SOURCE: "Is There an 'Inner Circle' of Humanity?," in Gurdjieff: Making a New World, Bennett Books, 1973, pp. 38-60.

In the following essay, Bennett discusses Gurdjieff's theory of the "inner circle of humanity."

Reports of brotherhoods whose members possess wisdom and powers that are different from and more significant than those of ordinary people suggest that they may be founded in fact and should be taken seriously. The supposition that such people have existed in the past, and that they decisively influenced human life in ways that ordinary people cannot understand, is the hypothesis that an Inner Circle of Humanity existed in the past. If we extend the idea to include the present and the foreseeable future, we have the hypothesis in the form of a perpetual hierarchy. This tradition is common to most Sufi teachings, and it was affirmed by Gurdjieff himself. He associates it with the idea...