Blog: What’s there to live for?

“I not wish people identified with me. I wish them identified with my ideas. ”

G I Gurdjieff

Thoughts on a Teacher

As was mentioned in a previous post, though the need was seen, there was some personal resistance to accepting a teacher as well as a difficulty in locating one. It took the author a number of years of work to discover where this resistance was coming from, and this discovery was only possible because there had been acceptance of a teacher. That’s the conundrum for some of us; others seem to go through teachers like water or are immediately able to accept and submit their will, to some degree, to the teachers they come upon. They must have a teacher, but for the wrong reasons in some cases. One of Gurdjieff’s aphorisms is: “If you have not by nature a critical mind, your staying here is useless.” So this is not a way of blind faith, but of understanding.

It seems very few people are neutral in their attitudes on this issue. And certainly the current emphasis on individuality, so called freedom and the illusion of free will that so dominate in the Western World and America in particular, are also factor. The technological distancing that has overrun the world has become a way out of the teacher conundrum for many. One can sit at home in front of the screen and pretend that they are in a real work with a real teacher. It is not that there is no room for technology in a spiritual work, in many ordinary ways it can be a useful tool. However, as a substitute for person to person contact it is an abject failure. Zoom meetings, Zoom bodywork and so forth are a poor substitute at best and delusional to the student/teacher at worst. One might assume that any teacher with a deep level of understanding would be aware of this. Simply put, there is no energetic connection through an internet connection. And to be believe otherwise is imagination.

“A true teacher doesn’t take himself for a teacher, and he doesn’t take his pupil for a pupil. When neither one takes himself to be something, there is a coming together, a oneness. And in this oneness, transmission takes place. Otherwise the teacher will remain a teacher through the pupil, and the pupil will always remain a pupil. “
Jean Klein

When I was first in the Work my teacher used the phrase “…he who takes on the role of the teacher” So, what does this mean? Implicit in this statement is that a person is taking on a role, but must not identify with the role. To teach in a state of non-identification takes a high level of being. A teacher must act impartially in his/her role when working with their students. This is certainly an ideal but is it reality? For the situation any teacher finds, him or herself in, is very fluid, students act and react in erratic ways as does the outside world. Does the teacher react or simply act? Do a teacher’s actions come from presence? Should one expect infallibility from their teacher? Infallibility is both unreasonable and impossible. Teachers are human beings, and subject to the same self-love, vanity, suggestibility and so forth that nearly all humans find themselves trapped in. Can some escape this? Yes, it may be possible but to expect or worse simply believe a teacher has continuous impartiality is unrealistic. As Gurdjieff says,” …the man himself is not worth a brass farthing but he must have as a teacher no other than Jesus Christ” (Search p203). He also makes a few other important statements: the teacher and student cannot be at greatly disparate levels, and that it is law that no one can see higher than his own level. Additionally, he says, “On the fourth way there is not one teacher. Whoever is elder he is the teacher.” (Search p203) This is taken to be elder in the sense of degree of understanding, not age or for that matter years in the Work. Yes, this statement could be the beginning of nondual relationship, but it rarely works out this way as a hierarchical/student teacher relationship usually emerges. In a sense, this is the recreation of ordinary life as we were all “educated” in a hierarchical society. In the family, in school, in our jobs and so forth. This is our conditioning, and how societies of Homo Sapiens exist, so it takes awareness on the part of the teacher to observe as the dualism emerges and to not exacerbate and level the relationship into a facsimile of ordinary life (or worse).

It appears that the seeker is given a nearly insurmountable problem in accepting a teacher. If we take the seeker to be at the level of ordinary life, and this may not always be the case, then the seeker cannot determine the level of being of the teacher, aside from if it is lower than ordinary life, lower than a householder, which with faux teachers is a possibility, these of course must be rejected. So after the teacher clears the bar of not being a lunatic or a tramp (see Search 363-364) one must look at the level of knowledge the teacher has, If this knowledge is much greater than the seeker then this is a start. In the case of the Gurdjieff Work, and other teachings: who is the potential teacher’s teacher(s)? Is the teacher’s teacher in a direct line from Mr. Gurdjieff? This would of course pertain to other teachings as well. Such lineage is no guarantee of the teacher having come to anything, or being effective and more or less compatible, but it allows for the possibility that which will be received is potentially valuable and a part of an oral teaching.

It should always be remembered that the teacher has an aim. Perhaps a very high aim and perhaps not. Uspensky said of his later years of teaching “the system” that it had become a profession. And it can certainly be worse than that. This aim may be enunciated in part, in whole, not at all or falsely. What was Gurdjieff’s aim? Many have speculated about it: to bring this ancient teaching to the West, to keep the world from destroying itself by creating conscious people, reconciling the East and the West, and so forth. One that he is quoted as saying is he came to tell people “… that when it rains the sidewalks get wet” Even if he gave his aim explicitly, which he really didn’t, can it be taken as his deepest underlying aim? I think it enough to accept his question as our question: “What is the sense and significance of life on Earth and human life in particular?” said otherwise as: What is life about? Who am I?

Can we assume that the teacher has a good understanding of where the work typically begins ? The Gurdjieff Work begins as a self-exploration given in the context of Work ideas and practices. Has there been significant work in legitimate groups? Of course, if the teacher has been teaching for a while their students may be observed.

As Gurdjieff said: “Everything begins with the body”. What this means in the actuality of a spiritual practice is discovered relatively quickly, though this varies from student to student, and real understanding of this can take years. So if we are off studying the ideas in a vacuum simply using the intellectual center, that could be a red flag. The early work must have been explored and verified so that it then becomes first hand information for a teacher. Beyond this is another matter. Has the teacher really “come to something”? A student can have a taste of this but as was said can never know the level of the teacher if it is higher. And so students as they work come to more and more first hand information. Does the experientially acquired knowledge sync with what the teacher is giving? There can be individual differences, people don’t all start from the same point nor come to first hand information at the same pace. There are work horse students, and a few race horse students, as well as simply lazy or spiritual tourist students.

A teacher can die or become infirm, and their assistant may take over, as was the case with Gurdjieff. I don’t believe anyone took as truth that, Jeanne de Salzmann, or John Bennett, or John Pentland or Madame Uspensky and on down the line were at Gurdjieff’s level. And it may have been that John Bennett at that time, was at a higher level of being than Jeanne de Salzmann. Gurdjieff would of course have known this and yet he appointed, it is said, de Salzmann to be in charge after his death. Why? It likely goes back to the teachers aim which Gurdjieff likely felt was better served by de Salzmann. Given Bennett’s erratic actions quite likely this was the best choice. However, it put Bennett in odd situation. If indeed Bennett was at a higher level, his taking a deferential or even a collegial posture toward de Salzmann likely would not last, and indeed it didn’t, and about 5 years after Gurdjieff’s death relations were severed. Bennett, while having a large degree of independence, was wanting to put a more public face and outreach for the teaching while de Salzmann was taking a more protective “orthodox” position as to the dissemination of the teaching. Whether this was what Gurdjieff wished (doubtful) and the best course (debatable) there is no impartial answer. While the Work today is organized as Gurdjieff groups, when speaking of the Foundation groups, they might more accurately be described as de Salzmann groups, based on Gurdjieff’s teachings. If one reads de Salzman’s book,”The Reality of Being”, based primarily on her diaries, it becomes clear that she had brought into her life other teachings. And to be frank there are no “pure” Gurdjieff groups. And haven’t been since he died in 1949. Every teacher of the Fourth Way, whether affiliated with the Foundation or not, puts their own stamp of understanding on the teaching and so it continues to change. We are now at the end of the 2nd generation and well into the 3rd and beginning the 4th generation of teachers and so called teachers after Gurdjieff’s death.