The following article appeared in the current issue of
Telos: Inquiries into Self-Transformation in the Contemporary World
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Gurdjieff in Egypt
(Copyright Telos 1996. By permission of the publisher)
The search for the source of the ancient teaching that Mr.
Gurdjieff brought has always been to the East. Certainly elements can
be found in such diverse places as Safed, Bukhara, Kurdistan,
Azerbaijan, Mt. Athos, and Sheikh Adi. But the knowledge that dwells
in these areas, even if all linked together, does not resonate with
the depth and richness, the completeness, of Gurdjieff's Fourth Way
teaching. An area that has been given little attention is Khem or
Khemet (meaning black earth), or Egypt as it is presently known.
When Gurdjieff first spoke of the origin of the teaching he
spoke not of the East but of Egypt. Uspenskii reports that during the
short Essentuki period from mid-July to August 1917, with on every
side the mass psychosis of the impending civil war becoming more
feverish, Gurdjieff "unfolded to us the plan of the whole work. We saw
the of all the methods, the beginnings of all the ideas,
their links, their connections and direction."(1) [Author's Italics]
It was then that he also, according to Olga de Hartmann, answered the
question all his students wanted to know:
"The beginning," said Gurdjieff " . . . was a prearranged
meeting in Egypt at the foot of one of the pyramids. There three
persons met after long years of separate work in places where
initiation centers were still maintained."
One man was a man of science, the second a connoisseur of
religions and their histories, and the third "could be called a 'man
of being.'"(2)
In the late 1920s, when writing , Gurdjieff describes this meeting in richer detail. Having
recently come across a map of pre-sand Egypt, he was just outside
Cairo at Giza, the site of the Sphinx and the Pyramid of Cheops, where
he worked as a professional tour guide. It was here that he first
became aware of Professor Skridlov, an archaeologist, and Prince
Lubovedsky. The Pyramid of Cheops, or Khufu, as the pharaoh of that
period was known, is thought to have been erected between 2551-2528
B.C. (The earliest pyramids are believed to date to Egypt's Early
Dynastic Period (2920-2575 B.C.). It should be noted that Gurdjieff
told Uspenskii Christianity came "in ready-made form from Egypt." And
not from historical Egypt, but from prehistoric Egypt "many thousands
of years before the birth of Christ."(3) In other words, about 2500
B.C. or earlier.
Some, most notably the Egyptologist and symbolist R. A.
Schwaller de Lubicz (1891--1962), believe the Sphinx to be even older
than all of Egypt's 5,500 years of estimated history--much older than
the pyramids. This viewpoint is gaining in scientific credibility
because of recently discovered watermarks on the Sphinx which indicate
its weathering was caused by water, not sand and winds.
Egypt, the Sphinx and the pyramids were also of great interest
to Uspenskii. Travelling to Egypt some fourteen years after Gurdjieff,
Uspenskii felt it "as extraordinarily real, as though I was suddenly
transferred into another world, which to my own astonishment I seemed
to know very well. At the same time I was aware that this world was
the distant past. But here it ceased to be past, appeared in
everything, surrounded me, became the present. This was a very strong
sensation and was strangely definite." Uspenskii recognized the
pyramid as an observatory which was also "a whole library on physics,
mathematics and astronomy; or, to be still more exact, it was a
'physico-mathematical faculty,' and at the same time a 'depository of
measures.'"(4) In his Gurdjieff also speaks of pyramids
as astronomical observatories.
Coming from Cairo, as Gurdjieff did, there are only two
possible entrances to Giza. One is to enter by way of Cheops, as
Uspenskii would some years later, and the other is by the Sphinx.
Gurdjieff, apparently, was by the Sphinx and hired as a guide by
Professor Skridlov. "We were walking from the Sphinx towards the
Pyramid of Cheops,"(5) wrote Gurdjieff, when they met Prince
Lubovedsky, an old friend of the Professor's.
Gurdjieff writes on many levels, each having its own meaning.
Thus, exactly where Gurdjieff places the scene of the first encounter
between himself, Professor Skridlov, and Prince Lubovedsky may have
important symbolic significance--a site used for the scientific
purposes of a prehistoric civilization that may have predated the
ancient Egyptians. Given the emphasis on the scientific in the
teaching that Gurdjieff brought to the West, his placing the men's
first awareness of one another in this location is not surprising.
Interpreting symbolically, Gurdjieff, the man of being, and
Skridlov, the man of science, are walking from the prehistoric period
into the historic--from the Sphinx to the pyramid of Cheops--when they
hear Prince Lubovedsky call out. The first part of Lubovedsky,
interestingly enough, in Russian means "love." So, in effect, Cheops
is the location of the first encounter between being, reason, and
love, and from this sacred triad springs what will be a modern
reformulation of an ancient teaching. Note that Gurdjieff will tell
Uspenskii, "The teaching whose theory is here being set out is
of other lines and it has
been up to the present time."(6) [Author's
italics.]
Recognizing one another, the Professor and the Prince sat down
at the foot of Cheops with Gurdjieff, the guide, not far away
listening and eating a . The two men speak in a style
reminiscent of two other Seekers After Truth, Pogossian and Yelov,
though their remarks are not as biting. In the conversation, which
most readers are likely to pass up because of its deprecatory nature,
each man defines the other's chief desire, or . The Prince
asks the Professor if he is still "collecting the utterly worthless
rubbish supposedly once used in their stupid lives?" And the
Professor, for his part, attacks the Prince, saying he is looking "for
truth invented once upon a time by some crazy idler." In this
disguised manner, Gurdjieff informs the reader of what he himself is
doing in Egypt.
Finally, the Professor and the Prince leave one another,
"arranging another meeting in ancient Thebes." Because Gurdjieff has
dark skin and converses with them in Italian, both men take him to be
an Italian, that is, not one of them. Which is to say that neither
'sees' him. Thus, there is no real meeting yet between the three.
Several days later, Gurdjieff writes, he was at the site spending all
"my free time walking among these places like one possessed, hoping to
find, with the help of my map of pre-sand Egypt,(7) an explanation of
the Sphinx and of certain other monuments of antiquity." One such
monument must be Cheops.
Deeper than Gurdjieff's and the Prince's ancestry or language
is their interest in pre-sand Egypt. It is the map of pre-sand Egypt
which brings them together. The map, therefore, has a significance
beyond itself. Gurdjieff writes that he was at one of the pyramids,
most likely not Cheops or he would have mentioned it, and looking at
the map in a emotional state, when "suddenly," he says, "I felt that
someone was standing over me." The sight of the map has produced in
the Prince a like emotional state. "Pale and in great agitation, he
asked me in Italian how and where I had obtained this map," says
Gurdjieff.(8) He "at once guessed" that this was the same prince the
Armenian priest had described at whose house he had secretly copied
the map. The two men speak for a while and then the Prince invites
Gurdjieff back to his apartment in Cairo to "quietly continue" their
conversation. Why ? Because what they were discussing should
not be discussed openly. The word must be given this meaning, as
earlier in the same sentence Gurdjieff reports that "the prince had
become quite calm again."
Later, Gurdjieff reports that he travelled with the Prince to
the ancient city of Thebes where the Prince and Professor Skridlov had
arranged to meet. Originally known as Uast or Waset, the Greeks gave
this city the name Thebes (Thebai). They also called it the city of
Diospolis Magna, "the Great City of the Gods." Correctly so, in that
Thebes is the site of the Temple of Karnak and Temple of Man, and just
across the Nile lies the mountainous and majestic Valley of the Kings
where the pharaohs were entombed. It is interesting that Gurdjieff
never uses the modern name for Thebes which is Luxor (from
--The Palaces--as it was called by Arabs). Though this
meeting is taking place in contemporary time, Gurdjieff may be
directing the reader to understand that the meeting is really ancient,
beyond ordinary psychological and calendar time, and therefore
archetypal. It may be important, as well, to remember that Gurdjieff
has not traveled to Thebes with Professor Skridlov, whom he met first,
but with Prince Lubovedsky--this the first of many such expeditions
with the Prince. Interpreting this symbolically, it could be said
that, in effect, the Prince and Gurdjieff have traveled from the
prehistoric being of the Sphinx, to the scientific observatory of the
pyramid of Cheops, to ancient Egypt's most sacred site, Thebes. A
journey then of being in the company of love to meet science.
Now Thebes lies some 400 miles south of Cairo. It was
certainly a long enough trip for the two men to form a firm and
lasting bond. Thereafter, Gurdjieff says, "We met often, and our
correspondence continued uninterruptedly for almost thirty-five
years."(9) The use here of the word "correspondence" is interesting,
but that would take us into another subject.
At Thebes Gurdjieff reports his second meeting with Professor
Skridlov: "Soon after this I met him again in ancient Thebes, where I
ended my first trip with Prince Yuri Lubovedsky and where the
professor joined us to make some excavations."(10) It is here, on the
sacred ground of Thebes, not the scientific ground of Giza, that the
men become "such intimate and good friends."
The principal and largest structure in Thebes is Karnak whose
250 acres of temples, chapels, obelisks, columns and statues comprise
"the most remarkable religious complex ever built on earth."(11)
Thebes, and especially Karnak, is dedicated to the god Amon who was
known in earlier eras but attained preeminence during the New Kingdom
(1550-1070 B.C.) in which Thebes became the capital of Egypt. The name
Amon means "hidden." He figured in the Hermopolitan myths associated
with the dynamic force of life.(12) Hermopolis was the capital of
Upper Egypt and a cult center for Thoth, the god of learning and
wisdom. Thoth has a strong association with the moon and is the
protector of priest-physicians. He was skilled in magic and was
depicted in every age as the god who "loved truth and hated
abomination."(13) These traits correspond strongly with Gurdjieff. He
was an esoteric, or hidden, priest-physician in whose teaching the
moon and the life force play primary roles and who, in his magnum
opus, the First Series-- a testament to his love for truth and hatred
for abomination--names his spaceship Karnak. It may be of some
interest, as well, given Gurdjieff's use of horns in the , that one must pass through a long line of ram-headed sphinxes
in approaching the first pylon, or outer wall, of Karnak.
When the Prince leaves, Gurdjieff and Professor Skridlov
decide to live together for three weeks in one of the tombs. They then
travel up the Nile to its source, most likely the source of the Blue
Nile, and "went on into Abyssinia, where we stayed about three months,
and then coming out to the Red Sea we passed through Syria, and
finally reached the ruins of Babylon"(14) where they stayed together
for four months. Skridlov stays on and Gurdjieff goes off, taking a
circular route through Meshed to Ispahan, in northeastern and western
Persia, what is today Iran. Sometime later, Gurdjieff reunites with
the Prince in Constantinople.
Interestingly, Gurdjieff mentions Abyssinia, or modern day
Ethiopia, for when asked where he would go to spend the rest of his
days, he mentions Ethiopia.(15) One generally retires to a place that
is most con-genial to them, be it their home, where they were born, or
some place of significance. What is Gurdjieff telling us here?x
(1) P. D. Ouspensky, , p. 346.
(2) Thomas and Olga de Hartmann, , Definitive edition, p. 68.
(3) Search, p. 302.
(4) P. D. Ouspensky, , pp.
350, 355. It is his theory that the meaning and significance of these
ancient monuments were "quite incomprehensible" to the people we call
the "ancient Egyptians." That they found them lying half-buried in the
sand and restored them, but didn't construct them.
(5) G. I. Gurdjieff, , p.
119.
(6) Search, p. 286.
(7) According to Gurdjieff, it is the third and fifth
planetary catastrophe that covered Egypt with sand. See First Series,
p. 312.
(8) Ibid, 275.
(9) Ibid, 121.
(10) Ibid, 225.
(11) Margaret Bunson, ,
p. 133.
(12) Ibid, p. 20.
(13) Ibid, p. 264
(14) Ibid, p. 225.
(15) J. G. Bennett, ,
pp. 20-21. Speaking of Abyssinia, Bennett describes it as a place
"where there are strange contacts with lost traditions." He says: "I
do know that Ethiopia was very important to him because to the very
end of his life he spoke of his great love for Ethiopia. Once he said
that he thought of going to spend the rest of his days there. He said
that the two places where he felt he had ties were, Central Asia, that
is, Bokhara, and the other Ethiopia."
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