Customer Reviews

Struggle of the Magicians: Why Uspenskii Left Gurdjieff : Exploring the Teacher-Student Relationship

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The book let the reader feel as if he is riding the current of history along with the individuals who worked with Gurdjieff in the early years of the 20th century to establish Mr. Gurdjieff's teching in the west. It also provides a historical context that portrays events against a backdrop of political and social events and upheavals. A GREAT read.

Recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of the Fourth Way and its students. Also gives the view that Gurdjieff was and is the Teacher and not Ouspensky---something that so many have gotten confused. Must read.

Highly recommended reading for anyone who sincerely works on themselves with a genuine teacher. Patterson has clearly done in-depth research and study of the facts as they appear in library archives and personal papers. This is a *first* as no other recent author has previously done so. The book gives much needed insights into the lives of Gurdjieff and his significant students. One is left with a genuine sense that those who followed Gurdjieff were sincere and great seekers. Any serious student will hear and see themselves in the book---hear the resistances and openings---in their own teacher-student relationship.

This is a chronicle of the teacher-student relationship between G. I. Gurdjieff and his three most prominent students, set against the background of some of the most turbulent history of the past century. Using a simple journal style, the author draws on a variety of sources to relay a timeline history of Mr. Gurdjieff's many attempts bring the Fourth Way to the West and his relationships with P. D. Uspenskii, John Bennett and A. R. Orage.

Gurdjieff first meets P. D. Uspenskii in 1915, while teaching in Russia. After years of travel and study in the Middle East and Asia Minor, he has uncovered an ancient teaching and he has come to Moscow and Petrograd on a mission to make this teaching accessible to the West. Uspenskii seems to be the man Gurdjieff is looking for -- ideally suited to assist him in setting up his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. A writer and lecturer on the occult and theosophy, Uspenskii can easily capture the attention of his listeners and he has a massive intellect, well able to take in the breadth of Gurdjieff's ideas and cosmology. For Uspenskii, Gurdjieff holds the key to understanding and gathering together the many threads of the different eastern ideas that he has been pursuing. But Uspenskii has trouble placing himself in the role of a student and in accepting Gurdjieff's authority. Here we see the archetypal struggle between master and disciple - first acceptance, but then resistance and a rebellion that destroys the trust so necessary for the student's development. The revolution and the World War drives Gurdjieff and Uspenskii out of Russia to Essentuki, Constantinople, and eventually to Europe after the war. We see Uspenskii more and more keeping his distance, but using Gurdjieff's teaching to set up his own groups. He ends up in England while Gurdjieff settles in France to finally open his Institute at Fontainebleau.

We get glimpses of John Bennett, who first meets Gurdjieff in Constantinople in 1920 and he appears later in France. Like Uspenskii, he has an unusual ability to take in the ideas of Gurdjieff and pass them on to others. And, like Uspenskii, when given the chance to take on a major role assisting Gurdjieff in France, he declines, avoiding the demands for genuine work that Gurdjieff would put on him.

We also meet A. R. Orage, a well known English literary critic and founder of the very influential journal, The New Age. Approaching middle age, Orage throws himself into the work at the Institute, soaks up the teaching so well that Gurdjieff sends him to America to start groups there. He is faithful to this task until he meets his own inner resistance as it manifests in his 1927 marriage to a much younger woman, Jesse Dwight, who has little interest in Gurdjieff's work and is determined to keep Orage away from it.

These men were giants among Gurdjieff's students and contributed greatly to introducing his ideas to the West. But at a critical moment each could not make the inner commitment so necessary for his own growth and transformation. Mr. Patterson gives them much credit for their struggle and presents their difficulty as an inherent part of a real teaching.

This book presents the first clear picture of what has often been a confusing history. Mr. Patterson structures the book so as to relay the story from a "neutral" place, allowing the reader to judge for himself, and saving his own observations and insights for the footnotes and essays which come at the end of the volume. He is respectful of the inner struggles made by these men and uses their work to illuminate the same struggles facing every student pursuing the Fourth Way. An excellent book, and a unique one in the literature on Gurdjieff.

I bought this book without knowing much about the author and was very pleased. I could not put it down!! Anyone with even a vague interest in Gurdjieff and his ideas will love this book. After reading it, I just had to read more of Patterson's books! He has an incredibly readable style.

The subject of Mr. Patterson's book is almost unexplored in Spiritual literature. The relationship between the Teacher/Master and the seeker/student is like no other social interaction in life. Can the ordinary man fully appreciate the nature of such a relationship without having a similar experience himself? I think not. Thanks to Mr. Patterson, the reader gets an improved understanding and greater insight into the difficulties involved in treading the spiritual path. Mythologies are filled with fantastic adventures and dangerous struggles which await the hero. This book shades light on the inner psychological struggles which characterized the relationship between master and seeker.

So many "new age books" written today are full of advice on "ways to reach higher consciousness or what is referred to as Enlightenment. Some writers on the subject suggest breathing exercises, mantras or meditation technique one can do it on their own. However, Mr. Patterson's Struggle of Magicians puts to rest that notion by detailing the personal suffering which was Mr. Uspenski's voluntary but perhaps necessary lot. Suffering which has its seat in the rational mind, in formatory thinking and self love.
According to Mr. Uspenski himself it is the only thing man will not give up. Mr. Patterson spells out the price Mr. Uspenski undoubtedly had to pay to understand such a truth.

One get the feeling reading this book that perhaps the most essential variable in ones personal search for truth is the struggle that takes place between the student and the teacher. We do not easily submit our will to another. Most informed Gurdjieff readers will agree, Mr. Gurdjieff embodied the truth and Mr. Uspenski was the student. Mr. Patterson seems to support that position.

It was abundantly clear while reading this book Mr. Gurdjieff was and perhaps still is the Master Magician. But who or what was the other Magician was unclear at the outset. As I read the book the answer was revealed. The other Magician was none other than Mr. Uspenski's ego. A very powerful ego, prepared to defend itself by whatever means necessary to the very end. Accordingly, as we all know, Mr. Uspenski leaves Mr. Gurdjieff and justifying his actions begins an independent line.

One gains increased appreciation for Mr. Gurdjieff's patient mastery of the human psyche and his firm insistence on uncompromising work conditions. How many men were capable of sitting at Mr. Gurdjieff's table? Struggle of the Magician shades light on why it must have been so difficult.

Mr. Patterson's Struggle of the Magicians seems to be making a case for a necessary prerequisite if one is to make progress on the Spiritual Journey. A teacher is required. We are all familiar with the proverb, "When the student is ready the teacher will appear". Uspenski was a seeker of truth of the highest order. He was well educated, extensively traveled and had profound insights into life at a rather early age.

Obviously, Mr. Patterson has researched the personal histories, documents and related literature extensively and shades light on the tumultuous, often confrontative, and stressful relation that played out between these two giants.

Today there seems to be among Gurdjieff / Uspenski readers some disagreement as to who was the teacher and who the student. Some feel it was Gurdjieff, others followed Uspenski, some don't ask the question and simply glean from both sources. The book is a valuable source of information for those who desire more information on the subject.

Somebody misused my name! There is only one Roberto Cazares in Paris. Whoever wrote this review, knows about me being in the work.
He/she must have registered under my name to write this review.

Roberto Cazares, Paris, France

This book takes the position that Gurdjieff is an avatar of higher consciousness, sent from some higher sphere to enlighten all mankind, while Ouspensky was a failure who couldn't live up to the supposedly high standards of his notorious guru. From this, I draw the conclusion that its author is either borderline crazy, or the same kind of huckster Gurdjieff was. Or both.

I take Gurdjieff at his word, when he obliquely describes himself (in his pseudo-autobiography) as a sort of sincere con man, and when he says that he was only a part of a group that put together his ideas. That is because I have known guys just like him -- hick preachers, mostly. Most of them act just like the "master" Gurdjieff and many of them even look like him (types are quite real, as G. himself always said). Basically sincere, good-hearted guys who sort-of believe in what they preach, but who have the same set of deep weaknesses, a need to spend a lot of money and live off of other people while manipulating them. They are always hypocrites, they always like whiskey and women and dirty jokes and gambling and con games of any kind, they always end up screwing over and driving off many of their disciples then lying to cover up their own role in it,and they always have about fifteen different businesses going at once, none of them entirely legitimate. Guys like Gurdjieff don't have the intellectual discipline to put together the kind of system he taught (and which G. himself communicated with only a little coherence), and they are not readers or writers of any quality, but they are great oral learners and great speakers. They have to be, to be the awesome hucksters they are. And if you get to know them, they will usually even admit they are hucksters, as Gurdjieff did, to anyone with the sense to pay attention. They tend to be quite likable people and aware of their failings.

It is unfortunate for the Pattersons of the world (who, if they only knew, define the "sleep" that the Gurdjieffs of the world like to rub in their faces even as they pick their pockets) that they don't understand this type of good-natured con artist, or they wouldn't waste their lives believing they are "teachers". It is quite telling that all of Gurdjieff's main disciples, then and now, are urban pseudointellectual types who have never encountered these charismatic religious con artists from the wrong side of the tracks; they are perfect victims. Where I grew up, you can turn over any rock and a couple of them will crawl out. I have seen a dozen of these phony little preacher-men and believe me, they are all alike. Gurdjieff did just what they all do, preached a lot of things he got from some other place and only barely understood himself. The only difference between him and the hick preachers carousing on weeknights is this: Gurdjieff actually had access to people with real insight and real ideas. Ouspensky figured him out: a tainted source from a true school, or schools. (Check out Peter Kingsley's video and books on Empedocles, and you will see where the main part of this line began, at least in recorded history, though both Patterson and I agree with G. that it came orginally from Egypt and before. It was passed to the Sufis and from there to G., who is obviously a sort of half-developed rogue Sufi).

Instead of wasting time on Patterson's earnest true-believer tomes, you might instead seek out Ouspensky's books, especially the ones written before he met Gurdjieff. The language of mysticism is, everywhere and everywhen, geometry. Gurdjieff's core work, the enneagram, is a nice little semi-lucid footnote to Pythagoreanism, but Ouspensky's work on the fourth dimension is truly groundbreaking and still the cutting edge of thought in esoteric geometry. I'll take Ouspensky's Tertium Organum and New Model of the Universe over everything the entire Gurdjieff work has to offer (which when stripped of its true sources is very little), and I think most real thinkers would as well.

For many of us Gurdjieff and Uspenskii have remained mysteriously attractive but dauntingly difficult to grasp. Struggle of the Magicians is a 'hard to put down' exception to much of the literature available about Gurdjieff, presenting his life and work almost like a play against the panoramic backdrop of his turbulent times, from World War I and the Russian Revolution through World War II.

The central focus of the book is the sacred, archetypal relationship of the Master and disciple. An intimate view is given of Gurdjieff's work with his students including many who, like the famous Uspenskii, were unwilling to pay the price. This revealing look at the roles of Guru and disciple in the compelling work of self-transformation makes the book of special interest and value to those on any path.