Gurdjieff said:
The process of the growth and the warming of the moon is connected with life and death on the earth. Everything living sets free at its death a certain amount of the energy that has ‘animated’ it; this energy, or the ‘souls’ of everything living – plants, animals, people – is attracted to the moon as though by a huge electromagnet, and brings to it the warmth and the life upon which its growth depends, that is, the growth of the ray of creation. In the economy of the universe nothing is lost, and a certain energy having finished its work on one plane goes to another.16
He then went on to say that the moon influences everything that happens on earth.
Man, like every other living being, cannot, in the ordinary conditions of life, tear himself free from the moon. All his movements and consequently all his actions are controlled by the moon. If he kills another man, the moon does it; if he sacrifices himself for others, the moon does that also. All evil deeds, all crimes, all self-sacrificing actions, all heroic exploits, as well as all the actions of ordinary life, are controlled by the moon.17
And J. G. Bennett wrote:
At a certain point in the history of the earth it was perceived by the Higher Powers that a very undesirable and dangerous situation was developing on the planet earth which could endanger the equilibrium of the entire solar system and, in particular, the evolution of the Moon.18
If men realized that, because they were controlled by the moon, their personal efforts were unavailing, might they not be tempted to mass suicide, and so deprive the moon of the askokin needed for its development? To guard against this possibility, the Higher Powers implanted an organ at the base of man’s spine delightfully named by Gurdjieff ‘the organ Kundabuffer’.* This had the effect of ensuring that man would base his values solely on satisfying his own desires and the pursuit of happiness by making him perceive reality as topsyturvy. So man would serve the moon blindly, unaware that, by embarking on the path of self-development, he could free himself from the moon altogether. Once the moon crisis had passed, the organ Kundabuffer was removed; but the majority of mankind still behave blindly, selfishly, and without insight as if the organ was still there. This is actually necessary if the purposes of nature are to be fulfilled. According to Ouspensky, Gurdjieff said that the evolution of humanity as a whole might be injurious.
For instance, the evolution of humanity beyond a certain point, or, to speak more correctly, above a certain percentage, would be fatal for the moon. The moon at present feeds on organic life, on humanity.
Humanity is part of organic life; this means that humanity is food for the moon. If all men were to become too intelligent they would not want to be eaten by the moon.19
The majority of human beings provide askokin for the moon after death, and are then condemned to obliteration. However, some few who follow the path of self-development and self-realization prescribed by Gurdjieff create askokin during life. Such people may finally develop a soul which can survive and may even reach Objective Reason and attain a form of immortality by being reunited with the Most Most Holy Sun Absolute.
How can anyone ever have taken this kind of thing seriously? Some have referred to Gurdjieff’s teachings as myths, and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh claimed that Gurdjieff was joking about the moon, but J. G. Bennett wrote that Gurdjieff certainly intended his account of the historical appearance and disappearance of the organ Kundabuffer to be taken literally.20 He also quotes the author Denis Saurat, then Director of the French Institute in London, as believing that Gurdjieff’s teaching ‘could not be of terrestrial origin. Either Gurdjieff had revelations vouchsafed only to prophets or he had access to a school on a supernatural level.’21 Although writers about Gurdjieff tend to distance themselves from his most extravagant propositions, Philip Mairet, an intelligent literary figure who was editor of the New English Weekly, and who was also well acquainted with the works of Freud, Jung, and Adler, is reported as saying: ‘No system of gnostic soteriological philosophy that has been published to the modern world is comparable to it in power and intellectual articulation.’22 Having read Ouspensky’s exposition of Gurdjieff’s teaching in his book In Search of the Miraculous, and having attempted to read Gurdjieff’s own book All and Everything, I can only wonder at Mairet’s opinion. Perhaps I have extracted enough to give the reader some idea of Gurdjieff’s picture of the cosmos, and to demonstrate that Gurdjieff’s own writings are both voluminous and obscure. Even his devotees say that All and Everything has to be read several times if its meaning is to be grasped; and some claim that Gurdjieff’s obscurity was deliberate; a device adopted to ensure that the disciple would have to make a considerable effort at understanding on his own account rather than be spoon-fed with clear statements and doctrines.
At first sight, it is difficult to believe that Gurdjieff’s elaborate cosmology was anything other than a planned, comical confidence trick designed to demonstrate how far the gullibility of his followers could be tested. His own account of how he survived his early wanderings reveals how expert he was at deception. Gurdjieff wrote that he coloured sparrows with aniline dyes and sold them as ‘American canaries’ in Samarkand. He tells us that he had to leave quickly in case rain washed the sparrows clean. When people brought him sewing machines and other mechanical objects for repair, he was often able to see that the mere shift of a lever would cure the problem. However, he was careful to pretend that such repairs were time-consuming and difficult, and charged accordingly. He also wrote that he found out in advance which villages and towns the new railway would pass through, and then informed the local authorities that he had the power to arrange the course of the railway. He boasted that he obtained large sums for his pretended services, and said that he had no pangs of conscience about doing so.23
We know from J. G. Bennett that, when he and his followers were in danger from the conflict between the Cossacks and the Bolsheviks, Gurdjieff managed to get transport from the Provincial Government by spreading a rumour that he knew of enormously rich deposits of gold and platinum in the Caucasus mountains which would fill the Government’s coffers. Bennett wrote:
In all this, he was also demonstrating to his pupils the power of suggestion and the ease with which people could be made to ‘believe any old tale’.24
Fritz Peters recounts an elaborate hoax in which Gurdjieff diluted a bottle of vin ordinaire with water, and then covered it with sand and cobwebs. Two distinguished women visitors were tricked into believing that Gurdjieff was serving them with wine of a rare vintage, and dutifully pronounced it the most delicious which they had ever tasted.25
Fritz Peters recalled an occasion on which a rich English lady approached Gurdjieff as he was sitting at a café table and offered him a cheque for £1,000 if he would tell her ‘the secret of life’. Gurdjieff promptly summoned a well-known prostitute from her beat in front of the café, gave her a drink, and proceeded to tell her that he was a being from another planet called Karatas. He complained that it was very expensive to have the food he needed flown in from this planet, but urged the prostitute to taste some which he gave her. When asked what she made of it, she replied that he had given her cherries, and went on her way with the money Gurdjieff pressed upon her, obviously believing that he was mad. Gurdjieff turned to the English lady and said: ‘That is the secret of life.’ She appeared to be disgusted, called him a charlatan, and went off. However, she reappeared later on the same day, gave Gurdjieff the cheque for £1,000, and became a devoted follower.26
He became skilled at extracting money from Americans to support his enterprises at the Château du Prieuré, and referred to this activity as ‘shearing sheep’. For example, an American woman travelled from the United States to the Prieuré to seek Gurdjieff’s advice about her chain smoking, which she said was a phallic activity connected with her
