Gurdjieff on the mission of Jesus Christ

In Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson (Penguin/Arkana), G.I. Gurdjieff offers a profound and unsettling reinterpretation of sacred history. All the “Genuine Messengers from Above”—the divine founders of the world’s religions—are revealed to have participated in a single, coordinated effort: to rescue humanity from the lingering curse of the organ Kundabuffer, an artificially implanted veil that blinded mankind from perceiving its true purpose and divine origin. These Messengers—agents of divine mercy—employed “Faith,” “Love,” and “Hope” as the primary forces capable of dissolving the residual effects of this distortion.

But one Messenger is exalted above all the others.

Jesus Christ, and His original teaching, is not merely another salvific path among many. According to Gurdjieff, His mission was uniquely cosmic—an act of redemptive intervention upon which the highest intelligences in the universe placed their hopes:

“...the religion and teaching upon which the highest Individuals placed great hopes...” (Beelzebub’s Tales, p. 733).

Christ’s teaching, in its undistorted form, was not simply religious. It was ontological. It sought to re-engineer the very interior of man. It was the only teaching uniquely feasible to truly save humanity. And yet—Gurdjieff accuses—this mission was betrayed by the very institutions that claimed to preserve it:

“As a result of this kind of wiseacring of theirs—criminal, in the objective sense—all true faith in the divine teaching of salvation of the All-Loving Jesus Christ, uniquely feasible for them, was totally destroyed in the beings of subsequent generations.” (p. 736)

The word “salvation” is not used lightly here. Gurdjieff’s Christ is not merely a moral teacher, but the bearer of a divine method for the transformation and deliverance of the human essence from egoism, hate, and spiritual death. That method was obliterated—not just forgotten, but criminally distorted.

And in its place?

“And therefore at the present time, in place of the teaching of the Divine Teacher Jesus Christ, in which among other things was revealed the power of the All-lovingness and All-forgivingness of our CREATOR, suffering for beings—it is now already taught there that our CREATOR mocks the souls of those who follow this teaching.” (p. 703)

Gurdjieff here proclaims a near-total apostasy: what was once the revelation of God's salvific love is now interpreted as divine cruelty. A false gospel has been enthroned in place of the true.

But Gurdjieff does not conclude that Christ’s mission failed. Rather, he contends it must now be completed through a new intervention, consistent with the original aim of salvation. The crisis is cosmic. The disease is existential. The cure must be no less radical. And so Gurdjieff proposes, not a new religion, but the continuation of Christ’s redemptive work by new means:

“The sole means now for the saving of the beings of the planet Earth would be to implant again into their presences a new organ, an organ like Kundabuffer, but this time of such properties that every one of these unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as of the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests.

“Only such a sensation and such a cognizance can now destroy the egoism completely crystallized in them that has swallowed up the whole of their Essence and also that tendency to hate others which flows from it—the tendency, namely, which engenders all those mutual relationships existing there, which serve as the chief cause of all their abnormalities unbecoming to three-brained beings and maleficent for them themselves and for the whole of the Universe.” (p. 1,183)

This is not a metaphor. It is a blueprint for salvation.

The new organ Gurdjieff proposes is the inverse of Kundabuffer—a sacred implant of death-awareness, designed to rupture the hard crust of egoism and awaken a salvific humility. In this, Gurdjieff aligns himself not in opposition to Christ, but as a steward of His unfinished mission. The original teaching of Jesus was not simply about belief or morality—it was a cosmic technology of salvation, aimed at the full restoration of human being.

Thus, the Fourth Way is not a deviation from the Gospel, but its esoteric continuation. Christ's mission was—and remains—the central axis of planetary salvation. What was once offered through parables and acts of mercy must now be reignited through confrontation with death, egoism, and cosmic responsibility.

This is not an invitation. It is a warning. It is not simply a teaching—it is a last chance.