Considering Fragments

Allan Lindh
In the decades since George Ivanovitch Gurdjieffs death, many books have been
written about the man and the teaching he brought to Europe and America from
Central Asia. Since today many peoples first contact with his teaching is via the
written word, the question naturally arises as to which books can serve as an
introduction to these ideas? His own masterwork, All and Everything:
Beelzebubs Tales to his Grandson1 is difficult although it slowly becomes more
transparent with repeated readings. His other two books: Meetings with
Remarkable Men2 and Life is Real Only Then, When I Am,3 while seemingly less
difficult, present definite challenges of their own. Gurdjieff confides to the reader
in the Introduction to Meetings with Remarkable Men:
But since, little by little, I had become more adroit in the art of
concealing serious thoughts in an enticing, easily grasped outer
form, and in making all those thoughts which I term discernable
only with the lapse of time ensue from others usual to the thinking
of most contemporary people, I changed the principle I had been
following and, instead of seeking to achieve the aim I had set
myself in writing by quantity, I adopted the principle of attaining
this by quality alone.4
Given the inherent difficulty of Mr. Gurdjieffs writings, how much -- if any -- of
the other written material that has grown out of his legacy has the real stamp of
authenticity? Of particular note in this regard is P. D. Ouspenskys In Search of
the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching,5 which for many people
serves not only as an introduction to the ideas Mr. Gurdjieff brought, but a guide
to their practical application as well. However, given Ouspenskys early break
with Gurdjieff, one might reasonably ask how reliable and complete Fragments is
as an introduction to work on oneself? After all, the conversations Ouspensky
recordsmore than two-thirds of Fragments consists of direct quotes from
Gurdjiefftook place in Russian almost a century ago. Yet Fragments is written
in refined and rather philosophical English. Not only did Ouspensky have to
remember his conversations with Gurdjieffnote taking during meetings was
forbiddenbut he had to translate his personal notes into a language that he
learned later in life.
Fortunately we have published appraisals of Fragments from several
sources including some of Mr. Gurdjieffs most senior students.

Considering Fragments

Michel de Salzmann
In a discussion of the Gurdjieff literature, Dr. Michel de Salzmannwho directed
the worldwide network of Gurdjieff foundations, societies, and institutes from
1990 until his passing in 2001provides this strong endorsement:
There is now only one book, except for the books of Gurdjieff
himself, which can be considered, without prejudice, really useful
for followers of the teaching. This is In Search of the Miraculous
by P. D. Ouspensky. Gurdjieffs pupils have always felt deeply
indebted to Ouspensky for this as yet unrivaled contribution to his
work. Besides being a fascinating narrative, it is a brilliant, honest,
and faithful exposition of the authors memory of what was
transmitted to him. The feat of memory is all the more remarkable
when one realizes that note-taking was rigorously forbidden.
Although it corresponds to an initial stage of Gurdjieffs teaching,
both in time (1915 to 1923) and as regards the pupils preparation,
it retains a remarkable strength and freshness in orienting an active
questioning in those who are now working in this way.
Ouspenskys qualifications and motives were doubtless
exceptional, but the secret quality emanating from his book comes
precisely from the fact that it takes us as close as possible to the
conditions of oral teaching, in which the Masters presence brings
about an incarnation of the ideas, and reveals them in a wholly
new dimension.6
John Sinclair
In an introduction to Jean Vaysses book Toward Awakening, John Sinclair (Lord
Pentland)who worked closely with Ouspensky for about a decade, and with
Gurdjieff at the end of the 1940sprovides his evaluation of Fragments:
In Search [his reference to Fragments] was written and
meticulously revised by Ouspensky over a period of at least ten
years in order to give as honest and objective an account of the
teaching as possible. Probably his achievement will never be
equaled. In any case it was intended to preserve the teaching in as
pure and impersonal a form as possible.7
C. S. Nott
We also have accounts by several people of the circumstances under which the
decision to publish Fragments was made. C. S. Nott, a student of Gurdjieff for
over thirty years, recorded an exchange with Ouspensky in the mid 1930s:
Sometime later he gave me a typescript to read, saying that he was
writing down all that he could remember of what Gurdjieff had

Considering Fragments

said to him. When he asked my opinion of it I said that it was

wonderful stuff; it was in a different vein from Tertium Organum,
and A New Model of the Universe, much higher on the scale of
ideas; it was a verbatim report of Gurdjieffs talks.
But you will surely publish this? I asked. Apart from
Beelzebubs Tales and the Second Series, its the most interesting
collection of Gurdjieffs sayings and doings that could possibly be
got together.
I may publish itbut not if Gurdjieff publishes Beelzebubs
Tales.
To my question Why? He did not answer. It was eventually
published, after Gurdjieffs deathFragments of an Unknown
Teaching, which the American publishers stupidly dubbed In
Search of the Miraculous.8
Later in the same book, Nott describes the situation in the winter of 1948 when
Gurdjieff first received a copy of the Fragments manuscript.
Gurdjieff himself visited Mendham to see Madame Ouspensky,
though he would never stay there. Madame had presented him with
the complete typescript of Fragments of an Unknown Teaching,
and Gurdjieff, hearing it read, said that Ouspensky in this respect
was a good man. He had written down what he had heard from
him, exactly: It is as if I hear myself speaking.9
John Bennett
In his autobiography, Witness, John Bennett provides a first person account of
Gurdjieffs reaction to Fragments, based on his time with him in New York and
Paris in 1949:
He had just taken the final decision to publish the first volume of
All and EverythingBeelzebubs Tales to His Grandson, and had
been asked by Madame Ouspensky to decide whether or not
Ouspenskys own book, Fragments of an Unknown Teaching,
should also be published. He remained undecided about the latter
for some time, pointing out when he heard it read aloud that certain
of his ideas were far more clearly and strongly expressed in
Beelzebub. He finally agreed on condition that it should not be
published in advance of his own book. . .
Gurdjieff frequently complained that Ouspensky had ruined
his pupils by his excessively intellectual approach, and that he did
better with people who came to him with no preparation at all. On
the other hand, he praised Ouspensky for the accuracy of his
reporting. Once I read aloud in front of him an early chapter of In
Search of the Miraculous. He listened with evident relish, and

Considering Fragments

when I finished he said: Before I hate Ouspensky; now I love

him. This very exact, he tell what I say.10
Two additional accounts of meetings with Gurdjieff during the last year of his life
shed more lightfrom a somewhat different perspectiveon his evaluation of
Fragments as an introduction to the teaching:
Louise March
Gurdjieff traveled to America in December of 1948, and held daily luncheons and
dinners in his rooms at New Yorks Hotel Wellington as he had during previous
visits. Louise March kept a journal during the visit and her recollections were
later published by one of her students, from which the following is drawn:
Meals at Gurdjieffs New York table were as ceremonious as ever.
The ritual of the toasts to the idiots still accompanied every meal.
The only table decoration was a glass filled with tarragon, dill, and
spring onions. The herbs, along with all kinds of smoked fish, were
eaten with the fingers when the Armagnac was poured. Gurdjieff
never permitted flowers as table decorations. He stormed,
Nonsense of flowers spoils food.
Mr. Gurdjieff himself still went shopping, as he had done on
his previous visits, at the fresh meat and vegetable markets. As
before, melons were served regardless of the season. Now, on this
last visit, every meal began, after the obligatory fresh herbs, with
avocado halves served with salt and pepper, and sometimes with
olive oil as well. When avocados couldnt be found in the New
York markets, friends sent them from South America. . .
After every luncheon a chapter from a draft of Ouspenskys
In Search of the Miraculous was read. Mme. Ouspensky had sent it
to Mr. Gurdjieff with the question, Should it be published? Mr.
Gurdjieff praised it often, Very exact is. Good memory. Truth,
was so. Sometimes Gurdjieff was dissatisfied, Is too liquid. Lost
something.11
Elizabeth Bennett
Gurdjieff returned to Paris in February of 1949 and resumed meetings in his
apartment. Elizabeth Bennett kept a journal of her time in Paris during the
summer of 1949 which years later she published, together with her husband John
Bennetts journal of that time period, as Idiots in Paris. She states in the Foreword
that, I have added nothing to the text, but I have cut out one or two passages too
personal to be of interest to anyone but the writer, and one or two details of
Gurdjieffs illness and treatment. Apart from these small deletions, the manuscript
is untouched.12 Her straight-forward narrative of events in Mr. Gurdjieffs
apartment during the last summer of his life contains many references to the
readings that formed part of the daily routine:

Considering Fragments

We would go to lunch at midday. There was always a reading

aloud of some part of Gurdjieffs own writings, or occasionally
from P. D. Ouspenskys In Search of the Miraculous, called
throughout the diaries Fragments, a reference to Ouspenskys
original choice of a title. The reading would last for one or two
hours and then we would go to the dining room for lunch.13
We went back to the flat at 10:30 for dinner. We read Fragments.
There was a large crowd there: the Woltons, with two children,
Dr. Walker, the two Jaloustres, Vera Daumal, Hylda, Bryn and
Lucien, Dr. Bell and Miss Crowdy, Mr. Stewart, some English
whom I dont know and various members of the French group,
besides those sixteen who had been on the trip.14
In the evening he listened with great enjoyment to the reading of
Fragments, leaning forward with his elbow on his knee and his
cigarette-holder in his hand, his eyes snapping, shaking with
laughter at the references to himself.15
In the evening he was enjoying the reading from Fragments so
muchChapter XII, about the right use of sex energythat we
did not start dinner until ten to twelve.16
Gabo went to do more picture hanging in the dining room, and
Page began to read Chapter XIII of Fragments. . . We went on till
midnight, when we started dinner.17
This was French night, and Page began to read at 8:30. We
finished all we had of Fragments and went on to Impartial
Mentation [Chapter 47 of Beelzebubs Tales].18
Kenneth Walker
In A Study of Gurdjieffs Teaching, published in 1957, Kenneth Walker provides
another account of Gurdjieffs reaction to the Fragments manuscript:
I owe a great deal to Ouspensky for all he did for me during those
earlier years, and I am deeply grateful to him for his patient and
clear-headed interpretation of Gurdjieffs teaching. He had a much
better command of English than had Gurdjieff and a methodical
and tidy mind which imposed order on the latters less
systematized method of teaching. His patience was remarkable.
From 1917 onwards he sought clearer and yet clearer formulations
for the ideas he had received from Gurdjieff, with the intention,
possiblyfor he never spoke with certainty about thisof
publishing them in the form of a book after the latters death. But
Considering Fragments

he died before his teacher, and it was upon Gurdjieff that the
responsibility then lay of deciding whether or not Ouspenskys
much-revised typescript should be sent to a publisher. Gurdjieff
had a Russian rendering of it read to him, declared it to be an
accurate account of his own teaching and gave instructions that it
should be published forthwith. 19
However, later in the same book, Dr. Walker provides additional perspectives on
the teaching as transmitted by Ouspensky, one that sheds yet another light on
Fragments:
I realize that far too little emphasis was placed by Ouspensky at
this time on preparation for self-remembering, and it was only after
we had met G many years later in Paris that we understood how
necessary this was. The first step to self-remembering was to come
back from our mind-wandering into our bodies and to become
sensible of these bodies. We all know, of course, that we possess
limbs, a head and a trunk, but in our ordinary state of waking-sleep
we receive few or no sense-impressions from these, unless we
happen to be in pain. In other words, we are not really aware of our
bodies. But G taught us special exercises first for relaxing our
muscles to the fullest possible extent, and then for sensing the
various areas in our bodies, exercises to which reference will be
made later in this book. These exercises became of immense value
to us and were particularly useful as a preparation for selfremembering.20
At a very much later date the great importance of the faculty of
attention in our work was again brought home to us. This was after
Ouspenskys death, when some of us went over to Paris to study
under G himself. G immediately taught us a number of exercises in
muscle-relaxing and in what he called body-sensing, exercises
which were and still are of greatest value to us. We were told to
direct our attention in a predetermined order to various sets of
muscles, for example, those of the right arm, the right leg, the left
leg and so on, relaxing them more and more as we come round to
them again; until we have attained what we feel to be the utmost
relaxation possible for us. Whilst we were doing this we had at the
same time to sense that particular area of the body; in other
words, to become aware of it. We all know, of course, that we
possess limbs, a head and a body, but in ordinary circumstances we
do not feel or sense them. But with practice the attention can be
thrown on to any part of the body desired, the muscles in that
particular area relaxed, and sensation from that region evoked. At
the word of inner command the right ear is sensed, then the left
ear, the nose, the top of the head, the right arm, right hand and so

Considering Fragments

on, until a sensation tour has been made of the whole body. The
exercise can, if required, be rendered still more difficult by
counting backwards, by repeating strings of words or by evoking
ideas at the same moment that the relaxing and sensing is being
carried out.
The question may well be asked: What benefit can possibly
result from learning all these yogi tricks with the body? This is
not difficult to answer. There are three reasons for doing such
exercises as these: the first is that it is excellent training for the
attention; the second that it teaches a person how to relax; and the
third that it produces a very definite inner psychic change. This
change can be summed up in the statement that the exercise draws
together parts of our mechanism which previously had been
working disconnectedly. But external descriptions of these
valuable exercises and of the results obtained from them are quite
useless. They can only be understood by personal experience of
them, a fact which emphasizes once again the impossibility of
imparting knowledge of this kind in a book. All special exercises
of this kind have to be taught by word of mouth, and, so far as I
know, they have never been committed to writing. It is for this
reason that my description of them has deliberately been left
incomplete.21
Meredith Thring
Another account of being with Mr. Gurdjieff in Paris in the late 1940s are found
in an interview with Dr. Meredith Thring in London in 2001, from which the
following is extracted (very slightly edited for clarity):
I worked with Ouspensky and Bennett for about twelve years if not
thirteen, the end of 37 to 48, eleven years. Ouspensky died and
actually in 1949 I happened to be in America and they immediately
published -- Mme Ouspensky published -- In Search of the
Miraculous which Ouspensky had refused to publish because of
Gurdjieffs book. . .
The point was with Ouspensky, it was in effect philosophical
knowledge we got really. You knew you had many Is, you knew
that you couldnt DO and that you had to not express negative
emotions and so on and we worked on these things all those years.
And we had all the diagrams that are in In Search of the
Miraculous and there was quite a lot to go on, but somehow it was
all hopeless. There was no hope there, you couldnt do but
when we went to Paris it was entirely different, it was like going
into a different world a world in which negative emotions and
trivial things . . . they just werent there. It was like a world where
you were free of all that. You were just concerned with the Work.
We started doing the movements and I am hopeless at the
Considering Fragments

movements because I am totally un-musical but I got enough of

them to realize what kind of work, what kind of control of
attention, complete control of attention in all the centres is
necessary for that. So I got a taste for what that means. The
most important thing I got from Paris was the idea of sensing your
body, and also sitting quietly and sensing your limbs and so on.
And even then I got the sense of opening oneself and freeing
oneself from the thoughts that go on all the time and the
associations in the moving centre and the associations in the
intellectual centre, being free of these. So I got a taste of what it is
all about. And I got hope, there was a message of hope, always. It
wasnt cannot doit was trying to do work. The impression I got
of Mr. Gurdjieff was entirely different from the impression I had
from Ouspensky and Bennett. It was the impression that I can only
describe as Universal Benevolence. He really wanted you and me,
everybody to be influenced towards developing themselves as a
result of being in contact with him and his emanations. This was
very, very strong and it has been with me ever since . . .
If I may say so this is very interesting because under
Ouspensky it was Remember Yourself but when we got to Paris
it was Do I Am. This is a fact!22
Sri Anirvan
There is one other commentary on Fragments that speaks frankly to Ouspenskys
contribution, and to the question of completeness. In the 1950s, Sri Anirvan, a
Baul master in the Samkhya tradition sent one of his students, a French woman
Lizelle Reymond, back to Europe to find the students of Gurdjieff. In To Live
Within, an extraordinary account of her time with Sri Anirvan, she compiled
material from his letters and notes of conversations with him, which he revised
before his death in 1978. The following extracts are from that material:
Tantric teaching demonstrates that all life is born from the Void,
including the gods and goddesses and the higher and the lower
Prakriti. The Void is the matrix of universal energy.
One has access to it by four stages. In his book In Search of
the Miraculous, Ouspensky speaks about the first two stages. He
remained silent about the last two because he had left Gurdjieff. In
all of his subsequent personal teaching, which is very important, he
tells of the development of these two first stages and of his
experiences with his Master. The writings of Gurdjieff, on the
other hand, open for us the frontiers of the two last stages. These
are cleverly hidden in his mythical narrations. The four stages are:
plurality of Is, a single I, no I, the Void. 23
Gurdjieff had this lightly tinted whiteness. He never stopped
playing with all the colors of life; that is why fools cry out against
Considering Fragments

him. Ouspensky, who was a philosopher, tried to stay in the

whiteness he had discovered; but if you are the disciple responsible
for the kitchen, your duty is to prepare the food. If you refuse to do
this, you will be sent away by the Master or you will leave of your
own accord and your refusal will be a weight that will burden you
for years and possibly even crush you.24
Those who help to instill these broad ideas into the current of
thought are doing a very important thing. In this respect Georges
Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, who followed this method stripped of any
artifice, is a pioneer in the West. He is far ahead of his time; hence
the virulent attacks directed against him.25
Gurdjieff was, of course, a real Charvaka, that is to say, a rebel
against learnedly expounded orthodoxies that constrict the mind.
He behaved like all the mystics and powerful Gurus who, at a
given moment, have called the crowds to them.26
And what has Gurdjieff, with his broad shoulders, created for you
in the West? Surely a field of prakriti corresponding to your own
possibilities. This prakriti is arranged with care to offer you many
toys, instruments to use, and all kinds of intelligent absurdities,
which you wish to keep in your hands, hide in a strongbox, or
piously preserve in memory because you love to possess things.
This same prakriti will also reveal to you the many steps to climb
to approach the goal without depriving you of all the possible ways
to break your neck!27
All spiritual experiences are sensations in the body. They are
simply a graded series of sensations, beginning with the solidity of
a clod of earth and passing gradually, in full consciousness,
through liquidness and the emanation of heat to that of a total
vibration before reaching the Void. The road to be traveled is
long.28
We might consider also that by Mr. Gurdjieffs own account, he was not the
original source of the teaching he brought: I am small compared with those that
sent me.29 It seems he received a traditional teaching preserved and transmitted
within the cultures and languages of the Middle East and Central Asia, and having
embodied that teaching, undertook a cultural and linguistic translation and
transmission into a western scientific cultural milieufirst into Russian, later
English and French.
Ouspensky was one of the students who helped with the translation into
Anglo-American culture and language. Of course, Gurdjieff was one step closer
to the source, and was by all accounts possessed of greater beinga real Master.
But Ouspensky mastered the written English language to a remarkable degree,

Considering Fragments

had an orderly mind and a philosophical bent, and worked for almost half his life
at transmitting what he had received from Gurdjieff to thousands of students via
lectures, the written word, and group meetings.
In the final pages of Fragments, Ouspensky describes a conversation with
Gurdjieff in Constantinople in 1920. Somewhere about this time I told him in
detail of a plan I had drawn up for a book to expound his St. Petersburg lectures
and talks with commentaries of my own. He agreed to this plan and authorized me
to write and publish it.30 It seems likely that this was the genesis of In Search of
the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, and this account suggests
that Gurdjieff had authorized such an introduction in advance some 30 years
earlier. If so, then the differences between the ideas and language of Fragments
and All and Everything may be more apparent than real, with one a very well
organized and carefully structured introduction, the other a complete mytho-epic
statement of the teaching.
~~

G. I. Gurdjieff, Beelzebubs Tales to His Grandson, New York: Harcourt, Brace

& Company, 1950.
2
G. I. Gurdjieff, Meetings with Remarkable Men, New York: Dutton, 1963.
3
G. I. Gurdjieff, Life is Real Only Then, When I Am, New York: ElsevierDutton Publishing Company, 1975.
4
Meetings with Remarkable Men, p. 7.
5
P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of a Unknown
Teaching, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1949.
6
Michel de Salzmann, Footnote to the Gurdjieff Literature, in Gurdjieff: An
Annotated Bibliography, by J. Walter Driscoll and the Gurdjieff Foundation of
California, New York: Garland Publishing, 1985, p. xviii.
7
John Pentland, from the Foreword to Jean Vaysses Toward Awakening: An
Approach to the Teaching Left by Gurdjieff, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1980, pp. viiviii.
8
C. S. Nott, Further Teachings of Gurdjieff: Journey Through This World, New
York: Samuel Weiser, 1969, pp. 106107.
9
Ibid., p. 243.
10
J. G. Bennett, Witness, Santa Fe, New Mexico: Bennett Books, 1962, pp. 251
252.
11
Beth McCorkle, The Gurdjieff Years, 1929-1949: Recollections of Louise
March, Walworth, New York: The Work Study Association, 1990, pp. 7475.
12
J. G. Bennett and E. Bennett, Idiots in Paris, York Beach, Maine: Samuel
Weiser, 1991. p. xii.
13
Ibid., p. vii.
14
Ibid., p. 13.
15
Ibid., p. 15.
16
Ibid., p. 19.
17
Ibid., p. 21.
Considering Fragments

10

18

Ibid., p. 24.
Kenneth Walker, A Study of Gurdjieffs Teaching, London: Jonathan Cape,
1957, pp. 1415.
20
Ibid., p. 46.
21
Ibid., pp. 6970.
22
M. Thring, Informal Recollections of Meetings with Gurdjieff and Ouspensky
in Proceedings of The International Humanities Conference, Bognor Regis,
England, 2001.
23
Reymond, Lizelle. To Live Within: A womans spiritual pilgrimage in an
Himalayan hermitage. Portland, Oregon: Rudra Press, 1995, p. 194.
24
Ibid., p. 257.
25
Ibid., p. 112.
26
Ibid, p. 146
27
Ibid, p. 149
28
Ibid., p. 231
29
Further Teachings of Gurdjieff: Journey Through This World, Nott quoting
Orage recollecting Gurdjieff, p. 31.
30
In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of a Unknown Teaching, p. 383.
19

Considering Fragments

11