Playing Pretend with People and Places: Gurdjieff’s Fanciful Portrait of Father Evlissi the Essene
G. I. Gurdjieff Those who have not seen what he [Gurdjieff] is after in this book [ Meetings with Remarkable Men ] , and who read it just as a kind of autobiographical account, or as amusing escapades, can have no idea at all of the purpose of the book. Or, if they expect to find in the book some part of his practical teaching, they also are mistaken, because it has no claim to contain that. But what it contains is really very important, and hardly anyone has understood this. It is probably that the time was not ready, had not come yet for this. –J. G. Bennett [1] Our knowledge of the early life of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff bottle-necks down to what has been described by James Moore as his “ahistorical, auto-mythopoeic” autobiography, Meetings with Remarkable Men (1963).” [2] A key question in relation to the work is whether the so-called Sarmoung brotherhood with their remote monastery where Gurdjieff reports having spent time imbibing their ancient teac