A.D.
As Gurdjieff supposidly said just before his death in 1949, “I’ve left you in a fine mess” and the Gurdjieff Work is pretty much of a mess, as Gurdjieff likely expected it to be. The history of the Work after Gurdjieff’s death is fairly well documented. Various Gurdjieff foundations and related institutions were begun across the world under the overall control of Jeanne de Salzman a long time student and assistant of Gurdjieff’s as well as the mother to one of his many out of wedlock children. While Gurdjieff himself gave public demonstrations in America and Europe and envisioned multiple institutes teaching “the Gurdjieff method” of harmonious development, the Work after his death became hidden and insular; rigid in some areas and changed in others. Gurdjieff’s and Uspensky’s books as well as some of his other students writings became widely available and widely read. His ideas, as given in his books, were taken by many faux Fourth Way teachers, spiritual aggregators and others with little to no intervention from the Foundation leaders. These so called teachers created their own groups or followers often with little to no work with a lineage Fourth Way teacher. They attracted large numbers of followers, many of whom could find no Foundation or other lineage group to become a part of. Personally, my search for a Gurdjieff group in the nearest big city to where I ended up after leaving Arkansas was a failure, though a Foundation group existed, I couldn’t find it. This at a time when the interest in such spiritual ways was at its height but before certain faux groups had become wide spread. The rationale behind this secrecy was first to preserve the teaching in as pure a form as possible. As to the seeker there was the idea that if one’s magnetic center was strong enough one would find a group, somehow. It is an Eastern teaching that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And perhaps this is correct. I may well have not been ready. This period of “orthodox” secrecy didn’t really lessen until the early 2000’s by which time much damage, irreparable damage had been done to the reputation of Gurdjieff and to the psyches of many honest seekers who were drawn into groups that had little in common with the teaching other than using his name and Upensenky’s as a calling card. End Post
Open to Openness 