Share the Wealth: Gurdjieff Unveiled by Seymour B. Ginsburg

Greetings Bifrost Voyagers,

I thought another adventure into the arcane is about due. As with the other parts of the series, I share this with the sincerest hope that it benefits another seeker on the less traveled path towards self-knowledge.

When you begin to conduct an inquiry into the “indweller,” it’s only a matter of time before you’ll encounter the name Gurdjieff.  An Armenian mystic who lived at the turn of the last century, G.I. Gurdjieff travelled extensively teaching the Fourth Way to students throughout the world. The Fourth Way being a reference to the fourth or objective state of consciousness. The central premise of his work is that man is asleep, is unaware of his slumber and must awaken. His writings and teachings are essentially a blueprint for awakening from this somnambulatory state of life.

There are other great books exploring Gurdjieff’s philosophy such as Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, but I promised free and short with this series. This is a marvelous little book in the public domain that provides a nice intro to navigating the far more complex writings of the esteemed teacher. As the story goes, Gurdjieff’s writing was purposely complicated to elicit a greater investment and effort from his students. When combined with the process of linguistic evolution over the last century, a modern reader is likely to find it quite a difficult undertaking.

Ginsburg does a nice job of simplification with Gurdjieff Unveiled.  He introduces Gurdjieff’s wisdom in a concise fashion making it easy for the modern reader to grasp.

Here are a few brief excerpts to help decide if this is your cup of tea,

“The Work, the name by which his teachings are most usually known, is drawn from alchemy, where the Great Work signified the refinement and purification of base metals into gold as well as the transmutation of the soul into a higher spiritual state. Gurdjieff’s teachings similarly aimed at the transformation of man’s inner substance. Through cosmological speculations, through lectures, manual work, communal life, and sacred dances or ‘Movements’ in successive phases of his life, Gurdjieff offered a practical form of esoteric instruction that could harmonize the microcosm of the
human being with the macrocosm of the universe and so reunite man with the Endlessness or supreme deity.”

“Behind Gurdjieff’s teaching lies the idea that human beings live and die in a state of sleep, but do not realize this. In this sense, all human beings are divided into two categories: those who realize they are asleep and who are attempting to awaken, and those who do not know. The idea that human beings live mostly in a kind of sleep state is not new. For example, we can find it expressed by Plato in his allegory of the Cave in The Republic. But Gurdjieff’s teaching brings us methods about how to awaken from this “waking sleep,” with all the freedom and cosmic benefit that this gives, because through the teaching we eventually awaken to who we are.

Because Gurdjieff’s teaching is a “how to” teaching, it is directed at the category of human beings who realize they are asleep and who are attempting to awaken. For the category of human beings who do not know that they are asleep, there is no need for this teaching. It is only when a person begins to recognize the sleep of his mechanicalness and looks for a way to awaken that this teaching becomes relevant.”

“In order to experience the highest state of human consciousness, objective consciousness, we must transfer our identity from the personality, which is what we mistakenly believe that we are, to essence, that which we really are. Because of our improper education or conditioning (Gurdjieff calls this our improper oskiano), we mistakenly believe that we are the personality. The personality is that tissue of memories, thoughts, emotions, and sensations that we have come mistakenly to call “I.” Yet we know that none of this existed before birth and that all of this will dissolve at death or shortly thereafter. In this sense the personality is impermanent and thus in Gurdjieff’s view, unreal. As long as we believe in the overwhelming importance of the personality we will never discover that which is real.”

I hope that you do decide to probe this little book further as there are some rather interesting ideas explored. Whether or not you decide to tackle Gurdjieff in depth, I do believe that you can definitely gain some insight into yourself from the introduction to the teaching. But enough rambling from me however, I’ll leave you to your own devices. Travel well amigos and remember, the miraculous is right outside your door, all you need do is look.

Link to the text: Gurdjieff Unveiled by Seymour B. Ginsburg

One love,

HJ