Modern Science and Gurdjieff’s Teaching

Gurdjieff invites us to explore the “sense and aim of human existence.” Why might we be here? Why am I here? The personal pronouns in these questions seem to pertain to the individual, but “here” is this room, this world, this universe that we are a part of. So these questions call us to ponder both ourselves and the larger world. This can lead to contradictions, because the inner world of mind, emotions, spirit, is not easy to relate to the outer world that is the domain today of science and physical law. Some traditions have rectified the conflict with creation stories, as in Genesis. Buddha, on the other hand, called on people not to speculate on questions that cannot be verified by direct experience. In recent times Stephen Jay Gould¹ proposed that science and religion are two “magisteria” with non-overlapping domains. All of these are simply ways to avoid the problem. Across all of time, truth must be universal. While paths up the mountain of truth may be far removed from one another, the summit of the mountain is the same—the reality of the Universe. 

People with great understanding, whom Gurdjieff referred to as “messengers from above,” have appeared at moments to try to convey the truth to people of their time. In ancient times referring to galaxies or the atom would have been impossible. And it is not just the scientific understanding of the world that evolved, it is also the appearance of the scientific method—fearless observation of facts, testing hypotheses, taking nothing on faith, being quantitative.  

So when we arrive at the twentieth century, truth has not changed, but the human context includes modern science that has as its aim the quantitative understanding of the natural world. There is then the confrontation of the scientific and spiritual approaches to truth, which leads many scientists to become atheists. This is a challenge that Gurdjieff encountered beginning at an early age, when he was being trained both for the priesthood and in medicine, and where he was by nature very interested in engineering and practical things. His search was modern and inclusive: how to bring an understanding that could encompass both “the wisdom of the east and the knowledge of the west.”

We can see the influence of the modern scientific method in aspects of Gurdjieff’s teaching that in their entirety distinguish it from traditional approaches. Objective observation, the ground truth of modern science, lies at the heart of Gurdjieff’s approach to spiritual development. While this may sound straightforward, those who try with sincerity soon realize the difficulty, because our ordinary mind is intrinsically unable to encompass the three brains of body, mind, and emotions simultaneously. However difficult it may be in practice, the concept of unbiased and complete collection of data, of resourceful experimentation, is akin to the scientific method. Believe nothing that you have not personally verified. Discover the truth anew through personal experience, through seeing. 

Gurdjieff also emphasizes that “everything is material.”² Emotions, thoughts, higher states of consciousness, all involve substances and energy. These substances evolve by interactions between the external world—food, air, impressions—and substances within the organism. Food evolves by itself through the instinctive functioning of the organism. Conscious efforts enable air and impressions to create finer substances that gradually infuse and transform the body. These ideas are presented with diagrams and numbers, bringing a quantitative perspective to spiritual development.  

Does this not sound intrinsically scientific? Spiritual development is not a phenomenon separate from the physical world, but a scientific process of physical transformation that can be experienced within the human body. It sounds so simple. . . . Of course, while the structure of ideas in In Search of the Miraculous is one that makes sense from a scientific point of view, and clearly was influenced by science, they can make us forget the important role of the feeling. They attract the mind, but in practice the difficulties and subtleties cannot be underestimated. 

Gurdjieff’s teaching includes the outer world, and his ideas are evenly proportioned between inner growth of the individual and the laws and structure of the Universe. Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson takes place in the context of a technologically advanced spaceship, aliens, planets, solar systems, and indeed the universe as a whole. Three brained beings in the book and throughout the Universe are engaged in one of the five strivings of a responsible life—to “know ever more and more concerning the laws of world creation and world maintenance.”³ 

Gurdjieff’s teaching presents cosmoses as domains of the universe that operate on different scales, but are what today we would call “self-similar.” This echoes ancient ideas of human beings as microcosms of the Universe. Gurdjieff notes that the specific manifestations of the laws will differ depending on the cosmos. For example, we cannot through understanding of ourselves know the laws of nucleosynthesis that operate in stars, nor those of cellular metabolism. He claims, however, that there are scale invariant laws that underlie both these domains and the human experience—the laws of three and seven. This is an inspiring vision: that from stellar interiors to planets, humans, cells, and the nucleus of the atom there are fundamental laws that underlie and include all phenomena. Indeed, “threes” are everywhere in science—down to the three subatomic particles that make up the three atomic particles of the atom. The aim is akin to modern science—to discover the mysteries of the Universe on all scales and the laws that apply to them. Key drivers of scientific research are questions, even if they remain unanswered for long periods of time. So, are there fundamental laws that underlie phenomena at all scales, manifested as well within the human experience? Can this be transformed from theoretical idea or superficial observation to real understanding? Such questions have the potential to unite science and spirit, if we could find the inner states and outer experiments with which to address them. 

One might think from the preceding paragraphs that appreciation of modern science would pervade Beelzebub’s Tales. After all, “knowledge of the west” is half of Gurdjieff’s aphorism applying to the human search for meaning. Gurdjieff is indeed laudatory of “objective science” and ancient scientists who carried out elaborate experiments with complex apparatuses that illustrate universal laws and properties.  

Beelzebub also includes statements that presage later scientific discoveries. He calls upon a creation event on the largest scale out of which flowed galaxies, stars, planets, and life— long before the discovery of the Big Bang. He described the Milky Way as one small example of a galactic scale, before any of the 200 billion galaxies had yet been discovered. The moon formed from Earth by cataclysmic impact, consistent with modern views. The hydrogen atom was made up of smaller particles, long before the discovery of subatomic particles.  

As for modern science itself and its practitioners, he is not impressed, referring to “so-called scientists, “scientists of new formation” and so on. He states that present-day scientists have a “fully developed inherency to wiseacre.”⁴ Gurdjieff calls upon the importance of three centered living and contact with “objective conscience,” deeply submerged within us, as a guide to behavior. These are indeed mostly lacking in the practice of modern science, always tainted by ego, with applications that genetically modify animals leading to their great suffering, create chemicals that damage all of life, and develop ever more lethal weapons of destruction. 

Amidst these shortcomings are the amazing discoveries of modern science, such as the periodic table, the structure of the atom, DNA, plate tectonics, evolution, and the Big Bang. These discoveries, which emerged despite the failings of the scientists that participated in them, provide a vastly increased understanding of the natural world.  

Some of these discoveries were emerging in the late nineteenth century—such as the periodic table and Darwinian evolution. Towards these Gurdjieff is dismissive, and at the same time sprinkles Beelzebub with scientific nonsense. He claims the Sun is as cold as the North Pole. The idea that the Moon will become like Earth and Earth like the Sun belies the fundamental importance of the size of these objects, which cannot be changed. We now know that chimpanzees and humans diverged from a common ancestor some six million years ago, but Gurdjieff proposes a reprehensible alternative, while calling out Darwin, among the greatest of scientists, as “wiseacring . . . with maximum intensity.”⁵  

How does a scientist deal with such apparent malarkey? One aspect is to realize that much of Beelzebub is allegorical rather than literal. One may also gradually discover that Beelzebub’s Tales is “state-dependent,”—designed to create experiences rather than give information. Understanding in modern science is a function of the ordinary mind, or “one-brained.” Understanding in the Gurdjieffian sense is three-brained, and a property of both knowledge and the mysterious word, Being. When one ceases to be completely identified with one’s thoughts, the limitations of the ordinary mind become apparent: its wandering nature, fixed ideas, fantasies, tendency to wise-acre, and lack of connection to present reality. Gurdjieff assaults the tendencies of this mind in many ways in Beelzebub's Tales, for example by using new words for which we have no associations. He offends us and in places says things that do not appear to be true, sometimes shortly afterwards dropping a jewel that we can only receive if we have not become identified with the reaction and strive for a more open state. Then, passages that once seemed wrong or impenetrable may become pregnant with meaning and feeling. One is then led to ask, is there a deeper meaning which in our ordinary state is invisible, and cannot be accessed by the ordinary mind alone? 

Throughout BeelzebubTales Gurdjieff links three-brained beings to their planet. “On each planet . . . the planetary bodies of the three-brained beings are coated and take on an exterior form corresponding to the nature of that planet, adapting to it in every detail.”⁶ Life is planetary. We are in every detail of our functioning, planetary beings, not just of any planet—but this planet, at this moment in Earth history.  

The emergent understanding of Earth history places human beings in a planetary context. Earth has gone through a long process of transformation from lifeless rock to verdant present. There are discrete stages that can be recognized by the physical state of the planet and the life that is present. If planetary evolution follows laws like physics and chemistry, then on Earth we can study this process as it may play out across the Universe. Human beings and civilization are only the most recent planetary transformation, a stage of planetary evolution. 

The young planet was violent, but quite rapidly cooled to a stable state with rocks, an ocean, and climate stability. Life soon began, but it consisted of tiny microbes that were energy inefficient, called prokaryotes. After a billion years or so, these organisms developed photosynthesis, which expanded their ability to receive energy from the Sun and allowed life to become much more prevalent. Photosynthesis, however, produced a potent and energetic molecule, oxygen gas, which was toxic for early life. Over the next billion years life gradually developed protection against oxygen (anti-oxidants), and also learned to use oxygen to obtain eighteen times more energy from food, leading to a revolution in life’s size and function. The prokaryotic cells related to one another and formed partnerships that became stable—eukaryotic cells that were thousands of times larger and required oxygen. The oxygen from the new biosphere began to permeate and transform the planetary surface. After several hundred million years the surface became saturated, and oxygen could build up in the atmosphere. The availability of this special chemical then allowed the eukaryotic cells to make partnerships—the first visible multi-cellular organisms, that could intentionally transport oxygen through breathing. These plants and animals soon emerged from the ocean to the land, and covered the entire surface with life, receiving and processing ever more energy from the Sun. 

In each stage of its evolution, a planet develops new access to energy and enlarged scales of relationship, leading to a profound modification of planetary function. Most planets may be halted at early stages. Mars and Venus may be examples.  

Human civilization is the latest revolution in planetary function. Language permits communication across space and time. Starting in the nineteenth century with the first telegraph wire, a global network of communications began, leading to a kind of planetary nervous system. Planetary scale sensing emerged. Symbioses among us are essential for our survival and give possibilities that no individual can provide. We can explore the laws of the Universe, understand where we come from, transform the planetary surface and carry out intentional actions such as space travel and the intentional modification of biological evolution. We are the greatest revolution in all of Earth’s 4.5 billion years of history, and it is happening now in the blink of a planetary eye.  

Is the next stage of planetary evolution the development of a conscious planet? Human beings are potentially an organ of planetary consciousness, a kind of planetary brain, permitting planetary awareness and a presence in what may be a conscious galaxy. Of course, our behavior is divorced from that, as we spread instead like a planetary cancer, making use of our unparalleled power for personal egotism, destroying the life of the planet without regard for its welfare, and killing each other with ever greater efficiency.  

Earth may then be at a crisis point in the latest stage of planetary evolution—will it be able to develop a benign consciousness attuned to planetary welfare? Madame de Salzmann in her later years often emphasized the Earth, saying that if a higher influence did not begin to operate then “Earth will go down” and that we have a responsibility for that. 

What might be our responsibility? The next stage of planetary evolution may depend on the spiritual evolution of three brained beings that appear on the surface. Am I a cell of a planetary brain, or planetary cancer? In past revolutions there has been novel access to energy and increased scale of relationship. Clearly, the mechanical forms of energy and relationship—fossil fuels (or renewable energy) and the internet—are not the answer. What would be the new forms of energy and relationship that human beings have the potential to bring to the planet that we depend on, and whose future may depend on us? From this perspective, the teaching of Mr. Gurdjieff may be directly attuned to the planetary crisis that appears so acutely around us. What if we were able to live according to the words Beelzebub says apply to three-centered beings throughout the Universe: 

“We in gratitude will maintain all that thou hast created.”⁷  

Might the planet be transformed? How would it be possible?