P. D.

Ouspensky
2 Career

Peter D. Ouspensky (Pyotr Demianovich Ouspenskii, also Uspenskii or Uspensky,

; 5 March 1878 2 October 1947)[1] was
a Russian mathematician and esotericist known for his
expositions of the early work of the Greek-Armenian
teacher of esoteric doctrine George Gurdjie, whom he
met in Moscow in 1915.

His rst book, The Fourth Dimension, appeared in 1909;

his second book, Tertium Organum, in 1912. A New
Model of the Universe, as explained by Ouspensky in the
foreword of the second edition, was written and published
as articles by 1914, updated to include recent developments in physics and republished as a book in Russian
in 1917. It was assumed that Ouspensky was lost to the
Revolution's violence, it was then republished in English
without his knowledge in 1931. Since the earliest lectures this work attracted a whos who of the philosophy
crowd (see below) and has been to this day a widely accepted authoritative basis for a study of metaphysics, or
rather, to exceed the limits of the same by his psychological method, which he denes as (paraphrasing p75) a
calibration of the tools of human understanding to derive
the actual meaning of the thing itself. This term is one of
three high concepts of the material presented, along with
the esoteric method which as he sums up (p76) depends
on the rst to derive the possibility of something beyond
ordinary human eort entirely. In high concept terms:
"...The idea of esotericism,... holds that the very great
majority of our ideas are not the product of evolution
but the product of the degeneration of ideas which existed at some time or are still existing somewhere in much
higher, purer and more complete forms. (p47) Ouspenskys reputation is presently degenerated to being a follower of Gurdjie, rather than a partner (see below) and
the apex of esotericism, self-knowledge, and metaphysical thought. Finally of course the title itself promises a
model of the universe, or unied theory of everything,
which it is. He also wrote the novel Strange Life of Ivan
Osokin, which explored the concept of eternal recurrence
or the eternal return.

He was associated with the ideas and practices originating

with Gurdjie from then on. In 1924, he separated from
Gurdjie personally, for reasons he explains in the last
chapter of his book In Search of the Miraculous. Some,
including his close pupil Rodney Collin, say that he nally gave up the (Gurdjie) system that he had shared
with people for 25 years in England and the United States,
but his own recorded words on the subject (A Record
of Meetings, published posthumously) do not clearly endorse this judgement, nor does Ouspenskys emphasis on
you must make a new beginning after confessing I've
left the system. All this happened in Lyne Place, Surrey,
England in 1947, just before his demise. While lecturing in London in 1924, he announced that he would continue independently the way he had begun in 1921. All in
all, Ouspensky studied the Gurdjie System directly under Gurdjies own supervision for a period of ten years,
from 1915 to 1924. His book In Search of the Miraculous
is a recounting of what he learned from Gurdjie during
those years.[2]

Early life

He traveled in Europe and the East India, Ceylon, and

Egypt in his search for knowledge. After his return
to Russia and his introduction to Gurdjie in 1915, Ouspensky spent the next few years studying with him, and
supporting the founding of a school. According to Osho,
when Ouspensky went to Gurdjie for the rst time, the
latter was but an unknown fakir and Ouspensky made him
well-known to his own reading public.[5]

Ouspensky was born in Moscow in 1878. In 1890, he was

studying in the Second Moscow Gymnasium, a government school attended by boys from 10 to 18. At the age
of 16, he was expelled from school for painting grati on
the wall in plain sight of a visiting inspector; thereafter,
he would be more or less on his own.[3] In 1906, he was
working in the editorial oce of the Moscow daily paper The Morning. In the autumn of 1913, age 35, before
the beginning of World War I, he journeyed to the East
in search of the miraculous but was forced to returned
to Moscow after the beginning of the Great War. There
he met George Gurdjie and married Mme Sophie Grigorievna Maximenko. He had a mistress by the name of
Anna Ilinishna Butkovsky.[4]

Denying the ultimate reality of motion in his book Tertium Organum,[6] he also negates Aristotle's Logical Formula of Identication of A is A and nally concludes
in his higher logic that A is both A and not-A.[7]
Unbeknown to Ouspensky, a Russian migr by the name
of Nicholas Bessarabof took a copy of Tertium Organum
1

LATER LIFE

to America and placed it in the hands of the architect

Claude Bragdon who could read Russian and was interested in the fourth dimension.[8] Tertium Organum was
rendered into English by Bragdon who had incorporated
his own design of the hypercube[9][10] into the Rochester
Chamber of Commerce building.[11] Bragdon also published the book and the publication was such a success
that it was nally taken up by Alfred A. Knopf. At the
time, in the early 1920s, Ouspenskys whereabouts were
unknown until Bragdon located him in Constantinople
and paid him back some royalties.
Ouspenskys lectures in London were attended by such literary gures as Aldous Huxley, T. S. Eliot, Gerald Heard
and other writers, journalists and doctors. His inuence
on the literary scene of the 1920s and 1930s as well as on
the Russian avant-garde was immense but still very little
known.[12] It was said of Ouspensky that, though nonreligious, he had one prayer: not to become famous during
his lifetime.
Ouspensky also provided an original discussion of the nature and expression of sexuality in his A New Model of the
Universe; among other things, he draws a distinction between erotica and pornography.
During his years in Moscow, Ouspensky wrote for several
newspapers and was particularly interested in the thenfashionable idea of the fourth dimension.[13] His rst published work was titled The Fourth Dimension[14] and he
explored the subject along the ideas prevalent at the time
in the works of Charles H. Hinton,[15] the fourth dimension being an extension in space.[16][17] Ouspensky treats
time as a fourth dimension only indirectly in a novel he
wrote titled Strange Life of Ivan Osokin[18] where he also
explores the theory of eternal recurrence.

Later life

After the Bolshevik revolution, Ouspensky travelled to

London by way of Istanbul. G.R.S. Mead became interested in the fourth dimension and Lady Rothermere,
wife of the press magnate, was willing to spread the news
of Ouspenkys Tertium Organum, while Ouspenskys acquaintance A.R. Orage was telling others about Ouspensky. By order of the British government, Gurdjie was
not allowed to settle down in London. Finally, he went
to France with a considerable sum of money raised by
Ouspensky and his friends and settled down near Paris at
the Prieur in Fontainebleau-Avon.[19] It was during this
time, after Gurdjie founded his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in France, that Ouspensky came to the conclusion that he was no longer able to
understand his former teacher and made a decision to discontinue association with him, setting up his own organisation The Society for the Study of Normal Psychology,
which is now known as The Study Society.[20] Nevertheless, he wrote about Gurdjies teachings in a book

Ouspenskys grave at the Holy Trinity Church in Lyne, Surrey,

England, photographed in 2013

originally entitled Fragments of an Unknown Teaching,

only published posthumously in 1947 under the title In
Search of the Miraculous. While this volume has been
criticized by some of those who have followed Gurdjies teachings as only a partial representation of the totality of his ideas, it nevertheless provides what is probably the most concise explanation of the material that was
included. This is in sharp contrast to the writings of Gurdjie himself, such as Beelzebubs Tales to his Grandson,
where the ideas and precepts of Gurdjies teachings are
found very deeply veiled in allegory. Initially, Ouspensky
had intended this book to be published only if Beelzebubs
Tales to his Grandson were not published. But after his
death, Mme Ouspensky showed its draft to Gurdjie who
praised its accuracy and permitted its publication.
He died in Lyne Place, Surrey. Shortly after his death
in 1947, The Psychology of Mans Possible Evolution was
published, together with In Search of the Miraculous. A
facsimile edition of In Search of the Miraculous was

3
published in 2004 by Paul H. Crompton Ltd. London.
Transcripts of certain of his lectures were published under the title of The Fourth Way in 1957; largely a collection of question and answer sessions, the book details
important concepts, both introductory and advanced, for
students of these teachings.

Wundt meant by apperception. Ouspensky disagreed and

noted how an idea so profound to him would pass unnoticed by people whom he considered intelligent. Gurdjie explained the Rosicrucian principle that in order to
bring about a result or manifestation, three things are necessary. With self-remembering and self-observation two
Ouspenskys papers are held in Yale University Library's things are present. The third one is explained by Ouspensky in his tract on Conscience: it is the non-expression of
Manuscripts and Archives department.
negative emotions.[22][23]
Self-Knowledge

Teaching

After Ouspensky broke away from Gurdjie, he taught

the "Fourth Way", as he understood it, to his independent
groups.

4.1

Fourth Way

Gurdjie proposed that there are three ways of selfdevelopment generally known in esoteric circles. These
are the Way of the Fakir, dealing exclusively with the
physical body, the Way of the Monk, dealing with the
emotions, and the Way of the Yogi, dealing with the
mind. What is common about the three ways is that they
demand complete seclusion from the world. According to
Gurdjie, there is a Fourth Way which does not demand
its followers to abandon the world. The work of selfdevelopment takes place right in the midst of ordinary
life. Gurdjie called his system a school of the Fourth
Way where a person learns to work in harmony with his
physical body, emotions and mind. Ouspensky picked up
this idea and continued his own school along this line.[21]
P.D. Ouspensky made the term Fourth Way and its use
central to his own teaching of the ideas of Gurdjie. He
greatly focused on Fourth Way schools and their existence
throughout history.
Students
Among his students were Rodney Collin, Maurice Nicoll,
Robert S de Ropp, Kenneth Walker, Remedios Varo and
Dr Francis Roles, .

4.2

Self-remembering

Ouspensky personally confessed the diculties he was

experiencing with self-remembering, a technique to
which he had been introduced by Gurdjie himself. Gurdjie explained to him this was the missing link to everything else. While in Russia, Ouspensky himself experimented with the technique with a certain degree of success and in his lectures in London and America, he emphasized its practice. The technique requires a division of
attention, so that a person not only pays attention to what
is going on in the exterior world but also in the interior.
A.L. Volinsky, an acquaintance of Ouspensky in Russia mentioned to Ouspensky that this was what professor

According to Beryl Pogson, author of The Work Life,

"...the only real poverty is lack of self-knowledge.[24]

5 Published works
The Psychology of Mans Possible Evolution. Online.
Tertium Organum: The Third Canon of Thought, a
Key to the Enigmas of the World. (Translated from
the Russian by Nicholas Bessarabo and Claude
Bragdon). Rochester, New York: Manas Press,
1920; New York: Knopf, 1922; London: Kegan
Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1923, 1934; 3rd American
edition, New York: Knopf, 1945. Online version.
A New Model of the Universe: Principles of the Psychological Method in Its Application to Problems of
Science, Religion and Art (Translated from the Russian by R. R. Merton, under the supervision of the
author). New York: Knopf, 1931; London: Routledge, 1931; 2nd revised edition, London: Routledge, 1934; New York: Knopf, 1934.
Talks with a Devil.(Russian, 1916). Tr. by Katya
Petro, edited with an introduction by J. G. Bennett. Northhamptonshire: Turnstone, 1972, ISBN
0-85500-004-X (hc); New York: Knopf, 1973, ;
York Beach: Weiser, 2000, ISBN 1-57863-164-5.
The Psychology of Mans Possible Evolution. New
York: Hedgehog Press, 1950.
Strange Life of Ivan Osokin. New York and London:
Holme, 1947; London: Faber & Faber, 1948; rst
published in Russian as Kinemadrama (St. Petersburg, 1915). Online (Russian).
In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949;
London: Routledge, 1947.
In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching London, Paul H. Crompton Ltd
2010 facsimile edition of the 1949 edition, hardcover.
The Fourth Way: A Record of Talks and Answers to
Questions Based on the Teaching of G. I. Gurdjie
(Prepared under the general supervision of Sophia

7 FURTHER READING
Ouspensky). New York: Knopf, 1957; London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957.
Letters from Russia, 1919 (Introduction by Fairfax
Hall and epilog from In Denikins Russia by C. E.
Bechhofer). London and New York: Arkana, 1978.
Conscience: The Search for Truth (Introduction by
Merrily E. Taylor) London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1979.
A Further Record: Extracts from Meetings 1928
1945 London and New York: Arkana, 1986.
The Symbolism of the Tarot (Translated by A. L.
Pogossky). New York: Dover Publications Inc.,
1976. Online version.

[11] Rudolf Rucker, Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension, Dover Publications Inc., 1977, p. 2. ISBN 0486-23400-2.
[12] Gary Lachman In Search of P. D. Ouspensky, pp. 177-8,
Quest Books, 2006 ISBN 978-0-8356-0848-0
[13] Geometry of four dimensions by Henry Parker Manning
[14] P. D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Dimension, Kessinger Publishing, 2005. ISBN 1-4253-4935-8.
[15] Rucker, Rudolf, editor, Speculations on the Fourth Dimension: Selected Writings of Charles H. Hinton, Dover Publications Inc., 1980. ISBN 0-486-23916-0.
[16] Scientic Romances by Charles Howard Hinton
[17] A new era of thought by Charles Howard Hinton

The Psychology of Mans Possible Evolution and The

Cosmology of Mans possible Evolution, a limited edition of the denitive text of his Psychological and
Cosmological Lectures, 1934-1945. Agora Books,
East Sussex, 1989. ISBN 1-872292-00-3.

[18] P. D. Ouspensky, Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, Lindisfarne

Books, 1947. ISBN 1-58420-005-7.
[19] Alex Owen The Place of Enchantment, p. 232, University
of Chicago Press, 2004 ISBN 978-0-226-64201-7

P.D. Ouspensky Memorial Collection, Yale Univer- [20] Brian Hodgkinson (2010).
In Search of Truth.
sity Library, Archive Notes taken from meetings
Shepheard-Walwyn (Publishers). ISBN 978-0-85683during 19351947.
276-5. p. 34

References

[21] Bruno de Panaeu-Jacob Needleman-George BakerMary Stein Gurdjie, p. 218, Continuum International
Publishing Group, 1997 ISBN 978-0-8264-1049-8

[1] Ouspensky Foundation. ouspensky.info. 2002. Retrieved 7 March 2014.

[22] P. D. Ouspensky Conscience, p. 126, Routledge, 1979

ISBN 978-0-7100-0397-3

[2] Miller, Timothy (1995). Americas Alternative Religions.

SUNY Press. p. 260. ISBN 0-7914-2397-2. Ouspensky
succeeded in capturing on paper Gurdjies system...

[23] Gary Lachman In Search of P. D. Ouspensky, p. 121,

Quest Books, 2006 ISBN 978-0-8356-0848-0

[3] Shirley, John (2004). Gurdjie. Penguin Group. p. 111.

ISBN 1-58542-287-8.
[4] Moore, James (1999). Gurdjie. Element Books Ltd. p.
73. ISBN 1-86204-606-9. The meaning of life is an eternal search.
[5] Osho, Swami Ananda Somendra And The Flowers Showered, p. 39, Diamond Pocket Books Ltd., 1978 ISBN 97881-7182-210-2
[6] Ouspensky, P. D. (1912). Tertium Organum (2nd ed.).
Forgotten Books. ISBN 1-60506-487-4.
[7] Ouspensky, P. D. (2003). Tertium Organum. Book Tree.
p. 266. ISBN 1-58509-244-4. A is both A and Not-A
[8] Gary Lachman In Search of P. D. Ouspensky, p. 174,
Quest Books, 2006 ISBN 978-0-8356-0848-0

[24] Beryl Pogson The Work Life, p. 5, 1994 ISBN 978-087728-809-1

7 Further reading
Bob Hunter: Don't Forget: P.D. Ouspenskys Life
of Self-Remembering, Bardic Press, 2006. ISBN 09745667-7-2.
Gary Lachman: In Search of P. D. Ouspensky: The
Genius in the Shadow of Gurdjie. Quest Books,
2004, ISBN 0-8356-0840-9. Chapter VI, Online
J. H. Reyner: Ouspensky, The Unsung Genius.
George Allen & Unwin, London, 1981, ISBN 0-04294122-9.

[9] Claude Bragdon, A Primer of Higher Space, Omen Press,

Tucson, Arizona, 1972.

Colin Wilson: The Strange Life of P. D. Ouspensky.

The Aquarian Press, 1993, ISBN 1-85538-079-X.

[10] A primer of higher space (the fourth dimension) by Claude

Fayette Bragdon, plates 1, 20 and 21 (following p. 24)

The Study Society: The Bridge No. 12, P. D. Ouspensky Commemorative Issue.

External links
The Ouspensky Foundation
www.ouspensky.org.uk
Ouspenskys Historical Choreography
Ouspensky | Gurdjie - Becoming Conscious
Tertium Organum (full text at sacred-texts.com)
A Brief Discussion of Ouspenskys Thought by
Michael Presley

9 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

9.1

Text

P. D. Ouspensky Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.%20D.%20Ouspensky?oldid=623493436 Contributors: Modster, Dominus,

Gabbe, William M. Connolley, Alex756, Charles Matthews, Dysprosia, Jose Ramos, Ramonthomas, Twang, ChrisG, Sam Spade,
Matt91486, Sunray, DocWatson42, Supergee, Gamaliel, Peterak, Mpresley, Neilc, Quadell, Lesgles, Gary D, Ukexpat, Subsume, Esperant, Eep, D6, Xgenei, Bender235, Violetriga, CanisRufus, Joel Russ, RoyBoy, Jpgordon, Ghirlandajo, Japanese Searobin, Sburke, Duf
Davis, ThomasHarte, SqueakBox, Anarchivist, YurikBot, SatuSuro, Pigman, Dking, Deeday-UK, Johndburger, Ninly, Curpsbot-unicodify,
SmackBot, Moez, Vald, TheFourthWay, Hmains, Siorse, Jerome Charles Potts, Chaoscrowley, Mladilozof, Chlewbot, Rrburke, FWadel,
Gurdjie, Gobonobo, Hu12, Wikifarzin, ShelfSkewed, DeadLeafEcho, Cydebot, Treybien, Peterdjones, Otto4711, Orlando F, Boboroshi,
Satori Son, Thijs!bot, Barticus88, Esowteric, Mfantoni, Bobblehead, Nick Number, Modernist, TheGunslinger, Ekabhishek, Rothorpe,
Magioladitis, Asdfg12345, Ericbarnhill, Az115, Systemlover, Michelaaveta, JayJasper, Al B. Free, Voltara, VolkovBot, Aeuio, TXiKiBoT, Rickquiroz, Ivan-ossokin, GirasoleDE, Six and Four, SieBot, Moon Rising, Ontologicos, Chphe, Vojvodaen, ImageRemovalBot,
Wantthetruth?, Muro Bot, ChrisHodgesUK, JDPhD, DumZiBoT, Wednesday Next, Beingpresent, Caleb004, Addbot, Grayfell, Favonian,
Legobot, Yobot, Kunnon, Triquetra, AnomieBOT, Wikirpg, Xqbot, NoVomit, Kimosabe126, Omnipaedista, FrescoBot, Doremo, WiltonPyle, SpacemanSpi, Simpacto, Kiefer.Wolfowitz, Skyerise, MastiBot, Jandalhandler, Full-date unlinking bot, EmausBot, John of Reading,
WikitanvirBot, Arashocial, Marspps, Kevjonesin, ChuispastonBot, Manytexts, Cotswold Tiger, A B VYAS, Lindaedith34, Helpful Pixie
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Renesogol and Anonymous: 63

9.2

Images

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9.3

Content license

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