Clare Mingins - Gurdjieff and Mesmer and the Idea of Reciprocal Maintenance (Gurdjieff Studies)

The famous animal magnetism with which Mesmer is associated was described by him not simply as a subtle fluid, a series which undoubtedly includes what we would call energy at the higher end of his scale.

We can recall, also as series of finer or coarser matters, the active elements with different degrees of vivifyingness described in Beelzebubs Tales , It is also difficult not to draw connections between some aspects of Gurdjieffs Omnipresent-Active-Element-Okidanokh and animal magnetism.

In Mesmers first published work, his thesis for his medical degree, written when he was thirty two, he used the term Animal Gravity, or Living Gravity, ( Gravitas Animalis ) rather than animal magnetism, but the basic ideas expressed are consistent with his later writings, and he says :

There isanother species of influence on the animal body ,

And in Beelzebubs Tales , we are told:

Everywhere in the Universe, this Omnipresent-Okidanokh or Omnipresent-Active-Element takes part in the formation of all both great and small arisings, and is, in general, the fundamental cause of most of the cosmic phenomena and, in particular, of the phenomena proceeding in the atmospheres .

Thus, we have Gurdjieffs Okidanokh as the fundamental cause of most of the cosmic phenomena and Mesmers Animal Gravity as the cause of universal Gravitation, and which is probably the basis of all corporeal Properties.

Mesmers own system of ideas, while it seems that he tried to align it as far as possible to the science of his day, nevertheless caused problems for many of his scientific and medical contemporaries. Whether Gurdjieff took or adapted any of Mesmers ideas specifically, is an open question, but there can be found much that links the two, as demonstrated in this paper. Mesmer, although portraying himself in his own record to be a discoverer of animal magnetism, though such indications are never explicitly admitted by Mesmer in his writings.

Gurdjieff undoubtedly borrowed ideas from many traditions and cultures, old and new, including Western philosophy and science of various times, our own included. Yet in the grand interconnected scheme of Gurdjieffs All and Everything , we cannot simply say that this or that idea that he uses is superseded (as it may well be, for example, in contemporary science) because, in addition to other possibilities, it may be a prop for a more subtle idea, not immediately obvious, and perhaps with its components spread over several different parts of the book or books.

Like Gurdjieff, Mesmer took pains to point out our tendency to misuse language, and complained that we tend to substantivise verbs, making processes into things. He says also: