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'''George Ivanovich Gurdjieff''' (c. 1867 – 29 October 1949)<ref>According to his own account Gurdjieff was born in 1867. He told a group meeting on Thursday 28/10/1943 that he was then 76 years old. He died six years later in 1949 when he was 82 years old - and certainly looked this age from photographs and videos taken at that time. His age also reflects what he said in his autobiography "Meetings with Remarkable Men" - that he was about 7 years old at the time of the great cattle plague which affected his father's livestock. This event occurred in the summer of 1873. In the same chapter he recalls his childhood in the "1870's". Various documents and other authors such as James Webb, ''The Harmonious Circle'', Thames and Hudson, 1980, pp. 25–26 provides a range of dates from 1872, 1873, 1874, 1877 to 1886.</ref> was a [[philosopher]], [[Mysticism|mystic]], [[spiritual teacher]], composer, and dance teacher.<ref>http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/58952 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190918080033/http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/58952 |date=2019-09-18 }} Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Edited by Michael Pittman. G. I. Gurdjieff: Armenian Roots, Global Branches. During the early period after Gurdjieff's arrival in Europe in 1921 he gained significant notoriety in Europe and the United States... In October 1922, Gurdjieff set up a school at the Prieuré des Basses Loges at Fontainebleau-Avon, outside of Paris. It was at the Prieuré that Gurdjieff met many notable figures, authors, and artists of the early twentieth century, many of whom went on to be close students and exponents of his teaching. Over the course of his life, those who visited and worked with him included the French author René Daumal; the renowned short story author from New Zealand, [[Katherine Mansfield]]; [[Kathryn Hulme]], later the author of ''[[The Nun's Story|A Nun's Life]]''; [[P. L. Travers]], the author of ''[[Mary Poppins (book series)|Mary Poppins]]''; and [[Jean Toomer]], the author of ''[[Cane (novel)|Cane]]'', whose work and influence would figure prominently in the [[Harlem Renaissance]]... Numerous study groups, organizations, formal foundations, and even land-based communities have been initiated in his name, primarily in North and South America and Europe, and to a lesser extent, in Japan, China, India, Australia, and South Africa. In 1979, Peter Brook, the British theater director and author, created a film based on ''[[Meetings with Remarkable Men (film)|Meetings with Remarkable Men]]''.</ref> Gurdjieff taught that people are not conscious of themselves and thus live their lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep", but that it is possible to awaken to a higher state of consciousness and serve our purpose as human beings. The practice of his teaching has become known as "The Work"<ref>{{cite book |last=Ouspensky |first=P. D. |author-link=P. D. Ouspensky |title=In Search of the Miraculous |url=https://archive.org/details/insearchofmiracu00uspe/page/312 |year=1977 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/insearchofmiracu00uspe/page/312 312–313] |publisher=Harcourt, Brace |quote=Schools of the fourth way exist for the needs of the work... But no matter what the fundamental aim of the work is ... When the work is done the schools close. |isbn=0-15-644508-5}}</ref> (connoting work on oneself) and is additional to the ways of the [[fakir|Fakirs]] ([[Sufism|Sufis]]), [[monk|Monks]] and [[yogi|Yogis]], so that his student [[P. D. Ouspensky]] referred to it as the "[[Fourth Way]]".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.gurdjieff.org/ |title=Gurdjieff International Review |publisher=Gurdjieff.org |access-date=2014-03-02}}</ref>
Gurdjieff's teaching has inspired the formation of many groups around the world. After his death in 1949, the [[Gurdjieff Foundation]] in Paris was established and led by his close pupil [[Jeanne de Salzmann]] in cooperation with other direct pupils of Gurdjieff, until her death in 1990; and then by her son [[Michel de Salzmann]], until his death in 2001.
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*{{harvnb|Pittman|2008|p=x}}: "Gurdjieff was born in Gyumri, Armenia, to an Armenian mother and a Cappadocian-Greek father."
* {{Plain link|url=https://www.gurdjieff.org/salzmann-m1.htm Michel de Salzmann (1987)}}: "His father was Greek and his mother Armenian"
* {{harvnb|Tchekhovitch|2006|pp=244-240}}: "Since for some time I had the privilege of living close to Mr. Gurdjieff's mother, I am sure the reader will understand why I would wish to devote to this woman some recollections that illustrate her exceptional character{{nbsp}}... Her last words, spoken in Armenian, had the character of a Japanese poem."</ref> According to Gurdjieff himself, his father came of a Greek family whose ancestors had emigrated from Byzantium after the [[Fall of Constantinople]] in 1453, with his family initially moving to central Anatolia, and from there eventually to [[Georgia (country)|Georgia]] in the [[Caucasus]].<ref name="Churton2017-1">{{harvnb|Churton|2017|pp=19–25}}: "Archival Records: Hearst columnist and old friend of Aleister Crowley
There are conflicting views regarding Gurdjieff's birth date, ranging from 1866 to 1877. The bulk of extant records weigh heavily toward 1877, but Gurdjieff in reported conversations with students gave the year of his birth as {{circa|1867}},<ref name="Churton2017-2">{{harvnb|Churton|2017|pp=3–4, 316–317}}</ref> which is corroborated by the account of his niece Luba Gurdjieff Everitt and accords with photographs and videos taken of him in 1949.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Everitt |first=Luba Gurdjieff |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J08PAAAACAAJ |title=Luba Gurdjieff: A Memoir with Recipes |publisher=SLG Books |isbn=978-0-943389-22-6 |publication-date=1997 |page=12 |language=en |orig-date=1993}}</ref>{{Request quotation|date=April 2024}} George Kiourtzidis, great-grandson of Gurdjieff's paternal uncle Vasilii (through Vasilii's son Alexander), recalled that his grandfather Alexander, born in 1875, said that Gurdjieff was about three years older than him, which would point to a birth date {{circa|1872}}.<ref name="Churton2017-2" /> Although official documents consistently record the day of his birth as 28 December, Gurdjieff himself celebrated his birthday either on the Old Orthodox [[Julian calendar]] date of 1 January, or according to the [[Gregorian calendar]] date for New Year of 13 January (up to 1899; 14 January after 1900).<ref name="Churton2017-2" /> The year of 1872 is inscribed in a plate on the grave-marker in the cemetery of [[Avon, Seine-et-Marne]], France, where his body was buried.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.landrucimetieres.fr/spip/spip.php?article1949|title=AVON (77) : cimetière - Cimetières de France et d'ailleurs|website=www.landrucimetieres.fr}}</ref>
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In 1919, Gurdjieff and his closest pupils moved to [[Tbilisi]], where Gurdjieff's wife Julia Ostrowska, the Stjoernvals, the Hartmanns, and the de Salzmanns continued to assimilate his teaching. Gurdjieff concentrated on his still unstaged ballet, ''The Struggle of the Magicians''. [[Thomas de Hartmann]] (who had made his debut years ago, before Czar [[Nicholas II of Russia]]), worked on the music for the ballet, and [[Olgivanna Lloyd Wright|Olga Ivanovna Hinzenberg]] (who years later wed the American architect [[Frank Lloyd Wright]]), practiced the dances. It was here that Gurdjieff opened his first [[Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man]].
In late May 1920, when political and social conditions in Georgia deteriorated, his party travelled to Batumi on the Black Sea coast and then by ship to Istanbul.<ref>[[Thomas de Hartmann]], ''Our Life With Mr. Gurdjieff'' (1962), Penguin 1974 pp.94–5.</ref> Gurdjieff rented an apartment on Kumbaracı Street in Péra and later at 13 Abdullatif Yemeneci Sokak near the [[Galata Tower]].<ref>[http://www.gurdjieff-movements.net/newsletter/2003-03/06_gurdjieff_istanbul.htm "In Gurdjieff's wake in Istanbul"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061031072357/http://www.gurdjieff-movements.net/newsletter/2003-03/06_gurdjieff_istanbul.htm |date=2006-10-31 }}, Gurdjieff Movements, March 2003.</ref> The apartment is near the [[Khanqah
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Gurdjieff was standing by his bed in a state of what seemed to me to be completely uncontrolled fury. He was raging at Orage, who stood impassively and very pale, framed in one of the windows
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Films of movements demonstrations are occasionally shown for private viewing by the [[Gurdjieff Foundation]]s, and some examples are shown in a scene in the [[Peter Brook]] movie ''[[Meetings with Remarkable Men (film)|Meetings with Remarkable Men]]''.
Gurdjieff wrote a trilogy with the Series title ''All and Everything''. The first volume, finalized by Gurdjieff shortly before his death and first published in 1950, is the First Series and titled ''[[An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man]]'' or ''[[Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson]]''. At 1238 pages it is a lengthy allegorical work that recounts the explanations of Beelzebub to his grandson concerning the beings of the planet Earth and laws which govern the universe. It provides a vast platform for Gurdjieff's deeply considered philosophy. A controversial redaction of ''Beelzebub's Tales'' was published by some of Gurdjieff's followers as an alternative "edition", in 1992. [See Paul Beekman Taylor's' ''Gurdjieff's Worlds of Words'' (2014) for an informed account.]▼
On his page of ''Friendly Advice'' facing the first Contents page of ''Beelzebub's Tales'' Gurdjieff lays out his own program of three obligatory initial readings of each of the three series in sequence and concludes, "Only then will you be able to count upon forming your own impartial judgement, proper to yourself alone, on my writings. And only then can my hope be actualized that according to your understanding you will obtain the specific benefit for your self which I anticipate."▼
The posthumous second series, edited by [[Jeanne de Salzmann]], is titled ''[[Meetings with Remarkable Men]]'' (1963) and is written in a seemingly accessible manner as a memoir of his early years, but also contains some 'Arabian Nights' embellishments and allegorical statements. His posthumous Third Series, (''[[Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am']]''), written as if unfinished and also edited by Jeanne de Salzmann, contains an intimate account of Gurdjieff's inner struggles during his later years, as well as transcripts of some of his lectures. An enormous and growing amount has been written about Gurdjieff's ideas and methods, but his own challenging writings remain the primary sources.▼
==Reception and influence==
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Gurdjieff inspired the formation of many groups around the world after his death, all of which still function today and follow his ideas.<ref>Seymour B. Ginsburg ''Gurdjieff Unveiled'', pp. 71–7, Lighthouse Editions Ltd., 2005 {{ISBN|978-1-904998-01-3}}</ref> The [[Gurdjieff Foundation]], the largest organization influenced by the ideas of Gurdjieff, was organized by [[Jeanne de Salzmann]] during the early 1950s, and led by her in cooperation with other pupils of his. Other pupils of Gurdjieff formed independent groups. Willem Nyland, one of Gurdjieff's closest students and an original founder and trustee of The Gurdjieff Foundation of New York, left to form his own groups in the early 1960s. [[Jane Heap]] was sent to London by Gurdjieff, where she led groups until her death in 1964. Louise Goepfert March, who became a pupil of Gurdjieff's in 1929, started her own groups in 1957. Independent thriving groups were also formed and initially led by [[John G. Bennett]] and A. L. Staveley near Portland, Oregon.
[[Louis Pauwels]], among others,<ref>{{Cite book|last=Lachman |first=Gary |title=Turn off your mind |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8jfptmqzTzkC&q=critics+of+Gurdjieff+work&pg=PA13 |quote=... a hostile book on... Gurdjieff. |page=13 |year=2003 |publisher=The Disinformation Co. |isbn=0-9713942-3-7}}</ref> criticizes Gurdjieff for his insistence on considering people as "asleep" in a state closely resembling "hypnotic sleep". Gurdjieff said, even specifically at times, that a pious, good, and moral person was no more "spiritually developed" than any other person; they are all equally "asleep".<ref>{{cite book |url=http://books.googld.com/books?id=QjetCc6ktOgC&pg=PA110&dq=Gurdjieff+insanity&lr=#v=onepage&q=Gurdjieff%20insanity&f=false |title=Gurdjieff and Orage |first=Paul Beekman |last=Taylor |page=110 |year=2001 |publisher=Samuel Weiser |isbn=978-1-609-25311-0 |quote=...Orage revealed Gurdjieff's views of drugs and alcohol as conducive to 'insanity' }}{{dead link|date=December 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>▼
===Pupils===▼
[[Henry Miller]] approved of Gurdjieff not considering himself holy but, after writing a brief introduction to Fritz Peters' book ''Boyhood with Gurdjieff'', Miller wrote that people are not meant to lead a "harmonious life" as Gurdjieff believed in naming his institute.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Miller |first=Henry |title=From Your Capricorn Friend |url=https://archive.org/details/fromyourcapricor0000mill |url-access=registration |page=[https://archive.org/details/fromyourcapricor0000mill/page/42 42] |year=1984 |publisher=New Directions Publishing |isbn=0-8112-0891-5 |quote=What I intended to say...}}</ref>▼
Critics note that Gurdjieff gives no value to most of the elements that compose the life of an average person. According to Gurdjieff, everything an average person possesses, accomplishes, does, and feels is completely accidental and without any initiative. A common everyday ordinary person is born a machine and dies a machine without any chance of being anything else.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Ginsburg |first=Seymour |title=Gurdjieff unveiled |page=6 |year=2005 |publisher=Lighthouse Editions Ltd |isbn=1-904998-01-1| quote=Without any doubt the human psyche and thinking are becoming more and more automatic. }}</ref> This belief seems to run counter to the Judeo-Christian tradition that man is a living soul. Gurdjieff believed that the possession of a soul (a state of psychological unity which he equated with being "awake") was a "luxury" that a disciple could attain only by the most painstaking work over a long period of time. The majority—in whom the true meaning of the [[gospel]] failed to take root<ref>See The [[Parable of the Sower]]</ref>—went the "broad way" that "led to destruction."<ref>''Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.'' [[Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] 7, 13–14.</ref>▼
In ''Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson'', Gurdjieff expresses his reverence for the founders of the mainstream religions of East and West and his contempt for what successive generations of believers have made of those religious teachings. His discussions of "orthodoxhydooraki" and "heterodoxhydooraki"—orthodox fools and heterodox fools, from the Russian word ''durak'' (fool)—position him as a critic of religious distortion and, in turn, as a target for criticism from some within those traditions. Gurdjieff has been interpreted by some, Ouspensky among others, to have had a total disregard for the value of mainstream religion, philanthropic work and the value of doing right or wrong in general.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ouspensky |first=P. D. |title=In Search of the Miraculous |pages=[https://archive.org/details/insearchofmiracu00uspe/page/299 299–302] |publisher=Harcourt Brace & Co. |year=1977 |isbn=0-15-644508-5 |quote=G. invariably began by emphasizing the fact that there is something very wrong at the basis of our usual attitude towards problems of religion. |url=https://archive.org/details/insearchofmiracu00uspe/page/299}}</ref>▼
Gurdjieff's former students who have criticized him argue that, despite his seeming total lack of pretension to any kind of "guru holiness", in many anecdotes his behavior displays the unsavory and impure character of a man who was a cynical manipulator of his followers.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.cafes.net/ditch/motm1.htm|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20091124052447/http://www.cafes.net/ditch/motm1.htm|url-status=dead|title=Cafes.net|archivedate=November 24, 2009}}</ref> Gurdjieff's own pupils wrestled to understand him. For example, in a written exchange between Luc Dietrich and Henri Tracol dating to 1943: "L.D.: How do you know that Gurdjieff wishes you well? H.T.: I feel sometimes how little I interest him—and how strongly he takes an interest in me. By that I measure the strength of an intentional feeling."<ref>Henry Tracol, ''The Taste For Things That Are True'', p. 84, Element Books: Shaftesbury, 1994</ref>▼
Louis Pauwels wrote ''Monsieur Gurdjieff'' (first edition published in Paris in 1954 by Editions du Seuil).<ref>Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke ''Black Sun'', p. 323, NYU Press, 2003 {{ISBN|978-0-8147-3155-0}}</ref> In an interview, Pauwels said of the Gurdjieff work: "After two years of exercises which both enlightened and burned me, I found myself in a hospital bed with a thrombosed central vein in my left eye and weighing ninety-nine pounds ... Horrible anguish and abysses opened up for me. But it was my fault."<ref>Bruno de Panafieu/Jacob Needleman/George Baker/Mary Stein ''Gurdjieff: Essays and Reflections on the Man and His Teachings'', p. 166, Continuum, 1997 {{ISBN|978-0-8264-1049-8}}</ref>▼
Pauwels believed that [[Karl Haushofer]], the father of [[geopolitics]] whose protégée was Deputy Reich Führer [[Rudolf Hess]], was one of the real "seekers after truth" described by Gurdjieff. According to Rom Landau, a journalist in the 1930s, [[Achmed Abdullah]] told him at the beginning of the 20th century that Gurdjieff was a Russian secret agent in Tibet{{citation needed|reason=reliable source needed to support claim|date=February 2019}} who went by the name of "Hambro Akuan Dorzhieff" (i.e. [[Agvan Dorjiev]]), a tutor to the [[Dalai Lama]].<ref>Gary Lachman, ''Turn Off Your Mind'', pp. 32–33, Disinformation Co., 2003 {{ISBN|978-0-9713942-3-0}}</ref> However, the actual Dorzhieff went to live in the Buddhist temple erected in St. Petersburg and after the revolution was imprisoned by [[Stalin]]. James Webb conjectured that Gurdjieff might have been Dorzhieff's assistant Ushe Narzunoff (i.e. [[Ovshe Norzunov]]).<ref>Gary Lachman ''Politics and the Occult'', p. 124, Quest Books, 2004 {{ISBN|978-0-8356-0857-2}}</ref>▼
[[Colin Wilson]] writes about "Gurdjieff's reputation for seducing his female students. (In Providence, Rhode Island, in 1960, a man was pointed out to me as one of Gurdjieff's illegitimate children. The professor who told me this also assured me that Gurdjieff had left many children around America.)"<ref>Colin Wilson ''G. I. Gurdjieff/P. D. Ouspensky'', ch. 6, Maurice Bassett, 2007 Kindle Edition ASIN B0010K7P5M</ref>▼
Gurdjieff's notable pupils include:<ref>Gurdjieff: an Annotated Bibliography, J. Walter Driscoll and the Gurdjieff Foundation of California, Garland, 1985.</ref>
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[[Henry John Sinclair, 2nd Baron Pentland]] (1907–1984), was a pupil of Ouspensky's during the 1930s and 1940s. He visited Gurdjieff regularly in Paris in 1949, then was appointed as President of the Gurdjieff Foundation of America by Jeanne de Salzmann when she founded that institution at New York in 1953. He established the Gurdjieff Foundation of California in the mid-1950s and remained President of the US Foundation branches until his death. Pentland also became President of Triangle Editions when it was established in 1974.
==
[[Leonora Carrington|Leonora Carrington's]] experience of the [[Fourth Way]] led her to model the character Dr Gambit on Gurdjieff in her novel ''[[The Hearing Trumpet]]'' (completed 1950, published 1976).<ref>{{cite journal |last1=O'Rawe |first1=R. |date=2017 |title='Should we try to Self Remember while playing Snakes and Ladders?': Dr. Gambit as Gurdjieff in Leonora Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet (1950). |url=https://pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/files/130571054/QUB_Author_Version.pdf |journal=Religion and the Arts |volume=21 |issue=1–2 |pages=189–208 |doi=10.1163/15685292-02101008 |s2cid=193786196 |access-date=13 June 2023}}</ref>▼
▲[[Louis Pauwels]], among others,<ref>{{Cite book|last=Lachman |first=Gary |title=Turn off your mind |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8jfptmqzTzkC&q=critics+of+Gurdjieff+work&pg=PA13 |quote=... a hostile book on... Gurdjieff. |page=13 |year=2003 |publisher=The Disinformation Co. |isbn=0-9713942-3-7}}</ref> criticizes Gurdjieff for his insistence on considering people as "asleep" in a state closely resembling "hypnotic sleep". Gurdjieff said, even specifically at times, that a pious, good, and moral person was no more "spiritually developed" than any other person; they are all equally "asleep".<ref>{{cite book |url=http://books.googld.com/books?id=QjetCc6ktOgC&pg=PA110&dq=Gurdjieff+insanity&lr=#v=onepage&q=Gurdjieff%20insanity&f=false |title=Gurdjieff and Orage |first=Paul Beekman |last=Taylor |page=110 |year=2001 |publisher=Samuel Weiser |isbn=978-1-609-25311-0 |quote=...Orage revealed Gurdjieff's views of drugs and alcohol as conducive to 'insanity' }}{{dead link|date=December 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>
Two stories in C. Daly King's 1935 collection ''The Curious Mr. Tarrant'' ("The Episode of the Man with Three Eyes" and "The Episode of the Final Bargain") have a character named Monsieur Hor who is based on Gurdjieff.<ref>{{cite conference |
▲[[Henry Miller]] approved of Gurdjieff not considering himself holy but, after writing a brief introduction to Fritz Peters' book ''Boyhood with Gurdjieff'', Miller wrote that people are not meant to lead a "harmonious life" as Gurdjieff believed in naming his institute.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Miller |first=Henry |title=From Your Capricorn Friend |url=https://archive.org/details/fromyourcapricor0000mill |url-access=registration |page=[https://archive.org/details/fromyourcapricor0000mill/page/42 42] |year=1984 |publisher=New Directions Publishing |isbn=0-8112-0891-5 |quote=What I intended to say...}}</ref>
Gurdjieff appears as a character in [[Andrew Crumey|Andrew Crumey's]] novel [[Beethoven's Assassins]] (2023), together with [[Alfred Richard Orage|A. R. Orage]], [[Thomas de Hartmann]] and [[Katherine Mansfield]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Crumey |first=Andrew
▲Critics note that Gurdjieff gives no value to most of the elements that compose the life of an average person. According to Gurdjieff, everything an average person possesses, accomplishes, does, and feels is completely accidental and without any initiative. A common everyday ordinary person is born a machine and dies a machine without any chance of being anything else.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Ginsburg |first=Seymour |title=Gurdjieff unveiled |page=6 |year=2005 |publisher=Lighthouse Editions Ltd |isbn=1-904998-01-1| quote=Without any doubt the human psyche and thinking are becoming more and more automatic. }}</ref> This belief seems to run counter to the Judeo-Christian tradition that man is a living soul. Gurdjieff believed that the possession of a soul (a state of psychological unity which he equated with being "awake") was a "luxury" that a disciple could attain only by the most painstaking work over a long period of time. The majority—in whom the true meaning of the [[gospel]] failed to take root<ref>See The [[Parable of the Sower]]</ref>—went the "broad way" that "led to destruction."<ref>''Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.'' [[Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] 7, 13–14.</ref>
▲In ''Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson'', Gurdjieff expresses his reverence for the founders of the mainstream religions of East and West and his contempt for what successive generations of believers have made of those religious teachings. His discussions of "orthodoxhydooraki" and "heterodoxhydooraki"—orthodox fools and heterodox fools, from the Russian word ''durak'' (fool)—position him as a critic of religious distortion and, in turn, as a target for criticism from some within those traditions. Gurdjieff has been interpreted by some, Ouspensky among others, to have had a total disregard for the value of mainstream religion, philanthropic work and the value of doing right or wrong in general.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ouspensky |first=P. D. |title=In Search of the Miraculous |pages=[https://archive.org/details/insearchofmiracu00uspe/page/299 299–302] |publisher=Harcourt Brace & Co. |year=1977 |isbn=0-15-644508-5 |quote=G. invariably began by emphasizing the fact that there is something very wrong at the basis of our usual attitude towards problems of religion. |url=https://archive.org/details/insearchofmiracu00uspe/page/299}}</ref>
▲Gurdjieff's former students who have criticized him argue that, despite his seeming total lack of pretension to any kind of "guru holiness", in many anecdotes his behavior displays the unsavory and impure character of a man who was a cynical manipulator of his followers.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.cafes.net/ditch/motm1.htm|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20091124052447/http://www.cafes.net/ditch/motm1.htm|url-status=dead|title=Cafes.net|archivedate=November 24, 2009}}</ref> Gurdjieff's own pupils wrestled to understand him. For example, in a written exchange between Luc Dietrich and Henri Tracol dating to 1943: "L.D.: How do you know that Gurdjieff wishes you well? H.T.: I feel sometimes how little I interest him—and how strongly he takes an interest in me. By that I measure the strength of an intentional feeling."<ref>Henry Tracol, ''The Taste For Things That Are True'', p. 84, Element Books: Shaftesbury, 1994</ref>
▲Louis Pauwels wrote ''Monsieur Gurdjieff'' (first edition published in Paris in 1954 by Editions du Seuil).<ref>Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke ''Black Sun'', p. 323, NYU Press, 2003 {{ISBN|978-0-8147-3155-0}}</ref> In an interview, Pauwels said of the Gurdjieff work: "After two years of exercises which both enlightened and burned me, I found myself in a hospital bed with a thrombosed central vein in my left eye and weighing ninety-nine pounds ... Horrible anguish and abysses opened up for me. But it was my fault."<ref>Bruno de Panafieu/Jacob Needleman/George Baker/Mary Stein ''Gurdjieff: Essays and Reflections on the Man and His Teachings'', p. 166, Continuum, 1997 {{ISBN|978-0-8264-1049-8}}</ref>
▲Pauwels believed that [[Karl Haushofer]], the father of [[geopolitics]] whose protégée was Deputy Reich Führer [[Rudolf Hess]], was one of the real "seekers after truth" described by Gurdjieff. According to Rom Landau, a journalist in the 1930s, [[Achmed Abdullah]] told him at the beginning of the 20th century that Gurdjieff was a Russian secret agent in Tibet{{citation needed|reason=reliable source needed to support claim|date=February 2019}} who went by the name of "Hambro Akuan Dorzhieff" (i.e. [[Agvan Dorjiev]]), a tutor to the [[Dalai Lama]].<ref>Gary Lachman, ''Turn Off Your Mind'', pp. 32–33, Disinformation Co., 2003 {{ISBN|978-0-9713942-3-0}}</ref> However, the actual Dorzhieff went to live in the Buddhist temple erected in St. Petersburg and after the revolution was imprisoned by [[Stalin]]. James Webb conjectured that Gurdjieff might have been Dorzhieff's assistant Ushe Narzunoff (i.e. [[Ovshe Norzunov]]).<ref>Gary Lachman ''Politics and the Occult'', p. 124, Quest Books, 2004 {{ISBN|978-0-8356-0857-2}}</ref>
▲[[Colin Wilson]] writes about "Gurdjieff's reputation for seducing his female students. (In Providence, Rhode Island, in 1960, a man was pointed out to me as one of Gurdjieff's illegitimate children. The professor who told me this also assured me that Gurdjieff had left many children around America.)"<ref>Colin Wilson ''G. I. Gurdjieff/P. D. Ouspensky'', ch. 6, Maurice Bassett, 2007 Kindle Edition ASIN B0010K7P5M</ref>
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Three books by Gurdjieff were published in the English language in the United States after his death: ''[[Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson]]'' published in 1950 by E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc., ''[[Meetings with Remarkable Men]]'', published in 1963 by E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc., and ''[[Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am'|Life is Real Only Then, When 'I Am']]'', printed privately by E. P. Dutton & Co. and published in 1978 by Triangle Editions Inc. for private distribution only. This [[trilogy]] is Gurdjieff's legominism, known collectively as ''[[All and Everything]]''. A ''legominism'' is, according to Gurdjieff, "one of the means of transmitting information about certain events of long-past ages through initiates". A book of his early talks was also collected by his student and personal secretary, [[Olga de Hartmann]], and published in 1973 as ''[[Views from the Real World|Views from the Real World: Early Talks in Moscow, Essentuki, Tiflis, Berlin, London, Paris, New York, and Chicago, as recollected by his pupils]]''.
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The feature film ''[[Meetings with Remarkable Men (film)|Meetings with Remarkable Men]]'' (1979), loosely based on Gurdjieff's book by the same name, ends with performances of Gurdjieff's dances known simply as the "exercises" but later promoted as ''[[Movements (sacred dances)|movements]]''. [[Jeanne de Salzmann]] and Peter Brook wrote the film, Brook directed, and Dragan Maksimovic and [[Terence Stamp]] star, as does South African playwright and actor [[Athol Fugard]].<ref name="PanafieuNeedleman1997">{{cite book |last1=Panafieu |first1=Bruno De |last2=Needleman |first2=Jacob |last3=Baker |first3=George |title=Gurdjieff |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GV0dhZxB91EC&pg=PA28 |publisher=Continuum International Publishing Group |date=September 1997 |pages=28– |access-date=14 April 2011 |isbn=978-0-8264-1049-8}}</ref>
▲Gurdjieff wrote a trilogy with the Series title ''All and Everything''. The first volume, finalized by Gurdjieff shortly before his death and first published in 1950, is the First Series and titled ''[[An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man]]'' or ''[[Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson]]''. At 1238 pages it is a lengthy allegorical work that recounts the explanations of Beelzebub to his grandson concerning the beings of the planet Earth and laws which govern the universe. It provides a vast platform for Gurdjieff's deeply considered philosophy. A controversial redaction of ''Beelzebub's Tales'' was published by some of Gurdjieff's followers as an alternative "edition", in 1992. [See Paul Beekman Taylor's' ''Gurdjieff's Worlds of Words'' (2014) for an informed account.]
▲[[Leonora Carrington|Leonora Carrington's]] experience of the [[Fourth Way]] led her to model the character Dr Gambit on Gurdjieff in her novel ''[[The Hearing Trumpet]]'' (completed 1950, published 1976).<ref>{{cite journal |last1=O'Rawe |first1=R. |date=2017 |title='Should we try to Self Remember while playing Snakes and Ladders?': Dr. Gambit as Gurdjieff in Leonora Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet (1950). |url=https://pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/files/130571054/QUB_Author_Version.pdf |journal=Religion and the Arts |volume=21 |issue=1–2 |pages=189–208 |doi=10.1163/15685292-02101008 |s2cid=193786196 |access-date=13 June 2023}}</ref>
▲On his page of ''Friendly Advice'' facing the first Contents page of ''Beelzebub's Tales'' Gurdjieff lays out his own program of three obligatory initial readings of each of the three series in sequence and concludes, "Only then will you be able to count upon forming your own impartial judgement, proper to yourself alone, on my writings. And only then can my hope be actualized that according to your understanding you will obtain the specific benefit for your self which I anticipate."
▲Two stories in C. Daly King's 1935 collection ''The Curious Mr. Tarrant'' ("The Episode of the Man with Three Eyes" and "The Episode of the Final Bargain") have a character named Monsieur Hor who is based on Gurdjieff.<ref>{{cite conference |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343536631 |title=Fictional Portraits: Gurdjieff in the Popular Imagination |last1=Cusack |first1=Carole |date=December 2019 |location=university of Sydney |conference=Studying Gurdjieff: Scholars and Practitioners in Conversation}}</ref>
▲The posthumous second series, edited by [[Jeanne de Salzmann]], is titled ''[[Meetings with Remarkable Men]]'' (1963) and is written in a seemingly accessible manner as a memoir of his early years, but also contains some 'Arabian Nights' embellishments and allegorical statements. His posthumous Third Series, (''[[Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am']]''), written as if unfinished and also edited by Jeanne de Salzmann, contains an intimate account of Gurdjieff's inner struggles during his later years, as well as transcripts of some of his lectures. An enormous and growing amount has been written about Gurdjieff's ideas and methods, but his own challenging writings remain the primary sources.
▲Gurdjieff appears as a character in [[Andrew Crumey|Andrew Crumey's]] novel [[Beethoven's Assassins]] (2023), together with [[Alfred Richard Orage|A. R. Orage]], [[Thomas de Hartmann]] and [[Katherine Mansfield]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Crumey |first=Andrew |date=2023 |title=Beethoven's Assassins |location=Sawtry |publisher=Dedalus |pages=388–414 |isbn=9781912868230}}</ref> The novel also discusses the theories of [[P. D. Ouspensky]]<ref>{{cite book |last=Crumey |first=Andrew |date=2023 |title=Beethoven's Assassins |location=Sawtry |publisher=Dedalus |pages=225–226 |isbn=9781912868230}}</ref>
=== List of books by Gurdjieff ===
* {{Cite book |last=Gurdjieff |first=Georges Ivanovitch |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/317688869 |title=The Herald of Coming Good: First Appeal to Contemporary Humanity |date=1974 |publisher=S. Weiser |isbn=0-87728-049-5 |oclc=317688869}}
* {{Cite book |last=Gurdjieff |first=Georges Ivanovitch |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/785823922 |title=Transcripts of Gurdjieff's Meetings 1941-1946 |date=2009 |isbn=978-0-9559090-5-4 |edition=Second |location=London |oclc=785823922}}
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* {{Cite book |last=Gurdjieff |first=Georges Ivanovitch |editor-last=Grant |editor-first1=Stephen A. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PUwibT27qdIC |title=In Search of Being: The Fourth Way to Consciousness |date=2012 |publisher=[[Shambhala Publications]] |isbn=978-1-61180-037-1 |language=en |oclc=794359168}}
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{{Reflist}}
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* {{Cite book |last=Churton |first=Tobias |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WGEoDwAAQBAJ |title=Deconstructing Gurdjieff: Biography of a Spiritual Magician |date=2017 |publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]] |isbn=978-1-62055-639-9 |language=en}}
* {{Cite book |last1=de Hartmann |first1=Thomas |last2=de Hartmann |first2=Olga |title=Our life with Mr. Gurdjieff |publisher=Cooper Square Publishers |year=1964 |language=en}}
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*{{Cite book |last=Transcripts |first=Wartime |url=https://bookstudio.co.uk/transcripts-of-gurdjieff-meetings-1941-1946 |title=Transcripts of Gurdjieff's Meetings 1941–1946 |year=2009 |publisher=Book Studio |isbn=978-0-9559090-5-4 |language=en}}
* Jean Vaysse, ''Toward Awakening, An Approach to the Teaching Left by Gurdjieff''. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980, {{ISBN|0-7100-07159}}.
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