gnosis fourth way quotes

7/31/2019 Gnosis Fourth Way Quotes

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An Anthology of Quotations on The

Fourth Way and Esoteric Christianity


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expensive carpet that he has seen in a shop. And instead of wishing to be a Christian he begins to think how he canmanage to buy this carpet, forgetting all aboutChristianity. Or if somebody else does not believe what a wonderful Christian he is, he will be ready to eat him aliveor to roast him on hot coals. In order to be a goodChristian one must be. To be means to be master of oneself. If a man is not his own master he has nothing andcan have nothing. And he cannot be a Christian. He issimply a machine, an automaton. A machine cannot be aChristian. Think for yourselves, is it possible for amotorcar or a typewriter or a gramophone to be Christian?They are simply things which are controlled by chance.They are not responsible. They are machines. To be aChristian means to be responsible. Responsibility comeslater when a man even partially ceases to be a machine,and begins in fact, and not only in words, to desire to be aChristian."

Gurdjieff had unusual views of many aspects of

Christianity, including its origin. The following passageclaims that the Christianity church took its form from anancient Egyptian form that predates even what we knowof Egypt. What he says is not historically verifiable, but Egypt certainly had a large part to play in the earlycenturies of Christianity.

"Generally speaking we know very little about Christianity and the form of Christian worship; we know nothing at allof the history and origin of a number of things. Forinstance, the church, the temple in which gather thefaithful and in which services are carried out according tospecial rites; where was this taken from? Many people donot think about this at all. Many people think that theoutward form of worship, the rites, the singing of canticles, and so on, were invented by the fathers of thechurch. Others think that this outward form has beentaken partly from pagan religions and partly from the


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Hebrews. But all of it is untrue. The question of the originof the Christian church, that is, of the Christian temple, ismuch more interesting than we think. To begin with, thechurch and worship in the form which they took in thefirst centuries of Christianity could not have been borrowed from paganism because there was nothing like iteither in the Greek or Roman cults or in Judaism. TheJewish synagogue, the Jewish temple, Greek and Romantemples of various gods, were something quite differentfrom the Christian church which made its appearance inthe first and second centuries. The Christian church isaschool concerning which people have forgotten that it is aschool. Imagine a school where the teachers give lecturesand perform explanatory demonstrations without knowingthat these are lectures and demonstrations; and where thepupils or simply the people who come to the school takethese lectures and demonstrations for ceremonies, or rites,or 'sacraments,' i.e., magic. This would approximate to theChristian church of our times."The Christian church, the Christian form of worship, was

not invented by the fathers of the church. It was all takenin a ready-made form from Egypt, only not from the Egyptthat we know but from one which we do not know. ThisEgypt was in the same place as the other but it existedmuch earlier. Only small bits of it survived in historicaltimes, and these bits have been preserved in secret and so well that we do not even know where they have beenpreserved.

"It will seem strange to many people when I say that thisprehistoric Egypt was Christian many thousands of years before the birth of Christ, that is to say, that its religion was composed of the same principles and ideas thatconstitute true Christianity. Special schools existed in thisprehistoric Egypt which were called 'schools of repetition.'In these schools a public repetition was given on definitedays, and in some schools perhaps even every day, of the

entire course in a condensed form of the sciences thatcould be learned at these schools. Sometimes this


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repetition lasted a week or a month. Thanks to theserepetitions people who had passed through this course didnot lose their connection with the school and retained intheir memory all they had learned. Sometimes they camefrom very far away simply in order to listen to therepetition and went away feeling their connection with theschool. There were special days of the year when therepetitions were particularly complete, when they werecarried out with particular solemnityand these daysthemselves possessed a symbolical meaning."These 'schools of repetition' were taken as a model forChristian churchesthe form of worship in Christianchurches almost entirely represents the course of repetition of the science dealing with the universe andman. Individual prayers, hymns, responses, all had theirown meaning in this repetition as well as holidays and allreligious symbols, though their meaning has beenforgotten long ago."Continuing, G. quoted some very interesting examples of the explanations of various parts of orthodox liturgy.

Unfortunately no notes were made at the time and I willnot undertake to reconstruct them from memory. The idea was that, beginning with the first words, the liturgy so tospeak goes through the process of creation, recording allits stages and transitions. What particularly astonished mein G.'s explanations was the extent to which so much has been preserved in its pure form and how little weunderstand of all this. His explanations differed very

greatly from the usual theological and even from mysticalinterpretations. And the principal difference was that hedid away with a great many allegories. I mean to say that it became obvious from his explanations that we take many things for allegories in which there is no allegory whateverand which ought to be understood much more simply andpsychologically.


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While Gurdjieff did away with many allegories in hisexplanation of Christian rites, he certainly accepted that Christianity made use of symbolic forms.

There was yet another drawing of the enneagram which was made under hisdirection in Constantinople in the year 1920. In thisdrawing inside the enneagram were shown the four beastsof the Apocalypsethe bull, the lion, the man, and theeagleand with them a dove. These additional symbols were connected with "centers."

Though he did not say a great deal about theinterpretation of the gospels, we do have some of hiscomments:

"The comparison of a man to a house awaiting the arrivalof the master is frequently met with in Eastern teachings which have preserved traces of ancient knowledge, and, as we know, the subject appears under various forms in many of the parables in the Gospels.

"There is nothing new in the idea of sleep. People have been told almost since thecreation of the world that they are asleep and that they must awaken. How many times is this said in the Gospels,for instance? 'Awake,' 'watch,' 'sleep not.' Christ's discipleseven slept when he was praying in the Garden of

Gethsemane for the last time. It is all there. But do menunderstand it? Men take it simply as a form of speech, asan expression, as a metaphor. They completely fail tounderstand that it must be taken literally. And again it iseasy to understand why. In order to understand thisliterally it is necessary to awaken a little, or at least to try to awaken. I tell you seriously that I have been askedseveral times why nothing is said about sleep in the

Gospels, although it is there spoken of almost on every page. This simply shows that people read the Gospels in


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sleep. So long as a man sleeps profoundly and is wholly immersed in dreams he cannot even think about the factthat he is asleep. If he were to think that he was asleep, he would wake up. So everything goes on. And men have notthe slightest idea what they are losing because of thissleep.

Undoubtedly the most controversial of Gurdjieffsstatements concerning Christianity was his explanationof the Last Supper.

"For instance, in all the denominations of Christianity agreat part is played by the tradition of the Last Supper of Christ and his disciples. Liturgies and a whole series of dogmas, rites, and sacraments are based upon it. This has been a ground for schism, for the separation of churches,for the formation of sects; how many people have perished because they would not accept this or that interpretationof it. But, as a matter of fact, nobody understands whatthis was precisely, or what was done by Christ and hisdisciples that evening. There exists no explanation thateven approximately resembles the truth, because what is written in the Gospels has been, in the first place, muchdistorted in being copied and translated; and secondly, it was written for those who know. To those who do notknow it can explain nothing, but the more they try tounderstand it, the deeper they are led into error."To understand what took place at the Last Supper it isfirst of all necessary to know certain laws."You remember what I said about the 'astral body'? Let usgo over it briefly. People who have an 'astral body' cancommunicate with one another at a distance withouthaving recourse to ordinary physical means. But for suchcommunication to be possible they must establish some'connection' between them. For this purpose when goingto different places or different countries people sometimestake with them something belonging to another, especially


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things that have been in contact with his body and arepermeated with his emanations, and so on. In the same way, in order to maintain a connection with a dead person,his friends used to keep objects which had belonged tohim. These things leave, as it were, a trace behind them,something like invisible wires or threads which remainstretched out through space. These threads connect agiven object with the person, living or in certain casesdead, to whom the object belonged. Men have known thisfrom the remotest antiquity and have made various uses of this knowledge."Traces of it may be found among the customs of many peoples. You know, for instance, that several nations havethe custom of blood-brotherhood. Two men, or severalmen, mix their blood together in the same cup and thendrink from this cup. After that they are regarded as brothers by blood. But the origin of this custom liesdeeper. In its origin it was a magical ceremony forestablishing a connection between 'astral bodies.' Bloodhas special qualities. And certain peoples, for instance the

Jews, ascribed a special significance of magical propertiesto blood. Now, you see, if a connection between 'astral bodies' had been established, then again according to the beliefs of certain nations it is not broken by death."Christ knew that he must die. It had been decided thus beforehand. He knew it and his disciples knew it. And eachone knew what part he had to play. But at the same timethey wanted to establish a permanent link with Christ. And

for this purpose he gave them his blood to drink and hisflesh to eat. It was not bread and wine at all, but real fleshand real blood."The Last Supper was a magical ceremony similar to'blood-brotherhood' for establishing a connection between'astral bodies.' But who is there who knows about this inexisting religions and who understands what it means? Allthis has been long forgotten and everything has been given

quite a different meaning. The words have remained buttheir meaning has long been lost."


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This lecture and particularly its ending provoked a greatdeal of talk in our groups. Many were repelled by what G.said about Christ and the Last Supper; others, on thecontrary, felt in this a truth which they never could havereached by themselves.

In Beelzebubs Tales to his Grandson, Gurdjieff repeatsthis and takes it a little further, transforming the figure of Judas into a loyal disciple who sacrificed himself to saveChrists mission.

"And this came about because, thanks as always to the

abnormally established conditions of ordinary existence,their being-mentation began to function without any participation of their 'localization of feeling' or, in theirterminology, their 'feeling center,' and thus finally becamecompletely automatized."Hence, during all this time, in order to be able to makeanything clear to themselves, even approximately, orexplain it to others, they have automatically beencompelled to invent, and go on inventing, a great many almost meaningless words for things and also for ideas,great and small, and so their mentation has gradually begun to function, as I have just said, according to theprinciple of 'chainonizironness.' '"Well, it is with this kind of mentation that yourcontemporary favorites try to decipher and understand atext written in the 'imagonisirian' manner for thementation of beings who were contemporaries of thedivine Jesus Christ."In this connection, my boy, I must explain a certain fact,absurd to the highest degree and in the objective sense blasphemous, so that you may see more clearly the realnothingness of their Holy Writ, which has becomeparticularly widely spread among your favorites since theirlast process of reciprocal destruction, and in which, as youmay already surmise, there is everything you please exceptreality and truth.


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"I will tell you in particular about what is said in this Holy Writ, which has supposedly reached them in anunchanged form, about the most important, mostreasonable, and most devoted of all the beings directly initiated by this Sacred Individual or, as they would say,about one of his 'apostles.'"This devoted and beloved apostle, initiated by JesusChrist, was named Judas."Anyone wishing to draw knowledge of the truth from thepresent version of this Holy Writ will arrive at theconviction, which will become fixed in his essence, thatthis Judas was the basest of all conceivable beings, and aconscienceless, doublefaced traitor."But in fact, not only was this Judas the most faithful anddevoted of all the close followers of Jesus Christ, but it wassolely thanks to his Reason and presence of mind that allthe acts of this Sacred Individual could produce thatresult which, if it did not lead to the total destruction of the consequences of the properties of the organkundabuffer in these unfortunate three-brained beings,

was nevertheless, during twenty centuries, the source of nourishmentand inspiration for the majority of them, and made theirdesolate existence at least a little endurable."In order that you may represent more clearly to yourself the genuine individuality of this Judas and the significanceof his manifestation, you should also know that when theSacred Individual, Jesus Christ, intentionally

actualized in a planetary body of a terrestrial being, wascompletely formed for responsible existence, he decided tocarry out the mission imposed on him from Above toenlighten the Reason of these three-brained terrestrial beings by means of twelve beings chosen from different types,initiated and prepared by him personally."But at the very peak of his divine activities, before having

fulfilled his intention, that is, before having had time toexplain certain cosmic truths and give the required


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instructions for the future, he was compelled by circumstances independent of him to allow the prematurecessation of his planetary existence to take place."He therefore decided, together with the twelve terrestrial beings he had intentionally initiated, to have recourse tothe sacred sacrament of almtznoshinoothe actualizationof which was already well known to them, as they hadalready acquired in their presences all the data for itsfulfillmentso that he should have the possibility, whilehe was still in that cosmic individual state, to finish the work of preparation, according to the plan he haddesigned for accomplishing the mission assigned to himfrom Above."But, my boy, when they had decided on this and wereready to begin the preliminary preparations required forthis sacred sacrament, they saw that it was utterly impossible because it was too late, they were already surrounded by beings called 'guards,' and their arrest, with everythingthat would follow, was expected at any moment.

"And it was just here that Judas intervened."This future saint, the inseparable and devoted helper of Jesus Christ, who is 'hated' and 'cursed' owing to the naivestupidity of the peculiar three-brained beings of yourplanet, then rendered his great objective service for whichterrestrial three-brained beings of all subsequentgenerations should be grateful."The wise and onerous initiative that he took upon himself

with disinterested devotion was that at the moment of despair, on ascertaining that it was impossible to fulfill therequired preparation for carrying out the sacredalmtznoshinoo, this Judas, now a saint, leaped to his feetand hurriedly said:'I will go and do everything necessary so that you have thepossibility to fulfill this sacred preparation withouthindrance Meanwhile, set to work at once. '

"Having said this, he approached Jesus Christ and, afterspeaking with him aside for a few moments, he received


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his blessing and hurriedly left."Thus the others were able to complete without hindranceeverything necessary for the accomplishment of the sacredprocess of almtznoshinoo."After what I have just said, you will doubtless understandhow the terrestrial three-brained beings of the two types Idescribed distort every truth, for their various egoisticaims, and have done so to such an extent that in thecase of Judas, now a saint, thanks to whom alone they have benefited for twenty centuries from a blessed hearthof tranquility in the midst of their desolate existence, therehas been crystallized in the presence of beings of alllater generations this unprecedentedly unjustrepresentation."I think myself that if Judas was portrayed in their Holy Writ in this way, it may have been because it wasnecessary for someone or other belonging to thementioned types to belittle for a certain purpose thesignificance of JesusChrist himself.

"That is to say, it would make him appear so naive, sounable to feel and see beforehand, in a word, sounperfected that, in spite of knowing this Judas andexisting with him for so long, he failed to sense and beaware that thisnearest disciple of his was a perfidious traitor, who wouldsell him for thirty worthless pieces of silver.

I must admit that Gurdjieffs view of Judas hasnt helped me to understand the gospels, but its certainly startling.Gurdjieff maintained this view of Judas to the end of hislife, so he presumably felt there was more to it than itsshock value. On the other hand, he ends the account witha tease:

" moreover it will be particularly interesting andinstructive for you to know that part of the history of Saint


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Jesus Christ which relates to the period of his existencethere from the age of twelve to the age of twenty-eight,according to their time-calculation. "

But he never actually gets round to telling us this story. Robert de Ropp describes Gurdjieff introducing a piece of music with, This music I play you now come from Essenemonastery where Jesus Christ spent from eighteenth tothirtieth year. And in Meetings With remarkable Men herecounts, I had been among the Essenes, most of whomare Jews, and that by means of very ancient Hebraicmusic and songs they had made plants grow in half an

hour, and I described in detail how they had done this.

His friend Bogachevsky, or Father Evlissi becameassistant to the abbot of the chief monastery of the Essene Brotherhood, situated not far from the shores of the Dead Sea.This brotherhood was founded, according to certainsurmises, twelve hundred years before the Birth of Christ;and it is said that in this brotherhood Jesus Christ received his first initiation.

While Gurdjieff surely did meet with sources of ancient wisdom, hes bamboozling us here. He also mentions that the order had a branch in Egypt. The connections of the Essenes with the Dead Sea and Egypt come straight fromthe writings of Pliny and Philo which, unlike the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Nag Hammadi Library, were quiteavailable.

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Before he met Gurdjieff, Ouspensky had already used passages from the Bible as springboards for his thought in Tertium Organum. Although he developed his ideasmuch further, his most sustained treatment of Christianity was in A New Model of the Universe.


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Nor will esoteric ideas, that is, ideas coming from highermind, say much to alogical man. He will ask, for instance: "Where are theproofs that the Gospels were written by people of higher mind?" Where indeed are the proofs? They are there, everywhere,in every line and in every word, but only for those whohave eyes to see and ears to hear. But the logical mind canneither see nor hear beyond a very small radius or themost elementary things.

Am entire chapter of A New Model was devoted to the

study of the New Testament. He restricts himself to thegospels and revelation, regarding the letters of Paul as a falling away from the initial esoteric impulse of Christianity:

The Acts and the Epistles are works of a quite differentspecific gravity from thefour Gospels. In them esoteric ideas are met, but theseideas do not occupy in them apredominant place, and they could exist without theseideas.The four Gospels are written for the few, for the very few,for the pupils of esoteric schools. However intelligent and educated in theordinary sense a man may be, he will not understand the Gospels without specialindications and withoutspecial esoteric knowledge. At the same time it is necessary to note that the fourGospels are the sole sourcefrom which we know of Christ and of his teaching. The Acts and the " Epistles " of the Apostles add several essential features, but they alsointroduce a great deal thatdoes not exist in the Gospels and that contradicts theGospels. In any case from the


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Epistles it would not be possible to reconstruct either theperson of Christ, or theGospel drama, or the essence of the Gospel teaching.The Epistles of the Apostles, and especially the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, arethe building of the Church. They are the adaptation of theideas of the Gospels, thematerialisation of them, the application of them to life, very often an application which goes against the esoteric idea.The addition of the Acts and the Epistles to the fourGospels in the New Testament has a dual meaning. First(from the point of view of the Church), it gives thepossibility to the Church, which in fact originates from theEpistles, to establishconnection with the Gospels and with the " drama of Christ ". And, second, (from thepoint of view of esotericism) it gives the possibility to a few men, who begin withChurch Christianity, but are capable of understanding the

esoteric idea, to come intotouch with the first source and perhaps to succeed infinding the hidden truth.Historically the chief role in the formation of Christianity was played not by theteaching of Christ but by the teaching of Paul.

I do feel that Ouspensky does Paul a disservice here.

Pauls letters are the oldest Christian writings, predatingthe gospels by between one and five decades, while Actsuses the same esoteric techniques as the four gospels.

Ouspenskys essay provides a fairly radical look at thegospels, from his statements that they were written muchlater than is generally thought, and not by the discipleswhose names are assigned to them, to his assertion that features of the life of Jesus are taken from the life of Moses (extremely probable) and the life of Buddha


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(rather unlikely.) Ouspensky tends to state everything,and I do wish that he had given a few more reasons alongthe way. He views Matthew as the earliest gospel, beingused by Mark and Luke as material for their owngospels: this is very difficult to maintain, and it is muchlikelier that both Matthew and Luke used Mark. Heregards the Gospel of John as being a much higher level of work than the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Markand Luke.

A New Model of the Universe, at least in the 1931 edition,now appears to be out of copyright. In the USA it hasrecently been reprinted by Dover Books and Kessinger Publishing. With this understanding, I have put the entirechapter on Christianity and the New Testament online:-Ouspensky on Christianity and The New Testament

In the chapter on Superman, Ouspensky seems todisagree with Gurdjieffs assessment of Judas:

Another remarkable type in the Gospel drama, a type alsoopposed to everything which in ordinary humanity leads to the superman, isJudas.Judas is a very strange figure in the Gospel tragedy. Thereis no one about whom

so much has been written as Judas. In modern Europeanliterature there are attemptsto represent and interpret Judas from all possible points of view. Contrary to theusual " Church " interpretation of Judas as a mean andgreedy " Jew " who soldChrist for thirty pieces of silver, he is sometimesrepresented as a figure even higher

than Christ, as a man who sacrificed himself, his salvationand his " life eternal " in


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order that the miracle of redemption should beaccomplished; or as a man whorevolted against Christ, because Christ, in his opinion,spoiled the " cause ",surrounded himself with worthless people, put himself in aridiculous position, andso on. Actually, however, Judas is not even a " role ", andcertainly not a romantic hero,not a conspirator desirous of strengthening the union of the apostles with the bloodof Christ, not a man struggling for the purity of an idea.Judas is simply a small man who found himself in the wrong place, an ordinary man,full of distrust, of fears andsuspicions, a man who ought not to have been among theapostles, who understoodnothing of what Jesus said to his disciples, but a man whofor some reason or other was accepted as one of them and was even given a

responsible position and a certain authority. Judas wasconsidered one of thefavourite disciples of Jesus; he was in charge of theapostles' domestic arrangements, was their treasurer. Judas tragedy was that he feared to beexposed; he felt himself inthe wrong place and dreaded the thought that Jesus mightone day reveal this to

others. And at last he could bear it no longer. He did notunderstand some words of Jesus; perhaps he felt a threat in these words, perhaps ahint at something which only he and Jesus knew. Perturbed and frightened, Judas fledfrom the supper of Jesus andhis disciples and decided to expose Jesus The famousthirty pieces of silver played

no part in this whatever. Judas acted under the influenceof injury and fear, he wished


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to break and destroy that which he could not comprehend,that which revolted andhumiliated him by the very fact of its being above hisunderstanding. He needed toaccuse Jesus and his disciples of crimes in order to feelhimself in the right. Judas'psychology is a most human psychology, the psychology of slandering what one doesnot understand.

In Search of the Miraculous contains much that Gurdjieff taught concerning Christianity; most of this is excerpted

above, in the section on Gurdjieff.

Ouspensky hardly wrote anything else on esotericChristianity, although he did make an unpublished English translation of the Sincere Narrations of a Pilgrim. (Rodney Collin published a pamphlet, Notes onthe Gospel of St. John, in parallel English and Spanish in1949, made up from notes found after Ouspensky died. However, it seems that these were actually made by oneof Ouspenskys students, so he withdrew the pamphlet.) However, Ouspensky spoke of the gospels in his meetings,which were transcribed, and formed the source material for the books The Fourth Way, A Record of Meetings and A Further Record.

Ouspensky carried around with him a well thumbed copyof the New Testament in the original Greek. Irmis Popoff records a charming incident, on the first occasion that she met Ouspensky, soon after he came to New York:

Lionja Savitzky read that evening some notes taken fromthe writings that we came to know much later as the"Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution I was notparticularly impressed, but when someone asked, "Mr.

Ouspensky, do I understand correctly, you state thatneither good nor evil are important in your System, that all


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man must do to develop is to remember himself?" And after a short pause he answered, "It is correct. Good,evil, all relative. A man who remembers himself can become conscious. Conscious man is free, and may do ashe wishes. It is all that is needed."I protested, "But, sir, as Oscar Wilde says, 'What does itprofit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his ownsoul?' "He was very near sighted. He adjusted his glasses on thetip of his nose and, scrutinizing me, he asked, "Begpardonwho said?""Oscar Wilde," I repeated emphatically."Ahhhl" He smiled, and turned his attention to someoneelse.So did I. Very late that evening, when I returned home I found a wireawaiting me. It read:"MR. OUSPENSKY WILL SEE YOU AT HIS STUDIO AT 4P.M. TOMORROW. M.S. Secretary."

"How odd!" I thought. "Now why on earth would thisgentleman want to see me, of all people?"Curiosity made me keep the appointment. I found himalone."Well. . . .?" he asked me as I sat by him."Well, I received your wire. A wire from Miss Seton."He smiled as he told me, "Yes. You must read New Testament. All versions you can find. And next Tuesday,

same time, you come to see me.""New Testament! But what do you mean by all versions?"Iasked."Greek, Catholic, King Jamesall versions you can find."It was my turn to say, "0. . .hi" I had thought there was butone version. After a while he dismissed me, saying, "Read, read. Thencome back."

I did.Starting with Matthew's Gospel, it was not long before I


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came to Chapter 16:XXVI: "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"I had never noticed the quotes in Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Grey. Jiminy! I thought, and I understood.Suddenly I felt a warm sensation of affection for the kindly old gentleman. What a quaint way to show me! I whispered to myself.

Mrs Popoff also records another incident: [O]ne day when he was telling us about the many I'spresent in man, how he hasno unity, how he is not one but many. He scolded us

severely saying that we must never say "I" before we knew what we were saying."Look what happened to the devil," he said. And Iprotested:"But, Mr. Ouspensky, God said to Moses on Mount Tabor,'I am that I am'l"I was sitting in the first row. He paused, and looked at mefor a while, and then said tenderly and very softly:

"Yes. But you see, you are not God. In you there is no 'I.' You must work. Work hard to have 'I.' ""If only I had enough energy to work!" I said sincerely."You have it," he assured me. "You waste it in arguments."He gave me a long look, and then indulged in the shadow of asmile.

Here is an analysis of the Lords Prayer, taken from The Fourth Way:

is the same as speaking of such Christian principles asloving your enemies.Q. Is not the A B C of all esoteric knowledge the death of the seed?

A. We may take it like that. As a matter of fact, inconnection with this there is


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another thing which may perhaps explain our situation. Iremember long ago MrGurdjieff said about this expression repeated two or threetimes in the New Testament, that in order to germinate and produce a planta seed must die, that it wasnot complete in relation to man. In relation to man it must be amplified. Speaking ingeneral about the work, about its possibilities and aboutthe direction of the work, MrGurdjieff explained it to us like this. First we must realizethat we are asleep; secondly we must awake. When we are awake we must die; when wedie we can be born. Thisis the process in detail and the direction. It is useful tothink about it, useful tounderstand what sleep means, what to awake means, whatto die means and what it would mean to be born. Suppose we want to be born. Wecannot be born until we die,

and we cannot die until we awake. We cannot awake until we realize that we areasleep. So there are definite steps.Q. What does to die mean in the sense in which you speak? A. 'To die' means to die, to disappear, not to be, not toexist. It is useless to die insleep, because then you cannot be born. You must awakefirst.

I have been asked many questions, some of them very naive, by different people who have tried to understand the Lord's Prayer and whocame to me asking me toexplain what one or another phrase in it means. Forinstance, I have been asked what'our Father in heaven' means, who are 'our debtors' and what are 'our debts' and so

onas if the Lord's Prayer could be explained in 'plain words'. You must understand


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first of all that ordinary, plain words cannot explainanything in relation to the Lord'sPrayer. Some preparatory understanding is necessary,then further understanding may come, but only as a result of effort and right attitude.The Lord's Prayer can be taken as an example of aninsoluble problem. It has beentranslated into every language, learnt by heart, repeateddaily, yet people have not theslightest idea of what it really means. This failure tounderstand its meaning isconnected with our general inability to understand theNew Testament. If youremember, in another conversation, the whole of the New Testament was given as anexample of objective art, that is to say, the work of highermind. How then can weexpect to understand with our ordinary mind what wasformulated and given by higher mind? What we can do is to try and raise our mind to the level of

thinking of higher mind;and although we do not realize it, this is possible in many different ways. Inmathematics, for instance, we can deal with infinities with infinitely small andinfinitely large quantities which mean nothing to ourordinary mind. And what ispossible in mathematics is possible for us if we start in the

right way and continue inthe right way.One of the first things which must be understood andremembered, before a study of the Lord's Prayer is possible, is the difference betweenthe religious language andsystem language. What is religion? This word is used very often; there are

people who use it every day, but they cannot define what is meant by religion.


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In the system we have heard that religion is different fordifferent people, that thereis religion of man No. 1, a religion of man No. 2, a religionof man No. 3 and so on.But how can we define the difference between them?Before coming to definitions wemust understand first of all that the most necessary element in all religions known tous is the idea of Goda God with whom we can stand in apersonal relationship, to whom we can, as it were, speak, whom we can beg for help,and in the possibility of whose help we can believe. An inseparable part of religionis faith in God, that is, in aHigher Being, omnipotent and omnipresent, who can helpus in anything we wish foror want to do.I do not speak from the point of view of whether this isright or wrong, possible orimpossible. I simply say that faith, that is belief in God and

in his power to help us, isan essential part of religion.Prayer is also an inseparable part of any religion; butprayer can be very different.Prayer can be a petition for help in anything we may undertake, and also, throughschool-work, prayer can become help itself. It can becomean instrument of work

which can be used for reviving ideas of the system, it can be used for selfrememberingand for reminding us about sleep and the necessity forawakening. At the same time, the expressions of religious languagecannot be translated exactly into the system language. First, because of the element of faith in religion, and

secondly, because of the acceptance in religion andreligious language of facts and


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assertions which in the system are regarded as illogicaland inconsistent.Nevertheless, it would be wrong to say that religion andthe system are incompatibleor contradictory; only, we must learn not to mix the twolanguages. If we begin to mixthem, we shall spoil any useful conclusions that could bemade on either of the twolines.Returning to the idea of God, an idea which is inseparablefrom religion andreligious language, we must first ask ourselves how religions can be divided in ageneral or historical way. They may be divided intoreligions with one God andreligions with many gods. But even in this division it must be remembered that there is a great difference between theordinary understanding of monotheism and polytheism and thesystem understanding of the

same ideas. Although there are certain differences betweengodsas, for instance, inGreek mythologyin the ordinary understanding of polytheism all gods are more orless on the same level. From the system point of view, which includes the idea of different scales and different laws on different levels, onehas quite a different

understanding of the interdependence of gods.If we take the Absolute as God, we can see that it has norelation to us. The Absolute is God for gods; it has relation only to the next world, that is, World 3. The World 3 is God for the next world, that is, World 6, andalso for all the following worlds, but in a lesser and lesser degree. Then the Galaxy,

Sun, Planets, Earth andMoon are all gods, each including in itself smaller gods.


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The Ray of Creation as a whole, taken as one triad, is also God: God the Holy, Godthe Firm, God the Immortal.So we may choose on which level we wish to take our Godif we want to use the word 'God' in the religious sense, that is to say, in thesense of a God havingimmediate access to our lives. From the system point of view we have nothing toprove that any of these worlds may have a personalrelation to us; but there is a placefor God in the system.In the lateral octave which begins in the Sun as 'do' thereare two quite unknownpoints about which we have no material for thinking. Theoctave begins as do in theSun, then passes into si on the level of the Planets. OnEarth it becomes la-sol-fa, which constitutes Organic Life including man. When eachindividual being in the

human, animal and vegetable kingdom dies, the bodyor what remains of the bodygoes to the Earth and becomes part of the Earth, and thesoul goes to the Moon and becomes part of the Moon. From this we can understandmi and re; but about si and do we know nothing at all. These twonotes may give rise to many

suppositions as to the possible place of a God or godshaving some relation to us in theRay of Creation.Now, remembering all that has just been said, we may come to the study of theLord's Prayer.The first thing is to discover why and when it was given. We know that it was given

to replace many useless prayers.The next thing is to note many interesting features in the


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Lord's Prayer itself and inits very special construction; and from our understandingof this construction, andparticularly from our knowledge of the Law of Three, wemay be able to realize that,from the system point of view, there is a possibility of thedevelopment of understanding through our understanding of the Lord'sPrayer.Like many mathematical problems, the study of the Lord'sPrayer must begin with acorrect disposition or arrangement of the separate parts of the problem. We notice atonce two interesting things: first, that the Lord's Prayer isdivided into three times three, and second, that in theLord's Prayerthere are certain key-words, that is to say, words whichexplain other words to whichthey refer. We cannot call the division into three timesthree triads, because we do not

know their relation to one another and cannot see theforces. We can only see thatthere are three parts.If you read the first three petitions together as one part, you will see many things which you cannot see if you read them in the ordinary way.1. Our Father which art in heaven hallowed be Thy name2. Thy kingdom come

3. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.In the first petition, 'Our Father which art in heavenhallowed be Thy name', theimmediate question is, who is 'our Father'? The key-wordis 'heaven'. What does 'inheaven' mean? If we try to answer this question from thepoint of view of the Ray of Creation we may be able to understand something. We live

on the Earth, so 'heaven'must mean higher levels, that is, the Planets, the Sun or


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the Galaxy. The idea of 'heaven' presupposes certain forces, or certain mind orminds on those higher levels to which, in some way, the Lord's Prayer advises us toappeal; 'heaven' cannot refer toanything on the level of the Earth. But if we realize that thecosmic forces connected with the Galaxy, the Sun or the Planets are too big to haveany relation to us, then wecan look for the place of our 'Father in heaven' in the do orsi of the lateral octaveor we can again leave it to higher regions.In the words which follow there is nothing personal.'Hallowed be Thy name' is theexpression of a desire for the development of the rightattitude towards God, and for a better understanding of the idea of God or Higher Mind,and this desire fordevelopment obviously refers to the whole of humanity.The second petition, 'Thy kingdom come', is the

expression of a desire for thegrowth of esotericism. In A New Model of the Universe I tried to explain that thekingdom of heaven could only mean esotericism, that is to say, a certain inner part of humanity under particular laws.The third petition, 'Thy will be done on earth as it is inheaven', is the expression of

a desire for the transition of the Earth to a higher level,under the direct will of HigherMind. 'Thy will be done' refers to something that may happen but has not yethappened. These three petitions refer to conditions whichmay come but which havenot yet been fulfilled.The first petition of the second part of the Lord's Prayer is:

'Give us this day our daily bread'.The word 'daily' does not exist in the oldest known Greek


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and Latin text. Thecorrect word, which later was replaced by 'daily', is 'super-substantialis' or'supersubstantial'. The correct text should be: 'give us to-day our supersubstantial bread'. 'Supersubstantial' or 'spiritual' as some people say,may refer to higher food, higher hydrogens, higherinfluences orhigher knowledge.The two following petitions in this second part,'Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors', and 'Leadus not into temptation but deliver us from evil' are the most difficult tounderstand or to explain. They areparticularly difficult because their ordinary meaning, asgenerally accepted, hasnothing to do with the real meaning. When people think about the words, 'forgive usour debts as we forgive our debtors' in the ordinary way,they immediately begin to

make logical and psychological mistakes. First of all, they take for granted that they can forgive debts, and that it depends on them whetherthey will forgive or notforgive; and secondly, they believe that it is equally good toforgive debts and to havetheir own debts forgiven. This is a fallacy and has nofoundation whatever. If they

think about themselves, if they study themselves, if they observe themselves, they will very soon see that they cannot forgive any debts just asthey cannot do anything.In order to do and in order to forgive one must first of all be able to rememberoneself, one must be awake and one must have will. As weare now, we have

thousands of different wills, and even if one of these wills wants to forgive, there are


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always many others which do not want to forgive and which will think thatforgiveness is a weakness, an inconsistency or even acrime. And the strangest thing isthat sometimes it is really a crime to forgive. Here wecome to an interesting point. Wedo not know whether it is good to forgive or not, whether itis good to forgive always,or whether in some cases it is better to forgive and in somecases better not to forgive.If we think more about it, we may come to the conclusionthat even if we couldforgive, perhaps it would be better to wait until we knew more, that is, until we knew in which cases it is better to forgive and in which cases it is better not to forgive. At this point we should remember what has been saidabout positive and negativeattitudes and we should realize that positive attitudes arenot always correct, negative

attitudes are sometimes necessary for a rightunderstanding. So, if 'forgiving' alwaysmeans having a positive attitude, then forgiving may sometimes be quite wrong. We must understand that to forgive indiscriminately may be worse than not toforgive at all; and this understanding may bring us to theright view of our own

position in relation to our own debts. Suppose for amoment that there actually wassome benevolent and rather stupid deity who could forgiveour debts, and who wouldreally forgive them and wipe them out. It would be thegreatest misfortune that couldhappen to us. There would be no incentive for us to work then, and no reason to work.

We could go on doing the same wrong things and havingthem all forgiven in the end.


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Such a possibility is quite contrary to any idea of the work.In the work we must know that nothing will be forgiven.Only thisknowledge will give us a real incentive to work, and at leastprevent us from repeatingthe same things which we already know to be wrong.It is interesting to look at schools from this point of view and to compare schools with ordinary life. In life people may expect forgiveness, orat least hope for it. Inschool nothing is forgiven. That is an essential part of aschool system, school methodand school organization. Schools exist precisely for not-forgiving, and because of thisfact one can hope and expect to get something from aschool. If things were forgivenin schools, there would be no reason for their existence.The inner meaning of 'Forgive us our debts as we forgiveour debtors' actually refers to influences, that is to say, influences from higher

levels. We can attract toourselves higher influences only if we transfer to otherpeople the influences wereceive or have received. There are many other meaningsof these words, but this isthe beginning of the way to understand them.The third petition of this second part is:'Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil'.

What is our greatesttemptation? Most probably it is sleep: so the first wordsare understandable'help usto sleep less, or help us to awake sometimes'. The next partis more difficult. It reads:'But deliver us from evil'. Possibly it should be 'and deliverus from evil'. There aremany interpretations of this 'but', but none of them is

quite satisfactory as translatedinto ordinary language, so I shall leave it for the present.


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The chief question is, what does 'evil' mean? One possibleinterpretation is that inrelation to the ordinary temptation, which is only sleep, itmeans letting oneself fallasleep again when one had already begun to awake. It may mean giving up the work when one has already understood the necessity for working, giving up efforts after onehad begun to make efforts and, as has already beenmentioned, starting to do stupid oreven harmful things, such as going against school rulesand justifying oneself for sodoing. Many interesting examples of things of this kindcan be found in the actions of people who leave the work and particularly in theirexplanations of their doing so.Finally, the third part of the Lord's Prayer should be takenas referring to a futureorder of things and not to the present order.1. For Thine is the kingdom

2. the power3. and the glory for ever Amen,presupposes that the desire expressed in the first part of the Prayer has already beenrealized, has already taken place. Actually these words canonly refer to the future.In conclusion, the whole of the Lord's Prayer can be takenas one triad. It cannot be

taken in the sense that one part is active force, anotherpart passive force and a third part neutralizing force, because all relations probably change with the change in the centre of gravity of attention. Thismeans that, by itself, each of these three divisions or parts can be taken as one force andthat together they canmake a triad.

These very big ideas are put in the form of a prayer. When


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you decipher this idea of prayer, prayer in the sense of supplication, disappears.

***

Maurice Nicoll was a pupil of both Gurdjieff, with whomhe spent a number of months at the Chateau du Prieure in Fontainbleau, and Ouspensky. The psychiatrist Carl Junggave him his early training. In 1931 Ouspensky told Dr Nicoll to go and form his own groups, which he led until his death in 1953. Nicoll wrote two books on the esotericinterpretation of the Bible: The New Man, published in

1950 at roughly the same time as In Search of the Miraculous and All and Everything, and The Mark, published posthumously. These two books are classics of interpretation.

All sacred writings contain an outer and an inner meaning.Behind the literal words lies another range of meaning,another form of knowledge. According to an old-agetradition, Man once was in touch with this innerknowledge and inner meaning. There are many stories inthe Old Testament which convey another knowledge, ameaning quite different from the literal sense of the words.The story of the Ark, the story of Pharaoh's butler and baker, the story of the Tower of Babel, the story of Jacoband Esau and the mess of pottage, and many others,contain an inner psychological meaning far removed fromtheir literal level of meaning. And in the Gospels theparable is used in a similar way.

Many parables are used in the Gospels. As they stand,taken in the literal meaning of the words, they referapparently to vineyards, to householders, to stewards, tospendthrift sons, to oil, to water and to wine, to seeds andsowers and soil, and many other things. This is their literallevel of meaning. The language of parables is difficult to

understand just as is, in general, the language of all sacred writings. Taken on the level of literal


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understanding, both the Old and New Testaments are fullnot only of contradictions but of cruel and repulsivemeaning.

Beryl Pogson, Dr Nixcolls secretary, describes thebeginning of Dr Nicolls work on the gospels:

During 1941 Dr Nicoll had completed his chapters on TheLords Prayer which were published posthumously in TheMark. The writing of the chapters which were eventually published in The New Man began in a curious way. Weoften had talks about the Bible characters. One day an idea

came to me to me. I collected from the four gospels all that was said about St Peter and arranged the material, as faras possible, chronologically. Then I laid this document onDr Nicolls table with the tentative suggestion that hemight like to comment on the character of St Peter and thepart played by him in the gospels. This experiment hadsurprising results, for Dr Nicoll was immediately interested and wrote with the utmost rapidity the chapteron St Peter which was later included in The New Man justas it stood without alteration. We little thought at the timethat this was the beginning of a whole book.

The New Man is not without its faults. Since Nicoll iswriting for an audience that may know nothing of thework ideas, he tends to labour his point, and at timesseems convinced that the reader isnt going to understand what he has to say. In other places, such as his use of the platonic ideas of the good and the truth, he doesnt seemto quite hit the mark. But even in these passages, he hasclearly identified an esoteric symbolism, in this case thestories of the older and younger brothers, such as Jaconand Esau. The five volumes of Psychological Commentaries, put together from Nicolls meetings, alsocontain a good deal of Bible interpretation. Nicoll stopped

short of Gurdjieffs radical rewriting of the place of Judas


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in the drama of Christ, but does suggest that Judas played the most difficult part in a conscious drama.

The New Man and The Mark contain much that leads to agenuine esoteric and psychological understanding of the Bible.

***

Rodney Collin, Ouspenskys most inspired pupil, moved to Mexico to make a fresh start the year after Ouspenskydied. His publishing house, Ediciones Sol, published Spanish translations of The New Man and the Psychological Commentaries soon after they came out in England. Despite this, there is little trace of this kind of interpretation in Collins writings, although he could still write, The words of Christ have waited two thousand years to be understood. They can be understood at oncewith clear thoughts and clean minds. The Gospels werenot written only for people two thousand years ago. Theyare always a new force, and it is our duty to relate thesituation of each individual to every passage of theGospels, interpreting it not only with the mind but withthe emotions of our hearts.

Living in Mexico, Collin finally converted to RomanCatholicism in 1955; as a young man he had been

involved with the Christian organization Toc H. His pamphlet, he Christian Mystery, published in Spanish in1953 and in English the following year, puts the entireChristian civilization, along with the gospel drama, and the lives of the body, the soul and the spirit, onto theenneagram. It is written in ecstatic, poetic language, and is not something to be read with the logical mind:

Christ died. Christ lives. The figure grew. Not in intensity but in size, as the ripple expanding. Characters moved to


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new places for another scale. Others entered. The Acts of the Apostles. The Acts of the Church. Not thirty years butthree thousand. The coiled spring of time, wound beyond breaking point, unwinds again, remaking the Christianmystery in history. In space and centuries. Its body.The apex God, mystery, and the hidden schools of mystery.From school in Egypt Jesus returned to his birthplace. Where the Virgin Mother Mary stood, new standsBethlehem, and all it signifies.Peace on earth, goodwill towards men. Christmas, humblenativities.From Bethlehem Jesus went up in triumph to the capital. Where John stood now stands Jerusalem, place of pilgrimage, prayer, bloodied crusaders, quartered among warring sects, all things to all men according to their being.The second apex Christ loving, crucified, ascended,everywhere.Paul to the Galatians, John to Patmos and the SevenChurches which are in Asia. Where Mary Magdalene stood

new stands Asia Minor, land of Diana and Astarte, theEastern Church, Byzantium.Peter and Paul to Rome. "Upon this rock will I build my church". Where Peter stood now stands Rome, imperial and eternalRome, the Vatican and the Popes, the Church Catholic andMilitant. And as between Mars and Venus, so between West and

East, Rome and Byzantium, Catholic and Orthodox, twosides of the Christian mystery must wage confederate wartill a unity not of time and place be seen again.The third apex Paul the persecutor, opposer, fanatic,militant, emissary of schools, martyred and ascended also.The three Maries to Provence, Joseph of Arimathea toGlastonbury. Where he stood new stands Christian Europe.

Monasteries, orders, Knights Templars, chanting in parishchurch, the devotion of peasants at wayside shrines.


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Benedict, Augustine, Francis, Luther, More.Copts to Ethiopia, Jesuits to China, Franciscans to Mexico. Where Judas stood now stands the Christian world.Compound of revelation and betrayal. Courage,martyrdom, love; blood, cruelty, corruption of ancientinnocence. A thousand fantastic sects. Every man's prejudice andimagination armed with Christianity. Yet none to blame:save the being of unregenerate man, for whom Christcame.The first apex once again God, mystery, and the schools of mystery, whither the whole circle yearns.

He adds to Ouspenskys idea of the drama of Christ beinga conscious play.

But it is this latter, the Gospel, which must represent theperfect examplethe classicalperformance as it wereof such a play The backgroundof Christ's drama is muchmore familiar. The strategic outpost of a great bureaucratic empire, nervous officials and an irresponsiblemob, political oppression and the shadow of revoltallthis is by no means 'sympathetic'. Yet it shows that thepossibility of a general 'move' in level of consciousness, which may in the end affect hundreds of thousands ormillions of men, does not at all depend on conditions thatfrom an ordinary point of view we would call favourable.The familiar evil of life may even be 'used', as a kind of fulcrum, to give higher forces a purchase against which to work and attain their ends. Despite such differences of scene, the types of such a drama appear permanent. TheRoman centurion who suddenly sees through the politicalcrucifixion to burst out, 'Truly this man was the Son of God!' is the same character as Socrates' jailer who, bringing the poison, begs forgiveness of 'the noblest andgentlest and best of all who ever came to this place.' At the


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same time, each role may be played with individualdifferences depending on the particular actor and theparticular production. The innkeeper who serves Buddhathe rotten food from which he dies is introduced as a quiteminor character, whose critical action is almost 'accident'. In the Christiandrama, on the other hand, Judas is taken as thepersonification of evil, and though he finally repents, isstill required to hang himself. Even here, however, there isa curious suggestion of collusion at the Last Supper and inChrist's phrase at the betrayal: 'Friend, wherefore art thoucome?'

For we have to accept the idea that in all such dramas,each conscious actor must eventually learn to play allparts, with the idea that he may one day even qualify forthe central role itself. In the Gospel drama, for example,there are many hints that Saint John'the disciple whomJesus loved', who alone stayed with him at the crucifixion,to whose care he entrusted his mother, whose gospel

reveals the deepest emotional understanding, and aboveall, who later as an old man in Patmos himself describedthe experiences of an electronic bodywas, so to speak,'understudying the Christ'. 'The imitation of Christ' is infact the ultimate task of every player in the Christianmystery. All such parts, however, are but subsidiary. Forthe real significance of the whole play must lie in thetransfiguration of the chief character into the electronic

world, his achievement of spirit. And all the miraculousevents and manifestations which follow his death may inone sense be seen as a demonstration that the play hassucceeded, the tremendous miracle has beenaccomplished.

Rodney Collin felt that that he spent with Ouspensky at the end of his teachers life was also a conscious drama,albeit on a smaller scale. Collin himself had a dramatic


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death in 1956 when he fell from a tower of the cathedral in Cuzco, Peru.

Maurice Nicolls secretary, Beryl Pogson, continued toteach some of the remnants of Maurice Nicolls books. Her main literary monument is her esoteric explanationof Shakespeares plays, In The East My Pleasure Lies. Sheread the Gospel of Thomas in 1959, the year it was first published in translation. Her comments on it can be found here, http://www.bardic- press.com/thomas/pogson.htm

She also wrote a short book, Commentary on the FourthGospel. The Fourth Gospel is the Gospel of St John. Hereis her interpretation of Christ walking on the waters:

"When Jesus therefore perceived that they would comeand take him by force, to make him a king, he departedagain into a mountain himself alone. And when even wasnow come, his disciples went down unto the sea, andentered into a ship, and went over the sea towardCapernaum. And it was now dark, and Jesus was not cometo them. And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew. So when they had rowed about five and twenty orthirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, anddrawing nigh unto the ship: and they were afraid. But hesaith unto them: 'It is I; be not afraid'. Then they willingly received him into the ship: and immediately the ship wasat the land whither they went. (John VI: 15-21) It was afterthe miracle of the feeding of the five thousand that Christ walked on the waters of the Sea of Galilee, shewing that Hecould walk on the waters of life. This is the fifth Sign. Without His presence the disciples were tossed about intheir boat on the waves. But when they were aware thatChrist was present, and heard His words:Ego Eimi" - "It is I" - their fear was dispelled and they

were immediately taken where they wanted to go. This isagain an eternal experience that is described, taking place


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within the Circle of Eternity. When a man's consciousnessis araised so that he is aware of the approaching Presenceit is the I, the Real I, which takes over, and the waves arestilled, the fear cast out, and the Master directs the course.The multitude now seek Jesus and find Him atCapernaum. It is here that He tells them: "I am the breadof life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger and hethat believeth on me shall never thirst". He is trying toteach them what He can give if they will only ask for it.The bread of life is the symbol of this energy of consciousness, which is inexhaustible, as the saints havefound when they have drawn upon it to do what isimpossible to their own strength.The comment made by Jesus, "Ye seek me, not because yesaw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled", may mean that because the people had once been nourished by this bread they were moved to seek theGiver again. They were not necessarily seeking sensationafter witnessing a miracle.In the Fourth Gospel there is not the same account of the

Last Supper as in the Synoptic Gospels. There is no traceof laying down a ritual to be enacted. But in this Gospelthere is interpretation of the meaning of the bread thatChrist offers to those who can receive it, the substance which is Himself, His consciousness, which can transforma man, so that his whole substance is changed, so thatafter death he can inhabit his immortal body, the Body of Resurrection. All this is implied in the words: "This is the

bread of life which cometh down from heaven, that a manmay eat thereof and not die... I am the living bread whichcame down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread heshall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world". "Flesh" in theNew Testament is a technical word meaning thepsychology of a man, not the body. Thus it is that "flesh"can nourish the inner bodies of a man, while "blood" can

cleanse.


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Boris Mouravieff was an associate of both Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. He knew Ouspensky fairly well, and grudgingly admits the influence of In Search of the Miraculous at the beginning of his extensive three volumework, Gnosis. He claims, somewhat vaguely, to havegone back to some mysterious Orthodox Christian source for his extension of the system ideas. In the following,which is one of my favourite sections of Gnosis volume 1,he shows that the do-re-mi notation actually derives from Latin terms that describe the Ray of Creation.

The esoteric teaching, formerly reserved for the initiated

only, was known not only in the Orient but also in theOccident. We can see the evidence of this by analyzing thenames of the notes of the musical scale, established, as weknow, by Guido of Arezzo, an Italian Beneictine (c.995-1050). To do this, he utilized the hymn to St. John theBaptist, composed two years previously by Paul Diacre or Warnefrid, a historian of Lombardy (740-801). The latter was a secretary to the king of Lombardy, Dider, and after

that lived at the court of Charlemagne, then in that of Benevent, to retire finally to the monastery of MonteCassino, where he ended his days. The hymn to St Johnthe Baptist goes like this:

UT queant lixisREsonare fibrisMIra gestorumFAmuli tuorumSOLve pollutiLAbil reatumSanctae Johannes

We see that this hymn was composed by Paul Diacre inhermetic form. Such a procedure was always favoured inesoteric teaching. Comparative study of the diagram of theGreat Octave, and the hymn of Paul Diacre, leaves no

doubt that he knew this diagram quite veil. So did Guidoof Arezzo who, two centuries after Paul, chose that hymn


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amongst all others, to introduce it into the musical gamut. We can even see for ourselves why Paul Diacre utilized thesyllable UT, instead of DO, to designate the first note. Weshould carefully note that he conceived this hymn as anascending gamut, although the Great Octave naturally represents a descending gamut. From the meaning of itscontent, this hymn tends from the lower to the higher,from the coarse to the fine, in other words, from thehuman plane toward the divine plane. But he stops, without reaching the latter, at the note SI, consecrated toSt John the Baptist, Let us say in passing that thePrecursor enjoys a very particular veneration in theTradition, and is placed above the Apostles. On certainByzantine icons he is represented as winged, having twoheads, one quite severed and bloody, and he bears it withhis own hands on a platter.

If Paul Diacre had wanted to prolong his hymn by onemore line, he would have had to consecrate it to Jesus, andconsequently to start it from the syllable DO. But he did

not do that. His eminently human gamut, having begun with man as he is, born of woman in all his imperfection,could obviously not start with DO, which really stands forDominus. He chose the syllable UT, from the word uterus,the organ of gestation, precisely in order to underline thatimperfect condition which is as common to all the devoutas to all men, in order to direct them on the track of StJohn, of whom Jesus said: Verily I say unto you, among

them that are born of woman there hath not arisen agreater than John the Baptist..

Thus UTuterussymbolises the door of birth accordingto the flesh and SI, the door of the second birth, accordingto the spirit, without which man cannot see the kingdomof God.The ascending gamut of Paul Diacre thus comprises anoctave of regeneration, going from birth on earth to birthin the heavens.


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That is the explanation of this hymn, closely conforming tothe sense of the mystical traditions of the past.

An exhaustive examination of the names of the notes thatform the musical octave shows direct correspondence withthe notes of the Great cosmic Octave, as can be shownfrom the following diagram:

(UT UTerus, born of woman)DO God. The Absolute manifest. The central Sun.DOminus

SI Starry sky. Ensemble of all Worlds. SIderus orbisLA Our Great World, the Milky Way. LActeus orbisSOL The Sun. SOLFA The Planetary World, to which our antiquity attributed direct influence on our destiny. FAtumMI Earth, our imperfect world, under the mixed rule of Good and Evil.MIxtus orbisRE The Moon, ruler of human fate according to the Ancients.REgina astris.

Mouravieffs works were retrieved from obscurity largelythrough the efforts of Robin Amis. In addition to publishing and helping to translate Gnosis, Amis haswrote A Different Christianity, a sincere and well-informed attempt to further Mouravieffs ideasconnecting the origin of Gurdjieffs teaching with theOrthodox tradition. Amongst the few additional works onthe fourth Way and esoteric Christianity in recent yearsare A Point in the Work, a rather dreary collection of sermons by someone who seems to be in the line of Beryl Pogson and Maurice Nicoll, my own small book on theGospel of Thomas, and Richard Smoleys Inner

Christianity. This last is an eclectic exploration of


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material on esoteric Christianity, ranging from Gurdjieff and Mouravieff to A Course in Miracles.

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