Customer Reviews

Struggle of the Magicians

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I recently finished this book and intend to go back to it after re-reading In Search of the Miraculous and The Fourth Way. Both books have many valuable insights, but I found that the singular POV plus the lack of anchoring "in time" made it hard for me to see the person behind the voice. Perhaps this was intended . . . .

Regardless, Patterson's book is a wonderful guide to the twists and turns of how the Work has manifested in the world through Gurdjieff's prodigious efforts. For me it illustrated the Law of Octaves in a way that made more sense than any other. For that alone it was worth reading. As has been written earlier in this section, Struggle of the Magicians provides a valuable link between the many books written about G. and his students.

To me, this book was very well researched and written. The author has not only researched the writings of the various students of Gurdjieff, but is himself a student of the 4th Way via one of these same students.

He has brought forth a very clear picture of the interwoven threads of the different outlooks on Gurdjieff's teachings, and how very few of them even half understood what was being given to them. And just how this half-knowledge then became a distorted teaching of the pure knowledge that Gurdjieff had tried to teach them.

As I write this, there is only one other review given of this book. It is a good review, very spirited, and I would not challenge its personal perspective. The book is certainly a major contribution. The historical chronology is both interesting and useful. Probably the greatest service the book accomplishes is its stated purpose of adding insight to the master-pupil relationship. This is done with several examples of Gurdjieff's pupils, but foremost of course is that of Ouspensky. I remember the first time I read Ouspensky's "In Search of the Miraculous," I was bewildered by the schism that came between them. People may not necessarily agree 100% with Patterson's assessment of this situation, but it is certainly carefully and seriously reasoned and offers deep and important insight. While I find room for slight variations in my own perspective, the variations are only slight and I find that Patterson has something very important to say about Gurdjieff in clarifying this issue. In spite of my enormous respect for Ouspensky, I think it is important to have a balanced perspective on this issue and come closer to a full realization of Gurdjieff's true significance. Thank you Mr. Patterson for your contribution.

Some years after reading P.D. Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous, I picked up this Fourth Way book Struggle of the Magicians. It shed a lot of light on a number of contradictions and other things that I didn't understand after several readings of In Search of the Miraculous. Don't get me wrong - In Search of the Miraculous is an incredible, rich source of Fourth Way wisdom. However, I could see that, in places, there was some selective criticism being made by the author about his teacher, and some of the things he said always seemed a little `off' to me. So I wanted to know why he said these things. Also, there are key experiences that Ouspensky mentions in the book, yet doesn't go deeper into them. What happened?

Struggle of the Magicians answered a number of my questions by providing a solid backdrop of information regarding Ouspensky's relationship with Gurdjieff. It is a far different relationship than any type of relationship that one typically has in one's life. Also, I liked how the author wove a broader historical background into the book giving the added perspective of world events during Ouspensky's time with Gurdjieff. I'm sure that all of our lives are somehow different today as a result of 9/11, and the same can be said of the lives of many people during the Russian Revolution.

Is the Fourth Way really a `system,' as Ouspensky put it? Because in the same book (In Search), Gurdjieff tells Ouspensky that the teacher is the living embodiment of the teaching, and the two cannot be separated. Why would Ouspensky, then, differentiate the `system' from the teacher when Gurdjieff has told him otherwise, and Ouspensky even writes it in his book? Further, at the very end of In Search of the Miraculous, Ouspensky rationalizes that, after all these years, he was mistaken in having Gurdjieff, specifically as his teacher, because he didn't feel that Gurdjieff's style and `specialty' suited him. So Ouspensky left Gurdjieff to start his own groups, employing Gurdjieff's `system,' though in an incomplete, truncated fashion. So I had to ask myself: What specifically happened that Ouspensky suddenly saw things differently and decided to `run off?' Struggle of the Magicians really lays out what the spiritual student-teacher relationship was and is, and the pitfalls that a student (not just Ouspensky) can come upon in the process.

I'd recommend this book to all Fourth Way students and to anyone who has read and really pondered Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous.

I only heard of Gurdjieff in passing or read mentions of him in varies of literature, but the first time I truly came across the understanding of Gurdjieff's concepts was in P.D. Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (Harvest Book) and found myself wanting to know more. Soon thereafter, I picked up William P. Patterson's "Struggle of the Magicians," which shed light on interesting dynamic or rather intensive relationship between Gurdjieff and his students, including Ouspensky.

This book is truly, without question, a profound insight into the life and the work of Gurdjieff, and revealed how unique was the teacher-student relationship like that of Gurdjieff and his pupils. Not only that, from this book, one would understand oneself better through the interactions between the teacher and the students. Also, I found Patterson's historical perspective to be quite fascinating and well presented.

This remarkable book is roughly 330 pages, three-part, well-written, and certainly full of insights.

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.

This is a wonderful gathering together of information from so many sources - including unpublished ones - that gives a detailed description of Gurdjieff's relationships with Ouspensky, Orage and Bennett. In reading about the interactions between these men, I feel that I gained a better understanding of the struggle of the teacher-student relationship. It is much easier to see the struggle when it is not your own that is being described.

I found it interesting to read Part I, which covers Ouspensky's years in Russia with Gurdjieff, in tandem with reading In Search of the Miraculous. Struggle provides descriptions from other students of these early years with Gurdjieff, which sometimes left me with a different impression from what I had received in Ouspensky's Search. Also, Patterson provides a picture of the political, social and economic situation of Russia in those war years. This gave me a better understanding of the "societal madness" in which the teaching was being given. If you then read Patterson's Voices in the Dark, which chronicles Gurdjieff's teaching during WW II, you see the tremendous obstacles that Gurdjieff had to overcome due to the phenomenon of man's "reciprocal destruction."

'I' could not put this book down and devoured in in one afternoon. I have read several of Gurdjieffs books and Uspensky's 'in search of the miraculous' - an exceptional book for any truth seekers. It does help to have prior knowledge of fourth way work in reading the struggle of the magicians since some of the analysis involves inferences that may be inaccessible to those yet to have found this path of understanding and personal development.
I was very moved towards the end in the discussion of Uspensky's death, the loss of all of his immediate family seems to have placed an impenetrable protection mechanism against the attempts by Gurdjieff to free him from his fears and as a result he lost his way.
Personally the book ties in very well with the concepts of Narcissism, see my other reviews. - Since Uspensky had never dealt with the traumatic events of his childhood he was unable, despite incredible intellectual capacity, to fully develop. You need to love yourself before you can love others and you need to understand yourself before you can fully develop and evolve.

I loved this book. It is chock full of the type of details about the life and times of Gurdjieff that anyone interested in the man will relish. Despite it's title this book was not for me so much about the student teacher relationship as much as about the massively difficult task that confronted Gurdjieff in attempting to awaken anyone. The details provided about Ouspensky Orage Bennet etc make it very clear that having a great intellect is not enough to ensure success in esoteric work and in fact if too great can be the greatest impediment to that success. Such was the case with Ouspensky and I was left with a feeling of immense sympathy for Gurdjieff and admiration for his patience, love and devotion to people who could not understand the gift he was offering them.

Patterson shows the teacher-pupil relationship in the fullest relief with three of Gurdjieff's leading pupils: first with P. D. Uspenskii, then A. R. Orage and finally John Bennett. Each of these men living in their own time and space was attracted to the Work. Uspenskii was `in search of the miraculous;' A. R. Orage was trying to find God; and Bennett was interested in hypnotism, the occult, and the fifth dimension. Each man had talents of persuasion and knowledge and each was approached by Gurdjieff at specific times to help spread the teaching. All failed for reasons outlined in the book because, ultimately, they could not give everything.

Uspenskii halved the `ideas' from the man, Gurdjieff, who embodied and brought the teaching to the West. He was unable to separate the `conditions' that Gurdjieff demanded from his own `conditioning.' Orage was unable to discriminate the vastness and seriousness of Gurdjieff's mission and Bennett seemed unable to `stay on track.' None of them seemed to fully sense or realize the urgency and what Gurdjieff called the `terror of the situation.'

The format is a time line where each person, each situation speaks; the author's notes are in footnotes. A brilliant book if one considers just the teacher-pupil relationship, but there is also an ordering of the situation, a sorting out. Patterson asks the reader to allow "the available material to build up sequentially, hopefully allowing it to be pondered in a wider context."