PREFACE I prefer people talking nonsense about important matters rather than keeping silent, because from the ensuing argument and fighting the truth will out. – Diderot
On two occasions, my life has been touched by something extraordinary. These differed from all other intense experiences, good or bad, which I have known like any other person, in that both times it seemed as if a power manifested itself. A power, the existence of which I could not have imagined, the source of which seemed to reside outside of me. From its independent core, far from me, shrouded in invisibility, this power briefly illuminated me, the result of a mere coincidence, the way a searchlight dances its beam across all manner of objects as it glides swiftly forward through the dark.
The desperation of my adolescent existence, like a fly at the bottom of a bottle, was gone. Deep within the keys, behind the vital rhythms, a life resounded whose simplicity, resignation,
humanity, hope and love had taken on a vibration my nervous system absorbed like a dry sponge soaks up water.
We were welcomed by a handsome woman, of small stature, and Oriental appearance. Her relaxed countenance immediately put us at ease. Without wasting time, we were lined up in rows as if we had joined the army, and she demonstrated a powerful physical exercise, in which she moved her arms, legs and head separately. An old lady, seated at a piano more elderly than she, hammered out a strange, almost hypnotic melody, as she desperately searched for the right keys. The movements my body performed while hearing this music had a sudden effect on me. It was as if a blinding light filled everything in the dance hall, including me, and I was convinced that I had stumbled across something of incredible meaning and power. That was my first encounter with Gurdjieff’s Movements.
The study of this phenomenon, Gurdjieff’s Movements, has occupied my life since I discovered it. This book forms the embodiment, the results of years of research. Both these experiences shared an intensity that held an inescapable commitment. The initial impetus for this book came from Dries Langeveld, chief editor of Bres Magazine, a philosophical and esoteric Dutch monthly to which I contributed articles on a regular basis throughout the nineties.
“Pupils,” Dries repeated softly, lost in his thoughts while attempting to pour coffee in a near impossible situation—standing between the towers of books that littered his study—and concluded his musings with: “Write about them Wim, try to explain as accurately as possible what is going on here. If something has gone wrong, analyse it. Don’t attribute blame needlessly, but don’t humor anyone either. We’re not into pretending that everything is fine when it isn’t here.”
Dries Langeveld, a great expert on every aspect and school of thought within spirituality and blessed with encyclopaedic knowledge, died shortly after this conversation. He is often in my thoughts and it is with fond memories that I reflect on him. I am so glad that I did what he asked me to do.
Who am I to venture into this hornets’ nest, and am I capable of providing a faithful report? This is
a question I asked myself many times after Dries Langeveld had requested that I write this book.
Can I still be objective? Of course not. Would a report by an impartial outsider not be preferable? Probably not.
Every observer perceives the complex mosaic of reality through a screen onto which gradually more and more personal associations are projected. The transparency of this screen determines the quality of the observation and the opinion that is formed based on this. The reader should be wary of all opinions, of mine, but especially his or her own. Since the observer’s vision says as much about the observer as the object under observation, I believe it only fair that the reader knows which associative patterns have colored and shaped my observations. This
is the reason why, from time to time, I relate my own experiences, in the form of anecdotes, in this book.
I hope most sincerely that this book will initiate a process in which others supplement the inadequacies in this presentation.
Many will disagree with me, but I think that the length of time and intensity I devoted to this matter form a good basis for expressing my opinion. Above all, if we live in a free country, such expressions of opinion are permitted all the time.
They combated the rise of fascism in Spain, as members of the International Brigade, and printed free speech pamphlets on old printing presses in their cellars throughout the war. It was my job to compile their medical files so that they could apply for a state pension. They made an indelible impression on me. I love them very much, all these years later, and with the example they have given me, I would be deeply ashamed if I kept a well-founded opinion to myself. Truth exists. The maximum a single individual can comprehend of the truth is called consciousness. The courage to face this is honesty. To live accordingly, this is power. These principles have guided me in writing the following pages.
They made an indelible impression on me. I love them very much, all these years later, and with the example they have given me, I would be deeply ashamed if I kept a well-founded opinion to myself. Truth exists. The maximum a single individual can comprehend of the truth is called consciousness. The courage to face this is honesty. To live accordingly, this is power. These principles have guided me in writing the following pages.
Part I Background
1 Georg Ivanovitch Gurdjieff
The teaching only acquires meaning when it answers a question and, as such, the possibilities or impossibilities of that teaching can only be verified in the inner world—in myself. That question cannot be theoretical, nor hatched from a logical mental process. The question arises from the daily experience of the inescapable fact: that I/you do not know. This last word, “know,” should be in capitals. The question can only be kept alive by a deep desire for understanding.
His main work was a trilogy, titled All and Everything. The first and most voluminous part of this triptych is the most important, and also Gurdjieff’s magnum opus. It is an allegory in which the principal character, Beelzebub, sets out his critical view on humanity to his grandson. The two remaining parts can be considered autobiographical.
“A worthy goal for a person is to die an honorable death… this is only possible if you work on yourself… if you do not do so, you will perish like a dog.” The melancholic sounds of Gurdjieff’s harmonium concluded these evenings.
THE MAN, THE MYSTERY, THE SPIRITUAL TEACHER A precondition for “spiritual teaching” is that it must be practiced by the person who teaches it. A human being, as he or she is, not what he claims or writes to be, is the living proof of the authenticity of his teaching.
Gurdjieff claimed that he was forced to lead an unnatural life in order to pass on his ideas to humanity, who were enslaved by a
concerted effort of hypnotic forces as well-organized as multiplication tables. Humanity was in the grip of these cosmic “laws,” which are not at all concerned with the human’s well being. And furthermore, the existence of these laws are not even surmised. Gurdjieff’s decision to remain hidden in his role-playing, which he employed consciously to separate his teaching and his person, can also be taken as a piece of good advice. An open question is better than a closed one and takes us back to ourselves. It is better to doubt than to lose ourselves in illusory certainties.
MEETING JOHN BENNETT Another measure of a “spiritual teacher” is the level of his pupils. They too are an indication, albeit indirect, of the quality of the teaching.
I just remember how captivated I was by the appearance of the city from above in the softly vibrating light of a summer day, the sea of roofs interspersed with treetops, the cry of seagulls and the glistening of the water in the canals.
Within a very short time, and after a series of the most unlikely coincidences, as if the one occurrence evoked the next like a magic formula, I found myself sitting opposite John Bennett, one of Gurdjieff’s most important pupils, who gave me a piercing look from behind his desk. Our eyes met and it was as if two chemicals had mixed indissolubly. His eyes emitted a kind of black light that shone right through me, so powerfully that I could no longer perceive his face very clearly, and it slowly transformed into the black granite masks of the Buddha statues I had once seen in a museum.
After that, we spoke at length, and our meeting was occasionally interrupted by what would become a fixed ritual, in which Bennett would apologize that the conversation had gone on long enough and would leave the room. Then his secretary would enter to show me out. Each time, I refused to leave, after which I could hear her saying despairingly in the other room: “Sir, the young Dutchman still refuses to go.” Bennett then would re-enter the room as if nothing had happened and resume the conversation at the point we had left off.
Without question, John Bennett was an exceptional individual, tall and lean, and even now, over fifty years later, I can recall every detail of his ascetic head. Perhaps because his is the only face that I cannot imagine could ever possibly show the slightest trace of fear. Another emotional expression, however, did not escape my notice. When we talked about how, after his death, Gurdjieff’s work disinte-grated into various organizations which chose to adopt a hostile rather than a cooperative attitude towards one another, I saw in a flash, in less time than a match head needs to flare up, how his face turned ashen, flush with great grief. I remember to this day how surprised I was that a person with powers like his could not mask his grief, but I did not respond to this. Instinctively, I felt that whatever had happened at the time was none of my business. Immediately after this, he recovered his unusual vitality. Everything he focused his attention on that afternoon was balanced on a fine line, which seemed to emphasize his own calmness even more.
Doubt is normal, even healthy in many cases, but I never doubted that a teacher and a teaching that can evoke the qualities that John Bennett possessed must be very special. It was the first, but for me also the most important talk I ever would have with one of Gurdjieff’s pupils.
2 INVENTORY AND CLASSIFICATION OF GURDJIEFF’S LEGACY Art without a magical component does not exist. Great magic cannot exist without great art. – Valentin Bresle
The first book alone has 1300 pages of India paper in small print. His Movements are set out in the smallest detail: one single Movement comprising a complexity of combined multiple roles. His musical compositions appear to have been composed in passing, in the midst of his creative eruptions, in just a matter of years. How should this legacy, created with such passionate energy, be regarded?
An attempt to classify the elements of this legacy immediately raises questions of how this should be tackled. Are they interconnected, and if so in what way? How do his books, music and Movements relate to his teaching? Are all parts equally important? Or does one of them form the center of gravity, around which the other parts revolve as mere illustrations, or clarifications, of the core?
In ancient times, art, science and esotericism formed a unity, and each in its own way testified to a harmonious universe, created and governed by a higher intelligence than that of the human.
My motivation for writing this book is to reply to the question of coherence in Gurdjieff’s legacy with a straightforward, heartfelt Yes, and my answer is based on four solid reasons: • Gurdjieff’s works complement each other • they all share a ritualistic character • they all share a hidden content • their common source is the same: his teaching. I will explain these four reasons in order.
Gurdjieff’s legacy can be seen as the result of a major effort to create an entirely new ritual in which essential questions are approached not only through a mental effort, but a ritual that simultaneously stimulates and mobilizes the sensitivity of the body and emotional life. Shared Hidden Content Another argument for regarding Gurdjieff’s different artistic expressions as one single entity is the fact that they all have a hidden content, and this is very typical for everything regarding his teaching and his work.
Secrecy, concealing information or taking gullible souls for a ride has nothing to do with it. This is not esotericism but deceit. A useful alternative word for esotericism is “inaccessible.”
Gurdjieff used the word “legominism” to describe this form. In the future, only those who could interpret the codes could obtain access to the secret, others could not. “Those who know, know. Those who do not know, do not know” was one of Gurdjieff’s cryptic statements that would not be out of place here. It is consequently logical that Gurdjieff’s own artistic works have a deeper heart of insight hidden under their artistic cloaks.
The Common Source Finally, consider the inaccessibility caused by a lack of knowledge or resources. This is the meaning of the old adage that states that “something cannot be given that cannot be received.” This is true for everything.
His works must be understood as a single work of art, created in different areas, but fed from a single source and energized with a single force: his vision of fate and the potential of the individual considered within the scope of a vast creation. Gurdjieff‘s legacy provides the material in the form of a ritual. This ritual puts his teaching into practice in order to test it, study it and decode it, like in a laboratory. His
More likely, he realized that spiritual ideas cannot be conveyed rationally, or through employing rationality alone, and for this reason he later hid them in his works of art, his “legominisms.”
3 GURDJIEFF’S CONVEYANCE OF HIS TEACHING True contact between two people can only occur at a unique moment in both their lives. – Jan Foudraine1
It is interesting to note that in the Jewish religion it is not permitted to record in writing some of the holy concepts and insights!
It is as if the written word has lost some substance, has been reduced, in the way in which a photograph or film distorts actual human form, or a compact disc changes live music. In any case, verbal communication has a dynamic that is missing when we read, as an answer can be given immediately, and if something is not properly understood an explanation can be offered using other words. These are the advantages, but there is another factor at play that can be disadvantageous. One of the hallmarks of person-to-person communication is that the recipient of the message partially determines what can be conveyed.
“A fact that people don’t want to accept is that a thought comes to us when ‘it’ sees fit, not when ‘I’ desire it. It is a distortion of facts to state that ‘I’ think, no ‘it’ thinks and there is no certainty that ‘it’ is actually ‘I.’” Nietzsche wrote this in 1885 in his book Jenseits von Gut und Böse.
Vladimir Solovyov predicted that a “new man” would arise, equipped with higher spiritual and physical capacities. He would be able to not only look forward but also backward, with a new appearance, a different face, and speaking an entirely new, universal, language.
Gurdjieff left a deep impression on Ouspensky, because he appeared to possess practical knowledge, devoid of speculation, of a type Ouspensky had never previously encountered. Gurdjieff spoke about facts that he himself had verified, and he did so in a dialect akin to that used by an illiterate Caucasian farmer, rather than a prophet revealing a cosmic vision. In a phenomenal feat of memory, Ouspensky recorded literally word for word how Gurdjieff had explained the complete system of his teachings.
His vision denied that one possesses individuality, a will or a soul. This could be acquired, yes, but only through great effort and voluntary suffering. A human
life did not come into being to serve humankind, but as a part of organic life on earth that, in totality, generates a substance that nourishes the moon.
This is reminiscent of the vision of the Russian Symbolist composer Scriabin who lived around this time. He was so convinced that one day the sun would wrap its fiery arms around the earth that he devoted an amazing composition for the piano, Vers la Flamme, to this belief.
As I reflect on my life, I see a stream of images in which new images appear brightly as the previous image disappears into the dusk of the waiting room of memories, perhaps forever. Once in a while, one image appears brighter than the other and hovers for longer in my mind’s eye.
Although it is difficult to comprehend, these meetings appear to hang “in the air,” induced and guided by an unknown force which has been given the inadequate label of “coincidence.” They seem to be part of a pattern that I believe has been independently fixed, well in advance of the events. After these meetings, the events appeared to follow the pattern that had been set out in advance, much in the way that one film image inevitability follows the next out of the projector, and as if I remembered something I could never have known.
In such meetings, words played a role, but they were not an important or determining factor. The words were only confirmations of what had already been felt by both parties. They floated on the surface of the mysterious dynamic of the contact, like pieces of wood on water. They originated from this exchange, but what really occurred can never be experienced, reduced or found again by others, in the words alone. This explains why love letters read by those for whom they were not intended are so boring and predictable. Not so for those to whom they are addressed. For them, they are a magical formula, the talisman, which keeps the flame of love burning.
When Gurdjieff learned of Orage’s untimely death, he wept at the passing of his “super idiot”—in Gurdjieff’s opinion a very positive evaluation—and he wiped the tears from his eyes with his balled-up fists.
was Gurdjieff himself who, in 1931, unexpectedly and with unscripted drama, put an end to the activities of Orage. There can be no doubt that what Orage taught to his groups in America largely originated from Gurdjieff, but the gifted pedagogue that he was, he could not have helped but frame the teachings with many of his own examples. Orage’s teachings in America are preserved in a book, The Oragean Version, written by C. Daly King—a psychologist specializing in the physiology of the brain—with the intention of keeping the interpretation of Gurdjieff’s teaching, by Orage, for posterity. He limited the edition of his book to one hundred numbered copies and expressly forbid any further dissemination. It is difficult to over-emphasize the importance of this book as a productive study of Gurdjieff’s ideas.
It also includes elements that are entirely missing from Ouspensky’s diary, including a diagram that compares the possible development of the human against a diatonic scale. This diagram, not included by Ouspensky, seems to me to be the most important of Gurdjieff’s teachings.
Ouspensky’s diary, Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, nonetheless remains as the only report Gurdjieff authorized, one of the cornerstones that supports his teaching. One of two cornerstones to be exact. The other cornerstone is the first book in Gurdjieff’s trilogy, The All and Everything, titled Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson.
4 The Struggle Of The Magicians
Gurdjieff did not dwell on the fact that in the end there was no performance; he believed that people should work born of a love of the work itself and not for the results.
• In the first act, a whirling dervish enters the stage who, in the opening line, sings about the triple and sevenfold aspects of the divinity of nature. • Then, later in the piece, the Good Magician declares to his pupils, while they gaze at the heavens through a large telescope, that a person who knows himself knows the entire cosmos, including God.
At the end of the story, as the conclusion, Gurdjieff’s most powerful statement comes in the form of a solemn incantation by the Good Magician against humankind’s mechanical endeavors, the sole medium from which evil can propagate itself.
This took place especially during the stating of what type of “idiot” someone was: Gurdjieff’s resolute qualification of his dinner guests during a series of “toasts” that never seemed to end.
The role of magical procedures in Gurdjieff’s teachings, especially the inner-self exercises that he taught individual pupils in his later years, is seriously underestimated. Whatever the source of Gurdjieff’s knowledge, it is certain that he distilled this from a number of methods that can be described as “magical rituals,” but in contrast to our familiar magic they do not originate from a flight of fantasy or a diseased mind, but actually have their origins in extremely ancient traditions.
THE WAY OF STRUGGLE Remarkably, the first word to flow from Gurdjieff’s pen was “struggle,” the opening word in the title of his ballet. This word is typical to describe Gurdjieff and his teaching. It is difficult to see his discipline as anything else than a “struggle” with “something.”
5 BEELZEBUB’S TALES TO HIS GRANDSON No path is so steeped in mystery as the path that leads within: here resides eternity with all its worlds, the past and the future. – Novalis
Modesty does not seem to be the most obvious character trait for this author. Such modesty in this case is not possible, because the objective of his work is to achieve a tremendous synthesis of the creation and everything that this brought forth. The idea, that an individual could bring this about, verges on the visionary. It would even be highly suspect for a person to harbor such a belief. “Lunacy,” people call this.
Yet, a universal synthesis is described by Gurdjieff in his bold and lonely attempt to turn the tide. The stakes were high, typical of the man and his life. It was all or nothing.
His efforts appeared infectious, because fifteen years after the publication of All and Everything, a previously mentioned pupil of Gurdjieff, John Bennett, published the fourth and last book from his Dramatic Universe and, in doing so, rounded off a heroic attempt to complete a summary of all human knowledge, experience and values. Another fifteen years on, the book, De Compositie Van De Wereld (The Composition of the World), appeared, written by Harry Mulisch, a famous Dutch author. In this book, he introduced the musical octave as the principle element that is expressed in a predictable pattern in the development of each individual, as well as in the development of all humankind.
YES AND NO AND THE GREAT LAWS In Gurdjieff’s life, a life-sized “yes” had met with a life-sized “no.” For years, he had explored the corners of the Earth in search of knowledge, and he sifted through the knowledge with the sieve of his own experience, like a gold digger separates the gold dust from the wet sand in a stream. His entire life was aimed at transferring this knowledge, but due to his accident he no longer had the time and energy to accomplish this.
After birth, the creation must travel a road consisting of seven steps, formulated as such far back in antiquity by Pythagoras and Plato. After his intense experience of these Laws, Gurdjieff composed the first sentence of his epos. The start of the sentence was, “It was in the year 223 after the creation of the world…”5 He could not have summarized the creed of his teaching in more compact terms. The number 223, that is written in black and white here, is not arbitrary; it consists of 3 numbers that add up to 7. The number 223 is also the 49th prime number, 7 times 7. This number is represented in his first sentence as a moment in time, but it expresses the numbers 3 and 7 that symbolize Laws in Gurdjieff’s teachings that have no time, that are of all times.
Sitting in Parisian cafés, or wherever he may have been, jotting down thoughts on bits of paper wherever he was, it would take him more than eight years to write—eight years, before this “third force” took on a satisfying form for him. But this didn’t mean that the work was over; Gurdjieff kept working diligently on the text, rewriting it time and time again, after trying it out on all kinds of different people. Gurdjieff died eight days after the printer’s proofs of his book were delivered to him.
Earth appears to be a planet of doom, a freak of nature full of abnormalities. The leitmotiv in the story to his grandson is of a particularly horrifying nature, compared to which a typical horror-film scenario is an innocent bit of light reading.
The special energy required for this re-establishing of relationship had to be provided by the organic life on Earth, including humankind. To spare humans the knowledge that their life was merely intended to repair some kind of cosmic imbalance that had become unsettled through no fault of theirs, an organ was incorporated into humans, called the “Kundabuffer,” which hid this horrible truth.
The awful repercussion is that humans, in the embrace of the effect of this organ, attribute characteristics to themselves such as “individuality,” “will” and a “soul,” and consequently do not see that they have to make an effort to develop these. This would be a fully desperate situation if it were not for “His Endlessness,” who sent messengers from time to time—like Jesus Christ, Buddha, Lama or Mohammed—to awaken the inhabitants of Earth, the “creatures with three brain systems,” from their hypnotic sleep. The method for this awakening was often repeated, by these various messengers, invariably in the same words: conscious effort and intentional suffering. One of these messengers is Ashiata Shiemash, in whom many think they recognize a Gurdjieff alter ego.
As the book recounts, their deaths created a strange sort of substance, which, I imagined, ascended from the square as a cloud and was subsequently absorbed and digested by cosmic entities, whatever they may have been. What a nightmare!
“The human being is a machine. An automatic machine. It is composed of thousands of complex and delicate mechanisms which perform their function in accordance with laws devised for their governance, and over which man himself has no authority, no master-ship and no control.”
drawings. In these drawings, Wölfi’s head often appears amidst labyrinths, with dark circles under his large eyes, depicting his grief. From this central point, the absolute sovereign oversees his creation, but is also its prisoner. In his writings, Wölfli relates how he leaves the Earth with his ever-growing “Avantgarde” (sic) of “Nature Explorers” and visits star after star with his “Airship.” After having worked uninterrupted, Wölfli is canonized by “God=father” and, fulfilled with this Omnipotence, the “Holy Adolf” decides to create a new world. Wölfli reached for heaven by creating for himself, with unimaginable perseverance, a more beautiful world than the hell in which he lived.
The story is a mystic epic from which, like a genie from a bottle, a cloud of events and thoughts ascends, and in which all the events have a metaphorical meaning that can be interpreted in more ways than one. Here is an alchemistic mixture of myths, symbolic incidents, analogies, allegories, old sayings, proverbs, formulas from religious sources… and all this interspersed with made-up words. Gurdjieff’s intention was to summarize his entire teachings in this book, so that they would be saved for future generations. But he buried them so deeply that they remain hidden, as if covered by an invisibility cloak.
Gurdjieff did not commonly repeat himself, but one thing he kept coming back to is that there are no words for higher insights or knowledge; that words only suffice for simple facts of a practical nature. This is not new.
Gurdjieff consciously does not opt for a clear and logical text. He cannot! In his conviction, a superficial mental understanding destroys the possibility of further development. However, one is tempted to try to understand this mysterious text logically. (It became clear to me a long time ago that “thinking” about this book does not produce much.) Moreover, every mental interpretation of such a mystical text as this one remains guesswork at all times. The interpretation will never be confirmed or denied with authority. The author is no longer alive and, even if this were the case, he would never lend himself to such confirmation.
He did Gurdjieff the honor of mentioning his book and quoting from it in the very last article he wrote, “L‘écart absolu.”9 This title can be translated as “Away with it!”
then uttered the sentence that was not only an answer to my question, but is also applicable to the controversy surrounding Gurdjieff’s book. “My son, don’t you worry about that. If his genius wanted it that way, it simply means there was no other way.”
6 GURDJIEFF’S FINAL YEARS, HIS DEATH AND THE SUCCESSION (TO THE THRONE) I live alone, out of time, I am going to a sun lost to your eyes.
In this series, everyone could climb or descend, but the most decisive step and the condition for progression was the transfer from an “objectively hopeless idiot” to a “subjectively hopeless idiot.” During his final years, Gurdjieff regularly undertook short trips through France accompanied by his pupils, to cities with ancient cathedrals, but also to spa towns like Vichy or to the French southern coast.
He never missed an opportunity to test them in difficult practical situations. Just as a pupil once told me: “Upon returning home after a couple of days, it was as though you had been away for months, so intense had the flood of impressions been.”3
He believed that the core, the substance, would disappear within four generations. In a final dead lift, he doubled his efforts to pass on the Movements, the mysterious calligraphy of movements untainted by words, in which he summarized his teachings for the final time, until he collapsed during a Movements’ class and the end was announced.
It is not easy to witness, at least not for me, how a proud and spectacular doctrine, with which the “mechanical man” could acquire a “soul” for himself, must now be satisfied with a modest place on the shelf between oil for foot massages and the latest report on conversations with aliens. The most important medium within which Gurdjieff’s teachings survive is the “Gurdjieff groups,” the name for organizations where these teachings are instructed.
There is little contact among the different traditional organizations or groups, but there is uniformity in the activities. There are weekly meetings, in which experiences are exchanged regarding an exercise previously assigned by the leader of the group. In addition, weekends are organized, usually in a country house that belongs to the organization, in which the group performs practical physical work,
instructions are given for Movements, and Gurdjieff’s books are read aloud. The day is usually begun with what is called a “morning exercise,” a led-meditation session in which the leader of the group verbally instructs the members in an inner-self exercise. This sum of activities is a contemporary cocktail of elements from the various phases of Gurdjieff’s teachings. However, this does not apply to the led “morning exercises,” an element that only came to be after Gurdjieff’s death.
It would be a good thing if you could see by looking at a charismatic leader of a Gurdjieff group if he was “good” or “bad,” but unfortunately this is not possible. Besides being in a direct line of transmission from Gurdjieff, the other thing to look at in determining the strength or accuracy of a group leader is his or her presence of being, or obvious embodiment of the principles of the teachings. Book study of the teachings is not the issue here.
Two questions with which Gurdjieff once opened a conversation with pupils can be traced back to this polarity. The first was: “What is this life that has been given to me; what is it exactly?” The second question was: “Do you need the sun?”
Amazed, I noticed that what I used to call “myself” was not a stable entity at all, but something that changed second by second.
8 THE FLIP SIDE… and so the Kingdom of the Dream with all its visitors was destroyed as a result of the battle between the visionary Patera and the pragmatist Bell. Only the blue-eyed original residents lived on… – Alfred Kubin
While working on this book, I noticed that what I write is always the outcome of a struggle. On one side, I have the wish to assist the reader’s understanding of complicated subjects, but unfortunately, this wish often mingles with the dubious desire to be appreciated by others for what I am not.
Dying to not have to die. – Teresa of Avila
In this dream, I had no fear. Peculiar, if you know anything at all about the dangers of the sea. On the contrary, a strong feeling of peace and relaxation came over me, as though the sea welcomed me with its infinity. After waking, I did not feel exhausted, as is often the case after other dreams, but instead bursting with energy, as though the sea had shared some of its strength with me, in the way that it leaves shells behind on the wet beach. The meaning of this dream is perfectly clear to me. The water is the truth. The city and houses are the temporary dwellings that will sooner or later be overwhelmed by the sea. The two signs in the dream, the water and the houses, do not just symbolize the contrast between eternity and the temporary, or irrational and rational, but also the difference between a spiritual and a scientific discipline. All spiritual systems, including that of Gurdjieff, focus on the water, not on the city. A choice has to be made: you go out on the water in a boat, or you stay at home.
Many of its kind would not escape this fate: to be killed, in order that from their bodies a substance could be extracted that would be of use to the “fathers of the city,” in other words to higher organisms in the cosmos.
The next note, “si,” is the step that can bring about the octave—the rebirth through a transformation of the sexual energy. The function of the note “fa” is an essential difference between Gurdjieff’s teaching and other spiritual systems.
But, with none of them are we able to perceive ourselves through the eyes of a neutral and unbiased observer. The note “fa” is the decisive transition to the higher possibilities and stands for “self-knowledge,” the mysterious elixir of life of Gurdjieff’s teachings.
2 In my opinion, the first part—say for the sake of argument the first hundred pages—of the book Voyage Au Bout De La Nuit, published in 1932 (English translation, Journey to the End of the Night, published by New Directions, 1952) by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, offers an almost unsurpassable example of the description of “self-remembering.” Fragments of great power can equally be found with many other authors, in Dutch literature, for example, with Simon Vestdijk.
10 THE TWO RUDIMENTARY ELEMENTS The composition of the world.
Gurdjieff’s teachings are characterized by two laws: the “Great Laws” of Three and Seven. The existence and meaning of these Laws cannot be confirmed or explained in a logically constructed train of thought. They can only be experienced once our inner self has acquired access to the unknown worlds,
The energy that is bundled in these Laws, like a very dense cloud that drifts on the edge of our atmosphere, can only reach me if I first discard my illusions concerning myself, in the way that a devout Muslim does with his footwear before entering the mosque. This is the price that must be paid: the note “fa.” A high price, because it is difficult to see how and who we are. It is only with tremendous tenacity and effort that we can create the conditions in which our “self-observations” can be given space, and even then we do our utmost to avoid having to look into this merciless mirror. How strange, in actual fact, that we cannot see ourselves without fleeing from
this; sooner or later, it will become clear to us who we are, or, as will be the case in the last moments of our lives, who we were.
It is therefore important to emphasize that the inner experience of these Laws is of a very high order and opens an entirely new chapter for the possible evolution of humankind.
THE LAW OF THREE Gurdjieff was very reserved when he spoke about this Law, and his practical examples could be counted on one hand. He stated that a moment of creation, at
whatever level, can only occur when a “third force”—like a breath of life—counterbalances the tension between a positive and a negative pole. An alternative word for this reconciling force is the “designing force.”
The negative factor cannot be destroyed by the positive opposition, but has to be observed and lived through, which results in the evocation of a neutralizing force that transforms the duality into a force-field of three factors. Could it be that, through the complete acceptance of the irreversibility of our death, a new insight is generated that rises above the duality of life-death, as the epigraph of the previous chapter, a quote from the holy Teresa, suggests?
Hegel asserts that the trinity comprises the reconciliation of opposites that transform into a synthesis. This cannot assist us, however, because this logic does not permit a variability of the factor “consciousness”; it only recognizes statements, formulated in words, which are true or untrue.
THE LAW OF SEVEN About the other Great Law, the “sevenfold,” Gurdjieff explains that every stimulus and every initiative must undergo predictable stages, each with its own characteristics. The scale in major demonstrates these stages: do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si-do. The new “do” is the octave note of the first “do.” Thus, this Law is often also called the “Law of Octaves.”
This second variation of this Law—the one “outside time”—does not appear in Ouspensky’s book, but solely in Gurdjieff’s own work. He refers to the Law of Seven existing outside time, where the notes become frozen force-fields that keep each other in balance. Gurdjieff gave various examples of this second variety, such as opium that comprises seven components that in turn each comprise seven parts, or that of the human face of which the form is determined by the dimensions of seven parts of the body. The co-existence of these two varieties of the same Law, seemingly so contradictory, indicates that we are dealing here with an organic phenomenon that is difficult if not impossible to understand by logical means alone.
This appears similar to the Pythagorean creation of the worlds based on numeric relationships as explained in Plato’s Timaeus. The numeric calculations of the creation in Plato’s Timaeus are so complex that “even the Demiurge who created the world gave a sigh of relief once the creation was complete.” If these calculations are carefully computed, a series of numbers are generated that relate to the notes of the octave in the same way as the vibration numbers do in Gurdjieff’s Law of Seven. In other words, a series with five whole and two half-increments of tone, located in exactly the same places.
For him, there was no question of complicated calculations. Rather, the diatonic scale occurs because a line—in other words a phenomenon or process—is first divided into seven equal segments, and after that into three. The “milestones” from the first division of seven are now shifted in such a way that two of them converge with the “milestones” from the division of three.
Gurdjieff claimed that no single stimulus can progress in the right direction without supporting shocks being administered from the outside.
Life on Earth is the stimulus from outside that is administered to the “ray-of-creation octave” at this “fa-mi” interval. The extremely thin film of organic life that is wrapped around the planet must secure the stimulus from the Sun (“sol”) and all the planets (“fa”) in the direction of the Moon (“re”). This second-to-last component of this staggering column of creation, the moon, devours all the life on Earth like a hungry predator.
One octave serves as a jolt for the other. In this way, the absorption of nourishment, breathing and experiencing of impressions are three octaves that set each other in motion with clockwork precision.
It is the only declining octave that is not assessed negatively by Gurdjieff, but, as appears from a single remark from him in Ouspensky’s diary, is creative. This “creativity” is analyzed in a less than reassuring way by Mulisch in his book, The Composition of the World, previously mentioned in Chapter 5.5
This statement from someone of his literary and philosophical stature should serve as a warning for not interpreting the enneagram too lightly. Gurdjieff said that this symbol could only be understood by those who had danced the enneagram-Movements. My own experiences have confirmed this. Not that I now understand this symbol, far from it, but it is as though you come into contact with a secret. The deep silence that practicing the enneagram-Movements has evoked in me, time and time again, is so different from the mental effort required for deciphering the enneagram, that the craving to do this has left me. The word “enneagram” is absent from Gurdjieff’s own writings—it only occurs in Ouspensky’s book—but in his Movements this symbol plays a major role, if not the singularly most important role.
11 MUSIC BY GURDJIEFF / DE HARTMANN Hear the melodies in the way in which the stringed instruments of love exhale them. These are the true Psalms of David. Do not dwell on the future or the past. Live now. That is the secret of peace. – Omar Khayyam
More important to him than the emotional value of all this music was the fact that the vibrating sounds of the long-necked string instruments, the monotone song of the monks, yes even his little harmonium that accompanied him to the end of his days, comprised vibrations in which universal patterns could be studied. Music was an essential ingredient of his teachings. And its significance is still overlooked, even among circles interested in this discipline.
The stimuli that moved Gurdjieff to compose music were to provide Movements with accompanying music and, following his accident, to give musical illustrations while reading from his books, as an emotional version, complementary to the intellectual form comprising words. Gurdjieff said this literally. It means that just reading or studying his books misses out on the added value of his music.
The titles were, in order of appearance: Hymns from a Great Temple, Songs and Rhythms from the Orient, Sayid Chants and Dances, Dervish Chants and Dances and Sacred Hymns.
The album Songs and Rhythms from the Orient is the most varied. It includes folk music from Greece, Armenia, Afghanistan, Turkish and Kurdish music, Persian and Tibetan melodies and songs from various peoples like the Molokans and Assyrians.
The work of the independent, Dutch, music-researcher Gert Jan Blom should not be overlooked here. He has recently ensured that the orchestral work and the harmonium recordings were made available to the public at large. The distribution of Gurdjieff’s music owes a great deal to this pioneer.
It is worth mentioning that jazz music, similar to Gurdjieff’s music, also results from the merging of two worlds—in this case, European harmonies with African rhythms. These two worlds met in a single city, New Orleans, and in a single moment.
12 OBJECTIVITY AND SUBJECTIVITY IN ART The Gods reside in the realm of mathematics. – Novalis
On many occasions, he repeated that objective art originated from mathematical knowledge, which has nothing to do with talent and can be expressed in any area.
For many years and regularly, for days, sometimes weeks, this topic has consumed me with the intensity of someone in the grip of an obsession. The stage of my “wrestling with an angel” was music, a field that is familiar to me and was also important to Gurdjieff.
The night and the unfamiliarity with someone you will never see again can move a person to greater openness.