Georgette Leblanc and health as the first requirement
What was the secret that Georgette Leblanc gained from Gurdjieff that so transformed her physical health as well as enabled inner work for being?
[For citation abbreviations and full references please see Introduction and Bibliography]
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Georgette Leblanc (1869-1941), the French opera singer and actress, arrived with her companions at the Prieuré at Fontainebleau-Avon, France, in June 1924 [TCM, p.44], to attend Gurdjieff’s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. Leblanc had serious struggles with her health for many years. This included a close encounter with death from pneumonia in 1934, of which she writes vividly in her book, The Courage Machine [TCM p.85-93. Amazon Kindle, Hardcover]. In spite of this, she says, strangely,
I think the primary condition for approaching Gurdjieff is to be in good health. One must be in a state to withstand the first shocks [TCM p.46].
She writes of how the work on herself gave her new energy:
...In the beginning it seemed heartbreaking to approach such truths at last and to have so few years left to give to them. But soon the fact that I was working within myself, with an unawakened part of my nature, supplied me with a new strange energy. From now on I would know how to use the time remaining to me – I pictured myself as a honeycomb with each cell waiting to be filled [TCM p.44-5].
From 1924, she lived at intervals at the Prieuré for two years, following which,
“...until 1935 we encountered Gurdjieff more rarely but we continued to live, as far as we could, according to his principles, incorporating his doctrine more and more deeply [TCM p.49].”
From 1935 until the beginning of the war in 1939, Georgette “was able to see [Gurdjieff] continually” in Paris [TCM p.94-5]. Gurdjieff told her that her liver was sick and that all her organs were blocked, but that he could help her and prevent pain so as to prepare the ground for something else [TCM p.96 and p.99]. She asked Gurdjieff whether she could read the new parts of his manuscript of Beelzebub’s Tales. He permitted her to do this, placing the manuscript in a cupboard in a little room, to which she was given access at any time. She often read it for two or three hours a day [TCM p.96]. She wrote,
I read with concentration, as if my life depended on the difficult thought that comes from his pages [TCM p.96].
With her new work and contact with Gurdjieff again, she describes herself becoming without pain, light and strong, charged like a dynamo [TCM p.97], and writes in her diary,
I often feel a great internal heat, as if I were close to a fire. I sleep without waking. I believe that a silent and healing perturbation is taking place in me [TCM p.97].
One day she arrived at the door of Gurdjieff’s apartment, which he himself opened, and told him that she felt completely well, as if she was in a new body [TCM p.99].
So what did Gurdjieff do for Georgette Leblanc to help her become so much better physically? As far as self-development was concerned, he said, “I cannot develop you...I can create conditions in which you can change yourselves [TCM p.44].” Did the change in her physical health also follow this principle? If so, it would have resonances with a number of stories of Gurdjieff’s cures [E.g., Tchekovitch, p.211].” Or did Gurdjieff impart to Leblanc his healing “magnetism” or Hanbledzoin, as described elsewhere [e.g., Nott, TG p.63; BT p.568]?
Gurdjieff’s statement of “all organs blocked” could correspond to ordinary western medicine’s conceptions of blockages – such as of arteries and of ducts of various kinds. And the mention of liver problems suggests that gallstones and attendant obstructions of the biliary tract may have been a big part of Leblanc’s ill health. However, blockage as a general principle is also resonant with the assertions of Mesmer, who is of course given space in Beelzebub’s Tales, and who claimed that the hindered or obstructed circulation of various fluids, including blood and the “subtlest series of the universal fluid” or “magnetism,” is the basis of all illness [e.g., Mesmer, Allgemeine Erläuterungen, 1812, p.32 and 34].
In 1936, Georgette told Gurdjieff that she was no longer young and had not long to live. However, Gurdjieff told her more than once that she was, on the contrary, still young. She writes in her book that she understood later that this remark of Gurdjieff’s had referred to her healthy glands [TCM p.96-7]. He might have meant by glands, endocrine glands in general. However, the functioning of the “sex glands” (or ovaries and testes), and the substances concentrated within them, being-Exioëhary, are accorded special importance in Gurdjieff’s writing and oral teaching, and are specifically implicated in health and long life [e.g., BT p.791, p.944; L p.166].
As described above, even (or, perhaps, especially) the reading of Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales was a medicine for her. Leblanc writes:
He tells his pupils that my case interests him. “She was a candidate for death. Now she is a candidate for life.” At lunch he looked at me mischievously: “I only said, read the book, madame, read the book” [TCM p.97].
So, can reading “the book,” that is, Gurdjieff’s All and Everything, especially the first series, be also for us, a cure? If so, this will be first of all a cure for our abnormal perceptions. But if it does this, then it may also indirectly transform our equally abnormal automatic manifestations, and perhaps even bodily as well as psychic functioning [1]. Time and rightly directed effort will tell.
Footnote
[1] The word “psychic” in Gurdjieff’s writing seems to have some equivalence to the word “psychological” in ordinary modern English.
Main work cited here is:
Leblanc, Georgette – The Courage Machine: A New Life in a New World (Tr. Margaret Anderson and Solita Solano), Book Studio (n.p.), 2012 [Original French: La Machine à Courage: Souvenirs, J.B. Janin (Paris), 1947]. [TCM] [Amazon Kindle, Hardcover]