The Gurdjieff movements are the name given to the collective body of sacred dances that were collected or authored by G. I. Gurdjieff and taught to his students as part of the work of self observation and self study.
Gurdjieff taught that the movements were not merely calisthenics, exercises in concentration, and displays of bodily coordination and aesthetic sensibility: on the contrary, in the movements was embedded real, concrete knowledge, passed from generation to generation of initiates - each posture and gesture representing some cosmic truth that the informed observer could read like a book. Certain of Gurdjieff's followers claim that the Gurdjieff Movements can only be properly transmitted by those who themselves have been initiated in the direct line of Gurdjieff; otherwise, they say, it leads nowhere.
The movements are purportedly based upon traditional dances that Gurdjieff studied as he traveled throughout central Asia, India, Tibet, the Orient and Africa where he encountered various Indo-European and Sufi orders, Buddhist centers and other sources of traditional culture and learning. However, Gurdjieff insists that the main source as well as the unique symbol of the Enneagram was transmitted to him as an initiate in the Sarmoung Monastery. There were literally thousands of movements collected and taught by Gurdjieff throughout his teaching career. The music for the movements was written by Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann, as well as British composer Edouard Michael.
A brief glimpse of the dances appears at the very end of the motion picture about Gurdjieff, Meetings with Remarkable Men, produced and directed in 1978 by Peter Brook.
An example of Gurdjieff's later series of movements (The 39 series) are:
- 1. The Automat.
- 2. Prayer in Three Parts.
- 3. Four Tableaux.
- 4. Prayer for Instruction.
- 5. Pointing Dervish.
- 6. Movement in canon
- 7. Esoteric
- 8. Triads in Pairs. Complexity in Simplicity.
- 9. 'Olbogmek'. Double Multiplication
- 10. (A light dance with counting in canon)
- 11. Lord Have Mercy.
- 12. Halleluia
- 13. (A prayer movement)
- 14. Reading from a Sacred Book
- 15. (Tibetan) Days of the Week.
- 16. -- 17. Multiplication of Enneagram
- 18. -- 19. Stop Exercise. 'Frightened'
- 20. Six Displacements. Dervish exercise.
- 21. Remorse of Conscience
- 22. of Mesoteric series
- 23. -- 24. Chadze Vadze (Lord, Mercy!)
- 25. Black and White Magic.
- 26. (A multiplication)
- 27. (A canon)
- 28. -- 29. -- 30. Canon of Six Measures. A 'cosmic' dance.
- 31. Fifteen Rhythms. Getting up and Down
- 32. Automaton.
- 33. Premier exercise apri le retour d'Amerique
- 34. (A continuous multiplication)
- 35. -- 36. Dervish Movement. People scattered about
- 37. -- 38. (A canon)
- 39. (Thinking, Feeling, Sensing)
Famous quotes containing the words gurdjieff and/or movements:
“A considerable percentage of the people we meet on the street are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead. It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what a number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror.”
—George Gurdjieff (c. 1877–1949)
“The short lesson that comes out of long experience in political agitation is something like this: all the motive power in all of these movements is the instinct of religious feeling. All the obstruction comes from attempting to rely on anything else. Conciliation is the enemy.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)