Gurdjieff International Review
Gurdjieff Obituary
The Times
November 12, 1949
Mr. George Gurdjieff who recently died in Paris at the age of 77 leaves in nearly every country in the world friends and pupils to whom he was the incomparable teacher of a way of life. His death has seemed to many the premature curtailment of a life that was strenuous to the last days. He was born in the Caucasus in Alexandropol in 1872 and studied under the well known Russian scholar and musician Father Borsh, Dean of the Cathedral at Kars. Until the age of 40 his life was spent in archaeological and anthropological research in Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. Having reached the conviction that his researches had led him to a valid conception of the meaning of human existence, and having discovered methods, some ancient, others new, for the development of the powers latent in the human psyche, he founded in 1910 in Moscow the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. After the Russian revolution this was moved to Paris, which have been the center of his activities ever since. Writers, including Katherine Mansfield, A. R. Orage and P. D. Ouspensky, as well as many scientists and medical men, have been among the many students attracted by his conception of human destiny and impressed by his practical methods. These have hitherto been known only to the circle of his immediate pupils, but in the year before his death, he decided to publish his writings and to permit practical demonstrations to be given of his methods of work.