What is The Significance of the Life of Man on Earth?

His love for the world was no less than Christ's or Buddha's; no less was his commitment to the transmission of the truth of the world he saw dimmed by the floating ash of successive explosions of human error. He sought to restore the bleak human landscape of ignorance to light and life; and he carried that light and life in himself on his quest to impart it to others without discrimination." - Alfred Richard Orage

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (January 13, 1866 – October 29, 1949), was a Greek-Armenian mystic, a teacher of sacred dances, and a spiritual teacher. At different times in his life he formed and liquidated various schools around the world to utilize his teachings. He claimed that the teachings he brought to the West from his own experiences and early travels expressed the truth found in other ancient religions and wisdom teachings relating to self-awareness in one's daily life and humanity's place in the universe. His teachings might be summed up by the title of his third series of writings: Life is Real Only Then, When 'I Am', while his complete series of books is entitled "All and Everything." He is most notable for introducing what some refer to as "The Work," connoting work on oneself according to Gurdjieff's principles and instructions, or as he first referred to it, "The Fourth Way".

Gurdjieff claimed that people do not perceive reality, as they are not conscious of themselves, but live in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep.".

"Man lives his life in sleep, and in sleep he dies." Gurdjieff taught that each person perceived things from a completely subjective perspective. Gurdjieff stated that maleficent events such as wars and so on could not possibly take place if people were more awake. He asserted that people in their typical state were unconscious automatons, but that it was possible for a man to wake up and experience life more fully..

Gurdjieff wrote and approved for publication three volumes of his written work under the title All and Everything. The first volume, 'Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson', is a lengthy allegorical work that recounts the explanations of Beelzebub to his grandson concerning the beings of the planet Earth. Intended to be a teaching tool for his teachings, Gurdjieff had gone to great lengths in order to increase the effort needed to read and understand the book. The second volume, 'Meetings with Remarkable Men', was written in a very easily understood manner, and purports to be an autobiography of his early years, but also contains many allegorical statements. His final unfinished volume, 'Life is Real Only Then, When 'I Am'', contains a fragment of an autobiographical description of later years, as well as transcripts of some lectures.

Even today, after almost a century of intense study and practice by students of his teaching, Gurdjieff himself remains an enigma. On first meeting him in Moscow in 1915, eminent writer and mathematician, P.D. Ouspensky, noted, "I saw a man of an oriental type, no longer young, with a black mustache and piercing eyes, who produced the strange, unexpected and almost alarming impression of a man poorly disguised, the sight of whom embarrasses you because you see that he is not what he pretends to be and yet you have to speak and behave as though you did not see it."

Gurdjieff taught that one should learn to play a role in life—willingly fulfilling all its changing demands while remaining inwardly free—and he demonstrated this so effectively in his own life that he confounded both his admirers and detractors. Nevertheless, his influence as a spiritual force attracted seekers from all walks of life who, like the heroes in his uncompromising book, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, recognized a deep lack in themselves and sought a method of completion.

Gurdjieff was born into a deeply spiritual family. His grandmother was a midwife and healer, revered throughout the Alexandropol region of Armenia. His father was a Greek "Ashokh" who committed to memory the great works of antiquity calling man to a spiritual awakening; his mother was a devote Christian who undertook a life of self-denial in gratitude for the birth of her first son, George Ivanovitch, on January 13, 1866.

He was a gifted child who followed his grandmother's advice, "not to do anything as others do." Schooled for both the priesthood and medicine, Gurdjieff had one unconquerable desire: to investigate from all sides, and to understand the exact significance and purpose of the life of man. He was convinced that the knowledge he sought had once existed in the great spiritual traditions and could be rediscovered.

From the age of twenty-one until he appeared in Moscow in 1912 with a complete system of psychological and metaphysical ideas, and a method for the development of the inner life of man, Gurdjieff traveled to centers of knowledge in The Middle East and Central Asia, gathering the strands of ancient wisdom and fashioning them into one coherent whole, now called The Gurdjieff Work.

After several failed attempts, due to war and revolution, to found a center of teaching in Russia and Germany, Gurdjieff, with an entourage of pupils, family and refugees founded the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at Fontainebleau, in France in 1922. Around him gathered an impressive group of pupils that included P. D. Ouspensky who had followed him from Russia and later published a succinct account of Gurdjieff's teaching, A. R. Orage, prominent editor of the London New Age Review, who initially founded groups in New York, and Jean de Salzmann who, after his death, assumed responsibility for the transmission of Gurdjieff's teaching.

When Gurdjieff died in Paris in 1949 where he had lived and taught in a crowded apartment during and after the difficult years of the war, he left behind the foundation of a worldwide movement of spiritual renewal for the welfare of "all creatures of our Common Father similar to myself." This consisted of a collective of dedicated and capable senior pupils, four distinctive books containing his ideas, a body of sacred dances, called the Movements, and several hundred pieces of sacred music. As Madame de Salzmann noted, "He had prepared everything; nothing had been overlooked." Gurdjieff, like all great spiritual masters, embodied his teaching.