G. I Gurdjieff, Trinitarian Master

Abstract

From its beginnings the Gurdjieff teaching has been presented through a heavily secular lens—“spiritual but not religious” —most frequently as an early run-up on what we would nowadays call Mindfulness Training. While this secular emphasis is by no means misplaced, it tends to deflect attention away from what is surely its opposite but equal truth: that Gurdjieff’s grasp of the Christian Mystery unfolds at a remarkably high level of theological subtlety and devotional depth that catches both mainstream scholars and Gurdjieffians themselves largely unaware. Nowhere is this more evident than in Gurdjieff’s bold and comprehensive treatment of the Holy Trinity. His unique, metaphysically based understanding of the Trinity as inextricably linked to the Law of Three (a.k.a. “The Law of World Creation”) repositions it as a cosmogonic template rather than a mystical speculation on the inner ontology of God, thereby “giving it legs” for both personal inner transformation and conscious action in the world. My paper will develop this thesis through a close examination of Gurdjieff’s Trinitarian metaphysics as presented in his extended discourse in Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson, followed by a preliminary exploration of several as yet unpublished “Trinitarian Exercises” contained within the Vera Daumal collection of Gurdjieffian material at the Bibliotheque Jacques Doucet in Paris.