Editing George Gurdjieff (section)

===Travels===
In early adulthood, according to his own account, Gurdjieff's search for such knowledge led him to travel widely to [[Central Asia]], Egypt, Iran, India, Tibet and other places before he returned to Russia for a few years in 1912. He was never forthcoming about the source of his teaching, which he once labelled as [[esoteric Christianity]], in that it ascribes a psychological rather than a literal meaning to various parables and statements found in the Bible.<ref>p.109 from "In Search of the Miraculous": for the benefit of those who know already, I will say that, if you like, this is esoteric Christianity.</ref> The only account of his wanderings appears in his book ''[[Meetings with Remarkable Men]]'', which is not generally considered to be a reliable autobiography. One example is of the adventure of walking across the Gobi desert on stilts, where Gurdjieff said he was able to look down on the contours of the sand dunes while the sand storm whirled around below him.<ref>S. Wellbeloved, ''Gurdjieff, Astrology and Beelzebub's Tales'', pp. 9–13</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.gurdjieff.org/owens2.htm |title=T. W. Owens, Commentary on Meetings with Remarkable Men |publisher=Gurdjieff.org |date=2000-04-01 |access-date=2014-03-02}}</ref> Each chapter is named after a "remarkable man", some of whom were putative members of a society called "The Seekers of Truth".

After Gurdjieff's death, [[J. G. Bennett]] researched his potential sources and suggested that the men were symbolic of the three types of people to whom Gurdjieff referred: No. 1 centred in their physical body; No. 2 centred in their emotions and No. 3 centred in their mind. Gurdjieff describes how he encountered [[dervish]]es, [[fakir]]s and descendants of the [[Essenes]], whose teaching he said had been conserved at a monastery in Sarmoung. The book also has an overarching [[quest]] involving a map of "pre-sand Egypt" and culminates in an encounter with the "[[Sarmoung Brotherhood]]".<ref name="sedgwick">Mark Sedgwick, "[https://books.google.com/books?id=7cjFFgvUdDUC&pg=PA208 European Neo-Sufi Movements in the Inter-war Period]" in ''Islam in Inter-War Europe'', ed. by Natalie Clayer and Eric Germain. Columbia Univ. Press, 2008 p. 208. {{ISBN|978-0-231-70100-6}}</ref>

Gurdjieff wrote that he supported himself during his travels by engaging in various enterprises such as running a travelling repair shop and making paper flowers; and on one occasion while thinking about what he could do, he described catching sparrows in the park and then dyeing them yellow to be sold as canaries;<ref>Gurdjieff, G.I: "The Material Question", published as an addendum to ''[[Meetings with Remarkable Men]]''</ref>  It is also speculated by commentators that during his travels he was engaged in a certain amount of political activity, as part of [[The Great Game]].<ref>Moore, pp 36–7</ref>