George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff
(1877?-1949) was born in Alexandropol (modern Gyumri, Armenia), near the Persian frontier,
where ancient traditions of patriarchal life were still a living influence. Following his tutelage by Dean Borsh of the Kars
Military Cathedral, he began, with other 'Seekers of Truth', an unremitting search for real and universal knowledge.
In 1921,
Gurdjieff settled in France, where he founded the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. He continued
to transmit what he had learned in the East, elaborating his teaching in two principal works: Beelzebub's
Tales to His Grandson, a cosmological epic fertile with paradoxes, and Meetings
with Remarkable Men, a narrative with the undeniable ring of authenticity and a sense of the mystery surrounding
the truths he had discovered.
Gurdjieff, who was virtually unknown in his lifetime, is becoming recognized as a great spiritual philosopher, a true revolutionary, who saw clearly the direction modern
'civilization' was taking, and set about preparing people to discover for themselves, and eventually to
diffuse among mankind, the certitude that 'Being' is
the only indestructible reality.