The Strange Life of P. D. Ouspensky (19 page)

When Ouspensky discovered Gurdjieff, though, it seemed that now, at last, he had his 'ladder', a means of achieving higher states of consciousness through ordinary conscious effort. His certainty that he had stumbled upon a completely new approach to the problem of higher consciousness was increased by some of Gurdjieff's odder and more paradoxical ideas - such as that knowledge is 'material', and therefore cannot be shared out indefinitely, or that human beings are 'food of the moon'. After his 'short cut' with nitrous oxide, he now went to the opposite extreme, and became entrenched in a kind of gleeful pragmatism. His total refusal to countenance anything that sounded like 'mysticism' has something in common with Marx's view that religion is the opium of the people. In effect, Ouspensky had become a kind of 'spiritual Marxist'. This attitude certainly made an immense impact on his followers in London, and later in America, producing the impression that he had
the
answer. In effect, he ordered everyone to toe the party line or else . . . Yet this attitude was the reverse of what he had stood for in
Tertium Organum
and
A New Model of the Universe
. It seems incredible that this 'Marxist' Ouspensky could have allowed himself to publish the chapter on Notre Dame, the Pyramids and the Sphinx, which sound as if they have been written by some disciple of Madame Blavatsky.

Significantly, of course, Gurdjieff himself was anything but a 'spiritual Marxist'. His approach remained fundamentally religious. This was the basic reason why Ouspensky had to renounce him. Ouspensky felt that he had taken Gurdjieff's System and discarded the nonsense. Religion and mysticism were traps for the woolly-minded. He had no time for such 'opium'.

Yet by the time he went to America, it had become clear to Ouspensky that his own 'Marxianized' version of the System was getting him nowhere. It left him trapped in 'tunnel vision' and only strong alcohol could enable him to 'open up'. Gurdjieff never made the same mistake: he ate, drank, fornicated and prayed, and remained a well-rounded human being. If we are to believe
Beelzebub
, the only thing he lacked was that deep, Chestertonian conviction of 'absurd good news'.

When Madame Ouspensky began to encourage the study of religious texts, Ouspensky allowed her to do so, for he was now aware of the shortcomings of his own approach. Yet this was a total reversal of what he had believed when he came to England in 1921, when such dilution of the System would have been harshly treated. And finally, as Nott has recorded, he felt like abandoning the System altogether and going off once more in search of 'secret doctrines' and hidden knowledge. His attempt to 'Marxianize' the System had left him intellectually bankrupt.

According to disciples who were with him in the last months of his life, Ouspensky achieved peace at the end. The 'tunnel vision' disappeared as death approached, and he probably felt that his attempt to intellectualize the System had not been such a waste of time after all. At least it had produced a masterpiece, in his record of his years with Gurdjieff, a book in which all his early clarity, brilliance and honesty combined to produce the perfect introduction to Gurdjieff's ideas. Without
In Search of the Miraculous
, 'the war against sleep' would certainly have made very little headway in the twentieth century, which has no time to get to grips with a work like
Beelzebub's Tales
. Half a century later, Ouspensky's book remains by far the best introduction to Gurdjieff.

It is a pity that Ouspensky never produced such an excellent introduction to Ouspensky.
Tertium Organum
and
A New Model of the Universe
both strike us as an odd mixture of brilliance and confusion. But if he had never written anything else, they would make us aware that Ouspensky was a powerful and original mind, comparable to Soloviev, Rozanov, Berdyaev and other major Russian thinkers. Instead posterity will continue to regard him as another man's interpreter.

Still, if the accounts of the serenity of his final days are accurate, it may be that this is how he would have preferred to be remembered.

Adhyar 17-18

All and Everything: Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson
102,105,107,112,119,120,125,130,139,140

Anthroposophy 45-6

art 46-7,58

Bennett, J.G. 9,17,18,55-6,69-70,81,87

Bhagavad Gita
129-30

Blake, William 122

Blavatsky, Helena 18

Bragdon, Claude 87-8,90,109

Bucke, R.M. 35

Camus, Albert 42-3

capturing insights 55-7

Ceylon (Sri Lanka) 18

chaos theory 53

Collin, Rodney 10,111,116

cosmic consciousness 35

cosmology, Gurdjieff's 67-8,77

Law of Seven 68

Law of Three 68

de Beauvoir, Simone 43

déjà vu
12

Dostoevsky 20

early years, Ouspensky's 10-15

energy 134-5

Enneagram 68-9

essence 66,131

Eternal Recurrence 13,19,26,73,114

excitement 51ff

Experimental Mysticism 47-9,136,138

Four Aspects of Man 66-7

Fourth Dimension 30-1

Fourth Dimension, The
9

Fourth Way 65-6,99

'Fragments of an Unknown Teaching' 78;
see also In Search of the Miraculous

free will 59-60

Goethe 122

Gurdjieff, George Ivanovich 6,9-10,24-7,58

and art 46-7

background 44-6,

car crash 102-4,

cosmology 67-9,

death 119-20,

difference with Ouspensky 63,

effect on Ouspensky 124-5,

and freedom 58-9,

intellectual system 65-83,

London 1922 93-4,

meeting with Ouspensky 24,41,46-64,72-83,138,

mistakes 121-41,

opinion of Ouspensky 107,

Paris 1923 94,100-1,

post Ouspensky's death 116-20,

physical effort 95,

as teacher 27,46-64,72-83,
and sex 45,94,

US trip 101-2

and war 62

Hartmann 81-2,86,101

Herald of Coming Good
,117,125

Hesse, Hermann 123

higher consciousness 122-4

Hinton, C.H. 29-30,31-2

In Search of the Miraculous
61,129,130,139

India 17

intentional suffering 66,128

James, William 38-40,47,48-9,81,127-8

Journey through this World: the Second Journeyof a Pupil
105ff,112

Jung 91

Kant 29, 32

Law of Seven 68

Law of Three 68

levels of consciousness 131-3

livingness 54-5

love 56, 61

Madame Ouspensky 98-9,105,108-9,111,112,113,116-17,139

Mansfield, Katherine 72,101

Maslow, Abraham 42,71,125-6,134

mathematical relations 50-1

Meetings with Remarkable Men
45,119

Mesmer, Anton 135

mother, Ouspensky's 14

muscles 134-5

mysticism 35,36

Neill, A.S. 92

New Age, The
17,84

New Model of the Universe, A
12,16,36,47,60,63,83,97,112,138,140

Nicoll, Maurice 91-2,95

Nott, C.S. 89-90,105-20,125

break with Ouspensky 112-13

objectivity 29,49-50,58

Orage, A.R. 17,84, 89,90,93,94-6,101,109-10,117

Our Life with Mr Gurdjieff
81

Ouspensky,

alcoholism 110-11,

appearance 25,

death 115-16,

early years 10-15,

emotional weakness 107,

later years 105-20,

London 1921 onwards 88-9,90-1,96-104,

Madame Ouspensky 98-9,105,108,111,112,116-17

meeting with Gurdjieff 24,41,46-64,72-83,138,

mistakes 121-41,

movement 99-100,

parents 12-14,

remeeting Gurdjieff 86-7,

romanticism 11-12,

split with Gurdjieff 81-3,97,111,

System 97-8,114,

vision 23,

work 98

Outsider, The
130

parents, Ouspensky's 12-14

peak experiences 41,71,126,131

perception 31-3,50-6

personality 66

pessimism 23

Principles of Psychology
40

psychical research 30

Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution
113

Renouvier, Charles 40

robot, humans as 59-60,66-7,70-2,93,136

romanticism 11-12,16-17,23,58-9,122-3

Russia 10-12

schooling, Ouspensky's 13

self-remembering 41-2,67,121

sex 36,60

Shaw, G.B. 20,89,107

sister, Ouspensky's 15

Slade, Henry 30

sleep 131

spiritualism 30,45

Steiner, Rudolf 45,86,124

Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, The
12-13

system 114

Talks with a Devil
18-23

Tertium Organum
9,27-9,32,34,35-41,59,87,109,136,138,140

Theosophical Society 17

Theosophy 45-6

time 52-3

Tsars 11-12,14-15,76

Varieties of Religious Experience, The
39-40,47

Ventures with Ideas
96

Walker, Kenneth 10,12,36-7,92,96,118-20,130-1

War against Sleep, The
128,131

Ward, R.H. 50,55

Waste Land, The
89

Winter Palace 14

work, according to Gurdjieff 65-6,68-9,71-2,115;
see also
self-remembering

yoga 25

Zarathustra 35

Zinaida 13

Zollner 30

Zvenigorod 11-12