G.I. Gurdjieff
Of all the gurus who have influenced western thinking in this century, the life of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff is perhaps the most enigmatic. Little is known for sure about the first four decades of his life, and his own descriptions of them are both fantastic and contradictory.

It is likely that he was born in what is now the state of Armenia (which was until recently part of Soviet Central Asia) sometime between 1866 and 1886. His formal education was sketchy at best, but he was street-wise and crafty to an extraordinary degree. He may or may not have been a Russian secret agent under the Czars, visited Tibet and married a Tibetan, and been a member of a mysterious esoteric sect (the Sarmoung Brotherhood) in the Himalayas. He was certainly a dance teacher, a hypnotist, a carpet dealer and a story-teller.

The influences he claims on his life, in for instance his ‘autobiographical’ work Meetings with Remarkable Men, defy the ordinary, even as some kind of obscure metaphor, but he was clearly influenced by Sufi thought, especially the Naqshbandi dervishes, and also by Theosophical teachings. His approach was however unique.

A charismatic figure with bristling moustaches, he delighted in playing tricks on his devotees to test their metal. His ‘system’, to which he often referred, defied comprehension even to his closest disciples. It usually involved chanting and breathing exercises, dance, fasting, encouraging internecine strife, lectures on esoterica, admonishments, etc., all of which were designed to get his pupils to awaken from the machine-like state he perceived most ordinary humans to exist in. He claimed to have invented a Fourth Way, distinct from the development of the physical, the emotional, or the intellectual, which involved a harmony created by the opposition of powerful forces rather than the absence of activity.

History records his first formal teaching as having begun in Moscow in 1912 and continuing there (and for a while in Finland) until 1917. After a variety of travels and hardships, he and what remained of his group had escaped from the upheavals of the Russian Revolution to Constantinople by 1920.

Despite these vicissitudes, earning a living seemed to come with almost magical ease for Gurdjieff, and although often short of funds for the institute it was his desire to create, he never seemed to lack commercial schemes to stay afloat whilst he built up a new supply of pupils. Tiring of Turkish intrigue, he quickly moved on to Germany, then England, before finally arriving in Paris in 1922. This remained his main base for the rest of his life.

With financial help from English supporters he quickly established the ‘Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man’ at the Chateau du Prieuré des Basses Loges near Fontainebleau. Here he conducted an ongoing experiment in spiritual development which attracted individuals from across both Europe and the social spectrum, and achieved considerable notoriety.

Pupils could only expect the unexpected at the Prieuré. Days of harsh living with little or no food available would be followed by lavish banquets. Unlike Theosophy, physical work was extolled as a virtue, and English aristocrats would find themselves chopping wood or cooking soup along with everyone else. It would sometimes be well past midnight when work for the day would finish.

In 1924, after a mysterious (and possibly staged) road accident, Gurdjieff closed down most of the Prieuré’s activities and kept on only a skeleton of staff. He turned to writing, and increasingly to tours of America. His negligence eventually forced the sale of the Prieuré in 1933 over an outstanding but trivial debt to a coal merchant.

From 1933-35 Gurdjieff was mostly in the USA but he returned again to Paris where he lived in a flat, and taught only a small group of pupils until the outbreak of World War II. His activities for the next six years, when he remained in Paris throughout the entire German occupation, are typically obscure. Despite the obvious threat from the Nazis he seemed to live well and joked that he received supplies from a distant planet.

The post-war period ushered in a short revival, but this Indian summer of his fortunes ended with his death at Neuilly in 1949.

Gurdjieff’s teachings were also much publicised by his disciple P.D. Ouspensky and by J.G. Bennett. The groups they founded influenced a number of prominent Community members in the seventies, but it would seem that his teachings were too much an extension of his own fabulous personality to maintain their influence indefinitely.

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother
Aurobindo Ghose was born in India of Indian parents on August 15th 1872, but he received an essentially Western education. Age seven he was sent to Manchester and he remained in England until shortly after graduating from King’s College, Cambridge in 1892.

On his return to his native land in 1893 he began an academic career as an English professor, but from 1900 to 1910 his desire for India to win her freedom from imperial rule drew him into active political activity. Inevitably this led to conflict with the British authorities and he was arrested for sedition in 1907. Later he spent a year in prison awaiting trial for conspiracy, only to be acquitted of all charges.

His time in jail was to prove of great significance however. As early as 1893 he had experienced a profound mystical state, and shortly before his imprisonment a meeting with the teacher Vishnu Bhasker Lele led to his instruction in meditation. Thus the months he spent in solitary confinement in Alipore jail he was able to put to good use, meditating on the Gita and practising yoga.

He continued to be politically active for a short period after his release, but in 1910 he left northern India for Pondicherry, having resolved to dedicate his life to a renewal of Indian spirituality, and karma yoga or selfless action. During the next seven years he published most of his major written works.

In 1914 he met Mira Richard, a spiritual seeker, a psychic, and the wife of a French diplomat. They immediately recognised a spiritual kinship with one another. Aurobindo soon acknowledged her as ‘The Mother’ of his ashram, and in time as his appointed successor.

In 1926 Aurobindo completed his great written masterpiece, The Life Divine, and on November 24th of that year he withdrew into seclusion after a mystical experience he interpreted as a ‘descent of Krishna into the physical.’ It was only in 1938, after fracturing a hipbone, that he began to make himself available again to a few close disciples.

In a move that went against the grain of Indian popular opinion, in 1940 he and the Mother announced support for the Allies in the war effort, and later in this conflict, their approval of a British proposal to allow a greater degree of Indian self-government in return for Indian co-operation. It was clearly a matter of great satisfaction to him that India achieved formal independence on his seventy-fifth birthday.

Sri Aurobindo died in 1950, aged seventy eight.

Aurobindo himself stated that the main achievements of his life were not to be discerned from his outer activities, and today he is acclaimed as one of Indian’s greatest yogis of modern times, and by some, an avatar. His philosophy is wide-ranging and, unlike many traditional Indian schools, is aimed at the bringing of divine consciousness into matter, not the transcendence of the material. He was opposed to his teachings becoming any kind of religion as he stressed the need for individual self-development.

The Mother saw her primary function as bringing aspirants to Aurobindo rather than as a person of great significance in her own right. Nonetheless, she announced that she had experienced ‘the descent of the Supermind’ in 1956 in accordance with Aurobindo’s predictions.

Shortly after Aurobindo’s death, The Mother created the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education in Pondicherry. She also predicted that ‘the supramental consciousness will enter into a phase of realising power in 1967’ [1].

Arguably her greatest work was the founding of the Auroville International township community as a means to ground this consciousness. This task began in 1968 and Auroville has grown to a become an international spiritual community of over five hundred members, with the extraordinary Mandir temple at its centre. Spread out on a site of over eleven thousand acres it is comprised of a over forty different settements. Activities include re-afforestation work, crafts and the construction of small scale renewable energy systems. Overseen by the Auroville Cooperative, the structures are highly decentralised and there is s strong emphasis on self-reliance.

The Mother left the physical on November 17th 1973 at age 95.

There have been regular trips and exchanges between Auroville and the Foundation over the years, including for a time, a computerised link up.

Sai Baba
Sri Sathya Sai Baba’s direct influence on our collective life is a more recent phenomenon than any of the others mentioned in this section. Prior to 1987 few members had any interest in his teachings, but since that time there have been annual organised trips of groups of members and guests to his ashram in India, (usually including a stay at Auroville as well) and many individuals have undertaken private visits. When considering such a visit, Eileen received the following guidance:

Go and do what he is doing – turning people within to find the divinity within them, and to live and move and have their being from that divine centre.

Some Community members now believe that the ‘God’ whose words Eileen Caddy channelled is synonymous with Sai Baba.

His story is certainly an extraordinary one. Born of poor parents on 23rd November 1926 [2] at Puttaparti in the state of Andhra Pradesh, his early life was attended by many strange stories about his knowledge and powers. At age 13 after an apparently serious affliction which lasted two months, young Sathya announced himself to be ‘Sai Baba.’ Immediately he began giving teachings on the Vedas and quoting passages of scriptures he had apparently never read. He did not begin his first public ministries in Indian cities for another 17 years, but as disciples sought him out in his remote home, an ashram began to develop there.

He states quite unequivocally that he is the Avatar of our age, and that his present life is one of three Sai incarnations destined to lead mankind back to the path of spirit from which we have strayed. The first of these lives is that of Shirdi Sai Baba, a saint or fakir who taught devotees from his base in a deserted mosque in Bombay state, and who died in 1918. He predicted he would return as a boy eight years later. Sathya Sai Baba predicts he will die at age 96, but return within a year as Prema Sai who will be born in the state of Mysore. These are grand pronouncements, and although the claim to be an Avatar is one for which there are unfortunate precedents, his followers now number at least 50 million world-wide [3], and include many influential leaders and politicians, especially in India.

His teachings are not easy to encapsulate. He often talks in parables which have a biblical simplicity, but he is equally capable of producing erudite discourses on the nature of inner reality. Nonetheless, he himself has said that “It is enough to cultivate the love that knows no distinction between oneself and another – because all are limbs of the one body of Almighty God.”

His four main watch words are Satya, Dharma, Shanti and Prema ( Truth, Duty, Peace and Love). According to one devotee:

The three main tenets of the teachings of Sathya Sai Baba are first, the universality of all religions; secondly, that the atma, or divine spark is indwelling in all human beings, which is the basis of the Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God; and last, that God is Love, and that the quickest and most direct way to Him is through love in action, or selfless service.

Ron Laing, in The Embodiment of Love

There are therefore many similarities between these teachings and the work of our own Community, as has been expounded on at length by Carol Riddell in her book The Findhorn Community. The Hindu basis of ashram life is hard for some Westerners to feel comfortable with, but his teachings are very ecumenical and he has frequently advised those searching for spiritual truth to work within the religious format they are already familiar with. His claim to be the re-incarnation of Krishna is not one to be taken lightly, but when asked outright if he was God, his reply was apparently to the effect that:

The only difference between us is that I know that I am God.

Those interested in learning more will find no shortage of companions in the Community.

The Maharishi
The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is probably the world’s most well-known living spiritual teacher, and for many people the archetypal guru figure.

Surprisingly little has been published about his early life, although it is clear that he was a disciple of Guru Dev, a great teacher of the Vedic tradition. The Maharishi spent thirteen years with Guru Dev, a period about which he later said “Right from the beginning the whole purpose was just to breathe in his breath. That was my ideal.”

In 1953 the Maharishi retired to live a life of retreat in the ‘Valley of the Saints’ high in the Himalayas. Two years later he left to visit the holy city of Rameshvaram near the southern tip of India, and here he began his first public teachings. These were and are based around the premise that the apparent gap between the Vedic teachings that ananda or bliss is the true nature of life, and the wretched suffering of ordinary people can be bridged quite simply, namely through the practice of what has come to be known as Transcendental Meditation, or TM.

Towards the end of 1957 at a ‘Seminar of Spiritual Luminaries’ he announced his plan spiritually to regenerate the world. His first few centres were located in India but soon he began his first world tour, travelling to south east Asia, and reaching America and Europe by 1959. His fame spread quickly – by 1961 the open session of the first World Assembly in London was attended by 5000 people.

The extraordinary growth of his organisation, which today spans the globe, has however been largely overlooked. This is primarily because he is indelibly linked in the popular imagination with his most famous followers – The Beatles – who dallied with his techniques and ideas in the mid-1960s at the height of their popularity.

The quiet but steady growth of his work has continued all the same. By 1974 over one million people had been taught TM, and today his ambitions remain nothing if not bold. In 1988 he announced his world-wide program to ‘Create Heaven on Earth’, the central focus for which is his Vedic Science and Technology which attempts to fuse the scientific with the spiritual. For example, it is claimed that 30 scientific research studies have shown that when a tiny fraction of a population practice the Advanced TM-Siddhi technique, or 1% practice regular TM, crime, accidents and sickness are all reduced.

In Britain his largest centre is in Lancashire at Skelmersdale, but the most well known recent contribution of TM to modern British culture have been the unfortunate antics of the Natural Law Party, a wholly unsuccessful attempt by TM’s political wing to field candidates adept at ‘yogic flying’ at a recent general election.

The Maharishi’s genius has been to create a simple and accessible introduction to meditative techniques, which has allure for many beginners, and then to back this up with a mastery of Vedic philosophy which becomes available to those who wish to probe more deeply into the mysteries. There is much in common between the Maharishi’s philosophy and Community thinking, particularly in stressing the importance of meditation and that humanity’s role is not to escape matter, but to infuse it with spirituality.

Unsurprisingly many Community members (including Eileen) have been initiated into the TM technique, and there are some who have taken a more formal role in the TM movement at one time or another. Regrettably however, in the UK at least the TM movement tends to take a fairly exclusive approach, and formal links between our respective communities are virtually non-existent.

Other Teachers
A complete list of the many other teachers and teachings who have influenced members of the Community would be as impossible to create as it is unnecessary. Such influences include A Course in Miracles, Ken Carey, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho), Mother Meera, Pak Subuh, Babaji, Yogananda, Dion Fortune et cetera, et cetera.

Various works of fiction have also been influential in the Community from time to time. Interestingly it is often works of science fiction or fantasy which strike the deepest chord. Tolkien, Doris Lessing and Ursula Le Guin are probably the most prominent of such authors to date. Carlos Castaneda has also been widely read – although whether his writings are held to be fact or fiction is a moot point.

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[1] See Building the Community for parallels with our own Community history.
[2] By co-incidence or otherwise, this is the day before Sri Aurobindo’s period of withdrawal commenced.
[3] This is an incredible figure, making his followers the fifth largest spiritual movement in the world. There is little reason to doubt the veracity of the statement, but it makes the almost total absence of media coverage of his work in the West hard to understand. He has apparently indicated that he is deliberately withholding the growth of recognition of his role for the present.

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Reading List

Sri Aurobindo; The Life Divine; Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust; 1973
Essays on the Gita; Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust; 1976
Sri Aurobindo On Himself; Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust; 1985
Anne Bancroft; Modern Mystics and Sages; Paladin; 1978. Brief summaries of the lives and work of  several prominent influences of the New Age including Steiner, Gurdjieff , Alan Watts, Pak Subuh, and Krishnamurthi.
Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba; Discourses on the Bhagavad Gita; Sri Sathya Sai Books and Publications Trust; 1988
A Course in Miracles; Foundation for Inner Peace; 1976
Ram Dass; The Only Dance There Is; Doubleday; 1970. Journey and Awakening; Bantam; 1990
Dion Fortune; The Mystical Qabalah; Aquarian Press; 1987
Findhorn Foundation; The Story of the Tibetan Ring; an audio tape archive in which Peter tells the story of an initiation on Ben Macdui.
G.I. Gurdjieff; Meetings With Remarkable Men; Pan; 1978. Originally published by Routledge and Kegan Paul; 1963. Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson; Arkana; 1985
Robert McDermott (editor); The Essential Aurobindo; Lindisfarne Press; 1987. The quotation regarding supramental consciousness cited above is from this source. The editor acknowledges ‘Mitra; The Liberator; p279’ as the original source of the information.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; Thirty Years Around the World: Volume 1 1957-64. the quotation regarding Guru Dev is from page 37.
Maharishi’s Programs to Create Heaven on Earth; Global Video Productions; 1992
On the Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation, Chapters 1-6; Penguin; 1986. Many believe this to be the Maharishi’s masterpiece.
Caitlin and John Mathews; The Western Way; Arkana; 1985
Peggy Mason and Ron Laing; Sathya Sai Baba: The Embodiment of Love; Sawbridge Enterprises; 1982. The quotation is from page 215.
James Moore; Gurdjieff: The Anatomy of a Myth; Element; 1991
The Mother; Collected Works of The Mother; Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust; 1979-91.
Mother Meera; Answers; Rider; 1991
Jacob Needleman; The New Religions; Doubleday; 1970. Includes material on the Maharishi, Subud, Tibetan influence on the West etc.
P.D. Ouspensky; The Fourth Way; Routledge and Kegan Paul; 1957
Wilf Parfitt; The Qabalah; Element; 1991
Robert M. Pirsig; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; Bodley Head; 1974.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh; The Mustard Seed: Discourses on the Sayings of Jesus from the Gospel According to Thomas; Rajneesh Foundation; 1975
Jane Roberts; Seth Speaks; Bantam; 1974
Satprem; Sri Aurobindo or The Adventure of Consciousness;  Sri Aurobindo Society; 1970
Paramhansa Yogananda; Autobiography of a Yogi; Rider; 1969

Fiction
Richard Bach; Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah; Pan; 1977
Carlos Castaneda; The Teachings of Don Juan; Penguin; 1970.
Alan Garner; Elidor; McMillan; 1982. A children’s book in which the leading characters have to teach a unicorn called ‘Findhorn’ to sing in order to save the world. First published in 1965.
Hermann Hesse; The Glass Bead Game; Picador; 1987
Nic Inman; Canoeing Through Life; Findhorn Press; 1985
Jack Kerouac; The Dharma Bums; Granada; 1972
Doris Lessing; Canopus in Argos: Archives, a series of five books comprising: Shikasta, The Marriages Betwen Zones Three, Four and Five, The Sirian Experiments, The Making of the Representative for Planet 8, and The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire; Panther/Jonathan Cape; 1981
Ursula Le Guin; A Wizard of Earthsea; Penguin; 1992
J.R.R. Tolkien; The Lord of the Rings; Harper Collins; 1993