by Allan Lindh
In the decades since George
Ivanovitch Gurdjieff's death, many books have been written about the man, and
the teaching he brought to Europe and America from Central Asia. Since today
many people's first contact with this teaching is via the written word, the
question naturally arises as to which of these books can best serve as an
introduction to these ideas? His own masterwork, All and Everything:
Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson, is somewhat difficult. His other two
books:
Meetings with Remarkable Men, and Life is Real Only Then, When I
Am, while
seemingly less difficult, present definite challenges of their own. Gurdjieff
confides to the reader in the Introduction to Meetings with Remarkable Men:
[1]
Given the inherent difficulty of
Mr. Gurdjieff's writings, the question naturally arises as to whether any of the
other written material that has grown out of his legacy has the real stamp of
authenticity? Of particular note in this regard is P.D. Ouspensky's In Search
of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, [2] which for many people has
served not only as an introduction to the ideas Mr. Gurdjieff brought, but an
introductory guide to their practical application as well. However, given
Ouspensky's early break with Gurdjieff, questions naturally arise as to how
reliable Fragments is as an introduction to work on oneself. After all, the
conversations Ouspensky records -- more than two-thirds of Fragments consists of
direct quotes from Gurdjieff -- took place in Russian almost a century ago. Yet
Fragments is written in refined, and rather philosophical English. Not only did
Ouspensky have to remember his conversations with Gurdjieff -- note-taking during
meetings was forbidden -- but he had to translate his personal notes into a
language that he learned late in life.
But since, little by little, I had become more adroit in the art of concealing
serious thoughts in an enticing, easily grasped outer form, and in making all
those thoughts which I term 'discernable only with the lapse of time' ensue from
others usual to the thinking of most contemporary people, I changed the
principle I had been following and, instead of seeking to achieve the aim I had
set myself in writing by quantity, I adopted the principle of attaining this by
quality alone. (p. 7)
Fortunately we have published appraisals of Fragments from some of Mr.
Gurdjieff's most senior students. In a discussion of the Gurdjieff literature,
Dr. Michel de Salzmann provided his strong endorsement:
"…there is now only one book, except for the books of Gurdjieff himself, which
can be considered, without prejudice, really useful for followers of the
teaching. This is In Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky. Gurdjieff's
pupils have always felt deeply indebted to Ouspensky for this as yet unrivaled
contribution to his work. Besides being a fascinating narrative, it is a
brilliant, honest, and faithful exposition of the author's memory of what was
transmitted to him. The feat of memory is all the more remarkable when one
realizes that note-taking was rigorously forbidden. Although it corresponds to
an initial stage of Gurdjieff's teaching, both in time (1915 to 1923) and as
regards the pupil's preparation, it retains a remarkable strength and freshness
in orienting an active questioning in those who are now working in this way.
In an introduction to Jean Vayse's book Toward Awakening, John Sinclair (Lord
Pentland) -- who worked closely with Ouspensky for about a decade, and with
Gurdjieff at the end of the 1940s -- provided his evaluation of Fragments.
"In Search [his reference to Fragments] was written and meticulously revised by
Ouspensky over a period of at least ten years in order to give as honest and
objective an account of the teaching as possible. Probably his achievement will
never be equaled. In any case it was intended to preserve the teaching in as
pure and impersonal a form as possible. [4]
Ouspensky's qualifications and motives were doubtless exceptional, but the
secret quality emanating from his book comes precisely from the fact that it
takes us as close as possible to the conditions of oral teaching, in which the
Master's presence brings about an "incarnation" of the ideas, and reveals them
in a wholly new dimension. [3]
In addition, we have accounts by several people of the circumstances under
which the decision to publish Fragments was made. C.S. Nott, who was a student
of Gurdjieff's for over thirty years, recorded an exchange with Ouspensky in the
mid-1930s in his book Further Teachings of Gurdjieff: [5]
"Some time later he gave me a typescript to read, saying that he was writing
down all that he could remember of what Gurdjieff had said to him. When he
asked my opinion of it I said that it was wonderful stuff; it was in a different
vein from Tertium Organum, and A New Model of the Universe, much higher on the
scale of ideas; it was a verbatim report of Gurdjieff's talks.
'But you will surely publish this?' I asked. 'Apart from Beelzebub's Tales
and the Second Series, it's the most interesting collection of Gurdjieff's
sayings and doings that could possibly be got together.'
'I may publish it -- but not if Gurdjieff publishes Beelzebub's Tales.
To my question 'Why?' He did not answer. It was eventually published, after
Gurdjieff's death -- Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, which the American
publishers stupidly dubbed In Search of the Miraculous. (pp. 106-107)
Later in the same book, Nott described the situation in the winter of 1948
when Gurdjieff first received a copy of the Fragments manuscript:
"Gurdjieff himself visited Mendham to see Madame Ouspensky, though he would
never stay there. Madame had presented him with the complete typescript of
Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, and Gurdjieff, hearing it read, said that
Ouspensky in this respect was a good man. He had written down what he had heard
from him, exactly: 'It is as if I hear myself speaking.' (p. 243)
In his autobiography, Witness, [6] John Bennett provided a first person
account of Gurdjieff's reaction to Fragments, based on his time with him in New
York and Paris in 1949:
"He had just taken the final decision to publish the volume of All and
Everything -- Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson and had been asked by Madame
Ouspensky to decide whether or not Ouspensky's own book, Fragments of an Unknown
Teaching should also be published. He remained undecided about the latter for
some time, pointing out when he heard it read aloud that certain of his ideas
were far more clearly and strongly expressed in Beelzebub. He finally agreed on
condition that it should not be published in advance of his own book.
Two additional accounts of meetings with Gurdjieff, during the last year of
his life, shed more light -- from a somewhat different perspective -- on his
evaluation of Fragments as an introduction to the teaching he brought.
…
Gurdjieff frequently complained that Ouspensky had ruined his pupils by his
excessively intellectual approach, and that he did better with people who came
to him with no preparation at all. On the other hand, he praised Ouspensky for
the accuracy of his reporting. Once I read aloud in front of him an early
chapter of In Search of the Miraculous. He listened with evident relish, and
when I finished he said: "Before I hate Ouspensky; now I love him. This very
exact, he tell what I say. (p. 205)
New York, Winter, 1948-9
Gurdjieff returned to America in December of 1949, and resumed the daily
luncheons and dinners that he held in his rooms at New York's Hotel Wellington
during previous visits. Louise March kept a journal during the visit, and her
recollections were later published by one of her students, from which the
following is drawn: [7]
"Meals at Gurdjieff's New York table were as ceremonious as ever. The
ritual of the toasts to the idiots still accompanied every meal. The only table
decoration was a glass filled with tarragon, dill, and spring onions. The
herbs, along with all kinds of smoked fish, were eaten with the fingers when the
Armagnac was poured. Gurdjieff never permitted flowers as table decorations.
He stormed, 'Nonsense of flowers spoils food.'
Paris, Summer, 1949
Mr. Gurdjieff himself still went shopping, as he had done on his previous
visits, at the fresh meat and vegetable markets. As before, melons were served
regardless of the season. Now, on this last visit, every meal began, after the
obligatory fresh herbs, with avocado halves served with salt and pepper, and
sometimes with olive oil as well. When avocados couldn't be found in the New
York markets, friends sent them from South America…
After every luncheon a chapter from a draft of Ouspensky's In Search of the
Miraculous was read. Mme. Ouspensky had sent it to Mr. Gurdjieff with the
question, 'Should it be published?' Mr. Gurdjieff praised it often, 'Very exact
is. Good memory. Truth, was so.' Sometimes Gurdjieff was dissatisfied, 'Is
too liquid. Lost something.'
Gurdjieff returned to Paris in February of 1949, and resumed meetings in his
apartment. Elizabeth Bennett kept a journal of her time in Paris during the
summer of 1949, which years later she published, together with her husband John
Bennett's journal of that time period, as Idiots in Paris. She states in the
Foreword that, "I have added nothing to the text, but I have cut out one or two
passages too personal to be of interest to anyone but the writer, and one or two
details of Gurdjieff's illness and treatment. Apart from these small deletions,
the manuscript is untouched." [8] Her straight-forward narrative of events in
Mr. Gurdjieff's apartment during the last summer of his life contains many
references to the readings that formed part of the daily routine.
"We would go to lunch at midday. There was always a reading aloud of some part
of Gurdjieff's own writings, or occasionally from P.D. Ouspensky's In Search of
the Miraculous, called throughout the diaries Fragments, a reference to
Ouspensky's original choice of a title. The reading would last for one or two
hours and then we would go to the dining room for lunch. (p. vii)
In A Study of Gurdjieff's Teaching, [9] published in 1957, Kenneth Walker provided
another account of Gurdjieff's reaction to the Fragments manuscript.
July 30th
…We went back to the flat at 10:30 for dinner. We read Fragments. There
was a large crowd there: the Woltons, with two children, Dr. Walker, the
Jaloustres, Vera Daumal, Hylda, Dryn and Lucien, Dr. Bell and Miss Crowdy, Mr.
Stewart, some English whom I don't know and various members of the French group,
besides those sixteen who had been on the trip….(p. 13)
July 31st.
…In the evening he listened with great enjoyment to the reading of
Fragments, leaning forward with his elbow on his knee and his cigarette-holder
in his hand, his eyes snapping, shaking with laughter at the references to
himself. (p. 15)
August 2nd
…In the evening he was enjoying the reading from Fragments so much --
chapter XII, about the right use of sex energy -- that we did not start dinner
until ten or twelve. (p. 19)
August 3rd
…Gabo went to do more picture hanging in the dining room, and Page began to
read Chapter XIII of Fragments.…We went on till midnight, when we started
dinner…(p. 21)
August 4th
…his was French night, and Page began to read at 8:30. We finished all we
had of Fragments and went on to Impartial Mentation [Chapter 47 of Beelzebub's
Tales]. (p. 24)
"I owe a great deal to Ouspensky for all he did for me during those earlier
years, and I am deeply grateful to him for his patient and clear-headed
interpretation of Gurdjieff's teaching. He had a much better command of English
than had Gurdjieff and a methodical and tidy mind which imposed order on the
latter's less systematized method of teaching. His patience was remarkable.
From 1917 onwards he sought clearer and yet clearer formulations for the ideas
he had received from Gurdjieff, with the intention, possibly -- for he never
spoke with certainty about this -- of publishing them in the form of a book
after the latter's death. But he died before his teacher, and it was upon
Gurdjieff that the responsibility then lay of deciding whether or not
Ouspensky's much-revised typescript should be sent to a publisher. Gurdjieff
had a Russian rendering of it read to him, declared it to be an accurate account
of his own teaching and gave instructions that it should be published forthwith.
(pp. 14-15)
However, later in the same book, Dr. Walker provided another perspective on the
teaching as transmitted by Ouspensky, one that sheds yet another light on
Fragments.
"…I realize that far too little emphasis was placed by Ouspensky at this time
on preparation for self-remembering, and it was only after we had met G many
years later in Paris that we understood how necessary this was. The first step
to self-remembering was to come back from our mind-wandering into our bodies and
to become sensible of these bodies. We all know, of course, that we possess
limbs, a head and a trunk, but in our ordinary state of waking-sleep we receive
few or no sense-impressions from these, unless we happen to be in pain. In
other words, we are not really aware of our bodies. But G taught us special
exercises first for relaxing our bodies to the fullest possible extent, and then
for 'sensing' the various areas in our bodies, exercises to which reference will
be made later in this book. These exercises became of immense value to us and
were particularly useful as a preparation for self-remembering. (p. 46)
Similar recollections are found in an interview with Dr. Meredith Thring in
London in 2001:
...
"At a very much later date the great importance of the faculty of attention
in our work was again brought home to us. This was after Ouspensky's death,
when some of us went over to Paris to study under G himself. G immediately
taught us a number of exercises in muscle-relaxing and in what he called
'body-sensing', exercises which were and still are of greatest value to us. We
were told to direct our attention in a predetermined order to various sets of
muscles, for example, those of the right arm, the right leg, the left leg and so
on, relaxing them more and more as we come round to them again; until we have
attained what we feel to be the utmost relaxation possible for us. Whilst we
were doing this we had at the same time to 'sense' that particular area of the
body; in other words to become aware of it. We all know, of course, that we
possess limbs, a head and a body, but in ordinary circumstances we do not feel
or sense them. But with practice the attention can be thrown on to any part of
the body desired, the muscles in that particular area relaxed, and sensation
from that region evoked. At the word of inner command the right ear is
'sensed', then the left ear, the nose, the top of the head, the right arm, right
hand and so on, until a 'sensation' tour has been made of the whole body. The
exercise can, if required, be rendered still more difficult by counting
backwards, by repeating strings of words or by evoking ideas at the same moment
that the relaxing and sensing is being carried out.
"The question may well be asked: 'What benefit can possibly result from
learning all these yogi tricks with the body?' This is not difficult to answer.
There are three reasons for doing such exercises as these: the first is that it
is excellent training for the attention; the second that it teaches a person how
to relax; and the third that it produces a very definite inner psychic change.
This change can be summed up in the statement that the exercise draws together
parts of our mechanism which previously had been working disconnectedly. But
external descriptions of these valuable exercises and of the results obtained
from them are quite useless. They can only be understood by personal experience
of them, a fact which emphasizes once again the impossibility of imparting
knowledge of this kind in a book. All special exercises of this kind have to be
taught by word of mouth, and, so far as I know, they have never been committed
to writing. It is for this reason that my description of them has deliberately
been left incomplete. (pp. 69-70)
"What I want to say more than anything is that I worked with Ouspensky and
Bennett for about twelve years if not thirteen, the end of '37 to '48, eleven
years. Ouspensky died and actually in 1949 I happened to be in America and they
immediately published, Mme Ouspensky published In Search of the Miraculous which
Ouspensky had refused to publish because of Gurdjieff's book.
There is one other commentary on Fragments that speaks frankly to
Ouspensky's contribution, and to the question of completeness. In the 1950s,
Sri Anirvan, a Baul master in the Samkhya tradition sent one of his students, a
French woman Lizelle Reymond, back to Europe to find the students of Gurdjieff.
In To Live Within, [10] an extraordinary account of her time with Sri Anirvan, she
compiled material from his letters and notes of her conversations with him,
which he revised before his death in 1978. The following extracts are from that
material:
…
The point was
with Ouspensky, it was in effect philosophical knowledge we got really. You
knew you had 'many 'I's, you knew that you couldn't DO and that you had to 'not
express' negative emotions and so on and we worked on these things all those
years. And we had all the diagrams that are in In Search of the Miraculous and
there was quite a lot to go on, but somehow it was all hopeless. There was no
hope there, you couldn't do [unclear] but when we went to Paris it was entirely
different, it was like going into a different world a world in which negative
emotions and trivial things…they just weren't there. It was like a world
where you were free of all that. You were just concerned with work. We started
doing the movements and I am hopeless at the movements because I am totally
un-musical but I got enough of them to realize what kind of work, what kind of
control of attention, complete control [of] attention in all the centres is
necessary for that. So I got a taste for what that means. [unclear] The most
important thing I got from Paris was the idea of sensing your body, and also
sitting quietly and sensing your limbs and so on. And even then I got the sense
of opening oneself and freeing oneself from the thoughts that go on all the time
and the associations in the moving centre and the associations in the
intellectual centre, being free of these. So I got a taste of what it is all
about. And I got hope, there was a message of hope, always. It wasn't 'cannot
do' it was trying to do work. The impression I got of Mr. Gurdjieff was
entirely different from the impression I had from Ouspensky and Bennett it was
the impression that I can only describe as Universal Benevolence. He really
wanted you and me, everybody to be influenced towards developing themselves as a
result of being in contact with him and his emanations. This was very, very
strong and it has been with me ever since."
...
"Because Mme Ouspensky, the moment Ouspensky died rang up Bennett and the people
at Lyme Place and so on and said 'Go over to Mr. Gurdjieff at such and such an
address' and so they did. And Gurdjieff apparently said that he was delighted
with Ouspensky he said 'Now he is my friend' because he had seen…In Search
of the Miraculous. It is marvelous we have got two different formulations of
his teaching. Some of them disagree quite a lot. The Moon for example in In
Search of the Miraculous is the growing tip of creation -- in Beelzebub it [is]
an awful mistake. But they do together produce a very powerful [impression],
and it's very important, that's what I am glad to do in my book is to put them
together from…references to things from both books and from all the others,
from Views from the Real World and so on. It is so important that you don't
just have one verbal formulation you have different verbal formulations which
apparently at first sight disagree and that's the way you get towards something
real. I think we are incredibly fortunate to have had Mr. Gurdjieff."
...
"All I know is that I didn't get the feeling from Ouspensky that there was a way
through and I did get it from Gurdjieff."
...
"And I think the point about this, you see. Ouspensky was a journalist and he
could write quite well and clearly and be easy to understand from that point of
view. Gurdjieff deliberately made his book very difficult, sentences a whole
page long so that you've got to puzzle over it. You've got to be persistent
with it."
Question: "Do you think…the hopelessness that you say Ouspensky [brought],
that there was no hope, you couldn't do anything, this is very strong in
Fragments and he reports it as coming from Gurdjieff…I just wondered do
[you] think this feeling of hopelessness is coming from Ouspensky all the time,
or, do you feel Gurdjieff's teaching changed a great deal from the beginning?"
Professor Thring: "I don't think it changed, no. I think it was Ouspensky's
caste of character that [unclear] in that book. I don't believe Gurdjieff ever
taught that it is hopeless."
Question: "And yet Gurdjieff was pleased with Fragments, wasn't he?"
Professor Thring: "Oh yes because Fragments is a very clear account of the
theory so to speak beautifully written and it adds a lot to the knowledge and I
think that Beelzebub's Tales contains far more if you can get down to it. Far
more, in fact when he, in the Second Series he keeps promising to put a whole
lot of things in the Third Series it is my view that they are in here, hidden
away deeply. For all those things he says he will write about he has written
about and they are hidden away."
Question: "Do you think he have, animated a feeling of hope when he was in
Russia…do you think he had that feeling then?"
Professor Thring: "I'm sure he had because the message he came back from was;
there is a way! That was his message. There is a way and I think I am going to
try and communicate it to you. You see this is where religions fall down in my
opinion, they don't tell you a way."
…
"... this is very interesting because under Ouspensky it was 'Remember Yourself'
but when we got to Paris it was 'Do I Am.' This is a fact!"
"Tantric teaching demonstrates that all life is born from the Void -- the gods
and goddesses, the higher and the lower prakriti. The Void is the matrix of
universal energy.
One has access to it by four stages. In his book In Search of the
Miraculous, Ouspensky speaks about the first two stages. He remained silent
about the last two because he had left Gurdjieff. In all of his subsequent
personal teaching, which is very important, he tells of the development of these
first two stages and of his experiences with his Master. The writings of
Gurdjieff, on the other hand, open for us the frontiers of the two last stages.
These are cleverly hidden in his mythical narrations. The four stages are:
plurality of "I's," a single "I," no "I," the Void. (p. 194)
…
"Gurdjieff had this lightly tinted whiteness. He never stopped playing with
all the colors of life; that is why fools cry out against him. Ouspensky, who
was a philosopher, tried to stay in the whiteness he had discovered; but if you
are the disciple responsible for the kitchen, your duty is to prepare the food.
If you refuse to do this, you will be sent away by the Master, or you will leave
of your own accord and your refusal will be a weight that will burden you for
years and possibly even crush you. (p. 257)
…
All spiritual experiences are sensations in the body. They are simply a
graded series of sensations, beginning with the solidity of a clod of earth and
passing gradually, in full consciousness, through liquidness and the emanation
of heat to that of a total vibration before reaching the Void. The road to be
traveled is long. (p. 231)
We might consider also that by Mr. Gurdjieff's own account, he was not the
original source of the teaching he brought, "I am small compared with those who
sent me." [11] He received a traditional teaching formulated within the cultures
and languages of the Middle East and Central Asia, and having embodied that
teaching, undertook a cultural and linguistic translation and transmission into
a western scientific cultural milieu -- first into Russian, later English and
French. Ouspensky was one of the students who helped with the translation into
Anglo-American culture and language. Of course, Gurdjieff was one step closer
to the source, and was by all accounts possessed of greater being -- a real
Master. But Ouspensky mastered the written English language to a remarkable
degree, had an orderly mind and a philosophical bent, and worked for almost half
his life at transmitting what he had received from Gurdjieff to thousands of
students via lectures, the written word, and group meetings.
In the final pages of Fragments, Ouspensky describes a conversation with
Gurdjieff in Constantinople in 1920. "Somewhere about this time I told him in
detail of a plan I had drawn up for a book to expound his St. Petersburg
lectures and talks with commentaries of my own. He agreed to this plan and
authorized me to write and publish it." It seems likely that this was the
genesis of In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, and
this account suggests that Gurdjieff had authorized such an introduction in
advance, some 30 years earlier. If so, then the apparent differences between
the ideas and language of Fragments and All and Everything may be more apparent
than real, with one a very well organized and carefully structured introduction,
the other a complete mytho-epic statement of the teaching. Of course the two
works are not on the same level, but the evidence suggests that Fragments was
considered by Gurdjieff an authentic introduction to the ideas he brought from
the East. Even when he must have known in 1949 that he was dealing with his
last group of students -- the ones who would assume responsibility for the
teaching -- first-person accounts suggest that he sometimes had them listen to
chapters from the manuscript of Mr. Ouspensky's introduction.
NOTES and REFERENCES
1. Gurdjieff, G.I. Meetings with Remarkable Men (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.
Inc., 1969).
2.Ouspensky, P.D., In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of a Unknown Teaching,
(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1949).
3. Salzmann, Michel de, "Footnote to the Gurdjieff Literature", in Gurdjieff: An
Annotated Bibliography, by J. Walter Driscoll and the Gurdjieff Foundation of
California (New York: Garland Publishing, 1985), pp. xviii.
4. Pentland, John , From the Foreword to Toward Awakening: An Approach to the
Teaching Left by Gurdjieff, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980) pp. iii-iv.
5. Nott, C.S., Further Teachings of Gurdjieff: Journey Through This World, (New
York: Samuel Weisner, Inc., 1969)
6. Bennett, J.G. Witness. (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Bennett Books, 1962).
7. McCorkle, Beth, The Gurdjieff Years, 1929-1949: Recollections of Louise March
(Walworth, New York: The Work Study Association, Inc., 1990), pp. 74-75.
8. Bennett, J.G. and E. Bennett, Idiots in Paris. (York Beach, Maine: Samuel
Weiser, Inc., 1991) p. vii.
9. Walker, Kenneth. A Study of Gurdjieff's Teaching, (London: Jonathan Cape,
196?)
10. Reymond, Lizelle. To Live Within: A woman's spiritual pilgrimage in an
Himalayan hermitage. (Portland, Oregon: Rudra Press)
11. Nott quoting Orage recollecting Gurdjieff, in C.S. Nott, Further Teachings of
Gurdjieff, p. 31.
