Gurdjieff states in his book Life is Real, Only then When ‘I AM’ that, in regard to his essence-oath NOT to use his 'psychic abilities' as a means to support his spiritual work, he made two reservations about this for scientific purposes, one of which was to use it for:
‘…increasing the visibility of distant cosmic centres many thousands of times through the use of a medium…’ (page 26).
Gurdjieff also mentions using this ability a number of times in his book Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson for sourcing real information about history, and other personages using it for predicting the future.
A modern interpretation of this purported phenomenon is ‘Remote Viewing’ - a novel perceptual discipline for gaining information not available to the ordinary physical senses. Used extensively by so-called 'psychic spies' during the Cold War for classified military projects, it has a long history both as an intelligence gathering tool and as the subject of research and applications in the civilian world [see the International Remote Viewing Association, established by ex-military and intelligence personnel].
The C.I.A.'s declassified documents concerning the use of remote viewing is interesting to say the least. In civilian application, the Applied Precognition Project employs professional Remote Viewers to predict financial markets for investment purposes.
The key characteristic of Remote Viewing (really ‘Remote Sensing’) is the deliberate ‘blind’ or ‘double blind’ process for a subject to simply receive and describe ‘impressions’ through an active attention (there is no altered state of consciousness used) of remote objects or events regardless of time, space or barriers.
Validation
As a subject of enquiry, the author of this post consulted many of the leading experts and practically studied (through rigorous methodology) Remote Viewing over many years to investigate its authenticity and Gurdjieff's claims. Overall, the results have been remarkable, with successful identification of 'targets' (remote viewing objects) occurring more often than not.
As a consequence, a derivative of the Remote Viewing process to 'predict future events' (Associative Remote Viewing) was developed. It also employed biometric analysis to measure the so called ‘presentiment’ effect (‘Feeling the Future”) to provide another validity point for research. Gurdjieff refers to the lost human ability and properties of presentiment in Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, and it has been subject to much scientific scrutiny. The Associative Remote Viewing derivative was tested in over 400 trials (self-administered and subject-administered), achieving, on average, successful prediction of 75% across fair coin tossing and Forex Trading. This result provided a very high level of statistical significance that predictive success was well above chance expectations.
The Old Testament of the Bible is full of prophesy. In the Gospels, Christ often foretells his destiny and the details of what was to come.
Implications
From this author's perspective, it is not surprising that Gurdjieff laid so much emphasis on the study of 'remote viewing' - particularly as its implications for Soul creation, and humanity in general, has always been 'game-changing'.