This Man’s Work Is Incredibly Important But Gets Lost Due To Controversy.
The book Georgi Ivanovitch Gurdjieff – The Man, The Teaching, His
Mission is a work of immense power and love by William Patrick
Patterson, a teacher of “the Work,” as Gurdjieff’s teaching is called
and the author/ producer of several books and videos on the subject.
It is over 600 pages long (over 400 narrative with 200 supplementary)
and is a painstakingly precise account of two figures little known in
the mass media, almost overlooked in popular history, and yet who
may have been among the greatest thinkers of their time.
Georgi Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (G) appeared in St. Petersburg in
1916; P.D. Uspenskii (as Patterson refers to him) met him shortly
thereafter and it later turned out that Gurdjieff had sought him out
for his writing ability and notoriety in intellectual circles to help
build his following. Patterson has gone through the personal papers
and books of Gurdjieff’s students and G’s own writings to piece
together his early years, including his brush with death and his
apparent teachers, as well as the society of seekers of which he was a
member before he appeared in St. Petersburg. Patterson himself has
written extensively about the teaching and some of the material, for
example the section on the women who studied with Gurdjieff in
Paris (a group called the “Rope”) presumably echoes his earlier work,
Ladies of the Rope.
Patterson has also pieced together the early life of
P.D. Uspenskii, including his own searches for ancient wisdom and
personal relationships, and brings the two men together in the
strange circumstances that were pre-revolution Russia, circa 1916.
But what is extraordinary is how Patterson describes
Gurdjieff’s method, wonderfully echoing Uspenskii’s own
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description of how he was exposed to the teaching which is the spine
of Uspenskii’s great work,
In Search of the Miraculous. Prospective
students were introduced mysteriously and led to a strange space
with Persian carpets and strange artifacts, where they met a man they
each described as unique, powerful, insightful and with the capacity
to see right through them. Everything was kept secretive and private.
You had to know someone who knew someone to meet Gurdjieff and
become a follower in St. Petersburg, and also later. It was also made
clear that if one did not seize the opportunity to take advantage of the
moment, one might never get another chance.
Uspenskii became convinced that Gurdjieff had access to
ancient wisdom and wanted it for himself—but Patterson describes
how at various turns Gurdjieff “played” with his individualistic
personality to try to make him see his own habitual tendency – that
is, to live in his head and not his heart.
The Gurdjieff/Uspenskii groups fled the Bolsheviks and
survived many hardships, often through luck and more often
through Gurdjieff’s cunning understanding of human
nature. Eventually Uspenskii could not continue to accept many of
Gurdjieff’s methods and peculiarities and broke away, although his
wife continued on with Gurdjieff for some time.
Gurdjieff admired the energy and power of America and also
satirized the materialism of the United States, and used his visits to
raise capital by “shearing” the wealthy to subsidize the work and the
lessons of the less fortunate. Patterson spans decades as he follows
Gurdjieff to his Prieure (institute) in Paris and describes his methods
of hard work to break the conditioning of students—intelligentsia
would clean toilets and garden—and his conversations over meals
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and in cafes where students would toast themselves as various kinds
of “idiots.”
A major part of being an “idiot” is believing in the imaginary
concepts of the mind as opposed to what one has gotten for oneself.
At one point he hears Gurdjieff’s voice in his head with nothing
being said verbally. This is precisely the sort of “miracle” Uspenskii
had been seeking and yet he needed to analyze it and could not
simply accept it as a clear indication of his position under his teacher
and his need to sublimate his own formative mind and the “need to
know.”
All of these mysterious aspects are hinted at and yet not posited
authoritatively by Patterson, the consummate researcher and
observer. What is posited is simply that such events occurred –the
meaning and interpretation (the knowing) remains a mystery. Finally
Uspenskii broke completely with Gurdjieff and founded his own
school, first in England during the Second World War and then in the
United States.
As Patterson calls the teaching a “sacred science,” what
Gurdjieff saw in Uspenskii was the ability to convey his “system”
scientifically, due to his great intelligence. This would make it a
bridge between East and West and comprehensible in terms of the
Renaissance and Enlightenment in the West. Where Uspenskii fell
short, apparently, was his own egoism and coldness—he did not
seem to manifest Gurdjieff’s own capacity for kindness and
compassion. He did not live the Work as much as he seemed to relish
the role of revered and admired teacher/ writer.
Patterson follows both Uspenskii and Gurdjieff’s personal
journeys and describes the work of many of their followers, some
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self-appointed or anointed and others viable. One such personage is
Lord John Pentland, who studied with both Uspenskii and Gurdjieff
and later led the Work in the U.S., becoming the beloved teacher of
the author.
As you read through the dialogues and studies you can’t help
but see the threads of modern New Age thought as well as teachings
like Advaita and Nonduality, along with the historical motifs of
Theosophy and mysticism that were concurrent with Gurdjieff’s
arrival on the scene.
For example Krishnamurti’s teaching galvanized Americans,
and Uspenskii is asked about him at one point:
“He says a system cannot awake a man. Certainly it cannot.
Mathematics cannot build a bridge. But if a bridge is built without
mathematics, it collapses. If Krishnamurti keeps to this point of
view–he will not be alone. Many people believe in spontaneous
awakening, just be realization, and without a system and without
following another man!”
Here we can sense the immensity of Gurdjieff’s contribution in
its effect on Uspenskii, a man who wants scientific proof of miracles
but has been opened to the limitations of science by his teacher,
Gurdjieff, who brought a system of “sacred science” that bridged the
heart and formatory (left brain) mind (Ego).
It was no small feat that Gurdjieff attempted to introduce this
system in the “Christian” west at a time when conventional religion
ran the show. True Christianity was a sacred science which
attempted to confront life in its full grandeur and immensity from a
position of awe.
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This is reminiscent of the “neters” of Egypt, where deities
represented the organic reality of natural forces like the wind, sun,
tide and so on, in which man plays his part naturally and without the
urge to “conquer” nature. (Interested readers might look up
Patterson’s DVD,
Gurdjieff in Egypt which traces the author’s own
journey to Cairo and his description of Gurdjieff’s sources and
influences.)
But where Gurdjieff diverges with modern Western religion is
in its anthropomorphism and personalization of a “God.” God and
all of the vital life forces exist for Gurdjieff but at a level beyond
man’s scientific and logical comprehension. All is impersonal and
impartial, even sex.
This goes against much of modern pop culture, psychology,
conventional thought and religion and also rubs against parts of our
interior conditioning— since we are committed to notions of
romantic love. Gurdjieff’s “love” is seemingly an impersonal and
objective love of What Is –the Great System that he brings to light and
tries to convey to his students both through his lectures and perhaps
more importantly, through the drama that was his own Life.
In Patterson’s enormous breadth of research and narration he
truly delivers the reader into the full context of the historical period
that is no more –before computers and the Internet –where these two
men in fact anticipated such scientific wonders and saw the vast
intelligence that is inherent in what Gurdjieff referred to as “Great
Nature.”
Many kinds of reader will profit immeasurably from
Patterson’s work. Interested seekers like me, who never fully
committed to a “school” but were intrigued by the legend of both
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men and their system will gain a profound understanding of the
meaning and sense of “the Work” including its historical context and
the unique individuals who came in and out of the teaching. The
tenor of the time is illustrated with wonderful photographs of the
surroundings in early 20th Century France, Russia and the United
States, and portraits the main players, along with the pithy
commentary.
I am sure that direct students of the disciples of Lord Pentland’s
line to Uspenskii and Gurdjieff will gain a great deal more in terms of
both historical context and insight to the machinations and
methodologies of their teachers and fellow students. Again this
amazing biography is a work of great tribute and love by a truly
devoted student and teacher.
--Tom Bunzel
See more at:
http://www.collective--‐evolution.com/2014/01/17/the--‐
controversial--‐yet--‐insightful--‐work--‐of--‐georgi--‐ivanovitch--‐gurdjieff/
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