I have mentioned on this site the 1954 volume, Early Fathers from the Philokalia, edited and translated by Evgenia Kadloubovksy andGerald Eustace Howell Palmer. https://www.josephazize.com/2017/08/12/from-ouspensky-to-the-philokalia/

One of the gems unique to this volume is the collection of “Miscellaneous Saying from Various Texts” of Abba Evagrius of Pontus (345-399). I would not recommend his extreme ascetic lifestyle, or his apparent refusal to bathe. However, his spiritual writings contain some important and influential material: for example, it seems that he was the one who was ultimately responsible for the list of seven deadly sins of St Gregory I (although Evagrius had eight).

It is unclear from Early Fathers whether the twelve sayings were set out just like that in the Russian text, or whether they have extracted them from Evagrius’ large corpus. But they are revealing of the affinity between this Orthodox spiritual tradition (where he is revered as a saint in the calendar) and the Gurdjieff tradition. They are as follows:

1. Hell is the darkness of ignorance, which envelops sentient creatures, when they have lost the contemplation of God.
2. It is unseemly for the man who seeks honours to shirk the efforts for which honours are given.
3. Do you wish to know God? Learn first to know yourself.
4. It is inconsistent to think highly of oneself, while one’s actions are base.
5. In every man self-opinion prevents self-knowledge.
6. He is pious who is not at variance with himself.
7. A soul pure in God is God.
8. If you wish to be free from discontent, strive to please God.
9. If you wish to know who you are, do not look at what you have been, but at what you were originally created.
10. A proud soul is a den of robbers; it cannot bear the voice of knowledge.
11. Without temptations no one would be saved.
12. Pray without ceasing and remember Christ, who has regenerated you.

Number 3 in particular, has a loud resonance for the Gurdjieff tradition. It does not say do not strive to know God, but rather, to understand that if that is my aim, then I need to begin first by coming to know myself. Neither does it mean that to know myself is to know God as if I am God or He is me. As I understand it, only to the degree that I know myself, can I know anything else because all my imagined knowledge will be tainted by my false ideas of myself – what Gurdjieff called “false personality.” It is, I would say, an abiding human weakness that our conception of God reflects our own subjectivity. Until I know myself I cannot be impartial to myself, and hence none of my notions can be impartial.

Another side of the same insight, if not quite so pungent, is found in number 5: it means that if I wish to know myself, then I have to overcome my self-opinion, meaning my false ideas of myself (once more, false personality). To an extent, this must also be related to number 6: after all, if I have a divided mind (at variance with myself), how can I possibly be pious? But it goes a little further: it I am of single mind, then I am pious. This, I suspect, is Evagrius’ way of rephrasing Christ’s words:  “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light” (Matthew 6:22, KJV).

Then, number 9 gives a clue to how to find self-knowledge: not to examine the history of my madness, but how we were originally created. This sidesteps the issue of so-called “original sin.” We are not to look at that, but how we were created by God: souls put on this world to come to know, love and serve Him. We are to consider our possibilities, or potential virtues, and not to commiserate with our self-pitying and glorifying “I’s.” (We form both types of “I” together, as a sort of internal balance which only keeps us crazy.) This is a very hopeful statement because it draws attention to the light with which we were created. It is not easy to ponder how we were to created, and to put aside our pain at how we are.

However I do think there is a deep truth here: to the extent that we blame ourselves for what we did in sleep, it shows that something in us does not accept that we were in fact asleep, and this same something does not accept that we are in fact asleep now. Yet, I know that even as I was writing those words, I was not as awake as I have been. Something in us is swift to accept our state, whatever it may be.

Number 11, that without temptations we would not be saved, bursts into meaning for anyone who has studied Gurdjieff. It is not that our temptations save us, but that they remind us of our state. When we are tempted we see that we are about to fall into sin. This is our great chance. If I am so deeply asleep that I do not know it, I have no chance. But when I am tempted, I may be able to sense that a fall is imminent, and then awaken to see just how low I have fallen.

As if to provide a counter weight to any tendency to despair, the last of these sayings encourages us to remember Christ and our regeneration (in principle).

I would say that this volume is still of great value. Drawn from all volumes of the Philokalia except volume 4, it brings together between two covers a lot of powerful and rich religious thought; something especially useful when there are otherwise five books to work through. It should be reprinted.