Media Insights

Any kind of organization is going to say, “Ok; who can come? Who can come in the door?” Not everybody can come in the door. Well, what kind of qualifications do you set? And, this is an endless difficulty.

Early Groups and Contemporary Groups

First of all, Gurdjieff never refused people. If somebody wanted to come because they had read a newspaper article or they were simply curious or whatever, he never turned anybody away. However, after Gurdjieff died, then the question is how do we go from here? There had to be some kind of organized effort to do that. So, Madame Jeanne de Salzmann brought together many of the people who had been close to Gurdjieff and who had worked with him for years. She formed a foundation (the Gurdjieff Foundation), and they decided how they were going to organize group activities or students who had been working with them individually over a period of, again, years.

So, the early formations took place in Paris, in London, and then through Lord Pentland, in New York. Those were the first. They have since grown. There is a major branch, if you will, of the foundation in San Francisco, but there are many regional centers throughout the United States, 45 or 50 of them. In South America, it is the same kind of thing. Madame de Salzmann’s daughter, one of her daughters, Natalie, went to Venezuela and she began what has become a thriving and expanding kind of movement.

Now, that’s one lineage, if you will, one way that has its pluses and minuses, you can see. Any kind of organization is going to say, “Ok; who can come? Who can come in the door?” Not everybody can come in the door. Well, what kind of qualifications do you set? And, this is an endless difficulty. For instance, to give it a more personal kind of emphasis on how you go through this sift/sort, I met many people years ago, young people who had come in sometimes to me as patients, sometimes I would simply meet them under other kinds of social conditions, and you do get impressions. I think we all get impressions about whether somebody is serious about life, or not. If somebody is constantly caught up in the dalliance of getting better, making more money, buying a new car and so forth and so on, you don’t pursue a conversation of values much with those people. Sure there is discrimination required in that kind of situation, and sure you’re going to make mistakes. There is no question you’re going to miss the guy because he is talking out his inner world so openly that you don’t see that he’s really suffering, or what he is seeing. Sure, that happens. But, still in all, from the contacts that we have in life, we do find and bump into people who seem to have an interest in serious questions. So, with those people, maybe you give them something to read, and you say, “Hey, you know, you might be interested in this or that,” or whatever. So, you give them something that is reachable. In Search of the Miraculous is already a pretty big thing.

Mrs. Popoff made great use of the Nicoll Commentaries. Maurice Nicoll was a British psychi-atrist. In fact, he was to be the inheritor of Carl Jung but he chose to go to Gurdjieff. So, he was already deeply involved in his own spiritual journey when he met Gurdjieff. So, finally, when he established himself and had his own groups, he began to write these weekly little essays that would raise one specific point that has to do with selfishness, that has to do with identification, that has to do with hypnotic events . . . He did this for five years, so he wrote a lot of commentaries. Those have been, now, all published. There are five volumes of the Nicoll Commentaries. They are very accessible and straight ahead. Almost anybody could pick up one and they would get something out of it. It would raise important questions.

Mrs. Popoff made great use of the Nicoll Commentaries. We used them in our groups for several years. That might be one of the books that you would say, “Here; read this and let me know what you think of it.” And perhaps with some other folks, you might recommend them reading In Search of the Miraculous.

So, you put some feelers out and you get some feedback, or you don’t, and somebody returns the book to you in a week and says, “This guy is nuts!” That’s the end of it. So, it’s like that. For other people, especially in recent years, there is more available literature. You go on the internet and there are various websites; there is just a ton of things. And, I am sure that there are young people who discover something that may be of interest. They see the Movements and they say, “My God; that’s really remarkable!” Well, if they are that kind of person, they are drawn to that. In any event, they go looking and they say, “I wonder how I can meet other people who do this?” There are lots of places, lots of websites that are helpful.

The All and Everything International Humanities Conference is one of those. There is a website. There are people who inquire and say, “Gee, I didn’t know you people were around. I’d be interested in coming and finding out more.” So, there is that. There has always been a great hesitation, and I think appropriately so, to go out and try to advertise. It is more just individual listening, and probing and trying to be there for people, to help them by reading something or by talking further about it, or whatever, then establishing a kind of walkway into group activities.