excerpts from Ernest Scott's The People of the Secret
(Octagon Press, 1983):
A SECRET DIRECTORATE?
It is not surprising to see that all attempts to reintroduce the
lost component and to place man in touch with a genuine
technique whereby he might develop true consciousness (as
opposed to the walking-dream consciousness which he does
possess and which he mistakes for the other) have at all times
and places been regarded as a deep and subtle attack on
religion itself. This is as true of Islam as it is of Christianity.
For some two centuries after the Council of Nicaea it would
seem that Directorate participation was either withdrawn or
confined to a sort of holding operation.
Then, about AD 567, Mohammed was born. There seems to be
nothing in his early life to suggest that an event of significance
had happened, but presently the mark of higher activity begins
to attach to circumstances. Mohammed spent periods during his
youth with Bedouins in the desert and in conducting caravans
from Mecca to Syria, southern Arabia and perhaps to Egypt.
Arab religion at the time - "paganism" according to most
authorities - was influenced in the north by Christianity and in
the south by Jewish tradition. Legends suggest that before
Mohammed, a number of individuals had left Arabia to try to
find links with "the original religion of Abraham" and it may be
that Mohammed made contact with this activity during his
travels.
Perhaps a parallel exists here to the journeys from Greece to
Egypt which resulted in the school of Pythagoras.
At any rate, some event took place which resulted in
Mohammed deciding to retire to Mount Hira near Mecca.
There, it would be seen, he made contact directly with a level of
higher consciousness.
Soon afterwards he began to teach. His first audience
consisted of his own family, his wife Khadija, his friend Abu
Bakr and his cousin Ali. Initial attempts to record
Mohammed's teaching which he received in a state of trance
were abandoned and his hearers began to memorize for oral
transmission the material which he delivered.
The nucleus of a "school" was thus established for which
additional human material was waiting on the periphery. After
Mohammed's death in 632 a group of some 90 men and women
came together and through them the further development of
the impulse was realized. Such descriptions of them as exist
suggest that they included people who already knew that the
possibility of higher consciousness existed and were searching
for an Operation through which it could be exemplified.
One such was Salman the Persian, originally a Zoroastrian
who had gone from one Christian teacher to another and been
passed along through a series of testing trials and tribulations
which culminated in his being sold into slavery.
It was this event, apparently disastrous for his search, which
in fact brought him to the Companions.
This inner group of 90 took an oath of fidelity and are said to
have adopted the name Sufi...
[Arabic documentation of the term, however, begins only after AD 815.]
... Does this mean that Sufism derives from the school that
formed round Mohammed? There are reasons to suppose not.
Uways el Qarni, who died in 657, was regarded as a Sufi master
but he never met Mohammed.
Five hundred years later another Sufi master, Hakim Jami,
implicitly denied the formal Islamic origin of Sufism by
declaring that Plato, Hippocrates, Pythagoras and Hermes
were on an unbroken line of Sufic transmission.
Within our suggested mechanism of history there is no
problem. When Demiurgic levels first incarnated on earth to
achieve closer control of evolutionary trends, certain ordinary
men were initiated by them: that is, ordinary men were given
access to a technique whereby their minds could become able to
process conscious energy and hence to achieve contact with the
Demiurgic intention.
A certain number of such Initiates have been maintained
within the ordinary life of men in all places and at all times.
Sometimes they are known or suspected. Usually they are quite
unknown.
Such men have been given different names in different ages.
It is clear that certain of the Old Testament Prophets and the
Priest-Initiates of Egypt were of this order. The Sufis are the
exemplars of this unbroken Tradition in recent historical times.
The term [Sufi] has been adopted within recent years by groups
imitating such outward form of Sufi practice as they have been
able to discern and the word has to some extent been debased
during the 20th century in both East and West.
We are concerned only with the original and generally
invisible Tradition and to conclude that Sufism is the esoteric
aspect of Islam only is clearly unwarranted on the evidence.
The line, by whatever name it is known, is the line of
esotericism in all religions. It is also the line of esotericism in
many other modalities of evolution whose existence is generally
unsuspected.
There may be reason to suppose, however, that enhanced
techniques of "soul-making", relevant to the present stage of
mankind's development, were made available by the
Demiurgic level, through its Directorate on earth, at the time of
Mohammed. Put bluntly, these techniques constitute the trade
secrets of Sufism.
The Sufic influence was certainly exercised within the
framework of Islam as it has been exercised within the
framework of all religions without being identified with any.
We shall see that it was employed within Medieval Christianity
in an effort to restore the wisdom component which had
been excluded by the formulations of the early Church.
Here it might be permissible to venture a speculation in
general terms. So long as a religion develops according to its
evolutionary potential, Sufic activity will coincide with its
orthodox expression. As a religion becomes formalized in
dogma — that is, when it begins to desert its evolutionary
possibilities - the Sufic influence separates and is then seen by
orthodoxy as a heresy. At a certain stage of divergence, when
nothing more can be salvaged, the kinetic component
withdraws entirely, at which point the religion becomes subject
to the law of diminishing returns and finally extinguishes itself.
There is certainly no indication that the development of
Islam was any less free of contingency at material level than
Christianity was. It may be that in the matter of contingency
Prophets and Messengers are sometimes faced with cruel
alternatives. Rejecting all compromise with events as they
develop may mean that the Message with which they are
charged will be denied actualisation altogether. They may
choose to some extent to compromise with contingency and
thereby ensure that the Message is actualized at least partially.
Something of the sort has been suggested, in that
Mohammed's original insistence on an exclusive monotheism
was altered marginally as the price of securing the survival of
his Companions and hence of his Message.
Certainly the early promise that a genuine theocracy would
arise with spiritual authority subtending a stable structure at
all levels was not fulfilled.
To begin with, there was the familiar explosive expansion
along almost every line of human activity which we have seen
associated with the birth of every new cell in the body of history.
... But, as always, the impulse channelled through a genuine prophet had to be actualised in terms of human instruments congenitally contaminated with pride and jealousy and all the permutations of egoism in human behaviour.
Islam in no way avoided its share of human shortcomings.
On the one hand, there was a sublime reverence for man's
highest aspirations. There was just law-giving, a surging
expression of art and architecture. On the other hand, there
was egoism, conflict and hatred in many of those who sought to
serve the new ideas.
Umar, the second Caliph, was murdered. Uthman, the third
Caliph, and a Meccan aristocrat, aroused widespread opposition
by apparently favouring his own family and he, too,
died by assassination.
Ali, the fourth Caliph, was Mohammed's cousin and the
husband of his daughter Fatima. Ali was opposed by
Mu'awiya, a relative of the murdered Uthman. In 661 Ali, too,
was murdered and at this point arose the schism within Islam
which has never been bridged to this day.
The successors of Ali drew together as a separate sect (the
Shi'ites), while the supporters of Mu'awiya and his line of
Umayyad caliphs regarded themselves and their Sunnite
tradition as the true succession of the Prophet.
At some point in its development, a religion begins to diverge
from the impulse from which it derives; a departure which
appears to be in the nature of things. It is as though space itself
were curved and an unfolding event must actualize in a
sequence diverging from the straight line of its own noumenon.
At this point a religion elaborates dogma and ritual; it becomes
obsessed with the letter and not the spirit of its own inner
nature. Its outward expression becomes formalized, rigid and
autocratic. We have suggested that this is the point at which the
kinetic component appears to separate and is thereafter seen as
a newly-arisen heresy.
From the external viewpoint it seems fair to say that the
social and political body of Islam was showing advanced
entropy within thirty years.
The Umayyad Caliphate, deriving from Mu'awiya, retained
temporal control and continued the external expansion of
Islam.
Damascus was chosen as the capital, Arabic chosen as the
language of Empire. Laws were made, a uniform coinage
established and toleration extended to Jews, Christians and
Zoroastrians.
As the eighth century opened, a second wave of conquest
began in North Africa. ....
There was land across the sea ...: Spain, a land so torn by the chaos left by departing Romans and contending Visigoth rulers that it was ripe and ready for invasion.
In 711 Tariq crossed the Straits with an army. The word
Gibraltar (Jebel-Tariq, Mount Tariq) marks the event. Within
months he was in Cordoba and Moslem armies, Arab, Syrian
and Berber, were pouring through Spain and mustering to
cross the Pyrenees.
Legend has it that the Saracen captains looked down on the
lush lands of France and called out "On, on, to the conquest of
the world for Islam". One general is said to have had
misgivings: "No. We shall remain in Spain. France is too green
and my men would degenerate in that soft land." His
misgivings - according to Moslem legend - gave Charles
Martel time to gather his forces and the westward flood tide of
Islam finally broke on the battlefield of Poitiers in 732.
So the Saracens settled for Spain. Visigoth landowners made
terms with the invaders and the cities and monasteries followed
suit. Settlement was facilitated by a number of widely contrasting
factors. The serfs were still tied to a Roman slave
system but could now obtain at least nominal freedom by
embracing Islam. There was no lack of fervent converts.
The Jews regarded the occupation as a merciful deliverance
from Christian persecution and welcomed the Saracens with
open arms. They remained a powerful component of "Moorish
Spain" for 700 years.
Yet another, almost a theoretical factor, helped. The Council
of Nicaea had declared against Arius but the Arian heresy
remained, for the Visigoths, orthodox Christianity. Not
surprisingly, the Neo-Platonic ideas in Islam found an answering
echo among Spanish Christians.
But there was little of a unified nature about the Moslem
conquest of Spain. Within the occupying forces there was
conflict and hatred. Arabs denigrated Syrians and both were
contemptuous of the Berbers. The latter were so badly treated
by their brothers in Islam that generation by generation they
drifted back to their African homeland.
Dissension at Spanish colonial level was matched by dissension
at the heart of Islam. The Umayyad rulers had Islamized Persia but the Persian aristocrats had contrived to retain positions of an executive nature, from which, it is said, they hoped to keep alive Zoroastrian ideas.
Finally, in protest against taxation, they rebelled and in 749
defeated the forces of the Caliph and proclaimed the first of a
new line of caliphs, the Abbasid, choosing a descendant of
Abbas, the uncle of Mohammed. The centre of government was
then moved to Mesopotamia where the second caliph of the
new line laid the foundations of Baghdad in 763. Here a stable
Caliphate was to continue for nearly a century.
Concurrently Cordoba had crystallized as the centre of the
Umayyad regime. It was to become a showpiece of Islamic
rule. At its peak it contained 700 mosques, three public baths, a
Palace with 400 rooms and a city library with 400,000
books.
At this stage it is difficult to resist the temptation to
speculate, from a human standpoint, upon the experience of the
Hidden Directorate. It must surely have been compounded of a
mixture of alarm, disappointment and qualified satisfaction.
The Directorate had vested high hopes in Islam as the
vehicle of a major evolutionary gain. It had seen much of the
intrinsic promise destroyed by the intransigence of human
nature. Yet two stable centres now existed, 3,000 miles apart,
serving, at least in name, a spiritual reality.
If we think of Cordoba and Baghdad as magnetic poles we
can see that the whole of Europe lay in the field which they
subtended. Within this field much might yet be achieved.
Within it, a required, a fore-ordered, rise in the specific gravity
of human nature could still be contrived. Humanitarianism,
science, art and a technique of man's individual as well as
corporate evolution might be induced.
A wholly new basis of human life was called for, utterly
beyond the wildest imagination of the men of AD 1000. Step by
step, trend by trend, man and his institutions would be
impelled or restrained along a predestined road. Over and over
again man would step aside and be guided back; or would step
off the road and be halted and impelled to retrace.
Institutions once regarded as fundamental verities of human
experience would melt away. Monarchy would yield to the
social management of man by himself. The concept of nation
would change to the concept of continent, and from continent
to the conception of the entire world as one.
Man would be offered a glimpse of an expanding universe
and his mind, which measured in leagues, would strain to
measure in light-years.
Within the millennium which lay ahead of the year 1,000,
the specific gravity of human soul-stuff would be required to
rise by an amount greater than had been achieved in all the eras that had gone before.
Within the force-field that was moulding him, man would
understand little and co-operate hardly at all. From the
viewpoint of his own present moment in any of the unfolding
centuries, he would see only change without pattern; quixotic
ebb and flow; disruption, chaos, order restored and chaos once
again. Sacred standards would be cast down and strange,
seemingly arbitrary, new standards created.
From the present moment of a lifetime of seventy years, all
would seem the whim of chance and accident, all without
purpose or meaning.
Yet from the present moment of Intelligence able to contain
the whole history of mankind as a single perception, all would
be true end-gaining, deliberate, law-conforming and almost -
but never quite - inevitable.
If not quite inevitable then certainly necessary; for a great
event lay ahead in man's temporal future. It existed already in
eternity and was required to be actualized in time.
The event is a mutation in man's evolutionary nature
involving a new modality of experience, a new organ of
perception. Though latent, perhaps, since man emerged from
his primate ancestry, it is an organ of experience that has only
intermittently been active in certain exceptional individuals.
Man is due to inherit it one day as part of his total experience.
For this event man had to be prepared. Certain promising
races of pre-men were inexplicably extinguished and it has
been conjectured that this happened because they were unable
to come to terms with intellect - for them an incomprehensible
and unmanageable experience.
By analogy, a function giving access to a four-dimensional
world might be equally disastrous to intellect-based Modern
Man. A certain minimum standard of soul, a certain minimum
psychic specific gravity is necessary before such a radical new
modality may be risked.
Preparation for this - in our view - was begun as a deliberate
operation of Higher Intelligence 1,000 years ago.
The first steps involved a certain social tolerance, a certain
expansion of intellect, a certain instinctive humanitarianism.
These had to be established before the first tentative switching
on of the new organ could be regarded as viable.
How mankind was prepared within the ferment of the last
thousand years, we shall hope to glimpse in succeeding
chapters.
Once we have the key we shall see that the ebb and flow of
history itself illustrates the goals that were required to be
gained. Here and there it may be possible to see the agents of
the process at work - the Secret People serving, perhaps
members of, the Hidden Directorate.
But for the most part, their presence, like their purpose, will
be obscured from the view of the men and women among whom
they walked.
The People of the Secret (p. 44-52)
Sunday, August 10, 2014
The Directorate (II)
excerpts from Ernest Scott's The People of the Secret
(Octagon Press, 1983):
VEHICLES
Astronomy, trigonometry, music, chemistry, alchemy and
the Cabbala, all, it would seem, dripped into the veins of a
Europe still almost completely unconscious after the sleep of
the Dark Ages. The transfusion took place in Spain from
Saracen sources in the 11th and 12th centuries.
Our submission is that this was not by chance. It was not an
accidental drift, concentration and redistribution of random
material from the past: but a purposeful operation planned at a
hidden level and executed at a lower level to produce a
calculated effect - the awakening of Europe.
It would seem that the agents were of many degrees of
awareness. They ranged from conscious men of an original
School, through initiates of lesser degree, down to men chiefly
impelled by the hunger for scholarship - but having
nevertheless some knowledge of the Great Work.
At the outermost perimeter there were scribes and copyists
performing their role mechanically; but all, whatever their
degree of awareness, serving a purpose whether they glimpsed
it or not.
At ordinary historical level the contribution of the Arabs to
the awakening of Europe is undoubted, and it is now
increasingly exciting scholars: but the attribution of the whole
operation to schools of men possessing some kind of consciousness
in advance of the ordinary human kind is regarded as
either unproved or as pure fantasy.
The idealistic interpretation cannot of course be proved.
Proof depends on fact and facts define themselves as the only
admissible data. If some variety of data beyond fact is
postulated, this can never be shown in terms of fact. Yet the
analogy of this ring-pass-not of fact and supra-fact is freely
admitted in human experience. The effect of Beethoven's Fifth
is admitted to be a reality though it cannot be demonstrated
with a thermometer.
In the absence of some subjective experience which validates
the noumenal as a reality, the only support for a supra-causal
theory of history must lie in analogy. Support for the analogy
may be possible if it can be shown that "fact" is consistently
amenable - and most plausibly amenable - to a hypothesis of
higher causation. This is something like the "psychological
method" of P. D. Ouspensky. It is as far as "fact" can be
pushed towards transcending itself.
(P. D. Ouspensky, A New Model of the Universe, Routledge, London, 1951.)
Suppose, for example, that consciousness is two-dimensional
and can record only what takes place on the surface of a sheet of
paper. Within this "flat-land" universe, certain phenomena
are regularly recorded. To begin with, a point suddenly
appears. This point changes to a circle whose diameter
gradually increases up to a certain limit. This activity,
whatever it may be, now rests. The circle remains the same, but
its colour changes, apparently arbitrarily. If these phenomena
occur regularly and are carefully enough recorded, flat-land
observers will be able to predict the whole sequence as a series
of facts occurring in time. One of the predictions will be that the
mysterious circle, after a time, grows smaller and finally
becomes a point and vanishes. In terms of flat-land consciousness,
there is no more to explain. "Fact" is wholly incapable of
rising to the noumenal level which, in this case, would be a
coloured pencil pushing through the paper.
Developmental "schools" are pencils piercing the pages of
history. Their existence cannot be shown in terms of pages. It
can only be experienced in terms of pencils.
But if it is seen that the idea of pencil gives consistently a
more satisfactory explanation of the holes that keep appearing
in pages, even flat-land consciousness may begin to feel that the
hypothesis moves from possibility to probability.
And this, perhaps, is as far as any proof of a higher
motivation of the historical process can be taken. The reader
can only be shown the series of holes which appear in pages and
left to consider whether they are not most plausibly explained
by pencils.
Even those amenable to this sort of approach have objected
to the identification of the "one-up" dimension with Schools of
the Sufic tradition. They point out that much of the Iberian
population is in any case concerned with material which is not
specifically Sufic at all, being largely Greek and Egyptian.
To this it can only be replied that much Greek, Egyptian and
Neo-Platonic material is held by Sufi schools to be in true
alignment with the developmental needs of mankind.
Sufic Schools of the Directorate will use material from any
source - artistic, scientific, religious or secular - which lies on
the optimum line of man's possible evolution; an idea which is
conveyed in the Sufic teaching aphorism: "Pears do not grow
only in Samarkand."
The People of the Secret (p. 78-80)
*********
Some four years before this present book was written, a
group of five people of different nationalities came together
because of a common interest in esoteric subjects. Each had a
speciality interest in one branch of occult lore. All of them had
been convinced for some time that behind the various aspects of
esotericism which they had studied piecemeal, there was some
overall unity which eluded them.
They began to suspect, from hints that had become
increasingly explicit from the early nineteen fifties, that the
word "Sufi" pointed to the overall organization which they
suspected but had not been able to identify.
This group decided to pool resources and see if they could
take this idea further.
The group of five succeeded in making contact initially with
one contemporary Sufic group and were allowed facilities for
further investigation. The conditions under which they were
allowed to investigate and the discoveries they made will be
discussed later, but it is appropriate at this stage to look at one
study which they originated.
They approached a sociologist, whose interest was European
history, and asked him to consider, purely as a theoretical
exercise, the idea that certain movements in history were not
fortuitous but directed. In effect, the idea of The Secret People
was presented to him as a purely hypothetical concept and he
was asked to try to analyse a number of historical incidents
"as though such an organization existed". The several
historical occasions he was asked to study were in fact Sufic
operations.
His analysis is now given, and we have added in italics after
some of his conclusions a possible relevance, taken either from
the Troubadour/Arthurian complex or from alchemy and
associated subjects.
His report was as follows:
In all the periods studied, the incidents or events under review
take place against similar backgrounds. A prevailing order
claims, explicitly or implicitly, to have a monopoly of truth. In
the past such systems were either religious or national, but,
whatever the apparent form, the essential structure of such
ideologies is,essentially the same as that of modern totalitarian
regimes.
All such systems seek to indoctrinate their communities with a
given set of beliefs and the concept of heresy is a means of involving
the population in the control apparatus. Each individual becomes
the supervisor of his neighbour "for the good of all". The good so
served is, in fact, the good of the control apparatus itself.
Assuming the existence of individuals and organizations concerned
with breaking the monopoly of such rigid systems by
conveying new knowledge into them (the given hypothesis), there
would appear to be two main means possible.
1) The use of some advanced capacity (perhaps related to ESP) to
communicate directly with selected members of the community.
Even if such capacities exist, their employment would
be difficult or impossible to identify in operation and little more
can be said about such a possibility.
(2) A direct approach from within the community itself through
some centre which was
(a) hidden and therefore unsuspected by the organization in
power;
(b) operating openly but seemingly engaged in an activity
wholly innocuous to the official regime.
(c) apparently part of the official regime itself.
The suggested historical groupings which fall under suspicion as
being the subjects of such intervention exhibit certain
characteristics in common and it may therefore be possible
tentatively to suggest the general procedures possibly employed by
some (postulated) individuals and groups conducting such intervention.
Characteristics of such interventions are:
1) They are said to be teachings.
(Freemasonry's rationale is supposed to be a teaching
transmitted from ancient times.)
(2) They have a leadership.
(The Rosicrucians regard Christian Rosenkreuz as their
spiritual head. The Grand Master was spiritual and
temporal head of the Templars. St. Francis was the head
of the Franciscans.)
(3) They use symbols or a language of their own.
(The Troubadour codes. The ciphers of alchemy. The
strange medieval figures who spoke no Western language
but held up symbols. The "tools" of Freemasonry. The
symbol language of heraldry.)
(4) They are said to be for the benefit of mankind.
(The Knights Templars were to protect pilgrims.
In recent times there have been suggestions of an
influence, not explainable in terms of expediency or of
either personal or national advantage, connected with the
origins of the Red Cross.
Baden Powell's life attitude may have been decisively
affected by his contact with the Regiment of Guides in the
Second Afghan War. Much of the Scout and Wolf Cub
symbolology has a trans-personal and trans-national
significance if investigated below its apparent surface
triviality.)
(5) They stress secret knowledge or development by stages or degrees.
(Freemason and Rosicrucian secret societies are based on
a degree structure allegedly marking, or at least
symbolizing, advances in inner development.)
(6) They cross the ordinary boundaries of nation, race and religion.
(Both the real and the ostensible activities of Raymond
Lully exemplify this. Alchemy was international and
alchemists understood each other in spite of differences in
race or language.
Eleanor of Aquitaine's courts were attended by the
young nobility of Europe.
The Translators converged on Spain from many countries
and returned to distribute their material.)
(7) They are said to have come from outside or are connected with
strangers or foreigners.
(The mystique of Freemasonry.
The mystique of the gypsies. Historians continue to try
and trace some motivation behind the diaspora of the
gypsies in the 15th century but find that what they are
seeking eludes them. The possible simultaneous appearance
of the Tarot pack in Europe has however been noted: as has
the phrase "the affairs of Egypt".
The choice of a Syrian as the Patron Saint of England.)
(8) They have powerful sponsorship from important figures in the host community.
(Raymond of Toulouse for the Cathars. The family of Aquitaine
for the Troubadours. The British Royal Families for the
Orders of Chivalry. Royal patronage for cathedral builders.)
(9) They require tests and practices for their operation.
(The signs and passwords of the Freemasons. The trade
practices of workers in traditional crafts and the rituals to
which apprentices are subjected on obtaining the grade of
Journeyman. The word Journeyman is almost overt in
suggesting participation on a Path. The trade test of an
apprentice cooper to the present day has thinly veiled
initiatory elements.)
(10) They have a myth or symbolical story or stories whose parallels are believed to be worked out in the life of the community or group.
(The symbolology of Hiram Abif. The symbolology of the
English Coronation rite. The symbolology of Morris
Dancing. The order of knighthood based on Arthurian
(chivalric) symbolism.)
(11) They have unexpected links with each other not explained by saying that heretics are attracted to one another - which is not in any case true.
(There is reason to suspect that much activity ordinarily
assigned to well known individuals is in fact the result of
influences emanating from groups with which the
individuals were associated. The tales of Wolfram von
Eschenbach and Chretien de Troyes, the poetry of Dante,
Spenser, Blake and Goethe: the Orders of Chivalry, Zen
Buddhism and judo; the medicine of Paracelsus and the
psychology of Mesmer: the devotional system of St.
Francis and the disciplines of the Jesuits may all be
variations of weft upon a single unsuspected woof.)
(12) These links are sometimes tenaciously clung to, even at the expense of general goodwill in the community.
(Local nobles continued support for the Cathars even
when such action became anti-survival. The "fraternal
links" of modern Freemasons are said to be supra-national
even when the host communities are at war.)
(13) The dogma, ritual or myth does not provide a true historical link with the origin of the movement.
(The historicity of Christian Rosenkreuz is regarded as
untenable. Arthur of the Round Table in incompatible with
any historical Arthur, The belief that the Gypsies came from
Egypt is untenable. Legends of historical incidents in
which alchemical gold-making occurred are at one level
veridical; at another, the historicity goes "soft" at the critical
point.)
(14) There are distinct signs of actual or former mental and physical practices such as exercises.
(The dancing of the witches; the whirling of some dervishes;
the Freemason memorising the "work"; a witch riding a
broomstick; the psychological exercises of the Jesuits;
Maypole dancing; working through a maze at the end of a
pilgrimage.)
(15) There is a connection with religion but it is never "official" religion.
(The Arthurian literature is aspirational and devotional
but the precise nature of the religious content cannot be
pinned down.
Master Builders of the cathedrals seem to have worked
independently of official Church policy, e.g., gargoyles
and the symbolism of the great Cathedrals.)
(16) There is always a connection with non-religious behaviour to such an extent that religious or mystical investigators become con/used in trying to locale the association. Elements of art, science, literature, chemistry, commerce, military affairs intrude but cannot be accommodated informal labelling.
(The sexual components of the Love Courts. The sexual
ambivalence of the Arthurian saga. The Baphomet legend
in the Templar Order. The strains of science, chemistry
and religion in alchemy. The martial elements in the
Orders of Chivalry. The Hermetic Fair when a "Papal"
enthronement was played as "Black Comedy" actually
within the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The Christian
"Feast of Fools" and the "Feast of the Donkey" - all
seemingly religious activity with a non-religious or antireligious
component that defies analysis.)
(17) It would appear that some force prevents, certainly at the time of their maximum operation, the coherent investigation of their location, operation and other attributes which would make it
possible to mount effective opposition.
(Witch covens and their procedures are endlessly reconstructed
from testimony extracted from witches under
torture but coven meetings do not seem to have been
raided in session.)
(18) They are always studied piecemeal and an apparently "inside"
explanation of their activities and nature is eagerly accepted. Activities of this sort are in turn regarded as heresies, later as psychological phenomena and at the present time as the result of social and economic forces. The pigeon-holing actually serves to aid concealment. Once labelled there is no further public interest, "the secret being now exposed".
(Official science accepted Jung's psychological explanation
of alchemy with relief. A troublesome thorn in rationalist
flesh, it had been identified and labelled and was therefore
respectable. There was no further need to regard it as
something that needed attention.)
(19) Apostasy from such organizations contains the suspicion of diversionary tactics.
(Dervish orders who "went over" to Jenghis Khan.
Mevlevis who agreed to put on a tourist pantomime for
Kemal Ataturk.)
(20) The available literature of such organizations seems to disappear after a time or is found in such a diversity of forms as to baffle inquiry. This peculiarity may suggest a deliberate policy of stirring up the pond to make the water muddy.
(The quantity of surviving alchemical texts is enormous but
the success in decoding is in inverse ratio to the amount of
material included in any particular study.
After only seventy years it has apparently become impossible
to unravel the origins of the neo-pagan Society of
the Golden Dawn. There are now probably as many authoritative
"final explanations" as there are researchers.
Documentation of seemingly equal validity is available to
prove that it derived from a "revelation" to Henri
Bergson's sister and that it grew from a magical document
lying on a book barrow in the Farringdon Road, London.
Elucidation of Rudolph Steiner's source is no less enturbulated.)
From external analysis it seems impossible to arrive at any
firm conclusion as to the theory of "intervention". As to the
object of such historical operations as have been suggested, it
would appear impossible to discover the aims and purposes
which they could have.
If they are mounted to convert and organize masses of
people it seems clear that they have never succeeded. It is
more likely (assuming that such activities take place) that
the aim is to locate and act on selected people at various points
in history and then to disband activity decisively.
It seems possible to detect vestigial traces of some activity of
the kind suggested. The quality of such activity seems consistently
arid and banal and may suggest the mechanical
perpetuation of some format from which the essential quality
has been fully abstracted.
The People of the Secret (p. 98-104)
(Octagon Press, 1983):
VEHICLES
Astronomy, trigonometry, music, chemistry, alchemy and
the Cabbala, all, it would seem, dripped into the veins of a
Europe still almost completely unconscious after the sleep of
the Dark Ages. The transfusion took place in Spain from
Saracen sources in the 11th and 12th centuries.
Our submission is that this was not by chance. It was not an
accidental drift, concentration and redistribution of random
material from the past: but a purposeful operation planned at a
hidden level and executed at a lower level to produce a
calculated effect - the awakening of Europe.
It would seem that the agents were of many degrees of
awareness. They ranged from conscious men of an original
School, through initiates of lesser degree, down to men chiefly
impelled by the hunger for scholarship - but having
nevertheless some knowledge of the Great Work.
At the outermost perimeter there were scribes and copyists
performing their role mechanically; but all, whatever their
degree of awareness, serving a purpose whether they glimpsed
it or not.
At ordinary historical level the contribution of the Arabs to
the awakening of Europe is undoubted, and it is now
increasingly exciting scholars: but the attribution of the whole
operation to schools of men possessing some kind of consciousness
in advance of the ordinary human kind is regarded as
either unproved or as pure fantasy.
The idealistic interpretation cannot of course be proved.
Proof depends on fact and facts define themselves as the only
admissible data. If some variety of data beyond fact is
postulated, this can never be shown in terms of fact. Yet the
analogy of this ring-pass-not of fact and supra-fact is freely
admitted in human experience. The effect of Beethoven's Fifth
is admitted to be a reality though it cannot be demonstrated
with a thermometer.
In the absence of some subjective experience which validates
the noumenal as a reality, the only support for a supra-causal
theory of history must lie in analogy. Support for the analogy
may be possible if it can be shown that "fact" is consistently
amenable - and most plausibly amenable - to a hypothesis of
higher causation. This is something like the "psychological
method" of P. D. Ouspensky. It is as far as "fact" can be
pushed towards transcending itself.
(P. D. Ouspensky, A New Model of the Universe, Routledge, London, 1951.)
Suppose, for example, that consciousness is two-dimensional
and can record only what takes place on the surface of a sheet of
paper. Within this "flat-land" universe, certain phenomena
are regularly recorded. To begin with, a point suddenly
appears. This point changes to a circle whose diameter
gradually increases up to a certain limit. This activity,
whatever it may be, now rests. The circle remains the same, but
its colour changes, apparently arbitrarily. If these phenomena
occur regularly and are carefully enough recorded, flat-land
observers will be able to predict the whole sequence as a series
of facts occurring in time. One of the predictions will be that the
mysterious circle, after a time, grows smaller and finally
becomes a point and vanishes. In terms of flat-land consciousness,
there is no more to explain. "Fact" is wholly incapable of
rising to the noumenal level which, in this case, would be a
coloured pencil pushing through the paper.
Developmental "schools" are pencils piercing the pages of
history. Their existence cannot be shown in terms of pages. It
can only be experienced in terms of pencils.
But if it is seen that the idea of pencil gives consistently a
more satisfactory explanation of the holes that keep appearing
in pages, even flat-land consciousness may begin to feel that the
hypothesis moves from possibility to probability.
And this, perhaps, is as far as any proof of a higher
motivation of the historical process can be taken. The reader
can only be shown the series of holes which appear in pages and
left to consider whether they are not most plausibly explained
by pencils.
Even those amenable to this sort of approach have objected
to the identification of the "one-up" dimension with Schools of
the Sufic tradition. They point out that much of the Iberian
population is in any case concerned with material which is not
specifically Sufic at all, being largely Greek and Egyptian.
To this it can only be replied that much Greek, Egyptian and
Neo-Platonic material is held by Sufi schools to be in true
alignment with the developmental needs of mankind.
Sufic Schools of the Directorate will use material from any
source - artistic, scientific, religious or secular - which lies on
the optimum line of man's possible evolution; an idea which is
conveyed in the Sufic teaching aphorism: "Pears do not grow
only in Samarkand."
The People of the Secret (p. 78-80)
*********
Some four years before this present book was written, a
group of five people of different nationalities came together
because of a common interest in esoteric subjects. Each had a
speciality interest in one branch of occult lore. All of them had
been convinced for some time that behind the various aspects of
esotericism which they had studied piecemeal, there was some
overall unity which eluded them.
They began to suspect, from hints that had become
increasingly explicit from the early nineteen fifties, that the
word "Sufi" pointed to the overall organization which they
suspected but had not been able to identify.
This group decided to pool resources and see if they could
take this idea further.
The group of five succeeded in making contact initially with
one contemporary Sufic group and were allowed facilities for
further investigation. The conditions under which they were
allowed to investigate and the discoveries they made will be
discussed later, but it is appropriate at this stage to look at one
study which they originated.
They approached a sociologist, whose interest was European
history, and asked him to consider, purely as a theoretical
exercise, the idea that certain movements in history were not
fortuitous but directed. In effect, the idea of The Secret People
was presented to him as a purely hypothetical concept and he
was asked to try to analyse a number of historical incidents
"as though such an organization existed". The several
historical occasions he was asked to study were in fact Sufic
operations.
His analysis is now given, and we have added in italics after
some of his conclusions a possible relevance, taken either from
the Troubadour/Arthurian complex or from alchemy and
associated subjects.
His report was as follows:
In all the periods studied, the incidents or events under review
take place against similar backgrounds. A prevailing order
claims, explicitly or implicitly, to have a monopoly of truth. In
the past such systems were either religious or national, but,
whatever the apparent form, the essential structure of such
ideologies is,essentially the same as that of modern totalitarian
regimes.
All such systems seek to indoctrinate their communities with a
given set of beliefs and the concept of heresy is a means of involving
the population in the control apparatus. Each individual becomes
the supervisor of his neighbour "for the good of all". The good so
served is, in fact, the good of the control apparatus itself.
Assuming the existence of individuals and organizations concerned
with breaking the monopoly of such rigid systems by
conveying new knowledge into them (the given hypothesis), there
would appear to be two main means possible.
1) The use of some advanced capacity (perhaps related to ESP) to
communicate directly with selected members of the community.
Even if such capacities exist, their employment would
be difficult or impossible to identify in operation and little more
can be said about such a possibility.
(2) A direct approach from within the community itself through
some centre which was
(a) hidden and therefore unsuspected by the organization in
power;
(b) operating openly but seemingly engaged in an activity
wholly innocuous to the official regime.
(c) apparently part of the official regime itself.
The suggested historical groupings which fall under suspicion as
being the subjects of such intervention exhibit certain
characteristics in common and it may therefore be possible
tentatively to suggest the general procedures possibly employed by
some (postulated) individuals and groups conducting such intervention.
Characteristics of such interventions are:
1) They are said to be teachings.
(Freemasonry's rationale is supposed to be a teaching
transmitted from ancient times.)
(2) They have a leadership.
(The Rosicrucians regard Christian Rosenkreuz as their
spiritual head. The Grand Master was spiritual and
temporal head of the Templars. St. Francis was the head
of the Franciscans.)
(3) They use symbols or a language of their own.
(The Troubadour codes. The ciphers of alchemy. The
strange medieval figures who spoke no Western language
but held up symbols. The "tools" of Freemasonry. The
symbol language of heraldry.)
(4) They are said to be for the benefit of mankind.
(The Knights Templars were to protect pilgrims.
In recent times there have been suggestions of an
influence, not explainable in terms of expediency or of
either personal or national advantage, connected with the
origins of the Red Cross.
Baden Powell's life attitude may have been decisively
affected by his contact with the Regiment of Guides in the
Second Afghan War. Much of the Scout and Wolf Cub
symbolology has a trans-personal and trans-national
significance if investigated below its apparent surface
triviality.)
(5) They stress secret knowledge or development by stages or degrees.
(Freemason and Rosicrucian secret societies are based on
a degree structure allegedly marking, or at least
symbolizing, advances in inner development.)
(6) They cross the ordinary boundaries of nation, race and religion.
(Both the real and the ostensible activities of Raymond
Lully exemplify this. Alchemy was international and
alchemists understood each other in spite of differences in
race or language.
Eleanor of Aquitaine's courts were attended by the
young nobility of Europe.
The Translators converged on Spain from many countries
and returned to distribute their material.)
(7) They are said to have come from outside or are connected with
strangers or foreigners.
(The mystique of Freemasonry.
The mystique of the gypsies. Historians continue to try
and trace some motivation behind the diaspora of the
gypsies in the 15th century but find that what they are
seeking eludes them. The possible simultaneous appearance
of the Tarot pack in Europe has however been noted: as has
the phrase "the affairs of Egypt".
The choice of a Syrian as the Patron Saint of England.)
(8) They have powerful sponsorship from important figures in the host community.
(Raymond of Toulouse for the Cathars. The family of Aquitaine
for the Troubadours. The British Royal Families for the
Orders of Chivalry. Royal patronage for cathedral builders.)
(9) They require tests and practices for their operation.
(The signs and passwords of the Freemasons. The trade
practices of workers in traditional crafts and the rituals to
which apprentices are subjected on obtaining the grade of
Journeyman. The word Journeyman is almost overt in
suggesting participation on a Path. The trade test of an
apprentice cooper to the present day has thinly veiled
initiatory elements.)
(10) They have a myth or symbolical story or stories whose parallels are believed to be worked out in the life of the community or group.
(The symbolology of Hiram Abif. The symbolology of the
English Coronation rite. The symbolology of Morris
Dancing. The order of knighthood based on Arthurian
(chivalric) symbolism.)
(11) They have unexpected links with each other not explained by saying that heretics are attracted to one another - which is not in any case true.
(There is reason to suspect that much activity ordinarily
assigned to well known individuals is in fact the result of
influences emanating from groups with which the
individuals were associated. The tales of Wolfram von
Eschenbach and Chretien de Troyes, the poetry of Dante,
Spenser, Blake and Goethe: the Orders of Chivalry, Zen
Buddhism and judo; the medicine of Paracelsus and the
psychology of Mesmer: the devotional system of St.
Francis and the disciplines of the Jesuits may all be
variations of weft upon a single unsuspected woof.)
(12) These links are sometimes tenaciously clung to, even at the expense of general goodwill in the community.
(Local nobles continued support for the Cathars even
when such action became anti-survival. The "fraternal
links" of modern Freemasons are said to be supra-national
even when the host communities are at war.)
(13) The dogma, ritual or myth does not provide a true historical link with the origin of the movement.
(The historicity of Christian Rosenkreuz is regarded as
untenable. Arthur of the Round Table in incompatible with
any historical Arthur, The belief that the Gypsies came from
Egypt is untenable. Legends of historical incidents in
which alchemical gold-making occurred are at one level
veridical; at another, the historicity goes "soft" at the critical
point.)
(14) There are distinct signs of actual or former mental and physical practices such as exercises.
(The dancing of the witches; the whirling of some dervishes;
the Freemason memorising the "work"; a witch riding a
broomstick; the psychological exercises of the Jesuits;
Maypole dancing; working through a maze at the end of a
pilgrimage.)
(15) There is a connection with religion but it is never "official" religion.
(The Arthurian literature is aspirational and devotional
but the precise nature of the religious content cannot be
pinned down.
Master Builders of the cathedrals seem to have worked
independently of official Church policy, e.g., gargoyles
and the symbolism of the great Cathedrals.)
(16) There is always a connection with non-religious behaviour to such an extent that religious or mystical investigators become con/used in trying to locale the association. Elements of art, science, literature, chemistry, commerce, military affairs intrude but cannot be accommodated informal labelling.
(The sexual components of the Love Courts. The sexual
ambivalence of the Arthurian saga. The Baphomet legend
in the Templar Order. The strains of science, chemistry
and religion in alchemy. The martial elements in the
Orders of Chivalry. The Hermetic Fair when a "Papal"
enthronement was played as "Black Comedy" actually
within the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The Christian
"Feast of Fools" and the "Feast of the Donkey" - all
seemingly religious activity with a non-religious or antireligious
component that defies analysis.)
(17) It would appear that some force prevents, certainly at the time of their maximum operation, the coherent investigation of their location, operation and other attributes which would make it
possible to mount effective opposition.
(Witch covens and their procedures are endlessly reconstructed
from testimony extracted from witches under
torture but coven meetings do not seem to have been
raided in session.)
(18) They are always studied piecemeal and an apparently "inside"
explanation of their activities and nature is eagerly accepted. Activities of this sort are in turn regarded as heresies, later as psychological phenomena and at the present time as the result of social and economic forces. The pigeon-holing actually serves to aid concealment. Once labelled there is no further public interest, "the secret being now exposed".
(Official science accepted Jung's psychological explanation
of alchemy with relief. A troublesome thorn in rationalist
flesh, it had been identified and labelled and was therefore
respectable. There was no further need to regard it as
something that needed attention.)
(19) Apostasy from such organizations contains the suspicion of diversionary tactics.
(Dervish orders who "went over" to Jenghis Khan.
Mevlevis who agreed to put on a tourist pantomime for
Kemal Ataturk.)
(20) The available literature of such organizations seems to disappear after a time or is found in such a diversity of forms as to baffle inquiry. This peculiarity may suggest a deliberate policy of stirring up the pond to make the water muddy.
(The quantity of surviving alchemical texts is enormous but
the success in decoding is in inverse ratio to the amount of
material included in any particular study.
After only seventy years it has apparently become impossible
to unravel the origins of the neo-pagan Society of
the Golden Dawn. There are now probably as many authoritative
"final explanations" as there are researchers.
Documentation of seemingly equal validity is available to
prove that it derived from a "revelation" to Henri
Bergson's sister and that it grew from a magical document
lying on a book barrow in the Farringdon Road, London.
Elucidation of Rudolph Steiner's source is no less enturbulated.)
From external analysis it seems impossible to arrive at any
firm conclusion as to the theory of "intervention". As to the
object of such historical operations as have been suggested, it
would appear impossible to discover the aims and purposes
which they could have.
If they are mounted to convert and organize masses of
people it seems clear that they have never succeeded. It is
more likely (assuming that such activities take place) that
the aim is to locate and act on selected people at various points
in history and then to disband activity decisively.
It seems possible to detect vestigial traces of some activity of
the kind suggested. The quality of such activity seems consistently
arid and banal and may suggest the mechanical
perpetuation of some format from which the essential quality
has been fully abstracted.
The People of the Secret (p. 98-104)
The Directorate (III)
excerpt from Ernest Scott's The People of the Secret
(Octagon Press, 1983):
GURDJIEFF & THE INNER CIRCLE
As we have tried to suggest, genuine operations, once terminated,
leave "traces" invested with powerful energies. These act as a magnet for well-intentioned ordinary people who seek to perpetuate what is in effect an empty form. It has been claimed that virtually all occultism known to the West is of this variety.
Such pseudo-movements are "involutionary". The personality,
negative emotions, vanity and wish-fulfilment urges of
those involved, proceed, as in ordinary life, to mechanical
and perhaps finally destructive ends....
Due, however, to the illuminating and magnifying nature of
the original idea to which they are attached, such organizations
have an apparent vitality much in excess of ordinary social
and political groupings.
Since it is only "remainder" forms which are available for
investigation, it is not surprising that such inquiries as have
been attempted converge on some theory of an historical
influence which is for the most part sinister....
...It is probably safe to assert that all attempts to discern and
connect the elements which might provide a unified theory of
history must fail so long as inquiries are confined to the visible
shadows and not the invisible substance. The substance,
however, has a built-in invisibility; or so it seemed till very
recently.
Since the early 1950's, a great deal of hitherto unknown
material has become available, and in the nature of things this
cannot have happened by accident. If it has leaked, it is because
those in charge of it have decided to "leak" it.
Separately, the various hints amount to little. Taken
together, they suggest, for the first time, the nature of the
organization, long suspected but never identified, which is
concerned with injecting developmental possibilities into the
historical process at certain critical points.
On the basis of internal evidence, it may be legitimate to
suggest that this organization is the expression of one of the
Centres inferred by J. G. Bennett as directing the evolution of
the whole human race. Twelve thousand years ago, these
Centres withdrew for some 80 generations to prepare for the
debut of modern man. The suggestion is that one of these,
immediately responsible for the West, has decided to come,
partially at least, into the open in the second half of the 20th
century. It may be that the intellectual development of the
West is now at such a stage that the parent can only guide the
offspring further by taking it into its confidence.
To glimpse the steps by which the first hints of this have
passed into the public domain and to guess at the possible
purpose of such action, it will be necessary to go back to last
century and to the little Caucasian town of Alexandropol.
There in 1872 was born George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff,
certainly one of the most remarkable figures ever to appear in
the West.
The Caucasus region has been a mixing bowl of cultures for
thousands of years. European, Slavonic, Turkish, Roman,
Mongol, Persian and even more ancient cultures have flooded
into this area and then receded, each leaving some contribution.
It was into this fusion of influences that Gurdjieff was
born.
His family were Greeks who had emigrated from Caesarea in
the 16th century. His father was a bard whose recitations
preserved legends of remote antiquity, including Assyrian and
Sumerian traditions.
It was these that probably first suggested to Gurdjieff the
idea of some hidden influence that linked all the generations of
men in a way ordinarily unsuspected.
Late in life he discovered that the archaeological recovery
and translation of ancient cuneiform inscriptions endorsed in
minutest detail the account of ancient history preserved in his
father's poems. In other words, there exists an unsuspected oral
transmission of history as accurate and at least as enduring as
any orthodox historical record.
As a youth, Gurdjieff became obsessed with the idea that there
was a purpose and aim behind human life which was hardly ever
glimpsed in the ceaseless generations of man. He became
convinced that in former epochs man had possessed genuine
knowledge of such matters, and that this knowledge was still
preserved, somehow, somewhere.
Together with a number of others, like-minded with himself,
Gurdjieff began a search (lasting decades) for traces of this
knowledge. His "society" of seekers, singly and in groups, went
on pilgrimages to remote places where traces of this ancient
knowledge might survive. The members - some actual, some
possibly allegorical-met at intervals of years to compare results.
Their survey took in Africa, Persia, Turkestan, Tibet, India and
the Far East as far as Malaya.
Some of his friends were killed. Some remained with
brotherhoods they had discovered in unimaginably remote
corners of the world. Gurdjieff and some others made a contact
which they regarded as significant in the highest degree and they
underwent a long and arduous training.
This period seems to have finished by about 1908, and during
his lifetime nothing appears to have been known about his
activities between 1908 and his appearance in Moscow in 1914.
(Much new material has recently come to light from the researches of J. G. Bennett, Gurdjieff: Making a New World, Turnstone, London, 1973).
There he occupied the role of teacher and gathered round him
a group which included the Russian writer and philosopher,
P. D. Ouspensky. The subsequent activities of Gurdjieff and his
pupils is given in Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous and in a
flood of books by pupils, former pupils and interested bystanders
published in recent years.
During his period in France, Gurdjieff came under scrutiny by
many intellectuals of the West, who tried to assess what was
going on in the only terms available - their own.
The result is a motley collection of impressions and "assessments"
which variously show Gurdjieff as a superman, a
magician and something like a madman. He had an incredible
capacity for puncturing people's egoism and was seemingly
wholly unconcerned about the vituperation this produced.
If there is one impression common to all, it is that Gurdjieff
was not an ordinary man. He possessed powers which ordinary
people did not possess, and he had an aim before which all other
considerations were wholly unimportant.
Those who were close to Gurdjieff for longer than a single
afternoon are unanimous in testifying to the extraordinary effect
he had upon them. Outraging all ordinary standards of good
manners and behaviour, and sometimes using language which
by social standards was unpardonable, he could nevertheless
leave an impression of some unbearable nostalgia; a hint of some
unknown level of humanity; an impression of holiness. The
experience of meeting Gurdjieff could never be forgotten.
For years, while earning a living as a business man in Paris, he
conducted his classes at Fontainebleau, supervised the coming
and going of thousands of pupils from all over the world, taught
his dance movements and his music and wrote two books and
part of a third.
The first book, All and Everything,* which was in proof before his
death (October 29, 1949), probably confirmed the literary
world in its belief that Gurdjieff could be written off as a
madman.
But behind the extravagance of language, the deliberate
confusion of chronology and the absurd allegories of ravens as
space scientists, there is a significance which is certainly not to be
appraised superficially.
The drama of the universal process, the nature of time and an
exposition of the transflux energies associated with life, are
linked to a cosmology that is mind-daunting. There is every
reason to believe that Orage and C. S. Nott are right, and that
All and Everything is a work of objective art comparable to the
Mahabharata.
The book produces effects upon the reader at several levels.
On people whose lives have been based entirely on the
satisfactions of personality, the effect is sometimes overwhelming.
Gurdjieff was often asked about the source of his system
and the origins of the teaching it contained. This he would
never divulge, but sometimes pointed to the indications contained
in his second series of writings, Rencontres avec des
Hommes Remarquables.
This carried the suggestion that the members of Gurdjieffs
society of seekers had travelled in virtually unexplored areas
of Central Asia.
"Gurdjieff's people" all over the world included writers,
scientists, artists, doctors and professionals of many kinds.
Many of them sensed that in All and Everything there were
revelations about the mechanism of nature which could be
translated into practice in the technological world of the 20th
century.
A quarter of a century after his death this appears to be
happening. Ideas, all unacknowledged, have crept into
psychology which clearly derive from All and Everything.
In England and America, a new science of "structural
communication" is being applied to such diverse activities as
teaching machines and naval strategy. This, though the
origin is not suspected by educationalists or industrialists,
derives from Gurdjieff's "occult" teaching.
In the early years before Gurdjieff's death, all was confusion
among the many "Gurdjieff groups" in England,
America, France, Germany and elsewhere.
Several "successors" to Gurdjieff appeared, all implicitly
or explicitly claiming that they had been given the charter by
"G" himself.
People who for years had worked on themselves to
transcend ordinary personality limitations, behaved in
thoroughly "unobjective" ways. There was name calling and
vituperation. There was, on one hand, a tendency to look
outward, and, on the other hand, a tendency slavishly to
continue the "work" taught by Gurdjieff himself.
Behind most of this there was problably fear. Most sincere
pupils realized that their studies and practice had taken
them beyond the most childish patterns of ordinary
personality behaviour, but they had not for the most part
reached a level from which they could make further progress on
their own.
Some of the most independent people sought to meet the next
phase half-way - if there was a next phase.
Many elaborate deductions were made. In All and Everything, it
was related, for example, that seven centuries before the
"Babylonian events", a genuine Messenger had incarnated on
earth. His name was Ashiata Shiemash. This "Most Very
Saintly, now already Common Cosmic Individual", had
concluded after very long deliberation that all the methods used
by Genuine Messengers in the past, namely, one or other of the
sacred impulses of Faith, Hope and Love were no longer
applicable. Certain accretions in the soul-body of humanity had
become so dense that the inspiration of a Messenger employing
one of the familiar sacred impulses was no longer adequate to
achieve the catharsis from which evolution could proceed.
Ashiata Shiemash decided that Conscience alone remained
uncontaminated in the human presence, and he proceeded
therefore to work on methods of activating Conscience.
This chapter in All and Everything had always made a profound
impression on people, and some of the Gurdjieff groups deduced
that it was the key to the future. "Seven centuries before the
Babylonian events" was, they decided, a typical Gurdjieff
"blind". Various Messengers and Prophets known historically
might be identified with efforts based on faith, hope or love, but
none was known who had made his appeal to human conscience.
. . . From this it was decided that Ashiata Shiemash was
still to come.
Near the end of his life Gurdjieff had been asked what would
become of the Gurdjieff people after his death. He was said to
have replied: "Another will come. He is even now preparing."
Other hints placed this expectation in India, or some country
with Indian associations.
This combination of clues led a large number of Gurdjieff
people in America, England and France to identify the
Indonesian teacher Mohammad Subuh with "Ashiata
Shiemash", and this was almost certainly a factor in the rapid
spread of Subud in the West.
Other groups associated with the Gurdjieff material, but
centred more on his pupil, P. D. Ouspensky, declined to make
this identification, but found reason to identify with the Indian
mystic, Maharishi Mahesh.
Various lecture courses at present advertised throughout the
country for subjects far removed from anything metaphysical
apparently derive from yet another attempt to identify Ashiata
Shiemash. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this
represents the ultimate example of looking for a caravan in an
empty oasis.
In addition to such attempts to identify Ashiata Shiemash,
several attempts were made to make contact with Gurdjieffs
source in the East. These were without success, but the
experience of those who tried probably underlines the principle
that such sources cannot be found unless they want to be found.
When they do, there is little difficulty. As it transpired, they did
want to be found - but not apparently before 1961.
In that year a journalist and traveller seeking material for an
article on Sufi practices met a Sufi in Pakistan and was
unaccountably introduced to every facility for getting material
for his article. This journalist, Omar Burke, found himself
allowed to visit a secret Dervish community whose location has
been identified as Kunji Zagh ("Raven's Corner") in
Baluchistan.
He spent some days there, and gathered various impressions
of the community's activities. Soon afterwards he wrote
his article, which appeared in Blackwood's Magazine in
December 1961.
Burke, in his description of the day-to-day life of this
community, described various practices and one particular
exercise which were clearly identifiable with Gurdjieff's
system.
The article was read, by chance, by a member of one of the
London Gurdjieff groups who realized that one trail to
Gurdjieffs "source", long thought to be concealed beyond
hope of discovery, was in fact being given openly in a literary
magazine!
It is perhaps possible to imagine the excitement and the
behind-the-scenes activity which this discovery produced.
Contact was finally made with Akhund Mirza, the wandering
Dervish who had so fortuitously met Burke in Pakistan, and
additional information asked for. The reply was, if anything,
more startling than the original discovery of a possible clue to
Gurdjieff's source. The London group were told that it would
be pointless to come to Baluchistan as the current focus of
activity was not in the East at all, but in England.
A little later, but independently of the Burke incident, a
seeker writing under the name of Rafael Lefort, was to solve the
same mystery in a much more direct way.
This man had come to the conclusion that the section of the
Gurdjieff movement with which he was associated was pursuing
activities which were sterile and futile. He also felt that
from being developmental under Gurdjieff, the activity had
now become totalitarian.
Braving the heretic label which his action would
undoubtedly give him, he went to Turkey and sought the trail
to Gurdjieff s source by the simple and direct method of going
about asking people: "Did you ever hear of a man called
Gurdjieff?"
In a short space of time he realized that his inquiries were
being passed back in some way, and were leading to opportunities
for him to meet people who had known Gurdjieff and
who also knew a great deal about associated matters.
Lefort's book The Teachers of Gurdjieff is an outstanding
example of achieving big results by employing methods so
simple that nobody else apparently thought of them.
(Gollancz, London, 1966. It has recently been pointed out with some authority that this is in the nature of a series of fables put together to illustrate a point of view and should not be
taken as a factual account. If this is the case it may
however do no more than illustrate a Sufic aphorism
which, roughly rendered, says "It doesn't have to be fact
to be true".)
Lefort was passed along a line of a dozen contacts, at each of
which his motives were tested and his vanity deflated. In the
end he came to the same source as the London group had
arrived at by different methods.
By 1962 the great mystery had thus been solved twice -
although the solution had apparently been available all along.
The whole story of the search for Gurdjieff's source is much
like the Eastern story of the blind men and the elephant. People
had touched a trunk, an ear, a tail and had built up a theory of
the nature of the beast. But the search was for bits and pieces.
Nobody was looking for a complete elephant.
The search also shows European scholarship in an
unflattering light. Gurdjieff talked about teachings in
Kafiristan. The Sufi tradition of Haji Bektash says the same
thing. Anyone who had suspected the Sufic origins of G.'s
system could have found this reference in a book published
during the period of G.'s stay at Fontainebleau.
G. also published a pamphlet, copies of which still exist,
naming several Sufi Orders and groups as the source of his
dramatic presentations.
While excellent minds in England, France and Germany
were trying without success to arrange pieces of an intractable
jigsaw puzzle, the existence of the completed picture was
almost common knowledge in the East.
An inner circle of humanity which kindles or restrains
human activity is associated with the Sufi concept of the Abdals
("Changed Ones"), and this is openly referred to in both oral
and literary sources.
The idea that Dervish or Sufic brotherhoods represent a
more or less visible link in this organization is part of common
acceptance among quite ordinary people in the East.
In fairness, it should be mentioned that the Sufic link seems
to have been considered, but to some extent passed over.
Rodney Collin had noticed certain significant points in Dervish
literature, and even published in Mexico a booklet containing
Dervish material. This was a selection from the Lives of the
Gnostics by Aflaki, who was a disciple of the grandson of
Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273), founder of the Mevlevi Order
of Dervishes. Rumi was the author of the great poem, the
Mathnawi, which expresses the mystical path which the
Mevlevis tread.
Gurdjieff had taught "movements", a stylized dance
technique which requires extended energies of attention. The
association of the G "movements" and the Mevlevi whirling
was perhaps unavoidable, but we shall find reason to suspect,
presently, that the "movements" have a different source,
although G. dressed his disciples in Mevlevi outfits, perhaps for
"misdirection" purposes.
Before Gurdjieff took over the Prieure at Fontainebleau,
P. D. Ouspensky, the Russian philosopher and G.'s pupil, had
decided that Gurdjieff's exposition was unsatisfactory on
intellectual grounds. He believed that G. lacked the ultimate
key to the system he taught. He believed, further, that G. had
taken, or was about to take, a wrong turning which, instead of
obliterating egoism, would create it into an entity with grave
consequences for all associated with him. He parted from G.,
and formed his own groups of pupils. Ouspensky's decision to
work independently seems today, even from the sidelines, to
have been rash. He proceeded to exclude entire elements from
the practice taught by Gurdjieff- a practice which, according
to Ouspensky, was already defective.
Ouspensky's hope was that by sheer intensity of personal
effort, he would attract the attention of the Source. Instead of
looking for it, the Source would look for him.
By 1938, it had become apparent that this expectation had
not been realized.
Like other intellectuals who had studied Gurdjieff material,
he was fascinated by the word Sarmoun, a secret brotherhood
that Gurdjieff had mentioned and from which he had clearly
obtained important gains.
Ouspensky, like many others, suspected that the Sarmoun
monastery was, if not the actual Source, on the threshold to it.
For some reason, he believed that the Mevlevi Order of
Dervishes held the entree to Sarmoun.
In the 1938 it is believed that Ouspensky made contact with
the Mevlevis and asked them to send someone to England. This
they declined to do, but indicated that they were prepared to
receive a representative from him. One of Ouspensky's senior
pupils was ready to leave for the East in 1939 when War broke
out and the project was abandoned.
Although one section of Ouspensky's pupils is convinced
that he broke through to a certain level of development as a
result of almost superhuman efforts made in the last few
months of his life, others are equally convinced that he died
wholly disillusioned.
Sufic sources have since indicated that the whole search for
Gurdjieff's Source - and later for his successor - was watched
from various points in Central Asia with compassionate, if
wry, amusement. One of their reported comments is: "The
Western European and American phase of the Gurdjieff -
Ouspensky operation was heroic in intensity. The Source is not
attracted by heroism, but by capacity and ability to respond to
its messages."
The seekers were quite right; a key was missing. But it was
not the kind of key they imagined. What was missing was the
realization that "interventions", designed to inject a developmental
impulse into the historical process, are discontinuous.
"Occasions" relate to the fortuitous presence of energies on a
much vaster scale and perhaps from outside the planet. It is as
though a solar wind blows on the earth at intervals. When it does,
agents of the Directorate - represented for the past 1,000 years
and more by some Sufic organizations - can act to straighten out
involutionary trends and produce an evolutionary gain. In the
absence of this "solar wind", there is no possibility of "work",
and hence no activity on the historical scale.
The matter is not at the discretion of those who organize the
field-work, much less of aspirants to participate, however
industrious and well-intentioned.
Both lines of search which finally traced back the source of
Gurdjieff's teaching, came to the same conclusion: it was a
Sufic source. They also discovered that examination of the
Gurdjieff material would have shown this all along.
The central figure of All and Everything is an archetypal figure
called Beelzebub, who in his youth committed an indiscretion.
By dint of conscious labour and intentional suffering of a heroic
nature, he purifies himself to the point where he can be received
back into the hierarchy of cosmic beings.
Beelzebub describes his experiences on earth to his
grandson, "Hassein". Two major historical figures in the East
are Hassan and Hussein, grandsons of- Mohammed. Further,
Beelzebub is the anglicized version of B'il Sabab, which is
Arabic for "the man with a motive, aim"
Another example of this play on meaning is the famous
Ashiata Shiemash. When the leadership of a Sufi school is
transferred from one teacher to another, the transfer is
signalled by the phrase, Ya Shahim Sahiest.' ("It is
prepared, O my Shah!") As an anagram, Ashiata
Shiemash is virtually intact even in English transliteration.
In his writings, Gurdjieff repeatedly mentions meetings with
dervishes. One of the most seemingly absurd accounts relates
to a hermit living in primitive conditions in a cave. This man,
however, lights his cave with electricity and gas. He also
produces an abscess on the leg of a visitor by playing certain
notes on a musical instrument, and then causes the swelling to
reduce and finally disappear by playing another sequence of
notes.
While not perhaps discouraging speculation about possible
symbolic meanings of the story, Gurdjieff told several of his
pupils that it was a factual account of an incident he had
himself experienced.
One possible conclusion to be drawn from the story is that
certain people who live in primitive conditions may possess
sophisticated modern technology. They may also possess
powers unknown to science and medicine because they have
fallen heir to a wholly different kind of knowledge.
The hermit in the cave is a dervish, that is, a member of a Sufi
order. His name is Asvatz-Troov. B'il Sabab (the man with the
aim) is introduced to Asvatz-Troov by another dervish, the
Hadji Bogga-Eddin of Bokhara.
"Bogga-Eddin" is a Russianized version of Bahauddin, the
Russians substituting "g" for "h" (Gitler for Hitler). If we note
that a very famous Sufic teacher was called Bahauddin, and
that he came from Bokhara, the concealed reference to the
origin of the dervish's powers becomes clear."
Bahauddin Naqshband was a Sufi teacher in the Khwajagan
("Masters") line whose school greatly influenced the development
of the Mogul and Turkish empires. The transmission
from Bahauddin is known as the chain or the Masters of the
Design. He died in 1389, but his spiritual power or baraka is
said to sustain, among other organizations, the Brotherhood of
Sarmoun! (The second great Central Asian Sufi Master
named Bahauddin Shah is buried near Kabul in Afghanistan.
He belonged to the same Sufi family as the Hindu-Kush
Sayeds located by The Times correspondent in Kafiristan.)
Sarmoun, it will be recalled, was believed by many of
Gurdjieff's followers to be the key to his teaching. Recent hints
suggest that the word may also identify the "powerhouse"
through which developmental activity, in respect of at least
part of the world, is maintained.
Hints of this are now appearing in ordinary sources. The
American travel author, Peter King, in Afghanistan,
Cockpit in High Asia notes:
"Nor is the Snowman the only mystery in Nuristan (area of
Afghanistan, till second Afghan War called Kaftristan). Somewhere in these mountains are to be found the hidden monasteries or
training centres of what Afghans refer to as The People of the
Tradition. These people, about whom one can learn little, are
supposed to be the custodians of the secret traditions which are
the bases of religion and man's development. In the most
inaccessible spot of all is said to be the Markaz or "powerhouse"
of the People. The Sufis in Afghanistan are closely connected with
these People, but no one will tell an outsider anything more than
that these monasteries exist. They say that the only outsider to
have penetrated into the outer ring of monasteries was a
Russian-Greek, George Gurdjieff, whose contacts enabled him to
be accepted as a pupil. This is the same Gurdjieff who had some
success with a form of philosophical teaching in the United States
and Europe in the 30's. Said to have been trained by Bahauddin
Nakshband, one of the "outer masters", Gurdjieff mastered some of
the teachings and tried to teach them in the West. This teaching did
not really catch on, and after his death his converts carried on in a
desultory fashion and introduced some things to freshen up the
image. It was not, apparently, till the 1960's that a group of
his former students re-established contact with the original
Source of the teaching. This was both a shock and an ecstatic experience for them, for they found that the dervishes did not accept all the important successors of Gurdjieff as being worthy
of being taught, let alone to teach. . . ."
Clearly, in the last ten years, information which has been
held in impenetrable secrecy for centuries - perhaps millennia
- is emerging into common knowledge. It is equally clear that
this has not just happened, but has been engineered.
It seems inconceivable, for example, that a Western newspaper
reporter should just happen to discover extensive details
of something that has never been more than a whispered hint
all through history. Yet this happened in 1964.
The London Times on March 9 of that year published an
account by its own correspondent of a visit to a highly
significant monastery in Kafiristan. The article includes the
name of the Abbot and - virtually - directions for getting there.
Earlier, in January 1961, in a weekly English-language
cultural periodical published in Delhi, S. Brook White
described the operation of Sufi methodology all over the world,
and revealed that it is active in England.
In December, 1965, the English magazine The Lady published
an article by Major Desmond Martin in which the
author describes what amounts to a facility trip to a monastery
of the Sarmoun Brotherhood.
In 1961, a doctor was given facilities to watch an hitherto
unknown form of medicine being practised in a remote
community in Afghanistan. The method involved hypnosis,
but was far removed from the mere removal of symptoms by
post-hypnotic suggestion. It recalled classical accounts of the
Greek "Temple of Sleep" technique which is ordinarily
supposed to be symbolic. (J. Hallaji, in The Nature of Hypnosis, Eds. R. E. Shor and M. T. One, Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, New York, 1965.)
The practitioners, who trained for 16 years before being
allowed to practise, were Sufis.
In a book review in the London Evening News (February 10,
1969), the writer noted a number of significant hints that had
been appearing in recently published books, and seemed to
suggest that these references were part of a deliberate policy of
releasing information.
From all of these published accounts and from other sources,
it may be possible to suggest some tentative conclusions.
In summary, these would be:
The legend of the "Secret People" has recently received considerable confirmation. Such matters do not, by their
nature, "leak" by accident, and it is to be concluded that information has been deliberately released.
A number of centres associated with this activity can be
deduced.
( 1 ) In Baluchistan, in a place referred to as Kunj-i-Zagh
("Raven's Corner").
(2) By a waterfall locally known as Nimtout (means "waterfall")in the Paghman
range, which begins about 20 miles north-west of Kabul.
(3) At an unidentified location in Northern Afghanistan "looking
up to the Hindu Kush". This is the legendary monastery of
Sarmoun, the acting head of which is a Sufi, identified as Baba
Amyn.
(4) Adjoining the above, a similar community for women.
(5) Northern Afghanistan, a location given as Abshaur.
(6) A centre in Persia.
(7) A centre in Iraq.
The references from which the above list has been deduced
may overlap, and it is possible that two at least are separate
descriptions of the same location.
One possible reason for deliberately exposing the general
location of communities which have for so long been kept
secret would be that the real activity associated with them
has been moved elsewhere. Such an idea seems almost
explicit in an incident reported by Major Martin in his
magazine article already referred to. He was allowed to see
certain possessions of the Sarmoun community which had
never before been shown to the uninitiated. He reports :
"They had been 'deconsecrated', as it were, because a new
phase of teaching somewhere to the West had superseded the
ritual to which they belonged. Henceforth they would be
merely museum pieces" (our italics).
Several speculations might arise from this.
At the turn of the 12th century the
Mongol invasions took place, a turning point in history, the
significance of which is not perhaps fully allowed by
historians. In the Sufic hierarchy - at any rate above a
certain level - this event and its long-term consequences were
foreseen and steps were taken in advance (a) to limit the
worst excesses of the new regime at the level of everyday life,
and (b) to turn adverse conditions to ultimate advantage.
When Jenghis Khan swept through Central Asia and
destroyed Balkh, "the mother of cities", Sufic organizations
had already acted in a certain way. One-third emigrated.
One-third, seemingly, came to terms with the invaders.
One-third went underground.
There would seem to be at least the possibility that a
similar situation is foreseen in the 20th century. If this is so, the
"Cockpit of Asia", lying as it does between China and Russia,
would probably be untenable for the organization of "The
People of the Tradition".*
(*A communist revolution took place in Afghanistan in the Spring of 1978)
The theory of such a contingency, with its element of emigration,
would be supported by the circumstance that something
subtended by the Sarmoun and associated traditions began to
establish in the West, including England, from about 1952.
The Sarmounis ("the Bees") believe that the teaching they
follow pre-dates the Flood. They assert that objective
knowledge is a material substance and can be collected and
stored like honey. This is done during periods of history when
the world does not value honey. At critical junctures, the
Sarmouni distribute the honey throughout the world by the
agency of specially trained emissaries.
Associated with the organization of the Sarmouni is a symbol
called the No-Koonja (literally, "nine-pointed diagram"),
also known as the Naqsh (seal or design) which "reaches for
the innermost secrets of man".
Social structures set up in various parts of the world by the agents
of the Tradition are later taken over by people without
understanding. Such, the Times correspondent was told at
Abshaur, become in time only "philosophical grinding mills",
and from that stage become cursed.
The Sarmoun tradition regards as degenerate dervishes who
teach through Moslem scriptures, and dervishes who give
public displays of dancing, etc.
Such activities of the Sarmoun teaching as are sometimes
detected "outside" are of a nature which leads Christians to
regard them as disguised Mohammedanism, and Moslems to
regard them as disguised Christianity.
Certain activity throughout the world apparently causes concern.
Due to recent trends of immigration, Asiatic populations
in Western countries have tended to set up social and racial
groups using Sufic terminology and Sufic forms of organization.
To the Western mind which has experience of such communities, the word Sufi tends to be associated with this
imitative activity. Agents of the Tradition are concerned
about the effects of this. Since they used other labels of
identification before the 7th century, it may be that the
members of the Tradition will be constrained to relinquish
the word Sufi - a word which among themselves they seldom
use.
***********
We have suggested that there is behind visible history a
hidden influence which is concerned with evolutionary aims for
the whole human race. We have suggested that recently clues to
the identity of this influence have become deliberately available,
and we have tried to show that the clues converge upon
Afghanistan and associated geographical areas.
(The People of the Secret, 155-172.)
(Octagon Press, 1983):
GURDJIEFF & THE INNER CIRCLE
As we have tried to suggest, genuine operations, once terminated,
leave "traces" invested with powerful energies. These act as a magnet for well-intentioned ordinary people who seek to perpetuate what is in effect an empty form. It has been claimed that virtually all occultism known to the West is of this variety.
Such pseudo-movements are "involutionary". The personality,
negative emotions, vanity and wish-fulfilment urges of
those involved, proceed, as in ordinary life, to mechanical
and perhaps finally destructive ends....
Due, however, to the illuminating and magnifying nature of
the original idea to which they are attached, such organizations
have an apparent vitality much in excess of ordinary social
and political groupings.
Since it is only "remainder" forms which are available for
investigation, it is not surprising that such inquiries as have
been attempted converge on some theory of an historical
influence which is for the most part sinister....
...It is probably safe to assert that all attempts to discern and
connect the elements which might provide a unified theory of
history must fail so long as inquiries are confined to the visible
shadows and not the invisible substance. The substance,
however, has a built-in invisibility; or so it seemed till very
recently.
Since the early 1950's, a great deal of hitherto unknown
material has become available, and in the nature of things this
cannot have happened by accident. If it has leaked, it is because
those in charge of it have decided to "leak" it.
Separately, the various hints amount to little. Taken
together, they suggest, for the first time, the nature of the
organization, long suspected but never identified, which is
concerned with injecting developmental possibilities into the
historical process at certain critical points.
On the basis of internal evidence, it may be legitimate to
suggest that this organization is the expression of one of the
Centres inferred by J. G. Bennett as directing the evolution of
the whole human race. Twelve thousand years ago, these
Centres withdrew for some 80 generations to prepare for the
debut of modern man. The suggestion is that one of these,
immediately responsible for the West, has decided to come,
partially at least, into the open in the second half of the 20th
century. It may be that the intellectual development of the
West is now at such a stage that the parent can only guide the
offspring further by taking it into its confidence.
To glimpse the steps by which the first hints of this have
passed into the public domain and to guess at the possible
purpose of such action, it will be necessary to go back to last
century and to the little Caucasian town of Alexandropol.
There in 1872 was born George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff,
certainly one of the most remarkable figures ever to appear in
the West.
The Caucasus region has been a mixing bowl of cultures for
thousands of years. European, Slavonic, Turkish, Roman,
Mongol, Persian and even more ancient cultures have flooded
into this area and then receded, each leaving some contribution.
It was into this fusion of influences that Gurdjieff was
born.
His family were Greeks who had emigrated from Caesarea in
the 16th century. His father was a bard whose recitations
preserved legends of remote antiquity, including Assyrian and
Sumerian traditions.
It was these that probably first suggested to Gurdjieff the
idea of some hidden influence that linked all the generations of
men in a way ordinarily unsuspected.
Late in life he discovered that the archaeological recovery
and translation of ancient cuneiform inscriptions endorsed in
minutest detail the account of ancient history preserved in his
father's poems. In other words, there exists an unsuspected oral
transmission of history as accurate and at least as enduring as
any orthodox historical record.
As a youth, Gurdjieff became obsessed with the idea that there
was a purpose and aim behind human life which was hardly ever
glimpsed in the ceaseless generations of man. He became
convinced that in former epochs man had possessed genuine
knowledge of such matters, and that this knowledge was still
preserved, somehow, somewhere.
Together with a number of others, like-minded with himself,
Gurdjieff began a search (lasting decades) for traces of this
knowledge. His "society" of seekers, singly and in groups, went
on pilgrimages to remote places where traces of this ancient
knowledge might survive. The members - some actual, some
possibly allegorical-met at intervals of years to compare results.
Their survey took in Africa, Persia, Turkestan, Tibet, India and
the Far East as far as Malaya.
Some of his friends were killed. Some remained with
brotherhoods they had discovered in unimaginably remote
corners of the world. Gurdjieff and some others made a contact
which they regarded as significant in the highest degree and they
underwent a long and arduous training.
This period seems to have finished by about 1908, and during
his lifetime nothing appears to have been known about his
activities between 1908 and his appearance in Moscow in 1914.
(Much new material has recently come to light from the researches of J. G. Bennett, Gurdjieff: Making a New World, Turnstone, London, 1973).
There he occupied the role of teacher and gathered round him
a group which included the Russian writer and philosopher,
P. D. Ouspensky. The subsequent activities of Gurdjieff and his
pupils is given in Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous and in a
flood of books by pupils, former pupils and interested bystanders
published in recent years.
During his period in France, Gurdjieff came under scrutiny by
many intellectuals of the West, who tried to assess what was
going on in the only terms available - their own.
The result is a motley collection of impressions and "assessments"
which variously show Gurdjieff as a superman, a
magician and something like a madman. He had an incredible
capacity for puncturing people's egoism and was seemingly
wholly unconcerned about the vituperation this produced.
If there is one impression common to all, it is that Gurdjieff
was not an ordinary man. He possessed powers which ordinary
people did not possess, and he had an aim before which all other
considerations were wholly unimportant.
Those who were close to Gurdjieff for longer than a single
afternoon are unanimous in testifying to the extraordinary effect
he had upon them. Outraging all ordinary standards of good
manners and behaviour, and sometimes using language which
by social standards was unpardonable, he could nevertheless
leave an impression of some unbearable nostalgia; a hint of some
unknown level of humanity; an impression of holiness. The
experience of meeting Gurdjieff could never be forgotten.
For years, while earning a living as a business man in Paris, he
conducted his classes at Fontainebleau, supervised the coming
and going of thousands of pupils from all over the world, taught
his dance movements and his music and wrote two books and
part of a third.
The first book, All and Everything,* which was in proof before his
death (October 29, 1949), probably confirmed the literary
world in its belief that Gurdjieff could be written off as a
madman.
But behind the extravagance of language, the deliberate
confusion of chronology and the absurd allegories of ravens as
space scientists, there is a significance which is certainly not to be
appraised superficially.
The drama of the universal process, the nature of time and an
exposition of the transflux energies associated with life, are
linked to a cosmology that is mind-daunting. There is every
reason to believe that Orage and C. S. Nott are right, and that
All and Everything is a work of objective art comparable to the
Mahabharata.
The book produces effects upon the reader at several levels.
On people whose lives have been based entirely on the
satisfactions of personality, the effect is sometimes overwhelming.
Gurdjieff was often asked about the source of his system
and the origins of the teaching it contained. This he would
never divulge, but sometimes pointed to the indications contained
in his second series of writings, Rencontres avec des
Hommes Remarquables.
This carried the suggestion that the members of Gurdjieffs
society of seekers had travelled in virtually unexplored areas
of Central Asia.
"Gurdjieff's people" all over the world included writers,
scientists, artists, doctors and professionals of many kinds.
Many of them sensed that in All and Everything there were
revelations about the mechanism of nature which could be
translated into practice in the technological world of the 20th
century.
A quarter of a century after his death this appears to be
happening. Ideas, all unacknowledged, have crept into
psychology which clearly derive from All and Everything.
In England and America, a new science of "structural
communication" is being applied to such diverse activities as
teaching machines and naval strategy. This, though the
origin is not suspected by educationalists or industrialists,
derives from Gurdjieff's "occult" teaching.
In the early years before Gurdjieff's death, all was confusion
among the many "Gurdjieff groups" in England,
America, France, Germany and elsewhere.
Several "successors" to Gurdjieff appeared, all implicitly
or explicitly claiming that they had been given the charter by
"G" himself.
People who for years had worked on themselves to
transcend ordinary personality limitations, behaved in
thoroughly "unobjective" ways. There was name calling and
vituperation. There was, on one hand, a tendency to look
outward, and, on the other hand, a tendency slavishly to
continue the "work" taught by Gurdjieff himself.
Behind most of this there was problably fear. Most sincere
pupils realized that their studies and practice had taken
them beyond the most childish patterns of ordinary
personality behaviour, but they had not for the most part
reached a level from which they could make further progress on
their own.
Some of the most independent people sought to meet the next
phase half-way - if there was a next phase.
Many elaborate deductions were made. In All and Everything, it
was related, for example, that seven centuries before the
"Babylonian events", a genuine Messenger had incarnated on
earth. His name was Ashiata Shiemash. This "Most Very
Saintly, now already Common Cosmic Individual", had
concluded after very long deliberation that all the methods used
by Genuine Messengers in the past, namely, one or other of the
sacred impulses of Faith, Hope and Love were no longer
applicable. Certain accretions in the soul-body of humanity had
become so dense that the inspiration of a Messenger employing
one of the familiar sacred impulses was no longer adequate to
achieve the catharsis from which evolution could proceed.
Ashiata Shiemash decided that Conscience alone remained
uncontaminated in the human presence, and he proceeded
therefore to work on methods of activating Conscience.
This chapter in All and Everything had always made a profound
impression on people, and some of the Gurdjieff groups deduced
that it was the key to the future. "Seven centuries before the
Babylonian events" was, they decided, a typical Gurdjieff
"blind". Various Messengers and Prophets known historically
might be identified with efforts based on faith, hope or love, but
none was known who had made his appeal to human conscience.
. . . From this it was decided that Ashiata Shiemash was
still to come.
Near the end of his life Gurdjieff had been asked what would
become of the Gurdjieff people after his death. He was said to
have replied: "Another will come. He is even now preparing."
Other hints placed this expectation in India, or some country
with Indian associations.
This combination of clues led a large number of Gurdjieff
people in America, England and France to identify the
Indonesian teacher Mohammad Subuh with "Ashiata
Shiemash", and this was almost certainly a factor in the rapid
spread of Subud in the West.
Other groups associated with the Gurdjieff material, but
centred more on his pupil, P. D. Ouspensky, declined to make
this identification, but found reason to identify with the Indian
mystic, Maharishi Mahesh.
Various lecture courses at present advertised throughout the
country for subjects far removed from anything metaphysical
apparently derive from yet another attempt to identify Ashiata
Shiemash. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this
represents the ultimate example of looking for a caravan in an
empty oasis.
In addition to such attempts to identify Ashiata Shiemash,
several attempts were made to make contact with Gurdjieffs
source in the East. These were without success, but the
experience of those who tried probably underlines the principle
that such sources cannot be found unless they want to be found.
When they do, there is little difficulty. As it transpired, they did
want to be found - but not apparently before 1961.
In that year a journalist and traveller seeking material for an
article on Sufi practices met a Sufi in Pakistan and was
unaccountably introduced to every facility for getting material
for his article. This journalist, Omar Burke, found himself
allowed to visit a secret Dervish community whose location has
been identified as Kunji Zagh ("Raven's Corner") in
Baluchistan.
He spent some days there, and gathered various impressions
of the community's activities. Soon afterwards he wrote
his article, which appeared in Blackwood's Magazine in
December 1961.
Burke, in his description of the day-to-day life of this
community, described various practices and one particular
exercise which were clearly identifiable with Gurdjieff's
system.
The article was read, by chance, by a member of one of the
London Gurdjieff groups who realized that one trail to
Gurdjieffs "source", long thought to be concealed beyond
hope of discovery, was in fact being given openly in a literary
magazine!
It is perhaps possible to imagine the excitement and the
behind-the-scenes activity which this discovery produced.
Contact was finally made with Akhund Mirza, the wandering
Dervish who had so fortuitously met Burke in Pakistan, and
additional information asked for. The reply was, if anything,
more startling than the original discovery of a possible clue to
Gurdjieff's source. The London group were told that it would
be pointless to come to Baluchistan as the current focus of
activity was not in the East at all, but in England.
A little later, but independently of the Burke incident, a
seeker writing under the name of Rafael Lefort, was to solve the
same mystery in a much more direct way.
This man had come to the conclusion that the section of the
Gurdjieff movement with which he was associated was pursuing
activities which were sterile and futile. He also felt that
from being developmental under Gurdjieff, the activity had
now become totalitarian.
Braving the heretic label which his action would
undoubtedly give him, he went to Turkey and sought the trail
to Gurdjieff s source by the simple and direct method of going
about asking people: "Did you ever hear of a man called
Gurdjieff?"
In a short space of time he realized that his inquiries were
being passed back in some way, and were leading to opportunities
for him to meet people who had known Gurdjieff and
who also knew a great deal about associated matters.
Lefort's book The Teachers of Gurdjieff is an outstanding
example of achieving big results by employing methods so
simple that nobody else apparently thought of them.
(Gollancz, London, 1966. It has recently been pointed out with some authority that this is in the nature of a series of fables put together to illustrate a point of view and should not be
taken as a factual account. If this is the case it may
however do no more than illustrate a Sufic aphorism
which, roughly rendered, says "It doesn't have to be fact
to be true".)
Lefort was passed along a line of a dozen contacts, at each of
which his motives were tested and his vanity deflated. In the
end he came to the same source as the London group had
arrived at by different methods.
By 1962 the great mystery had thus been solved twice -
although the solution had apparently been available all along.
The whole story of the search for Gurdjieff's source is much
like the Eastern story of the blind men and the elephant. People
had touched a trunk, an ear, a tail and had built up a theory of
the nature of the beast. But the search was for bits and pieces.
Nobody was looking for a complete elephant.
The search also shows European scholarship in an
unflattering light. Gurdjieff talked about teachings in
Kafiristan. The Sufi tradition of Haji Bektash says the same
thing. Anyone who had suspected the Sufic origins of G.'s
system could have found this reference in a book published
during the period of G.'s stay at Fontainebleau.
G. also published a pamphlet, copies of which still exist,
naming several Sufi Orders and groups as the source of his
dramatic presentations.
While excellent minds in England, France and Germany
were trying without success to arrange pieces of an intractable
jigsaw puzzle, the existence of the completed picture was
almost common knowledge in the East.
An inner circle of humanity which kindles or restrains
human activity is associated with the Sufi concept of the Abdals
("Changed Ones"), and this is openly referred to in both oral
and literary sources.
The idea that Dervish or Sufic brotherhoods represent a
more or less visible link in this organization is part of common
acceptance among quite ordinary people in the East.
In fairness, it should be mentioned that the Sufic link seems
to have been considered, but to some extent passed over.
Rodney Collin had noticed certain significant points in Dervish
literature, and even published in Mexico a booklet containing
Dervish material. This was a selection from the Lives of the
Gnostics by Aflaki, who was a disciple of the grandson of
Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273), founder of the Mevlevi Order
of Dervishes. Rumi was the author of the great poem, the
Mathnawi, which expresses the mystical path which the
Mevlevis tread.
Gurdjieff had taught "movements", a stylized dance
technique which requires extended energies of attention. The
association of the G "movements" and the Mevlevi whirling
was perhaps unavoidable, but we shall find reason to suspect,
presently, that the "movements" have a different source,
although G. dressed his disciples in Mevlevi outfits, perhaps for
"misdirection" purposes.
Before Gurdjieff took over the Prieure at Fontainebleau,
P. D. Ouspensky, the Russian philosopher and G.'s pupil, had
decided that Gurdjieff's exposition was unsatisfactory on
intellectual grounds. He believed that G. lacked the ultimate
key to the system he taught. He believed, further, that G. had
taken, or was about to take, a wrong turning which, instead of
obliterating egoism, would create it into an entity with grave
consequences for all associated with him. He parted from G.,
and formed his own groups of pupils. Ouspensky's decision to
work independently seems today, even from the sidelines, to
have been rash. He proceeded to exclude entire elements from
the practice taught by Gurdjieff- a practice which, according
to Ouspensky, was already defective.
Ouspensky's hope was that by sheer intensity of personal
effort, he would attract the attention of the Source. Instead of
looking for it, the Source would look for him.
By 1938, it had become apparent that this expectation had
not been realized.
Like other intellectuals who had studied Gurdjieff material,
he was fascinated by the word Sarmoun, a secret brotherhood
that Gurdjieff had mentioned and from which he had clearly
obtained important gains.
Ouspensky, like many others, suspected that the Sarmoun
monastery was, if not the actual Source, on the threshold to it.
For some reason, he believed that the Mevlevi Order of
Dervishes held the entree to Sarmoun.
In the 1938 it is believed that Ouspensky made contact with
the Mevlevis and asked them to send someone to England. This
they declined to do, but indicated that they were prepared to
receive a representative from him. One of Ouspensky's senior
pupils was ready to leave for the East in 1939 when War broke
out and the project was abandoned.
Although one section of Ouspensky's pupils is convinced
that he broke through to a certain level of development as a
result of almost superhuman efforts made in the last few
months of his life, others are equally convinced that he died
wholly disillusioned.
Sufic sources have since indicated that the whole search for
Gurdjieff's Source - and later for his successor - was watched
from various points in Central Asia with compassionate, if
wry, amusement. One of their reported comments is: "The
Western European and American phase of the Gurdjieff -
Ouspensky operation was heroic in intensity. The Source is not
attracted by heroism, but by capacity and ability to respond to
its messages."
The seekers were quite right; a key was missing. But it was
not the kind of key they imagined. What was missing was the
realization that "interventions", designed to inject a developmental
impulse into the historical process, are discontinuous.
"Occasions" relate to the fortuitous presence of energies on a
much vaster scale and perhaps from outside the planet. It is as
though a solar wind blows on the earth at intervals. When it does,
agents of the Directorate - represented for the past 1,000 years
and more by some Sufic organizations - can act to straighten out
involutionary trends and produce an evolutionary gain. In the
absence of this "solar wind", there is no possibility of "work",
and hence no activity on the historical scale.
The matter is not at the discretion of those who organize the
field-work, much less of aspirants to participate, however
industrious and well-intentioned.
Both lines of search which finally traced back the source of
Gurdjieff's teaching, came to the same conclusion: it was a
Sufic source. They also discovered that examination of the
Gurdjieff material would have shown this all along.
The central figure of All and Everything is an archetypal figure
called Beelzebub, who in his youth committed an indiscretion.
By dint of conscious labour and intentional suffering of a heroic
nature, he purifies himself to the point where he can be received
back into the hierarchy of cosmic beings.
Beelzebub describes his experiences on earth to his
grandson, "Hassein". Two major historical figures in the East
are Hassan and Hussein, grandsons of- Mohammed. Further,
Beelzebub is the anglicized version of B'il Sabab, which is
Arabic for "the man with a motive, aim"
Another example of this play on meaning is the famous
Ashiata Shiemash. When the leadership of a Sufi school is
transferred from one teacher to another, the transfer is
signalled by the phrase, Ya Shahim Sahiest.' ("It is
prepared, O my Shah!") As an anagram, Ashiata
Shiemash is virtually intact even in English transliteration.
In his writings, Gurdjieff repeatedly mentions meetings with
dervishes. One of the most seemingly absurd accounts relates
to a hermit living in primitive conditions in a cave. This man,
however, lights his cave with electricity and gas. He also
produces an abscess on the leg of a visitor by playing certain
notes on a musical instrument, and then causes the swelling to
reduce and finally disappear by playing another sequence of
notes.
While not perhaps discouraging speculation about possible
symbolic meanings of the story, Gurdjieff told several of his
pupils that it was a factual account of an incident he had
himself experienced.
One possible conclusion to be drawn from the story is that
certain people who live in primitive conditions may possess
sophisticated modern technology. They may also possess
powers unknown to science and medicine because they have
fallen heir to a wholly different kind of knowledge.
The hermit in the cave is a dervish, that is, a member of a Sufi
order. His name is Asvatz-Troov. B'il Sabab (the man with the
aim) is introduced to Asvatz-Troov by another dervish, the
Hadji Bogga-Eddin of Bokhara.
"Bogga-Eddin" is a Russianized version of Bahauddin, the
Russians substituting "g" for "h" (Gitler for Hitler). If we note
that a very famous Sufic teacher was called Bahauddin, and
that he came from Bokhara, the concealed reference to the
origin of the dervish's powers becomes clear."
Bahauddin Naqshband was a Sufi teacher in the Khwajagan
("Masters") line whose school greatly influenced the development
of the Mogul and Turkish empires. The transmission
from Bahauddin is known as the chain or the Masters of the
Design. He died in 1389, but his spiritual power or baraka is
said to sustain, among other organizations, the Brotherhood of
Sarmoun! (The second great Central Asian Sufi Master
named Bahauddin Shah is buried near Kabul in Afghanistan.
He belonged to the same Sufi family as the Hindu-Kush
Sayeds located by The Times correspondent in Kafiristan.)
Sarmoun, it will be recalled, was believed by many of
Gurdjieff's followers to be the key to his teaching. Recent hints
suggest that the word may also identify the "powerhouse"
through which developmental activity, in respect of at least
part of the world, is maintained.
Hints of this are now appearing in ordinary sources. The
American travel author, Peter King, in Afghanistan,
Cockpit in High Asia notes:
"Nor is the Snowman the only mystery in Nuristan (area of
Afghanistan, till second Afghan War called Kaftristan). Somewhere in these mountains are to be found the hidden monasteries or
training centres of what Afghans refer to as The People of the
Tradition. These people, about whom one can learn little, are
supposed to be the custodians of the secret traditions which are
the bases of religion and man's development. In the most
inaccessible spot of all is said to be the Markaz or "powerhouse"
of the People. The Sufis in Afghanistan are closely connected with
these People, but no one will tell an outsider anything more than
that these monasteries exist. They say that the only outsider to
have penetrated into the outer ring of monasteries was a
Russian-Greek, George Gurdjieff, whose contacts enabled him to
be accepted as a pupil. This is the same Gurdjieff who had some
success with a form of philosophical teaching in the United States
and Europe in the 30's. Said to have been trained by Bahauddin
Nakshband, one of the "outer masters", Gurdjieff mastered some of
the teachings and tried to teach them in the West. This teaching did
not really catch on, and after his death his converts carried on in a
desultory fashion and introduced some things to freshen up the
image. It was not, apparently, till the 1960's that a group of
his former students re-established contact with the original
Source of the teaching. This was both a shock and an ecstatic experience for them, for they found that the dervishes did not accept all the important successors of Gurdjieff as being worthy
of being taught, let alone to teach. . . ."
Clearly, in the last ten years, information which has been
held in impenetrable secrecy for centuries - perhaps millennia
- is emerging into common knowledge. It is equally clear that
this has not just happened, but has been engineered.
It seems inconceivable, for example, that a Western newspaper
reporter should just happen to discover extensive details
of something that has never been more than a whispered hint
all through history. Yet this happened in 1964.
The London Times on March 9 of that year published an
account by its own correspondent of a visit to a highly
significant monastery in Kafiristan. The article includes the
name of the Abbot and - virtually - directions for getting there.
Earlier, in January 1961, in a weekly English-language
cultural periodical published in Delhi, S. Brook White
described the operation of Sufi methodology all over the world,
and revealed that it is active in England.
In December, 1965, the English magazine The Lady published
an article by Major Desmond Martin in which the
author describes what amounts to a facility trip to a monastery
of the Sarmoun Brotherhood.
In 1961, a doctor was given facilities to watch an hitherto
unknown form of medicine being practised in a remote
community in Afghanistan. The method involved hypnosis,
but was far removed from the mere removal of symptoms by
post-hypnotic suggestion. It recalled classical accounts of the
Greek "Temple of Sleep" technique which is ordinarily
supposed to be symbolic. (J. Hallaji, in The Nature of Hypnosis, Eds. R. E. Shor and M. T. One, Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, New York, 1965.)
The practitioners, who trained for 16 years before being
allowed to practise, were Sufis.
In a book review in the London Evening News (February 10,
1969), the writer noted a number of significant hints that had
been appearing in recently published books, and seemed to
suggest that these references were part of a deliberate policy of
releasing information.
From all of these published accounts and from other sources,
it may be possible to suggest some tentative conclusions.
In summary, these would be:
The legend of the "Secret People" has recently received considerable confirmation. Such matters do not, by their
nature, "leak" by accident, and it is to be concluded that information has been deliberately released.
A number of centres associated with this activity can be
deduced.
( 1 ) In Baluchistan, in a place referred to as Kunj-i-Zagh
("Raven's Corner").
(2) By a waterfall locally known as Nimtout (means "waterfall")in the Paghman
range, which begins about 20 miles north-west of Kabul.
(3) At an unidentified location in Northern Afghanistan "looking
up to the Hindu Kush". This is the legendary monastery of
Sarmoun, the acting head of which is a Sufi, identified as Baba
Amyn.
(4) Adjoining the above, a similar community for women.
(5) Northern Afghanistan, a location given as Abshaur.
(6) A centre in Persia.
(7) A centre in Iraq.
The references from which the above list has been deduced
may overlap, and it is possible that two at least are separate
descriptions of the same location.
One possible reason for deliberately exposing the general
location of communities which have for so long been kept
secret would be that the real activity associated with them
has been moved elsewhere. Such an idea seems almost
explicit in an incident reported by Major Martin in his
magazine article already referred to. He was allowed to see
certain possessions of the Sarmoun community which had
never before been shown to the uninitiated. He reports :
"They had been 'deconsecrated', as it were, because a new
phase of teaching somewhere to the West had superseded the
ritual to which they belonged. Henceforth they would be
merely museum pieces" (our italics).
Several speculations might arise from this.
At the turn of the 12th century the
Mongol invasions took place, a turning point in history, the
significance of which is not perhaps fully allowed by
historians. In the Sufic hierarchy - at any rate above a
certain level - this event and its long-term consequences were
foreseen and steps were taken in advance (a) to limit the
worst excesses of the new regime at the level of everyday life,
and (b) to turn adverse conditions to ultimate advantage.
When Jenghis Khan swept through Central Asia and
destroyed Balkh, "the mother of cities", Sufic organizations
had already acted in a certain way. One-third emigrated.
One-third, seemingly, came to terms with the invaders.
One-third went underground.
There would seem to be at least the possibility that a
similar situation is foreseen in the 20th century. If this is so, the
"Cockpit of Asia", lying as it does between China and Russia,
would probably be untenable for the organization of "The
People of the Tradition".*
(*A communist revolution took place in Afghanistan in the Spring of 1978)
The theory of such a contingency, with its element of emigration,
would be supported by the circumstance that something
subtended by the Sarmoun and associated traditions began to
establish in the West, including England, from about 1952.
The Sarmounis ("the Bees") believe that the teaching they
follow pre-dates the Flood. They assert that objective
knowledge is a material substance and can be collected and
stored like honey. This is done during periods of history when
the world does not value honey. At critical junctures, the
Sarmouni distribute the honey throughout the world by the
agency of specially trained emissaries.
Associated with the organization of the Sarmouni is a symbol
called the No-Koonja (literally, "nine-pointed diagram"),
also known as the Naqsh (seal or design) which "reaches for
the innermost secrets of man".
Social structures set up in various parts of the world by the agents
of the Tradition are later taken over by people without
understanding. Such, the Times correspondent was told at
Abshaur, become in time only "philosophical grinding mills",
and from that stage become cursed.
The Sarmoun tradition regards as degenerate dervishes who
teach through Moslem scriptures, and dervishes who give
public displays of dancing, etc.
Such activities of the Sarmoun teaching as are sometimes
detected "outside" are of a nature which leads Christians to
regard them as disguised Mohammedanism, and Moslems to
regard them as disguised Christianity.
Certain activity throughout the world apparently causes concern.
Due to recent trends of immigration, Asiatic populations
in Western countries have tended to set up social and racial
groups using Sufic terminology and Sufic forms of organization.
To the Western mind which has experience of such communities, the word Sufi tends to be associated with this
imitative activity. Agents of the Tradition are concerned
about the effects of this. Since they used other labels of
identification before the 7th century, it may be that the
members of the Tradition will be constrained to relinquish
the word Sufi - a word which among themselves they seldom
use.
***********
We have suggested that there is behind visible history a
hidden influence which is concerned with evolutionary aims for
the whole human race. We have suggested that recently clues to
the identity of this influence have become deliberately available,
and we have tried to show that the clues converge upon
Afghanistan and associated geographical areas.
(The People of the Secret, 155-172.)
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