Gurdjieff & Mme Blavatsky |
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In the decades following Mr. Gurdjieff's death in 1949, a succession of partisans from other 'teachings' have claimed as their own either all or parts of the ancient teaching he brought. Others, drawn irresistibly to the teaching by its practicality and scale, have simply stolen parts of it in inventing their own teachings. All have disregarded and dismissed Gurdjieff's characterization of the teaching as being "...completely self-supporting and independent of other lines and it has been completely unknown up to the present time." In the late 1950s, Boris Mouravieff first began publishing in French three volumes in which he appropriated the early, pre-1923 version of the teaching recorded by Ouspensky and mixed in his own ideas about chivalry. Mouravieff purported to prove that the Work had its origins in the Eastern Orthodox Church, a cause later taken up by Jacob Needleman, perhaps rejuvenating Mouravieff's followers enough to have created an English translation. In the 1960s, stepping into the vacuum created by the vacillation of John Godolphin Bennett, Idries Shah began a 20-year campaign to subsume the work under the rubric of Sufism. Conversely, James Webb, in his study of the impact of the occult revival that began in the mid-nineteenth century and reached a crisis at the turn of the twentieth, placed the teaching in the context of the occult knowledge that had been rejected by the established culture of the West, and in particular by the Christian Church. Webb went on to link the Work with ancient esoteric Christianity, the Kabbalah, and Theosophy. More recently, Peter Washington, a popscholar whose work is more widely read than Webb's, sought to forge a link between Gurdjieff and Madame Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy. Washington maligns Blavatsky as a talented, widely read charlatan who nevertheless managed, by catering to the spiritual malaise endemic in the rapidly industrializing Western nations, to foster the introduction of a great deal of Eastern spirituality, Buddhism in particular. After painting a cynically ugly portrait of Blavatsky, Washington tries to tar Gurdjieff with the same brush, relentlessly drawing comparisons between them and ignoring their differences. Washington's thesis has been taken up by K. Paul Johnson, in a book published under the imprimatur of the State University of New York. Whereas Washington derisively dismissed Gurdjieff as "an Armenian carpet dealer," Johnson's works are based on what seems more like objective scholarship. He compares points in Gurdjieff's teaching with Theosophy and tries to show that the Work is derivative. As we shall see, neither is as objective as they might appear at first reading. We are left then with two questions: is there is a relationship between Gurdjieff's teaching and Theosophy, and if so, what is it?
On September 13, 1875, in New
York City, the Theosophical Society was
founded by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky,
Col. Henry Olcott, and William Quan
Judge. About a month later, an inaugural
address was delivered by Olcott to a
handful of disillusioned Spiritualists. By
the time Blavatsky died in 1891, there
would be many thousands of members
worldwide. Today, with its international
headquarters in India, the society has
branches in some 60 countries around the
world.
From its beginnings, Spiritualism
went hand in hand with Theosophy. Mme
Blavatsky and Col. Olcott first met at a
farm in Vermont, where both had gone to
investigate a family exhibiting a variety
of psychic phenomena including materializing
spirits and levitation. Spiritualists
believed in the continued existence of the
dead who could communicate with them
by means of mediums. Blavatsky herself
practiced as a Spiritualist in New York
City during the early years of the Society.
The Society's charter expressed its
divergent interests in three main goals:
1) the formation of a universal human
brotherhood without distinction of race,
creed, sex, caste, or color; 2) the encouragement of studies in comparative
religion, philosophy and science; and
3) the investigation of unexplained laws
of nature and the psychic powers latent
in man.
The term
theosophy
was used for
many centuries before Blavatsky and
Olcott claimed it; it referred to any mystical
philosophy which aimed at a
knowledge of God. Wrote Blavatsky,
"According to lexicographers, the term
theosophia is composed of two Greek
words—theos, 'god,' and sophos,
'wise.'" A Theosophist, she said, "is one
who gives you a theory of God or the
works of God, which has not revelation,
but an inspiration of his own for its basis.
In this view every great thinker and philosopher,
especially every founder of a
new religion, school of philosophy, or
sect, is necessarily a Theosophist. Hence,
Theosophy and Theosophists have
existed ever since the first glimmering of
nascent thought made man seek instinctively
for the means of expressing his
own independent opinions....Theosophy
is, then, the archaic Wisdom-Religion, the esoteric doctrine once
known in every ancient
country having claims to
civilization."
Blavatsky claimed
that Theosophy distilled
the universal, fundamental,
seed religion that had
been guarded for many
thousands of years and
that she had been chosen
as a vehicle for its transmission
by adepts called
"mahatmas" or "masters"
who were part of a
"Brotherhood of the
White Lodge." Her two
major works,
Isis
Unveiled
(1877) and
The
Secret Doctrine
(1888),
were, she said, psychically
dictated to her by the
mahatmas. It incorporated
elements of Christianity
(although in both Ireland
and England early Theosophy
was aggressively
anti-Christian), medieval
and Renaissance occultism,
the mystery religions
of ancient Greece, Hinduism,
and, in particular,
Buddhism.
Theosophy, then, takes a logical,
universalist point of view, recognizing
that although an adherent of a particular
way or religion may see it as being
the
religion, it is in fact one among many.
Blavatsky's books are mostly an assemblage
of extracts and glosses from major
world religious writings, which, along
with her exegesis, she uses to make a primarily
intellectual demonstration of this
underlying unity of ideas. But if the
underlying premise is true, a serious
practitioner of a genuine religion will
come to
experience
the unity and so
would have no need of such an intellectual
demonstration. Intellectually
grasping the idea is in itself such a powerful,
compelling experience that it too
often leads to the ecstatic belief that the
experience of unity has been touched
when it has not. This belief, and its corresponding
emotional appeal, is likely to
keep the believer from ever moving
beyond the intellectual experience,
thereby keeping the person from progressing
further. The danger is that these
beliefs, especially when combined with
drug use, will create, in Gurdjieff's
terms, "imagination in higher emotional
center."
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For the remainder of this article, please order The Gurdjieff Journal Issue #23 |