The Gurdjieff Work is a living oral teaching based on traditional methods of inner work shared in a group setting. The forms are meetings, the study of specific ideas, music, the movements, exercises, and other practical work together. Its aim is balanced self development. It is a school where we learn to make our life a school.
George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff was born in about 1877 in the area that was part of the Silk Road, a meeting place of cultures and traditions in what is now Armenia. Unsatisfied with the answers offered by science and religion about the meaning of human life, he was drawn to conduct a long spiritual search in remote parts of central Asia. After visiting monasteries, dervish groups and many traditional teachers, he discovered a teaching belonging to what he called “The Ancient Knowledge.” He spent the rest of his life sharing that teaching with the west. After starting branches of his institute in several European cities he opened the “Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man” near Paris in 1922. He traveled to America a number of times and continued writing and working with pupils until his death in 1949.
