Gurdjieff and Blavatsky: Western Esoteric Teachers in Parallel (original) (raw)

No Religion Higher than Truth": A History of the Theosophical Movement in Russia, 1875-1922

The Russian Review, 1994

Most works on Theosophy, whether of the American, British, or continental school, seem to get written by, for, or against fellow Theosophists. Fortunately for all who are not initiates but who have at one time or another wanted to know much more about the subject, Maria Carlson has written a superb history of this most fascinating period of organized occultism in Russia. The book admirably combines scholarship and readability, objectivity and sympathy, solemnity and levity, and provides, at last, an intelligent and comprehensive analysis of the teachings, the personalities, and the appeal of Theosophy in Russia a century ago. As Carlson succinctly demonstrates in her introduction, mystical speculation, theosophy (with a small ''t"), had long been a stepsister of philosophy and theology in Russia.

No Religion Higher than Truth": A History of the Theosophical Movement in Russia, 1876-1922

American Historical Review, 1994

Most works on Theosophy, whether of the American, British, or continental school, seem to get written by, for, or against fellow Theosophists. Fortunately for all who are not initiates but who have at one time or another wanted to know much more about the subject, Maria Carlson has written a superb history of this most fascinating period of organized occultism in Russia. The book admirably combines scholarship and readability, objectivity and sympathy, solemnity and levity, and provides, at last, an intelligent and comprehensive analysis of the teachings, the personalities, and the appeal of Theosophy in Russia a century ago. As Carlson succinctly demonstrates in her introduction, mystical speculation, theosophy (with a small ''t"), had long been a stepsister of philosophy and theology in Russia.

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.

The work': The teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky in Russia and beyond

2020

This article examines the views of Gurdjieff's disciples P.D. Ouspensky and Maurice Nicoll on the esoteric nature of the Gospels. Utilising one of Wouter Hanegraaff's definitions of esotericism as religious activity concerned predominantly with salvific knowledge of the 'inner mysteries of religion' reserved for a selected elite, Ouspensky's and Nicoll's view of the Gospels as the rendering in metaphorical form of esoteric knowledge as the formulation of the esoteric psychology of the path of inner evolution is discussed. Sources for this discussion are Ouspensky's A New Model of the Universe (1931), and Nicoll's The New Man (1950) and The Mark (1954). It is suggested that the Gospels render esoteric knowledge and its linguistic expression secret and hidden. Nicoll's idea of the necessity for this secrecy and hiddenness in dealing with the esoteric, that esoteric knowledge given to those unprepared for it is dangerous, both because it will be spoiled, its truth and beauty destroyed, and because it will turn into what Nicoll calls "world poison", is illustrated in a discussion of the thesis presented in Jacob Needleman's A Sense of the Cosmos (1975), that the rise of modern science represents an abuse of esoteric knowledge. The article concludes by presenting ideas from Needleman, Ouspensky and Nicoll of what needs to be done in the face of this current widespread abuse of esoteric knowledge.

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.