Meetings With Remarkable Men

by G. I. Gurdjieff

Concerning sexual desire, he once told me the following:

  ‘If a youth but once gratify this lust before reaching adulthood, then the same would happen to him as happened to the historical Esau, who for a single mess of pottage sold his birthright, that is, the welfare of his whole life; because if a youth yields to this temptation even once, he will lose for the rest of his life the possibility of being a man of real worth.

  ‘The gratification of lust before adulthood is like pouring alcohol into Mollavallian madjar.6

  ‘Just as from madjar into which even a single drop of alcohol has been poured only vinegar is obtained and never wine, so the gratification of lust before adulthood leads to a youth’s becoming a monstrosity. But when the youth is grown up, then he can do whatever he likes; just as with madjar—when it is already wine you can put as much alcohol in it as you like; not only will it not be spoiled but you can obtain whatever strength you please.’

  Father Borsh had a very original idea of the world and of man.

  His views on man and the aim of man’s existence differed completely from those of the people round him and from everything I had heard or gathered from my reading.

  I will mention here certain thoughts of his which may serve to illustrate the understanding he had of man and what he expected of him.

  He said:

  ‘Until adulthood, man is not responsible for any of his acts, good or bad, voluntary or involuntary; solely responsible are the people close to him who have undertaken, consciously or owing to accidental circumstances, the obligation of preparing him for responsible life.

  ‘The years of youth are for every human being, whether male or female, the period given for the further development of the initial conception in the mother’s womb up to, so to say, its full completion.

  ‘From this time on, that is, from the moment the process of his development is finished, a man becomes personally responsible for all his voluntary and involuntary manifestations.

  ‘According to laws of nature elucidated and verified through many centuries of observation by people of pure reason, this process of development is finished in males between the ages of twenty and twenty-three, and in females between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, depending on the geographical conditions of the place of their arising and formation.

  ‘As elucidated by wise men of past epochs, these age periods have been established by nature, according to law, for the acquisition of independent being with personal responsibility for all one’s manifestations, but unfortunately at the present time they are hardly recognized at all. And this, in my opinion, is owing chiefly to the negligent attitude in contemporary education towards the question of sex, a question which plays the most important role in the life of everyone.

  ‘As regards responsibility for their acts, most contemporary people who have reached or even somewhat passed the age o adulthood, strange as it may seem at first glance, may prove to be not responsible for any of their manifestations; and this, in my opinion, can be considered conforming to law.

  ‘One of the chief causes of this absurdity is that, at this age, contemporary people in most cases lack the corresponding type of the opposite sex necessary, according to law, for the completion of their type, which, from causes not dependent upon them but ensuing, so to say, from Great Laws, is in itself a“something not complete”.

  ‘At this age, a person who does not have near him a corresponding type of the opposite sex for the completion of his incomplete type, is nonetheless subject to the laws of nature and so cannot remain without gratification of his sexual needs. Coming in contact with a type not corresponding to his own and, owing to the law of polarity, falling in certain respects under the influence of this non-corresponding type, he loses, involuntarily and imperceptibly, almost all the typical manifestations of his individuality.

  ‘That is why it is absolutely necessary for every person, in the process of his responsible life, to have beside him a person of the opposite sex of corresponding type for mutual completion in every respect.

  ‘This imperative necessity was, among other things, providentially well understood by our remote ancestors in almost all past epochs and, in order to create conditions for a more or less normal collective existence, they considered it their chief task to be able to make as well and as exactly as possible the choice of types from opposite sexes.

  ‘Most of the ancient peoples even had the custom of making these choices between the two sexes, or betrothals, in the boy’s seventh year with a girl one year old. From this time on the two families of the future couple, thus early betrothed, were under the mutual obligation of assisting the correspondence in both children of all the habits inculcated in the course of growth, such as inclinations, enthusiasms, tastes and so on.’

  I also very well remember that on another occasion the father dean said:

  ‘In order that at responsible age a man may be a real man and not a parasite, his education must without fail be based on the following ten principles.

  ‘From early childhood there should be instilled in the child:Belief in receiving punishment for disobedience.

  Hope of receiving reward only for merit.

  Love of God—but indiference to the saints.

  Remorse of conscience for the ill-treatment of animals.

  Fear of grieving parents and teachers.

  Fearlessness towards devils, snakes and mice.

  Joy in being content merely with what one has.

  Sorrow at the loss of the goodwill of others.

  Patient endurance of pain and hunger.

  The striving early to earn one’s bread.’

  To my great distress, I did not happen to be present during the last days of this worthy and, for our time, remarkable man, in order to pay the last debt of earthly life to him, my unforgettable tutor, my second father.

  One Sunday, many years after his death, the priests and congregation of the Kars Military Cathedral were much astonished and interested when a man quite unknown in the neighbourhood requested the full funeral service to be held over a lonely and forgotten grave, the only one within the grounds of the cathedral. And they saw how this stranger with difficulty held back his tears and, having generously recompensed the priests and without looking at anyone, told the coachman to drive to the station.

  Rest in peace, dear Teacher! I do not know whether I have justified or am justifying your dreams, but the commandments you gave me I have never once in all my life broken.

  IV

  BOGACHEVSKY

  BOGACHEVSKY, OR FATHER EVLISSI, is still alive and well, and has the good fortune to be an assistant to the abbot of the chief monastery of the Essene Brotherhood, situated not far from the shores of the Dead Sea.

  This brotherhood was founded, according to certain surmises, twelve hundred years before the Birth of Christ; and it is said that in this brotherhood Jesus Christ received his first initiation.

  I met Bogachevsky, or Father Evlissi, for the first time when he was a very young man and when, having finished his course at the Russian Theological Seminary, he was waiting to be ordained to the priesthood and was a deacon at the military cathedral of Kars.

  Soon after his arrival in Kars he consented, at the request of my first tutor, Dean Borsh, to become my teacher in place of Krestovsky, another candidate for the priesthood, who several weeks before had received a post as chaplain to a regiment somewhere in Poland. Bogachevsky had then taken his place at the cathedral.

  Bogachevsky turned out to be a very sociable and kindly man; he soon won the confidence of all the cathedral clergy, even of Ponomarenko, who was also a candidate, but crude and, in the full sense of the word, a boor, and not on good terms with anyone. With Bogachevsky, however, he got along so well that they even shared the same lodgings, taking rooms together near the public gardens close to the military fire-brigade.

  Although I was then still very young, my relationship with Bogachevsky soon became very friendly. I often went to see him in my spare time, and
when I had afternoon lessons I would often stay after they were finished, either to prepare other lessons or to listen to his conversations with Ponomarenko and with the acquaintances who were always visiting them. Sometimes I helped them in their simple household.

  Among those who often came to see them was an army engineer, Vseslavsky, who was a fellow-countryman of Bogachevsky, and an artillery officer and pyrotechnical expert named Kouzmin. Seated around the samovar, they would discuss anything and everything.

  I would always listen very attentively to Bogachevsky and his friends, as, reading at that time a large number of books on the most varied subjects in Greek, Armenian and Russian, I was interested in many questions; but because of my youth I naturally never joined in their conversation. Their opinions were authoritative for me, and at that time I had a great veneration for these men on account of their advanced education.

  It was, by the way, all the conversations and discussions of these men, who gathered at my teacher Bogachevsky’s to kill time in the monotonous life of the remote and very boring town of Kars, which awakened my ever-continuing interest in abstract questions.

  Since this interest played an important part in my life, leaving a definite mark on my entire subsequent existence, and since the events which stimulated this interest occurred during the period to which belong my memories of Bogachevsky, I will dwell upon them a little longer.

  Once, during one of these conversations, a lively discussion arose about spiritualism and, among other things, about table-turning, which at that time was a subject of absorbing interest everywhere.

  The army engineer asserted that this phenomenon occurs through the participation of spirits. The others denied this, attributing it to other forces of nature, such as magnetism, the law of attraction, auto-suggestion and so forth; but nobody denied the existence of the fact itself.

  I, as usual, listened attentively and every opinion that was expressed deeply interested me. Although I had already read a great deal of ‘anything and everything’, this was the first time I heard about these matters.

  This discussion about spiritualism made a particularly strong impression on me because of the recent death of my favourite sister and my grief over it, from which I had not yet recovered. In those days I often thought about her and involuntarily questions arose in my mind about death and life beyond the grave. What was said that evening seemed to be in response to the thoughts and questions which had unconsciously arisen in me and were demanding a solution.

  As a result of their discussion they decided to make an experiment with a table. For this a table with three legs was necessary, and there was one in the corner of the room; but the specialist in these experiments, the army engineer, would not use it because there were nails in it. He explained that the table had to be without iron, and so they sent me to a neighbouring photographer to ask whether he had such a table. Finding that he had one, I brought it back with me.

  It was evening. Having closed the doors and turned down the light, we all sat down round the table and, placing our hands on it in a certain way, began to wait.

  Sure enough, in about twenty minutes our table did begin to move, and when the engineer asked it the age of each one present it tapped out the numbers with one leg. How and why it was tapping was incomprehensible to me; I did not even try to explain anything to myself, so strong was the impression of the vast, unknown fields opening up before me.

  What I had heard and seen agitated me so profoundly that when I went home I thought about these questions all that night and the next morning, and even decided to ask Father Borsh about them during my lessons. This I did, and told him about the conversation and experiment of the previous evening.

  ‘All that is nonsense,’ replied my first tutor. ‘Don’t think and bother about such things, but learn what is necessary for you to know for leading a tolerable existence.’

  And he could not resist adding: ‘Come, you little garlic-head’ —that was his favourite expression—‘think! If spirits can really tap with the leg of a table, it means that they have some physical force. And if they have, why should they resort to such an idiotic and moreover complicated means of communicating with people as tapping with the leg of a table? Surely they could transmit whatever they wished to say either by touch or by some other means!’

  Much as I valued the opinion of my old tutor, I could not accept his categorical reply without criticism, the more so since it seemed to me that my younger instructor and his friends, who had been through the seminary and other higher educational institutions, might know more about some things than the old man who had studied in the days when science was not so advanced.

  So, in spite of all my respect for the old dean, I doubted his views on certain problems concerning higher mattters.

  My question was thus left unanswered. I tried to solve it by reading books given me by Bogachevsky, the dean and others. My studies, however, did not allow me to think very long about anything extraneous, and after a time I forgot about this question and thought no more about it.

  Time passed. I studied very hard with all my teachers, including Bogachevsky, and only occasionally, during the holidays, went to visit my uncle in Alexandropol, where I had many friends. I went there also to earn money. I always needed money for personal expenses, for clothes, books and so on, and also now and then for helping some member or other of my family, which at that time was in great want.

  I went to Alexandropol to earn money, firstly, because everyone knew me there as a ‘master of all trades’ and I was always asked to make or repair something. One person wanted a lock repaired, another a watch mended, a third a special stove hewn out of the local stone, and another a cushion embroidered for a trousseau or for decorating the parlour. In short, I had a large clientele there and plenty of work and, for those times, I was very well paid. I also went to Alexandropol because in Kars I mixed with people of the ‘learned’ and ‘superior’ circles, according to my youthful understanding, and I did not wish them to know me as an artisan or to suspect that my family was in need and that I was compelled to earn money for my own expenses as a simple craftsman. At that time all this deeply wounded my self-love.

  And so at Easter that year I went as usual to Alexandropol, which was only about sixty miles from Kars, to stay with the family of my uncle, to whom I was much attached and whose favourite I had always been.

  On the second day of this visit, at dinner, my aunt said to me, among other things: ‘Listen, take care not to have an accident.’

  I was astonished. What could possibly happen to me? I asked her what she meant.

  ‘I don’t quite believe it myself,’ said she, ‘but something that was foretold about you has already come true, and I am afraid that the rest of it might also come true.’ And she told me the following:

  At the beginning of the winter the half-witted Eoung-Ashokh Mardiross came to Alexandropol, as he did each year, and for some reason or other my aunt took it into her head to summon this fortune-teller and ask him to foretell my future. He had predicted many things awaiting me and, according to her, some of them had already occurred. She then pointed out certain things which had indeed happened to me during this time. ‘But thank God,’ she continued, ‘there are two things which have not yet happened to you: one, that you will have a large sore on your right side; the other, that you are in danger of a serious accident from a fire-arm. You should, therefore, be very cautious wherever shooting is going on,’ concluded my aunt, stating that, although she did not believe this lunatic, it was in any case better to be careful.

  I was very much astonished by what she told me, because two months before a carbuncle had indeed appeared on my right side, which I had had to have treated for a month, going to the military hospital almost every day to have it dressed. But I had not spoken of it to anyone, and even at home no one knew about it, so how could my aunt, who lived far away, have possibly known anything about it?

  However, I did not attach any great importance to m
y aunt’s story, since I did not believe at all in any of this fortune-telling, and I soon quite forgot about this prediction.

  In Alexandropol I had a friend named Fatinov. He had a friend, Gorbakoun, the son of a company commander in the Baku regiment, which was stationed not far from the Greek quarter.

  About a week after my aunt’s story this Fatinov came and asked me to go with him and his friend to shoot wild duck. They were going to Lake Alagheuz at the foot of the mountain of the same name.

  I agreed to join them, thinking it would be a good opportunity for a rest. I was really very tired, as I had been working hard studying certain absorbing books on neuropathology. Moreover, I had been very fond of shooting since early childhood.

  Once, when I was only six years old, I had taken my father’s rifle without permission and had gone out to shoot sparrows, and although the first shot knocked me down this not only did not discourage me but even added zest to my love of shooting. Of course they at once took the rifle away from me, and hung it so high that I could not possibly reach it; but out of old cartridge shells I made myself another one, which shot the cardboard bullets I had for my toy gun. This rifle, loaded with small lead shot, hit the mark no worse than a real one and became so sought after among my comrades that they began to order such fire-arms from me; and besides passing for an excellent ‘gunsmith’, I began to earn a good income.

  And so, two days later, Fatinov and his friend called for me and we went off to shoot. We had to walk about fifteen miles, so we started at daybreak in order to arrive by evening, without hurrying, and be ready early the next morning for the ducks to rise.

  There were four of us—a soldier, the orderly of commander Gorbakoun, had joined us. We all brought guns, and Gorbakoun even had a service rifle. Arriving at the lake as planned, we made a fire, had supper, built a hut, and went to sleep.

  Rising before dawn, we divided the shores of the lake between us and began to wait for the birds to fly. On my left was Gorbakoun with his service rifle. He fired at the first duck that rose while it was still very low, and the bullet hit me right in the leg. Fortunately it passed clean through, missing the bone.