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Liber XXXIII · Theosophy

Liber XXXIII · Theosophy · Chapter IV: The Fourth Way

P. D. Ouspensky: Tertium Organum, Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way

P. D. Ouspensky's life and ideas: Tertium Organum and the fourth dimension, his years with Gurdjieff, the London groups and In Search of the Miraculous.

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Pyotr Demianovich Ouspensky (1878–1947) was a Russian journalist, mathematician by inclination and esoteric philosopher, best known as the pupil who wrote down G. I. Gurdjieff's teaching in In Search of the Miraculous and spread it through his own groups in London and New York. Before he met Gurdjieff he was already famous in Russia for Tertium Organum (1912), a speculative book about the fourth dimension and mystical consciousness. His career shows how pre-revolutionary Russian occultism, Theosophy and popular science fed into what became known as the Fourth Way.

Early Life and Journalism in Moscow§

Ouspensky was born in Moscow in March 1878 into an educated family; his mother painted and his father, an officer in the land survey, was interested in mathematics and music. He left his gymnasium without completing the course and never took a university degree, educating himself instead in mathematics, psychology and philosophy while earning a living as a journalist. Around the turn of the century he read the literature of Theosophy, then fashionable in Russian intellectual circles, together with Western writings on higher space by the English mathematician Charles Howard Hinton.

Two early themes would stay with him for life. The first was eternal recurrence, the idea that a life may be lived again and again, which he explored in a story later published in English as The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin. The second was the search for a "miraculous" knowledge beyond science and ordinary religion. He wrote a short study of the Tarot, published in 1912–1913 and translated as The Symbolism of the Tarot, which read the cards as a philosophical system in the manner of the French occultists (see our history of tarot).

Tertium Organum and the Fourth Dimension§

Ouspensky's reputation rests first on Tertium Organum, published in St Petersburg in 1912. Its title presents it as a "third canon of thought" after Aristotle's Organon and Francis Bacon's Novum Organum. The book argues that our perception of three-dimensional space and of time is a limitation of consciousness rather than a property of the world. A two-dimensional being would experience a solid passing through its plane as a series of changing shapes; in the same way, Ouspensky suggested, humans experience as motion and time what is in reality a higher-dimensional whole.

From this geometrical analogy he moved to psychology and mysticism. Drawing on Richard Maurice Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness, on William James and on mystical literature from many traditions, he argued that moments of mystical insight are glimpses of this higher reality and that humanity is evolving towards a new form of consciousness. The English translation by Nicholas Bessaraboff and the architect Claude Bragdon appeared in the United States in 1920 and was widely read in artistic and literary circles. Ouspensky's later A New Model of the Universe (1931) gathered essays on esotericism, the Gospels, yoga, dreams and recurrence written before and after his years with Gurdjieff.

In 1913–1914 Ouspensky travelled to Egypt, Ceylon and India in search of living esoteric schools, and spent some time at the Theosophical Society's headquarters at Adyar (see the Theosophical Society). He found much to admire but no school of the kind he sought, and the outbreak of the First World War brought him back to Russia.

Meeting Gurdjieff, 1915–1918§

In the spring of 1915, in a Moscow café, Ouspensky was introduced to George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. He was at first sceptical of the dark, enigmatic teacher, but soon became convinced that Gurdjieff possessed exactly the kind of systematic knowledge he had been looking for. Over the next two years he attended Gurdjieff's groups in Moscow and Petrograd and recorded the teaching in detail: the idea that man is a machine who lives in sleep, the practice of self-remembering, the three centres, the Ray of Creation, the Law of Three and the Law of Seven, and the enneagram symbol. These ideas are summarised in our guide to the Fourth Way.

In 1917, as revolution spread, Ouspensky followed Gurdjieff to Essentuki in the northern Caucasus, where a small group undertook an intensive period of work. Ouspensky later described there an experience of what he took to be direct, silent communication with Gurdjieff. Yet he also grew uneasy with Gurdjieff's methods and personal demands, and in 1918 he began to distance himself, while still regarding the teaching as authentic.

Exile, London and the Break with Gurdjieff§

The Civil War drove Ouspensky, like Gurdjieff, out of Russia. In Constantinople in 1920 he gave lectures on the system and briefly worked again alongside Gurdjieff. His books had made him known in England, and with the support of Lady Rothermere, the wife of the newspaper proprietor, he moved to London in 1921. There he gave lectures attended by writers, doctors and intellectuals, among them the editor A. R. Orage and the psychiatrist Maurice Nicoll.

When Gurdjieff opened his Institute at Fontainebleau in 1922, Ouspensky helped raise money for it and sent pupils there, but he did not settle there himself. By early 1924 he had told his London followers that he was ending all connection with Gurdjieff and that those who wished to continue with him must do so independently. His wife, Sophie Grigorievna Ouspensky, remained for some years closer to Gurdjieff. The reasons for the break have been debated ever since: Ouspensky believed that the teaching could be separated from the teacher and his increasingly unpredictable behaviour, while Gurdjieff's loyalists believed that the transmission depended on the master's living presence.

In Search of the Miraculous and Ouspensky's System§

Through the 1920s and 1930s Ouspensky taught what he called "the system" to groups in London, and from 1935 at Lyne Place, a country house near Virginia Water in Surrey, where pupils combined study with practical work on the estate. In 1937 his followers formed the Historico-Psychological Society, and his larger meetings in London attracted hundreds of members. The mathematician J. G. Bennett, the surgeon Kenneth Walker and the writer Rodney Collin were among his best-known students.

Ouspensky's manner as a teacher was intellectual, cautious and somewhat austere. He emphasised self-observation, self-remembering and the study of ideas, and he discouraged speculation that went beyond what he had received. In the 1920s and 1930s he composed a long account of his years with Gurdjieff, which he did not publish in his lifetime. It appeared in 1949 as In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, and it remains the clearest and most widely read source for Gurdjieff's early ideas, including the first published description of the enneagram. His lectures were issued as The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution (1950), and answers to pupils' questions as The Fourth Way (1957).

Last Years and Legacy§

During the Second World War Ouspensky moved to the United States, living from 1941 at Franklin Farms in Mendham, New Jersey, and lecturing in New York. In poor health, he returned to England early in 1947. At meetings that year, according to several of those present, he startled his followers by declaring that he had abandoned "the system" and that they must begin again from what they themselves knew and wanted. Interpretations differ: some saw a final teaching on self-reliance, others an admission of failure. He died at Lyne Place on 2 October 1947.

His pupils took the work in several directions. Rodney Collin, who believed Ouspensky had achieved a conscious death, developed the system in The Theory of Celestial Influence (1954) and later founded groups in Mexico. Maurice Nicoll wrote the multi-volume Psychological Commentaries on Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, and J. G. Bennett pursued his own synthesis with Sufi and Subud elements. Gurdjieff's own heirs, organised in the Gurdjieff Foundations, treated In Search of the Miraculous as essential reading. Beyond these groups, Ouspensky's speculations on higher dimensions and recurrence influenced artists, novelists and later writers on consciousness, and his practical interest in dreams and "half-dream states" anticipated modern interest in lucid dreaming.

Frequently asked questions§

What is Tertium Organum about?§

Tertium Organum (1912) argues that time and three-dimensional space are limitations of human perception and that reality is higher-dimensional. Ouspensky linked this geometrical idea to mystical experience and to the emergence of what he called a new, cosmic consciousness in humanity.

Why did Ouspensky break with Gurdjieff?§

Ouspensky came to distrust Gurdjieff's personal conduct and methods while continuing to value his ideas. He believed that the system could be taught without Gurdjieff, and in 1924 he formally ended his connection with him, though he continued to teach the ideas he had learned.

Is In Search of the Miraculous reliable?§

It is a careful first-hand record of Gurdjieff's teaching between 1915 and the early 1920s, and Gurdjieff's own circle accepted it as authoritative. It reflects Ouspensky's orderly, intellectual temperament, however, and gives less weight to the Movements, music and personal relationship that Gurdjieff himself emphasised.

Did Ouspensky really abandon the system?§

Several pupils reported that in 1947 Ouspensky told them he had abandoned the system and that they should start afresh. Whether this was a renunciation, a test or a teaching about independence has been argued ever since, and the surviving accounts differ in detail.

Sources and further reading§