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by William Patrick Patterson
Ever since Mr. Gurdjieff’s death, Sufis have
claimed him as one of theirs. Either that or
claimed that the teaching he brought is really
Sufism in disguise. Parallels between Sufism and
the ancient teaching of The Fourth Way can be
pointed out, of course, certain of his dances,
music and perhaps some practices. No one
reading the first two series of his Legominism, All
& Everything, could doubt his familiarity with and
respect for Mohammed, Islam and Sufism. But
does that make Gurdjieff a Sufi?
Gurdjieff is a Christian. But not of
contemporary vintage. He often made fun of
contemporary Christianity. The Orthodox, he
said, had retained at least something, but Roman Catholicism had degenerated
entirely. He held that Jesus Christ was not the only divine messenger to the
planet, which would of course exempt Gurdjieff’s adhering to the Nicene Creed.
Still, in even a casual look at his life, his ‘Christianity’ is so obvious as to make
one wonder why it would remain a question. Gurdjieff was baptized a Christian,
educated by Russian Orthodox priests, and at his death services were conducted
at his request in the Russian Orthodox Church in Paris by a Russian priest.
Gurdjieff’s Vision of Christianity
Four months after finally succeeding in
opening his Institute for the Harmonious
Development of Man, he declared, “The program of
the Institute, the power of the Institute, the aim of the
Institute, the possibilities of the Institute can be
expressed in a few words: the Institute can help one to
be able to be a Christian.” [Emphasis added.] He went
on to say, “Christianity says precisely this, to love all
men. But this is impossible. At the same time it is
quite true that it is necessary to love. First one must be
able, only then can one love. Unfortunately, with time,
modern Christians have adopted the second half, to
love, and lost view of the first, the religion [of being able to do], which should
have preceded it.”
He then added, “Half the world is Christian, the other half has other
religions. For me, sensible man, this makes no difference; they are the same as
the Christian. Therefore it is possible to say that the whole world is Christian, the
difference is only in name. And it has been Christian not only for one year but for
thousands of years. There were Christians long before the advent of Christianity.”
[Emphasis added.]
This last statement accords with what P. D. Ouspensky reports Gurdjieff
said in Russia some seven years before. When asked what is the origin of The
Fourth Way, Gurdjieff said that to understand what is meant by the term
Christianity one would have to “talk a great deal and to talk for a long time.”
Then he declared: “But for the benefit of those who know already [that is, know
what he means when he says ‘Christianity’] I will say that, if you like, this is
esoteric Christianity.” [Emphasis original.]
Later on, Ouspensky reports Gurdjieff saying:
It will seem strange to many people when I say that this prehistoric
Egypt was Christian many thousands of years before the birth of
Christ, that is to say, that its religion was composed of the same
principles and ideas that constitute true Christianity…. The Christian
church, the Christian form of worship, was not invented by the fathers
of the church. It was all taken in a readymade form from Egypt, only
not from the Egypt we know but from one which we do not know.
This Egypt was in the same place as the other but it existed much
earlier.
What isn’t commonly understood, though the clues are there in Search,
Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson and Meetings with Remarkable Men, is that
Gurdjieff discovered the teaching of The Fourth Way in Egypt and Ethiopia
(Abyssinia). That was his first journey. His second was to rediscover, reassemble
and reformulate elements of the original prehistoric teaching of Christianity—
existing in Egypt before 3,000 b.c.e.—that over time had moved northward with
Pythagoras and into Central Asia.
Bennett’s Bias
One of the advocates for the notion that Gurdjieff’s teaching is based on
Sufism is J. G. Bennett. In his Making a New World, an otherwise interesting study
of Gurdjieff and his teaching, Bennett clearly overlooks the importance of
Gurdjieff’s connection with Egypt while greatly emphasizing that of Central
Asia. But he does write:
We know that the Eastern churches have admirable spiritual exercises,
some of which Gurdjieff taught his own pupils. He refers to a journey
to Abyssinia with Professor Skridlov. He stayed for three months in
Abyssinia where he followed up indications he had found in Egypt of
the importance of the Coptic tradition. At the end of his life, I more
than once heard him speak of Abyssinia, even referring to it as his
‘second home,’ where he hoped to retire and finish his days. He also
mentioned the special knowledge of Christian origins possessed by the
Coptic Church that had been lost by the Orthodox and Catholic
branches of Christianity.
So, like a good bit of what has happened to the Work since Gurdjieff’s
death, the Work has largely brought this confusion upon itself. The recent new
edition of Ouspensky’s Search shows on the cover a Sufi in a turban. This is
congruent with covers of Gurdjieff books which show either Arabic writing or
Persian rugs. This denial of the origins of Gurdieff’s Fourth Way, intentional or
otherwise, now with a historical clash between JudaeoChristianity and Islam
coming to the fore, must be righted if Gurdjieff and the teaching are not to suffer
by association.
Thus, with the understanding that Gurdjieff is a true Christian and that
The Fourth Way is an ancient teaching rooted in prehistoric Egypt—and
therefore, being the original source teaching for all subsequent teachings—let us look
at Gurdjieff’s connection with Islam and Sufism.
In The Herald of Coming Good Gurdjieff speaks of a brotherhood—a word
he puts in quotations apparently to signify that it is something more than a
brotherhood as commonly understood—which exists in the heart of Central Asia.
Later he will refer to it as a “certain Dervish monastery” where he spent two
years studying oriental hypnotism. Because, he says, “I foresaw certain possible
changes in the conditions of ordinary life [there would be a world disaster, if the
‘wisdom’ of the East and the ‘energy’ of the West were not integrated and made
harmonious—see Fritz Peters’ Boyhood with Gurdjieff and Gurdjieff Remembered]
and decided therefore to confide my intentions to a ‘brotherhood’ with a view to
securing in certain ways their future cooperation.” He mentions that long
discussions followed concerning mutual obligations “which, on my side, were
chiefly on the grounds of my future religious and moral actions, and, on their
side, were on the grounds of guiding, in strict accordance with the means
indicated by me, the inner world of people whom I would confide to them.”
Gurdjieff is not going to the West as a disciple or student. He is directing
them in how the students he will send will be taught—“in accordance with the
means indicated by me.” In the translator’s note to Meetings with Remarkable Men,
it states that “Gurdjieff was a master…an actual incarnation of knowledge.” (This
is heartening, as Gurdjieff is often characterized as a “philosopher and mystic,”
but unfortunately speaking of him as a master was not continued.)
Certainly Gurdjieff was well acquainted with Islam and the Sufis. After
his sojourn in Egypt he adopted a disguise and traveled to Mecca, and later he
and Professor Skridlov disguised themselves as a direct descendant of
Mohammed, a Seïd, and as a Persian dervish, respectively, in order to explore
Kafiristan (if Gurdjieff had indeed become a Sufi, why the disguise?). Gurdjieff
certainly holds dervishes in high regard, for he writes in the First Series: “By the
destruction of this ‘dervishism’ those last dying sparks will also be entirely
extinguished there which, preserved as it were in the ashes, might sometime
rekindle the hearth of those possibilities upon which Saint Mohammed counted.”
He speaks in high terms of the founder of Islam calling him “the Sacred
Individual Saint Mohammed” and of Islam as “the fourth great religion.” With
time, however, the purity of the religion was diluted by mixing into it
“something from the fantastic theory of the Babylonian dualists” and “about the
blessings of the notorious ‘paradise’ which as it were, existed ‘in the other
world.’” He notes that Islam “from the very first split into two schools the
‘Sunnite’ and the ‘Shiite’” and that the “psychic hatred of each because of
frequent clashes now transformed completely into an organic hate.” He warned:
“Beings of certain European communities have during recent centuries greatly
contributed by their incitement…in order that the animosity should increase
should they ever unite, since if this was to happen, there might soon be an end
there for those European communities.”
If one brotherhood stands out above all others for Gurdjieff it is clearly the
World Brotherhood. “Among the adepts of this monastery there were former
Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists, Lamaists, and even one Shamanist.
All were united by God the Truth.”
This World Brotherhood is Gurdjieff’s Brotherhood.
Notes
1. Orthodox had retained at least something. J. G. Bennett, Idiots in Paris (York
Beach, Me.: Samuel Weiser, 1991), p. 52.
2. The program of the Institute. G. I. Gurdjieff, Views from the Real World
(London: Arkana, 1984), p. 152.
3. Christians long before the advent of Christianity. Gurdjieff, p. 153.
4. This is esoteric Christianity. P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, p.
102.
5. Prehistoric Egypt was Christian many thousands of years before the birth of Christ.
Ouspensky, p. 302. To follow Gurdjieff’s search in Egypt, see the video
Gurdjieff in Egypt (Fairfax, Calif: Arete Communications, 1999).
6. Certain Dervish monastery. G. I. Gurdjieff, The Herald of Coming Good
(Edmonds, Wash.: Sure Fire Press, 1988), pp. 59, 19.
7. I foresaw certain possible changes in the conditions of ordinary life. Gurdjieff,
Herald, p. 59.
8. Gurdjieff was a master. G. I. Gurdjieff, Meetings with Remarkable Men (New
York: E. P. Dutton, 1963), p. x.
First printed in The Gurdjieff Journal.
William Patrick Patterson is the author of seven books on The Fourth Way, the
latest of which is "Spiritual Survival in a Radically Changing WorldTime."