Don Hoyt, President, Gurdjieff Foundation of California, 1984–88
The Process of Domestication of a Great Teaching
How a great teaching gradually undergoes that profound shift of direction, whereby, more and more, it comes to be filtered through the forms of our customary and familiar modes of perception — this is an age-old phenomenon. One that can aptly be described as a process of domestication, a domestication of the vision and vital force inherent in that teaching.
It is a process that cannot be so easily delineated in terms of simple cause and effect. At the same time, it is of critical importance, for those of us who regard ourselves as serious students of the Gurdjieff teaching, to understand how this process comes about.
Pivotal to this understanding is the reminder that we ourselves are participants in that process, a process which begins not because anyone decreed it, but rather because it so naturally and comfortably blends into our most cherished patterns of thought and feeling. The culminating effect of this process — within the Gurdjieff teaching — is to soften the essential thrust of Gurdjieff ’s message, thereby rendering it reasonable, and unshockable. There are numerous ways by which this process is encouraged and by means of which, unwittingly, it even comes to be sanctioned.
One of these ways — to which I’d like to call attention — can best be illustrated by reference to the oft quoted words of the Buddha as he was approaching his death. Among other things he said: “Be ye your own refuge. Look to no one as a refuge.” Clearly this can be understood from many levels. My own ponderings as to its intrinsic meaning, suggest that the Buddha was not counseling his monks to never approach another for guidance, but rather — beyond a given stage of their spiritual journey — that they not persist in looking up to any person as the embodiment of the teaching.
These ponderings become more poignantly relevant in light of the astonishing decision that culminated in the disassembling and reassembling of Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson to replace the original version. Poignantly relevant — since the decision had the blessings of one individual who had in fact come to be revered as a living repository of the Gurdjieff work. Thus, the necessity for coming to such a decision in the first place was never questioned.
What is so interesting from an historical perspective is that this orientation (even on the part of the eldest pupils of the work in New York) can be seen as a continuing expression of this process of domestication, a process that inevitably gives rise to a pervasive paternalism—a paternalism that is entirely appropriate in relation to the youngest pupils, but which is singularly inappropriate when applied to older members of the work.
Were he to witness the unfolding of this process of domestication, Gurdjieff might well have winced just a little, knowing as he did so well, that passive acquiescence to such a condition can have only one predictable outcome — the attenuation of that psychic force which is so indispensable to a living practice of the work; a work that he intended should ultimately become the central and authentic expression of our life.
Domestication
the adaptation of something to meet the expectations or tastes of ordinary people.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
The domestication of that force, of that intention, is unworthy of the best that is in us. But more than that, it is unworthy of what Gurdjieff himself wished for us — that we discover for ourselves what it means to come upon our own work. 
In 1955, Don Hoyt joined the newly formed Gurdjieff Foundation of California created and led by Lord Pentland, with whom he worked for nearly 30 years. He became a group leader and was the most revered of the Movements teachers. After Lord Pentland’s death on February 14, 1984, Don Hoyt served as president of the Gurdjieff Foundation of California until 1988. He passed in 2005.