Two months before Mr. Gurdjieff's death he made his last auto excursion to visit the prehistoric caves of Lascaux. In effect, it was his last wish. Discovered by chance in 1940, just after the German occupation of France, Lascaux had been opened to the public only in 1948. J.G. Bennett had visited the caves then and when he and Gurdjieff met soon after, Bennett told him of the spectacular and mysterious paintings and etchings on the walls. Despite Gurdjieff's increasing infirmity, his swollen legs and gaz—said Bennett, "He looked much older and moved with greater difficulty than when I had come to Paris the year before"—Gurdjieff insisted on making the trip.

And so on the morning of August 31, 1949, Gurdjieff, "smoking a cigarette in a big black holder, with his red fez at a jaunty angle on the back of his head and a pocketbook bulging with thousand-franc notes," left Paris in a car loaded with students and hampers of food. Two more carloads of Gurdjieff's students followed.

"We left at 9 in the morning," wrote Elizabeth Mayall in her diary, "and had a marvelous drive through Clermont-Ferrand and by the Puy de Dôme to Montdoré. I thought it very beautiful. Mr. Bennett's car led. Five people [who had taken a train] had hired a car at Vichy in order to come too. We stopped at Montdoré for lunch [and] went on to Montignac." The party made the 400 mile trip from Paris to the village of Montignac, near the caves in the Dordogne region in the south of France, in 12 hours, arriving at 9 in the evening.

They dined at Le Relais du Soleil d'Or, Montignac's fanciest hotel, where Bennett had made reservations. Tired, his legs swelling, Gurdjieff talked little. He did speak about religion, saying that while Roman Catholicism had degenerated entirely, the Eastern Orthodox Church had retained at least something. About midnight, he finally retired. Though Gurdjieff seemed no better the next morning, he insisted on going to the caves and, according to Elizabeth Mayall, "seemed even anxious to see them." About 10 in the morning Gurdjieff descended into the series of chambers which extend deep into the hillside. There he saw the paintings of various animals, most spectacularly those of deer and bulls. At the time these were the richest known specimens of prehistoric art.

Said Elizabeth Mayall: "I remember him standing with his feet apart, leaning on his stick, with his head thrown back, looking up at the Great Stag with the stylized antlers in the first gallery." Inspecting the paintings, Gurdjieff told his students they were the work of "a brotherhood that existed after the loss of Atlantis seven or eight thousand years ago," likely a reference to the society Akhaldan.

"As he stood looking at the paintings," said J.G. Bennett, "he seemed completely to belong there. He explained various symbols, and especially the painting of a strange composite animal, which he said was like the Sphinx, the 'emblem' of an esoteric society."

Bennett asked if he meant "symbol."

"No. Emblem," Gurdjieff declared. "At that time there were societies with special knowledge, and each society had an emblem by which the members recognized each other. Same way as we have Enneagram."

He implied, according to Bennett, that Lascaux was the center of an esoteric society and that the Great Stag was not only its emblem but its reminding factor for its work. The horns on the reindeer, he said, are like Beelzebub's horns. The number of points on the antlers represented the degree of attainment of the man. (He elaborates upon these degrees in the First Series.)

On the way to the caves after leaving Paris, and during and between meals, Gurdjieff had spoken about the "Inner God," saying, "If you learn to obey Inner God, this is a thousand times better than the Ten Commandments, which only tell us how to live, but cannot help man to work." Later he spoke about immortality. "Unmortal is a very big thing, but is not all. If a man works he can become of use even to God." He then pointed to Bennett and added: "There are two kinds of unmortal. He now has already Kesdjan body. This is unmortal, but not real unmortal. Real unmortal only comes with higher body. He have body for soul—but must also have body for 'I'."

Describing the difference between Paradise and the Sun Absolute, Gurdjieff noted: "You can go to Paradise with Kesdjan body. But Paradise is only good for two or three days. Imagine what it would be next year, year after, hundred years. Must not be satisfied with Paradise—must find way to Soleil Absolu."

To grow antlers or horns one must have more than a physical, or carnal, body. The higher the reason, the higher the body one must have attained, for the body is the support of reason. In Russia 1915–1917 Gurdjieff spoke of the crystallization of these bodies, designating them as carnal, natural, spiritual and divine bodies. Considering the context—that Gurdjieff is on his way to see the caves at Lascaux and that he realized the end of physical life was drawing near for him—his words take on an added weight.

Viewing the paintings on the cave walls, Gurdjieff said they were 8,000 years old. Here he might only have been speaking of the years before the birth of Jesus Christ and not including the two thousand years after. If so, the paintings would be some 10,000 years old.

Bennett reminded him that experts dated the paintings to 18,000 to 20,000 years. Gurdjieff wouldn't hear of it. "He insisted," said Bennett, "that this work was done after the loss of Atlantis."

Bennett told him that the evidence from the implements and bones in the cave showed that the paintings "go back before the time of the loss of Atlantis."

According to Bennett, "Gurdjieff immediately replied in a rather shocked tone, 'How can that be? These cannot be before the loss of Atlantis.' He then remained silent and I could get no more out of him."

When the group collected by the cars in front of the caves, Gurdjieff instructed Bennett to drive in another car. Then on the way back to Paris at Tulle, without any ceremony, he told Bennett: "I go left; you go right."

"Then we must say goodbye to you," answered Bennett. "Yes, goodbye!" Could what Gurdjieff is saying to Bennett relate to Bennett's denial of Gurdjieff's date for the Lascaux paintings?

As can be seen from Gurdjieff's comments at Lascaux and his First Series, the destruction of Atlantis is a pivotal event for him. The only historic accounts of Atlantis occur in Plato's Timaeus and in his Critas in which an Egyptian priest tells the famous Greek statesman Solon: "There have been and will be many different calamities to destroy mankind, the greatest of them by fire and water, lesser ones by countless other means....You remember only one deluge, though there have been many...." Evidence suggests that the deluge the priest refers to occurred around 9,600 B.C. writes Mary Settegast in her book Plato Prehistorian. Further, she believes that "The wave of inexplicably sophisticated settlers that appeared in the Near East in the last half of the eighth millennium B.C., may actually have been refugees from Plato's ruined cultures in the west."

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