Gurdjieff

Abstract

This is the first analysis of all of Gurdjieff’s published internal exercises, together with those taught by his students, George and Helen Adie. It includes a fresh biographical study of Gurdjieff, with groundbreaking observations on his relationships with P. D. Ouspensky and A. R. Orage (especially why he wanted to collaborate with them, and why that broke down). It shows that Gurdjieff was, fundamentally, a mystic and that his contemplation-like methods were probably drawn from Mount Athos and its hesychast tradition. It shows the continuity in Gurdjieff’s teaching, but also development and change. His original contribution to Western Esotericism lay in his use of tasks, disciplines, and contemplation-like exercises to bring his pupils to a sense of their own presence, which could, to some extent, be maintained in daily life in the social domain, and not only in the secluded conditions typical of meditation. It contends that he had initially intended not to use contemplation-like exercises, as he perceived dangers to be associated with these monastic methods, and the religious tradition to be in tension with the secular guise in which he first couched his teaching. As Gurdjieff adapted the teaching he had found in Eastern monasteries to Western urban and post-religious culture, he found it necessary to introduce contemplation. His development of the methods is demonstrated, and the importance of the three exercises in the Third Series, Life Is Real Only Then, When “I Am,” is shown, together with their almost certain borrowing from the exercises of the Philokalia.