George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff

"Original name George S. Georgiades (b. 1872?, Alexandropol, Armenia, Russian Empire--d. Oct. 29, 1949, Neuilly, near Paris), Greco-Armenian mystic and philosopher who founded an influential quasi-religious movement.

"Details of Gurdjieff's early life are uncertain, but he is thought to have spent his early adult years traveling in northeast Africa, the Middle East, India, and especially Central Asia, learning about various spiritual traditions." - - Encyclopaedia Britannica

"In the course of his years of seeking, Gurdjieff fell ill with some of the most pugnacious micro-organisms the East could muster; and more than once he was grievously wounded by stray bullets, as he skirted the edges of wars and revolutions. He spent years in monasteries in Central Asia, including a spiritual community in the mountains of Bokhara, the Hindu Kush of Afghanistan; he was apparently in close contact with mystics tucked away in the esoteric circles of the Russian Orthodox orders; he studied in Tibet and India." - - John Shirley, The Shadows of Ideas - A Distant Glimpse of Gurdjieff

"He moved to Moscow about 1913 and began teaching there and in Petrograd, returning to the Caucasus at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917. Rejoined by some followers, Gurdjieff established the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in 1919 at Tiflis (now Tbilisi), Georgia; it was reestablished at Fontainebleau, Fr., in 1922. Its members, many from prominent backgrounds, lived a virtually monastic life, except for a few banquets, at which Gurdjieff would engage in probing dialogue and at which his writings were read. Ritual exercises and dance were also part of the regimen, often accompanied by music composed by Gurdjieff and an associate [Thomas deHartmann]. Performers from the institute appeared in Paris in 1923 and in four U.S. cities the following year and brought considerable attention to Gurdjieff's work." - - Encyclopaedia Britannica

"Gurdjieff wrote three books that help introduce people to his ideas. These are Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, Meetings with Remarkable Men, and Life is Real Only Then When I Am. A student named P.D. Ouspensky introduced Gurdjieff's teachings in an intellectual form accessible to Western readers in his book In Search of the Miraculous." - Richard Hodges

"It is clear from Gurdjieff's writings that hypnotism, mesmerism and various arcane methods of expanding consciousness must have played a large part in the studies of the Seekers of Truth. But none of these processes had any bearing on black magic..." - P. Travers, "Gurdjieff", Man, Myth & Magic, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural

"Men are machines who are not responsible for their actions. We cannot do. With us everything happens." "Buffers are appliances by means of which man can always be in the right. To destroy inequality and suffering would destroy evolution and the "shock" needed to overcome the buffers." - - - George Gurdjieff

"Gurdjieff's basic assertion was that human life as ordinarily lived is similar to sleep; transcendence of the sleeping state required work, but when it was achieved, an individual could reach remarkable levels of vitality and awareness. The Fontainebleau centre was closed in 1933, but Gurdjieff continued teaching in Paris until his death." - Encyclopaedia Britannica

"The year 1946 marked the beginning of the last phase of his teaching, a period that, for those who had known him earlier, was richer than any that had gone before." "The exotic flavors and the vodka in which the famous 'Toasts to the Idiots' were drunk ('idiot' in this case having its original Greek meaning of private person, that which in myself I am) did not make things easier. But easiness was not the aim. The patriarchal host, massive of presence, radiating a serene power at once formidable and reassuring, dispensed this 'food' in various ways, always unexpected; sometimes in thunderclaps of rage, sometimes telling a story that only one of all the table would know was meant for himself, sometimes merely by look or gesture thrusting home the truth. Masks were mercilessly stripped off. Beneath the exacting benevolence of Gurdjieff's gaze everyone was naked. "But occasionally for those who could face their own situations, he would fleetingly let fall his own mask. It was possible then to see that behind the apparent mercilessness was sorrow and compassion." - P. Travers, "Gurdjieff", Man, Myth & Magic, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural

"Constant awareness of the inevitability of death is the only means to acquire the urgency to override the robot." - - George Gurdjieff

Numerous biographies have been written on Gurdjieff, one of the 20th century's most influential esoteric teachers. Gurdjieff is one of the great influences on the QFS, representing a prior living tradition that has proven valuable in explaining the human condition time and again. Gurdjieff's teaching is comparable to a cold shower of realism, dispelling much of the fluffy wishfulness of other esoteric teaching or of the New Age. While Gurdjieff teaches a rather dim conception of the human condition, where man is by default only a mechanical part of a food chain, Gurdjieff's life's work demonstrates a faith in the possibility of this being altered, at least for a small portion of humanity.

Most of Gurdjieff's system of metaphysics and cosmology has been transmitted through P. D. Ouspensky but Gurdjieff stands apart from his followers as the uncontested source of the teaching.

The 4th Way Work consists of mental exercises of awareness, specific physical exercises such as traditional temple dances and specific movements aimed at developing attention, group work in a school context and applied study of an extensive body of teachings on the inner structure of man and the universe.

See 4th Way, Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson, Ouspensky and any articles labeled 4W for more on Gurdjieff.