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Fourth Way Contextual Studies
The Echo of the Champs-Elysées
In November 1923, The Echo of the Champs-Elysées - the English language version of a French Journal - dedicated an issue to an announcement of "Demonstrations of G. Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man". Performances were to take place at the Theatre of the Champs-Elysées between 13 December and Christmas Day. A.R. Orage translated the programme for the Echo just before leaving for the United States, where he went to prepare for a number of similar demonstrations in New York and elsewhere. Extracts from the newspaper are reproduced here.
The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man
"It is practically impossible to find an epithet that will aptly describe the subject of the present programme. It is something so peculiarly new, so out the ordinary run of what we are accustomed to see, that the word "demonstration" renders very imperfectly the character of what Mr. Gurdjieff is now setting before the public. If we stretch a point and grant that it recalls the choreographic art, since we are shown movement ritual, subtle rhythms and transpositions of music into corporal expressions, still it were puerile to be satisfied with the definition of "dances" in explanation of these exhibitions. As a matter of fact we cannot fail to observe that these movements and rhythms are but part of a tremendous whole, and that the conception of it is sheer genius. And yet it is all only one of the numerous branches applied by the founder to what he calls the Harmonious Development of man.
And the form presented has only been chosen in preference to another because it illustrates perhaps clearly and more esthetically the idea - in other respects more abstract - that underlies this Development; the fact is that we have to realize that we are face to face with a gigantic synthesis of all the harmonics in the new gamut to which new man must vibrate - the ideal gamut of the good and the beautiful. While it would be difficult and hazardous task to present at once to an unprepared public subjects that can only be approached through a course of serious lectures: religion, magic, ancient art, philosophy, mathematics, all of which take share in this great re-moulding of our <<Self>>, the explanation to this same public of the wonderful results that an entirely fresh method of education has succeeded in producing on bodies such as ours was easy and most convincing. And from the body, we are brought back to the soul.....
Thus we should keep constantly in mind the principle that we must not simply admire these dances, these attitudes of ritual, these almost electrical reactions merely in themselves and for their esthetic beauty - as we might do a choreographic show - but that we must also give thought to a new soul that makes these bodies live.
And, in this way, we shall merely hark back to the ancient wisdom of the past, according to which a dance is a prayer, a manifestation of God, as mystery. It is in this that Mr. Gurdjieff, with the insight worthy of a great prophet, has made vigorous hold of the teachings that he has brought back from his numerous travels in the East, not the East of the literary world, but the East that hides even today the most astonishing philosophic religions amongst the secret peoples,so to say of Thibet Upper, India, Turkestan, Afghanistan. The wisdom of the thinkers of those regions has appeared to Mr. Gurdjieff to be the sole means of restoring in us the energies which western civilization is crushing out of us forever. The more perfect and harmonious combination of all our physical and spiritual possibilities he sought in an entirely different organisation of our psychological and material temperament, and this organisation was distilled into him drop by drop by the extraordinary internal work that went on in him after his mind had hearkened to the pre-ancient voice of the Hindu Gush and the Pamir.
We will not unnecessarily weary our readers by explaining the principles that are clearly set forth in Prospectus No. 1, presented with this programme. For the sake of greater clearness now we will merely observe that, in Mr. Gurdjieff's view, our threefold system of perception, reaction and emotion, has been completely thrown out of gear under the action of modern life. The functions of each of these systems are exercised independently of one another, and this has brought about the complete incoherence of our psycho-corporal machine.
Since long before the war, Mr. Gurdjieff has devoted all his energy to the re-education of these complex mechanisms -- receiving -- emotional -- transmitting and executive -- and it is mainly to this end that he has just completed the organisation of his model Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. An almost superhuman task, whose noble ideal will come right home to every thinking being. Let us hope that he will meet with ever more and more sympathy and real help on the part of all who yearn to heal humanity of the malady that afflicts it. It is signal merit to have sought the remedy in balancing our faculties anew. Does not this seem, upon reflexion, to be the most efficient and radical solution?
We trust that the circle of those who are convinced of the necessity of this total reform of our "self" will continually widen. Will not those present at the performance of to-day's programme begin by acquainting themselves, by a careful perusal of the above-mentioned prospectus, with the essential details regarding the preliminary organisation of the Institute, which is fitted up with extraordinary richness and beauty, as well as with the profound causes of the need felt by Mr. Gurdjieff to change completely our relations with the external world and with our fellow-beings."
H. Br.
Acknowledgments
Access to written material has been kindly provided by the staff of the Brotherton Special Collections Library at the University of Leeds.
Every effort has been made to obtain permissions from holders of copyright material. However, if any copyright owner has been omitted, the author of this web site would be grateful for any additional copyright information, and undertakes to rectify any omissions.
Explicit permission to quote from the works of A. R. Orage has been kindly provided by Mrs. Anne Orage.
The Echo of the Champs-Elysées compiled by RB.