An Introduction to “Gurdjieff’s Medicine”
See also Medicine is a Branch of Cooking.
Summary: The relation of Gurdjieff’s medicine to his teaching as a whole; the problem with collecting fragments; the universe being composed of vibrations; the law of seven; the law of three; the unity of everything; the materiality of everything; improvement in health in association with self-development; the idea of normal.
Gurdjieff’s medicine [1] is not only a huge field in itself, but it impinges on, and is affected by, practically everything else that he taught. In a way, it is very artificial to divide it off from the rest of his teaching, and the posts in this section, therefore, should be seen in the light of his whole teaching to be seen truly. For instance, his psychological and cosmological teachings are integral. Likewise are his music and Movements, two key areas which are deeply related to medicine and the striving for wholeness.
The fact that Gurdjieff helped people to improve their physical health is not usually given much attention. Yet, this seems to be of prime importance as a foundation on which to base inner work.
When young, Gurdjieff studied to become a priest and a physician [2]. His first tutor, Dean Borsh, was convinced that to be able to care for the soul, a priest also had to know about the body, and vice versa.
... ‘Just as a physician who does not have access to the soul of his patient cannot be of any real help to him, so also one cannot be a good priest without being at the same time a physician, because the body and soul are interconnected and it is often impossible to cure the one when the cause of the illness lies in the other.’
He was in favour of my having a medical education, though not in the ordinary sense but as he understood it, that is, with the aim of becoming a physician for the body and a confessor for the soul [3].
Thomas de Hartmann notes a question asked by an English visitor at Gurdjieff’s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at the Prieuré at Fontainebleau, and that the first part of Gurdjieff’s response simply concerned improvement of physical and psychological health:
Question Has Mr Gurdjieff’s educational system produced an example of the type of man that he wishes to develop?
Answer With regard to the results achieved by pupils here during this short period of time, first of all we can note:
1. Improvement in their health. That means that there was established a basis to improve their future health from the chronic diseases that they had. The following can serve as examples: improvement from obesity, the strengthening of their weak memories and bringing in order their disordered nerves... [4].
Professor Denis Saurat, visiting the Prieuré for the first time, and initially sceptical of what Gurdjieff was doing, was given a rare interview with Gurdjieff in 1923, and wrote:
Myself: ‘What results are you trying to obtain here?’
Gourdyev: ‘To give physical health, to increase the intelligence, to lift people out of their routine [5].’
Within Gurdjieff’s immense, all-encompassing teaching, there is an astonishing system of psychology, physiology and anatomy. These, needless to say, while often having a surface resemblance, or, at least, a seeming correspondence, to their Western counterparts, nevertheless, when plumbed to even a little depth, may be found to be infinitely richer, more subtle, more exact in language, as well as more practical. I would also propose that the study of general physiology and neurophysiology and other modern sciences give a good basis for the pursuit of the understanding of “Gurdjieff’s medicine.” Gurdjieff himself makes the striking claim that when he was young,
...there was not a single book on neuropathology and psychology in the library of the Kars military hospital that I had not read, and read very attentively, carefully going over almost every line... [6].
The great danger in collecting fragments of a much greater whole is being misled into taking things out of context. The further complication of such a study, and the study in general of Gurdjieff’s writing, talks and conversations, is the possibility of a single statement having a number of different meanings [7], and the abundant use of allegory without necessarily excluding literal meanings [8], and vice versa. However, if one tries to keep the whole in mind, and keeps everything in question, especially one’s own interpretations, then it may be that this endeavour of the investigation of “Gurdjieff’s medicine” can be useful.
It is well to keep in mind Gurdjieff’s view of the universe as being composed of vibrations [9], and that these develop and interact according to specific laws. Through the law of seven, or the law of the octave, and the law of three, everything is divided and yet remains a unity [10]. Regarding the first, the law of seven, from the greatest to the smallest phenomena, all manifest the same octave of divisions and transformations, though on different scales. Gurdjieff often used sound vibrations and the musical major scale to illustrate the principle of the law of seven [11]. This scale ascends from the do of one octave to the do of the next in seven steps - do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do – and the number of vibrations of the first do is doubled by the time it reaches the next higher do of the octave. Peculiar to Gurdjieff is that this process is described as going along by its own momentum except between the steps mi and fa and between si and do, where there is required an extra impetus from outside in order to keep the flow of forces along the same line. At the difficult places, at the mi-fa and si-do intervals, without this extra help, the line will be deflected to another direction from that of the original. This is also why, for instance, no project we undertake is ever straightforward [12].
The other fundamental law of the universe, according to Gurdjieff, is the law of three. Every phenomenon, is the result of three forces: a positive force, a negative force and a neutralising force, sometimes called the affirming force, the denying force and the reconciling force [13]. Gurdjieff said, “...there can be no new thing without the third force [14].” He took the example of bread:
When the first two forces are mixed with a third, something quite different is created. For example, flour and water remain flour and water – there is no change; but if you add fire, then fire will bake them and a new thing will be created which has different properties [15].
The law of three, is also a very practical “law” for observing and applying in our lives, as is the law of seven.
Gurdjieff said that for the work of self-development that he taught, it was necessary to know the human organism thoroughly, “every screw” [16]. This must include both the psyche, or the mind, and the body. In addition, Gurdjieff writes, “everything is material,” and that even every thought has a definite weight or density, which can be measured [17]. Medicine, knowledge of the human organism, and self-development go hand in hand. The curing of diseases, however, for Gurdjieff, does not seem to have been with the primary aim of the relief of suffering. Payment was exacted, sometimes of money, but there was the need for effort also from the patient, of inner work, of something corresponding from them, which is described in a few places. For example, Pan Philipovitch says, having been advised by Olga de Hartmann, before he knew Gurdjieff, to ask him for help in his troublesome “fainting spells,”
“I later learned that Mr. Gurdjieff wasn’t at all pleased to have been suggested as someone who could be helpful in my case. ‘Whether or not I help,’ he declared, ‘does not depend on his asking or even begging me. If he deserves help, he’ll get it; otherwise don’t interfere [18].’ ”
From a Western medical standpoint, in the secondary literature on Gurdjieff, there are a number of bizarre and even seemingly downright dangerous treatments used by Gurdjieff [19]. More than ever, we should keep a critical and questioning eye open when assessing these things, and to keep in mind,
...the principal demand made...is the demand for understanding... [20].
Much of the material covered here may largely be to do with external and everyday things, of the body and its needs, rather than the higher spiritual matters that Gurdjieff was always concerned with. However, this latter is always on the horizon in this writing too, and toward which everything tends.
Indeed, the main thrust of Gurdjieff’s teaching is to do with personal inner work, with the aim of acquiring real knowledge and being, and, as Gurdjieff put it, of developing a soul.
“Every thinking man – and by man I also mean woman – must be occupied only by this interest – to develop a soul [21].”
Gurdjieff called himself a religious man [22], but unlike many such, he seemed to regard the body as an essential partner with the intellect and feelings in the pursuit of inner development, and thus of serving Nature and God [23].
In Beelzebub’s Tales, Gurdjieff repeatedly criticises the “abnormal external conditions of the ordinary being-existence established by them,” and says that the majority of our innumerable “illnesses” arise owing to these abnormal conditions [24]. If the health of body and soul are so intertwined, then living according to more normal conditions might increase not only physical and psychological health, but could also be more favourable for spiritual development. As mentioned in a previous article, Georgette Leblanc, one of Gurdjieff’s French pupils who suffered a lot of ill health throughout her life, and who was helped a great deal in this by Gurdjieff, thought the first requirement for Gurdjieff’s work, that is, inner work, was actually good health [25].
If most illnesses are due to abnormalities in lifestyle and milieu, or abnormal external conditions of ordinary being-existence, then there is never likely to be optimal functioning and development in the presence of such external abnormality. The idea of the normal human being comes up again and again with Gurdjieff [26], though the word normal cannot be taken in its usual sense. In Gurdjieff’s writings and talks, normal is not something that is ordinary, average or common, but, rather, more like something comprising full development of possibilities. Gurdjieff wrote of some who strove “...to become such as they ought to have been, corresponding to the sense and aim of their existence... [27].” To strive to be normal requires both internal and external measures, the latter including a normal lifestyle, customs and habits. Only when normal can one fulfil one’s destiny as a human being without quotation marks.
Footnotes
[For full citations of items referenced, see Introduction and Bibliography.]
[1] As a preliminary definition, medicine is taken here as the healing art – healing being that which makes whole – and applying both to oneself and to helping others. In terms closer to Gurdjieff’s, medicine could be thought of that which facilitates the evolutionary processes of health over the involutionary processes. [cf L p.7]
[2] M p.54
[3] M p.53
[4] Hartmann p.179
[5] From Gurdjieff International Review, source cited as: The Living Age, New York, January 1934, Vol. CCCXLV (4408), pp. 427–433. Originally published in French as Visite à Gourdjieff.
[6] M p.70
[7] TG p.136 and p.176
[8] TG p.75
[9] ISM p.87
[10] V p.18
[11] V p.17, ISM p.124-6
[12] ISM p.126-9
[13] ISM p.77
[14] V p.188
[15] V p.189
[16] V p.166 and M p.189
[17] V p.23
[18] Tcheslaw Tchekhovitch – Gurdjieff: A Master in Life, p.211
[19] For example, Peters, Fritz – Boyhood With Gurdjieff, Victor Gollancz (London), 1964, p.123-4
[20] ISM p.49
[21] GWR p.22
[22] GWR p.28
[23] For example, this is reflected in Gurdjieff’s term “three-brained being,” and the insistence on the effort of three-brained or three-centred activity, “...the working together of the three centers—moving, emotional and thinking. When all three work together and produce an action, this is the work of a man...” V p.105
[24] BT p.319 and p.1004
[25] TCM p.46
[26] For example, ISM p.109, p.164; L p.134
[27] BT p.298