Introduction

The Practice of Medicine

By Kathryn Weld

How will I know / in thicket ahead / is danger or treasure /
when Body my good / bright dog is dead /
--May Swenson, “Question”

“Body my house / my horse my hound / what will I do / when you are fallen /” begins May Swenson, giving voice to a tenuous sense that the body, with its animal nature, is also our portal to knowledge of the world. The idea or, better, the experience that the body participates in consciousness is central to Mr. Gurdjieff’s teaching. Viewed from a work perspective, to be a health professional is a particular privilege: to have the training to understand, possibly in a new way, what a body is; and the opportunity to try, actively and consciously, to embody the role of the healer; to witness one’s failures, and to be nourished by the aim. The reader will recall that in Mr. Gurdjieff’s narrative of his early years, Meetings with Remarkable Men, we learn that although Gurdjieff’s family intended that he train for the priesthood, his tutor, Dean Borsch, recommended a medical education, saying, “one cannot be a good priest without being, at the same time, a physician, because the body and soul are interconnected.”[1] Similarly, in Beelzebub’s Tales, high regard is paid to the Zirlikner, one of “those responsible individuals who voluntarily devote the whole of their existence to helping any being of that region to fulfill being-obligations, if this being, for some reason or other, or simply thanks to a temporary irregular functioning of his planetary body, ceases to be able to fulfill his inner or outer being-duty by himself.”[2]

We hope that this issue of the Gurdjieff International Review will be a venue for those engaged in the practice of medicine as physicians, nurses, and alternative practitioners to explore their experience, and no less a venue for all of us. There are so many questions. What was Mr. Gurdjieff’s own medical experience? What does All and Everything tell us about how he viewed physicians? How do practitioners engage with the inner discipline of the work while facing the outward discipline of healing? How are the influences of inner work transmitted when facing the patient? The care of a patient in crisis or undergoing surgery may place an extraordinary demand on the clinician. What is the experience of that demand, and what meets the need? Does finding the inner capacity for such extraordinary moments of attention change the outer conditions in any tangible way, and what insights emerge from those “super efforts”? What about the medical practices of non-Western cultures? What can the physician tell us about facing mortality? How does the practice of medicine prepare one for life?

The seventeen essays that emerged in response to this call, to these questions, are remarkable in their variety and scope. Philip Heinegg has assembled for us an incisive summary of Gurdjieff’s view of the short-fallings of the modern physician, as compared with the conduct of physicians on “normal” planets—a challenge to any medical practitioner. Christian Wertenbaker offers a comprehensive narrative of Mr. Gurdjieff’s own activities as a physician and healer. Tom Molloy reminds us of the ancient Greek understanding that medicine is an art, requiring not just scientific knowledge, but the development of a therapeutic relationship with the patient. Surgeons Donald D’Amico and Alain de Lotbinière take us inside the operating room and find sacred space. Barbara Heffel points to “sacred commonality” arising between individuals confronting crisis together; and pediatrician Amy Griffin uncovers the need for rōbai shin (grandmotherly love). Dror Mevorach contrasts Gurdjieff’s medical philosophy with Western medicine, while Jeff Matrician relates his own experience with Chinese medicine, Tai Chi and the forces within the body: “Something needs to arrive, a force that comes from a natural struggle between opposites, one that can align the body in a way that it habitually avoids.” Feldenkrais teacher Lavinia Plonka describes awakening to the body as a revelation: “Sensation became my holy grail.” Joseph Azize, a Maronite priest, gives a thoughtful account of Gurdjieff’s esoteric “medical exercises” for healing, practiced in the ‘30s and ‘40s and still explored by some pupils. Clinical psychologist Judith Kessler tells us about her collaborative work with a western-trained Navajo healer. Psychiatrist Paul Roberts thanks his patients for helping him understand the way in which, aided by buffers, we narrate ourselves into being, and for helping him recognize his own stories. A young nurse, Bonnie Sturm, caring for two work elders at Franklin Farm, comes to a question about “presence, intention and being in the world as a nurse.” Richard Sandor’s early experiences in the emergency room bring Gurdjieff’s aphorisms to life. Finally, William Welch and Donald D’Amico each write of the quest to actively accept and participate in the inevitability of one’s own death.

These fine essays bear rereading, fresh discoveries coming into focus with each visit. □

Kathryn Weld, MFA, PhD, is Professor Emerita of Mathematics at Manhattan University. A longtime member of the New York Foundation, she is the author of Afterimage, a book of poetry, and a chapbook, Waking Light.