Mavi Boncuk | SOURCE
Constantinople (By Uncredited. Postcard c. 1905-1910. Photograph from an earlier date. (Delcampe.net online auctions) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
In January 1920 Ouspensky arrived destitute in a Constantinople teeming with Allied forces, demobilised Turks, and Russian refugees. On completing shipboard quarantine, the family were fortunate to find accommodation in a single room in a large lodging house on Prinkipo Island in the Marmara. Ouspensky again supported them, this time by teaching mathematics to children, and English (which he scarcely knew) to fellow émigrés. Once established, Ouspensky began lectures on Gurdjieff’s ideas in Pera, Constantinople’s European quarter; here, in the upstairs offices of the Russky Mayak (a Y.M.C.A. for White Russians) he excited broad interest, gradually forming a nucleus of twenty to thirty pupils. He anticipated the arrival of Gurdjieff and his company, which was rumoured in bazaar gossip, and which materialised in June 1920.
The ensuing year – the last throughout which Gurdjieff and Ouspensky had substantial contact – was characterised by Ouspensky’s complex vacillations. At outset, when he brought Gurdjieff to his lectures and magnanimously surrendered all his pupils to him, there seemed promise of full reconciliation. Indeed from July to September 1920 the two men related closely: exchanging visits, making excursions, attending dervish ceremonies, and working together on the scenario of Gurdjieff’s ballet The Struggle of the Magicians. However, by October, when Gurdjieff opened his Institute in Constantinople at No.13 Yemenedji Sokak, the same psychological difficulties arose for Ouspensky as at Essentuki: accordingly, he dissociated himself and withdrew for two months to Prinkipo. Here in mid-November 1920, he was gratified to receive, from Nikolai Alexandrovitch Bassaraboff in New York, a substantial royalty cheque, with the unanticipated news that Tertium Organum had been published successfully in English: this reinforced Ouspensky’s intention to settle in England or America. In December, once Gurdjieff’s Institute was established, Ouspensky resumed his own lectures at Russky Mayak, and also began group discussions at Matchka, in the flat of Mrs Winifred Alise Beaumont (then living with John Godolphin Bennett who a year later became Ouspensky’s pupil).
John Godolphin Bennett (Source unknown)
Despite their now independent trajectories, the relationship between Gurdjieff and Ouspensky was still fundamentally unimpaired. In spring 1921 Ouspensky accepted an invitation to give weekly lectures at Gurdjieff’s Institute. He also interested himself in Gurdjieff’s Movement classes at the Grand Rabbinate, both by volunteering young pupils and by attending Saturday night demonstrations (his interest however fell short of personal participation).
Prinkipo Island By SALTOnline [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons
On 19 May 1921 Ouspensky received the then substantial sum of £100 from Mary Lilian, Lady Rothermere in Rochester New York, cabled with the encouraging message: ‘Deeply impressed by your book Tertium Organum wish meet you in New York or London will pay all expenses’. With his path to London now smoothed, Ouspensky secured from Gurdjieff permission to write and publish a book on his ideas. His last three months in Prinkipo were not without tension: he suffered bureaucratic delay in obtaining his British entry visa; and Mme Ouspensky, disapproving his course, resolved to remain with Gurdjieff. Ouspensky finally left alone for London in mid-August 1921.
1920–1921: Constantinople[*] SOURCE
Gurdjieff arrived in June and the two men resumed a close association. Ouspensky handed all his new students over to Gurdjieff and ceased for some time to lecture independently. He helped Gurdjieff to re-establish his Institute, drafting the scenarios for Gurdjieff’s ballet ‘The Struggle of the Magicians’, created from the special movements and dances which would in future form the centre of Gurdjieff’s work.
Relations between the two men remained cordial and their frequent explorations of the city and the bazaar included a visit to the Mevlevi ceremony of the Mukabele which Ouspensky had first witnessed in 1904.
Ouspensky himself did not join the Institute, though he gave weekly lectures there at Gurdjieff’s invitation and in which Gurdjieff himself took part. Gurdjieff authorised Ouspensky’s plan to publish an account of Gurdjieff’s St. Petersburg lectures which would eventually be published as In Search of the Miraculous.
Despite their renewed collaboration and friendship Ouspensky again experienced the reservations which had first arisen in Essentuki and he now finally made the decision to work on his own. Once Gurdjieff’s Institute was well established he resumed lecturing independently.
Boris Ferapontoff kept extensive notes of Ouspensky’s lectures in Constantinople (a copy survives in the P.D. Ouspensky Memorial Collection at Yale University). These notes show that Ouspensky had begun to teach a synthesis of his own ideas and Gurdjieff’s system. Indeed the join between the two was seamless; the ideas he had put forward in Tertium Organum were now integrated by reference to the system.
He began to further develop some of the system ideas, for example the ‘law of three’, and to differentiate the phenomena arising from the six possible combinations of the three forces in a way which eventually led to his own teaching of ‘the six activities of man’.
He spoke of the different matters described by the ‘Food Table’ in a detailed manner not found in later published accounts. His own extensive knowledge of anatomy and physiology was apparent.
The System’s teaching of the ‘centres’ of consciousness which make up the human endowment was further developed by Ouspensky’s own understanding of the relationship of time between different cosmoses. According to Ferapontoff’s notes:
Different rates of perception of different centres. Man perceives more or less, depending upon the centre with which it is done. The rate of perception of centres is proportionate to the speeds of the three worlds. The rate of work of the formatory apparatus corresponds to the speed of man’s impressions. That of the moving centre – to that of mankind. That of the emotional centre – to that of earth. In the same phenomena receptivity is greater.
The notes also indicate that at these public lectures Ouspensky revealed a great deal that in later years would be spoken of only in private.
In May 1921 Ouspensky received a telegram from Lady Rothermere who, enthused by her reading of Tertium Organum and forwarding a substantial cheque for expenses, invited him to proceed immediately to London.
[*] In the 1920s, Constantinople (now Istanbul) was under
occupation by Allied forces following World War I, significantly impacting its
political and social landscape.
After the end of World War I, the occupation of Istanbul
began on November 12, 1918, when British, French, Italian, and Greek forces
entered the city. This occupation was formalized under the Treaty of Sèvres in
1920, which aimed to partition the Ottoman Empire. The occupation lasted until
October 4, 1923, when the last Allied troops withdrew, following the signing of
the Treaty of Lausanne.
SEE ALSO: Peter Ouspensky 20th Century Mathematician & Philosopher
Piotr Demianovich Ouspensky (March 4, 1878–October 2, 1947) was a Russian philosopher who rejected the science and psychology of his time under the strong suspicion that there had to exist a superior system of thought. SEE ALSO | Gurdjieff IN ISTANBUL
Mavi Boncuk |
Constantinople: 1920-21 SOURCE
In January 1920 Ouspensky arrived destitute in a Constantinople teeming with Allied forces, demobilised Turks, and Russian refugees. On completing shipboard quarantine, the family were fortunate to find accommodation in a single room in a large lodging house on Prinkipo Island in the Marmara. Ouspensky again supported them, this time by teaching mathematics to children, and English (which he scarcely knew) to fellow émigrés. Once established, Ouspensky began lectures on Gurdjieff’s ideas in Pera, Constantinople’s European quarter; here, in the upstairs offices of the Russky Mayak [1] (a Y.M.C.A. for White Russians) he excited broad interest, gradually forming a nucleus of twenty to thirty pupils. He anticipated the arrival of Gurdjieff and his company, which was rumoured in bazaar gossip, and which materialised in June 1920.
The ensuing year – the last throughout which Gurdjieff and Ouspensky had substantial contact – was characterised by Ouspensky’s complex vacillations. At outset, when he brought Gurdjieff to his lectures and magnanimously surrendered all his pupils to him, there seemed promise of full reconciliation. Indeed from July to September 1920 the two men related closely: exchanging visits, making excursions, attending dervish ceremonies, and working together on the scenario of Gurdjieff’s ballet The Struggle of the Magicians. However by October, when Gurdjieff opened his Institute in Constantinople at No.13 Yemenedji Sokak, the same psychological difficulties arose for Ouspensky as at Essentuki: accordingly he dissociated himself and withdrew for two months to Prinkipo. Here in mid-November 1920, he was gratified to receive, from Nikolai Alexandrovitch Bassaraboff in New York, a substantial royalty cheque, with the unanticipated news that Tertium Organum had been published successfully in English: this reinforced Ouspensky’s intention to settle in England or America. In December, once Gurdjieff’s Institute was established, Ouspensky resumed his own lectures at Russky Mayak, and also began group discussions at Matchka, in the flat of Mrs Winifred Alise Beaumont (then living with John Godolphin Bennett who a year later became Ouspensky’s pupil).
On 19 May 1921 Ouspensky received the then substantial sum of £100 from Mary Lilian, Lady Rothermere in Rochester New York, cabled with the encouraging message: ‘Deeply impressed by your book Tertium Organum wish meet you in New York or London will pay all expenses’. With his path to London now smoothed, Ouspensky secured from Gurdjieff permission to write and publish a book on his ideas. His last three months in Prinkipo were not without tension: he suffered bureaucratic delay in obtaining his British entry visa; and Mme Ouspensky, disapproving his course, resolved to remain with Gurdjieff. Ouspensky finally left alone for London in mid-August 1921.
"Like everyone, it was in my adolescence that a definite image of myself was formed. I became completely convinced that all my opinions, reactions, and aims were absolutely justified and worthy of respect. I did not imagine that other values as true and valid as my own could exist. There were certain ideas – such as patriotism, duty, and friendship – that I held sacred and which had an absolute and unalterable meaning for me. It was a real shock to discover that others had motives and points of view quite different from my own that were just as valid and perhaps even more correct. One day, shortly after my arrival in Constantinople, a confrontation with Gyorgi Ivanovitch (Gurdjieff) literally turned my inner world upside down and forced me to question the basis of all my beliefs. We were drinking tea in the shade of the trees by the Russki Mayak, the Russian pavilion. Our conversation turned to memories of the war, still very much alive in our minds. It was a hot day and Mr. Gurdjieff, passing nearby, stopped to take some refreshment. We stood up to offer him a seat. He sat down and asked us to continue our conversation as if he weren’t there, and so we returned to our talk of the war.
Read MORE From– Gurdjieff – A Master In Life – Recollections of Tcheslaw Tchekhovitch
In January 1920, Tcheslaw Tchekhovitch, 20 years of age, was part of the Polish contingent of the Tsar’s army in retreat to Constantinople.. Tcheslaw Tchekhovitch was among the Russians who followed Gurdjieff from Istanbul to Germany, and then to France. After Gurdjieff's death in 1949, he worked closely with Jeanne de Salzmann before his own death in 1958.
[1] The Russian word for a lighthouse is mayak (маяк)
- by
- P.D. Ouspensky
In naming his book Tertium Organum Ouspensky reveals at a stroke that astounding audacity which characterizes his thought throughout—an audacity which we are accustomed to associate with the Russian mind in all its phases. Such a title says, in effect: "Here is a book which will reorganize all knowledge. The Organon of Aristotle formulated the laws under which the subject thinks; the Novum Organum of Bacon, the laws under which the object may be known; but The Third Canon of Thought existed before these two, and ignorance of its laws does not justify their violation. Tertium Organum shall guide and govern human thought henceforth." MORE...EXCERPT from Letter III
Ekaterinodar September 25, 1919... But the destruction was at that time an accomplished fact. Russian life no longer existed. All that has happened since is nearer to death than to life. In fact, Russian life was brought to a standstill from the first moment of the Revolution. This moment meant the destruction of any possibility of cultural work. Unhappily, only a few understood its real meaning.The following is a personal opinion: the public, the man in the street, had a deeper insight into the Revolution and understood the events much better than the representatives of the Press, the literary men, and especially the politicians. These had lost all power of reasoning and were carried away by the whirlwind of events. Unhappily, their opinion was estimated to be Russian opinion, and, what is worse, they themselves mistook their views for the will of the nation.It was at that time considered obligatory to profess joy in regard to the Revolution. Ail who did not feel it had to remain silent. Many, of course, understood that there was nothing to rejoice about, but they were scattered, and even had they spoken their voices would not have been heard in the general chorus of delight.
(pictured Gurdjieff Institute at 13 Abdullatif Yemeneci Sokak, Yemeneci Sokak and entrance to Koumbaradji (Kumbaraci) Street in Péra today)
On October 29, 1949, at the American Hospital in Paris died a Caucasian Greek named Georgy Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. A few nights later at Cooper Union, New York, a medal was presented to the revolutionary architect Frank Lloyd Wright. After his part in the ceremony was over, Wright asked the chairman's permission to make an announcement. "The greatest man in the world," he said, "has recently died. His name was Gurdjieff." Few, if any, in Wright's audience had ever heard the name before.Mavi Boncuk |
When the Bolshevik revolution struck Russia, Gurdjieff moved south. He halted at various places, notably at Tiflis, to launch groups. In late May 1920, when political conditions in Georgia changed and the old order was crumbling, Gurdjief and his followers crossed the Caucasian mountains on foot to Batumi on the Black Sea coast and then to Istanbul. Gurdjieff rented an apartment on Koumbaradji (Kumbaraci) Street in Péra, and later at 13 Abdullatif Yemeneci Sokak near the Galata Tower. The apartment is near the Dervish house of the Mewlevi Order of Sufis , where Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Thomas de Hartmann experienced the sema ceremony of The Whirling Dervishes.
In Istanbul, Gurdjieff also met Captain John G. Bennett[1], then head of British Military Intelligence in Constantinople. Later, Bennett would become a follower of Gurdjieff and of Ouspensky.[2]
"Few places exist where East and West blend so intimately that one cannot tell whether the environment is Asiatic or European. I have never seen this fusion more completely realised than in the palace of Kouron Chesme (Kurucesme), the home of Prince Sabahaddin[3][4], nephew of the last Sultan of Turkey and deep student of Christian and Islamic tradition. It was there that I first met Gurdjieff in the autumn of 1920, and no surroundings could have been more appropriate. In Gurdjieff, East and West do not just meet. Their difference is annihilated in a world outlook which knows no distinctions of race or creed. This was my first, and has remained one of my strongest impressions. A Greek from the Caucasus, he spoke Turkish with an accent of unexpected purity, the accent that one associates with those born and bred in the narrow circle of the Imperial Court. His appearance was striking enough even in Turkey where one saw many unusual types. His head was shaven, immense black moustache, eyes which at one moment seemed very pale and at another almost black. Below average height, he gave nevertheless an impression of great physical strength. The prince had apparently known him since before the war but did not tell me anything about their former meetings.…"
[1] John G. Bennett, (8 June 1897 - 13 December 1974) In the closing months of World War 1, Bennett undertook an intensive course in Turkish language at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and was posted to Constantinople, where he held a sensitive position in Anglo-Turkish relations as the British liaison officer at the Ottoman war ministry. "In 1921 he showed up in Constantinople. "His (Gurdjieff) coming to Constantinople," says J. G. Bennett, "was heralded by the usual gossip of the bazaars. Gurdjieff was said to be a great traveler and a linguist who knew all the Oriental languages, reputed by the Moslems to be a convert to Islam, and by the Christians to be a member of some obscure Nestorian sect." In those days Bennett, who is now an expert on coal utilization, was in charge of a British Intelligence section working in Constantinople. He met Gurdjieff and found him neither Moslem nor Christian. Bennett reported that "his linguistic attainments stopped short near the Caspian Sea, so that we could converse only with difficulty in a mixture of Azerbaidjan Tartar and Osmanli Turkish. Nevertheless, he unmistakably possessed knowledge very different from that of the itinerant Sheikhs of Persia and Trans-Caspia, whose arrival in Constantinople had been preceded by similar rumors. It was, above all, astonishing to meet a man, almost unacquainted with any Western European language, possessing a working knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology and modern astronomy, and able to make searching comments on the new and fashionable theory of relatively, and also on the psychology of Sigmund Freud."
To Bennett, Gurdjieff didn't look at all like an Eastern sage. He was powerfully built—his neck rippled with muscles—and although of only medium height, he was physically dominating. He had a shaven dome, an unlined swarthy face, piercing black eyes, and a tigerish mustache that curled out to big points. In his later years he had a large paunch. But in one respect Gurdjieff's reputation followed the pattern of all the swamis, gurus and masters who have roamed the Western world: his past in the East was veiled in mystery. Only the scantiest facts are known about him before he appeared in Moscow about 1914.
[2] Via Germany, Gurdjieff reached France where, as related, Lady Rothermere enabled him to found the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at the Château du Prieuré. This Institute, Orage once told me, was to have made Bacon's project for an Academy for the Advancement of Learning look like a rustic school. But in 1924, Gurdjieff met with an automobile accident which nearly killed him, and thereafter he turned to the less strenuous activity of writing. The Institute plans were canceled, and he began the tales of Beelzebub as told to his grandson on a ship in interstellar space. This book is a huge parable with chapters on the engulfed civilization of Atlantis, the "law of three" and the "law of seven," objective art, and many riddles of man's history. It purports to be an impartial criticism of the life of man on the planet Earth. In this period Gurdjieff also composed many pieces of music, making original use of ancient scales and rhythms. SOURCE
[3] Prince Sabahaddin of Thrace (born as Sultanzade Mehmed Sabâhaddin Beyefendi Hazretleri; 13 February 1879, İstanbul—30 June 1948, Neuchâtel, Switzerland) was an Ottoman sociologist and thinker. Because of his threat to the Ottoman dynasty due his political activity and attitude, he was expelled. Prince Sabahaddin was a person full of surprises. He was connected to the Ottoman Palace through his mother, but was known as a Young Turk standing in opposition to that regime. Allegations of his close affinity to the ambassador of England could not be proven. As a follower of Émile Durkheim, Prens Sabahaddin is considered to be one of the founders of sociology in Turkey. He established the Private Enterprise and Decentralization Association (Teşebbüsü Şahsî ve Ademi Merkeziyet Cemiyeti in Turkish) in 1906.
Sabahaddin had, unknowingly, influenced many people including John G. Bennett who was introduced to him by Satvet Lutfi Bey (Satvet Lütfi Tozan) in Istanbul during 1920 while working as an intelligence officer for the British Army which were among the occupying forces of Istanbul after the First World War. Sabahaddin introduced Bennett into the world of spirituality by borrowing, among others, the book and encouraging him to read Les Grands Initiés ("The Great Initiates") by Édouard Schuré. He had also introduced to Bennett an English woman living in Turkey, Winifred "Polly" Beaumont, to whom Bennett had married. Among the others Sabahaddin had introduced to Bennett, the most influential was doubtlessly G.I. Gurdjieff - Bennett has assumed him as his mentor and his master for the rest of his life.
[3]" The proposed guest was a man whom he had not seen since 1912, but whom he regarded as unusually interesting. He mentioned the name, which I could not catch over the telephone, and said that he had recently come to Turkey from the Caspian region. I learned that the name of the guest was Gurdjieff, and that the Prince had first met him by chance when he was returning from Europe to Turkey after the Young Turk revolution of 1908. He had met Gurdjieff only three or four times, but knew that he belonged to a group of occultists and explorers with whom he had travelled far and wide. The Prince regarded him as one of the very few men who had been able to penetrate into the hidden brotherhoods of Central Asia, and had always profited by the talks they had had together. He could not, or would not, tell me any more." J.G. Bennett - Witness p.55
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