Books: Wise Man from the East

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Sour Cream & Vodka. One line of his teaching was an intricate extension of the old Greek injunction: "Know Thyself." The self, said Gurdjieff, is a chameleon, altering with each whim and impulse. "A man decides in the evening to reform his habits and to get up earlier in the morning. But the 'I' that wakes up next day knows nothing about any such plan and has no intention of rising any earlier than usual." The self is a sleepwalker reacting blindly to external impressions. "Everything happens in us in the same way that changes in the weather happen." The self is locked in the prison of habit, and the chief habit is self-deception. One form of self-deception is "considering" other people. "We are entirely preoccupied with what they are thinking of us, whether they like us, whether they dislike us, whether they are giving us our due or not ... It is a form of inner servitude."

To strip to his essential self, starch his will, and reform his character, a man must be awakened from "perpetual twilight" and "attain self-awareness." But the self, insisted Gurdjieff, is a very sound sleeper. It needs the rousing pinch of intensive self-observation, the alarm-clock shock of irritating tasks. At Fontainebleau, Gurdjieff put his followers through stiff paces. It was not unusual for a disciple to be routed out in the middle of the night, told to pack his things and move to another room. Frequently, no one was in bed at that hour, for Gurdjieff liked to keep his disciples up most of the night. During the day, tree-chopping might be assigned as a task, or intricate dances performed. Gurdjieff himself weighed more than 200 Ibs., but he moved with the grace of a cat; he composed his own tunes to accompany the dances.

Dinner usually began with vodka toasts "to the 21 varieties of idiot." Gurdjieff liked to get new disciples sozzled, if only to get them relaxed and in a self-revealing mood. A fine cook, the master would sit at the head of the table doling out spicy vegetable concoctions dunked in sour cream. Years later, when Dr. Walker went to Paris to meet Gurdjieff and was admitted to his private room, he found the walls covered with tiers of groceries, boxes of candy, bottles of brandy and vodka. The master, himself, sat jammed against the shelves with a large chocolate fish sheathed in tinfoil swinging just above his enormous head.

Shearing the Sheep. At times, Gurdjieff would petrify his disciples by simulating fierce tantrums; then he would laugh like a hyena. To learn more of "the system" and keep the grocery stack high, the disciples dug deep into their bank balances. Gurdjieff referred to this process as "shearing" and rocked with mirthful spasms whenever the subject came up. On a 1931 trip to the U.S., reporters asked the master about his mission. Said he, deadpan: "I have come to shear sheep."

Gurdjieff happily went on shearing the sheep to the day of his death at the age of 77 in 1949. Long separated from his mentor, Ouspensky had died two years before. Today, dedicated groups continue "the work" on at least two continents, hold readings from Gurdjieff's All and Everything, a mammoth mishmash of allegory, impish jest and bad writing. But it is not quite the same as when Gurdjieff was alive.