I. VAMA MARGA Foundations Of The Left-Hand Path - staticfly.net

admirers some form of sexual initiation. However, unlike his contemporary
Crowley, Gurdjieff left behind no record documenting his many trysts. Any
attempt to determine whether these were actually left-hand path sexual rites
– as some have theorized – or were simply manifestations of a high libido
exercising itself among a willing audience of spiritual groupies cannot be
made with any certainty. Such erotic exploits inspired numerous rumors of
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"sexual black magic" to be associated with Gurdjieff, whispered innuendoes
that his flamboyant behavior only exacerbated. Former lovers were said to
have a penchant for killing themselves after the Master had slaked his
fleshly appetite upon them, and more than one intimate student of
Gurdjieff's suspected that she had been the subject of a lust spell.
One interesting anecdote from 1933 suggests that Gurdjieff had
gained proficiency in a practice associated with left-hand path sorcery, and
indicates something of his libidinous reputation. At a party, Gurdjieff turned
his gaze – frequently described as hypnotic – on his American pupil, the
novelist Zona Gale, who was seated with a companion. They observed the
notorious magus inhaling and exhaling in what seemed a deliberate,
methodical manner. Gale blanched, stiffened, and upon resuming her
composure reported (in the terminology of the Work) that Gurdjieff's
peculiar attentions had "struck her right through her sexual center". The Sly
Man had supposedly bestowed a remote-control orgasm upon her through
his magical powers. Even though such tales must be taken with a grain of
salt, they form an ineradicable part of Gurdjieff's legend.
This feat recalls a mind control method practiced by Indian left-hand
path adepts, who claim the ability to form a telepathic link with another
person by carefully observing, and then imitating, his or her breath pattern.
Attuning one's own breathing to another person's respiratory rhythm, with
full mental focus, is said to allow the magician ingress to the unsuspecting
consciousness of another, permitting willed control of that individual's mind.
Through these means, death, healing, transmission of thought, or sexual
excitement can theoretically be brought about from a distance. Of course, in
the above-cited case of Gurdjieff and his student, we can't ignore the
psychological factors establishing a pre-existing link between sorcerer and
subject, an affinity which must surely ease the flow of such a transmission.
Like Crowley, Gurdjieff was adamant in his opposition to any kind
of contraceptives, perhaps a reflection of his belief in the magical properties
of semen, and its purported role in the creation of a "higher body" Be that as
it may, the Master's many dalliances with his disciples led to the creation of
many illegitimate bodies of the usual physical type – whatever the nature of
Gurdjieff's sexual relations with his students, he left behind him a throng of
Gurdjieffian bastards and bastardettes. Although he has long since been cast
in a saintly light by his latter-day followers, an essential part of Gurdjieff's
personal teaching was the way in which he deliberately inverted the usual
behavior expected in a spiritual teacher. His carefully embellished repute as a
lecher was only one of his tactics. He seems to have gone out of his way to
have been exceedingly difficult, temperamental and untrustworthy, and many
a would-be adherent of the Fourth Way abandoned it out of sheer
exasperation with the teacher's unfathomable – and sometimes infuriating –
methods.
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During the early part of his career as a professional enigma, Gurdjieff
mortified one prospective pupil, a strait-laced and respectable military officer
of the Russian aristocracy, by insisting that he meet him for the first time at a
particularly seedy cafe frequented by prostitutes. The officer's first
impression of his guru was of an unkempt, shady personage who greeted him
with the disappointed complaint that "there are usually more whores here."
Gurdjieff's disciple, J. G. Bennett, interpreted Gurdjieff's deliberately