The Enneagram Debacle by James Moorepar G. I. Gurdjieff, samedi 6 septembre 2008, 20:12 ·

NEW LAMPS FOR OLDThe Enneagram DebacleLONG, CONTENTIOUS CENTURIES HAVE BURIED OUR TRADITIONALreligions beneath a sediment of awesome scholarship. (Think say of Trimingham on the Sufi Orders or Bultmann on Judas Iscariot.) Although the domains of exegesis and kerygma remain volatile (sufficiently so, cynics might complain, to stir the pot of human misery), the textual and historical substrate affords theologians scant latitude. One solecism, one fatal slip in this grim arena, signals the thumbs down to academic reputa-tion. ... How startlingly different the realm of New Religions! Neither the large self-advertisements of its protagonists, nor the free-floating idealism of its young adherents, nor the anti-cult organizations' delight in hearsay calumny, nor the all-permeating | influence of money, nor the cyni- cism of the press and the innocent indifference of the public—nothing here conduces to decent accuracy.

In so-to-say the no-man's land between religions new and old, between slack subjectivism and scholarship of rabbinical nicety, there looms today the enigmatic figure of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. Given the reclusion and a-historicism of the Gurdjief- fian nucleus and the chutzpah of his denigrators, imitators, and peripheral fellow travelers, it is hardly surprising to encounter wild New Age distortions. And nevertheless a canon of scholarship begins, slowly and painfully, to accrete about this Gurdjieff; increasingly, we his self-appointed "judges" stand to be judged.

One fascinating proving-ground of relevant scholarship is the burgeoning oeuvre sketched in Anthony C. Edwards' welcome piece "Competitiveness and Apartheid in the New Age: The Enneagram Schools." It is only a pity that, wielding the authority of Lancaster University, Edwards no less than seven times binds Gurdjieff and the Enneagram to Sufism. His core idea—namely: given Gurdjieffs interest in Sufism, it does seem likely that the Enneagram was known to Sufi scholars before Gurdjieff—is syllogistically re-expressible thus:Major: Gurdjieff was essentially a "Sufi-inspired teacher" (Mr. Edwards' definition).Minor: Gurdjieff propounded the Enneagram.Conclusion: Therefore the Enneagram probably has Sufic antecedents.This seemingly innocuous proposition deserves, both for its typicality and topicality, the compliment of reasoned scrutiny.

One applauds, of course, the historically respectable minor premise:Gurdjieff did indeed first propound the Enneagram to his Petrograd and Moscow groups in 1916, and all early enneagram-matic commentaries (Ouspensky, 1949;Maurice Nicoll, 1952-54; J. G. Bennett, 1956-66) salute Gurdjieff's pre-eminence. ... Contextually we do well to reinforce this premise. Why?—Because in 1972, when the clever Bolivian ideological opportunist Oscar Ichazo initiated the current trend with his luridly colored booklet The Human Process of Enlightenment and Freedom, he blandly presented the familiar diagram as the "enneagon," vouchsafing Gurdjieff no acknowledgement whatever. "Oscar claims," explained one of his lieutenants, "to have worked out the ancient meanings and uses of the Enneagram himself." Oscar did more than that: he actually protested that others had stolen his idea and that, in "...masking the plagiarism, some variations had been introduced that... produce negative and dangerous effects." A singular claim indeed! Rather as though an irate Alfred Russel Wallace had burst upon the public with the theory of natural selection 50 years after Darwin.

Gurdjieff's Multiplex SourcesEdwards' major | premise merits at least two I cheers. Sufism undoubtedly ! did interest and inspire Gurdjieff. Like Richard Burton, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca —and plainly his monotheism and ample recognition of Muhammad as a genuine messenger of God, satisfy the tashahud or First Pillar of Islam (without which any profession of Sufism is specious). Gurdjieff commends, as the epicenter of practical esotericism, Persia, Mesopotamia, and Turkestan— regions permeated by Sufic tradition. He accords a telling significance to the "incomparable Mullah Nassr Eddin," mediaeval wise fool of Turkish literature. Program notes (Paris, 1923; New York, 1924) of Gurdjieff's Sacred Dances hint at his contact with specific dervish orders: Qadiri, Naqshbandi, Kubravi, Yesevi, and—not least—Mevlevi. Certain dances could hardly parade their Sufic provenance more openly: the "Camel Dervish," the "Trembling Dervish," the "Ceremony for a Dead Dervish," etc. In his ballet The Struggle of the Magicians, Gurdjieff incorporated a Persian dervish song. His whole life-style—which courted the epithet "charlatan"—recalls "The Way of Blame" of the Qalandaris and Shems-Eddin, the Sun of Tabriz.

That Gurdjieff drew inspiration from Sufism is thus the truth, and nothing but the truth—yet it is light years from being the whole truth. The fault of Edwards' major premise lies not in sug-gestio falsi but in suppressio veri. Only compare the Christian facet. The boy Gurdjieff (a chorister at Kars Cathedral and his education entrusted to Dean Borsh and Deacon Bogachevsky) came early under Christian influence. The youth's precocious pilgrimages to Echmiadzin and the monastery of Sanaine, presaged the man's longer journeys:seeking in Cappadocia the origins of Christian liturgy; in Mount Athos the legacy of Hesy-chasm; in Jerusalem the link with the Essenes, and in Coptic Abyssinia the roots of Christian gnosis. Gurdjieff's first British pupil (Paul Dukes, 1913) received a teaching squarely grounded in Christianity:".. .the gospel became intensely personal, free of any kind of dogma whatsoever, a living message, with the Lord's Prayer its emblem, the parables its illustration."

Venerating Jesus as a Divine Messenger with a teaching of unexampled love, Gurdjieff composed (in collabora-tion with a distinguished Russian pupil, Thomas Alexandrovitch de Hartmann) a wealth of extant Christian liturgical music: "Hymn for Easter Thursday," "Hymn for Good Friday," "Easter Night Procession," "The Story of the Resurrection of Christ," etc. Once indeed, Gurdjieff even defined his own self-referential teaching as "esoteric Christianity." When he died, high requiem mass was sung for his soul in the packed Alexander Nevski Cathedral in Paris, and it was by his own wish that he was buried at Avon with the full rites of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Space constraints alone forbid my advancing an equally persuasive and unbalanced case that Gurdjieff's teaching flowed chiefly from Buddhism—with particular redolences of Ch'an (or Zen). Nor can one blithely disregard elements evidently drawn from Pythagorean, Stoic, Essene, Zoroastrian, and Shaman-ist material.... Since 1980, when James Webb published The Harmonious Circle, with its complex chapter "The Sources of the System," no self-respecting critique of Gurdjieff's thought can rest on any single-source hypothesis whatever. Still less can the "Sufi-inspired" drum be ~ banged unaccompanied, in sheer disregard of L. P. Elwell-Sutton's magisterial "Sufism and Pseudo-Sufism" and Robert Amadou's lucid "Gurdjieff et Ie soufisme".... In formal terms, the major premise that Gurdjieff was fundamentally a Sufi-inspired teacher must politely be summed up in one unavoidable adjec-tive: false

The TrapHow was this trap laid, which ensnares so many honest commentators possessing no substantial background in Sufic or Gurdjieffian studies? 1966 was the year of grand misdirection. It was then there appeared the distasteful fabrication The Teachers of Gurdjieff by Rafael Lefort (pseud.) asseverating— with marvelous chronological implausi-bility—that the youthful Gurdjieff had merely been an indifferent pupil to a succession of still living Sufi masters; it was then, in "Special Problems in the Study of Sufi Ideas," that the Home County Sufi "Sheikh," Idries Abutahir Shah, explicitly asserted: "G. I. Gurdjieff left abundant clues to the Sufi origins of vir-tually every point in his 'system.'" The ulterior and all-too-human motive for this misdirection I have already examined in some detail in "Neo-Sufism: The Case of Idries Shah." Shah's self-advertisements and invertebrate "Sufism" signified less than nothing in orthodox Islamic circles and were rejected wholesale by the British Gurdjieffian mainstream, which he schemed to divert. The canard would never have taken hold had not Shah and his self-depiction a) won flattering acceptance among a small but influential coterie of British intellectuals, and b) chimed in with the extravagant millenarian and messianic fervor of 69-year-old John Godolphin Bennett (1897-1974), who had been among those close to Gurdjieff in his final year.

A "Sufi-inspired Gurdjieff' now quickly crystallized as the by-product of "Shah-School" productions (a homoge-neous literary oeuvre eulogizing Shah and his "Sufism," produced by Shah himself and his followers, both overtly and pseudonymously). In 1972 Robert B. Omstein, a distinguished admirer of Shah, echoed the thesis in The Psychology of Consciousness; in 1973 J.G. Bennett lent his excited pen to the notion of Gurdjieff's Sufic antecedents, in Gurdjieff: Making a New World, in 1975 John C. Lilly (an American expert on the seemingly discrepant subject of dolphins) chimed in thoughtfully: "The Enneagram is a device used by the Sufi school and developed by Ichazo." In 1976 Kathleen Riordan Speeth, trusting to Shah's partisan analysis, cheerfully echoed: "The Enneagram is almost certainly of Sufi origin." Like Bennett, Dr. Speeth seemed, prima facie, to raise a Gurdjieffian voice. However, her question-begging credentials ("I was bom into the Gurdjieff work") are overtopped by the uninhibited gratitude she expresses to "Claudio Naranjo who has for five years inspired, enriched and mercilessly scourged me." (TMaranjo was no Gurdjieffian but had been under Ichazo's influence since 1969.) By now Shah's fib was being innocently re-promulgated in works of reference used by journalists. Thus Katinka Matson in her book The Encyclopaedia of Reality: A Guide to the New Age assured her readers: "Gurdjieff was very much oriented in the Islamic Sufi tradition." Finally, in 1985, the Encyclopaedia Britannica (15th ed.) announced ex cathedra: "Gurdjieff spent his early adult years...learning about spiritual traditions, especially from teachers of Sufism (Islamic mysticism)...." To the consternation of the nucleus of Gurdjieff's informed followers, the triumph of a lie—or at best a wonderfully partial truth—seemed accomplished.

A ReflectionEven had the Encyclopaedia been correct; even had Gurdjieff been overwhelmingly a "Sufi-inspired teacher"— Edwards' conclusion a propos the ennea-gram strains credulity. How does one explain the absence of this symbol from standard reference books on Islamic geometrical design? Why has not a single academic authority on Sufism even deigned to dignify the attribution with comment? And—the corollary—how does one pass down a complex diagram by "oral tradition" without any figurative trace? Last but not least, how does one accommodate Gurdjieffs own assurance that this symbol "has been completely unknown up to the present time" (1916) and "cannot be met with anywhere in the study of' occultism,' either in books or in oral tradition"—evidently by an obdurate disregard, tantamount to contradiction.

Descending now to the "Enneagram of personality," does not the spectacle of its self-interested proponents, and its callow joy-riders, rigged out in Enneagram T-shirts, give shuddering pause? What could this conceivably have to do with Sufism or with Gurdjieff? However variegated Sufism's historical expression (a variegation eluding most New Age commentators), it was never humanistic. Its axis was and is: "abandonment of self-love for the love of God, yearning for union with and annihilation in God." And to reduce Gurdjieff's enneagram to a symbol of personality is exquisite irony. For him, personality was the mask (Latin persona). His psychological address was to "essence": the pupil's inexpungeable and fate-attracting particularity, underlying the behavioral veneer. Gurdjieff propounded his enneagram in 1916 not to titillate narcissism but to reconcile at macrocosmic and microcosmic level his "Law of Three" and "Law of Seven." The "cash value" of that complex meta-physic we cannot dream of debating here; suffice that Gurdjieff's theme evokes the salutary warning of G. K. Chesterton: "A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos."

The "Americanism" so brashly stamped all over enneagram-of-personality literature is not the Americanism of H. L. Mencken but the Americanism of Elmer Gantry. Sociologically viewed, its typology bears comparison with Sun-sign astrology in the tabloid press—narcissistic, tendentious, and lacking anysignificant substrate of scholarly or empirical validation. It is finally defensible only in the spirit that Roland Barthes defends all-in wrestling—as the meretricious which briefly purges signification of its inherent ambiguity. Of such personality differentiation, Gurdjieff's distinguished pupil Rene Daumal (whose orientalism was grounded in a command of Sanskrit) wrote bleakly:nous convenons de signifier par Ie symbols zero, Ie nepas etre, tout ces somnabiiles different entre eiix comme les expressions: 0x3,0x8,0x17, etc. different entre elles. II y a une infinite de modes de nepas etre.

Given the lamentable history of misinformation regarding the Islamic/Sufic relationship to Gurdjieff's enneagram, a fastidious care seems indicated now in delineating Christian/Jesuit involvement. Since 1970 more than one idiosyncratic tendency in Ignatian spirituality has migrated from South America to the USA and there seems no denying that the enneagram of personality has found significant Jesuit apologists (e.g. Patrick O'Leary, Robert Ochs, Don Richard Riso) and important Jesuit havens (e.g., theological centers at Berkeley, California, and Loyola University, Chicago). But does Edwards conceivably imply that the Society of Jesus worldwide is now committed to the enneagram? Has it actually come to this—that the heirs of the three great mediaeval systems of Bonaventure, Aquinas, and Duns Scotus need recourse to Gurdjieffs symbol in Kitsch form? Does the Jesuit Father General seriously believe this redounds admajorem Deiglo-riam? ... If the answer to these terrible questions is "Yes," many traditionalists may feel it high time to dust off Pope Leo XIII's Encyclical Aeterni Patris 33, or even send out a distress call for Thomism's natural champions, the First Order of Dominicans.

Alike to Christians and Gurdjieffians, the current trend bears painful witness to a spiritual Gresham's Law in which the bad drives out the good. Mr. Edwards' survey is an admirable beginning, but—as the Enneagram-cult burgeons, as the great religious traditions are rashly prayed in aid, and as the cash tills ring merrily— a more glacial eye would not come amiss. M —James Moore

Author's NoteThis article complements the author's two preceding pieces "Neo-Sufism: The Case of Idries Shah" (Religion Today 3 (3)) and "The Enneagram: A Developmental Study" (Religion Today 5 (3))— in which latter some significant printing errors occurred. James Moore is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and author of Gurdjieff: The Anatomy of a Myth and Gurdjieff and Mansfield, and is currently working on his memoirs. Email: james.moore@gurdjieff.org.ukNotes1. Awesome scholarship. J. Spencer Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam (London: O.U.P., 1971).2. Welcome piece. Anthony C.Edwards, "Competitiveness and Apartheid in the New Age: The Enneagram

Schools," Religion Today 1 (2), Spring 1992.3. Enneagrammatic commentaries. P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (London: RKP, 1949). Contains both Gurdjieff's original exposition of the enneagramTELOS 25(pp. 286-95) and Ouspensky's commentary (pp. 376-78).4. Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries in the Teaching ofG. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky (London: Vincent Stuart, 1952).5. J. G. Bennett, The Dramatic Universe. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1956-1966).6. Ideological opportunist. Oscar Ich-azo, The Human Process for Enlightenment and Freedom (New York: Arica Institute Inc., 1972).7. Oscar claims. John C. Lilly and Joseph E. Hart, "The Arica Training," in Charles T. Tart, ed. Tr-ampersand Psychologies (London: RKP, 1975:331). Diagrams of the enneagram, with Spanish sub-texts, had in fact been available to Ichazo since 1952, when Ediciones Sol (Mexico) put out P. D. Ouspensky's En busca de lo milagroso: fragnientos de una ensenanza desconocida and Rodney Collin's El desarrollo de la luz. Ich-azo's latest contention is that the enneagram (or enneagon) figure originated c. 500 B.C. as a Pythagorean "seal," relating the octet to the Monad. Unfortunately, like Edwards, Ichazo omits to support his theory of provenance with textual citation,8. Dangerous effects. Ichazo, op.cit: 2.9. Qalandaris see Trimingham, op, cit:267-9.10. Tliegospel. Sir Paul Dukes, The Unending Quest (London: Casell 1950:109).11. Christian liturgical music. Available from: Triangle Records, Triangle Editions Inc., P.O. Box 452, Lenox Hill, New York, NY 10021, USA.12. 'Esoteric Christianity. 'Gurdjieff q. Ouspensky, op. cit.: 102. Striking parallels between Gurdjieff's psycho-logical ideas and Christian devotional practice emerge in Early Fathers from the Philokalia (London: Faber & Faber, 1954). Significantly a major role in translating this remarkable work, from the Russian of Bishop Theophan the Recluse, was played by Eugenie Kadloubovsky, secretary to Gurdjieff's pupil and apologist P. D. Ouspensky. For an insightful Gurdjief-fian exploration of the Gospels' esoteric and psychological meaning, see Maurice Nicoll, The New Man: An Interpretation of Some Parables and Miracles of Christ (London: Stuart & Richard, 1950). For a wholesale, slack, and highly tendentious extrapolationof these parallels, see Boris Mourav-ieff, Gnosis Etude et commentaires sur la tradition esoterique del'orthodoxie orientate (Paris: La Colombe, 1961-65,3 Vols.). Boris Petrovitch Mourav-ieff(1890-1966), chefde cabinet to Alexandre Kerensky in 1917, was as-it-were Idries Shah's less successful Christian counterpart, rooting all Gurdjieff's ideas, including the ennea-gram, not in Sufism but in St. Paul and the Greek fathers. In the 1950s he propagated his heterodox views from his Centre d'etudes chretiennes esoteriques broadly within the ambiance of Geneva University.13. Webb published. James Webb, The Harmonious Circle: The Lives and Work ofG. I. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky and Their Followers (London:Thames & Hudson, 1980: 499-542).14. Magisterial. L.P. Elwell-Sutton, "Sufism and Pseudo-Sufism." Encounter XLIV (5), May 1975:44-57.15. Lucid. Robert Amadou, "Gurdjieff et Ie soufisme." Question de (Paris) 50 Nov.-Dec. 1982:44-57,16. Distasteful fabrication. Rafael Lefort (pseud.), 777e Teachers of Gurdjieff (London: Gollancz, 1966). The persistent rumour and reasonable inference that Idries Shall is Rafael Lefort was first publicly bruited by Nicholas Saunders in Alternative London (London: Nicholas Saunders, 1970:109).17. Abundant clues. Idries Shah, The Way of the Sufi (New York: Dutton, 1970), p. 43, note 35.18. Misdirection. James Moore, "Neo-Sufism—The Case of Idries Shah." Religion Today 3 (3), n.d.: 4-8.19. Echoed the thesis. Robert E, Omstein, The Psychology of Consciousness (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1972).20. Excited pen. J. G. Bennett, Gurdjieff Making a New World (London: Turn-stone, 1973). See especially chapters 2 and 3,pp.24-79.21. Developed by Ichazo. Lilly & Hart, op.cit: 333.22. Cheerfully echoed. Kathleen Riordan Speeth, The Gurdjieff Work (Berkeley, CA: And /Or Press, 1976: preface). Dr. Speeth's parents were distinguished Gurdjieffians; her claim to having been "born into the Gurdjieff work" admits this interpretation only.23. Scourged, idem.^.Journalists. Katinka Matson, The Encyclopaedia of Reality: A Guide to the New Age. (St. Albans: Paladin/ Granada Publishing, 1979:162).25. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Happily all Sufic ascription has been expunged from the 1987 imprint of the 15th edition. This follows my correspondence with Britannica (Lan Mahinske) Jun./ Aug. 1985.26. Gurdjieff's own assurance. Gurdjieff q. Ouspensky, op.cit: 286.27. Cannot be met -with. ibid: 287.

27. Sufism's historical expression. Portmanteau allusion to Sufism ,, -, throughout Enneagram-of-personal-ity literature unhappily conflates quite disparate elements: the transcendentalism of the 7th and 8th centuries and the immanence of the 9th and 10th; the asceticism of the primary epoch and the luxuriant mystical poetry of the 11th and 12th century Persia. Nor does it differentiate the numerous dervish orders (more than 100 in Gurdjieff's purview alone) ethnically, regionally, or in terms of Sunni/Shia persuasion. Nudging allusions to the Naqshbandi order, dutifully following Idries Shah, have found no endorsement from Hamid Algar, the world authority on this tariqa.28. Annihilation in God. Elwell-Sutton, op.cit: 11.29. Cosmic philosophy. G. K. Chesterton, The Book of Job (London, 1929).30. All-in wrestling. Roland Barthes. Mythologies. Paris, 1957.31. Personality differentiation. Rene Daumal, Tu t'es toujours trompe (Paris: Mercure de France, 1970: 37).32. Encyclical. Pope Leo XIII (Joachim Vincent Pecci) issued his Encyclical Aeterni Patris in 1879 in hopes of instigating a Thomist revival, but, among the intelligentsia, only Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) responded with a significant body of relevant work.33. Thomism 's natural champions. Nor are the Dominicans uninformed as to Sufism. Indeed, by virtue of his book 772e Persian Sufis (London: George Alien & Unwin, 1964), and his fruitful contact with the venerable Nimatullah dervish Sheikh Sham-sul'Urafa, Father Cyprian Rice 0. P. ranks with Arberry, Corbin, Mas-signon, and Nicholson among the prime European authorities.26 TELOS