Fragments, Chapter 18, pp.382-389 - Reading Club posting 68
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This is this is the sixty eighth and last of our weekly readings in Fragments Reading Club from P.D. Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, where we have been gradually working our way through the whole book.
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Next week we will begin with sequential weekly readings from Volume 1 of Maurice Nicoll’s Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.
Journey to Constantinople. Collecting people. G. arrives. New group introduced to G. Translating a dervish song. G. the artist and poet. The Institute started in Constantinople. G. authorizes the writing and publishing of a book. G. goes to Germany. Decision to continue Constantinople work in London, 1921. G. organizes his Institute at Fontainebleau. Work at the Chateau de la Prieuré. A talk with Katherine Mansfield. G. speaks of different kinds of breathing. "Breathing through movements." Demonstrations at the Theatre des Champs Elysées, Paris. G.'s departure for America, 1924. Decision to continue work in London independently.
Soon afterwards I managed to leave for Constantinople.
At that time Constantinople was full of Russians. I met acquaintances from St. Petersburg and with their assistance I began to give lectures in the offices of the "Russki Miyak." I at once collected a fairly large audience mostly of young men. I continued to develop the ideas begun in Rostov and Ekaterinodar, connecting general ideas of psychology and philosophy with ideas of esotericism.
I got no further letters from G., but I was sure that he would come to Constantinople. He actually arrived in June with a fairly large company.
In former Russia, even in its distant outskirts, work had become impossible and we were gradually approaching the period which I had foreseen in St. Petersburg, that is, of working in Europe.
I was very glad to see G. and to me personally it seemed then that, in the interests of the work, all former difficulties could be set aside and that I could again work with him as in St. Petersburg. I brought G. to my lectures and handed over to him all the people who came to my lectures, particularly the small group of about thirty persons who met upstairs in the offices of the "Miyak."
G. gave to the ballet the central position of his work at that time. Besides this he wanted to organize a continuation of his Tiflis Institute in Constantinople, the principal place in which would be taken by dances and rhythmic exercises which would prepare people to take part in the ballet. According to his ideas the ballet should become a school. I worked out the scenario of the ballet for him and began to understand this idea better. The dances and all the other "numbers" of the ballet, or rather "revue," demanded a long and an entirely special preparation. The people who were being prepared for the ballet and who were taking part in it, would, in so doing, be obliged to study and to acquire control over themselves, in this way approaching the disclosure of the higher forms of consciousness. Into the ballet there entered, and as a necessary part of it, dances, exercises, and the ceremonies of various dervishes as well as many little known Eastern dances.
It was a very interesting time for me. G. often came to me in Prinkipo. We went together through the Constantinople bazaars. We went to the Mehlevi dervishes and he explained something to me that I had not been
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able to understand before. And this was that the whirling of the Mehlevi dervishes was an exercise for the brain based upon counting, like those exercises that he had shown to us in Essentuki. Sometimes I worked with him for entire days and nights. One such night in particular remains in my memory, when we "translated" a dervish song for "The Struggle of the Magicians." I saw G. the artist and G. the poet, whom he had so carefully hidden inside him, particularly the latter. This translation took the form of G. recalling the Persian verses, sometimes repeating them to himself in a quiet voice and then translating them for me into Russian. After a quarter of an hour, let us say, when I had completely disappeared beneath forms, symbols, and assimilations, he said: "There, now make one line out of that." I did not try to create any measure or to find a rhythm. This was quite impossible. G. continued and again after a quarter of an hour he said: "That is another line." We sat until the morning. This was in Koumbaradji Street a little below the former Russian consulate. At length the town began to wake. I had written, I think, five verses and had stopped at the last line of the fifth verse. No kind of effort could make my brain turn any more. G. laughed but he also was tired and could not go on. So the verse remained as it was, unfinished, because he never returned again to this song.
Two or three months passed by in this way. I helped G. all I could in organizing his Institute. But gradually the same difficulties arose before me as in Essentuki. So that, when the Institute was opened, I think in October, I was unable to join it. But in order not to hinder G. or to give rise to discord among those who came to my lectures, I put an end to my own lectures and ceased to visit Constantinople. A few of those who came to my lectures visited me in Prinkipo and there we continued the talks begun in Constantinople.
Two months later when G.'s work had already become consolidated I again started to give lectures at the "Miyak" in Constantinople and I continued them for another six months. I visited G.'s Institute from time to time and sometimes he came to me in Prinkipo. The inner relationship between us remained very good. In the spring he proposed that I should give lectures in his Institute and I began to give lectures there once a week in which G. himself took part, supplementing my explanations.
At the beginning of summer G. closed his Institute and went over to Prinkipo. Somewhere about this time I told him in detail of a plan I had drawn up for a book to expound his St. Petersburg lectures and talks with commentaries of my own. He agreed to this plan and authorized me to write and publish it. Up till then I had submitted to the general rule, obligatory for everyone, which concerned G.'s work. According to this rule nobody under any circumstances had the right to write even for his own
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use anything connected with him or his ideas, or any other participants in the work, or to keep letters, notes, and so on, still less to publish anything. During the first years G. insisted strongly upon the obligatory nature of this rule and it was supposed that everyone accepted in the work would give his word to write nothing (and it goes without saying to publish nothing) referring to G. without special permission, even in the event of his leaving the work and G.
This was one of the fundamental rules. Every new person who joined us heard about it and it was considered to be fundamental and obligatory. But afterwards G. accepted in his work people who paid no attention to this rule or who did not wish to consider it. This explains the subsequent appearance of descriptions of various moments in G.'s work.
I passed the summer of 1921 in Constantinople and in August left for London. Before my departure G. proposed that I should go with him to Germany where he once more intended to open his Institute and prepare his ballet. But in the first place I did not believe it was possible to organize work in Germany and secondly I did not believe that I could work with G.
Soon after my arrival in London I began to give lectures in continuation of the work at Constantinople and Ekaterinodar. I learned that G. had gone to Germany with his Tiflis company and with those of my Constantinople people who had joined him. He tried to organize work in Berlin and Dresden and intended to purchase the apartments of the former Institut Dalcroze in Helleran near Dresden. But nothing came out of it all and in connection with the proposed purchase some strange events took place which ended in legal proceedings. In February, 1922, G. came to London. I at once invited him, as a matter of course, to my lectures and introduced him to all who were coming to them. This time my attitude towards him was much more definite. I still expected a very great deal more from his work and I decided to do everything I could to help him to organize his Institute and the preparation of his ballet. But I did not believe it was possible for me to work with him. I saw again all the former obstacles which had begun to appear in Essentuki. This time they had appeared even before he arrived. The outward situation was that G. had done very much towards the accomplishment of his plans. The chief thing was that a certain cadre of people, about twenty, had been prepared, with whom it was possible to begin. The music for the ballet had almost all been prepared (with the co-operation of a well-known musician). The organization of the Institute had been worked out. But there was no money to put all this into practice. Soon after his arrival G. said that he thought of opening his Institute in England. Many of those who came to my lectures became interested in this idea and arranged a subscription among themselves to cover the material side of the business. A certain sum of money was immediately given to G. to
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prepare for the passage of the whole of his group to England. I continued my lectures, connecting them with what G. had said during his stay in London. But I had decided for myself that if the Institute opened in London I would go either to Paris or to America. The Institute was finally opened in London but for various reasons it failed. But my London friends and those who came to my lectures collected a considerable sum of money for him and with this G. bought the historic Chateau Prieuré in Avon near Fontainebleau, with an enormous neglected park, and in the autumn of 1922 he opened his Institute there. A very motley company assembled there. There were a certain number of people who remembered St. Petersburg. There were pupils of G.'s from Tiflis. There were people who had come to my lectures in Constantinople and London. The latter were divided into several groups. In my opinion some had been in far too great a hurry to give up their ordinary occupations in England in order to follow G. I could have said nothing to them because they had already made their decision when they spoke to me about it. I feared that they would meet with disappointment because G.'s work seemed to me not sufficiently rightly organized and therefore to be unstable. But at the same time I could not be sure of my own opinions and did not want to interfere with them because if everything went right and my fears proved to be false then they would undoubtedly have gained by their decision.
Others had tried to work with me but for some reason or other they had parted from me and now thought that it would be easier for them to work with G. They were particularly attracted by the idea of finding what they called a short cut. To this, when they asked my advice, I of course advised them to go to Fontainebleau and work with G. And there were others who came to G. temporarily, for two weeks, for a month. These were people who attended my lectures and who did not want to decide themselves, but on hearing about other people's decisions had come to me and asked whether they ought to "give up everything" and go to Fontainebleau and whether this was the only way to go on with the work. To this I said that they should wait until I was there.
I arrived at the Chateau Prieuré for the first time at the end of October or the beginning of November, 1922. Very interesting and animated work was proceeding there. A pavilion had been built for dances and exercises, housekeeping had been organized, the house had been finished off, and so on. And the atmosphere on the whole was very right and left a strong impression. I remember one talk with Miss Katherine Mansfield who was then living there. This was not more than three weeks before her death. I had given her G.'s address myself. She had been to two or three of my lectures and had then come to me to say that she was going to Paris. A Russian doctor was curing tuberculosis by treating the spleen with X-rays. I could not of course tell her anything about it. She already seemed to me to be halfway to death. And I thought that she was fully aware of it.
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But with all this, one was struck by the striving in her to make the best use even of these last days, to find the truth whose presence she clearly felt but which she was unable to touch. I did not think that I should see her again. But I could not refuse when she asked me for the address of my friends in Paris, for the address of people with whom she would be able to talk about the same things she had talked about with me. And so I had met her again at the Prieuré. We sat in the evening in one of the salons and she spoke in a feeble voice which seemed to come from the void, but it was not unpleasant.
"I know that this is true and that there is no other truth. You know that I have long since looked upon all of us without exception as people who have suffered shipwreck and have been cast upon an uninhabited island, but who do not yet know of it. But these people here know it. The others, there, in life, still think that a steamer will come for them tomorrow and that everything will go on in the old way. These already know that there will be no more of the old way. I am so glad that I can be here."
Soon after my return to London I heard of her death. G. was very good to her, he did not insist upon her going although it was clear that she could not live. For this in the course of time he received the due amount of lies and slanders.
During the year 1923 I went fairly often to Fontainebleau, that is, to the Prieuré.
Soon after its opening the Institute attracted the attention of the press and for a month or two the French and English papers were active writing about it. G. and his pupils were called the "forest philosophers," they were interviewed, their photographs were published, and so on.
G.'s own work during this time, that is, from 1922, was dedicated chiefly to the development of methods of studying rhythm and plastics. He never stopped working the whole time on his ballet, bringing into it the dances of various dervishes and Sufis and recalling by memory the music he had listened to in Asia many years before. In this work was a very great deal that was new and interesting. Dervish dances and music were reproduced in Europe undoubtedly for the first time. And they produced a very great impression on all who were able to hear and see them.
In the Prieuré also they carried on very intensive mental exercises for the development of the memory, of attention, and of the imagination, and further, in connection with these exercises, in "imitation of psychic phenomena." Then there was a lot of obligatory work for everyone in the house and connected with the housekeeping which required great strenuousness, thanks to the speed of working and various other conditions.
From among the talks of that time I particularly remember one which related to the methods of breathing and although this talk as well as
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many other things that were done then passed unnoticed, it showed the possibility of an entirely fresh point of view on the subject in question.
"Right exercises," G. said once, "which lead direct to the aim of mastering the organism and subjecting its conscious and unconscious functions to the will, begin with breathing exercises. Without mastering breathing nothing can be mastered. At the same time to master breathing is not so easy.
"You must realize that there are three kinds of breathing. One is normal breathing. The second is 'inflation.' The third is breathing assisted by movements. What does this mean? It means that normal breathing goes on unconsciously, it is managed and controlled by the moving center. 'Inflation' is artificial breathing. If for instance a man says to himself that he will count ten inhaling and ten exhaling, or that he will inhale through the right nostril and exhale through the left—this is done by the formatory apparatus. And the breathing itself is different because the moving center and the formatory apparatus act through different groups of muscles. The group of muscles through which the moving center acts are neither accessible nor subordinate to the formatory apparatus. But in the event of a temporary stoppage of the moving center the formatory apparatus has been given a group of muscles which it can influence and with whose help it can set the breathing mechanism in motion. But its work will of course be worse than the work of the moving center and it cannot go on for long. You have read the book about 'yogi breathing,' you have heard or have also read about the special breathing connected with the 'mental prayer' in Orthodox monasteries. It is all one and the same thing. Breathing proceeding from the formatory apparatus is not breathing but 'inflation.' The idea is that if a man carries out this kind of breathing long enough and often enough through the formatory apparatus, the moving center which remains idle during this period can get tired of doing nothing and start working in 'imitation' of the formatory apparatus. And indeed this sometimes happens. But so that this should happen many conditions are necessary, fasting and prayer are necessary and little sleep and all kinds of difficulties and burdens for the body. If the body is well treated this cannot happen. You think there are no physical exercises in Orthodox monasteries? Well, you try to carry out one hundred prostrations according to all the rules. You will have an aching back that no kind of gymnastics could ever give.
"This all has one aim: to bring breathing into the right muscles, to hand it over to the moving center. And as I said, sometimes this is successful. But there is always a big risk that the moving center will lose its habit of working properly, and since the formatory apparatus cannot work all the time, as for instance during sleep, and the moving center does not want to, then the machine can find itself in a very sorry situation. A man may even die from breathing having stopped. The disorganization
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of the functions of the machine through breathing exercises is almost inevitable when people try to do 'breathing exercises' from books by themselves without proper instruction. Many people used to come to me in Moscow who had completely disorganized right functioning of their machines by so-called 'yogi breathing' which they had learned from books. Books which recommend such exercises represent a great danger.
"The transition of breathing from the control of the formatory apparatus into the control of the moving center can never be attained by amateurs. For this transition to take place the organism must be brought to the last stage of intensity, but a man himself can never do this.
"But as I have already said, there is a third way—breathing through movements. This third way needs a great knowledge of the human machine and it is employed in schools directed by very learned people. In comparison all other methods are 'home made' and unreliable.
"The fundamental idea of this method consists in the fact that certain movements and postures can call forth any kind of breathing you like and it is also normal breathing, not 'inflation.' The difficulty is in knowing what movements and what postures will call forth certain kinds of breathing in what kind of people. This latter is particularly important because people from this point of view are divided into a certain number of definite types and each type should have its own definite movements to get one and the same breathing because the same movement produces different breathing with different types. A man who knows the movement which will produce in himself one or another kind of breathing is already able to control his organism and is able at any moment he likes to set in motion one or another center or cause that part which is working to stop. Of course the knowledge of these movements and the ability to control them like everything else in the world has its degrees. A man can know more or less and make a better or a worse use of it. In the meantime it is important only to understand the principle.
"And this is particularly important in connection with the study of the divisions of centers in oneself. Mention has been made of this several times before. You must understand that each center is divided into three parts in conformity with the primary division of centers into 'thinking,' 'emotional,' and 'moving.' On the same principle each of these parts in its turn is divided into three. In addition, from the very outset each center is divided into two parts: positive and negative. And in all parts there are groups of 'rolls' connected together, some in one direction and others in another direction. This explains the differences between people, what is called 'individuality.' Of course there is in this no individuality at all, but simply a difference of 'rolls' and associations."
The talk took place in the big studio in the garden, decorated by G. in the fashion of a dervish tekkeh.
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Having explained the meaning of various kinds of breathing he began to divide those present into three groups according to type. About forty people were there. G.'s idea was to show how the same movements with different people produced different "moments of breathing," for instance, with some inhalation, with others exhalation, and how different movements and postures can produce one and the same moment of breathing—inhalation, exhalation, and holding the breath.
But this experiment was not completed. And, as far as I know, G. never afterwards returned to it again.
During this period G. invited me several times to go and live at the Prieuré. There was a good deal of temptation in this. But in spite of all my interest in G.'s work I could find no place for myself in this work nor did I understand its direction. At the same time I could not fail to see, as I had seen in Essentuki in 1918, that there were many destructive elements in the organization of the affair itself and that it had to fall to pieces.
In December, 1923, G. arranged demonstrations of dervish dances, rhythmic movements, and various exercises in Paris in the Theâtre des Champs Elysées.
Soon after these demonstrations in the beginning of January, 1924, G., together with a part of his pupils, went to America with the intention of arranging lectures and demonstrations there.
I was at the Prieuré on the day of his departure. And this departure reminded me very much of his departure from Essentuki in 1918 and all that was connected with it.
On returning to London I announced to those who came to my lectures that my work in the future would proceed quite independently in the way it had been begun in London in 1921.