G.I. Gurdjieff: A Short Introduction
The first principle of the search is understanding our degradation
One of the most seminally important and enigmatic spiritual figures of the twentieth century was Greek-Armenian philosopher G.I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949). His essential teaching is that man lives in a state of sleep — not metaphorically but actually.
Human existence, the teacher observed, is not only passed in sleep but man himself is in pieces, at the passive bidding of his three brains or centers: thinking, emotional, and physical, all of which function in disunity leaving a “man-machine” incapable of authentic activity.
“Man cannot do,” Gurdjieff said. He meant this in the fullest sense.
Nearly all of Gurdjieff’s statements — including his 1950 literary giant Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson — were intended to disrupt rote thought. He instructed that the magisterial allegory be read three times.
Author P.L. Travers, best known for the Mary Poppins books, noted aptly, “In Beelzebub’s Tales, soaring off into space, like a great, lumbering, flying cathedral, Gurdjieff gathered the fundamentals of his teaching.”
There is no neat summarizing the breadth of Gurdjieff’s system, which extended to sacred dances, self-observation, rigorous and…
