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G. I. Gurdjieff [1866(?)-1949]

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'Everybody must have an aim!'

Allegedly born in Kars (Alexandropol), a medium sized merchant town near
the Caspian Sea, as the offspring of a Greek-Armenian family, Gurdjieff
spent his younger years travelling all over Middle East and continental Asia as
far East as Tibet. During his travels, circumstances were apparently created
through which he was able to get closer to the Truth he was ardently seeking.
He started the first groups in Russia around 1912, then after a brief stay
in England as a Russian emigree (1922), he established a comunity near Paris,
France. He taught the Work until his death in October 1949.
The Man referred to by Ouspensky as G. was an enigma during his life
and remains a controversial figure after his death. But more important is
the fact that he brought to and taught in the West a system for the development
of the inner possibilities of man as the only way to a harmonious evolution
and integration of Man within the Real World, as meant by his Creator, the vast
Absolute manifesting through His merciless governing Laws. These ideas,
whom G. called "The Fragments Of An Unkown Teaching", were put together
by him in a System that became known as The Work.
His views on mankind, its past, present and future, were genially rendered in
ALL AND EVERYTHING, a trilogy comprising:

• Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (All and Everything, First Series)
  
• Meetings with Remarkable Men (All and Everything, Second Series)
  
• Life Is Real Only Then, When "I am" (All and Everything, Third Series)

It is impossible to get a 5 minute idea about G. or the Work, but there are
certainly several exceptional books out there for anyone to read and "ruminate" upon,
I shall submit to your attention only a few remarkable quotes and recorded talks.
If they get your essence going, well, seek and ye shall find!
After all, there can be no bigger achievement for one than aquiring a soul!

P. D. Ouspensky [1878-1947]

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"Remember yourself always and everywhere"

Born in Moscow to a middle class family, Ouspensky was an accomplished writer
and an original thinker long before he met G. in 1915. His two previous books,
especially "Tertium Organum" broke new grounds in abstract mathematical
theory and philosophy. As G. told him in the begining of their relationship:
"If you understood everything you have written in your own book,
[Tertium Organum]... I should come and bow down to you and beg you to
teach me. But you do not understand..."
Not then, maybe, but later on he became the prominent teacher of the Fourth Way
ideas, carrying on the flame relentlessly from 1921 to his very last day.
His last words were, reportedly, "More effort! More effort!"
Although he left behind more than 10,000 pages of transcripts (stored at
the famous Archives & Manuscrits Department of Yale University), much of
Ouspensky's teachings would have been lost if not for the effort of some of
his former students. Here are some quotes for your perusal.
The Fourth Way, the most comprehensive statement of the ideas he taught for
more than 25 years, prepared for publication by a group of dedicated students a
decade after his death, was to become the definitive reference for bringing the
System to the psychology of the Western man.

'The most important ideas and principles of this system do not belong to me.
This is chiefly what makes them valuable, because if they belonged to me
they would be like all other theories invented by ordinary minds
- they would give only a subjective view of things.' P. D. Ouspensky