Fall 2025 Issue, Vol. XV No. 1

Welcome to the Gurdjieff International Review—a source of informed essays and commentary on the life, writings, and teachings of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. Mr. Gurdjieff was an extraordinary man, a master in the truest sense. His teachings speak to our most essential questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What is the purpose of life, and of human life in particular? As a young man, Gurdjieff relentlessly pursued these questions and became convinced that practical answers lay within ancient traditions. Through many years of searching and practice he discovered answers and then set about putting what he had learned into a form understandable to the Western world. Gurdjieff maintained that, owing to the abnormal conditions of modern life, we no longer function in a harmonious way. He taught that in order to become harmonious, we must develop new faculties—or actualize latent potentialities—through “work on oneself.” He presented his teachings and ideas in three forms: writings, music, and movements which correspond to our intellect, emotions, and physical body.

The Practice of Medicine

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Introduction
Kathryn Weld, MFA, PhD

In this issue of the Gurdjieff International Review, the writers, drawn from many medical practices and perspectives, speak of a work that moves in two directions, toward the patient and toward oneself. Their accounts follow the moment when skill no longer answers, when a silence of attention must appear between thought and act. Here, the effort to heal reveals another order of meaning: that the measure of care lies not only in what is done, but in the presence that does it. To heal is to meet another life with attention. Between action and understanding, there is a finer possibility, to be awake within one’s work.

Gurdjieff’s Zirlikner: the True Physician
Philip Heinegg, MD

“Can physicians bear to see themselves in the same merciless light by which Beelzebub exposes the pride, egoism and cupidity that he saw in the modern practice of medicine?”

Gurdjieff as Physician and Healer
Christian Wertenbaker, MD

“Some of his cures could merit to be called ‘miraculous,’ although in the context of modern physics—quite ‘miraculous’ itself—reasonable possible explanations in terms of physical mechanisms are available.”

The Role of Mutual Influence in Medical Practice
Thomas Molloy, MD FACC

“When the different centers have learned to respect one another, a hidden multicentered intelligence of the body begins to unfold naturally and organically, like a seedling in response to favorable conditions and attention.”

The Operating Room: A Sacred Space
Donald J. D’Amico, MD

“If I am able to be more engaged during surgery, with my attention at its widest and my relaxation at its deepest, I have the sense that something noble is occurring and the operating room becomes a sacred space.”

The Silent Center of Attention
Alain C. J. de Lotbinière, MD

“What is evident, what is clearly seen now, is that the energy of attention is what connects me to another world—a world that becomes alive when I am centered, and not a prisoner of recurring thoughts or emotions.”

Sacred Commonality
Barbara Heffel, RNC-OB

“To be common seems now to be sacred—to enter this realm of commonality between human and ethereal, where a new intelligence is available.”

Experiences During the Pandemic
Amy Griffin, MD

“Perhaps this is love for our human condition that connects us all. So, when we are asked to come together in the unknown, about those we deeply care for, what arises?”

Healing in Chinese Medicine
Jeff Matrician

“Somehow, paradoxically, an emphasis on suffering, if nuanced, brings some surprising formulations. It can bring, for example, a faith that in the disease is also the cure.”

Healing Journeys
Judith Kessler, PsyD

In the Native American Community, “The aim of healing is ‘mending the hoop’—finding our place in the Circle of Life. Medicine is whatever can help us overcome that which separates us, primarily our ego.”

Moving Toward Wholeness
Lavinia Plonka

“Sensation became my Holy Grail.”

Gurdjieff’s Medical Philosophy
Dror Mevorach, MD

“Gurdjieff’s medical philosophy reframes healing not as the elimination of symptoms but as the integration of all levels of human existence—biological, psychological, and spiritual—into a state of conscious presence.”

Gurdjieff’s “Medical Exercises”
Joseph Azize, PhD

“Gurdjieff’s medical philosophy reframes healing not as the elimination of symptoms but as the integration of all levels of human existence—biological, psychological, and spiritual—into a state of conscious presence.”

On Being a Gurdjieffian Psychiatrist
Paul Roberts, MD

“It’s not clear to me whether my involvement in the Gurdjieff work ever did much good for my patients. But I do believe that my patients have done a lot of good for my own inner work.”

Impressions of Work as a Nurse
Bonnie Sturm, RN, MS, EdD

“It is not so much repeating as facing together the young woman and the gradually more awakened woman, all in the same body: to be willing to see and be seen, something just a tiny step outside of time.”

Gurdjieff’s Aphorisms Illustrated in the Practice of Medicine
Richard Sandor, MD

“Think of an aphorism as a seed—a condensed packet of wisdom, dormant and waiting to take root and grow.”

On Dying an Honorable Death
William Welch, MD

“The answer to life is in fact death. And the substance of a man’s life … will be the stuff from which he will fashion his own participation in its end.”

The Gift
Donald J. D’Amico, MD

“It is beyond glorious to be well and active again, but there are other inner things that are also important to me; their importance has been strengthened, and I do not wish to lose them in illusions of tomorrow and immortality.”

About This Publication

The Gurdjieff International Review is published by Gurdjieff Electronic Publishing. Any information or opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher or editors.

“My family had at first intended me for the priesthood, but Father Borsh had a quite particular conception of what a real priest should be. As he conceived it, the duties of a priest should be combined with those of a physician. He was in favor of my having a medical education … with the aim of becoming a physician for the body and a confessor for the soul. ”

G. I. Gurdjieff

“If I am able to be more engaged during surgery, with my attention at its widest and my relaxation at its deepest, I have the sense that something noble is occurring and the operating room becomes a sacred space, a solemn place revered and entered for the alleviation of suffering.”

Donald J. D’Amico, MD

“Indigenous medicine … looks within the spirit of a patient rather than the body since the underlying belief system puts both the source and cure of illness as originating in the spiritual realm. The healers are people who have undergone intense spiritual training, including physical suffering, to purify themselves… In this way, there is a resonance with Gurdjieff’s view that it is necessary to heal the past to prepare the future.”

Judith Kessler, PsyD

“Interactions with patients have often offered me moments that felt miraculous; occasions where a finer sensitivity, both in myself and in those I cared for, appeared… In those moments, a deeper dimension of healing seemed to reveal itself, beyond the purely physiological.’”

Dror Mevorach, MD

“[A traditional Chinese doctor] has a clear concept of the natural state of health—that each of us has a mandate from life itself to transform something of life.”

Jeff Matrician

February 20, 2026