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Gurdjieff: The Anatomy of a Myth : A Biography

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*Gurdjieffian Confessions: A Self Remembered

James Moore


Hove: Gurdjieff Studies Limited, 2005, 281 pp., h/b - ISBN 0 9549470 0 2


Reviewed by Holly Baggett
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Warts and All: the honest confessions of a Fourth Way seeker
In this highly engaging memoir James Moore, biographer of George Gurdjieff (1866-1949), Greco-Armenian philosopher and gnostic teacher of the Fourth Way, shares an inside view of London Gurdjieff circles from mid-50s Britain to roughly 1980.

Introduced to Gurdjieff by public library copies of Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous and Kenneth Walker's Venture with Ideas, Moore summons up the courage to write Walker a letter. An invitation to his first meeting ends with the door slammed unceremoniously in his face, but our young hero perseveres. Moore never really explains (if such a thing is possible in this type of memoir) what it is precisely about the Gurdjieffian universe that captures him so completely. It is clear, however, that the secret society aura makes for a dramatic contrast from his day-to-day drudgery as a civil servant in the Admiralty.

Moore is an accomplished autodidact. There are philosophical conundrums for him - he longs to understand Gurdjieff within a larger cultural and historical context - where does he fit in with `Adorno, Buber, Eliot, Heidegger', et al., and he is fascinated by the possibilities of germane paths in a variety of religious and artistic traditions. Persuaded by his teachers not to entangle Gurdjieff's ideas with strands of modernism, Moore soldiers on.

In fact, he sticks with it for fifty years in spite of suffering the absurd politics of huge and petty egos so often displayed by the spiritually advanced. Not that he lets them off the hook. Indeed, while Moore portrays himself as an earnest young man who respectfully defers to the Gurdjieffian hierarchy, the reader suspects his only genuine reverence is for his mentor Henriette Lannes, one of the few to escape his scathing characterisations. A small sampling of portraits includes `a poisoned gumdrop', `small grey squirrel with an attitude' and `looking like Shelley Winters on a bender.' We have firsthand accounts of Jane Heap, Pamela Travers, and J.G. Bennett, all legendary figures who met the master himself, but in Moore's hands fare no better in presentation than those lower on the esoteric food chain. This tone does not come off as mean spirited, however, and the reader can't help but smile, if only from the sheer cheekiness of it all.

One unintended slice of humour is Moore's rendition of the pompous super-secret machinations to hide the preparations for Peter Brook's film adaptation of Gurdjieff's memoir Meetings with Remarkable Men, given the fact that the finished product embarrassed almost everyone involved. To their credit Moore and most of his contemporaries were brutally honest about the film -- Moore recalling that the script `seemed pitched at an audience with learning difficulties.'

Moore eventually blooms as the author of two impressive books Gurdjieff and Mansfield and the authoritative biography Gurdjieff: Anatomy of a Myth. He ascends to the role of teacher, but the future is anything but smooth. He uses his literary talents launching `counter thrusts against the opportunistic appropriations and distortions which multiplied worldwide' but it will be his own work that is seen as threatening to the powers that be.

His article `Moveable Feasts: The Gurdjieff Work ` which criticised the twin movements of watering down the message while creating a fossilised `church' led to his `excommunication' and temporary spiritual and social limbo. As Moore points out, it now seems like a tempest in a teapot but the Gurdjiefffian orthodoxy, unlike the master himself, had no sense of humour.

The entire story is not of Gurdjieff family dysfunction, but endearing tales of his own family and affectionate portraits of friendships that lasted for decades. At the age of seventy-five Moore's story inevitably contains losses poignantly remembered. A gifted writer, he does an admirable job of evoking England from the post-war Angry Young Men to the late seventies Winter of Discontent. Confessions is not the bland mind numbing account of one man's spiritual journey so often found in this genre. It is a gem of a book, equally fascinating for those inside and out of `the Work.'

Professor Holly A. Baggett teaches American History and Gender Studies at Southwest Missouri State University. She is an authority on Gurdjieff's pupil Jane Heap, whose letters to Florence Reynolds she edited for New York University Press.

James Moore achieves with this book not only to give
a many-sided picture of Gurdjieff, but also of his search
for truth, the main ideas of what he taught and how he
accomplished it as a teacher.

In addition you will find a detailed chronology of Gurdjieff's
life, clarifying notes on many subjects, full references
to the sources of the book and a select bibliography.

Mr. Moore's background in the Gurdjieff Work has given
him direct contacts with many people who knew Gurdjieff
or his teaching well. This has given him the possibility
to write of many things that can not be found in any
other books.

I like the contents and the way he writes!