Gurdjieff Groups in the UK

[vaadark1]

Hi , after a few years reading the Gurdjieff and Fourth Way material availlable in books and on the web I am keen to find a Gurdjieff Group. I am very cautious however about either being ripped off or ending up in a culty organisation. Does anyone have any experiences with groups in the UK they can share?

 

[PepperFritz]

Hello Vaadark, welcome to the forum. Good to have you here.

As this is your first post, perhaps you could write a little intro about yourself in the Newbies Forum, tell us how you came to discover/join this site, whether you've read any of Laura's work yet, etc.

From time to time this forum recieves questions/recommendation requests about Gurdjieff groups. Please find below a collection of previous replies from Laura and forum moderators on that subject. You might also find the following threads/forums useful:

The C's and Gurdjieff

Imitation Fourth Way Groups Started by Gurdjieff Rejects

The Work



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...perhaps it would help if you read "The Wave" so that you could understand that our beginning point is NOT Gurdjieff, it is rather direct initiation via the Cassiopaean Experiment . We find Gurdjieff's work to be very full of rich and helpful concepts, but it is not the foundation here. You could say that it is more the layout of the rooms. We also utilize concepts from Mouravieff who, we clearly understand didn't have the whole cheese (neither did Gurdjieff, but he was a lot closer than Mouravierr), and Castaneda who, it is clear, borrowed a lot of his ideas from Gurdjieff and re-worked them. We also find many clues in modern psychological research.

In general, we have observed that a "direct connection to the work" can be a hindrance rather than a benefit. We do, in fact, have several members of QFS who have been long-time members of various Gurdjieff groups around the world and have discussed and analyzed how they operate. In The Wave, you will come across a discussion of my husband's meeting with Henri Tracol years ago and the result of their discussion. You might find it interesting.

The bottom line is: Gurdjieff's work is only part of the puzzle, though it is a large part.

...The work of Gurdjieff is pretty core to what we do here. Bearing in mind that I have no first hand experience with actual what you might call 'official Gurdjieff groups' but my current understanding is that most if not all 'visible' Gurdjieff groups out there have, somehow or other lost their way, become a bit 'self-involved' , and seem to miss the fundamental point underpinning what Gurdjieff was trying to do. So maybe they have some value, or maybe they don't. Others might have some more relevant observations to make....

I guess you will find a good part of any genuine Gurdjieff school teaching in this forum. I'm afraid that genuine ways (reiki, soufism, 4th way) quickly get twisted, corrupted, destroyed and in the end a very small percentage of those groups remain "pure" while a broad majority offer useless teaching at best, harmful ones at worse. So a lot of discernment will be necessary for you to identify a genuine Gurdjieff school....

You have to keep in mind that many people enter "schools" and learn nothing. When speaking of schools, Gurdjieff was not just talking about a social environment where students are under a teacher. A "school" is a particular dynamic that comes about when a person interacts with another person, or people who see more. The former is the "student", the latter is the "teacher". However, there are preconditions for this dynamic. The "teacher" must be more "developed" than the student. And the student must have the desire to learn, and the capability of learning. There is no escape from prison on one's own. Only one who has already escaped can show the one still trapped.

As for whether this forum is such a school, I would say that it can be. For those who want to learn and grow, there is that possibility.

There are a lot of useless things claimed to be handed down by Gurdjieff as a "general way to do things" that were originally devised at a specific time, in a specific place, for a specific purpose and sometimes even for a specific individual, that have no usefulness in a general way. It strikes me that you (and others, perhaps those who taught you) have done exactly what Gurdjieff predicted:

"The work itself of schools of the fourth way can have very many forms and many meanings. In the midst of the ordinary conditions of life the only chance a man has of finding a 'way' is in the possibility of meeting with the beginning of work of this kind. But the chance of meeting with such work as well as the possibility of profiting by this chance depends upon many circumstances and conditions.

"The quicker a man grasps the aim of the work which is being executed, the quicker can he become useful to it and the more will he be able to get from it for himself.

"But no matter what the fundamental aim of the work is, the schools continue to exist only while this work is going on. When the work is done the schools close. The people who began the work leave the stage.

Those who have learned from them what was possible to learn and have reached the possibility of continuing on the way independently begin in one form or another their own personal work.

"But it happens sometimes that when the school closes a number of people are left who were round about the work, who saw the outward aspect of it, and saw the whole of the work in this outward aspect.

"Having no doubts whatever of themselves or in the correctness of their conclusions and understanding they decide to continue the work. To continue this work they form new schools, teach people what they have themselves learned, and give them the same promises that they themselves received. All this naturally can only be outward imitation.

You have to understand, Gurdjieff's work had a definite purpose that failed. His school closed, he died, and all that was left were people who did not understand. This point is made clear by Gurdjieff himself in his introduction to his "All and Everything" series of writings which includes Beelzebub.

The Cassiopaean Experiment is a Fourth Way Work that began in 1994 and is ongoing at present. It picks up Gurdjieff's work where he left it after realizing that it was not yet time, and that his major contribution was to provide a map so that the next school that emerged after him could travel farther and avoid many errors by learning from his mistakes.