Maximalism and Minimalism in the works of GI Gurdjieff

Gurdjieff’s music, composed in collaboration with Thomas De Hartmann, is often seen as minimalistic and associated with artists like Erik Satie from the same time period. Historians laud Satie himself for paving the way to classical minimalism.

However, in his written works he is much more akin to an artist like James Joyce, a maximalist whose works go into excessive, overtly complex detail. There is much to be said about the comparision between Gurdjieff and Joyce, and it seems likely that Joyce’s works, first serialized by Gurdjieff’s students Jane Heap and Margarett Anderson in the Little Review, and the attention that it garnered, probably served as the impetus for Gurdjieff’s decision to use writing as the ultimate form in which he chose to pass his teaching.

Once again we have Gurdjieff pushing the absolute outer boundaries in both directions in a polymathic way, much like many influential Russian thinkers before him. Gurdjieff was not Russian, but the Russian Empire, with its confused cultural blend of Eastern and Western tendencies, was a predominant imperial force acting on the more traditional caucasian culture Gurdjieff grew up in. These are the actual Wetsern/Eastern influences Gurdjieff experienced, not a genearlized “East-West” as usually supposed. Gaining a sense of the importance of Russian culture and the transfusion of knowledge and ideas into the Caucasian region owing to Russian military and economic influence causes one to realize that Gurdjieff’s exposure to Western culture came more so via a Russian filter than directly from the West itself. This explains some of the differences between Gurdjieff and other alternative spiritual influencers with which he is associated such as Rudolf Steiner. In Steiner, the influence of Goethe and other western influences mixed with Theosophism of Blavatsky (a Russian thinker herself) feature much more prominantly in his works, whereas in Gurdjieff, it is a blend of Theosophism with Russian intellectual traditions like Fedorovism, Symbolism as it played out in Russia, and Cosmist ideas.

These are important influences for Western readers to understand in reading gurdjieff’s works, because to a Western reader, Gurdjifef’s cosmic idesas seem utterly unique, whereas to someone familiar with Cosmist ideas prevelant at the time, Gurdjieff was absolutely in lockstop with his Russian contemporaries in his concern with the Earth’s and humanities role as not only a biosphere, but beyond into the solar system. At the same time, there are reasons to believe Gurdjieff did not entirely take these ideas seriously himself (to be explored at a later date).

Therefore, Gurdjieff as one of the early teachers seeking to synthesize the East and the West, was not synthesizing the East and West so much as syntheisizing Russian culture, itself a unique East-West blend, with a teaching about Awakening in a more Eastern style. What perhaps sets Gurdjieff apart from Blavatsky and Steiner is that he was a geniuinely tranformed or Awakened teacher much more in the style of a Sufi or Zen master.

So, Gurdjieff, though not Russian, followed in the footsteps of Russian intellectual culture in its polymathic pursuit of many fields of knowledge and near reckless syntheses of opposites such as science and religion, earthly and comsic, etc. This underlies much of the excessive and syncretistic art and ideas that he created. It is no surprise then, that in his early exposition of ideas in Russia which he chose at the place to originate his institution, and his later written exposition, we find the same tendency. The form his written exposition took corresponded to Western literary works he observed being published by his pupils. So we essentially have a highly Russian, quasi-theosophical cosmist blend with the Eastern Orthodox and Sufi religious impulse of the territory around his home, interlaced with shots of Tibetan Buddhist and Hindu understandings, which is then pumped through a Western literary masterpiece and quasi-manifesto bearing influences from a variety of modernist movements, including surrealism (with its emphasis on the unconscious), dadaism (like surrealism, seeking shock value), cubism, and stream of consciousness writing like Joyce. The motivation of this work is primarily psychological and sociological in terms of understanding, while undergerded with the fundamental task of Awakening. This taken altogether, explains the form Gurdjieff’s writings took. If we put these influences in order:

• Primary, or core: Awakening as contained in Esoteric Christianity, Sufism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Hinduism. The description of the path as Fourth Way being from the Hindu idea of Hatha, Bakti, Inana, and Raja (or possibly Krya) Yoga, with morning sittings like Hindu or Tibetan, but bringing these sittings into activity with dances somewhat like Sufism but adapted into a symbolic, theatrical device more influence by Western art movements and theatre trends. Esoteric Christianity forms the feeling world of this blend. All these influences show the core aim of the whole teaching: Awakening.
• Secondary: Psychology. Understanding self and others. Verbal and nonverbal communication skills. Dark psychology and hypnotism. This is where more western psychological influences enter. Much of the psychological understanding here comes from G’s own development in the philosophical realm outlined below, as he went from a fantastical theosophical framework to an actual understanding of Awakening as he discovered it in Tibet.
• Tertiary, theoretical structure: Philosophy. Pseudo-blavatskyism, Pseudo-theosophical worldview. Blending science and religion. These are the false-ideas worn as theatrical masks by Gurdjieff or as symbolic devices to entice the naive into his teaching, the reason for the stunning difference between G and his pupils observed by Ouspensky. He understood this was his doorway into spirituality, so he used false worldviews as exoteric, symbolic garb, for inner teachings on psychology and from there, states of mind produced by attention exercises. This is the worldview which he wishes to “destory” and why he knew it needed to be destroyed from his own experience. Interestingly, the very aim to “mercilessly destory the worldview” of his first series is precisely an aim Blavatsky says is preliminary for engaging in her work. This is interesting because the Blavatskyism which infected Gurdjieff, which he later determined was a false version of a true reality, becomes the very thinking which must itself be destoryed. Gurdjieff “apes” Blavatsky, thus associating knowledgable readers to her at the same time he is saying she must be overcome in their own worldview.
• Quaternary, outer forms: The forms of practice his teaching took, Sittings, Movements, Writings, and music were primarily derived from cultural customs (i.e. dances and music) in the middle east, a blend of middle eastern and western romantic musical styles in a minimalist form so as to be accessible, religious customs (buddhist/hindu sittings, internal christian prayer work, Sufi dancing) and Western art as found in theatre and literature and, to some extent, as noted, music.

Gurdjieff started out in the Teritary, was exposed to all the elements of the quaternary along the way to discovering the primary core in his searches as a youth. In so doing, and in reflecting on his own process, he came to understand his own psychology and that of groups of people, illustrating for him the second level. This totality of experience and understanding informed his use of symbolism and indirect teaching, using elements of the tertiary to create a blended quarternary of outer forms as the primary exercises he gave his students. Unlike all other teachers, he never taught directly, avoiding the use of, as he symboliscally calls them in his writings, “fruit preserves”. This decision has ultimately relegated his teachings to the fringe in academic circles, perfectly demonstrating the tendency, at the group level, to take people and their ideas at face value rather than considering them in any depth, despite the obvious allusions to depth contained in Gurdjieff’s works of art.

So, looping back around, we see the incredible span of G’s art and influences. We return to the question of why he took a minimalist approach to music and a maximalist approach to his writings. There are a few reasons to suppose this happened.

First, and most straightforward, he was minimalist and maximalist based on his own proficiency. He was not a skilled musician, however much he may have understood music, and so the most he could do was composed melodies for de Hartmann to improvise over.

A second practical reason for his minimalism in music relates to his movements. The music forms a background of feeling, focus, and especially rhythmic foundation to accompany the movements. For this reason alone complexity is not particularly useful. Often the rhythm of the hands must match the rhythms of the dancers positions which are necessarily rhyhmically more simple to be accessible to most participants. The harmonies and melodies then need to be just complex enough to create the corresponding feeling of the piece as well as any ideas associated with the symbolism. Additionally, Gurdjieff wanted the music to be simple enough most pianists could play it so that his works could be spread more easily.

However he could have encouraged de Hartmann, who was highly capable, to compose much more complex musical pieces for the pieces that were written for listening only and not to accompany movements, the so-called “concert music”, much of which was published by Schott. Why didnt he? Here, it may have been G’s own musical limitations again at play, or it could have been the influence of minimalistic thinking such as we find in Satie.

In looking at these potential reasons, it seems much more likely that the forms of movements, which are sybmolically extremely complex (as complex as his writings), probably rhythmically constrained the music to be relatively minimalistic and simple. De hartmann, encountering these simple melodies, may have drawn on his knowledge of then-current musical trends such as Bartok and Satie in his harmonization of G’s melodical ideas. In other words, G probably wasn’t being consciously Minimalistic out of a reaction against intellectualism and complexity.

The only hitch is that G did say that what appear to be simple eastern melodies are actually extremely complex in their subtlety. So called minimalism in general is not so much minimalistic as it focuses on complexity at a nanoscopic level of the subtle mastery of volume and other dynamics in the music, many of which are influenced by control over ones inner imaginative and emotional landscape as it effects the nervous system and therefore the instrument being played, as well as conscious control and mastery of motor control of the body in the playing of the instrument. The joints of the body such as the wrist, elbow, shoulder, back, all the way back to the waist, exert a profound influence on the effect of the sounds coming from the instrument and can be consciously trained to that effect. These small differences actually have a large effect on how the music is felt by the listener. Not only is G quoted as speaking about the hidden complexities of “simple” eastern music, but De Hartmann’s favorite exercise apparently was to play one single note and listen very carefully to the differences between notes. This was almost for sure influenced from Gurdjieff.

The reality is that Gurdjieff had a mastery over the very simple and the very complex, but it is likely the minimalism of his music, both for concert and for movements, resulted from practical necessity of rhythm and also deep meditatve attention to subtlety.

On the other side we find his writings to be as complex as Joyce, one of the most towering giants of the 20th century. This goes completely unrecognized in literary circles. The funny thing is that Gurdjieff mostly wrote his masterwork in about 7 years. If one takes account of his “revision” to this work, we can add perhaps another 7 years. In any case, we have him beginning in Jan of 1925, and a relatively finished version by 1932, which was then polished for several years in the thirties. Ultimately it was published in 1950 posthumously after being utilized in private groups for many years. However my point in saying all this is that he wrote his works at a stunning speed considering witing was not his primary life long occupation. James Joyce took 7 years to write Ulysses, at 720 pages, and 17 years to write Finnegans Wake at 688 pages. Joyces total word count for his masterpieces was about 433,000 words at Joycian complexity over a period of about 23 years. Gurdjieff’s total written works probably exceed 500,000 words, written at equal complexity and completed in roughly 10 years, or less than half the time. This can give us a sense of just how massive Gurdjieff’s efforts were when compared with one of the supposed giants of 20th century literature.

And yet he is completely unknown in literary circles.

It seems likely that Gurdjieff maximalism resulted from the breadth of his knowledge and synthesis of the above mentioned influences as instantiated in a storyline spanning so many pages. This also clearly reflects his intellectual competency as heavily predominating over his musical competency.

In the end, we have to say that Gurdjieff dabbled at both ends of the minimalistic and maximalistic spectrum but like many of his Russian cultural predecesors, was fundamentally expansive and wildly syncretic in his activities and thinking and so is much more Maximallistic in nature. The tendency for the lineage traditions of his teaching has been to tend toward the minimalistic simply becuase this is what most practitioners can handle. The result has been to think of Gurdjieff as relatively miniamalistic, emphasizing supposed quotes like “when it rains, the pavement gets wet”, eschewing a deep and thoughtful exploration of his writings, and failing to recognize the complex symbolism of his movements in addition to failing to pass on the full, complex movements forms in many lineages. The movements forms have been transmitted (those that were recorded), but most students today are not trained with an emphasis on learning the full form. As a result, they are unable to knit together the various fragmented aspects of the Movements symbolism which is nearly as complex as Gurdjieff writings. This enables folks to approach movements as an amorphous, “intuitive expeirence” that “cant be put into words”, and essentially fail to increase in understanding of them.

In sum, the minimalism Gurdijeff did enact was primarily due to his own lack of proficiency, the musical needs of Movements forms more so than a Zen Buddhist-like aesthetic emphasis on simplicity and silence. Rather, Gurdjieff was in the world, loud, noisy, a flaming comet trailing endless “noxious” fumes, ringing the town bell at all times of night and cursing in as many languages as possible and with the greatest Maximallism imaginable.