New Gods in America - G.I. Gurdjieff

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CHAPTER

III

Gurdjieff

One of the most intellectually tantalizing religious groups are the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky disciples. Gurdjieff, about whom much gossip and many facts have emerged, was a powerful-personality Russian philosopher, who died in Paris in 1949. “Gurdjieff was better on emotions; Ouspensky, a mathematician-disciple, on theory,” said Ellen Sil­ verman of Los Angeles, who has a yogalike calm and wears her hair in enormous pigtails. Today, their philosophy of inner development is attracting untold numbers to its gatherings of talk, dance, and music, despite their de-emphasis of proselytization. There are two groups of Gurdjieff people—those from the Gurdjieff Foundation and disciples of W. A. Nyland, who is believed to live near Warwick in the State of New York. Figures are hard to obtain, but there are about four hundred active participants in the New York area belong­ ing to the Foundation. It also has groups in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal, Boston, and Cleveland. Guessing Nyland’s total, five thousand should not be too far off. Gurdjieff’s books, according to the Foundation and the owner of the leading occult book store in New York City, have had very considerable sales recently. With the excep­ tion of a woman leader, I was consistently and continually blocked from a penetrating study of the movement. I was 18

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not allowed to see their Eastern-inspired dancing (though I was told I might be able to see this at another time), attend more than one carefully pre-arranged group meeting, learn more than the most rudimentary (and even that not al­ ways) details of their organization, and was even urged “not to read All and Everything” From the ten Gurdjieff people I talked with, I have a tentative impression that a number of them are the oppo­ site of Gurdjieff himself, who appears to have been a full­ blown character, whereas they appear shy. The reluctance to disclose their activities seems to stem also from the elu­ sive quality of the comfortably-off (though many are not, I am told) and an understandable desire not to have Gurdjieff’s ideas corrupted by simplistic reports. There is an eerie quality noticeable about some of the Gurdjieff people some of the time. Colin Wilson, the author of The Outsider; P. L. Travers, who wrote the Mary Poppins books; Kathryn Hulme of The Nun’s Story; and Katherine Mansfield, the noted short story writer, have all been interested in Gurdjieff. In a lilting, convinced voice, Ellen, a Montessori teacher, twenty-three, said she and her friends did not like to talk about G-O, as G-O was life, and talking about G-O was withdrawing from life. Ellen’s group in Los Angeles con­ sists mainly of young people in the arts and professions, and there are Gurdjieff followers at Harvard, Yale, Radcliffe, and Sarah Lawrence. In New York, twelve young (almost all Ivy Leaguers or graduates of same) assemble under the guidance of a doc­ tor’s wife, Mrs. Louise Welch. George Thompson (not his real name), is twenty-four, (Yale, ’67), a gentle young man with a wave of blond hair and a bony face. He is earning a doctorate at Columbia in philosophy. Mary, twenty-two, his wife of two months, is confident—a pretty blonde, similarly soft in manner, who completed her bachelor’s degree this year at the University of California. Also present was the other older member of their group, an editor who asked not to be identified.

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A Variety of Religious Journeys

George: “I was an Ivy League hippie, taking a lot of drugs, wore huge sideburns [he’s now clean-shaven], took a lot of acid, and was planning to take STP until I encoun­ tered Gurdjieff. I was interested in states of consciousness, mysticism, and had previously worked out an epistemology for religion and art. Then, at Yale, I met a young friend who introduced me to Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff, I realized, was simple, obvious, and direct, a more real kind of life, solid. It releases the imagination in higher emotional centers. In drugs I couldn’t be sure what was real. With Gurdjieff, I see that our life doesn’t belong to us now. We have to reclaim it.” Mary: “I have some hesitation in saying Gurdjieff is God. Each person discovers the truth in himself differently. We’re not limited by dogma; you can only believe in things you can verify yourself. In the Duino Elegies of Rilke, one realizes that the whole idea is hope, that one realizes one’s life. Gurdjieff’s idea is that as we are, we experience no reality, such as my emotions and thoughts, and he doesn’t promise happiness at the beginning.” George: “It’s like the medieval paintings of the soul on the man’s shoulder. We want another self to watch oneself.” Mary: “It’s being aware of my anxieties right now.” George: “You do not dump the bad things. Sometimes it’s better to be uptight. Sometimes you can’t control your negative emotions. Nothing’s obvious. Everything can be turned upside down.” Mrs. Welch: “All religions are the same, in essence.” George: “Gurdjieff is not a belief or a religion.” Mary: “Gurdjieff is an understanding, not a technique.” George: “Mary and I try to ask each other at the end of the day what the day has brought us. We read All and Everything or Beelzebub’s Tale to Elis Grandson [by Gurdjieff] aloud. There are no sacred texts.” Mary: “Mrs. Welch rephrases your questions, asks you what you are really asking. In our group, we don’t dance. Others do. There are exercises, not for audiences but for the participants, for their self-study.”

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George: “The churches are not powerhouses of spiritual energy any more.” Mrs. Welch: “Gurdjieff work should be taken seriously or not at all. We would not want to see it a fad or fashiona­ ble. You might call it esoteric Christianity. Gurdjieff is a form of deep acceptance of life, not resignation.” Some of the Gurdjieff people have an infuriating way of leading one on and then suspending one in mid-air. The most frustrating interview of my life was four hours with Lord Pentland, the president of The Foundation, and a young woman follower, when he managed to reply to my questions with an extraordinary number of non-answers. Fictionalized, but representative, the conversation went as follows: if I said, “God is good,” he would reply, “It depends.” “It depends on what?” “God.” “You mean God isn’t all good?” “I didn’t say that.” Lord Pentland, the St. Paul of the movement in America, is an Englishman, probably in his later fifties, who can be charming. The reader may wish to compare Lord Pent­ land’s approach to me and Gurdjieff’s treatment of visitors described later on. “Gurdjieff,” according to Larry Morris, another early disciple, “chose Lord Pentland to head the work in Amer­ ica.” A profound believer in Gurdjieff’s ideas, John Pent­ land told my wife he had moved to the U.S. some years ago expressly for this purpose, and I had the feeling that other­ wise he found America slightly distasteful. A close friend of Pentland says that actually he loves this country. The Gurdjieff work (The Gurdjieff people always refer to what they do, as Gurdjieff himself did, as “the work”) is centered at a town house on East Sixty-third Street in New York owned by the Gurdjieff Foundation. Said Morris, “I’d rather not tell you who the secretary and treasurer are, as it would give more of an impression of organization than is justified.” Here are kept Gurdjieff’s writings, as well as

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A Variety of Religious Journeys

books on religions of the world. Classes and sacred dances are conducted here. In Westchester County the Foundation owns a thirty-acre property. On weekends they do pottery, weaving, and other artistic activities. Lord Pentland flies once a month or so to Los Angeles and San Francisco where he heads groups. Mr. Morris, a retired cultural attache of the U. S. State Department, leads groups in Boston and Cleveland. Mrs. Welch flies to hers in Toronto. “W. A. Nyland,” according to Morris, “lectures and leads followers. He used to be connected with the Foundation. “Other people,” says Morris, a courtly, reserved, gray­ haired man, “read the books, see that they can make some­ thing of it and start groups.” I was given a tour through the Gurdjieff Foundation building on East Sixty-third Street. Few, if any, outsiders have ever been inside. There was a large hall painted a cheerful off-white where the “sacred dances and move­ ments” are performed. But I did not see them, though I was told that films have been shown in New York. The last public performance was given about ten years ago. Upstairs were various lounge-type meeting rooms. One was one-half or one-third the size of the gymnasium-type hall. Mr. Mor­ ris said, “The whole New York group fitted in there a few years ago but now we need the large hall.” I had an exciting, mysterious glimpse of a youngish man meditating in a sort of Oriental trance. That was it! Except for the downstairs office. Mrs. Welch says, “Trances are defi­ nitely not encouraged in the Gurdjieff work. We are inter­ ested in waking up, and not in any form of day or night dream.” Morris said, “I do not think you can write about Gurdjieff successfully unless you join as a sincere disciple. Otherwise you cannot attend the meetings.” Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, the first of three books under the general title of All and Everything, is 1238 pages long, costs $9.95, and is an infuriatingly written book because of its convolutions of sentences and hodgepodge of subjects. The second book, Meetings with Remarkable Men, is a

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remarkable book. Its conclusion is, “Formerly it may be said, my whole being was possessed by egoism. All my mani­ festations and experiencings flowed from my vanity. The meeting with Father Giovanni killed all this, and from then on there arose in me that ‘something’ which has brought the whole of me to the unshakable conviction that, apart from the vanities of life, there exists a ‘something else’ which must be the aim and ideal of every more or less thinking man, and that it is only this something else which may make a man really happy and give him real values, instead of the illusory ‘goods’ with which in ordinary life he is always and in everything full.” The secrets of this “something else” will be revealed pre­ sumably in “the third series of my writings,” so far unpub­ lished. Though Gurdjieff refers to this third book a num­ ber of times and the foreword says it is “being prepared for publication,” a question about it addressed to a Gurdjieff leader, produced a vague answer. For the most part Meetings is a succession of chapters about “remarkable” personalities Gurdjieff knew and col­ laborated with in searches for the meaning of life. Their adventures are exciting: a camel bite leads to death, escape from “white slavery,” disguises, dervishes, fights, and desert and mountainous treks through many dangers. Gurdjieff tells a good story. Orage says in his Translators’ Note: “Gurdjieff was a master. . . . But to meet him was always a test. In his pres­ ence every attitude seemed artificial. Whether too deferen­ tial, or on the contrary pretentious, from the first moment it was shattered; and nothing remained but a human crea­ ture stripped of his mask and revealed for an instant as he truly was.” Gurdjieff writes, “From my point of view, he can be called a remarkable man who stands out from those around him by the resourcefulness of his mind, and who knows how to be restrained in the manifestations which proceed from his nature, at the same time conducting him­ self justly and tolerantly towards the weaknesses of oth­ ers.” In the book Gurdjieff “managed to earn a great deal,

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A Variety of Religious Journeys

having besides my official salary several unofficial sources of income of a rather questionable character. These he de scribes as payment by local officials to “arrange” the laying of a new railroad through their towns. Whereas Gurdjieff had no such power, as assistant to a railroad engineer, he knew of its route beforehand. On another occasion: “At the house I asked the landlady for scissors, clipped my sparrow to the shape of a canary, and then colored it fantastically with the aniline dyes. I took this sparrow to Old Samarkand where I immediately sold it, claiming that it was a special ‘American canary.’ ” He sold a number of such sparrows and fled before discovery. A Gurdjieff expert says these in­ cidents should be considered as “parables, an Eastern form of writing.” In a secret monastery he observed “sacred dances” which he says he might describe “in a special book.” Were these the model for the sacred dances currently performed by the Gurdjieff people? Chapters V to VIII of The Master Game by Dr. Robert S. DeRopp are highly interesting. These pages describe the current “work” of The Gurdjieff Foundation in the study of man, the Universe and its mysteries, according to its leaders. The book has frequent witty asides, historical commentaries, and sharp observations on men and women, ranging from power-mad conquerors to banal hippies. It’s not entirely original (“Some truths can’t be original,” re­ plies Mrs. Welch). Dr. DeRopp, a biochemist, outlines the three principal physical classifications—endomorphs, mesomorphs, and ectomorphs—and their corresponding temperments— viscerotonic, somatotonic and cerebrotonic. He describes the essences of men and their play-acting selves. He de­ scribes where psychotherapy has to stop and creative psy­ chology begin. He emphasizes the five stages of conscious­ ness. The third, and most familiar, “self-sense is narrow, limited and strictly personal.” The objective of the guru and the student—the fifth—is the transcendence of self.