Great minds, from William Blake to Mahatma Gandhi, have proclaimed the oneness of all religions. However, George Gurdjieff was specific about just how all religions are the same. The commonality he saw was their original purpose and original practices, which he described in a way that is radically different from what organized religions teach about themselves and radically different from what almost everyone believes.
What is most compelling is that there is evidence in the religions themselves that Gurdjieff was accurate. Here are three specific and sweeping claims he made about the world’s great religions:
1. In Chapter 14 of In Search of the Miraculous, Ouspensky quotes Gurdjieff saying:
"One of the most central of the ideas of objective knowledge … is the idea of the unity of everything... From ancient times people who have understood the content and the meaning of this idea, and have seen in it the basis of objective knowledge, have endeavored to find a way of transmitting this idea in a form comprehensible to others. … The idea of the unity of everything, as the fundamental and central idea of this knowledge, had to be transmitted first and transmitted with adequate completeness and exactitude… The idea itself was put … into religious teachings which endeavored to create an element of faith and to evoke a wave of emotion carrying people up to the level of 'objective consciousness.”
2. In In Search of the Miraculous, Gurdjieff says secret and hidden teachings are not kept secret and are not hidden from us; they are in plain sight and are called secret only because we have not learned how to see them.
In chapter 2 of In Search of the Miraculous, a student asks,
"Why, if ancient knowledge has been preserved and if, speaking in general, there exists a knowledge distinct from our science and philosophy or even surpassing it, is it so carefully concealed…?”
Gurdjieff responds,
“[T]his knowledge is not concealed… [N]o one is concealing anything; there is no mystery whatever… [T]hose who possess this knowledge are doing everything they can to transmit and communicate it to the greatest possible number of people, to facilitate people's approach to it and enable them to prepare themselves to receive the truth.”
3. In his book Gurdjieff: A master in life (p. 43), Tcheslaw Tchekhovitch quotes Gurdjieff saying,
“There are not three, not twenty, not even two religions. There is simply religion. … True religion is always and everywhere the same – it is one and unique. … The essence of all the religions … is the same. Fundamentally, they are all concerned with only one thing – evolution. The teaching of each great master enables his pupils to follow a certain evolutionary path, and to arrive at a level where contact with the highest cosmic force becomes possible. At their root, all the teachings are one and the same, each having as its purpose to help us attain this possibility.”
In Gurdjieff’s book All and Everything: Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, he describes the world’s religions as all beginning with the same practices, path and purpose. He writes about Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and also Tibetan Lamaism, which he treats as separate from Buddhism. Each religion begins with one great master who teaches practices designed to free man from the prison he is in, practices that are very similar to what Gurdjieff taught. The great masters, sent from above, he calls Saint Moses, Saint Jesus, Saint Muhammad, Saint Buddha and Saint Lama. In his book, after the founding teacher dies, later generations of followers alter the teachings until they are almost unrecognizable.
This might seem self-serving, as if Gurdjieff were rewriting the founding of each religion to make it reflect what he taught. But if he is accurate, then he is not remaking the world’s religions to match his beliefs; he is only teaching what the great religions taught for millennia before him.
If these three claims are all true, we should find evidence for them in our major religions. We should see 1) that the unity of everything is the most fundamental teaching of the world’s religions, 2) that this esoteric teaching is not subtle or secret, but is staring us in the face and becomes obvious when we learn how to see it, and 3) that all the great religions originally taught a practice similar to what Gurdjieff taught, but it has been lost or forgotten over time. If he is correct, then we should find that all religions teach, or at one time taught, the exact same path that brings practitioners into contact with higher energies.
Let’s look first at Judaism and Christianity, the two religions Westerners are most familiar with. Is there evidence for these claims by George Gurdjieff in these two major religions?
The first of his claims listed above is that the unity of everything is the most central teaching of true religions. Judaism and Christianity share a prayer that both religions consider to be the most fundamental and central of all. Jesus is quite clear about this. In the book of Mark 12:28-30, is written:
28And one of the scribes came, and … asked him, “Which is the first commandment of all?”
29And Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is, ‘Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God, the Lord is one.’
30And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.’ This is the first commandment.”
These few words (in italics) that Jesus quotes are found in Deuteronomy 6:4-5. Jesus calls them the first of all commandments.
They are also the foremost prayer of Judaism. They are the first words written on a mezuzah, the parchment that Jews traditionally place on the doorposts of their homes, and observant Jews say these words twice a day in their daily prayers.
The first sentence Jesus recites is called the Shema, which is the Hebrew word for “Hear,” the first word in the prayer. Many Jews try to time their morning prayers to say the Shema at the moment of sunrise.
This practice of saying the Shema at the moment of sunrise dates back at least two millennia. According to Jewish teaching, on the last day of his life in the year 135, while Rabbi Akiva was being tortured by the Romans, the sun rose and, seeing it, he said the Shema. When asked how he could pray while being tortured, he said he had spoken that prayer at sunrise every day of his life and this day was no different. It is hard to overstate how important this prayer is to Judaism.
When I was in second grade, my family joined a reform temple. On my first day of religious school, my new teacher wrote out a transliteration of the Shema – “Shema Yisrael, Adonoy Elohenu, Adonoy Echaud” -- and asked me to memorize it. That was the start of my religious education. The Shema is so important to Judaism that nothing could be more fitting than for a Jewish child to begin his religious education with that prayer.
Gurdjieff said the unity of everything is the first and most important idea all religions try to transmit. So, is this prayer, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One,” an expression of the unity or oneness of all things?
The conventional interpretation of the Shema is that it means there is only one God. The ArtScroll prayer book, which is very traditional, translates it as “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the one and only.” This is the most widely held belief, that this short prayer simply says there is just one God, not the pantheon of gods believed in by most other religions of the ancient world. For many Jews and Christians, that is the only meaning of this prayer.
However, saying God is one is not far from saying God is oneness, or oneness is God. And many Jews also accept this interpretation. For example, Chabad is a large international Jewish movement that is very orthodox, so it’s traditional, but it’s also Hasidic, so it’s rooted in mysticism. This is from the Chabad website:
“The idea that ‘G-d is One’ means not only that there is one G-d, but that G-d and the whole of creation are only oneness. There is nothing apart from G-d. Nothing exists outside of Him; everything that we perceive, every particle of existence, is nothing but a veiled manifestation of G-d.”
So the last part of this short prayer, the words “the Lord is one,” can have two different meanings. It can mean that there is only one God and not many, or it can mean that the oneness of everything is God. This second meaning of the Shema is exactly what Gurdjieff says is the fundamental and central teaching of all religions based on objective knowledge.
However, this prayer does more than express the unity of everything. It also contains instructions on how to practice in order to experience this unity.
“To hear” can mean to be told or to be informed. This fits with the conventional interpretation of the last words of the prayer, giving the whole prayer this meaning: Listen to this fact, all you Israelites; there is only one God.
But “to hear” can also mean to take in or to perceive auditory impressions. Metaphorically, it can mean to take in all impressions -- to be consciously aware in this moment of what we see, hear, sense, feel and think. This practice – conscious awareness of our thoughts, feelings and physical senses, including what we see and hear – is found in nearly every spiritual path.
Gurdjieff taught conscious awareness of impressions and named it “first conscious shock.” It’s called “first” because everything else follows and depends on it, “conscious” because the effort is to be aware both of the impressions and of ourselves receiving them, and “shock” because the practice changes our inner state and allows our inner development to proceed.
Buddhists have this practice and call it by various names. The Vipassana Buddhists call it mindfulness. It is their primary practice. In fact, it is just about their only practice.
Early Jewish and Christian adherents might have understood the word “Shema,” the imperative command “Hear,” as this same practice, as guidance directing them to experience the sensations, thoughts and feelings of the present moment. If so, the word Shema is probably the shortest meditation instruction ever written. It is also one of the earliest.
But the essence of the prayer is more than the practice of mindfulness; it is the connection between the practice of conscious awareness and the experience of oneness. Here’s the connection:
Conscious awareness of our impressions, even for a moment, pulls us away from our ordinary state, which for most of us is being lost or caught up in our thoughts. With conscious awareness, the mind becomes a bit quieter and we have some sense of our own presence, even if only briefly. And something important happens when we sense our own presence and the mind quiets.
In Psalms 46:10 is written, “Be still and know that I am God.” Zen Master Ryokan wrote, “When the heart is pure then all things in the world are pure.” When we are more present, even for a moment, we get a brief sense of the oneness of everything.
The practice of conscious awareness of our thoughts, feelings, and sense impressions in this moment connects us to the experience of oneness. To some degree, the connection is immediate. That is the link between the first word and the last word of the Shema.
So along with the conventional meaning of the Shema, there is also a mystical interpretation: Perceive the impressions of this moment; and experience the oneness that is God.
I can’t say with certainty that the authors of Deuteronomy and the rabbis who made the Shema the central prayer of the Jewish service intended this latter meaning, but it’s a reasonable translation and one that is profoundly meaningful – and a prayer that is fundamental to two great religions should be profoundly meaningful.
The prayer then continues in what sounds like further instructions on how to practice conscious awareness and the experience of oneness. This is from the King James version of Deuteronomy 6:4-7:
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one.
5 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart:
7 Thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children, and shall speak of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
The literal interpretation of these four verses from Deuteronomy is that there is only one God, and we are commanded to love this God and express our love throughout the day.
However, mystical interpretations are often metaphorical rather than literal, using things and events outside of ourselves poetically to allude to what takes place within. A more metaphorical interpretation of this prayer would be instructions for spiritual practice. Here’s a line-by-line mystical interpretation:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Perceive the impressions of this moment, and experience the oneness that is God.
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
Open to (love) and experience this oneness with your three centers -- your feelings (heart), your higher mind (soul), and your body (might.)
And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart:
Keep this practice alive in yourself.
Thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children,
Use this conscious practice to connect to and guide your own wayward thoughts and unconscious feelings.
and shall speak of them when thou sittest in thy house and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up.
Practice this always and everywhere.
The language in the last part of this prayer has also been used by others as a way to say practice this always and everywhere.
For example, in the Buddhist tradition, the Korean Zen Master Mang Gong (1872-1946) wrote:
“The Zen hall is not the only Zen hall. For those who practice Zen, their own body is also a Zen hall. You can practice Zen nonstop, when you are standing, walking, sitting or lying down.”
Another example comes from The Reality of Being, transcriptions of talks given by Madame de Salzmann, George Gurdjieff’s foremost pupil. In chapter 105, she says,
“In order for the conscious force to develop, I have to maintain a continual sensation in all activities of my daily life—in walking, in speaking, in every kind of work.”
Madame de Salzmann, Zen Master Mang Gong, and Deuteronomy 6:4-7 are all saying the same thing; they are instructing us to take our practice of conscious awareness into every part of our daily lives. At least, that is one way of reading this ancient prayer.
It might be part of natural order that such an important prayer has more than one meaning, and that the more esoteric or mystical meaning is often unknown and unseen. Even those who do know the mystical meaning still might not realize these are instructions for how to experience oneness and how to connect with higher energies. So for many, perhaps for most, the practice instructions and the spiritual path they outline are effectively “hidden.”
These two interpretations, the conventional and the mystical, represent different levels of awareness. One is what Gurdjieff called formatory, and the other is conscious or experiential.
Formatory thinking requires no conscious effort. It is the way our brain thinks when we are on autopilot and making no effort to be consciously aware. According to Gurdjieff, formatory thinking is not really thinking; it’s just labeling, and it can only distinguish between and label two things. In this case, it distinguishes one God from many gods.
Once something has been divided in two and labeled, the formatory center believes it has told the whole story, and the person who is totally caught up in formatory thinking forgets about any other meaning. So they read this prayer and say to themselves, “Oh, yes, we believe in one God and not many,” and go no further.
That might play a role in how religions are formed. A religion might begin as a practice that leads to conscious awareness and conscious connection with higher energies, but that’s hard work and not very ego-gratifying. It’s easier to talk about practice than to do it. So over time, positions of leadership and authority are taken by people who value the words but not the actual practice, and eventually by people who have forgotten the practice altogether. They don’t see the inner meaning of their religion, don’t believe there are other meanings, and perhaps even persecute people who do recognize other meanings.
These new leaders still do something valuable; they preserve the teachings. We have the great religions and their teachings today thanks to generations of formatory thinkers who kept the outer forms intact and passed them on.
They have passed on prayers, stories and rituals within which are “hidden” instructions for spiritual practice. The instructions are not actually hidden; they’re right there. But people who never learned about the original meaning and purpose of their religion cannot recognize these instructions because they don’t know what to look for and don’t even know to look. They readily accept a one-dimensional literal interpretation because they never learned there might be anything else.
Besides, the new leaders who teach this literal understanding often allow for no other interpretation. They are the high priests of literalism.
But, to understand and make use of the original meaning of these teachings, to see that these are instructions for practice and not just expressions of belief, we must learn to see allegorical meanings. For that, we must be led toward a very different and non-literal understanding. As Gurdjieff’s father said, “If the priest goes to the right, then the teacher must without fail turn to the left.”
Otherwise, the second meaning will remain forgotten, and we will have only the formatory and not the experiential.
It can’t be said for certain that the inner meaning of the Shema as described here is what the original authors of Deuteronomy intended. But if it is, then Gurdjieff seems to be right thatesoteric secrets are laid out right in front of us and are only hidden because we were never taught to see them.
This is certainly true for me. Growing up Jewish and practicing Judaism as an adult, how many hundreds of times did I say the words of this prayer with no inkling of the spiritual practice it describes! How many times have I seen or walked past a mezuzah on a doorpost without realizing it is an ancient reminder, sent by conscious forces to wake me up in this moment!
In my teen years, believing Judaism of that day lacked what I wanted, I began exploring other practices, including Christianity, teachings of a Sikh guru, the 12 steps, Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Vipassana meditation, Jewish Renewal, and the Gurdjieff Work. Sixty years later I’ve found that most of what I was looking for is contained in that 6-word prayer I was asked to memorize my first day of religious school when I was 7 years old. The Shema hasn’t changed, but what I’ve learned over the years has allowed me to recognize what was always there.
Gurdjieff also seems right when he said that from ancient times people with wisdom have made the oneness of everything the most important of religious teachings. We’ve just seen it in Judaism and Christianity, but it’s found in other religions as well.
Tawhid, the most important and most central belief in Islam, means both that there is no God but Allah, and that all things are one. Oneness or unity is just as important to Islam. If anything, Muslims state it even more emphatically.
The concept of oneness might not be central to Buddhism, but the experience of oneness is. In Zen and Vipassana stories, consistent practice leads to enlightenment, which is insight into emptiness. Emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness means all things are interconnected and dependent on each other; they do not exist independently in and of themselves. Buddhists say they are empty of inherent existence.
But while all things do not inherently exist, the allness of things can still be experienced. Buddhists prefer the term non-duality, but when you think about it, non-duality is pretty much the same as oneness. The point, however, is not to think about it. The point is to experience it.
In his enlightenment story, the 7th century Korean Zen Master Won Hyo realized that “without thinking, there is no universe, no Buddha, no Dharma. All is one, and this one is empty.” This is Won Hyo’s realization, that “All is one.” Insight into emptiness is an experience of the oneness of all things.
Thirdly, Gurdjieff also appears to be right when he said, “each great master enables his pupils to follow a certain evolutionary path, and to arrive at a level where contact with the highest cosmic force becomes possible.” The Shema is not just an expression of the oneness of everything; it contains instructions on how to practice in order to experience oneness. Based on what we’ve just seen in the religions themselves, there is reason to believe that Moses, Jesus, Muhammed and the Buddha all taught this same practice. It really does appear that all the world’s great religions at one time or another taught a practice of experiencing our impressions in this moment and as a result experiencing the oneness of everything.
However, there is more to this evolutionary path that all the great religions seem to have in common. The path is not just this one practice of conscious awareness. Going back to what Jesus said in Mark 12:
And one of the scribes … asked him, “Which is the first commandment of all?”
And Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is, ‘Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.’ This is the first commandment.”
And the second is, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ ”
What Jesus calls “the first of all the commandments” can be seen as instructions on how to practice conscious awareness in the present moment. It is a description of what Gurdjieff calls first conscious shock, and Jesus even calls it “the first.”
What little I know of second conscious shock is Gurdjieff’s description, “to endure the displeasing manifestations of others.” Recently, one of my teachers said that a succinct description of second conscious shock is, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” At first, I did not understand, but it does make sense. When you love someone, their unpleasant behavior – their snoring, their strange beliefs, even their rudeness – all become much more tolerable, even endearing. Loving others is a way, maybe the only way, to truly bear their unpleasant manifestations.
It’s interesting that Jesus is quoted using the words “first” and “second” to describe these commandments, implying an order of practice and not just relative importance. These are the same two practices Gurdjieff calls first and second conscious shock. He also calls them conscious labors and intentional suffering. Buddhism has these two practices as well, and in the same order.
When I lived at the Providence Zen Center, a Buddhist residential and retreat center, the main practices were sitting meditation, chanting and bowing. The purpose of these practices was to bring us into present awareness.
We were told to have no goal, but in all the Zen stories meditation practice led to enlightenment. Again, the practice of conscious awareness leads to the experience of oneness. As the center’s founding teacher, Zen Master Seung Sahn said, “This moment is very important. It has everything in it. … If you attain this moment, you attain everything.”
However, the stories and dharma talks made it clear that was only the first step. One of the senior teachers told me that every good Zen story should have two steps. First is enlightenment, insight into emptiness. But it must always be followed with using this wisdom to help others.
Zen is part of Mahayana Buddhism, and the Mahayana ideal is first to practice to attain enlightenment, and second, rather than entering nirvana oneself, to instead help all others to enter nirvana. Those are the two steps, to get enlightened and then to use the enlightened mind to help others. Zen Master Seung Sahn ended all his letters with these two steps, a wish that the recipient would “gain enlightenment and save all beings.”
When I attended teachings with the Tibetan lama Garchen Rinpoche, a Vajrayana teacher, he spoke repeatedly of the two main goals of practice, wisdom and compassion. Wisdom is insight into emptiness, and the practices that lead to wisdom all involve being aware of our thoughts and perceptions in the moment.
However, Garchen Rinpoche’s main focus was the second step, developing compassion. He spoke at length about developing an altruistic heart, and used the words loving-kindness and compassion so often his students’ notes are full of the abbreviation LK & C. The most important thing, Rinpoche said, was at the end of our lives to die with a good heart.
Buddhism has two main types of practices, those that generate wisdom or insight into emptiness, and those that generate the altruistic heart that wishes happiness and freedom from suffering for all beings. To state what might be obvious, these are the same two practices Jesus called the first and second commandment and Gurdjieff called first and second conscious shock. They are also first and second in Buddhism.
In Judaism and Islam, the experience of God’s oneness is likewise first and foremost. These two religions don’t explicitly state a second practice the way Christianity, Buddhism and the Gurdjieff Work do. But both Judaism and Islam place great emphasis on charity. Huge emphasis. You can’t really practice either religion without engaging in charity.
Charity is not just giving; it’s also an inner practice. Islam teaches that everything one has belongs to God, which makes it a practice of non-attachment.
The Hebrew word tzedakah, which is translated as charity, actually means justice. Jewish teaching is that we give out of a need for justice when we recognize an inequity and want to correct it. We don’t give out of love; we give from a sense of justice. But by giving we develop love.
Simply put, charity is not just about giving; it is a practice that develops non-attachment and love.
So the world’s great religions all appear to have two practices in common, and in all religions the two practices are presented in the same order.
First and foremost is the practice of being consciously present, aware in the moment of what we see, hear, sense, think and feel. As the Vipassana teacher Joseph Goldstein noted, different teachings call it by different names, but there aren’t different ways of being aware in this moment. It’s the same experience, whether it’s the Tibetan practices Dzogchen or Mahamudra, the Zen practice Shikantaza, the Vipassana practice of mindfulness, or another term from Gurdjieff, self-remembering. To this list we can add Gurdjieff’s terms “first conscious shock” and “conscious labors,” the Jewish and Christian practice described in the Shema, and the Muslim practice Tawhid. They are all essentially the same. Perhaps the list should also include the Christian practice called centering prayer and the Brother Lawrence practice of the presence of God.
The mystical interpretation of Deuteronomy 6:4-7 given earlier is instructions to practice conscious awareness of what we think, feel and experience with our senses; as a result of this practice to sense the oneness of all things; then to allow this sense of oneness to penetrate into our heart, mind and body; and finally to bring this practice into all of our daily activities. Do any of the religious practices named in the prior paragraph ask any more or any less than that?
Each religion or teaching also has a practice of developing love for all others. The practice goes by various names: loving-kindness, compassion, bodhicitta, the bodhisattva path, save all beings, charity, how can I help, serving others, love thy neighbor, bearing the displeasing manifestations of others, intentional suffering, or altruism. But whatever we call it, it’s a practice that develops in us a kind and caring heart that puts the well-being of others ahead of our own.
And the world’s religions and teachings consistently call this the second practice. Jesus calls it the second commandment. Mahayana Buddhists teach it as a second practice or second step. Gurdjieff calls it second conscious shock.
These same two practices are central to every religion and probably have been from the beginning. They might have been partially forgotten, turned into ritualistic prayer that is often recited with no sense of the inner meaning, or told as stories that make the actual instructions hard to see. Yet we can still see these practices spelled out in order if we look.
What is also often forgotten is that these practices are the path to a goal. The two practices that make up this path are not practiced just because these are good and noble things to do. According to Gurdjieff, this is the path for making contact with the highest and most sublime energies of the universe. This might be the same goal Jesus speaks of when he speaks about attaining the kingdom of heaven. This might also be the same goal of Buddhist practice, namely attaining Buddhahood. We can’t know for sure, but do we really think there are different ultimate spiritual experiences or just different names?
So Gurdjieff’s description in Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson of all religions beginning as the same spiritual path, all teaching the same practices and for the same goal, is arguably true. What we’ve just examined is evidence in the great religions themselves of the same practices being given the same importance and given in the same order. Perhaps with time and forgetting, they took on different outer forms, but there is reason to believe that originally they were all exactly the same.
These are the same practices and path Gurdjieff taught centuries and millennia later. He took no credit for anything new, and never claimed his ideas were unique or invented by him. Just the opposite; he said they were fragments of ancient teachings. And when asked, Gurdjieff said he taught nothing more than esoteric Christianity.