Gurdjieff’s system

 

Gurdjieff himself taught a system of ideas which dealt not only with man but also with the world he lives in. Tonight I am only going to speak about the ideas he taught about man, but I don’t wish to leave the impression that what he taught about the world man lives in is less important than what he taught about man. If one asks oneself the question, “What is the sense and aim of man’s life?”—if one reflects about that question, one sees that it cannot be answered just in terms of man. It must be answered by placing man in a meaningful relation to the universe in which he lives. And for that you have to have a meaningful picture of that universe. So, like every other esoteric system of teaching that I’ve managed to discover, Gurdjieff’s system has two sides: the psychological and the cosmological. But tonight I shall be speaking primarily about the psychological ideas, and since there is a limited time to talk about them, you must expect me, in talking about them, to speak in pretty broad generalizations. Probably there is not an idea which I shall mention tonight which I couldn’t—if I wished to—talk about for the whole evening. So, what I’m going to talk about tonight is tremendously compressed, and obviously when it’s expanded it can and needs to be refined. But I must spread before you what is in effect a large-scale map…