By George Kiourtzidis/Gurdjieff

   It was the wish of my grandfather Alexander Gurdjieff (later translated to ‘Kiourtzidis’ when the family moved to Greece) that on my birth I should be named George, after his first cousin George Gurdjieff. My grandfather and George Gurdjieff, sons of two brothers Ivan and Vasili, were about the same age and they were very close that time, since Gurdjieff very often and especially on his school holidays used to visit his cousin Alexander in the nearby village, where they had large market-gardens and vineyards as Mr. Gurdjieff himself writes in his book, Meetings.

   Some twenty-three years ago, under strange life conditions, I found myself in a far away place where I had never been before. It seemed to me then very strange when one of the people that I met there asked me as a favour, when returning to London, to send him a book, to which I agreed. He gave me a piece of paper and there was written the title ‘Teachings of Gurdjieff’. When I read it I was shocked, but not as shocked as my new friend when I told him Mr. Gurdjieff was my uncle. When I arrived in London, the next day I went and bought the book. Since up until then I had never read even one line of my uncle’s work – the only things I knew were some stories from my grandfather – I decided to read a little. It was a revelation when I read the last phrase of the first page. Early the next day I went and bought another copy for my new friend. As I said, it was a revelation from the first day, but it is one thing to know, and another thing to do. It took me twenty years to do what I already knew.

   And as my uncle before me, I can also say this. I wish my uncle George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff was here to see me, and that he would be very happy and astonished that I also finally made it, the impossibility of which he and Father Giovani many times argued with during their conversations.

   When a man arrives at that state, he needs nothing, he feels full, he has the need to go and meet other people only to give, to empty a little and make room for new influences such as compassion, love, conscious love. Conscious love is indifferent to likes and dislikes.

   So, inspired by my grandfather’s wish that on my birth I should be named after his first cousin, and by my uncle’s wish that one of his sons, whether by blood or in spirit, seek out his father’s grave and there set up a stone with the inscription:

I AM THOU
THOU ART I
HE IS OURS
WE BOTH ARE HIS
SO MAY ALL BE
FOR OUR NEIGHBOUR

   And since I may not have the possibility to grant him his wish, I set upon myself the task at least to be worthy of his name, and for 23 years in all my dealings with people, never once did I fail to remember the aim of his wish.

   And now, engendered by the same impulse, the good of my neighbour, I have formed this organization, under the original name ALL AND EVERYTHING, a reminding factor of all the beneficial truths that are elucidated by my uncle G.I.Gurdjieff to successfully introduce in practice into our lives.

   The organization is based on three principles:

   Objective Reason, Impartiality and Sincerity.

   Our civilization, with its almost unlimited means of influencing a man, has made it almost impossible for him to live in the conditions which should be normal to him. While civilisation has opened up for man new horizons in knowledge and science and has raised his material standard of living, thereby widening his world-perception, it has instead of lifting him to a higher level all round, only developed certain faculties to the detriment of others; some it has completely destroyed. The fact is that from childhood, there gets implanted in the general psyche of man an automatic way of perceiving all kinds of new impressions with no need of making any individual effort whatsoever.

   Our civilisation has taken away from man the natural and essential qualities of his inherited type, but it has not given him what was needed for the harmonious development of a new type, so that civilisation, instead of producing an individually whole man adapted to the nature and surroundings in which he finds himself and which really were responsible for his creation, has produced a being out of his element, incapable of living a full life, and at the same time a stranger to that inner life which should by rights be his.

   It is upon this that the psychological system of G.I. Gurdjieff takes its stand. The system proves that the world-perception of a man of our time and his way of living are not the conscious expression of himself as a complete whole, but on the contrary, are the unconscious manifestation of only one of the three parts of him. With the result that his intellectual, emotional, and moving-instinctive functions fail to complete and correct one another; they travel along different paths, they rarely meet, and so his moments of real consciousness are very few.

For more information, contact: info@allandeverything.org