G. I. Gurdjieff on Health and Healing: Hypnotism, Sacred Dances, Diet, Physical Labour, and Drugs (original) (raw)
Related papers
Foreword: Gurdjieff: Mysticism, Contemplation and Exercises
Joseph Azize, Gurdjieff: Mysticism, Contemplation and Exercises (Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. xi-xvii.
The life of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (c. 1866-1949) until his emergence as a teacher in Moscow and St Petersburg in 1912 is shrouded in obscurity, and his semi-fictionalised memoir Meetings with Remarkable Men, while intriguing and suggestive of possible real life journeys and potentially identifiable sources for his teachings, remains inconclusive. 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.
Editor's Introduction, G. I. Gurdjieff and the Work: Transformations of an Esoteric Teaching
Correspondences, Vol 8, No. 2 (2020), pp.
G. I. Gurdjieff (c. 1866-1949) taught a highly original esoteric “system” which combined a complex cosmology with literary and artistic endeavours (including the Movements or sacred dances, the music composed with Thomas de Hartmann, and Gurdjieff’s spiritual writings). Gurdjieff’s “Work” or “Fourth Way” was lived out in quasi-communal settings where intentional labour and inner exercises were combined with dancing and readings of the master’s texts. In Gurdjieff’s lifetime he was not associated with esotericism or religion; the terms applied to him by outsiders, for example journalists, were “magician” and “charlatan.” When Gurdjieff died in he had a relatively small number of followers, and had published only The Herald of Coming Good (1933), a short prospectus which he had recalled shortly after distribution. His posthumous Three Series All and Everything established him as a major force in twentieth century esotericism, and one of the three putative sources of the “New Age,” with Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) and his near-contemporary Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925).
Reading Western Esotericism: George Gurdjieff and His "Cunning" Esotericism (full text)
Studies of western esotericism in the twentieth century proposed a certain number of characteristics as fundamental and universal to esotericism. This article first reviews Antoine Faivre's intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics and Wouter J. Hanegraaff's typology of esotericism, constituting the so-called empirical historical method. Next, it considers the case of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (c. 1866-1949), a prominent Russian-speaking spiritual teacher who developed his own method of personal perfection and whose place in the history of western esoteric thought is not indisputable. Through a discussion of some main points of Gurdjieff's teachings and the ways he dealt with esoteric subjects, it is suggested that Faivre's and Hanegraaff's material can partly be applicable to his system. It finally argues that this uncertainty can be explained by specifics of Gurdjieff's teachings, which should be considered as crucial in formulating his esotericism, as well as by limitations of the above-mentioned approach.
Mind – body – spirituality. Walach, H. (2007) Mind and Matter 5: 215-240
The argument of this paper is that the modern brain-consciousness debate has left out one important element: the question of a transpersonal or spirit-like element of consciousness. Thus the problem really is not a mind-body-problem or brain-consciousness problem, but a mind-body-spirit or brain-consciousness-soul problem. Looking at the history of the debate it can be seen that, explicitly or implicitly, this aspect has always been part of the philosophical debate. Most notably, this can be seen in the Aristotelian concept of the soul, which held that form and matter were both together necessary to constitute a unity. But on top of that, a Platonic strand of teaching existed in Aristotle, which was lost. This tradition stipulated an aspect of the soul, the active intellect, that was separate and separable. This idea has inspired other and later writers into postulating an immortal part of the soul. In the modern debate this tradition has been lost and was frequently amalgamated with dualist positions. Phenomenological descriptions of mystical experiences, as well as other unusual (or exceptional) mind-matter anomalies suggest that this aspect of the problem needs reconsideration. For this purpose a transcendental kind of monism is suggested which does not violate the consensus that only a monist description of the world is scientifically viable. Such a position would, in addition, provide the option to incorporate the transpersonal side of the debate. Fenwick P., Galliano S., Coate M.A., Rippere V., and Brown D. (1985): Psychic sensitivity, mystical experience, head injury and brain pathology. British Journal of Medical Psychology 58, 35-44. Feyerabend P. (1975): Against Method. Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, Left Books, London. Gammel G. and Moosbrugger H. (1982): Nichtparametrischer unbedingter Randomisierungstest für ein-und zweifaktorielle Versuchspläne mit kleinen Stichprobengrößen. Psychologische Beiträge 24, 253-276. Goswami A. (1990): Consciousness in quantum pyhsics and the mind-body problem. Journal of Mind and Behavior 11, 75-96.
Special Editor's Introduction: Fieldwork on G. I. Gurdjieff and the Work
Fieldwork in Religion, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2016, pp. 3-9
George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (c. 1866–1949), with Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831– 1891) and Rudolf Steiner (1851–1925), is one of the three core teachers of modern esotericism (Hunt 2003: 225–50), and is often credited as a seminal inspiration for New Age spirituality (Wellbeloved 2005). However, Gurdjieff’s teaching (the “Work” or the “Fourth Way”) is less well-researched than either Theosophy or Anthroposophy, and scholarly engagement with Gurdjieff has until recently been minimal, with the majority of publications being hagiographical treatments from “insiders” (Sutcliffe 2014). The secrecy surrounding the “inner” content of the Work and the model of teacher–pupil instruction practised after Gurdjieff’s death within “offi- cial” Foundation groups led by his successor Jeanne de Salzmann (1889–1990) is an important factor in researching Gurdjieff and, indeed, all esoteric teachings.
"She Sees the Is beyond the Seems": Gurdjieff, Phenomenology, and Embodied Wisdom
G. I. Gurdjieff conference, Harvard University, 2024
One of the most laudable aspects of the Gurdjieff Work is its holistic character-a comprehensive, usable integration of psychological, transpersonal, and cosmological aspects. If phenomenology can be defined as a thorough, accurate rendition of human experience, then the practical and philosophical system offered by Gurdjieff includes a remarkable phenomenology of humans as three-centered beings to illustrate one set of insights relevant to phenomenological explication: his explication of what he calls the "instinctive-moving center" as it offers a refined, multivalent understanding of "embodied wisdom."
Survival?: Body, mind, and death in the light of psychic experience
1984
The greatest part of what we say and do is unnecessary. MARCUS AURELIUS Presque toute notre vie este employée à des curiositées niaises. En revanche il y a des choses qui defraient exciter la curiosité des homes au plus haut degré, et qui, à en juger par leur train de vie ordinaire, ne leur en inspirent aucune. Où sont nos amis morts? Pourquoi sommes-nous ici? Venons-nous de quelque part?.... BAUDELAIRE The answer to human life is not to be found within the limits of human life. JUNG Man has not basically changed. Death is still a fearful, frightening happening, and the fear of death is a universal fear even if we think we have mastered it on many levels. KÜBLER-ROSS Medical advances may postpone death, but no degree of scientific sophistication is able to eliminate it altogether. Sooner or later each of us has to confront the prospect of the death of the physical body. Then what? The annihilation of a dreamless sleep, or might conscious existence continue in some sense? If so, what might be the nature of such a continued existence? Might my present conduct and attitudes influence its quality? The decline in infant mortality has made us less familiar with death in the immediate family. We may see disasters on the television news, we may read of murders in the newspapers, but such events rarely touch us directly: this kind of thing could never happen to us, we remain insulated and apart. Our old people are often carefully segregated in institutions out of contact with the rest of society, and when they fall ill they are discreetly transported to clockwork hospitals. Here they become patients, further isolated from their normal environments, and are often cloaked in a conspiracy of silence regarding the real nature and gravity of their illness. Kübler-Ross constructs a scenario of what may ensue at this stage: Our imaginary patient has now reached the emergency ward. He will be surrounded by busy nurses, orderlies, interns, residents, a lab technician perhaps who will take some blood, another technician who takes the electrocardiogram. He may be moved to X-ray and he will overhear opinions of his condition and discussions and questions to members of his family. Slowly but surely he is beginning to be treated like a thing. He is no longer a person. Decisions are made often without taking his opinion. If he tries to rebel he will be sedated, and after hours of waiting and wondering whether he has the strength, he will be wheeled into the operating room or intensive treatment unit and become an object of great concern and great financial investment. He may cry out for rest, peace, dignity, but he will get infusions, transfusions, a heart machine, or a tracheotomy. 1 The alienation is exacerbated. For medicine death is the ultimate symbol of failure and defeat: life must be prolonged where possible. Death is to be evaded and denied. Such evasion and denial surrounding the terminal patient may temporarily prop up the medical staff and relatives, but it is liable to elicit feelings of horror and revulsion towards the dying person at the very moment when he most needs human sympathy and comfort. People are afraid of identifying themselves too closely. But one day it will be their turn. During the earliest stages, air is conceived as participating with thought: the voice is air, and, in return, the wind takes notice of us, obeys us, and is 'good at making us grow', comes when we move our hands, and so on. When thought proper is localised in the self, and the participations between air and thought are broken, the nature of air changes by virtue of this fact alone. Air becomes independent of men, sufficient to itself, and living its own life. But, owing, to the fact that it is held to participate with the self, it retains at the very moment when it is severing these bonds, a certain number of purely human aspects: it still has consciousness, of a different kind perhaps than formerly, but its own nevertheless. Only very gradually will it be reduced to a mere thing. 3 We know that trees, idols, holy places, and human beings are recognisable objects of the external world, into which early man projected his inner psychic contents. By recognising them, we withdraw such 'primitive projections', we diagnose them as autosuggestion or something of the sort, and thus the fusion effected by participation between man and the objects of the external world is nullified. 5 First, concerning souls of individual creatures, capable of continued existence after the death or destruction of the body; second, concerning other spirits, upwards to the rank of deities. Spiritual beings are held to affect or control the events of the material world, and man's life here and hereafter. 11 He goes on to argue that, given the possibility of communication between these spirits and men, reverence and propitiation will soon arise, thus pointing to emergence of religion from a combination of ancestor-worship and worship of elemental forces. This view has been contested by, inter alia, Evans-Pritchard 12 but a discussion of the issues falls outside the scope of this work. Whatever the controversy over the actual sequence of beliefs, it is generally recognised that the primitive outlook is characterised by the kind of animism formulated by Tylor. This view does not limit the possibility of continued post-mortem existence to man. Frazer states that The explanation of life by the theory of an indwelling and practically immortal soul is one which the savage does not confine to human beings but extends to the animate creation in general ….he commonly believes that animals are endowed with feelings and intelligence like those of men, and that, like men, the possess souls which survive the death of their bodies either to wander about as disembodied spirits or to be born again in animal form. 13 Once the moon charged the hare to go to men and say 'As I die and rise to life again, so shall you die and rise to life again'. So the hare went to men, but either out of forgetfulness or malice he reversed the message and said 'As I die and do not rise to life again, so shall you also die and not rise to life again'. Then he went back to the moon and she asked him what he had said. He told her, and when she heard that he had given the wrong message, she was so angry with him that she threw a stick at him and split his life, which is the reason why the hare's lip is still split ….before he fled he clawed the moon's face, which still bears the marks of his scratching, as anybody can see for himself on a clear moonlight night. 64 This myth is notable for its economy in explaining at one stroke the origin of death, the hare's lip, and the man in the moon. A third theme, that the serpent and his cast skin, has a tenuous connection with the Genesis story. Some Melanesians say that a messenger was entrusted with the message of immortality for men, providing that they shed their skins every year; but serpents were to be mortal. Unfortunately the secret was betrayed to the serpents and the message reversed. In another case in Annam 65 the messenger was entrusted with the same message but was intimidated by a group of serpents and obliged to repeat the message in reverse. It is interesting that both myths assume that the serpent somehow expropriated a privilege originally accorded to man. Another Sumatran story tells of a certain being who was sent down from heaven to put the finishing touches on creation. He was The idea of immortality was an axiom to the minds of the Egyptians; their notions might be confused, might be rebuffed by pessimism, might develop in various ways, yet from the first burial, with its regular offerings, the belief was always acting until it was expanded in the conversion to Christanity.9 with the calm assurance common to all close and confined religious associations, the Eleusinian society divided mankind into two classes: the 'Pure', that is those who had been initiated at Eleusis, and the innumerable multitude of the uninitiated'. 34 'Alexander's Tomb'. Here the essential items were distributed between three automatists, Mrs Piper, Miss Verrall, and Mrs Holland: Mrs Piper: Moorhead, I gave her that for laurel.
The purpose of this article is to acquaint the reader with those types of consciousness which are considered as higher than self-consciousness, and in a general sense considered part of spiritual consciousness. In the tradition of the teachings of Alice A. Bailey and the Tibetan Master, Djwhal Khul, these higher types of consciousness are clearly distinguished from each other as regards their level of influence as well as their nature and quality. In this article knowledge about their existence is sought firstly in the Upanishads, then in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with special references to occult meditation, considered as the surest means of arriving at higher levels of consciousness. Lastly, an attempt is made to clarify the nature of the higher consciousness of the Spiritual Triad, by means of discussing and referencing select passages from the works of Alice A. Bailey.
Body, Soul, and Spirit - Revisited
2021
Referring to neurological structures and functions within the brain, as well as thought operations and behaviors coming from the brain, this short paper distinguishes between the Body and the Soul, and between the Soul and the Spirit. Materialists, attempting to describe the fully functioning human being, argue there is only Body. Dualists argue there is only Body and Soul. The Spiritual/Tripartite view is that humans exist as Body, Soul, and Spirit. There are scientific indications, as well as literary/philosophical/theological indications that human beings exist at all three levels. The scientific indications come from brain scans, thought operations, and complex behaviors. The Soul develops from the Body, and the Spirit develops from the Soul, but that does not mean that (once formed) they can be reduced to one another. This paper attempts to move the reader from a “substance” orientation (materialism) to a “functional” orientation (measurable abilities). Reductionistic materialism does violence to the functional integrity of the human being. What hangs over this whole discussion is the materialistic “substance” metaphysics of the 1600s. Unless you can specify a tangible, measurable “substance”, then whatever you are talking or writing about is not really “real.” This position is, of course, nonsense. Anyone who knows about the electro-magnetic forces, clouds, speeds, positions, transformations, sudden appearances and disappearances in particle physics knows that the era of a “single observable stuff universe” is long over. What supplies a much more complete, understandable, and satisfying perspective is a functional orientation, where the focus shifts from “material substances” to “observable functions and outcomes.” This is the descriptive orientation of this paper. Yet, often, if you bring this up this newer orientation, you will instantly be called “unscientific.” What is truly “unscientific” is refusing to question assumptions and refusing to look at life through anything but a “substance” lens. If ever we are to have what Abraham Maslow called “a Science of Persons”, we are going to have to get past our obsession with material “substance” and accept/welcome an Analysis of Functions.
Mystical Experience and the Evolution of Consciousness: A Twenty-first Century Gnosis
2021
This article addresses three ideas: mystical experience, the evolution of consciousness, and gnosis. There are different interpretations of these ideas, so I begin by saying how I intend to understand them. Mystical experience I see as a wider, broader, deeper perception of things and their relations than our usual limited view allows. It provides an ‘unitive’ and ‘participatory’ form of consciousness, in which the usual ‘subject/object’ divide has dissolved. The evolution of consciousness is the notion that our present consciousness is not consciousness per se, but has been arrived at over time. This suggests that there have been other forms of consciousness before it. As Barfield and others have suggested, earlier peoples not only had different ideas about the world than we have, they also saw a different world than we do. This suggests that the consciousness of people of a future time may also differ from ours. Gnosis I see as the cognitive character of mystical consciousness, th...