Boyhood With Gurdjieff; Gurdjieff Remembered; Balanced Man
Fritz Peters, with a preface by Henry Miller
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Excerpt from Boyhood With Gurdjieff

I met and talked to Georges Gurdjieff for the first time in 1924, on a Saturday afternoon in June, at the Château du Prieuré in Fontainebleau-Avon, France. Although the reasons for my being there were not very clear in my mind—I was eleven at the time—my memory of that meeting is still brilliantly clear.
It was a bright, sunny day. Gurdjieff was sitting by a small marble-topped table, shaded by a striped umbrella, with his back to the château proper, facing a large expanse of formal lawns and flower beds. I had to sit on the terrace of the château, behind him, for some time before I was summoned to his side for an interview. I had, actually, seen him once before, in New York the previous winter, but I did not feel that I had “met” him. My only memory of that prior time was that I had been frightened of him: partly because of the way he looked at—or through—me, and partly because of his reputation. I had been told that he was at least a “prophet”—at most, something very close to the “second coming of Christ”.
Meeting any version of a “Christ” is an event, and this meeting was not one to which I looked forward. Facing the presence not only did not appeal to me—I dreaded it.
The actual meeting did not measure up to my fears. “Messiah” or not, he seemed to me a simple, straightforward man. He was not surrounded by any halo, and while his English was heavily accented, he spoke far more simply than the Bible had led me to expect. He made a vague gesture in my direction, told me to sit down, called for coffee, and then asked me why I was there. I was relieved to find that he seemed to be an ordinary human being, but I was troubled by the question. I felt sure that I was supposed to give him an important answer; that I should have some excellent reason. Having none, I told him the truth: That I was there because I had been brought there.
He then asked me why I wanted to be there, to study at his school. Once more I was only able to answer that it was all beyond my control—I had not been consulted, I had been, as it were, transported to that place. I remember my strong impulse to lie to him, and my equally strong feeling that I could not lie to him. I felt sure that he knew the truth in advance. The only question that I answered less than honestly was when he asked me if I wanted to stay there and to study with him. I said that I did, which was not essentially true. I said it because I knew that it was expected of me. It seems to me, now, that any child would have answered as I did. Whatever the Prieuré might represent to adults (and the literal name of the school was “The Gurdjieff Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man”), I felt that I was experiencing the equivalent of being interviewed by the principal of a high school. Children went to school, and I subscribed to the general agreement that no child would tell his teacher-to-be that he did not want to go to school. The only thing that surprised me was that I was asked the question.
Gurdjieff then asked me two more questions:
1. What do you think life is?
and
2. What do you want to know?
I answered the first question by saying: “I think life is something that is handed to you on a silver platter, and it is up to you (me) to do something with it.” This answer touched off a long discussion about the phrase “on a silver platter”, including a reference by Gurdjieff to the head of John the Baptist. I retreated—it felt like a retreat—and modified the phrase to the effect that life was a “gift”, and this seemed to please him.
The second question (What do you want to know?) was simpler to answer. My words were: “I want to know everything.”
Gurdjieff replied immediately: “You cannot know everything. Everything about what?”
I said: “Everything about man, ” and then added: “In English I think it is called psychology or maybe philosophy.”
He sighed then, and after a short silence said: “You can stay. But your answer makes life difficult for me. I am the only one who teaches what you ask. You make more work for me.”
Since my childish aims were to conform and to please, I was disconcerted by his answer. The last thing I wanted to do was to make life more difficult for anyone—it seemed to me that it was difficult enough already. I said nothing in reply to this, and he went on to tell me that in addition to learning “everything” I would also have the opportunity to study lesser subjects, such as languages, mathematics, various sciences, and so forth. He also said that I would find that his was not the usual school: “Can learn many things here that other schools not teach.” He then patted my shoulder benevolently.
I use the word “benevolently” because the gesture was of great importance to me at the time. I longed for approval from some higher authority. To receive such “approval” from this man who was considered by other adults to be a “prophet”, “seer”, and/or a “Messiah”—and approval in such a simple, friendly gesture—was unexpected and heartwarming. I beamed.
His manner changed abruptly. He struck the table with one fist, looked at me with great intensity, and said: “Can you promise to do something for me?”
His voice and the look he had given me were frightening and also exciting. I felt both cornered and challenged. I answered him with one word, a firm “Yes”.
He gestured towards the expanse of lawns before us: “You see this grass?”
“Yes.”
“I give you work. You must cut this grass, with machine, every week.”
I looked at the lawns, the grass spreading before us into what appeared to me infinity. It was, without any doubt, a prospect of more work in one week than I had ever contemplated in my life. Again, I said “Yes”.
He struck the table with his fist for a second time. “You must promise on your God.” His voice was deadly serious. “You must promise that you will do this thing no matter what happens.”
I looked at him, questioning, respectful, and with considerable awe. No lawn—not even these (there were four of them)—had ever seemed important to me before. “I promise, ” I said earnestly.
“Not just promise,” he reiterated. “Must promise you will do no matter what happens, no matter who try stop you. Many things can happen in life.”
For a moment his words conjured up visions of terrifying arguments over the mowing of these lawns. I foresaw great emotional dramas taking place in the future on account of these lawns and of myself. Once again, I promised. I was as serious as he was then. I would have died, if necessary, in the act of mowing the lawns.
My feeling of dedication was obvious, and he seemed satisfied. He told me to begin work on Monday, and then dismissed me. I don’t think I realized it at the time—that is, the sensation was new to me—but I left him with the feeling that I had fallen in love; whether with the man, the lawns, or myself, did not matter. My chest was expanded far beyond its normal capacity. I, a child, an unimportant cog in the world which belonged to adults, had been asked to perform something that was apparently vital.

II

What was “the prieuré”, which was the name most of us used, or “The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man”?
At the age of eleven, I understood it to be simply some kind of special school, directed, as I have said, by a man who was considered by many people to be a visionary, a new prophet, a great philosopher. Gurdjieff himself once defined it as a place where he was attempting, among other things, to create a small world that would reproduce the conditions of the larger, outside world; the main purpose in creating such conditions being to prepare the students for future human, or life, experience. It was not, in other words, a school devoted to ordinary education which, generally, consists in the acquisition of various faculties such as reading, writing, and arithmetic. One of the simpler things that he was attempting to teach was a preparation for life itself.
It may be necessary to point out here, especially for the benefit of people who have had some contact with Gurdjieffian theory, that I am describing the “Institute” as I saw and understood it as a boy. I am not attempting to define its purpose or meaning for individuals who were interested in, or attracted to, Gurdjieff because of his philosophy. To me, it was simply another school—different from any school I had known, to be sure—and the essential difference was that most of the “students” were adults, With the exception of my brother and myself, all the other children were either relatives—nieces, nephews, etc., of Mr. Gurdjieff—or his natural children. There were not many children in all: I can only remember a total of ten.
The routine of the school, for everyone except the smallest children, was the same. The day began with a breakfast of coffee and dry toast at six o’ clock. From seven o’ clock on, each individual worked at whatever task was assigned to him. The performance of these tasks was only interrupted during the day by meals: dinner at noon (usually, soup, meat, salad, and some kind of sweet pudding); tea at four in the afternoon; a simple supper at seven in the evening, After supper, at 8:30, there were gymnastics, or dances, in what was called the “study-house” This routine was standard, for six days a week, except that on Saturday afternoons the women went to the Turkish bath, and early Saturday evenings there were “demonstrations” of the dances in the study-house by the more competent performers, for the other students and for guests who frequently came to visit for weekends; after the demonstrations, the men went to the Turkish bath, and when the bath was over, there was a “feast” or special meal. The children did not participate in these late meals as diners—only as waiters or kitchen help. Sunday was a day of rest.
The tasks assigned to the students were invariably concerned with the actual functioning of the school: gardening, cooking, house-cleaning, taking care of animals, milking, making butter; and these tasks were almost always group activities. As I learned later, the group work was considered to be of real importance: Different personalities, working together, produced subjective, human conflicts; human conflicts produced friction; friction revealed characteristics which, if observed, could reveal “self”. One of the many aims of the school was “to see yourself as others saw you”; to see oneself, as it were, from a distance; to be able to criticize that self objectively; but, at first, simply to see it. An exercise that was intended to be performed all the time, during whatever physical activity, was called “self-observation” or “opposing I to it”—“I” being the (potential) consciousness, “it” the body, the instrument.
At the beginning, and before I understood any of these theories or exercises, my task and, in a sense, my world, was completely centred on cutting the grass, for my lawns—as I came to call them—became considerably more vital than I could have anticipated.
The day after my “interview” with him, Mr. Gurdjieff left for Paris. We had been given to understand that it was customary for him to spend two days a week in Paris, usually accompanied by his secretary, Madame de Hartmann, and sometimes others. This time, which was unusual, he went alone.
As I remember, it was not until sometime on Monday afternoon—Mr. Gurdjieff had left Sunday evening—that the rumour that he had been in an automobile accident filtered down to the children at the school. We heard first that he had been killed, then that he had been seriously injured and was not expected to live. A formal announcement was made by someone in authority Monday evening. He was not dead, but he was seriously injured and near death in a hospital.
It is difficult to describe the impact of such an announcement. The very existence of the “Institute” depended entirely on Gurdjieff’s presence. It was he who assigned work to every individual—and up to that moment he had supervised, personally, every detail of the running of the school. Now, the imminent possibility of his death brought everything to a standstill. It was only thanks to the initiative of a few of the older students, most of whom had come with him from Russia, that we continued to eat regularly.
While I did not know what was going to happen to me, personally, the one thing that was still vivid in my mind was the fact that he had told me that I was to mow the lawns “no matter what happened”. It was a relief to me to have something concrete to do; a definite job that he had assigned to me. It was also the first time that I had any feeling that he was, perhaps, extraordinary. It was he who had said “no matter what happens”, and his accident had happened. His injunction became that much stronger. I was convinced that he had known beforehand that “something” was going to happen, although not necessarily an automobile accident.
I was not the only one who felt that his accident was, in a sense, foreordained, The fact that he had gone to Paris alone (I was told it was the first time he had done so) was sufficient proof for most of the students. My reaction, in any event, was that it had become absolutely essential to mow the grass; I was convinced that his life, at least in part, might depend on my dedication to the task he had given me.
These feelings of mine assumed special importance when, a few days later, Mr. Gurdjieff was brought back to the Prieuré, to his room which overlooked “my” lawns, and we were told that he was in a coma and was being kept alive on oxygen, doctors came and went at intervals; tanks of oxygen were delivered and removed; a hushed atmosphere descended over the place it was as if we were all involved in permanent, silent prayer for him.
It was not until a day or so after his return that I was told—probably by Madame de Hartmann—that the noise of the lawn-mower would have to stop. The decision I was forced to make then was a momentous one for me. Much as I respected Madame de Hartmann, I could not forget the force with which he had made me promise to do my job. We were standing at the edge of the lawn, directly beneath the windows of his room, when I had to give her my answer. I did not reflect for very long, as I recall, and I refused, with all the force in me. I was then told that his life might actually depend on my decision, and I still refused. What surprises me now is that I was not categorically forbidden to continue, or even forcibly restrained. The only explanation that I can find for this is that his power over his pupils was such that no single individual was willing to take the responsibility of totally denying my version of what he had told me. In any case, I was not restrained; I was simply forbidden to cut the grass. I continued to cut it.
This rejection of authority, of anything less than the highest authority, was deadly serious, and I think the only thing that sustained me in it was that I was reasonably convinced that the noise of a lawn-mower would not kill anyone; also, less logically, I did feel, at the time, that his life might—inexplicably—depend on my performance of the task he had given me. These reasons, however, were no defence against the feelings of the other students (there were about one hundred and fifty people there at the time, most of them adults) who were at least equally convinced that the noise I continued to make every day could be deadly.
The conflict continued for several weeks, and each day when “no change” in his condition was reported, it became more difficult for me to begin. I can remember having to grit my teeth and overcome my own fear of what I might be doing every morning. My resolve was alternately strengthened and weakened by the attitude of the other students. I was ostracized, excluded from every other activity; no one would sit at the same table with me at meals—if I went to a table where others were sitting, they would leave the table when I sat down—and I cannot remember any one person who either spoke to me or smiled at me during those weeks, with the exception of a few of the more important adults who, from time to time, continued to exhort me to stop.

Published January 2005 by Bardic Press. Hardcover, 372 pages, ISBN 0-9745667-6-4, £29.95, €42.

Please note that this edition is not available for sale in the USA. It is printed, published and sold in the United Kingdom.

Read an excerpt from Boyhood With Gurdjieff
Read an excerpt from Gurdjieff Remembered
Read an excerpt from Balanced Man