Jeanne de Salzmann (1889 - 1990)
Jeanne de Salzmann studied piano, composition, and orchestral conducting at the Conservatory of Geneva. Dancer and teacher of rhythmic movements, she was a pupil of Emile-Jaques Dalcroze who opened an avant-garde institute of the arts devoted to music, dance, and theater in Germany in 1912. During the Russian revolution, she and her husband Alexandre were living in Tiflis, Georgia, where she opened a school of dance and music. In 1919 the composer Thomas de Hartmann introduced the young couple to Gurdjieff. In the years that followed, Jeanne de Salzmann became Gurdjieff’s devoted pupil, and remained with him until his death in 1949. For more than forty years thereafter, she worked tirelessly to transmit his teaching and to preserve the inner content and meaning of the Movements. The Gurdjieff Foundation, the largest organization that has direct lineage back to Mr. Gurdjieff, was organized by Jeanne de Salzmann during the early 1950s and led by her, in cooperation with other direct pupils, until her death in 1990.[1]
It is reported that Jeanne de Salzmann explicitly emphasized reception of a higher energy from above the head, in group ‘sittings.’ From cosmological perspective the emphasis appears to shift from efforts for ascension to reception of a descending phenomenon, which by law only a minority of the group would be able to receive, and minority (if any) in this minority would have permanent access to. This ignited discussions, see Insider Scholars for details.
Ravi Ravindra reports, she was unapologetic and spoke more and more intensely, linking reception of this higher energy with the fate of Earth and thus human beings.[2] Unsurprisingly disapproval was already there. A senior person, who considers such statements are for the apostles or the abbots, commented: ‘If His Endlessness is depending on me, He has poor management!’[3]
Enclosed are some excerpts from her that can be found in Ravindra’s Heart without Measure: Gurdjieff Work with Madame de Salzmann about the descending energy in de Salzmann's recorded statements:
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The Earth is in exchange with higher levels of existence. For this an apparatus is needed. Mankind is that apparatus. This exchange is not automatic; it requires work.
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This is what man is meant to serve.
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Without man the Earth cannot receive the energy from a higher level. So, if some people work consciously, they assist the descent of this energy. Otherwise, there is discord on the Earth. One can sense it.
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But man, as he is by nature, is not complete. … To be able to bring higher energy in contact with the Earth, man must have a harmonious relationship -a right exchange- among his centres. … You need to learn how to work. … Mind and body both have resistance. You need to understand that. You must ask repeatedly, 'Who am I?' and 'Why am I here?'
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It is important to bring the body and the mind -a different mind, not the usual mind- to the same rate of vibration. Then there is relationship, as between a man and a woman, and a child can be produced -a new feeling. Higher energy is there, but we do not receive it because we are fragmented.
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A group of people is needed for a certain level of energy to appear. You must work alone and also with other people—often.
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Man is made to create a link between two levels—to receive energy from a higher level in order to have an action on the level below; not a reaction.
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The Lord, the Seigneur, is there, but he needs my body to come. The body is not ready. It needs to be prepared. If the mind and the body are connected, then the higher energy, which is what religions call Seigneur, will appear. … It cannot be done easily or cheaply. But it must be done. It is necessary for the maintenance of our world. The body has to serve something else, not itself. The body itself is designed for destruction; it has to serve something else.
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It is necessary to face the idea that the Earth will fall if we do not work. This will help your work and help you understand that your work is necessary.[4]
Ravindra also reports about Mme de Salzmann's emphasis on the need for sensation, for the requirement of a total lack of tension and the importance of even brief moments of connection with this energy:
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I understood that to mean that I can contact the higher energy, but that I should be careful not to lose contact with the body. Perhaps I have a mystical tendency to fly away and leave the ground. To fly away from the Earth is certainly a deep inclination of the Indian spiritual traditions and I could have hardly escaped it.
She has one central thing to say, or to demonstrate. It does not matter what anybody asks or says, Madame de Salzmann quickly returns to speak of the energy that comes from the higher part of the mind and which can come into the body when there is no tension anywhere.
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The group was particularly fractious and argumentative, but she did not react. Again and again she would start anew, from one angle or another, emphasizing the need for the right posture of the body, the need for a total lack of tension, the need for a relationship between the mind and the body, the need for sensation, the need for strong attention.
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Madame de Salzmann seems to have aged considerably in the past year; she is nearly a hundred and one. Still, she was very strong in the senior group meeting. She much emphasized the fact that it is very difficult to make a connection with the higher energy. With work, especially with others, one can make this connection for a few brief moments. That itself will reveal what is to be done. This connection is necessary, and even a little of it is very useful.[5]
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Below excerpt is a directly related subsection (from the 140 subsections) from The Reality of Being, ‘a book edited by a small group of Jeanne de Salzmann’s family and followers.’ In the foreword, it is advised that the contents of the book are from mostly her notebooks and also includes a few passages from other, recorded statements of her.[6]
94. A COSMIC SCALE
"Each person has an ideal, an aspiration for something higher. It takes one form or another, but what matters is the call to this ideal, the call of his being. Listening to the call is the state of prayer. While in this state, a man produces an energy, a special emanation, which religious feeling alone can bring. These emanations concentrate in the atmosphere just above the place where they are produced. The air every where contains them. The question is how to enter into contact with these emanations. By our call we can create a connection, like a telegraph wire, which links us, and take in this material in order to let it accumulate and crystallize in us. We then have the possibility to manifest its quality and help others understand -that is, to give it back. True prayer is establishing this contact and being nourished by it, nourished by this special material, which is called Grace. As an exercise for this, we breathe in air, thinking of Christ or Buddha or Mohammed, and keep the active elements that have been accumulated.[7]
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"We need to understand the idea of a cosmic scale, that there is a link connecting humanity with a higher influence. Our lives, the purpose of being alive, can only be understood in relation to forces whose scale and grandeur go beyond ourselves. I am here to obey, to obey an authority that I recognize as greater because I am a particle of it. It calls to be recognized, to be served and to shine through me. There is a need to put myself under this higher influence and a need to relate to it in submitting to its service. I do not realize at the outset that my wish to be is a cosmic wish and that my being needs to situate itself and find its place in a world of forces. I consider it my subjective property, some thing I can make use of for personal profit. My search is organized on the scale of this subjectivity in which everything is measured from a subjective point of view -me and God. Yet at a certain point I must realize that the origin of the need I feel is not in me alone. There is a cosmic need for the new being that I could become. Humanity -a certain portion of humanity- needs it. And I also have a need, with their help, to capture the influence that is just above me.
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"We feel that without this relation with a higher energy, life has not much meaning. But by ourselves alone, we will not have the force to achieve it. A certain current, a certain magnetism, needs to be created in which each person finds his place, that is, the place which will permit the current to be better established. Our whole responsibility is here. The traditional ways all recognized and served this aim in a man ner that corresponded to the development of people in a given place and period. Today we need to find again the contact with this energy.
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"This is why Gurdjieff brought the help of a Fourth Way, which excludes nothing and takes account of the development of the different functions in contemporary people. This way is not new. It has always existed, but only within a limited circle. Today it can renew the weakening link between the two levels of the cosmos. This calls for a great work. The first step is to establish centers where we seek to live this way with others. The experience proceeds with ups and downs, with responsibility more or less assumed, in a play of forces through which a certain liberation can emerge. But it still involves only a limited number of people, and this force needs to be felt on a much larger scale of humanity.[8]
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For more from her:
https://www.gurdjieff.org/salzmann.htm
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For a short video of her:
http://www.realityofbeing.org/video.html
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[1] Gurdjieff International Review, https://www.gurdjieff.org/salzmann.htm [accessed 03-03-20201]
[2] Ravi Ravindra, Heart without Measure: Gurdjieff Work with Madame de Salzmann (Morning Light Press, 2004).
[3] Ravindra, Heart without Measure, pp. 179
[4] Ravindra, Heart without Measure, pp. 14, 24, 18, 24, 33, 53, 57, 108, 181.
[5] Ravindra, Heart without Measure, pp. 171-172, 185, 201.
[6] ‘Foreword’ to Jeanne de Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff (Boston: Shambala, 2010) pp.xviii.
[7] Compare with Joseph Azize, ‘“The Four Ideals”: A Contemplative Exercise by Gurdjieff,’ Aries Vol.13 No.2 (2013) pp. 173-203.
[8] Jeanne de Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff (Boston: Shambala, 2010) pp.198-200.
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