Meetings With Remarkable Men

by G. I. Gurdjieff

  ‘On the following day, with this brooch in my pocket, I was in a position to borrow two thousand dollars from a friend; but I took this valuable to America with me, since in Paris I was offered only one hundred and twenty-five thousand francs for it, whereas in my opinion it was worth much more—and I found I was not mistaken when I sold it here in New York.’

  At this point in his narrative Mr. Gurdjieff paused, and, with his particular smile, began to smoke a cigarette. In the silence reigning in the room, Mr. H rose from his place, went over to Mr. Gurdjieff, and said:

  ‘Mr. Gurdjieff, I really do not know, after all the joking remarks you have seen fit to make about the material question, whether it is due to the particular order in which you have told your story today, or to my naïveté or suggestibility, but, beyond all doubt, at this moment I am ready with my whole being to do anything to lighten the enormous burden you have voluntarily taken upon yourself.

  ‘And I shall perhaps be even nearer the truth if I tell you that this impulse has arisen in me owing to the distinct impression I received throughout your narrative: that in taking upon yourself this high task, a task beyond the limits of strength of an ordinary man, you have always up till now been absolutely alone.

  ‘Allow me to put into your hands this cheque which represents all that I have at my disposal at this moment. At the same time, in the presence of all those here, I pledge myself to deliver the same sum to you every year for the rest of my life, wherever you may be and whatever may be your circumstances!’

  When Mr. H had finished speaking and, visibly moved, was wiping his forehead with his handkerchief, Mr. Gurdjieff stood up and, placing a hand on his shoulder, looked at him with that penetrating, kind and grateful look of his, which I personally can never forget, and said simply:

  “Thank you—my, from today, God-given brother.’

  But the strongest proof of the great impression produced by the narrative of Mr. Gurdjieff was the declaration of a certain Lady L, who was visiting in New York, and was present that evening as the guest of Mr. R. She suddenly said, with great sincerity:

  ‘Mr. Gurdjieff, it is somewhat by chance that I am present at this meeting in honour of the opening of a branch of your Institute in New York, and that I have been able to hear your story, which has intensely interested me. But before this, I have more than once had the opportunity to hear something of your activities and of the beneficent ideas to which your Institute has given life; and I have even had the good fortune to be admitted to one of the demonstrations which you organized every week in the Study House in the park of the Prieuré, and to see with my own eyes certain other striking examples of your achievements. It will not surprise you, therefore, if I tell you that I have thought of your work many times and have always felt a desire to be useful to you in some way. And now, after having heard the story of your indefatigable efforts, and felt with a woman’s intuition the truth of what you are bringing to humanity, I understand how greatly your activities are paralysed by the lack of that which has become today the motive power in the life of people—I mean money; and so I also wish to bring my contribution to your Great Work.

  ‘In comparison with most people, my resources are certainly not small and should permit me to offer you a rather large sum. In reality, they just suffice to meet the established requirements of life according to my social position. I have been thinking all evening what I could do for you, and I have thought of the money which little by little I have laid aside and deposited in a bank for a rainy day. Until I can do better, I have decided to put half of this temporarily at your disposal, without interest, until such time as—God forbid—some serious occurrence might require me to make use of these savings, as one never knows what the future may hold!’

  During Lady L’s heartfelt speech Mr. Gurdjieff listened to her attentively with a kindly and serious expression. Then he replied:

  ‘Thank you, esteemed Lady L. I particularly appreciate your frankness, and if I accept this sum of money, which will be of great assistance to me in my present activities, I, in my turn, must speak frankly to you. Lifting for once the veil of the future, I can tell you with special gratitude that I shall be able to return this sum to you in exactly eight years, at a time when, although in perfect health, you will have the greatest need of what constitutes today, as you have so correctly said, the motive force of the entire process of the life of man.’

  Mr. Gurdjieff remained silent a long time, as though immersed in heavy thoughts. Suddenly he looked tired. His eyes rested for a moment on each one of us.

  I am now revising this manuscript from notes of my pupils, sitting in a restaurant in the city of New York, named Childs, at the comer of Fifth Avenue and 56th Street—in the same conditions in which I have always done my writing during the past six years, that is, in various public places, such as cafés, restaurants, clubs or dance-halls; since the manifestations, contrary to my nature and unworthy of man, which are usual in places of this kind, apparently have a beneficial influence on the productivity of my work. And I do not find it superfluous to point out a singular fact, which you are at liberty to consider pure coincidence or even the effect of supernatural providence: namely, that without any intention on my part, but perhaps simply because in my work as a writer I always conform to an exact order, I have finished the revision of this text today in this same city, exactly seven years to the very day since the evening which has just been described.

  In order to complete this narrative I will simply add, on the subject of my first trip to America, that although the undertaking was risky to say the least—with a troupe of people not having a cent in their pockets and not speaking a word of the local language, with the programme of the proposed demonstrations not yet completed, and without any advance publicity such as is usual, particularly in America —the success of this tour of demonstrations for the purpose of making known the results of the work of the Institute far outstripped my expectations.

  I may boldly state that, if I had not had a serious accident a few days after my return to France which prevented me from going back to America six months later as I had intended, everything I had accomplished on this continent, with the help of those who had accompanied me, would have allowed me not only to repay all my debts, but even to ensure for the future the existence of all the branches of the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, both those already in activity and those I intended to open the following year.

  But is it worth talking about now?

  In writing about this period of my life, there involuntarily arises in my memory that saying of our dear Mullah Nassr Eddin: ‘Do not recall with grief the beautiful hair of the convict’s head!’

  As I was writing these last words someone came and sat down at my table.

  All my acquaintances without exception know the condition imposed on everyone who comes to talk to me, which is to wait until I have finished writing and begin the conversation myself. Let it be said in passing that, although they have always respected this condition, I have nevertheless very often sensed that, while fulfilling the requirement scrupulously, some of them were grinding their teeth as if ready to drown me in a spoonful of the latest fashionable medicine.

  When I had finished writing I turned to the newcomer and, from the first words he spoke, a series of reflections and deductions was started in me, the whole of which brought me to a categorical decision. If, just as I am concluding, I would now refrain from speaking about this categorical decision and the reflections which brought it into being, I would be acting contrary to the fundamental principles which run like a red thread all through this narrative.

  To understand my situation at this moment, you must know that the person who came to sit at my table, and who left after receiving the requisite instructions from me, was no other than my secret partner in the wholesale trade in antiques. I say ‘secret’ because no one, not even any of the people nearest to me, knows about these business relations of mine.

  I had enter
ed into these relations with him six years previously, a few months after my accident. I was then still very weak physically but, with my customary faculty of thinking re-established, I began to cognize in all its nakedness my material situation of that date, due partly to the enormous expenses of the trip to America and partly to the expenses incurred on account of the serious illnesses of my mother and my wife. As prolonged lying in bed was becoming an increasingly unbearable moral torment for me, I began taking trips by car to try to relieve this suffering by taking in different impressions, and also in order to get wind of some business deal suitable for my condition at the time. Accompanied by several people who were constantly with me, I began to go about everywhere, chiefly to the gathering places of Russian refugees in Paris.

  It was thus that one day in one of the famous cafés in Paris a man came over to me whom I did not immediately recognize. It was only during the course of conversation that I remembered having met him many times in various towns of the Caucasus, Transcaucasia and the Transcaspian region. Travelling from town to town through these countries, he had been engaged in trading in all kinds of antiques, and had met me because almost everywhere in Asia I was known as an expert on antiques and as a very good dealer in rugs, Chinese porcelain, and cloisonné.

  He told me, among other things, that he had managed to salvage a certain capital from the disaster in Russia and that, making use of his knowledge of English, he was engaged in the same business in Europe.

  In telling me about his affairs he complained that the chief difficulty was that in Europe the market was flooded with all kinds of imitations, and suddenly he asked me:

  ‘By the way, my dear fellow-countryman, how about going into partnership with me, if only for the appraisal and valuation of the antiques?’

  The result of our talk was that we drew up an agreement which brought about my participation in his business for four years. Before purchasing any of the antiques, he was to bring them to me for my appraisal. Or if they happened to be in places which more or less fitted in with the itinerary of the trips I had to take for many reasons during my activities as a writer, I would go myself to inspect them and communicate my opinion to him in a way agreed upon.

  So it continued for a certain time. He would spend the whole year travelling about Europe unearthing and buying all sorts of rare pieces, which he would bring here to America and sell to antique dealers, chiefly in New York. As for me, I was only a partner for appraising the antiques.

  However, last year, when the crisis in my material situation reached its zenith, while at the same time this business continued to do well since numerous outlets had been found and Europe was overflowing with merchandise of this kind, I had the idea of restoring my finances by this means; and I decided that the scale of operations carried on by my partner should be expanded as much as possible.

  With this aim, instead of allowing myself some rest before and after my tiring journeys, as had been my habit in recent years, I began to devote all my available time to making arrangements for borrowing money from various people who trusted me and with whom I was in contact for one reason or another. Having thus collected a sum of several million francs, I invested all of it in this business.

  Encouraged by the development of our enterprise and the prospect of substantial profits, my partner worked to procure merchandise without sparing his strength, and, as agreed upon, he arrived in America this year with his whole collection six weeks before I came here myself.

  Unfortunately, however, a general economic depression had meanwhile come about, particularly affecting this trade, and we could no longer count on any profit, nor even hope for the recovery of our capital. And this was precisely what he came to tell me.

  What words should I use this time to describe the unexpected material situation in which I now found myself, when I have just referred to the crisis of last year as having reached its zenith?

  I cannot find a better expression than that of Mullah Nassr Eddin which I have just this moment remembered: ‘Ah, it’s no great wonder that a bald daughter should be born to the oldest spinster of the village by that rascal of a mullah! But now if an elephant’s head and a monkey’s tail should grow on a bed-bug, that indeed would be astonishing!

  And to understand why my material situation had again passed through such a crisis, it is not necessary to have a college education.

  Last year, when I first had the idea of developing my antique business in America on a large scale, I estimated and was fully convinced that this project of mine would yield a profit that would suffice not only to pay off all my accumulated debts, but would also enable me, without depending on anyone, to publish the first series of my writings—which I counted on having finished by then—and after that to give all my time to the second series. But unfortunately this unforeseen American crisis has plunged me, as Mullah Nassr Eddin would say, into such a ‘deep galosh’ that today I can scarcely see a single streak of daylight out of it.

  For six years, for the purpose of preparing the material for the three series of books I intended to write, I had always and everywhere, in all conditions and circumstances, to ‘remember myself’ and to remember the task I had set myself, by the fulfilment of which I wished and still wish to justify the sense and aim of my life.

  I had to hold myself without weakening, while experiencing all kinds of feelings, to an extremely intense level of inner activity in order not to identify myself with anything. And I had to resist, with a merciless attitude towards myself, any change in the automatically flowing process of mental and emotional associations demanded for the themes of thought which I had been working out during this time. And, finally, I had to force myself not to neglect or omit anything which might be related to, logically correspond to, or contradict any of the innumerable series of separate ideas which in their totality constitute the substance of my writings.

  In my concern to express my thoughts in a form accessible to others, my psychic concentration, time and again, reached such a point that for unusually long periods I forgot even my most essential needs.

  But the objective injustice most painful to me in all this was that, during this inner concentration of the whole of my force for the purpose of transmitting true knowledge to people, both now and of the future, I had frequently to tear myself away from this state, and, at the cost of my last reserves of energy accumulated with much difficulty during short intervals between the hours of intensive work, to think out various complicated arrangements for postponing this or that payment or settling one or another of my debts.

  During these six years, I grew tired to the point of exhaustion not from writing, rewriting, and again revising the many manuscripts piled in a cellar arranged especially for my archives, but from this periodic necessity to turn over and over in my head all possible combinations for dealing with these ever-increasing debts.

  Until these last years, whenever I needed the support of others for a material problem, of little importance compared to that for which my time was necessary—support concretely expressed by the word ‘money’—and when I did not receive it, I could still be resigned to this, as I understood that the significance of my activities could not be clear to everyone. But now that the significance and aim of my activities, thanks to what I have actualized during the last six years, may be recognized by all, I do not intend to resign myself to this any longer; but on the contrary I consider myself justified, with an entirely clear conscience, in requiring that every person who approaches me, without distinction of race, faith, or material or social position, shall protect me as the apple of his eye, in order that my force and time may be spared for the activities corresponding to my individuality.

  Well then, the aforementioned categorical decision, which was the result of these serious reflections after my secret partner left Childs Restaurant, and which I made according to principle, is as follows:

  While I am here among people who have not undergone the catastrophic consequences of the last great war
, and through whom I shall suffer considerable losses—of course without intention on their part—I will once again, by myself alone, without other people taking the initiative and, of course, without resorting to any means which could one day give rise in me to remorse of conscience, make use of certain capacities formed in me thanks to correct education in my childhood to acquire such a sum of money as will clear up all my debts and in addition enable me to return to the continent of Europe and live without want for two or three months.

  And in doing this I shall experience again the highest satisfaction foreordained for man by Our Common Father, formulated in ancient times by the Egyptian priest who was the first teacher of Saint Moses in the words: Satisfaction-of-self arising from the resourceful attainment of one’s set aim in thecognizance of a clear conscience.

  Today is the tenth of January. Three days from now, by the old style calendar, the New Year will be welcomed in at midnight, an hour which is memorable for me as the time of my coming into the world.

  According to a custom established since childhood, I have always begun, from that hour, to conform my life to a newprogramme thought out beforehand and invariably based on a definite principle, which is to remember myself as much as possible in everything, and voluntarily to direct my manifestations and also my reactions to the manifestations of others in such a way as to attain the aims chosen by me for the coming year. This year I will set myself the task of concentrating all the capacities present in my individuality towards being able to acquire, by my own means, before my proposed departure from America about the middle of March, the sum of money needed for clearing up all my debts.

  Then, on my return to France, I shall begin again to write, but on the sole condition that henceforth I be relieved of all concern about the material conditions necessary for my mode of life, already established on a certain scale.