The Making of the Gurdjieff Trilogy
An Interview with William Patrick Patterson
WE INTERVIEWED WILLIAM PATRICK PATTERSON DURING HIS nationwide speaking tour introducing Gurdjieff's Legacy, the concluding installment of his video trilogy.
The Gurdjieff Journal: Viewing the sheer scale of the video trilogy of Gurdjieff's life and teaching—one that is shot on-site in Egypt, Russia, Turkey, France, London and America—is truly a monumental experience. Just how long has it taken to complete the trilogy The Life and Significance of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff?
William Patrick Patterson: A few lifetimes or a few seconds depending on one's perspective. We began shooting the first video, Gurdjieff in Egypt, December 1996; finished Gurdjieff's Mission in 2002; and completed the third video of the trilogy, Gurdjieff's Legacy, in February 2003.
TGJ: Where did the idea come from to do a video?
WPP: I was on my way to a meeting in Israel and decided to make a stopover in Egypt.
I'd never been much interested in Egypt, believing, as most people do, that Western civilization began with the Greeks. But seeing the Sphinx, the Great Pyramid and then going up the Nile to Thebes, modern-day Luxor, and seeing the Temple of Man, Karnak and the Valley of the Kings ... well, I stood in awe of the immense scale, intelligence and deep esoteric understanding that once existed.
TGJ: What impressed you the most?
WPP: The whole of it. So to continue ... when I returned to America I reread the chapter in Meetings with Remarkable Men where Mr. Gurdjieff sees the map of pre-sand Egypt. I'd been reading that book for decades and never asked myself the obvious question: what did he see on the map?
TGJ: Why not?
WPP: The obvious is often what is most hidden. Anyway, Gurdjieff doesn't say directly but later gives the answer about what he saw when he says he had been "spending all my free time walking among these places [the Giza Plateau outside Cairo] like one possessed, hoping to find, with the help of my map of pre-sand Egypt, an explanation of the Sphinx and of certain other monuments of antiquity." Remember now that he is in search of the origin of esoteric knowledge and believes it to be the Sarmoung Brotherhood, which existed in Babylon about 2,500 B.C.E. But in coming upon the map of pre-sand Egypt he immediately breaks off his search and goes where?—to the Giza Plateau.
TGJ: But why would he need an "explanation of the Sphinx"?
WPP: Exactly. The Rosetta Stone had been discovered and deciphered in the 1820s and every Egyptologist of that day (as well as most of this day) believed the Sphinx dated from the time of the Great Pyramid, about 2,750 B.C.E. So why does Gurdjieff need an "explanation"? Well, because that is what he saw on the map!
TGJ: Couldn't he have seen something else?
WPP: What else? The Sphinx is the primordial symbol of esoteric knowledge.
TGJ: Pre-sand Egypt. What are we talking about in terms of time?
WPP: The time was 7,500 B.C.E. and before. That was when Egypt was green. Later I came upon a video by John Anthony West, a member of the Gurdjieff Society in England, who believes that the Sphinx dated from pre-sand Egypt. He had read Sacred Science by René Schwaller de Lubicz, the great hermetic Egyptologist, in which de Lubicz says that the erosion we see on the Sphinx is not caused by wind or sand but water. West has done a lot of pioneering and innovative work with geologists to establish the true date of the Sphinx and is still carrying on the struggle.
TGJ: With this insight why didn't you write a book rather than do a video?
WPP: I've written a number of books so that would not be a challenge. More importantly, I believe, as never before, we need to build bridges to young people, and young people seem to be more influenced by video and film than books. Then, too, I have groups and groups need projects and what better project to jump into than something none of us knew anything about.
TGJ: Did you plan a trilogy from the outset?
WPP: No, not at all. Creating a video was a many faceted project. Our aim was to meet professional standards so that what we did technically would not take away from the tremendous and unrecognized story we had to tell of Gurdjieff's search in Egypt and Abyssinia.
TGJ: Unrecognized?
WPP: Yes, most people believe that the origin of The Fourth Way was in Central Asia—basically Sufi or dervish. Either that or Russian Orthodox Christianity.
TGJ: Why is that?
WPP: Let's get into that later. So, as I was saying, we just hoped we could complete the first video—we had no idea of doing a trilogy. But then on completing Gurdjieff in Egypt it just seemed right and necessary to tell the entire story.
TGJ: Necessary? Most people know the story don't they?
WPP: To some extent. But I believe the emphasis has been ...
TGJ: Wrong?
WPP: The film of Meetings with Remarkable Men, as beautiful and compelling as it is in many sections, gave only a part of Gurdjieff's life. James Webb's biography of Gurdjieff shows prodigious research but is fanciful at times and biased throughout. James Moore's biography is much better, but I find his vision conventional and limited and the language too self-referential.
TGJ: What about Bennett's Making a New World?
WPP: This is his best book in my opinion. But he believes the origin of the teaching is Sufi. He, like Ouspensky, has had a significant influence on framing the public view of the teaching. Just as Ouspensky believed the teaching was fragmentary—his view was based solely on the Russian period of the teaching, and when presented with Gurdjieff's Legominism he thought it was rubbish—Bennett, too, never seems to have realized what Gurdjieff says in Search, that "The teaching whose theory is here being set out is completely self-supporting and independent of other spiritual lines and it has been completely unknown up to the present time." The emphasis is mine.
TGJ: You lost me.
WPP: Bennett was introduced to the teaching three times. In Constantinople in 1921. At the Prieuré in 1923. And in Paris in 1948. From what Bennett reports in Witness, Gurdjieff had high hopes of Bennett spreading and carrying on the teaching. Instead, Bennett hopped from the Work to Subud to Catholicism to Idries Shah to Hinduism and then into some eclectic combination of all these which he taught and called The Fourth Way. His actions show he never realized that "the teaching . . . is completely self-supporting and independent of other spiritual lines."
TGJ: You mean he shouldn't have kept searching?
WPP: Like a good many people who enter the Work, he didn't realize the search was over. He had found what he had been searching for. Some people, you know, are perennial seekers. They "collect" teachings and teachers but remain aloof, uncommitted. It's one form of what I call esoteric egoism.
TGJ: Let me see if I understand what you're saying. Namely, that Ouspensky's and Bennett's views have largely framed the teaching—Ouspensky in terms of it being fragmentary and Bennett because he believes it is derivative in origin—mainly Sufi. Right?
WPP: That's good enough for now.