How Gurdjieff Ranked the World's Religions
Read with care, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson yields a clear order among the five religions Gurdjieff counted as genuine: Christianity first, then Judaism, Lamaism, Buddhism and lastly, Islam. This post sets out that order and the reasoning behind it, from Gurdjieff's own text.
One caveat belongs at the front. Gurdjieff gives only one explicit superlative in the whole book. In Chapter 42, Beelzebub says that the teaching of the Divine Jesus Christ, if carried out in conformity with its original, would be the best of all religions — existing and future (BTTHG p. 1009). He never numbers the rest.
So places two to five are a reconstruction. My aim is to make that reconstruction honest by naming the criteria Gurdjieff himself applies, and to show that the order falls out of them rather than out of my own preference.
Gurdjieff's three criteria
Gurdjieff judges every religion by three measures. They recur through Chapter 38, "Religion," and the long dialogue in Chapter 42.
Completeness of the original revelation. Did it provide for both soul and body? Did it aim at conscious transformation — Partkdolg-duty and the coating of higher being-bodies — or only at a tolerable ordering of life?
Whether it presupposes the capacity for contemplation. This is the decisive axis in Chapter 42. A teaching given to beings who can still contemplate ranks above one built so that life may run "mechanically" for those who have lost that capacity.
Fidelity of transmission. How fast, and how badly, did wiseacring and Hasnamussian policy strip it? Did a genuine esoteric remnant survive, and for how long?
Every one of the five comes from a genuine Messenger from Above, and every one was corrupted. The ranking is therefore not about true versus false religion. It is about how much there was to lose, and how much was kept.
1. Christianity: the original teaching of Jesus Christ
Christianity stands first because it is the only teaching Gurdjieff calls the best of all, past and future. It wins on all three criteria, even allowing for how badly it was later corrupted.
Completeness. In Chapter 42 describes the original Christian teaching as the fullest synthesis of everything before it. It made provision for the soul and for the body alike, and gave every regulation needed for a peaceful and happy existence. No other founder receives this praise.
Contemplation. It was given to people who could still receive it consciously. Its aim was not regulated conduct but inner rebirth: metanoia, the formation of the soul through participation in the Theomertmalogos, the Word-God. This is the Fourth Way's own aim, and it is why Gurdjieff could say of his system, "this is esoteric Christianity" (ISOTM p. 102).
Transmission. The institution failed badly. Gurdjieff calls the Fathers' alterations "criminal" in the objective sense (p. 736). He laments that a teaching of the Creator's all-lovingness became one in which the Creator mocks souls (p. 703). Yet the original survived among the Essenes (pp. 703–4).
One detail settles the matter. The only sacred operation in Beelzebub that fully succeeds is Christ's. The Last Supper prepared the Almznoshinoo, and his Kesdjan body was materialised after death (pp. 734–43). Judas, far from a traitor, bought the time this required. The same rite attempted in Tibet ended in catastrophe, as we will see below.
2. Judaism: the teaching of Saint Moses
Judaism ranks second because it is the root that Christianity fulfils. Chapter 42 states that the Christian religion was founded almost wholly on Judaic doctrine, with only its outer details adapted to the mentality of Christ's contemporaries (p. 1002).
Completeness. Moses is a Sacred Individual sent from Above. His task was to give exact indications for ordinary existence, so that the crystallised consequences of Kundabuffer might gradually dissolve (p. 700). His was a teaching for a normal life.
Practical genius. Beelzebub's longest tribute to any founder's practical wisdom is his account of circumcision (pp. 1003–9). He presents it as esoteric hygiene drawn from Akhaldan knowledge preserved in Egypt, and vouches for its results as a physician. No other religion's customs receive such detailed defence.
Transmission. The decay began at once. Moses' followers added so many "spices" that he could not recognise his own counsels (p. 700). Today, Beelzebub foresees dissolution through policy-bred "organic hatred" and secularisation. The new Jewish university in Jerusalem, a hearth burning the labours of centuries, is his symbol of it (pp. 707–8).
Judaism is nearly as complete as Christianity, but its centre of gravity is the right ordering of life. Christianity added what Moses prepared for: the inner resurrection.
3. Lamaism: the teaching of Saint Lama
Lamaism ranks third because, of every stream after Christ, it was the best preserved in practice. Many readers will expect it lower. The text does not allow it.
Completeness. Saint Lama was the last of the five Sacred Individuals. His teaching inherited the line of Krishnatkharna and Buddha and refined it for the beings of Tibet. It is derivative and local, not universal.
Transmission. Here Lamaism outranks everything but Christianity's Essene line. It is the one case where Beelzebub reports beings actually working on themselves: some had attained deliverance, others were on the way, and all were grouped by their degree of inner transubstantiation (pp. 715–16). The Himalayas, divinely stabilised, kept them isolated from the abnormal conditions spreading over the planet.
Then came the British expedition of 1904. The Tibetans refused to meet it with violence, on the ground that every life is dear to the Creator (p. 723). A stray bullet killed the chief of the Group of Seven, the sole bearer of the secret instructions. The remaining six attempted the Almznoshinoo without the threads of preparation Christ had laid at the Last Supper. Everything within a kilometre was obliterated, including the Legominisms of Krishnatkharna, Buddha and Lama (pp. 726–33).
Lamaism is less complete than the teaching of Moses. But it carried the best of Buddha's line intact until 1904. It was lost to a single catastrophe, not to centuries of decay.
4. Buddhism: the teaching of Saint Buddha
Buddhism ranks fourth because its original teaching was high, but its corruption turned that teaching into its opposite.
Completeness. Gurdjieff names Buddha a genuine Messenger of the Creator (pp. 233–4). His indications were exact: conscious endurance of the unpleasant manifestations of others, and intentional suffering in ordinary life, among people. Both aim squarely at Partkdolg-duty. On this criterion alone, Buddhism might stand above Lamaism.
Transmission. It was the most perversely wiseacred of all, and at its very centre:
Endurance among others became flight into monastic solitude (pp. 242–3).
Prana, to be earned through labour, became Prana already present in everyone, abolishing the need for labour (pp. 244–6).
Kundabuffer, a remnant to be outgrown, became Kundalini, a force to be awakened (p. 250).
The end point is Tibet's "Self-tamers," monks immured for life in sealed cells (pp. 260–1). The modern end point is worse: the fragments now feed Theosophy, Occultism and Spiritualism (p. 249).
A teaching of conscious labour inverted at its core is a deeper loss than Lamaism's sudden end. Yet Buddhism still ranks above Islam, because its original aim was conscious transformation itself.
5. Islam: the teaching of Saint Mohammed
Islam ranks fifth because Gurdjieff describes it as designed for a humanity that could no longer contemplate, and so was regressive. This is a structural judgment, not contempt.
Respect for the founder. Gurdjieff calls him "Saint Mohammed" and "full of hope." Had the teaching stayed pure, he says, it might have become a hearth of hope and reconciliation among peoples (p. 704).
Contemplation. Chapter 42 is explicit. Islam's customs — abdest (ablution), sooniat (circumcision), polygamy — were established so that the daily life of believers who had lost the capacity for contemplation might at least flow tolerably, mechanically (pp. 1010–11). By Gurdjieff's own axis, a teaching built as a mechanical substitute ranks below one addressed to conscious beings. Its rites produce right behaviour; they were not designed to give birth to conscience.
Transmission. It was mixed early with the fantasies of the Babylonian dualists, above all the sensual paradise (pp. 704–5). The Sunni–Shia schism hardened from psychic into "organic" hatred, later exploited by European powers to keep Muslims divided (pp. 705–6). Gurdjieff calls it the religion most stripped, and most used for egoistic and political aims (pp. 709–10).
Its living esoteric remnant was the dervishes, who had received Mohammed's teaching well and passed it on unchanged. Their monasteries were closed by the Turkish reforms. With them went the last dying sparks of the original (pp. 710–12).
Below the five
Three things sit outside the pentad, and each ranks lower than any genuine religion.
Hinduism. Krishnatkharna's teaching is not one of the five surviving religions. Gurdjieff treats it as an earlier Pearl-land stream, absorbed into the line of Buddha and Lama, and later the soil of the Kundalini distortions.
Babylonian dualism. This is not a revelation at all. It is the fantasy layer — paradise, hell, the cosmic war of good and evil — that infected Judaism, Christianity and Islam alike.
Modern pseudo-teachings. Theosophy, Occultism, Spiritualism and Psychoanalysis stand at the very bottom. Gurdjieff treats them as means of further obscuring a psyche already obscured.
Two objections answered
"Gurdjieff praises Muslims over Christians"
He does, in practice. In the Chapter 42 dialogue, a young Persian defends polygamy and ablution against European monogamy, adultery and disease. Beelzebub does not refute him. He concedes the customs work, and contemporary European Christian life comes off worse. This does not overturn the ranking. It confirms the distinction it rests on. The ranking concerns the original revelations.
On present-day practice, Gurdjieff plainly rates the ordinary Persian Muslim above the ordinary European Christian. That is exactly what one should expect if the Church has lost its esoteric method while Islam's mechanical customs still function. The gap between original Christianity and institutional Christianity is the whole argument for the Fourth Way.
"Ashiata Shiemash outranks Christ"
By results, Ashiata Shiemash is the most successful Messenger in the book. His work produced normal being-existence across whole regions (Chapters 25–29). He founded no religion, and judged that faith, hope and love could no longer be relied on in contemporary people. He worked through conscience instead. A critic could read him as Gurdjieff's true ideal: pre-Christian and conscience-based.
The answer lies in the name of the brotherhood he founded, Heechtvori, where, only he will be called the Son of God who acquires conscience in himself (p. 368). Ashiata's aim is the same Sonship that Christ embodies. Conscience, for Gurdjieff, is the representative of the Creator within us, made of particles of the Creator's own sorrow (pp. 371–3). Ashiata does not stand outside the Christological order. He works within it, by another door.
The ranking at a glance
Rank | Religion | Completeness | Addressed to | Fidelity of transmission |
1 | Christianity (original) | Fullest: soul and body; best of all, past and future | Conscious, contemplative beings | Corrupted by the institution; preserved by the Essenes |
2 | Judaism | Root of Christianity; exact indications for life | The right ordering of life | Spiced at once; now dissolving |
3 | Lamaism | Derivative and local, of Buddha's line | Communal inner work | Best kept in practice until 1904; then annihilated |
4 | Buddhism | High: conscious labour and intentional suffering | Conscious beings | Inverted at its core |
5 | Islam | A merciful simplification and regressive | Those who lost contemplation | Most stripped and politicised; dervish remnant destroyed |
Conclusion
Gurdjieff's order is not a sectarian league table. Every founder is a saint and a genuine Messenger; every religion was betrayed by those who came after. What separates them is what each was given to do, and how much of it survived.
On those terms the original teaching of Jesus Christ stands alone. It was the most complete, it was addressed to conscious beings, and its esoteric core outlived the institution that buried it. That core is what Gurdjieff claimed to carry. The Fourth Way is not a sixth religion added to the five. It is the attempt to recover the first.
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