Gurdjieff Home Page

Fall 1997 Issue, Vol. I No. 1

Introduction

It is our whim to make this the best general website available on Gurdjieff. Lest you misinterpret our intention or ‘whim’ as flippant and frivolous, please let us share one of our favorite anecdotes.

G. Gurdjieff’s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man

Excerpts from Prospectus Number 1. Fontainebleau: Privately printed, 1923, issued in English, French and German, 15p. (An original copy of this document can be examined in The Heap-Reynolds ‘Little Review Collection’ at The University of Delaware Library. Sub-series F 21, 1926.) Beginning in the Spring of 1923, Gurdjieff’s students were given a prospectus for the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man that was also distributed to the public at movements demonstrations in Paris. It was the first statement about his past and ideas that Gurdjieff published in Europe.

Sayings of Gurdjieff

More aphorisms and sayings of Gurdjieff as documented by Kenneth Walker in his book, A Study of Gurdjieff’s Teaching.

Gurdjieff: The Unknown Teacher

A previously unpublished essay by John G. Bennett, published with the permission of George Bennett. Taken from a typescript written in 1949. Bennett’s essays of this period, written when he was in contact with Gurdjieff during the last years of Gurdjieff’s life, have a distinctive balance and intensity that sets them apart. Begins with descriptions of Bennett’s meetings with Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and his conviction that at last he had found “a comprehensive and convincing world outlook.”

Gurdjieff Chronology

Chronology reproduced from Gurdjieff: the Anatomy of a Myth (Element Books Ltd 1991, 415p., ISBN 1-85230-114-7) by permission of the author James Moore.

Gurdjieff: An Original Teacher

An abridgement of this introduction to and short biography of Gurdjieff, written by J. Walter Driscoll and George Baker, was published in Gurdjieff: an annotated bibliography.

Lord Pentland

A brief sketch of John Pentland’s life and writings by J. Walter Driscoll. Pentland was a pupil of both P. D. and Mme. Ouspensky for many years during the 1930s and 1940s. He spent considerable time with Gurdjieff in 1949, after which he led the Gurdjieff Work in North America.

About This Publication

The Gurdjieff Home Page is published by Gurdjieff Electronic Publishing. Any information or opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors.

The first succeeding generation began … to superwisacre so thoroughly that there reached the beings of the third and fourth generations nothing else but what our Honorable Mullah Nassr Eddin defines by the words: ‘only information about its specific smell.’

G. I. Gurdjieff

October 1, 1997