Grudjieff study group, Canberra, Australia

A brief historical record and some of Gurdjieff's ideas.





Gurdjieff Gurdjieff was born around 1870 to a Greek father and an Armenian mother He grew up in Kars, a fortress town in the Caucasus. His insatiable questioning about the meaning and significance of life eventualluy led him to schools of awakening in remote parts of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

In Russia in 1912, he began to transmit what he had discovered 

Before his death in 1949, Gurdjieff entrusted the task of transmitting the teaching to his closest student, Jeanne de Salzmann. Groups were established in Paris, London, New York and Caracas. Other centres have developed in major cities of the world including Sydney Australia. All maintain links with the principal centres and the Australian groups have developed under the personal guidance of first-generation pupils of Gurdjieff.

For a review of his ideas, click here.

Gurdjieff on the difference between knowledge and Being:

There exists in the East an ancient book of wisdom that has never been published and probably never will be. Among its aphorisms is this:

'To know means to know all.
To know a part of something means not to know.
It is not difficult to know all, because in order to know all one has to know very little.
But in order to know that little, one has to know pretty much.'

You remember that I often say you must be internally free. You understand what it is to be free? You must identify with (attach to) nothing. He who wants to have liberty (freedom) must kill everything in himself. You divide yourself into two parts. Inwardly, you must not identify. Outwardly, you must play a role.Your task is to acquire inner freedom. This is the starting point for going further. Internally, you cannot be as you were before. Externally, like an actor, you play the role of what you were before.

A mark of the perfected man is his ability to play to perfection any desired role in his external life while inwardly remaining free and not allowing himself to "blend" with anything proceeding outside of him. Our aim is constantly to have a sensation of oneself, of one's own individuality, of Self. This sensation cannot be expressed intellectually, because it is organic. It is something which makes you independent—you in front of another.

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