The Master

Roger Lipsey, insightful biographer of figures such as the metaphysician and historian of Indian art, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy; economist and diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld; and Cistercian monk and author Thomas Merton, invites us to reconsider the life and legacy of Greek-Armenian George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. For many, the title may surprise. Reconsider? Who now has considered Gurdjieff, even once? Now referred to as "the Work," the way of Gurdjieff, based on inner study rather than on faith, has fallen out of the public eye.

Born (circa 1870) in Armenia, the young Gurdjieff spent some twenty years traveling—from Greece to Egypt, to the Caucasus and Tibet—with a small band of companions in search of esoteric knowledge. Much of what we know about these years derives from Gurdjieff's semi-fictional autobiography, Meetings with Remarkable Men (1963), on which Peter Brook based his eponymous film (1979). By 1912, Gurdjieff was teaching in Moscow and St Petersburg. In 1917, forced to flee the revolution, he made his way with followers to Essentuki, Georgia. In 1919, he and his pupils fled again, across the Caucasus and eventually to France, where Gurdjieff resided, first at the Prieuré at Fontainebleau, and later in a small apartment in Paris, until his death in 1949.

Gurdjieff's pupils found, in the master's work and in his presence, personal hope and meaning despite brutal conditions—revolution, depression, holocaust, and world war. At the same time, as shared by Gurdjieff with his French pupils during the war, Gurdjieff's great aim is ultimately a work for one's neighbor: "I swear to myself that this will never be for my personal profit, but to help others. I wish to be, to help others. This is to be understood as a vow." In her forward, Cynthia Bourgeault writes,

For those unfamiliar with this teaching, I might describe it as an early run-up on what we would now call "mindfulness training," combined with an even more intricate metaphysics. … But the Work also has extraordinary heart, carried largely in the aforementioned sacred dances (or "Movements," as they are more widely known), which provide not only a powerful integrative counterbalance to the intellectual content but also a de facto liturgical expression of searing emotional intensity.

As Lipsey points out, the word "reconsidered," "promises either the refinement of an existing reputation or a radical break from received opinion." With the same friendly, almost intimate tone he used so successfully in his work on Hammarskjöld and Merton, Lipsey is a helpful guide with a sensitive touch. A senior member of the Gurdjieff Foundation of New York, he is very able to provide insight. His extensive use of primary sources, both published accounts and unpublished manuscripts held in public libraries and private archives, vividly evokes both the man and his community of pupils.

Lipsey avoids expounding the teaching, trusting that as a lived practice, the teaching will appear in each reported exchange. There are a few exceptions—for example, an extensive discussion of the key concept "being." To those impatient with the extensive terminology introduced by Gurdjieff in his early teaching period in Russia, the "theory" decade, Lipsey offers this comparison:

For the anonymous fourteenth century author of The Cloud of Unknowing, a perfectly stunning guide to progressive exploration of the inner life, the diligent and fortunate seeker comes upon zones of experience that can only be described metaphorically.

Slowly, a portrait emerges that is deeply nuanced and humane. In the chapter on the Prieuré, an abundance of vignettes about the life of the community places the teaching in context. It is a rich tapestry, with colorful personae: Katherine Mansfield, A. R. Orage, T. Tchekhovitch, the De Salzmann's, and all the children who lived at the châteaux, to name only a few, and Gurdjieff himself, frequently playing the role of provocateur. Lipsey finds kinship with Pythagoras and imagines Gurdjieff as spiritual heir of Diogenes the Cynic. Here is Katherine Mansfield, from...