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.)