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These
people paid him money to have him wake them up by treating
them in ways that were, according to one scholar, "shocking,
mysterious, frightening, magical, delicately gentle,
and omniscient."1
"I wished to create around myself," he wrote, "conditions
in which a man would be continuously reminded of the
sense and aim of his existence by an unavoidable friction
between his conscience and the automatic manifestations
of his nature."2
What's
known for sure is this: he was a choreographer, excellent
chef, author of several odd books that some very intelligent
people think are works of genius, founder of a school,
and inventor of a complicated system of teachings which
is not quite like anything else.
1.
Needleman,
Jacob, "G. I. Gurdjieff and His School."
This webpage draws heavily
on Mr. Needleman's article. Any errors are ours, not his.
2.
Quoted in Needleman,
Jacob, "G. I. Gurdjieff and His School."
Born around 1866, probably in Armenia, to Christian
parents. Around 1912 a circle of students began forming
around him in Russia, including by 1914 the philosopher
P.D. Ouspensky, who would later write the clearest book
about Gurdjieff's teachings, and shortly afterward Russian
composer Thomas de Hartmann, with whom Gurdjieff would
later collaborate on musical compositions. As the Russian
Revolution approached Gurdjieff and his pupils left
Russia and went to Tiflis, where in 1919 Gurdjieff established
his school, the Institute for the Harmonious Development
of Man. In 1922 the school moved to a location near
Paris, where it attracted writers and literary figures
from America and England. In 1924 he nearly died in
a car accident; when he recovered, he began writing
books, producing three (one of them unfinished) by 1935.
In 1932 he moved to Paris, where he died in 1939.
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