G.I. Gurdjieff Quote

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (c. 1866–1877 – 29 October 1949) was a philosopher, mystic, spiritual teacher, composer, and movements teacher. Born in the Russian Empire, he briefly became a citizen of the First Republic of Armenia after its formation in 1918, but fled the impending Red Army invasion of Armenia in 1920, which rendered him stateless. In the early 1920s, he applied for British citizenship, but his application was denied. He then settled in France, where he lived and taught for the rest of his life.
Gurdjieff taught that people are not conscious of themselves and thus live their lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep", but that it is possible to awaken to a higher state of consciousness and serve our purpose as human beings. His student P. D. Ouspensky referred to Gurdjieff's teachings as the "Fourth Way".
Gurdjieff's teaching has inspired the formation of many groups around the world. After his death in 1949, the Gurdjieff Foundation in Paris was established and led by his close pupil Jeanne de Salzmann in cooperation with other direct pupils of Gurdjieff, until her death in 1990; and then by her son Michel de Salzmann, until his death in 2001.
The International Association of the Gurdjieff Foundations comprises the Institut Gurdjieff in France; The Gurdjieff Foundation in the USA; The Gurdjieff Society in the UK; and the Gurdjieff Foundation in Venezuela.
Gurdjieff was born in Alexandropol, Yerevan Governorate, Russian Empire (now Gyumri, Armenia). His father Ivan Ivanovich Gurdjieff was Greek, and a renowned ashugh under the pseudonym of Adash, who in the 1870s managed large herds of cattle and sheep. While traditionally believed that Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian, recent scholarly research increasingly supports the view that both parents were Greek. This interpretation aligns with Gurdjieff's own statements about Greek being his mother tongue and is supported by his German identification papers from World War II, which listed him as Greek.
According to Gurdjieff himself, his father came of a Greek family whose ancestors had emigrated from Byzantium after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, with his family initially moving to central Anatolia, and from there eventually to Georgia in the Caucasus.
There are conflicting views regarding Gurdjieff's birth date, ranging from 1866 to 1877. The bulk of extant records weigh heavily toward 1877, but Gurdjieff in reported conversations with students gave the year of his birth as c. 1867, which is corroborated by the account of his niece Luba Gurdjieff Everitt. George Kiourtzidis, great-grandson of Gurdjieff's paternal uncle Vasilii (through Vasilii's son Alexander), recalled that his grandfather Alexander, born in 1875, said that Gurdjieff was about three years older than him, which would point to a birth date c. 1872. A number of scholars have also tried to deduce Gurdjieff's year of birth by analyzing an incident of a cattle plague he wrote about in his book Meetings with Remarkable Men, where Gurdjieff claimed he was about seven years old at the time of the calamity; its occurrence has been dated by James Moore to 1873, by Mohammad H. Tamdgidi to 1879, by Paul Beekman Taylor to either 1877 or 1884, and by Tobias Churton to c. 1883–1884. According to Tamdgidi, the confusion surrounding Gurdjieff's year of birth:

was an example of a whole series of puzzles, signposts, and difficulties Gurdjieff deliberately created for his pupils, readers, and posterity, for specific reasons that are inseparable from the method and aims of his teaching. As Gurdjieff later discovered about the nature and purpose of "ancient art," "lawful inexactitudes" consciously and intentionally placed in artwork (and in this case, in his own writings) play significant roles in the transmission of important information to future generations.
Although official documents consistently record the day of his birth as 28 December, Gurdjieff himself celebrated his birthday either on the Old Orthodox Julian calendar date of 1 January, or according to the Gregorian calendar date for New Year of 13 January (up to 1899; 14 January after 1900). The year of 1872 is inscribed in a plate on the grave-marker in the cemetery of Avon, Seine-et-Marne, France, where his body was buried.
Gurdjieff spent his childhood in Kars, which, from 1878 to 1918, was the administrative capital of the Russian-ruled Transcaucasus province of Kars Oblast, a border region recently acquired following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. It contained extensive grassy plateau-steppe and high mountains, and was inhabited by a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional population that had a history of respect for travelling mystics and holy men, and for religious syncretism and conversion. Both the city of Kars and the surrounding territory were home to an extremely diverse population: although part of the Armenian Plateau, the Russian-ruled Transcaucasus province of Kars Oblast was home to Armenians, Caucasus Greeks, Pontic Greeks, Georgians, Russians, Kurds, Turks, and smaller numbers of Christian communities from eastern and central Europe such as Caucasus Germans, Estonians, and Russian Orthodox sectarian communities like the Molokans, Doukhobors, Pryguny, and Subbotniks.
Gurdjieff makes particular mention of the Yazidi community. Growing up in a multi-ethnic society, Gurdjieff became fluent in Armenian, Pontic Greek, Russian, and Turkish, speaking the last in a mixture of elegant Ottoman Turkish with some dialect. He later acquired "a working facility with several European languages".
Early influences on him included his father, a carpenter and amateur ashik or bardic poet, and the priest of the town's cathedral, Dean Borsh, a family friend. The young Gurdjieff avidly read literature from many sources and influenced by these writings and witnessing a number of phenomena that he could not explain, he formed the conviction that there existed a hidden truth known to mankind in the past, which could not be ascertained from science or mainstream religion.