Looking for a Work Teacher in the UK

If you're living in the United Kingdom and looking for a Work teacher, this post is for you.

The UK is the country I know best, though I spent many years in the USA and also lived for a while in Israel. In the former, the various groups affiliated with the Gurdjieff Foundation in New York have only a fairly loose association with it, and are not closely supervised by the Foundation - at least, not compared with the situation in the UK. It's much easier to find a group in the USA than it is here. And Israel is the only country in the Middle East that is secure enough to protect the existence of a Work group, and there is one main group, affiliated to the Paris Foundation.

In the UK, however, the situation is very different.

Here, the Gurdjieff Society, located in London, oversees most groups, and it keeps a fairly tight rein on them. Some of the teachers are good, and some are less so. I've known teachers from the Society who frankly bullied their students and hadn't a clue how to teach anything. They might have known a lot about the Work, but they didn't understand how to teach, how to model the Work for their students, or how to create the conditions in which each student could learn for themselves. Others were completely ineffectual, and while the students may have enjoyed the social gathering they certainly didn't learn how to work on themselves.

 Each seeker must decide for herself whether a particular group and its teacher are for her. And it's a difficult process because you simply don't know what to expect.

 A Work teacher is usually quite an ordinary person who makes no claim to supernatural powers or to be able to ensure anyone else's progress in the Work. He doesn't dress outlandishly, most likely won't drive a fancy car, and won't try to impress you with his esoteric knowledge. He doesn't go around telling people he's a Work teacher. He generally keeps quiet about it in ordinary life, because he doesn't want to draw attention to himself. You may or may not like him personally. If not, give him a try anyway.

Run a mile if there is any sign of bullying, any attempt to intimidate students, or to hint at "hidden powers", esoteric knowledge and so on. A boastful Work teacher is a contradiction in terms. Any boasting or bragging comes from arrogance and is part of that person's False Personality, which should play no part in the life of a Work teacher. What's more, a Work teacher must be able to generate and conduct the higher hydrogens which students need for their development. If someone is unable to do this, she will be an ineffectual teacher.

 Also beware of the teacher who seems over-eager to include you. All Work teachers have to turn away more students than they accept, and if they take you on immediately without any kind of interview you should beware of getting stuck with someone who just wants to play the numbers game. Students are not, as they might imagine, eagerly snapped up. To take on a difficult or disruptive student would hinder the progress of the existing group and waste the teacher's energy. On the other hand, a good student, someone with the necessary humility as well as Magnetic Centre, can be a help to the entire group. It's up to the teacher to decide, and to be very discriminating in their choice.

A major problem in the UK is that the groups who trace their descent directly from Gurdjieff and his personal students often give short shrift to Ouspensky, Dr Nicoll, Bennett, Rodney Collin and Beryl Pogson. They consider these teachers to be inferior to Gurdjieff, and they don't usually mention them at all. They discourage students from reading their books, and if you insist you will be asked to leave.
At least, this was the situation until a few years ago, when I had my most recent meeting with a teacher from the Foundation. They were still very rigid in this respect, and it deprives students of a huge range of really important and useful material.

On the other hand, the Ouspensky-descended groups associated with the Study Society at Colet House in London display a similar attitude towards all teachers other than Ouspensky. Some do allow Dr Nicoll's Commentaries to be read, because Nicoll was a close friend as well as a student of Ouspensky. Generally, however, Gurdjieff is anathema to them.

The Nicoll groups, who - as the name shows - trace their descent from Maurice Nicoll, are much more open to other writings. Dr Nicoll studied at the Prieure with Gurdjieff and was a student and friend of Carl Jung as well as Pyotr Ouspensky. All Nicoll groups encourage readings from the three teachers and from others who also illuminate the Work.

When my own teacher, Marian Davison, began teaching, she was encouraged and helped by Dr Bernard Courtney Myers and Dr Francis Roles, the former from the Gurdjieff Foundation and the latter from what become the Study Society. In those days - the 1960s - the situation was much more fluid and there was cooperation between all the branches of the Work. It was only later that barriers began to grow and obstacles were thrown in the way of mutual help. This, to me, was a huge step backwards.

I'm a teacher in the Nicoll line, so this is the branch which I know best, although I've also been fortunate enough to study the Work in groups in America, Israel and in London which were affiliated with the Foundation. (In regard to the latter I met Mme. de Salzmann in New York and was blessed with the experience of studying with Dr Courtney Myers in London, both of them excellent teachers: I haven't met anyone else of that calibre in either location, however). I studied in the only Work group that exists in Israel. But Marian remained my teacher throughout, and I kept in touch with her through letters, notes and phone calls.

When I was authorized to teach on my own, I was initially very reluctant to take on the responsibility. I agreed to do so when Marian gave me her blessing. She said that reluctance is a sign of humility, and it indicated that I was ready to teach. Someone who actively wants to teach is usually not ready, and is discouraged. Such a person may want to call themselves "a Work teacher," and add it their esoteric CV, as it were, but not actually to take on the hard work and inevitable suffering that results from one's labours as a teacher.

(Incidentally, this post is not an advertisement for myself! I'm not currently accepting any new students, because I want to focus on my writing. That is the main way in which I now attempt to disseminate Work teachings).

The various Nicoll groups continued after the death of Dr Nicoll, most taught by Beryl Pogson. After her death, Mrs Davison continued her work and took over Mrs Pogson's groups, while beginning new "nursery" groups in London and Brighton.

Some Nicoll groups chose to join the Foundation after Dr Nicoll died, and they have now merged with it and no longer exist in their own right.

Most, however, carried on their independent lines of work, because they believed - as did Mrs Pogson, Mrs Davison and myself - that to exclude huge areas of study, including the invaluable books by Dr Nicoll and Rodney Collin, among others, was to deprive students of a real aid to development.

We deliberately kept away from the Foundation after we realized that some of their teachers were determinedly trying to take over the independent Nicoll groups, and were shutting down the areas of study with which they disagreed. Indeed, they closed down some groups completely. We thought this was authoritarian and very short-sighted, not in the spirit of Gurdjieff or Ouspensky, and quite contrary to the teaching of Dr Nicoll.

 It's interesting to consider that the three founders of the Work each began with a concentration on a particular centre; Gurdjieff clearly favoured the Moving Centre to begin with, Ouspensky the Intellectual Centre, and Dr Nicoll the Emotional Centre, with his work in psychoanalysis. Of course, as each developed and attained a higher level of Being, they transcended the levels of Man No 1, 2 and 3, and became Balanced before going on to reach even greater heights.

 Nicoll students believe that without any one of the founders, the Work is incomplete, and therefore the Nicoll line seems to us to be the true continuation of the Work, in the sense that Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Dr Nicoll understood it and wished it to be handed on.

Nicoll groups are known for the depth and breadth of their studies, including science, esotericism and the Work.  Some groups learned Ancient Greek and Latin so that we could study the Gospels and similar writings, as well as Old Testament Hebrew so we could understand the Kabbala and Gematria.

We all studied various arts and crafts from weaving to woodcuts, and held Work weekends so that a real community could be experienced. Mrs Davison continued with the methods that Mrs Pogson and Dr Nicoll had begun, and included her own special knowledge of astrology and Sufi teachings. She was a sheikh in the Sufi Order to which I belonged, and so was able to bring a special understanding of Sufism to the Work. Sufi poetry and teaching was an important part of our studies.

We studied the Tarot in its esoteric sense; the Renaissance scholars, including Marsilio Ficino; alchemy; the Greek philosophers; the early Christian fathers and their contemporaries; and some Gnostic writers. From this we gained a sense of the enormous influence of Work ideas on humanity, and their supreme importance to mankind's survival through past and future changes and cataclysms. We now form, we believe, a special type of Ark.

The Nicoll groups today are few and far between. The group I taught in Bournemouth has now disbanded due to the advanced age of its members. A very small, embryonic group existed for a while in West Wales, but it has now closed and there is currently no Nicoll group in Wales. Other groups I know of are located in East Anglia and the far southwest of England.

Unlike the Foundation and the Study Society, we didn't form a strict, hierarchical organization with an extensive administration. Each teacher knows of one or two others, and can ask for a Movements Teacher to visit their group when it reaches a certain size.

For the large number of Gurdjieff groups that existed all over the world, tight organization was necessary and was the only way in which they could have survived. Nevertheless, the Foundation and the Society have both suffered to some extent from this type of structure, which was inevitable.

When you try to organize a spiritual association, you lose much of its original spirit. You can't nail to jelly to a wall. Boxes have to be ticked, hoops jumped through and strict criteria met. The Work loses some force with every new generation of students, because with the best will in the world teachers who never knew the founders of the Work are at a disadvantage and can't pass on the full knowledge of the Work to their students. Creating barriers between the lines of descent furthers the ossification of the remaining groups, prevents the sharing of knowledge, and is unhelpful.

The Nicoll line kept the spirit of the Work best, but by avoiding the pitfalls of over-organization we also lost some of the benefits, mainly that we have no central office to disseminate information about groups and locations.

 In order to meet a Nicoll line teacher, you need to be in the right place at the right time, and to be ready to learn; it is the Conscious Circle of Humanity who will lead you there, if you have Magnetic Centre. Someone will have heard of someone who teaches; sometimes there may be a very small, very discreet notice in a library. If there is no Nicoll teacher in your area, then this contact is impossible. In that case, it is simply not your Fate to meet a Nicoll teacher in your current lifetime. That line of Work may not be right for you; perhaps the Work itself is not for you.

Of course, you always have the option of contacting the Foundation, which I would personally choose in preference to the Study Society simply because it's more open to outside influence, although not very much. The Society people I've met are very likeable, spiritually evolved people, however, and you might find yourself more drawn to them, especially if you are interested in the Sufis, because they are home to a group of Mevlevi dervishes and practice their ceremonial whirling dance.

You'll find all sorts of groups on the internet claiming to be the bearers of the Gurdjieff Work, but there are many charalatans and wolves there, and even with Magnetic Centre it's very difficult for a beginning student to find a real Work teacher.You do need to look at the group's lineage, if it has one. If it does, you may be able to check whether it is genuine by contacting a sister group. If they trace their lineage back to someone who was known to have been excluded from the Work - and such groups do exist - they could be dangerous and harmful, and I'd shun them like the plague.

On the internet, the best contacts are, I believe, the Gurdjieff Society in London, or - if you really prefer Ouspensky - the Study Society.

James Moore, a former member of the Society, left because of the distasteful, behind-the-scenes power struggles into which he was unwillingly drawn when his own teacher, Henriette Lannes, was passed over in favour of another whom he considered inferior. Moore started his own group, in Kent. I have not been to it and I don't know whether he is still alive, but if I lived in that part of the world I would think it worth checking out. He wrote the best biography ever published of Gurdjieff, and his later gossipy memoirs are very enjoyable, if somewhat scurrilous, reading!

 Fourth Way schools surface for a while every couple of hundred years in the West, at times when civilization is in crisis, and then disappear once again. The Work makes itself more accessible at times of great change, and creates Arks wherein its invaluable teachings may be preserved. When its task is done, it disappears. The schools carry on their work in secret until the time is right for a new dissemination of the teachings. The particular form in which it manifested at one time may never recur. This may well be the fate of the Nicoll groups.  If it is, then the Nicoll line has fulfilled its mission for this period of time.

We can't deny that humanity is facing greater dangers than ever before. The atrocities committed by terrorists, whether "lone wolves" or agents of Isis, or other branches of radical Islam, threaten everyone in the world today, especially Christians, Jews, and secular Westerners. They hate mysticism and kill peace-loving Muslims. Nowhere is now safe from their terrible evil. They are hasnamusses, and spare no one who disagrees with them. Other terrorist groups exist alongside them, and all are the enemies of mankind.

Simultaneously, the earth suffers from climate change, which could now be irreversible, and from pollution on a worldwide scale that is killing off many forms of life. Every day, new species become extinct. It is more urgent than ever that each and every Work student realizes the importance of their task. We must contribute to the evolution of organic life in the way that the Work teaches, and we must be willing to form an Ark within ourselves so that this teaching is never lost. If you feel called to this tremendous task, and if it is your Fate to be part of it, then you will meet the Work.

Conscious Humanity will make it possible for you to take part.

I wish you joy and ultimate fulfillment in your search.