Gurdjieff
OXFORDSTUDIESINWESTERNESOTERICISM
SeriesEditor
HenrikBogdan,UniversityofGothenburg
EditorialBoard
Jean-PierreBrach,ÉcolePratiquedesHautesÉtudes CaroleCusack,UniversityofSydney
ChristineFerguson,UniversityofStirling OlavHammer,UniversityofSouthernDenmark WouterHanegraaff,UniversityofAmsterdam RonaldHutton,UniversityofBristol JeffreyKripal,RiceUniversity
JamesR Lewis,UniversityofTromsø MichaelStausberg,UniversityofBergen EgilAsprem,UniversityofStockholm DylanBurns,FreieUniversitätBerlin GordanDjurdjevic,SiimonFraserUniversity PeterForshaw,UniversityofAmsterdam JesperAa.Petersen,NorwegianUniversityofScienceandTechnology
CHILDRENOFLUCIFER
TheOriginsofModernReligiousSatanism
RubenvanLuijk
SATANICFEMINISM
LuciferastheLiberatorofWomaninNineteenth-CenturyCulture PerFaxneld
THESIBLYSOFLONDON
AFamilyontheEsotericFringesofGregorianEngland SusanSommers
WHATISITLIKETOBEDEAD?
Near-DeathExperiences,Christianity,andtheOccult JensSchlieter
AMONGTHESCIENTOLOGISTS
History,Theology,andPraxis
DonaldA Westbrook
RECYCLEDLIVES
AHistoryofReincarnationinBlavatsky’sTheosophy JulieChajes
THEELOQUENTBLOOD
TheGoddessBabalonandtheConstructionofFemininitiesinWesternEsotericism ManonHedenborg-White
GURDJIEFF
Mysticism,Contemplation,andExercises JosephAzize
Gurdjieff
Mysticism,Contemplation,andExercises
JOSEPHAZIZE
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ISBN978–0–19–006407–5 eISBN978–0–19–006409–9
ToGeorgeandHelenAdie,this,mysimplehomage
Contents
ForewordbyProfessorCaroleCusack
Acknowledgments
Introduction
01 AimandThesis
PARTI:INTRODUCTORY
02 FormalDefinitionoftheExercises
03 “Subjective”and“Objective”Exercises
04 “Meditation,”“Contemplation,”“Mysticism,”and“WesternEsotericism”
0.5 PreliminaryQuestions
0.6 Format
1 ABiographicalSketchofGurdjieff
1.1AManwithaHeritagebutNoHome
1.2Gurdjieffto1912
1.3P.D.Ouspensky
1.4Gurdjiefffrom1912to1931
1.5A.R.OrageandAmerica
1.6Gurdjiefffrom1931anddeSalzmann
1.7Summary
2. AnOverviewofGurdjieff’sIdeas
21 AnOverviewofGurdjieff’sSystem
22 RealityandCreation
23 MatterandMateriality
24 Gurdjieff’sAnthropology:TheCenters
25 “Doing”and“Sleep”
26 “Self-Remembering”
27 TheFoodFactoryandDiagram
28 Conscience
29 DutyandSuffering
2.10GurdjieffonReligionandPrayer
3 GurdjieffandtheMysticalTradition
3.1 Introduction
3.2 GurdjieffonMysticism
3.3 GurdjieffandNeoplatonism
3.4 Gurdjieff,MountAthos,thePhilokalia,andTheWayofaPilgrim
3.5 Gurdjieff,Ouspensky,andtheJesusPrayer
PARTII:GURDJIEFF’SCONTEMPLATIVEEXERCISES
4. TheRussianYears
41 Introduction
42 TheEgoExercise
4.3 FirstRelaxationandSensingExercises
4.4 TheStopExercise
45 WhyDidGurdjieffInitiallyEschewContemplativeExercises?
46 Gurdjieff’sHesitationsAboutContemplativeExercises
47 Gurdjieff’sReticenceAboutExercises
5. GurdjiefftotheEarly1930s
51Introduction
52Orage’sPsychologicalExercises
53Orage’s“OnDyingDaily”
54TheHeraldofComingGood
55Transformed-Contemplation
6 TheFirstSeries:Beelzebub’sTalestohisGrandson
6.1Introduction
6.2Aiëssirittoorassnian-Contemplation
6.3TheGenuineBeingDutyExercise
7 TheSoilPreparingExercisefromtheThirdSeries
7.1Introduction
7.2TheTalks
7.3TheSoilPreparingExercise
7.4ConjecturedSources
8. TheFirstAssistingExercisefromtheThirdSeries
81Introduction
82TheFirstAssistingExercise
83SubsequentExplanations
9. TheSecondAssistingExercisefromtheThirdSeries
91Introduction
92TheSecondAssistingExercise
93Commentary
94PossibleAntecedentinthePhilokalia
10 GurdjieffintheLate1930s
10.1 Introduction
10.2 AnExerciseConcerningAimandEnergy
10.3 “ThereAreTwoPartstoAir”
10.4 CommentaryontheTwoPartstoAirExercise
10.5 HulmeontheExercises
10.6 “MakeStrong!NotEasyThing”
10.7 Commentaryon“MakeStrong!NotEasyThing”
10.8 Review:Gurdjieff’sTransformed-Contemplationin1939
11. ExercisesfromtheTranscriptsof1941–1946
111 Introduction
112 RelaxationExercises
113 ASimpleSensingExercise
114 ExercisesfortheBody
115 ExercisesforThreeCenters
116 TheAtmosphereExercise
117 “IAm”Exercises
118 TheFillingUpExercise
119 TheWebExercise 1110AnExerciseof“IAm,”Breathing,andExternalConsidering 1111AnExerciseforActiveReasoning 1112AimandDecision
1113CountingExercises:ImprovingonOrage 1114MiscellaneousExercisesandAllusions
PARTIII:EXERCISESFROMGURDJIEFF’SPUPILS
12 TheRealityofBeing
12.1Introduction
12.2TheRealityofBeing
12.3AnExerciseforFeeling
12.4The“I,Me”Exercise
12.5ContinuityandDiscontinuity
13. TheFourIdealsExercise 131Introduction
132TheFourIdealsExercise
133CommentaryontheFourIdealsExercise
134DevelopmentoftheExercise
14. The“LordHaveMercy”Exercises
141Introduction
142“LordHaveMercy”inTheRealityofBeing
143The“LordHaveMercy”Exercises
144Commentaryonthe“LordHaveMercy”Exercise
14.5HelenAdie’sVersion
14.6“LordHaveMercy”andGurdjieff’sSources
15 TheColorSpectrumExercise
15.1Introduction
15.2GurdjieffonColorinLifeIsReal
15.3TheColorSpectrumExercise
15.4CommentaryontheColorSpectrumExercise
16. TheClearImpressionsExercise 161Introduction
162TheClearImpressionsExercise
163CommentaryontheClearImpressionsExercise
17. ThePreparation
171Introduction
172APreparationbyHelenAdie
173CommentaryonthePreparationbyHelenAdie
174APreparationbyGeorgeAdie
175CommentaryonthePreparationbyGeorgeAdie
176ThePurposeofthePreparation
17.7TheDetailsofthePreparation:TimeandPosture
17.8WillpowerandTransformation
18 Gurdjieff’sLastExercises
18.1 Introduction
18.2 TheLastExerciseGiventoClaustres
183 TheLastExerciseGiventotheAdies
184 TheFormandPurposeofGurdjieff’sContemplativeExercises
185 Gurdjieff’sSourcesforHisContemplativeExercises
186 GurdjieffandTransformed-Contemplation
Bibliography Index
Foreword
The life of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (c1866–1949) until his emergence as a teacher in Moscow and St Petersburg in 1912 is shrouded in obscurity, and his semi-fictionalized memoir Meetings with Remarkable Men, while intriguing and suggestive of possible real-life journeys and potentially identifiable sources for his teachings, remains inconclusive.1 From approximately 1914 his activities and associates were chronicled by a range of journalists and other observers, not necessarily unbiasedly, providing a rich public source of corroborative evidence up until his death in 1949. In his life Gurdjieff was not the subject of scholarly attention, and the lens of “religion” was not applied to his practical instruction or his written works Indeed, one of his pupils, Solange Claustres (1920–2015),opinedthat“Gurdjieff’steachingisnotasearchforreligiosity,butitcanbeadeepeningofreason....There is no question of ‘for’ or ‘against’ religion in this work”2 This is compatible with understanding Gurdjieff’s teaching as a technique for spiritual advancement that might be utilized in a range of contexts, and by people with varying or no religious beliefs or affiliations In fact, the terms used to describe Gurdjieff during his life included “charlatan” and “magician” but in general did not connect him to religion, and more recent designators like “spiritual teacher” and “Western esotericist” had not yet come into vogue It is therefore not surprising that the academic study of Gurdjieff has emerged only recently, and that it is situated in a range of disciplines including religiousstudies,psychology,andWesternesotericism,reflectingboththeproteanqualityoftheWorkortheFourth Way,andtheconflictingandcontestedwaysthatGurdjieffhimselfhasbeenportrayed.
The earliest writings about Gurdjieff, as noted above, were by critical journalists, and these were supplemented by a body of early “devotional” literature authored by close pupils. These works included expositions of Gurdjieff’s ideas such as P D Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous (1949) and C S Nott’s Teachings of Gurdjieff: A Pupil’sJournal (1961), and more personal, literary accounts of encounters with the master and of personal spiritual growth, like Margaret Anderson’s The Unknowable Gurdjieff (1962) and Kathryn Hulme’s Undiscovered Country (1966). With the exception of The Herald of Coming Good(1933), which was later recalled, Gurdjieff’s own Three Series were published posthumously Many other sources exist: pupil notes from lectures public and private, both from Gurdjieff himself and from authoritative pupils in a range of teaching lineages; choreographies of Movements; scoresofthemusichewrotewithhispupil,theUkrainiancomposerThomasdeHartmann(1885–1956);andwritten outlines of the “exercises” that are the subject of Joseph Azize’s astonishing research in Gurdjieff: Mysticism, Contemplation, and Exercises. In the twenty-first century the restricted and initiatory nature of the Work as a directly transmitted teaching from teacher to pupil via the Gurdjieff Foundation in London, New York, Paris, and Caracas, which was led by Jeanne de Salzmann (1889–1990), Gurdjieff’s nominated successor, is in decline. AlternativelineagesledbyimportantpupilsincludingJohnGodolphinBennett(1897–1974),MauriceNicoll(1884–1953), and Annie-Lou Staveley (1906–1996), to name only a few, have proliferated and challenged the master narrative of the Foundation, and in the past three decades a steady stream of memoirs, collections of lectures, and otherbooksaboutorinfluencedbyGurdjieffhavebeenpublished.Interestingly,manyofthesearebyFoundationor formerFoundationmemberswithaccesstosignificantprivatearchives.3
Since the 1960s the dominant Christian religion of the Western world has been in retreat, and a deregulated religious and spiritual marketplace has provided a range of alternatives for seekers. Gurdjieff; Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), co-founder of Theosophy; and his near-contemporary Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), the founder of Anthroposophy, have been cast as founding figures of the so-called New Age Gurdjieff’sMeetings with Remarkable Men and Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous became minor esoteric bestsellers, and in 1979 Madame de Salzmann and the celebrated theater and film director Peter Brook made a film of Meetings with Remarkable Men that has become a cult classic among film buffs and also served to introduce Gurdjieff to a new audience.4 This gradual but growing presence of the Fourth Way in the public sphere was accelerated by the development of the internet; in 2019 it is thirty years since the debut of Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web interface, which effectively made cyberspace a medium for expression and communication among those who were not computer scientists In the first three decades of the Web, sites related to Gurdjieff have proliferated These include the curated, non-interactive Gurdjieff International Review site; William Patrick Patterson’s Gurdjieff Legacy Foundation site, which hosts his Online Fourth Way School; and the interactive Gurdjieff Internet Guide,
founded by Reijo Oksanen in 2002 Other online services, such as YouTube, provide a range of Work content, including film footage of Movements and recordings of the Gurdjieff–de Hartmann music, which has gained a considerable following outside Fourth Way circles due to Keith Jarrett’s recording, G. I. Gurdjieff: Sacred Hymns, releasedin1980.5
The beginnings of the academic study of Gurdjieff were visible in the 1990s, with publication of some insideroriented volumes with mainstream scholarly publishers For example, Jacob Needleman and George Baker’s Gurdjieff: Essays and Reflections on the Man and his Teaching (1998), put out by Continuum, was a translation of BrunodePanafieu’seditedcollectionissuedinFrenchas GeorgesIvanovitchGurdjieff in1994 HarryT Hunt, who had completed a doctorate on Gurdjieff, published a monograph, Lives in Spirit: Precursors and Dilemmas of a Secular Western Mysticism (2003) with the State University of New York Press in a series on Transpersonal Psychology. This had one chapter on Gurdjieff but was important because it brought Gurdjieff’s life and teachings into conversation with those of other figures who could usefully be compared to him The methodology included phenomenology; object relations theory, which is associated with A. H. Almaas (b. A. Hameed Ali, 1944); and the sociology of Max Weber (1864–1920) and Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923), whose phrase “the secret religion of the educated classes” Hunt applied to the “inner worldly mysticism” that he studies.6 Hunt’s genealogy of “secular Western mysticism” included figures who are relevant to the present study, such as Epictetus, Plotinus, and various Gnostics, and in the modern era a mix of philosophers (Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger), psychoanalysts (Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud), Transcendentalists (Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman), magic practitioners (Aleister Crowley), and feminist movements with roots in Theosophy. This location of Gurdjieff’s teachings in the field of psychology continued in Mohammad H Tamdgidi’s Gurdjieff and Hypnosis: A Hermeneutic Study (2009) with a foreword by J. Walter Driscoll, a Gurdjieff insider. Tamdgidi’s eccentric study was published by Palgrave Macmillan and is primarily a textual analysis of Gurdjieff’s writings using hypnosis as a lens through which to understand Gurdjieff’s assertion that humans are asleep and need to wake up in order to become real and to acquire thepossibilityoflifeafterdeaththroughgrowingasoul 7
The development of the academic field of (Western) Esotericism is temporally linked to this emergence of scholarly studies of Gurdjieff Antoine Faivre’s Access to Western Esotericism (1994) was published by the State University of New York Press and provided a framework that generated a (relatively) consistently demarcated field that unified disparate tendencies in the work of scholars like Edward A Tiryakian, Marcello Truzzi, Mircea Eliade, Colin Campbell, and Patricia A. Hartman from the 1970s. Since 2000 publications that apply methodologies from both Religious Studies and Western Esotericism to Gurdjieff have gained ground The emphasis has shifted from insider-oriented work, though much fine research of that type has been done, in particular by James Moore (1929–2017), to outsider-oriented work such as that pioneered by James Webb (1946–1980) A group of scholars working in Australia formed, largely because of the presence of Joseph Azize, a researcher in Ancient Near Eastern religion and culture, who assisted several younger scholars 8 Through his cooperation with my initiatives, utilizing our international links with academics both inside and outside the Work in Europe and America, collaborations (mostly in the form of themed journal special issues dedicated to aspects of Gurdjieff’s life and teachings) have resulted since.9 The most substantial outcome is Johanna Petsche’s monograph Gurdjieff and Music: The Gurdjieff/de Hartmann Piano Music and its Esoteric Significance (2015), which was published by Brill and has been well received.
Thishistoricalsketchofwriting,reading,researching,practicing,andpublishingaboutoraspartoftheGurdjieff tradition establishes the context for Gurdjieff: Mysticism, Contemplation, and Exercises, a book that makes a major contributiontoscholarshipinanumberofareas Ithasbeencommonplacetoclaimvarious“origins”or“sources”of Gurdjieff’s teachings over the years: In his lectures he often spoke of Christianity, Sufism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and various other religious and initiatory traditions, and sundry pupils became focused on seeking the mysterious Sarmoung Brotherhood that featured in Meetings with Remarkable Men, most notably Bennett, who was convinced that the Work originated in Sufism This view has been promoted in two monographs, Anna T Challenger’s Philosophy and Art in Gurdjieff’s “Beelzebub”: A Modern Sufi Odyssey (2002) and Michael S. Pittman’s Classical Spirituality in Contemporary America: The Confluence and Contribution of G I Gurdjieff and Sufism (2013)Yet onmorethanoneoccasionGurdjieffdescribedhisteachingas“esotericChristianity”andhisownupbringingwasas a member of the Orthodox Church During his residence in and near Paris from 1922 to 1949 he often attended the St. Alexandre Nevsky Russian Orthodox Cathedral at 12 Rue Daru, and his funeral service was conducted there. Joseph Azize’s argument that the inner exercises that Gurdjieff termed “Transformed-contemplation” or “Aiëssirittoorassnian-contemplation”werelikelyderivedfromHesychasm,acontemplativepracticeintheOrthodox tradition, and specifically from the monastery of Mount Athos in Greece, goes farther than earlier, very general, attributions. Azize can better support his contention for three reasons: his extensive research into Eastern
Christianity; his deep knowledge and long-term engagement with Gurdjieff’s spiritual exercises; and unique access to Gurdjieff pupils, archives, and texts that enable a more detailed and genuinely open analysis of the exercises, which to date many have believed should be kept secret. Azize thus can situate Gurdjieff in the tradition of the mystical use of the Prayer of the Heart and its great Orthodox Christian commentators and exegetes, most notably Nicephorus the Solitary, without making a blanket claim that Gurdjieff was a Christian teacher or limiting the Work to be interpreted via the lens of Christianity, as in real terms crucial elements of the faith were not present (for example,thesalvificJesus,sacraments,andtheBible)inGurdjieff’ssystem.10
Situating Gurdjieff in the context of the history of mysticism creates space for discussion of the exercises that have been neglected to date for a range of reasons, chiefly the perception among Gurdjieff groups of all types and lineages that the exercises were secret, and the fact that they have almost entirely been discontinued among Foundation members.11 Gurdjieff: Mysticism, Contemplation, and Exercises makes valuable contributions to a number of areas in Gurdjieff studies For example, Azize is able to shed light on the relationships that two distinguished literary pupils, Ouspensky and Alfred R. Orage, had with Gurdjieff and to clarify the reasons for Gurdjieff’sinterestinhighlycapablewriters ThefirstaccountoftheWorkwaspublishedbyOuspensky,andOrage waskeytothe1931editionof Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson, which has only recently been published by editor Robin Bloor 12 Azize also builds new knowledge about how and why Gurdjieff taught in certain ways in different periodsofhislife;ratherthanacceptingthe“insider”ideathatGurdjieff’steachingsprangfullyformedfromhim,as did Athena from the head of Zeus, he demonstrates that the early teaching in Russia and the Caucasus was characterized by the exposition of an elaborate cosmology and the use of physical techniques like the Movements and the “Stop Exercise,” while the 1920s was characterized by intense work on music with Thomas de Hartmann and the writing of Beelzebub’s Tales, whereas in his last two years Gurdjieff recorded a range of harmonium improvisations Therisetoprominenceofthecontemplativeexercises,Azizeavers,wasaround1930
Gurdjieff disliked the term “meditation,” and his concept of contemplation differed from traditional understandings in that he rejected the distinction between the active and the inactive (contemplative) life The exercises were to be practiced in the context of everyday life, and Azize’s exposition is especially valuable as to the untrained eye they often appear to be so similar that disentangling the exact purpose of each exercise requires extensive knowledge of their specific functions. Azize considers a range of “Transformed-contemplation” exercises, identifyingGurdjieff’sThirdSeries, Life is Real Only Then, When “I Am” (1975), as the crucial text, along with the lecture transcripts from 1941 to 1946, for tracing exercises to Gurdjieff himself. In this category are included the Soil Preparing Exercise, the First and Second Assisting Exercises, the Atmosphere Exercise, and the Filling Up Exercise, among others. The book also treats exercises that are preserved in the writings of key pupils; de Salzmann’s The Reality of Being (2010) is especially interesting, as its publication twenty years after her death effectively meant the Foundation made public much previously hidden material, though it is clear that the editing of that book renders the dating and context of all of the information opaque Those exercises that de Salzmann alludes to are quite distant fromGurdjieff’s own, given her alteration of the tradition through the introduction of zazen-style “sittings” and the abandonment of the effortful exercises (“self-remembering”) in favor of passivity (“being remembered”).13 Versions of exercises preserved by different pupils are compared; both de Salzmann and Helen Adie had versions of the “Lord Have Mercy” Exercise, and George Adie’s version of the Four Ideals Exercise is carefully compared to truncated renderings preserved in writings by Bennett (“Conscious Stealing”), Frank Sinclair, andothers 14
The theological implications of Gurdjieff’s Transformed-contemplation are spelled out in Gurdjieff: Mysticism, Contemplation, and Exercises The Four Ideals Exercise suggests that Gurdjieff taught that the spiritual ideals (Christ, Buddha, Muhammad, and Lama) actually exist. Azize relates the use of the phrase “Lord have mercy” both inMovementsandtheeponymousexercisetoGurdjieff’sknowledgeoftheAthonitetradition,andhisassertionthat the Orthodox liturgy preserved knowledge of the Ray of Creation, which Ouspensky noted.15 The Law of Three, expressed in terms of the Affirming, Denying, and Reconciling forces, operates in the exercises, as for example in thenamelessexercisetaughtbyGeorgeAdiethatAzizedubstheClearImpressionsExercise,inwhichtheexercitant first is active through looking, then passive through closing eyes, and then harmonized in a plan for the day The chief quality that individuals and groups bring to spiritual work is attention, which must be active in thought, feeling, and sensation In an exercise like the Preparation, these three are raised to consciousness, assisting in the development of willpower. The last exercise that Gurdjieff gave to George and Helen Adie was a version of the “I Am” Exercise, which Azize connects to the Jesus Prayer and Hesychasm The basic intention of Gurdjieff’s inner Work seems to be that through practice the individual will develop a “real I” that is awake, conscious, and in possession of a soul For this reason Gurdjieff was wary of meditation, trance, and also (though he was a skilled
hypnotist) hypnotism, all of which occluded consciousness. Joseph Azize’s book represents an invaluable contribution to the scholarly study of Gurdjieff, in part through demonstrating that he changed his approach and developedhisteachingsovertime.ItisalsoamajoradvanceinfillinglacunaeinourknowledgeofWesternesoteric teachings and currents in the first half of the twentieth century, and is a significant reconsideration of the links betweensuchsystems,forexampleGurdjieff’s,orindeedSteiner’s,andChristianity
CaroleM.Cusack
ProfessorofReligiousStudies
UniversityofSydney
March22,2019
1 Gurdjieff(1963)passim
2 Claustres(2005)136
3 These works include Roger Lipsey’s Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy (2019), Jeanne de Salzmann’s The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff (2010), and Frank Sinclair’s Without Benefit of Clergy (2005) Additionally, a large number of books have been writtenbyPaulBeekmanTaylor,whosehalf-sisterEve(Petey)wasoneofGurdjieff’schildren,includingabiographicalstudytitled G I Gurdjieff: A New Life (2008) and two moving studies of Gurdjieff’s relationship with two key pupils who were themselves celebrated literary men, Gurdjieff and Orage: BrothersinElysium(2001)andShadowsofHeaven:GurdjieffandToomer(1998)
4 Cusack(2011)93–97
5 Petsche(2015)10
6 Hunt(2003)65–71
7 Gurdjieff(1950)569
8 The foremost Australian Gurdjieff scholar is Joseph Azize, who assisted David Pecotic and mentored Johanna Petsche during their PhD candidatures at the University of Sydney, where they were enrolled in Studies in Religion and supervised by Carole M Cusack, who developed an interest intheWorkasaresultoftheseassociations AzizeandPecoticbeganpublishingontheFourthWayinthefirstdecadeafter2000,withPetscheandCusack contributingfromthestartofthesecond
9 The first of these was a collection of four chapters in a book edited by Cusack and Alex Norman in 2012 by Azize, Pecotic, and Petsche with the additional contribution by Anthony Blake, a pupil of Bennett and an innovative and productive Work teacher himself, based in the United Kingdom Since then special issues of Journal for the Academic Study of Religion (2014), International Journal for the Study of New Religions (2015), Fieldwork in Religion (2016), and Religion and the Arts (2017) have appeared, with additional contributions by Steven J Sutcliffe, Vrasidas Karalis, Michael Pittman, David Seamon, David G. Robertson, Ricki O’Rawe, John Willmett, and Catharine Christof. Two further issues are planned for Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism (2020) and Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism (2021), with a further scholar, Christian Giudice, joining the now-establishedgroup(totalingfourteenscholarsfromEurope,America,andAustralia)
10 AzizehasdiscussedaspectsoftheWorkthatpointtoaffinities,ifnotidentity,withChristianity,suchasfasting Azize(2014)299–300
11 Moore(1994)11–16
12 Gurdjieff(1931)passim
13 Wellbeloved(2003)154.
14 Azize(2013)183
15 Ouspensky(1949)132
PARTI INTRODUCTORY
Introduction
0.1AimandThesis
The aim of this book is to study and make better known, in as clear and precise a format as possible, Gurdjieff’s internal exercises He coined for them the phrases “Aiëssirittoorassnian-contemplation” and “Transformedcontemplation,” although we could say “contemplation-like exercises.”1 It also offers a thesis about Gurdjieff’s sources for these exercises and his philosophy and purpose in fashioning them Thatstudy grounds a reevaluation of GurdjieffandhissystemandrevisitsaspectsofhisrelationshipwithP.D.OuspenskyandA.R.Orage.
This research is undertaken in the hope that it will prove to be of interest not only to students of Gurdjieff’s system, but also to students of meditation and contemplation, and to scholars of modern culture, and of Western Esotericism in particular Since it is suggested that Gurdjieff’s internal exercises were probably adapted from the hesychast Christian Orthodox traditions of Mount Athos, and especially from the techniques of the Prayer of the Heart (most notably as found in the writings of Nicephorus the Solitary), it may also be of interest to scholars of Hesychasm and the Christian contemplative traditions, who may begin to see Gurdjieff from a new perspective, and perhapsbenefitfromsomeofhisideas
Gurdjieff’s system is in many respects compatible with Christianity; indeed, Gurdjieff said that his system could be taken as “esoteric Christianity”2 Notwithstanding this, Gurdjieff also insisted on the value of non-Christian traditions, stating that Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and what he called “Lamaism” (thereby distinguishing it from Buddhism) had been founded by “genuine Sacred Individuals sent from Above”3 Had he been asked how his system related to these, he might have described it as “esoteric Islam,” “esoteric Buddhism,” or even “esoteric Lamaism” Apparently cutting across this division, he made a short enigmatic comment to Ouspensky in 1915 that “schools” had been divided up “long ago” so that there were only schools of “philosophy” in India, of “theory” in Egypt,andof“practice”inMesopotamiaandTurkestan(forOuspensky,seeSection1.3).4
Later on, Gurdjieff taught that there were four chief lines of “understanding”: the Hebraic, Egyptian, Persian, andHindu Of these,hestatedpartsofHebraic, Egyptian,andPersian theorywerethen known,togetherwithHindu philosophy. From these “fundamental lines,” two “mixed” lines, bearing “grains” of truth insufficient to give “practical realization,” were known: “theosophy and so-called Western occultism. ”5 Further, Gurdjieff had warned that “professional occultism,” by which he meant “spiritualists, healers and clairvoyants,” were “professional charlatans”andtheiractivitieswereabsolutelyinimicaltoeffectiveinternaldevelopment.6
Gurdjieff therefore claimed to be speaking from a perspective that allowed him to judge the value of all religions, philosophies, and spiritual paths. Gurdjieff notably availed himself of dervish culture, especially in his SacredDancesandMovements,andallowedthattherewasgenuineknowledgeinalchemy,astrology,theTarot,and ancient folk traditions, if they were understood correctly.7 At the same time, Gurdjieff not infrequently pointed to what he said were gaps in these teachings, but added that his system supplemented and corrected them; for instance, while stating that alchemists, fakirs, and monks had some understanding of the necessary path of spiritual development,heaverredthattheyleftoutordidnotknowof“self-remembering,”thevitalpreparatorystep.8
SolangeClaustres(1920–2015),hispupilfrom1941untilhisdeathin1949,stated:“Gurdjieff’steachingisnota search for religiosity, but it can be a deepening of reason. . . . There is no question of ‘for’ or ‘against’ religion in this work”9 On this view, if one understands Gurdjieff’s ideas, one can better discern what is valuable in any religion or tradition, and what is not. This accords with Gurdjieff’s idea of the Four Ways (see Section 2.1), his individual survey and evaluation of the traditions Gurdjieff’s comments about religion are often akin to the approach of Theosophy, where certain religions and spiritual currents, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Neoplatonism, are accepted as being exoteric husks around an esoteric seed, although the exotericcirclemaybeobliviousevenoftheexistenceoftheesotericcore.10
Although I shall be contending that Gurdjieff’s contemplative methods were adapted from Orthodox traditions, and became more overtly religious as he grew older, his system cannot be called a Christian system, if only because theMessiahhimself,thesacraments,andthescripturesplaynosignificantroleinGurdjieff’ssystem
Despite having adapted monastic Christian techniques, dervish culture, and other resources, Gurdjieff’s ideas and practical methods were carefully and consistently integrated and interrelated Perhaps the best available analogy is that of language: Gurdjieff’s relationship to older religions and spiritual traditions can be likened to the relationship between someone who fashions a new, internally consistent language, on the model of already existing languages Theinnovator’snewtonguemakesuseoffoundlanguages,andproducesitsownmoreorlessdistinctive vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. The former languages are not rendered obsolete, but the practitioner of the new may believe that it is superior Gurdjieff himself pointed the way to some such understanding when he spoke of his “Fourth Way” as combining simultaneously the practical elements found in the three other ways, those of the Fakir, theMonk,andtheYogi.11 JaneHeap(1887–1964),oneofthefewpupilswhomGurdjieffhadpersonallyauthorized to teach his system, was speaking of both his ideas and his methods when she said: “Gurdjieff left us a great inviolablebodyofideas,”12 thuspaintingGurdjieff’steachingasanorganicanddistinctiveidentity.
My aim, then, is to expound the nature and basis of Gurdjieff’s contemplative methods, and to explore his sources, to the degree that is possible. My view is that Gurdjieff has, to a significant extent, been imperfectly understood by scholars For reasons given below, I suggest that Gurdjieff can properly be considered to be a “mystic” who tried to fashion a workable system without contemplative methods, but later found them necessary supplementstohispracticalmethods
It is part of my thesis that Gurdjieff’s method as a whole can be taken as naturally leading to the mystical dimension of spirituality A survey of contemporary practitioners of Gurdjieff’s system also leads to the same conclusion: For example, Parabola, a magazine founded by Dorothea Dooling (a personal pupil of Gurdjieff and Jeanne de Salzmann), and connected by some personnel if nothing else to the New York Gurdjieff Foundation, regularly features articles and interviews from and with practitioners of the major religious traditions, but rarely fromTheosophical,occult,ormagicalcircles 13
Someofthetermsusedinstatingthisthesisrequireexplanation.WithGurdjieff,thewords“mystic,”“God,”and “serious,” for example, have slightly but not entirely different meanings from those they enjoy elsewhere One simple reason is that Gurdjieff integrated his vocabulary into his philosophy, and so words take on corresponding nuances Further, Gurdjieff devoted much attention to his beloved “philological question”14 So substantial is Gurdjieff’sapproachtolanguagethattherehavebeentwomonographsonthatsubjectalone 15
The word “seriousness” may serve as an example of how Gurdjieff integrated his interest in words into his system:
[S]eriousnessisoneoftheconceptswhichcanneverandundernocircumstancesbetakenconditionally Onlyonethingisseriousforallpeopleat all times If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning around in a circle of insignificant interests andinsignificantaims hewouldunderstandthattherecanbeonlyonethingthatisseriousforhim toescapefromthegenerallaw,tobefree Peoplewhoarenotserious arepeoplewholivebyfantasies,chieflybythefantasythattheyareabletodosomething 16
It was probably because Gurdjieff wanted to be understood by those who were “serious” in his sense of the word, and to discourage those who were not, that he adopted the strategy of mixing clarity and confusion I suggest that Gurdjieff attempted to be sufficiently clear for those who were serious to sense that there was something of value in histeaching,butnotsoclearthatthiscouldbeappreciatedwithoutsomepersonalefforttopenetratetothismeaning Thosewhoweremerelydilettanteswouldmoveontothenextfad,andleavehiminpeace.
0.2FormalDefinitionoftheExercises
TheMacquarieDictionary(2017)definesthenoun“exercise”asmeaning,interalia:
1. bodilyormentalexertion,especiallyforthesaleoftrainingorimprovement.
2 somethingdoneorperformedasameansofpracticeortraining,toimproveaspecificskillortoacquirecompetenceinaparticularfield
3 aputtingintoaction,use,operationoreffect
9 areligiousobservanceoractofworship 17
The Shorter Oxford Dictionary, from 1944 and hence published during Gurdjieff’s lifetime, offers an interesting definitionasitsfirst:
1 Theactionofexercising;theconditionofbeinginactiveoperation 18
That dictionary then goes on to provide definitions such as that found in the Macquarie All of these definitions
are useful, but that of working to be “in active operation” will appear particularly pertinent to Gurdjieff’s exercises. The word’s etymology is interesting: It is not controversial that Skeat derives the word from the Latin exercitium, and that word itself from exercitus, the past participle of exercere, “to drive out of an enclosure, drive on, keep at work”19 “Tokeepatwork”wouldbeanappropriatedescriptionof“exercise”inGurdjieff’ssense
In the course of his career, Gurdjieff taught many exercises of different kinds, some of which I would call “tasks,” others “disciplines,” and yet others “Transformed-contemplation” “Exercise” is my umbrella term for Transformed-contemplation, tasks, and disciplines. When we speak of “Transformed-contemplation,” we mean thoseexercisesthatare:
Internal practices designed to shift the exercitant out of a habitual state, using attention and intention to coordinate and develop their three centers, ie theirfacultiesofmind,feelingandsensoryawareness(includingawarenessofthebreath),andsometimespurportingtoinvolveotherfaculties; inordertoassimilate,transformandcoatveryfinesubstancesintheexercitant’sbody(whatGurdjieffcalls“thesacredcosmicsubstancesrequired forthecoatingofthehighest-being-body,whichsacredbeing-partoftheirs theycallsoul”) 20
Theaimisdevelopedovertwostages,firstofalltochangetheexercitant’sstate,andthentocrystallizethesoul(this latteraspectismoreoftentacitlyunderstoodthanarticulated)
I would distinguish “tasks” as being occupations for the mind or body that were given on a particular occasion and “disciplines” as occupations for the mind or body that were given to be used over a period of time Neither of thesecompriseTransformed-contemplation,inmyterms,becauseneitherofthemuseallthreefacultiesor“centers,” oraredirectedtothemetabolismofhighersubstances
Gurdjieff did not say that “Transformed-contemplation” must exclusively be conducted in the secluded conditions that are often associated with contemplative practices (eg, seated, with eyes closed, away from distractions, and so on). More important for Gurdjieff was that the internal being of the exercitant approximate to what he called a “special state.”21 The hesychast tradition, too, demands a serious internal disposition, not that the Jesus Prayer be recited sitting in a cell However, from 1930, he more frequently used secluded conditions as an aid to finding the special state (or “kind of state”) That is, Gurdjieff came to believe that contemplation in secluded conditions was, as a practical matter, necessary. Further, I shall contend that in speaking of “Aiëssirittoorassniancontemplation” in Beelzebub, he specifically had in mind exercises of the type of the Assisting Exercises from the ThirdSeries,hisbreathingexercises,andtheFourIdealsExercise(seeChapter13).IfGurdjieff’s“FourthWay”isa way “in life,” it understands “life” as embracing both contemplation in secluded conditions and activity in the social domain.
Here, the focus will be on just those exercises that do conform more closely to what is known of contemplation from global religious and spiritual traditions. It could be argued that, especially for Gurdjieff, the distinction between life in secluded conditions and life in the social domain is artificial, and so his entire body of ideas and methods comprise Transformed-contemplation. But on this approach, the value of what Gurdjieff himself wrote about Transformed-contemplation would be lost in generality There is a question of emphasis: In secluded conditions, one can focus more closely on the receipt of impressions both from within and from without. Gurdjieff sometimes linked his exercises to external activities; for instance, he fashioned some internal exercises to be included with some of his Movements. I shall not consider those exercises here, precisely because the focus there is ontheMovementasawhole,andnotonlytheinternalexercises
Three noteworthy aspects of Gurdjieff’s contemplation-like exercises are how they (1) are so closely related to his instructions for existence in daily life, (2) form variations on a theme, and (3) usually appear to be improvised, butsometimesareapparentlycarefullycrafted.
Very often, the same advice given concerning a contemplation-like exercise would also be offered to persons asking about their state when they met family and friends. For Gurdjieff, as with the Prayer of the Heart, no single sphere of life was to be isolated from another So one must compare and contrast Transformed-contemplation (usually practiced alone, seated, and quiet), and Gurdjieff’s instructions for external life (which demands manifestation in life in the social domain), to understand them both In his Gurdjieff groups, exercises that might be done alone while at home were practiced by all or some of the group, together. This made an intermediate condition betweenspecialsecludedconditionsandthesocialdomain
When we speak of “contemplation” here, its true complement is not the active life, but rather external manifestation. The distinction between the “active” and the “contemplative” lives (the lives of praxis and theōria, respectively) is known from Christianity, although even there the distinction was variously drawn.22 Nicephorus the SolitaryusesthedistinctionbetweentheactiveandthecontemplativelifeinhisshortbookOnSobriety,atextthatis critical for understanding the background to Gurdjieff’s techniques (see Chapter3).23 However, Gurdjieff eschewed these phrases and the distinction From his perspective, the contemplative work is the most active work of all, even
if it has been traditional to contrast the contemplative and active lives. That Gurdjieff would find a distinction between “contemplative” and “active” to be unsatisfactory may perhaps explain, at least in part, why he called his techniques first “Transformed-contemplation,” and finally “Aiëssirittoorassnian-contemplation,” rather than “contemplation” simpliciter Further, it is not ideal to refer to “ordinary” or “daily” life as if Transformedcontemplation was part neither of an “ordinary” (or ordered) life, nor of “daily” life In Gurdjieff’s system in its latest form, the secluded exercise known as the Preparation was to be practiced each morning, and linked by a carefully thought-out plan to the activities of the day These exercises thus suffused one’s daily life This is why I prefer to contrast “life in the social domain” with a “special state,” rather than to contrast “in life” with “away from life,”albeitattheriskofacertainclumsiness
0.3“Subjective”and“Objective”Exercises
Gurdjieffdistinguishedbetween“objective”and“subjective”exercises ThebriefjottingsGeorgeAdie(1901–1989; seeSection13.1) made of his time in Paris with Gurdjieff refer to this distinction, marking the Four Ideals Exercise as subjective, and noting that at the same time he had been given the “I Am” to say hourly, leading to the inference thatthatexercisewasanobjectiveone.Elaboratingonthisdistinction,Adiesaid,inameetingonJune11,1980:
As far as exercises are concerned, there are objective exercises and subjective exercises. The objective exercises are ones that affect everybody in thesameway,orcouldaffecteverybodyinthesameway,andeverybodymayusethem Thesubjectiveexercises,asyoucansee,willbespecially suitedtothepersonaccordingtotheirrequirementsatthetime,andhowmuchtheyhaveunderstood thelevel,asitwere,oftheirunderstanding Andthatwillbemeasuredfromtimetotime 24
Therefore, “subjective” exercises were for specific individuals alone. It would require judgment to decide when to give the objective exercises, and flair to devise the subjective exercises In the transcripts of Gurdjieff’s meetings in the 1940s, the subjective ones seem to have been improvised as the demand presented itself. As we shall see, Gurdjieff himself refers to some exercises as being for specific individuals only, while others are for the entire group.
0.4“Meditation,”“Contemplation,”“Mysticism,”and“WesternEsotericism”
Perhaps these words cannot adequately be defined, at least not with cross-cultural validity. However, they can be described well enough for our purposes First, let us take the words “contemplation” and “meditation” In an earlier study, considering the historical and cultural factors, as well as the etymological, I concluded that the contemporary word “contemplation” often bears the nuance of a way of life that is more withdrawn than the “active” life 25 Inthat study, I concluded that the word “meditation” probably developed “from the notion of measuring out one’s attention, that is, carefully controlling it [or else from] the care needed when remaining “in the middle,” as it were,betweenvariouspossibilities.”26
Perspectives on meditation and contemplation vary to an almost surprising degree depending on the scholar’s background. For example, in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, a chapter on “Meditation” written by Thomas Bestul, an academic in English literature, devotes more attention to “meditation as a written form” than to it as a viva voce practice. While Bestul sees that as only one side of meditation, the other being “meditation as a practice of spiritual exercise,” even his understanding of the practice is intimately related to literary engagement.27 Further, despite the presence of a chapter by Andrew Louth, Hollywood concedes in her introduction that “There is little attention to the Christian East after the sixth century”28 and that a separate volume is needed for that. But that, of course, only shows that the book should have been called The Cambridge Companion to Western Christian Mysticism.
These two points, the width of the concept of “meditation” and the existence of significant mystical traditions in both Eastern and Western Christianity, again indicate the difficulties awaiting anyone who attempts to produce a globalsurveyofmeditation
The fact is that Gurdjieff deliberately used the word “contemplation” when coining the phrase “Aiëssirittoorassnian-contemplation” for the English and French editions of Beelzebub’s Tales For the German edition, however, he chose the German word “Betrachtung.” “Betrachtung” has not only the meaning of “contemplation”butalsothatof“examination”Theverbalroot“betrachten”means“tolookat,watch,observe”and so on. As I observed in an earlier study: “Had Gurdjieff wished to use a term suggestive of trances or altered states of consciousness, he could have However, in all three languages, especially perhaps in German, the words suggest
concentratedattentionandheightenedalertness.”29
Why, then, did he eschew using the word “meditation”? It seems that Gurdjieff usually avoided that word other than to disparage it; hence, on January 25, 1936, he said to Solita Solano of attempting the exercises he was then teaching: “But not mind meditating like monk or philosopher”30 Gurdjieff did not use the term “meditation,” although it otherwise seems quite suitable for his exercises, because of its associations, first with Christian prayer and lectio divina;31 second with the Eastern practices that he believed led only to “sleep on a higher level” (see Section46);andthird,withthemonksandphilosophersofwhoseexamplehewarnedSolitaSolano
I adopt Katz’s definition “mysticism” as “the quest for direct experience of God, Being, or Ultimate Reality, however these are understood, that is, theistically or non-theistically” This is similar to many other attempted definitions32 andincludesexperiencessuchasthosewithinBuddhismanddiverseanalogoussystems.Perhapsitwill appear that mysticism can only be described rather than defined, but Katz’s definition is sufficient for my present purposes. There have been many universal studies of mysticism, and the great spate of scholarship in the field has led to something of a shift in the understanding of that subject Katz contends that in the history of the study of mysticism,therehavebeentwobroadmodels:the“essentialist”andthe“contextualist.”33
The essentialist sees mystical experience as a relatively homogenous experience, essentially the same across boundaries of culture, religion, language, age, gender, social status, and so on. This sort of view was unchallenged for quite some time A typical representative was Margaret Smith, who wrote that “mysticism” was to be found all over the world “in an almost identical form,” so that it could be called “universal, a tendency of the human soul which is eternal”34 Even a relatively modern study using methods of biofeedback took the same attitude Cade and Coxheadwrote:
The actual basis of the biofeedback principle is very simple: if one is enabled physically to observe in one’s self some biological happening of which one is not normally aware, for example, the presence of what is called the alpha rhythm in one’s brain waves, then one can be trained to control that happening In cases of alpha rhythm, the subject may be trained to produce at will more of the appropriate state of calm, detached awareness with which it is associated So one aspect of biofeedback is the training of the individual to control his own states of awareness, just as one aspect of the Eastern philosophies of yoga, Sufism or Zen is the training of the individual to control his own internal awareness at will, but withoutoutertechnicalcorroboration.Inotherwords,itmightreasonablybesaidthatbiofeedbackisaninstrumentalmysticself-control.35
Thatis,CadeandCoxheadhaveanessentialisttakeon“Easternphilosophies,”amongwhichtheynumberSufism
The contextualist, however, sees mysticism as a range of experiences, influenced and even determined by culture,andothersocialinfluences Katz,thechiefproponentofthistheory,states:
[I]n order to understand mysticism it is not just a question of studying the reports of the mystic after the experiential event but of acknowledging that the experience itself, as well as the form in which it is reported, is shaped by concepts which the mystic brings to, and which shape his or her experience. . . . what is being argued is that, for example, the Hindu mystic does not have an experience of x that he or she then describes in the familiarlanguageandsymbolsofHinduismbut,rather,hasaHinduexperience 36
Thedistinctionbetweenthetwoschoolsofthoughtmaybefalse,oratleastoverlyrigid:Fewessentialistswould ever deny that subjective factors had no effect on mystics’ experiences, while even a contextualist might find something in common between at least some of those experiences, albeit across cultural barriers, and even find an objective basis for that commonality. Thus, for example, Ewert Cousins, writing in one of Katz’s volumes, states that “the symbolic method of interpreting scripture is not arbitrary but is based on the very structure of the psyche.”37
Influential as Katz’s theory has been, it has not always been accepted, and short as this overview is, I suggest that it goes too far. D’Aquili and Newberg, in their neurobiological study of mysticism, refer to Katz’s thesis, and state:
Thebottomlineinunderstandingthephenomenologyofsubjectivereligiousexperienceistounderstandthateveryreligiousexperienceinvolvesa senseoftheunityofrealityatleastsomewhatgreaterthanthebaselineperceptionofunityinday-to-daylife 38
It is significant that researchers in the biological and medical sciences consider that there are, objectively, different statesofconsciousness,whichcanbechangedbytheuseoftheexercitant’sattentionalone CadeandCoxhead,who knew of Ouspensky’s advice to be aware of oneself while gazing at a watch-face, concluded that if one “conscientiously:triedtobeawareofone’s“sensoryinput,”asOuspenskyhadsuggested,then:
you will experience what amounts to a new altered state of consciousness the state of generalized hyperesthesia, or mind expansion without drugs andhoweversuccessfulorunsuccessfulyouwereinfocusingallthestimuli,providedthatyoumadeareallyhonesteffort,youwillrealize whyOuspenskysaid,“Manisasleep;forcomparedtowhatwearecapableof,ournormalwakingstateismorelikesleep-walking”39
An approach based on organic phenomena occurring in the body of the practitioner should, in theory, make it possible to study all systems, as d’Aquili and Newberg assert 40 They define a “state” of “Absolute Unitary Being,” or “AUB,” by reference to either “blissful positive effect . . . usually interpreted as the unio mystica, or the experience of God,” or a “neutral or tranquil effect” that the exercitant understands impersonally “as the void or NirvanaofBuddhism,orastheAbsoluteofvariousphilosophicsystems.”41
The great danger of their model, the essentialist, is that it may fashion the very object it purports to study, and prove its assumptions by removing from consideration any phenomena that do not correspond to those assumptions. Physical and biological characteristics can be defined, but there may be more than one cause for a particular characteristic.Psychologicalstatesarehardertopindown,especiallyacrosslinguisticandculturalboundaries.
Biology apart, how does the researcher decide who is to be considered a mystic, and who is not? As even d’Aquili and Newberg state, the interpretations of the states experienced can be quite different. But if the interpretation is bracketed, as it were, then how do we know which states are being compared? Many people who claimed to have had apparitions and visions of divine figures, but yet are not considered to be mystics. It seems that unless the visionary has not articulated a certain spirituality or theology, then that visionary rarely elicits the interest of students of mysticism. Lamm refers to “religious elitism,” and notes that there are good reasons to think that far morepeoplehavehadmysticalexperiencesthanweknowof 42
The contextualist model is not without its dangers, too: If “mysticism” is so very various, on what basis do we use the one word for it? At a deeper level, perhaps, it is not to the point that “mystical” experiences are conditioned by the mystic’s culture. That may be so, and yet the essentialist model still be accurate, for the mystics may be having similar experiences that are influenced and interpreted by reference to their diverse cultures, yet possess an objective and common basis. The same is true of all perception: It is always influenced and interpreted by one’s culture It does not mean that there is nothing “universal,” let alone objective and common, in the perceptions This is Pike’s critique of Katz’s critique of Stace, and it is a view that, as we shall see, Gurdjieff would most certainly haveshared 43
Besides, from a purely logical point of view, does it matter if a Hindu mystic has a “Hindu experience” and a Christian mystic a “Christian experience” and so on, if Hinduism and Christianity themselves are diverse exoteric expressions of identical esoteric reality? Here, we only need to be aware of this debate, as we shall return to it and Gurdjieff’sview,aviewthatisfarmoreconsistentwiththeessentialist,inSection32 “Western Esotericism,” one of the streams in which I place Gurdjieff, has been “somewhat crudely” defined by Bogdanas:
a Western form of spirituality that stresses the importance of the individual effort to gain spiritual knowledge, or gnosis, whereby man is confronted with the divine aspect of existence Furthermore, there is usually a strong holistic trait in esotericism where the godhead is considered manifest in the natural world a world interconnected by so-called correspondences. Man is seen as a microcosm of the macrocosm, the divine universe Through increased knowledge of the individual self, it is often regarded as possible to achieve corresponding knowledge about nature, andtherebyaboutGod 44
This definition, streamlining the views of scholars such as Faivre,45 is more serviceable than, for instance, van Egmond’sdefinitionofesotericschoolsasenablingtransformationandguidancefromone’s“soul,”“higherself,”or “holy guardian angel,”46 which is not, in my view, incorrect so much as it is limited. We shall see that Gurdjieff’s teaching accords well with Bogdan’s description It sometimes seems that each scholar in the field has his or her own definitions. David Katz, for example, is loath to draw distinctions between terms such as “occult” and “esotericism”47 and sees Gurdjieff as an occultist whose “movement successfully made the transition to what would becomeNewAge religion”48 Hanegraaff, on the other hand, sees occultismas a subset of esotericism and mentions Gurdjieff only tangentially in his study of the New Age, esotericism, and the occult in Western culture.49 Another approach is taken by von Stuckrad, who prefers to speak of “the esoteric” rather than of “esotericism,” seeing “the esoteric” as an “element of discourse,” avoiding the term “occult,” and not mentioning Gurdjieff at all in his short book, but granting Blavatsky an eminent position.50 Magee simply sees Gurdjieff as “arguably the most influential esotericteacherofthetwentiethcentury”51
To my mind, the hardest term to pin down in the definition may well be “Western,” but I think that what is important here is that, within this historically conditioned definition, the word “Western” serves the purpose of highlighting the disillusionment with both the (Western) Enlightenment program and the dominant (Western) Christian churches, which seems to me to be a regular feature of the confluence of currents called “Western Esotericism.”52
So, questions of definition and categorization are difficult and complex: certainly too complex to fully deal with here Also, the very point of this monograph is to present an aspect of Gurdjieff that has been little known and often unacknowledged. The result of this study may well be that it alters scholars’ view of Gurdjieff, and the extent to whichheresemblesamagicianmorethanamystic
0.5PreliminaryQuestions
Some preliminary questions arise The first question, which often puzzles even those in the Gurdjieff groups who approach these exercises, is this: Which exercises came from Gurdjieff himself? In this volume, I state reasons for considering the various exercises to be authentically from Gurdjieff, or, in a very few cases, either uncertain or clearly not authentic In Section 131, I state why the exercises George Adie taught can be attributed to Gurdjieff withsomedegreeofconfidence.
Related to this question of source is that of the variety of forms in which the exercises are found today in the Gurdjieff groups. One might wonder why Gurdjieff would fashion various exercises that were so similar, but the inescapable conclusion is that this was intentional on Gurdjieff’s part The exercises often seem to fall into variations on a theme, showing the extent to which they were an artistic form of teaching. He told Annie-Lou Staveley (1906–1996) that when he taught them any exercise, he gave them a skeleton, and it was for them to place fleshonit 53 Thatis, Gurdjieffprovidedaparadigmthatthen hadtobe applied or renewed, as it were, each time the exercises were attempted. Solange Claustres explained her understanding of the principle this way: “I never took refuge in an exercise; I understood the principle of it without knowing it consciously. It happened naturally in me, throughalifeinstinct.”54
The apparent improvisation of exercises, so apparent in Chapter 11 where we see them given in the course of group meetings in Paris between 1941 and 1946, relates to this. The “fleshing out” would take place extempore, in thepresenceofanimmediatedemand Itmayevenbethattheywereideallyfleshedoutinsuchcircumstances
The challenge when improvising was only augmented by Gurdjieff’s instruction that the exercises were always to be given and to be worked at precisely, never “approximately” As Gurdjieff said in an undated transcript: “One must work precisely on something precise. Work should not be a desire, but a need, a need.”55 There is no contradiction between the requirement to be exact in practicing exercises from an internalized skeleton rather than from a text. One might have to use artistic freedom in deciding what was to be taught or done, but it was a freedom to search for the exact demand It might even be better to avoid speaking of this freedom as “artistic,” and to coin the less colorful phrase “athletic freedom,” for athletes must continually and soberly adapt their regimen by referencetoprinciplesandtoexigencies
Nottheleastinterestingcontroversy,althoughtodateithastendedtobeheldonlywithintheGurdjiefftradition, is why Gurdjieff taught an elaborate system of ideas, particularly well known from Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, but in later years seems to have abandoned it. One solution is to say that Gurdjieff worked with Ouspensky on ideas simply because of Ouspensky’s intellectual abilities, just as he worked with the talented composer Thomas de Hartmann on music. However, it is not so simple. Gurdjieff had commenced teaching the ideas before Ouspensky joined him Also, Ouspensky was not the only highly intelligent person to whom the ideas were taught, and what we see in Gurdjieff’s later years was, in the eyes of many, not merely a downplaying but practicallyanegligenceofthesystemhehadoncetaught 56
My conjecture is that Gurdjieff’s initial intention was not to use these inner exercises, certainly not in secluded conditions That is, he wanted people to learn his ideas, and to strive to observe and remember themselves exclusively in the social domain of life, without using the affirmations and techniques concerning breathing, representation,andthemovementofenergiesheeventuallytaught Ifthatwashisoriginalperspective,itchanged
Perhaps bringing people to the higher states of self-awareness he pointed to was not so easy using only the ideas and corresponding instructions: In other words, it was just too hard to awaken people in the social domain It was found necessary to first arouse oneself in a special state on arising and then, when one had a taste of it, to bring that experience to the day He also feared, I believe, using techniques of self-suggestion, which he regarded as akin to hypnotism and hence dangerous, a risk he explicitly referred to and acknowledged himself to be taking (see Section 81)
These considerations could explain Gurdjieff’s experimenting with different methods He introduced the Sacred DancesandMovements,makingthemamajorfeatureofhissystemfromnoearlierthan1917 57 Hepreparedavery large body of music with de Hartmann, which he worked on intensely only between the years of 1925 and 1927,58 andrecordedmanyofhisimprovisationsontheharmoniumduringtheyears1948and1949.59 Butfromabout1930,
he gradually introduced and gave more and more importance to Transformed-contemplation. He found detailed use of the ideas less helpful than he had anticipated It may also be that he was disappointed Ouspensky had not producedthepromisedintroductiontothem(seeSection1.3).
Studying how Gurdjieff continues and develops the traditions he found, we approach the question of the “lineage,” as it were, of his system As indicated above, it seems to me that those in the Gurdjieff groups tend to see Gurdjieff as following in the tradition of Christian mystics such as Meister Eckhart, of certain Sufis (although there is quite some diversity, even within Islam, in “Sufism”), and of Buddhist and Hindu sages Adie specified, as specially relevant: “the Hindu, the Zen, Sufi and Christian teachings”60 Kenneth Walker, a personal pupil of Gurdjieff, compared him to both Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus, the master and the pupil.61 Academics, however, often place Gurdjieff on a horizon with Blavatsky and Steiner, and even see him as a bricoleur. 62 In my view, if we exclude from consideration the magical tradition, let alone the “magick” of Crowley and his ilk, each perspective has some elements of the truth I return to this in Chapter 18, after we have examined the nature of Gurdjieff’s internalexercises,foruntilweaccuratelyknowwhatGurdjiefftaught,wecannotaccuratelyplacehim.
Onesubsidiaryresultofthewritingofthisbookwillbethepreservationofsomeoftheexercisesdealtwithhere, especially the Four Ideals, the Clear Impressions, and the Color Spectrum Exercises. Even the Preparation, the quondam basis of Gurdjieff’s practical system, is known in very different ways throughout the Gurdjieff world
While the idea of an oral esoteric tradition is appealing to some, the reality is that the exercises of Gurdjieff that have not been forgotten are those that have been published The unpublished exercises have effectively disappeared, evenfromthesubcultureoftheGurdjieffgroups.
This book, therefore, preserves for the Gurdjieff tradition, too, some exercises that would be otherwise lost By considering the basis of Gurdjieff’s exercises, it may facilitate a reappraisal of their value. Gurdjieff was not speaking of pushups when he said: “Exercises, exercises, thousands and thousands of times Only this will bring results.”63
IdealonlywiththoseGurdjieffexercisesthathavebeenpublished,togetherwiththeexercisestaughtbyGeorge and Helen Adie. Some other exercises are attributed to him, but of those known to me, the evidence is tenuous, and notvouchedforbyanyonewhopersonallystudiedwithGurdjieff
0.6Format
The volume falls into three parts The shortest is the first, which introduces Gurdjieff and the questions to be considered. Part II is devoted to Gurdjieff’s exercises and their necessary context. In Part III, I deal with the exercisestaughtbyGeorgeandHelenAdie,andaconclusion
This book is, then, a partly diachronic and partly thematic study. Because my contention is that there was a development within Gurdjieff’s approach to the use of contemplative exercises, it must to that extent proceed in chronological order. However, two factors have frustrated my initial desire to proceed purely chronologically: the uncertainty concerning the true dates of the writing of the all-important lectures in Life Is Real, and the desirability of not unduly fracturing the discussion of questions such as why Gurdjieff eschewed the terms “meditation” and “contemplation” simpliciter I could have simply dealt with these last questions piecemeal, referring back at each stage to the earlier discussion and adding more to it, but this proved to be unsatisfactory. I have opted, therefore, for afour-partsolution:
1 InPartI,IsetoutthebackgroundinChapters1,2,and3,includingadiscussionofGurdjieff’sdesiretohavehisteachingwitnessedin,ratherthanreduced to,writing;andthesubsequentneedforOuspenskyandOrage,whowerehigh-caliberauthors,andwellsuitedforthepurpose
2 In Part II, I consider the written material concerning In Search of the Miraculous about Gurdjieff’s teaching when he was in Russia, then the relevant passagesinHeraldofComingGood,Beelzebub,theexercisesinLifeIsReal,andsomesundryexerciseshegaveinthe1930s
3 IdealwithallotherexercisesfromtheGurdjiefftraditioninPartIII ThemainsourceshereareJeannedeSalzmannandGeorgeAdie
4 Cutting across that neat scheme, I deal with thematic questions when they first arise, even if it is necessary to refer to texts that were written later on, or mentionedearlier.
When referring to Gurdjieff’s books, I would prefer to speak of the First, Second, and Third Series for those three volumes he prepared for publication, although none were published in his lifetime. However, they were published under the rather longer and clumsier, albeit more colorful, titles Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, MeetingswithRemarkableMen,andLifeIsRealOnlyThen,When“IAm.”
Notes
1. Gurdjieffspokeof“Transformed-contemplation”inGurdjieff(1933)32.
2 Ouspensky(1949)102
3 Gurdjieff(1950) 699 Orage wrote: “Tibetanism is not a form of Buddhism, but the religion of St Lama who lived It is little known to us” Orage(2013)285
4 Ouspensky(1949)15
5 Ouspensky(1949)285–286
6 Ouspensky(1949)243–244
7 Ouspensky(1949)15,20,35,193,283,and366–367
8 Ouspensky(1949)193
9. Claustres(2005)136.
10 Blavatsky(1910) 1–2, 31–32, and especially 40: “[Theosophy] is the essence of all religion and of absolute truth, a drop of which underlies every creed”SeealsoBlavatsky(1877)613 ForGurdjieff,seeTchechovitch(2006)45–46
11 Ouspensky(1949)44–51
12. Heap(1983)95.
13 The author checked the accuracy of his first draft on this point with Jeff Zaleski, the editor of Parabola, who broadly approved that draft, but suggestedthreeimprovements Thoseimprovementshavebeenmade (EmailcorrespondenceofJune17,2017)
14 Anonymous (2012) 101 Incidentally, Ouspensky shared this interest with Gurdjieff George Adie, who knew both men, told me that Ouspensky hadthecompleteOxfordEnglishDictionaryandspenthislastweeksimmersedinit
15 ThemostimportantoftheseisTaylor(2014) ThereisarathermoreobscureeffortbyBonnasse(2008)
16 Ouspensky(1949)364
17 MacquarieDictionary,7thed MacquarieDictionaryPublishers,Sydney,2017,vol I,527
18 TheShorterOxfordDictionary,3rded withrevisedetymologies,ClarendonPress,Oxford,1973,700
19 Skeat(1882)vol I,199
20 Gurdjieff(1950)569
21. Gurdjieff(2017)173and317–318.
22 Ware(1992)395–414,396–397
23 See“AMostProfitableDiscourseonSobrietyandtheGuardingoftheHeart,”inKadloubovskyandPalmer(1951)23
24 Azize(2013)178
25. Azize(2016a)139–158,especially139–144.
26 Azize(2016a)141
27 Bestul(2012)157–166
28 Hollywood(2012)9
29 Azize(2016a)146
30 Anonymous(2012)27
31 Trompf(2010)1–2
32 See,forexample,thecollecteddefinitionsinFerguson(1976)126
33 See,forexample,Katz(1978)32–33,40,46–47and65–66;andKatz(2000)3
34 Smith(1930)2
35 CadeandCoxhead(1979)4
36. Katz(2013)5.
37 Cousins(2000)128
38 d’AquiliandNewberg(1999)159
39 CadeandCoxhead(1979)110–111
40 d’AquiliandNewberg(1999)14
41 d’AquiliandNewberg(1999)110
42 Lamm(2013)5
43 Pike(1992),194–204 PikecritiquesKatz’stheoriesasmisconceivingthematerialhestudies:204–206
44 Bogdan(2007)5
45 SeeStuckrad(2005)1–5
46 vanEgmond(1998)312
47 Katz(2007)6–10
48 Katz(2007)173
49 Hanegraaff(1996)421–422and351
50 vonStuckrad(2005)10–11
51. Magee(2016)284.
52 Bogdan (2007) 6–10 and 20–21 I am aware of the Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, edited by Hanegraaff, and the importance he attributestothegnostic However,Icanfindlittletorecommendinthearticleson“Gurdjieff”and“GurdjieffTradition,”which,unfortunately, arerepletewitherrorsandbareassertions
53 OralcommunicationfromapersonalpupilofStaveley’s,April2016
54 Claustres(2005)146
55 Gurdjieff(2009)101
56 ThisdisorientedmanyofOuspensky’sformerpupils:Moore(1991)297–298
57 Azize(2012) and Cusack (2017) It is arguable that the Sacred Dances and Movements represent an intermediate state between seclusion and the commondomain,althoughIshallnotenterintothatquestionhere
58 Petsche(2015)1
59. Blom(2004)
60 Adie and Azize (2015) 310 Michel de Salzmann (2011) draws on mythology, psychiatry, and mainstream religions, and not at all on occultism In MicheldeSalzmann(1987),ashortentryinanencyclopedia,hecomparesGurdjiefftoSocratesoraZenPatriarch
61 Walker(1963)127–128
62. Sutcliffe(2015).
63 Gurdjieff(2009)100(undated)
ABiographicalSketchofGurdjieff
1.1AManwithaHeritagebutNoHome
That the life of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (December 1865 or January 1866–1949) should be found interesting, obscure, and controversial all at once is of a piece with his teaching. In Meetings with Remarkable Men, “Prince Lubovedsky” encounters an old man who uncannily uses the prince’s long-forgotten childhood name When Lubovedskyaskshimwhoheis,theelderreplies:“Isitnotallthesametoyou,justnow,whoIamandwhatIam?. Is there really still alive in you that curiosity which is one of the chief reasons why the labors of your whole life have been without result?”1 In one conversation, Gurdjieff averred that “Curiosity is a dirty thing,” and distinguished a beneficent type of it (“needing-to-know”) from a maleficent “idiot” variety.2 Ouspensky explained: “He by no means wanted to make it easy for people to become acquainted with his ideas On the contrary he considered that only by overcoming difficulties, however irrelevant and accidental, could people value his ideas.”3 Gurdjieff held that we do not value knowledge unless we have worked and thus paid for it, seeking it for the sake of a conscious aim, and not allowing ourselves to be distracted by trivialities and fancies 4 Munson states that although Gurdjieff usually spoke in bad English, he (Munson) heard him speak “perfect English” on some occasions, causing him to believe that “it was a deliberate part of his pedagogy to speak broken English By making himself hard to understand, Gurdjieff obliged his listeners to give full attention In order to get his meaning, they had to be active insteadofpassivetowardhim”5
Such a perspective might leave a potential biographer abashed, but there is sound reason for inquiring as to certain aspects of Gurdjieff’s life: namely, they help us to understand the development of his teaching, and so to bettergraspit.Researchcan,perhaps,beaformofpayment itiscertainlyaformofwork.
Gurdjieff appears on the world stage as a man with a heritage but no fixed home, a past presented as a mystery more than a history. An Oriental forced to the West by war and revolution, he hid key biographical details, presenting often improbable sagas, artfully mixing fact and myth to produce a narrative that pointed to the teaching, andtoldthelessonthatdaringandsacrificewereneededtomakeitone’sown.Itwastheteaching,meaningbothhis ideasandhismethods,thatheconsideredimportant
However, together with this concern for the teaching are signs of a certain negligence. In the 1930s, Gurdjieff gave only fitful signs of being driven by a mission; he allowed perhaps the most significant of his Sacred Dances to simply be forgotten; and he practically impeded Ouspensky and Orage, his two most successful lieutenants.6 His sometimes bizarre behavior and contrariness, especially difficult to understand when directed toward people who were not even his pupils, must be acknowledged: for instance, abusing priests totally unknown to him while driving past them, even causing one to fall heavily onto the pavement7; and telling Olga de Hartmann’s parents that if they did not do something he asked, “a coffin will be in this room and your daughter will be in it”8 It is a question of judgment as to whether Gurdjieff did not sabotage whatever his mission was by devising too many difficulties, and sometimes making his presentation too baffling, particularly in the book to which he devoted so much time, Beelzebub:SomeofitsreadersevencomplainedaboutBeelzebub’sopacitytohisface.9
The combination of three matters contributes to arouse interest in the man himself and his history: first, his presentation of a comprehensive systemin an originalgarb with a plurality of often startlingly new techniques (such as the Movements and the Stop Exercise); second, the fact that he claimed to be both traditional and innovative, inviting questions as to the traditions he stood in; and third, his striking, even compelling, personal impact, supportedbyhiswidepracticalabilities,andhisoccasionaldemonstrationofastrikingunderstandingofhealingand trance. As cures, I might cite the mysterious healing of Peters by a transfer of energy, “as if a violent, electric blue light emanated from him and entered into me”10; and the treatment of Mrs Beaumont with pills, followed by Gurdjieff asking her where her pain has gone, and her reply: “You have taken it.”11 He demonstrated an ability to
