REGISTER Premises. . Retell era The Subject and the Attitude eee e eee! WW, The Local Map ws sees ee penny MM, The Boat ..ssseeeeee cert 90 IV. The Greater Map Pee Ee eeEEy : 180 VY. Destination... see eee Peet 287 Reckoning. , ap 22278 Appendices eee EE Ce Cee eed Peet Index eee seen eeeree cer aren encsTAcknowledgment is gratefully made to Mildred S. King Ise Manchester Sherman Manchester for assistance in the preparation of this book: Premises , This treatise te not wrllten for publlestion, which I forbld. The reniona upon which I base my decision in this respect will appear tn fuller detall later. My reasons for wel{ing down what follows, however, are clear and simples It constitutes @ne version of the approach to the Hidde Learning) an approach which I now know (ull well will surely be lost ness (els carefully set down at the present time. ‘Rod inniged the season ls late for this tazk already: many of those who were once acquainted unambignousty with tts principles, and even With it detiils, have wandered during the past [ifteen years into other paths, perhaps os legitimate but assuredly very different. For them ints version has become subtly distorted, overtaid with other attitudes ss the colors of an original painting alter nat only with the passage of fading tine but, as {might be, are also changed by well-intentioned efforts. to Improve upan the original through the {urther application of a supposedly better technique. It is nol my purpose here to reader Any judgment regarding the wisdom of such efforts; what remains ts Simply that they inevitaLiy sbseure and eventually destray the integrt= {y ofthe yersion us affected, and with ts integrity its validity also. Tome it appears of importance that the version be preserved. ‘The Hilden Learning has evinted (25 it exists today) at all times of which we know, although only seldom appearing upon the surface of what the late M. Ouspensty called Public History of the History of Crime, viz. the history of the school books, which deal withwars, conspiracies, violence and tyranniés. As now and then we catch vague glimpses of the Hidden Learning, it appears in many different guises of versione -+ the East Indian version of the Dachavad Ghiita, the medieval rendition of the Orders of Chivalry snd of the original Rosy Cross, perhaps In the very earliest of the Christian and Mobummedsn accounts, perhaps also in the initial Interpretation of the Lamalsts whose devcendants still inhabit Thibet, and a0 on, And once it even appeared with unaccustomed clarity tn Public History tlself, in the official religion of Ancient Egypt whose compleaities are rendered only the more dublous by the anthropotogical nalvetd of professional Egyptology but which shine ith nn nlenost unbelievable om whon a few key prin elples of the Hidden Learning have een achieved. ‘The exegesis dealt with In this treatise may be called « satralght™ version, formulated rigorously but without the slightest decile entendre; no artificial impediments are involved andaGlatt Underetanding of the formutations (e Umited solely by the degree of individual development already gained by the Inquirers In other expositions (In fact In all of them with which I have any sequaintance) many safeguards of an artilicial and deliberate kind are thrown about the student or postulant; in thls there are none Thua the reason for non-publication (s not merely of a pearls before-swine character. For perhaps this (s the most dangerous veralon whose formutations are In any way available, The field of these formulations is that of objective truth, both Personal and non-personal, And in auch a {leld common sense will warn us that we must take into account not only what ie written, tn 4 treatise like the present one, but tkewise who it Is that writes, And although, generally, the authority for any serious statement Hes tn Us truth and not in its enunclator === when the case te that of factual report of what precisely a given series of formulations haa been, Il is advisable to have some assurance that the Teporier himself really knows what those formulations were, For that reac son I conceive It necessary to declare merely the relevant detets of my own relation to the version which U have underteken to set down, tn the year, 1924, M, Georges Gurdjteff came to New York Gity. He was then the founder and head of The institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, at Fontainebleau, France; and he brought with him a considerable number of his instructors ond Pupils, with whose assistance he produced a succession of eshitl- tons, first at the Neighborhood Playhouse in downtown New York, Tater at Carnegie Mall, and still Inter in Chicago. The performances consisted of “tricks, half-tricks and real phenomena, and incleded nuinber of dance-ceremonies, some original and some, replicas Hons of ancient dervish and sacred dances... These exhibitions were totally unusual and impressive toa degree. My wile and t (1 had then been married somewhat more than a year) attended one at the Neighborhood Playhouse and another. at Catnegle Hall, have forgotten who informed ine of them; it may have been Miss Teasie Dwight, then» mere acquaintance of mine, who war paete owner and operator of the Sunwise Turn Bookshop on 44th Streets +. Gurdjieff returned to France and for a time { heard no more of aim. Twas the following autumn, of 1924, when Miss Dwight (at whose shop I purckased all my books) Informed me that Mar A. R. Orage had remained In New York City as the representative of M, Gurdjieff and that he was proposing to hold a series of informal groups for those Interested, in order to explain the nature of the Institute and of tts work. She urged me to attend, twas then twenty-nine years of age. Eight years earlier, in 1916, Thad graduated from Yale College with the degree of DA. where my courses had been generally in what are called the liberal major subject had been Latin; t had also studied Greek, French, Germans good deal of professions! phitosephy, constitas fiona inns American sn ancient hatorys tome mathematics and of physics, ‘That was my educational background then ims fneaiately following graduatign [had served with the American fleld artillery in World Ward, a year of itin France; shortly sfler my Feturn my father had died and { had found myself the juntor general pariner in the factoring business which he tnd founded tnd buildup in Now York City. It was an honorable, successful thd lucrative enterprise bul, strive as t would, { could not succeed in becoming seriously interested In excrying (on 0 my father had hoped that t would. My widowed mother had been left very coinfort= ably off and | myself hud a small but adequate income even after f Presently married, s0 that necessity did not come to my ald, 1 Tad, however, become interested in'a new technique called paychos snaiysis and at ths pertod { had undecgons am analysts of such a Kind tinder Dr. Edward J. Kermpt, who was somewhat of an eclectic in the field and based his theories more upon the funclions vf the autonomic nervous system (han upon the enlirely subjective foumda~ tions of anslogienl speculation, My chiel, and perhaps unusual, motive bad been to discover what & wns all about through peesonal ence but {had been fatrly thoroughly taken apart in the fo5he experi ion of this technique and it had effected lwo cesulls in my case, although Uhelieved then ~~ and it is still my conviction =~ that the disadvantages of the psychoanalytic technique far outweigh its n= scientific advantages, The first of these results was the initiation of my interest in psychology proper: the second was my first reali~ zation that it was possible for me to view the man, C, Daly King, from the outside as well as from the inside, i.e., a5 some purely external observer might view him and especially without the neces sity of being identified with his wishes, his hopes or his fears. This, then, was my situation when Miss Jessie Dwight urged me to attend one of the groups conducted by Alfred Richard Orage. Certainly Lwas far from unhappy hut Iwan definitely diasatistied with my business life and | was vaguely seeking another activity which would occupy ine more seriously and to which my growing interest in the so-culled science of psychology would possibly fur~ nish the answer, The fundamental questions af philosophy aroused my curlosity, but nat the philosophical verhalisms by means of which they were dealt with by philosophers, And there was more than this, too. [had by now encountered the Gnostic literature, the Hernies Trisimegistos of G.R.S. Mead, and other fragments. Also Iwas interested in Egyptology and, as { considered that long ps cade Of strange gods und goddesses, [ could not believe that anyone of a Uvely oF inquiring intellect could possibly view them seriously for more than a few moinents without receiving the conviction that there was some real significance there, something quite other than the childish totemism attributed to them by those who falrly obviously 3