The Strange Life of P. D. Ouspensky (10 page)

This explains why Gurdjieff felt justified in 'exaggerating'. And if a person can be galvanized into a sense of urgency, surely that is all that matters?

But we have seen that one problem of exaggerating man's mechanicalness is that it tends to produce a grim and negative state of mind. Gurdjieff told Ouspensky: 'One need not . . . be afraid of efforts; the danger of dying from them is not all that great. It is much easier to die from inaction, from laziness, and from the fear of making efforts' But, as we shall see, Gurdjieff's critics have accused him of being a bully who drove some of his followers into illness, and even - in one well-known case, the writer Katherine Mansfield - into death.

A year after meeting Gurdjieff, Ouspensky began to feel that he was at last beginning to understand the Work. On first meeting the Moscow pupils, he felt that they were artificial, as if playing a role; by the summer of 1916 he saw that this was because they were maintaining a high level of self-observation. Gurdjieff, he noticed, also observed them closely, and placed them in new situations where they would cease to behave formally - for example, taking them on excursions into the countryside or a trip up the Neva. Later on, in Paris, he would organize large dinner parties for the same reason, and force everyone to drink toast after toast in vodka until they were all drunk. He explained to Ouspensky: 'Later on you will see that everyone in the Work is given his own individual tasks corresponding to his type, and his chief feature or his chief fault, that is, something that will give him the opportunity of struggling more intensively against his chief faults.'

The task he gave Ouspensky was to act as a kind of propagandist, to lead his acquaintances into conversations about the Work. When the whole group was instructed to talk to their acquaintances about the Work, the results made them aware of how difficult it is to communicate meaningfully, even with intelligent people. (Ouspensky was later to go to the opposite extreme and order his followers not to discuss the Work with anyone outside it.)

At other meetings, Gurdjieff tried the experiment of asking his pupils to talk about themselves and their lives. This was also a failure; it turned into an exercise in anecdote that bored everybody. But Ouspensky realized something interesting: that when he began to speak, there were many things that he had no intention of divulging.

On another occasion, Ouspensky was in a gloomy mood and complained to Gurdjieff that he felt they were getting nowhere. To cheer him up, Gurdjieff offered to answer any question. Ouspensky asked about the truth of 'Eternal Recurrence', and Gurdjieff replied - perhaps predictably - that Eternal Recurrence is a reality, but that work on oneself can nevertheless alter a man's possibilities. This was a view that Ouspensky incorporated into a revised version of
Ivan Osokin
(the early version had ended on a totally pessimistic note).

Ouspensky was galvanized to new efforts. He began short but intensive fasts without worrying about their effect on his health, as well as practising breathing and concentration exercises. Gurdjieff invited a small group of his pupils to a house in Finland - not far from Petrograd - and was unusually harsh and sarcastic, as if trying to provoke them. He certainly upset Ouspensky when he repeated in front of everyone something unflattering about one of their number which Ouspensky had told him in the greatest confidence.

Here we encounter the essence of the problem that finally caused the break between the two men. Ouspensky was, of course, fully aware that Gurdjieff was attempting to galvanize them into effort, like an experienced drill sergeant, and that a man who wishes to become a good soldier does not quarrel with the drill sergeant. Yet he must also have been aware that he possessed his own genius, and that he already knew a great deal even before he met Gurdjieff. So he felt that Gurdjieff was going too far in repeating a confidence.
Was
he correct? The question is of fundamental importance. Was Gurdjieff underestimating Ouspensky's 'freedom'? If so, then Gurdjieff himself was capable of misjudgement, even of a kind of stupidity. Ouspensky himself later decided that the answer to that question was yes. Those who regard Ouspensky as a man of genius in his own right will agree.

Almost as if to apologize for his 'bullying' treatment, Gurdjieff now allowed Ouspensky an experience of his 'magical' powers. One evening in Finland, Gurdjieff called three of his pupils into a room, and proceeded to show them certain postures and physical exercises. Gurdjieff always laid great emphasis on physical movements as training for man's 'moving centre'. Anyone who wishes to try out their effect should make an attempt to pat himself on the head with one hand while rubbing his stomach with the other. Gurdjieff's 'movements' often involved doing something different with both hands, both feet, and the head. On this occasion, Ouspensky was impressed by the precision of Gurdjieff's movements. After this, Gurdjieff began to discuss why they could not tell the story of their lives:

And with this the miracle began.

I can say with complete assurance that Gurdjieff did not use any kind of external methods, that is, he gave me no narcotics nor did he hypnotise me by any of the known methods.

It all started with my beginning to
hear his thoughts . . .
Suddenly I noticed that among the words which he was saying to us all there were 'thoughts' which were intended for me. I caught one of these thoughts and replied to it, by speaking aloud in the ordinary way. Gurdjieff nodded at me and stopped speaking. There was a fairly long pause. He sat still saying nothing. After a while I heard his voice inside me as it were in my chest, near the heart. He put a definite question to me . . . I answered him in the affirmative. . . And he at once put another still more definite question to me in the same way . . . And again I answered in the same way. Z and S [Zaharoff and Stoerneval] were visibly astonished . . . This conversation . . . proceeded in this fashion for not less than half an hour.

Back with the others, Gurdjieff made some remark about Ouspensky that drove Ouspensky to walk out in the woods. Suddenly, he saw that Gurdjieff was right:

. . . what I had considered to be firm and reliable inside myself . . . did not exist. But I had found something else. I knew that he would not believe me and that he would laugh at me if I showed him this other thing. But for myself it was indubitable, and what happened later showed that I was right.

This is an interesting passage because it reveals something that Ouspensky prefers not say openly: that Gurdjieff taunted him about his weakness and his romanticism. This is something that Ouspensky takes care not to reveal in all his work; yet it remains, as Gurdjieff would have said, his 'chief feature'.

We can also see that, if Ouspensky was right in feeling that he had discovered another source of strength within himself, the implication must be that Gurdjieff himself was
not
infallible; his psychological insight was limited, and there were things about Ouspensky that he discounted and failed to understand.

Back in his own room, Gurdjieff again began to speak 'inside [Ouspensky's] chest', and they held a conversation while Gurdjieff was out on the veranda with others. Ouspensky is again reticent, but it is clear that Gurdjieff was trying to force him to make some promise, or to leave the Work. He gave Ouspensky a month to make up his mind.

The next morning, at breakfast, Gurdjieff again read Ouspensky's mind, and advised him to stop thinking about a certain question. During the next few days, Ouspensky found himself in a strange emotional state, so that he remarked to Gurdjieff: 'How can this be got rid of? I cannot bear it any more.' Gurdjieff's reply was that this was what Ouspensky had been asking for. He was now awake. Ouspensky comments that he is not certain that this was entirely true.

Back in Petrograd, Ouspensky not only continued to converse with Gurdjieff - who was on the train going to Moscow - but to actually see him.

At this time, he says, he also began seeing 'sleeping people'. As he walked along the street, he would see that people were actually asleep, surrounded by their dreams in the form of clouds. When this impression began to fade, he found he could renew it by efforts of self-remembering.

All this convinced Ouspensky that 'paranormal' powers are a by-product of higher states of awareness, and that therefore they cannot be studied 'objectively', as if in a laboratory. The mind needs to be 'awake' first.

In fact, as we have seen, Ouspensky had already made the same discovery during his nitrous oxide experiments. He had 'heard voices' which were sometimes able to reply accurately to his questions, and had also correctly foreseen the precise events that would cause the trip to Moscow to be cancelled. Ouspensky adds that this higher state of awareness also made him see, with great clarity, why violence is always bound to be counter-productive. This recognition, he says, was not 'ethical', but practical.

Soon after this, Gurdjieff announced to the group that they all had to make a choice: now they must decide whether they wanted to wake up, or remain asleep. 'In future I shall work only with those who can be useful to me in attaining my aim.' Two people dropped out of the group. It seems clear that what Gurdjieff was demanding of Ouspensky in Finland was total commitment - perhaps to devote his life to spreading the idea of the Work. Ouspensky seems to have agreed.

It may have been Gurdjieff's recognition of what was happening in Russia that caused him to make these demands. The war was going badly; troops were fighting without weapons and without proper clothing. In an offensive that ran out of steam, the Russians lost a million men. The army was demoralized. Many people believed the Tsarina - who was of German birth - wanted the Germans to win. At the end of 1916, the Tsar's
eminence grise
Rasputin was assassinated by Prince Felix Yussupov; he had foretold that if he was killed by a member of the aristocracy, the Russian monarchy would come to an end. In March 1917, riots and strikes broke out in Petrograd, and there was a general mutiny of troops. The Tsar abdicated, and a provisional government took control, while the royal family was placed under arrest. In April, Lenin arrived from Switzerland, sent by the Germans to undermine Russia. In July, the Bolsheviks made their first attempt to seize power.

In February, Gurdjieff had made his last visit to Petrograd; when he took his leave of his followers at the station, Ouspensky felt that something unusual had taken place. On the platform, Gurdjieff had seemed 'an ordinary man, like anyone else'. Moments later, when he came to the window of the train, he seemed quite different, 'a man of a quite different order . . . with a quite exceptional importance and dignity in every look and movement, as though he had suddenly become a ruling prince or statesman of some unknown kingdom . . .'

It is possible of course, that Gurdjieff was 'acting' again; most people who knew him felt that he wore a series of masks. But it seems more probable that Ouspensky and the others had witnessed a genuine transformation. This is what Gurdjieff had meant when he said, 'In future I shall only work with those who can be useful in attaining my aim.' He did not state his aim, but it can have been only one thing: he was using his group, and the consciousness induced by teaching them, to raise himself into a higher state of intensity. Ouspensky later observed that teaching other people had the effect of teaching himself. It seems probable that what they witnessed at Petrograd station was the moment in which Gurdjieff achieved his 'transformation' to a more conscious level of power. A journalist who travelled in the same carriage as Gurdjieff was convinced that he was, at the very least, a millionaire oil magnate.

And now, before we accompany Gurdjieff and Ouspensky on the flight that will take them into exile, it is time to pause to look back over what had happened since their meeting two years earlier.

It seems clear that when Gurdjieff left Tashkent and embarked on his career as a teacher in Moscow and St Petersburg, his teaching was still in an undeveloped form. He had almost certainly learnt his 'cosmology' - the 'ray of creation' - from monks or holy men in Central Asia or the Himalayas, and may have arrived at his conclusion that man is 'asleep' from painful personal experience. In the essay 'Glimpses of Truth' which Ouspensky had heard read aloud when he first met Gurdjieff's Moscow pupils, the emphasis is all on the Law of Three and on Gurdjieff's cosmology.

There seems no doubt that Gurdjieff deliberately set out to 'catch' Ouspensky. He admitted that when Ouspensky left on his trip to India and Ceylon, he instructed his pupils to carefully read his articles to determine what sort of man he was. The detailed care with which he answered questions in their early talks reveals how far he was determined to interest Ouspensky - who was by then a well-known lecturer and author. Gurdjieff wanted to become known, and the best way was to interest men who were already known - Thomas de Hartmann, who was already famous as a ballet composer, was another example.

But for most of the two years after he met Ouspensky, Gurdjieff simply talked. He also planned to present his ballet
The Struggle
of
the Magicians
, which was full of 'sacred dances'. But he had not yet developed the 'exercises' and methods that became the basic part of the Work after he left Russia. Ouspensky describes how they were introduced to the famous 'Stop!' exercise at Essentuki in 1917: Gurdjieff would shout 'Stop!' and everyone had to freeze, no matter what he was doing. (One man got his fingers severely blistered on a glass of boiling tea.) Gurdjieff explained that this exercise was considered sacred in 'schools' but it seems equally likely that he had just invented it. If not, why had he not mentioned it during the past seven years, since his teaching career began? There can also be no doubt that his aim, in part at least, was to become a famous teacher. With new pupils, he insisted on total secrecy - they were not allowed to discuss the Work with anyone who was not part of it. Yet when Ouspensky declined to make such a promise, Gurdjieff gave way. And in later years, when Ouspensky had written down his early experiences with Gurdjieff in 'Fragments of an Unknown Teaching',[1] Gurdjieff read it and approved. He was not a charlatan, a man who wanted fame for its own sake. But he certainly did want fame. So it is important to realize that, although Gurdjieff struck his disciples as a superbeing, he developed, like anyone else, by a slow learning process.