A RETURN

TO

TRADITION

An Interview with Frank Sinclair

Born and raised in South Africa, Frank Sinclair settled in the United
States in his 20s to pursue his interest in the ideas of G. I. Gurdjieff
(18661949), primarily by working with some of Gurdjieffs foremost students. During subsequent decades he enjoyed a successful
career in the business world while becoming increasingly engaged in
the activities of the Gurdjieff Foundation of New York. He was
named co-president of the Foundation in 2000 and president in
October 2005.
There is, as Sinclair said during PARABOLA s conversation with him,
so much misunderstanding about the Gurdjieff teaching. It was
to help situate Gurdjieff more properly in the light of tradition
that PARABOLA visited Sinclair this past summer in his home on the
Hudson River some twenty miles north of Manhattan.
JEFF ZALESKI AND TRACY COCHRAN

PARABOLA: The Gurdjieff Work shares certain elements with

all the major traditions. Is the Work then a synthesis created
by Gurdjieff? And if so, from where does its authority
derive? Or did Gurdjieff, as some believe, inherit a teaching
that has existed either alongside or within the traditions,
albeit secretly, for millennia?
FRANK SINCLAIR: Please understand that I am not some ultimate authority on the Gurdjieff teaching. I did not know
Mr. Gurdjieff. But the deeper I have explored his ideas and
his principles as they have been conveyed to me by those
14 | PARABOLA

who studied with him, the more I am

convinced that he has indeed brought
us fragments of an unknown teaching.
Clearly, he embodied an extraordinary
knowledge, and he was in that sense
a real Master. All the evidence is that
he was a man of real being. A man of
Presence.
It wasnt that he collected bits and
pieces from the great traditions and contrived some proprietary teaching. Rather,
he seems to have been able to gain access
to several primary sources and to make

their knowledge authentically his own.

If every real teaching derives from some
overarching revelation, he must also
have had some centering experience or
experiences that connected him to the
Source, to what is central. I dont think
he was bringing a new religion, as some
have suggested. He was returning to
the source of the perennial wisdom.
He called it the Great Knowledge, the
powerful ancient stream of true knowledge of being.
I can only say that his is an extraordiWINTER 2007 | 15

nary teaching. And for me, the proof is,

as it were, in the pudding: that through
his teaching people can change, that
they can grow in being, that there can
be openings to the Higher. There have
been really extraordinary examples in our
time. I think, for example, of people like

ceased to exist from the origin of the

human race. And in our time, Dr.
Conge, one of Madame de Salzmanns
closest circle of students, declared that
Gurdjieff made it clear that there is a
source teaching at the root of what he
transmitted.

Madame de Salzmann, Gurdjieffs foremost student.

That to me is the point: the Gurdjieff

teaching is in its essential core a source
teaching. It points one to, it calls one to,
the very source from which the traditions
derive, the source on which the great
orthodoxies are based. It leads one,
measured perhaps in moments only,
to the unmanifest and indivisible reality
behind all forms. Each tradition takes
a particular conformation, depending
upon the individual through whom it
aroseChrist, the Buddha, Muhammad
in the surrounding in which he appeared
among humanity. What I have become
personally convinced ofand not
through blind faithis that Gurdjieff

P: Is the Gurdjieff Work a tradition in

the making?
FS: I think of it rather as a return to
Tradition. It is Tradition. Gurdjieff is
mining the mother lode, if you wish.
To me its a renewal or a revivification
of the Christian lineage. Gurdjieff
himself said his teaching was esoteric
Christianity. Even a great Church Father
like St. Augustine could say, That which
is today called the Christian tradition
existed among the ancients and never
16 | PARABOLA

ranks in that special lineage of people

who, like Meister Eckhart, have transcended known forms, and penetrated
to what is hidden.

P: Yet some basic tenets of the teaching

of Gurdjieff seem to contradict the
teachings of major traditions. One
example is Gurdjieffs emphatic statement that everything is material, including the Absolute.

a role to play in this endless regeneration

of the universe. But not as we are. And
for that vertical exchange, there has to be
a movement between levels.
For example, Gurdjieff emphasizes the
need to practice remorse; intentionally to
go over ones life in order to suffer, consciously, as part of this extraordinary

THE GURDJIEFF TEACHING IS IN ITS

FS: But no one can accuse Gurdjieff
of being a Cartesian. I am struck by
the fact that theoretical physicist Basarab
Nicolescu, a member of the scientific
establishment, and a man who has
appeared in the pages of PARABOLA , is
drawn to Gurdjieffs philosophy of
nature. He points out that Gurdjieff
speaks of levels upon levels of materiality
related to ever finer energies. If you
wish, reality is plastic. And there are
levels that we in our ordinary states cannot fathom or comprehend.
P: It does seem that Gurdjieff calls us
to respect the immensity of creation
and the mystery of who we are.
FS: In the great traditions, like Islam,
it is said that God created the universe
because He felt He was a hidden treasure
or a hidden jewel, and He wished to be
known. But Gurdjieff brings a rather
audacious extra dimension. He says that
God needed to create the universe out
of a cosmic necessityto counter and
overcome the merciless Heropass,
the inexorable flow of time that leads
inevitably to entropy and death. The
Creator brought the universe into
being in order to regenerate Himself.
Moreoverand this is a very extraordinary ideaGurdjieff says that we have

ESSENTIAL CORE A SOURCE TEACHING.

exchange that is called by the Higher.

Except for Gurdjieff, I am not aware
that any of the great teachings tend to
say much about that. But for me, that
exchange of energies is the deep necessity to which the Gurdjieff Work calls one.
The full meaning and significance of our
lives resides in that.

P: Gurdjieff called conscience the most

sacred of all human faculties and the
most refined of our modes of intelligence. What is conscience?
FS: There are some who profess to tell
you exactly what conscience is. I can
only say that its a very high thing. It
doesnt come from me. I have come
to see it as a force that descends from a
high source, and is experienced when
the inner alignment corresponds with
that possibility.
Generally, Im not touched by conscience. But there are moments when
all of my parts come togetherthe
thought, the body, the feeling are
mobilized, as it were, in the awesome
realization that I am indeed incomplete,
WINTER 2007 | 17

not whole. And through that acceptance,

that surrender, this other energy is able
to pass.
Gurdjieff speaks of His Endlessness
[God] in anthropomorphical terms,
which is perhaps all that is ordinarily possible for us. But what is central to his
teaching is this vertical exchange of energy, for which we are needed. Andto
repeat myselfI am needed not as I

WHO IS THE TEACHER?

"I AM" IS THE TEACHER.

ordinarily am. I need to be in conformity

with that need. To me thats why were
alive. This is the sacred service to which
we are called.

P: What indications does Gurdjieff give

about this high service?
FS: Gurdjieff has intentionally buried
the dog very deep, as he keeps reminding us. Yet there are undeniable indications of his meaning in his famous
Obligolnian Strivings. Take, for
instance, the fourth striving: The striving from the beginning of their existence
to pay for their arising and their individuality as quickly possible, in order afterwards to be free to lighten as much as
possible the Sorrow of our Common
Father. What could this conceivably
mean: To work to alleviate the sorrow
of His Endlessness? There must be some
need, then, which the Creator feels
anthropomorphically, to be sureas
suffering. Clearly, this means that His
Endlessness needs what only we human
beings can deliver. What then is the sor18 | PARABOLA

row of His Endlessness? And what is this

vertical exchange that takes place
through remorse of conscience?
What the brothers have found, if I
may express the experience with some
ecclesiastical overtones, is that there is
an energya conscious energythat
comes from On High to meet my
remorse. And thus it is that in moments
of great, great suffering, joy appears, like
the phoenix rising from the ashes. Its
not that I create the joy. Surely this is
the conscious force that descends; it
meets the suffering that I experience in
realizing my own imperfection. Both the
creature and the Creator are nourished
through the process and the outcome
of this exchange.

P: One can have an experience of

remorse, and of the joy. Thats different
than stating that this is something thats
needed by His Endlessness. It seems that
is knowledge that I cant come to on my
own. That is something that is revealed.
FS: Its revealedor, if you wish, it is
realized. As the Scriptures put it, No
man by taking thought can add a cubit
to his stature. Gurdjieff could not merely have invented that understanding.
P: Because in the end, you feel that it
is true.
FS: You know with absolute certitude
through the feeling.
P: So who was Gurdjieff that this revelation worked through him?
FS: Who indeed. One comes to appreciate that in Gurdjieffs teaching, as in the
great Abrahamic traditions, and also in
Vedanta, for example, the pivotal under-

standing is non-dualisticthat there is

only One who incarnates. It is I Am
that incarnates. Who is the Teacher? I
Am is the Teacher. Remember Exodus
[3:14]: And God said unto Moses, I
AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt
thou say unto the children of Israel, I

ent levels, in a vast spectrum or range of

actuality. The I Am encompasses the
entire scale of being from the finest to
the densest. There is no other. One
senses then the depth to the reality of
Gurdjieffs understanding when reflecting on his fathers death, that I am Thou.

AM hath sent me unto you.

The centrality of this great understanding is indicated by the statement
Gurdjieff would make in his Paris meetings, that the exercise of I Am is the
first exercise in the work for selfremembering. And he evidently communicated many variations on that theme.
In the end, the title of Gurdjieffs third
book conveys the pivotal place that this
revelation plays in his teaching: Life is
real only then, when I Am.
One experiences the I Am at differ-

Of course, so I can easily parrot the

words I am, and they will have no
more significance and no more relevance
than anything spoken by a simple person
on the street. Theres no fundamental
alignment, however remotely, with the
higher. But it slowly becomes a centering element in ones wish to be. For
example, I can establish that Im here
in this space now by declaring silently
that I am. It may have a very limited
resonance in me, it may represent something so shallow, but it is a beginning of
WINTER 2007 | 19

this movement towards wholeness,

of the return to the primordial perfection
that was sacrificed through the very act
of Creation itself. It was the great and
humble Meister Eckhart who made the
defining observation that the only
one who can pronounce am with

ging instinctive need for self-perfection

in the sense of being. For me this is a
movement of return. It is this movement
for which we are intended. It must be
this that eases the burden of the Creator.
I do not see how we can be of help in
alleviating the sorrow of His

absolute conviction is God. For the

rest of us, it becomes a conscious labor
a workto pronounce this formula
with meaning. If we are honest, we see
that we can pronounce this only with
relative authenticity, relative unity, relative certitude.

Endlessnessthe aim of the fourth

strivingif we are content to be fragmented, incomplete, indulging our lack
of unity. So long as we make no attempts
to work for unity and Presence, all the
higher energies can only pass us by. In
Gurdjieffs felicitous phrasing, possibilities such as these can only beat their
wings in vain.

P: Are the so-called strivings merely a catalog of desiderata, of remote possibilities,

or do they have a practical significance?
FS: The second striving, for example,
urges us to have a constant and unflag20 | PARABOLA

P: More than once Mme. de Salzmann

said that if there arent enough people
working, the Earth will fall.

FS: I think she said that if certain energies

dont appear, the planet, the Earth, will fall.
P: How do you understand that?
FS: One feels that the Earth is being
violated when one considers the enormous numbers of human beings who
have been, and are being, slaughtered
in wars to end all wars, ethnic cleansings,
the senseless eradication of defenseless
species, the evident consequences of our
squandering of non-renewable resources,
and the ravages of global climate change.
Perhaps Gurdjieffs warnings about the
use of electricitythe whole planet is
wired nowarent just idle gestures.
Some of his early students recall how
he went around switching off lights,
saying, I will not be guilty. Perhaps
he knew something that we still fail to
recognize.
P: One key work in the Gurdjieff Work is
sitting practice. In many lines of
Buddhism, including Zen, sitting is
emphasized. If sitting is so important,
why dont Gurdjieffians sit all the time?
In Zen or Vipassana, people will sit for
days, weeks, months at a time.
FS: That is where Gurdjieff is so extraordinarily normal. We have two natures.
On the one hand, we have this corporeal
presence that has to act. I have to be in
life, manifesting, moving, having to do
things, fulfilling certain needs of the
planetary body (yet another of
Gurdjieffs strivings). And for that I
need a healthy organism and a healthy
egoism. One of the remarkable aspects of
his teaching is the way he encouraged
people to be active in life. I have
known quite a number of people professedly in the Work who, in the earlier

days, made strange personal sacrifices

from a totally misguided sense of going
against their natures.
And then there is this other, totally different, nature, which is impervious to my
temporal success or failure. It needs to
be embodied. It needs the creaturely
nature, and it needs the functional sheath
or surrounding in order to have an
action on the planet. One can experience, especially but not exclusively in sittings, that a certain alignment can appear
through ones active participation but
only if there is no attempt at doing.
In that moment, the attunement, the
receptivity, is there and I can be in touch
with something higher. But we dont
truly understand that relationship, or the
need for the harmonious development
that is the indispensable prerequisite for
the movement between levels. Its not
just to be pleasant, socially acceptable,
warm and open. Its in order to allow
this other energy to act on the planet.
So for many of us, the sittings are a very
necessary and profound work. They are
not an escape from the realities of everyday life.

P: There are Buddhists who go on silent

retreats for years. The Tibetan teacher
Gehlek Rinpoche says, A mole goes
into a cave, and three years later a mole
comes out.
William Segal, who loved to sit and
who loved Zen, once corrected a Work
leader who was trying to impose Zen sitting on his students. Segal said, This is
not that. We try self-remembering here.
FS: Yes, as I have said elsewhere, some
group leaders have a lot to account
for. What is the Self that remembers? If
it is indeed, as the Great Knowledge
indicates, something abiding, something
WINTER 2007 | 21

without beginning or end, something

at the source of life itself, it must encompass action, it must include our having
to manifest. But it is the little self, the
small I, the creature, who fails in its
being-duty to be intentionally, consciously, engaged with the life that
is given.

FRANK SINCLAIR CLIMBING JACOBS LADDER

TABLE MOUNTAIN, SOUTH AFRICA, C. 1956

P: One way the Gurdjieff Work seems to

differ from the traditions is that it has no
stated ethics or morality, no emphasis on
living with compassion, or with nonviolence. How does what is cultivated by
the Work look to the rest of the world?
How does a person who has cultivated
22 | PARABOLA

intention or attention behave, so that we

may know it?

FS: P. D. Ouspensky recalled Gurdjieffs

famous response: We do not teach
morality: we teach how to find conscience. He did not say, Practice
immorality. In fact, Gurdjieffs one
great stated imperative was that we not
be parasites. These great virtues of love,
compassion, generosity cant appear in
an unprincipled surrounding. Many people regarded the seeming abandon with
which Gurdjieff dealt with the massive
egoisms around him as a license to
behave likewiseto freely vent their own
selfishness and vanity and self-love when
they set out to bring the Work. My
wife recalls a moment in the Hotel
Wellington when Gurdjieff railed at
some luckless woman. And in the very
next instant, my wife felt that he was in
touch with something greaterGod?
Everyone felt this other levelof love,
divine love, she said. I feel that when
Gurdjieff acted as he did, it was out of
the deepest compassion. It was for their
souls. Theres so much misunderstanding about the Gurdjieff teaching. His
methods surely were totally appropriate
to his being. But they were not for aping.
P: Gurdjieff said that Christianity over
time had, quite lawfully, strayed from its
original aims. How do those in the
Gurdjieff Work meet the challenge of the
same laws causing the Work to stray from
Gurdjieffs intent?
FS: One has to continue working. One
has to be faithful to what has been
revealed, and one must be discriminating. As in all the formal traditions, there
are a great many forces at play now in the
Gurdjieffian worldso many different

visions, or lack of vision; so many different agendas at so many levels, so many

opportunities to lose the thread, to
become identified with some confining
perspective; so many people who do not
see the scale of the difficulty but feel nevertheless that they are chosen to protect
the faith. But I recall Pope John Paul
IIs famous injunction to the activist
priests in Latin America: he told them
to get off the streets and to pray more.

superiorum, reminds us, the Supreme

Mystery infinitely transcends Its aspect
as The Creator. Speaking very loosely
then, when the Absolute does act, It
would appear to do so through the
agency or the aspect of the Creator.
Gurdjieff himself appears to convey this
understanding when speaking of the
laws of world creation and world maintenance. Nevertheless, he refers to one

P: So there is a work.
FS: To pray more. To be more interiorized. To turn more actively to the
unplumbed reaches of our inner world.
The I AM is still not the Absolute,
and a realization such as that puts one
squarely before the mysteries of the
Great Knowledge, of which Gurdjieff
was such a resounding exemplar. Even
though Gurdjieff mercilessly scoffed at
the cassock as an empty symbol, he was
brought up in the orthodoxy of the
Eastern Church and he chose to be
buried in its ambience. He must have
done so for the esoteric meanings invisibly embodied in the Christian tradition.
His whole extraordinary cosmological
teaching appears to me to point to the
timeless, perennial understanding that
beyond God is the Godhead, which is
the unfathomable source of all.
P: This takes us into deep territory.
FS: Here then one must speak with
great circumspection, and not as one
who presumes to know. Meister
Eckhart, for example, is emphatic that
the Godhead and God are as distinct
as heaven and earth. And a latter-day
Monk of the West* in the modern
Christian Church, writing cum permissu

WE ARE CALLED TO TURN TO THE SOURCE,

TO THE VERY SILENCE AT THE CORE OF
OUR BEING.

comprehensive and infinite Source of all

that existsOur Almighty Omni-Loving
Common Father Uni-Being Creator
Endlessness. It seems to be this ultimate
Unknown that Gurdjieff calls us to fathom in our attempts to disinter the dog
he has buried so deep.

P: How then are we to approach these

vast imponderables?
FS: Surely not by taking more thought.
Insteadand here one speaks ahead
of oneselfwe are called to turn to the
Source, to the Silence at the very core
of our being, to the unmanifest that
informs all forms. To accept to be in
question. And to open to the unknown
transforming force.

* A Monk of the West, in Christianity and the

Doctrine of Non-Dualism (Sophia Perennis).

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