Gurdjieff and the structure of the Universe

Perhaps the most interesting teacher of esotericism to come out of the 20th century was George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. An Armenian Greek from the borderlands of Turkey and Russia, he spent his youth searching in Central Asia for lost or secret knowledge. In the course of his travels he visited certain isolated monasteries belonging to what he called the 'Sarman Brotherhood'. This was (and maybe still is) an order of Christian initiates in possession of secret teachings that are unknown in the West. These concern ideas to do with self-transformation as handed down within the Nestorian and other traditions of the East. Gurdjieff brought these ideas to the West.

Among his teachings were profound ideas relating to the structure of the Universe. In this lecture we will begin an analysis of these ideas which fit surprisingly well the latest ideas and discoveries concerning astrophysics. (These associations will be discussed in later lectures of this series.)