Gurdjieff, George Ivanovitch (1877-1949)

Russian occultist and mystic who influenced the modern human-potential movement. He wrote a book called Meetings with Remarkable Men (English translation 1963). The mystic Ouspensky was a disciple who expanded his ideas.

After years of wandering in central Asia, in 1912 Gurdjieff founded in Moscow the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, based on a system of raising consciousness (involving learning, group movement, manual labour, dance, and a minimum of sleep) known as the Fourth Way. After the 1917 Revolution he established similar schools in parts of Europe. He also spent some time in the USA.

He structured his teaching on the belief that human beings are not fully conscious, apart from infrequent flashes of insight, and are carried helplessly along by a succession of events. To ‘wake up’ his students, Gurdjieff devised a type of dancing that required concentrated bodily control. He claimed that practising this would bring about a higher level of consciousness, with the inner centres of the organism working together in harmony and equilibrium. During his lifetime, he attracted an international following, and his philosophy continues to be taught in various parts of the world today.

In the 1920s, Gurdjieff collected his philosophical ideas into a lengthy book called All and Everything, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson.