If you could imagine waking up one day to find that your nerdy, no-fun, librarian first girlfriend had written a memoir of your 3 year love affair...and while being, well, factually accurate, had failed dismally to convey anything of your mojo, humor and joie-de-vivre, then you might understand how the philosopher Gurdjieff felt about the first drafts of In Search Of The Miraculous.

Originally titled pre-release as Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, Ouspensky's book faithfully conveys his excitement as an earnest, serious young man, just returned from a search for hidden Esoteric Knowledge in India. Stumbling upon Gurdjieff, Ouspensky realises that here was a man who knew a great deal of what he had been looking for thousands of miles away:

"...I saw a man of an oriental type, no longer young, with a black mustache and piercing eyes, who astonished me first of all because he seemed to be disguised,and completely out of keeping with the place and its atmosphere...

...And this man with the face of an Indian raja or an Arab sheik whom I at once seemed to see in a white burnoose or a gilded turban, seated here in this little cafe...in a black overcoat with a velvet collar and a black bowler hat, produced the strange, unexpected, and almost alarming impression of a man poorly disguised, the sight of whom embarrasses you because you see he is not what he pretends to be and yet you have to speak and behave as though you did not see it...

...He spoke Russian incorrectly with a strong Caucasian accent; and this accent, with which we are accustomed to associate anything apart from philosophical ideas, strengthened still further the strangeness and the unexpectedness of this impression..."

Gurdjieff in Paris

silent film with soundtrack

In Search Of The Miraculous details lectures that Gurdjieff gave to small groups of the Russian Intellligentsia in Moscow and Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), just before, during and just after the October 1917 revolution. These lectures were offered in "fragments" of esoteric knowledge, including meditation, psychological exercises, radical reinterpretations of Christanity etc. all at a time when no such utterences had ever been heard in The West.

Gurdjieff's ideas did have something in common with Theosophy...but was so based in real-life data and seemingly dismissive of Faith, that the two sets of learning seemed to have no common ground.  

Sometimes the fragments were deliberately contradictory, which group members had to unravel, argue over, reconstitute and then pit against Gurdjieff at a later date.

Most startling of all, Gurdjieff gave them one of his exercises in self remembering. Self remembering is a simple concept...but almost impossible to practice for a prolonged period. There are thousands of variations...but a simple version is:

to get your index finger nail and dig it into your thumb, then go about your day, making your goal to continue feeling that pressure. If you swear an oath to yourself, that this exercise is more important than Life, itself, the results can be startling:

"...On one occasion I had been walking along a particular street remembering myself, thought about cigarettes, and at this thought I seemed all at once to fall and disappear into a deep sleep. At the same time, immersed in this sleep, I had continued to perform consistent and expedient actions. I had left the tobacconist, called at my flat, telephoned to the printers, written two letters. Then again I went out of the house and took a cab to the printers.

On the way I began to feel a strange uneasiness as though I had forgotten something...and suddenly I remembered that I had forgotten to remember myself..."

And it was through exercises such as these that Ouspensky started to come to terms with the shattering realisation that neither Christ nor Gurdjieff were talking in pretty poetics when they said that "Man was asleep", they were simply telling the truth and that Ouspensky's busy and respected life as an intellectual was little more than a series of routine actions carried out by a robot.

Another one of the initial exercises given to newcomers to Gurdjieff's study groups was to witness the internal combustion that occured when asked to stop the expression of negative emotions, the constant complaints and minor dissatisfactions that make up most of their (and our) everyday emotions.

Gurdjieff used this exercise to show the group how their negative emotions were rote...and were carrying on of their own accord, in sleep.  Gurdjieff's lectures would then draw on that information, that knowledge that they had all experienced and point out how early Christianity had taken this exercise and its deeper application,  turning the other cheek, and misguidedly attempted to make a general rule for everyday Life.  Such a code could only lead to chaos.

Ouspensky became increasingly excited through exercises like these that Gurdjieff could provided the group with a means by which Christianity could be proven, rather than believed, a profound Christianity without the need for Faith.

Unfortunately Gurdjieff's teaching for Ouspensky carried within it it's own seeds of destruction and the two eventually drifted apart acrimoniously. Nevertheless, I believe In Search Of The Miraculous to offer the most coherent readable and believable introduction to Gurdjieff's philosophy. However, there are three big problems that I have with it, two, not so serious and the third, very:

1 Gurdjieff's "cosmology" is downright confusing. Either it's completely beyond me or it's metaphorical and I just don't get "it". My ignorance has not hindered me in pondering other areas of the teaching, though

2 In the early 1900s, the scientific periodic table had only just been made public and Gurdjieff's "table of energies", using a similar "understanding", appears clunky and impenetrable.

Frankly, I don't consider being unable to understand these ideas as much of a hinderance. Like with women, I simply ignore the bits I don't understand and...er...enjoy the bits I do!

3 It's the third point, though, that I have serious problems with. I believe In Search Of The Miraculous, like Ouspensky, to be deeply, deeply flawed. It tries to capture the "constant flux" that is necessary for any dynamic training and turn Gurdjieff's ideas into an easily understandable and applicable system.

Unfortunately, by definition, there is no textbook for excellent teaching, any gifted teacher will tell you that, whether in a classroom, a football field...or even as a parent. Teaching needs a dynamic relationship between teacher and student.

And when the teaching involves esoteric training and the "melting down" of personal reserves, sometimes using methods that might be considered psychological torture (not dissimilar to some Special Armed Forces training), a teacher has to be completely on his toes and the system must not be in in his head but in every part of his awareness.

I don't believe that Ouspensky comes close to acknowledging this and in his attempts to make everything fit, provides us with the understanding of why his interpretations of Gurdjieff's ideas are limited.

In Search of The Miraculous (book)

In Search Of The Miraculous ends with Ouspensky stating that he no longer found himself capable of continuing with Gurdjieff. That story is continued in The Struggle Of The Magicians. Nevertheless, In Search Of The Miraculous remains a valuable introduction to the enigma of George Gurdjieff and in..."spiritual circles" is considered a modern classic.

I have just become aware that a movie has been made, called In Search Of The Miraculous, purporting to be based on the book...  

In Search Of The Miraculous (DVD)