George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (January 13, 1866 – October 29, 1949) rounds out our Section IV. I save him for last because to me he remains an enigma and still extremely intriguing, and the reason he interests me is not so much his theories as it is the man himself.
If you read Beelzebub’s Tales To His Grandson, or maybe I should say, if you can survive it, you know the man is a master story teller, one who is also a great adventurer…especially if you are to believe what he writes. While Beelzebub is a work of fiction, a gigantic allegorical presentation of his understanding of the history of Man on Earth, Gurdjieff’s works taken as whole is where you discover the man, as well as the philosophy. Together with Beelzebub, the books Meetings With Remarkable Men [click the links, which are actual full .pdf versions of these books, no guarantees as to how long they will last], and Life Is Real Only When “I Am” comprise the “All And Everything” Trilogy. His first book, The Herald of Coming Good, and works by his pupils Ouspensky and the de Hartmanns, further bring to light a resoundingly unique individual.
Not unlike the rest of the people in this section, Gurdjieff’s radically different views have both alienated him from mainstream science, and caused his status as a cult figure. To say his views are controversial is almost an understatement, and if you throw in his alleged personal acts of cunning, including once painting canaries to sell them to unwit-ting tourists as exotic songbirds, and reasoning, if not weaseling his way out of restaurant tabs, as well as his alleged penchant for practical jokes – and the affections of the opposite sex, as his rumoured 9 kids by several different women would attest – well, you begin to get an idea as to why there is a great divide about this man Gurdjieff.
It’s important to know a little about G.I. the man before getting into his philosophical ideas and, especially for our purposes here, his thoughts on the origin of Man. He grew up very poor, but very educated, loving books, learning, and Truth from an early age. He was also, when young, prone to mischief, and not beyond capitalizing on any foreseen opportunity to make a some quick cash. Later in life he was, if you believe his closest pupils, somewhat of a tyrant in his leadership, very demanding of his students both psychologically and physically. You would think, with all these questionable characteristics, that there is not much to like here. But let me assure you, like him I do. The reasons are many. Primarily, it is because he appears to be honest. When reporting on his exploits and deeds Gurdjieff doesn’t whitewash any of them. His greatness to me lies in his reporting the Truth as he experiences it, whether or not that Truth makes him appear unflattering. By plan or by consequence, his telling the Truth about even his own shortcomings gives the rest of what he says a more believable quality.
Then of course there are his ideas. Any man who talks about most supposed thinkers and scientists as being little more than “parrots” and “wiseacrers”, and who believes that more than “90% of what people believe is bullshit”, 
and that “people are asleep and need to be shaken” is certainly on the right track. No thinker has more confounded even his own closest disciples, with the possible exception of Friedrich Nietzsche, but Nietzsche had no real disciples until after his death. Only an extremely careful reading of Gurdjieff’s works (“three times,” as he suggests…), along with a study of those who had first-hand knowledge of him, can reveal what these ideas are.
A brief look at what has been translated as the “kundabuffer”, as found in Beelzebub, will serve as a good launch pad for a quick presentation of his ideas, especially as they pertain to the Origin of Man.
The Dreaded “Kundabuffer”
Imagine that there was a time when all people worked together, without someone telling them what to do, in fact without even thinking about it. People knew how to act, cooperated as one, and got along for the most part, some normal adversity being necessary for growth. This is how Gurdjieff imagines the primal state of humanity, to me it is describing a life not unlike that lived by ants or any societal animal. The group always takes priority.
But, in time, trouble was to hit the planet Earth, a catastrophe of some sort, and the only way these cooperative, if robotic people would survive, and so not all die out from the imminent catastrophe, was to install in them something like what we today call an ego, or a programming for self-preservation above all things. This ego would serve to, in a way, anaesthetize Man, put him (what was supposed to be only) temporarily in a state of trance, or type of sleep. Without this “kundabuffer“, a play on the word “kundalini” which was to be placed in Man’s spinal area, Man would certainly perish. The impending cosmological disaster would throw him into a mad panic, and every single man would otherwise be – strange for us to hear today – too concerned with helping others rather than preserving himself. The kundabuffer set in place, Man would now have enough “instinct” for self-preservation, enough ego and putting himself first, to try and keep himself alive, thereby saving the species. It should be noted that this kundabuffer has some history in Gnostic teachings and Gnosticism is known to be one source of Gurdjieff’s ideas.
After the disaster/catastrophe in the cosmos, in which most on Earth died anyway, it was determined that the kundabuffer was no longer needed. But, try as they could, those who placed it in Man (the three-brained Earth creature) found that the kundabuffer, this “devil’s tail”, could not be extricated. It had, as the generations gone by, become part of Man’s formal being. Scientifically speaking, the kundalini, or wisdom serpent, is meant to be something like our genetic code. The “ego”, or “concern for self sleep” placed in this DNA code, was supposed to be a temporary measure, taken out after the threat had passed.
Unfortunately, because removing it has proven to be impossible, the “sleep” that has been imposed upon him remains to this day a block to his advancement of Mankind as a whole, and to each of us as individuals. Being now self-centered so to speak, we continue to fight wars and cause bloodshed and crimes of all kinds, as too many are blinded, in fact are asleep to the plights of others. Those who live every day for only themselves do so courtesy of this dreaded kundabuffer. What was supposed to be a temporary species-saving de-vice has become rather the source of all vice.
The Fourth Way
The bulk of Gurdjieff’s teachings assume Man in a predominantly sorry state of spiritual blindness, and much of his living teachings advanced methods for waking up from our zombie, or robot-like, autonomic state of existence. The Fourth Way, made famous in itself later in a book by that name by Ouspensky, Gurdjieff’s probably best pupil, describes both a course and a way.
According to Gurdjieff, and somewhat proven by history, paths to enlightenment for Man have usually taken one of three forms:
1) The Way Of The Fakir
Made prominent by the extraordinary feats of Eastern devotees, the way of the fakir has taken many shapes and seen many incarnations. It still exists today, even in the West, through practices like yoga, breathing exercises, and any form of self-mastery requiring physical control of one’s body. The theory behind fasting, controlling the heartbeat, and rituals of this nature, is that by taking over one’s body and its parts, and mastering the discipline required for controlling one’s breathing for example, and/or regulating the type and quantity of one’s food intake, the practicing fakir might come upon greater awareness and spiritual fulfillment. Even today when people do these things for non-religious reasons, perhaps for purposes of “health”, it is hoped that by maintaining the body one can be in better position to handle illness and disease. While they can be and often are much more than only this, notably magicians, body mastery and control is ultimately the distinctive way of the fakir.
2) The Way Of The Yogi
The way of the yogi also takes many forms today, as it was in Gurdjieff’s day, and all through history. Ways to enlightenment, personal growth, and further understanding, which involve somehow mastering or controlling the mind, are the ways of the yogi. Training the mind, focusing one’s attention, meditation for relaxation, stilling the thoughts, even chanting mantras and saying prayers, are examples of the many ways by which the yogi might control the mind. Yogis can also be much more than only this, often teachers, but mind control is ultimately the distinctive way of the yogi.
3) The Way Of The Monk
Primarily concerned with getting one’s heart or soul right, that is, correcting one’s behavior to have a clean conscience, the way of the monk is the third known path to enlightenment. This way involves negotiating right and wrong action, making fair judgments, and being honest with one’s self, spreading love and good cheer, these and other affairs of the spirit. Monks can be much more than only this, often healers and leaders, but strengthening spirit is ultimately the distinctive way of the monk.
These three ways can be seen as addressing, in turn, the human body, the mind, and the soul, and so Gurdjieff calls us “three-brained creatures”. For him, all these three ways are faulty, in the main because they operate to the exclusion of one another. There is then a better alternative, a Fourth Way, one which takes into account the virtues of all three ways.
The 
way of the fakir, alone, leads nowhere. You can stand on your head for months, or learn to lower your heart rate to a few beats a minute, or pick up hundreds of pounds, but that cannot alone lead to enough mental or spiritual growth. The way of the yogi, also, is not too beneficial alone. Here you could conceivably become a master of control over your very thoughts, but if the body is not controlled and in shape, and the spirit is unattended or disregarded, no matter how intelligent you become, or how disciplined of mind you are, you will be unable to reach your potential. The same, finally, for the mastery over spirit. You could like a monk conceivably become adept at always doing the right thing in your heart, and know the right way to act, but without action, and control of the body, or mind control, or a proper plan of action, a fit spirit alone is also not enough for you to reach your potential.
This reaching of one’s potential, the old adage of Aristotle, is a maxim for Gurdjieff as well. Clearly, for both philosophers, people are not equal, and are in fact drastically different in strengths and weaknesses, by nature. The three-brained creature is always limited to what he can become by his genetic code and, of course, the selfishness brought on by the kundabuffer, or we could say, selfish desire. Therefore, the best you can hope to do in this life is make every day a chance to, as he says, “do work”, a specific kind of labor on one’s self, to better head toward being all you can possibly be. But, Gurdjieff also believes, you can’t easily, if at all, accomplish this work by any of the ‘old” ways talked about already. You must use your time in this world to labor not just on your body, or just your mind, or just your soul or spirit, rather you must work on ALL of them, and in a particularly balanced way.
As it is of a three-brained creature, each human brain (he speaks of them separately) is in need of a specific type of nourishment. You need mental, physical, and spiritual sustenance, and you need more every day, to refine yourself more every day, in order to progress yourself, and earn a place for yourself in the great hierarchical corporation that is the macrocosm of the universe. Gurdjieff says that whatever it is you will eventually become, you must believe in, anticipate, and prepare for a next life.
The Fourth Way combines the teachings of the other three ways in order to try and help the seeker down a more complete path to personal fulfillment, and according to Gurdjieff, and many other mystics, we are given teachers along the way to help us on our journey. What is most important to remember is that every day, excepting a day of rest, should be used to do work on yourself, in all three aspects of your being, and you should seek out, or rather, be on the lookout for, teachers who might steer you in the right, or at least a better, direction; this is familiar as the “guru” concept.
The Gurdjieff School
Music, being somewhat an embodiment of the three parts of the human psyche or soul, stimulating at once the body, the mind, and the spirit, therefore plays a large role in the advanced Gurdjieffian studies. There exist today copies of some of the music for this purpose actually composed by Gurdjieff. Even his music requires concentration, but it always played a part in his school.
We would do well to note that Gurdjieff does not have a high opinion of people en masse. Several times he reports about his own taking advantage of bad human habits, like vanity, to teach those people a lesson, perhaps, or maybe just to provide a counter-weight. For Gurdjieff we are, let me restate it again, mostly in the dark, living out our days like sleep-walking automatons. So bad is it that soft words will no longer do the trick to right Man’s ship. No, to reach people today, you have to grab and shake them, until they wake up long enough for you to get something through. Even those of the best attention are often so tainted in their evaluations by the lies they accept as fact – and which pervade their every thought – that even they require repetition and startling to make them able to think afresh, with an open mind, and as individuals.
I guess one way of explaining his approach is to talk a bit more about his school. Gurdjieff was a good teacher, almost a cult figure, strict an demanding, but one who never took more from his students than what they could afford, financially, mentally, and physically, and who often fed many mouths by his own devices. He was very well read, and often spent his last coins, especially in his younger years, on books he had to have.
Understand how this school worked. If new students came to Gurdjieff from a background of manual labor or menial tasks, he would charge them with keeping the finance books, reading and researching, developing an art, quiet meditation and inaction, or something other than what they were used to. If the people were piano teachers or accountants before, Gurdjieff would have them out in the mud, digging, cleaning, or something of that nature. Seekers who came to him from religious backgrounds were given decidedly irreligious tasks to accomplish, and professed atheists were sent to do things like learn prayers and clean churches. You get the picture. The idea was to take what was being neglected in each individual, whether the spirit, body, or soul, or some combination of the three, and bring those aspects or “brains” to the forefront of the new recruit’s life, in effort to achieve a balance. This was the teaching method, designed to bring to the pupil’s awareness the importance of taking care of all the needy aspects of his tripartite human nature.
Many debates have raged as to the sources of Gurdjieff’s ideas. He claims to have seen maps and books lost to us today, for which we have to take his word as having ever existed. Definitely his Armenian background comes into play, as well as the many religions he traveled the world to study. Gnosticism plays a big part, and in no small measure nearly all the religions of the world have found their way into his thought; Sufi, Persian, Jewish, Egyptian, Sumerian, Hindu, Christian, and Buddhist ideas all make appearances.
What I have not seen, but which deserves further study, is his association with Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. Especially Aristotle rings true often in Gurdjieff’s works, and especially that Aristotelian goal of self-realization, or reaching one’s potential. Perhaps this stems from some inspiration on his mother’s Greek side. This philosophical outlook of “self-actualization” or “self-realization, was later to be revived in psychology by Maslow, and his pyramids.
Many have drug Gurdjieff through the mud for being everything from a conscious capitalist ready to feed the spiritually hungry people of the world, as did Madame Blavatsky, to an out-and-out charlatan who used his charisma to recruit disciples able to pay his expenses, like any two-bit cult leader. In actuality he was neither of those, and I dare say his voice is refreshing amongst the piles of rabble and unoriginal thought, not unlike the other men we’ve been discussing in this section, but a bit more honest about himself than the rest. About his school, it was a real school where real learning was going on. That some, who could not tolerate the lessons, later begrudged Gurdjieff for this or that peculiarity does not deny the fact that those who stood by Gurdjieff have expressed lividly and admiringly about the things they went through under their Master, and acknowledge unilaterally the light he revealed to them.
Compare Gurdjieff to just the great men we’ve discussed in this section. Von Daniken has admitted to fabricating evidence, Velikovsky did not always cite the sources of his beliefs or acknowledge his own prejudices, and Sitchin takes his knowledge of cuneiform and squanders it on what might be just fabricated fairy tales and fantastic, unprovable conclusions. These other men are still unique and interesting, most of them brilliant and worthy of much more mention than they’ve yet received, but in the presence of any work by Gurdjieff, one sees right away a very real difference. This difference is not of mental capacity, but of character. Gurdjieff is not a subject pretending to be objective. The more you study him, you realize he wants objective facts to be his entire subjective outlook – all Truth, and little “George Ivanovich Gurdjieff”. It is an utterly human philosophy devoid of prejudices and, despite his own origins and essays to the contrary, a very Christian one. It is true, the allegorical presentation of much of his work, and perhaps all of Beelzebub, exempts him from much criticism. But there is a purpose in the ambiguity of his presentation, and that is to avoid becoming sectarian. I suggest it was Truths common to all religions that are the source of his ideas.
Gurdjieff’s Origin and Destiny Of Man
Being well-rounded and balanced is thus the aim, and never should you exercise one of your three brains to the exclusion of the others. Your goal in life should be to improve yourself, but not in the normally suggested ways, as in therapy, exercises, mantras, etc. For Gurdjieff, it is new experiences that are most mandatory in order for you to progress. New impressions from new places, seeing new things, meeting new people, being thrust into different situations, etc., expand your horizons, and allow you to receive new impressions with which to grow.
Stimulation of all the senses is therefore an integral part of the Fourth Way, but the need for each individual to find his OWN way is eventually the overriding goal. Perhaps this was the source of many of the reported conflicts with his closest pupils. If you want to follow Gurdjieff that would be fine with Gurdjieff; what must be remembered is that in the end you must even part with Gurdjieff, or whomever you take as your teachers. To really be, or better to say, become yourself, you follow masters and lights as far as they can take you, but then it is your duty to stop copying and begin making your own unique way. Balance, authenticity, truth, checking the ego, pushing the boundaries, “devil’s advocacy” – these are all part of the path to authentic self-fulfillment, and put you in a good position for achieving happiness in a next life.
But this is not a biography of Gurdjieff, nor a discussion of his thinking in total. Our concern from the beginning here has been to find the true origin of Man. On this subject Gurdjieff has quite a few things to say. Coming from a
family of storytellers, he prided himself on weaving yarns. His books, with Beelzebub as the prototypical example, utilize every means possible to force his readers to give them one hundred percent of their attention: he invents words, combines old ones into new ones, uses roots of several languages, tells his stories on multi-levels, gives his characters and places difficult-to-pronounce names, and more. Indeed, to accomplish this feat of capturing his reader’s undivided attention, and still produce such beautiful and meaty works, is a testament to his genius.
One major difficulty with Gurdjieff, unfortunate for our pursuit here, is deciphering his opinions about the origin of Man. The main problem is that it is often a herculean task determining what in his works is fact and what fiction. There is one story he tells, for example, about being in a desert and weathering a sandstorm by the use of stilts. Stories such as this, with little scientific likelihood, and no evidence other than the word of Gurdjieff, are difficult to interpret. This being said, from what I can glean the origin of Man for Gurdjieff is ultimately God, as we are from the beginning, as a species and as individuals, potentialities with divine consciousness and spirit. But, it should be pointed out, Man is also in body really just an eating machine, as for Gurdjieff all breathing beings, whether of one, two, or three brains, have as their primary and most primitive thoughts those about consumption and excretion, and these are said by Gurdjieff to be necessary processes for the continued existence of the world. The intricate balance between the mind, body, and spirit of the universe, as in the individual, also must be maintained. As above so below.
So personally responsible are we for our progression in all three phases that if we fail to advance, or worse, regress in this required self-improvement, we are sure to face the wrath of “Hasnamuss” who, as the allegory claims, then comes into your consciousness and attracts detrimental things into your life and the lives of those around you. Almost a karmic effect, Hasnamuss can be brought on, for example, if you:
1) engage in “every kind of depravity,” conscious or unconscious
2) get satisfaction from leading others astray
3) are inclined to destroy, or enjoy the destruction of, other breathing creatures
4) get lazy in your improvement, or try to escape from the necessities and duties demanded by nature
5) represent yourself falsely, as what you are not
6) gloat or brag about something that others do not
7) continually head in the wrong direction
and so on.
Of course, Hasnamuss doesn’t need to exist as a discoverable entity in order for us to understand what Gurdjieff means by the concept. In this Hasnamuss also stands as a good example of why G.I. used different sorts of, even crazy, words. Consider that, after a while of repeating a prayer, or mantra, or even the words “I love you” or “thank you”, there usually reaches a point when the phrases are spoken unconsciously. There is no real mental or spiritual awareness of the sentiment meant to be expressed by the physical words; the attention is often off somewhere else in the mind. “Do unto others”, “Love thy neighbor”, “Do not bear false witness”, all these catchy religious phrases, beneficial and correct as written, are still too often repeated and not often enough followed. All these mantras, whether via Christian ideas, Buddhist ideas, Hindu ideas, and so many more, are present in the works of G.I. Gurdjieff. You can find the soul, the spirit, the will, emotions, even God, too, but none of them will be called by these names. They will be called something different by Gurdjieff, at bottom, to avoid preconceptions.
So, as Gurdjieff has it, we Men are from the beginning animals like the other animals, and without changing our inborn nature we will live and die and the cycle will continue. The saving grace, however, is that Man alone can transcend this condition, actually change his nature, and so in life he is afforded a chance to “Make something of himself”. This passage I’ve found to be a good summary:
In order to more readily understand Gurdjieff’s teaching one must understand Gurdjieff’s view of the ordinary man, which was that the ordinary man, for the most part, was a machine among machines. Man reacts to what acts on him. However, something is wrong with this scenario: Man is just a machine among machines, but a machine which can be free, can be not a machine. From this Gurdjieff concluded that this would not be possible if there were not different levels of existence. On one level of existence man is just a machine existing among machines; but, on another level of existence, there exists the possibility of freedom. Gurdjieff, therefore, concluded that there are two worlds opened to man, both are here, not one far away.
Gurdjieff knew that before man would strive for the second world he must first be aware of it. He was convinced that in order for man to reach the second world, man must first be convinced of the existence of the two worlds and of the complete difference between the existence of the one world and the existence in the other. Gurdjieff’s view of man’s purpose for living more fully described his two-worlds theory. Gurdjieff stated that man has a two-fold purpose for living. The first purpose he must serve whether he wants to or not — in common with every other living being, whether plant, animal or anything else – and this purpose is to serve in the transformation of energy that is required for the whole cosmic economy particularly the economy of our solar system, our earth and our moon.
All living things including human beings, Gurdjieff concluded, are transformers of energy, which is their primary task. But, while men perform this primary task they may choose to also perform on a different level. Some men, in other words, chose to produce or transform a greater amount of energy than is required of them. These men, according to Gurdjieff, seek a different destiny for themselves. Such men have paid their debts; they have produced their required amount of energy and also build up a surplus for themselves.
To be understood, there are two different viewpoints possessed here. The man who just does what is required of him usually thinks something like this, “This is all I can expect out of life; and all that life can expect from me.” This is an expression of no incentive; while a proper response would be a try to make efforts, struggle to raise himself above this level of mechanical existence, to lift himself out of this causal mechanism. The man possessing the second attitude changes himself into a free and independent being who does things that he deems necessary to do. The latter is the response of the man who works on himself, as Gurdjieff phrased it.
This is the man, according to Gurdjieff’s judgment, that rightfully chooses between life and death. The life is not an imaginary life in some far-off heaven, but rather a full and functional life on earth that contributes to the cosmic economy; and the death is not a death in a fiery hell, but the death of an unproductive life-or the death of the “man machine” that Gurdjieff termed him. The one who seeks life, Gurdjieff contended, is the man who finds that he has latent powers to perfect himself. These latent or additional powers are not confined just to his ordinary life; but rather with them the man discovers that he not only can do what is required of him in his ordinary life but also can produce a surplus of energy that enriches his life and the lives of others. However, at the present time, which is readily observed, there is far too small of a proportion of men that are seeking to improve their lives, or seeking a second destiny. The consequences of this are not good, because the amount of energy or matter that has to be produced in the life of man is not determined by man himself, but by general influences. As individual production decreases world population must increase to maintain production. This is, at present, analogous to herds of sheep, when sheep produce less wool the number of sheep must be increased in order to meet the same requirement for wool. The analogy summarizes Gurdjieff’s simplified and concentrated message: only by the unremitting struggle of the individual for his self-perfecting can a force be created which will change the world. Without this the world will continue in an unproductive state, living off of itself.
Simply stated, far too many persons are just aware of their first world or destiny, as Gurdjieff contended. They reside in a static state of unconsciousness. In order to break out of this state Gurdjieff also held that people had to study under persons who already had escaped from their own robotic existences: a teacher, a Man Who Knows. Such people must form groups or schools where they have to obey all of the rules, including the obligation to tell the teacher everything, to keep silent in front of others, and to be prepared for the teacher to lie for the “good” of the students. The students had to achieve self-realization through work on themselves, self-observation, and self-remembering – conscious awareness of their surroundings ‘and’ self in the situation. [source here, my emphasis]
To recap, because of the aforementioned kundabuffer Man is by nature out for himself, and so his spirituality has been corrupted. The mistake was made by those who thought they were doing good, without God’s permission, instilling into Man this kundabuffer. Because of this mistake Man has a long hard road, but one that is not impossible to travel. Gurdjieff makes clear, though, the sad reality that over 90% of people will not be able to overcome their inborn shortcomings. Through no fault of their own, Men have been cursed, and it is only by a type of grace that they have any chance at all of escape. The kundabuffer, originally meant to be a protection from panic and to instill a penchant for self-preservation, keeps people unaware of what is really going on around them. Since it cannot be removed, Man must work to awaken himself from it, and Hasnamuss keeps us on the right track.
The work we ought do on ourselves is best accomplished by feeding each of the three hungry aspects of one’s being equally. You cannot become a bookworm and ignore your body, nor work your body without strengthening your mind. And, of course, both mind
and body must give equal time to the strengthening and expansion of the spirit. Any imbalance is undesirable. Most people live their lives as the sheep, going as goes the herd, which surely means they will be fleeced and eventually used for food like the other sheep. One can reverse this direction by beginning to question everything and not be led blindly by the forces of life and society.
As Gurdjieff says in Beelzebub:
Although the solar system Ors had been neglected because of its remoteness from the Center and for many other reasons, the Most Holy Cosmic Individuals surrounding our Common Father Endlessness had sent Messengers from time to time to the planets of this solar system, to regulate more or less the process of existence of the three-brained beings arising there, and to bring it into accord with the general world harmony.
Man, then, arises normally on certain planets, a product of the general Creation plan.
While I disagree with Gurdjieff about the existence of humans, or three-brained beings, anywhere else, his theory is consistent throughout and postulates many worlds all a product of the same Creation. Each planet in the universe with life sees that life evolve to a certain plan, and as this passage shows, periodically “angels” or messengers appear to check on the progress of these creatures. Sometimes these high messengers bring with them bits of technology to advance the species, like agriculture and metallurgy. It seems we Earthly three-brained beings are an anomaly in the universe. We require special attention, being victims of unforeseen circumstances.
Gurdjieff is one of my favorite thinkers right now for several reasons. Although I disagree with many of his ideas, he is, in a word, refreshing. He has all the esoteric knowledge of a Blavatsky without all the baggage and obvious dishonesty. I am a fan of Blavatsky more because of her attitude and scope of knowledge than her academic honesty, which I do not trust. I can do without channeling and things of that nature, as frankly I don’t see the need for why it should even be desired, let alone possible. With Gurdjieff, you can almost feel the mastery of world religions and esoteric knowledge he possessed, but at no time does he ever allude to anything beyond the scope of possibility. He does not drop names and make memorable quotes or put what he obviously knows on open display. Sure, I think we must retain a bit of skepticism when we consider especially his own personal exploits, and when he alludes to things like maps no one else has ever seen, but we cannot for a moment discount the work he has done.
His pupil Ouspensky made the Fourth Way into an at one time trendy self-help book. The original, in thought and justification, can only be found in the Master Gurdjieff, and anyone who really wants to give themselves a test, and learn about the real Fourth Way, can only do so by reading Gurdjieff himself.
Truthopia 