Gurdjieff is famous for his improvisational creativity and the numbers of ideas and forms of practice he generated. It is in part the vast number of ideas, movements, and other paraphanelia in his legacy which give him a certain mystery. They mystery, along with his use of Exoticism, his experience as a magician and stage hypnotist and raconteur, elevated him to the stature in some people’s minds of a incarnate god.
In fact, it would seem, upon examination of many of his works, that a combinatorial play lay at the bottom of his creativity. One finds in many stories in his book Beelzebub’s Tales, for instance, a repetition of elements which indicate the recombination of a relatively small number of elements. Many of his movements appear to be highly patterned, with the group of often six dancers moving through multiplication series and other group patterns. How, why, and to what end is a long discussion, but for the purposes of this post we may simply say that a combinatorial process lurks behind these patterns seen in the primary works left behind as part of his legacy.
Gurdjieff is particularly well known for the emblem of his school, the enneagram. Although much has been made of the ancient origins of the enneagram, with references to Athanasius Kircher, Raymon Lull, Pythagorus, and supposed Sufi schools, nonethless I have seen no evidence for the existence of the enneagram prior to Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff himself appears to have said almost nothing about the symbol or its importance in his system other than to describe an octave of transformation of various “foods” through the three centers of body (food), emotion (air), and mind (impressions). The food diagram that resulted is a sufficiently precise bit of pseudo-science to provoke a kind of gullible respect from those emotionally invested in his teaching at the same time they fail to justify its importance through any examples of its practical value. In any case, Gurdjieff himself said almost nothing of the enneagram despite making it the emblem of his School.
Gurdjieff did, however, make comments about symbolism, theosophical addition, and other mathematically related topics that, along with the patterned nature of his writings and movements, allow us to infer how he used the enneagram and its importance to him.
The first use of the enneagram was as a point of contemplation. In contemplating the enneagram, the view naturally begins to associate its circle, triangle, hexagram, points and lines metaphorically with whatever ideas or thoughts are present at the time. Gurdjieff seems likely to have hit upon prevalent esoteric ideas of his time which associated geometric forms with various philosphical ideas, a long tradition in the Western world, some of whose proponents we mentioned above. Philosophically, Gurdjieff seemed to associate the circle with time, the triangle with unity and multiplicty, and the hexagram with process. But at a more practical, human level, Gurdjieff applied the movement around the circle (through an “octave”) to the successful completion of a thread of attention as part of accomplishing an aim. The triangle, in representing the three centers, then came to relate to the completion of an aim as involving the participation of the whole person. The philosphical and practical modes of Gurdjieff’s use of the enneagram became the theoretical foundations for his thought and teaching.
This thought and teaching, which consisted of harmonizing the three centers through a process in time to maintain attention on an aim despite obstacles, and resulted in a movement from fragmentation to unity, then naturally led to a search for practical solutions. This gave rise to his development of practices based on these principles, and his second use of the enneagram as a combinatorial generator to develop attention exercises.
Part of Gurdjieff’s early teaching describes the need for alarm clocks: the idea that the human nervous system, constantly seeking equilibrium, requires shocks to “stay awake.” The moment a pattern has been perceived and fully cognized by the system, a portion of the mind goes back onto a kind of default mode of detached association, while some other part auomatically continues to perform the outward function being required. Thus, most humans learn how to drive a car, learn a particular trade or job, and finally, after years of gradually falling asleep while still outwardly performing their functions, ultimately die while still appearing alive inside the accumulated habits of their life pattern. For Gurdjieff, switching things up, changing circumstances constantly, producing shocks, became a means of insuring the continuity of a living force inside a human being. The need to constantly invent “alarm clocks” and wind them up became the task of a teacher or a group working together for the aim of his teaching.
No surprise then, we see Gurdjieff creating many methods. Primary among these seem to have been histrionic emotional scenes, hard physical labor or lack of sleep, and counting exercises.
The counting exercises are especially helpful in understanding the relationship between number, attention exercise, and the enneagram in the formation of his practices. Orage, who led groups in New York which Gurdjieff shattered in one of his emotional tirades, and who eventually Gurdjieff forced away from himself through his treatment of his new wife Jesse, left a very useful record of some of “psychological exercises”. Although many of these are of his own creation, he was clearly influenced by Gurdjieff, and one can see how they are essentially the “alarm clocks” Gurdjieff spoke of. Additionally, we know from records of the early Prieure period (1922-1933) Gurdjieff had his students performed counting exercises while doing physical labor. Counting exercises remain a part of many Gurdjieff groups to this day.
Counting exercises then show up determining patterns in the Gurdjieff Movements and Sittings. In sittings, there are cycles of sensation wherein the limbs are sensed in canon. This is precisely the exercise of counting 1-2-3-4, 2-3-4-1, 3-4-1-2, 4-1-2-3 except with each number applied to a limb of the body. The mind tends to wander within a few seconds, and the limiting of the count to a four count cycle which is reformulated at the end of the cycle, prevents the mind from wandering precisely at the point it normally would. Here we are reminded of the overaching theory of his teaching that the attention has diffulty attending to a process for a sufficiently lengthy enough period of time.
Another example, also of canon, from the Movements: a line of five dancers are formed. Each dancer must hop up into the air in place, and, upon landing, assume a full body posture. There are six postures in all. Rather than simply a canon, this count goes up and back down, varying the total number from four to five to six, then back to five, and four again. At the same time, the count, beginning again, starts over at the next file in the row. Since there are only five files (dancers), and because the count may either be to a number greater than five, or may begin from files 3-5, thereby causing the number to pass beyond the last dancer, it must skip back to the first file, who acts as the next number in the sequence. In each case, the individual dancer must visualize the entire row’s sequence to derive the moment they must hop and take the next position.
The example above is the application of a number sequence to a group of dancers such that each dancer maintains a continuity of awareness onto the group as a whole. The Movements also contain series of postures taken individually in which the dancer must visualize their total personal sequence, deriving the posture of any given moment from an awareness of the total sequence in time. This develops awareness of the total process one is engaging in personally. The combination of awareness of one’s personal process as well as the group’s process is certainly one of the more advance aspects of the Movements.
We can see in the Movements and Sittings the presence of patterns of number used to corral the mind which tends to default into a kind of wandering state the moment a pattern is recognized enough for the body to perform the task by itself without consciousness. In each case, there is a precise and intionanal focusing of the attention onto a particular area of experience. We have poined out a few: sensation of the limbs, awareness of the group, awareness of one’s momentary task or process in time.
What has been much less recognized is the use of and intention behind pattern as we find it in the Tales. To begin with, the anti-intellectualism suffusing Gurdjieffian culture, along with a dogmatic belief system in the Tales ineffability, has caused many, if not most, to fail to notice that there are in fact patterns in Gurdjieff’s writings. Any patterns which are found by one brave thinker, rather than being recognized as attention exercises like in the Movements or Sittings, are generally frowned upon by others. Further, most of these “Brave thinkers” are themselves only the types of people who delight in pattern-seeking esoterica of the sort that prevents them from accurately intuiting the deeper wisdom contained enfolded within the symbolism. In fact, each pattern its itself a momentary phase in a sequential unfolding series of configurations just as in the Movements. Its as though, when a pattern in the Tales is found, one had found one of the multiplications in the Movements, but did not realize that it was in fact one in a series. Beyond, there lay, unbeknownst to us, a complete cycle of such configurations forming a large attention exercise.
Just as in the Movements and Sittings, the purpose is not the pattern itself, but its ability to act as an “alarm clock”, that is, a way of temporarily galvanizing a quantity of attention, which may then be directed upon some area of experience so as to develop insight into the nature of one or another aspect of reality. So in the Tales, we find words evoking images which may themselves mean a number of different things. Gurdjieff developed a number of indicators, which he at one time called “indications of relativity”, which alternate which meaning must be applied to the given word. As a result, the reader must always consciously bear in mind which particular meaning they are ascribing to the word. This goes completely against the common tendency to associate subjectively and uncocnsciouly and fail to understand the meanings placed into a word by onself and other people. There are a great many other examples from the texts, with specific intent with regard to where consciousness is being on the one hand directed, and, on the other hand, made continuous despite shifting contexts.
The point in all of these examples is the use of number to generate novelty. Gurdjieff began with simple number patterns done inwardly to occupy the mind while some other task was performed, and gradually shifted to developing more sophisticated applications, ascribing numbers to limbs, energetic centers, feelings, thoughts and ideas, among others. Above all these practices hovers Gurdjieff’s singular emblem, the enneagram, silently communicating their origins.
It would be foolish to try to cram all of Gurdjieff’s exercises inside of the enneagram, and that would be to miss the point. Rather, Gurdjieff took inspiration from the Enneagram, but was never confined to any limitations. For instance, the pattern of a canon, found commonly in his Movements or early counting exercises, is not specifically enneagramatic. Movements like the Great Prayer contain measures which constantly vary anywhere from 2 to 7 or 8 beats in a measure.
Here we find in reality one of the great secrets of Gurdjieff’s genius: the enneagram as conceptual tool. People wondered their entire lives how he kept coming up with so many novel forms, but any amount of time working with ideas and the enneagram quickly reveals its ability to spin out new permutations from previously existing material. In the Tales, the creation of new phenomena from already existing phenomena is one of the favorites hobbies of a character who from one perspective represents Gurdjieff himself (see Ch 4: Law of Falling; here I refer to Saint Venoma).
Ironically, Gurdjieff is not unique in this respect. As alluded to above, he is one in a line of Western esotercists who used math and combination for the purpose of creativity. Ryamon Lull, who famously predated computation and combinatorics, had his Ars Magna:
The Art was intended as a debating tool for winning Muslims to the Christian faith through logic and reason. Through his detailed analytical efforts, Llull built an in-depth theosophic reference by which a reader could enter any argument or question (necessarily reduced to Christian beliefs, which Llull identified as being held in common with other monotheistic religions). The reader then used visual aids and a book of charts to combine various ideas, generating statements which came together to form an answer.
Following in Lull’s footsteps was Anathasius Kircher:
The Arca Musarithmica (also Arca Musurgia or Musical Ark) is an information device that was invented by Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher in the mid 17th century. Its purpose was to enable non musicians to compose church music. Through simple combinatoric techniques it is capable of producing millions of pieces of 4-part polyphonic music. Like other calculating aids of the period, the Arca prefigures modern computing technology. It is among the earliest examples of “Artificial Creativity”
We can see the amazing amount of music which could be created through the Arca Musarithmica which is only “articial creativity.” If one did not know a person was using a machine to produce the music, one might be tempted, as humans with an already-available belief system are want, to ascribe other-wordly origins to that music, saying the person “channelled it”, etc.
Lull, who predated Kircher, apparently took his inspiration from the Arabs, and a device they had called a “Zairja”:
A zairja (Arabic: زايرجة; also transcribed as zairjah, zairajah, zairdja, zairadja, and zayirga) was a device used by medieval Arab astrologers to generate ideas by mechanical means. Ibn Khaldun described zairja as: “a branch of the science of letter magic, practiced among the authorities on letter magic, is the technique of finding out answers from questions by means of connections existing between the letters of the expressions used in the question. They imagine that these connections can form the basis for knowing the future happenings they want to know.”
So we see that combinatorial devices, typically containing a geometric component in which a group of points may be variously connected by means of lines, have been used for centuries. The use in each case was unique to the purpose of the individual employing it. For the arabs, to predict the future in the heavens, for Lull, to debate the Arbas into becoming Christian, for Kircher, to produce church music, and for Gurdjieff, to create meditation exercises for the three centers as part of his overall theoretical framework.
It is no surprise a device like the enneagram might be co-opted for use by others. The now famous Enneagram typology system has become ubiquitous. It began when Oscar Ichazo placing the seven deadly sins around the enneagram circle, and, finding himself two short (the enneagram has nine points, i.e. “ennea” means nine) invented two additional “sins.” He used this is a kind of typology, saying humans have a tendency toward one or another sin. His student, Claudio Naranjo, a psychologist, then simply filled in these types with the most relevant psycholigical data from the DSM IV that corresponded to each. The resulting types had both a moral dimension which stemmed from the religious influence of the sins and a psychological dimension resulting from the DSM IV. Claudio’s students, among others, went on to fine tune and polish these descriptions, ultimately packaging them up into portable self-help volumes written in accessible language, selling hundreds of thousands of books.
There is no doubt as to the usefulness of the enneagram typologies. They are highly descriptive with great explanatory power, since most people will in some way demonstrate the motivational and behavior patterns found there. The typology system of the enneagram types demonstrates the ability for a geometrical symbol to compress knowledge to a surprising degree and proves that theoretical frameworks can form an incredibly powereful basis for developing practical modalities. One wonders what would result from a typology system based on a different geometrical symbol, or one which combined, rather than Christianity teachings on sin, Gurdjieffian ideas about personal evolution, and psychology, a different concatenation. For instance, what if instead of the Christian sins, a moral framework from Buddhism had been inserted? Would the resultant mixture have been any less useful, given a few decades and the lifelong blood and sweat of individuals to turn out all its implications?
Turning now back to Gurdjieff, we have a more grounded understanding of his genius. Though genius he was, he was neverthless no superhuman. It is precisely the belief system of most Gurdjieffians in his power to “channel” or influence the subconscious in a mysterious way using archetype (and here they are inserting Jungian ideas developed by Joseph Campbel post hoc), coupled with the typical human cognitive bias of simple attribution which allows them to see Gurdjieff’s “articificial creativity” as somehow indicative of him being superhuman. In reality, along every other metric, he was completely normal. A genius, but normal. He got fat, developed diabetis, and died the same as everyone else.
Finally, we see that the enneagram, which lay behind the prolific output of Gurdjieff as a generator of ideas, lay also behind the generation of unique number patterns in the service of creating an “alarm clock” for the various parts of a human being. This understanding allows us to take another look at Gurdjieff’s legacy of practices to intuit their real intent. Rather than performing Movements without understanding, we may see that they generate awareness in a quite practical way. Similarly, the Tales, completely misunderstood and nearly forgotten, have a practical intent and purpose. We are then in a position to use the practices to their fullest extent possible.
Time to dust off the old space Occasion and take it for a ride, all-centers-balanced.
The All and Everything Review 