Peter Demianovich Ouspensky
Peter Demianovich Ouspensky was born in Moscow in 1878. At the University of Moscow he studied natural science and psychology, and his first book, ‘The Fourth Dimension’, earned him immediate respect as a mathematical theorist. Ouspensky decided, however, to become a journalist and writer, contributing to the principal Russian newspapers, writing books and traveling widely between 1908 and 1915. The Revolution drove him from his home in St. Petersburg to the safety of Constantinople, where friends discovered him living in poverty. Lady Rothermere came across an edition of Ouspensky’s second book, ‘Tertium Organum’, and through her intervention he was able to come to England.
Ouspensky’s life had been changed in 1915 by his meeting with the Caucasian teacher G.I. Gurdjieff and he became a disciple of his. Ouspensky set up a self-supporting community at Lyne Place, near London, which flourished for many years. Among the men and women who studied with him were J.D. Beresford, Algernon Blackwood, A.R.Orage, Christopher Isherwood, and Aldous Huxley. In 1940 he settled in America and formed a colony patterned after his earlier community. He died at Lyne Place in 1947.
Ouspensky’s early reputation rested mainly on ‘Tertium Organum’, the theme of which is the need to go beyond logical thinking to understand the nature of the real world. However, after the publication of ‘In Search of the Miraculous, Fragments of an Unknown Teaching’ in 1949, Ouspensky became, for many seekers, the man who was able to make Gurdjieff’s teaching accessible.
P D Ouspensky (1878-1947)
Ouspensky’s Books
In Search of the Miraculous – Fragments of an Unknown Teaching
In Search of the Miraculous is undoubtedly a tour de force. To put an entirely new and very complex cosmology and psychology into fewer than 400 pages, and to do this with a book accessible to any educated reader is in itself an achievement.
The Search of P.D. Ouspensky in Europe, in Egypt and in the Orient for a teaching which would solve for him the problems of Man and the Universe, brought him into contact with G.I. Gurdjieff, in 1915 in St. Petersburg. ‘Fragments of an Unknown Teaching’ is the record of Ouspensky’s eight years of work with Gurdjieff.
These are Ouspensky’s opening words………
I returned to Russia in November 1914…. after a rather long journey through Egypt, Ceylon and India…….When leaving Petersburg at the start of my journey I had said that I was going to ‘seek the miraculous’. The ‘miraculous’ is very difficult to define but for me this word had quite a different meaning. I had come to the conclusion a long time ago that there was no escape from the labyrinth of contradictions in which we live except an entirely new road, unlike anything hitherto known or used by us………… The ‘miraculous’ was a penetration into this unknown reality.
The Fourth Way
(compiled by pupils and first published in 1957)
Ouspensky’s first major book, ‘Tertium Organum’ dealt with a new way of thinking; the ‘Fourth Way’ is concerned with a new way of living. This book is a precious guide to those who are seeking not an easy but a true way of inner growth. It is the most complete statement of the ideas which Ouspensky taught from 1921 to 1946 and it develops those ideas set out in ‘In Search of the Miraculous’. Contained here is a lucid explanation of the practical side of Gurdjieff’s method, revealing how ordinary life can lead us to ‘real’ life.
Tertium Organum (1912)
Combining the worlds of Mathematics and mysticism Ouspensky formulates an inspired vision of a philosophy by which a bridge can be built between Western rationalism and Eastern mysticism. Here Ouspensky proposes that the dimensionality of space corresponds with the development of consciousness.
A New Model of the Universe (written 1914)
Here is a book revealing Ouspensky’s preoccupation with the problems of Man’s existence. It covers a vast range of subjects with the common theme of the nature and meaning of Man’s place in the Universe. Ouspensky examines ways to study the New Testament; the systems of Yoga; Esotericism: the symbolism of the Tarot and the problem of ‘Superman’.
The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution
These lectures, originally entitled ‘Six Psychological Lectures’ were privately printed in 1940 for the Historico-Psychological Society in London. They give an account of meetings with Ouspensky’s London groups in 1937 where Ouspensky tells us that we are ‘incomplete’ beings with a choice of three possibilities….. to follow a path of further development; to become static; or to degenerate. If our consciousness is to develop we must make it happen through our own efforts of will.
P. D. Ouspensky’s unique series of five ‘psychological lectures’ describe not what Humanity is now, but what it may become.
In these lectures, originally meant only for a select few, Ouspensky gives invaluable guidance for those starting out on this most important of all quests. P. D. Ouspensky describes how a man must work simultaneously on his knowledge and his being to find inner unity and why although his development depends on his own efforts, this is very difficult to achieve without guidance from a School.
The Cosmology of Man’s Possible Evolution
(lectures from 1934 – 1940)
Every system of philosophy and every serious student at a certain stage of their development must come to the conclusion that it is impossible to study man without studying the Universe. Man is an image of the ‘World’. He was created by the same laws……
Extract taken from Lecture 1.
Contained in this book are definitions of the ‘Law of Three’, the ‘Law of Seven’, and the ‘Ray of Creation’.
Conscience – the Search for Truth
Ouspensky’s themes for this book include the role of ‘memory’, ‘surface personality’, ‘self-will’, ‘negative emotions’, and general notes on Work. Through ‘Memory’ we can learn how to attain ‘true self-consciousness’. ‘Surface personality’ bids us shed superficialities …… ‘self-will’, is taking the path of mindfulness and responsibility; … ‘negative emotions’ can be starved out of existence and ‘notes on the Work’ warns us of the commitment and self discipline needed to change our lives.
A Record of Meetings
( between 1930 and 1947)
This book contains transcripts of numerous meetings at which Ouspensky answered questions on a great many issues ranging from evolution, the will, the self, religion and culture, and thought and intelligence. From the precision of his responses Ouspensky emerges as one of the most profound and influential masters of the spoken as well as the written word.
A Further Record
Extracts from Meetings 1928-1945.
Here Ouspensky’s ideas are grouped into subjects for ease of reference. It includes sections on ‘self-remembering’, ‘the nature and purpose of suffering’, ‘energy centres in man’, and ‘The Lord’s Prayer’.
Talks With a Devil
Originally published in Petrograd in 1916.
The two stories published in this book examine two problems that for Ouspensky were very serious and important……. The first if that of ‘conscious evil’, running an analogy of modern man faced with the consequences of the miracles of science and technology And the second problem…is brought out by the suggestion that the devils are interested in man only when he makes a real effort to escape.
The Symbolism of the Tarot
A classic study of the 22 cards of the Greater arcana
Letters from Russia – 1919
As a professional journalist, Ouspensky found a means to send a series of articles to the ‘New Age’ under the editorship of A.R. Orage. These letters give a detached but horrific description of the total breakdown of public order in Russia. Ouspensky foresaw with unusual clarity the inevitability of the tyranny described by Solzhenitsyn some fifty years later.
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