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Ouspensky, P[ytor] D[emianovich] (1878–1947)
(Uspensky/Uspenski,
Petr D.)
A
Chronological English Language Bibliography
J.
Walter Driscoll
Tertium Organum:
The Third Canon of Thought, a Key to the Enigmas of the
World.
[Russian edition 1, 1912. English. Edition 1]
translated from the Russian [1916, edition 2] by Nicolas
Bessaraboff and Claude Bragdon, Rochester, Manas
Press, 1920, 344p. [U.S. edition 2,] New York: Knopf, 1922;
[British Edition 2,] London: Kegan Paul Trench, Trubner,
1934. Edition 3, New York: Knopf, 1945, 306p. A
revised translation by Eugenie Kadloubovsky and the author,
limited edition of 21 copies, Cape Town: Stourton Press,
1950, 192p.
An Abridgement of P. D. Ouspensky’s ‘Tertium Organum’
by Fairfax Hall, Cape Town: Stourton Press, 1961, 276p.
New York: Vintage-Random, 1970, 298p. ISBN 0-3947-5168-X (pb).
Revised translation by E. Kadloubovsky and the author, New
York: Knopf, 1981, 298p., index.; London: Routledge,
1981, 298p., ISBN 0-7100-7659-2 (pb); Book Jungle, 2005,
360p., ISBN 1-5946-2017-2 (tdpb). The 1922 Edition is posted
at:
www.sacred-texts.com/eso/to/index.htm
This bold, complex first book earned Ouspensky an
appreciative audience among the Russian avant-garde and
internationally after its English
translation in 1920. An enduring independent work,
Tertium Organum
has been compared to two important turn-of-the-century
mystical tracts which Ouspensky frequently quotes,
Maurice Bucke’s
Cosmic Consciousness
(1901), and William James’
Varieties of Religious Experience
(1902).
Ouspensky’s experiences of altered states—he called it
“experimental mysticism”—convinced him that a different mode
of thought was the necessary next stage in human evolution.
It would have to be radically different from the two
traditional Western modes, the Classical, and the
Positivistic, which have dominated Euro-American thinking
since Aristotle and Bacon. Claude Bragdon’s
introduction to his 1922 translation put it concisely:
Ouspensky reveals at a stroke that astounding audacity which
characterizes his thought throughout—an audacity which we
are accustomed to associate with the Russian mind in all its
phases. Such a title says, in effect: ‘Here is a book
which will reorganize all knowledge. The Organon
of Aristotle formulated the laws under which the subject
thinks; the Novum Organum of Bacon, the laws
under which the object may be known; but The Third
Canon of Thought existed before these two, and
ignorance of its laws does not justify their violation.
Tertium Organum shall guide and govern human
thought henceforth.’
Ouspensky draws on panoramic ideas from the teachings of
Eastern and Western mysticism for inspiration, and on
examples of both sacred art and scientific thought, to frame
a vision that transcends materialism and positivist thought.
The first Russian edition was published in 1912, the same
year Gurdjieff arrived in Moscow and three years before
Ouspensky and Gurdjieff met. During one of their early
conversations in 1915, Gurdjieff acknowledged having read
Tertium Organum,
then quipped;
If you
understood everything you have read in your
life, you would already know what you are looking for now.
If you understood everything you have written in your own
book . . .
Tertium Organum
I should come and bow down to you and beg you to teach me.
Ouspensky published the second edition in
1916, about a year after he began attending every one of
Gurdjieff’s lectures that he could.
~
* ~
The Symbolism of the Tarot:
Philosophy of Occultism in Pictures and Numbers.
[Edition 1] translated by A. L. Pogossky. St
Petersburg: The Trood Printing and Publishing Co., 1913,
softbound wraps printed in red and black. 8vo. 65 + (1)pp.;
New York: Dover, 1976, 63p., ISBN 0-4862-3291-3 (tdpb);
London: Universal Books, 1985, ISBN 0-908240-78-3 (hc);
Lightning Source Inc., ISBN 0-7661-0478-8 (pb).
Ouspensky revised this illustrated essay for publication in
The New Model of the Universe (1931).
He discusses the history of the Tarot deck, provides colour
reproductions of the 22 major arcana, and interprets their
symbolism.
~ * ~
Strange Life of Ivan Osokin: A Novel.
First
published in St Petersburg, 1915 as Kinedrama.
[Translated by the author.] Limited edition of 356 copies,
London: Stourton, 1947, 179p.; New York and London; Holme,
1947, 166p.; London: Faber & Faber, 1948; New York:
Hermitage House, 1955, 166p., this Hermitage edition
was also issued by University Books, New Hyde Park, N.Y., in
their dust jacket; London: Faber & Faber, 1971, 204p.
With a foreword by J[ohn] P[entland], Baltimore: Penguin,
1971 (Penguin Metaphysical Library), 204p.. ISBN
0-14-00-3366-1 (mmpb); London: Routledge, 1983, (pb); London
& New York: Arkana, 1987, 162p., ISBN 0-1401-9058-9 (tdpb);
Steiner Books, 2002, (pb); UK: Floris / Lindisfarne
Books, 2002, 192p., ISBN 1-5842-0005-7; Kessinger,
2004, ISBN 1-4179-5010-2 (tdpb);
Written in 1905, Ouspensky’s novel is based on his vision of
Time and “eternal recurrence”, by which he meant that unless
one awakens, one is reborn to the same identity and
circumstances, perpetually repeating the same mechanical
life. Osokin is an unfortunate, a disenchanted
outsider who comes to see his entire life as a repetitive
cycle from which he is desperate to escape. The last
chapter powerfully portrays the shock of possible awakening.
~ *
~
Talks with a Devil.
First published in Russian, 1916. Translated by Katya
Petroff, edited with an introduction by J. G. Bennett.
Northhamptonshire: Turnstone, 1972, 155p., ISBN
0-85500-004-X (hc); New York: Knopf, 1973, 176p.; York
Beach: Weiser, 2000, 176p., ISBN 1-57863-164-5 (tdpb).
Two extended stories, The Inventor, and The
Benevolent Devil, in which Ouspensky explores the costs
and consequences of struggling to awaken from appearances to
reality.
He regarded these as immature work and refused to translate
them to English.
~ * ~
Letters from Russia 1919.
Translated by Paul Leon, introduction by Fairfax Hall.
London: Routledge and Kegan, Paul, 1978, 59p., ISBN
0-7100-0077-4 (tdpb); London and New York: Penguin/Arkana,
1991, 59p., ISBN 0-14-019293-X (tdpb).
In 1919 Ouspensky was living in horrific war conditions in
southern Russia near the Crimea. He somehow found a
way to send a series of five letters describing his
circumstances, to his acquaintance, A. R. Orage, who
published them that summer, in The New Age. An
Epilogue contains C. E. Bechhofer’s light-hearted account of
a week-long visit with Ouspensky who then lived above a barn
and some evenings, regaled guests by serving vodka he had
distilled. Fairfax Hall was a close follower of
Ouspensky and established Stourton Press to publish the
earliest private editions of Ouspensky’s work.
~
* ~
A
New Model of the Universe:
Principles of the Psychological Method
in Its Application to Problems of Science, Religion and Art.
Translated with the author by R. R. Merton, New York: Knopf,
1931; London: Routledge, 1931, 544p. Edition 2,
London: Routledge, 1934. Edition 2 Revised, New York:
Knopf, 1934, 476 + XI p., index. Edition 3,
London: Routledge, 1938, 554p., index; New York: Knopf,
1938, 554p., index. Edition 2 reprinted, New York:
Vintage Books, 1971, 476 + XI p. index, ISBN 0-394-71524-1 (tdpb).
Edition 3 reprinted several times by Routledge and by Knopf,
then more recently, London: Arkana, 1984, 554p., ISBN
0-14-01-9042-2 (tdpb); Mineola, NY: Dover, 1997, 554p., ISBN
0-486-29701-2 (tdpb). Print-by-demand [undetermined
editions],
Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 1999, 572p., ISBN
0-7661-0822-8, (tdpb); BookSurge, 2006, ISBN: 1-4196-5161-7
(pb);
Kessinger has recently issued
most chapters of this and other of Ouspensky’s books, as
individual booklets. Their website details the
source for each title:
www.kessinger.net
A
diverse collection of 12 extended and often penetrating
essays, some were first published singly in Russia before
Ouspensky escaped in 1917. He translated these pieces
for English publication to account for his research since
the 1920 publication of Tertium Organum in English,
and to attract attention to his lectures. Topics
include, esotericism, the fourth dimension, Christianity,
the Tarot, Yoga, Dreams & Hypnosis, Experimental mysticism &
drugs, Cosmology, Sex, and Eternal Recurrence.
~ * ~
Six Psychological Lectures: 1934–1940.
London: privately printed edition of 125 sets of signatures
to be distributed by the author’s Historico-Psychological
Society, 1940, 90p. Fifty copies were bound but
only a few distributed privately and none were sold.
Posthumously published in five lectures—with the second and
third lectures combined, as
The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution.
New York: Hedgehog Press, 1950, 98p.; London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1951, 95p., index; New York: Knopf, 1954, 114p.;
New York: Bantam, 1968, 99p. (mmpb). Edition
2 enlarged, introductory note [by John Pentland], New
York: Knopf, 1974, 128p., ISBN 394 48755 9 (hc), ISBN 0-394
71943 3 (pb), contains “Notes on the Decision to Work” and a
previously unpublished autobiographical note, London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978, 95p., contains Ouspensky’s
1945 introduction. [Edition 3] New York: Random House,
1981, 128 p. This paperback edition contains a new
publisher’s note, two selections in the second edition are
replaced by a lecture of Sep. 23, 1937 in which Ouspensky
discloses that he “parted from Mr. G” when he saw that
Gurdjieff did not intend to establish a stable centre for
the work. “I saw that his work was going to crash, and
I parted with him in order to save the work in London.”
The five Psychological lectures were reissued in a combined
volume as The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution
and The Cosmology of Man’s Possible Evolution.
A limited edition of the definitive text of his
Psychological and Cosmological lectures, 1934-1945, 2500
copies, Robertsbridge, East Sussex: Agora Books, 1989,
205p., ISBN 1-872292-00-3 (hc). The Cosmological
lectures were first published as part of In Search of
the Miraculous QV. and in a separate paperback
volume as
The Cosmology of Man’s Possible Evolution
Cosmological Lectures (1934-1940) – a definitive edition to
provide a permanent record of the original text.
Robertsbridge, East Sussex: Agora Books, 1989,
111p., ISBN 1-872292-01-1 (tdpb).
These private introductory lectures were not written for
publication, but to provide Ouspensky’s closest followers
with an account of the direction his work had taken since
Tertium Organum
(1920), and
A New Model of the Universe
(1931), and his break with Gurdjieff.
Ouspensky indicates that these lectures are an invitation
to “follow the advice and indications given . . . which
referred chiefly to self-observation and a certain
self-discipline.” These deeply considered, powerful
talks present Ouspensky’s long struggle to articulate the
key ideas of Gurdjieff’s teaching.
POSTHUMOUS WORKS
In Search of the Miraculous:
Fragments of an Unknown Teaching.
New York: Harcourt Brace, 1949, 399p., index, paperback
issued [19]68; ISBN 0-15-644508-5; London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1950, 399p., index; [1975] ISBN 0-7100-1910-6 (hc);
ISBN 0-7100-6635-X (pb). Reissued with the title
In Search of the Miraculous: The Definitive Exploration of
G. I. Gurdjieff's Mystical Thought and Universal View.
Foreword by Marianne Williamson, New York: Harcourt,
2001, 416pp., ISBN: 0-156-00746-7 (tdpb). London: Paul
H. Crompton Ltd.: 2004, 400p., ISBN-10: 1-8742-5076-6,
ISBN-13: 978-1874-250760. The Cosmological lectures in
In Search of the Miraculous were also published
(1989) as six lectures in The Cosmology of Man’s
Possible Evolution. (See the previous entry
for
The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution.)
This is Ouspensky’s riveting
systematic
account of Gurdjieff’s
expository talks about psychology, awakening, and cosmology,
in Moscow, St Petersburg and Essentuki between 1915 and
1918. It was undertaken in 1920 with Gurdjieff’s
approval. The earliest book-length manuscript dates
from 1925. Ouspensky began having it read to his
groups and continued to work on it into the 1930s. He
referred to this book as, “Fragments”
and refused to allow any information about
“the system”
to be published, so it remained in manuscript.
Shortly after his death
in 1947
it was brought to Gurdjieff’s attention by Ouspensky’s wife
Sophie. With Gurdjieff’s encouragement, it was first
published in the autumn of 1949, some months before the 1950
publication of Beelzebub’s Tales. This
remains the most widely read account of Gurdjieff. The
predicament of everyone studying with Gurdjieff is aptly
described in
a passage from an early draft, where Ouspensky speaks about
Gurdjieff’s being and knowledge:
About schools and about where he found the knowledge, which
he beyond a doubt possessed, he said very little and just
hinted at it. He mentioned Mount Athos, Sufi schools
in Persia, Tibetan monasteries and Chitral schools in
central Asia and eastern Turkestan. He referred to
dervishes too, but all this was always in a very indefinite
manner.
There was
one question which I was never able to answer, namely, what
had he been born with and what had he been given by schools,
if he had passed through a school. I often thought
about this and at times it seemed to me, and some of us came
to the conclusion, that G. was a genius in his own domain,
that he scarcely had to learn, that what he knew could not
be learned and that none of us could hope to expect to
become like him.
But when I thought thus, another voice always said in me
that though I could indeed never learn much that G. knew,
this did not in the least deter me because I could
undoubtedly learn many things. . .
~ * ~
The Fourth Way:
A Record
of Talks and Answers to Questions
Based on the Teaching of G. I. Gurdjieff.
Prepared under the general supervision of Sophia Ouspensky.
New York: Knopf, 1957, 446p., index; London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1957, 446p., index; New York: Vintage/Random,
1971, 446p., index, ISBN 0-3947-1672-8 (tdpb); London:
Routledge & Kegan, Paul, 1975, (tdpb) ISBN ;
Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publications, 2000, 112p., ISBN
1-4253-4935-8 (tdpb).
Verbatim extracts from talks and answers to questions by
Ouspensky between 1921 and 1946. Chapter one surveys
the fundamental ideas, subsequent chapters amplify these, subject by subject in the order Ouspensky followed.
These excerpts are drawn from
Reports of Meetings 1921-1947.
Original typescripts and electrostatic copies in the
P. D. Ouspensky Collection at Yale University, manuscript
group 849, boxes 1 to 35.
~ * ~
A
Record of Some of the Meetings Held by P. D. Ouspensky
between 1930 and 1947.
Privately printed limited edition of 20 copies. Cape
Town: Stourton Press, 1951, 694p., index. (Copy in the
P. D. Ouspensky Collection, Yale University.) London
and New York: Penguin / Arkana, 1992, 662p., index, ISBN
0-14-019307-3 (tdpb).
A
Further Record:
Chiefly
of Extracts from Meetings Held by P. D. Ouspensky
between
1928 and 1945.
Privately printed limited edition of 20
copies. Cape Town: Stourton Press, 1952, 347p., index.
(Copy in the P. D. Ouspensky Collection, Yale University.)
London and New York: Penguin / Arkana, 318., index, ISBN
0-1401-9023-6 (tdpb).
These companion volumes supplement
The Fourth Way
and contain hundreds of precisely focused short talks
followed by question and answer periods with Ouspensky, in
England and New York. He expands upon and returns
repeatedly to detail fundamental ideas and practices covered
in his own earlier writings.
~ * ~
Conscience: The Search for Truth.
Introduction by Merrily E. Taylor. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1979, 159p.; London and New York: Arkana, 1988,
159p., ISBN 0-14-019011-2 (tdpb); London: Penguin, 1989,
176p., ISBN
10: 0140190112, ISBN-13: 978-0140190113.
Taylor’s Introduction (pp. 1-11) provides thoughtful general
discussion about Ouspensky’s books and his approach to
writing. Five short essays titled Memory, Surface
Personality, Self-Will, Negative Emotions, and, Notes on
Work, were originally published in limited editions by
Stourton Press between 1952 and 1955. Copies of the
Stourton editions are in the P. D. Ouspensky Collection at
Yale University.
~ * ~
P. D. OUSPENSKY’S MANUSCRIPTS
P. D. Ouspensky Memorial Collection.
Sterling Memorial Library, Yale
University. New Haven, Conn., Manuscript Group No.
840.
Fifty-four boxes of material that include
transcripts of Ouspensky’s meetings from 1921 to 1947,
manuscripts, translations and copies of his books, and two
boxes of photographs and material about Ouspensky.
Access is facilitated by Janet Elaine Gertz’ Finding Aid,
P. D. Ouspensky Memorial Collection :Manuscript Group 840.
New Haven: Yale University, 1981, 9p.
Remembering Pytor Demianovich Ouspensky.
Compiled and edited by Merrily E. Taylor. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Library, 1978, 45p.
A brochure for an exhibition commemorating
the 100th anniversary of Ouspensky’s birth, and
celebrating the gift of his papers and manuscripts to the
Yale Library. Contains a biographical outline,
an annotated bibliography of
Ouspensky’s major works and a selection of
reminiscences by followers.
~ * ~
Notes on the Gospel of Saint John.
Mexico City: Ediciones Sol, 1949, 1979, 27p.
Rodney
Collin found this manuscript among Ouspensky’s papers and
published it under his name. James Webb contends that
it “was in fact the work of another pupil who submitted it
to him. Collin issued it believing it to be
Ouspensky’s work, but withdrew it when he discovered his
mistake.” (Harmonious Circle. p. 491.)
INTERVIEWS
WITH P. D. OUSPENSKY
Bowyer. E. C.
Not a Cult.
The Daily News
(London), February 19, 1923, pp. 1, 7. Concludes a
four-part series on Gurdjieff’s Institute by E. C. Bowyer.
Provides a revealing glimpse of Ouspensky’s attitude then,
towards Gurdjieff and his group in France. “Gurdjieff
and I have reached our present stage of knowledge by long
and hard work in many lands . . .. My book, telling of our
discoveries so far as they have gone, should be out this
summer. . . . I am thinking of calling it Fragments of an
Unknown Teaching. In the meantime I am lecturing
before small private classes, which is as much as my command
of English permits.”
Landau, Rom
God Is My Adventure: A Book of Modern Mystics, Masters and
Teachers.
London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1935, 426p.; New York:
Knopf, 1936, 411p., bib.; London: Faber & Faber, 1941,
255p.; London: Allen & Unwin, 1964, ISBN 0-0420-0006-8 (pb).
Landau sought out men who
claimed to have penetrated “those regions of truth that
official religions and sciences are shy of exploring.”
He describes interviews with Keyserling, Bo Yin Ra, Steiner,
Krishnamurti, Heher Baba, George Jeffreys, Frank Buchman,
and Ouspensky, who’s London meetings Landau attended several
times. Landau visited Gurdjieff in his New York
hotel-room one afternoon during the 1930s. Sepia
photos are dipped in, of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky. These
are the first extended interviews of Gurdjieff and of
Ouspensky to be published in book form.
ACCOUNTS OF
P. D. OUSPENSKY
Butkovsky-Hewitt, Anna
With Gurdjieff in St Petersburg and
Paris.
With the assistance of Mary Cosh and Alicia Street.
New York: Weiser, 1978, 157p., ISBN 0-87728-387-7 (hc);
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978, 157p., ISBN
0-7100-8527-3 (hc).
An
admiring account of the author’s intimate quest—from 1913 to
1917—with P. D. Ouspensky, for “the mystic threshold between
the third and fourth dimension”. She is not precise
with dates and lumps most events into 1916 but Ouspensky
introduced her to Gurdjieff when the latter was recruiting
his first Petrograd group at the tables of the Errant Dog
Café in 1915. Members included Dr Leonid Stjoernval,
P. D. Ouspensky, Anna Ilinishna Butkovsky, and Andrei
A. Zaharoff. Sometimes with Gurdjieff’s Moscow group,
they formed the audience for the “Fragments of an unknown
teaching” which Ouspensky faithfully recorded.
Nicoll, Maurice
Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of G. I.
Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky.
By Maurice Nicoll.
[3
Vols.]. London: Vincent Stuart, 1952, 1227p.; [Vol. 4]
London: Vincent Stuart, 1955, pp. 1235–1503; [Vol. 5]
London: Vincent Stuart, 1956, pp. 1513–1766; [5 Volume Set]
London: Robinson & Watkins, 1972, 1973; London: Watkins,
1975; New York: Weiser, 197?; [6 Volume] paperback set with
index in Vol. 6, Boulder & London: Shambhala, 1984, 1985,
1986, 1987; 6 Volume hardcover set includes index, York
Beach, Maine: Weiser, 1996, ISBN 0-87728 910-7 (hc).
This encyclopaedic set contains hundreds of brief, sharply
focused, penetrating essays and commentaries on a wide range
of topics connected with Nicoll’s presentation of the
psychological and cosmological teachings he gathered from
his year with Gurdjieff and particularly from his nine years
of close study with Ouspensky and assimilation of the
latter’s practice of psychological evolution. There is
no specific mention of Ouspensky or Gurdjieff in the text,
they are reflected throughout in the ideas (largely
Gurdjieff’s from his expositions in Russia) and the style
(essentially Ouspensky’s, somewhat warmed with Nicoll’s
stern charm.).
Pogson, Beryl
Maurice Nicoll: A Portrait
New York: Thomas Nelson, 1961, 288p., index.
Nicoll’s secretary from 1940 until his death in 1954, draws
on family archives and Nicoll’s own accounts and diaries to
describe his studies with Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.
Pentland. John
P. D. Ouspensky
in
The Encyclopedia of Religion
edited by Mircea Eliade. N. Y: Macmillan, 1987.
Vol. 11, pp. 143–144.
Pentland studied with
Ouspensky for almost two decades. He offers a
succinct, informed synopsis of Ouspensky’s contributions as
an independent thinker, writer and leading exponent of
Gurdjieff’s ideas.
Roberts, Carl
Eric Bechhofer
In Denikin’s Russia and the Caucasus, 1919–1920: Being the
Record of a Journey to South Russia, the Crimea, Armenia,
Georgia and Baku in 1919 and 1920.
Introduction by Alfred E. Zimmern. London: Collins;
1921, 324p.; New York: Arno, 1971, 324p., ISBN 0-405 03077 0
(hc).
The author was a journalist who spoke Russian and was
acquainted with Ouspensky when he undertook an assignment to
report on conditions there in 1919. He provides an
informed assessment of the volatile social and political
situations, as well as an engaging account of his ‘journey
through Georgia’ (pp. 65–69) and a series of meetings with
“a curious individual named Georgiy Ivanovich Gourjiev.”
Roberts’ sceptical but admiring observations provide the
first published account in English about Gurdjieff.
Roberts also sketches the few days he spent living in a barn
with Ouspensky in Rostov-on-the-Don (pp. 81–93). This
account was included in the 1978 and 1991 reprints of
Ouspensky’s
Letters from Russia,
QV.
Seton, Marie
The Case of P. D. Ouspensky.
Quest
(Calcutta), No. 34, July-Sept., 1962, pp. 36-44, 6000wds.
Posted as the last at
www.Gurdjieff-Bibliography.com
Marie Seton was Ouspensky's secretary and confidante in
America during the 1940s. Although convinced of his goodness
and honesty, she writes pointedly about his struggle with
the corrupting influence of serving as a guru.
Walker, K.
Venture With Ideas.
London: Jonathan Cape, 1951, 192p., New York:
Pellegrini & Cadahy, 1952, 212p., New York: Weiser, 1972,
192p..; London: Neville Spearman, 1973, 192p.;
Edition 2, revised.
London: Luzac Oriental, 1995, 160p., ISBN
1-898942-04-8 (hc), 1-898942-05-6 (pb).
Bound for almost thirty years by a promise to Ouspensky to
not speak publicly or publish anything learned at their
meetings, the author was freed to write about his
experiences with Ouspensky and Gurdjieff by the death of
both men and the publication of
Beelzebub’s Tales
and
In Search of the Miraculous.
Walker describes the impact of Gurdjieff’s system
“on a man who had received an orthodox scientific education”
as a physician. Offering autobiographical
vignettes as well as explication of core ideas and
practices, Walker also describes the enduring impact
Gurdjieff had on him during their brief encounters.
The Making of Man. London:
Routledge & Kegan, 1963, 163p., index, ISBN 0-7100-2248-4
(hc).
Walker begins with an account of his days as a medical
student at Cambridge with Maurice Nicoll. It was
through Nicoll that Walker met Ouspensky, with whom he
studied for almost three decades. He also had a series
of meetings with Gurdjieff in 1948–1949. He
intersperses anecdotal material with informed examination of
psychological and cosmological ideas.
GURDJIEFF
BIOGRAPHIES WITH COVERAGE OF P. D. OUSPENSKY
Webb,
James
The Harmonious Circle: The Lives and Work of G. I.
Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, and Their Followers.
New York: Putnam, 1980, ISBN 0-399-11465-3
(hc); London: Thames & Hudson; 1980, 608p., ISBN
0-500-01131-1 (hc); Boston: Shambhala, 1987, 608p., index,
ISBN 0-87773 427 5 (pb).
This massively researched chronicle and assessment of the
lives, influence and significance of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky,
and their followers, remains an enduring monument to James
Webb’s tenacity and scholarship. A sceptic’s handbook,
bursting with details and ambitious flights of speculation,
it is pervaded by Webb’s precipitous conflict between a
severely rationalist bias and his fascinated and agonised
indecision about Gurdjieff’s and Ouspensky’s intentions and
legacies
Moore, James
Gurdjieff: the anatomy of a myth, a biography.
Shaftsbury, Dorset: Element, 1991, 415p., chronology, notes,
references, index, ISBN 1-85230-114-7 (hc), 1993, ISBN
1-85230-450-2 (pb). With a revised introduction and
the title Gurdjieff: a biography.
Shaftsbury, Dorset: Element, 1999, 416p., ISBN 1-86204-606-9
(pb).
Moore crafts a lively, articulate, deeply informed, and
admiring, yet sardonic portrait of Gurdjieff and his closest
entourage. Their story is framed in the context of
historical events and individual dramas in relation to
Gurdjieff’s compulsion to act as an abrupt awakener and
esoteric teacher. Despite the formidable obstacles he
faces as a biographer, Moore succeeds in providing as clear
and balanced an account as we are likely to have of
Gurdjieff, who carefully covered most of the personal tracks
he didn’t erase, and of the lives drawn into his vortex.
EVALUATIONS
OF P. D. OUSPENSKY
Priestley, J. B.
Man and Time.
London: Aldus Books, 1964; Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday,
1964, 319p.; New York: Dell 1968, 319p.; New York: Crescent
Books, 1989, 319p., ISBN 0-517-69042-X (hc).
This
thoughtful, well-illustrated examination reflects
Priestley’s life-long fascination with the subject and draws
on a wide variety of scientists, poets and philosophers to
examine ideas about and experiences of time. He
devotes an approving chapter titled “Esoteric School”, to an
examination of Ouspensky’s and occasionally Gurdjieff’s
concepts of time.
Presley, Michael
A Brief Overview of Certain Aspects of the Thought of Petyr
Demianovich Ouspensky.
This article has been posted on various sites since the mid
1990s and was reprinted in The Gurdjieff International
Review II (2), Winter 1998-1999.
Presley focuses
on Tertium Organum, A New Model of the Universe and
Strange Life of Ivan Osokin to identify and discuss
Ouspensky’s philosophical ideas as an original thinker and
creative synthesizer, quite apart from his influence as an
interpreter of Gurdjieff’s ideas.
The Bridge: A Journal Issued by the
Study Society,
No. 12, P. D. Ouspensky Commemorative Issue.
London, 1997, 257p., sewn trade paperback.
The Study
Society was established by the contingent of Ouspensky
followers who—after their leader’s death in 1947, did not
migrate to Gurdjieff as Sophie Ouspensky proposed.
This ambitious anthology contains 45 essays and poems
reminiscing, examining and celebrating Ouspensky’s life.
An earlier issue, No. 3, 1978, 66p.,
contains an editorial The Thought of P. D. Ouspensky
and four articles, which mark “the centenary of the birth
of” Ouspensky in 1888.
© J Walter Driscoll 2007
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