In Search of P. D. Ouspensky: The Genius in the Shadow of Gurdjieff [Paperback]

Gary Lachman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 25, 2006

P. D. Ouspensky's classic work In Search of the Miraculous was the first to disseminate the ideas of G. I. Gurdjieff, the mysterious master of esoteric thought in the early twentieth century who still commands a following today. Gurdjieff's mystique has long eclipsed Ouspensky, once described by Gurdjieff as "nice to drink vodka with, but a weak man." Yet Ouspensky was a brilliant, accomplished philosopher in his own right, and some consider his meeting with the charismatic "Mr. G." the catastrophe of his life. Indeed, in subsequent years Ouspensky tried hard, with limited success, to break away. This book moves Ouspensky's own story center stage, against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution, the dervishes of Constantinople, and a cosmopolitan Europe entre deux guerres. The archetypal encounter it describes echoes that of Don Juan and Castaneda, or perhaps Mephistopheles and Faust. One of the great mystical adventures of our time, it will fascinate everyone interested in the farthest reaches of what it means to be human. The paperback edition includes a new chapter on Gary Lachman's own former work in Gurdjieff's psychology.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Quest Books; 2nd edition (October 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0835608484
• ISBN-13: 978-0835608480
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #773,011 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Fourth Way" Escape Manual, April 27, 2005

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Michael J. Langlais "Michael J. Langlais" (Norway, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In Search of P. D. Ouspensky: The Genius in the Shadow of Gurdjieff (Hardcover)

Gary Lachman's book is essentially predicated upon what we already knew about Gurdjieff and Ouspensky from primary and secondary sources. However, the book's very special character stems from the author's brilliant synthesis of all that material. One might criticize the book for its dependence on secondary sources. But such criticism badly misses the mark.

In my judgment, the real value of Mr. Lachman's work is that it humanizes the so-called "Fourth Way," something that has, heretofore, never been attempted, let alone achieved. The book is a lucid and fascinating demythologization of both an erstwhile practical "philosophy," and the concealed personalities behind it. It provides a badly needed hermeneutic by which one can decipher the manner in which the sly man behind the curtain plied his hypnogogic craft. The man I have in mind, of course, is Gurdjieff.

Lachman is absolutely correct to suggest that Ouspensky denied his better self, and neglected his own (in my estimation, more important) work, to pursue the idiosyncratic and synthetic occultism of Gurdjieff. Lachman gives us a masterful depiction of the process of decline of Ouspensky the man, as well as his metaphysical thought world. It is truly tragedy on an epic scale, and Lachman adeptly chronicles the monumental pathos without disfiguring the human beings involved in the drama.

Besides all the obvious merits of Lachman's book, allow me to touch on one that has been thus far neglected in any reviews of which I am aware. In fact, allow me to go so far as to suggest that it is the chief merit of this important book. That is, Gary Lachman opens a way for Fourth Way devotees to gain some objective insight into their precarious existential situation. He reveals the people and personalities behind the dogma and ritualism of the Fourth Way worldview. He exposes the true and concrete dimensions of the "work," not in any theoretical or purely historical manner, but as it actually was and is for the people bound to the "system." He lays bare the roots of Fourth Way "philosophy" in the person and personality of one man, G. I. Gurdjieff, and displays the catastrophic and appalling outcome of the imposition of one man's will upon that of another.

In my own meetings with remarkable wo/men over the years, I have never met a more remarkably rigid, mechanical, and unimaginative lot as those who are devotees of Beelzebub, the sly Monsieur Gurdjieff. They are blindly caught in the neurotic-obsessive drive to actualize a superhuman, godlike Self. Their uncomprehending devotion to the religion of spiritual self-idolatry surpasses anything with which I have come into contact. This penetrating and sadly amusing irony escapes no one except his very obedient and unthinking disciples. Now there is an "escape manual" for them to consult. I cannot, of course, say that this was one of the intentions of the author in writing his book. My guess is that it must have at least been in the back of his mind. In any event, we owe Mr. Lachman a debt of gratitude for a very fine and interesting book, and furthermore, one with the potential to do great good.

-- Michael J. Langlais, Ph.D.

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars acceptable survey for casual readers, June 6, 2007

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king wolf (Jotunheim) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In Search of P. D. Ouspensky: The Genius in the Shadow of Gurdjieff (Paperback)

The partisan squabbles between the devotees of Ouspensky and those of Gurdjieff take place on roughly the same level as those between the advocates of the XBox and the Playstation, or the Yankees and Red Sox. But Lachman doesn't sink to their level, and his understanding of events is as near to the truth as we will probably see from any of these types. He is still sort of a moon-mad mystic, but not nearly to the degree of William Patterson or J G Bennett or any of the other lost souls who have written about these subjects in the past. However, there is little new in this book, and the author's understanding of Ouspensky's most important ideas is obviously quite shallow, as he concentrates on the more incidental aspects of his work. Those who have read the sourceworks, almost all of which are decades old, won't find this book to be of much value.

The Gurdjieff work is a hundred miles wide and one foot deep. Just deep enough for those who can't swim to drown in, as Ouspensky almost did. The work isn't without value; many of Gurdjieff's ideas are basically correct, but everything he knew can be found in superior form in other places. All of Gurdjieff's ideas are distortions of things he got from other places, but he wasn't sophisticated enough to always tell the good from the bad, and he mixes wisdom and foolishness together in a salad of roughly equal parts. And much of what Gurdjieff taught, such as the necessity of group work or self-observation as endless toil, is the opposite of truth. Gurdjieff was a man who asked the right questions, but got all the answers wrong. Partly because Gurdjieff was a second-rate mystic with a second-rate mind, and partly because he was like all gurus: he had a deep-seated need to manipulate others and take financial advantage of them. I have seen his type repeatedly and known some of them personally. They are all the same. They take bits and pieces of other people's ideas and use them to impress the gullible. Ouspensky was able to separate what little good there was in Gurdjieff from the little con man himself, but grew too attached to the ideas before finally rejecting them.

It is Ouspensky's work that is of serious interest, but really only parts of it, mainly his thinking on spatial dimensions. It is a tragedy of epic proportions that Ouspensky abandoned his real work for the shallow occultism of the dubious Gurdjieff, and it doesn't speak well of Ouspensky's more mystical side. But that isn't the side of Ouspensky that will stand the test of time.

To this day, his two books Tertium Organum and New Model of the Universe are at the cutting edge of human thought. They show the real direction that our conceptions of space and time should take, not the mathematically correct but logically ridiculous direction physics has taken. And yet, no doubt largely because of his association with the little Armenian con man, the enormous importance of Ouspensky's work is largely forgotten by all but a few.

Those two books show how to overcome the paradoxes of not just physics, but of philosophy. Nothing like them exists, or has ever existed. If you understand his ideas, their truth cannot be denied on any level. Unlike the endless double-bind prison that constitutes the "thought" of the "fourth way", the essays in those two books can change the way you perceive the world in the most fundamental way imaginable. But they are beyond both the reach and grasp of people with no more intelligence or common sense than occult disciples, which is why the people most likely to encounter them get very little from them.

To his eternally recurring credit, Ouspensky abandoned and renounced the Gurdjieff system late in life, realizing at last that it was a dead end, a dangerous distraction. It is ironic that Ouspensky is remembered mostly for his book on Gurdjieff, which is the least of his works and the very thing that keeps the Gurdjieff movement going. Indeed, much of the better stuff people tend to give Gurdjieff credit for was, in fact, Ouspensky all along. Without Ouspensky to make his ideas semi-coherent, there never would have been a Gurdjieff movement. It would have died with Gurdjieff.

In any event, it has been noticed by too few that many of the ideas credited to Gurdjieff, such as the antiquity of the Sphinx, for example, are mentioned in Ouspensky's books long before Gurdjieff professed them, in altered form, later on. And Gurdjieff himself said he would beg Ouspensky to be his teacher if Ouspensky "understood" his own books! From this we can gather that Gurdjieff read Ousepensky's early classics, admired them, and very likely appropriated many of Ouspensky's own ideas, only to regurgitate them back at their originator later on, as part of Gurdjieff's own admittedly "stolen" hodgepodge of ideas. No wonder Ouspensky was so impressed with him.

My recommendation is to read Ouspensky's two early classics, then come back to this biography if you are interested in more information on this fascinating man. But only if you haven't already read any of the existing biographical literature.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Good Friend, April 5, 2010

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Mnemosyne (Planet Earth) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: In Search of P. D. Ouspensky: The Genius in the Shadow of Gurdjieff (Paperback)

I've read all the classic G & O literature and it's been a tremendous blast. Decades have passed and, like every other experience, it has all faded into standard memory, leaving only some pleasantries and old-timer's allegories to "pass on to my children." The conclusion of this book is that Ouspensky ended his life a defeated man: it had all turned to nothing. Living it, taking the tour, having the adventure was all there ever was. To have a goal: Ouspensky's ultimate advice.

If so, I think he's got it dead right. I think that's all anyone "knows." The arguments that have ranged back and forth through these reviews do not give the impression of a community that has learned anything fundamental about our place in the universe, or of any "destiny" for us as human beings.

I have little interest in purported systems of insight into our ultimate nature anymore. I simply don't believe. It was all a good story and Ouspensky was a brilliant storyteller, whom I've always felt close to and would have dearly loved to meet. The only other dead man I'd really like to have met would be Che Guevara. I think that both he and O had guts and tried to remain true to the last.

Perhaps Gurdjieff was a great man, but I found the recordings of his voice [the harmonium tapes] most disappointing. For me, the question is this: who would one like to have had as a friend? Ouspensky would be at the top of my list, along with Che. The latter, too, strove to create "The New Man," and it's that effort, that passion, that compulsion, that I find attractive.

This book tells a good story, I recommend it.