What Gurdjieff found in Tibet

[Jetsun]

George Gurjdjieff (1886-1949) as a young man realised that none of the people, sciences or religions around him knew the answers to any of the sincere questions he had about life so set off on a journey to find those people left in the world who had real knowledge and truth. He spent many years gaining access to all the secret places usually barred to outsiders such as Mt Athos, Mecca, Sufi temples and Essene monasteries, from Jerusalem to Egypt, but inevitably found his way to Tibet which at that time was cut off from the rest of the world and at a time when Buddhism was flourishing before the Chinese invasion. He managed to get a job as a debt collector for the Dalai Lama which was ideal as it would give him intimate access to all the monasteries to see what they contained. This is what he discovered;

 

When he was 21 years old, he read the works of Madame Blavatsky and took her indications seriously. He traveled to every place she mentioned in The Secret Doctrine, but he found nine out of ten of her references were false. This cost him years of effort and suffering. He then took a job as collector of monastic dues for the Dali Lama, and that gave him access to every monastry in Tibet. "I will truthfully say," Gurdjieff told Orage, "that it is true I discovered extraordinary developments. I did not discover one single being with universal development, only monsters. A particular variety of the monstrous, but with no attainment of objective reason, now more than in the West, only different. I finally arrived in India, at its center of development. I would gladly spare any human being the fruitless efforts I have gone through".

- Source: "Gurdjieff and Orage: Brothers in Elysium" By Paul Beekman Taylor

 

 

[Cheshire Cat]

I did not discover one single being with universal development, only monsters. A particular variety of the monstrous, but with no attainment of objective reason, now more than in the West, only different.

 

What's universal development in Gurdjieff's mindset ?

And what's objective reason?

 

Universal development was something like "voluntary suffering" in order to develop one's will.

And objective reason... well, it was his personal reason ( an interesting interpretation of the christian doctrine) hahaha

 

This is what he found

 

[Jetsun]

What's universal development in Gurdjieff's mindset ?

And what's objective reason?

 

Universal development was something like "voluntary suffering" in order to develop one's will.

And objective reason... well, it was his personal reason ( an interesting interpretation of the christian doctrine) hahaha

 

This is what he found

 

 

Universal development I think means a development of all centres of your being equally harmoniously, so you work on the mind, emotional and physical centres at once. One of Gurdjieffs main criticisms of most of the paths and religions he found was that they would only work or focus on one centre creating lopsided development of the being.

 

What he meant by objective reason... i'm not entirely sure, I don't think I have it

 

I just thought it was an interesting contrast to all the stories of people who have written about Tibet as the ultimate spiritual ShangriLa. But Gurdjieff did have respect for Tibetan Buddhism as he called Padmasambharva one of the few genuine saints to have been in this world, yet the can be a degredation and corruption of the teaching which is worth being wary of.

[Ish]

So when did Gurdjieff meet Padmasambhava?

[Cheshire Cat]

The Gurdjieff model of three-brained individuals seems something pseudo-scientific, a weird theory that could born out of a superficial generalization.

In eastern philosophy, none would really believe that one can separate the development of mind, body and emotion... since mind and body have strict relation (in qi-gong terms, it is said that if you have your qi-channels open, your mind is still). Also, the greeks had the concepts of kalos kai agathos ("mens sana in corpore sano" (healthy soul in healthy body)).

 

Emotions are just means of communication, but in Gurdjieff they are something similar to desire (think of the example of the monk tempted by the devil).

 

The "core" of Gurdjieff practice was "voluntary suffering", willingly creating unfavorable conditions to mantain the mind in a state of alertness. If it was for the mind-centre, they may decide to not use the right hand for a week. If it was for the body-centre, they practiced some form of physichal yoga (Gurdjieff was excellent at this)... and for the emotional, it was bare suppression probably...

 

He had no real "competence" to judge entire spiritual systems :-D

 

 

I just thought it was an interesting contrast to all the stories of people who have written about Tibet as the ultimate spiritual ShangriLa. But Gurdjieff did have respect for Tibetan Buddhism as he called Padmasambharva one of the few genuine saints to have been in this world, yet the can be a degredation and corruption of the teaching which is worth being wary of.

 

It has been a long time since I read the Belzebub, but I remember that his story of Tibet had no "historical basis"... nor basis in tibetan mythology

Maybe I'm wrong, I'll investigate a bit more.

 

[3bob]

I take the "4th way" materials and Mr. G. with multiple grains of salt. I stay far away from certain "4th way" cults that have arisen and ime are opposite to the original intentions of the "fragments of an unknown teaching".

 

Was Mr. G. and alcoholic and womanizer, yes according certain eye-witness accounts thus he had his own "monsters" to deal with besides pointing out those of others...

 

None-the-less I greatly appreciate parts of the 4th way materials and related work.

[Jetsun]

I take the "4th way" materials and Mr. G. with multiple grains of salt.

 

A lot of what he said was for teaching purposes to destroy peoples beliefs and attachments, to try to get people to empty their cup and become honest about what they really know and don't know in order to bring back the beginners mind. So he is not so different than many other masters from many other traditions in that regard, yet his methods were often far more fierce and critical. That could be the purpose of what he said about Tibetan Buddhism, to try destroy peoples imaginatory beliefs about it, or it could be that he meant it literally, either way I think it helps encourage the spirit of what the Buddha said about finding out the truth of things for yourself.

[3bob]

That is kind of a stretch imo Jetsun, since the historic Buddha taught "right speech" instead of "imaginary" acts of criticism.