Meetings With Remarkable Men

by G. I. Gurdjieff

  Our journey to the town of Tabriz, which we reached ten days later, passed without any special incident. But not long after leaving Tabriz an event occurred which I will describe in as much detail as possible, not merely because Ekim Bey took an active part and manifested a deep interest in it, but also because it turned my own outlook on life completely upside down.

  While in Tabriz we had heard a great deal about a certain Persian dervish, supposedly a performer of extraordinary miracles, and our interest was aroused. A little later in our journey we again heard about him from a certain Armenian priest, and we then decided, although he lived in a place a good deal out of our way, to change the route we had planned in order to see him and find out for ourselves who and what he was.

  It was on the thirteenth day of a tiring journey, during which we spent the nights in the huts of Persian or Kurd shepherds or in small settlements, that we finally reached the village where this dervish lived.

  We were directed to his house, which was some distance beyond the village. We immediately made our way there and found him near his house in the shade of some trees, where he usually spoke with the people who came to him.

  We saw a man of fairly advanced age, dressed in rags, barefoot and seated cross-legged on the ground. Near him sat a number of young Persians who, as we discovered later, were his pupils. We approached, asked his benediction, and also seated ourselves on the ground, forming a half-circle round him. Our conversation began.

  We put questions and he answered us, and in his turn he asked us questions.

  At first he received us rather coldly and showed little inclination to talk, but later, when he found that we had come a considerable distance especially to talk with him, he became more cordial. He expressed himself very simply, in unpolished language, and at the beginning gave the impression, at least to me personally, of being an ignorant man, that is to say, uneducated in the European sense of the word.

  The conversation with the dervish was conducted in Persian, but in a particular dialect which none of our company knew except myself, Dr. Sari-Ogli and one other who was not very fluent in it. Consequently Sari-Ogli and I asked the questions, immediately translating all that was said for the benefit of the others.

  It was dinner-time. A pupil came bringing the dervish his food—rice in a bowl made out of a gourd. Continuing the conversation, the dervish began to eat. As we had eaten nothing since we had risen and started on our way early in the morning, we opened our knapsacks and began to eat also.

  I must remind you that at that time I was an ardent follower of the famous Indian yogis and carried out very exactly all the indications of what is called Hatha Yoga, and when eating I tried to masticate my food as thoroughly as possible. So, long after everyone, including the old man, had finished their simple meal, I continued slowly eating, trying not to swallow a single morsel without masticating it according to all the rules.

  Seeing this, the dervish asked me: ‘Tell me, young stranger, why are you eating like that?’

  I was so sincerely astonished by this question—which seemed to me very strange and to say not very much for his knowledge—that I even had no desire to reply to him, and thought that we had made such a long detour in vain, to meet a man who was not worth talking with seriously. Looking into his eyes, I felt not only pity but also ashamed for him, and replied with self-assurance that I chewed my food carefully so that it might be better assimilated in the intestines, and, referring to the well-known fact that properly digested food gives the organism a larger quantity of calories necessary for all our functions, I repeated all that I had extracted from various books on the subject.

  Shaking his head, the old man slowly and with conviction uttered the following saying which is known throughout Persia:Let God kill him who himself does not know and yet presumes to show others the way to the doors of His Kingdom.

  After that Sari-Ogli put a question to the dervish which he answered briefly. He then turned again to me and asked:

  ‘Tell me, young stranger, you probably also do gymnastics?’

  I was in fact working very hard at gymnastics at that time and although I knew all the methods recommended by the Indian Yogis, I kept to the system of the Swede, Mueller. I told the dervish that I did work at gymnastics and considered it necessary to practise twice a day, morning and evening, and I explained briefly the kind of exercises I was doing.

  ‘This is only for the development of arms, legs and in general the external muscles,’ said the old man, ‘but you have also inner muscles which are not affected at all by your mechanical movements.’

  ‘Yes, certainly,’ said I.

  ‘Good. Let us now return to your way of chewing your food,’ the old man continued. ‘If you chew in this way as a means to health or for the sake of other attainments, then I shall have to say, if you would like to know my sincere opinion, that you have chosen the worst possible way. By chewing your food so carefully you reduce the work of your stomach. Now you are young and everything is all right, but you are accustoming your stomach to do nothing; and when you are older, owing to the lack of normal work, your muscles will be to a certain extent atrophied. And that is bound to occur if you continue this system of chewing. You know that our muscles and body get weaker in old age. Now, in addition to the natural weaknesses of old age, you will have another brought on by yourself, because you are accustoming your stomach not to work. Can you imagine how it will be then?

  ‘On the contrary, it is not at all necessary to masticate carefully. At your age it is better not to chew at all, but to swallow whole pieces, even bones if possible, to give work to your stomach. I can see that those who have advised you to practise this mastication, and also those who write books about it, have, as is said, “heard a bell without knowing where the sound came from”.’

  These simple, obvious and consistent words of the old man made me completely change my first opinion of him. Until then I had put questions to him out of curiosity, but from that moment I felt a serious interest in him, and began to listen with the greatest attention to everything he said.

  Suddenly I understood with the whole of my being that ideas I had hitherto accepted as indisputable truths were incorrect. I realized that up till then I had seen things only from one side. Now many things appeared in quite a new light. Hundreds of new questions arose in my mind concerning this subject.

  Carried away by our conversation with the dervish, the doctor and I quite forgot about the rest of our comrades and stopped translating what was said. Seeing how deeply we were interested, they kept interrupting us with the questions: ‘What did he say?’ ‘What is he talking about?’ and each time we had to put them off, promising to tell them everything in detail later.

  When the dervish had finished speaking about artificial mastication, and the different means of assimilating food and its automatic transformation in us according to law, I said:

  ‘Be so kind, Father, and also explain to me what you think of what is called artificial breathing. Believing it useful, I practise it according to the instructions of the yogis, namely, after breathing in the air, I hold it a certain time, and then slowly exhale it. Perhaps this also should not be done?’

  The dervish, seeing that my attitude towards his words had completely changed, began to be more in sympathy with me and explained the following:

  ‘If you harm yourself with your way of chewing food, you harm yourself a thousand times more by the practice of this breathing. All the exercises in breathing which are given in books and taught in contemporary esoteric schools can do nothing but harm. Breathing, as every sane thinking man should understand, is also a process of feeding, but on another sort of food. Air, just like our ordinary food, entering the body and being digested there, disintegrates into its component parts, which form new combinations with each other as well as with the corresponding elements of certain substances which are already present. In this way those indispensable new substances are produced which are continuously being consumed in
the various unceasing life processes in the organism of man.

  ‘You must know that, to obtain any definite new substance, its constituent parts must be combined in exact quantitative proportions.

  ‘Let us take the most simple example. You have to bake bread. For this you must first of all prepare the dough. But to make dough you must take definite proportions of flour and water. If there is too little water, you will get, instead of dough, something that will crumble at the first touch. If you take too much water, you will simply get a mash, such as is used for feeding cattle. It is the same in either case. You will not get the dough necessary for baking bread.

  ‘The same thing occurs in the formation of every substance necessary for the organism. The parts composing these substances must be combined in strict proportions, both qualitatively and quantitatively.

  ‘When you breathe in the ordinary way, you breathe mechanically. The organism, without you, takes from the air the quantity of substances that it needs. Tne lungs are so constructed that they are accustomed to work with a definite amount of air. But if you increase the amount of air, the composition of what passes through the lungs is changed, and the further inner processes of mixing and balancing must also inevitably be changed.

  ‘Without the knowledge of the fundamental laws of breathing in all particulars, the practice of artificial breathing must inevitably lead, very slowly but none the less surely, to self-destruction.

  ‘You should bear in mind that besides substances necessary for the organism, the air contains others which are unnecessary and even harmful.

  ‘Well then, artificial breathing, that is to say, a forced modification of natural breathing, facilitates the penetration into the organism of these numerous substances in the air which are harmful to life, and at the same time upsets the quantitative and qualitative balance of the useful substances.

  ‘Artificial breathing also disturbs the proportion between the amount of food obtained from the air and the amount obtained from all our other foods. Hence, on increasing or diminishing the intake of air, you must correspondingly increase or diminish the amount of other kinds of food; and to maintain the correct proportion you must have a full understanding of your organism.

  ‘But do you know yourself so well? Do you know, for example, that the stomach needs food not only for nourishment but also because it is accustomed to taking in a certain quantity of food? We eat chiefly to gratify our taste and to obtain the accustomed sensation of pressure which the stomach experiences when it contains this particular quantity of food. In the walls of the stomach there branch out what-are-called wandering nerves which,

  188 beginning to function when there is not a certain pressure, give rise to the sensation we call hunger. Thus, we have different hungers: a so-called bodily or physical hunger, and, if it may be so expressed, a nervous or psychic hunger.

  ‘All our organs work mechanically and in each, owing to its nature and habits, there is created a special tempo of functioning, and the tempos of the functioning of different organs are in a definite relation to each other. So there is established in the organism a certain equilibrium: one organ depending on another —all are connected.

  ‘By artificially changing our breathing, we change first of all the tempo of the functioning of our lungs, and, as the activity of the lungs is connected, among other things, with the activity of the stomach, the tempo of the functioning of the stomach is also changed, at first slightly, then more and more. For the digestion of food, the stomach needs a certain time; let us say that food must remain there an hour. But if the tempo of the stomach’s functioning is changed, then the time for the passing of food through the stomach is also changed: the food may pass through so quickly that the stomach has only time to do a part of what it has to do. It is the same with the other organs. That is why it is a thousand times better to do nothing with our organism. Better leave it damaged than try to repair it without knowing how.

  ‘I repeat, our organism is a very complicated apparatus. It has many organs with processes of different tempos and with different needs. You must either change everything or nothing. Otherwise, instead of good you might do harm.

  ‘Numerous illnesses arise just from this artificial breathing. In many cases it leads to enlargement of the heart, constriction of the windpipe, or damage to the stomach, liver, kidneys or nerves.

  ‘It very rarely happens that anyone who practises artificial breathing does not harm himself irreparably, and this rare case occurs only if he stops in time. Whoever does it for a long time invariably has deplorable results.

  ‘If you know every small screw, every little pin of your machine, only then can you know what you must do. But if you 189 just know a little and experiment, you risk a great deal, because the machine is very complicated. There are many tiny screws which might easily be broken by a strong shock and which cannot afterwards be bought in any shop.

  ‘Therefore—since you have asked me for it—my advice to you is: stop your breathing exercises.’

  Our conversation with the dervish continued for quite a long time. Before we left I had managed to talk over with the prince what we should do next, and so, after thanking the dervish, I told him that we proposed staying another day or two in the neighbourhood, and asked whether he would allow us to converse with him once more. He consented and even said that if we wished we could come to see him the following evening after dinner.

  We stayed not two days, as we intended, but a whole week, and every evening we all went to this dervish and conversed with him, and afterwards, until late each night, Sari-Ogli and I repeated to our comrades everything that had been said.

  The last time we went to the dervish, to thank him and take our leave, Ekim Bey, to our great surprise, suddenly turned to him and, in a humble voice unusual for him, said in Persian:

  ‘Good Father! During these days I have become convinced with the whole of my being that you ...’

  Interrupting himself at this point, he hurriedly asked Sari-Ogli and me not to hinder him from speaking for himself and to correct him only when the expressions he used had a special meaning in the local dialect which might change the sense of what he was saying. Then he continued:‘... that you are the very man I have instinctively been searching for, a man to whom I could wholly entrust the guidance of my inner world, in order to regulate and neutralize the struggle which has recently arisen in me between two totally opposite strivings. On the other hand, numerous life circumstances over which I have no control do not permit me to live here, somewhere near you, so that whenever necessary I could come and reverently hear your directions and counsels as to how I should live, in order to put an end to this tormenting inner struggle and to prepare myself to acquire the being worthy of man.

  ‘That is why I beg you, if it is possible, not to refuse to give me now a few brief indications and guiding principles of life, appropriate to a man of my age.’

  To this unexpected and high-sounding request of Ekim Bey, this venerable man, the Persian dervish, replied with precision and in great detail.

  I will not record here, in this second series of my writings, what he then explained, considering it premature for serious readers and, as regards the correct sequential perception of all my writings, even harmful to the aim of genuine understanding. I have therefore decided, with a clear conscience, to expound the quintessence of these explanations only later, in a corresponding chapter of the third series of my writings, entitled ‘The physical body of man, its needs according to law, and possibilities of manifestation’.

  Early in the morning following this last visit to the dervish, we resumed our journey. Instead of going, as previously mapped out, in the direction of the Persian Gulf, we went west towards Bagdad, since two of our company, Karpenko and Prince Nijeradze, had fallen sick with fever and were becoming worse from day to day.

  We reached Bagdad, and after staying there about a month we separated and went off in different directions. Prince Lubovedsky, Yelov and Ekim Bey left
for Constantinople; Karpenko, Nijeradze and Pogossian decided to follow the Euphrates upstream as far as its source, then to go over the mountains and cross the Russian frontier. But Dr. Sari-Ogli and I, with the others, agreed to turn back and go in the direction of Khorasan, and only when there to decide on the final stage of our journey.

  In setting down my memories of Dr. Ekim Bey, I must not fail to mention his ardent interest in hypnotism and everything relating to it. He was particularly interested in those phenomena which in their totality are called the ‘power of human thought’ and the study of which is a distinct branch of the contemporary science of hypnotism.

  And indeed he obtained, especially in the said branch, unprecedented practical results. Thanks chiefly to the experiments he performed on people in order to elucidate from every aspect the various manifestations of the power of human thought, he was reputed by those round him to be a redoubtable magician and wizard.

  The experiments which he performed on his friends and acquaintances with the mentioned aim led, among other things, to the result that some of the people who had met or even only heard about him began to be afraid of him, while others, on the contrary, became exaggeratedly respectful, and even, as is said, began to lick his boots.

  I think that the main cause of this false conception which people formed of him was not his deep knowledge and the extraordinary development of inner forces he had achieved, but simply his understanding of one property of the functioning of man’s organism, which might be connected to a certain degree with the servility of human nature.

  This property, which is inherent in every ordinary man, to whichever class he may belong and whatever his age, is that, whenever he thinks about something concrete outside himself, then his muscles instantly strain, that is to say vibrate, in the direction taken by his thoughts.