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George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff took a special oath in 1911 in which he
would devote 21 years to introduce and establish the teaching of the
Fourth Way in the West. Gurdjieff's idea was to establish an institute
to train helper-instructors to disseminate the teaching. He began in
Russia in 1912, but the Russian Revolution a few years later made his
stay there impossible. Subsequent attempts to establish the institute
in Constantinople, Germany and England failed. Finally, in 1922,
Gurdjieff established The Institute for the Harmonious Development
of Man in Fontainbleau, France, about 40 miles from Paris. Shortly
afterwards, he made his initial trip to America.
Less than two years after opening the Institute, Gurdjieff was involved in a near fatal car crash. This shock brought the realization that there was not enough time to train his helper-instructors. Six weeks later he closed the Institute.
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Videos
Gurdjieff's Legacy
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The Life & Significance of George Ivanovitch
Gurdjieff, Part III — Gurdjieff's Legacy: Establishing The Teaching
in the West, 1924–1949 Winner of the WorldFest 2003 Gold Special Jury Award for Outstanding Excellence Shot on site in Paris, Avon, Mont. St. Michel, Lascaux, London, New York, and New Haven, the documentary traces Gurdjieff's life from his near-fatal car crash through to his giving meetings during the Nazi-occupation of Paris to his death in 1949. Examined in depth are the writing of his Legominism All and Everything and his relationships with Orage, Ouspensky and Bennett. Also included is the Rope and his final trip to the Caves of Lascaux. Created and narrated by William Patrick Patterson. $30.00, VHS—NTSC and DVD formats, color, 86 minutes. |
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The Life & Significance of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, Part II
— Gurdjieff's Mission: Introducing The Fourth Way to the West,
1912–1924 Winner of the WorldFest 2002 Gold Special Jury Award for Outstanding Excellence Shot on site in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Constantinople, London, Fontainebleau-en-Avon, New York and Lascaux, this documentary video—narrated by William Patrick Patterson and based on his book Struggle of the Magicians—retraces Gurdjieff's mission to introduce the teaching to the West. P. D. Ouspensky's and J. G. Bennett's enigmatic relationship with Gurdjieff are explored. Particularly stressed are the "St. Petersburg Conditions" and Gurdjieff's technique of "divine acting." The video vividly demonstrates Gurdjieff's warning to America of the rise and challenge of the East with footage recalling the 9/11 attack and its aftermath. $30.00, VHS—NTSC/PAL formats, color, 80 minutes. |
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The Life & Significance of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, Part I
— Gurdjieff in Egypt: The Origin of Esoteric Knowledge Created and narrated by William Patrick Patterson Winner of the WorldFest 2000 Gold Award Follows Gurdjieff's search for pre-sand Egypt beginning with the Sphinx and Great Pyramid, to Thebes and the Temple in Man and Karnak, to the Valley of the Kings, the Temples of Edfu and Abu Simbel, and into Ethiopia where he unexpectedly discovers the origin of the ancient teaching of The Fourth Way. $30.00, VHS—NTSC format, color, 60 minutes. |
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Books
The Life & Teachings of Carlos Castaneda
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The Life & Teachings of Carlos Castaneda
by William Patrick Patterson Since Castaneda's first book, The Teachings of Don Juan, readers have wondered about his sources. Here, shown concept-by-concept, is the primary source of Castaneda's ideas—Gurdjieff's Fourth Way. Also explored is don Juan's true identity, the meaning of Castaneda's "jump into the abyss," the life of the Nagual and his witches. Also included in full is the first reference to Nagualism, anthropologist Daniel Brinton's essay "Nagualism: A Study in Native American Folklore and History" written in 1894. $27.95 Hardcover, 290 pages Notes, Chronology, Index, Appendices |
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Voices in the Dark: Esoteric, Occult & Secular Voices in Nazi-Occupied
Paris 1940-44. Including transcripts from 31 of Gurdjieff's wartime
meetings.
by William Patrick Patterson Voices in the Dark weaves together the oppression and fear of the Nazi Occupation of Paris with the transcripts from 31 of G. I. Gurdjieff's wartime meetings. Voices that helped to mold the time speak out—Camus, Malraux, Sartre, Beauvoir, Gide, Daumal, De Gaulle, Churchill, Hitler, Stalin and many others. Explored in depth is the little-recognized but powerful influence of the pseudo-occult in the ideology at the foundation of Hitler's vision. $50.00 Softcover, 360 pp. Photos, Maps, Notes, References, Bibliography & Index. Sold only in the U.S. |
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Ladies of the Rope: Gurdjieff's Special Left Bank Women's Group
by William Patrick Patterson This is the first book to examine the Rope, the ladies-only group of spiritual seekers, all lesbians except one, that G. I. Gurdjieff formed on Paris' Left Bank. During his thirty-seven years of work in the West, Gurdjieff's creation of the Rope remains his most enigmatic. The conclusions reached by the author about why Gurdjieff created the Rope are as original as they are surprising and will be of serious interest to those involved with feminine spirituality in all its many forms. $20.00, 320 pp. |
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Taking with the Left Hand: Enneagram Craze, The Fellowship of Friends, & the Mouravieff Phenomenon
by William Patrick Patterson The first book to examine the spiritual theft and appropriation that marks our time. A detailed and well-documented study, it illustrates how the enneagram movement commercialized an ancient alchemical symbol, how Robert Burton, founder of The Fellowship of Friends, arrogated The Fourth Way teaching, and how Boris Mouravieff plagiarized and tried to appropriate it. $15.00, 156 pages |
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Struggle of the Magicians: Exploring the Teacher-Student Relationship
by William Patrick Patterson Explores the teacher-student relationship as seen through the lives of Gurdjieff and Uspenskii. "The tension between the richly contrasting personalities of Gurdjieff and Uspenskii is a cameo of the problems with which the personal transformation tradition has had to contend....[A] finely-told chronicle of a classic event in occult history, set against the backdrop of overwhelming dramatic, historic events, effectively set into the narrative as date-lines."—Robert S. Ellwood, Chairman, Dept. of Religion, University of Southern California. $20.00, 336 pp. |
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Eating The "I": A Direct Account of The Fourth Way—The Way of Using Ordinary Life to come to Real Life
by William Patrick Patterson Expanded edition. Includes a gallery of 17 paintings depicting different stages in the journey.
First modern book to show Gurdjieff Work in action. By a pupil of Lord John Pentland. "Vivid, rare insider's account,"—Yoga Journal. "A classic of Gurdjieff literature."—Syzygy. "Gives as full a picture of the Work as it may be possible to get without joining it . . . comes from a great depth and carries much conviction."—Gnosis.
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For Fourth Way videos, books, music, public events, workshops, seminars, and the past and present issues of The Gurdjieff Journal©, please visit www.Gurdjieff-Legacy.Org. For more Fourth Way links, please click here.
© Arete Communications LLC 2003–2008 |
Gurdjieff pondered on how to accomplish his aim for four months. He
then began dictating All and Everything of which the First Series
is Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson; he would hurl the teaching
into the future as a "legomonism." Gurdjieff said, "A legomonism is
the name given to the successive transmission of information about
long past events which have occurred on the planet Earth from initiates
to initiates of the first kind, that is, from really meritorious beings
who have themselves received their information from similar meritorious
beings." By the early 1930's he had finished the First Series and
the Second Series titled Meetings With Remarkable Men; in 1935 he
finished the Third Series, Life Is Real Only Then When 'I Am'.
Throughout this decade he made eight trips to America. He said, "Americans
more receptive because not closed up inside yet; they naïve, stupid, perhaps,
but still real." In the late thirties he continued teaching with a
woman-only group called "The Rope." He stayed with his students during the
Nazi occupation of Paris in WWII and made his last trip to America in the
winter of 1948-1949. Gurdjieff died in Paris October 29, 1949.
