The Way of Inner Alchemy
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J.G. Bennett
The work that Bennett taught at the Academy at Sherborne can be described as “TRANSFORMATION”. Echoing Gurdjieff, he taught the notion of Conditional Immortality – that human beings are born with the possibility of a soul.
Bennett was introduced by Gurdjieff to the notion of Solioonensius, or times of heightened energy within a part of our planet, or the whole of our planet. Bennett researched this idea, and reached the conclusion that times of such heightened energy are often seen as terrestrial catastrophes, but that in fact these have always been times of accelerated evolution for the human race. In other words, this is a time of great creativity for us people.
The guiding policy of the DuVersity is 'integration without rejection', a principle taken from John Bennett, a pupil of Gurdjieff. It seeks to integrate the most spiritual with the most material, the most individual with the most collective, the most ancient with the most modern. It is deeply concerned with methodology, or 'how-to', in which it sees an underlying unity that cuts across ideological, cultural and belief divides without loss of diversity.
Books and CD's
Bennett Books Publishing is also an instrument for publishing ideas on the Transformation of Man. Since 1988 we have concentrated largely on making available the writings and talks of JG Bennett -- a major developer of the ideas of Gurdjieff -- and from whom Bennett Books takes its name. The founder and current associates of Bennett Books studied with JG Bennett and Elizabeth Bennett in the 1970s.
We offer a unique selection of rare, out-of-print and select new books. Most are related to mysticism, metaphysics, philosophy, psychology or religion. Our inventory has a particular emphasis on G.I. Gurdjieff and The Fourth Way.
Triangle Editions (G-H Records)
THE MUSIC OF GURDJIEFF/de HARTMANN is the result of an extraordinary collaboration between G.I.Gurdjieff and the Russian composer, Thomas de Hartmann. Gurdjieff traveled for twenty years in the Middle East and Central Asia to discover and develop the teaching which now bears his name. In the 1920's he and de Hartmann worked together on the music included in this collection. These are the only recordings available of Thomas de Hartmann himself playing the music he composed with Gurdjieff.
Fourth Way Books from the Netherlands.
Conferences
The ALL & EVERYTHING Conference provides an open, congenial & serious atmosphere for the sharing of researches and investigations of G. I. Gurdjieff's legacy. The Conference seeks to keep the study of the teachings of Gurdjieff relevant to global scientific, spiritual and sociological developments. The Conference includes the presentation of academic papers, individual view papers, seminars on chapters and themes in All & Everything, and relevant cultural events.
Fourth Way
Fourth Way contacts around the World
G. I. Gurdjieff started teaching in Russia in 1912; his teaching is also known as the Fourth Way. Gurdjieff's ideas are followed in all continents in group work, seminars, the Movements classes and work in handicrafts.
The Fourth Way is not a retreat from life but instead teaches students how to consciously experience and engage ordinary life to come to real life. In doing so, each seeker verifies for himself or herself the truth and applicability of the practices and ideas in their own lives.
There are a number of faux Fourth Way groups led by people who have never had any contact with an authentic teacher, or very little. Because of their coercive measures, including financial and sexual exploitation, the reputation of The Fourth Way has been tarnished. The arrogation of many of its ideas by so-called New Age Teachings;—self-styled inventions which take elements from a number of teachings—has also served to cast the teaching as outdated. This is profoundly not true, as any direct contact with the teaching will show.
There is also a confusion among those who would like to merge the teaching with Theosophy and Western occultism. On this point Mr. Gurdjieff was very specific. He said they "have resulted from a mixture of the fundamental [spiritual] lines. Both lines bear in themselves grains of truth, but neither possess full knowledge and therefore attempts to bring them to practical realization give only negative results."
A genuine teaching of self-transformation cannot be an "invention," something put together by taking a little from this teaching, a little from that, and giving it a new name. So much of what purports to be a spiritual teaching is in reality simply spiritual theft.
G.I. Gurdjieff
This edition of the Gurdjieff Reading Guide contains a retrospective anthology of fifty-two articles, some originally published here, and others dating as far back as 1919. These provide an independent survey of the literature by or about George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1866?-1949) and offer a wide range of informed opinion (admiring, critical and contradictory) about him, his activities, writings, philosophy, and influence.
More than fifty years have passed since George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff left in our keeping an extraordinarily valuable teaching, comprised of clearly defined principles, fresh stimulating ideas, and precise practical suggestions for living them.
But this priceless legacy is increasingly being allowed to deteriorate, become neglected or lost, and Mr. Gurdjieff's carefully considered, specific instructions are being ignored, misunderstood or misinterpreted. Distortions of "The Gurdjieff Ideas" and "The Fourth Way" proliferate in the public marketplace, and even the meticulously constructed and jealously guarded "Movements" are being deformed, forgotten, or used inappropriately.
A large number of people do not just accept that "all this is inevitable!" and they share a sincere wish to preserve, practice, and pass on Gurdjieff's teaching undistorted. As a community of "like-minded" individuals, assembled to serve this cause, we are calling ourselves “THE GURDJIEFF HERITAGE SOCIETY.”
In his recently published book George Jeffery writes:
"While I am very aware of the necessity of maintaining the purity of the teaching, it is pointless to preserve ideas for future generations by wrapping them in cotton wool when the very existence of those generations is gravely in doubt."
This puts two questions:
Is Gurdjieff’s teaching for this world?
Or is it just for the few people who are in the official organisations?
International Association of the The Gurdjieff Foundations
The Association has been initiated by the Foundations in Paris, London, New York and Caracas which were established on the direct instructions of G.I. Gurdjieff.
The aim of the association is to preserve the essence, the specificity and the integrity of all aspects of Gurdjieff's teaching.
In the years preceding 1920, one of gurdjieff's pupils, A,R. Orage, had formed a group of practicing psychologists to study psychoanalysis from all sides. This group, which included Dr. Maurice Nicoll - one of Jung's foremost exponents, - reached the conclusion that the need in psychology was not psychoanalysis but psycho-synthesis. In 1920, P.D. Ouspensky, who had met Orage in 1914, arrived in London. Ouspensky talked with Orage about the ideas of G.I. Gurdjieff. These talks convinced Orage that a practical psycho synthesis was now in existence through the teaching of Gurdjieff.
In 1922, Gurdjieff opened the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, in Fontainebleau, near Paris. It was here that Orage worked with Gurdjieff, and became his representative in America. Although Gurdjieff studied and worked with many esoteric schools prior to arriving in the West, the system he brought is not a religion, nor a philosophy, but a practical method of developing consciousness. This system is thought to have originated in Pre-dynastic Egypt, fragments of which have survived in the rituals of the Red Hat LLamas, the Sufis and the Essenes. Gurdjieff's mission was to reawaken the West to the possibility of discovering what one truly is - one's essence - and all this without reference to religion or modern occultism.
Gurdjieff said that 'Man's possibilities are very great' - however we suffer from vanity, pride and self-love to such an extent that our possibilities are virtually non-existent, as we are - that is in terms of reaching an improved state of 'being'. In fact the gulf between knowledge and being is the crux of the problem. As in Alchemy, a purification is needed before the real work can begin - work towards a higher level of being. Fortunately, the Fourth Way is a practical method of developing being, and one that is available to any serious seeker.
The teaching of G.I. Gurdjieff is described particularly well by P.D. Ouspensky, in the books - In Search of the Miraculous , and The Fourth Way . See The Fourth Way Foundation for information about these books.
After Mr Gurdjieff's death in Paris in 1949 his closest pupils, led
by Mme de Salzmann, continued the oral transmission of his practical
teaching through activities touching all sides of a man, and this tradition
continues today.
The Society in London was established at that time and has remained in
close touch with the other main centres of Gurdjieff's teaching in Paris
and New York, always adapting to new conditions whilst remaining true
to its source.
Journals
Gurdjieff International Review
A source of informed essays and commentary on the history, writings, and teachings of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. Mr. Gurdjieff was an extraordinary man, a master in the truest sense. His teachings speak to our most essential questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What is the purpose of life, and of human life in particular? As a young man, Gurdjieff relentlessly pursued these questions and became convinced that practical answers lay within ancient traditions. Through many years of searching and practice he discovered answers and then set about putting what he had learned into a form understandable to the Western world. Gurdjieff maintained that, owing to the abnormal conditions of modern life, we no longer function in a harmonious way. He taught that in order to become harmonious, we must develop new faculties—or actualize latent potentialities—through “work on oneself.” He presented his teachings and ideas in three forms: writings, music, and movements which correspond to our intellect, emotions, and physical body.
P.D. Ouspensky
It has been said that the 20th century has produced more gurus, sages and messiahs than the previous five centuries put together, mainly due to the collapse of organised religion. The three men, G.I. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky and L. MacLaren all lived within the span of a hundred years. For three years, Gurdjieff was the teacher of Ouspensky, who started a school of his own after a gap of ten years. L. MacLaren, who never met either of them, but who was a pupil of Ouspensky's successor, Dr. Roles, founded his own school based on the esoteric teaching of the other two. Although the three men operated independently from each other, their work was basically the same and consisted in rediscovering and reformulating the ancient esoteric teaching - 'eso' means 'inner' -, which like a subterranean stream disappears and reappears from time to time.
Gurdjieff and Ouspensky called their teaching "The Fourth Way", for it was not the way of the fakir, the monk, or the yogi, but of the ordinary householder, meaning that a man can continue to live an ordinary life, but, by working on three levels, physical, emotional and intellectual, he can develop himself to his full potential, provided he does so under the guidance of a teacher or a school. By means of the links below, you can see how at a certain point the Eastern stream very naturally flowed together with the Western, from which we can now reap the benefits.
The Study Society was registered in 1951 by the late Dr. F.C. Roles and his friends who had been associates of the Russian philosopher and author P.D. Ouspensky (1878-1947). Ouspensky was particularly interested in the inner life of civilisations and in the convergence of science, philosophy, art and religion in the service of truth. He was also very much concerned with the inner transformation of humanity as a matter of practical experience.
The Society was founded to carry on his aims and researches. He had also asked Dr Roles to look for a simple method of finding inner stillness that was suitable for people living ordinary active lives. Dr Roles fulfilled this aim in the early 1960s when he discovered a method of meditation and the knowledge associated with it, which is part of the Advaita or non-dualist school of philosophy, as taught by His Holiness, the late Shantanand Saraswati, Shankaracharya of Northern India.
Sacred Dance
The online resource for Gurdjieff and his Movements.
The dances called 'Movements' are essential in G.I. Gurdjieff´s
teaching, further consisting of orally transmitted ideas, books and musical
works.
Practicing Movements can generate a form of energy difficult to find
elsewhere.
On this website we publish information and material about the Movements.
Also you can find list of Movements instructors and dates for seminars.
We do not belong or support any particular organization and invite everybody
who is involved in the Work to participate.