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.

Gurdjieff had seven known illegitimate children:

Gurdjieff argued that many of the existing forms of religious and spiritual tradition on Earth had lost connection with their original meaning and vitality and so could no longer serve humanity in the way that had been intended at their inception.

In 1948 and 1949, Segal was sporadically in contact with Gurdjieff, who had been the teacher of avant-garde lesbian Jane Heap.

Gurdjieff is said to have had a strong influence on many modern mystics, artists, writers, and thinkers, including Osho ( Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh ), Frank Lloyd Wright, Keith Jarrett, George Russell ( composer ), Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Fripp, Jacob Needleman, John Shirley, Carlos Castaneda, Dennis Lewis, Peter Brook, Kate Bush, P. L. Travers, Robert S de Ropp, Walter Inglis Anderson, Jean Toomer, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Louis Pauwels, James Moore and Abdullah Isa Neil Dougan.

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.

The professor who told me this also assured me that Gurdjieff had left many children around America ).

* The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship by Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman, 2006, ( includes especially extensive documentation on " the strong influence the occultist Georgi Gurdjieff had on Wright and especially his wife Oglivanna.

Haushofer may have been a short-term student of Gurdjieff, that he had studied Zen Buddhism, and that he had been initiated at the hands of Tibetan lamas, although these notions are debated.

The Edinburgh scholar L. P. Elwell-Sutton, in a 1975 article critical of what he called " pseudo-Sufis " like Gurdjieff and Shah, opined that Graves had been trying to " upgrade " Shah's " rather undistinguished lineage ", and that the reference to Mohammed's senior male line of descent was a " rather unfortunate gaffe ", as Mohammed's sons had all died in infancy.

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.

One of Ouspensky's earliest pupils, Reggie Hoare, who had been part of the Gurdjieff work since 1924, made contact with Shah through that article.

He was convinced that Gurdjieff had adopted many of the ideas and techniques of the Sufis and that, for those who heard Gurdjieff's lectures in the early 1920s, " the Sufi origin of his teaching was unmistakable to anyone who had studied both.

The document announced that there was now an opportunity for the transmission of " a secret, hidden, special, superior form of knowledge "; combined with the personal impression Bennett formed of Shah, it convinced Bennett that Shah was a genuine emissary of the " Sarmoung Monastery " in Afghanistan, an inner circle of Sufis whose teachings had inspired Gurdjieff.

Sannyasins who had " graduated " from months of meditation and therapy could apply to work in the ashram, in an environment that was consciously modelled on the community the Russian mystic Gurdjieff led in France in the 1930s.

This experience further convinced him that Gurdjieff had profound knowledge and understanding of techniques by which man can achieve transformation.

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 1948, Bennett went to the United States and met Ouspensky's wife, through whom he learned that Gurdjieff had survived the French occupation and was living in Paris.

Though it was now 25 years since they had last met ( due mainly to Ouspensky's long standing veto on Gurdjieff to members of his groups ), Bennett quickly decided to renew contact.

He lectured frequently, trying to fulfill a promise he had made to Gurdjieff to do everything in his power to propagate his ideas.

Gurdjieff himself once said, “ I bury the bone so deep that the dogs have to scratch for it.

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.

Originally published at the time of George Gurdjieff's death and authorized by Gurdjieff himself, it is considered one of the best expositions of the structure of Gurdjieff's ideas, and is often used as a means of teaching Gurdjieff's system, although Ouspensky himself never endorsed its use in such a broad manner.

It is considered to be the most comprehensive Gurdjieff biography.

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 1924, Alfred Richard Orage, a British intellectual, the editor of the magazine, The New Age, was appointed by Gurdjieff as the assistant of another old follower of Gurdjieff to lead study groups in America, but due to Gurdjieff ’ s nearly fatal automobile accident, the one who was supposed to lead the groups never went to US and Orage decided to lead the groups on his own initiation.

In the early 1930s Gurdjieff publicly ridiculed one of his pupils, Alfred Richard Orage.

Published accounts of time spent with Gurdjieff have appeared written by A. R. Orage, Charles Stanley Nott, Thomas and Olga de Hartmann, Fritz Peters, René Daumal, John G. Bennett, Maurice Nicoll, Margaret Anderson and Louis Pauwels, among others.

A book of autobiography, Gurdjieff started working on the Russian manuscript in 1927 and revised it for several times over the coming years, eventually an English translation by A. R. Orage was first published in 1963.

Orage, according to Gurdjieff, capitalized on Gurdjieff's post-accident convalescence by taking on a greater role in the New York group than originally intended.

Gurdjieff also accuses Orage of being motivated to join the New York group — moving from England — to gain closer proximity to a saleswoman.

At the close of this talk, Gurdjieff has his secretary orate a contract which will have to be signed by anyone interested in continuing involvement with Gurdjieff's official New York group, or Orage.

Here Gurdjieff explains that the meetings led by Orage for the past year have served only for " collective titillation " and that participants need to acquaint themselves with his written material, specifically An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man, in order to grasp the fundamentals of the material for discussion.

Gurdjieff explains that members of the group fell into three camps: those who signed, those who refused to sign, and those who delayed signing until consulting Orage.

Orage arrives in New York and requests a meeting with Gurdjieff, who agrees to meet with him on the condition that he signs the same contract given to the members of his group ( which paradoxically includes himself ).

Orage and his former followers are admitted as candidates to Gurdjieff's New York group for after paying a fine ( from them Gurdjieff collects $ 113, 000 ).

The fourth talk represents an incomplete text of the lecture Gurdjieff gave to Orage, his former followers, and the seeds of the new group.

In 1924 Orage sold The New Age and went to France to work with George Gurdjieff, the spiritual teacher P. D. Ouspensky had recommended to him.

After spending some time of preliminary training in the Gurdjieff System, Orage was sent to America by Gurdjieff himself to raise funds and lecture on the new system of self-development which emphasized the harmonious work of intellectual, emotional and moving functions.

Orage also worked with Gurdjieff in translating the first version of Gurdjieff's All and Everything as well as Meetings With Remarkable Men from Russian to English ; however, neither book was ever published in their lifetime.

In 1927 his first wife, Jean, granted him a divorce and in September he married Jessie Richards Dwight ( 1901 – 1985 ), the co-owner of the ' Sunwise Turn ' bookshop where Orage first lectured on the Gurdjieff System.

In February 1922, Ouspensky introduced Orage to G. I. Gurdjieff.

In 1924 Orage was appointed by Gurdjieff to lead study groups in America.