Writing about Georges Gurdjieff is difficult. In him a mission was concentrated, an extensive reflection on existence, a vision. A project that survives its physical death and continues to unite people who resonate on the same note of research and growth.
Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (Alexandropol, 01/13/1872 - Neuilly, 29/10/1949)
In the photos Georges Gurdjieff has an expression that strikes the viewer in depth; the big mustache hides the upper lip and the intensity of the look seems to penetrate the elsewhere. Those eyes conveyed a very complex belief based on precise principles, like the one that compares life to a mental state. The purpose of existence, according to this great mystic, poet and philosopher, would be to break the mechanisms inside us, dictated by laziness, fear, things that, as Gurdjieff said, make us "pigs", equal to all those who they live without being present to themselves constantly.
Gurdjieff, vehicle of the sacred
Born in Alexandroupolis in southern Russia, from a wealthy sheep farmer who enjoyed great fame as a popular storyteller. Since he was a child, Georges Gurdjieff absorbs the great oral tradition of the regions south of the Caucasus where different and ancient cultures cross. He then embarked on the path of scientific studies, which merged with the profound religious education of Armenian priests. The result is extremely interesting: spiritual rigor and poetic inspiration are mixed with scientific rigor. After having traveled extensively in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia to collect the scattered fragments of ancient traditions of wisdom, he dedicated himself to organically reconstructing the knowledge of the lost truth and transmitting it to Westerners interested in spiritual research.
1924 was the year of this turning point, the year in which Gurdjieff became the vehicle of "an unknown teaching" to be communicated to Western civilization. In that year he landed in New York, where he publicly presented for the first time his sacred Movements, also known as Gurdjieff's Sacred Dances. These are gestures full of vitality and "cleanliness", based on the theory that it is the body that receives and transforms energies and, thus seeking balance, brings man into his unity, leads him to harmony and measure .
Until 1924, Gurdjieff had taught in the oriental manner, communicating his ideas to a small group of students, always and only directly, both in theory and in practice, without ever allowing them to transcribe the indications received. But that year, following a serious car accident, he thought it was time to let everyone know about his ideas "in a form accessible to all".
After attracting a large number of students and disciples among whom there were people of some importance, he founded a school for spiritual development, called the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man.
Gurdjieff and Ouspensky as Socrates and Plato
The ideas of Georges Gurdjieff have spread above all thanks to the efforts and devotion of one of his students, PD Ouspensky, who transmitted the teaching received directly from Gurdjieff in the book Fragments of an unknown teaching . Ouspensky has left us an extraordinary testimony of the work done with Gurdjieff, between the years from 1915 to 1923, and his book has always been considered a genuine trace of this work.
PD Ouspensky admirably conveyed Gurdjieff's teaching, a perfect synthesis of Christianity, Sufism and other religious traditions inserted in a system of psychophysical techniques that seeks to favor the overcoming of the psychological and existential automatisms that condition the human being .
Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way
In Fragments of an Unknown Teaching we read:
In truth, only the man who possesses the four fully developed bodies can be called Man in the full sense of the word. Thus the accomplished man possesses many properties which the ordinary man does not possess. One of these properties is immortality. All religions and all ancient teachings contain the idea that with the acquisition of the fourth body man acquires immortality; and all indicate ways to acquire the fourth body, or immortality.
To understand this fragment one cannot ignore the mention of the so-called Fourth Way. What did Gurdjieff mean by Fourth Way?
We imagine man as a being on a journey, a constant evolution. Man changes as happens with everything in nature, but he can blindly abandon himself to this flow or decide to get to know each other better along the journey. Here then he will undertake a precise path, which Gurdjieff studied in depth and structured in a lucid, precise manner. The fourth way, or way of the astute man, works on the three main centers - mental, emotional, motor - at the same time and it can be followed without abandoning the life that is being done, as the development of the person must start from the environment where he lives, increasing a magnetic center that leads to accomplish his individual path. The conscious effort of self-remembering and re-harmonization are aided by participation in a group of people who help each other stay awake and follow the road.
Gurdjieff did not discredit the personal effort, but was convinced that to overcome certain limits it was essential to join people who had undertaken the same search path. In the Gurdjieffiano lexicon, you cannot go too far if you are not part of a group of people engaged in Partkdolg duty, that is, personal development and self-remembering. A 4th level sangha, that is, a community of researchers, is necessary to be able to carry out valid work on oneself, which does not overwhelm fanaticism, rigidity, negative mysticism, illusion of illusion.
