Biography of george gurdjieff. Life as a search for truth
Buddha said that "When the iron bird takes off, the Dharma will come from East to West." And the person through whom, at the beginning of the 20th century, the transfer of esoteric knowledge of the Fourth Way from the Schools of the East to Russia, Europe and America took place George Ivanovich Gurdjieff.
Gurdjieff formalized his doctrine in the light of the peculiarities of the perception of the people who surrounded him at that time - intellectuals pre-revolutionary Russia, the creative intelligentsia of Europe, America. To deduce people's thinking from the usual terms and understandings of Christianity from an external point of view, he presented the system as the science of awakening through efforts to concentrate attention, using the so-called Gurdjieff movement, creativity in creating performances, living together in a group and hard work.
He used the method of "denial", in which he created shocks and difficulties for students, allowing them to see more deeply their dream. George Gurdjieff spoke in many ways in riddles that lead logic to a dead end. Gurdjieff dance system, enneagram of gurdjieff, his music to this day looks mystical and ambiguous.
Gurdjieff's books
Gurdjieff's books:
"Anything and Everyone, or Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson"
"Meeting wonderful people"
"Life is real only when" I am "
When Gurdjieff wrote Beelzebub's Tales to his grandson, it became a practice in his groups to read this book together aloud, in order to practice focusing attention on a long complex thought and to stay in the present extended time by listening to the reader. In "Stories" by G.I. Gurdjieff Beelzebub represents the Real Self of man - that which is a witness of our life, as in the book the stranger Beelzebub is a witness to the life of the Earthlings.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the knowledge that through Gurdjieff came to the Europeans was available only to a select few, but now Gurdjieff's books you can download them on many sites or buy them in a store.
As George Ivanovich Gurdjieff said: "life is real when I am." And the main practice, the system of the Fourth Way, is the awareness of oneself in the present - only then a person really "is". For this, every conscious teacher finds his own techniques, be it dances, meditations, exercises for attention, or something else. The variety of external forms is apparent, since the goal of each real School is the same - the awakening of consciousness.
Gurdjieff quotes
Some sayings and quotes of Gurdjieff:
“Without knowing oneself, a person cannot become free, cannot govern himself. He always remains a slave, a plaything of external forces, therefore the first requirement of all ancient teachings on the path to liberation was "know thyself."
"Remember yourself always and everywhere."
"Love what allows you to live consciously."
"I love someone who loves work."
“The best way to awaken the desire to work on yourself is the realization that you can die at any moment. But first, you must learn to remember this always ”.
“First, make a sacrifice, no further work is possible without a conscious sacrifice. And above all, sacrifice your fantasies. Fantasies about the past, about the future, about oneself now, dreams. This is one of the main causes of sleep. And also sacrifice your suffering. Stop suffering and feeling sorry for yourself. "
“Knowledge and understanding are two different things. One must strive for understanding, only it leads to the Lord. Understanding manifests itself as a result of everything personal experience reinterpreted by the person himself. Knowledge is just a mechanical memorization of words in a certain sequence. "
"There are no Russians, no Englishmen, no Jews, no Christians, but only those who pursue one goal - to be able to be."
Biography of Gurdjieff
Biography of Gurdjieff, as well as the teaching of Gurdjieff, is ambiguous and full of secrets. Gurdjieff Georgy Ivanovich, of Greek-Armenian origin, was born in the late 19th century in southern Russia. Gurdjieff's first teachers were his own father, and his confessor, Gregory, a priest of the Greek Church. G.I. Gurdjieff traveled extensively in the East in his youth, and supposedly studied with several teachers in several esoteric Schools.
The first groups of students interested in Gurdjieff's teachings began to gather around him when he arrived in pre-revolutionary Russia in the early 20th century. After the revolution, he, along with his closest students, emigrated to Europe.
George Gurdjieff lived, gathered students, led groups, gave lectures and performances of his dances and performances in France, England, America.
Photo and video of Gurdjieff
Films about Gurdjieff
There are few documentaries and videos of Gurdjieff, online viewing which are easily accessible to Internet users. Today you can find and see next films about Gurdjieff:
P. Brook "Meeting wonderful people"
Martiros Fanosian “I am Gurdjieff. I will not die."
The Holy Scripture says: "Everyone who transgresses the teaching of Christ and does not abide in it does not have God; he who abides in the teaching of Christ has both the Father and the Son" (2 John 1: 9). For any Christian, these words of the Evangelist John sound like a warning, like a call to check everything that we encounter in our spiritual life with Christ's Covenant, expressed, first of all, in Holy Scripture. If a newly-minted teacher preaches something contrary to Holy Scripture, one should turn away from him: "But even if we or an Angel from heaven began to preach the gospel to you other than what we preached to you, let it be anathema" (Gal. 1: 8). A Christian who does otherwise rejects Christ.
Holy Scripture warns: "... Satan himself takes the form of an Angel of light, and therefore it is not a great thing if his servants also take the form of ministers of righteousness; but their end will be according to their works" (2 Cor. 11: 14-15). Ministers of this kind in the Holy Scriptures are called "wolves in sheep's clothing" (Matthew 7:15). Woe to the flock that has chosen such guides. "Fierce wolves" (Acts 20:29) will not take care of Christ's flock, therefore the question is especially important: who is he, the shepherd, claiming to be a spiritual leader? Does he lead his flock to Christ or not? It is a matter of life or death, salvation or eternal destruction!
In this article we will consider some aspects of the religious teachings of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, who in one of his works urged readers to "be Christians." Also noteworthy are the statements of Gurdjieff, characterizing occultism and theosophy as "false-human knowledge" and even "specific psychosis". One can only agree with such a diagnosis of theosophy and occultism, but a closer acquaintance with the works of George Gurdjieff himself makes one think about the nature of his own spiritual path... Is it really so far from the occult and close to the Christian? This article is an attempt to answer these questions.
Georgy Ivanovich Gurdjieff (1873-1949) was born into a family of a carpenter of Russian-Greek origin and spent his childhood in a remote village in the South Caucasus, near the border with Turkey. Having received a good education, Gurdjieff became interested in mysticism, entered a certain "Community of Truth Seekers" and began to travel around the world. The "Community of Truth Seekers" believed that once upon a time there was one religion on Earth, the fragments of which were later inherited by the countries of the East. Philosophy went to India, theory to Egypt, practice to Persia, Mesopotamia and Turkestan. Members of the society have dedicated their lives to the search for ancient esoteric knowledge. There were many Europeans in the "Community of Truth Seekers", these people traveled to the East, studied in various monasteries, entered secret societies... The experience that Gurdjieff received as a result of such searches for "ancient esoteric knowledge" formed the basis of his teaching.
Speaking about the personality of Gurdjieff, it should be noted that, by today's standards, he was a good entrepreneur. It is said that one day he caught several sparrows, painted them yellow and sold them under the guise of canaries, after which he hastily left the area, without waiting for the first rain. Gurdjieff knew how to weave carpets, collected sewing machines. He made good money in the corset business. Having learned that low corsets are becoming fashionable in the Caucasus, he began to alter the old high ones. Having bought up useless old corsets for a pittance, Gurdjieff altered them and sold them to the same shopkeepers from whom he had previously purchased them for a pittance. Gurdjieff spent the money raised from this business on travels in the East. Unlike the Christian approach to spiritual ministry, which Christ expressed briefly: "... freely you received, freely give" (Matthew 10: 8), Gurdjieff believed that his activities had nothing to do with charity, so the disciples should pay for his spiritual services. teachers.
In 1915, Gurdjieff wrote and directed a ballet entitled The Struggle of the Magicians. A note about this production attracted the attention of the journalist P.D. Uspensky, who was fond of the occult and had by that time traveled all over India, who, after meeting with Gurdjieff, became his follower and the most famous popularizer of his teachings. In 1922, Gurdjieff opened in France the "Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man", which existed until the death of its founder. Students of this educational institution talked about man and the structure of the world, or rather, their attention was offered the teaching of Gurdjieff, which includes the consideration of these issues. In addition, the institute worked on transforming the inner world of a person through the use of various psychotechnics, which Gurdjieff learned during his travels in the East, as well as with the help of psychotechnics, which he developed independently. The students had to do hard physical labor, after which they learned the dances that Gurdjieff invented. According to eyewitnesses, the followers of Gurdjieff, during practical training in psychotechnics according to the method of their teacher, resembled zombies, their expressions were absolutely meaningless. Gurdjieff did not hide the fact that he possessed hypnosis, as well as the fact that he actively uses it, using hypnosis not only in relation to his students.
What are the main points of Gurdjieff's teaching? Let us turn to his own creations: "... we (Gurdjieff with his disciples. - VP) are materialists. I (Gurdjieff. - VP) are a skeptic. The first prescription inscribed on the wall of the Institute (Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. - VP), reads: “Do not believe anything, not even yourself.” I believe only when I have statistical evidence, that is, when I get the same result over and over again. I study and work for leadership, and not for faith. " Well, Gurdjieff's approach is not new, it is proclaimed by all occult teachings, for example, Theosophists: "Faith is a word that cannot be found in theosophical dictionaries: we are talking about knowledge based on observation and experience." The idea is that, as the occultists assure, their teaching does not require "blind faith", but is entirely based on practical knowledge. Several distortions can be found right away here. First, occultists misunderstand the Christian understanding of faith, interpreting it as an uncritical belief in authority, to which Christianity in reality does not call: "Prove all things, hold on to what is good" (1 Thess. 5:21). Second, they forget to say that "pure" knowledge does not exist, and there are no guaranteed ways to evaluate mystical experience without resorting to its interpretation through the prism of the mystic's worldview. What people experience may be objective reality, but the interpretation of any spiritual experience is always subjective. A person always interprets any spiritual experience in the mainstream of the attitudes already existing at that time. Therefore, if a person has an occult worldview, he interprets his spiritual experience within its framework, that is, completely differently than a Christian, but this is not due to the fact that occultism is based on "pure" experience, but on the fact that this experience was acquired by an occultist. , not a Christian. It is based on principles different from Christian principles, which leads to a different spiritual result. In Orthodoxy, one simple truth is recognized: "... a religious dogma can change the very mind of the one who professes it: such people differ from those who were formed on the basis of a different dogmatic concept." Thus, other ideological attitudes take part in the formation of a different spiritual experience, therefore occultists can be accused of blind faith in occult dogmas in the same way as they accuse Christians of blind faith.
Speaking about matter, Gurdjieff teaches: "Everything in the world is material; and, obeying the universal law, everything is in motion and constant transformation; transformations proceed in different directions - from the most subtle matter to the grossest and vice versa. Between these two boundaries there are many degrees density of matter ". This thesis of Gurdjieff is also by no means original, similar ideas can be found, for example, in agni yoga: “It is said that matter is a crystallized spirit, but one can also say the other way around, because everything from the subtlest energies is matter. ... Who considers himself a materialist , he must respect matter in all its varieties ... "; "We (" mahatmas ". - VP) turn to the highest strata or the grossest types of the same matter." Theosophy also agrees with these ideas: "The idea that matter and spirit are completely different from each other and both are eternal, of course, could not have entered my head, no matter how little I knew about them, for one of the elementary and fundamental the doctrines of occultism says that both of them are one thing, differing only in their manifestations, and moreover only in limited perceptions of the sensible world. " Further, Gurdjieff asserts: "... matter constantly enters into various combinations, becomes more and more dense, meets with other matter and becomes denser, thus changing all its qualities and capabilities. For example, in the higher spheres, the mind is in pure form, and as the descent becomes less intelligent "; "Matter is the same everywhere, but at each physical level it has a different density. Therefore, each substance takes its place on the scale of matter; and we have the opportunity to say whether this substance is on the way to a finer or denser form." The doctrine of the change in the density of matter is also in agni yoga and in Theosophy, for example, theosophical "mahatmas" teach: "... spirit and matter are one, being only differentiations in states, but not in essences ...". According to Georgy Gurdjieff: "At some points of development, there are, as it were, stops, or transfer stations. These stations are found in everything that can be called organisms in the broad sense of the word, for example, the Sun, Earth, man, microbe. They are switches that transform matter both in its ascending movement, when it becomes thinner, and in its descending movement towards greater density. This transformation occurs purely mechanically "; "man is a station for the transformation of matter"; "Switches differ only in scale. For example, man is a transmitting station as much as the Earth or the Sun are; inside it, the same mechanical transformations of high forms of matter into low ones take place, and lower ones into higher ones. "But again, the same ideas can be found in agni yoga:" So, humanity is an accumulator and transmutator of high energy, which we agreed call mental. The significance of humanity is to transmute this energy in consciousness and, through the Hierarchy, direct it to the Higher Spheres ... ". The occult doctrine of the identity of matter and spirit has nothing to do with the Christian doctrine. eternal, since before its creation it was not. Gurdjieff, like all occultists, preaches pantheism, Christianity is monotheistic, for a Christian the world and matter are different. : “For a closed, isolated system, the amount of useful energy in the Universe decreases.” If the occultists, together with Gurdjieff, were right, then the amount of energy in the Universe could not decrease in any way.
Gurdjieff's teaching, like any other pantheistic teaching, proclaims the relativity of good and evil: "What you like, good or bad, has the same value; good is a relative concept." Blavatsky also wrote about the relativity of good and evil: "Good and evil are relative ...". This approach to morality logically leads occultists to justify evil. Gurdjieff writes: "If you believe in God, you also believe in the devil. All this has no value. Whether you are good or bad, it does not matter." Can we conclude from the words of Gurdjieff that faith in God is not needed, and the criminal and the righteous, from his point of view, are one? Maybe then the Jewish crowd, which two thousand years ago made its choice between a robber and a Righteous One (John 18:40), did nothing reprehensible? Perhaps Judas, who betrayed Christ, is a good example to follow? As you know, Madame Blavatsky deified Satan in her teaching. Gurdjieff's thought develops in the same direction: "... Morality is a double-edged sword, it can be turned this way and that." But Holy Scripture teaches exactly the opposite, it speaks of the absoluteness of moral categories: "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, darkness is considered light, and light is darkness, bitter is considered sweet, and sweet is bitter!" (Is.5: 20). The occult's approach to morality makes it possible, if necessary, to justify any crime, including fraud in the sale of sparrows painted like canaries or the use of lies by Gurdjieff to convert new people into his teachings, as evidenced by Ouspensky. In light of all of the above, the following words of Gurdjieff are no longer surprising: "First of all, you must think of yourself and do your best to elevate yourself. You must become an egoist. Selfishness is the first stage on the path to altruism, to Christianity." Selfishness, perhaps, is the first stage on the path to Gurdjiyism, but not to Christianity. To those who seek to exalt themselves, the Holy Scripture answers: "... whoever exalts himself will be humiliated, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted" (Matthew 23:12). Christianity calls not to selfishness, which is always combined with pride, but to humility: "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble" (James 4: 6).
Gurdjieff believed that a person is a "mechanical doll" devoid of a soul: "An ordinary person does not have a soul ... A child is never born with a soul. A soul can be acquired during life: but even then it is a luxury available to only a few. Most people all their lives they live without a soul, without a master; for everyday life the soul is completely unnecessary. "Similar ideas can be found in Buddhism, but they are not in Christianity. Holy Scripture speaks of the gift of a soul from God to man:" And the Lord God created man from the dust of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a soul living "(Genesis 2: 7). About the threefoldness of a person who has spirit, soul and body, writes Apostle Paul:" May the God of peace himself sanctify you in all its fullness, and may your spirit, soul and body be preserved in all its integrity without blemish in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ "(1 Thess.5: 23). The following words of Christ also testify to the existence of a man's soul:" ... what is the use of a man if he gains the whole world, but damages his soul? or what ransom will a person give for his soul? "(Matthew 16:26), and these words refer to all people, and not to the privileged group of" chosen secret scholars ":" ... I spoke clearly to the world; I always taught in the synagogue and in the temple, where the Jews always converge, and secretly did not say anything "(John 18:20). Christian teaching about the soul has nothing to do with the teachings of Gurdjieff, but, as we have already noted, it has a lot in common with Buddhism, but he, as you know, fundamentally denies the existence of God, which also does not agree with Christianity in any way.
Since "ordinary" people do not have a soul, what fate can await them after death? Answering this question, Gurdjieff writes: "Man is the result of the interaction of planetary emanations and the earthly atmosphere with the material elements of the Earth. After the death of an ordinary man, his physical body disintegrates into its component parts; parts of the Earth return to the Earth -" you are dust and you will return to dust. " The particles that entered the planetary emanations return to the world of the planets; the particles of the earth's atmosphere return to it. Thus, nothing remains as a single whole. " If Scripture uses such authority in the eyes of Gurdjieff that he quotes him to confirm his own teaching about the absence of the posthumous existence of "ordinary people" - "... for dust you and to dust you will return" (Genesis 3:19), then why not he also did not pay attention to the following words of Holy Scripture: "And these will go away into eternal torment, but the righteous into eternal life" (Matthew 25:46), "And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some for eternal life, others to eternal reproach and shame "(Dan 12: 2)? If Gurdjieff's teaching about the soul is correct, then what kind of eternal torment can we talk about? Indeed, according to his concept, "ordinary" people do not have a soul, which means that after death they can not expect either eternal shame or eternal life. If Gurdjieff did not share the Christian idea of heaven and hell, why resort to citing Holy Scripture, where this teaching is expressed? Isn't this a form of deception: to pull out individual phrases from Holy Scripture, endowing them with meanings that are not in the original source? And can we talk about the honesty of the person who does this?
If a person is a "mechanical doll", then it would be logical to conclude that he has no will, this is precisely the conclusion that Gurdjieff comes to: "An ordinary person ... has no will. What is commonly called will is just the resultant of desires. . If a person has a desire and at the same time the opposite desire arises, that is, an unwillingness stronger than the first, then the second becomes dominant and stops the first. This phenomenon in ordinary language is called will. " Gurdjieff makes man a puppet of desires. Christianity teaches differently: man was created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27), he is endowed with reason, which means that he has free will: "... we say that together with reason, free will immediately enters." According to the Christian worldview, every person has free will, while Gurdjieff grants the right to possess free will only to a group of especially "enlightened", which, naturally, includes himself: "Free will is ... the function of such a person whom we call a master ...".
Gurdjieff's doctrine of personality is completely different from Christianity. For example, he writes: "Personality is a random thing: upbringing, education, views, i.e. everything external. It's like the clothes that you wear; your artificial mask, the result of your upbringing, the influences of your environment, opinions consisting of information and knowledge: such opinions change daily, one of them annuls the other. " The views of Gurdjieff are close to the views of theosophists, who also perceive personality as a "mask" that the individual puts on during incarnation, but after death the personality disappears. If for Gurdjieff, personality is an "accidental thing," then for Christians, personality is "freedom in relation to nature," the personality manifests itself through the forces inherent in rational nature - through the mind, will and vital energy. Freedom in relation to nature means that man is not a puppet of nature, as the pantheists, in particular Gurdjieff, imagine the situation, he is free, he can be above nature, but this teaching can only be created in monotheism. It should be noted that the understanding of the term "personality" among occultists and Christians is fundamentally different, to which occultists, however, do not actually pay attention.
Like all occultists, Gurdjieff praises magic: "Since ancient times, people have known how to use ... the laws of nature. Such use of mechanical laws, carried out by man, is called magic; it includes not only the transformation of substances in the desired direction, but also opposition or resistance to certain mechanical influences.
People who know these universal laws and know how to use them are called magicians. There are white magic and black magic. White magic uses its knowledge for good, black - for evil, for its own selfish purposes. "Gurdjieff in his attitude to magic echoes H.P. Blavatsky:" White Magic... The so-called "Beneficial Magic" is divine magic, free from selfishness, lust for power, ambition or self-interest and aimed entirely at creating good for the world in general and for one's neighbor in particular. The slightest attempt to use your paranormal powers to satisfy your self turns these abilities into witchcraft and black magic. "So, a true occultist, according to Blavatsky, is a white magician, but then Blavatsky adds:" But for a true researcher of Occult Teachings, White or Divine Magic can to exist in Nature without its opposition to Black Magic no more than a day without a night ... "By the way, the warlock Papus worked closely with the Theosophists, and they, apparently, were not at all embarrassed by the fact that he was engaged in black magic:" Gerard Encausse / Papus / ... In 1887, in contact with French theosophists - adherents of the teachings of H.P. Blavatsky, ... prepared and published the treatise "Modern Occultism" - a kind of manifesto of a new generation of mystics late XIX century. "As you can see, the opinion of theosophists and Gurdjieff about magic actually coincide, but completely contradict the Christian attitude to magic. According to Holy Scripture, magic is an abomination before God (Deut. 18: 9-12), which, moreover, is nothing cannot help the magician (Isa. 47: 9).
Gurdjieff's teaching about Christ also has nothing to do with the Christian: "Christ was a magician, a man of Knowledge, He was not God, or rather, he was God, but at a certain level." It is superfluous to comment here, since the denial of the divinity of Christ is shared by all occultists.
The occult source of Gurdjieism is clearly visible from its attitude to astrology: “All beings born on Earth are colored by the light that prevailed on Earth at the moment of their birth; and they retain this color throughout their entire life. As no consequence can exist without a cause , and no reason can remain without consequences. Indeed, the planets have a huge impact both on the life of mankind in general, and on the life of an individual. The big mistake of modern science is that it does not recognize this influence: on the other hand, the influence of the planets is not as great as modern “astrologers” want to assure us of. first of all, he considered himself, however, about megalomania, which he suffered, below we will say a few more words. The depth of Gurdjieff's knowledge of astrology allowed him revelations like: "The moon feeds on organic life, feeds on humanity. Humanity is part of organic life; therefore, humanity is food for the moon. If all people became too intelligent, they would not want to be eaten by the moon. "The revelation is undoubtedly deep and worthy of such a great occult teacher as Gurdjieff was. Thanks to the astrological research of this author, we now know that war is a consequence of the influence of the planets that people are just pawns subject to their influence. Nuremberg trials: the wrong ones were tried, it was necessary to judge the true culprits, that is, the planet.
Gurdjieff believed in the existence of the so-called thin bodies, in which, however, all occultists believe: "Man has two substances: the substance of the active elements of the physical body and the substance of the active elements of the astral body."
Let us now examine in more detail Gurdjieff's relation to the occult. Studying his books, one can find out that in occult circles he was recognized as one of his own: "... I had, in accordance with the special conditions of my life, the opportunity of access to the so-called" holy of holies "of almost all Hermetic organizations, such as religious, philosophical, occult , political and mystical societies, congregations, parties, associations, etc., which are inaccessible to the common man, and discussion and exchange of views with numerous people who, in comparison with others, are true authorities. " Among the "true authorities" Gurdjieff also acquired a certain prestige due to the fact that he once made "... the decision to apply my knowledge of the so-called" supernatural sciences ", which is exclusive to modern man, as well as the art of performing various" tricks "in these pseudoscientific fields, and to declare himself a "professor instructor" .... The main reason for this decision was the understanding of the fact that at that time a specific psychosis was widespread among people, which, as it was long established, periodically reaches a high degree and manifests itself in giving oneself to all kinds of "damned" ideas in the field false-human knowledge, which in different eras had different names, and nowadays it is called "occultism", "theosophy", "spiritualism", etc. ... I have earned a reputation among the members of the aforementioned "circles" and their families as a great "maestro" in everything connected with supernatural knowledge (emphasis added. - VP). During all these "manipulations" in the realm of the other world, which I performed in the presence of a large number members of one of the many, widespread then, as now, "workshops-for-cultivation-psychopathy", the name by which I now openly call them, I began to observe and study the various manifestations of the psyche of these trained and freely moving "experimental rabbits “sent to me by Fate for my experiments.” As you can see, Gurdjieff considered occultism and theosophy to be “false-human knowledge”, believed that occultists and theosophists were sick with “specific psychosis,” but this did not prevent him from being his own in their midst. As for those who have shown interest in the teachings of Gurdjieff, then the reader can formulate a moral assessment of his attitude towards these people as "guinea pigs." to the highest degree possessed the aforementioned "specific psychosis" and, accordingly, were known to those around them as engaging in all kinds of "nonsense", otherwise known under such names as "occultism", "theosophy" ... ". Gurdjieff easily diagnoses other occultists, but not himself. The Holy Scripture says: "Do not be deceived: bad communities corrupt good morals" (1 Cor. 15:33). Perhaps, because the occultists first of all reacted to the ideas of Gurdjieff, that they saw in him a brother in spiritual dispensation? Like is drawn to like. And the diseases that Gurdjieff sees in other occult teachings can be seen in his own. At least he suffered from delusions of grandeur. For example, in his writings we read: "... Great Nature has graciously provided my whole family and me, in particular, - ... the highest degree of understanding accessible to man ... since childhood I had, among other abilities, one especially developed - the ability to elicit their most sacred goals and intentions. " It is interesting that a person who possessed the "highest degree of understanding" of people could not find employees for himself, which he himself admits, talking about main goal my life, "... which included the intention to widely disseminate the essence of my ideas, including through literature ... which did not succeed due to the unreliability and vicious laziness of those people whom I specially trained for this purpose for many years ...". What prevented Gurdjieff from finding reliable people and making them his companions and followers, if he was so perceptive that from childhood he had an extraordinary ability to "elicit from people their most sacred goals and intentions"? It is interesting to note that the most important popularizer of Gurdjieff's ideas in the world, P.D. Ouspensky wrote that after the completion of the first meeting with his future teacher, he felt "... as if I had escaped ... from captivity." In the future, Ouspensky will write about Gurdjieff that he was forced to refuse to communicate with him, since he did not share his personnel policy. Thus, even the main propagandist of the Gurdjieff doctrine left his teacher, who possessed such "great" abilities of heart study.
Gurdjieff considered himself a man of "the highest culture." Presumably, it was precisely the height of culture that prompted Gurdjieff to urge his students to disregard the opinions of others: “You must understand - and take it as a strict rule that you cannot pay attention to the opinions of other people; you must be free from those around you. When you are internally free, you are freed and from them" . Gurdjieff taught his followers to remain internally indifferent and not react in any way when communicating with people.
Gurdjieff believes that he is an impartial judge of himself, and he managed to achieve this impartiality, and therefore objectivity, with the help of ... satiety: "At the present period of my life, in my declining years, I am fed up with everything that life has to offer a person, as a result of which I became disillusioned. in everything and, therefore, having all the data that allow me to be an impartial judge to myself ... ". But if satiety leads to impartiality, then, for example, Orthodox monks have no chance to achieve it, since they not only reject the path of satiety, but, on the contrary, follow the path of asceticism, that is, through abstinence and overcoming passions. Regarding "what life has to offer a person", that is, "the lusts of the world" (1 John 2:17), and what, by his own admission, Gurdjieff was "fed up", in the Holy Scriptures we read: "The works of the flesh are known; they are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, magic, enmity, quarrels, envy, anger, strife, disagreement, (temptations), heresy, hatred, murder, drunkenness, outrage and the like, ... those who do this will not inherit the Kingdom of God. the same spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, goodness, mercy, faith, meekness, abstinence, ... but those who are Christ's crucified the flesh with passions and lusts (emphasis added .. - VP) "(Gal. 5 : 19-24). Thus, satiety cannot lead to the eradication of passions, on the contrary, those who belong to Christ are those who crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts, but the real fruit of satiety, as Gurdjieff himself admits, is disappointment, which is by no means a revelation for humanity. , - in the book of Ecclesiastes, written 3c. BC , we read: "I said in my heart:" Let me, I will try you with joy, and enjoy the good "; but this too is vanity!" (Eccl. 2: 1), "I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and vexation of the spirit!" (Eccl. 1:14). What is “good for the sons of men, what should they do under heaven in the few days of their lives” (Eccl. 1: 3)? Here is how Ecclesiastes answers this question: “Let us hear the essence of everything: fear God and keep His commandments, for in this everything is for man” (Eccl. 12:13). Saint Anthony the Great says: "When the soul surrenders itself to God with all by my strength, then the All-Bounteous God gives her the spirit of true repentance, and cleans her of all these passions, teaching her to follow them, and giving her the strength to overcome them and conquer enemies who do not cease to put obstacles to her, trying through temptations to kidnap her again ";" If we want to sincerely approach our Creator, then we need to strive for the liberation of our souls from passions, according to the spiritual law. For from ... the delight of the passions, from the multitude of the devil's temptations, our intellectual strength weakened, and the good movements of our souls froze ... and there is no salvation for us from anyone but our Lord Jesus Christ ... ". .3: 5).
How did Gurdjieff feel about Christianity? At the beginning of the article, we already noted that he called his disciples to be Christians, but it should be noted that, following the teachings of Gurdjieff, his followers will have to renounce Christianity, since they must, at his call, “ruthlessly, without the slightest compromise, root out the process of thinking and feeling ... the old, rooted views and beliefs about everything in the world ... But in Russia thinking has been shaped by Orthodoxy for centuries, so what should be taken out of thinking by the Russian Orthodox?
Christianity is incompatible with the teachings of Gurdjieff; without harm to his spiritual health, a Christian cannot be his follower, since the ideological basis of Gurdjieff lies in the field of occultism. Gurdjieff speaks negatively of the occult, however, in reality his teaching is very close to the occult and at the same time has nothing to do with Christianity. The moral character of this person is far from being an example to follow. The most reasonable thing that a Christian can do, if he falls into the hands of Gurdjieff's books or similar authors, is to follow the words of Holy Scripture: "Do not be carried away by different and alien teachings; them "(Heb. 13: 9). Indeed, as Gurdjieff himself testified, the result of his life was satiety and disappointment. In our opinion, these are not the spiritual fruits that a Christian should strive for.
Applications
1. Gurdjieff G. View from the real world // Bulletin of the coming good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993. p. 64.
2. Below we will consider the question of Gurdjieff's true relationship to the occult and theosophy.
3. Gurdjieff G. Herald of good things to come. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993. S. 92-93.
4. A short biography is based on the book: Vanderhill E. Mystics of the XX century. Encyclopedia. M., Ed. Astrel; Ed. MYTH. 2001.S. 164-180.
5. Uspensky P.D. In Search of the Miraculous // G. Gurdjieff, Messenger of Good Coming. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993.S. 142.
6. Vanderhill E. Mystics of the XX century. Encyclopedia. M., Ed. Astrel; Ed. MYTH. 2001.S. 175.
7. Ibid. P.178.
8. Gurdjieff G. View from the real world// Herald of good things to come. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993.S. 36.
9. Blavatsky E.P. The Key to Theosophy.
10. For more details on the occult interpretation of faith and its Orthodox understanding, see: V.Yu. Pitanov. Judgment of Conscience: Agni Yoga Against Christianity. http://apologet.orthodox.ru
11. See: N.L. Geisler. Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. SPb., Bible for all. 2004.S. 571.
12. See: V.Yu. Pitanov. Mantra Yoga, Meditation and Orthodox Prayer: A Question of Compatibility. http://apologet.orthodox.ru
13. Archimandrite Alipy (Kastalsky-Borozdin), Archimandrite Isaiah (Belov). Dogmatic theology. Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra. 1998.S. 24.
14. On the attitude of theosophists to the faith, see: V.Yu. Pitanov. Theosophy: facts versus myths. http://apologet.orthodox.ru
15. Gurdjieff G. View from the real world // Bulletin of the coming good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993. p. 42.
16. Living ethics. Aboveground. 638.
17. Living ethics. Community. 101.
18. Bowl of the East. Letters from the Mahatmas. Riga. Ligatma. 1992.S. 195.
19. Gurdjieff G. View from the real world // Bulletin of the coming good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993. p. 40.
20. Ibid. P.43.
21. See: V.Yu. Pitanov. Judgment of Conscience: Agni Yoga Against Christianity; Theosophy: facts versus myths. http://apologet.orthodox.ru
22. Letters of the Mahatmas. Samara. 1993. Letter. 64.C.256.
23. Gurdjieff G. View from the real world // Bulletin of future good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993. p. 43.
24. Ibid. P.45.
25. Ibid. P.43.
26. Living ethics. Hierarchy. 296.
27. See: Archimandrite Alipy (Kastalsky-Borozdin), Archimandrite Isaiah (Belov). Dogmatic theology. Holy Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, 1998, p. 161.
28. Geisler N.L. Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. SPb., Bible for all. P.413.
29. Gurdjieff G. A view from the real world // Bulletin of future good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993.S. 9.
30. H. P. Blavatsky. Secret Doctrine. M., Sirin. 1993. Vol. 3 (5). P.501.
31. Gurdjieff G. View from the real world // Bulletin of future good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993. p.8.
32. See: V.Yu. Pitanov. Theosophy: facts versus myths. http://apologet.orthodox.ru
33. Gurdjieff G. A view from the real world // Messenger of future good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993. p. 63.
34. For example, Nicholas Roerich welcomed the destruction of Christians in Russia by the Bolsheviks, which did not prevent him from talking about love for one's neighbor and acting as a spiritual teacher. See: V.Yu. Pitanov. Judgment of Conscience: Agni Yoga Against Christianity. http://apologet.orthodox.ru
35. Uspensky P.D. In Search of the Miraculous // G. Gurdjieff, Messenger of Good Coming. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993.S. 139.
36. Gurdjieff G. View from the real world // Bulletin of future good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993.S. 20.
37. Vanderhill E. Mystics of the XX century. Encyclopedia. M., Ed. Astrel; Ed. MYTH. 2001.S. 168.
38. Gurdjieff G. A view from the real world // Messenger of future good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993. S. 46-47.
39. See: E.A. Torchinov. Religions of the World: Experience of the Beyond: Psychotechnics and transpersonal states. SPb., Center "Petersburg Oriental Studies". 1998.S. 222.
40. See: V.Yu. Pitanov. Christian Practicing Buddhism - Is It Possible? http://apologet.orthodox.ru
41. Gurdjieff G. A view from the real world // Messenger of future good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993. p. 48.
42. Ibid. P.46.
43. Venerable John Damascene. Exact presentation Orthodox faith./ Source of knowledge. M., Indrik. 2002, p. 227.
44. Gurdjieff G. A view from the real world // Messenger of future good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993. S. 62-63.
45. Ibid. P.22.
46. See: E.P. Blavatsky. The Key to Theosophy. http://www.theosophy.ru/lib/key-theo.htm
47. Lossky V.N. Dogmatic theology. / Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. Dogmatic theology. M., SEI. 1991.S. 215.
48 See: Archimandrite Alipy (Kastalsky-Borozdin), Archimandrite Isaiah (Belov). Dogmatic theology. Holy Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, 1998, p. 140.
49. See: V.Yu. Pitanov. Judgment of Conscience: Agni Yoga Against Christianity http://apologet.orthodox.ru
50. See: V.Yu. Pitanov. The Judgment of Conscience of an Agni Yogi Against Christianity; Theosophy: facts versus myths; The facets of the occult: from hermeticism to magic and extrasensory perception. Http://apologet.orthodox.ru
51. Gurdjieff G. A view from the real world // Messenger of future good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993. p.44.
52. H. P. Blavatsky. Theosophical dictionary. M., Sphere. 1994.S. 264.
53. H. P. Blavatsky. Secret Doctrine. M., Sirin. 1993. Vol. 3 (5). P.27.
54. Papus. Practical magic. M., Renaissance, 1991.S. 7.
55. For more details see: V.Yu. Pitanov. The facets of the occult: from hermeticism to magic and extrasensory perception. Http://apologet.orthodox.ru
56. Gurdjieff G. A view from the real world // Messenger of future good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993. p.44.
57. See: V.Yu. Pitanov. The Agni Yogi's Judgment of Conscience Against Christianity. http://apologet.orthodox.ru
58. Gurdjieff G. A view from the real world // Messenger of future good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993. p. 69.
59. Uspensky P.D. In Search of the Miraculous // G. Gurdjieff, Messenger of Good Coming. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993.S. 170.
60. Ibid. P.158.
61. Gurdjieff G. A view from the real world // Messenger of future good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993.S. 7.
62. Gurdjieff G. Herald of the good to come. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993. p. 89.
63. Ibid. S.92-93.
64. Ibid. P.96.
65. Ibid. S.88-89.
66. Ibid. P.108.
67. P.D. Uspensky In Search of the Miraculous // G. Gurdjieff, Messenger of Good Coming. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993.S. 141.
68. P.D. Uspensky Psychology of possible human evolution; Cosmology of possible human evolution. SPb., JSC "Komplekt". 1995.S. 156.
69. Gurdjieff G. Messenger of good things to come. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993.S. 106.
70. Gurdjieff G. A view from the real world // Messenger of future good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993. p. 65.
71. Ibid. P.64.
72. See: G. Gurdjieff. Everything and everyone // Messenger of future good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993.
73. See: The Key to Understanding the Holy Scriptures. Bruxelles. Life with God. 1982.S. 141
74. St. Anthony the Great. Philosophy, vol. 1. Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra. 1993.S. 27.
75. Ibid. P.33.
76. Gurdjieff G. A view from the real world // Messenger of future good. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993. p. 64.
77. Gurdjieff G. Everything and everyone // Bulletin of the good to come. SPb., Ed. Chernysheva. 1993.S. 111.
Gurdjieff, Georgy Ivanovich(-) - Greek-Armenian mystic philosopher, composer, dance teacher.
Gurdjieff early became interested in "supernatural phenomena" and began his travels to various countries in Asia and Africa, where he tried to find answers to his questions. Among the countries he visited were Egypt, Turkey, Tibet (practically inaccessible at that time to Europeans), Afghanistan, various places in the Middle East and Turkestan, including the Muslim holy city of Mecca. These journeys often took the form of expeditions that Gurdjieff organized with other members of the Truth Seekers Society he had created. In his travels, Gurdjieff studied various spiritual traditions, including Sufism, Tibetan Buddhism and various branches of Eastern Christianity, as well as folklore (in particular, dance and music) of the countries he visited, and collected fragments of ancient knowledge (mainly Egyptian and Babylonian civilizations ), sometimes resorting to archaeological excavations.
At the beginning of the 20th century, on the basis of learning from teachers of various traditions and his ethnographic and archaeological research, Gurdjieff creates a system of concepts and practices, which later became known as the "Gurdjieff Work" or "Fourth Way". The origins of many aspects of this system are difficult to trace among the various religious and philosophical concepts with which Gurdjieff may have been familiar. Some of these aspects were probably the contribution of Gurdjieff himself - for example, the idea of "mutual support" - the interchange of energies and matter between all the entities of the Universe, without which, according to Gurdjieff, their existence is impossible.
Gurdjieff began to pass on this system to his first students in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1912. Among the students whom he attracted during this period were the mystic philosopher Pyotr Demianovich Uspensky and talented composer Thomas (Thomas) de Hartmann. In parallel with the training of students, who are gradually increasing in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Gurdjieff begins work on the ballet "The Struggle of the Magicians" - work on it together with the students continued in exile, the ballet script survived, but neither the music nor the choreography for the ballet were completed and it has never been staged for the public.
After the revolution, Gurdjieff had to leave Russia with his students in exile.
Gurdjieff tried several times to found his "Institute harmonious development man "- first in Tiflis (Tbilisi) - then in Constantinople - until he finally realized his idea by founding the Institute in the Prieuré des Basses Loges, near Fontainebleau near Paris in the city of In Prieure, public lectures and demonstrations were organized“ Sacred Movements ”- dances and exercises developed by Gurdjieff, partly based on the folk and temple dances that he studied during his travels in Asia. These evenings were fairly well known among the French educated public. In addition, a large number of Gurdjieff's students remained to live and work in Prieure, some of these students (in particular, those who emigrated with him from Russia) Gurdjieff supported financially. On several occasions he made extended visits to groups of his students in the United States, also organizing public lectures and performances of the Movements there.
After the death of Gurdjieff, his student Jeanne de Salzmann, to whom he entrusted the spread of his teachings, tried to unite students of various groups, which marked the beginning of an organization known as the Gurdjieff Foundation (the name in the United States, in fact - the unification of Gurdjieff groups in various cities in Europe the same organization is known as the Gurdjieff Society). Also active in the dissemination of Gurdjieff's ideas were John G. Bennett and P.D. Uspensky's students Maurice Nicholl and Rodney Collin.
Notable students of Gurdjieff included Pamela Travers, author of a children's book about Mary Poppins, french poet Rene Domal, English writer Catherine Mansfield and American artist Paul Reynard. After the death of Gurdjieff, famous musicians studied with his students
Gurdjieff Georgy Ivanovich is a Russian mystic, composer and writer who was born in the second half of the 19th century in Armenia. By origin, George had Greek and Armenian roots(father is Greek, mother is Armenian), however, he turned out to be a forced emigrant and moved to Russia.
He was also a teacher-mentor and devoted his life to writing books about human self-improvement, expanding the scope of his consciousness and his paths to a long and happy life... Gurdjieff made a great contribution to the development of esotericism, became the founder of the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, which existed from 1917 to 1925.
Creative activity
Gurdjieff's books are still relevant and read all over the world. The secret of their popularity can be explained by the fact that they are written in the simplest possible language and are adapted for skeptical readers, which many are in our time. Out of principle, he chose Russian as the language of his books, although he was fluent in many languages.
His famous collection "Everything and Everything" consists of 10 books, which are combined into 3 sections, and each of these creations is the result of the comprehension of the experiences of the writer, reflects his thoughts, experiences that he passed through himself.
Perhaps the most important part of Gurdjieff's teaching is sacred dances and movements, as well as early music a long tradition that prompts the search. It is not known exactly which dances he borrowed, which he himself created on the basis of the acquired knowledge, and which are a successful combination of the first and the second.
According to Gurdjieff, man is not complete. Nature helps him to develop to a certain level, and then he must develop independently. Three things can help in this: attention, self-remembering and transformation of suffering. Together they collect fine threads inside the body and create a semblance of a Soul.
Life as a search for truth
At a very early age, George began to travel to eastern countries, with the help of this he wanted to find answers to his questions. These were both the countries of the Middle East and Egypt, Afghanistan, Greece, Turkmenistan, etc. During his wanderings, George studied the features of different spiritual cultures, such as Buddhism and Christianity of the East, collected music and drew on the knowledge of these countries.
Later, while in exile, Gurdjieff would tell the details of his wanderings with friends in the book "Meetings with Remarkable People" (1919).
1. In Moscow. In 1912-1914 the traveler is in Moscow, where he gathers his circle of several like-minded people, who will later be remembered as "students of Gurdjieff." He communicates with various philosophers, journalists and writers. An interesting story was associated with Peter Uspensky, a Russian writer and occultist.
Like Gurdjieff, Ouspensky loved to travel and at that time was preparing for a new trip to the very "heart" of Asia, aiming to get answers to the necessary questions. Their fateful meeting completely crossed out Peter's plans: he realized that this unattractive, but very educated and inquisitive man could give him all the answers, and therefore he had nothing to do in Asia. From that time on, Ouspensky decided to become a student of George, and he was him for several years.
2. In emigration. George Gurdjieff several times during his emigration tried to found his later famous Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, however, due to the intervention of the authorities, the attempts remained in vain. And only in 1922, in a small town on the outskirts of France, in a purchased mansion, the writer was finally able to found, we will not be afraid of this word, a cultural center that became his life's work.
3. Post-war period. After the end of the Second World War, Gurdjieff gathered all his students and disciples of Ouspensky, who had already died at that time, beside him. He felt that he would not last long, so he asked them to publish several of his works for the collection. The Gurdjieff movement had already gained momentum then, so he did not want people to quickly forget about him after his death.
The writer died in a hospital in one of the small Parisian towns in 1949. Author: Antonina Belokon
"The results of the work are proportional to the consciousness in it"
G. I. Gurdjieff
// Biography of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff
// V. Aleksakhin
======================================
By the trope of Gilgamesh
Mysterious appearance of Gurdjieff in the horizon of historical twists and turns XX
century is a special phenomenon, comparable, perhaps, with such extravagant
conductors of esoteric influences on humanity, like Apolonius of Tyana,
who lived in the 1st century A.D., was known as a magician-miracle worker and studied in the East,
in India and other countries. Or, for example, - Johann Faust (1480-1540),
who owned the secrets of magic and served as the prototype for the hero of the immortal poem
Goethe. Some researchers of the life of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (1877-1949)
compare him with Cagliostro (Giuseppe Balsamo), with the amazing "immortal"
Saint-Germain (appeared in Europe in 1735, died in 1784), whom Elena
Blavatsky ranked among the "great Tibetan masters."
It is interesting to note that Gurdjieff produced in Russia a stronger
"furor" than the Count Saint-Germain during the time of Catherine II, as he acted
covertly and extremely efficiently - perhaps more efficiently than many of
we are able to understand and appreciate ... The pattern is striking: in periods
crises and cataclysms in the historical arena, individuals appear who
create special schools and groups of people capable of moving human
spirituality in a direction perpendicular to the normal course of time.
It was Gurdjieff who brought the secret of the fateful intervals to his disciples.
historical time: "In the life of mankind there are periods when the masses
people begin to irreparably destroy and destroy everything that was created
centuries and millennia of culture. These periods generally coincide with the beginning of
the decline of culture and civilization; such periods of mass madness, often
coinciding with geological cataclysms, climate change, etc.
such phenomena of a planetary nature, liberate great amount
knowledge. This, in turn, necessitates the work of collecting
knowledge that would otherwise be lost. So the job of collecting
scattered matter of knowledge often coincides with the onset of destruction and collapse
cultures and civilizations. "In addition to Faust, Saint-Germain and Apolonius of Tyana
it is appropriate to mention another, almost mythical figure with a direct
attitude towards Gurdjieff. It is about Gilgamesh, the hero of the most ancient epic,
famous history of cultures, - a hero who went on a journey for a distant
sea to get hold of the "thorn flower" that gives immortality. Exactly like this
flower of immortality (which in fairy tales and legends turned into "scarlet
flower ") Gilgamesh wished to bring to his people ...
Where did this associative, at first glance, appear - nothing more than
associative? - connection: Gurdjieff, legendary teacher of the esoteric school
the "fourth way", who lived in the XX century, and - on the other hand - Gilgamesh,
who lived in the late XXVII - early XXVI centuries BC. (!) in the city of Uruk in Sumer.
According to modern scientific evidence, Gilgamesh was a real historical
figure, the fifth ruler of the 1st dynasty of Uruk. After death he was deified,
after which his name is found in the "royal list" of the III dynasty of Ur, where he
turns into a mythical king-hero. Already from the 2nd millennium BC.
Gilgamesh was viewed as a judge in the afterlife, a protector of people from
demons ("protector of people" is a remarkable term, to which we still
back). The earliest version of the Akkadian epic of Gilgamesh (3rd-2nd
millennium BC) is attributed to the Uruk spellcaster Sinlikeunninni -
this is the poem "About everything that has seen", one of the most outstanding poetic
works of ancient oriental literature. With his friend Enkidu Gilgamesh
performs many feats (ancient Indian version: Rama and Hanuman). But
Enkidu dies, - Gilgamesh, shocked by the death of his brother-in-law, flees to
desert, where for the first time he realizes that he, Gilgamesh, "the great king", is
mortal, is an insignificant dust in the eyes of eternity: ...
How can I keep quiet, how can I calm down? My beloved friend became the earth, Enkidu,
my beloved friend, has become earth, dust! Just like him, will I not fall to
never get up, forever and ever? ..
Gilgamesh sets out on the path of Shamash, the sun deity, through the mountains,
going beyond the horizon, into the dungeons, falls into a wonderful garden, is ferried
through the "waters of death" to the island where Ut-napishti lives, the only person
of people who have acquired immortality. Ut-write (analogue of the biblical Noah,
escaped from the flood) tells Gilgamesh the story of the great flood,
after which only he remained, Noy-Ut-write, since the council of the gods decided
grant him " eternal life". At the request of the wife of Ut, write the Sumerian Noah on
farewell reveals to Gilgamesh the secret of the "flower eternal youth".
FLOWER OF SELF-MEMORIES
Gilgamesh goes on a journey and with great difficulty gets this
"flower of eternity". But he fails to use the magic of the flower: while he
swam, the flower was dragged away by a snake, which immediately shed its skin and looked younger,
gaining new life... Gilgamesh Returns to Uruk Comforted by Contemplation
the inaccessibility of the walls around the city ... What does all this mean in a secret language
characters? At the end of the account of Gilgamesh, it is emphasized that
the only thing accessible to a person is the memory of his glorious deeds, more precisely
- memories of their own successes and failures, moments
"self-memories" that a person takes with him to the dimension of Eternity.
It is this idea that is one of the main ones in the Fourth Way school, although it can
have various aspects understanding at the level of cultural traditions and
mystical interpretations. The idea of "self-remembering" appears later in
antiquity, in the dialogues of Plato, in the aphorisms of Aesop and Socrates, in the saying
Delphic oracle "Know thyself", etc.
The idea of self-remembering is the most important practical idea of the Gurdjieff system and
his followers. In a veiled form, it can be found in various
mystical schools of the East and West. For example, in the XIII chapter of the Bhagavad Gita,
which is called "Yoga of recognition between the Field and the Knower of the Field", i.e.
"discrimination", "division of attention" between the contemplated and the beholder: "Those
who, with the eyes of wisdom, see the difference between the Field and the Knower of the Field, and
liberation of beings from Prakriti (materiality of the world), they go to the Highest. "
However, a clear statement of the principle of "division of attention" in Russian
a modern seeker of truths can find in the book of Peter Uspensky "In
search for the miraculous ":" - None of you noticed the most important thing for which
I got your attention, ”he said. - In other words, none of you
noticed that you do not remember yourself (he especially emphasized these words). You do not
you feel, you are not aware of yourself. In you "something observes" - absolutely
just like "says something", "thinks", "laughs". You don't feel, "I
watching "," I notice "," I see. "You still have something" noticeable "
"seen" ... In order to truly observe oneself, a person first of all
he must remember himself (he again emphasized these words). Try to remember
yourself when you observe yourself, and later tell me the results.
Only those results will be of any value, which are accompanied by
remembering yourself. Otherwise, you yourself do not exist in your observations. And what
are all your observations worth in this case? .. Everything that Gurdjieff said, everything
what I thought for myself, especially what my attempts to remember myself showed me,
soon convinced me that I was faced with a completely new problem, on the
which neither science nor philosophy has yet paid attention to. "
WONDERFUL PEOPLE
Gurdjieff was born in the city of Alexandropol (now the city of Gyumri, territory
Armenia) in 1877, when this area was part of the Russian
empire. Literally "Alexander" - "defender of people", "Alexandropol" - "city
protector of people "... This in Greek repeats one of the titles
the legendary Gilgamesh.
"Gyurji" - in Turkish "Georgian", a resident of the Caucasus. Surname Gurdjieff or
Gyurdjian is worn by many Greeks who moved from Georgia and other regions to that
towards the Caucasus mountains to the territory of Armenia. To this day, there is an extensive
a colony of Greeks in the area of Lake Khalka (southern Georgia). Gurdjieff's mother is Armenian,
father - Greek of Asia Minor. Already in early childhood, a father, a great connoisseur of legends
and songs of antiquity, sang to George the story of Gilgamesh. Later Gurdjieff
read the contents of this song in one of the scientific journals, where there were
published data of archaeological excavations - cuneiform tables,
found in Nineveh. This fact convinced Gurdjieff that there was
"oral tradition", independent of official science, which is not preserved
worse than official letters and tables and makes more correct emphasis on
meaningful aspects of knowledge. Vivid examples of this kind are the singer
ancient Greek legends Homer, Slavic Boyan, author of "The Elephant on the Regiment
Igor "and others.
Belief in receiving punishment for disobedience.
The hope of receiving an award is for merit alone.
Love for God, but indifference to the saints.
Remorse for mistreating animals.
Fear of upsetting parents and teachers.
Dislike for worms, snakes and mice.
The joy of being content with only what you have.
The sadness of losing the goodwill of others.
Patient endurance to pain and cold.
Trying to earn your bread early. "
Gurdjieff exclaims: "To my great chagrin, I did not have to
to catch the last days of this worthy and wonderful person, so that
give him the last debt of earthly life, my unforgettable teacher, my
to the second father ... Rest in peace, dear Teacher! I don't know if I justified and
do your dreams come true, but the commandments you gave me I never
broke in my whole life. ”Another person who“ remarkably ”influenced
Gurdjieff, was Bogachevsky, Father Eulisy, who ended his days as an assistant
the governor of the monastery of the Essene brotherhood, located near the Dead Sea.
According to legend, in this brotherhood, "Jesus Christ received a blessing for
his selfless devotion "(modern data confirm the close connection of the first
communities of Jesus with the Qumran schools of esoteric Judaism). "I met
Bogachevsky for the first time when he was a young man and, after completing a course in
Russian theological seminary, was awaiting ordination to the priesthood and was
deacon in the military cathedral in Kares ".
Bogachevsky possessed a unique knowledge of distinguishing between subjective and
objective morality: "Objective morality," he said, "is established by life
and the commandments given to us by the Lord God himself through his prophets, she
becomes the basis for the formation in a person of what is called
conscience. And with this conscience, objective morality, in turn,
supported. Objective morality never changes - it can only
expand over time. As for subjective morality, it
invented by man and therefore is relative concept differing
for different people and different places and depending on the subjective
understanding of good and evil prevailing in this period. "Future father
Eulisius instructed Gurdjieff to live and act according to inner conviction,
without following the tricks of the "generally accepted conventions": "You should not know that
your inner circle considers it good or bad, but to act in life,
as your conscience commands you. An undeniable conscience will always know
more than all books and teachers put together. But for now, before
your own conscience will be formed, live according to our commandment
teachers of Jesus Christ: "Do not do to others what you did not want them to
did you. "During this period Gurdjieff became very seriously interested in
supernatural phenomena, but even immersed in books and communicating with
scientists, he could not find answers to many inexplicable things, an eyewitness
which he happened to be. He began to look for answers in the field of religion: "I
visited various monasteries and saw people whose piety I heard,
was reading Holy Bible and the Lives of the Saints and was even for three months
servant of the famous father Evplampy in the monastery of Sanahin. I also committed
pilgrimages to most of the holy places of various faiths in Transcaucasia. "
eyes, the paralytic was healed on Mount Dhajur, where there was
monastery with the miraculous tomb of the saint. Another phenomenon is the action of a prayer service
with icons and banners for asking for rain during severe drought. Third
example - rescuing a doomed girl in an unusual way: to the mother-in-law of the patient
Maryar Ana (Azerbaijani Virgin Mary) appeared in a dream and ordered to collect
pink berries, boil them in milk and give the girl a drink.
During these years, Gurdjieff became close to an Armenian youth, who later
will call in his memoirs "Mister Isk" or "Captain Poghosyan". Discussing many
problems, they came to the conclusion that there is a "secret knowledge" known
people from antiquity, but by now lost and forgotten. Having lost
any hope of finding anything in modern sources, Gurdjieff and Poghosyan
plunged into the study of ancient literature. They settled among the ruins of an ancient
Armenian capital Ani and once accidentally (??) stumbled upon a covered
monastic cell, where they found "in a corner niche a pile of parchments with
writing "...
SECRET BROTHERHOOD "SARMUNG"
Through the study of the scrolls, it became known: the brotherhood (ernos) "Sarmung"
existed near the city of Sinarush, but was previously "in the Izrumin Valley,
near the town of Nivesi. It turned out that the city of Mosul, near which
was the former capital of Assyria, Nineveh, in the 7th century. was called "Nivesi" ...
Poghosyan and Gurdjieff met the description of the "Sarmung" brotherhood in print
the publication of the ancient mystical book "Merkhavat". They decided to find traces
stay of this school between Lake Urmia and Kurdistan, three days' journey from
Mosul. Overcoming many difficulties and dangers, friends accidentally
discovered a "secret map of ancient Egypt" from one of the local priests.
They managed to get a copy of the map - they went to Egypt. But Poghosyan decided
stay on the ship, heading for Alexandria. Later, having received
educated in Liverpool, he became a skilled mechanical engineer.
Poghosyan was one of those who taught Gurdjieff a lot, especially -
the ability to consciously do things, to achieve goals. After 1908
of the year Poghosyan became a businessman and became one of the richest people
on the ground. "He was right when he said that irresponsible work is always
is lost. He really worked knowingly and conscientiously day and night,
like an ox, all his life, in all circumstances and under all conditions. "
Further adventures of Gurdjieff, his meetings with amazing people,
who shared with him the difficulties of searches and efforts, can be found in the book "Meetings
with wonderful people "(Abram Elov, Yuri Lyubovedsky, Ekim Bey, Peter
Karpenko, Professor Skridlov, etc.). In the end, Gurdjieff found what
he sought, although for this he had to pay many ... Ouspensky writes in
the book "In Search of the Miraculous": "About schools, about where he found knowledge, which,
no doubt possessed, he spoke little and always somehow casually. He mentioned
Tibetan monasteries, Chitral, Mount Athos, Sufi schools in Persia, Bukhara and
Eastern Turkestan, as well as dervishes of various orders; but about all this
spoke very vaguely. "
at the age of 22, Gurdjieff goes on an expedition to the countries of the East
(India, Afghanistan, Persia, Turkestan, Egypt, Tibet, countries of the Middle
East). For some time he studied in a system related to the Sufi
the Naqshbandi order. In Bukhara, he meets with a member of the Sarmung Brotherhood
whose monasteries are located in the inaccessible mountains of Central Asia (on the territory
Afghanistan). Here Gurdjieff brings together and synthesizes everything that he
acquired over the years of study and wanderings.
GURDJIEV IN RUSSIA
In 1912, Gurdjieff appears in Moscow and St. Petersburg, performing with
lectures and creating groups of people interested in working on themselves.
In the spring of 1915, Gurdjieff meets with Ouspensky, who by that time had already
traveled to many countries of the world, was in India, in Egypt, observed with his own eyes the Sphinx,
Taj Mahal and Notre Dame Cathedral. Ouspensky was fond of theosophy,
occultism; he had already written a pamphlet on the Tarot Arcana and summarized his
research in the book "TETRIUM ORGANUM". Later, already in our time, Rajneesh (Osho)
will call this book the third most important after Aristotle's Organon and
Francis Bacon's "New Organon" ... Subsequently, Gurdjieff admitted
Ouspensky that these books drew Gurdjieff's attention to Ouspensky's personality,
and his involvement in Gurdjieff's school was thought out and planned in advance.
Russian society during the First World War was already permeated
searches for mystical movements, schools and circles, salons and philosophical
societies. The exotic east began to open its veils before the gaze
Russian intellectuals, dreamers, symbolist poets. See you with
Gurdjieff, Uspensky shaped his worldview in his own way. He was aware
himself as the creator of a "new model of the Universe": the world appears to be multidimensional, and
mysticism - by the "knowledge of the expanded consciousness" of that noumenal world "of things
in itself ", about which philosophers and mystics of different times and cultures spoke.
Its development was "rapid and quite in the spirit of the great beginning of the century",
as noted by Arkady Rovner. At 13, he was interested in dreams and psychology;
at 16, discovered Nietzsche, seriously thought about the idea of a "superman"; v
For 18 years he began to write articles and books, came to the exhaustion of rationalism and
took steps in search of "unknown knowledge". At the age of 29, he was carried away by the idea
"fourth dimension", which could justify any "miraculous", proceeding
from mathematical models of the multidimensional world and the transition from ordinary time to
the dimension of "eternity".
The schools that Ouspensky found in the East demanded a break with
culture of the West - but Ouspensky believed in reason and intellectual freedom,
which remained alien to the amorphous mysticism of the East. The ecstasies of meditations he
compared with the "charm" of unusual states that visit ascetics and
monks and well known to the elders of esoteric Christianity
(followers of Gregory Palamas, hesychasts) and are described in "...". In full
confusion from the failure of his searches abroad, Ouspensky unexpectedly for
himself faced the most mysterious, perhaps, of the people of our century. V
face of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky met with a completely new form thinking.
The system that he began to eagerly study with the help of "a man with a face
Indian Rajah or Arab Sheikh ", was able to fuse,
to reunite all the knowledge that he knew, including religious,
philosophical, occult and scientific forms and principles. Now he could get rid of
from the feeling of annoyance experienced while reading H.P. Blavatsky, Annie Besant,
Charles Letbitter, Papus and the newfangled yoga writers of the profane
waves of the beginning of the century.
Gurdjieff in a short time gave such a powerful energy of knowledge that
collapsed on the intellectual acuity of Uspensky like an avalanche of a waterfall.
A whole web of new concepts, structures, and practical exercises was breaking
illusory stereotypes of everyday, albeit quasi-scientific, ideas about the world,
man and higher influences. Gurdjieff drew his attention to the tragic
the gap in the European world of "essence" ( inner man) and "personality"
(external person, "person", "mask", "imitator", "adaptive to
environment). The essence remains with an adult raised in
the world of falsehood and imitation, at the level of a six-year-old child, while
his personality is a set of small "I", pressed into a swarm or legion
conflicting motives and desires, - increases hypertrophied,
subjugating the essence, turning it into a slave, into a "Cinderella". Essence development idea
a person, - the transition to the third stage, which is not entered ordinary people,
- appeared before the students of Gurdjieff, as quite concrete and real
tangible task. Gurdjieff, unlike many others, is not just something
affirmed or proclaimed - he gave clear exercises and methods,
allowing you to change yourself, make a leap in the direction of the growth of the essence.
The entity can be compared to a downtrodden "ugly duckling" who does not suspect
what can become a "swan" ...
Each of the ideas - which is always in the "Fourth Way" System
accompanied by a practical aspect of understanding, was aimed at living
a person (knowledge of the world correlated with the knowledge of a person and vice versa), -
could serve as a theme for the creation of any new philosophical system,
with which the speculatively educated West was filled. We list only
a few of these ideas, forming an interconnected and coherent whole:
the idea of "separation of attention" and "self-remembering"; the idea of "four states":
dream; wakefulness; the third state, "self-remembering"; fourth state
consciousness, "objective consciousness", transcendental "illumination"; idea of the set
"I am"; the idea of opposition between "personality" and "essence"; idea of scale, inclusiveness
some levels of being into others, more "eternal" and "free"; Ray's idea
creations and hierarchies of worlds in the Universe; the idea of the law of "three forces" and "seven notes"
(the principle of triad and octave); the idea of the mechanicalness of people, the loss of "themselves";
the idea of non-observability and secrecy of the "third force"; the idea of four mind centers,
functioning in the organic machine of man, etc.
To assimilate the ideas and principles of the Fourth Way school, there was
a special language that was lost a long time ago, at the time
construction Tower of babel and the so-called relocation and mixing
"peoples" and cultural languages. Gurdjieff claimed there were three
projection, three modifications of a single "universal language": the first modification
- "on the first of them you can speak and write, while remaining within your
own language, with the only difference that when people speak
their usual language, they do not understand each other, but in this other language -
understand "(another time he called such a language" philosophy "and compared it with
the first inner circle, the "esoteric" layer of inner humanity,
pointing to India, where this form of presentation and communication has been preserved); second
modification - "in the second language, the letter is the same for all peoples, as,
say, numbers or mathematical notation; but people still speak
their own languages; however, each of them understands the other, at least
this other spoke in an unfamiliar language "(otherwise it is" science ",
the "mesoteric" layer of inner humanity, historically such a language
preserved in Egypt, in the Middle East); the third language is the same for
everyone, both written and spoken; at this level, the differences between
languages completely disappear "(this is a" practice "," esoteric ", nuclear layer
inner humanity, this "language" was preserved in Central Asia, Turkestan,
Mesopotamia). "Outer humanity" - outside the walls of that "city" or "fortress",
who built, possibly even Gilgamesh, when he created the principles
esoteric foundations of being, methods of improvement, achieving immortality,
approaching the divine level.
This subdivision of "tongues" was apparently known to Moses,
Pythagoras, Plato, adherents of Kabbalah, Sufism, esoteric Christianity and
other mystical teachings based on the hidden code
Tetrads or Tetragrammaton - a method of dismembering the single Logos-Meaning into
stages or stages of the gradual connection of knowledge and being. Attempt to make
this code is more accessible for western culture undertaken by Dante Alighieri,
although his theory of four senses (coinciding with the symbolism of Philo, Origen,
Kabbalah, Sufi masters and Gnostics) remained incomprehensible and
undeveloped European tradition.
A new period in Ouspensky's life begins after the 1917 revolution,
when, at the invitation of Gurdjieff, he came to Alexandropol, and then to
Essentuki, where he settled in a house on Panteleymonovskaya street. To this place
gradually other disciples of Gurdjieff came together, forming a close-knit group,
completely devoted to work, communication. And learning. Went to bed late
got up early, at sunrise: "We haven't talked so much in six years,
how much we talked about during these six weeks. "In the midst of the world and
civil wars, among terror and numerous gangs, in Essentuki,
imperceptibly from the influences of planetary fires and bloodshed, there was an intense,
painstaking work to create an awakened consciousness ... Such a feature -
property of the esoteric school, which should be able to derive "benefit" from
any situation, whatever it may be. Gurdjieff demonstrated to his
students, not in words, but in deeds, what he can do and how he can do in
hopeless and critical, at first glance, the situation. He could
subscribe to an aphorism that goes back to Lao Tzu: "The worse the better."
If for the Dormition event of 1917 in Russia seemed only "massive
madness ", then for Gurdjieff they were an incentive and a condition
real practice. After all, Gurdjieff has always been "for" extreme situations,
when "super-efforts" are required, without which the real transformation of oneself
impossible: "Schools are urgently needed ... the person is too lazy ... he
afraid to do something unpleasant to herself. On his own he never
reaches the required intensity. "
When the Reds appeared in Essentuki, Gurdjieff presented to the new authorities
their group as scientists searching for the location of gold in the mountains
Caucasus. He proposed a plan: to formally equip the expedition (supposedly) for
search and export of gold. The props were collected from Kislovodsk, Mineralnye
Waters, nearby stations: horses, carts, alcohol for scientific needs, provisions,
- although Ouspensky decided not to participate in the "passage of Gurdjieff through the Caucasus." He
soon learned that the group had reached Sochi, from where they had arrived in Tiflis: all
participants in the historical "transition", this experience has become almost the brightest
mystical impression and the discovery of "second wind", overcoming
mechanicalness.
In the summer of 1919, Ouspensky received a letter from Gurdjieff inviting
him to Tiflis to work in the new "Institute for Harmonious Development
person "... At this time, Ouspensky is in a state of rejection of personality
Gurdjieff. Taking the whole system of the "Fourth Way", he already assessed
extraordinary sharpness and "unintelligence" of Gurdjieff negatively as
"contaminated source". Exists different points view of the conflict
between them. One is that Gurdjieff was not interested in
intellectual constructions of Uspensky, his efforts to give everything his
definition and correct wording - Ouspensky was offered
the traditional formula for the East of unconditional devotion to the teacher, without
any evasions and self-will. But Ouspensky tried to keep his
independence - he even began to lead circles according to his own plan in the summer and
in the fall of 1919 in Yekaterinodar, Rostov and Novorossiysk.
In January 1920, Ouspensky, together with his family (wife Sofya Grigorievna and
one-year-old son Leonidas) left Russia and moved to Constantinople by sea.
Here, among Turkish soldiers, allied armies, tens of thousands of Russians
refugees, - living in a small room, he gave English lessons and
at the same time formed his group, giving lectures on psychology and introducing
people with the "Fourth Way" system. Here he met a young
an Englishman named Bennett, who would write about Ouspensky, Gurdjieff and
the ideas of this school about 44 books, still not translated into Russian,
survived numerous publications around the world: "Creative Thinking",
"The Deepest Man", "Dramatic Universe" (in 4 vols.), "First
freedom "," Gurdjieff: a very big riddle "," Gurdjieff: Doing a New
the world "," Excitement: the risk of implementation "," How we do things: the role of attention in
spiritual life "," The Image of God in Work "," International Academy
Conscious Education "," Is there "life" on Earth? "," Masters of Truth ",
"The needs of society New era"," Secret Influences: Spiritual Actions in
human life ", etc.
In Constantinople, Uspensky lectures at the Russian Mayak for
emigrants from Russia. In 1920, Gurdjieff arrived here with his disciples,
old and new. Central to Gurdjieff's work is
special ballet, in which students are provided with performance training
"unnatural" movements that create such efforts and stress on the muscles and
the nervous system, which under normal conditions, in mechanical life,
are impossible. Ballet turned out to be a form of self-knowledge leading to disclosure
higher forms of consciousness, awakening of higher centers. Ouspensky recalled
this "interesting time" with special warmth: he and Gurdjieff walked together
to the dervishes of the Mevlevi order; Gurdjieff explained that the spinning of the dervishes around
own axis was based on rhythmic counting for brain development. "To me
I especially remember one such night. We translated one of the dervish songs
for "Fight of the Magicians". I saw Gurdjieff the artist, Gurdjieff the poet, who
he carefully concealed within himself, sometimes repeating them quietly to himself, and then
translated them into Russian for me. In a quarter of an hour, I was
buried under forms, symbols and associations; then he said: "Well, and
now make one line out of this! "I didn't even try to find a rhythm or
create some kind of measure; it was completely impossible. Gurdjieff continued
work; and another quarter of an hour later he said: "This is another line." We
sat until the morning. The case took place on Kumbarachi Street, not far from
the former Russian consulate. Finally, the city began to awaken. I seem to
stopped at the fifth line. No effort could force mine
the brain to keep working. Gurdjieff laughed; however, he was tired and could not
work on. The poem remained unfinished ... "
In the spring of 1920, Ouspensky lectured at the Gurdjieff Institute. Usually
Gurdjieff supplemented Ouspensky's explanations with answers to questions. In 1921 g.
Ouspensky left for London. There, in the atmosphere of "post-Victorian England"
which turned out to be favorable for the perception of Ouspensky's ideas
(revised by him the ideas of Gurdjieff, the school of the "Fourth Way"), books
Uspensky are beginning to be translated into English, French and other languages and
published all over the world. Among the students of Ouspensky - now worldwide
famous A.R. Orange, Maurice Nicholl, John Bennett, Kenneth Walker and others.
For many, Gurdjieff's dancing was a purely exotic side of the matter.
Sometimes these dances were perceived as an expression of "Satanism", as they seemed
unnatural and too "contradictory". A victim of such an impression
turned out to be Vasily Shulgin, who in 1920 ended up with Wrangel's army in
Istanbul and got through a friend to the "Gurdjieff dances" at the "Institute
harmonious development of man ":" A man sitting on a low stage,
kept motionless, making no movement. But he stared intently
on us ... I saw his eyes. They are unforgettable. Burning eyes ... like u
rich Karaites who kept tobacco shops in Kiev ... "People who do not have
the magnetic center, which attracts them to the source of the B-influence and
then, in the case of the correct development of the magnetic center, to the source
esoteric knowledge in the person of a specific teacher who expresses C influence - not
can perceive sacred dances correctly. Shulgin describes his
negative reactions to the "eleven contradictory movements" that he
saw at the Gurdjieff Institute, and the exercise "stop" when dancing figures
freeze at the command of the teacher in order to feel and realize the most unusual
the state of your body.
Gurdjieff deliberately arranged demo performances in the form
dances and various psychological experiences, so that with the help of such "networks"
catch people who are really interested in the "miraculous" - those who
the magnetic center is sufficiently developed - and then include such people in
work on yourself.
Ouspensky recalls in his book "In Search of the Miraculous" (first chapter) how
once, while working as editor of a Moscow newspaper in January 1915, he
stumbled upon an article in The Voice of Moscow, which mentioned the ballet script
"The Fight of the Magicians" belonging to a certain "Indian" (by this "Indian" as
it turned out to be Gurdjieff). The ballet was set in India, it must
was to give a complete picture of "Eastern magic, including the miracles of fakirs, sacred
dancing and the like. "When Uspensky got into one of the Moscow groups
Gurdjieff, he was given a manuscript of one of the students who described his
impressions of the meeting with Gurdjieff. This story was called "Glimpses
truth ", and it began with an episode when the author of the story fell into the hands of
a note about the ballet "The Struggle of the Magicians" ... The one that Ouspensky cut out of
Zamoy newspapers in 1915. As Ouspensky later learned, the idea of this story
belonged to Gurdjieff himself, who wanted to offer Ouspensky
print it in one of the magazines (knowing that Ouspensky works as a journalist
and editor, revolves among writers). This example shows how
Gurdjieff knew how to involve the people he needed in his work. He put before them
certain practical tasks and at the same time revealed their features,
features, potentialities, mechanics of responding to certain
things.
Ouspensky further writes: “My ballet is not a mystery,” said Gurdjieff.
-The challenge I set was to create an interesting and
beautiful performance. Of course, there is a certain meaning hidden behind the external form; but
I did not pursue the goal of showing and emphasizing precisely this. I will explain to you
in short, what's the matter. Imagine that by studying the movement of celestial bodies, say,
planets of the solar system, you have built a special mechanism to transmit
visual representation of the laws of these movements and remind us of them. In such
mechanism, each planet, depicted by a sphere of appropriate sizes,
placed at a certain distance from the central sphere representing
The sun. The mechanism is set in motion, all spheres begin to rotate and
move along given paths, reproducing laws in a visual form,
controlling the movement of the planets. This mechanism reminds us of everything that you
know about the solar system. Something similar is contained in the rhythm of some
dancing. In strictly defined movements and combinations of dancing in the visible
form reproduced certain laws, understandable to those who know them. Such
the dances are called "sacred dances". During my wanderings in the East
I have witnessed many times how these dances were performed during
services in ancient temples. Some of them are reproduced in "Struggle
magicians. "In addition, the ballet is based on three special ideas. But if I
I will put the ballet on an ordinary stage, the audience will never understand them. "
Ouspensky found out that important scenes of Gurdjieff's ballet are portrayed by schools
"white magician" and "black magician", exercises of students of both schools and wrestling
between them. All events take place against the backdrop of life eastern city and
intertwined with love story, which has an allegorical character. By
about the "three ideas" inherent in Gurdjieff's dances, one of his
followers, Orage (who created the center of this school in the United States, where in the 20s
years, Gurdjieff came), connected them with the task of simultaneously turning on
three centers of the human body: instinctive-motor,
emotional and intellectual. So the dances are haunted by the outside,
indicative goals of symbolic cosmology and, at the same time - internal,
psychological goals of self-observation by students of themselves in the process of action.
The concepts of "rhythm" and "ritual" here coincide not only etymologically, but also
content - expressing the unity of space and man as a microcosm (small
space): the Sanskrit word "rita" has a deep meaning - "Rita
defines the transformation of an unordered state into an ordered one and
ensures the preservation of the basic conditions for the existence of the universe, man,
morality. Through Rita, the order of rotation is achieved
the universe. Since this order coincides with the truth, then Rita was interpreted in
in the broadest sense (German indologist G. Lüders). Rita's opposite
-Anrita, disorder as Rita's deprivation. Rita's universal character
manifests itself in the fact that she controls both the universe and the ritual; she defines
both the physical and the moral aspect of life, Rita was established by the Adityas,
who guard her. Most of all the gods are associated with Rita Varuna (and Mitra),
it is he who controls the correspondence between Rita and the actions of people. Rita
invisible to mortals: "the law is hidden by the law" (Rig Veda V 62, 1), i.e. Rita
is determined not from the outside, but from itself; in other words, it defines everything
including myself. Even the activities of the gods are nothing more than private
manifestations of Rita. Through Rita, the movement of the sun, rain, life is regulated
plants, animals, people, the actions of the gods. "We see that every sacred
ritual, including dances, round dances, symbolic movements in space,
church holidays with the removal of relics, etc. - there is not just a mystery,
repeating mythical plots, but also a special way of correlating space and
microcosm that reinforces the opposition between the forces of order and forces
chaos. In terms of the Gurdjieff System, "rhythm and ritual depicts
the collision of "good" (conscious forces) and "evil" (mechanical forces ", or
schools of "white magician" and "black magician". Every conscious and intentional
action increases the forces of consciousness and order, each unconscious,
mechanical action - forces of disorder and loss of integrity.
Towards an esoteric understanding of rituals and dances as collisions
(battle, war, competition, Apocalypse, etc.) of opposite principles,
world principles, the idea of opposing the descending and ascending
octaves. A descending octave is a series of mechanical degradations in which
there is a transition through the steps or levels of being from higher to lower, from
fine to coarse, or light to dark. Rising octave -
the reverse process, ascent, or, as Dante said, "anagogy" from the lower
steps to higher, from coarse and dense matter - to thin and discharged,
more and more filled with spirituality. In Judaism, Kabbalah and Christianity
the descending and ascending rows are allegorically depicted by the Ladder between
heaven and earth, dreamed of Jacob, on which the angels descended and
went up. In the enneagram, the descending octave corresponds to the movement against
clockwise, and ascending - clockwise, while the "highest" point
"9" coincides with the "lowest" point "O", since the absolute Everything and
absolute Nothing is one and the same, represented in two opposite
aspects. Gurdjieff explained: "You know the prayer:" Holy God, Holy
Strong, Holy Immortal "? This prayer came from ancient knowledge." Holy
God "means the Absolute, or All;" Holy Mighty "also means
Absolute, or nothing; "Holy Immortal" means that which is between
them, i.e. six notes of a ray of creation with organic life. All three taken
together, make up one; it is the indivisible and unmerged Trinity *. Nine or
The Enneagram expresses the connection of the six notes of creation (the Ray of Creation) with the One
beginning, "alpha and omega" at the start and end point, point "9":
In February 1922, Gurdjieff came to London, where he took part in lectures
Uspensky. The latter helps him in organizing the Institute and staging
the long-conceived ballet "The Struggle of the Magicians". About
twenty people, including the participation of the famous musician T. Hartmann (one of
the first students of Gurdjieff) who prepared the arrangement of musical themes
Gurdjieff. Ouspensky and the rest of the students collected a significant amount of money,
for which Gurdjieff bought the historic castle "Abbey" (Chateau-Priore) in
Avone, near Fontebleau near Paris. And in the fall of 1922 a new one was opened here.
version of the Institute, where the "motley company" (in the expression
Uspensky) of all those who knew Gurdjieff and Uspensky in St. Petersburg, Moscow,
Tiflis, Constantinople and London
In December 1923, the Theater on the Champs Elysees in Paris hosted
an unprecedented performance. Dances and special exercises were shown. Were
tricks and "magic" experiments: reading thoughts and transmitting them to
distance; hid the object, and the blindfolded student, taking the hand
one of the spectators, looking for something hidden; to the person sitting in the hall,
showed objects, and he telepathically transmitted the name and shape of the object
people sitting on stage, etc. The most impressive was the number when
someone from the audience mentally passed on to the pianist F. Hartmann, who was on
the stage at the piano, the name of any opera written on a piece of paper by the audience - and
the pianist performed a musical excerpt from it. The audience ordered some
an animal to one of the students sitting in the hall - and another student on the stage
made sketches of exactly the animal that they ordered to portray.
The audience was completely shocked, to the point of bewilderment and horror, when in
the climax of the performance, a group of students turned to face
stage, abruptly rushed to the ramp and, flying over the orchestra pit, fell into
the first rows of the stalls, forcing the audience to jump up from their seats. But, strange
mixed with each other, these "flying" figures, piled up on each
friend, instantly froze in silence and stillness. Then they on command
Gurdjieffs rose - and there was not a single fracture, bruise or scratch.
In early 1924, Gurdjieff organized a tour of his
"troupes" in the cities of the USA. And there the audience perceived the fireworks of dancing and
magic "miracles" as a phenomenon of the boundless domination of the teacher-magician over
by their students. The famous writer William Seabrook has characterized this
spectacle as "amazing, bright, automatic, inhuman, almost
incredible obedience and robotic obedience of students "turned to
the command of "trained zombies or circus animals". In reality
Gurdjieff strove to show the fantastic possibilities of man in such
sphere, like dance, movement, control of your body. It was like
modern martial arts, fakiric abilities in the spirit of Houdini or
tricks by David Copperfield.
The performances were supposed to shake the townsfolk, make them think about
their capabilities, look at life from a different point of view, discover something
new in itself. It should be recalled that there were no employees in Gurdjieff's group.
professionals, but young men and women, attractive, good
educated, proficient in other specialties, but thirsty
esoteric knowledge. They were not "zombies" at all, but rather something
the opposite. "Zombies", oddly enough, were at the moment
performances in the hall ...
The secret of such "obedience" of students lies in the System itself and methods
training according to Gurdjieff. He himself once went through all the stages of obedience
sheikhs and teachers of monasteries in Tibet, Afghanistan and the Middle East. He
always repeated the main principle of the work of a student with a teacher: "You cannot
achieve real will if you do not learn absolute obedience. "
the rule is due to the fact that a person constantly indulges his whims,
remaining in captivity of many random impulses, useless emissions
energy, chaotic fermentation of small "I". To overcome the mess
own uncontrollability, the student initially trains to obey
the will of the teacher, who has already reached the real "I", integral and indestructible in
its action. And only after accumulating experience of discipline and concentration
all forces (on the basis of the guidance of a truly strong-willed "I") the student will be able to understand
what is what - and open a similar integral "I" inside your own
nature. However, ordinary people who do not have sufficient intuition and flair for
recognition of a real teacher, can easily succumb to the influence of charlatans and
all kinds of "psychics" of a home-grown sample. This is similar to how
if a person who wants to master mathematics would agree to study not from
mathematics, and, for example, a trade worker who can count quickly
and manipulate numbers.
The master is always seen in the little things and in the everyday environment. That's how
one of the students describes his observations of Gurdjieff:
how he crossed the street through moving vehicles - without
nervousness and haste inherent in most people - but as if he
felt with all his being, fully aware of what he was doing, like
to the wise elephant, whom I saw in Burma, when he made his way through the thicket
forest. "The same student gives an example of how Gurdjieff creates will in
their students. The story was like this. The student was given the task of carrying water for
a hundred yards from the stream, which took an entire morning. One day he noticed that
the stream ran on the other side of the wall that enclosed the garden. It occurred to him
dig a hole near the wall and let water through the wall. This channel could
save a huge amount of work. But the wall could come crashing down over
hole made. Then the student suggested pouring water through a siphon,
and, taking out a piece of hose, two students made the water flow through
a ten-foot wall and plunge into a hole in the garden. Some
the inhabitants of the "Abbey" (Chateau-Priore near Fonteblo) came to look at
invention, commenting with surprise on this apprentice's quick wits:
"It's funny how tall minds like Orage, Nicole, Jung and Pinder spend weeks
dragged this water, and no one came up with such a simple idea. "Finally
appeared Gurdjieff, who had been on trips before. While the "inventors"
stood nearby, rubbing their hands with pleasure, anticipating the praise of "himself",
Gurdjieff, examining the mechanism, said the following: "Very good, very
witty. And now I have another thought. Remove the hose and bury
pit. Look for a spring here ... "The student experienced many negative emotions.
However, five years passed, and one of the beautiful days it so happened that
it was this student who unearthed the water source located in the garden. Such
overcoming Gurdjieff called "super-efforts". After this incident, given
the student has become a completely different person.
This cautionary tale also has a symbolic dimension: everyone must
with the help of super-efforts to find the source of life within oneself, and not
try to simplify the task with external devices. When in July 1924
years Gurdjieff was in a car accident, the students drew attention to
that the night before his trip, he behaved unusual: he asked the mechanic
carefully inspect the car; for no reason gave his papers to Madame de
Hartmann and authorized her to act on her own behalf; before returning from
Paris to Fontainebleau, he told Madame de Hartmann to return by train and in response to
her bewilderment just waved his hand ... "The radiator was crushed, the engine
shifted to the side, the steering column is broken, the blinds, doors and windows are broken,
the front axle and wings are concave. Gurdjieff was found lying on the grass that grew
the side of the road from Paris to Fontainebleau, and under his head was a car
seat. How he got out of the car, whether he got out on his own or was carried out, was
dont clear. The car crashed into a tree. "
About a month later, Gurdjieff appeared in the garden. The head was bandaged
the eyes are hidden by dark glasses. Sight was virtually absent: he was nobody
recognized. But every day he got up from his chair and took a few steps,
contrary to the advice of doctors. In October, he, sitting in a chair, began to give instructions
breed under open air large bonfires, sitting for an hour or more at
flame. It was believed that he gains strength from fire. It lasted until those
until almost half of the park was cut down for fires ... Soon
he began to lead from his chair and "we began to work as before,
striving to feel and remember yourself, work carefully and realize that,
if we work consciously, we will help him as well as ourselves. "
Hartmann confessed to Nott that he was still in Russia, in the Caucasus, when he fell ill
typhoid, the attack of the disease was so strong that everyone considered him hopeless.
One night he suddenly regained consciousness: Gurdjieff bent over him and
sweat trickled down his face ... "All his strength was directed at me. He gave me
a piece of bread and left. I sat down, began to eat and realized that he saved my life. "
was a teacher of the Fourth Way, whom the yellow press journalists to this day
the day is called a charlatan and a dubious nutcase. Apparently,
the ballet "The Struggle of the Magicians" continues to this day. On different stages in different
the times of the power of consciousness and creativity are in the struggle with the forces
mechanical reactions and clouding of mind. The script for this ballet was not written
us. And this scenario is not poetic hyperbole, but a genuine drama,
which takes place here and now, in the present.
And here are other "analogies" from the field of "secret lodges" and "historical
conspiracies ": in the summer of 1921, Gurdjieff with a group of students through Romania and
Hungary arrived in Germany, appearing on the outskirts of Berlin. Here he is supposedly
met with a number of followers of Theosophy and Ariosophy who dreamed of
"superman" ... There is a legend that Gurdjieff gave lessons in hypnosis
the future "Fuehrer of the Third Reich" Adolf Schicklgruber. But all of this
unverified facts. From the works of Ouspensky and other students, you can make
an unambiguous conclusion about how exactly Gurdjieff treated people like
Napoleon, Hitler and politicians in general, overwhelmed by a thirst for power: he called
such a breed of "Hasnamus", a person without conscience, hopeless from the point of view
evolution. However, Gurdjieff taught how you can use such people in your
purposes.
In a heap of gossip and "points of view" resembling a trash can, wishing
can find anything, as is usually the case around and around those
whose life is overgrown with legends. But, unlike "hyenas that eat
carrion ", the lions go on through the desert, leaving garbage and rotting slag
to those who are attracted to such "food" according to the law of sympathetic drives
("like attracts like"). Many modern books on occultism,
magic, pseudo-hermeticism is full of such rubbish. This kind of thing should always
exist in order to make proper selection and so that one kind of people does not
interfered with another, who is able to find something more intimate and of higher quality. Exists
Sufi parable about how one sheikh, after being harassed by a negligent group
students demanding sensations and precise instructions, in which everything is simple and
clearly, he wrote especially for them books on fortune-telling, astrology, palmistry and
the like - and as a result bad students ceased to interfere with the worthy,
seduced by secondary knowledge. This is the wisdom of the esoteric schools.
He who has ears, let him hear! Here are the opinions of the authorities of mass culture: "In the highest
degree questionable doctrine "(Anna Catarina Porter"; "charlatan" (Francois
Moriak); "not one person, but a million people in one" (Margaret Anderson);
"a brilliant and striking psychologist, not inferior to Nietzsche" (Colin Wilson);
"one of the great inspirators of the sixties" (Sergius Golovin); "This
either a great and subtle joke ... or complete nonsense! "(JB Watson, founder
behaviorism in psychology, after reading "Everything and Everyone: Tales of Beelzebub,
told to the grandson ").
The "fourth way", the way of the "sage" or "sly", can be better understood if
we will try to figure out the many shades of meaning Greek word"sophist"
or "skillful person": "sophia" means - wisdom, knowledge, sharpness,
cunning, dexterity, skill, skill, the ability to do things, skillfully
to invent, to be a clever, tested person, to be an expert,
mentor, etc. In the Greek tradition, Solon was called a "sophist",
Pythagoras, famous philosophers, poets and sages - and only in times
Socrates and Plato, due to the proliferation of profane schools of instruction
youth to the art of success in life (like modern courses in psychology and
pragmatism, giving recipes for "success in business, life and sex"), the term
"sophist" acquired a negative connotation, equal to the word "charlatan" or "deceiver."
A skillful man, as Gurdjieff believed, does not allow his past
become the future, he is trying, drop by drop, to find the divine
spark, freeing itself from the burden of false "I", fettering its movement like
a lot of extra clothes. In the book "Intelligence Agents" Timothy Leary cites a number of
rules that Gurdjieff used to raise the level of human consciousness:
1. Try to get to the bottom of the events from which other people
brushed aside as mysterious and enigmatic.
2. Never do something just because others are doing it.
3. Never think the way others think.
4. Trust only your own vision of the world, not how they see it
others, and do not trust your own opinion for very long.
It is known that Gurdjieff himself, carried away in his youth by the books of Madame
Blavatsky and Western literature about the East, decided to check everything
thoroughly, - as he said, it took him several
years of life: from 1890 to 1898 he visited Baghdad, Afghanistan, Kashgar,
enters Tibet, gets a job as a tax collector from Tibetan lamas, which gives
he has access to all monasteries; later he studies in Kabul and other centers
Sufi science. It is obvious that he has overcome many adversities.
and tests. This is confirmed by his own words: "Do you want to know?
really, in order to know, you have to go through suffering. You should
learn to suffer not as you are suffering now, but consciously. At present
time you do not know how to suffer for a single franc, but to understand, you need
suffer a million francs. "Gurdjieff was out of national issues and
despised all kinds of chauvinism: "There are no Englishmen, no Russians, no
Jews or Christians, but there are only aspiring to common goal- become
able to do. "To learn how to actually do things, you need to take
any small thing and forget about big things: "Set yourself a goal
get rid of some petty habit. "Art step by step
getting rid of mechanical habits and ideas gives a person knowledge
about how and why he had previously submitted to the captivity of fantasies and obsessions - in
including, from where various pseudo-teachings and mystical currents arise,
99 percent of which are based on subjective perception. About supporters
of theosophy, Gurdjieff spoke of those who "heard where the ringing is, but do not know where
he. ”And this assessment concerns many“ seekers of truth. ”One of the disciples
Gurdjieff conveyed his point of view about humanity: "Ninety-six
percent of our civilization is determined by the instinctive-motor center,
physical body; three percent is real culture associated with
emotional center; only one percent is concerned with the question "Why?" and
depends on the action of the real mind. Instinctive motor center,
who should be a passive part, has become active in our civilization,
positive force. We are people upside down, turned upside-down. "
Raphael Lefort in the book "Teachers of Gurdjieff" shows - if you believe
his travels in search of the "wonderful" origins of the "fourth way" school,
- a whole system of Sufi centers that accept disciples moving
from one step to another. According to Lefort, through such a chain of initiations
passed at one time Daurdzhiadze, i.e. Gurdjieff: "Who is" they "who
sent him? I asked, prying further. “It’s not a secret,” he replied.
(Haji Abdul Kader). - That Lodge, which is near Cape Karatas in the south. They were
disciples of Bahaudin, known as Naqshbandi, or "artists". There are already
no, but he (Gurdjieff) must have been sent there from somewhere else, since I
I went there quite often and never saw him. "When asked by Lefort
"Where they could have sent him from" Haji laughed: "From the north or from the south, from the east
or from the west, from a thousand places. Or from another place of study from another
teachers. Who knows what he learned before he came to me? May be,
falconry, music, dancing, carpentry? .. "In the end, finding
Sheikh Ul Masheikha in Afghanistan, Lefort returns to Europe, to the secret
group for "seekers of truth" in the West. The circle closes like
a gnostic serpent biting its own tail.
Comparing the teachings of Gurdjieff with the schools of the Gnostics, troubadours, alchemists
and the Hermeticists, one can conclude that in Europe at all times
there was a system of knowledge that was brought either from the East, or
the roots of which existed latently in the West, hiding behind the foliage of various
external forms. The followers of Sufism themselves understand the latter is not purely
Islamic esotericism, as some believe, but something originally
characteristic of the ancient esoteric schools of different cultures and eras. "True
united ", although the paths to it have been lost. Gurdjieff was the one who indicated the approaches to
finding the real Path to the real Truth. He paid attention to
man's self-creation of himself: "I can't move you in any way
further, I can only create conditions in which you can advance. "
this is also the purpose of his books, which originally served as a guide
for a narrow circle of students and without special comments to them can cause
incorrect assessments and associations. A variant of the commentary to "Beelzebub" can be
found in Nott's book "The Teachings of Gurdjieff". A feature of the latest book "Life
is real only when "I am" is its unfinishedness, or rather -
complete absence of a finished book. In fact, this is not a book, but only
a series of sketches, remarks and theses that Gurdjieff outlined for himself
yourself as "rafters" for possible construction future book... With another
hand, the theses "Real life while I am" open before us
psychological world of Gurdjieff, his inner dialogue, style of work with himself
yourself. Most likely, if Gurdjieff were now asked the question of whether it is worth
whether or not to publish these sketches, - he would answer succinctly: "Idiots!" ... And
would certainly be right.
It is said that during Gurdjieff's funeral ceremony in 1949
the organizer of the ceremony, who did not know Gurdjieff during his lifetime, was so
struck by the dignity and nobility that radiated the body and face of the deceased,
that he could not restrain sobbing at the open grave of Georgy Ivanovich.
In the Arch-Absurd, Baal-Zebub shakes his head over the creatures of this planet.
"Our sun does not shine, does not warm." When we get high ideas like
in this Book, and we make an effort to understand, - as a result, there appears
true Light.
V. Aleksakhin Download all books by G.I. Gurdjieff or read them on-line at the link