# Transformation in Translation: G.I. Gurdjieff as Cosmopolitan of the Early Twentieth Century ## Transformation in Translation: G.I. Gurdjieff as Cosmopolitan of the Early Twentieth Century Michael Pittman ![Blue Rectangle](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2025-01/Screen%20Shot%202025-01-22%20at%204.46.20%20PM.png?itok=0fG7fqHu) ## Transformation in Translation: G. I. Gurdjieff as Cosmopolitan of the early Twentieth Century The aim of this essay is to consider some of the conditions and influences in G. I. Gurdjieff’s early life, his own response to them, as well as the later expression of his ideas and forms of his work through the lens of Cosmopolitanism.[1](#references) Gurdjieff navigated the space between the so-called East and West, both geographically and spiritually. In *Meetings with Remarkable Men*, Gurdjieff’s semi-autobiographical book, he writes about his early life and shares stories about his father, his early teachers, and fellow travellers. Conveyed within these stories and teachings, the details of his early life in the Caucasus shine through. Embodying the diversity of languages of the region, Gurdjieff spoke Armenian, Greek, and Turkish, as well as other languages. The Caucasus—or, using the earlier descriptor Transcaucasia—was frequently embattled, the site of skirmishes, wars, and border disputes. These tensions were also a significant influence on Gurdjieff’s formation, thinking, and worldview. Gurdjieff is also known to have later travelled in Central Asia, Egypt, India, and Tibet; his driving desire was to find the sense and aim of life on earth. His magnum opus, *Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson*, or *All and Everything*, sought to create, as I have argued elsewhere,[2](#references) a new “discourse on the soul” based on the notion of “conscious labor and intentional suffering.” Arising from this discourse on the soul is a presentation of human beings as “three-brained beings” living in an expanding universe—the megalocosmos—with the potential to live as one created in the image of God. The diversity and richness of Gurdjieff’s early life in the Caucasus resonate throughout his ideas, writings, and the formulation of his view of human beings and their place in the world and universe. ### On Cosmopolitanism and the Caucasus Early references to the notion of cosmopolitanism have been cited in reference to the Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope, who, when asked where he came from, declared: “I am a citizen of the World” (kosmopolite, or citizen of the cosmos). This concept was also explored by Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century and the sociologist Emile Durkheim in the late nineteenth century.[3](#references) It has received renewed attention since the 1990s as a theoretical term used to explore and identify the significance of place and meaning in the world. The term cosmopolitanism is still contested by some as, on the one hand, a proclamation of patriotism and, on the other, a kind of elitism, out of touch with the travails of the world. Here I draw on Kwame Anthony Appiah’s usage of the sense of “rooted Cosmopolitanism” as a particularly useful way to consider Gurdjieff’s early life and later teachings and writings.[4](#references) Appiah resists the facile applications of the term to emphasize the notion of the bounded nature of one’s roots, even as one seeks to embrace and connect with a larger sense of the world. Through the lens of “rooted cosmopolitanism,” Gurdjieff’s valuation of local forms of knowledge and even ethical orientations that he learned as a young man are positioned within a larger, cosmopolitan worldview. Here I use the term to highlight elements of Gurdjieff’s early orientation to the world—or cosmos—and to his later presentation and understanding of the cosmos at large—the megalocosmos—and the human being’s place in it. In Gurdjieff’s life and work, we find the indelible imprint of cosmopolitanism. The echoes of Gurdjieff’s cosmopolitanism can be discovered in the languages and culture he was exposed to as a young person, but also, later, in the ideas and expressions in his teaching, writing, and movements. While the Caucasus is little studied in Europe and the United States, it has had a long and varied, even mythical, history. About the Caucasus, Thomas de Waal writes, “For centuries, the name Caucasus was synonymous in Europe with wild cold mountains and with the myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and was punished by being chained to the icy peaks.”[5](#references) He adds that the highland geography of the Caucasus contributes to the diversity of the region, including its ethnic diversity. Linguistically, we can find early Arab references to the Caucasus as “the djabal al-alsun, or the ‘mountain of languages,’ for its abundances of languages and the North and South Caucasus together have the greatest density of distinct languages anywhere on earth.”[6](#references) de Waal also adds that the southern Caucasus alone has approximately ten nationalities. Especially during the period that Gurdjieff lived, the region was fraught with war and conflict as well as frequent border disputes.[7](#references) Gurdjieff grew up in and around the region of the Caucasus and his world view expanded as he encountered the variety of people, languages, and cultures around him. And while his worldview expanded, he always placed a high value on the traditions, cultures, music, and modes of storytelling that he grew up with. ### Cosmopolitanism and Beelzebub’s Tales The expressions of Gurdjieff’s cosmopolitanism reflect a sense of at-homeness and connection to multiple, successive levels of belonging, from the local to the universal. And, in *Beelzebub’s Tales*, Gurdjieff undoubtedly reflects a cosmopolitan world view. *Beelzebub’s Tales* is told in the mode of a frame tale, as a dialogue between Beelzebub and his grandson Hassein, and reflects an influence, both direct and indirect, from oral storytelling, popular culture, and early literary forms that were prevalent in the texts of Asia, the Middle East, and even Europe. Gurdjieff also drew on the local lore, folktales, and stories of the Caucasus and the region, but did not hesitate to criticize them or the way they had arrived to us in the modern period. In the introduction to the book, Gurdjieff remarks that the task of his book is “to destroy, mercilessly, without any compromises whatsoever, in the mentation and feelings of the reader, the beliefs and views, by centuries rooted in him, about everything existing in the world.”[8](#references) While respecting fundamental elements of the local, Gurdjieff rejects the privileging of ethnic, national, or regional identities. Within this far-reaching narrative, we are introduced to “three-brained beings,” the epithet used to describe not just human beings but a range of other beings living in the expanding universe. Generically, the three-brained being reflects the tripartite structure of a being with mind, feeling, and body. Throughout the *Tales*, the reader is provided with a sense and perspective that the three-brained beings of earth are out of sync with other three-brained beings of the universe. Arising out of *Beelzebub’s Tales* is Gurdjieff’s distillation of the spiritual teachings and traditions that he encountered in his life and is perhaps most potently articulated in the phrase “conscious labor and intentional suffering.” The neologism Gurdjieff employs for conscious labor and intentional suffering is “being-partkdolg-duty,” which emphasizes the sense of duty as intrinsically connected to the development and possession of being. Partk is from Armenian, meaning duty, and dolg is from Russian, also meaning duty. Thus, the phrase emphasizes and reemphasizes twice more the significance of duty, or obligation, in relation to being: Being-duty-duty-duty. J. G. Bennett, in a talk on *Beelzebub’s Tales*, adds that being-partk-dolg-duty means, “what is intrinsically right of itself.” He continues, “Being-partk-dolg-duty is that which brings a complete welfare, spiritual and material, together. It means that which can assure us of the complete welfare of the individual, of the society, and of mankind.”[9](#references) The distillation of a spiritual discourse based on “conscious labor and intentional suffering” allows Gurdjieff to present a fluid and flexible model for understanding spiritual transformation and transmission in a wide variety of contexts, times, and places. ### From Cosmos to Megalocosmos Within the frame of *Tales*, we are also introduced to a cosmology that includes, especially later in the book, the notion of the human being as created in the image of God. The term *tetartocosmos* is first used by Beelzebub in Chapter 9 as a brief reference to three-brained beings, including those on Earth. He next uses the term and expands upon it nearly seven hundred pages later in the book in the chapter “The Holy Planet Purgatory.” Here, Beelzebub, speaking to Hassein, explains that in the creation of the universe there were gradually formed certain three-brained systems, made up of microcosmoses, called Tetartocosmoses. Additionally, he confirms to Hassein, these beings are also just like those beings of Earth that he has become so interested in. The chapter “The Holy Planet Purgatory,” in a much-condensed form, presents key details of Gurdjieff’s cosmology and cosmography, including the creation of the universe, and the role of three-brained beings in it. In introducing the creation of the world, the notion of different levels of organizational strata are introduced, ranging from microcosmoses all the way up to the megalocosmos. While the term megalocosmos – —or the entirety of the universe – —was mentioned once before in the book, the chapter on Purgatory attempts to explain the significance of this term in relation to the transformation of substances and the role of individual beings. In this chapter, Beelzebub shares some of the knowledge he learned about the creation of the universe: “It was just during this same period of the flow of time that there came to our CREATOR ALL-MAINTAINER the forced need to create our present existing ‘Megalocosmos,’ i.e., our World.”[10](#references) Beelzebub then goes on to describe how the megalocosmos contains and operates according to two sacred laws, the Law of Three (*triamazikamno*), and the Law of Seven (*heptaparaparshinokh*) in far greater detail. After a lengthy and detailed discussion on the operation of these sacred laws of world creation and world maintenance, and the necessity to change their functioning, Beelzebub shares an important detail about the workings of the cosmos. He also describes here how Hassein’s “favorites,” the humans on earth, are like all other three-centered beings in the universe—or megalocosmos—and how through them the necessary exchange of substances takes place. In the continuing passages, Gurdjieff explains the correspondence between three-brained beings and the megalocosmos: > ...each three-brained being arisen on this planet of yours represents in himself also, in all respects, just like every three-brained being in all our Universe, an exact similarity of the whole Megalocosmos. > > “The difference between each of them and our common great Megalocosmos is only in scale.[11](#references) The Megalocosmos is represented as the whole cosmos, and the three-brained beings of earth, just like all other three-brained beings, reflect the structure of the entire megalocosmos. What is perhaps more potent may be the re-rendering of the notion that the human being is created in the “image of God” in the next passage: > Here you should know that your contemporary favorites very often use a notion taken by them from somewhere, I do not know whether instinctively, emotionally, or automatically, and expressed by them in the following words: ‘We are the images of God.’ > > .… And indeed, each of them is the image of God, not of that ‘God’ which they have in their bobtailed picturings, but of the real God, by which word we sometimes still call our common Megalocosmos.[12](#references) Now stated in quasi-scientific language but resonant with the language of religion, Gurdjieff’s view of the human being is given a new grounding. This new grounding contrasts with the image of God founded upon the inherited images received from the past, which tend to either oversimplify God’s nature or exaggerate and emphasize God’s remoteness. Gurdjieff goes on to declare to Hassein that, despite all the deleterious imaginings of God as similar to themselves, “each of your favorites, separately, is, in his whole presence, exactly similar in every respect to our Megalocosmos.”[13](#references) Gurdjieff recasts and expands the significance of the human being, both scientifically and symbolically, with weighty significance: contained within each three-brained being is the very structure and significance of the megalocosmos. In this sense, we might shift the emphasis from cosmos to megalocosmos, from the human as cosmopolitan to human as “megalocosmopolitan.” The response, then, to the question posed to Diogenes is, for Gurdjieff, “I am a citizen of the megalocosmos.” One must also emphasize that there is an additional simultaneity: three-brained beings are beings who inhabit not just the cosmos, but the megalocosmos as a whole and, simultaneously, have the potential to live as the megalocosmos itself —a reflection of God with all the potential and incumbent responsibility that goes along with the designation. ### The Cosmopolitanism of Compassion To conclude, I suggest that Gurdjieff’s work and teachings provide an expanded view of cosmopolitanism —or even megalocosmopolitanism —as a cosmopolitanism of compassion. The renewed view provided in *Beelzebub’s Tales* of a human being created in the image of God has the potential to take responsibility for one’s own life, as well as for others, within a greatly expanded sense of universal duty and belonging. In later talks, Gurdjieff emphasized the importance of recognizing and living out what it means to be made in the image of God more explicitly. Near the end of *Beelzebub’s Tales,* writing in his own voice, Gurdjieff remarks that he continues to be influenced by a teaching inculcated in him as a child, growing up in the Caucasus: “‘’the highest aim and sense of human life is the striving for the welfare of one’s neighbor,’ and that this is attainable only through the conscious renunciation of one’s own.”[14](#references) For Gurdjieff, the diversity and richness of his own upbringing in the Caucasus, including the love he felt for his parents, gave birth to a universal vision and cosmology based on the principle of love and compassion for others. Echoing this aim in a talk of 1941, Gurdjieff connects this capacity to the relationship one has with one’s parents as a generative impulse: “Love of your neighbour; that is the Way. Bring to everyone that which you felt for your parents.”[15](#references) ### Author Biography Michael Pittman, Ph.D. is an independent scholar whose research and publications have focused primarily on the life and writings of G.I. Gurdjieff. Drawing on a background in Comparative Literature and Religion, he continues to return to Armenia and Turkey for teaching and research, especially on the life of Gurdjieff and the traditions and practices of Sufism. His book-length work, *Classical Spirituality in Contemporary America: The Confluence and Contribution of Gurdjieff and Sufism* (Continuum 2012), addresses the cultural and religious influences on Gurdjieff’s work, as well as the influence that Gurdjieff and Sufism continue to have in contemporary religious and spiritual culture in North America. His latest article is entitled, “Concluding *Beelzebub’s Tales*: Gurdjieffian Notions of the Soul and the Import of Human Life,” appearing in *Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review*. ![Michael Pittman](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/2024-12/Pittman_square.png?itok=U3Kbia_B) ## References 1\. This essay is an extension of an earlier essay: Michael Pittman, “21st Century Reflections on G. I. Gurdjieff and Late 19th/Early 20th Century Cosmopolitanism in the Caucasus,” *Creoles, Diasporas, and Cosmopolitanisms*, ed. David Gallagher (London and Washington, DC: Academica Press, 2011). [\[Return to Section\]](#section1) 2\. Michael Pittman, *Classical Spirituality in Contemporary America: The Confluence and Contribution of G.I. Gurdjieff and Sufism* (London: Continuum, 2012). [\[Return to Section\]](#section1) 3\. Barney Warf, "Cosmopolitanism," *International Encyclopedia of Human Geography*, 2nd ed, ed. Rob Kitchin and Nigel Thrift (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2020), 419-22. [\[Return to Section\]](#section2) 4\. Kwame Anthony Appiah, *Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers* (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), 217. [\[Return to Section\]](#section2) 5\. Thomas de Waal, The Caucasus: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). [\[Return to Section\]](#section2) 6\. Ibid. [\[Return to Section\]](#section2) 7\. Christopher Baumer, *History of the Caucasus: At the Crossroads of Empires* (London: I. B. Tauris, 2021). [\[Return to Section\]](#section2) 8\. Baumer. [\[Return to Section\]](#section3) 9\. J G. Bennett, *Talks on* *Beelzebub’s Tales* (Santa Fe: Bennett Books, 2007), 136–37. [\[Return to Section\]](#section3) 10\. G. I. Gurdjieff, *Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson* (New York: E. F. Dutton & Co., 1950), 749. [\[Return to Section\]](#section4) 11\. Gurdjieff, *Beelzebub’s Tales*, 749–50. [\[Return to Section\]](#section4) 12\. Gurdjieff, *Beelzebub’s Tales*, 775. [\[Return to Section\]](#section4) 13\. Gurdjieff, *Beelzebub’s Tales*, 777. [\[Return to Section\]](#section4) 14\. Gurdjieff, *Beelzebub’s Tales*, 1186. [\[Return to Section\]](#section5) 15\. G. I. Gurdjieff, *Transcripts of Gurdjieff’s Wartime Meetings: 1941–1946* (London: Book Studio, 2019), 4. [\[Return to Section\]](#section5) #### Suggested Citation Pittman, Michael. "Transformation in Translation: G.I. Gurdjieff as Cosmopolitan of the early Twentieth Century" in The Teachings & Legacy of G.I.Gurdjieff: Conference Anthology, edited by Carole Cusack and Gosia Sklodowska. Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, 2025. © License: CC BY-NC.