G.I. Gurdjieff

Understanding G. I. Gurdjieff is an almost impossible challenge but explaining his importance to another is both an invitation to mischief and an opportunity to be sincere. The details of Gurdjieff's life make a fantastic adventure story—every time someone gets around to writing them down. But other than, “Next, Gurdjieff and his students crossed the Caucasus to Tiflis, where, incidentally, he had friends” or some other such event, what do these stories tell us about the man. Of him one thing can easily be said, he took to heart the options presented to him by his grandmother:

“Either do nothing—just go to school—or do something nobody else does.”

How many ways can we interpret that advice?

All of the wonderful variation around us has one thing in common. It is all mechanical. We are all mechanical. Orders upon orders of universal laws make this so. Consequently, what usually passes for 'completely different' is equally bound by laws, bound by external influences and mechanicality. Gurdjieff's vision of 'a different sort of life' defies many of those laws. Instead of mechanicality it aligns itself with Consciousness and Conscience.

Neither this website nor this school and its papers would exist if he had not done something wonderful, something that 'nobody else does'.