![]() ![]() Most commentators leave his background unexplained, and Meetings is not generally considered to be a reliable or straightforward autobiography. The only account of his wanderings appears in his book Meetings with Remarkable Men. He was never forthcoming about the source of his teachings. In early adulthood, according to his own account, Gurdjieff's curiosity led him to travel to Central Asia, Egypt, Iran, India, Tibet and Rome before he returned to Russia for a few years in 1912. Influenced by these writings, and having witnessed a number of phenomena that he could not explain, he formed the conviction that there existed a hidden truth not to be found in science or in mainstream religion. The young Gurdjieff avidly read Russian-language scientific literature. Įarly influences on him included his father, a carpenter and amateur ashik or bardic poet, and the priest of the town's Russian church, Dean Borsh, a family friend. ![]() He later acquired "a working facility with several European languages". Growing up in a multi-ethnic society, Gurdjieff became fluent in Armenian, Pontic Greek, Russian and Turkish, speaking the last in a mixture of elegant Osmanlı and some dialect. Gurdjieff makes particular mention of the Yazidi community. Both the city of Kars and the surrounding territory were home to an extremely diverse population: although part of the Armenian Plateau, Kars Oblast was home to Armenians, Russians, Caucasus Greeks, Georgians, Turks, Kurds and smaller numbers of Christian communities from eastern and central Europe such as Caucasus Germans, Estonians and Russian sectarian communities like the Molokans, Doukhobors, Pryguny, and Subbotniks. ![]() It contained extensive grassy plateau-steppe and high mountains, and was inhabited by a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional population that had a history of respect for travelling mystics and holy men, and for religious syncretism and conversion. Gurdjieff spent his childhood in Kars, which, from 1878 to 1918, was the administrative capital of the Russian-ruled Transcaucasus province of Kars Oblast, a border region recently captured from the Ottoman Empire. Although the dates of his birth vary, the year of 1872 is inscribed in a plate on the gravemarker in the cemetery of Avon, Seine-et-Marne, France, where his body was buried. ![]() A passport gave a birthdate of November 28, 1877, but he once stated that he was born at the stroke of midnight at the beginning of New Year's Day ( Julian calendar). Olga de Hartmann, the woman Gurdjieff called "the first friend of my inner life", and Louise Goepfert March, Gurdjieff's secretary in the early 1930s, believed that Gurdjieff was born in 1872. The exact year of his birth remains unknown conjectures range from 1866 to 1877. The name Gurdjieff represents the Anglicized Russian form of the Greek surname Γεωργιάδης ( Georgiádes). His father Ivan Ivanovich Gurdjieff ( Greek: Ιωάννης Γεωργιάδης) was Greek the long-held view is that Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian, but some scholars have recently suggested that she was a Greek named Evdokia Eleptherovna or Kalerovna. Gurdjieff was born in Alexandropol, Russian Empire (present-day Gyumri, Armenia). The International Association of the Gurdjieff Foundations is an umbrella group for the four main organisations: The Gurdjieff Foundation in the USA, with centers in New York and San Francisco, The Gurdjieff Society in the UK, the Institut Gurdjieff in France and GI Gurdjieff Foundation - Caracas in Venezuela with a network of partner foundations in South America. After his death in 1949, the Gurdjieff Foundation Paris was organized and led by Jeanne de Salzmann from the early 1950s, in cooperation with other direct pupils, until her death in 1990 and by Michel de Salzmann, until his death in 2001. Gurdjieff's teaching and practice inspired the formation of many groups organized as Foundations, Institutes, and Societies many of which are now connected by the International Association of the Gurdjieff Foundations (IAGF). Ouspensky referred to it as the " Fourth Way". According to his principles and instructions, Gurdjieff's method for awakening one's consciousness unites the methods of the fakir, monk and yogi, and thus his student P. Gurdjieff described a method attempting to do so, calling the discipline "The Work" (connoting "work on oneself") or "the System". Gurdjieff taught that people are not conscious of themselves and thus live their lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep", but that it is possible to awaken to a higher state of consciousness and serve our purpose as human beings. 1866–1877 – 29 October 1949) was a philosopher, mystic, spiritual teacher, and composer. ![]()
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