Alfred Richard Orage - With Gurdjieff

With Gurdjieff

In 1914 Orage met with P. D. Ouspensky, whose ideas left a lasting impression. When Ouspensky moved to London in 1921, Orage began attending his lectures on "Fragments of an unknown teaching", the subject of which would later be published as In Search of the Miraculous. From this point on Orage became less and less interested in literature and art, instead focusing his attention in the greater part of the 1920s on the problems of the theory and practice of mysticism without having to run away from the world. His correspondence with Harry Houdini on these subjects moved him to explore ideas of the afterlife. He returned to the idea that there were absolute truths and felt these were embodied in the Mahabharata.

In February 1922, Ouspensky introduced Orage to G. I. Gurdjieff. Selling the New Age, he moved to Paris to study at the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. In 1924 Orage was appointed by Gurdjieff to lead study groups in America. He taught the Gurdjieff System in America for seven years. Gurdjieff arrived in New York from France on 13 November 1930, and after a few years of teaching in New York, Orage was deposed by Gurdjieff and his groups were formally disbanded because Gurdjieff believed that they had been incorrectly taught and they were working under the misconception that self-observation could be practiced in the absence of self-remembering or in the presence of negative emotions. Members were allowed to continue study with Gurdjieff after taking an oath not to communicate with Orage (ironically Orage himself also signed the oath). Upon hearing that Orage had also signed, Gurdjieff wept. Gurdjieff had once considered Orage as a friend and brother and thought of Jessie as a bad choice by Orage for a mate. Orage was a chain smoker and Jessie was a heavy drinker.

Orage, Ouspensky, C. Daly King emphasized certain aspects of the Gurdjieff System while ignoring others. According to Gurdjieff himself, Orage emphasized self-observation. In Harlem, New York City, Jean Toomer, one of Orage's students at Greenwich Village and part and parcel of the Harlem Renaissance, was using Gurdjieff's work to confront the problem of racism.

The Orages sailed back to New York from England in the S.S. Washington on 29 December 1930 and arrived at 9:30 AM on Thursday, 8 January 1931. The next day, while staying at the Irving Hotel, Orage wrote a letter to Gurdjieff unveiling a plan for the publication of All and Everything before the end of the year and promising a substantial amount of money.

At lunch, on 21 February 1931, in New York City, Achmed Abdulla, a.k.a. Nadir Kahn, confided to the Orages that he had met Gurdjieff in Tibet and there Gurdjieff was a.k.a. Lama Dordjieff, a Tsarist agent and tutor to the Dalai Lama.

After the separation with Gurdjieff, Orage returned to England with Jessie. In the privately-published Third Series of writings, Gurdjieff wrote of Orage and his wife Jessie, "... his romance had ended in his marrying the saleswoman of 'Sunwise Turn,' a young American pampered out of all proportion to her position..."