Rating: 
Summary: Ancient wisdom/contemporary language/singular practice
Review: An experience of organic change can enter one's presence upon inner recognition (resonance) while reading, since the "Miraculous" is now as it always has been, yet is explained here in concise language representing a living tradition. Not a psychology, a religion, or a science, the in-the-moment practice outlined in text and diagrams, reaches our depths if upon our approach we open our minds, hearts, and the sensation of being in the moment while reading. A book to live by and refer to with renewed attention indefinitely.
Rating: 
Summary: Ken Wilber and Ouspensky - levels of consciousness
Review: For some reason, Westerners think that Eastern philosophy is shallow, sentimental, unrealistic, and pseudo-intellectualism. And who could say otherwise with all the half-baked "be at peace with yourself" self-help manuals being marketed today? But Ouspensky is the real deal. Instead of watering down eastern thought in the manner of hippies, Ouspensky presents man in all his complexity. The reader is challenged, and we learn that awareness, real awareness, requires hard work, as opposed to the local yogi at your YMCA who tells you that mere meditating and stretching exercises will do the trick. There's so much in this book to take in. And at some moments you'll think that you're back in chemistry class with all the diagrams and discussions of hydrogens and triads. But don't be deterred. If you want to sit and meditate and be happy with your mickey mouse brand of self-exploration, then by all means, steer clear of this book. But for those of you who are serious, this book can start you on the path like no other, so long as you are diligent and somewhat desperate for another way of being.
Rating:
Summary: The Single Best Book on the Gurdjieff Work
Review: Having read just about everything written by or about Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Collin, Orage, Nicoll, and countless disciples, spin-offs, Sufis, etc., etc., and having been drawn by them into spending years in a Gurdjieff "school," and being familiar with the traditions on which the Gurdjieff approach was based, I take a lot of the "fourth way" material with a large grain of salt. The core of the "work" is a powerful methodology, but no more so than, say, vipassana, Zen, vajrayana or other solid, meditation-based tradition. There is nothing about the fourth way that is any more "esoteric" than these other traditions. The biggest difference is that Gurdjieff left behind a legacy of fraudulent teachers and cults, whereas there are many Buddhist and other groups that are reliable. Regardless, I strongly recommend In Search of the Miraculous. It's the single best book on Gurdjieff's work ever written. It's reasonably comprehensive on the important theories and methods. It's clear -- no Beelzebub's Talesian mumbo-jumbo. It includes enough of Ouspenky's personal comments and experiences to make an entertaining story, but it isn't a self-indulgent book about the author ("and then he said this to me, and then I said that to him.") I find Ouspensky's other works overly dry and intellectual, but this one is both fun and profound. (And if you happen to buy a copy that has a bookmark in it from a purported Gurdjieff "school" -- toss the bookmark.)
Rating: 
Summary: In Search of the Credulous
Review: I'll offer a short review of this book, all the while cognizant of the fact that, according to Ouspensky, I, along with the other Amazon.com customers who've offered their two cents about this work, are "asleep" and have no real knowledge. Therefore, our opinions of this book are inherently worthless. First, P.D. Ouspensky's "In Search of the Miraculous," though it is burdened with a cheesy New-Agey title, is, at the very least, a profound work of the imagination in that it synthesizes a panoply of ancient pseudo-sciences into an over-arching structure that is more or less coherent. In this respect, it deeply impresses me every time I read it. Second, the problem with the magpie system this book outlines (which is an explication of the ideas of G.I. Gurdjieff) is that its ideas about science are totally preposterous. For example, did you realize that, according to Ouspensky/Gurdjieff, all organic life on earth "feeds the moon"? What this means is that the "electromagnetic" essences of all living things, upon their deaths, flies off to the moon, where it more or less stays forever. The reason this happens is to further the "evolution" of the moon. One day, according to this line of thinking, aeons and aeons hence, the moon will become a planet akin to the earth, whereupon not only will the earth become a "sun," a satellite of the erstwhile moon will also appear. Did you also know that this school of thought considered the planet Jupiter to be a "sun" for its other moons? Did you further know that stones can "think" and that the sun is actually "cold."? I'll be blunt and brief about the point I'm trying to make here: Given the fact that Gurdjieff and Ouspensky were intelligent men (which they unquestionably were), the inclusion of obviously bogus science in their elaborate system must surely have been designed so that anyone trained in the rigorous and systematic skepticism of the traditions of Western science would steer clear away of their organization. Other than that, before anyone decides to get involved with one of numerous groups currently flying the Gurdjieff/Ouspensky banner, I would strongly advise giving two books a quick read: James Webb's "The Harmonious Circle" (for a bend-over-backwards judicious account of the Gurdjieff/Ouspensky phenomenon, albeit from an outsider's perspective); and parts of Peter Washington's "Madame Blavatsky's Baboon" (for a more skeptical assessment).
Rating:
Summary: More Clever than Memoir
Review: If Ouspensky published this book today, it would be considered yet another piece of "creative nonfiction." In one way this is not inappropriate. Ouspensky is a very careful and creative writer, and I fear that if his work is appreciated only as a more approachable Gurdjieff or as a lock-step literal-truth, much may be lost.
One example of Ouspensky's very intelligent use of detail is his observation early on that "G" (Gurdjieff) speaks Russian improperly. (Read Bakhtin for some insights on the different ways Russians use Russian. G was Armenian anyway.) Some readers insist that G's apparently uncouth Russian usage is evidence of his incompetence, and thus celebrate Ouspensky as the "true" carrier of the fourth way teaching. It seems more likely to me that Ouspensky is telling us something about himself at the time through this detail, that G's provincial grammar was of concern to him. Now, this book is the story of Ouspensky's own transformation; this moment reveals some bourgois arrogance over trivial details, which will prove useful when it comes time to understand what in Ouspensky is transformed, and what is not by the end of the book.
In other words, Ouspensky is honest and skilful enough as a writer to present his own flaws.
Some readers like to compare Ouspensky and Gurdjieff as writers, and I do not think this is fair. Their goals and methods differ tremendously. Gurdjieff's style suits my bizarro tastes better, and Ouspensky appeals to more conservative readers. Ouspensky's approach has proven to be invaluable for people trying to udnerstand their own processes and Gurdjieff's for that matter.
It's worth two or three careful readings of this book on its merits as a useful memoir alone. (Not all memoirs are useful.) The image of a solitary Ouspensky working out the mathematical details of Gurdjieff's chemico-cosmology into the night haunts me.
But this is a book of ideas, primarily. Thw two ideas Ouspensky develops in this texts that are particularly interesting to me at least are the machinic aspects of being human, where to be a body is to be a machine, or a set of machines.; and the practices of self-remembering and nonidentification, which are spiritual practices treated with scientific rigor. The reader may be interested in exploring each of these further. Deleuze and Guattari explore the human machine (and all manner of social machines) in precise if eccentric detail in A Thousand Plateaus; Tarthang Tulku presents a dynamic series of exercies in the spirit of self-remembering and the deconstruction of the submect-object binary in clear, scientific language in Time, Space, and Knowledge.
Happy inquiry...
Rating: 
Summary: Unfortunate Association
Review: It is indeed unfortunate that the new edition of this perennial classic on the Work Life has now been associated with the so-called "New Age Movement" through the addition of Marianne Williamson's introductory "testimonial." 'In Search of the Miraculous' is in no way provender for New Age imaginations. It is tough-minded, practical Work instruction in the form of imperishable philosophical and cosmological concepts. This book is not recommended for those who, like Ms. Williamson, imagine themselves eclectic occultists. Better you do your foraging among the remains of Madame Blavatsky or Mrs. Prophet.
If you are interested in a presentation of Work ideas free of bias and questionable supernaturalist interpretations, find a copy of one of the older editions of 'In Search of the Miraculous'. The older editions contain only the text of Peter Ouspensky, a decided advantage over this "new," co-opted edition. For these and other reasons, the older editions rate 5 stars. This new edition à la mode, only 1 star.
-- Dr. Michael J. Langlais
Rating:
Summary: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching
Review: Ouspensky named his book 'Fragments of an Unknown Teaching', but when the book was published in 1950, after his own and Gurdjieff's death, the name was changed due to its similarity to 'Fragments of a Faith Forgotten' by G.R.S. Mead. Gurdjieff's lectures and answers are recorded in the 'Fragments' so exactly that when Madame Ouspensky showed the book to Gurdjieff he said: 'I can hear myself speaking' and gave permission to publish the book, but insisted that his own book 'Beelzebub's Tales' must come out first. 'Beelzebub's Tales' was eventually also published first time in 1950. The contents of the 'Fragments' were delivered in meetings in Moscow and Petrograd (earlier St. Petersburg, later Leningrad and now again St. Petersburg) in 1915 - 1918, in other words just before, during and just after the October revolution, in conditions G. described as favourable for 'picking up ideas'. The 'Fragments' has the whole theory of Gurdjieff's teaching, often known as the Fourth Way, and moreover presented in such clear way that the book is easy reading taking into account the difficulty of the subject. To get to know what Gurdjieff's teaching is can be found out by reading the book. To put it in just a few words is not really possible, but Ouspensky writes about it like this: "G. began the next talk as follows:
"Man's possibilities are very great. You cannot conceive even a shadow of what man is capable of attaining. But nothing can be attained in sleep. In the consiousness of a sleeping man his illusions, his 'dreams' are mixed with reality. He lives in a subjective world and he can never escape from it. An this is the reason why he can never make use of all the powers he possesses and why he always lives in only a small part of himself."
Rating:
Summary: The Best Summary of the Gurdjieff System
Review: Ouspensky's widow had Gurdjieff read this book before it was published and Gurdjieff stated it was accurate. This book contains a lot of useful information about man's psychological problems and their possible resolution. I would suggest hiliting the passages you find useful for future review. The book to read after this one is Teachings of Gurdjieff by C. S. Nott. Then it would be time to do your first reading of Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. Gurdjieff said that he chose his style of writing to force the reader to "ponder" his message with the objective of achieving a greater understanding. I personally feel it would have been smarter to write with greater clarity. Thankfully we do have a "clear" presentation approved by Gurdjieff himself in The Search For the Miraculous.
Rating:
Summary: The only serious alternative
Review: The essence of this book derives from notes made by Ouspensky and his fellow students in the first teaching groups Gurdjieff had in Moscow and St. Petersburg before the revolution. Here Gurdjieff first expounded the remarkable teaching that he had found and reconstructed, the ancient esoteric Christianity, from an Egypt before the sands. It seems Gurdjieff later took it for granted that this first exposition would be available, for nowhere else is the teaching set out so manifestly. If you are prepared to know the truth of your situation, read this book.
The new attempt to market this book by having someone wellknown for teaching A Little Course in Miracles out there in California is misleading. Anyone who teaches that kind of thing cannot have understood what this book is about. Certainly she cannot have absorbed the information on white and black magic given in chapter eleven. So if you cannot get a used version of the earlier editions, just skip the introduction.
Rating:
Summary: This goes for the Ouspensky books in general.
Review: There's one very valuable concept in this system; self-observation, and the conscious attention that's required for self-observation. The author gives proofs that this is not as easily achieved as one might expect. At some point in the system, the general truths have been stated and some 'further-out' conclusions are drawn. At that point, these books taught me a lesson that they didn't intend: Many philosophies have their most valuable parts at the beginning, after which we are often better off drawing our own conclusions.
|
