Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 13, No.

3, 1998 321

G.I.Gurdjieff: Some References to Love

SOPHIA WELLBELOVED

ABSTRACT New developments in the Gurdjieff. teaching (the Work) have raised ques-
tions about the authentic line of the teaching. James Moore in his article "Moveable
Feasts: The Gurdjieff Work" (Religion Today 9 (2), 1994: 11-16) argues that, in terms
of the dialectic between personal endeavour and supernal grace, Gurdjieff's teaching is
based on making effort rather than receiving grace, working rather than being worked
upon. The article looks at some references to love made by Gurdjieff and by some of his
pupils. It suggests that, although absent from Work teaching in the Gurdjieff Society in
London from the 1950s to the 1980s, grace was an element of Gurdjieff s teaching, and
that new practices may serve to restore grace.

Introduction
I would like to look at some references to love to be found in Views From the Real
World: Early Talks of Gurdjieff (Gurdjieff, 1976—hereafter VFTRW) and in the
writings of Gurdjieff s pupils in relation to James Moore's article "Moveable
Feasts: The Gurdjieff Work" (Moore, 1994).
Moore analyses new developments within the Gurdjieff Work in terms of the
dialectic between personal endeavour and supernal grace. He writes that from
1949 until 1980 teaching led by Mme H.H.Lannes (who was "Mme de Salz-
mann's chosen representative and plenipotentiary in England ...", Moore, 1994:
12) in the Gurdjieff Society in London was based on Gurdjieff theory, and on a
demand for an active personal struggle 'to be', on the requirement for the pupil
to 'work on himself, to 'remember himself. Moore compares this rigorous
approach with the new post-1980 'deconstructed' teaching offered by Gurdjieff's
successor, Jeanne de Salzmann in which
... the pupil's new experience of 'being worked on' and Tjeing remem-
bered' was posited in a mystical illuminism which hinted encourag-
ingly at a supernal look of love'—albeit not specifying its presumable
divine, demiurgic or angelic provenance. In a doctrinal corollary of
seismic implications, fusion with supernal source replaced individua-
tion as the pupil's goal...
... in regular communal 'sittings', the highly energised love from
above' professedly entered the pupil's subtle body through an 'aper-
ture' at his crown... (Moore, 1994: 13)
After 30 years of unremitting struggle, the Gurdjieff teachers (and the pupils
who had stayed the course) may well have felt that "recourse to striving brings
diminishing returns to the point of counter-productivity" (Moore, 1994: 14). In
any case, the precedent for changes in Work teaching had already been set by

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322 S. Wellbeloved

Gurdjieff himself. He often changed the focus and form of his teaching and these
changes do seem to reflect changes in contemporary interests as well as the
needs of his pupils.
For example, Gurdjieff's early teaching in Moscow (1912-1916) was partly
expounded in occult terms specifically because this was already an area of
interest to the Moscow intelligentsia in general and his pupils in particular.
(VFTRW: 14) His choice of ballet as a teaching vehicle also seems connected to
Muscovite interests.
Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at Fontainbleau-
Avon in France was fully functional for only two years (1922-1924). After the
closure of his Institute, Gurdjieff again changed the form of his teaching in a way
which also seems to reflect contemporary interests.
From 1924 to 1928 Gurdjieff was based in Paris and his main focus was on
writing Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (Gurdjieff, 1950—hereafter BTTHG).
Paris during the 1920s and 1930s was the literary centre of the Western world
and writing was certainly an important contemporary interest. Although Gurd-
jieff scorned "bon ton literary language" (BTTHG: 7), he was engaged in the
fashionable activity of writing.
Gurdjieff had a keen eye for the fashionable activities of his time and was able
to present his leaching in a form that reflected contemporary interests: occultism
and ballet in Russia, occultism and literature in Paris. Thus, if Mme de Salzmann
changed Ihe form of the teaching so as to reflect the interests of people in the
1960s and 1970s, she would be entirely within Gurdjieff's own 'tradition'.
The fact lhal the Work changed its focus often is acknowledged by Jeanne de
Salzmann in the introduction to VFTRW. She is quoted as stating that a
"fundamental characteristic" of Gurdjieff's teaching was
... that while the truth sought for was always the same, the forms
through which he helped his pupils approach it served only for a
limited time. As soon as a new understanding had been reached the
form would change. (VFTRW: vii)
In a personal communication I was informed by a pupil, who belonged to The
Gurdjieff Society in the 1960-70s and who lived in France in the early to
mid-1970s, that the changes in work practice described in "Moveable Feasts" as
taking place in London in the 1980s, were already established in M.Deselle's
group in France in the early 1970s.1
Thus the new Gurdjieff teaching was in operation at much the same time as
the publication of VFTRW (copyright 1973). Whether or not Mme de Salzmann
intended the publication of VFTRW to give ideological support for the new
teaching, its emphasis on love does go some way to provide support for the new
practices.
Moore points out that "Though the French teachers scrupulously eschewed
Yogic terminology", the teaching they propounded does seem to be based on
energy flows via Chakra centres:
In regular communal 'sittings' the highly energised love from above'
professedly entered the pupils subtle body through an 'aperture' at his
crown, (cf Kundalini's Lotus of a Thousand Petals) (Moore, 1994: 13)
Eastern clothes, food, and music as well as religious teachings were being
absorbed into European culture during the late 1960s and 1970s largely through
 GJ.Gurdjieff 323

the increase in student and youth travel to and from India via the Iiippy trail'.
Mme de Salzmann's introduction of changes to the Work teaching also seems to
reflect changes in contemporary social and political attitudes.
I was informed in a personal communication that during the 1968 student-led
uprising in Paris, Mme de Salzmann went into the streets to talk to students. She
witnessed the disillusion of young people with established social, economic,
political and religious structures and the subsequent development of the ethos
of the 'flower children' and 'hippies'. This counter-culture is defined by
Theodore Roszak as "... a culture so disaffiliated from mainstream assumptions
of our own society that it scarcely looks to many as a culture at all..." (Roszak,
1968: 42) Roszak quotes "Gurdjieff, gnostic, Sufi and tantric texts ... and ecstatic
states of consciousness" among other source matter cited by the prospectus of
the Anti-University which opened in London in-early 1968 (ibid: 146). The
counter-cultural mood of disillusionment with the establishment was receptive
to new physical and spiritual experiences, such as those offered by Mme de
Salzmann's 'love from above'.
However, the concerns which gave relevance to this new teaching in the
1960/70s in Paris were not present when the teaching was introduced in London
in the 1980s. This was the period of Thatcherism which Hay describes with a list
of ideological principles:
... moral authoritarianism and traditional values; respect, discipline
and moral decency; repressive/deterrent policing of deviance; reasser-
tion of the nudear family unit; defence of the 'British way of life';
patriotism, monarchism, nationalism; social hierarchy and tradition.
(Hay, 1996: 134)
Nevertheless, if, as Mme de Salzmann states, "the truth sought for was always
the same" (VFTRW: vii), then even if the "forms through which he [Gurdjieff]
helped his pupils approach it..." have been changed, we might find evidence of
the need for "love from above" (Moore, 1994: 13) in Gurdjieff's own teaching, in
VFTRW, BTTHG or in the writings of his pupils.2

VFTRW: References to Love

Although VFTRW was published in 1973 and although the 40 talks which it
contains took place between 1917 and 1930, 31 of these 40 talks took place either
at the Prieuré, Fontainbleau-Avon, France, in 1923 (12 talks) or in New York in
1924 (19 talks).
Thus VFTRW principally reflects aspects of Gurdjieff's teaching in the years
1923 to 1924. The focus on talks from these years is not immediately noticeable
as the talks are not presented in chronological order.
Gurdjieff's talk in November 1922 at the Prieuré (VFTRW: 171-173) concerns
the categories of exercises given to pupils and introduces the need to include
exercises for the feelings as well as for the mind and body. As an example of
feelings, he discusses morality, classifying it as of three kinds: objective, subjec-
tive or automatic. He says that if people had within them the small number of
objective laws necessary, then "There would be no loneliness, nor would there
be unhappy states". Gurdjieff refers to 15 commandments, established from
324 S. Wellbeloved

ancient times, which, if we had them within, would enable us "to understand,
to love, to hate ... to have the basis of right judgement".
All religions, all teachings come from God and speak in the name of
God. This does not mean that God actually gave them, but they are
connected with one whole and with what we call God.
For example, God said. Love thy parents, and thou wilt love me. And
indeed whoever does not love his parents cannot love God.
Before we go any further, let us pause and ask ourselves: Did we love
our parents, did we love them as they deserved, or was it simply a case
of 'it loves', and how should we have loved? (VFTRW: 173)
If we did pause and ask ourselves the questions that Gurdjieff suggests, we
may begin to feel uncertain; his "how should we have loved?" asks us to admit
that we cannot love either our parents or God. Uncomfortable feelings of shame
or guilt may be aroused. The inability to love is expressed in Gurdjieff theory as
part of man's inability to 'do' anything: "... mechanical man cannot love—with
him it loves or it does not love" (Ouspensky, 1950: 254, emphasis in original).
Gurdjieff referred to fifteen commandments, but the above passage concerned
with love of parents and love of God might well bring to mind the ten Biblical
commandments: the fifth "Honour thy father and thy mother" (Exodus 20: 12)
and
... The first of all the commandments is 'Hear O Israel, the Lord our
God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy
strength. (Mark 12:29, 30, KJV)3
The function of arousing guilt in his hearers about the quality of love which they
may have had for their parents is made clearer in the talk given in New York
on 1 March 1924, in which Gurdjieff talks about conscience (VFTRW: 246-251):
... whoever is guided by conscience automatically behaves in accord-
ance with the commandments. If our conscience were open and pure,
there would be no need to speak about morality. Then unconsciously or
consciously, everyone would behave according to the dictates of this
inner voice. (VFTRW: 247)
Gurdjieff continues by saying that only suffering or shock can pierce the crust
which has formed over conscience. He gives the example of a man who on the
death of his mother instinctively begins to hear his conscience speak to him:
To love, honour and cherish one's mother is the duty of every man, but
a man is seldom a good son. When his mother dies, a man remembers
how he had behaved toward her, and begins to suffer from the
gnawings of conscience. But man is a great swine; he soon forgets, and
again lives in the old way. (VFTRW: 248)
Although the pupil's work is to awaken conscience which involves striving, an
awakened conscience would allow him to live in accordance with the command-
ments. He would be able to love God, his parents, himself, not through constant
striving, but 'automatically'; this seems to express aspects of both striving and
grace.
On 28 February 1923 (VFTRW: 148-154) at the Prieuré, Gurdjieff expresses the
 CLGurdjieff 325

programme, power, aim and the possibilities of his Institute as being to "help
one to be a Christian. Simple! That is all!" (VFTRW: 152)
He says that the majority of those present (at the talk) would call themselves
Christians. For Gurdjieff a Christian is a "man who is able to fulfil the
Commandments". Having pointed out that his pupils cannot love or hate to
order Gurdjieff says, "At the same time it is quite true that it is necessary to love.
First one must be able, only then can one love" (VFTRW: 153).
At the Prieuré on 24 May 1924, Gurdjieff returns to the subject of man's
inability to love (VFTRW: 243-245). He compares the "love of a slave" with the
love acquired by work: "Real love is Christian religious love; with that love no
one is born, for this love you must work." (VFTRW: 243)
Of the different kinds of love Gurdjieff speaks about love for life:
Wherever there is life—beginning with plants (for they too have life),
animals, in a word wherever life exists, there is love. Each life is a
representative of God. Whosoever can see the representative will be
able to see Him who is represented. (VFTRW: 243)
This implies possibilities for the pupils which are very different from those
described in Gurdjieff's cosmology of Gnostic separation of men on earth from
God /Absolute. "Whoever wishes to learn to love his neighbour must begin by
trying to love plants and animals. Whoever does not love life does not love
God." (VFTRW: 244) As recalled above, to love God is the first commandment:
"And the second is like, namely this to love thy neighbour as thyself. There is
none other commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:31, KJV)
Thus, although men are machines, Gurdjieff acknowledged the importance of
love that "All living things are tied to one another" (VFTRW: 245), and he gives
help so that his pupils may begin to learn how to be able to carry out the
commandment to love their neighbour. "If you begin to look consciously, you
will see many things, you will discover many Americas." (ibid)
The last talk in VFTRW (266-270) was given at the Prieuré on 13 February
1923. As already mentioned, the talks are not presented in chronological order
(the last talk was given in New York in 1930), so we might expect this talk to
offer a final word as chosen by the book's compiler or compilers.
This talk is concerned with self-love. Gurdjieff says that we do not possess
genuine self-love.
Self-love is a great thing. If we consider self-love as we generally
understand it, as reprehensible, then it follows that true self-love—
which, unfortunately, we do not possess—is desirable and necessary.
Self-love is a sign of a high opinion of oneself. If a man has this self-love
it proves what he is.
As we have said earlier, self-love is a representative of the devil; it is
our chief enemy, the main brake to our aspirations and our achieve-
ments. Self-love is the principal weapon of the representative of hell.
But self-love is an attribute of the soul. By self-love one can discern the
spirit. Self-love indicates and proves that a given man is a particle of
heaven. Self-love is I—I is God. Therefore it is desirable to have
self-love. -
Self-love is hell and self-love is heaven; these two, bearing the same
name, are outwardly alike, but totally different and opposite to one
326 S. Wellbeloved

another in essence. But if we look superficially, we can go on looking

throughout our whole life without ever distinguishing the one from the
other. (VFTRW: 269-270)

Earlier in this talk Gurdjieff explained a mode of 'active reasoning' which can
help pupils to make this distinction. He says that "our aim must be to have
self-love" (VFTRW: 270) and advocates the use of active reasoning which "is
learned by practice, it should be practised long and in many varied ways" (ibid).
VFTRW offers material which has a different emotional tone compared with
Gurdjieff's other writing. Although it is often as abrasive as a Gurdjieff pupil
may have come to expect, yet in these talks Gurdjieff acknowledges that "there
do exist enquiring minds which long for the truth of the heart" (VFTRW: 43),
"who hunger and thirst for truth" (VFTRW: 50).
He offers a teaching which can lead to the ability to love and which stales the
need to Jove this self, our parents, our neighbour, God and God's representa-
tives—and everything that has life. The suffering which he advocates will open
his pupils to their consciences and although they are 'machines', they have his
presence to guide them, "the help and authoritative guidance of someone who
knows" (VFTRW: 50).
Gurdjieff was and is seen by some of his pupils not only as "a man who
knows", but as a prophet and divine messenger from above. For example, James
George, having written that "a new dispensation (or tradition in embryo)... to
be valid,... [it] must be nothing less than a new revelation" (George, 1995:
94-95), goes on to write that he believes Gurdjieff's mission was to be "a herald
of 'the good news' from above in a form that would best serve the spirit and
needs of people today." He writes further: "Gurdjieff's message is about the
healing power of a certain kind of love ... which is critical to the survival of life
on earth." (George, 1995: 106)
In his epic BTTHG, Gurdjieff merges his own identity with that of his hero
Beelzebub. In chapter 34, entitles "Russia", and in chapter 42, entitled
"Beelzebub in America", the descriptions of Beelzebub's journeys mirror those of
Gurdjieff's own life. Gurdjieff has an implied special status in being equated
with Beelzebub who, in chapter 47 of the Tales is revealed as having attained the
second highest level of being in the universe. In this way, Gurdjieff presented
himself in terms of a divine messenger. He is understood in these terms by Fritz
Peters who writes of Gurdjieff's choice of Beelzebub as hero:

When Gurdjieff stated that Christ, Buddha, Mohammed and other such
prophets were "messengers from the Gods" who had finally failed, I
could accept the implicit theory that perhaps it was time to give the
devil his chance.... But if the mentioned prophets had, for some reason
"failed", was there any assurance, then, that Gurdjieff (or Beelzebub)
was going to succeed? (Peters, 1976: 118)

If we do see Gurdjieff himself in the role of divine messenger, then he himself

can be seen as a transmitter of grace as Christ was. We might remember that
Christ said, "... without me you can do nothing" (John 15:5, KJV).
 G.I.Gurdjieff 327

Gurdjieff's Pupils: Recollections of Love

Although Gurdjieff demanded effort and struggle and could create harsh condi-
tions for his pupils, there is evidence in his pupils' writings that they experi-
enced themselves as loved by Gurdjieff and helped by him in a way that seems
to have been experienced as grace. This can be shown by comments which
Margaret Anderson made about Gurdjieff in 1948 (Anderson, 1962):
He sat at the side of the table instead of at the end, and he was more
silent than in the years before. But there was teaching in all that he did
or said, only its form had changed; he was teaching now chiefly
through his presence. (Anderson, 1962: 172)
Both Georgette Leblanc and J. G. Bennett felt that they had seen Gurdjieff
without his 'mask'. Margaret Anderson quotes a diary entry from Georgette
Leblanc's unpublished work, la machine à Courage, where she writes about the
experience of Gurdjieff in Paris. This entry is for 2 November 1936:
A great emotion today. When I arrived at Gurdjieff's apartment it was
he himself who opened the door. I said immediately, T am completely
well, I am in a new body.' The light that came from the little salon
illuminated him fully. Instead of avoiding it he stepped back and
leaned against the wall. Then for the first lime, he let me see what he
really is ... as if he had torn off the masks behind which he is obliged
to hide himself. His face was stamped with a charily thai embraced the
whole world. Transfixed, standing before him, I saw him with all my
strength and I experienced a gratitude so deep, so sad, that he felt a
need to calm me. With an unforgettable look he said, 'God helps me'.
(Anderson, 1962: 149)
Similarly J. G. Bennett writes about seeing Gurdjieff after the car accident of
1948:
Before the accident he had been -the enigmatic Gurdjieff that we had
known, and of whom so many stories are told. For four or five days
after the accident, it seemed that he either could not or did not feel the
need to play a role, to hide himself behind a mask. We then felt his
extraordinary goodness and love for humanity. In spite of his
disfigured face and arms—he was literally black and blue from head to
foot—and his terrifying weakness of body, he was so beautiful that we
felt that we were looking at a being from another and better world.
(Bennett, 1962: 250-251)
Bennett also writes of his wife having been healed by Gurdjieff:
Having realised earlier that Mrs Bennett was in great pain, later
Gurdjieff... broke off what he was saying and turning to my wife said,
"Where is your pain now?" She answered: "It is gone." He insisted: "I
ask where is it now?" Her eyes filled with tears and she said, "You have
taken it." He replied, "I am glad. Now I can help you." (Bennett, 1962:
247)
C. S. Nott refers in his prologue4 to Orage's description of Gurdjieff as a
"walking God" (Nott, 1969: xvii). Nott writes of how, after his six-year-old son
328 S. Wellbeloved

lost a leg in an accident, he visited Gurdjieff in Paris. Gurdjieff "... with a look
of deep compassion and power" began to play his hand-harmonium:
Little by little I became aware that he was conveying something to me
both through the music—the combination of notes—and by the
telepathic means which he understood so well. A change took place in
me; I began to understand something and a feeling of conscious hope
and conscious faith began to displace the dark hopeless depression.
(Nott, 1969: 118-119)
Fritz Peters writes of his visit to Gurdjieff in Paris, during the Second World
War. Peters felt himself to be "close to the edge of complete nervous collapse"
(Peters, 1976: 249).
I remember being slumped over the table, sipping at my coffee, when
I began to feel a strange uprising of energy within myself—I stared at
him, automatically straightened up, and it was as if a violent electric
blue light emanated from him and entered into me. As this happened
I could feel the tiredness drain out of me, but at the same moment his
body slumped and his face turned grey as if it was being drained of life.
I looked at him amazed, and when he saw me sitting erect, smiling and
full of energy, he said quickly: Tou all right now—watch food on
stove—1 must go.'... He was gone for perhaps fifteen minutes while 1
watched the food, feeling blank and amazed because I have never felt
any belter in my life. I was convinced then—and am now:—that he
knew how to transmit energy from himself to others; I was also
convinced that it could only be done at great cost to himself. (Peters,
1976: 252)
Margaret Anderson quotes Dorothy Caruso who in 1951 wrote of her experi-
ence of Gurdjieff's leaching in Paris in 1948. Dorothy Caruso, widow of the tenor
Enrico Caruso, became a pupil of Gurdjieff in Paris through Margaret Anderson
whom she met in 1942. She commented:
Gurdjieff was gentle with my soul. It was a soul that had not grown up,
as I grew u p . . . Gurdjieff gave it courage. From his mysterious and
conscious world he guided it with the kind of understanding he called
'objective love'—the 'love of everything that breathes': and 'it' re-
sponded with unlimited trust—the highest type of love there is, I think,
in this immediate and unconscious world. (Anderson, 1962: 192)
From these examples it is clear that Gurdjieff's pupils not only experienced
struggle, but they also felt themselves to be in the presence of someone by whom
they were healed, loved and guided. It is worth noting that these experiences of
Gurdjieff come from the 1930s and 1940s and not from the time when Gurdjieff
was teaching at the Prieuré. J. G. Bennett writes:
It was during the time of the Prieuré that Gurdjieff built up all his
reputation for wanting to dominate over people and for the use of
violent methods ...
At the Prieuré he had all sorts of elaborate conditions designed to cause
frictions between people and he would be ruthlessly cruel—not out of
malice but simply to wake people up. (Bennett, 1977: 117-118)
 G.I.Gurdjieff 329

Bennett writes that later, Gurdjieff s way of working changed. He equates

Gurdjieff s second way of working to awaken his pupils with the transmission
of grace.
There is a chapter in Bennett's The Sevenfold Work which describes the place of
grace in the work, (see Bennett, 1979:109-118) If, as Bennett suggests, Gurdjieff's
teaching may be thought of as unfolding in two phases, each with its own
predominant method of teaching, then Mme Lannes's rigourous demand for
active personal struggle seems nearer in method to Gurdjieff's first phase, while
Mme de Salzmann's 'new' teaching seems nearer to Gurdjieff's second phase.
Further on the theme of love and guidance, Henri Tracol, pupil of Gurdjieff
and President of the Gurdjieff Institute in France, writes:
It was enough to be in his presence—of course provided one was ready
for it—to experience at once this presence itself as a source of under-
standing, as a fire capable of reanimating in us an independent power
of perception as an exigence full of understanding and benevolence.
(Tracol, 1994: 131)
At the end of Gurdjieff, Fritz Peters quotes P. D. Ouspensky's Tertium Organum
(Ouspensky, 1951: 170-173) in which Ouspensky writes: "... within the limits of
the knowable we must recognise that all the creative activity of humanity results
from love. Our entire world revolves around love as its centre." Peters com-
ments:
While Ouspensky knew, in his mind, lhat 'Love is the potent force that
tears (iff all masks, and men who run away from love do so in order
that they may preserve their masks', Gurdjieff understood it... What I
knew as a child, 1 am beginning to understand as an adult, Gurdjieff
practised love in a form that is unknown lo almost everyone: without
limits. (Peters, 1976: 330)
Tracol comments on this passage in an interview:
It is a sentence which greatly touched me, because it is just that which
stands out, when all is said and done, from the experience lived at Mr
Gurdjieff's side, if one is not trapped by this or that anecdotal memory.
Unbounded love, neither left to chance nor without a price; a love of
extreme exactingness, born of this suffering at seeing us prisoners of
our numerous misunderstandings and attempting by all possible means
to evoke in us the feeling of urgency, the thirst for return, for union, for
communion with the essential. (Tracol, 1994: 137)
In the same interview Tracol replies to the question: '...what part does the grace
of God play in the work?' He says: 'The largest, the greatest. Even if it is not
said, even if it is not always acknowledged, this remains nonetheless obvious."
(Tracol, 1994: 134-135)

Remembrance of Death: Grace in BTTHG

Gurdjieff does suggest another way to receive grace. In one of the aphorisms
from the study house at the Prieuré, he stated: "From looking at your neighbour
and realising his true significance, and that he will die, pity and compassion will
arise in you for him and finally you will love him." (New York, February 8,
330 S. Wellbebved

1931).5 The awareness of death is a grace which leads to love. The remembrance
of death leads to grace in that it enables a revaluing of life itself; of the
continuous processes of life, as a gift which comes to us through grace and not
through reward for any effort of our own.
At the end of BTTHG, Hassein asks Beelzebub "whether it is still possible to
save (men on earth).... and to direct them into the becoming path. 6 (italics
mine) Beelzebub's, reply and his final words in the text are:
The sole means now for the saving of the beings of the planet Earth
would be to implant again into their presences a new organ, an organ
like Kundabuffer but this time of such properties that every one of
these unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly
sense and be cognisant of the inevitability of his own death as well as
of the death of everyone upon whom lois eyes or attention rests.
Only such a sensation and such a cognisance can now destroy the
egoism completely crystalised in them that has swallowed up the whole
of the Essence and also that tendency to hate others which follows from
it—the tendency, namely, which engenders all those mutual relation-
ships existing there, which serve as the chief cause of all their abnor-
malities unbecoming to three-brained beings and maleficent for them
themselves and for the whole of the universe. (BTTHG: 1183)
The existence of grace is acknowledged in BTTHG in that "Our UNI BEING
. ENDLESSNESS7 who has pardoned this once erring Beelzebub who by the
infinite grace of our Creator will again exist among you" (BTTHG: 1175, italics
mine). Here we see that Beelzebub who certainly has worked and striven during
the whole period of his exile, does not receive forgiveness as a result of his
efforts alone, but through the intercession of the divine messenger from above
Ashiata Shicmash and by the grace of his Endlessness:
And thus to a certain planet of this solar system, namely, the planet
Earth, there was once sent as such a Messenger from our ENDLESS-
NESS, a certain Ashiata Shiemash, and as Beelzebub had then fulfilled
a certain need in connection with his mission, the said Messenger,
when he returned once more to the "Sun Absolute", earnestly besought
HIS ENDLESSNESS to pardon this once young and fiery but now aged
Beelzebub.
In view of this request of Ashiata Shiemash, and also of the modest and
cognoscent existence of Beelzebub himself, our MAKER CREATOR
pardoned him and gave him permission to return to the place of his
arising. (BTTHG: 54)

Conclusion
This brief look at the above references to love gives evidence for an acknowl-
edgement of the salvific powers of love as an important element in Gurdjieff's
teaching. We find this evidence in both what he said and how his pupils
experienced him.
I agree with Moore that Mme Lannes's teaching, "along with all authoritative
work voices endorsed, without a shred of reservation, Gurdjieff's canon of effort,
striving and self-reliance" (Moore, 1994:12). Work doctrine says that "... energy
 GJ.Gurdjieff 331

is spent chiefly on unnecessary and unpleasant emotions ... nervousness, irrita-

bility, imagination, daydreaming ..." (Ouspensky, 1950:179), and so pupils were
taught to struggle against the expression of unpleasant emotions (Ouspensky,
1950: 112). Given that Work doctrine also deemed them incapable of real love,
Work pupils suffered, at the least, a theoretical limitation of the expression and
experience of their emotions.
Yet in Gurdjieff's writings as well as those of his pupils there is evidence for
an emphasis on love and emotion that seems to have been absent from Mme
Lannes's teaching. James George writes that
... a higher force of love was without question real to Mme de Salz-
mann. She said again and again that we had to try to have a conscious
attention in the body, present as sensation, so as to be able to open to
this form of love coming from above the head. (George, 1995: 108)
Mme de Salzmann is directing pupils to receive love/grace not from herself
but from above. We can see this in Pentecostal terms as when after Christ's
death his disciples were not abandoned but received 'the comforter', the Holy
Spirit. The parallel is strengthened because Christian iconography depicts the
"cloven tongues like as of fire ... [which] sat upon each of them" (Acts 2:3, KJV)
as flames on the crown of the head, the visual imagery thus suggesting the
reception of the Holy Spirit through the top of the head.
In this light, Mme de Salzmann's introduction of 'love from above' to the
Gurdjieff Society in London can be seen as an attempt to provide a new form for
part of Gurdjieff's teaching which had been over-shadowed for some thirty
years. If she, like George, saw the work as an embryo tradition, she could only
restore the reception of grace either by herself assuming the role of prophet,
whose presence would transmit grace, or by teaching pupils a new way to
receive the love and grace which they had lacked since Gurdjieff's death in 1949.

Sophia Wellbeloved, a doctoral student at King's College London, is researching

C.I. Gurdjieff's Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson under the supervision of Professor
Peter Clarke. Correspondence: 35 Moorepark Rd., London SW6 2HU.

NOTES
1. M. Deselle was a pupil of Gurdijeff's and became a Work teacher in France and England.
2. A.R.Orage, chief editor of Gurdjieff's BTTHG and teacher of Gurdjieff groups in New York,
published On Love: Freely Adapted from the Tibetan (London: Unicorn Press, 1932). Despite its
Tibetan origins, the source of which I have been unable to discover, this text is a straightforward
Gurdjieffian discourse on the inability of mechanical man to love. C.S. Nott recalls that Orage
showed him the draft of On Love during the summer of 1926 at Fontainbleau with the comment:
"I talked with Gurdjieff last night for a long time, and afterwards I went to my room and wrote
till four this morning. This is the result." (Nott, 1990: 113-114) Later, Nott paid for the
publication of On Love in London.
3. This in Gurdjieffian terms is asking for a love of the emotional, mental and physical centres plus
the soul which in Gurdjieffian theory is only acquired through work, hence this commandment
could not be carried out by man-as-he-is.
4. In C. S. Nott, Journey Through This World. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969.
5. See VFTRW: 194.
6. In BTTHG (p. 81-90) we learn that man's function as part of organic life on Earth is to be an
energy transmitter which helps sustain the moon. In order that men should not perceive the
reality of their function and, because of their distress, destroy themselves, a 'Most High
332 S. Wellbeloved

Commission' of sacred individuals caused the organ 'Kundabuffer' to be implanted in human

beings: this is "... a special organ with the property that, first, they should perceive reality
topsy-turvy and, secondly that every repeated impression from outside should crystalise in
them data which would engender factors for evoking in them sensations of 'pleasure' and
'enjoyment'." (BTTHG: 88).
7. In the terms of the Beelzebub myth in BTTHG, we can equate HIS ENDLESSNESS or our LORD
SOVEREIGN ENDLESSNESS with God, as it was HIS ENDLESSNESS who banished Beelzebub
from the Sun Absolute to the solar system Ors (BTTHG: 52). Gurdjieff has many variations of
name for HIS ENDLESSNESS, including OUR ENDLESS MAKER AND CREATOR (ibid: 92),
OUR ALL EMBRACING CREATOR ENDLESSNESS HIMSELF (ibid: 1182), and OUR
UNIBE1NG ENDLESSNESS (ibid: 1175).

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