West, John Anthony
Encountering Gurdjieff
My first (alas! posthumous) encounter
with the remarkable Mr. Gurdjieff took place on the Balearic Island of
Ibiza in the early 1960's. A casual artist friend, responding to my
newfound enthusiasm for astrology, gave me Rodney Collin's Theory of Celestial Influence
to read. Despite certain misgivings about the incessant harping about
'schools' I was eager to hear more, and my shrewd and tactful friend
thereafter carefully spoon-fed me selected titles --Ouspensky, Nicoll,
Bennett, Kenneth Walker-- until he deemed me ready for the man himself.
For a moment it was touch and go.
Reading, in the first few introductory sentences to Beelezebub, that I was about to be obliged to disavow everything I had ever thought, believed, admired, valued and even wrote,
I was about to hurl this arrogant book against the wall ... when I
realized that this was precisely Gurdjieff's intention. Knowing, as an
already substantially published writer, how difficult it is to elicit a
specific, intended response from readers in twenty pages of prose, or
200 pages for that matter, I was caught up in admiration for a man who
could get me that angry in just two sentences.
With a big inner smile, and nod of admiration, I read on ...and on ... and on ...
Via my extensive prior reading I was already predisposed to the
cosmology, philosophy, psychology, the scrambled and revised history
and much of the rest. I was unprepared for the sweep of his humor, and
the carefully convoluted style that obliged my brain to sweat in
entirely new ways.
But what attracted me most was that Gurdjieff was the first human being
I had ever encountered (albeit posthumously) as utterly contemptuous of
Western Civilization as I was. What I called 'The Lunatic Asylum' he
called 'The Pain Factory'. We were talking the same language. The big
difference, the huge
difference between us, from my thirty-year-old point of view, (apart
from his obvious comprehensive knowledge and understanding) was that he
knew how to live successfully within the asylum, and I did not. And it
was this I had to learn -- or else!
Even so, it took a few more years of inner wrestling to get convinced
that this knowledge could not be acquired on my own (I was accustomed
to doing things on my own, hated 'groups', refused to ask for help from
anyone, even when I needed help). And so I left my sunny, but now
tourist-and-hippie infested island and off I went to London to join the
Foundation, then under the leadership of Mme. Lannes. Voracious reading
and research along with intensive inner work now prepared me for the
'symbolist' interpretation of ancient Egypt developed by R.A. Schwaller
de Lubicz in his massive, three volume work Le Temple de' l'Homme (The Temple of Man) then only in French. This set the stage for the next thirty years of writing.
I was already convinced that Gurdjieff had somewhere accessed otherwise
hidden sources of an almost forgotten doctrine, and presented it --on a
take it or leave it basis--in a form compatible to contemporary
understanding. Schwaller proved
in magisterial fashion that it had once existed in coherent and
recoverable form in ancient Egypt (and by extension, in other ancient,
but presently vitiated or degenerate doctrines as well).
Initially, I thought that there had to be some formal connection
between Gurdjieff and Schwaller. Both were living in France around the
same time; Gurdjieff of course was well known, indeed notorious, in the
Paris of the 20's. I thought that Gurdjieff had perhaps given Schwaller
the task of actually documenting the great doctrine. But, no; working
closely with Schwaller's step-daughter, Lucie Lamy, convinced me that
there was no formal connection. Schwaller had come to his almost
identical interpretation entirely on his own. My self-imposed task now
became making Schwaller's difficult, sometimes near-impenetrable work
accessible to a wider audience.
But after seven years in the Foundation, it was time, with no little
regret, to leave it. The expeerience had been invaluable, but it now
seemed to me that what was called The Foundation for the Study of the
Harmonious Development of Man was some 90 percent Foundation and just
10 percent Harmonious Development. The old Bohemian anarchist within me
re-asserted himself. Even so, I left with no little regret.
I had learned what I had learned. It was not what I'd hoped to learn. I
was not enlightened. I had not met God, though it seemed to me
sometimes that some of his minions were guiding me in some way. I had
not found a way to immunize myself against negative emotions, or to
stop doting on my suffering (hard to acknowledge that I or anyone else
should engage in so fruitless an exercise, but so it was, and is...). I
was still much too recognizable to people who knew me before -- I was
supposed to be walking around rayed in light, an obvious beacon to
attract others. It was nothing like that. The changes, unapparent to
others, but not so to me, were internal, minuscule. An incredible
amount of work had gone into them, yet there was little to show. On the
other hand, however minuscule, that difference was all the difference
in the world. I was not even very 'conscious', but I was in some sense
difficult to define, responsible. It was no longer that easy to press my buttons --and when they did get pressed, it was my responsibility, not 'theirs'. I could function within the asylum!
Still, it was time to leave the formal Foundation and carry on as best as I could on my own.
Now, twenty five years later, it is still the Gurdjieff work that
sustains, informs, and makes it possible to not just cope but move
ahead.
The lessons learned and other reflections will eventually find their
way into a book I'm currently working on, but one musing seems worth
passing on now.
While in the Foundation, one of its most irritating characteristics was
the incessant gossip, and the internal friction between the various
'schools' all claiming to be the inheritors of the 'true' Work. The
Foundation-ites disparaged the Bennett people, and vice-versa while the
various splinter groups in America, England and Paris were all
increasingly at odds with each other. Twenty five years later, that
situation has become worse, rather than better, as the splinter groups
themselves split into toothpicks and then matches.
It seemed so unnecessary and I, like so many, wondered why it had to be
like this. I had long since given up as futile trying to pass judgment
on Gurdjieff himself. I did not care if he was Man 4, 4.2, 5, 6 or 7.
No one, it seemed to me, had a monopoly or lock on what this
extraordinary man intended. My own understanding of the hierarchical
principle convinced me that the lower is in no position to pass
judgment on the higher. But the more I read (and keep on reading) of
the experiences of those who had had close contact with him, the more I
began to think that just perhaps the friction itself was a part of the
grand plan. And it is this that I offer up for what it may be worth.
The doctrine and even more important, the practice, has been given out
to the world. There can be no doubt that Gurdjieff had gone to almost
superhuman lengths to avoid personal gurufication or canonization by
his followers. It's hard to imagine that this was anything but
intentional. So, it seems to me just possible, that along analogous
lines, he took similar pains to ensure that no one person, no single
group, could successfully turn the Work into an orthodoxy, which by
definition means stasis, or Death. G's (alleged) famous last words,
'I've left you all in a fine pickle' perhaps refers to that, or
something like that.
We were on our own. And so we are today -- intentional or not.
The fractious, competing and contentious groups ensure --until or
unless someone of Gurdjieffian stature appears to pull it all together,
(which may not be a good thing anyhow)-- that unorthodoxy will prevail.
Since, from long study and much experience, it still seems to me that
the Work is, if not the only, then at least the most effective way to
learn to live with some degree of certainty within the degenerate,
chaotic but yet wildly proliferating forces of The Church of Progress
(whose Jesuits are Science, Education and the Media). Our job is to get
on with that Work as best we can.
I have my own ideas as to what constitutes the 'real' work and what is
misguided, even perverted. But it seems to me that (David Kherdian and
I have discussed this at length) if 'the Terror of the Situation' is
more-or-less accurately perceived, and the personal intention is
more-or-less pure and focused, the Work, in that special Gurdjieffian
sense, will produce real results, regardless. Not much else will.