The College of Charleston

This paper given by Sophia Wellbeloved at the Association for the Study of Esotericism’s
Third International Conference at the College of Charleston, South Carolina in June 2008,
is one of five papers given relating to Gurdjieff. The others were given by Michael Pittman,
Joseph Azize, Richard Smoley and Jon Woodson, to see the full program copy and paste this
link:
http://www.cofc.edu/ase//program.html to see the full programme.

‘Gurdjieff as Magus’ looks at G. I. Gurdjieff (1866?-1949) in his role as a magus. He taught

pupils the acquisition of will, use of symbolism, inter-relationship of macrocosmos to
microcosmos and a manipulation of cosmic laws so as to form a set of new bodies of ever
finer materiality and longevity. It shows the centrality of hypnotism to his teaching about
consciousness and how hypnotic techniques function in his texts and oral teachings. Gurdjieff
used the imagery of black and white magic and reflects the roles of both black and white
magician, using alcohol, drugs and intense pressures to entangle pupils usually for short
periods of time. Lastly we will look at how the teaching has become institutionalised,
necessitating omissions and redefinitions of both Gurdjieff and the Work.

Gurdjieff as Magus: Omissions and Redefinitions of the Work

Gurdjieff is not an easy man to define, and we are not going to attempt to impose a fixed
definition of him here. What we are going to look at is:

1.
How he presented himself in his writings

2.
How he presented himself to his pupils in his oral teachings

3.
Present day omissions and redefinitions of the Work

—————————

1.
Gurdjieff as Hypnotist

Gurdjieff was known as a hypnotist who cared for and cured drink and drug dependency and
other conditions, a role which he regarded as separate from his role as a teacher and which he
continued throughout his life, (Peters 1977: 214, 220-223. Webb: 1980, 473).

Now we will look at how Gurdjieff presented himself in his texts in relation to hypnotism.
You can see below the full titles and the abbreviations I am going to use when I refer to the
texts
————————————–

GURDJIEFF’S TEXTS

HERALD
The Herald of Coming Good, privately published Paris, 1933

TALES
First series: An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man or Beelzebub’s Tales
to His Grandson, London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1950

MEETINGS
Second series: Meetings With Remarkable Men, trans. A. R. Orage, Londond:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963

LIFE
Third series: Life is real only then, when “I am”, New York: Duton for Triangle
Editions, 1975

———————————————-

In all these writings Gurdjieff refers to hypnotism; in the Tales, the two central chapters
are devoted to the practice of hypnotism, in these Gurdjieff’s life story merges with that
of his hero Beelzebub. Mesmer is perhaps the only historical person mentioned in the
Tales who is not vilified by Beelzebub (Tales: 561-2). In the other three
‘autobiographical’ works he gives examples of practicing hypnotism himself (Meetings:
197-98, Life: 25, Herald: 11-13, see also Wellbeloved 2003:100-02). Herald focuses almost
exclusively on his study of hypnotism and other occult practises.

Gurdjieff’s represents hypnotism in both passive and active functions

————————————————–

WAKING (hypnotic) SLEEP

(our usual waking state)

HYPNOTISM(can function passively or actively)

SUBCONSCIOUS
(usually inaccessible to us but made accessible by hypnosis )

———————————————–

We can relate hypnotism to the central tenet of Gurdjieff’s teaching. He taught that
what we usually regard as being our daily waking state is in fact a state of sleep. Not
ordinary sleep but hypnotic sleep.

In brief summary: our ‘true’ consciousness resides in what he terms the ‘subconscious’
which we are usually unable to contact. As a result of this division in our consciousness,
he says that, as we are, we cannot ‘do’, our actions are merely mechanical reactions.
In Chapter XXXII of the Tales Beelzebub explains that hypnotism is the means of
linking these two states of being. It can be used to act on these separated consciousnesses
in different ways, for example, it can put the usual waking state, where the personality
functions to sleep so that the subconscious which contains the essence can function. The
advantage of doing that is that according to the teaching essence can grow and develop
while the personality is a prison in which we respond mechanically to what ever
happens.

So we can see that a passive experience of hypnotism, being hypnotised by events or

surroundings, may function to trap us in ‘waking sleep’, while an active hypnotism, may
liberate us from waking sleep and give us access to our subconscious.

Hypnotism in Gurdjieff’s terminology is thus ‘a stick with two ends.’

——————-

Here I want to look at Gurdjieff’s four texts in relation to his law of three which
expresses two possible outcomes for the interaction of negative and positive forces.
Hypnotism is the third force that can reconcile these forces in an evolutionary/positive
way, or in a devolutionary/negative way.

The diagram below show how Gurdjieff’s texts embody his law of three.

————————————

+ LIFE
Results from reconciliation in an evolutionary/upwards direction

- TALES Hypnotism is the third force capable of reconciling positive and negative forces
+ MEETINGS

- HERALD
Results from reconciliation in devolutionary/downwards direction

——————————————————-

We can regard each text as representing a positive or negative force according to

Gurdjieff’s own intention for the books stated in the following way:

The Tales - functions as a negative force intended to destroy the reader’s beliefs and
views
Meetings - functions as a positive force – because it is to provide the reader with good
material for a new creation.

Life – functions as a result of an evolutionary reconciling force – because it is to help the

reader realise the world existing in reality rather than in his fantasy.

Herald - functions as the result of a devolutionary reconciling force, this is the book that
Gurdjieff withdrew or ‘exiled’.
In the two books which show how the positive and negative are resolved Gurdjieff
presents himself as a predominantly wise white magician in Life, and the personification
of a psychotic, black magician in Herald.

Gurdjieff instructed his pupils not to read Herald, but writes in Life, that we ought not
to read it. This is not a convincing strategy for someone who wants his book to be
ignored. Herald shows the chaotic state of a devolutionary descent in to madness, and it
is necessary to include it in order to show the full expression of his law of three.

Gurdjieff employed hypnotic techniques in all these texts. Some of these are defined by
Dr Joseph A. Sandford a psychologist and clinical hypnotheapist with Gurdjieffian
interests and professionally trained in the hypnosis methodology of Milton H. Erickson.
Sandford gives some examples of the hypnotic techniques that are used by both men:
‘story telling, metaphor, indirect suggestion, confusion techniques and implied
directives, and shocks (Gnosis through Hypnosis: the Role of Trance in Personal
Transformation, Proceedings of the All & Everything Humantities Conference,2005,
privately published. See also (Runyon, Carroll, Magick and Hypnosis).
http://nightbreed.tribe.net/thread/33226a91-c71c-49f4-90dd-dd1f0c997091
‘<em>Ceremonial magic is ritual hypnosis’).

Gurdjieff himself said that breaking the connection between the emotional and mental
centres will cause a person to become hallucinated (Gurdjieff, 1976: 263, 192), ‘Centres
are without critical faculty … when a person looks with one centre only, he is under
hallucination’). All his texts are intentionally confusing: misleading, contradictory, and
paradoxical, he defined himself as:

‘unique in respect of the so to say “muddling and befuddling” of all the notions and
convictions supposedly firmly fixed in the entirety of people with whom I come into
contact.” (Tales, 26).

2.
Now we will look at how Gurdjieff presented himself to his pupils.
Gurdjieff’s teaching emphasised specific methodologies according to where he was and
what was happening, but the content of the teaching remained the same in all periods.
Here, because of time constraints, we will look at two periods indicated in the
chronology below.

—————————————————

G. I. GURDJIEFF 1866? – 1949

1866? Born Alexandropol, Armenia, (now Gyumri)

1885?- 1910? Undocumented travels to Middle and Far East

1910? - 1917 In Russia teaching: P. D. Ouspensky meets Gurdjieff

records teaching from 1915 - 1922
In Search of the Miraculous (Search) Ouspensky 1949

1917 - 1922 From Russia to Europe with pupils

1922 France: Gurdjieff founds The Institute for the Harmonious
Development of Man outside Paris,
fully functional until 1924

1924 -1930 Visits USA begins writing. Closes the Institute but
continues to live there. Will visit the USA a further
nine or ten times.

1932 lives in Paris

1935 – 1940 Paris teaching the Rope group [and others].

1940-1945 Teaching groups in his flat in Paris

1945 Gurdjieff continued teaching pupils until his death in

1949.

———————————————————

P. D. Ouspensky

1915-1922
During this time Ouspensky records Gurdjieff’s teaching pupils: the acquisition of will,
the use of symbolism, the inter-relationship of macrocosmos to microcosmos and a
manipulation of cosmic laws so as to form a set of new bodies of ever finer materiality
and longevity. Gurdjieff expressed his teachings with reference to alchemical processes,
(Search,176, 180), transmutation and transformation (Search,193), and in relation to the
symbologies of astrology, magic and tarot, among others (Search, 278-295) and Webb,
(The Harmonious Circle 1980, 499-525) gives a good account of some of the likely
western esoteric origins of Gurdjieff’s teaching (Webb, 1980, 499-525).

Many if not most of Gurdjieff’s pupils had some knowledge of Theosophical ideas, so his
cosmology, ideas about the formation of different bodies would have been familiar to
them. What Gurdjieff offered pupils that differed from Blavatksy’s Theosophical
teaching was an occult practice that would enable them to transform themselves, not
just a theory about different bodies but methods for creating them. This brings
Gurdjieff’s teaching into the realm of magic (Versluis, Arthur, 2007: 1. ‘Magicians seek
direct spiritual insight and use it to affect the course of events’, and 4. ‘the Magus seeks to
have effects in the world’.)

Gurdjieff defines magicians as men who understand the laws of nature and know how to
use them to transform substances and also to oppose mechanical influences, and this is
not a bad summary of what Gurdjieff himself taught. He gives Christ as an example of a
magician who had this knowledge (Search: 226-7, see also (Views 1976/ 1st pub 1973 in a
talk in Essentuki in 1918). Gurdjieff’s definitions of both black and white magicians are
inconsistent and confusing (Search: 227). He does say that ‘Black magic does not in any
way mean magic of evil’ and this is representative of a theme he returns to throughout
his teaching. The pupils who took part in his revue ‘Struggle of the Magicians’, had to
dance the roles of both black and white magicians.
Gurdjieff agrees with Ouspensky that narcotics are used for the creation of states that
make magic possible, but says that they are not merely narcotics although substances
used may be prepared form opium or hashish (Search: 8-9 see also 162, 195).

There is a short paper on Narcotics and Hormones by G. I. Gurdjieff, ‘evidently taken

down by Ouspensky’. Here Gurdjieff relates some of the uses of narcotics including as a
help in ‘the work of Self-Observation and self study,’ he stresses that the use of narcotics
is dangerous and needs to be carried out by an expert.

In 1959 the Stourton Press in Cape Town published a short paper Narcotics and
Hormones by G. I. Gurdjieff, ‘evidently taken down by Ouspensky’, some of the
material is in his In Search of the Miraculous. Republished in Unforgotten Fragments,
Pogson, Beryl Chassereau, and Lewis Creed, 1994. Gurdjieff states that narcotics can be
used to change the state of consciousness. He refers to medieval literature as a rich
source on the subject. He defines hormones as ‘clouds of fine matter, finer than the
gaseous matter known to us which is given off by various organs of our body. The 1920s
and 1930s were a time of great interest and medical research into hormones. In 1922
insulin was first used to treat diabetes, (see also
http://www.uwyo.edu/wjm/Repro/classica.htm) There are references to opium in the Tales
including an complex passage pages 826-40 detailing research into the properties of
opium).

———————————————–

Solita Solano

1935 -1939/40
Gurdjieff was teaching’ the Rope’ a group of women pupils in Paris, seeing them once or
twice every day. According to Gurdjieff’s pupil J. G Bennett this group progressed at a
much faster rate than earlier pupils, Bennett attributed this to the use of drugs (Bennett
1976: 232), Bennett writes that Gurdjieff carried out ‘a very extraordinary experiment,
making use of methods that brought them into remarkable psychic states, and developed
their powers far more rapidly’ than those of earlier pupils. He saw memoirs but is not
allowed to quote from them, he hopes they will be published as they throw light on
Gurdjieff’s methods as a teacher and upon ‘his use of drugs as a method of developing
not only psychic experiences, but also opening hidden channels of the human psyche’.
Although he was castigated for making this suggestion, there are diary entries
concerning courses of injections, which Gurdjieff himself gave to the pupils, recorded in:

‘Notes taken by Solita Solano from October 1935 – April 1939 in Paris, with additional
notes about Gurdjieff’s visit to New York in 1948
(Janet Flanner and Solita Solano Papers, Library of Congress, folder 6 box 6).

There are twenty-three direct references to piqures (injections) and courses of injections
that Gurdjieff gave Solano and other members of the Rope group. He gave inner
exercises for them to do related to the injections.

Solano quotes Gurdjieff saying:

‘After a certain age this effort [his teaching] is very difficult and often impossible. There
is an artificial aid by means of physico-chemical substance… for example a substance
can be injected which will furnish artificial help for prayer … If the effort and the
amount of the chemical are not balanced, it becomes a dangerous poison for the
organism.’ (In January, 1936, p. 18).

He had already given her ‘My first piqure and my first exercise’ (16th November 1935).

These notes are greatly abridged and there is no mention of the actual substances he was
injecting, but he did take blood and urine samples from the group to check what
adjustments to make to their medications. The exercises are not give in the Notes, and
the results of the injections are not referred to in detail, Solano reports feeling better
after the first course. Later the group are strongly affected by the injections, two of
them cry and feel suicidal, Solano fears loosing her memory. Another time she asks
about an increase in menstruation which Gurdjieff attributes to the injections this last
suggests injections of hormones (Notes 39-40).

The group also take other medicines given them by Gurdjieff (Notes July 18, 1936, 42-
43).

There are references to magic, in the first (June 18th 1936) Gurdjieff refers to ‘the mag’,
Solano writes in brackets after mag ( magus, adept, master) and says that

The mag (magus, adept, master) is cunning.

… The mag is the highest that man can approach to God because only he can be
impartial and fulfil obligation to God. In old times the mag was always made the chief
because he had cunning. Other mags could do either white or black magic but the mag
who had cunning and canning could do both white and black and was the chief of the
Initiates. Man with real cunning is man without quotation marks. Angel can do only one
thing. Devil can do all.’ (July 18th 1936, Notes, 42-43).

A month later he says: “Both cunning and canning are necessary to all things. This is
why there are two magics. Black magic is cunning – often also is cunning and canness –
you understand the difference? Black magic is ideal for being. Cunning and can-ness is
like conscious and unconscious, or like two words used in Bible for meaning two kinds of
evil voluntary and involuntary sin”. (Notes 49).
Gurdjieff continued to teach pupils his mix of esoteric ideas and occult practices. He was
at pains to present himself in his writings and in his oral teachings in the roles of both
Black and White Magician. He never sought to present himself as solely good, or other
than he was which was capable of both constructive and destructive relations with his
pupils. I suggest that this duality is fundamental to his teaching because he is an
embodiment of his Law of Three, showing the good and bad possibilities open to a
human beings and how these may be reconciled.

Some of the methods that Gurdjieff used to hypnotised and entangled his pupils were:
intense pressures
conflicting demands
contradictory teachings
exhausting physical efforts
lack of sleep
use of alcohol and drugs
and fasts

The demands of both Gurdjieff’s writings and oral teachings entangle the reader or
listener in hypnotic paradox and contradiction . The demand for students to observe
themselves was contradicted by the teaching that they were mechanical and unable to
‘do’. The statement that pupils must have a critical mind was subverted by belonging to
a regime in which they had agreed to be incapable of ‘doing’ and therefore of being
critical. The constant demand for ‘making effort’ was reinforced by Gurdjieff’s
instruction that leaving the teaching before having reached a certain stage would be
injurious. It would be better for pupils to die making ‘super-efforts’ than to continue
living their mechanical lives. He stressed that the teaching was dangerous. Pupils could
not avoid danger, they had to face either the danger of the teaching, or of leaving it.
Gurdjieff’s teaching always took place in the last chance saloon.

But he did repeatedly warn pupils against taking his cosmological ideas literally
(Wellbeloved, 2003: 216-17). He also gave clues. The astute reader or listener will find
the contradictions and begin to question the texts and maybe also the teaching. The
process of freeing themselves from this hypnotised state might also free pupils from
much of their usual mechanically hypnotised state and allow them to connect with their
subconscious (Webb 1980: 560-573). Entanglement and liberation are two ends of the
same stick. One of the properties that Gurdjieff defined as belonging to the subconscious
is ‘confrontative criticism’ (Tales 568). Or to express it differently, they might be able to
define themselves and the world around them in terms other than those used by
Gurdjieff.

Ignoring the contradictions, both those created by him and those arising in his life, the
pupil may defeat the point of the teaching. Gurdjieff himself usually made sure the pupil
‘got it’ that is could not ignore the contradictions inherent in his teaching by
‘orphaning’ pupils, sending them away, behaving to them in such a way that they chose
to go, or by simply disbanding the whole group. This forced pupils to reassess him the
teaching and themselves (The Fourth Way, i.e. Gurdjieff’s teaching is never permanent,
Search: 312).

3.
Present day omissions and redefinitions of the Work
Once the Magus dies, his presence as embodiment is not longer there and his teaching
ends. Thus, he has to be reinvented and his teaching restructured and this has
happened. Gurdjieff and his teaching have inevitably been institutionalised and
redefined.

Today, in foundations (organisations set up after Gurdjieff’s death by his successor

Jeanne de Salzmann) and other groups, as far as I have discovered, there is no focus on
Gurdjieff’s use of:
Magic,
Hypnotism,
Narcotics and other drugs.
While the teaching was defined by Gurdjieff as a dangerous but quick way to acquire
knowledge, membership is now for long periods, or for life. The effort required is not
‘dangerous’. The pupil is focused on ‘searching’ rather than ‘finding’, ‘receiving’ rather
than ‘stealing’ or ‘making efforts’ (See http://gurdjieffbooks.wordpress.com/ “Doing” and
Not Doing” on the Joseph Azize page where he gives examples of the passive form of
language used in the 1980s by a Foundation work teacher.). Gurdjieff is generally
presented in a version ‘cleansed’ of occult practices. For example, the website of the New
York Foundation does not include Herald in its list of Gurdjieff’s writings
(http://www.gurdjieff-foundation-newyork.org/work2.html ).

The foundations have remained secretive and closed to general scrutiny. There are ‘not
for public release books and videos’, one of the videos I have seen presents Gurdjieff in a
romanticised sepia vision of his life as related in Meetings, where none of the
contradictions of his life or teaching are mentioned. The Work has now spread out and
become more widely known in versions that are entwined with other teachings (see
Wellbeloved ‘Changes in G. I. Gurdjieff’s Teaching ‘The Work’
http://www.cesnur.org/2001/london2001/wellbeloved.htm A paper presented at The 2001
Conference (CESNUR-INFORM) in London).

What we might ask now is: why is there a reluctance to mention occult practices, magic,
hypnotism and the use of drugs in this teaching, not only by the teacher/practitioners
but also by scholars? This is a question that is important for the establishment of the
discipline of western esotericism as a whole.

Traces of Gurdjieff as Magus, can be found in pupil memoirs and in Chaos Magic.
He remains fully alive in his roles as both black and white magician in his texts.
—————————

Bibliography

Azize, Joseph, http://gurdjieffbooks.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/doing-and-not-doing/

Bennett, John G. Gurdjieff: Making A New World, London: Turnstone Books, 1976

G. I. Gurdjieff, The Herald of Coming Good, privately published Paris, 1933

All and Everything, Ten Books in Three Series:

First series: An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man or Beelzebub’s
Tales to His Grandson, London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1950.
Second series: Meetings With Remarkable Men, trans. A. R. Orage, Londond:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963.

Third series: Life is real only then, when “I am”, New York: Duton for Triangle
Editions, 19

Views from the Real World: Early Talks of Gurdjieff: London, Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1976, 1sr pub. 1973.

Ouspensky, P. D. In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching,

London:
Arkana, 1987, 1st pub Harcourt Brace and World, 1949.

Peters, Fritz, Gurdjieff: containing Boyhood with Gurdjieff and Gurdjieff Remembered,
London:
Wildwood House, 1977 (1st pub. 1965).

Pogson, Beryl Chassereau and Lewis Creed, Unforgotten Fragments, York: Quacks
Books, 1994

Solano, Solita, unpublished Notes taken by Solita Solano from 1935 – 1940 in Paris,
Beinecke Library, Kathryn Hulme Papers YCAL MSS 22 Box 19, folders 484-93 Solano,
Solita 1951-75, n.d.

Versluis, Arthur, Magic and Mysticism,: an Introduction to Western Esotericism,

Lantham,
Boulder, New York, Toronto, Plymouth UK: Roman & Littlefield, 2007.

Webb. James, The Harmonious Circle, London: Thames & Hudson, 1980.

Wellbeloved, Sophia, ‘Changes in G. I. Gurdjieff’s Teaching ‘The Work’ 2001

CESNUR-Inform
Conference in London. http://www.cesnur.org/2001/london2001/wellbeloved.htm
Gurdjieff: the Key Concepts, London & New York: Routledge, 2003.