Understanding of the East

One of the aphorisms attributed to Gurdjieff is "Take the understanding of the East and the knowledge of the West—and then seek." There is no doubt that Gurdjieff himself took a great deal of understanding from the East, including India. In Beelzebub Tales to His Grandson he speaks about the importance and wisdom of the Pearl-land, which was later called Hindustan or India, and where traditional wisdom gradually dwindled following the usual cosmological laws. He visited India several times and refers to India on many occasions in his writings, often with the suggestion that in ancient times, if not now, esoteric schools with real knowledge had existed there. He even referred to himself as a “Hindu” in his first public announcement in a Moscow newspaper in 1914, regarding the performance of an “Indian” mystery play called The Struggle of the Magicians.¹ This particular instance may not be anything more than a useful role-playing, but in spirit he could be called a Hindu. As is well known, neither the word "Hindu" nor "India" is of Indian origin. The river Sindhu, marking the boundary of the Persian empire and Indian kingdoms, was pronounced by the Persians as “Hindu,” and the land on the other side was marked as “Hindustan,” meaning the land of the Hindus. Written in Greek, the first letter was not pronounced, and in English, the name of the river Sindhu became Indus, from where one gets India. According to the traditional nomenclature, what is called “Hinduism” is Sanatana Dharma (meaning “Eternal Order”), and anybody who wishes to and connects with that level, as did Gurdjieff, can be called a Hindu. 

Gurdjieff was quite knowledgeable about Indian traditions and often mercilessly critical of their exaggerations and of the many fads derived from India which were current in the occult and spiritualist circles of his day. Gurdjieff brings a revitalizing challenge to the traditions, not to destroy them, but in order to recover and release their essential core from the encrustation of dogma, exclusivism, and mechanical repetition. Gurdjieff was a traditionalist, although from all accounts a very untraditional one, in the sense that he had an enormous respect for the traditions and believed that all the major traditions once carried a kernel of truth that has in general been lost and which may be recovered from the fragments which have been preserved in the sacred texts and ceremonies of many religions. While speaking to people largely of Judeo-Christian background, he referred to his Work as “esoteric Christianity.” But one feels that in other contexts he might have called it “esoteric Buddhism” or “esoteric Hinduism” as well. Esoteric does not refer to any concealment, but rather to a level which is more inner and higher, and which is not available to ordinary, unintegrated, mind and feeling. To approach the esoteric level, a preparation is needed: a preparation not only to understand truth but also to withstand it. More than anything else, this requires a sacrifice of our mental and emotional habits which keep us tethered to our present mechanical level. 

Sentimentality and scholasticism are the two main avenues by which the vitality of any spiritual tradition is drained. This has also happened in India. One particularly striking example of a habit of thought in connection with the Indian tradition is that of kundalini, which is said to be a force which is situated coiled up like an earring or a serpent at the base of the spine, in the chakra (subtle center of energy in the body) representing the earth (prithivi). In many religious and philosophical circles in India, especially those fascinated by occult phenomena, kundalini is given a very high valuation. But Gurdjieff has nothing positive to say about kundalini, which in Beelzebub's Tales is labelled kundalina, strongly associated with the organ kundabuffer which has the property of making human beings perceive reality topsy-turvy.²  

With the intention "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,"³ Gurdjieff is very critical of the suggestively parallel beliefs about kundalini. P. D. Ouspensky quotes Gurdjieff as saying, “In reality Kundalini is the power of imagination, the power of fantasy, which takes the place of a real function . . . Kundalini can act in all centers, and with its help, all the centers can be satisfied with the imaginary instead of the real . . . Kundalini is a force put into men in order to keep them in their present state. If men could really see their true position and could understand all the horror of it, they would be unable to remain where they are even for one second. They would begin to seek a way out and they would quickly find it, because there is a way out; but men fail to see simply because they are hypnotized. Kundalini is the force that keeps them in a hypnotic state. 'To awaken' for man means to be 'dehypnotized.’”⁴ 

As one recovers from the shock dealt by Gurdjieff's merciless criticism of one of the commonly regarded jewels of the Indian tradition, one begins to look at the tradition again. One discovers that the most thorough and insightful authority on Yoga, Patañjali, author of the celebrated Yoga Sutras, never mentions kundalini. It is also not mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita, perhaps the single most important spiritual text to emerge from India. And some of the very ancient and authoritative texts on Yoga, such as Yoga Yajñavalkya, regard kundalini to be a hindrance in a person’s spiritual evolution, an impediment that needs to be removed in order to be touched and transformed by the energy from Heaven. The human being is situated along an axis stretched from Heaven to Earth, and the proper inner order demands a flow of energy (prana) from above downwards. Naturally, the powers from below, entrenched and coiled up in the organism as kundalini, resist and try to block the entry and movement of prana from Above.  

In the Sikh tradition, we find this remark: "To Gurmat (vision of the ten Sikh gurus) "ignorance," "delusion," "unlearned," "unwise" is kundalini; it means knotting of one's mind, or doubts and confusions in one's mind."⁵It may also be useful to quote a highly regarded contemporary authority on Yoga, T. K.V. Desikachar, in this regard: "Kundalini is nothing but what has been called avidya (ignorance). In the same way that avidya has become so powerful that it stops purusha [spirit] from seeing, kundalini blocks prana from entering the sushumna (the central channel in the body for the flow of prana).”⁶ Nevertheless, it is true that cultural degeneration takes place following the general cosmological laws. In much of the Indian society, kundalini has been placed at a high level in its ability to connect with the Divine spirit, prana.  

Returning to the remark about taking the understanding of the East, Gurdjieff refers to his teaching as a yoga, a classical Sanskrit word meaning “uniting with the Highest.” According to Gurdjieff, “The Fourth Way is the way of ‘Haida-yoga.’” It resembles the way of the yogi, but at the same time it has something different. Like the yogi, the Haida-yogi studies everything that can be studied. But he has the means of knowing more than an ordinary yogi can know. . . . Of a hundred yogis perhaps only one knows these secrets. The point is that there is a certain prepared knowledge which speeds up work on the way. . . . A yogi spends five hours, a ‘Haida-yogi’ one hour. The latter uses knowledge which the yogi has not got. A yogi does in a year what a 'Haida-yogi' does in a month. And so it is in everything.”⁷  

Again, one must accept the fact that at the mass level, yoga has simply become a physical exercise or simply reciting some verses from the classic text, Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras. However, the aim of yoga is “to stop all the movements of the mind” (Yoga Sutras 1:2), and “for cultivating samadhi and for weakening the hindrances” (Yoga Sutras 2:2). And "Samadhi is the state when the self is not, when there is awareness only of the object of meditation" (Yoga Sutras 3:3).⁸ Any serious practice of yoga involves an eight-fold path involving attention to one's body, breath, attention, practices assisting development of conscience and consciousness, the very practices that assisted the enhancement of the quality of being of the Buddha, and in modern times of Swami Vivekananda, Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, and many other remarkable sages. Of course, most of the so-called yogis in India or elsewhere are hardly at that level of being.  

There are many similarities and some radical differences between the Abrahamic teachings and the Indian teachings. Most of the differences arise from the important fact that in the Indian traditions there is an emanation myth rather than a myth of creation in the Abrahamic tradition. Brahman [the label for the Highest Reality, literally meaning “vastness”] did not create the universe, but the whole universe emanated from the substance of Brahman. As is explained in the oldest Upanishad, Brihadāranyaka Upanishad, just as the spider web emanates from the substance of the spider, but the spider can move anywhere on the web or away from it, the whole manifested universe has emanated from the substance of Brahman, but Brahman is not confined to the manifested universe. Consequently, everything in the universe, even rocks and mountains, has a particle of Brahman consciousness in it. Therefore, everything in nature, including the Earth, the Moon and the Sun, is regarded as alive with some consciousness. There is a strong emphasis in the Indian traditions that every level of reality, including human beings, animals, and rocks, is wishing to evolve in order to return back home, to the Source, to Brahman. But with the rise of the underlying assumptions of modern reductionist and materialist science, the whole of nature, including our body, which is individualized Nature, is regarded as mechanical. Therefore, Gurdjieff's emphasis on the possibility of the evolution of the moon and the earth strikes many people as unscientific. Here is an excerpt from P. D. Ouspensky's book In Search of the Miraculous: 

“What interested me in this talk was that G. spoke of the planets and the moon as living beings, having definite ages, a definite period of life and possibilities of development and transition to other planes of being. From what he said it appeared that the moon was not a ‘dead planet,’ as is usually accepted, but, on the contrary, a ‘planet in birth’; a planet at the very initial stages of its development which had not yet reached ‘the degree of intelligence possessed by the earth,’ as he expressed it.                                                                                      

“‘But the moon is growing and developing,’ said G.,’ and some time, it will, possibly, attain the same level as the earth. Then, near it, a new moon will appear, and the earth will become their sun. At one time the sun was like the earth and the earth like the moon. And earlier still the sun was like the moon.’ . . .  

“For instance, the evolution of humanity beyond a certain point, or, to speak more correctly, above a certain percentage, would be fatal for the moon. The moon at present feeds on organic life, on humanity. Humanity is a part of organic life; this means that humanity is food for the moon. If all men were to become too intelligent, they would not want to be eaten by the moon.”⁹ 

Critics of Gurdjieff's teaching, as well its followers, are struck by his assertion that humanity is food for the moon and consider this idea to be an original creation of Gurdjieff. However, this fact has been clearly addressed in the Indian tradition since ancient times. The Brihadāranyaka Upanishad (VI.2.15–16), as well as the almost equally ancient Chāndogya Upanishad (V.10.1–5), describes two different results—the devas (enlightened beings, gods, or angels) will feed the Sun after death and most of the human beings will feed the Moon.  

According to the Satapatha Brāhmana (III.8.1.2–3), “Only those may enter the Sun door who can truly respond to the question ‘Who are you?’ with ‘Nobody.’”  

According to the Kaushītaki-Brāhmana Upanishad (I.2): “When people depart from this world, it is to the moon that they all go. By means of their life breaths the moon swells up in the fortnight of waxing, and through the fortnight of waning it propels them to new birth. Now, the moon is the door to the heavenly world. It allows those who answer its question to pass. As to those who do not answer its question, after they have become rain, it rains them down here on earth, where they are born again in these various conditions—as a worm, an insect, a fish, a bird, a lion, a boar, a rhinoceros, a tiger, a man, or some other creature—each in accordance with his actions and his knowledge. . . . Who are you? (he is asked again). ‘I am you,’ he replies. Then he sets him free.”