-5-

you, his viewer, straight into the heart of mystery and holds
you there, without a word of explanation of what is <u>really</u>
going on in this phenomenal contest, accustoming you, as it were,
to supernormal events in preparation for the more to come.

-- Gurdjieff's adventure with the Yezidi, or "Devil Wor-
shipers", a sect inhabiting the region around Mount Ararat,
who could not come out of a circle drawn around them, or
even be pulled out, without falling into <u>catalepsy</u>;

--his experience with a <u>gornakh</u> or evil spirit which
enters the bodies of dead people, to reappear among their
friends or families, terrifying them;

-- his and Pogassian's encounter with a savage pack of
Kurd sheep dogs guarding the way to a certain holy place they
wished to explore;

--the crossing of the Gobi Desert in sledlike vehicles
drawn by sheep trained to pull under harness - wonderful
laughter-provoking scenes these, but very real: Gurdjieff's
small band of followers actually did train sheep to become
beasts of burden (and, very practically, they served as food
along the way!)

-- the Egyptian scenes - Gurdjieff sitting at the foot of
the Sphinx, studying a map of"pre-sand Egypt" which he had pilfered
in copy from an old monastery in the early days of his search.
He is unaware of an older man standing above him, looking down
at the antique map with a start of surprise which indicates
plainly that he has seen it before. And so is introduced the
most remarkable of Gurdjieff's "Remarkable Men" - the wealthy
Russian, Prince Yuri Lubovedsky, a man deeply engaged in the
search for the meaning of life, a scholar of the occult

-6-

and of myths relating to mankind, especially the pre-Flood
legends. A bond of friendship between the elderly prince
and the young Gurdjieff forms almost instantly, as they talk
together of their common goal and of how far along the un-
mapped road each has travelled in his search. The prince accom-
panies Gurdjieff on some of his travels, introducing him
to remote brotherhoods of monks who have special rituals that
convey information to their initiates, dances like those
of the Whirling Dervishes, but faster as the flutes and tam-
bours quicken the beat. . .and you see, behind the swirling
figures, the eyes of Gurdjieff blazing with excitement and you
forget it is a young Yugoslav actor playing his role.
you realize it is exactly how Gurdjieff found the forgotten
knowledge he searched for, bit by bit, fragment by fragment,
in remote unheard-of places not shown on any map, but only
heard of by chance, in some *chaikhana*, or tea-house along the
camel tracks of Asia Minor.

The tea-houses and the ancient monasteries are the real
tspring here, enhance your sense of being in a foreign land
where customs of religious piety and reverence for old holy
men of wisdom still prevail. We are ready in spirit to enter,
with Gurdjieff, the high secret place where all knowledge of
mankind and the meaning of life on earth is kept.

The finale of the Gurdjieff film begins as wild adventure
and ends as prayer made manifest by the human form in action.
Through a seeming coincidence Gurdjieff meets an old man he
has never seen before, who seems to know a great deal about him.
The old man is a member of the brotherhood known as Sarmoung and
suggests that Gurdjieff go there on the chance of finding answers
to some of the questions that trouble him.

-7-

Gurdjieff conceals his excitement on hearing the name Sarmoung Brotherhood, the very same monastery he had been trying to locate since the start of his search nearly a decade ago. He agrees to the conditions: that he take a solemn oath never to tell anyone where the monastery was situated; then he asks if his friend Soloviev might also go along. The old man agrees, providing that Soloviev takes the oath. The day and place of meeting with their guides is set, and the password that will identify them is told.

At the given place and time, Gurdjieff and Soloviev meet their guides, four swarthy Kirghiz awaiting them near some ruins along a river bank - the last familiar landmarks they would see for the next twelve days, for they are to ride blindfolded with native hoods drawn over their eyes.

Only twice were the hoods removed in daylight. The first time was when they came to a narrow swinging bridge over a mountain gorge, a bridge without handrails, too narrow for two to walk it abreast and just wide enough to take one horse at a time, without a rider. This is a scene of prolonged terror which Brook's cameras explore thoroughly, from the mountain stream foaming at the bottom of the cleftlike gorge to the jagged peaks high above, too cloudhung to see clearly. But no one on the bridge looks up or down: only straight ahead, as if in a trance.

The second time the hoods were removed was when they were passed a caravan. They must not excite suspicion, without Gurdjieff knew being told the reason for their brief bright interval of sight.

On the twelfth day the blindfolds were removed for good. They can see a faint stream of light.

-8-

On the twelfth day, their blindfolds are removed permanently and they transfer to tough little mountain asses for the final rugged climb to the monastery, straight up a stone wall, so it seems. From the top they see nothing at first except a verdant high mountain valley surrounded by a cirque of snowy peaks. Then a bend in the trail brings the monastery into view, or, rather, the location of it. It is completely surrounded by a high stone wall, unbroken by any lookout slit or window, except for a narrow opening at ground level - the entrance gate.

An old woman opens to the rap of the guide, listens to his few low words and beckons for Gurdjieff and Soloviev to dismount and enter. She leads them to a small courtyard with cell-like rooms opening into it, points to one that has two beds, smiles and departs at once. Later a venerable old man speaking a language they understand comes by to tell them that for the first few days their meals would be brought to them, that they should try to rest after their arduous journey and that if they wanted to go out and walk around the place they were free to do so. We catch a glimpse of them once, through the walls of the fortresslike enclosure, looking up to see if anything, any hint of what goes on within, may be visible, but they discover nothing. We begin to feel the frustration which they, by dint of strong work on themselves, refuse to show. Suspense builds up, in the audience and on screen.

On the third day, when the seekers are resting beside a lovely little waterfall outside the walls, the boy who brings them their meals, comes running toward them with a paper in his outstretched hand. It is a note addressed to Aga Georgi, in a handwriting so familiar that Gurdjieff all but faints when he sees it. It is the elegant hand-writing of Prince Yuri Lubovedsky.

-9-

In the years since their correspondence had ceased, Gurdjieff had believed the prince had died. He started to read the note aloud to his comrade but emotion choked him. He began running toward the monastery gate, waving to Soloviev to follow with the boy who takes the lead, once they are inside the holy place. There appears to be an entire city enclosed within the high walls, a bustling active place where all work is carried on in total silence and no one looks up as the two strangers led by an acolyte pass by.

In a court similar to the one Gurdjieff and Soloviev inhabit, but much larger, their young guide halts and points to the cell where Prince Lubovedsky lies. Gurdjieff rushes in to the bedside and takes the ailing prince in his arms, clasping him in a long silent embrace of thanksgiving.

The closing scenes of this unique film I shall not attempt to describe. They must be seen to be appreciated. They are the Sacred Dances, the priestesses of the temple perform with precision and exactitude - an alphabet of postures which everyone in the monastery can read as they spell out the ritual of the day.

The young Gurdjieff stands transfixed beside the now-recovered Prince Lubovedsky who has become his guide and teacher, authorized by the sheikh of the monastery to open all its doors to him.

As the Sacred Dances must be seen to be appreciated, so must the musical accompaniment to the film be heard rather than described. Thomas de Hartmann, a well-known composer, one of Gurdjieff's earliest disciples dating from 1917 and the days of the Petrograd group, wrote the extraordinary music for the dances which Gurdjieff had memorized as he had heard it 5 years earlier in secret monasteries and had kept intact in his great trained memory.

-10-

The tutelage under Lubovedsky is like an intensive initiation which goes on for some three months, until the day the prince comes to Gurdjieff and tells how he had been summoned that the morning to the court of a sheikh who had told him that it had become known that he, Yuri, had only three more years to live. His sheikh advised him to spend those final years in another monastery, on the north slopes of the Himalayas, where he could receive special preparation of some sort. Without hesitation he accepted, the prince tells the dumbstruck Gurdjieff, and it was decided that his caravan would set forth in three days. Gurdjieff strives in vain to conceal his grief as the prince concludes by telling him that he wishes to spend these last few days entirely with him, who is to be the man nearest to me in this life."

The last scene shows Gurdjieff outside the rear gate of the monastery watching the start of the caravan. The restorative effect of his last days of talk with the prince shows on his face, calm now, no emotions as the prince rides by to curve without looking at him until the trail begins/out of view behind a mountain. Here the prince turns in his saddle, looks back and raises his hand three times in blessing for Gurdjieff still visible from afar in his long white smock of the acolyte, standing motionless as a statue while his saintly friend passes from his sight forever.

- FINIS -

# THE GURDJIEFF FILM
## Another "first" for San Francisco

by
Kathryn Hulme

This extraordinary film, *Meetings With Remarkable Men*, is another Peter Brook masterpiece which will be shown to the general public for the first time anywhere in the world, in one of San Francisco's neighborhood movie houses, The Surf, starting April 27th.

Prior to this, only students of the Gurdjieff work in the established Gurdjieff Foundations of London, Paris, New York and San Francisco were invited to the special showings. Thus, I came to see the film in late January, in a small theatre in Berkeley, invited to the private showing doubtless because I once studied under Gurdjieff himself, in Paris before World War II. I am now the sole survivor of a small American group which he himself selected as pupils.

As I sometimes call myself a "vintage San Franciscan", (i.e. one who remembers the Big Earthquake!) so perhaps I may also call myself, for the space of this review only, and with unutterable love and respect, a "vintage Gurdjieffian", one who lived through the primordial upheaval of his personal teaching.

Speaking then, in my venerable voice of experience of Gurdjieff, I call Brook's film the truest and most believable portrayal of the famous mystic that has ever been created in any medium. Gurdjieff himself might have written the scenario, so faithfully does it follow, in spirit and substance, the book on which it is based - his own life story, his second published work.

-2-

Peter Brook, the versatile and innovative producer of such rare films as *Marat-Sade*, *Lear*, etc. wrote the scenario for the Gurdjieff film and directed it, in close collaboration with Mme. Jeanne de Salzmann, one of the few remaining of Gurdjieff's earliest disciples who, in her own published words, "spent thirty years with Gurdjieff, from 1919 in Tiflis until his death in 1949, following him to Constantinople, Berlin, Paris and New York and participating in all the stages through which his work passed - even carrying the responsibility for his groups during the last ten years of his life". Thus, it was from the start an inspired collaboration - Jeanne de Salzmann and Peter Brook - which wove together the subject matter of *Meetings With Remarkable Men*, the fact and fancy, myth and magic, inner and outer-world experiencing, and made of it all a *believable* whole.

The film opens with long views of the locale where most of it was shot, Afghanistan's remote mountain valleys walled-in to the North by the granite spears of the Hindu Kush. Donkies and fat-tailed sheep share steep, stony village streets with turbanned natives, Afghans, Turkomen, Kafirs, Kurds, not one of whom looks to be less than six feet tall. I felt myself swept into the alien scene with a sense of familiarity and heard my inner voice exclaiming silently: "*This is Gurdjieff country!* These are HIS people!"

The realization snatched me from that Berkeley playhouse and swept me back some forty years to the momentous days of Paris in the Thirties when I sat at Gurdjieff's dinner table listening to him tell, when an association spurred the memory, some incident of his boyhood days when he occasionally travelled with his father, a famous bard who chanted the epic poetry

-3-

of Asia Minor in contests that sometimes went on for a week.

On the screen that I was watching from Gurdjieff's table, so to speak, a contest was going on in a high mountain valley of the Caucasus. Tribesmen carrying strange-looking woodwind instruments that suggest primitive flutes, oboes, clarinets, are gathering in a circle around the judge, a patriarch with white beard and face of wisdom. It is a contest for the production of a certain *vibration*, we are told. Each contesting musician will blow a tune or some notes on his instrument. When the right vibration is struck, the rocks will echo it back exactly as blown.

This is how Peter Brook opens his film on Gurdjieff's search for hidden knowledge - a stunning prelude to mystery presented as factually as a travelogue about some strange land. It is remarkable how tension builds up as the camera explores the rugged faces of the contestants listening for the rocks to answer back after each has blown his tune. These are the faces of the descendants of Jhengiz Khan or Tamerlane since most of the actors, except a notable few like the Yugoslav who plays the adult Gurdjieff, Dragan Maksimovic, were recruited in Afghanistan.

The young actor who plays the boy Gurdjieff sits cross-legged on a large boulder looking down on the scene, his dark eyes alert and unsmiling, taking in every detail. You fancy you can follow his thought by the direction of his gaze. When it lifts to the granite rocks that wall in this dish-like valley, you wonder why they possess that peculiar property of echoing back only *one* vibration from a collection of instruments which *all* vibrate when blown. It just doesn't make sense, except to these assembled tribesmen whose air of expectancy seems almost a visible thing, as visible as

-4-

their huge wrapped turbans and woven wool capes.

I remembered how Gurdjieff loved the men of the mountains.
"Man without quotation marks", he called them, his expression for
a developed being. I wondered if the degree of self-development of
the contestants had anything to do with the special vibration that
would cause the rocks to answer back. Volume of sound apparently
had nothing to do with it. Deep-throated bassoon-like notes filled
the mountain amphitheatre and nothing happened.

The sweet, tender sounds from an instrument resembling a
shepherd's flute evoked no echo and I became aware of a mounting
excitement in the audience around me in the Berkeley playhouse,
which split my attention still further, so that I missed entirely
the tribesman who played the winning vibration and the instrument
on which he blew, and caught up with the film only when the rocks
began to speak back in clean, clear echo the notes he had blown.
For the listening tribesmen on the screen and the theatre audience
watching them, it was a moment of standstill emotion, if such a
thing can be.

There was no applause for the winner, no visible motion of
congratulation beyond the nod from the judge that signified the
contest had ended. The camera lingered with the contestants as
they rose and silently gathered up their primitive instruments;
then it panned to the boy Gurdjieff jumping down from his rocky
perch and starting down the trail leading to his village far below.

Thus, does Peter Brook begin his film odessy of Gurdjieff's
lifelong search for Truth - by presenting us with an inexplicable
phenomenon, made to appear so possible, so down-to-earth real,
so utterly believable from every point of view that we accept it
as an actuality. This is the magic of Brook's directing. He takes

-5-

you, his viewer, straight into the heart of mystery and holds
you there, without a word of explanation of what is _really_
going on in this phenomenal contest, accustoming you, as it were,
to supernormal events in preparation for the more to come.

-- Gurdjieff's adventure with the Yezidi, or "Devil Wor-
shipers", a sect inhabiting the region around Mount Ararat,
who could not come out of a circle drawn around them, or
even be pulled out, without falling into catalepsy;

-- his experience with a _gornakh_, or evil spirit, which
enters the bodies of dead people, to reappear among their
friends or families, terrifying them;

-- the crossing of the Gobi Desert in sled-like vehicles
drawn by sheep trained to pull under harness - wonderful,
laughter-provoking scenes these, but very real: Gurdjieff's
small band of followers actually did train sheep to become
beasts of burden (and, very practically, they served as food
along the way!),

-- the Egyptian scenes - Gurdjieff sitting at the foot of
the Sphinx, studying a map of "pre-sand Egypt" which he had pilfered
in copy from an old monastery in the early days of his search. He
is unaware at first of an older man standing above him, looking down
at the antique map with a start of surprise which indicates plainly
that he has seen it before.

-6-

of the occult and of myths relating to mankind, especially the pre-
Flood legends.

A bond of friendship between the elderly prince and the young
Gurdjieff forms as they talk together of their common goal and of
how far along the unmapped road each has travelled in his search.
The prince accompanies Gurdjieff on some of his travels, intro-
ducing him to remote brotherhoods of monks who have special rituals
that convey information to their initiates, dances like those of the
Whirling Dervishes, but faster as the flutes and tambours quicken
the beat . . . and you see, behind the swirling figures . . . the
eyes of Gurdjieff blazing with excitement and you forget it is a
young Yugoslav actor playing his role. It is, you realize, exactly
how Gurdjieff found the forgotten knowledge he searched for, bit by
bit, fragment by fragment, in remote, unheard-of places not shown
on any map, but only heard of by chance, in some *chaikhana*, or
tea-house, along the camel tracks of Asia Minor.

The tea-houses and the ancient monasteries enhance your sense
of being in a foreign land where customs of religious piety and
reverence for old holy men of wisdom still prevail. We are ready
in spirit to enter, with Gurdjieff, the high secret place where
all knowledge of mankind and the meaning of life on earth is kept.

-7-

Gurdjieff conceals his excitement on hearing the name Sarmoung Brotherhood, the very same monastery he had been trying to locate since the start of his search nearly a decade ago. He agrees to the conditions: that he take a solemn oath never to tell anyone where the monastery is situated; then he asks if his friend Soloviev might also go along. The old man agrees, providing that Soloviev takes the oath. The day and place of meeting with their guides is set, and the password that will identify them is told.

At the given place and time, Gurdjieff and Soloviev meet their guides, four swarthy Kirghiz, awaiting them near some ruins along a river bank - the last familiar landmarks they would see for the next twelve days, for they are to ride blindfolded with native hoods drawn over their eyes.

Only twice are the hoods removed in daylight. The first time is when they come to a narrow swinging bridge over a mountain gorge, a bridge without handrails, too narrow for two to walk it abreast and just wide enough to take one horse at a time, without a rider. This is a scene of prolonged terror which Brook's cameras explore thoroughly, from the mountain stream foaming at the bottom of the cleft-like gorge to the jagged peaks high above, too cloud-hung to see clearly. But no one on the bridge looks up or down: only straight ahead, as if in a trance.

The second time the hoods are removed is when they pass a caravan. They must not excite suspicion. Gurdjieff knew without being told the reason for their brief, bright interval of sight.

-8-

Later a venerable old man speaking a language they understand comes by to tell that for the first few days their meals would be brought to them, that they should try to rest after their arduous journey and if they wanted to go out and walk around the place they were free to do so. We catch a glimpse of them once, outside the walls of the fortress-like enclosure, looking up to see if anything, any hint of what goes on within, may be visible, but they discover nothing. We begin to feel the frustration which they, by dint of strong work on themselves, refuse to show. Suspense builds up, in the audience and on the screen.

On the third day, when the seekers are resting beside a lovely little waterfall outside the walls, the boy who brings them their meals comes running toward them with a paper in his outstretched hand. It is a note addressed to Aga Georgi, in a handwriting so familiar that Gurdjieff all but faints when he

-9-

sees it. It is the elegant handwriting of Prince Yuri Lubovedsky.

In the years since their correspondence had ceased, Gurdjieff had believed the prince had died. He started to read the note aloud to his comrade but emotion chocked him. He began running toward the monastery gate, waving to Soloviev to follow with the boy, who takes the lead once they are inside the holy place.

The closing scenes of this unique film I shall not attempt to describe. They must be seen to be appreciated. They are the Sacred Dances the priestesses of the temple perform with precision and exactitude - an alphabet of postures which everyone in the monastery can read as they spell out the ritual of the day. The young Gurdjieff stands transfixed beside the now-recovered Prince Lubovedsky who has become his guide and teacher, authorized by the sheikh of the monastery to open all its doors to him.

As the Sacred Dances must be seen to be appreciated, so must the musical accompaniment to the film be heard rather than described. Thomas de Hartmann, a well-known Russian composer, one of Gurdjieff's earliest disciples dating from 1917 and the days of the Petrograd group, wrote the extraordinary music for the dances which Gurdjieff had memorized as he had heard it years earlier in secret monasteries and had kept intact in his great trained memory.

-10-

The tutelage under Prince Lubovedsky is like an intensive initiation which goes on for some three months, until the day the prince comes to Gurdjieff and tells how he had been summoned that morning to the court of the sheikh who had told him that it had become known that he, Yuri, had only three more years to live. His sheikh advised him to spend those final years in another monastery, on the north slopes of the Himalayas, where he could receive special preparation of some sort. Without hesitation he had accepted, the prince tells the dumbstruck Gurdjieff, and it was decided that his caravan would set forth in three days. Gurdjieff strives in vain to conceal his grief as the prince concludes by telling him that he wishes to spend these last few days entirely with him, "who is the man nearest to me in this life."

The last scene shows Gurdjieff outside the rear gate of the monastery watching the start of the caravan. The restorative effect of his last days of talk with the prince shows on his face, calm now, no emotions showing as the prince rides by without looking at him until the trail begins to curve out of view behind a mountain. Here the prince turns in his saddle, looks back and raises his hand three times in blessing for Gurdjieff still visible from afar in his long white smock of the acolyte, standing motionless as a statue while his saintly friend passes from his sight forever.

— FINIS —