first and third Wednesday of every month - May 2 and 16
One Hundred Years of Gurdjieff’s Work
October 5th - 7th, 2012
If you want to make sure that a tradition will keep its effectiveness then develop it. A Feng-shui master
1.
Gurdjieff’s tradition, generally known as the Fourth Way, after almost one hundred years of its history, has come to a lengthy pending stage: whereas the number of publications related to Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way is rapidly growing, especially those written in the genre of memoirs or as general overviews, today only few people understand what is Gurdjieff’s Work and even fewer actually practice it. The Fourth Way is gradually being reduced to the Gurdjieff Movements, a series of exercises created by G.I. Gurdjieff and performed with the accompaniment of special music composed by him, an essential but by no means a central element of his teaching.
Today Gurdjieff Work is carried out by both ‘licensed’ and ‘unlicensed’ instructors of the Fourth Way. For many decades the exclusive right for determining what is the true and genuine tradition has been claimed by the Gurdjieff Foundation, which was created after G.I. Gurdjieff’s death by his devoted follower Jeanne de Salzmann and her associates. While the Gurdjieff Foundation has a long list of merits for preserving the framework of the Fourth Way intact, unfortunately, it has also posed itself as the only legitimate guardian of the Gurdjieff’s tradition. It declared two of the brightest disciples of Gurdjieff, Piotr Demianovich Ouspensky and John Godolphin Bennett to be distorters of the ‘true line’; other ‘dissidents’ have also been strictly censored.
Nevertheless, in the present day the Gurdjieff Foundation is not the only institution in the world which implements the Gurdjieff Work. In Europe, America, Asia and Australia we could find various groups and individuals practicing the Fourth Way at their own initiative and assuming full responsibility for it. Other adherents of the Fourth Way went along the road of rediscovering for themselves respectable ancient traditions such as Sufism, Advaita-Vedanta, Shamanism, and even Christianity, considering them to be the main source of Gurdjieff’s tradition. Still others chose the way of creation of new syncretic teachings on the basis of the Fourth Way and other traditions.
At the present time, when there is practically nobody left of those who met G.I. Gurdjieff in person and who studied under his supervision, and when the tradition is left with a complete lack of a strong center of gravity, we can state with a certain degree of confidence that Gurdjieff’s tradition does not have a real continuation, and that it is moving towards complete disintegration. Notwithstanding all these facts and problems, some people keep insisting on the idea of continuation and a direct line of succession.
In this regard the following questions arise before us in all their urgency:
What is the real story and true character of the creator of the Fourth Way? What are the essential components and what is the core element of Gurdjieff’s teaching? To what degree is the Fourth Way the creation of G.I. Gurdjieff and what are the real sources of Gurdjieff’s teaching? What are the metaphysical foundations of the tradition of the Fourth Way, which essentially appears to be a compilation of several different metaphysics? And, finally, the most crucial question: what could be the continuation or the new shape of the Fourth Way? Should we not expect that the revival of the genuine Gurdjieff tradition would come in a form of rebellion against this tradition? It was well known that Gurdjieff could not find a successor during his life, the reason behind this fact was that among his disciples there was not a single person who was sufficiently naïve, straightforward or ignorant, and whose mind was not dispirited by decadent western intellectualism. Such intellectual subtleties as the Enneagram, the Law of Three, the Law of Seven, the Ray of Creation and the Tables of Hydrogens were created by Gurdjieff exclusively for European, Western men and women, oversaturated with the ideas and achievements of modern sciences and in no lesser degree with the leftovers of exhausted traditions, thus being essentially incapable for direct learning from a teacher. After all, there is with a certain law, according to which only fools who are naïve and pure of heart, – such as Ivan the Fool from the Russian fairy tales, Parsifal, Joan of Arc and others − are capable of winning the Firebird, Helen of Troy, the Holy Grail…
Nevertheless, being naïve is not enough – one also needs a great spiritual charge and an enormous willpower to overcome all the barriers – the qualities that help to shape the circumstances of one’s life and personal destiny and lead to the victory of the Spirit over inertia and routine.
2
Gurdjieff was a “universal” man endowed with abundant talents, which he expanded and developed. He not only absorbed into himself a treasury of esoteric wisdom, both the traditional and the new one that emerged in the turn of the century, and was able to merge them into a new teaching which met the expectations of his Russian, European and American followers. In addition to many other skills, he also possessed a hypnotic ability and masterly used it to influence people’s behavior.
The intellectual part of Gurdjieff’s teaching is well represented in his own books and talks with his disciples as well as in the memoirs of the latter. The teaching revealed by Gurdjieff was integral and focused on his person: he himself played the role of a center which held all the other components together. After Gurdjieff’s decease, his teaching being left without a gravity center fell apart; splitting into the intellectual part which was reconstructed by Ouspensky and Bennett, into Movements and music that was noted by Thomas de Hartmann and, finally, into his mythologized image. These three parts eventually became independent of each other and presently they coexist in a self-sufficient manner.
The Gurdjieff Movements are presently the dominant self-sufficient phenomenon, and there have been numerous cases when only after a number of years of practicing the Movements participants begin to realize the significance and magnitude of their creator. However the peak of enthusiasm over the Movements was reached in the 1980s and 1990s and is presently waning.
The music composed by Gurdjieff and arranged by Thomas de Hartmann is one of the most harmonious and delicate elements of Gurdjieff’s heritage. Among the people who have been interested in Gurdjieff, there is a moderate circle of connoisseurs of this music, who perceive it primarily as an aesthetic phenomenon in a retro style. An interest in it is enhanced by the reminiscences of the spiritual practices of various Eastern traditions.
The myths and anecdotes that surround the founder of the Fourth Way are widely sold out by tradesmen of mass culture. On the other hand, many Westerners perceive Gurdjieff’s teaching as a sectarian cult and call for saving unsteady and inexperienced souls from its influence. The doctrines created on the basis of Gurdjieff’s teachings by his brilliant interpreters, Ouspensky and Bennett, over the years have turned into a kind of rationalistic philosophies, which have lost the plasticity of living and developing ideas. Even the language itself of the Fourth Way seems today out of date, and all those who use it, feel compelled to expand and modernize it and, hence, to shatter the foundations of the teaching.
This kind of decline was experienced by all classical traditions including Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism. These teachings once created by enlightened beings, flourished for a period of time and then slowly withered away. In the past this process took thousands of years, in our accelerating age less than one hundred years sufficed for the Gurdjieff tradition to go through the entire cycle.
Many of the classical traditions went through the periods of reformation, which were frequently marked by the idea of a return to the initial ideas and practices as they were created by the founders of those traditions. The time has come for reforms of the Fourth Way. As is always the case in such occurrences, the decrepit knowledge should be replaced by a multitude of new teachings from which only the most the sturdiest ones will survive. The fragments of the old teachings will serve them as saturating and noble fertilization.
3
The process of renewal of the Fourth Way followed the traditional path of systematization and rationalization with P.D. Ouspensky and J.G. Bennett as the initiators of this project. Their work was carried out in an atmosphere of opposition between the "conservatives" from the Gurdjieff Foundation and the "innovators". As far back as 1956 John Bennett was complaining about the impossibility of cooperating with the "conservatives," having explained their position as that of an overly reverent attitude towards Gurdjieff and his teaching. The reason for this was, in his opinion, a lack among the leaders of the Foundation of the people endowed with the knowledge, certitude and gift of improvisation similar to Gurdjieff's. The Foundation was comprised of those of whom Gurdjieff would say that they possessed only partial knowledge or knowledge of only isolated aspects of the teaching − while they did not have a slightest understanding of the "certain something," about which Gurdjieff spoke and wrote numerous times.
This lack of understanding became clearly evident in Peter Brook's film "Meetings with Remarkable Men," based on Gurdjieff's book with the same name, the creation of which was inspired by the Gurdjieff Foundation. The film turned out to be merely a strained illustration of a rich and lively context.
Instead of a flamboyant teacher, who ceaselessly created situations appropriate for learning by using any available context of life for that end, who spent days and nights in joint work, creativity and endless feasting with his disciples, preparing spicy Eastern dishes for them by himself, the students of the new generation met once a week with their mentors and spent meetings engaged in silence, learning patience and attention. Some of them took part in the Movements and in the work in Gurdjieff's farms, which was also marked by its atmosphere of constraint and boredom.
The Gurdjieff Movements were based solely on the exercises created by Gurdjieff and did not accept any innovation. "We only live, so to speak, upon the leftovers from the teacher's table” – the chief instructor of the Movements at the Gurdjieff Foundation, Jessmin Howarth complained, – “nobody among us is capable of creating exercises the way that Mr. Gurdjieff was able to do it.” These words of one of the matriarchs of the Gurdjieff Foundation clearly demonstrate lack of creative abilities of the devoted "conservatives."
Other people also participated in the process of renewal and explication of the Gurdjieff tradition:
Rodney Collin, the author of numerous books on cosmology and visionary experience, who declined the opportunity of becoming a leader among the groups of Ouspensky’s followers, darted to Mexico in 1949 in order to carry out his ecstatic experiment there in the mountains of Tetacala, and finished with a fatal jump from the bell tower of the town cathedral in Cusco. After Ouspensky and Bennett he was the most volatile spirit of a tradition that has lost its wings, however, filled with elements of phantasmagoria and false mysticism. This is apparent even in such a statement as his claim that Gurdjieff and Ouspensky were patronized by two Christian saints: Kosma, who was behind Gurdjieff, and Damian, who was behind Ouspensky, and behind these two saints there stood an even more lofty mystical spirit, named "Ivan Ivanovich," who was also St. Luke the Apostle.
The writer René Daumal, who was drawn to the teaching by Alexander de Salzmann, wrote his allegorical novelette, "Mount Analogue," which was most likely the most heartwarming work that has ever been inspired by the Fourth Way. The novelette develops the idea of a spiritual quest in a form of “expedition”.
Many of Gurdjieff’s disciples such as Morris Nichol, Jeanne de Salzmann, Pierre Elliott, Frank Lloyd Wright, Willem Nyland, John Pentland and others have also made their own contributions, to the best of their abilities, to the dissemination and development of the tradition.
Finally, in the 1970s Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo substituted the profound interpretation of the enneagram, offered by Ouspensky and Bennett, for a typological and pragmatic application of it. The theory of ennotypes applied by them for meeting therapeutic needs was greeted with enthusiasm by psychologists disappointed by the stagnation in their discipline which began after Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and extended for a number of decades. This approach found favor from the general public which has always been ready to respond to "novelties for mediocrities."
4
Against the backdrop of waning of the Fourth Way tradition the phenomenon of Georgy Gurdjieff stands out all the brighter, as of a man who was not bound to a single metaphysical idea or tradition of practical mysticism. The main objective set by Gurdjieff’s teaching for the human being is obtaining the higher “I” which he normally does not possess but can acquire by applying extensive efforts.
Although Gurdjieff’s teaching is seemingly filled with a traditional Judeo-Christian terminology, – “our Common Father”, “the Ray of Creation”, “the Archangels, Angels, etc., − these concepts have a rather modal character and hardly represent his theological credo. In a different religious context he could have certainly used another set of symbols, since his focus was not in the area of theological concepts, but in the spiritual concreteness of the task of human awakening.
The main method of Gurdjieff’s instruction was not in declaring the ultimate truths but in an evasive hint and in concrete directives. The fundamental principles of his teaching were also elusive in their character and could not have been deciphered even by two of his brightest interpreters P.D. Ouspensky and J.G. Bennett, let alone Jeanne de Saltzmann.
Gurdjieff was a volatile spirit and hence could not be squared by any of his commentators or interpreters. Just as Ivan the Fool managed to pull only one feather from the Firebird’s tail, Gurdjieff’s pupils were only able to touch the tip of the iceberg of Gurdjieff’s wisdom. Like many wise men of the Orient, Gurdjieff consistently varied his positions thus preventing the students from mistakenly taking the superficiality of the words and concepts for the true meaning of his intentions and ideas.
Any affirmation is, in essence, a slaughter of truth, while an apathetic statement (neti, neti) is, in essence, an affirmation of those attributes which the truth does not represent. Gurdjieff’s teaching about the Idiots, his “Beelzebub” and other writings, his music and Movements, the very outline of his life and, finally, his death, did not represent “the Pillars of Truth’ but, in fact, indications to where our own Paths begin.
Gurdjieff’s Enneagram and Laws do not form the laws of nature, as the latter are treated today by academicians. They are addressed not merely to the logical or practical domain but in the first place to that of mystical intuition. P.D. Ouspensky and J.G. Bennett could not survive for a long time in the nightmarish atmosphere of the fiery groundlessness surrounding Gurdjieff; they needed firm ground, terra firma under their feet which in their case was a rationalistic discourse. Perhaps for that very reason A.R. Orage passed away at such an early age, as he also tried to capture Gurdjieff’s carnival in the fetters of his aphorisms. Likewise, Thomas de Hartmann was instrumental in his mission of notating in musical figures the firestorm breathed into him by Gurdjieff, and he was also sent away by his teacher in the appropriate time.
As a result, only intuitive and week individuals remained with the teacher, those who lacked understanding and could only fathom the truth. They were the ones who later had been writing their pitiful memoirs.
5
Teachings are born, they live and die. There does not exist and there could not be an everlasting teaching. In the same way there is not and there could not exist one true teaching and the only true path.
Genuine teachings appear and live on the level of their incomprehensible depth. For an average man this presents a land of miracles, for the wise ones it is a sphere of supra-reasonable comprehension of “something”. Could a man perceive anything that is beyond reason? Gurdjieff provided a positive answer to this question, describing a higher intellectual center which is capable of achieving the objective truths. The truth of Persephone the Seed, planted in the soil and germinating when the time comes, is the core (that is why her other name is Core, the Seed) of the Elysian Mysteries. There is no written text, including this one, which could reach this sphere. No words, including the present ones, could help us in this situation.
There are two decisive steps to be taken which could help:
The First Step: a return to the crossroads. At the point of intersection of all the conflicting metaphysics there is a supra-rational domain pertaining to all the metaphysics. It is called the “dark night” of reason. But this domain is brightly illuminated by a supra-rational comprehension. Each one of the 28 types of sleeping human beings is in need of its own metaphysics; however people living on the point of intersection need none whatsoever. Here lies the hidden meaning of Christ’s description of the birds which have no need to seek for nourishment, since God provides it for them. People living on the point of intersection are in no need of any teaching. Gurdjieff’s teaching had answered the needs of those for whom it was created, but it has the ability to serve those people who live at the crossroads of traditions in a completely different manner.
The gardener Muso Soseki (1275-1351) wrote: “Those masters who have a clear understanding do not possess a definite doctrine as something set for eternity. They preach any teaching corresponding to the circumstances, and say anything that comes to their mind. They do not have any definite source on which they would rely, if somebody asks them about the Path. At times they reply in the vein of Confucius, at times, in the spirit of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu or the Buddhist teachers, and sometimes they answer in the form of folk sayings or they would simply shake their staff, or even shout in a loud voice. Or they would simply raise their finger or show their fist”.
The Second Step: a renewal of the teaching. Those who aspire towards the Gurdjieff teaching and who attempt to practice it, but who are confronted by insurmountable obstacles, such as: a lack of a universal teacher or of a Gurdjieff group, a shortage of motivation, or of will power, may be in need of a different teaching. This different teaching could essentially be the old teaching remodeled, or it could be created by a resonant group (endowed with a sense of resonance between its members and resonance with its epoch) of “masters who have a clear understanding.” Moreover, there is a need of a man who would deliver this new or remodeled teaching to those who would aspire to it. It should be a very “human” and a very multifaceted person – just like Gurdjieff.
The egg is located within its shell, and the pearl – in its case. It is not the egg or the pearl which is bad, but very often the shell or the case does not meet the needs of the customer. They see a different shell or a different case in their imagination.
For the creation of such a teaching (shell or case) there is an urgent need for “masters who have a clear understanding;” everything else – the setting, the money, the laboratory or the conditions for the field research – would come along with them. Such conditions are quite fathomable to create, if a few masters would gather together.
6
What kind of world do we live in now? What are the present conditions for field work? What is the new spiritual seeker like? Let us glance back at our recent past.
The world carnages of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 have divided the most recent history of Europe into three parts: before World War I, the period between the wars and the time after World War II. The final collapse of traditional Europe took place as a result of these two squalls which have descended on it, slaughtering millions of people physically and hundreds of millions spiritually. These horrific sacrifices have taught people the lesson of hopelessness and submissiveness before cruelty.
The time period before 1914 was characterized by an accelerating disintegration of the social order, although society was for the most part dominated at least nominally by traditional European values. Then the first squall descended, and the weak lost courage. The period between the two wars was a nostalgic one: people tried to forget about the past war and convince themselves that a lengthy peace had arrived, similar to the pre-war years. However the storm clouds gathered once again over Russia and Germany, and new horrors began looming on the horizon. In 1945, after the end of World War II, the new order established itself permanently, continuing up to the present day. It was a new type of tyranny, hypocritically labeled as democracy. From that time on, “democracy” has become a concept which masked a new technocratic brand of dictatorship, in which the submissive masses were controlled by anonymous magicians. These magicians replaced each other in successive order, using the old mechanisms of control, turning on the same levers of propaganda, as well as utilizing the same psychotropic means.
The intelligent spiritual seeker (“men number 1, 2 and 3,” according to Gurdjieff) had prior to 1914 contented himself with theosophy or anthroposophy, showed off his left-wing radicalism and flirted with black magic (remember Arthur Machen, the author of “The Great God Pan” and the main character of Huysmans’ novel “Là bas!”). During the inter-war period the talented spiritual seeker (René Daumal and Hans Kastorp from Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain”) turned towards surrealism, Dadaism and mysticism. He had no wish to ponder over the carnage which had just ceased or over that which was approaching. The young seeker of the period after World War II, bewildered by the unprecedented scale of its cruelty, was an anti-Stalinist or anti-Nazi according to his political views, and simultaneously a cynic and adventurer in his approach to life (the heroes of Nabokov), still dreaming in his heart of the pre-war paradise in which his childhood passed.
Presently the ecological catastrophe threatens to become global and irreversible. In ten to twenty years from now our civilization may be destroyed, either totally (due to the inaptitude of the environment for habitation in it) or in part (due to the impossibility of suppressing tensions in society). Distinct symptoms of the approaching catastrophe could already be discerned today. The demographics of Europe and the USA have changed considerably in the direction of mixing in with emigrants from Africa and the East. In some countries the predominating religions change – in France there are already more mosques than churches. Globalization (read: global standardization) is occurring within the spheres of economics, communications and culture. All of these phenomena have had their own proponents and critics, and this threatens us with wars and breaking up of big countries into small entities, where local chiefs and popes would come to power, especially in light of the approaching ecological catastrophe. The present-day financial crisis has shown us what kind of chaos could arrive even in such a seemingly common case as an economic recession. We are all living in this changing new world.
What attracts the modern spiritual seeker to the Fourth Way and what no longer does? What new type of shell is he trying to find? It is indispensible to find out precisely what aspects of the Fourth Way meet his real expectations, and to preserve these aspects. Is it possible to reanimate the Gurdjieff tradition and breathe new life into it? Finally, the most important question: what type of person is this seeker who is capable of making use of the treasure of the “true sages”? Are there any such people left in the rapidly disintegrating world? All these questions require practical answers, which could be obtained by means of observations and experiments. An appeal towards this course of action brings this essay to a close.
Arkady Rovner, Sergei Rodygin
Moscow-New York, 2009
