In Search of the Miraculous

the dispersal of the group. A final trip to Petersburg.

CHAPTER XVIII

Petersburg. October 1917. Bolshevik revolution. Return to G. in the

Caucasus. G 's attitude to one of his pupils. A small company with G at

Essentuki. More people arrive Resumption of work. Exercises are more

difficult and varied than before Mental and physical exercises, dervish

dances, study of psychic "tricks." Selling silk Inner struggle and a decision.

The choice of gurus. The decision to separate. G goes to Sochi. A difficult

time: warfare and epidemics. Further study of the enneagram, "Events" and

the necessity of leaving Russia. London the final aim Practical results of work

on oneself: feeling a new I, "a strange confidence." Collecting a group in

Rostov and expounding G.'s system. G. opens his Institute in Tiflis. Journey

to Constantinople. Collecting people. G arrives New group introduced to G.

Translating a dervish song. G the artist and poet. The Institute started in

Constantinople. G authorizes the writing and publishing of a book. G. goes to

Germany. Decision to continue Constantinople work in London, 1921 G

organizes his Institute at Fontainebleau. Work at the Chateau de la Prieuré. A

talk with Katherine Mansfield. G. speaks of different kinds of breathing.

"Breathing through movements." Demonstrations at the Theatre des Champs

Elysées, Pans. G.'s departure for America, 1924. Decision to continue work in

London independently.

THE SEARCH of P. D. Ouspensky in Europe, in Egypt and the

Orient for a teaching which would solve for him the problems

of Man and the Universe, brought him in 1915 to his meeting in

St. Petersburg with Georges Gurdjieff. (It is Gurdjieff who is

referred to, throughout the text of this book, as G.) In Search of

the Miraculous:

Fragments of an Unknown Teaching is the record of

Ouspensky's eight years of work as Gurdjieff's pupil.

Chapter One

I RETURNED to Russia in November, 1914, that is, at the beginning of the

first world war, after a rather long journey through Egypt, Ceylon, and India.

The war had found me in Colombo and from there I went back through

England.

When leaving Petersburg at the start of my journey I had said that I was

going to "seek the miraculous." The "miraculous" is very difficult to define.

But for me this word had a quite definite meaning. I had come to the

conclusion a long time ago that there was no escape from the labyrinth of

contradictions in which we live except by an entirely new road, unlike

anything hitherto known or used by us. But where this new or forgotten road

began I was unable to say. I already knew then as an undoubted fact that

beyond the thin film of false reality there existed another reality from

which, for some reason, something separated us. The "miraculous" was a

penetration into this unknown reality. And it seemed to me that the way to

the unknown could be found in the East. Why in the East? It was difficult to

answer this. In this idea there was, perhaps, something of romance, but it

may have been the absolutely real conviction that, in any case, nothing

could be found in Europe.

On the return journey, and during the several weeks I spent in London,

everything I had thought about the results of my search was thrown into

confusion by the wild absurdity of the war and by all the emotions which

filled the air, conversation, and newspapers, and which, against my will,

often affected me.

But when I returned to Russia, and again experienced all those thoughts

with which I had gone away, I felt that my search, and everything connected