D. H. LAWRENCE'S IDEA OF

THE NATURE OF MAN--

IN COMPARISON WITH G. I. GURDJIEFF'S IDEAS

MASASHI ASAI

I

The aim of this essay is to offer an approach to D. H. Lawrence's ideas by

comparing them with the ideas of G.I. Gurdjieff. The validity of this

comparison results from the fact that the ideas and aims of these two thinkers

have much in common, and yet they use quite diffrent methods to achieve

their own aims.

Unlike D. H. Lawrence, G. I. Gurdjieff is little known in most academic

circles, except in modern psychology. Gurdjieff was born in Caucasia,

probably in 1877, of a Greek father and an Armenian mother. Where he was

and what he did 'until 1912, when he appeared in Moscow, is not very clear.

In Moscow he immediately formed a group and started teaching the ideas as

well as the sacred dances and the mental and physical exercises which he

learnt and collected, as he said, in Central Asia. After the Communist

Revolution, he could not stay in Russia and continue the "Work," the name

which he and his pupils gave to all their activities. They moved to Caucasia,

then to Constantinople, Germany, England, and finally settled down in

Fontainebleau-Avon in France in 1922. He bought a large mansion there

with the financial aid of P. D. Ouspensky, one of the most skillful followers

who now started his own Work in London. In this mansion Gurdjieff

established his "Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man" and

continuted teaching there until 1933. Among his pupils were A. R. Orage,

(42 J

43

editor of the magazine New Age as well as one of the most influential critics

of the contemporary English literary scene; Katherine Mansfield; Maurice

Nicoll, a Jungian psychologist, and some other well-known people went to

his Institute. Sometime in this period he started writing which he had been

avoiding as a way of transmitting knowledge;and the final outcome of this

effort was his trilogy: Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson; Meetings with

Remarkable Men; and Life is Real Only Then, When "J Am." In 1933 he sold the

mansion and moved to Paris. Continuing his writing there, he travelled

several times across the Atlantic, and found many followers in the U. S. A.

He died in 1949 in Paris, but his Work is still kept active by many "Gurdjieff

groups" especially in North America and Europe.1

II

Lawrence knew Gurdjieff through two different ways. Firstly, through his

literary friends in England such as Katherine Mansfield, John Middleton

Murry, and Aldous Huxley. As I mentioned before, Ouspensky, already

famous as a mathematician and philosopher outside Russia, started his

teaching based on Gurdjieff's ideas in London in 1921. His series of lectures

attracted many intellectuals, amongst them were Maurice Nicoll, James

Young, a medical doctor, John G. Bennett, a mathematician and linguist, A.

R. Orage, Katherine Mansfield, Kenneth Walker, an eminent surgeon,

Aldous Huxley, and Christopher Isherwood. Highly stimulated by the ideas

put forward, many of them eventually decided to go to Gurdjieff's Institute.

Mansfield was to die there in January 1923, after a three-month stay. Orage,

who became one of the most enthusiastic pupils, later moved to America and

gave great help to make Gurdjieff's ideas popular. ]. M. ~urry,famous critic

and now Mansfield's husband, tried to understand, following Mansfield's

strong recommendation, the ideas and various methods such as dances and

exercises, but eventually found it impossible to grasp their meanings and

44

usefulness. He refused to accompany his wife to the Institute, but later, after

her death, he expressed a rather positive opinion on GurdjieH and his

Institute as well as her entering it.2 A. Huxley was attending Ouspensky's

meetings, but he never got as far as becoming his pupil. And yet it is

interesting to know that Huxley was to show in his later years more and more

interest in hidden human potentialities which was identical with GurdjieH's

and Ouspensky's interest.3 From these friends Lawrence received the news

of Mansfield's death and also heard of the place where she had died.

The other link connecting Lawrence to Gurdjieff was Mabel Dodge

Luhan, an American patroness of artists, almost comparable with Gertrude

Stein in Paris. Having read Sea and Sardinia, Lawrence's second travel book,

she became affectionately interested in him, and invited him to her ranch in

Taos, New Mexico. Lawrence had already left England in 1919, after the

first World War, for his "Savage Pilgrimage" that led ,him to Italy, Ceylon,

and Australia; he then accepted Luhan's invitation. He found New Mexico

fascjnating, feeling that the mode of life of the American Indians he saw

there was far closer to his ideal than that of the Europeans.

Shortly afterwards, Luhan got interested also in GurdjieH's ideas, and

soon tried to establish a branch of his Institute on her ranch. She, then,

naturally, encouraged Lawrence to learn his ideas;4 and gave him Ouspens­

ky's Tertium Organum; In this book Lawrence made extensive marginalia

which can be seen in E. W. Tedlock's "D. H. Lawrence's Annotation of

Ouspensky's Tertium Organum.,,5 We shall consider, this essay before

proceeding with our discussion.

III

Lawrence's reaction to Ouspensky's book was simply one of hatred, at

least far beyond that of disagreement. Expressions such as "Bosh,"

"Rubbish," "Nonsense" are often seen. He also wrote to Luhan when he was

45

back in Europe, obviously extending his impression of Ouspensky's book to

GurdjieH's activities: " I have heard enough about that place at Fontaineb­

leau where Katherine Mansfield died, to know it is a rotten, false,

self-conscious place of people playing a sickly stunt."6

Although having been written before Ouspensky met Gurdjieff, the ideas

contained in Tertium Organum basically coincided with GurdjieH's ideas,

and that was, in its turn, why Ouspensky was fascinated by those which he

found more precise and deeper than his own. In this respect, therefore, the

fact that Lawrence identified Ouspensky and Gurdjieff was not wrong. Yet

one may wonder what made him think this way despite the fact that he had

neither met Gurdjieff himself nor been to his Institute.

E. W. Tedlock gives us some suggestions about these violent repulsions

from Lawrence. One of them is: "As the possessor of his own key, he was not

apt to agree with either Ouspensky or her [Luhan]."7 Another one is: "a

stubborn common sense, stemming perhaps from his lower class origins-the

importance of daily business of . life was strong in him-and from the

feet-on-the-ground opposition of his wife."g The third is: "He hates the view of

the psyche as automatic, choiceless, and when Ouspensky countenances this

view regarding instinct, he strongly disagrees."g These three points being

closely connected, let us call them respectively "emotional repulsion,"

"environmental repulsion," and "intellectual repulsion."

To discuss the present issue more effectively, I will begin examining the

last one first, that is, "intellectual repulsion." Let us look a little more

closely at Tedlock's opinion:

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Lawrence's treatment of Ouspensky's book is his silence about Ouspensky's 'heralding of a new consciousness and a higher race of man. Within a few years Lawrence was to create in The Plumed SerPent his own conception of such a race, and to consummate their rebellion against and mastery Cif those aspects.

46

of modern culture that were inimical to his vision of perfected life20

These comments appear quite sound. Tedlock goes on to say: "It may be that

he balked at Ouspensky's emphasis on consciousness, for this was a term that

was anathema t~ him."ll The word "anathema" seems to oversimplify the

issue. On the contrary, in fact; Lawrence uses the word "consciousness" quite

frequently throughout his works. However, it is also true that his use of the

word alters from time to time, even in the same book, signifying different

aspects and meanings of the word. The word "consciousness" is used by

him basically in two ways, with "positive" and "negative" connotations.

Positive usage of it is seen in such passages as follows:

Any man of real individuality tries to know and understand what is happening, even in himself, as he goes along. This struggle for verbal consciousness should not be left out in art. It is a very great part of life. It is not superimposition of a theory. It is the passionate struggle into conscious beingY

We're only half-conscious and half alive. We've got to come alive and aware.13

His favorite phrases such as "physical intelligence" or "phallic conscious­

ness" are also used in a similar context. With this use of "consciousness" he

tries to convey the concept of "awareness" which, he thinks, is necessary for

man to live a real life, pointing that most of us lack this positive

consciousness, which is the major cause of our unhappiness.

On the other hand, "consciousness" in the negative sense often appears as

something opposing "naturalness" and "spontaneity." In other words, this

consciousness blocks the spontaneous flow of energies which are in the form

of thoughts, emotions, and movements, which naturally come out of the

"core" in man,14 and, as a result, this blocking makes everyone of his

expressions and behaviour unnatural and self-conscious. Examples of such a

47

usage are quite ample; a typical one is seen in Women in Love, where Birkin is

blaming Hermione:

'You'd be verily deliberately spontaneous- that's you. Because you want to have everything in your own volition, your deliberate voluntary consciousness. You want it all in that loathsome little skull of yours, that ought to be cracked like a nut. ... If one cracked your skull perhaps one might get a spontaneous, passionate woman out of you, with real sensuality. As it is, what you want is pornography-looking at yourself in mirrors, watching your naked animal actions in mirrors, so that you can have it all in your consciousness, make it all mental.'l5

Such terms as "blood-consciousness" and "mind-consciousness,"l6 for

instance, signify the same idea of "positive" and "negative" consciousness

repectively, only with clearer distinction.

Here let us turn our eyes to Gurdjieffs view of consciousness. A fairly

long, yet quite lucid, explanation of this matter is recorded in Ouspensky's

In Search of the Miraculous:

"Your principal mistake consists in thinking that you always have consciousness, and in general, either that consciousness is always present or that it is never present. In reality consciousness is a property which is continually changing. Now it is present, now it is not present. And there are different degrees and different levels of consciousness. Both consciousness and different degrees of consciousness must be under­stood in oneself by sensation, by taste. No definition can help you in this case and no definition is possible so long as you do not understand what you have to define. And science and philosophy cannot define consciousness because they want to define it where it does not exist. It is necessary to distinguish consciousness from the possibility of consciousness.

,We have only possibility of consciousness and rare flashes of it. Therefore we cannot define what consciousness is."l7

"In all there are four states of consciousness possible for man. "The two usual, that is, the lowest states of consciousness are first,

sleep, in other words a pas~ive state in which man.spends a third and ..

48

very often a half of his life. And second, the state in which men spend the other part of their lives, in which.they walk the streets, write books, talk on lofty subjects, take part in politics, kill one another, which they regard as active and call 'clear consciousness' or the 'waking state of consiousness.' ...

"The third state of consciousness is self-remembering or self­consciousness or consiousness of one's being. It is usual to consider that we have this state of consciousness or that we can have it if we want it. Our science and philosophy have overlooked the fact that we do not possess

this state of consciousness and that we cannot create it in ourselves by desire or decision alone.

"The fourth state of consciousness is called the objective state of

consciousness. In this state a man can see things as they are. Flashes of this state of consciousness also occur in man. In the religions of all nations there are indications of possibility of a state of consciousness of this kind which is called 'enlightenment' and various other names but which cannot be described in words. But the only right way to objective consciousness is through the development of self-consciousness ....

"The. fourth state of consciousness in man means an altogether different state of being; it is the result of inner growth and of long and difficult work on oneself."18

According to this idea, which lies in the very center of Gurdjieff's thought,

there are no such things as "positive" or "negative" consciousness, or

"blood-consciousness" or "mind-consciousness," but only different degrees

of consciousness. Therefore what a man must, and can, do is to acquire

higher states of consciousness, almost like climbing up the ladder of

consciousness.

Discussion on this point involves a closely connected idea which is, as

Tedlock points out in his essay, man's mechanicalness. Gurdjieff says:

"Man is a machine. All his ideas, actions, words, thoughts, feelings, convictions, opinions, and habits are the result of external influences, external impressions. Out of himself a man cannot produce a single

49

thought, a single action. Everything he says, does, thinks, feels-all this happens."19

Because of this, when something happens to him, that is, a certain external

influence affects him, his reaction is, in most cases, determined by the pattern

of emotion and thought, a certain repertoire within himself, which are created

and accumulated by his previous experiences and conditions. Whatever he

does, in this sense, "he" does nothing: simply his organism reacts according

to an applicable pattern depending on the influence or stimulation that is

received. He is, then, not "free" at all.

Gurdjieff tries to explain this idea in -several other ways. One of them is

that man has no one big "I" in himself; in other words, there are many small

"1"s, each of them declaring itself the master. And from time to time,

depending on an external stimulus, a certain "I" or a group of them get more

power over the others temporarily and do whatever they wish. This very

often creates undesirable, and sometimes even positively harmful results. It

is, therefore, this lack of harmony in man that drives him into a miserable

situation.

Putting the idea another way, man has no "will." If he acquires it, he will

be able to get out of his automatism, and consequently, of his miserable

situation. But in order to attain this "will," man has to make an effort and

suffer; in Gurdjieff's words, he has to "die" in order to be "reborn."

Interpreting the well-known text in the Bible: "Except a corn of wheat fall

into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but, if it die, it bringth forth much

fruit," he says: "A man may be born, but in order to be born he mustfirst die, and in

order to die ~ must/irst awake.'>20 And he adds: "To awaken means to realize

one's nothingness, that is to realize one's complete and absolute mechanical­

ness and one's complete and absolute helplessness."21 In order to go through

this process to the final spiritual rebirth, special effort i:> required. He calls

50

this effort "conscious labours and intentional sufferings."22

Lawrence may partly agree with these ideas. Concerning man's mechani­

calness he says, for example: "Our education from the start has taught us a

certain range of emotions, what to feel and what not to feel, and how to feel

the feelings we allow ourselves to feel."z3 Furthering this idea, he also says:

"Nothing that comes from deep, passional soul is bad, or can be bad."z4 This

seems to imply that man has by nature harmony in the depths of him, so that

only if he lets something develop from it, all will be well. It is on the basis of

this view that his denunciation of modern civilization takes place, im­

peaching it for being founded only on "mind-consciousness."

F or a better understanding of the issue, let us recall the significant passage

previously quoted in the note: "A third law is that the naive or innocent core

in a man is always his vital core, and infinitely more important than his

intellect or his reason. It is only from his core of unconscious naivete that the

human being is ultimately a responsible and dependable being." His message

is clear enough: a major cause of our unhappiness today is our intellect or

reason, or our too much relying on it, which is. destroying our "naivete" and

"innocent core," disturbing its spontaneous expression. To sum up Lawr­

ence's view, man is no such thing as a machine; he is an intrinsically naive,

harmonious, and spontaneous being; only his intellect and the external

conditions which intellect has created are suppressing his nature.

Explaining the idea Lawrence uses the concepts of "core" and "intellect"

as quite different, almost opposing, factors in man. Gurdjieff also makes a

<similar sort of distinction between these two factors, calling them "essence"

and "personality" respectively. According to him, everyone is born with

"essence" which is everything he has by birth, inherited from his parents and

ancestors. But in most of us "essence" stops growing at quite an early stage

of its development, at about the age of between five and ten, depending on

one's environment. What starts growing at these ages is called "personality"

51

which includes everything besides "essence," everything acquired afterone's

birth. In other words, "personality" is created by one's environment and

education among other causes.25

We now can say that what Lawrence calls "core" and "intellect" and what

Gurdjieff calls "essence" and· "personality" signify essentially the same

notions. Even more, both of them equally emphasize the necessity of a

harmonious development of these two factors in man. Lawrence says:

We've got to try to educate them [our children] to that point where at last· there will be a perfect correspondence between the spontaneous, yearning, impulsive-desirous soul and the automatic mind which runs on little wheels of ideas.26

And Gurdjieff says: "A successful beginning of work on oneself requires the

happy occurrence of an equal development of personality and essence.27

So far they seem to agree with each other. Yet, as we go into their ideas

deeper, we see some differences between their views, that mainly consist in

how to achieve this aim. Let us look at Lawrence's case first.

To achieve this aim of "perfect correspondence," he brings our attention to

instinct and unconsciousness. He comes to believe that they are the only

passage for us to reach and perceive our "core," as well as the only means

through which it can express itself. This is exactly why he puts so much

emphasis on the sexual aspects of mp-no The closer he came to the end of his

life, the more he seemed to beeom~ pessimistic about our present situation

and the possibility of getting out of it. Accordingly sex became more and

more important to him because it brought about "communion" much more

easily and naturally than through any other ways; and he thought this

"communion" the highest possible form of human relationship as well as the

relationship between everyone of living beings.

And yet sex did not mean only the sex act to him; on the contrary, he came

52

to put as much emphasis on "ch~stity," remarking that it came out of the real

sense of sex, as on the actual sex act.28 But even still, the sex act ·itself

occupies a vitally important place in his ideas of sex. Here we have a

beautiful passage from Lady Chatterley's Lover showing how it works for the

aIm of "communion":

And it seemed she [Conniel was like the sea, nothing but dark waves rising and heaving, heaving with a great swell, so that slowly her whole darkness was in motion, and she was ocean rolling its dark, dumb mass. Oh, and far down inside her the deeps parted and rolled asunder, in long, far-travelling billows, and ever, at the quick of her, the depth parted and rolled asunder, from the centre of soft plunging, as the plunger went deeper and deeper, touching lower, and she was deeper and deeper and deeper disclosed, the heavier the billows of her rolled away to some shore, uncovering her, and closer and closer plunged the palpable unknown, and further and further rolled the waves of herself away from herself, leaving her, till suddenly, in a soft, shuddering convulsion, the quick of all her plasm was touched, she knew herself was touched, the consummation was upon her, and she was gone. She was gone, she was not, and she was born: a woman.29

Connie, the unhappy heroine, met a "genuine" man Mellors, and through the

sex act with him she "died" and was "reborn." Just as in Gurdjieff's ideas,

"death" and "rebirth" are vital metaphors to Lawrence. Yet in his view they

occur, as clearly seen in the p~ssage above, almost exclusively through the

genuine physical contacts, the most effective and dramatic of which are the

sexual ories. That is to say, they take place only through physical and

instinctive communication without any hindrance of mind and intellect.

Connie is out of her consciousness: she is unconscious. By which Lawrence

seems to suggest that every great transformation occurs in the state of

unconsciousness.

What we should do, then, according to him, is to leap into relationships

53

courageously which involve more flesh and blood, so as to vitalize

"blood-consciousness" as well as to push "mental-consciousness" back into

its appropriate position, making it take only its original functions. For a

successful achievement of this task, some kind of strong stimulus is

necessary, and this is not easy to obtain in the usual experiences of everyday

life.

This realization drove Lawrence into his "Savage Pilgrimage." The new

mode of life, which he found on its way, was "new" to him and most

Westerners, but in reality it wasan"old" mode with its ancient wisdom. And·

it was this very wisdom, and the organic connection between the wisdom and

the people's lives, that fascinated him. This fascination in its turn led him

into all kinds of myth, mysticism, and esotericism; and the major outcome of

this search was The Plumed Serpent. In this novel he shows us the process of

establishing a mystico-religious society, ruled by a remarkable leader. It is

the most enthusiastic attempt Lawrence ever made to show his ideal society,

which is largely based on mystic rites and feelings. And here he also tries to

create, as Tedlock pointed out, his own conception of "a new consciousness

and a higher race of man."

Not long afterwards, however, he seemed to give up the whole idea of this

mystic hierarchy. In the letter written in the period when he was writing Lady

Chatterley's Lover, he says:

On the whole I agree with you, the leader-cum-follower relationship is a bore. And the new relationship will be some sort of tenderness, sensitive, between men and men and men and women .... I feel one still has to fight for the phallic reality, as against the non-phallic cerebration unrealities. I suppose the phallic consciousness is part of the whole consciousness which is your aim. To me it's a vital part.30

This is a confirmation of his faith in the blood and the flesh. He seems to

have come back to this earlier faith after a long quest into ideal human

54

existence. In the following quotations from the two different periods, sixteen

years apart from each other, however, we can see how consistent this faith of

his was:

My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than th~ intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true .... All I want is to answer to my blood, direct, without fribbling intervention of mind, or moral, or what-not. 31

What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his 'soul.' Man wants his physical fulfilment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. ... Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh .... We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos.32

In short, Lawrence tried to show how blood-consciousness was set in motion

and how mind-consciousness dwindled to its proper functions. The most

effective way to this purpose, he found, is to believe ·in the blood and the

flesh and' to be more physical, through genuine interaction between both

sexes.

How about Gurdjieff's approach to the mm of harmonizing the two

different factors, or modes of consciousness, in man? Just like Lawrence he

lays stress on the complete development of "essence" for man's harmonious

life, and yet he evaluates the functions of "personality" more than Lawrence

evaluates "mind-consciousness." He remarks that "personality" is indispens­

able and we have to develop it to a certain extent for the further development

of "essence." Maurice N icoll, interpreting this idea, says:

The further development of essence depends on the formation of personality around it. ... For it to develop, personality must become passive .... The first education is an education that life gives us; and

55

this is absolutely necessary. The better a person is educated by means of life, the more he learns, the more intelligent he is, the more experienced he is, the more he knows about people, and about affairs, the more he knows about manners, the better he can express himself, the more he is

able to use the different sides of life, the better for him.33

Although Gurdjieff's aim is never to acquire more elaborate intellect,34 he

employs methods of achieving the aim such as self-observation, discussion,

mental and physical exercises, and dances, all of which need appropriate

intellect and reasoning. In other words, "personality" should take, in the

early stages of one's transformation, positive place, and it may become

passive in its course according to one's achievement.

Sex also plays an important part in his ideas; the significance he admits to

has a strong resemblance to that which Lawrence supports. He views sex in

terms of sexual energy which has a profound importance in man's existence.

Yet what is peculiar to Gurdjieff is that he thinks that a sexual communion,

and the realization or enlightenment reached in the course of the sex act,

would not be sufficient to achieve the aim: to transform one's whole being.

One who has felt such a realization may easily slip back into dullness of

daily routine, to an ordinary degree of consciousness which is dominated by

intellect, forgetting the realization altogether.35 In order to keep it ever fresh

and vital, something should be done.

IV

The discussion at this point connects us to the second issue we have

pointed out, that is, Lawrence's "environmental repulsion" against Ouspens­

ky-Gurdjieff. Which repulsion was, as we have seen, based on "a stubborn

common sense, stemming perhaps from his lower class origins--the import­

ance of the daily business of life was strong in him." Apart from that this

remark seems less convincing as a cause of his repulsion than the other two

56

points Tedlock has given, the idea of attaching importance to the "daily·

business of life" seems to refer more appropriately to Gurdjieff's ideas. In the

practice of them, how to carry on such a business i$, as Katherine Mansfield

wrote to J. M. Murry, cif paramount importance: "Here the philosophy of the

'system' takes second place. Practice is first. You simply have to wake up

instead of talking about it, in fact. You have to learn to do all the things you

say you want to do."36 In view of this passage, if Tedlock's remark was right,

we have to conclude that this repulsion of Lawrence's was entirely the result

of his misunderstanding.

Misunderstanding? Did he ever try to understand Gurdjieff's, or Ouspens­

ky's, ideas at all? If not, there could not be any sort of misunderstanding. And

at this point, as one can see, we have started treating the third issue:

Lawrence's "emotional repulsion."

Despite Luhan's repeated recommendation to visit GurdjieH's Institute,

Lawrence kept refusing to do so. But, eventually, one day in 1924, he

accepted and wrote to her: " ... we called at th.at Fontainebleau place. The

Russian there believes entirely in going against the grain. He would make you

wash windows and scrub floors eight hours a day, and the viler your temper

the better. ,,37 J ames Moore carefully adds that Gurdjieff himself had left for

America shortly before his visit. 38 Yet, regardless of this fact, if Lawrence

temporarily set his ideas aside and tried to observe the reality of the events

and to understand what was really going on at the Institute, that is to say, if he

tried to grasp essential elements hidden under seemingly ridiculous

activities, he might have reserved to make such extremely antipathetic

remarks.

To make the point clearer, let us consider a correspondence between

Luhan and Lawrence. Luhan wrote to him:

Gurdjieff says quite calmly, here's a way. Sounds crazy, sounds awful.

57

Try it. Observe Mabel. Stand back a bit and see her. ... This Mable has three modes or centres--instinctive, mental, and emotional. They have

eaten up the universe. She m"ust create a fourth one herself--the I.39

Lawrence replied:

My I, my fourth centre, will look after me better than I should ever look after it. ... In the end, if you Gourdjieff [sic] yourself to the very end, a dog that barks at you will be .a dynamo sufficient to explore your universe. When you are final master of yourself, you are nothing, you can't even wag your tailor bark. ... when the !finally emerges, that way, it will be half demon and half imbecile .... Don't you see Gourdjieff's [sic] ultimate I is the ultimate self-importance?40

This exchange of opinions unequivocally tells us that Lawrence already had

had his own extremely firm view of man and life so that he did not take pains

to really understand someone else's view. From Gurdjieff's point of view, the

remark such as "When you are final master of yourself, you are nothing"

makes no sense at all; on the contrary, to become master of oneself is the

whole aim of his teaching. Moreover, this remark even shows a slight

contradiction in Lawrence himself, as he himself once had a similar idea of

becoming "master of oneself." Birkin's resolute assertion of "otherness" and

"star-equilibrium" isno other than Lawrence's own version of this idea. Even

Mellors in Lady Chatteeley s Lover, before meeting Connie, wanted to be a

"master of himself" in his own way, that is, in seclusion.41 But the emphasis

in this last novel of Lawrence's apparently shifted from one's "own isolate

salvation of his 'soul'" to "living unison," which view was manifested in a

more straightforward way in "The Man Who Died" and Apocalypse. Therefore,

in the period when he wrote this letter to Luhan, the idea of becoming

"master of oneself" has almost entirely receded, even appearing to him

disgusting.

Looking at the transition of Lawrence's thought with Gurdjieff's view in'

58

mind, both ideas, that is, the idea of becoming one's own master, and of

entering living unison, appear quite sound. Yet a significant point here is

that in Lawrence these two ideas did not seem to reconcile each other and

reside in himself in peace. According to Gllrdjieff, on the other hand, these

two ideas do not eliminate nor contradict each other. On the contrary, they

are complementary. That is' to say, unless one becomes one's own master, it

is neatly impossible to enter any living unison; at the same time unless one

has any help from vital relationships, it will be very hard to become one's

own master. Participation mystique must have a solid base of "self" in man. To

become one's own master has nothing to do with egoism or self-importance,

not even with individualism in the sense of ordinary usage. In this respect,

Lawrence's renunciation of individualism at the end of his life, as we will see

shortly, seems a right step for a further development, althought it was too

late.

Another remark in his letter to Luhan would help up to elucidate this issue

further. Th~ remark is: "My I, my fourth centre, will look after me better than

I should ever look after it," which openly declares that he does have a fourth

center.Whatever he means by that, it is certain that this center possesses

some higher functions which the other centers do not. Whatever the terms

are, this is definitely the object that many people in various religious and

intellectual circles try to attain. It is admittedly a delicate question if

Lawrence had it. A number of people who personally knew him suggest that

he. had some ex:traordinary abilities. Yet what makes me hesitate to fully

accept what he said about his fourth center is the situation he was in in his

last years.

Most remarkable with him in this period seems to me an unequivocal gap

between his ideas and his emotional attitude towards mankind and the world.

Let us take, for example, "The Man Who Loved Islands," a short story

written not long before his death. Here we can see Cathcart's, the hero's,

59

ultimate despair and abhorrence of man and the world. He runs away from

every living creature, and eventually it is suggested that he dies in the snow,

in solitude. Man and the world appear to him nauseating, suffocating him

into the sheer death of his spirit before the death of his body. To us who

know Lawrence's other writings of this period it is hardly difficult to identify

Cathcart with Lawrence himself. However, while Cathcart is completely

despairing, Lawrence is split into despair and hope; hope for the better

existence of human beings. Why was this? How did this split happen, despite

his profound insights and philosophy?

As an answer to this question, I would suggest his supreme confidence in

himself. In fact, whatTedlock implied by saying that "As the possessor of his

own key, he was not apt to agree with either Ouspensky or her" was this

confidence. Katherine Mansfield is much more decisive on this point: "He

[Lawrence] and E. M. F orster are two men who could understand this place

[Gurdjieff's Institute] if they would. But I think Lawrence's pride would keep

him back.,,42 James Moore's comment is cynical: "Lawrence was essentially

in the market to sell ideas, not to buy them ... ,,43 What they mean is

essentially one thing: Lawrence's strong confidence in himself, or pride, kept

him back from considering Gurdjieff's ideas more calmly and impartially,

which might have helped him to fulfil the gulf between his thoughts and

feelings.44 These three might have even implied that, to use his own words,

Lawrence's "ultimate 'I' was the ultimate self-importance.,,45

In the present discussion, his remark in Apocalypse becomes even more

significant; that is: "So that my individualism is really an illusion."46 This

passage seems to me his last confession which is questioning, or even

denying, his previous quest based on faith in individual~sm. (Even his faith

in the blood and the flesh was founded on this iridividualism.) It is followed

by: "What we want is to ... re-establish the living organic connection with

the cosmos ... Start with the sun, and the rest will slowly, slowly happen.,,47

60

These last passages in his last book sound as though he admits that he could

not find the answer nor solution to the p~oblerris encountered, so all he can do

is to leave a hint which may lead to a solution. The repetition of "slowly" in

the last sentence strengthens this impression.

He wrote, in 1923 or 1924, in a significantly entitled essay, '''On Human

Destiny," that: "Man, poor, conscious, f~rever-animal man, has a very stern

destiny, from which he is never allowed to escape. It is his destiny that he

must move on and on, in the thought-adventure. ,,48 It seems a great pity that

he died at the point where he at last found a new, though slight, possiblity of

moving "on and on." For, whilst he did not seem to have much hope for, and

possibility' of, moving on in the thought-adventure, trapped in the gulf

between his thoughts and emotions, he now became ready to proceed with his

new quest by renouncing his "poison" of individualism. The end of the same

essay reads: "Man fights for a new conception of life and God, as he fights to

plant seeds in the spring: because he knows that is the only way to harvest. ...

But.you hiwe to fight even to plant seed. To plant seed you've got to kill a

great deal of weeds and break much ground."49 Looking back Lawrence's

whole work in the light of this passage, we cannot help feeling, despite his

rather unsatisfactory ending, that he did fight to "plant seed, to kill a great

deal of weeds and break much ground" throughout his life. And it is this

ceaseless effort and, struggle fora "new conception of life and God" that

makes us believe that he, in his own way, fulfilled "his" destiny of becoming

a great thought-adventurer.

Notes

1 Explaining the present situation, Kathleen Riordan, a psychologist, writes:

"In most of the major cities in the Western world you can ... find a group of

people who are, as they say, "in the work" ·-that is, who attempt, together and as

61

individuals, to function more consciously and harmoniously by studying the

ideas and practicing the techniques given by George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff.

(Kathleen Riordan, "Gurdjieff," Transpersonal Psychologies, ed. C. T. Tart [New

York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 283.)

2 He writes in the commentaries on Mansfield's letters:

It is not for me to pass judgment on the Gurdjieff Institute ... But I am

persuaded of this: that Katherine made of it an instrument for that purpose of

self-annihilation which is necessary to the spiritual rebirth, whereby we enter

the Kingdom of Love. I am certain that she achieved her purpose, and that the

Institute lent itself to it. More I dare not, and less I must not, say. (Katherine

Mansfield's Letters to John Middleton Murry, ed. J. M. Murry [London: Constable

& Co., 1951), p. 701.)

3 Island (1962), Huxley's last novel, is particularly interesting in this respect, in

which he seems to express very similar ideas to those of Gurdjieff's. Even a few

passages in Notes on What s What, and on What it Might be Reasonable to Do About

What s What, which contains the philosophical essence of the book, prove this; for

example:

But Good Being is in the knowledge of who in fact one is in relation to

all experiences; so be aware-aware in every context, at all times and what­

ever, creditable or discreditable, pleasant or unpleasant, you may be doing

or suffering. (Aldous Huxley, Island [Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin

Books, 1964), p. 39.)

This remark seems to be a precise paraphrase of Gurdjieff's' idea of

"self-remembering."

4 lames Webb writes:

Mabel Luhan had been caught by the mission of Orage and Gurdjieff in

early 1924. When she had first heard of Gurdjieff's Institute, she wrote to D. H.

Lawrence, who at that time was in his most splenetic mood against all things

Gurdjieffian. (lames Webb, The Harmonious Circle: The Lives and Work of G. 1.

GurdjiefJ, P. D. Ouspensky, and Their Followers [New york: G. P. Putnam's

Sons, 1980], p. 339.)

5 Texas Studies in Literature and Language, II, 2 (1960), pp. 206-218.

6 Mabel Dodge Luhan, Lorenzo in Taos(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), p. 134.

62

7 E. W. Tedlock, "D. H. Lawrence's Annotation of Ouspensky's Tertium

Organum," p. 206.

8 Ibid., pp. 206-7.

9 Ibid., p. 207.

10 Ibid., p. 217.

11 Ibid., p. 217.

12 D. H. Lawrence, "Foreword to Women in Love," Phoenix II, eds. Warren Roberts

and Harry T. Moore (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1978), p. 276.

13 D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin

Books, 1960), p. 290.

14 The following passage will elucidate Lawrence's idea of man's "core":

Man is a pherromenon on the face of the earth. But the phenomena have their

laws ....

A third law is that the naive or innocent core in a man is always his vital

core, and infinitely more important than his intellect or his reason. It is only

from his core of unconscious naivete that the human being is ultimately a

. responsible and dependable being. (D. H. Lawrence, "Preface to Cavalleria

Rusticana, by Giovanni Verga," Phoenix, ed. E. McDonald [Harmondsworth,

Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1978), p. 245.

15 D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books,

1960), p. 46.

16 D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (Harmondsworth,

Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1971), p. 9l.

17 P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous (New York: Harcourt, Brace &

World, 1949), p. 117.

18 Ibid., pp. 141-42.

19 Ibid., p. 2l.

20 Ibid., p. 217.

21 Ibid., p. 218.

22 G. 1. Gurdjieff, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson: An Objectively Impartial

Criticism of the Life of Man (N ew York: E. P. Dutton, 1973), First Book, p. 292 and

passim.

23 D. H. Lawrence, "A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover," Phoenix II, p. 493.

24 "Foreword to Women in Love," Phoenix 11, p. 276.

25. P. D. Ouspensky, pp. 161-65.

26 D. H . .Lawrence, "Education of the People," Phoenix, p. 605.

27 P. D. Ouspensky, p. 164.

28 Lady Chatterley's Lover, pp. 316-17.

29 Ibid., p. 181.

63

30 D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H Lawrence, ed. Aldous Huxley (London:

Heinemann, 1932), p. 711.

31 Ibid., p. 94.

32 D. H .. Lawrence, Apocalypse (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books,

1974), pp. 125-26.

33 Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and

Ouspensky (London: Watkins, 1980), pp. 3-5, italics mine.

34 In fact ·Gurdjieff despises man's fanatic endeavour to obtain more and more

elaborate intellect and knowledge as bitterly as Lawrence, calling it "that psychic

disease called wiseacring." (Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, First Book, p. 286.)

35 Will's "realization" after the marriage to Anna and its extinction in the longer

course of his marriage life in The Rainbow is a very good example of it. His

"realization" turns out to be merely an exalted feeling created by sexual

satisfaction; and most of the sudden en lighted feelings of this sort are of the same

character, that is, temporary.

36 Katherine Mansfield's Letters to John Middleton Murry, p. 676.

37 Mabel Dodge Luhan, p. 139. italics mine.

38 James Moore, Gurdjieff and Mansfield (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,

1981), p. 200.

39 Mabel Dodge Luhan, p. 293.

40 Ibid., p. 295.

41 "He [Mellors] has reached the point where all he wanted on earth was to be

alone." (Lady Chatterley's Lover, p. 91.)

42 Katherine Mansfield's Letters to John Middleton Murry, p. 688.

43 James Moore, p. 203.

44 Similarly ambivalent attitude is seen in his view of Dostoevsky; yet in this case

Lawrence finally seems to give a proper appreciation to his ideas in "Introduction

to 'The Grand Inquisitor' by Dostoevsky."

45 As early as in his "formative years," Jessie Chambers's sister tells her about

Lawrence's enormous self-confidence which seemed to her to be verging on

"self-importance." (Jessie Chambers [E. T.], D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record

[London: Jonathan Cape, 1935], pp. 213-14.)

46 Apocalypse, p. 126.

47 Ibid., p. 126, italics mine.

48 D. H. Lawrence, "On Human Destiny," Phoenix, p. 628.

49 Ibid., p. 629.