Channeling Mr. Gurdjieff

CHANNELING GURDJIEFF

Excerpted from Chapter 11, "Pastor: Meetings with a Remarkable Channeled Entity" of In Search of the Unitive Vision: Letters of Sri Madhava Ashish to an American Businessman, 1978-1997, Compiled with a Commentary by
Seymour B. Ginsburg

"If you want to pursue in a Western way the path that we follow here at Mirtola, you need to study and work with the Gurdjieffian teaching."

Thus did the guru Madhava Ashish, at their first meeting, invite American businessman Sy Ginsburg on a spiritual journey that would last 19 years (until the guru’s death) and include both annual visits to Sri Madhava Ashish’s Mirtola ashram, near Almora, in India’s Himalayan foothills, and a lengthy correspondence. Along the way, the entrepreneur/author would not only be caught up in the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff, but also in the search for the elusive unitive vision—the world viewed from the perspective of the greater Self and not the personality.

In this remarkable spiritual document, the reader shares the search, increasingly catching glimpses of the unitive vision as the book draws toward a close that is also an opening out, into the vaster dimensions of the human mind.

I have yet to speak of the most mysterious, even the most explosive, of all the séances channeled by Charlaine that I attended. This was a session that took place at Charlaine’s house in Geneva. The reason for this European venue was that a colleague and good friend of mine, whom I’ve already mentioned, Nicolas Tereshchenko, had some very specific questions for Pastor; and since Nick lived in Paris the most obvious place for him to meet Pastor was at Charlaine’s home in Switzerland.

Nick is one of the world’s leading scholars of Gurdjieff’s space opera/allegory Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson (see next chapter), and he wanted to ask Pastor about some particularly mystifying details in that great book over which Gurdjieff labored for many years. I’ve previously mentioned that some followers of the Gurdjieff teachings think there is, for want of a better term, an "eternally conscious essence" of Gurdjieff, which can make itself known to the pupil if the need is great and is a valid one.

I’m not exactly sure if Nick subscribed to this belief, but in fact his intention was, in the course of this séance with Pastor, to at least try to actually ask Gurdjieff himself about these details.

The private session took place on November 21, 1989. In 1984, Charlaine’s psychic talents had come to the attention of a prominent Theosophist from Geneva, who had then helped Charlaine to develop her psychic abilities. This had culminated in the appearance of Pastor, who claimed to be a minor initiate in what is known in theosophical circles as the "spiritual hierarchy." By November, 1989, then, Charlaine had in one way or another acquired some knowledge of Theosophy. But she still knew virtually nothing about Gurdjieff or the Gurdjieffian teachings.

Here is part of what transpired on that night, with Charlaine, in a light trance, speaking as Pastor:

Nick: "Mr. Gurdjieff calls the ‘heptaparaparshinokh’ one of the primary cosmic laws, but he does not give, it seems to me, all the data necessary to understand it well. What must I know, in addition to what is given in Mr. Gurdjieff’s work, in order to really understand this law in depth?"

Pastor: The initiate you are talking about is a being who has been composed. Of course, he came on earth with his own spiritual dimension, but, in fact, the Masters he has met have not created in him the spirituality he could radiate. We must know that he has been composed as far as the kind of intellectual radiance, as far as the kind of alchemical radiance which he could propose to people and to which he has initiated people.

This is to say that if the being you are talking about, whom you call Gurdjieff (although for us he has another name), had known totally free spiritual enfoldment, he would have given of his own being, of his own initiatic level. And what he would have given would have been, believe me, something entirely different. However, there was written in his stars, in his destiny, the fact that he would have to take on one destiny, to offer one message. And this was in direct resonance with the disobedience he had committed a very long time ago, a very long time ago in history.

This means, in fact, that his work was a service and at the same time also a karma, a kind of reverence he owed to humanity but especially to the Lodge to which he belongs. This is why he could not do anything else but to return to this Lodge, to return to see his Masters whom he had disobeyed. And by the way, disobedience, originality, is something that characterized him even in the life he has known as Gurdjieff, all the way to the end of his days.

It is by this note that we could discover his disobedient nature or, if you wish, the final impact of his disobedience. Although I speak of disobedience, we must not see it as being an error. It is simply something that happens. It is almost unavoidable in the development of the initiate. I would say it is even desirable, because it is where we can see that he really exists, that he is building himself, that he is beginning to understand the universe and he is beginning to appropriate the divinity. Therefore, it is desirable. But of course this commits the individual to a certain kind of karma; this is also certain.

So, to get back to the question, I would say that the teaching he gave rests on one hand on the spiritual dimension he himself was, which he has developed throughout history. But at the same time his teaching was largely composed by the Masters he had met who ordered him to say things this way, to do things that way, and to give until such point and no further. This is why we can discern randomly in the texts, randomly in the lines, that something is missing. Not because something is really missing, but rather because he did not have the permission or the command to give the complement of information.

This communication was totally unexpected and surprising. It was not, however, without meaning for Nick and myself. The question whether Gurdjieff was an "enlightened Master"—whether he was enlightened, and what constitutes a Master—is a problematical one for those of a spiritual bent. Not only was Gurdjieff no "plaster saint," but there is no question he was a hell-raiser in his youth and indeed ever afterward.

So it was remarkable that Pastor should have uttered lines like, And this was in direct resonance with the disobedience he had committed a very long time ago, a very long time ago in history. Disobedience is a trait that characterized Gurdjieff even as Gurdjieff, from the beginning of his days to the end. One of Gurdjieff’s prime teachings—one for which I, along with many other Gurdjieff students, had the greatest admiration—was that one should never "do the expected thing " It was practically an admonition to constantly disobey. With this admonition, Gurdjieff had justified his habit of always saying and doing the opposite of what you might expect—especially if it might bring the necessary Gurdjieffian "friction" into your life to help you "wake up."

How could Charlaine possibly have known all this?

Pastor seemed to question Gurdjieff’s full status as a Master. Ashish had often remarked that Gurdjieff was not only not an ordinary human being, but he was not even someone who during this lifetime had developed the guru-like qualities we usually ascribe to people who have attained spiritual development (such as Nisarga Datta, or perhaps Ashish himself). Ashish believed that the being we call Gurdjieff in this lifetime had attained his high level of development in previous lifetimes, and had been "sent back in" to this lifetime to help humanity. Ashish revered Gurdjieff as a bodhisattva—someone who had finished with his/her cycle of incarnations before this birth and, not obligated to come back, had come back anyway, just to help.

But Pastor was saying that however extraordinarily high the level of "objective consciousness" of the being we call Gurdjieff, there was something seriously flawed about his cycle of reincarnational lives, he was under certain compulsions and not an entirely free soul, that his work was a service and at the same time also a karma, a kind of reverence he owed to humanity but especially to the Lodge to which he belongs. This is why he could not do anything else but to return to this Lodge, to return to see his Masters whom he had disobeyed.

As far as Nick and I were concerned, these communications served simplyto underscore how very meager was the understanding of us mere mortals about what being a "Master" really entailed. Ashish had often said that it was a mistake to "create" a Master in one’s own image of how a Master should behave, in the same way as it was the common error of humankind to mistakenly try to create a God in its own image—the image of behavior we think is appropriate, rather than the other way round.

It was for these reasons that Ashish did not much care for the opinion of the Theosophist who had written to the journal Theosophical History criticizing any claim for Gurdjieff’s status as a Master on the grounds that he smoked, drank, was not a vegetarian, and was sexually active.

A: The Theosophist can have her "gentle, pure and holy" Masters, but she has neither the right nor the equipment to claim that that is the only sort of Master there is. Jesus consorted with Publicans and wine-bibbers. He broke the rules of the Sabbath. He violently drove out the money-changers from the Temple. Jesus, the Buddha, and Mani hobnobbed with prostitutes. HPB used foul language—"swore like a trooper"—and smoked continuously. Even the "mild and gentle" Apollonius of Tyana, when he had a clairvoyant vision of the assassination of the Emperor Domitian, reportedly leapt to this feet crying, "Strike the tyrant; strike!" (G. R. S. Mead, Apollonius of Tyana, London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1901, p. 115)....We want to wean people away from the stained glass portrait of the saint, to learn from their observation of life that drink, sex, meat eating, etc., are not evil in themselves, but are good or evil according to the way they are used. She called G a dugpa, something she has no right to ascribe to G or to HPB who many churchmen condemned for her "satanic" phenomena. We have to get away from judging saints by their conformity to preconceived notions of social morality, and attempt to feel the real qualities of the Spirit in the man. One cannot even claim there to be safety in sticking to the pure and holy, for there are pure and holy frauds. [March 2, 1989]

Of particular interest to Nick and myself was Pastor’s comment on "the disobedience he [Gurdjieff] had committed a very long time ago, a very long time ago in history." In the chapter on Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, I speculate on the possibility that Gurdjieff’s allegorical space opera is quasi-autobiographical, Beelzebub the traveler in time and space being a proxy for Gurdjieff himself. Beelzebub’s sixth visit to planet Earth in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century parallels Gurdjieff’s life. But, at the outset of the book, Gurdjieff writes of Beelzebub as having been "banished" from the center. Nick and I asked ourselves if it were possible that the being we know of as Gurdjieff had actually been expelled for "disobedience" from the unity of being in the very early history of the universe Did this, perhaps, indicate a lack of consciousness? Of course, there was always the possibility that Charlaine, notwithstanding her lack of knowledge of what was contained in Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, had telepathically picked up our own thoughts about Gurdjieff. Again, we didn’t think so, because Pastor’s interpretation of G’s life cycles was not entirely flattering, and we had no unflattering thoughts about Gurdjieff in our minds.

Pastor had more to say. Though not offering to serve as a conduit, the channeled entity suggested to Nick that he should indeed reach out and try to speak directly to Gurdjieff himself:

If you want more, call Gurdjieff, be truly Gurdjieff’s disciple. Then, if you show yourself to him as his disciple (and when I say "his disciple," it is not in the meaning of membership), I would rather say show yourself as a cup that strives to join another cup in order for that cup to tip over and fill it. Then you are out of the conditionings the Masters, who composed Gurdjieff, who composed his service, insisted upon. You are out of the orders, which conditioned Gurdjieff. Therefore, he does not have to keep his word either to the Masters, or to the plan, or to the necessity of the present civilization. There is simply a Master and a disciple. And the one who will be the limit of the transmission of the teaching will not be the Master but will be the disciple. So, if you want more, call him.

However, you will tell me, "But I cannot call Gurdjieff. How can I get in contact with Gurdjieff? Does it mean that I must become either telepathic or that I could receive a teaching myself?"

Then I will tell you that there are a thousand and one ways to be in correspondence, whether with a Master, with a simple initiate, or with the mind of the Hierarchy, or with the mind of the Solar Hierarchy, or with God’s mind, let us suppose. There exist a thousand ways.

But, generally, the method the Master uses is the one the Egyptian initiate used to use, and it is what they used to call "the prophetic dream" or "the sacred dream." This is to say that we must put ourselves into a deep meditative state, during which we do not predestine ourselves to meet the Master or find the answer to this or that question. We try to simply open ourselves, to be an absence, to be a cup waiting to be filled.

From the moment we begin to be in that state, and supposing that during all the subsequent days we have called the Master or we have called the Hierarchy, and we have sent the question or we have sent the enigma that preoccupies us, at the moment we present ourselves in the universe with this openness, the answer automatically comes.

The answer comes in different ways: either through a symbolic dream, or by an apparition who says something, or by a film which seems to unfold and explains everything, or simply as if nothing appeared to be happening but the individual finds himself to be guided toward a book which contains the answer, or he picks up for the nth time the same book he was studying and inside a sentence, because of his multiple vision, he succeeds to decode the mystery and to obtain the answer. So the way of administering the answer will depend entirely on the disciple and on the subtlest antenna, which reaches him in the easiest way. This is to say that you must not expect to hear something, to read it in a book, which appears, or to see Gurdjieff or his superiors appear and speak to you. It can happen in an entirely different manner.

Charlaine ceased to publicly channel some five years later, in 1994, on the instructions of Pastor, who had, he said, completed the messages he wished to transmit. What remains in the public archive about the channeling of Pastor by Charlaine is a book of channeled utterances, La Conscience Cosmique, ou, l’Homme Transfiguré [Cosmic Consciousness, or, Man Transfigured], published by Éditions Fernand Lanore, Paris, 1990.

After this thoroughly mysterious Geneva séance of November 21, 1989, Ashish and I rarely again discussed the subjects of channeling and spirit guides.

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