But that was in the future. From that meeting until the summer of 1918, while Russia exploded into chaos, Ouspensky submitted himself to Gurdjieff’s tutelage and began to learn the “system,” a story he tells in his posthumous masterpiece, In Search of the Miraculous. And if Gurdjieff himself impressed with an aura of strength and knowledge, the system he began to unfold to an increasingly ensnared Ouspensky made an even greater impact. It was logical, consistent, based on experience and observation and free of the kind of wishful thinking that Ouspensky had found in many other mystic teachings. In fact, it was almost specifically designed to attract a rigorous, critical intellect that had recently shorn itself of much of its romanticism. Whether this was so or not, in Ouspensky’s case it’s exactly what happened. The Teachings In the 1960s he traveled throughout India as a public speaker and was a vocal critic of socialism, Mahatma Gandhi, and Hindu religious orthodoxy. He told Gurdjieff, “the most important thing is FACTS… If I could see genuine and real facts of a new and unknown character, only they would finally convince me that I am on the right way.’ … ‘There will be facts,’ said G. ‘I promise you. But many other things are necessary first.’ … I only understood [his words] later when I really came up against ‘facts,’ for G. kept his word.” (Pg. 22-23) What was Gurdjieff’s teaching? When Ouspensky remarked on how life in big cities like London, where he had just been, was becoming more mechanical and increasingly turning people into machines, Gurdjieff corrected him. They already are machines, he said, and would be whether they lived in the city or not. “This must be understood,” Gurdjieff impressed on Ouspensky. “All the people you see, all the people you know, all the people you may get to know, are machines, actual machines working solely under the power of external influences.” Ouspensky was already concerned about the increasing mechanisation of modern life, but he believed that some things, the most important ones – thought, art, poetry – could stand against it. Gurdjieff told him he was wrong. These, too, can be and regularly are performed mechanically. He put up a fight, but it was not long before Ouspensky, himself a novelist and short story writer – witness Strange Life of Ivan Osokin and Talks With the Devil, respectively – agreed.

There are in fact many I's, not just one, as when we refer to ourselves in the first person. This is because our minds are split into many different factions based on our feelings. Essentially the unity we think we possess is an illusion supported by buffers between the different parts that prevent harsh collisions. In this sense we are not one person but many, which explains how we can react in ways seemingly contrary to our previous convictions. Aside from his final piece, Ader’s best known body of work is a set of 16mm films known as the Fall series. Each film was recorded in a single static take. “ Fall 1, Los Angeles” (1970) opens with Ader sitting on a chair on the roof of his home. The camera is set at a distance, with only the house and Ader occupying the frame. The artist suddenly leans to his right, loses control, and begins to roll off the roof and into the bushes below. The work’s levity is bolstered by the artist’s use of slow motion. In an extra-comic twist, one of Ader’s shoes flies off before he hits the ground. Another film from the same year, “ Fall 2, Amsterdam” (1970), is presented at normal speed. The camera overlooks a road beside a canal. Ader enters the frame on a bicycle, cycling steadily. He abruptly swerves into the water a few seconds later. Crucially, both sequences are cut before we see Ader remerge. He essentially vanishes. Over the course of the last decade, the interest in Ader’s work has largely stepped away from a cultish fixation on his death towards a greater appreciation of his entire oeuvre.This summer saw two solo exhibitions of the artist’s work, one at Metro Picturesin New York, the other at Simon Lee Galleryin London. The press release for the lattermakes only a passing reference to the artist’s disappearance. Ader boils down romantic grand emotion to the basic scenes, gestures and icons through which it is staged. The crucial point, however, is that he does so not to ironise, devalue or dismiss, but actually to try and redeem grand emotion - by showing that the truth of this emotion can be found in the full depth and intensity on the surface of these scenes."Gurdjieff stated, “It is said of Christ that he never laughed… But there are different ways of NOT laughing. There are people who do not laugh because they are completely immersed in negative emotions, in malice, in fear, in hatred, in suspicion. And there may be others who do not laugh because they cannot have negative emotions. Understand one thing. In the higher centers there can be no laughter, because in higher centers there is no division, and no ‘yes’ and ‘no.’” (Pg. 236-237) In advocating a more open attitude to human sexuality he caused controversy in India during the late 1960s and became known as "the sex guru". In In Search of the Miraculous, P.D. Ouspensky takes his readers along on his spiritual journey that began when he first met George Gurdjieff in Moscow in 1915. For much of his adult life, Gurdjieff had wandered Central Asia, Egypt, Iran, India, Tibet, and many other places. He had met with dervishes, fakirs, monks, and members of the most diverse occult brotherhoods, each of whom searching for truth in their own way. Prior to their meeting, Ouspensky had himself also ventured East "in search of the Miraculous," but had returned to Russia largely disappointed. He had not found the answers he was looking for, but his curiosity was sparked upon meeting the enigmatic Gurdjieff, who seemed to be brimming with ancient wisdom. While some artworks in In Search of the Miraculouscontain narratives that are immediately apparent, others liebeneath the surface.Richard Long’s A Line of 33 Stones, A Walk of 33 Days(1998) describes a deliberate and poetic quest for marking time, space, and a line from the “southernmost point to the northernmost point in mainland Britain.” In a selection of prints from 24 Landscapes(2000/2008),Paul Pfeiffer digitally removes Marilyn Monroe from a series of glossy photoshoots, including thefinal portrait series shot by George Barris on Santa Monica beach in 1962; without Monroe, some of the most iconic images of the twentieth century are transformed into cliché views of the sea.Harry Gould Harvey IV’s mystical, devotional, and diagrammatic drawings meld the history, architecture, and ecology of the south coast region of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, each presented in ornate, handmade frames cobbled from materials sourced from local textile factories, churches, and demolished Gilded Age mansions.

The first half of this book is very readable, straightforward, engaging and practical. Initially there were very few far-out claims, and I felt they were meant to be taken metaphorically. For instance, the idea that war is caused by the uncomfortable proximity of certain planets at certain times seems to be more an illustration of the way mass movements are the result of mechanical forces. But the book becomes more and more obtuse and really goes downhill after Ouspensky introduces this strange pretend chemistry that's way too precise and detailed to not be taken literally. It talks about 'hydrogens' and has the airs of an actual science, but is totally void of empirical justification. It's tedious and slightly embarrassing nonsense, and I don't see any value to it. Gurdjieff said about groups, “When a group is being organized its members have certain conditions put before them… First of all it is explained to all the members of a group that they must keep secret everything they hear or learn in the group and not only while they are members of it but forever afterwards. This is an indispensable condition whose idea should be clear to them from the very beginning.” (Pg. 223) Mary Sue Ader [Andersen]: No. I’m absolutely convinced that was nowhere in his consciousness. We talked about it, and he assured me repeatedly these were not his intentions. If you're into this sort of thing, this book will likely take a position of strong influence on your perception from here on. There was just something very appealing about it and sad. And I felt like I identified with that longing. And longing for what? I don’t know. A searching for something? What is it? I didn’t know. And I wanted to know what he was thinking.Much of this probably sounded plausible at the time. Subatomic particles, radiation (the craze to label every new thing a "this ray" and "that ray") and relativity were cutting edge science at the time and seemed to open up a previously unsuspected invisible realm. However, it is all pretty clearly incompatible with even a rudimentary understanding of the world from the 21st century standpoint (Gurdjieff denies evolution, astronomy, etc., substituting in their place some quite outlandish theories). I first must apologize. I didn't finish reading this book. For that reason I hesitated to offer a review, but I feel obligated to do so anyway. In Search of the Miraculous is Ouspensky's recollection of his first meeting and subsequent association with George Gurdjieff and the esoteric teaching that Gurdjieff imparted to him. This teaching still exists today in various forms; Ouspensky himself taught it to various groups from 1921–1947. Throughout the book, Ouspensky never refers to Gurdjieff directly, only using the single initial "G.", but it is common knowledge that this "G." was Gurdjieff, who taught Ouspensky an ancient esoteric system of self-development commonly known as the Fourth Way.

The reason to follow a guru is because books sometimes are not enough, the turn teaches us things that only in practice we can do. The book begins with Ouspensky returning home to St. Petersburg from his recent excursion to the East, where he journeyed "in search of the miraculous", as he put it. He soon meets a mysterious man, a certain "G.", who has all the answers for which Ouspensky has been arduously searching all his life. He immediately joins Gurdjieff's esoteric school, and begins learning a certain system of self-development which originated in the East, allegedly during the most remote antiquity, possibly millennia before recorded history. Gurdjieff describes his teaching as representing the fourth way, not the way of bodily struggle (the way of the fakir), nor the way of purification of the emotions (the way of the monk), nor the way of purification of the mind (the way of the yogi). The fourth way works on all aspects of man at the same time, and requires no renunciation or belief. It can be and indeed must be practiced in the midst of ordinary life conditions. It is thus easier and faster, but also, in another sense, far more difficult than the traditionally recognized methods of self-development. The difficulty consists in its inherent newness—it can never be a culturally familiar form, but must always move at a different tempo from human culture or the normally recognized functions of reason; because it is the rapid path, it puts constant pressure upon the individual for seeing the truth about himself. I just think I’m intrigued because [the photo] shows a man crying. And you don’t see that image very often. And you don’t see a man letting himself have these true emotions. And yet he kind of pushes it away a little bit by sort of writing on there “I’m too sad to tell you.”We are introduced to the idea of essence and personality, the division of human nature between what is man’s own and what he acquires; we learn of the existence and role of other centers besides the three basic centers. One of the most dramatic and personal sections of the book occurs in this latter part—where Ouspensky vividly describes experiences of an inexplicable nature regarding his relationship with Gurdjieff, experiences or facts which Gurdjieff had promised him would eventually come. It is clear that Ouspensky in this case seeks to portray a personal state of consciousness which he believes is unlike anything in the known mystical literature of the world. More than anything else, however, personal relations described in this latter part of the book partake of a unique quality of feeling which may strike the reader as puzzling, even chilling, yet perhaps also as evidencing new possibilities of the reach of the human heart. Ouspensky’s decision to leave his teacher, poignantly but tersely described toward the very end of the book, has this same ambiguity in the most extreme degree. Has Gurdjieff veered away from a certain right direction? Or has he brought Ouspensky to a stage of inner development which can only proceed further through the creation in the pupil of an entirely new and unknown human emotion? Exactly why teacher and student fell out remains unclear, although in my book In Search of P.D. Ouspensky, I take a stab at answering this question, the essential one in the psychohistory of “the work.” Probably the most likely reason is that they were two very different men and that whatever his faults – I don’t spare them in my book – Ouspensky had a genius of his own, as many of his readers know. However remarkable a teacher Gurdjieff was, Ouspensky could not have remained a student for very long. The strange thing is that he continued to teach the system – to which he added his own ideas about time, as spelled out in his magnum opus A New Model of the Universe – while having many troubling doubts about his teacher. One concern was reports of Gurdjieff enjoying the intimate favours of some of his students. At first Ouspensky dismissed these as gossip; later he wondered about their veracity. Gurdjieff, he knew, was no angel. Indeed, some who encountered him painted him as quite the devil. In any case, he kept everyone on their toes and Ouspensky had had enough of it. In 1981, the Rajneesh movement's efforts refocused on activities in the United States and Rajneesh relocated to a facility known as Rajneeshpuram in Wasco County, Oregon. Almost immediately the movement ran into conflict with county residents and the state government, and a succession of legal battles concerning the ashram's construction and continued development curtailed its success. It's been some years since I've written a review, but for this book I felt I had to. Probably one of the more challenging but also fulfilling reads of my life. The fact that I'm taking the time to write this well past midnight on a Saturday night should tell you enough.

Heralded for its Keatonesque humor, the Fall series oscillates between farce and tragedy. The films embrace the themes of failure, determinism, and fate. In a 1971 interview with Avalanche magazine (issue 2, winter 1971) Ader stated: In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching is a 1949 book by Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky which recounts his meeting and subsequent association with George Gurdjieff. Great care is taken throughout the book to characterize the master-pupil relationship between Gurdjieff and his circle. The resulting picture of Gurdjieff is of a man obviously possessing immense wisdom and personal power, capable at once of painfully stripping away the pupil’s “mask” while carefully guiding him through the emotional and bodily experiences necessary for the process of deep learning. The information and speculations which Ouspensky offers about the sources of Gurdjieff’s knowledge and about his motivations for acting as he did in various situations, rather than satisfying the reader’s curiosity about Gurdjieff, communicate instead the impression of an indecipherable man, doubtless one of the most enigmatic men of the twentieth century.Regardless, I strongly recommend In Search of the Miraculous. It's the single best book on Gurdjieff's work ever written. It's reasonably comprehensive on the important theories and methods. It's clear--no Beelzebub's Talesian mumbo-jumbo. It includes enough of Ouspensky's personal comments and experiences to make an entertaining story, but it isn't a self-indulgent book about the author ("and then he said this to me, and then I said that to him.") I find Ouspensky's other works overly dry and intellectual, but this one is both fun and profound. (And if you happen to buy a copy that has a bookmark in it from a purported Gurdjieff "school" -- toss the bookmark. Trust me about that.)