The Gurdjieff Foundation

After Gurdjieff’s death in Paris in 1949, his work was carried on by his closest pupil and collaborator, Jeanne de Salzmann, under whose guidance centers of study were gradually established in Paris, New York, London, and Caracas. Over the past thirty years other centers of work have radiated from them in major cities of the Western world. The pupils living in America established the Gurdjieff Foundation of New York in 1953. Shortly thereafter, groups were started on the West Coast and in Canada. Similar branches of varying size have been formed throughout the world and at present there may be between five and ten thousand persons in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Middle East studying this teaching under the guidance of pupils who worked personally with Gurdjieff when he was alive. The main centers of study remain Paris, New York, and London because of the relatively large concentration of first-generation Gurdjieff pupils in these cities. Other groups maintain close correspondence with the principal centers, usually in relationship to one or two of the pupils who often travel to specific cities in order to guide the work of these groups. The general articulation of these various groups, both within America and throughout the world, is a cooperative one, rather than one based on strictly sanctioned jurisdictional control.

The Foundation offers its students a variety of activities whose form and emphasis change to some extent in response to cultural conditions and individual needs. Usually, inquiries and experiments are conducted in small groups under conditions that have the potential for developing in each individual the faculty of attention. As has already been indicated, the Gurdjieff teaching offers a remarkably comprehensive psychology of levels of attention and a many-sided practical method for developing access to this power in relationship to the three basic sources of perception in the human psyche—the three centers.

From the outset, pupils are encouraged and assisted in the study of the liberation of attention, which remains unexplored in the conditions of modern life. Such work is understood to be indispensable for what Gurdjieff called “self-observation.” In fact, as has also been indicated, Gurdjieff taught that this is a universal and essential discipline, which was conveyed by Socrates and ancient teachings in the words of the Delphic oracle—“Know thyself”—as well as in the Gospels under the cryptic one-word command gregoreite (awake) and in Buddhism under the designation nana dhasana (vision). But although clear enough to initiates in these ancient traditions, it is practically inaccessible to a modern Western-educated individual. The many and various forms of work offered by the Gurdjieff Foundation are understood as a way for modern people to grasp and put into practical use this discipline which is said to be literally indispensable to real progress in the regenerate life.

The Gurdjieff Foundation approaches the question of obedience and authority, which is of such concern in the modern world, in this context. By voluntarily subjecting oneself to such a work of self-study, the student may come to realize that not only is one responsible for one’s own work, and that on one level the student can and must rely only on himself or herself, but also that on a larger scale the student is entirely dependent on the help of others similarly engaged. Thus, in essence and in actual practice, nothing is given to a student unless the student asks for it, and then only after the student has studied the theory of the teaching sufficiently to understand intellectually the nature of the help being asked for.

Related to this orientation is the basic Gurdjieff idea of a “Way in Life,” which, as has been mentioned, has exerted considerable influence, under varying interpretations, on many new religious and psychological movements in the Western world. As practiced by the Foundation, it means that the student seeks to understand life as it is, without attempting to alter anything in the name of inner development. Relationships to family, vocation, personal ties, and obligations are, at least to start with, left intact both for the material they provide for self-understanding and for the ultimate value and force that all human relationships contain when they are engaged in with a more central and harmonious attention.

The activities of the Foundation include the study of the Gurdjieff ideas, group meetings, study of the movements and sacred dances left by Gurdjieff, music, crafts and household work, the study of traditions, public demonstrations of work, and work with children and young people.

In group meetings students verify the authenticity of their observations through expressing them in the presence of others. The place of group leader is taken by one or several experienced pupils, and great care is taken that these meetings do not revolve around the person of the leader or turn into speculative, psychological discussions or encounters. These meetings have little in common with either group therapy sessions or with religious/spiritual meetings in their known forms.

Crafts and household work are engaged in principally as a means of throwing light on the details of everyday life and to expose the cumulative force of self-illusion and passivity that holds sway even in the most “favorable” stations of life.

Gurdjieff reconstituted the “movements” exercises he had met with in Central Asia for his own pupils under intensive conditions of inner discipline. Through the guidance of Jeanne de Salzmann and Jessmin Howarth, the Foundation has taken precautions to transmit these exercises under comparable conditions, as part of the central aim of developing the moral and spiritual power of individuals, through the study and growth of the attention factor in the human organism. It is assumed that without the help of prepared teachers and without a solid connection to the ideas and the inner work, the practice of the movements cannot give the results intended. Therefore, at present, the movements are studied mainly at the principal established centers. Under Jeanne de Salzmann, a series of films documenting the movements have been made in order to preserve a record of the quality of inner work that the movements demand.

Group meetings and, where they are taught, the movements are comparatively invariant forms of practice of the Gurdjieff Foundation. The numerous other forms show more variety from center to center, depending on the makeup of the group and the specific line of inquiry that is held to be most useful at a given time or place.

The membership of the Gurdjieff Foundation worldwide exhibits considerable diversity with respect to social class, age, occupation, and educational background, although exact statistics are unavailable. Like Gurdjieff himself during his life, the Foundation attracts the interest of a surprisingly wide variety of people.
 

A Note on The Gurdjieff / de Hartmann Music (Note 5)

by Laurence Rosenthal

The young Thomas de Hartmann, in search of a spiritual teacher, came to Gurdjieff in 1916 and soon became his disciple. Since Gurdjieff was in no sense a trained composer, de Hartmann also became the ideal instrument for the expression of Gurdjieff’s musical thoughts. He began by harmonizing, developing, and fully realizing Gurdjieff’s music for the sacred dances, or Movements, which were an integral part of Gurdjieff’s teaching. Some years later, de Hartmann collaborated in a similar way on Gurdjieff’s musical works that were independent of the Movements. Amazingly, these latter pieces, very considerable in number, were almost all composed between 1925 and 1927 at the Prieuré in Fountainebleau. In 1927 this musical work came to an end and Gurdjieff never composed again.

Gurdjieff’s views on the subject of music, and indeed on art in general, stem from his differentiation between what he terms subjective and objective art. Most of the music we know, he says, is subjective. Only objective music is based on an exact knowledge of the mathematical laws that govern vibration of sounds and the relationship of tones.

In either case, the particular configuration of sounds will evoke a response in the human psyche in which the relation of the tones and their sonic qualities will be translated into some form of inner experience. This phenomenon appears to be based on a precise mathematical relationship between the properties of sound and some aspect of our receptive apparatus.

It is difficult to speak of the response to what could be considered objective art. It would appear to transcend the ordinary associative process which we have all experienced. In most of the music we know, at least within the common experience of a given culture, certain progressions and qualities of tones as well as their combination and spacing in time will evoke in the listener particular sensations and emotions that are shared in common with others. This phenomenon is as undeniable as it is seemingly inexplicable. It must result from a sympathetic resonance activated within the listener which can, moreover, also trigger associations with past experience, even when the connection between the sound and the memory is obscure or unknown. In most art, this power of vibration is used with only partial knowledge of the process and its consequences. Limited by his subjective consciousness, what the artist transmits can produce no more than an equally subjective response.

It is therefore Gurdjieff’s contention that the results of this subjective expression are accidental, and even produce opposite effects in different people. “There can be no unconscious creative art,” he asserts.

Conversely, objective music is based on a precise and complete knowledge of the mathematics determining the laws of vibration, and will therefore produce a specific and predictable result in the listener. Gurdjieff gives as an example a nonreligious person coming to a monastery. Hearing the music that is sung and played there, the person feels the desire to pray. In this instance, the capacity to bring someone into a higher interior state is given as one of the properties of objective art. The effect, depending on the person, differs only in degree.

What is paramount, then, in objective music is the exactness of its intention and the mastery of means to realize that intention. All the arts, according to Gurdjieff, were in ancient time related to the laws of mathematics and served as repositories of higher knowledge about man and the cosmos, encoded in various forms and thus preserved from later distortion. Even if the inner meaning were for periods of time forgotten, the “text” remained intact, the essence within waiting to be rediscovered.

This view of art is reflected in the cosmological side of Gurdjieff’s teaching, and especially in his use of the musical scale as a model of the universe, mirroring the two great laws which govern all cosmic processes. The form of music is seen as a microcosm, expressing on the scale of sound perceivable by the human ear the same dynamics that comprise all cosmic movement.

Thus the law of three with its positive, negative, and reconciling forces is echoed in the triadic structures of music, in which combinations of three tones constantly give birth to new combinations, with certain tones in common. Moreover, the law of seven, manifesting in a chain of octaves stretching like a cosmic ladder down from the ultimate source of Creation through increasingly dense orders of being, presents the specific form of the major scale in music, with its succession of tones and semitones. The semitones form the “intervals” that block or deflect the progression of any process and which require new sources of energy in order to be bridged, allowing evolutionary movement to continue. The subtle vibrancy of the “energy field” that exists between mi and fa and between si and do is palpable to any sensitive musician.

Thus it seems clear that in Gurdjieff’s view the mere enjoyment of pleasant musical sounds, however serious and exalted, does not even remotely approach the ultimate function of music as a science as well as an art, as a kind of diagram of higher knowledge, and as a possible food for human growth and evolution. It was principally in the East that Gurdjieff discovered art fulfilling this original and sacred purpose, the embodiment of truth. Ancient Eastern art could be read like a script. It was not for liking or disliking, he said, but for understanding.
 
 

Notes

1. Review of the film Meetings With Remarkable Men, in Material for Thought 8 (Spring 1980) 86 (San Francisco: Far West Editions).
2. John Pentland, entry on P. D. Ouspensky in The Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1987) 11:143.
3. G. Gurdjieff’s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man: Prospectus No. 1, p. 3 (privately printed, ca. 1922).
4. G. I. Gurdjieff, Meetings with Remarkable Men, 270.
5. Adapted from “Gurdjieff and Music,” by Laurence Rosenthal, in Gurdjieff: Essays and Reflections on the Man and His Teaching.
 

Bibliography

There now exists a vast and growing body of literature relating to Gurdjieff. Readers wishing to pursue the secondary literature are referred to the excellent and comprehensive Gurdjieff: An Annotated Bibliography, by J. Walter Driscoll and the Gurdjieff Foundation of California (New York: Garland, 1985).
 

Sources

Gurdjieff, G. I. Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson: An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man. New York: Dutton, 1978.

—————-. Life is Real Only Then, When “I Am.” New York: Dutton, 1982.

—————-. Meetings with Remarkable Men. New York: Dutton, 1969.

—————-. Views from the Real World: Early Talks in Moscow, Essentuki, Tiflis, Berlin, London, Paris, New York and Chicago. As recollected by his pupils. New York: Dutton, 1975.
 

Studies

Bennett, J. G.. Gurdjieff: Making a New World. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.

Daumal, Rene. Mount Analogue: An Authentic Narrative. Boston: Shambhala, 1986.

Hartmann, Thomas and Olga de. Our Life with Mr. Gurdjieff. New York: Penguin, 1992.

Moore, James. Gurdjieff: The Anatomy of a Myth. Dorset, England: Element Books, 1991. [I am grateful to Mr. Moore for his help in establishing the chronology of Gurdjieff’s life.]

Needleman, Jacob and George Baker, eds. Gurdjieff: Essays and Reflections on the Man and His Teaching. New York: Continuum, 1996.

Nicoll, Maurice. Living Time. Boulder and London: Shambhala, 1984.

—————-. The New Man. Boston and London: Shambhala, 1986.

Ouspensky, P. D. In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949.

—————-. A New Model of the Universe. New York: Random House, 1971.

—————-. Tertium Organum. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981.

—————-. The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution. New York: Random House, 1981.

Pentland, John. Exchanges Within: Questions from Everyday Life. New York: Continuum, 1997.

Vaysse, Jean. Toward Awakening: An Approach to the Teaching Left by Gurdjieff. New York: Arkana, 1990.

Webb, James. The Harmonious Circle. New York: Putnam’s, 1980.