Yet another notable esoteric strain stems from the teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky.

Orage met P. D. Ouspensky, a follower of Gurdjieff, in 1914 and began correspondence with Harry Houdini ; he became less interested in literature and art with an increased focus on mysticism and other spiritual topics ; the magazine was sold in 1921.

" In 1915, Gurdjieff accepted P. D. Ouspensky as a pupil, while in 1916 he accepted the composer Thomas de Hartmann and his wife Olga as students.

In March 1918, Ouspensky separated from Gurdjieff.

Posing as a scientist, Gurdjieff left Essentuki with fourteen companions ( excluding Gurdjieff's family and Ouspensky ).

The apartment is near the kha ’ neqa ’ h ( monastery ) of the Molavieh Order of Sufis ( founded by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi ), where Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Thomas de Hartmann experienced the sema ceremony of The Whirling Dervishes.

Later, Bennett would become a follower of Gurdjieff and of Ouspensky.

However, James Moore and Ouspensky convincingly show that Katherine Mansfield knew she would soon die, and that Gurdjieff made her last days happy and fulfilling.

In some cases, this has led to a break between student and teacher as is the case of Ouspensky and Gurdjieff.

After the war, during the Roaring Twenties, Blackwood studied with Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.

Peter D. Ouspensky, a Russian esoteric philosopher, met Gurdjieff in 1916 and spent the next few years studying with him, later forming his own independent groups which also focused on the Fourth Way.

He is perhaps best known as the author of the five volume series of texts on the teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky: Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky ( Boston: Shambhala, 1996, and Samuel Weiser Inc., 1996 ).

Gurdjieff has been interpreted by some, Ouspensky among others, to have had a total disregard for the value of mainstream religion, philanthropic work and the value of doing right or wrong in general.

* Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky by Maurice Nicoll, 1952, 1955, 1972, 1980, ( 6 volumes )

* " Ouspensky, Gurdjieff et les Fragments d ' un Enseignement inconnu ", by Boris Mouravieff, in Revue Mensuelle Internationale " Synthèses ", N ° 138, Bruxelles, novembre 1957.

* " Ecrits sur Ouspensky, Gurdjieff et sur la Tradition ésotérique chrétienne ", Inédit, Dervy Poche, Paris, September 2008.

* The Harmonious Circle: The Lives and Work of G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, and Their Followers by James Webb, 1980, Putnam Publishing.

In June 1962, a couple of years prior to the publication of The Sufis, Shah had also established contact with members of the movement that had formed around the mystical teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.

When Gurdjieff and Ouspensky moved on to Europe, Bennett remained in Turkey, committed to his work and fascinated by the political and social developments that finally led to the fall of the sultanate and the proclamation, on October 29, 1923 of the Turkish republic.

He joined Ouspensky's groups, and continued to study Gurdjieff's system with them for fifteen years, though Ouspensky broke off all contact with Gurdjieff himself in the early 1920s.

Ouspensky repudiated him in 1945, which proved very painful for Bennett, who had also lost touch with Gurdjieff, and believed him to be dead.

In an interview, Pauwels said of the Gurdjieff work: "... After two years of exercises which both enlightened and burned me, I found myself in a hospital bed with a thrombosed central vein in my left eye and weighing ninety-nine pounds ... Horrible anguish and abysses opened up for me.

Gurdjieff opens his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at Fontainebleau in France.

Gurdjieff developed a method for doing so, calling his discipline

The Turks & Persians called Georgia " Gurjistan ," which may account for the root of the name " Gurdjieff ".

), for 1872 ; Both Olga de Hartmann — the woman Gurdjieff called " the first friend of my inner life "— and Louise Goepfert March, Gurdjieff's secretary in the early thirties, believed that Gurdjieff was born in 1872.

Gurdjieff grew up in Kars and traveled to many parts of the world ( such as Central Asia, Egypt and Rome ) before returning to Russia for a few years in 1912.

Gurdjieff concentrated on his still unstaged ballet, The Struggle of the Magicians ; Thomas de Hartmann ( who had made his debut years ago before as the Czar of All Russia ) worked on the music for the ballet ; and Olga Iovonovna Lazovich Milanoff Hinzenberg ( who years later wed the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright ) practiced the ballet dances.

In 1919, Gurdjieff established his first Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man.

After he lost a civil action to acquire Hellerau possession in Britain, Gurdjieff established the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man south of Paris at the Prieuré des Basses Loges in Fontainebleau-Avon near the famous Château de Fontainebleau.

The second period music, for which Gurdjieff arguably became best known, written in collaboration with Russian composer Thomas de Hartmann, is described as the Gurdjieff-de Hartmann music.

Since the publication of four volumes of this piano repertory by Schott, recently completed, there has been a wealth of new recordings, including orchestral versions of music prepared by Gurdjieff and de Hartmann for the Movements demonstrations of 1923-24.

Gurdjieff sometimes referred to himself as a " teacher of dancing " and gained initial public notice for his attempts to put on a ballet in Moscow called Struggle of the Magicians.

Films of movements demonstrations are occasionally shown for private viewing by the Gurdjieff Foundations and one is shown in a scene in the Peter Brook movie Meetings with Remarkable Men.

According to Gurdjieff, the work of schools of the Fourth Way never remains the same for long.

Gurdjieff wrote and approved for publication three volumes of his written work under the title All and Everything.

The science-fiction and horror novelist John Shirley has written an introductory work on Gurdjieff for Penguin / Tarcher, Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas.

She was responsible for transmitting the movements and teachings of Gurdjieff through the Gurdjieff Foundation of New York, the Gurdjieff Institute of Paris, and other groups.

Willem Nyland was considered by some to be Gurdjieff's closest pupil, after Jeanne de Salzmann ; he was appointed for an undisclosed special task by Gurdjieff in the USA.

During that time, at Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man near Paris, de Hartmann transcribed and co-wrote much of the music that Gurdjieff collected and used for his Movements exercises, as well as additional music not intended to accompany Movements.

Louis Pauwels, among others, criticizes Gurdjieff for his insistence on considering people as " asleep " in a state closely resembling " hypnotic sleep.