George Gurdjieff: Difference between revisions

'''George Ivanovich Gurdjieff''' (c. 1867 – 29 October 1949) ({{lang-el|Γεώργιος Γεωργιάδης}}, {{lang-hy|Գեորգի Գյուրջիև}}, {{lang-ru|Георгий Иванович Гурджиев}}) <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]], [[monk]] and [[yogi]], 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>