There is in Our Life a Certain Very Great Purpose

(As published in the Proceedings of the 15^th International Humanities Conference: All & Everything 2010, presented in Greece, March 24, 2010)

At the end of Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, Gurdjieff tells us: “There is in our life a certain very great purpose and we must all serve this Great Common Purpose – in this lies the whole sense and predestination of our life.”¹ Gurdjieff goes on to explain that although everyone is equally a slave to this great purpose, the man or woman who has developed his own “I’ is conscious, and “he acquires the possibility, simultaneously with serving the all-universal Actualizing, of applying part of his manifestations according to the providence of Great Nature for the purpose of acquiring for himself ‘Imperishable Being’.”² A word of warning is in order here: we have to be careful not to take the idea of imperishable being as a possibility for the personality which is false and is destroyed at death or soon thereafter. Gurdjieff tells us, “Essence is the truth in man, personality is the false.”³

Gurdjieff’s statements give rise to four questions:

• What is Gurdjieff’s status and who is Gurdjieff really or what makes a Master?
• What is the certain very great purpose in our life to which we are all slaves?
• What makes it possible for us to acquire imperishable being while fulfilling the certain very great purpose in our life?
• What is the lot of those who fulfill the certain very great purpose in their life consciously and who acquire imperishable being?

To explore these questions, let’s take a look at this situation from the standpoint of Endlessness, which these teachings tell us is who we really are. It is the open secret of the esoteric Christianity of Gurdjieff and of the inner teaching of Esoteric Christianity, Kabbalistic Judaism, Advaitic Hinduism, Esoteric Buddhism, Sufi Islam, and other real religions. Although it is an open secret, we cannot see it until we are ready to see it. Meanwhile, we play a role in our grim games in which we call ourselves Mr. or Ms. so-and-so. When we are ready to see it, we realize this artifice. But so long as we do not even doubt that we are a Mr. or Ms. so-and-so, there is little hope of our standing in Endlessness or essence, that is, in who we really are rather than in personality who we mistakenly believe ourselves to be. Nevertheless, it is in playing this personality role that there is realized the very great purpose in our life.

• What is Gurdjieff’s status and who is Gurdjieff really or what makes a Master?

In the spring of 1978 in my personal quest for life’s meaning, I came across Helena Blavatsky’s writings (hereafter referred to by the initials she made famous, “H.P.B.”) and joined the Theosophical Society. I eagerly attacked H.P.B.’s magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine, thinking that an understanding of her thought would provide a key to life’s meaning. But I could not understand

her 1400 page commentary on a mystical poem, possibly from a pre-Babylonian creation myth, that she called the Stanzas of Dzyan. Yet, I sensed something important in what she was attempting to say. In the effort to understand, I was led to two additional books of commentary on these stanzas, the first being Man, the Measure of All Things (1966), co-authored by Sri Madhava Ashish (1920- 1997), a Scottish engineer who had come to India with the British military in World War II and subsequently turned Hindu monk, and his teacher, Sri Krishna Prem (1897-1965), another Englishman who had come to India in 1921 and who had also become a Hindu monk. This book describes the nature of the cosmos based upon the Stanzas of Dzyan. The second book, Man, Son of Man, authored by Ashish after Prem’s passing, describes what man is and the intentional effort required of him to fulfill the certain very great purpose in our lives about which Gurdjieff wrote. It was this book that caused me to meet Ashish in India, and these two books collectively are known as the Man books.

In that meeting Ashish advised me that when I returned home to America from India, I should begin to study the teachings of Gurdjieff. In a letter some ten years later he wrote: “The particular characteristic of the Theosophical Society is its direct inspiration by the Masters or Bodhisattvas. They fielded H.P.B. and stood behind her all her life. G [Gurdjieff] was one of them, which is why his teaching is in the same tradition.⁴ (Letter Dec. 12, 1988). Ashish also told me to begin to pay attention to my dreams.

I decided to return to see Ashish the following spring, 1979, writing him to request this. Thus began our extensive correspondence in which I asked him all manner of questions concerning theosophy, Gurdjieff’s teaching, how to approach the study of dreams, and the subject of Masters, the men whom H.P.B. called her teachers and who presumably transmitted psychically to her, the Stanzas of Dzyan. Many of Ashish’s responses in his correspondence with me on these and other subjects were published in 2001 in the book, In Search of the Unitive Vision, a collection of more than one hundred of his letters. The newly published Quest Book, The Masters Speak: An American Businessman Encounters Ashish and Gurdjieff (Quest 2010) recounts that earlier version.

Sensing my confusion about the subject of Masters, Ashish suggested that if I were to return to India to see him, I should first visit another man, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj who lived in Bombay, in order to help me understand just what makes a Master. This visit in 1979 to meet Nisargadatta and to again see Ashish would become the second in an annual pilgrimage that continued for nineteen years until Ashish’s passing in 1997.

Of particular interest is Ashish’s remark in a 1989 letter about Masters: “The Master is one with the Spirit. He exemplifies the final attainment. He is what is as yet only a partially realized potential in your own being. You can ‘recognize’ him only to the extent that you can feel the responses in your essence when like answers to like. G [Gurdjieff] is a Master.”⁵ (Letter, Jul. 7, 1989)

In another letter Ashish had this to say about Masters: “It may be a fact that some of the Masters derive their being from other worlds than this one. But too much attention given to this speculation can lead to the false view that they are so special as to have no relevance to the lives of ordinary

mortals like us. In fact, so many of them have arisen from the ordinary mortals of this planet, and from so many different races and cultures on this planet, that they provide us with examples of what we should and can become here and now.”⁶ (Letter, Jan. 24, 1989)

One of the reasons Ashish sent me to meet Nisargadatta was because Nisargadatta was an example from his own life of what we should and can become here and now. Unlike Ashish and unlike Ashish’s teacher, Sri Krishna Prem, both of whom lived ascetic lives in the remote Himalayas, Nisargadatta was an ordinary middle class Indian shopkeeper with a wife and four children, living in the midst of the craziness that is Mumbai (Bombay). In that sense his attainment is something to which any of us can aspire. Gurdjieff also tells us this. In Beelzebub’s Tales he says, “each one of us must set for his chief aim to become in the process of our collective life a master.”⁷

Gurdjieff described this circle of Masters, of which he was one, to P.D. Ouspensky, calling them the conscious inner circle of humanity. He said to Ouspensky, “The inner circle is called the ‘esoteric’; this circle consists of people who have attained the highest development possible for man, each one of whom possesses individuality in the fullest degree, that is to say, an indivisible ‘I,’ all forms of consciousness possible for man, full control over these states of consciousness, the whole of knowledge possible for man, and a free and independent will.”⁸ He went on to explain that this esoteric circle is surrounded by a mesoteric inner circle of people and that circle is in turn surrounded by an exoteric inner circle. These three concentric circles represent different degrees of understanding but are all part of the conscious inner circle of humanity, as distinguished from an outer circle of mechanical humanity to which belong the vast majority of human beings.

Much errant nonsense has been published about Masters, attributing to them all sorts of supposedly miraculous powers to tantalize a gullible public. These powers, are not at all relevant to the teaching brought to us by these Masters, and whether any of them had such powers is highly problematic. But it is verifiable that certain seemingly unusual capacities can be developed in human beings. These include, among others, such talents as telepathy. But we love our myths whether they are accounts of Jesus raising someone from the dead or another Master flying magically from the hills of India to Mt. Kailash in Tibet each day for his morning meditation.⁹

Whatever the truth in our myths, they are the least important aspect of our inquiry. What is important for us to understand is that H.P.B.’s adept Masters were a succession of incarnated human beings as was Gurdjieff, rather than a cosmic hierarchy of supermen. The actual “miraculous” power that they did have in common was the ability to communicate with H.P.B. and others at a distance, a power known under various words such as “telepathy”, of which there are many verified accounts in human experience. P.D. Ouspensky, for example, wrote in amazement of Gurdjieff’s telepathic powers, saying: “With this the miracle began … It all started with my beginning to hear his thoughts.”¹⁰

What we call “telepathy” is a natural function of our connectedness with each other at levels of the psyche, more interior than the turning thoughts of the lower mind as distinguished from higher mind. The Masters, at one with the Spirit, but having followed the Bodhisattva path of compassion toward their less evolved bretheren, continue to guide humanity with telepathically transmitted wisdom both

while incarnate and after leaving the physical body. We usually regard received wisdom as insight. Such insight often comes during silent meditation and through the symbolic language in which dreams speak to us. This is why Ashish placed such importance on our sitting quietly in meditation for long periods of time and on paying attention to our dreams and the symbolic language in which they speak.

H.P.B. was known to be highly psychic and she claimed to have psychically seen the Stanzas of Dzyan. About her reception of them, she wrote in an 1889 letter: “Knowledge comes in visions, first in dreams and in pictures presented to the inner eye during meditation. Thus have I been taught the whole system of evolution, the laws of being and all else that I know. … And knowledge so obtained is so clear, so convincing, so indelible in the impression it makes upon the mind, that all other sources of information, all other methods of teaching with which we are familiar dwindle into insignificance in comparison with this.”¹¹

Although I did not understand it at the time, it was because Gurdjieff’s teaching derives from the same source as H.P.B.’s teaching, that Ashish recommended it to me. That source is, in Gurdjieff’s terms, the esoteric conscious inner circle of humanity. H.P.B. called that same source, the Masters of wisdom as did J.G. Bennett. H.P.B. herself never claimed to be part of the esoteric conscious inner circle of humanity, but she did claim to be the student of three teachers, counterparts of Gurdjieff, whom she called her Masters. These teachers are part of that esoteric conscious inner circle as is Gurdjieff.

Was Sri Madhava Ashish a member of the esoteric conscious inner circle of humanity, or was he at the level of understanding of the mesoteric or the exoteric inner circles? I cannot say, but I knew from the time of our initial meeting in 1978, that there was something special about him. Exactly what that something was, I could not then put my finger on. But there was about him a presence very different from other men.

Evidence of the connections between Gurdjieff and other members of the esoteric conscious inner circle of humanity who were H.P.B’s teachers was presented in a paper given at The 3^rd International Humanities Conference: All & Everything, 98.¹² Here is a summary of the evidence for these connections.

In the introduction to The Secret Doctrine, H.P.B. gives a prediction: “In Century the Twentieth some disciple more informed and far better fitted [than the current author H.P.B.] may be sent by the Masters of Wisdom … [and] The Secret Doctrine is not a treatise, or a series of vague theories, but contains all that can be given out to the world in this [nineteenth] century.”¹³

What was given out at the end of the nineteenth century were the first two volumes of The Secret Doctrine based on The Stanzas of Dzyan; the first volume entitled “Cosmogenesis” (the coming into being of the cosmos) and the second volume entitled “Anthropogenesis” (the coming into being of man). Both these volumes constitute an intellectual description of reality, but lack practical instruction for the intentional effort that man must make to acquire imperishable being. However,

there is a further prediction given in The Secret Doctrine which goes on to say:

“These two volumes should form for the student a fitting prelude for Volumes III, and IV. Until the rubbish of the ages is cleared away from the minds of the Theosophists to whom these volumes are dedicated, it is impossible that the more practical teaching contained in the Third Volume should be understood.”¹⁴

Just what is Gurdjieff’s role in all this? H.P.B. answers this question in her Secret Doctrine commentary. She tells us that there are important parts of the teaching that she is not disclosing in these first two volumes. More is to be expected, especially as concerns the practical aspects of the teaching. H.P.B. tells us some interesting things about the predicted third and fourth volumes of The Secret Doctrine that will help us to connect them with Gurdjieff’s teaching. She writes:

“In Volume III. of this work (the said volume and the IVth being almost ready) a brief history of all the great adepts known to the ancients and the moderns in their chronological order will be given, as also a bird’s eye view of the Mysteries, their birth, growth, decay, and final death — in Europe.¹⁵

“In that volume [III] a brief recapitulation will be made of all the principal adepts known to history, and the downfall of the mysteries will be described.”¹⁶

And what of Volume IV.? What will it contain? Once more H.P.B. tells us. She says, “Volume IV. will be almost entirely devoted to Occult teachings.”¹⁷ In respect to these occult teachings, consider the never completed Third Series: Life is Real only then When I Am.

In addition to these clues, we can select from any number of other statements made by H.P.B. as we look for indications of what more might be given. One such statement is her comment about oral transmission in relation to The Secret Doctrine. She writes: “that which is given in these volumes is selected from oral, as much as from written teachings.”¹⁸ Therefore, we shall want to consider what oral teaching has been given to us along with that which has been set down in writing.

But who is the disciple predicted by H.P.B., who will bring both the oral and written teachings in the twentieth century? The elders of the Theosophical Society in the first decade of the twentieth century, under the leadership of Annie Besant, were not unmindful of H.P.B.’s predictions. But they incorrectly chose J. Krishnamurti as the predicted teacher who would come in the twentieth century. Krishnamurti himself rejected this role in his arguably most important speech “Truth is a Pathless Land” given before thousands of theosophists in Holland in 1929.

Let us now look at Gurdjieff’s position when he came public in Moscow beginning in 1912 and consider his actions over the next decades. Let us also assume that he is a Master, a member of the esoteric conscious inner circle of humanity, as Ashish recognized. Gurdjieff’s connections with theosophy ran wide and deep, notwithstanding his negative views about naïve early theosophists and other occultists who did much fantasizing. Two of his closest students, P.D. Ouspensky and A.R. Orage, both of literary prominence in the first half of the 20^th century, were well known speakers for

the theosophical movement. Two lesser known figures in the theosophical movement of the 1920s, Maud Hoffman and Trevor Barker, became pupils of Gurdjieff when he visited London in 1922 and went with him to Fontainbleau to help prepare the Prieure to receive students.¹⁹ Remarkably, all the while they were with Gurdjieff at Fontainbleau, these two pupils were working on the transcription, compilation and publication of The Mahatma Letters, a series of letters written by H.P.B.’s teachers, her Masters, to British officials in India in the late nineteenth century.²⁰ These Masters are the same group of teachers of whom Gurdjieff was one.

Let us assume that Gurdjieff wants to give the world indications that he is the teacher predicted in The Secret Doctrine, who will bring the practical teaching. How does he do it? Of course, he actually brings the practical teaching. That is his job. It is why he was sent in. The practical teaching is essentially oral, and he gives it out piecemeal to Ouspensky and others in the early Russian groups. Ouspensky recognizes this and writes “I realized very clearly that a great deal of time must pass before I could tell myself that I could outline the whole system correctly.”²¹ Eventually, Ouspensky does outline the system and writes it down as he understands it, however incompletely. This written account, In Search of the Miraculous, constitutes the most widely known and generally regarded authoritative exposition of the oral teaching imparted by Gurdjieff.

By the 1920s Gurdjieff is certainly aware of Krishnamurti’s designation by the theosophists as the new world teacher. He can hardly stand in opposition to this. It would appear unseemly and he would be accused of self-serving. What does he do? Gurdjieff, after the auto accident in 1924, which determined that he would have to close his school, dedicates himself to writing. He writes the intentionally mythological Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson, and writes into it a scenario that will fulfill The Secret Doctrine prediction. He does this by creating a great scientist who appears as a Saturnian bird, Gornahoor Harharkh, who helps Beelzebub to construct a telescope on the planet Mars, by which he is able to observe the happenings on Earth. In this way he is able to give “a bird’s eye view of the Mysteries, their birth, growth, decay, and final death — in Europe”; and he does this along with giving us “a brief history of all the great adepts known to the ancients and the moderns in their chronological order”, just as had been predicted by H.P.B. in The Secret Doctrine.

Some students of Gurdjieff’s teaching have recognized that Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, in spite of intentional obscuration, is largely Gurdjieff’s autobiography, at least in his most recent incarnation as Gurdjieff and possibly in his many appearances in the past on this planet, in the role of teacher. Events in his “sixth descent” to the planet Earth which lead us into the twentieth century can definitely be linked to Gurdjieff’s life here as we know it. Theosophical theory has it that a being sent in from above takes incarnation in a vehicle provided by ordinary human procreation. Beelzebub’s statements that he “descended” onto earth, in describing each of his six visits, can be seen as his entering into incarnation for the purposes described in Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson.

This is further confirmed in Beelzebub’s description of the taking incarnation by the allegorical Ashiata Shiemash: “By the All Most Gracious Command of Our OMNI-LOVING COMMON FATHER ENDLESSNESS, our Cosmic Highest Most Very Saintly Individuals sometimes actualize

within the presence of some terrestrial three-brained being, a ‘definitized’ conception of a sacred Individual in order that he, having become a terrestrial being with such a presence, may there on the spot ‘orientate himself’ and give to the process of their ordinary being-existence such a corresponding new direction, thanks to which the already crystallized consequences of the properties of the organ Kundabuffer, as well as predispositions to such new crystallizations, might perhaps be removed from their presences.”²²

Gurdjieff may very well have been describing himself in the guise of Ashiata Shiemash into whose mouth he put the words: “To me, a trifling particle of the whole of the GREAT WHOLE, it was commanded from Above to be coated with the planetary body of a three-centered being of this planet and to assist all other such beings arising and existing upon it to free themselves from the consequences of the properties of that organ which, for great and important reasons, was actualized in the presences of their ancestors.”²³

Although Madhava Ashish told me to study Gurdjieff’s teaching and he, himself, was a great fan of Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, in a letter, he made the following comment about what he called the Man books: “G’s system [of cosmology] is tantalizing, but mythological in form. G did not intend to provide a rational framework. As he says at the beginning of the book [Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson], he aims to destroy preconceived nations. Frankly, you will get a clearer approximation of the facts from the Man books [Man, the Measure of All Things and Man, Son of Man]. I think you will find G’s ideas making more sense against the framework those books sketch.”²⁴ (letter Feb. 26, 1993)

Ashish said this to me in 1993, about these two Man books that I came across in 1978 and which brought me to meet him. But it would be 2008, another fifteen years, before I picked up on his hint and began to re-examine the Man books, and especially Man, Son of Man. It is not because this book contains anything that cannot be dug out of Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, but Gurdjieff wrote it in mythological form just as H.P.B. wrote The Secret Doctrine in a confusing 19^th century literary style. A more modern and straightforward explanation was needed, and this is what was given to us, in my view, by Gurdjieff and his cohorts of the esoteric conscious inner circle of humanity in the 1950s, a few years after Gurdjieff left incarnation. This explanation was telepathically transmitted through Prem and Ashish. In his book on dreams, An Open Window: Dream as Everyman’s Guide to the Spirit, posthumously published in 2007, some ten years after his passing, Ashish described the receiving of the wisdom recorded in the Man books in the 1950s by him and Prem, in almost the same terms as H.P.B. used to describe her reception of this wisdom in the 1880s. The emphasis in both descriptions is upon the necessity of receiving wisdom through symbols in dream and in silent meditation where thought is stopped so that insight can be received. This is why silent meditation, known as “sitting” in Gurdjieff groups is so important, and this is why paying attention to symbols in dreams is equally important. About this, echoing H.P.B.’s description of how she received the Stanzas of Dzyan  in meditation and dream, Ashish wrote:

“We [Prem and Ashish] went through a high period [in the 1950s] when a night without a dream was a wasted opportunity, a forgotten dream was a breach of trust. We hurried through our many chores

to be free to pace up and down in the morning light, seeking meanings and their ramifications. Then as the mind began to come under control, little visions began to appear in meditation whose content was more direct, less concealed by symbols, than in ordinary dream. There was direct, personal instruction. And there were dreams which threw light on the Cosmogenesis and Anthropogenesis of the Stanzas of Dzyan on which we were attempting to write a commentary. Yet there was never direct dictation. One always had to struggle to understand what the symbols were saying, so that one was personally responsible for the form in which the general scheme was presented.”²⁵

In another letter Ashish said: “We [Prem and Ashish] wrote that the commentary has to stand on its own. Saying that inspiration and instruction was given by D. K. [Djwhal Khul, a theosophical Master] and others would add nothing to the validity of the work. We know to whom we owe it, but we are not going to make him answer for our misunderstandings and mistakes.”²⁶ (letter Jan. 7, 1992)

There has been an unfortunate lack of interest in the study of dreams within the Gurdjieff community because of the misunderstanding of what Gurdjieff meant in a talk he gave in 1923 entitled “Energy

– Sleep”, published in Views from the Real World.²⁷ But even within the Gurdjieff literature one finds references to dream work by Gurdjieff students such as in the published writings of Margaret Anderson and Dr. Maurice Nicoll. And it is a little known fact that Gurdjieff worked with certain individual students helping them to understand their dreams.

In working with dreams, we need to learn the symbolic language in which our dreams speak to us. Often, but not always, these are messages from higher centers, really another term for the esoteric conscious inner circle of humanity, urging us to growth, maturity and wholeness. Who or what is the source of wisdom that communicates with us through insight given symbolically in meditation and dream? Can we imagine that it is really Gurdjieff himself when Gurdjieff appears in a dream, or that it is Jesus supplying the insight that sometimes comes in silent meditation, or that it is the Master Maurya who calls our attention to a passage in a book that answers a question? Ashish expressed it this way:

“Any one of those beings (if it has any meaning to speak of these being more than one essential being) can look out through the eyes of any existing form that has eyes. There is a series of masks, shaped in the familiar forms of Gurdjieff, Jesus, the Buddha, Maurya, etc., so that idiots like us can recognize them, through which the one power can communicate with us. Yet there is a sense in which ‘The Great Russian Bodhisattva’ whom we last knew as Gurdjieff, at a certain level, is distinguishable from other bodhisattvas.²⁸ (letter Oct. 11, 1989)

In sum, Gurdjieff’s status is that he is a Master, a member of the esoteric conscious inner circle of humanity, as were H.P.B.’s teachers.

• What is the very great purpose in our life to which we are all slaves?

To help us understand the certain very great purpose to which Gurdjieff refers, an allegorical Hindu

children’s story may help. It goes like this: All there is, in and beyond the universe is Brahman (or Endlessness or Self or God or whatever we wish to call it). There is nothing else. In spiritual philosophy this is known as unity or non-duality. But in our story Brahman is lonely because there is nothing else. So Brahman decides to divide itself into two parts so that it can know itself and play with itself. We can recognize this division of the unity into two parts calling them male and female, or positive and negtive, and other similar terms. In this artificial division of one into two, an energy is released, a third part. It is Gurdjieff’s third force. In ordinary Hinduism these three parts are given names as the three highest Hindu Gods, Brahma the creator, Shiva the destroyer, and Vishnu the preserver. This triad of Gods is known in Hinduism as the Trimurti, to which Gurdjieff refers.

Practitioners of Gurdjieff’s teaching know from experience that what Gurdjieff brought was, as predicted by H.P.B, “the more practical teaching”, the teaching about the intentional effort that we each must make. And it is through the practical teaching that Gurdjieff brought, the psychological self-awareness exercises and the physical self-awareness exercises, that we actually come to know ourself. We become aware of being conscious of ourself.

When Gurdjieff said that the words “know thyself … which are generally ascribed to Socrates, actually lie at the basis of many systems and schools far more ancient than the Socratic”²⁹ he was not exaggerating. “Know thyself,” he said, “is full of particularly deep meaning and is one of the symbols leading to the knowledge of truth.”³⁰ The admonition, “Know Thyself” goes back long before the arising of homo sapiens vehicles on planet Earth. It goes back, in fact, to the manifestation of the universe as described in The Secret Doctrine. It is the admonition of and to Endlessness in its recurring voyage of self-discovery. On planet Earth that voyage is actualized in the three-brained homo sapiens beings, who are the vehicles through which Endlessness is able to know itself

Among the most important statements in Man, Son of Man are the following five in which is revealed the answer to the question: what is this certain very great common purpose, in which lies the whole sense and predestination of our life? It is there stated:

• “The only unqualified Subject in the Cosmos is the One, which can never under any circumstances become an object of its own awareness.”³¹

• “The primary creative impulse arising in absolute, undifferentiated Being can be described as a desire within Being to know itself, a desire which begins by producing a distinction between the subjective Knower and the desired object of knowledge, both separated and linked by the desirous act of knowing, and which ends by a multitude of knowing units being clothed in the objective garments of apparent form. There is, in other words, a purposeful striving within the unmanifest source of all things to make its inherent qualities apparent to itself—a necessary effort, because the diffused consciousness of Absolute Being cannot become aware of its own qualities until both a separation has been made between Knower and Known, and its qualities have been objectively represented.”³²

• “The urge to travel the path of spiritual endeavor springs from the Cosmic Being’s urge towards

its own fulfillment, an urge that is implanted in our hearts as it is implanted in the hearts of all creatures of the divine will. The inner goal towards which we are urged to turn is the goal of the cosmic cycle, and the purpose to gain that goal through man is the purpose of the whole process of evolution.”³³

• “When the Great Being once again sets out on His recurring voyage of self-discovery, then the bright jewel points of the perfected men [who are the esoteric conscious inner circle of humanity], re- clothe themselves in plastic form.”³⁴

• “The mystic’s vision of the essential unity of all being is the supreme truth indeed, but even he is apt to forget that the bliss of union with the divine being is attainable only by virtue of our seeming separateness.”³⁵

C. G. Jung and psychologists of the Jungian school who have delved into the mystical side of Jung’s teaching have well understood the need for this adventure in seeming separateness in psychological terms, writing: “In the early stages of ego development the opposites must be separated, and you might say that it is the task of the ego to get out of them. The young ego is obliged to separate from its environment and to define itself in terms of being different; … Separating the opposites is a task for the early part of life, and the union of the opposites is a task for the later part of life.”³⁶

Gurdjieff explains how the almost infinite diversity that we observe all about us fulfills the desire within Being to fully know itself. He tells us that it was actualized through the two great laws of world creation and world maintenance, the sacred Triamazikamno (the law of three forces) and the sacred Heptaparaparshinokh (the law of the octave). He tells us: “In the beginning, when nothing yet existed and when the whole of our Universe was empty endless space with the presence of only the prime-source cosmic substance ‘Etherokrilno, our present Most Great and Most Most Holy Sun Absolute existed alone in all this empty space, and it was on this then sole cosmic concentration that our UNI-BEING CREATOR with HIS cherubim and seraphim had the place of HIS most glorious being. It was just during this same period of the flow of time that there came to our CREATOR ALL-MAINTAINER the forced need to create our present existing ‘Megalocosmos,’ i.e. our World.”³⁷

The need for the creation is so that Endlessness can know itself in almost infinite diversity. It is the certain very great purpose of our homo sapiens incarnation. This begins with the artificial division of the one subject into subject and object, or knower and known, or male and female. This division results in a release of energy. Because, as is explained in Man, Son of Man, the diffused consciousness of the absolute being of Endlessness cannot become aware of its own qualities until both a separation has been made between knower and known, and its qualities have been objectively represented, an artificial division by Endlessness is made into subject (masculine) and object (feminine). The release of energy resulting from this division is what Gurdjieff has called “the third force.” It can be either attractive or repellent between the first and second forces. C.G. Jung recognized this from a psychological standpoint and in his magnum opus, the final and most mystical of his writings, Mysterium Coniunctionis, he

wrote: “The factors which come together in the coniunctio [union] are conceived as opposites confronting one another in enmity or attracting one another in love.”³⁸

While the law of the three forces has been generally known throughout the history of mankind, the equally important law of the octave has for the most part been unknown, or if known, then often misunderstood. Gurdjieff explains this law to us in terms of time, because time is necessary for Endlessness to know itself in infinite diversity. Without time there would be no possibility of self- knowledge because of the instantaneous collapse of the artificial duality back into non-duality.

The manifestation, giving rise to the creation and materialization, and resulting from the sacred Triamazikamno or the law of three forces for the purpose of Endlessness’s desire for self-knowledge, requires something more. The artificial division of the one into two (and effectively three) must instantaneously collapse back into one, meaning that there is no time and no possibility of self- knowledge, unless something further is done to prevent this instantaneous collapse. This something further is the changing of the Stopinders by Endlessness, in effect bringing into the process, the law of the octave – the sacred Heptaparaparshinokh, in which intentional irregularity has been inserted into what otherwise would be uniformity in the changing of rates of vibration throughout Endlessness. It is this irregularity intentionally inserted into the manifestation that gives rise to duration in which time allows the infinite variety through which Endlessness knows itself in infinite diversity. Duration in time allows the manifestation of our Megalocosmos created by the changing of the Stopinders and sustained by the reciprocal exchange of energies within the manifested universe. This reciprocal exchange prevents the diminishment of duration and consequently prevents the diminishment of the almos infinite variety of experience by which Endlessness comes to know itself. The necessity for the creation is expressed in Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson:

“Our present Most Great and Most Most Holy Sun Absolute [which] existed alone in all this empty space, and it was on this then sole cosmic concentration that our UNI-BEING CREATOR with HIS cherubim and seraphim had the place of HIS most glorious Being.”³⁹ This is a description of reality before the creation of “our present existing ‘Megalocosmos,’ i.e., our World.”⁴⁰ We then learn that “our ENDLESSNESS was forced to create the whole World which now exists at the present time.”⁴¹ The reason given for this is, “that our CREATOR OMNIPOTENT once ascertained that this same Sun Absolute, on which HE dwelt with HIS cherubim and seraphim was, although almost imperceptibly yet nevertheless gradually, diminishing in volume. … our OMNIPOTENT CREATOR for the first time made it clear that the cause of this gradual diminishing of the volume of the Sun Absolute was merely the Heropass, that is, the flow of Time itself,”⁴² and thus “to attain immunity from the maleficent action of the of the merciless Heropass (time), HE ultimately actualized it all.”⁴³

The outward journey, the descent of spirit into matter for the purpose of experience, and the inward journey, the path of return, has often been described as a parabola. The descending arc of the parabola is the descent of spirit into the almost infinite diversity of matter however artificial. The return ascending arc is the ascent of matter, which is objectively unreal, back to spirit, the only objective reality, but now with the benefit of experience in Endlessness’s desire to know itself.

The following “Diagram of Endlessness in the Form of Man” is intended to help clear up confusion because there are two series of seven orders of being, not one. The parabola in the seven circles on the left side represents inner man. About inner man, Gurdjieff says: “Your contemporary favorites very often use a notion taken by them from somewhere, I do not know whether instinctively, emotionally, or automatically, and expressed by them in the following words: ‘We are the images of God.’ These unfortunates do not even suspect that of everything known to most of them concerning cosmic truths, this expression of theirs is the only true one of them all. And indeed, each of them is the image of God, not of that ‘God’ which they have in their bobtailed picturing, but of the real God by which word we sometimes still call our common Megalocosmos.”⁴⁴

Man, more importantly, belongs to the non-materialized state than to the materialized homo sapiens vehicle. He is shown on the left side of the diagram as inner man, the Adam Kadmon of Gnosticism and Kabbalah. The seven orders of being represented by the seven circles on the right side of the diagram represent biological evolution providing vehicles for the ingression of consciousness. In Man, Son of Man we are told: “The descending order of creative powers meets the ascending order of physical forms at the junction between the desire level [the bottom circle of the parabola on the left] and the physical level [the fourth circle from the bottom of the series on the right].”⁴⁵ In terms of the biological evolution of a suitable vehicle, that junction takes place in the hominid vehicle, the precursor of the homo sapiens. Note also that the diagram is divided into three parts: (A) The unmanifest transcendent which is Endlessness “when nothing yet existed”;⁴⁶ (C) The materialization where “the descending order of human characteristics meets the physical order of animal evolution”;⁴⁷ and (B) What is called in Man, Son of Man, “the watery mid-region.” In Man, Son of Man, it is said: “We have begun by plunging directly into a discussion on the strange, shifting, uneasy ‘waters’ of the Matrix – the mid-region of magical effects, ghosts, astral bodies, [the body Kesdjan] and other occult phenomena. Let us meet the question squarely. Those who reject this strange, magical area of experience as ‘old wives tales’ and ‘superstitious nonsense’ are rejecting the key to the secret of life along with it.”⁴⁸

“It is extremely difficult to give an adequate description of this deceptive middle-region of the universe. … It has neither the relatively stable definition of the sensible universe, nor the intellectual clarity of the unmanifest Transcendent. So difficult is its nature to grasp that nearly all academic scientists prefer to ignore its presence, and so treacherous are its paths that most spiritual teachers seek to decry its importance. Yet we live constantly in its ‘watery’ atmosphere, our life and our very existence depend upon it, and every physical form in the universe has arisen through its mediacy, for it is the subtle, impressionable link between mental concept and physical form. In effect, it is the same energy-filled space out of which this universe has grown and in which it stands, but only at this outermost edge of the manifestation do those energies reach a sufficient intensity to become visible to us.”⁴⁹ This mid-region is the region of connection, the region that explains telepathic communication such as that demonstrated by Gurdjieff and recounted by Ouspensky. It is also the region of body-Kesdjan existence after the first sacred Rascooarno (physical death) and the time at which the being-body-Kesdjan temporarily existent in this after death state “must decompose, irrespective of whether the higher being-part existing within it, had by that time attained the requisite degree of Reason.”⁵⁰

Diagram of Endlessness in the Form of Man In Three Parts; and Two Series of Septenaries

• the Unmanifest Transcendent: “when nothing yet existed.”⁵¹
• the Watery mid-region: “the body Kesdjan, together with the ‘third-being-body … rise … to that sphere.”⁵²
• the Materialization: “the descending order of human characteristics meets the physical order of animal evolution.”⁵³

The Unmanifest Transcendent, the Divine Unity from which all proceeds and whither all returns. (SD I,1)⁵⁴

• The Watery mid-region between the sensible universe and the unmanifest transcendent. The mid-region of magical effects, ghosts, the body Kesdjan, and other occult phenomena.“Those who reject this strange, magical area of experience are rejecting the key to life along with it, for without [it], there could be no womb of becoming and no human birth.”⁵⁵

The Sacred Triamazikamno (law of the three forces)

ENERGY (FOHAT)

MASCULINE (SUBJECT)                FEMININE (OBJECT)

Parabola of Being of Inner Man             Physical Vehicle: Homo Sapiens

Man most importantly comes from this watery mid-region and to this region he returns.⁵⁶

Man #6&7 stands in

Adam Kadmon                                                                          unity

Man #5 turned

toward spirit

• The Materialization

In the Materialization, “The descending order of human characteristics meets the physical order of animal evolution.”⁵⁷

Man # 1,2,3&4

out-turned

Hominid pre- Homo sapiens But 3-brained

Animal 2-brained Vegetable Mineral

Simply phrased, we are Endlessness as is everything in existence. The idea is expressed poetically in the Hymn to our Endlessness appearing at the end of Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson [in part]:

“Thou Abundantly LOVING CAUSE of All That Exists, Thou Unique VANQUISHER Of The Merciless Heropass, … Extol Thee MAKER-CREATOR

Thou, The Beginning of All Ends, Thou, Proceeding from Infinity,

Thou, Having The End Of All Things Within Thyself, Thou, Our ENDLESS ENDLESSNESS.”⁵⁸

Notice that Endlessness in the hymn is “the beginning of all ends”, and has “the end of all things within itself.” This is a statement of non-duality. This non-dualistic view of mankind means that man is Endlessness and that Endlessness is man, not only in principle but in full knowledge of the fact.

In sum, our very great purpose as Endlessness, incarnated in the homo sapiens vehicle, is to fulfill the desire within being to know itself fully and therefore in almost infinite diversity.

• What makes it possible for us to acquire imperishable being while fulfilling the very great purpose in our life?

It is only in the three-brained homo sapiens vehicle on this planet that we, that is, Endlessness has the ability to know itself, to be aware of itself, on planet Earth. But this cannot happen without our intentional effort. We are told in Man, Son of Man:

“Unlike our arrival at manhood, we are subject to no inescapable compulsion to grow. Against our will we can neither be thrust upwards from below nor pulled upwards from above. Having achieved an instrument of its own will [homo sapiens], it is through that instrument that the divine Will achieves its purpose. It is as if the divine Will cannot compel itself by itself, and we, who are essentially moments in or of that Will must give ourselves to the fulfillment of its purpose if that purpose is to be fulfilled.”⁵⁹

“The perfection of man can only be achieved by intentional effort of the individual to discover his essential unity with the macrocosmic Man and so to complete the evolutionary cycle which begins with unexpressed potentials of life and ends with manifest vehicles through which the divine awareness achieves knowledge both of its essential unity and of its manifold nature.”⁶⁰

The intentional effort referred to requires what Gurdjieff has called “conscious labor and intentional suffering” throughout Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson. Ashish was explicit in listing aspects of the intentional effort that is required. Foremost among these is Gurdjieff’s admonition to “remember ourselves always and everywhere”. It is this method, sometimes called “self witnessing” that moves us away from identification with the personality and toward our real nature that is the Self or

Endlessness. But there are additional tools of which we can make use. In a 1989 letter Ashish listed these:

“1. Keep up the self-remembering exercises all the time.

• Give your mind food for thought which stimulates your aim. [i.e. read spiritual writings]
• Increase the periods and frequencies of meditation.
• Record dreams and visions and work on their meanings.
• Try to get inner sanction for even simple daily actions. The point is that the whole of your life has to be integrated around the center, and not just the spiritual bit of it.
• Open yourself to the psychic contents of events, from perceiving the flow of life in plants to noting synchronicities. [These synchronicities when paid attention to, will provide overwhelming personal verification of what Gurdjieff has called, the real world.]
• There is a connection between self-remembering and meditation. Keeping yourself centered at all times makes it easier to get into meditation at special times. This sort of effort is directed to a transpersonal goal. If you are dedicated to the way of the Masters (i.e. not to selfish liberation, but to helping others), then the Masters personify the goal. So your efforts take you directly towards them.”⁶¹ (letter May 25, 1989).

An important additional tool about which Ashish wrote separately and which Gurdjieff also explains is that the perfection of man, the three-brained being, requires a very fine energy, and is made possible because Great Nature has allowed to develop and remain in man, a certain “particle” through which imperishable being is acquired. Students of Gurdjieff’s teaching, studying the enneagramatic refining of energies within the human body will understand how the refining of the three incoming foods produces the finest energy. It is this energy (hydrogen si 12) that can be used for procreation, for inner transformation, or for both.

Frank Pinder, a man who C.S. Nott tells us was very close to Gurdjieff, expressed it this way: “We are among [Great Nature’s] experiments. But the Everlasting has left us a remnant of which she [Great Nature] could not deprive us. … This has to do with Gurdjieff’s “particle” in Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson; but this particle or remnant, is powerless to evolve by specific gravity when the proper being-effort is not directed towards it. Here, Dame Nature … has been compelled by higher powers to keep and make available to us certain organs otherwise than exclusively for her own use.”⁶²

These organs, referred to by Pinder, as quoted by Nott, are the organs producing sexual energy refined from the processing of foods in our organism, but employed for inner transformation and otherwise than exclusively for procreation, when that energy is turned inward. Gurdjieff further explains this, and the loss of this knowledge in Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson. (see pp. 781-4)⁶³

On the employment of sexual energy for transmutation and other than for procreation, Sri Madhava Ashish wrote: “We all know something of the connection between sexual restraint and the ‘production of substances necessary for the Work’ or ‘building the Kesdjan (astral) body’. We all know that in order to attain to the vision of the unity (Nirvana, or anything else one likes to call it)

the ‘outflows’ have to be withdrawn, and that since all outflowing interests are derivatives of eros, withdrawal of the major erotic interest, sexual interest, is a major step in the process. Most of us are now aware that to interpret these requirements in terms of celibacy is mere literalness, and that a balance has to be found such that the fires of the external passions can themselves be harnessed to serve our self-transcending aim; a difficult, dangerous doctrine, in which it is only to easy to deceive ourselves … The compulsions must be extinguished, not the fires themselves. Mahatmas cannot be classified according to their sexuality. There have been men, like Ramana Maharshi, who, so far as we know, never had any sort of sexual life. But Nisargadatta was married and had children. Gurdjieff was married and had children.”⁶⁴ (letter Jul. 6, 1979)

Gurdjieff developed the theme of the use of sexual energy for transmutation in the oral teaching given to Ouspensky: “For certain types a long and complete sexual abstinence is necessary for transmutation to begin; this means in other words that without a long and complete sexual abstinence transmutation will not begin. But once it has begun abstinence is no longer necessary. In other cases, that is, with other types, transmutation can begin in a normal sexual life – and on the contrary, can begin sooner and proceed better with a very great outward expenditure of sexual energy. In the third case the beginning of transmutation does not require abstinence, but having begun. Transmutation takes the whole of sexual energy and puts an end to normal sexual life or the outward expenditure of sexual energy.”⁶⁵

Like Ashish, Gurdjieff goes on to give warning, saying: “Speaking in general, there are only two correct ways of expending sexual energy – normal sexual life and transmutation. All inventions in this sphere are very dangerous.”⁶⁶

What makes it possible for us to acquire imperishable being while fulfilling the certain very great purpose in our life, are these tools including the use of sexual energy or libido for transmutation, and this is a capacity reserved for three-brained beings, the homo sapiens, and not for one and two- brained beings. Libido may or may not be associated with the discharge of bodily fluids in either male or female, but rather with the importance of the turning inward of this very high and fine energy associated with intentional effort or earnestness including conscious labor and intentional suffering. The turning inward of this energy opens up channels in the psyche that allows access to what has been here called the watery mid-region of the astral or kesdjan domain. “[This energy] has to be seen as the divine Eros itself, even if its concentration does occur through the body. … With this caution, there is nothing against invoking the power to heighten the sense of aspiration in meditation.”⁶⁷ (letter Dec. 12, 1988)

In sum, the use of these tools, as explained to us by Gurdjieff and other Masters makes it possible for us to acquire imperishable being while fulfilling the very great purpose in our life.

• What is the lot of those who fulfill the very great purpose in their life consciously and who acquire imperishable being? As Ashish explains it:

“Behind the whole cosmos, behind the whole structure of manifest worlds and unmanifest principles,

behind, supporting and surrounding, is the One Darkness, the origin, cause, purpose and destination of all existence. The Breath is its Breath, the Breath that in Greek was spoken of as Pneuma, in Latin as Spiritus, in Hebrew as Ruach, in Arabic as Ruha, in Sanskrit as Atman.⁶⁸ “The Divine Unity [is that] from which all proceeds and whither all returns.”⁶⁹ (SD I, 1)

“Few men of our planet have at any time achieved the actual experience of this essential unity. Yet that he is able to achieve such experience is the key to man’s significance in relation to the whole range of manifest and transcendent being, for of all the forms evolved by the divine outpouring, in man alone the bright mirror of Mind relates the field of content to the focus of consciousness in the act of understanding. From this act both the Self of Man and the universal Self accumulate their store of experience. Then, when the long process of evolution comes to fruition, the Man-Plant flowers, the cycle of the evolution is complete, man is God and God is man, not only in principle but in full knowledge of the fact.”⁷⁰

“Our task is therefore to refind that inner unity in which subject and object, man and woman, are once more fused in the blissful mingling of complementary natures. And to do this we have to sift every sensation, emotion, and thought, always reserving the more subtle or inner component of its content, until we come to know that sensations are the caresses of the cosmic Woman in whose embrace we live. Each one of us, indeed, is man and woman in one. Driven out from the paradisal androgyneity of the supreme bliss by the fiery wrath of the creative outrush, we have once again to bring our two halves together.”⁷¹

We are told in Man, Son of Man, that ‘Imperishable Being’ can be acquired simultaneously with serving the certain great common purpose of Endlessness to know itself which we all must serve: “He who blends his individual being with the Great Being enters into the bliss of the divine Source and as an individual ceases to exist. …

[In sum] The only certain survival of individuality occurs in the cases of those of us who reach the perfection of human evolution and are dedicated both to the preservation of the essential Wisdom and to the service of the Essential Being of the Cosmos.”⁷²

Conclusion

At the outset it was suggested that we look at our situation from the standpoint of Endlessness, who in fact we are, but playing the role of Mr. or Ms. so-and-so. Here is Sri Krishna Prem, Madhava Ashish’s teacher, in full knowledge that he is Endlessness, speaking as Endlessness to advise the personality:

“Memory remains in me alone, the memory of lives too numerous to count. That memory is yours, if, during life, you learn to enter me. If not, I keep it for you till we meet again once more. Your brain is new, and in it will be stored those memories alone in which it has a part, so that you start ‘once more on your adventure brave and new’, unburdened by a load of memories too great for you to bear. Yet the stored wisdom of your past is always with you, for it remains in me who am in you. If you will

listen for my voice within your heart, that voice will guide you so that in the maze of life your course will be shaped by a wisdom springing from you know not where, a wisdom that is not your own, but mine, and yet which is your Self, for you are me. … In all things seek for me who am your friend, your life, your very Self. He who finds me sees light within the darkness, life in the midst of death, joy in the heart of sorrow, rest on the wheel of change, love in the midst of hate. … As for the Path by which I may be found, I speak: it is for you to seize my meaning.”⁷³

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ashish, Sri Madhava. An Open Window: Dream as Everyman’s Guide to the Spirit. New Delhi: Penguin, 2007.

Ashish, Sri Madhava. Man, Son of Man. Wheaton, IL. Theosophical Publishing House, 1969. Blavatsky, H.P. The Secret Doctrine. 1888. Los Angeles: The Theosophy Company, 1974.

Edinger, Edward F. The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey through C. G. Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis. Toronto: Inner City Books, 1995.

Ginsburg, Seymour B. In Search of the Unitive Vision. Boca Raton, FL: New Paradigm Books, 2001. Gurdjieff, G.I. Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson. 1950. New York: Penguin-Compass, 1999.

Gurdjieff, G.I. The Third Series: Life Is Real Only Then, When “I Am.” New York: Triangle Editions, 1975.

Gurdjieff, G.I. Views from the Real World. 1973. New York: Penguin, 1984. Jung, C.G. Mysterium Coniunctionis. Princeton: Bollingen. 1965.

Nott, C.S. Teachings of Gurdjieff. New York: Penguin-Arkana, 1961.

Nicoll, Maurice. Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. London: Robinson & Watkins. 1952.

Ouspensky, P.D. In Search of the Miraculous. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950.

Prem, Sri Krishna. Initiation into Yoga. Wheaton, IL Quest-Theosophical Publishing House, 1976.

Prem, Sri Krishna & Ashish, Sri Madhava. Man, the Measure of All Things. Wheaton, IL. Theosophical Publishing House, 1969, 1966.

The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett. Transcribed, Compiled and with an Introduction by A. T. Barker. Adyar, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1962.

The 3^rd International Humanities Conference: All & Everything 98. Ginsburg, Seymour B. “Gurdjieff, Blavatsky and the Masters of Wisdom” Loughton, UK: Planning Committee, All & Everything Conferences, 1998.

Notes:

1    Gurdjieff, G.I. Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson. 1950. New York: Penguin-Compass, 1999. 1226-7.

² Gurdjieff. 1227.

³ Ouspensky, P.D. In Search of the Miraculous. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950. 162.

⁴ Ginsburg, The Masters Speak. 141.

⁵ Ginsburg. The Masters Speak. 150.

⁶ Ginsburg. The Masters Speak. 149.

⁷ Gurdjieff. G.I. Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson. 1950. New York: Penguin-Compass, 1999. 1236.

⁸ Ouspensky. P.D. In Search of the Miraculous, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950. 310-312.

⁹ Ginsburg. The Masters Speak, 283-284. “The famous Lahiri Mahasaya, the man you’ve read about in Yogananda’s book, Autobiography of a Yogi, he claimed to have done his daily worship on Mt. Kailash.

Yogananda did not mention the fact that the Mt. Kailash he refers to is in Ranikhet, whereas the reader immediately thinks of the Mt. Kailash up in Tibet. So Lahiri Mahasaya presumably, sort of magically went up to Tibet and back again every morning. It’s one of these confusions.” (Letter, Dec. 22, 1979)

¹⁰ Ouspensky. In Search of the Miraculous. 262. See also 262-4.

¹¹ Blavatsky Collected Writings BCW XIII, 285. A fragment from the pen of H.P.B. in The Theosophist, Vol. XXXI, March, 1910, 685.

¹² The 3^rd International Humanities Conference: All & Everything 98. Ginsburg, Seymour B. “Gurdjieff, Blavatsky and the Masters of Wisdom” Loughton, UK: Planning Committee, All & Everything Conferences, 1998. 43-73.

¹³ Blavatsky. S.D. I. xxxviii.

¹⁴ Blavatsky. S.D. II. 797-8.

¹⁵ Blavatsky. S.D.I. 437.

¹⁶ Blavatsky. S.D.I. xl.

¹⁷ Blavatsky. S.D.I. 437

¹⁸ Blavatsky. S.D. I. xxxvii.

¹⁹ Moore, James “A Footnote on Maud Hoffman and A.T. Barker.” Theosophical History, Vol. 3, No. 3 (July 1990) 77-78.

²⁰ Maud Hoffman, an American Shakespearean actress residing in England with her close friend, the theosophist, Mabel Collins, became executrix of the estate of A. P. Sinnett and inherited the Mahatma letters which Sinnett had collected in India. She wrote a full page article for the New York Times, February 10, 1924, describing life at the Prieure under her teacher Gurdjieff . Hoffman appointed Trevor Barker, a British theosophist to edit the Mahatma letters for publication. Some of this work took place while Hoffman and Barker were pupils of Gurdjieff.

²¹ Ouspensky. 64.

²² Gurdjieff. 347.

²³ Gurdjieff. 353.

²⁴ Ginsburg. 230.

²⁵ Ashish, Sri Madhava. An Open Window: Dream as Everyman’s Guide to the Spirit. New Delhi: Penguin, 2007. xvii.

²⁶ Ginsburg. 128.

²⁷ Gurdjieff. Views from the Real World. New York: Penguin, 1984, 115-20.

²⁸ Ginsburg. 137.

²⁹ Ouspensky. 104.

³⁰ Ouspensky. 280.

³¹ Ashish, Man, Son of Man. 241.

³² Ashish. Man, Son of Man. 5.

³³ Ashish. Man, Son of Man. 36.

³⁴ Ashish, Man, Son of Man. 303.

³⁵ Ashish. Man, Son of Man. 36.

36 Edinger, Edward F. The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey through C. G. Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis. Toronto:

Inner City Books, 1995. 321.

³⁷ Gurdjieff. 748-9.

³⁸ Jung, C.G. Mysterium Coniunctionis. Princeton: Bollingen. 1965. 3.

³⁹ Gurdjieff. 748-9.

⁴⁰ Gurdjieff. 749.

⁴¹ Gurdjieff. 748.

⁴² Gurdjieff. 749.

⁴³ Gurdjieff. 750.

⁴⁴ Gurdjieff. 775.

⁴⁵ Ashish, Man, Son of Man. 194.

⁴⁶ Gurdjieff. 748.

⁴⁷ Ashish. Man, Son of Man. 143.

⁴⁸ Ashish. Man, Son of Man. 85.

⁴⁹ Ashish. Man, Son of Man. 86.

⁵⁰ Gurdjieff. 766.

⁵¹ Gurdjieff. 748.

⁵² Gurdjieff. 765.

⁵³ Ashish. Man, Son of Man. 143.

⁵⁴ Blavatsky. S.D. I. 1.

⁵⁵ Ashish, Man, Son of Man. 85.

⁵⁶ Gurdjieff. See pp. 765-8.

⁵⁷ Ashish, Man, Son of Man. 143.

58 Gurdjieff. 1174.

⁵⁹ Ashish. Man, Son of Man. 284.

⁶⁰ Ashish. Man, Son of Man. 302-3.

⁶¹ Ginsburg, The Masters Speak. 151-2.

⁶² Nott, C.S. Teachings of Gurdjieff. New York: Penguin-Arkana, 1961. 226-7.

63 Gurdjieff. See, for example, 781-4.

⁶⁴ Ginsburg. 276-7.

⁶⁵ Ouspebnsky. 256.

⁶⁶ Ouspensky. 257.

⁶⁷ Ginsburg. 227-8,

⁶⁸ Ashish. Man, Son of Man. 38-9.

⁶⁹ Blavatsky. S.D. I. 1.

⁷⁰ Ashish. Man, Son of Man. 37.

⁷¹ Ashish.Man, Son of Man. 213.

⁷² Ashish. Man, Son of Man. 336-7.

⁷³ Prem, Sri Krishna. Initiation into Yoga. Wheaton, IL Quest-Theosophical Publishing House, 1976. 88.