It's More than a Taboo Against Knowing Ones Self

The world is not as it appears to be.

How much can we really know when it comes to the difficult task of knowing ourselves?

In most spiritual practices, there is a notion that the world we see and experience is an illusion. It is called māyā in both Hindu and Buddhist world views, a blindness that prevents humans from having a complete experience of life. The word māyā in Sanskrit points to a mental condition of pretense or deceit that’s a hindrance on the path to realization. Its Hindu roots also carry some notion of magic that the gods use to create illusion unless they are appeased. In Buddhist and Hindu theology, samsara indicates the perpetual cycle of enslavement to birth and death and the pain of being caught up in the grip of illusion. Samsara simply means “world” in Sanskrit, but has been extrapolated out to include an endless cycle of birth and rebirth, spelling out continuous suffering.

The monotheistic religious traditions attribute our alienation from God and ourselves as the result of sin. In Christianity, particularly after Augustine, Eve's sin in the Garden of Eden, and Adam’s complicity, cursed all mankind to Original Sin until the sacrifice of Jesus. While any broad statement is, of course, misleading, it is enough here to point to the role of sin and alienation from God that traps us in misfortune’s clutches.

Religious and spiritual teachings have proposed various ways of digging ourselves out of this hole. Christianity and other monotheistic traditions advocate “conversion,” repentance, prayer, and good works; Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism veer towards the meditation/introspection end of the spectrum, coupled with an analysis of the condition itself. 

Gurdjieff (I mention him because he is the subject of other posts on Buddha, S.J.), as well as various disciplines that have emerged more recently, attempt this analysis in the more neutral terms of being asleep. Gurdjieff said, "Man is immersed in dreams... He lives in sleep… He is a machine. He cannot stop the flow of his thoughts, he cannot control his imagination, his emotions, his attention... He does not see the real world. The real world is hidden from him by the wall of imagination." 

These characterizations are simplistic and miss a lot of nuance, a fault for which I will be criticized, including by my inner critic, but my purpose is to point out the predicament, not necessarily to argue the merits of any particular solution. 

A conundrum

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”― George Orwell

Why can’t we know the entire universe as it is? I will briefly outline three distinct ways that humans know (or imagine they know) the world: first, the gold standard, measurable data, and the instruments that humans have developed over time to explore, record and verify our knowledge; second, information that we “get” in conversation with other men and women about events in our lives, either in present time or from our history; and third, the information that comes to us from memoires, dreams and self-examination, as in therapy, and more broadly from what we might call the numinous sphere of our experience.

On December 25, 2021, the Webb Space Telescope was launched into space. Fourteen days, eight hours, eleven minutes, and three seconds later, after full deployment, when I logged into the NASA site, I was able to see the first images transmitted from the deep reaches of space. It required a 10 billion dollar, highly engineered instrument rotating at 1.5 million miles from Earth to expand the scope of our universe. My vision was extended by 13.5 billion light-years, allowing me to observe galaxies that formed only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. 

Closer to home, remove the scientific device, and I am limited by the range of my hearing — sound waves landing on my eardrums and my brain recognizing their origin and source. I had the experience of sitting in the same room with a friend when she began talking about a car coming up on the road, but I hadn’t even heard its tires on the stony path. I had to wait to experience their rumble, but I trusted my friend and, because the driver was a person we both loved, we also had a story that we could talk about in the future.

I don’t know all the dimensions of what I refer to as “myself.” As an adult at 81, I still don't realize how all the emotional, physical, and spiritual trauma (or joy, but trauma has a tricky way of hiding because we tend to avoid pain) of years past affects me now. If I were completely aware, I would not have been stunned last week by that “ah ha” moment that shed light on some personal behaviors that have been troubling me for years. I’m calling this knowledge domain subjective as it relies on information about our reactions to past events that we store in our brains, or more broadly, our somatic systems.

I have sketched out the concepts of observation, recognition, and remembering or retrieval, with an emphasis on their limitations. Again, I accuse myself of gross over-simplification, but for the purposes of describing our conundrum: When I acknowledge the extent of my blindness, do I simply feel frustrated or unfulfilled in some existential sense, or do I undertake the practice of observing myself? Let me explore some of the ramifications of the philosophical argument behind my dilemma to see what, if anything, holds water, makes sense by congruity, and where there are holes in the bucket.

 

The first part of this argument I would like to examine is that, as humans, our perception of the universe is limited; however, we believe that the information at our disposal provides a complete representation of the world as it is. Even if we admit that the world is not as it appears, we imagine that with investigation, we can discern more accurate information and, like a sleuth, uncover the culprit and save ourselves. This is simply hubris.

Self-observation is at least partially what the language points to: we investigate ourselves. But there are limits to any claims about the reliability of our human experience. What part of the “self” comes into play is not altogether clear, but this much is true: it is “subjective.” How do we examine the data? Is it real? Can it be verified? Is it useful for understanding past personal events as well as predicting the results of present and future actions?

Common sense demands — correctly, I think — that I can only believe what’s in front of my nose is indeed what’s in front of my nose if and only if I limit what I assert about the way I see my world to what’s actually under my nose. I know the immediate world I directly perceive. Unless I can verify it, all the rest is an assumption. Suppose I allow my mind to stray into the world of made-up stories, half-remembered or repressed memories, heavenly illusions, or sexual fantasy. In that case, I can no longer legitimately assert that I am seeing the world as it is. I want to believe that I can be as stone-cold sober as a hanging judge, whether or not I really can wield judgments best left to God. I will convince myself that I won’t stray into the forbidden territory of false opinions or prejudice by taking the moral high ground, but in fact, I am deluded into believing that the world I see is objectively real. A small portion of what I see can be reliably verified by measurable data, but in fact, most is almost entirely subjective, buttressed with the few agreements that I’ve managed to wrestle into my corner from family and lovers, political allies, or friends from church. Yet we claim that common sense provides a reliable indicator of the validity of our varied experience.

Some would argue more strongly that common sense doesn't just advise, as in “take aspirin if you’re feeling a bit woozy.” Normative logic prescribes limits for my world, drawing boundaries for the experiences I can assert are true and can reasonably trust. The process of expanding my world requires another level of investigation. I am obliged to account for the way I want to see the world. This demands that I undertake a careful, critical examination of subjective factors, from yearning and dissatisfaction to remembering with Proust the smell of my mother’s cookies, the elation of catching my first fly ball, or the humiliation of being punched in the nose by the class bully. 

This simple observation may point us in the right direction. We begin to see and understand the mechanisms of the apparatus of our perceptions, the thoughts, feelings, sensations, visual perceptions, and the registration of this experience in our memories. Our worldview is very limited unless we are willing to admit other factors, including, for example, our conversations with other people, our reading of history, and, most importantly, empirical scientific evidence, which, along with an understanding of the instruments of observation (including both physical science and psychology), allows us to test and verify our assumptions. This is also common sense.

However, I don’t want to let my argument devolve into complete solipsism. Surmising that what’s in front of my nose is also what’s in front of my friend’s nose is possible only if I have an agreement with my friend that he or she describes what’s in front of his or her nose with similar identifiable characteristics, mass, color, along with the collection of data from my other sensations, within a range of probable predictors. This will include an agreement to use a common descriptive language. Digging through this complex web of linguistic and psychological machinations tests the limits of human intelligence, but it does seem to be a worthwhile project. It can lead to freedom, but it can also verge on the preposterous.

I have drawn this picture as extensively as I could to describe a gap in our understanding. We neglect what we know empirically both in the way we conduct our lives and in what we allow ourselves to believe. We would like to believe that our understanding can get us out of trouble, and when it doesn’t, we look elsewhere to fill in the gap.

The Lacunae. The Unknown is simply unknown. The rest is just shit we make up. Enter the Guru!

There’s a natural lacuna in our experience where we don’t have reliable information. In my view, it is unknown because it is unknowable. We as humans do not have access to the data required, or our physical bodies and minds simply do not have the capacity to experience or know what remains hidden. There is no ontological reason; there are no secrets. 

It’s a normal human instinct to seek certainty. We all want peace of mind, but because we are afraid, or lazy, or greedy, or insecure, or arrogant, this creates an opening for the guru’s stealthy entrance. This ignorance becomes the playground for superstition, magic, wizards (sorry, Harry Potter), myth, and deception. Any appeal to a supernatural or unseen world that uses our inability to know creates a loophole and opens a vast playground for all kinds of mischief, from the taboo against walking under a ladder to believing your daily horoscope, supplied, of course, for a fee.

Even after we’ve observed and accepted that we as human beings have a limited range of perception due to physiological constraints, the limited capacity of our sense organs, as well as the neuro-physiology of our brains, our mind plays a trick; we tend to forget and set this aside, but we still experience dissatisfaction: we don’t get all the things we think we want or imagine we need. Plus, there are psychological consequences that come from the firing and misfiring of synapses that distribute endorphins to our pleasure centers. It makes no difference whether or not these actions and reactions are random or follow some predictable pattern; we experience an imbalance coupled with limited data to account for it. Voilá, from chemistry set to ontological predicament!

As a matter of fact, our suffering always seems to get the upper hand. When our unhappiness or dissatisfaction reaches a tipping point, we reach out for an answer, even if it means grasping for straws. Enter the person, book, practice, or belief system with an answer. It doesn't even have to be a good answer. Searching for answers to existential questions can require suspension of belief; perhaps the answer imposes an alternative set of beliefs and demands submission to its authority. In some sense, it operates like a narcotic or psychological addiction — the high it produces needs to be repeated for it to be effective. 

Over many centuries, our answers have taken the form of tribal ritual. In the small village where I live, when I’m in northern India, I rented the first floor of a lovely new building; my flat had been designed and built by a trained architect; the rent was relatively high. A good friend rented a smaller room on the ground floor, but there was a problem with the ventilation and the sewage. It really felt unsanitary. It had been built on the cheap by a local carpenter. Complaints got no results. Tempers flared. My friend left; there were bad feelings all around. The Nepali woman who owned the property called on a village priest to solve a problem. I saw with my own eyes the bloody sacrifice of a young goat to create favorable circumstances for increased guest house revenue ― and sanitary plumbing. My solution would have been to hire a competent plumber, but my owner opted to pay a witch doctor for the magic of animal sacrifice. 

At another end of the spectrum, Bob Hoffman, the psychic tailor and inventor of a process psychic therapy recommended by Claudio Naranjo, sits in a Berkeley coffee bar, gazes off into space; he delivers a prediction or confirmation about a life choice or personal problem, allegedly from his spiritual guide, Dr. Fisher. I can hear the certainty in the psychic’s tone of voice when he divines the root of your predicament and says, “Doors will open.” The door actually remains shut until we see for ourselves what is posing as an answer. Snake oil doesn’t even loosen the hinges.

I still haven’t really answered my own question about knowing ourselves. I’ve just pointed out some of the false claims. Knowing that there are limits to what we can know doesn’t invalidate what direct experience teaches us or weaken those experiences. It simply rejects their infallibility. I can be satisfied with my own experience. In the words of Jack Kerouac, “One day I will find the right words, ... then it sounds; you just can't fail when you get into the rhythm of the dance.” 

Note: I would like to acknowledge Geshe-la Kelsang Wangmo’s course on Dignaga, which was taught at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics, McLeod Ganj, HP, India, during the Spring semester of 2014.

The Enneagram, the Final Reckoning, Banishment to the Darkness of Ignorance

A Tale of Theft, Appropriation, Accusation, and Lying, Or Enlightenment?

Enneagram Posts:

Why choose to work with the Enneagram?

Connecting G.I. Gurdjieff with Naranjo’s Enneagram

Claudio Naranjo’s first SAT Groups in Berkeley

The Jesuit Transmission of the Enneagram

Helen Palmer and Claudio Naranjo in Berkeley

The Enneagram, the Final Reckoning, Banishment to the Darkness of IgnoranceEnneagram Bibliography

Discovered in a folder dated January 10, 2021, the day that Oscar Ichazo published his “Letter to the Transactional Community.”

 

This is a tale dire enough for spiritual warfare, Light vs Dark, worthy of the most gnostic sectarian cult. Oscar Ichazo was not your run-of-the-mill desert shaman. He might have traveled back to third-century Mesopotamia to enlist the Manichees rather than a 15th-century Sufi sect for his Enneagon. He displayed the fervor of a religious zealot rather than a crafty Murshid in his lawsuit, and today, in his "Letter to the Transpersonal Community." 

Let me recast the story as a Manichean saga. It will still include Metatron, the archangel who is the Almighty’s scribe, as well as the usual cast of warring parties.

The Enneagon sprang forth from Oscar Ichazo, full-blown, a vision of Light. He hiked to the northernmost point of Chile, the Atacama Desert, where he gathered a small group of disciples for the first initiation. One of these disciples, a real doctor and psychotherapist named Claudio Naranjo, stole away with his numbered binder containing a complete outline of the system. Naranjo appropriated it as the Source of his variant system. He called it the Enneagram. Naranjo then gathered his own students in a rival school, which he tried to tie to the teaching of G.I. Gurdjieff. Among Naranjo’s students was a sweet, bright, and remarkably naive Jesuit, Father Bob Ochs, who disseminated this purportedly esoteric information as if it were Jesus on a hot cross bun. Ochs, who had just completed an advanced theology degree in the post-Vatican 2 Institut de Paris, began preaching to a small group of enthusiastic fellow Jesuits who quickly and efficiently established independent schools and study centers. 

When Naranjo heard there were Jesuit cells, he realized he’d been far too lax, but the donkey had already escaped its pen. His “Seekers After Truth” students had signed what in his world was a karmically binding pledge to keep secrets secret, but it was just a photocopy of a generic non-disclosure form, the one Ichazo required of everyone in the Arica —  no need to reinvent the wheel for another sect. But when Naranjo learned that the Jesuits had not pledged to keep their mouths shut forever, or until he gave permission, he cast Ochs into outer darkness. When one of Ochs's Jesuit students did what Jesuits do and published a book, Ichazo got wind of it, and he, too, was angry, but he added teeth of legal action in a US Court.(1) However, O'Leary proved jesuitical. He agreed to state publicly that Oscar Ichazo was the sole originator of the theory of ego fixations and the system of Enneagons, but Ichazo was unable to halt the publication of the book.` On only one point was everyone agreed: no money changed hands between the plaintiff and the defendants.

In the high Andean deserts, the pay scale for shamans is generally not on the high end; witch doctors are a dime a dozen. But forlorn Bolivia sets a particularly low bar. Poor Ichazo convinced himself that his zombie-like seven-day “transformational” experience had accrued some cash value, and his pyrrhic victory over Dimension Books encouraged him to set his sights on the sweet, innocent-looking Rosacrucian lady, along with the deeper pockets of her publisher, Harper and Row. 

One bold action set Transformational Community ablaze with rumors of rainbows and pots of gold. In Kabbalistic heaven, the Archangel Metatron heard useemly rumblings and accusations of theft, lying, misappropriation of the Holy Teaching, or just plain greed. 

Metatron summoned Ichazo, Naranjo, Ochs, Palmer, and O’Leary.. After the appropriate trumpet fanfare and drum roll, the accused fell to the ground in prostration. This was the real deal. There was no escape. When Metaron appeared, Ichazo said, “Holy shit. I thought I was being guided by an abstract (even possibly imaginary) archangel.” Metatron said offhandedly, “Be more careful. I’ve heard that excuse before.” 

Metatron continued: “This mess smells like trafficking in stolen goods, Spiritual Goods, which is a grave matter, but you all lack imagination. Steal-lie-launder-justify; steal-lie-steal-launder-spin-repeat. You, Oscar, suggest that Naranjo spirited away your proprietary notes. Naranjo then gave the contents, which he had annotated and claimed were his property, to Father Ochs. Ochs followed his vocation and went on a preaching spree, giving the system to a few smart and well-trained Jesuits. Then innocent-looking Helen Palmer, trained by the beleaguered Rosacrucians, gathered copious notes (either honestly or by sleight of hand) from various sources, domesticated them, and sold them to a boatload of students. When pressed, Palmer lies with a straight face: ‘I did attend nine sessions of a public enneagram class with no ‘secrecy’ requirement.’ (2) (Ireland has the receipts: Everyone signed the NDA. He participated in the sessions and signed an NDA, despite already having signed one. Catherine Swiniarski testifies that Palmer handed her a signed copy of Naranjo’s NDA agreement. She was the registrar for the event.)

Metatron: “This scenario is absurd. I almost forgot one important but amusing allegation: Naranjo claims that no one owns anything because the whole system was a secret oral teaching from some well-hidden Sufis passed onto an irrasible Armenian-Russian madman called Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff himself told me that he had no idea what anyone was talking about. The whole lot of you don’t know what you’re talking about, but the choir sings ‘That’s the esoteric script. That’s what they’re supposed to say.’

Metatron to Ichazo: “You sued Jesuits? What were you thinking? Suing Jesuits is one thing, but suing them for trying to help others is an entirely different matter. And you accuse them of furthering parochial theological goals. Oh, Ichazo, from you, this is rich, truly rich.

“You, Oscar, claim that you didn’t make any money. Accounting is one of my things: no one made any money, except the lawyers. There was only one amicus brief filed in this matter, from a group called ‘The Big Mind Association of Trial Lawyers.’ Lovely high-sounding name, almost Buddhist. Can I chuckle? I hear a lot from Canon Lawyers (3) and the Sharia Courts, so I thought this might be a welcome change of pace, but, alas, in the end, sectarian lawyers are lawyers. Sex workers may be the oldest profession on earth, but in the religious world, the first ecumenical profession is the Law. I heard from no one else, Oscar Ichazo — not even your gypsy auntie, who gets paid for reading cards. She doesn’t think you deserve a single peso. 

“I want to ask the obvious question: ‘Are you so sure that you’ve interpreted this nine-pointed figure correctly, or fully? How did you arrive at this conclusion with any certainty?’ But before I do, I want to point out your arrogance and cruelty. 

“You, Oscar, suggest that Helen Palmer casts herself as a martyr, and not just an ordinary run-of-the-mill blasphemer. Instead, this sweet Godmother of the Enneagram is right up there with Savonarola, the fire and brimstone preacher who was burned at the stake for his attempt to end the Renaissance in Florence. Only in your mind is Palmer a fundamentalist. It’s you who have assumed the role of Grand Inquisitor and introduced this spectacle of religious barbarism. There is no hint, no innuendo of fanaticism in her writing. You say that she has every right on earth to say what she wants, but I don’t believe you.”

The Archangel considers filing a Charge Sheet against Ichazo.

Metatron: “You, Oscar, did a lot of suing. Maybe I, Metatron, should sue you, Oscar, in the Divine Court for allowing the Sacred Enneagram to be reduced to the level of the Daily Horoscope on the back page of a cheap tabloid. 

“You might ask what real damage I have actually done? Even from the position of an archangel, it’s challenging to ascertain evidence of harm in the marketplace of spiritual practice: How many people actually undertook the difficult work of self-analysis and introspection compared with how many were dissuaded? How many were misled or wasted time chasing a chimera or a rumor? Hard numbers in the world of the transcendent have always been a difficult matter, but if we measure the level of distraction by the number of words and titles that come up with a Google search for ‘the real origins of the Enneagram,’ the answer would be ‘considerable confusion.’ 

“In another time and place, your arrogance and cruelty would have tasted the flames. If you were trying to be funny, the Love and Light crowd is a dreary lot and wouldn’t get the “The Lady’s Not for Burning” joke. If your 41 pages of tightly argued documentation indicate that you are serious, your reference to one of the most barbaric periods of Western religious history forfeits any claim to teach anyone. In the end, Oscar Ichazo, you could just be a stark raving maniac, but I will have to search for another remedy. We just don’t do burning for heresy anymore.

“I have to ask myself if there is a way through this bickering among Aricans, Palmerites, Naranjo enthusiasts, and other “created from nothing” schools? If we allow ourselves just to hurl insults and dogmatic threats, we’ll stay stuck forever. 

“Let me suggest a kind of Enneagram anthropology, one that comes from the lived experience of using the system and discovering its inner logic. I propose several simple steps. Firstly, speak simply.

“The courts did a reasonably good job given the limitations of the materials they were allowed to consider. By defining terms and language that could be “uncopyrightable,”  the court declared that, you, Oscar, could not copyright sloth, lying, and cowardice (4), although I suppose that Scientology’s “engram” and “bank” might be as well as Mr. Gurdjieff’s gibberish: "Aieioiuoa," "Kerkoolnonarnian," "Sekronoolanzaknian," and “Kundabuffer.” 

“Spiritual concepts, at least in the introductory stages, should be expressed in language as simple as possible. Even if and when language disappears, as most mysticism indicates, the benevolent guardians of the Universe have allowed for some language, like baby talk, to point us in the right direction. If writing and testing, rather than automatic writing or divine pronouncements, might begin to lay out a path, we've made a decent start.

“Oscar, you say that the only reason that you attempted to copyright the Arica material was ‘because the psychologists and religious people publish their work, using Arica descriptions mainly of the fixations without appropriate acknowledgment of what is Arica's and what is their own input - as a linear therapy in the case of the psychologists or as a way to Christian redemption by the group of priests and nuns.’ (5) I do not recall that anyone elected you Pope.

“Secondly. Stop lying and hiding behind some outrageous ‘Histoire de Jour:’ 

“Ms Plamer, asserting that you did not sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement with Narajo, probably saved you from paying a penalty to Ichazo that he claims he wasn’t seeking, but it is a lie. You are both lying. On the other hand, Naranjo never admitted that he didn’t return Ichazo’s numbered workbook for the initial Arica Training, and oddly, Ochazo never mentions it. It only became a cause célèbre when Beesing, Nogosek, and O'Leary published their work, and Palmer began her rewrite. 

“I have a difficult time assigning blame, but there’s more than enough blame to go around. All of you, Ichazo, Naranjo, Ochs, and Palmer, share some of it. It would take a full team of lawyers to sort this out, which would be expensive (and probably beyond the statute of limitations), but really, questions about who said what when, and whether or not you signed a mimeographed DNA that was filed and forgotten, don’t matter that much.

“Thirdly, aim for compassion and steer clear of retribution. In this new pan-creedal world, I shy away from any sectarian slant, but I will still repeat the words of Jesus. He is very clear: 

‘You have heard that it was said, Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you." (Matthew 5:38-42, New International Version). Cooperation and working together might help you overcome base instincts.

If the practice of using the Ennegram for introspection survives, it will be in the hands of the people who do the hard work and talk openly about the results, the same kind of people who have been struggling with the nine-pointed figure for nearly six decades since it captured the imagination of a small segment of modern mystics. In the big picture, it is in its infancy.

Fourthly: Quit the cult. Put me out of a job.

Notes:

1 Beesing, Maria, Robert Nogosek, and Patrick O'Leary. The Enneagram: A Journey of Self-Discovery. Denville, N.J.: Dimension Bks, 1984.

2 Helen Palmer, quoted in “Special Forum: The Enneagram in Contention,” Gnosis, No. 42 (Winter 1997), p. 13. 

3 Almost 25 years ago, (10/23/2001), in a pastoral letter warning Catholics about using the Enneagram as a tool for spiritual direction, the U.S. Catholic bishops' Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices, stated that "sin is indeed unhealthy behavior and can be combated by an improved understanding, but it is at its root a moral problem, so that repentance before God and one’s neighbor must be the fundamental response. Enneagram teaching thus obscures the Christian understanding of sin."

4 Arica Institute, Inc. v. Palmer, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York - 770 F. Supp. 188 (S.D.N.Y. 1991). August 5, 1991. “The Court in its prior opinion found numerous aspects of plaintiff's works uncopyrightable: Ichazo's system of nine ego fixations, the sequence or arrangement of the ego fixations within that system, individual words describing the traits of each ego fixation and the one- and two-word labels for points on the various enneagrams from which the system of ego fixations is derived. Any similarity between Ichazo's works and The Enneagram based on these non-copyrightable elements does not constitute copyright infringement.”

5 Oscar Ichazo, Letter to the Transpersonal Community, Page 27.

The Enneagram: A Developmental Study

There is a lot of information about the Enneagram in the primary Gurdjieff materials. However it is rather esoteric and almost nothing that points to what we know about the system through the work of Ichazo, Naranjo, Ochs, or any of their students. The closest in my estimation are some of the writings of John G. Bennett, however Bennett’s authorization by Gurdjieff is murky.

Most of the close students of Gurdjieff do not support the iteration of the Enneagram teaching as proposed by Ichazo et al. Some like Mr. William Patrick Patterson mince no words.

Mr. James Moore was an authorized Gurdjieff teacher, and his paper, The Enneagram: A Developmental Study contains the most sympathetic view I could find. It is presented with no edits. There is a website dedicated to his work, JAMES MOORE HOME PAGE.

by James Moore

 

First published in 1987 and updated by the author in March 2004. Moore winnows the grain from the chaff in this discriminating examination of Gurdjeff’s problematic and best-known symbol.

 

The sea of faith, whose ‘melancholy, long withdrawing roar’ (1) was evoked metaphorically by the elegiac Victorian poet Matthew Arnold, is sweeping back, but in a hundred strange modalities. And though its waves are ostentatious, its eddies and undertows are obscure; and the charting of its cross-currents – these admixtures among religions old and new – is aided by certain discrete ‘marker-buoys’. This paper examples one, which – moored decades ago in the esoteric deep – has been swept leeward into the frothy shallows of pseudo-Sufism, ARICA, Transpersonal Psychology and liberal Catholicism. Our chosen marker is Gurdjieff’s problematic ‘enneagram’.

George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (c.1866-1949) was a writer, explorer, choreographer, psychologist, composer, physician, polyglot, entrepreneur, and spiritual teacher, who utterly eludes simplistic categorisation. But his ascendancy over many distinguished pupils, and his seminal importance in a variety of fields, are now challenged only by the most ill-informed or opinionated critics. 

The Enneagram

Gurdjieff’s integrated cosmological and psychological teaching has been described as ‘bewilderingly simple and sublimely, or absurdly complete’: (2) one small but disproportionately significant component was his enneagram, or nine-sided figure (3)– first presented to a private group of pupils in Moscow and Petrograd in 1916. Stressing the symbol’s importance, he demonstrated it as a dynamic model for synthesising, at macrocosmic and microcosmic level, his ‘Law of Three’ (4) and ‘Law of Seven’. (5) Later at Fontainebleau in 1922 he choreographed and taught the first of those many sacred dances (6) or ‘Movements’, whose beautiful but rigorously choreographed evolutions enact the enneagram. 

The subject is abstruse, certainly contentious, and not our real concern. All we need initially establish is that the enneagram was intrinsic and peculiar to Gurdjieff’s system of ideas, and unpromulgated before him. 

In effect, Gurdjieff did claim priority here, and persuasive in his favour is the enneagram’s perfect calibration with other uniquely Gurdjieffian models – those relating to cosmogony and cosmology, and to man’s assimilation of food, air, and sensory impressions. Nor has investigative scholarship yet produced a serious challenge. Consider Whitall Perry: this stern critic (7) of Gurdjieff is formidably armed with brickbats from oriental mystical literature, neo-Platonism, pseudo-Dionysius, Martinist, Rosicrucian and Masonic sources. Yet even he backed by all the academic resources of the Guénon-Schuon philosophical school (8) fails to adduce a precedent for the enneagram. Consider James Webb: no independent scholar worked more doggedly to unearth the provenance of Gurdjieff’s ideas. Yet all his efforts to tease the enneagram out of cognate materia in the Kabbalah, in the Ars Magna of Ramon Lull (c. 1232-1315), and the Arithmologia of the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680), seem finally as implausible as they are laboured. Consider J. G. Bennett: no Gurdjieffian became more personally and passionately involved in the search. Yet his convoluted argument that the enneagram ‘ . . . originated with the Sarmãn society about 2500 years ago and was revised when the power of the Arabic numeral system was developed in Samarkand in the fifteenth century’, (9) is projected with no hint of intellectual vigilance, and supported by no scrap of textual or archaeological evidence. 

Conclusion: although some future revelation cannot be ruled out, we may meanwhile decently hypothesise that the enneagram is sui generis and G. I. Gurdjieff, if not its author, is at least its first modern proponent. We have a valid anthropological marker. 

The Authorised Version

For more than thirty years (a longish spell with new religions), the enneagram remained hermetically sealed within its Gurdjieffian ambit. In Paris at the Salle Pleyel Gurdjieff gave it hauntingly beautiful expression in dance. In England profound commentaries were meditated (but not published) by his distinguished pupils, the Russian writer Piotr Demianovich Ouspensky (1878-1947) and the psychoanalyst Dr Maurice Nicoll (1884-1953). 

On 29 October 1949 Gurdjieff died, and the ensuing three years saw a natural dissemination (10) of hitherto recondite material. His original enneagram exposition, supplemented by Ouspensky’s commentary, was embodied in the latter’s brilliant recapitulation of Gurdjieff’s larger teaching; in May 1950 enneagram dances were included in the programme shown publicly by Gurdjieff’s pupils at the Fortune Theatre, Drury Lane, London; and finally in 1952 came the publication of Dr Nicoll’s 14 enneagram dissertations. These four manifestations represent, if anything can, the hieroglyph’s ‘authorised version’, and whatever one’s view of symbolism, sacred dance, or the enneagram in particular – it is hard to deny their integrity and essential dignity. On this sturdy and decent foundation however, a whole cluster of baroque enneagram ‘developments’ would soon be reared by ideological entrepreneurs. 

Heterodox Gurdjieffian Extrapolation

The first innovators were (in the broadest possible sense) Gurdjieffians. Rodney Collin-Smith (1909-1956), a precocious disciple of Ouspensky, emigrated to Mexico City and here in 1952 published The Theory of Celestial Influence (El Desarollo de la Luz). This astonishing work is essentially a Gurdjieffian Systema Universi, bearing comparison both in its audacity and ultimate implausibility with Bergson’s ‘Panpsychism’, Comte’s ‘Panhylism’ Fechner’s ‘Panentheism’, and Hegel’s ‘Cosmosophy’. Significantly for later developments, it gave the first account of the enneagram in Spanish, and contributed (11) to the formation of groups in Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay. 

The Gurdjieffian spirit, although unaligned with any specific religion, is essentially theistic and traditionalist: and in 1954 in Italy, Collin-Smith was received into the Roman Catholic Church. He now published his brief perfervid Christian Mystery, which tendentiously gives an enneagrammatic and astrological form to the incarnation, passion and resurrection of Christ. Needless to say, Rome took no formal cognisance of Collin-Smith, who died age 47 at Cuzco on 3 May 1956, probably by suicide. (12) Within the Gurdjieffian pantheon he remains at best an equivocal figure: in his speculations – brilliant perhaps – the enneagram begins to lose its aura of objectivity. 

Already, through our modest enneagram exhibit, we approach the more general dilemma of doctrine which challenges contemporary Gurdjieffians (as classically it challenges the custodians of any new teaching, once its protagonist is dead). Where lies the middle way between an indulgently ‘progressive’ exegesis and a moribund conservatism? ‘Every stick,’ as Gurdjieff was fond of saying, ‘has two ends.’ 

It was law-conformable that among Gurdjieff’s broad posterity two divergent schools arose, orthodox and heterodox. In England they might respectively be personified by two eminent (13) men, Kenneth Walker (1882-1966) and John Godolphin Bennett (1897-1974). Contrast them in 1957. This was the year in which Bennett at his Institute (14) in Coombe Springs opened his Djamichunatra, (15) a lofty study hall, oriented towards Gurdjieff’s grave, and having, like the enneagram, nine sides; it was a year which found him well embarked on The Dramatic Universe, his own Brobdingagnian Systema Universi, permeated by enneagrammatic speculation. It was also however the year which saw publication of Walker’s eagerly awaited Study of Gurdjieff’s Teaching,(16_ which added to the enneagram canon – precisely nothing. 

Nearly fifty years have come and gone, yet from the orthodox Gurdjieff school (17) scarcely a fresh word on the enneagram has emerged into the public domain. They have cherished the authorised version; they have laboured – some more than others – to deepen their understanding of it; above all they have brought it to vibrant life in dance, and recorded that silence. 

           The heterodox faction – mostly inspired by Bennett – have grown more incontinent as they dwindled in numbers and influence. Largely abjuring Gurdjieff’s cosmological and metaboldance on film (18) which it would be an impertinence to praise. But being justifiably concerned that spiritual glasnost would only replenish the ‘Schachermacher-workshop-booths’ (19) of popular charlatans, they have maintained – in the face of each new provocation – their deep ic synthesis, they have unexpectedly preferred themes of management, industry and science: in 1963 Clarence E. King perceived the enneagram at play in the engineering division of Vauxhall Motors; (20) in 1966 Kenneth Pledge, more persuasively, calibrated it with Newton’s prism deviation experiment and the corresponding spectrometer experiment; (21) in 1974 Bennett himself published his controversial anthology The Enneagram, exampling the symbol in the kitchen; in 1978 Irmis Popoff found it relevant to consumer product testing; and in 1987 Saul Kuchinsky confidently applied it across the whole managerial spectrum. (22) Speculations of this species have proliferated and indeed toppled over into a new century. 

  And their validity? Intuition is not slow to suggest an answer. Yet if the poor heterodox Gurdjieffians are to be accused of reckless and feeble subjectivism (as they sometimes are), council for the defence might plead in mitigation that they strove, however clumsily, to relate to Gurdjieff’s writings, and to respect – in its many implications and constraints – the specific geometric and arithmetic morphology of his symbol. Such a deference and such a discipline hardly commended itself to the self-anointed ‘enneagram experts’ who quickly arose outside Gurdjieffian circles. 

Non-Gurdjieffian Appropriations

All that was meretricious in the nouvelle orientalism of the 1960s, facilitated an impudent collusion by a small cabal of Home County pseudo-Sufis to denigrate Gurdjieff – the better to suggest that the half Scottis, half Afghan ‘Grand Sheikh’ Idries Abutahir Shah (1924- ) had somehow assumed his mantle. (23) They worked through rumour and pseudonymous writing; through half-truth, historical revisionism, and the usurpation of Gurdjieffian ideological talismans. (24) 

The want of a credible ‘proto-enneagram’ even within the incomparable treasure-house of traditional Islamic geometry was happily supplied (as so often in Shah’s ambit) by imagination:

On a wall faced with white Afghan marble, delineated in polished rubies glowed the symbol of the community. This is the mystical ‘No-Koonja’, the ninefold Naqschor ‘Impress’ . . . (25)

The casual generalist may be forgiven for viewing such passages (and they abound) (26) merely as nondescript oriental Kitsch: but the Gurdjieffian and the anthropologist – construing them within a broader complex of coded allusions, almost tantamount to a metalanguage – identifies a specific and tendentious claim. In effect Gurdjieff’s enneagram – ignobly shorn of functional significance – is being appropriated as some sort of pseudo-Sufic trademark. 

The enneagram’s final descent to a level of spiritual vaudeville affords only the bitter-sweet consolation of humour. That the symbol, for example, has been so aggressively marketed throughout South and North America, is due respectively to the Instituto de Gnoselogia (founded Arica, Chile 1968) and the ARICA Institute, Inc. (founded New York 1971). Neither enterprise is remotely Gurdjieffian. Each was instigated by the clever Bolivian ideological opportunist Oscar Ichazo, who is instructed by Metraton the prince of archangels, guided by the Green Qu’tub, and his removed his karmic nodules by massaging his left foot with the handle of a mixing spoon.(27) 

These dubious advertisements aside, it is arguable that Ichazo’s methodology and typology should be independently situated and evaluated within the extravagant complex of American eupsychian therapies (Synanon games, T-groups, Erhard Seminar Training, encounter groups, Transactional Analysis, Myers-Briggs personality inventory etc.) which, as Theodore Roszak points out, (28) owe so much to Gurdjieff yet acknowledge so little. But Ichazo himself forfeits independence by placing the enneagram at the centre of his system – and moreover in a manner which tests, virtually to destruction, one’s neutrality of viewpoint. 

The symbol’s exterior form has been copied without the smallest grasp of its interior dynamic: a conceptual instrument developed to transport objective ideas, is flatly reproduced as a means for coaxing down some personal advantage. Analogically Ichazo’s enneagram is to Gurdjieff’s what the New Guinea cargo-cults are to aviation. Ichazo’s 63 ‘domains, energies, divine principles, fixations, virtues, passions, and psychocatalyzers’ seem stuck around the symbol au choix like so many bird-of-paradise feathers. 

The Bolivian implausibly claims to have discovered the ‘enneogon’ and its arcane meanings independently; (29) his pupil John C. Lilly, an authority on dolphins, (30) chimes in misleadingly, ‘ . . . the enneagram is a device used by the Sufi school and developed by Ichazo.’ (31) By a sort of spiritual Gresham’s Law, it is this pastiche and commercialised version which has gained ascendancy in our contemporary world; which is enriching its proponents; which begins to infiltrate British Universities; (32) which is taught indeed in Roman Catholic retreats. (33) Perhaps it is unsurprising that a facile psychometric typology commends itself to Californian freshmen: but its uncritical acceptance at professorial level, and still worse by the spiritual heirs of St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus – this is sobering indeed. Gurdjieff himself jocularly foresaw a moment when his work would ‘be read in Pope’s palace’, (34) but hardly in the form of travesty. 

CONCLUSION

The symbolic corollaries to religious, political, artistic and literary movements are not historically negligible. Whether the enneagram in particular will sustain its present momentum, and even emerge from the ruck of contemporary symbols, very much remains to be seen: one might already concede it some resilience and adaptive qualities. Then does it matter that most modern exegesis is trivial and preposterous, and as much resembles the original ‘as a nail is like a requiem’? (35) The answer depends on one’s point of view. Clearly it does not matter a jot to those exploiting the symbol; and little if anything to the value-free anthropologist. But predictable indifference in these quarters does not oblige the more engaged commentator to emulate Mathew Arnold and ‘bring the eternal note of sadness in’. (36) For if Gurdjieff’s model lacks fundamental integrity, its corruption cannot concern us: and if, on the contrary, it is one of those rare symbols which encapsulate and transmit a new idea of awakening power, it will survive even its wildest extrapolators and apologists: some spirits at least, first meeting the enneagram in debased pastiche, will instinctively turn for a truer perspective to Gurdjieff’s original teaching. Perhaps on that formidable ground, an infinitely more intelligent, infinitely more responsible, exegesis could now be raised. Certainly it is overdue. 

 

First published in Religion Today: A Journal of Contemporary Religions (London) 

V (3), October 1986-January 1987, pp.1-5.

james.moore@easynet.co.uk

 

 

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Original Formulation

1949. G. I. Gurdjieff. Quoted by P. D. Ouspensky In Search of the Miraculous. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 399p., pp. 286-95. 

Orthodox Gurdjieffian Commentaries

1949. P. D. Ouspensky. Ibid.pp. 376-8. 

1952. Maurice Nicoll. Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of G. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky. Three Volumes. Vincent Stewart, 1766p., Vol. 2, pp. 373-438. 

 

Heterodox Gurdjieffian Speculation

1954. Rodney Collin-Smith. The Theory of Celestial Influence. Vincent Stewart, 392p., passim.

1954. Rodney Collin-Smith. The Christian Mystery. Mexico City: Ediciones Sol, 24p.

1956-1966. John Godolphin Bennett. The Dramatic Universe.Four Volumes, Hodder & Stoughton, 1667 p., passim. 

1974. John Godolphin Bennett. The Enneagram. Coombe Springs Press, 1974, 64p.; amplified edition retitled Enneagram Studies. Weiser, 1983, 133p. 

1978. Irmis B. Popoff. The Enneagramma of the Man of Unity. Weiser, 96p. 

 

Non-Gurdjieffian Appropriations

1972. Oscar Ichazo. The Human Process for Enlightenment and Freedom: A Series of Five Lectures. New York: Arica Institute Inc, 120p. 

1975. Charles T. Tart (ed.). Transpersonal Psychologies. New York: Harper & Row, 485p. Contains ‘The Arica Training’ by John C. Lilly and Joseph E. Hart, pp. 330-351. 

1982. Oscar Ichazo. Between Metaphysics and Protoanalysis: A Theory for Analysing the Human Psyche. New York: Arica Institute Inc. 

1984. Marian Beesing O. P., Robert J. Nogosek C. S. C., and Patrick O’Leary S. J. The Enneagram: A Journey of Self-Discovery. New Jersey: Dimension Books Inc. 

1987. Barbara Metz S. N. D. de N. and John Burchill O. P. The Enneagram and Prayer: Discovering Our True Selves Before God. New Jersey: Dimension Books Inc. 

 

NOTES

 

---

1 From ‘Dover Beach’ (1867) the most celebrated poem of Mathew Arnold (1822-1888), English critic and professor of poetry at Oxford University.

2 Richard Rees. ‘Monsieur Gurdjieff’ The Twentieth Century. Vol. 164, No. 981. Nov. 1958, p. 440. 

3To construct Gurdjieff’s enneagram: describe a circle: divide its circumference into nine equal parts: successively number the dividing points clockwise from 1 to 9, so that 9 is uppermost: join points 9, 3, and 6 to form an equilateral triangle with 9 at the apex: join the residual points in the successive order 1, 4, 2, 8, 5, and 7 to form an inverted hexagon (symmetrical about an imaginary diameter struck perpendicular from 9). 

In relation to the digits 3 and 7 – which in Gurdjieff’s model, as in mystical systems generally, are crucially significant – the sequence 142857 has noteworthy properties (lost incidentally when transposed to notations other than denary). It deploys all digits except 3 and its multiples. As a recurring decimal, it results from dividing 1 (The Monad) by 7. Its cyclical progression yields every decimalised proper seventh (thus 2 sevenths = .285714: 3 sevenths = . 428571 and so on). 

4 Named by Gurdjieff ‘Triamazikamno’, the Law of Three is a ubiquitous sacred dialect, built around his formulation ‘The higher blends with the lower in order to actualise the middle and thus becomes either higher for the preceding lower, or lower for the succeeding higher’. (See Beelzebub’s Tales, 1950, p. 751 passim.)

5 Named by Gurdjieff ‘Heptaparaparshinokh’. The Law of Seven defies précis. Centred on the idea of the ubiquitous discontinuity of vibrations, it has correlates with the Western musical scale (and more problematically with quantum theory and the periodic table of the elements, though Gurdjieff did not adduce these). (See Gurdjieff, ibid., p. 755 ff., passim). 

6 Gurdjieff perceived himself not least as a teacher of dancing, and the enneagram as a moving symbol. In many of his dances, individual and ensemble displacements are precisely governed by the enneagram. The word ‘Movements’, which in 1928 replaced the term ‘exercises’ in Gurdjieffian vocabulary, evidently now embraces seven discrete categories: the six preliminary exercises or ‘Obiligatories’; women’s dances; rhythms (harmonic, plastic and occupational); ritual exercises and medical gymnastics; men’s ethnic dances e.g. Dervish and Tibetan; sacred temples dances and tableaux; and the 39 Movements of Gurdjieff’s last series. 

7 Whitall N. Perry Gurdjieff in the Light of Tradition, Perennial Books, 1978 (first serialised as three instalments in Studies in Comparative Religion during the Autumn of 1974 and the Winter and Spring of 1975) constitutes the most considered intellectual attack on Gurdjieff to date. His charges of exclusivism, obscurantism, and anti-traditionalism, have been contested by Michel de Salzmann, K. E. Steffens, and James Moore. 

8 The hostility of René Guénon to Gurdjieff had a personal basis (see James Webb,The Harmonious Circle, Thames & Hudson, 1980, p. 467). For biographical detail see Robin Waterfield, René Guénon, Crucible, 1987, 160p.). The brilliant philosophical school overtly indebted to Frithjof Schuon (‘Isa Nuruddin’) – and to Guénon through the Alawiyya dervishes of Morocco – reinstituted attacks on Gurdjieff in 1972. Ironically Guénon’s and Schuon’s books (and those by associated figures like Titus Burckhart, Ananda Coomeraswamy, Martin Lings, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Marco Pallis, Whitall Perry and so on) receive more sympathetic attention in certain Gurdjieffian circles than anywhere else. 

9 John Godolphin Bennett, Gurdjieff: Making a New World, Turnstone, 1973, 320p., p. 293. 

10 In January 1949 Gurdjieff sanctioned posthumous publication of Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous (an account of Ouspensky’s discipleship, essentially comprising Gurdjieff’s direct and reported speech). He also urged forward publication of his own magnum opus,Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950, 1238p.); this work, although not explicitly referring to the enneagram, contains (in Chapters XXXIX and XL) the deepest exposition of the laws it encapsulates. 

11 The strength and prevalence of Gurdjieff groups in South and Central America is largely owed to the direct influence of orthodox Gurdjieffians from France, England, and the USA – commencing shortly after Gurdjieff’s death. 

12 An idealised account of Collin-Smith’s death appears in a postscript to his book The Theory of Conscious Harmony, Vincent Stewart, 1958, 212p., pp 187-8. A less inhibited version is offered in The Harmonious Circle, Thames & Hudson, 1980, 608p., pp. 494-6 by the rationalist historian James Webb (who tragically took his own life on 8 May 1980.) 

13 Walker was a man of wide culture and three times Hunterian Professor of Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons. Bennett was a polyglot and mathematician; his speculative paper ‘Unified Field Theory in a Curvature-Free Five-Dimensional Manifold’ (written with R. L. Brown and M. W. Thring) was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in July 1949. As J. B. Priestly wrote, ‘The level of Gurdjieff’s . . . most devoted students was very high. In order to study this movement, nobody will have to do any intellectual slumming.’ 

14 Bennett’s Institutefor the Comparative Study of History, Philosophy and the Sciences Ltdwas incorporated on 22 May 1946. By 1954 Bennett had broken from the Gurdjieffian mainstream to purse an eclectic line: he used his Institute to promote several cults (notably Subud and pseudo-Sufism), which were neither mutually consistent nor compatible with Gurdjieff’s ideas. See Bennett’s autobiography Witness, Turnstone, revd. ed 1975, 385p.

15 For fuller detail see James Moore, ‘Neo-Sufism: The Case of Idries Shah’ Religion TodayVol 3, No. 3, note 30. For photographs of the Djamichunatra,, see various editions of J. G. Bennett’s autobiography, Witnessibid. 

16 Kenneth Walker, A Study of Gurdjieff’s Teaching, Jonathan Cape, 1957, 221p. 

17 Albeit 'orthodox Gurdjieffian school' remains a taxonomic signifier which is useful and salutary in many contexts, the growing need for interpretative vigilance is manifest from recent untoward episodes within the Gurdjieffian communion. The delineation of orthodox and heterodox groupings in James Moore's ‘Gurdjieffian Groups in Britain’ [Religion TodayVol. 3 (No. 2)] published in May 1986, has become largely outdated. More perennially relevant may prove his 'Moveable Feasts: The Gurdjieff Work'[Religion Today Vol.9 (No.2) spring 1994] with its principled differentiation of (i) an orthodoxy fixedly arrogated to itself in institutional and nomenclatural terms, as against (ii) an orthodoxy validated, however fragilely, in terms of Gurdjieffian historicity and traditional praxis. Here Moore examples inter alia the problematical 1992 revision of the English-language text of Gurdjieff's magnum opus Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (since withdrawn from circulation), which drew widespread criticism as stylistically vapid, ideologically revisionist, and socially divisive. Paradoxically it sprang from the fountainhead of orthodoxy, namely Mme Jeanne de Salzmann and her Gurdjieff Foundations: yet was far-sightedly opposed by broadly heterodox Gurdjieffian figures like Annie Lou Staveley and even (at the earliest feasibility stage) by J.G. Bennett. 

18 A substantial effort of the traditional Gurdjieff groups over the last 35 years has been to create and preserve for the future, a visual record of Gurdjieff’s Sacred Dance and Movements. At a considerable expense of time, effort, and money, some 10 archival films have been made in Paris by the French, English, and American groups, collaborating together under the supervision of Gurdjieff’s senior pupil Jeanne de Salzmann (1889-1990). None of these films, from the heart of Gurdjieff’s teaching, are as yet in the public domain, but semi-public showings have recently begun (eg. in London on 14 June 1987). Here is a major quandary for Gurdjieffians: on the one hand they feel certain these films would ‘nourish the times’; on the other hand they readily identify forces and agencies which would appropriate, copy, and corrupt the material, for artistic and even for commercial purposes. Thus the only fragment so far released to the general public is the last 10 minutes of Peter Brook’s (1979) adaptation of Gurdjieff’s autobiography Meetings with Remarkable Men. 

19 Gurdjieff, Beelzebub’s Tales, op cit.,p. 1188. 

20 Clarence E. King, ‘The Systematics of a Manufacturing Process’, Systematics, Vol. 1, No. 2, p. 111. 

21 Kenneth Pledge, ‘Structured Process in Scientific Experiment’, Systematics, Vol. 3, No. 4, p. 304. 

22 Evidently the American business milieu is a unique field for cultivating a debased Gurdjieffianity. Charles Krone, a Carmel organisational consultant personally unconnected with Gurdjieff or his senior pupils, reportedly indoctrinated the 67,000 employees of Pacific Bell Inc. with his ‘Standard Leadership Development’ programme: Krone candidly acknowledges his fundamental reliance on J. G. Bennett’s (debatable) version of Gurdjieff’s ideas. See Kathleen Pender, ‘Pac Bell’s New Way to Think’, San Francisco Chronicle 23 March 1987, p. 1, 6. Ms. Pender implies that similar programmes are in progress or planned at Dupont, Scott Paper, Certain Teed – and in the UK at I.C.I. 

23 See (i) L. P. Elwell-Sutton, ‘Sufism & Pseudo-Sufism’, Encounter, Vol. XLIV, No. 5, May 1975, pp. 9-17 and the series of fifteen lively letters under various headings relating to Gurdjieff and Sufism between August 1975 and March 1976 from among others, Michael Currer-Briggs, James Moore, John Pentland and James Webb; and (ii) James Moore, ‘Neo-Sufism: The Case of Idries Shah’, Religion Today, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 4-8. 

24 Another Gurdjieffian talisman exploited by the Shah-School was the putative ‘Sarmoung Brotherhood’. Shah also followed Gurdjieff in his enthusiasm for Mullah Nassr Eddin, the medieval wise fool of Turkish folklore. 

25 Major Desmond R. Martin (? Pseud.) ‘Below the Hindu Kush’, The Lady Vol. CLXII, No. 4210, 9 Dec. 1965, p. 870. 

26 cf. ‘Rafael Lefort’ (pseud.) The Teachers of Gurdjieff, Gollancz, 1966, 151p., p. 23. And, Taslim (? Pseud.) ‘A Reconnaissance – Why I Travelled’ in The Diffusion of Sufi Ideas in the West: An Anthology of New Writings by and about Idries Shah (ed. L. Lewin) Institute for Research on the Dissemination of Human Knowledge, 1972, 212 p., pp. 158-9. 

27 These unusual claims are made on Ichazo’s behalf by John C. Lilly and Joseph E. Hart in ‘The Arica Training’ in Transpersonal Psychologies(ed. Charles T. Tart) Harper & Row, 1975, 485 p.; 1977, 504 p., p. 329-351, see p. 341 and p. 346. 

28 Theodore Roszak, Unfinished Animal: The Aquarian Frontier and the Evolution of Consciousness, New York: Harper & Row, 1975, 271p., p. 139. 

29 See Interviews with Oscar Ichazo, New York: Arica Institute Press, 1982, 190 p., passim. Significantly however major Gurdjieff enneagram disquisitions were available in Spanish throughout South America, before Ichazo published his first book. 

30 Dr Lilly, a former associate in residence at Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California, is the author of Man and Dolphin (1961) and The Mind of the Dolphin(1967). He spent two and a half months in a ‘living-in situation’ with Margaret Howe and a dolphin called Peter; and ten years working with isolation tanks and LSD. He converted to Ichazo in 1970. 

31 Lilly and Hart, op. cit., p. 333. 

32 Especially in the USA. A recent British case was Shree Pickar’s workshop ‘The Enneagram: Symbol for Personal Transformation’ held on 13-14 October 1984, under the auspices of the University of Surrey. Ms. Pickar formerly led workshops for Claudio Naranjo, the Chilean psychiatrist and authority on drug states. 

33 In the USA ‘Enneagram workshops’, loosely based on Ichazo’s adaptation, have for approximately for eight years been given by Jesuits, Dominicans, and various women’s orders. In the UK these characteristically take place under the auspices of the Roman Catholic National Retreat Movement at Cenacle houses in London, Dublin, Liverpool, Bristol, and Hindhead. 

34 Gurdjieff quoted by John Godolphin Bennett in his autobiography Witness: the Story of a Search, Hodder & Stoughton, 1962, 381p., p. 271. 

35 Mullah Nassr Eddin quoted by Gurdjieff Beelzebub’s Tales, op. cit., p. 13. 

36 Arnold loc. cit.

 

 

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Special Note on relevant 1987-2003 developments.

 

In appending below a provisional recapitulation of some significant developments touching on the typological enneagram, I acknowledge a debt of gratitude to Gurdjieff bibliographer and independent scholar J. Walter Driscoll, for sharing his knowledge of developments in the U.S.A.

 

 

1988 Helen Palmer publishes ‘The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself and the Others in Your Life ‘(Harper).

1990 Oscar Ichazo's lawsuit against Helen Palmer for copyright infringement of his "Enneagon" is dismissed.

1992 Religion Today Vol.7 (No.2) (London). Anthony C. Edwards publishes ‘Competitiveness and Apartheid in the New Age: the Enneagram Schools’, rashly lending academic weight to the misinformation promoted by successive proponents of the personality analysis industry, namely that indeterminate Sufic schools, not Gurdjieff, originated the enneagram.

1992 Religion Today Vol.8 (No.1) (London). James Moore publishes ‘New Lamps for Old: The Enneagram Débâcle’ challenging Anthony C. Edwards representations and emphasising Gurdjieff as the enneagram’s protagonist.

1993-1994 Gnosis # 30 Winter issue, News & Notes: ‘Enneagram Enters Halls of Academe’ announces that Helen Palmer's Center for Enneagram Studies and Stanford University's Business School will host the first International Enneagram Conference. (Addressing Conference, Kathleen Speeth unexpectedly warns of the “potential for harm" inherent in using the typological enneagram, adding that she herself will discontinue teaching it publicly.)

1994 Claudio Naranjo publishes Character and Neurosis: An Integrative View, a scholarly if laboured apologia for Ichazo’s contentious enneagram of personality types. 

1994 Gnosis: a Journal of the Western Inner Traditions (San Francisco) Summer Issue # 32 carries feature ‘Why the Enneagram: an interview with Helen Palmer’

1995 Helen Palmer publishes The Enneagram in Love & Work: Understanding Your Intimate & Business Relationships. (Harper). 

1996 A.G.E. Blake publishes The Intelligent Enneagram [Shambhala], a unique and honourable attempt to calibrate Gurdjieff’s enneagram with numerous scientific, philosophical, and spiritual paradigms. Audacious, cerebral, and heavy going. 

1996 Gnosis (San Francisco) Fall 1996 Issue carries feature ‘The Distorted Enneagram: interview with Claudio Naranjo’ in which he indicates “my main interest in learning from Oscar Ichazo was the conviction that he was the link to the Sarmouni - the school behind Gurdjieff." (The interviewer, O. M. C. Parkin suggests that "Ichazo has retreated to Hawaii and, apart from an interview with L. A. Weekly in 1993, has remained almost silent in public.")   

1997 Gnosis Magazine (San Francisco) #42, Winter, features a revealing correspondence section "Special Forum: The Enneagram in Contention": Helen Palmer defends herself against Claudio Naranjo's accusations of her "misappropriating the enneagram oral tradition":

Nicolas Tereschenko stresses that "Mr. Gurdjieff himself never gave his pupils any indication of this low-levels application of the enneagram”; Claudio Naranjo closes with a terse refusal to rebut criticism.

1998 William Patrick Patterson Taking with the Left Hand(Arete Communications) Part 1: ‘How the Enneagram Came to Market’ offers a racy and adversarial recapitulation of the links among Ichazo, Naranjo, Palmer et al, distancing that entire lineage from Gurdjieff’s original teaching.

 

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Copyright © James Moore 1987, 2004

Retrieved from www.Gurdjeiff-Bibliography.com