Encounters with Gurdjieff

My training in academic philosophy taught me how to be critical and discerning. I had also long sought to penetrate the reality behind everyday reality, which in philosophical terms is the difference between “appearance and reality”. Philosophy proper starts with the realisation that not everything is as it appears to be. And so one looks for the means to bridge that divide. So when I first encountered this man Gurdjieff and his teaching, in P.D.Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous in 1972, I was impressed by the possibility I saw there of how we might reliably access the deeper things of life. Here was a man with one foot planted firmly on each side of the divide. He had straddled that gap between the everyday world and what lies beyond. He wasn’t limited by the sterile self-assured scepticism of so many academics, who think they know it all by capitulating to what is simply obvious in everyday terms. He gave full credence to both realities. I was ready to follow him when I understood the steps for getting there. I wrestled with his ideas, and read widely, and opened myself to many means for transcending everyday reality. Then, a corridor opened, and I suddenly found myself walking into a realm beyond the three-dimensional world. As a result of that, my first direct “encounter” with Gurdjieff came over 30 years ago. I sat with a friend whose clairvoyant and mediumship abilities were rapidly opening. Unexpectedly, I was told that Gurdjieff - whose teaching had fascinated and involved me for over a decade - was present with us from the “other side”. Even more astonishing, he spoke directly to me, and asked me to write a book which corrected and extended the teaching he had given before he passed over in 1949. You would have to know the magnetic influence of this man, who arrived in Paris in the early 1920s, and spoke of ancient mysteries he had uncovered. He greatly impacted the intellectual elite of his time in cosmopolitan Paris. He wanted to show people how to access higher states of consciousness. In this he was far ahead of his time, long before the explosion of general interest in these things of the 1960s and 70s. But for Gurdjieff the “timing” was the problem. He was ready to pass on what he knew decades before those in the West were ready to receive and act on it. So he talked at length to those who were ‘interested’ in his ideas, and outlined the grand plan of what was possible. But he could hardly penetrate the inner understanding of even his most eager followers, and get them to do what was necessary to bring about the desired changes in themselves. He himself was the living embodiment of all he spoke of. He was greatly admired by his closest followers, but they hardly knew what to do beyond writing accounts of his ideas and talking about them. He explained to me his great frustration of not being able to get people to “work on themselves” productively to make the things he talked about a living reality in their own lives. It drove him to distraction. There was no-one he could interact with face-to-face, and to whom he could simply pass on all he knew. After a serious car crash in 1924, when he hovered between life and death, he could see no way forward except to hide what he knew in enigmatic writings. The truths would have to be unlocked later by those ready at last to see and use them. As he approached the end of his life, he set up “groups” to protect his writings and carry them forward. This would be the only way his message could get through. In numerous countries of the world you will find “Gurdjieff groups” - either official or unofficial ones - who carry the great promise of his ideas. They meet, they talk, and ponder what he left to them. But at some point there must come the breakthrough, when at last the simple steps for self-transformation are realised and embraced. The full impact of what this man knew and achieved has yet to be birthed into the everyday world. This is the burden of what he explained to me from 1984, when he asked me to help him in this quest. He wanted the basic steps for self-transformation to be presented simply in a new document, at a time when people in general would be ready to receive and use them. He saw such a book as a “restarting of the journey”. He was especially concerned that, when the great shift of the times began, and so many would at last be ripe for spiritual growth and awareness, that clear and simple directions from him would be available to assist that. He didn’t want new seekers confused and restricted by older incomplete versions of his teachings. Those older teachings had become impossibly convoluted and bogged down. When, really, people don’t need to join intellectual clubs, or engage in mental gymnastics, to start working productively on themselves. My “encounters” with Gurdjieff continued for over 6 months through my medium friend. He explained many things and directed me in a whole range of activities to revise his teaching and run groups which embodied his fast-track path to individual transformation. So it was all demonstrated practically as his directions were given to me. You can find all the clues for accessing our subconscious, and renovating our selves through our essence, in the older writings. But he spelt it all out very clearly to me, adding more that wasn’t said before, and wanted me to record it all simply in a new book that would be available to everyone. There is much in this book to inform anyone who has worked with Gurdjieff’s ideas before. You will find a complete explanation of the ‘essences’ and ‘types’, which has not been revealed until now. He adds the missing aspects of his “fourth way” teaching. Clues are given for how he wrote Beelzebub, and why. Once essences can be identified, the next stage of group work for further development is outlined. He details two important exercises he used himself. What he learnt in Morocco is revealed for the first time. There are some interesting secrets and things about himself not previously known. This book also provides sequenced steps for personal development that anyone not previously acquainted with Gurdjieff or his teaching may follow. He had tried to get Ouspensky to write such a generalised introduction in the 1920s and 30s, but without success. He even paused near the beginning of his last book, Life is real only then, when “I am”, in the 1930s, to regret that people not previously acquainted with his ideas couldn’t access what he was saying. But he was very pleased with what I had been able to achieve with his teaching, saying that it showed how people could pursue their own development outside of the established Gurdjieff groups. He found a new channel to communicate with me from 2012, when the time was right at last for me to write this book. His comments were passed on to me during the writing. Curiously, he seems happier with the completed book than I am. I can now send it forth at last, and do so with every good wish to those who read it.