Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff
Short biography
Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff (Георгий Иванович Гюрджиев, Georgiy Ivanovich Gyurdzhiev,Gurdjiev; January 13, ? – October 29, 1949), was a Greek-Armenian mystic and self-professed 'teacher of dancing'. He claimed that the teachings he brought to the West from his own experiences and early travels expressed the truth found in other ancient religions and teachings relating to self-awareness in one's daily life and humanity's place in the universe. It might be summed up by the title of his book: Life is Real Only Then, When 'I Am'.
Biography
Gurdjieff
was born in Alexandropol (now Gyumri), Armenia. The exact year is
unknown; anything from 1866 to 1877 has been offered. James Moore's
biography ("Gurdjieff: The Anatomy Of A Myth")
argues
pursuasively for 1866. Gurdjieff grew up in Kars, traveled
in the
Near East before returning to Russia and teaching in Moscow and St.
Petersburg in 1913.
In the midst of revolutionary upheaval in
Russia he left Petrograd (St. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd on
September 1, 1914) in 1917 to return to his family home in
Alexandropol. During the Bolshevik Revolution he set up temporary study
communities in Essentuki in the Caucasus, then Tuapse, Maikop, Sochi
and Poti, all on the Black Sea coast of Southern Russia where he worked
intensively with many of his Russian pupils.
In mid-January 1919
he and his closest pupils moved to Tbilisi. In late May 1920 when
political conditions in Georgia changed and the old order was
crumbling, they walked by foot to Batumi on the Black Sea coast, and
then Istanbul. There Gurdjieff rented an apartment on Koumbaradji
Street in Péra and later at 13 Abdullatif Yemeneci Sokak near the
Galata Tower. The apartment is near the tekke (monastery) of the
Mevlevi Order of Sufis (founded by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi) where
Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Thomas de Hartmann experienced the sema
ceremony of The Whirling Dervishes. In Istanbul Gurdjieff also met John
G. Bennett.
In August 1921 Gurdjieff traveled around western
Europe, lecturing and giving demonstrations of his work in various
cities such as Berlin and London. In October 1922, he established the
Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man south of Paris at the
Prieuré des Basses Loges in Fontainebleau-Avon near the famous Château
de Fontainebleau.
In 1924 he nearly died in a car crash. After
he recovered, he began writing All and Everything originally written by
him in Russian and Armenian. He stopped writing in 1935 having
completed the first two parts of the trilogy and only having started on
the Third Series which had been published under the title Life
is Real Only Then, When 'I Am'.
In Paris, Gurdjieff lived at 6 Rue des Colonels-Rénard where he
continued to teach throughout World War II.
Gurdjieff
died on October 29, 1949 at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine,
France. His funeral was held at the St. Alexandre Nevsky Russian
Orthodox Cathedral at 12 Rue Daru, Paris. He is buried in the cemetery
at Fontainebleau-Avon.
Timelines, facts and whereabouts of
Gurdjieff's early biography before he appeared in Moscow in 1913 are
found fictionalised in his text Meetings with Remarkable Men.