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

scandalous, often impossible behavior to be in keeping with the Sufi practice
of malamat (being blameworthy), in which the initiate adopts a mode of
conduct that consciously alienates those around him, ruining the good
reputation strived for by conventional citizens. The practice of malamat
might very well have been learned by the young Gurdjieff through an
encounter with the Malamti Sufi Order, an initiatory body founded in the
eighth century that has exercised a powerful underground influence upon the
magical tradition.
Such systematic ruination of one's standing in society is of course
also a standard practice of advanced left-hand path adepts, whose god-like
contempt for the slave values of the pashu manifest in extreme rejection of
all of the props of mass-approved comportment. If Gurdjieff did not go quite
as far as the Aghori in this radical detachment from that being he disdainfully
referred to as "the normal man", his actions seem to have served the same
initiatory purposes, for him, and for those willing victims he entangled in his
teaching.
There is one frequently ignored detail in Gurdjieff's life that places
his often puzzling behavior in an illuminating context. It seems fairly certain
that Gurdjieff's own restless trek through Tibet and possible contact to the
court of the Dalai Lama was made whilst in the service of the Tsarist
intelligence service. lie seems to have carried out this assignment under the
convenient guise of a spiritual seeker, and may well have continued his
intelligence work for other nations after the Bolshevik revolution.
Gurdjieff's withering contempt for politics, patriotism and government
policy of any kind – which often dismayed his more idealistic disciples –
was surely as informed by his experience as an undercover operative who
had been privy to the behind-the-scenes operations of the world, as by any
metaphysical understanding. Thus Gurdjieff could assume the seemingly
contradictory roles of Tsarist spy and minor Nazi collaborator, among many
others, with little hand-wringing over conventional ethics.
Was this stance simply Gurdjieff's mystical rationalization for
indulging a generally roguish character? lie never explained directly, but his
life-long pattern of creating elaborate initiatory crises and traumas for his
disciples, sexual or otherwise, thus forcing them to think for themselves or
fail in the attempt, seems clear enough. Although it can be argued that
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Crowley's similar courting of scandal and public infamy may have served
the same purpose, one gets the impression that Gurdjieff was much more
controlled and premeditated in applying this strategy. Like the medieval lefthand
path Master Drugpa Kunley, Gurdjieff sought to awaken his pupils
through shock treatment, disillusioning them as harshly as possible.
Gurdjieff biographer James Webb describes the one recorded
meeting of Gurdjieff and Crowley; based on what he claims are first-hand
reports. (Lawrence Sutin, in his Do What Thou Wilt: A Life Of Aleister
Crowley casts some doubt on this account.) If the encounter occurred as
described, it can be interpreted as meaning that either Gurdjieff sensed an
essential hollowness at the core of Crowley's persona, or merely felt that he
had to place any likely competitor in the Western guru game in his place.
After Crowley spent a fairly innocuous weekend at Gurdjieff's Institute for
the Harmonious Development of Man in Fountainbleau, Gurdjieff allegedly
turned upon his infamous guest and treated him to a furious public
denunciation. "You are filthy, all dirty inside. You never come in my house
again!", Gurdjieff shouted at the Great Beast 666, whom according to some
eyewitnesses at the meeting of mages, skulked off in a rare state of
embarrassment. Considering that Gurdjieff declared that one of his missions
in the West was the eradication of occultism and the delusions it excites, it
may be that he saw the arch-occultist Crowley as a prime target.
Gurdjieff's system grants none of the special importance to the