Martfotai: Self Individuality and the Gospel According to Gurdjieff

“To possess the right to the name of ‘man,’ one must be one.”– G.I. Gurdjieff, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, p. 1209

“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me.”– Luke 9:23

The Gospel of the Real Human Being

At the heart of both the Gospel of Jesus Christ and Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way lies a radical and uncompromising anthropology. What is called a “human being” is not yet what it was meant to be. The name "man," Gurdjieff writes, refers to the "acme of Creation" (Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, p. 1208), a microcosmic mirror of the cosmic Logos, formed with all the capacities to realize the image of the Divine Actualizer Himself.

Likewise, in the Christian Gospel, humankind is declared to be made imago Dei—not as a static fact, but as a dynamic vocation. Christ reveals and restores this vocation, not merely through forgiveness of sin, but through calling human beings to undergo metanoia, a total interior transformation.

This process is not given automatically, nor inherited, nor conferred by ritual. It is earned through suffering, through the labor of inner becoming.

For Gurdjieff, this attainment is called Martfotai—the actualization of real self-individuality, the fulfillment of "Real 'I'", a soul forged by struggle and conscious participation in the sorrow of God.

In Christian terms, it is the birth of the new man in Christ (Ephesians 4:24), or as the Apostle Paul writes, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

Martfotai: The image of the Son

The word Martfotai designates the sacred goal of human evolution in Gurdjieff’s cosmology: the attainment of an integrated, conscious, and objective individuality. This term, introduced in Beelzebub’s Tales (p. 386), is associated with the fifth of the “being-obligolnian-strivings”—the striving “to assist the most rapid perfecting of other beings… up to the degree of the sacred Martfotai.”

This ideal mirrors the Christian doctrine of theosis, the divinization of the human being through union with the divine Logos. Christ is both the prototype and the means of this transformation. As the eternal Son who “emptied Himself” and took on human form (Philippians 2:7), Jesus Christ embodies the path of voluntary suffering and inner death as the gateway to resurrection. This, Gurdjieff affirms in non-theological but deeply spiritual language, when he writes that man must struggle “unmercifully with his own subjectivity” and eradicate internal falsehoods, without “self-calming” (Beelzebub’s Tales, p. 1209).

Then, the call is not to conformity or social virtue, but to crucifixion: not only moral effort, but existential rebirth through conscious work and voluntary suffering. As Gurdjieff writes, “one must first of all… work on an all-round knowledge of oneself… and then… strive for the eradication [of one’s defects] without mercy towards oneself.” This is precisely the path outlined by Jesus: “deny yourself… take up your cross daily.” It is not moralism, but metaphysical warfare.

The Sorrow of the Father and the Work of Redemption

A stunning and unique point of connection between the Fourth Way and the Gospel is Gurdjieff’s metaphysical image of the Sorrow of Our Common Father Creator (Beelzebub’s Tales, 384–386). According to Beelzebub, a planetary epoch once existed in which three-brained beings became acutely aware of this divine sorrow. In response, they began living and acting solely in accordance with conscience—a sacred faculty, not of moral sentiment, but of objective knowing, resonant with the divine Will.

In the Christian revelation, the sorrow of the Father is expressed through the Passion of the Son. “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son” (John 3:16). Christ's self-offering is not simply a legal substitution, but a cosmic restoration: a participation in the divine sorrow through the full descent into human suffering, and a lifting up of creation through that descent.

Gurdjieff’s image is less personalistic, but no less theological. The call to Martfotai is to lighten the sorrow of God through the conscious actualization of one's being (Beelzebub’s Tales, p. 386). This, again, mirrors the apostolic teaching: “I rejoice in my sufferings… for in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Colossians 1:24).

For both Gurdjieff and the Gospel, the human being must pay for their arising—not in a penal sense, but in the sense of willingly completing the Work that has been initiated by the Creator.

Mechanicality and the Fall: From Adam to Automatism

For Gurdjieff, the tragedy of man is not primarily moral failure, but mechanicality. The average man is not free; he does not act—he reacts. He is a puppet, pulled by the strings of emotion, conditioning, and association. He is divided, lacking a unified “I.” He mistakes personality for essence. He is, in Christian terms, in the state of fallen Adam, governed by the flesh (Romans 7), unable to do the good he wills.

Jesus says, “everyone who sins is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). Paul describes the “old man” as governed by passions and delusions. In Gurdjieffian terms, this is the unintegrated man, the man in whom the centers do not communicate, in whom thoughts, feelings, and impulses operate independently and mechanically. Salvation begins, not with external change but with the shattering of self-delusion and the revelation of one’s interior fragmentation.

This is why Gurdjieff emphasizes self-observation, conducted with ruthless sincerity. This is also why Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8)—purity not as sentiment, but as inner unification. The beginning of salvation is to “know thyself”—but not in a romantic sense. Rather, it is to see without distortion, and through that seeing, begin to become.

The Strivings and the Commandments

Gurdjieff outlines five being-obligolnian-strivings (Beelzebub’s Tales, p. 386), which structure the path to real humanity. These strivings parallel the Gospel imperatives in profound ways:

1. To care rightly for the planetary body – echoes Christ’s teaching that “the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19), and the ascetic tradition of honoring the body as a vessel of incarnation.

2. To cultivate a need for inner perfection – corresponds to Christ’s call: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

3. To seek knowledge of cosmic laws – parallels the Gospel call to “know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32), and to become “sons of light” through understanding (John 12:36).

4. To pay for one's arising and lighten divine sorrow – echoes Paul’s language of “offering your bodies as living sacrifices” (Romans 12:1) and sharing in the sufferings of Christ.

5. To assist others in their perfection up to Martfotai – is the commandment of love: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39), not sentimentally, but in the deep work of helping others toward true being.

Salvation is not a static condition, but a path. It is not merely a juridical pardon, but a transformation of ontology—a new creature.

From Christianity to Christogenesis

Gurdjieff’s system is not a deviation from the Gospel, but a return to its existential and initiatory heart. His language is esoteric, his cosmology and practice metaphysically Christian, and his message is fundamentally the same: the human being must become what it is called to be. “To possess the right to the name of ‘man,’ one must be one” (Beelzebub’s Tales, p. 1209). And to become Man is to become theanthropos—the God-man, the Christ-formed being.

In this light, Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way is not a contradiction of Christianity, but a re-translation of the same eternal command: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (Ephesians 5:14).

This is Martfotai. This is the Gospel.