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GURDJIEFF
It is quite a challenge to find out how many “informal” schools of transmutation today got their inspiration from the teachings by G.I. Gudjieff. They have been preserved from the Sufism, despite their rigorous lack of any kind of written documentation and the observance to secrecy, but they have given up the obligation of the direct transmission of teaching, legitimizing whoever feels capable of creating a school.
Gurdjieff’s teaching is unique due to a basic characteristic: it is completely secular and can be adopted by people from any creed, atheistic and materialistic included, without any problem of conscience.
When we reflect about the religious, scarcely tolerant, climate in the schools of transmutation he attended, we should definitively give great merit to the untiring adjustment work the Russian master managed during his life, in spite of being confronted by members of traditional schools of esotericism and transmutation that were accusing him of being “without God”.
But in reality the tolerance and flexibility he introduced, absolutely unique elements around the rigid and closed world of esotericism, provided incalculable support to the spreading of the practices of transmutation in the West.
At this point we can point out how Gurdjieff’s teaching was focused on a field left empty by other masters: the first phase is the most difficult and tiring of all. The apprentice has to be trained to give up mental deformations typical of an “ordinary life” in order to be eligible to face transmutation.
Before him, Cagliostro, De Pasqually and others, believed that passing the test of initiation would mean having sufficient qualifications to face the work; Gurdjieff instead was disillusioned and for years and years was forcing his apprentices to repeat over and over exhausting self–discipline exercises, which would strengthen their will power and were selecting them.
Compared to other more famous Oriental preparatory disciplines, Gurdjieff’s system shows similar characteristic of depth of meaning, simplicity, efficacy, elegance and it proves to be more suitable to the psychological structure of the western man.
Georges Ivanovic Gurdjieff was born on the 1st of January 1877 in Alexandropol(today called Stavropol, by the northern side of the Caucasus). His father, a semi-nomadic shephard of Greek origin, was a storyteller and poet: he knew hundreds of songs, tales and ancient legends by heart. He transmitted them to his son from an early age, together with the knowledge of around six middle-eastern languages.
After a short experience at the Archiepiscopal of Kars, where the young Joseph Stalin also stayed, a restless temper and feverish passion for the esoteric studies brought young Gurdjieff to begin having deep contacts with at least three fundamental Sufi schools: Mevleviya, Naqshbandiya and Qadiriya. Together with the other Qadiri, he started traveling, seeking knowledge and coming in contact with the more various transmutation realities: from Essenism to Shamanism of central Asia. He wrote about this time of his existence in his most beautiful book ”Meetings with Remarkable Men”.
According to testimonials collected by Louis Pauwels, after this phase of his life he spent a long time in Tibet as Adviser to the Dalai Lama and also as a spy. But Gurdjieff, even if admitting to having visited Tibet, never talked about the other activity.
He arrived in Moscow in 1915 where the meeting of his life happened: the journalist Piotr Ouspensy (1878-1962). He was also a devoted student of eastern schools of transmutation. Ouspensky has left the description of that meeting in one of the most famous pages of the whole esoteric literature:
“I remember it very well. We had arrived at a little cafe’ far away from the center, in a very noisy street. I saw an eastern man, not young anymore, with black mustache and penetrating eyes that immediately got my attention because he looked totally out of place in that situation. I was still full of impressions from the Orient and that Indian rajah or Arab sheik looking man with his black coat and velveteen neck, black bowler sitting in that little cafe’ of traders and agents, was giving an unexpected, strange and even alarming impression of a man badly disguised, who embarrasses us because we can perceive he is not what he pretends to appear but still we have to talk and behave as we are unaware of it “
Piotr Ouspensky who will later become Gurdjieff’s most devoted friend and his closest collaborator, was also a good writer, able to synthesize the teachings coming at random from the Masters’ words, according to the oral method used by the schools where he had received them.
Two books by Ouspensky ”In Search of the Miraculous” and “The Fourth Way” are considered necessary readings today for anyone interested in coming closer to the essence of Gurdjieff’s teachings.
According to Ouspensky’s interpretation, Gurdjieff’s psychology considers the ordinary man as incapable of acting, he can only react, elaborating answers to the inputs he receives from the outside. His mental activity ends up revolving around a multitude of different personalities continuously alternating and determining his behaviors according to the needs manifested from the outside. This cloud of fake “selves” suffocates and prevents the development of the “real self”, the only one able to act, decide and exhibit “positive emotions”. The emotions given by fake “selves” are negative ones, independent of their own nature, because man passively bear them and therefore they cause a debilitating effect on him, while on the contrary, the natural function of emotions should be focused on offering transmute energy to our psyche.
This unnatural situation brings a lot of unbalance in our mind. The Mind is based on four centers (intellectual, emotional, instinctual and motor) created to function with four types of energy. But human incapacity to consciously assimilate energy makes it very rare for the ordinary man to happen; for example, it is common that the intellectual and emotional centers function through sexual energy from the instinctual center.
The technique used by Gurdjieff in order to handle these problems was complex and wise. The first battle the disciple had to face was achieving self-awareness: he was told that whatever he was saying or doing he should always remember “I am”. At that point he was required to handle the most difficult and tiring activities-often extremely far from his own attitudes-forcing him to accomplish them without, not even for a moment, forgetting about his “self-awareness”.
Therefore, according to Gurdjieff’s terminology, it created a “magnetic center” in the mind of the disciple; his purpose was to transform it in a “permanent gravity center” which would have gradually neutralized and absorbed fake “selves”, creating the conditions for a “real self” to happen.
The technique used to weaken the fake selves” was to cut their sources of nourishment, the “negative emotions”: the fight against them was based on learning how to recognize them, watch them with detachment and making an effort in perceiving them as pure energy. In this way they would become nourishment for the “real self”.
Other steps of the teaching would help to control violent reactions through which the “fake personality” was trying to regain its power from the escaping mind: for example, to distrust the “buffers” -mental induced mechanisms usually preventing us from being aware of contradictions created inside us by fake selves”; not falling into “identification”-the tendency to be absorbed by outside events, forgetting about one self ("think about a cat with a mouse…") and so on.
According to Ouspensky’s narration, the disciples being able to face the very strenuous pace of Gurdjieff’s discipline would have known sooner or later the awakening of their own “real self” through moments of incredible emotional fullness: they felt like children again, feeling moved to tears for the conscious perception of energy currents, flowing in them after being positioned in the right function.
To these selected disciples, Gurdjieff would offer a step-by–step learning of the theory behind his system, which according to him only the “real self” was able to understand: in his books, Ouspensky shows only a few fragments of them, incredibly complex and rich.
A time of intense collaboration and feverish activity followed Gurdjieff and Ouspensky’s meeting. The two friends founded schools in Moscow and St.Petersburg, then the revolution set them apart : Ouspensky continued his work in the little town of Essentuki and Gurdjieff in Tiflis, where he founded the “Institute for harmonious human development”.
Later on Gurdjieff moved the Institute to Istanbul, where Ouspensky reached him. Together they decided to bring their message further west. After an unsuccessful first attempt in London (where Ouspensky decided to settle), Gurdjieff moved to Paris, where in 1922 he founded the Institute at the Castle of Prieure’, near Fontainbleau.
Following a praxis already successfully experienced in Moscow and elsewhere, the first step for making himself known was to organize dance performances. The audience was astonished by the complexity of the movements that Gurdjieff’s disciples would easily achieve.
The interest brought by these moved famous intellectuals such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Rene’ Daumal and Katherine Mansfield toward Gurdjieff. Unfortunately the neo-Zealander writer, extremely sick with tuberculosis, died in Prieure’and the newspapers gave the blame to the rigid discipline imposed by Gurdjieff and his disciples.
In 1924, back from America, Gurdjieff was severely injured in a car accident. He barely survived two bad cranium fractures, he quit managing the Institute and continued private teaching to smaller disciple groups back and forth from France to United States.
In 1949, according to his closest disciples, ”he chose to die”: feeling his mission had been achieved, he passed away in a few days without suffering from any physical illnesses.
According to many (among them we recognize his disciple Louis Pauwels), the teaching brought by Gurdjieff in the west was “mutilated upwards” :it didn’t contain any references to the refined system of higher knowledge, Ouspensky hinted in his books and not even indications about the final purpose of the transmutatory exercises, their possibility to move human conscience on different levels than those of the objective reality.
A few of his critics have blamed the silence about the real purpose of the exhausting exercises he subjected his disciples to. They think that by ”awakening” the ordinary man from his objective fixation, giving him the awareness regarding how illusory his previous belief, is a way to lead him to despair, if any further clear and precise explanations about how to deal with one life after the awakening are not added.
If we want to understand Gurdjieff’s point of view, it is necessary to be aware of the idea, universally spread at Sufi schools, that the possibilities of human transmutation diminish according to how detached he lives from a social traditional context. Since he decided to teach in the West, he realized he reached the place where the problem was at its peak. This was the reason why instead of indicating as a final goal a far away target, which only very few disciples would have been able to achieve, he preferred pointing out a fictitious one, more available and nearer: a better control on every day reality.
Probably Gurdjieff decided not to transcend the level of objective reality to better follow this principle.
A very remarkable detail around this subject was granted by Pauwels. He writes that Gurdjieff was only sleeping three hours a night: according to transmutation this precludes all chance of dreaming and therefore of moving of the “joining point ”. He decided to be as similar as his disciples to share the mentality and aims with them, as an authentic master.
“What I wish you to understand” he used to tell them” is that only by using the ordinary awareness can you achieve the concept regarding the relative value of ideas; then you will perceive that objective reality is not the only one to exist”.