Tag Archives: Enneagram

10/5/21

Is the Enneagram Spiritually Neutral? Part 3

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Despite claims of having an ancient origin, the Enneagram as it is known today originated with George Gurdjieff, a Russian philosopher, mystic and spiritual teacher, who introduced it to the West in 1916. Gurdjieff thought it could be used to disclose all knowledge and reveal the secrets of the cosmos. As the Enneagram of personality, it has become a popular ‘tool’ for personality assessment and spiritual growth and even found its way into the Christian church. Unfortunately, it seems many Christians are unaware of, or explain away the evidence of its occult origins and nature.

Marsha Montenegro Critiques the Enneagram

Attempts to sanitize the Enneagram of personality by claiming it was stolen from Christianity and is based on biblical principles are false. Marsha Montenegro, a former astrologer who was involved with various New Age, occult and Eastern beliefs and practices before coming to Christ, said its theories of personality are based on esoteric teachings and an occult worldview. Its Gnostic initiation or awakening “is an occult counterfeit of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and His regeneration of the believer upon faith in Christ.” See her website, Christian Answers for the New Age (CANA) for several articles on the Enneagram.

The clear origin and purpose of the Enneagram is to initiate a Gnostic spiritual awakening to one’s alleged true divine Self, which is in itself an occult initiation. This is the claim and goal of virtually all occult and New Age teachings. The purpose of such initiation is a shift in consciousness, a change in the way one views reality — God, the world, others, and self.

The kind of Christianity claimed by Gurdjieff is a Gnostic distortion of Christianity. “Gurdjieff, his predecessors in Theosophy, and those who followed the various offshoots of Theosophy and related groups usually referred to themselves as Christians and believed they had discovered the ‘true’ Christianity.” Many who follow New Age belief systems or use ‘tools’ like the Enneagram will claim to be mystical or esoteric Christians.

Alisa Childers has a 13-minute video interview on her YouTube channel with Montenegro on how the Enneagram became part of Christian culture. Montenegro reviewed how Gurdjieff taught about the Enneagram to his students, including P.D. Ouspensky. Gurdjieff never wrote about the Enneagram, but Ouspensky did. Oscar Ichazo came across the teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky on the Enneagram and incorporated his own understanding of the Enneagram as a “picture of Ego fixation.” Each of the nine points of the Enneagram corresponded to an Ego fixation—something your Ego becomes fixated upon. Ichazo’s view was that your Ego, who you seemed to be outwardly, was a cover up for the true inner essential self.

“Your essence is actually pure and untouched by anything bad, or anything wrong.” This pure essence has been covered up by false ideas you’ve had about yourself via personal experiences, what other people have told you, how we have been conditioned by these things. This is the Ego, the false Self. “This in an idea that is very common in Jungian thinking and the New Age as well.” The belief is that there is this pure, untouched Self.

Ishazo taught that you should find your Ego fixation, and when you understand that it is not really you, “you can see this pure Self at the center of who you are.” The Enneagram still was not being taught as reflecting personality. Claudio Naranjo, a psychiatrist and spiritual seeker, was a student of Ichazo’s at Arica. He learned the Enneagram from Ichazo. Naranjo claimed that he received the Enneagram types that we now associate with the Enneagram from automatic writing. This is a form of spirit contact, where you open yourself up and let “whatever spirit or entity use your hand to write out things.” Naranjo said the types were partly from his observations, but mostly from automatic writing.

Catholic and Evangelical Critiques of the Enneagram

Montenegro is not the only person cautioning Christians to reject the Enneagram because of its occult, Gnostic origins and nature. In “The Enneagram—A History (Part 1)” Brandon Medina said while the Bible says nothing about the Enneagram by name, it has a lot to say about origins, practices, numerology and identity—“all of which make up the enneagram as a  whole.” The Bible instructs us to not do as the pagans or unbelievers do. Simply put, the Enneagram has no biblical foundation and is rooted in occult practices.

Supporters claim the Enneagram was stolen from Christianity, but history does not back this up; they propose the numbering system is ancient, but facts don’t back this up; and they teach your identity is found in your Enneagram number, but the Bible doesn’t back this up. In fact, the Bible says that our identity is found in Jesus and that He, not the Enneagram, began a work in us which He will complete.

Mitch Pacwa, a Jesuit priest who has studied the enneagram, said in “Enneagram: A Modern Myth,” that the Enneagram system is inherently pantheistic. The Enneagram itself is very symbolic, starting off with a circle that symbolizes the world or the cosmos; the oneness or wholeness of all beings. The circle also symbolizes the number one, for one cosmos. Inside the circle are two other drawings; one is a triangle that is used to signify “god.” Notice that “god” is contained inside the cosmos. God is contained by the universe, rather than the fundamental Creator-creation distinction of Christianity.

Some Enneagram proponents claim that the Enneagram is a 2,000-year-old Sufi system from Islamic mystics who lived before the time of Christ. Pawca pointed out how this was impossible because Sufism is a part of Islam, which is from the 7th century AD. He did state that Gurdjieff learned the Enneagram from the Sufis, who used it in Central Asia when he came across a group living in Central Asia during his travels. They used it for fortune telling through numerology.

The Sufis picked it up and used it as a symbol of the 9 stages of enlightenment: You move from your “ego” into your essence. What do they mean by essence? Your essence is that same being within you that has the same image as God. So your inner being has the same divine nature as God has. So it’s a very pantheistic and monist system. But it’s through very rigorous cleansing yourself of your ego and getting into your essence.

More Harmful than Helpful

Writing for The Gospel Coalition (TGC) in February of 2018, Kevin DeYoung wrote a critical review of The Road Back to You by Ian Cron and Suzanne Stabile, which was published by InterVarsity Press (IVP) in 2016. He thought on the whole, The Road Back to You would be more harmful than helpful for Christians who attempt to use it as a tool for spiritual growth. He observed that although the authors argued that the Enneagram does not smuggle the therapeutic under the guise of the theological, “The book is awash in therapeutic language.”

Every chapter talks about some combination of forgiving myself, finding my true self, becoming spiritually evolved, being healed from wounded messages, dealing with codependent behaviors, and pursuing personal wholeness. This is not the language of the Bible. We hear nothing about fear of man, the love of the praise of man, covenantal promises, covenantal threats, repentance, atonement, heaven or hell. When faith is mentioned it’s described as believing in something or someone bigger than you.

The spirituality of the Enneagram in The Road Back to You has little resemblance to biblical spirituality, according to DeYoung. In its discussion of the Fall, humanity’s sinful rebellion against God is said to be that “we’ve ‘lost connection’ with our God-given identity.” Their definition of sin, following that of Richard Rohr, is that “sins are fixations that prevent the energy of life, God’s love, from flowing freely.” There is nothing here about sin as lawlessness or spiritual adultery or “Sin as cosmic betrayal against a just and holy God.”

It has no doctrine of conversion, because the human condition described has no need for regeneration. Referring to their discussion of Enneagram personality type for “Fours,” DeYoung quoted the authors as saying “Fours arrived on life’s doorstep with the same equipment everyone else did. The kingdom is inside them too. Everything they need is here.”

This is not evangelical spirituality. It’s no wonder the book does not interact with Scripture (except for referencing the story of Mary and Martha) and quotes mainly from Catholic contemplatives like Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr, and Ronald Rolheiser, while also referencing “spiritual leaders” like the Dalai Lama, Lao-Tzu, and Thich Nhat Hahn. You don’t have to be a Christian to benefit from the Enneagram journey in this book, because there is nothing about the journey that is discernibly Christian.

In “The Enneagram—A History (Part 3),” Brandon Medina countered the claim of Beth McCord, the founder of Your Enneagram Coach, who says “[The Enneagram] is a tool to help bring transformation. The Gospel is the transformation.”  McCord views the Enneagram as a spiritually neutral tool with a significant appeal to Christians. If someone were to say to her that it’s not in the Bible, she’d respond: “Well, the Myers-Briggs isn’t in the Bible. You know, there’s lots of things that aren’t in the Bible but are still helpful.”

Medina concluded the Enneagram was not needed as a spiritual tool for Gospel transformation. He quoted Romans 8:13-14, “For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” And then he quoted 2 Corinthians 3:18, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this come from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

But by far the gravest danger is the view held by Russ Hudson, co-founder and president of The Enneagram Institute and co-author of several bestselling enneagram books with Don Riso, “The Enneagram is less about nine types of people and more about nine paths to God.” This is anathema to what the Bible states: that there is only one way to God and that way being Jesus. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians writes, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ”; we read in Acts 4:12, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved”; and then Jesus in John 14:6 says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Not Spiritually Neutral

In his daily blog, Richard Rohr said the enneagram is used to discern spirits, to help recognize your False Self, and lead you to encounter your True Self in God. Once you see your True Self for what it is, you are no longer attached to it; and it no longer blocks you from realizing your inherent union with God. “The whole Enneagram diagram is called ‘the face of God.’ If you could look out at reality from nine pairs of eyes and honor all of them, you would look at reality through the eyes of God—eyes filled with compassion for yourself and everyone else!”

Medina commented that if no other evidence has convinced you to avoid the enneagram, hopefully the claim of it being about nine paths to God should demonstrate that the Enneagram is another gospel, based on the teaching of men “who seek to teach there is another path to God.” There is nothing that can redeem the Enneagram as a spiritually neutral tool that Christians can use to grow in their faith and relationship with God. I don’t agree with Joe Carter that the Enneagram is a harmless fad which will fade away in a few years. Nor is it something that can be left up to the conscience of the individual Christian.

Using the Enneagram simply as a diagnostic tool or for personal classification does not place the matter in league with eating food sacrificed to idols. Rather, its use is something the Bible warned us against in passages like Romans 16:17-18:I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.

“Is the Enneagram Spiritually Neutral?” is a three-part series, this being the third article. Part 1 and Part 2 can be found on this website. Part 1 concentrated on the origin of the Enneagram symbol with George Gurdjieff. Part 2 followed how the Enneagram became the Enneagram of personality under Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo. I am grateful for the research and thoughtful discussion by Brandon Medina in his own three-part series on the Enneagram, which I largely followed in what I wrote in my own articles. Links to his series of articles are: The Enneagram—A History (Part 1), (Part 2) and (Part 3). For more critique on the Enneagram from a Christian perspective, try the Enneagram page of article links on Monergism.

09/28/21

Is the Enneagram Spiritually Neutral? Part 2

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The Enneagram of personality was developed by two men, Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo. In “The Enneagram — A History (Part 3),” Brandon Medina said Ichazo and Naranjo each played a key role in reimagining the Enneagram. As a result, the modern Enneagram, the Enneagram of personality, is not being taught and practiced the way George Gurdjieff conceived it, “as a tool which can reveal all knowledge and by which the secrets of the cosmos are laid bare.” Medina suggested that you could say that the Enneagram created by Gurdjieff died with him.

In Part 1, we looked at some of the history behind the Enneagram, noting how Gurdjieff drew it from ancient sources, possibly from the Babylonians. The Law of Three and the Law of Seven in the Enneagram were noted to be the philosophical foundation of the Fourth Way, a method he developed for humans to switch from the temporal to the immortal—in order to experience the “real world.” Here, while looking at “The Enneagram—A History (Part 2),” we will see how the efforts of two men transformed the Enneagram into a mystical personality test.

Ichazo and His Scientific “Discovery”

Oscar Ichazo was born in Bolivia in 1931. At the age of nineteen he joined a study group that experimented with techniques of altered consciousness. “I had contact with Indians and they introduced me to psychedelic drugs and shamanism while I was in my early teens.” Roughly one year later he was introduced to the writings of both George Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky, a student of Gurdjieff. Ichazo said in 1950 he was invited to a closed study group that included Theosophists, esoteric Rosicrucians, and a sect of mystical Christians called Martinists, where he took part in long discussions about the work of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. “I first pointed out to this group that all the ideas proposed by Gurdjieff and Ouspensky could be traced to certain forms of Gnosticism and to specific doctrines of the Stoics, the Epicurians, and the Manichaeans.”

Ichazo began to research Eastern tantra and the Holy Kabbalah. He traveled to Tibet and India to study yoga, alchemy, I Ching Kabbalah, Buddhism, Zen and Sufism. “Ichazo claimed to have received insight and instruction from Metatron the prince of the archangels and students whom Ichazo trained at his Arica Institute were guided by their own spirit guide, the Green Qu ’Tab, once they reach a higher state of development.” After waking from “a divine coma” he was in for seven days, he realized he had been entrusted to bring a special new accelerated method of spiritual work to the West.

The Enneagram with Riso-Hudson Type Names

Most Enneagram practitioners attribute the nine personality categories and their corresponding numbers on the Enneagram figure to Ichazo. He said the Enneagram of personality came to him in a vision and was his sole invention. He also introduced several other Enneagrams, which he called enneagons, for a total of one hundred and eight. The only differences were the terms surrounding the Enneagram figure, not the figure itself. He claimed direct revelation of all 108 Enneagram types.

I never considered them my invention, but a discovery as scientific discoveries are, with exactly the same qualifications of being verifiable and objective. . . [They] reflect something real in human nature itself. We feel the categories have been discovered rather than invented.

He later modified this statement, saying he did not receive the enneagons from anyone. “They came to me, 108 in all, as in a vision, showing their internal relationships with complete clarity.” Ichazo said that not only was he the initiator of the Enneagram of personality, but also “the 108 enneagons and the entire system in all its terms have been developed by me, only and exclusively.” He began teaching a group of fifty-five students in Arica who sought to reach their human potential (striving to switch from the temporal to the immortal—in order to experience the “real world”) by listening to a series of his lectures and using a variety of spiritual practices based on mystical and meditative traditions.

Naranjo and What Came to Him

Claudio Naranjo was a Chliean psychiatrist born in 1932. He was also introduced to the Enneagram and Ouspensky in his teens. In 1962, Naranjo was at Harvard as a visiting Fulbright scholar, where he participated in Gordon Alport’s Social Psychology seminar. He became a close friend of Carlos Castaneda and was part of Leo Zeff’s psychedelic therapy group in 1965-66. While taking a pilgrimage after the death of his son, Naranjo returned to Chile and became a student of Ichazo’s at the Arica Institute.

Naranjo corroborated Ichazo’s claim about how he received the enneagons. He said it was his own reading of Ouspensky and the Fourth Way that led him to Ichazo. “My main interest in learning from Oscar Ichazo was a conviction that he was a link to the Sarmouni—the school behind Gurdjieff.” But like Ichazo, Naranjo muddied the water as to the origin of the Enneagram of personality, initially saying it was Ichazo who introduced him to the Enneagram during Ichazo’s series of lectures.

Later, he seemed to suggest Ichazo cared very little for the Enneagram. Referring to Ichazo, Naranjo said, “He didn’t talk about the enneagrams of personality more than two hours during our year with him.” Naranjo said if Ichazo was credited as the ‘seed’ of the enneagram movement, “I should rather compare myself to the gardener who has watered the plant.” He claimed it was he, Naranjo, who put into words what Ichazo had the barest understanding and description of. Naranjo has also stated the psychological types of the Enneagram came to him by a process of ‘automatic writing.’

Naranjo sites his ‘automatic’ writing while Ichazo has said that a person “may receive instructions from the higher entities such as Metatron, the prince of the archangels, who has given instructions to Ichazo.” It was the contradictory claims of origin between the two and specifically the supernatural claims of inspiration made by both men which would later become a problem regarding ownership for Ichazo, Naranjo, and Arica.

Naranjo brought the Enneagram of personality to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Esalen was an experimental center of esoteric ideas that had a crucial role in the human potential movement. Naranjo’s connection to Esalen was through his being an apprentice of Fritz Perls, and part of the early Gestalt Therapy movement, where he conducted workshops as a visiting associate at Esalen. One of Naranjo’s students at Esalen was a Jesuit priest, Bob Ochs, who took what he had learned about the Enneagram of personality to Loyola University in 1971.

The Enneagram Goes to Church

There Ochs taught the Enneagram of personality to several priests, including Don Riso, Mitch Pawca and Gerry Hare, who later taught it to Richard Rohr. In time, Don Riso left the priesthood and cofounded The Enneagram Institute with Russ Hudson. Pawca eventually abandoned the Enneagram, concerned it was introducing New Age beliefs into Catholicism. He wrote Catholics and the New Age in 1992 and “Enneagram: A Modern Myth.” Within the chapter, “Occult Roots of the Enneagram,” Pawca said:

The books by Gurdjieff’s disciples and articles about Oscar Ichazo prove they practiced occultism and that occultism is interwoven with the enneagram itself. Therefore, I believe Christians need to be aware of the enneagram’s occult origins so they can prevent occult traces from infecting their faith in Christ Jesus.

Lastly, there is Richard Rohr, who would become one of the key figures to popularize the Enneagram of personality within evangelical churches. He is a Franciscan priest who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He’s published over thirty books, including: The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective and Discovering the Enneagram: An Ancient Tool a New Spiritual Journey. He wrote the Foreword to The Sacred Enneagram by Christopher Heuertz. Ian Cron and Susan Stabile, co-authors of The Road Back To You, along with Heuertz are friends and students of Rohr. The Sacred Enneagram and The Road Back to You are two of the most popular and widely read books on the Enneagram of personality within evangelical churches.

Medina noted how the competing claims of the supernatural origin of what they taught led to problems regarding ownership of the Enneagram of personality for Ichazo, Naranjo and Arica. The origins debate only became worse as students of both Ichazo and Naranjo disregarded non-disclosure agreements they signed and began to teach and write about what they had been taught. “In an attempt to stem the tide Naranjo went so far as to say that if these techniques were used or published outside of his training they would lessen in effect.” Yet, Naranjo failed to make those attending his public meetings sign a nondisclosure.

Much like what happened with Ichazo and Naranjo, attributions of conflicting origins were made by the various authors. Riso claimed a contemporary originship of Ichazo and Naranjo and not an ancient one as was claimed by Gurdjieff only to later change his position; Speeth and Palmer claimed an ancient origin which was developed by Gurdjieff and the Sufis. Though Palmer does agree with Ichazo’s claim that he developed a “new tradition” apart from the context [of] Sufi, Christian, and Gurdjieff into “an eclectic new age spiritual growth context.” No one can seem to agree if it is new or ancient, or new but ancient, or ancient but new. Because of the violation of the non-disclosure agreement as mentioned above, Arica would bring a lawsuit claiming copyright infringement; and in an ironic and amusing turn of events the very people whom broke the non-disclosure agreement they signed with Arica later made their students also sign non-disclosure agreements which they summarily ignored and broke. The books which quickly followed began to remove Arica, Ichazo, and Naranjo as originators of the Enneagram while some sought to ‘Christianize’ it.

There are now over 30 books by Christian publishers on the Enneagram of personality. IVP, InterVarsity Press, has books by Suzanne Stabile, Alice Fryling, Sean Palmer, and others. Zondervan publishes works by Christopher Heurtz. Thomas Nelson publishes Enneagram books by Beth McCord and Matthew Stephen Brown. There are dozens of Christian Enneagram coaches, like Beth McCord, the founder of YEC (Your Enneagram Coach), who provide “courses, coaching and community to help you discover your best self, using the tool of the Enneagram through the lens of the Gospel.”

Is the Enneagram of personality a ‘tool’ Christians can use? According to Beth McCord, you can see yourself “with astonishing clarity with the Enneagram through the lens of the Gospel, so [you] can break free from self-condemnation, fear, and shame by knowing and experiencing the unconditional love, forgiveness, and freedom in Christ.” We’ll examine this claim in the light of Scripture and look at a biblical critique of the Enneagram and the Enneagram of personality in Part 3 of this article.

09/21/21

Is the Enneagram Spiritually Neutral? Part 1

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The Enneagram, or the Enneagram of personality, seems to be everywhere these days. Within the Christian church, it is marketed as a method of spiritual enlightenment, a tool for personal transformation and development, and a fusion of psychology and spirituality. Christian publishers have fallen over each other to publish books on using the enneagram for becoming more like Jesus; uncovering your true, God-given self; and finding your unique path to spiritual growth. And yet, it is rooted in occult practices and has similarities to Gnostic, Eastern and New Age beliefs.

Brandon Medina, writing in “The Enneagram — A History (Part 1)” for Theology Think Tank, said the Enneagram is alleged to be a tool that helps the person who uses it to discover their Enneagram number, which supposedly represents both the person’s personality and the area of in the person’s life that is hindering their spiritual development. “The number defines and identifies who you are and where you struggle.” This description refers to the modern sense and use of the Enneagram, the Enneagram of personality, but the Enneagram itself has earlier, and some claim, even ancient sources.

Most scholars and writers attribute the origin of the Enneagram to George Ilych Gurdjieff, who introduced the Enneagram image to the West in 1916. Gurdjieff suggested he borrowed the symbol and its philosophy from “ancient sources.” In the above linked article, Medina traced Gurdjieff’s vague references of the origins of the Enneagram back to a possible Babylonian origin. He said: “We could continue along the bunny trails and down the rabbit holes in an attempt to find an exact origin but I believe the information above is enough to at least point to a far ancient though unspecific beginning which is anything but Christian or biblical in origin.”

Gurdjieff and the Enneagram

Gurdjieff was an Armenian mystic who taught esoteric spiritual philosophies based on knowledge he gleaned from his journeys, which he described in Meetings with Remarkable Men. In “The Enneagram — A History (Part 2),” Medina said Gurdjieff was influenced by several religions: Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sufism. His teachings aimed at the transformation of humanity’s inner substance and he emphasized secrecy and confidentiality within his groups. Gurdjieff believed that so-called ‘normal’, non-esoteric psychology was at such variance with what was involved in reaching a higher level of awareness, “that his students would only retard their own progress and stir up hostility and misinterpretation by discussing the work of the group outside of it.” Marcia Montenegro said in “The Enneagram GPS,” that “Gurdjieff held that man is not aware of true reality and needs an awakening of consciousness.” Medina quoted Gurdjieff as saying:

The knowledge of the enneagram has for a very long time been preserved in secret and if it now is, so to speak, made available to all, it is only in an incomplete and theoretical form of which nobody could make any practical use without instruction from a man who knows.

Gurdjieff believed there have been three traditional modes of transposing our identity from the temporal (bound by time and space) to the immortal. They were the way of the fakir (the way of struggle with the physical body); the way of the monk (the way of faith, the emotional way); and the way of the yogi (the way of knowledge, the way of mind). He concluded that while these work, they only work by severe asceticism and seclusion, which are not feasible to achieve in a modern society. His answer to this problem was the Fourth Way, which works on all three: body, emotions and mind at the same time in order to achieve balance. In Gurdjieff Unveiled, Seymour Ginsberg explained:

As we become more balanced, we can be self-conscious more easily because we are less identified with our body, our thoughts, or our emotions. When we no longer identify with these features of temporal life, we discover that we are free of all fears and all desires. We then stand in essence, not in personality, and essence is immortal.

The philosophical foundation of the Fourth Way is the Law of Three and the Law of Seven. The basic structure for the Law of Three is that for every action there are three required forces: active, passive and neutral. Gurdjieff called these forces affirming, denying and reconciling. They correspond to the triangle within the Enneagram as follows: affirming or active force (6), the denying or passive force (3) and the reconciling or neutral force (9). Christian mystics see imagery of the Trinity within the Law of Three; Hinduism sees Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu; Alchemy sees mercury, sulfur and salt. Until the third force interacts with the first two, nothing happens. Ginsburg said:

We can think of this process as movement along a parabola. The ‘descending’ arc of the parabola represents the ‘descent’ of spirit, an infinitely rapid, vibratory state, which represents infinitely fine matter, into grosser and grosser states until at the bottom of the parabola there is an infinitely slow vibratory state, which represents infinitely dense matter. The return arc of the parabola represents just the opposite, the ‘ascent’ of matter into spirit. It is sometimes called the path of return (to unity). Gurdjieff called human beings, ‘third-force blind,’ and this is because the third force is a property of the real world, the world as seen from the standpoint of Endlessness in complete non-identification. The real world can be experienced only in the state of objective consciousness. It is the fourth state of consciousness of which we are not conscious but toward which we work. It is the state in which we are completely free of all identification.

In contrast to the Enneagram of personality, notice that Gurdjieff intends for you to detach from your personality, not find it.

The Law of Seven or the Law of Octaves dives deeply into music and music theory. “While the Law of Three is one of forces, the Law of Seven is one of scales on which cosmic and global laws are attached.” Most people who use the Enneagram are unaware that each of the points are tones on the octave you move through before moving on to the next. “The law of octaves involves the complete process of the note ‘do’ going through a succession of tines until it reaches the complete process of the note ‘do’ of the next octave. The ‘do’ must pass through 7 tones which represent the Law of Seven.”

The so-called experts of the Enneagram wrongly ask people, or tell them through test results, what their enneagram number IS. They believe this number has a static, unchanging value. For example, in “How the Enneagram System Works” the Enneagram Institute mistakenly claims “that people do not change from one basic personality type to another” and “no type is inherently better or worse than any other.” These claims are the opposite of what was taught about the Law of Seven by P.D. Ouspensky, a student of Gurdjieff. When he introduced the Enneagram to Ouspensky, Gurdjieff said: “In order to understand the enneagram it must be thought of as in motion, as moving. A motionless enneagram is a dead symbol; the living symbol is in motion.”

When the Law of Three and the Law of Seven are combined with their lines of connection by the numbering sequences of each, the Enneagram in its final form is produced. The 3, 6, and 9 lines represent the Law of Three; and the 1, 4, 2, 8, 5, 7 lines represent the Law of Seven. Gurdjieff said, “The Enneagram is the fundamental hieroglyph of a universal language which has as many different meanings as there are levels of men.” He added:

All knowledge can be included in the enneagram and with the help of the enneagram it can be interpreted. And in this connection only what a man is able to put into the enneagram does he actually know, that is, understand. What he cannot put into the enneagram makes books and libraries entirely unnecessary. Everything can be included and read in the enneagram.

Yet, the Enneagram Institute disagrees, saying:

Although the Enneagram is probably the most open-ended and dynamic of typologies, this does not imply that the Enneagram can say all there is to say about human beings. Individuals are understandable only up to a certain point beyond which they remain mysterious and unpredictable. Thus, while there can be no simple explanations for persons, it is still possible to say something true about them. In the last analysis, the Enneagram helps us to do that—and only that.

Medina concluded that unfortunately for Gurdjieff the Enneagram has been popularized as a personality test that helps you discover who you are and who you can be, and “not as a tool to reveal the future of all knowledge.” Today it is a journey of self-discovery that helps you uncover your true, God-given self and your unique path to spiritual growth, rather than an explanation of all things in the universe. In Part 2 of this article, we’ll look at “The Enneagram — A History (Part 2)” by Brandon Medina and see how the Enneagram became the Enneagram of personality.