The Fourth Way
Books & Films

Introduction To Gurdjieff's Fourth Way: From Selves To Individual Self To The Self is a comprehensive 2.5 hour introduction to the Fourth Way on DVD. It is structured with an Introduction, three seminar lectures with questions and answers, and a film of the Gurdjieff Celebration meal. The Introduction offers a powerful and insightful critique of modern technology and the danger it poses to humanity and our individual development.

This is followed by the first seminar that considers how do we understand our potential vs. being a machine. This talk introduces Gurdjieff and his teachings, and discusses his search for wisdom and initiation into the Egyptian mysteries. It explains how Gurdjieff travelled the world to collect disparate elements of the teachings, and offer them to those who where ready to receive them. The key issue Patterson emphasizes in this seminar is how we need to escape the false personality, the machine, and wake up, experiencing being truly here.

The second seminar examines what Being really means. Such matters are continued in the third seminar and aspects of the teachings covered in each Q & A session. It is not easy to summarise what Patterson covers in this impressive series. He discusses everything from the multiplicity of selves to the states of consciousness, from self-remembering to the problem of being 'asleep'.

Patterson is an excellent communicator and does not pad out his talks with extraneous tales or anecdotes. He is direct and indeed could be said to speak from a "place of Being" rather than from an intellectual approach alone.

This is a challenging and thought provoking series of talks which will be of interest not only to those practicing the Fourth Way but to anyone who sees there is something seriously wrong with the modern world and understands change must start with themselves.

—Robert Black, New Dawn Magazine

G.I. Gurdjieff is considered one of the most significant spiritual teachers of the 20th century. He developed a unique system of personal development known as the Fourth Way or the Work. He taught there were the ways of the Fakir, the Monk and the Yogi, and now there was a Fourth Way, that of the "Sly Man", which applied the best aspects of the three other ways and combined them in such a method that true awareness could be achieved.

To get a handle on the Fourth Way is not easy. Gurdjieff's published works are obscure and somewhat of an enigma. His magnum opus Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson is an allegorical work that borders on science fiction and runs to over 1,000 pages in length; for many it remains an enigma, especially to those beginning study of the Fourth Way. There are many introductions but most filter the tradition through the mind of the author, P.D. Ouspensky is considered one of the better interpreters of Gurdjieff's work, particularly in relation to The Fourth Way: A record of Talks and Answers to Questions Based on the Teaching of G.I. Gurdjieff.

William Patrick Patterson is the founder/editor of The Gurdjieff Journal, publisher of many significant works on the Fourth Way, and the producer of an award winning three part video series on the life and work of Gurdjieff called The Life & Significance of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (it was seven years in the making and received multiple awards; [these DVDs were reviewed in New Dawn 124]).

Patterson has a clear vision of the Fourth Way and decries distortions of the tradition. In Taking with the Left Hand he denounces the corruption of the Enneagram into a pop personality typing system. In Patterson's earlier books such as Eating the I and Struggle of the Magicians: Exploring the Teacher-Student Relationships, to his latest releases, I found a unique clarity and insight not found in other Fourth Way titles. He avoids unnecessary obscuration and writes in such a way that complex subjects are more easily comprehended. This is significant considering the nature of the Fourth Way teaching.

—Robert Black, New Dawn

With this background, Patterson developed a practice called "conscious-body-breath-impressions," and went on to write nine books and found the Gurdjieff Legacy Foundation and The Gurdjieff Journal (est. 1992). He has produced an award-winning documentary film trilogy on The Fourth Way and now oversees his Online Fourth Way School.

This present offering is Patterson's third introductory DVD on The Work and consists of one-hour probe and dialogue portions from three separate days of seminars conducted at La Casa de Maria Center for Spiritual Renewal in Santa Barbara, California.

The format is typical of many Fourth Way work/meeting sessions. Patterson speaks for the first half of each hour and then responds to questions and comments from the audience. It is obvious from the quality and depth of the questions that the students are not new to The Work. They are familiar with Work terminology such as 'Real I', 'Knowledge and Being', 'Self-Remembering', 'Identification', 'Kesdjan Body', 'Triad of Forces', 'Three Brained Beings', 'Intentional Suffering', 'Ray of Creation', and more.

While this DVD contains a great deal of significance to continuing students of The Work, it is still valuable to neophytes because of its very practical teaching. It is, however, recommended that one view the first two videos in this series prior to this one for increased understanding.

Patterson echoes many of Gurdjieff's aphorisms but adds additional insight in a straightforward and lucid manner with his words carefully chosen and exhibiting a mastery of the method. He answers the proverbial nagging question of the meaning of one's life and objectively concludes that organic life on Earth, in general, exists only to perpetuate itself in receiving, transforming, and transmitting energy.

However, human beings alone have the potential to do more-to develop themselves to internally function as a true image of God. This can only be done when they come to the realisation, after difficult and persistent work on themselves, that their ordinary lives have no real significance other than that of the rest of organic life, that they are not born with a soul but must develop one, and they cannot do that if they continue to merely live inside their heads in their imagination, self glorification, and self-ego.

The speaker reminds us that we must begin, first of all, to remember at all times that we reside inside a physical body and observe how it reacts to outside forces. We cannot successfully do this alone from reading or talking with others. We need a real teacher in the "lineage of The Work" and a work group to help us withdraw from our addiction to ideas and words and be present in the moment as we attempt to observe physical reality impartially. When we do that we may eventually come to see we are not one, indivisible 'I' but a multitude of little I's which we have no will to control. Interestingly, these little I's can be identified with the different Animals that Adam names in the Book of Genesis, and they respond differently at different times to outside circumstances. This, then, gives us a hint that biblical stories are not to be taken literally but as internal, psychological teachings.

Patterson concludes his third session on the video with the admonition that the various Gurdjieff groups have tended over the years to ignore the Master's definition of The Work as "Esoteric Christianity." He laments the fact that they have lost the realisation that real Christian teaching originated in pre-sand Egypt long before the ancient Egyptian society of our history books. He reminds us that if, indeed, there was a historical Jesus, he existed to reinsert into our consciousness the meaning and the value of "conscience" as a mechanism to actuate the same functioning in ourselves that operates in God and the universe as a whole. In acknowledging that The Fourth Way is a kind of religion in the broadest and fullest interpretation of the word, we are then in a position to appreciate the hidden esoteric meaning of the line in the New Testament that John the Baptist was sent to "prepare The Way" for the coming of the Lord.

A note of caution to the viewer of this video: As is typical with all meetings of authentic Gurdjieff groups, the three sessions included in the DVD are intense and loaded with valuable insights. For full benefit and impact, it is highly recommended they be watched on three separate days and not together at one sitting.

—Alan Glassman, New Dawn

Owing to the circumstances of my life not dependent on me, I have not personally seen the grave where the body of my dear father lies. . . . I therefore, bid any of my sons, whether by blood or in spirit, to seek out, when he has the possibility, this solitary grave.

     —G. I. Gurdjieff
         Meetings with Remarkable Men

William Patrick Patterson undertook a 21-day pilgrimage to visit Mr. Gurdjieff's father's grave in Gyumri, Armenia. Travelling backward in time, he revisited Gurdjieff's life:

• Gurdjieff's grave and the Prieuré in Avon, France
• Kumbaraci and Yemenici streets in Istanbul, where Gurdjieff and his students lived
• Prinkipo Island on the Sea of Marmara, where Gurdjieff often visited P. D. Uspenskii
• Tiflis, where Gurdjieff opened his Institute at 22 Nikolas Street and first named it the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man
• Kars, Gurdjieff's home in the medieval quarter and the Kars Military Cathedral where he sang in the choir
• Ani, the ancient city where the Sarmoung manuscript was discovered
• Sanahin Monastery, Armenia, where Gurdjieff served as an acolyte
• Gyumri, Armenia, where Gurdjieff was born in the Greek Quarter at 222 Matnishyan Street
• Gyumri's Old Cemetery and Mr. Gurdjieff's father's grave

Gurdjieff was about finding and living a vow—one's sacred obligation. His intended purpose was to merge the teachings of East and West and to bring them to modernity, and to account for the "sense and significance of organic life, and human life in particular." He sought to use the scientific "methods" of the west to elucidate and crystallize the mysteries of the east. And he paid a heavy price.

In his own book, Meetings with Remarkable Men, Gurdjieff wrote: "Owing to the circumstances of my life not dependent on me, I have not personally seen the grave where the body of my dear father lies....I therefore, bid any of my sons, whether by blood or in spirit, to seek out, when he has the possibility, this solitary grave."

So that William Patrick Patterson's DVD follows his 21-day pilgrimage to visit Mr. Gurdjieff's father's grave in Gyumri, Armenia. Travelling backward in time, he revisited Gurdjieff's life and, without "spoiling" the climax, he honors and restores the grave site of Gurdjieff's father.

In this way Patterson demonstrates a deeply held conviction and dedication not only to his teacher, and fellow pupils, but he actually weaves a thread that modern seekers and students can follow to get a taste of traditions and ways of being that are threatened with extinction. The film covers:

• Gurdjieff's grave and the Prieuré in Avon, France
• Kumbaraci and Yemenici streets in Istanbul, where Gurdjieff and his students lived
• Prinkipo Island on the Sea of Marmara, where Gurdjieff often visited P. D. Uspenskii (Ouspensky)
• Tiflis, where Gurdjieff opened his Institute at 22 Nikolas Street and first named it the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man
• Kars, Gurdjieff's home in the medieval quarter and the Kars Military Cathedral where he sang in the choir
• Ani, the ancient city where the Sarmoung manuscript was discovered
• Sanahin Monastery, Armenia, where Gurdjieff served as an acolyte
• Gyumri, Armenia, where Gurdjieff was born in the Greek Quarter at 222 Matnishyan Street
• Gyumri's Old Cemetery and Mr. Gurdjieff's father's grave

This DVD is not a light and "positive" story; rather it is a heartfelt and deeply passionate tribute to an entire career and teaching, undertaken as lived experience. Watching it provides a brief and tiny glimmer into a sense of tradition, honour, and sacred obligation that is difficult to find in modern times.

—Tom Bunzel, Collective Evolution

—Mary Ellen Korman, A Woman's Work with Gurdjieff, Ramana Maharshi, Krishnamurti, Anandamayi Ma & Pak Subuh—The Spiritual Life Journey of Ethel Merston

Some 28 years after Eating The "I," Patterson completes his spiritual memoir with Teachers of No-Thing & Nothing. It gives an intimate diary-based continuation of a search which led to the opening of Consciousness beyond subject-object perception. He eloquently evokes the voices of his spiritual benefactors, Sunyata and Jean Klein, whose qualities of Being and Emptiness were the catalyzing holiness through which the fertile ground prepared by his teacher, Lord John Pentland, and Gurdjieff's sacred teaching of The Fourth Way blossomed.

—Ron & Claire Levitan, Growing a Soul on the Planet Earth

IT'S NOT A MYSTERY what happened after Eating The "I", Part I, or those of us actively engaged under the guiding direction of Fourth Way teacher William Patrick Patterson for we are the recipients of that Work. For others having read at the end of Part I that the author left the New York Gurdjieff Foundation must naturally create a question.

Patterson's most recent three decades have produced a serious and significant body of work, including ten books, along with eight films, four of them filmed on location in Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Egypt, Russia, France and England—and all focused on Mr. Gurdjieff and The Fourth Way teaching. But what exactly happened following the end of Eating The "I" and that period that begins these past three decades—of unflagging efforts and undeterred pace—that gave birth to such a profound legacy, inclusive of leading Fourth Way Groups, taking the role of teacher, giving talks, seminars, retreats, as well as founding and editing The Gurdjieff Journal while simultaneously writing books and producing films?

This tenth book, Teachers of No-Thing & Nothing, Parts II & III, an intriguing and revealing title, is not only a surprising response to this question but a deeply moving one. A spiritual autobiography and continuation of Part I—yes—but written in an uncommon style: chronological diary entries that include teaching dialogues from his two nondualism teachers (hence Parts II & III ), who Patterson refers to as his Benefactors: Sunyata, the Danish "rare-born mystic," given the name by the Sage Ramana Maharshi, and Jean Klein, the French medical doctor—both from the Advaita Vedanta Tradition.

Patterson couldn't have known at the time that he left the organized Work in October 1981 that his teacher, Lord Pentland, would leave the body a little over two years later in February 1984. And yet we hear, through Patterson's recounting of dreams, that for years afterward Lord Pentland would continue to speak to him, indicating the depth of their bond. What can now be seen as his introduction into the teaching of nondualism had already begun in April 1980 when he met Sunyata and heard him state in his simple manner, "The witness is a high state, but it's only a state." For Patterson, this was a new awakening—a catalyzing shock reflecting back to him in recognition that this is where one is.

His inner work thus far had brought him to the state of the Witness, one of conscious attention and inner emptiness. But don't we all believe that our attention is already conscious and consciously being directed? To understand what the Witness represents, we simply need to return to the body-mind sensation, self-observe and verify for ourselves that the ordinary state of attention is a mechanical oscillation between subject or object. That is, we are either all subject, me-myself-and-"I", or, all object, the attention projected outwards onto the world of objects, sentient or not. So, the impressions received are necessarily limited and partial. For the Witness, on the other hand, the weight of attention is grounded in Being, and comes to fruition only when the body-mind has digested the food of Work-on-oneself to a living inner emptiness and stillness. Only then, can the simultaneous subject-object Witnessing occur and its nature is the fullness of impartial perceiving.

Although similar to Part I, which presents the life story in vivid and revealing form, Parts II & III provide an illustration into the process of awakening—seeing, dropping and going beyond the person—but now from within a new context of deeper discrimination and impartiality—that of the Witness. The one writing and reporting on "Patterson" is possible only because he has gone beyond "him." It is rare enough to read a spiritual autobiography, and rarer still, one rooted in The Fourth Way, by "a man who takes on himself the role of teacher." [Emphasis added.] But Patterson does not obfuscate the quintessential problem to liberation: the person—no matter how rarefied the "I" that must be consciously eaten.

Through Sunyata, Patterson was availed of the beginning contact that would bridge the gap between the Work understanding of the many "I"s through to the Witness, and a forefeeling of the response to his own question as he states it, "...the perspective of duality no matter how refined did not answer the essential question I had been carrying all these years—what is the self in self-sensing, self-remembering, self-observation?" Although not formulated or assimilated at this point, Patterson is opened to a new awaring that the self in his question lies beyond the Witness.

The book provides a succinct life-story of Sunyata, born Alfred Emmanuel Sorensen, as well as numerous and delightful exchanges, events, happenings and one-to-one experiences with him. A number of darshans that Sunyata offered are colorfully portrayed, giving a taste of the many and varied seekers who attended—none of them resembling the types encountered previously in Gurdjieff groups he had attended starting in January 1970 when he first entered The Work. So different, in fact, that Patterson's first impression of them was that they "looked to be mostly low-lifers to no-lifers, their questions the usual safe 'spiritual' ones."

But months later, Patterson understands, no longer as an idea, Gurdjieff's statement, "The last thing a man will give up is his suffering." To be in the presence of emptiness was to have reflected back the unending person-dance, until at last the parade simply begins to recede into the ground of Being, which he must continually reaffirm, assimilating this wordless teaching, until, as he says, "A simple quiet clarity strikes through all your centers—suffering is a choice." This is a taste of the realizations he would come to while living in the presence of this awakened Mr. Nobody, who among the many sages he encountered, received the radiance of Ramana Maharshi three different times and who in 1984 left his body at the age of 93.

It was Sunyata who in December 1981 gave Patterson Advaita Master Jean Klein's book Neither This Nor That, I Am, and introduced them in April 1982. While both Sunyata and Klein are representatives of the Advaita Vedanta Tradition, Klein had also studied a specialized yoga in the line of Kashmiri Shaivism, also a nondualist Tradition but differing with Advaita in its approach, although in essence not contradictory. Advaita regards the phenomenal objective world as an appearance within Consciousness, that is, it's an illusion, Brahman alone is Real; Kashmiri Shaivism, on the other hand, regards the phenomenal objective world as real and as One with the Universal Subject, appearing separate only from the point of view of limited subjects.

This second approach, transmitted through Klein, seems to have given a certain ground to Sunyata's Ocean of Emptiness—one that embraced Gurdjieff's teachings on Unity, the Law of Seven, Law of Three and the Ray of Creation, as echoed in his statement, "Matter or substance necessarily presupposes the existence of force or energy. This does not mean that a dualistic conception of the world is necessary. The concepts of matter and force are as relative as everything else. In the Absolute, where all is one, matter and force are also one."

With Jean Klein, Part III, the journey that had begun with Sunyata deepens. A vastly outwardly different representation of the nondualism Tradition, Klein had been a medical doctor, spoke four languages and as Patterson says of his initial impression, "spoke in a precise, intellectual manner." Klein tells him during their first meeting, "You are tired of the phenomenal." And as with Sunyata pointing out the Witness, Klein had shone a beam of clarity into his inner experiencing—the answer to liberation is not to be found in the phenomenal world of objects—not even refined objects.

Other than the scheduled week-long retreats and seminars throughout the year, there were no set ongoing meetings or darshans with Jean Klein. One gets the impression that Klein divided his time between Europe and the U.S., and so to study with him, one had to actively seek him out. As senior editor of a business magazine, Patterson often intentionally created business trips in order to see and be with Klein and soon began to help in the organizing of meetings and seminars.

Patterson is now being introduced to and immersed in a nondual teaching of Being by way of a special energy-body yoga that as Jean Klein told him, "is a pretext for sharing the Silence." Diary entries in this beginning period with Klein give the sense of two inner workings occurring—on the one hand a continuing exploration in opening to Being and Silence through the special energy-body yoga, releasing and emptying in the midst of shocks, while on the other hand the activity of a strong "doer," as though a demand, to make something happen for transformation to take place. But not to be lost on the reader: Patterson puts on display his "Patterson"—and how many of us could and would do that? We see and hear "his" wanting "knowledge," the various ways "he" manifests, and the karmic incident "he" carries since childhood.

Observing in himself this drive for knowledge, he says, "Each time spiritual knowledge has been my spur." But soon after, given his steadfast sincerity, factually accepting and admitting his experiencing, he comes to real questions and Klein responds, giving Patterson one of the most beautiful and luminous transmissions of Truth regarding Subject-Object Relationship. With respect to understanding, Klein tells him, "The real expression would be to be 'awakened in consciousness.' You must know it. But this 'knowing' is not a thought-form."

When Patterson first met Sunyata he had already come to what Sunyata called the "high state" of the Witness where the perceiving is true subject-object. Eight years later, after waiting four days for a private meeting, Klein tells Patterson, "You have the geometric understanding," meaning, as Patterson says, that he had "the intellectual and emotional understanding of the teaching but had not fully experienced it" and that this quality of understanding "is a higher reasoning, one that leads beyond objects to the ultimate subject." In one of his dialogues, Klein expounds on the meaning:

On the level of the mind, ordinary understanding, the nearest we can come to objectless truth is a clear perspective, a vision of the objectless. I often call this a geometrical representation. The contents of this representation are what could be called the facts of truth: that the mind has limits; that truth is beyond the mind; that truth, our real nature, cannot be objectified, just as the eye cannot see itself seeing; that truth, consciousness, was never born and will never die; that it is the light in which all happenings, all objects, appear and disappear; that in order for there to be understanding of truth, all representation must dissolve. When this representation, the last of the conventional subject-object understanding, dies, it dissolves in its source—the light of which the mind informed but could not comprehend. In other words, understanding dissolves in being understanding. We no longer understand, we are the understanding. This switchover is a sudden, dramatic moment when we are ejected into the timeless.

Having actualized the geometric understanding, Patterson later comes to the experiencing of "the gradient between the waking state and the subconscious lessening to the degree that the former is assimilated in the latter"—this is what Klein called, "the Blank state." Patterson describes it as "still in subject-object perception but where there was very little subject." Then, four years later, he is imprinted in the Being Reality that Klein, Sunyata, Lord Pentland and Gurdjieff had all been pointing towards. That is, he suddenly experiences pure Consciousness, beyond subject-object. As he says, "...suddenly there was no subject. There was no perceiver, no thought. Only perceiving—direct, global conscious perception-reception of what is present without referent to past or future."

"What was experienced," Patterson recognizes, "was Turiya, the fourth state of the Self..." And, it is what five years earlier Klein had been speaking to when he told him:

The moment there is a "watching" that projects energy in space and time there is taking, attaining, grasping. It is an activity whose source is memory, not being. But the moment you welcome the perception, you are in the receiving position and projection dissolves completely. And, suddenly, you are taken by your own presence (which is not a subject-object relationship).... It is the point of being completely free of all volition, personal volition. You are really a channel.

This realization of the transmission—Turiya—was the response to his question: "...what is the self in self-sensing, self-remembering, self-observation?" Gurdjieff could have easily said "sensing," "remembering," "observing," so why, "self"? ...In his inimitable way, Gurdjieff buries the clue in plain sight.

What can be so easily missed, given the format of diary entries in which Patterson is not narrating an interpretation of the lived experiencing, is that during the period from 1979 through 1989, Patterson had gone through five rewrites of Eating The "I". At the time, obviously, there was no "Part I" as a subtitle. So while Teachers of No-Thing and Nothing is about Sunyata and Jean Klein, it is deeply about the silent current of his spiritual roots in The Gurdjieff Work, occurring simultaneously as punctuated by the appearance of Lord Pentland in dreams along with the conscious and intentional writing of Eating The "I"— "wishing and willing," as he says, "to get as close to the bone of the truth as possible."

While the rational mind expects and even demands neat, straight lines in life, Patterson writes of the new direction his journey would take beginning with his "Charles Fort" dream in 1975 where Lord Pentland hands him an envelope containing a white card inscribed in calligraphy telling him, "It's one of the original invitations."; it is fated that he must leave the organized Work. Could it be he was being prepared since Lord Pentland would leave the body in 1984?... "Transmission," Klein told him, "doesn't mean doctrine. It is not the doctrine that is transmitted, but the Truth, the Truth of reality. Tradition in the real sense is That which is transmitted from one who knows, who is the Truth, to another who is also . . . but has yet to realize it."

Beyond the personal story of a teacher in The Gurdjieff Tradition, however, is something else of serious import regarding the deep message of this book as it relates to The Gurdjieff Work itself. If we consider the spiritual idea of being called, what is the context within which Patterson publishes Eating The "I" and begins these past three decades reconnecting the roots of Gurdjieff's sacred teaching of The Fourth Way?

The Gurdjieff narrative that had formed from the 1970s and 1980s was largely being defined in the public arena through a proliferation of faux Gurdjieff groups, communities, and Enneagram "scholars" putting forth concoctions met by a simultaneous New Age wave of young adults yearning with spiritual hunger. Even within established, authentic Foundation groups could be heard the incorrect notion in using the expression, "Gurdjieff-Ouspensky Work." Not only did these errors, deviations and distortions require correction but the great need for the wholeness of The Fourth Way teaching called for its expression reconnecting it back to its source: Gurdjieff

Sri Anirvan, the Bengali Master and Vedic scholar, once told his student Lizelle Reymond, who later became Madame de Salzmann's student:

All life is from the Void.... The Void is the matrix of universal energy. One has access to it by four stages. The first stage is to realize the plurality of 'I's; the second stage is the recognition of a single 'I'; the third, is no 'I'; and finally the Void. Uspenskii speaks about the first two stages in Search of the Miraculous. He remained silent about the last two because he had left Gurdjieff. The writings of Gurdjieff [All & Everything] open for us the frontiers of the two last stages. These are cleverly hidden in his mythical narrations.

But for those with a sincere Wish to awaken, the deep and great scale of Gurdjieff's teaching, accessible by the four stages, no longer remains a mystery or hidden. The real title of Gurdjieff's Legominism, as Patterson reveals, is:

ALL & Everything & No-Thing & Nothing

—Teresa Adams

Review in the January edition of New Dawn Magazine by Alan Glassman

Mr. Patterson is an author, filmmaker, public speaker, and teacher of G.I. Gurdjieff's Fourth Way Work. He was a student for 11 years of Lord John Pentland in both the New York and San Francisco branches of the Gurdjieff Foundation and also studied with Danish mystic Alfred "Sunyata" Sorenson and western Advaita master Jean Klein. With this background, Patterson developed a practice called "conscious-body-breath-impressions" and went on to write nine books and found the Gurdjieff Legacy Foundation and The Gurdjieff Journal (est. 1992). He has produced an award-winning documentary film trilogy on The Fourth Way and now oversees his Online Fourth Way School. (Excerpted from my New Dawn Issue No. 174 May-June 2019 review of Patterson's DVD entitled "What Is The Meaning Of Life On The Planet Earth?")

This tenth and last book, so Patterson proclaims, is an edited version of his diary, letters, dream accounts, and other notes from 1980 through 1995 consisting primarily of his memories from interactions with Sunyata and Jean Klein. It's a delightfully anecdotal read that includes numerous color plates of his paintings which, as he says, "...give a taste of the time."

Patterson begins with an account of how he first met Sunya aboard the then late Alan Watts' houseboat in Sausalito, California, and his immediate attraction to this enigmatic, turban-headed master when the guru told him directly that the "witness" is a very high state. Coming from the Gurdjieff Work as a student of Lord Pentland, this resonated with Patterson. Sunya continued, "States aren't real. They come and go. Only Being is real."

Our author juxtaposes the recollections of his personal, everyday life with his spiritual pursuits in an amusing, informal way of writing, putting the reader in a relaxed mood. He also addresses some very private situations not normally divulged by most writers who would probably shrink from exposing their true feelings and actions. The result is that we are encouraged to experience an intimacy with his life. Personal photos of family, friends, and teachers lead us to a closer understanding of the gradual development of Patterson's own Being.

Of real value are some of the more noteworthy and meaningful words of Sunya Bhai our author quotes, including: "We think we push and pull, but we are being pushed and pulled all the time." "We can only change our attitude toward things, not the things." "God, Christ and the Holy Spirit are nothing outside oneself." "There is only one practice, becoming aware of who you are." "When the male and the female truths function in a complimentary harmony within one psyche, the body (as a tool) will remain male or female, but the psyche will be aware of the harmonious wholeness of itself, freely functioning in the unitive mode of experiencing." "A little death now and then is salutary." "The deep psychic dis-ease in modern man and woman is the diseased, atrophied condition of the intuitive faculty." "Ego oblivion is Self-Awareness." "Consciousness is not in the body. The body appears in Consciousness."

It was December 7, 1981, when Sunya put a book in Patterson's hands saying, "Here, you'll like this." That book was Nether This Nor That I Am by Jean Klein. Patterson says, "I read it in one sitting. The thought was so clear, precise, penetrating, without embellishment. He wrote easily about that which cannot be spoken of. I was immediately taken, but then realized this Jean Klein, the author, was in Europe."

It was in April of the next year that Klein came to the U.S., and the two met in Berkeley. Patterson says that Klein reminded him of Pentland, and they ended up spending an hour and a half together on the porch of Klein's hotel room in conversation about many things, both esoteric and mundane. Klein returned to Berkeley that December and Sunya and Patterson both went to see him. Our author describes that, when the two masters met, all he mysteriously saw was a "white blur. Their images disappeared. Just this emptiness. Then they reappeared."

So began an association between Patterson and Klein that lasted well beyond Sunya's and Pentland's death, both in 1984. We are told that there was no essential difference between Jean and Sunya, both being described as "Teachers of Nothing." A few of the many quotes from Klein include: "Memory is only a way of thinking." "Don't go out to things but wait for them to come to you." "One has to see what they feed the body—both in terms of food and impressions." "What is transmitted is tradition. It is not words." "Watch for gaps between thoughts. They are not nothing." "Experience the body as much as possible. See the functioning—for when something is fully seen it is completely burned up....When you have sensation of the body you are no longer identified with the body."

In April of 1992, after many years of work on himself, Patterson tells us of having an experience while checking out booths at a fair in Santa Rosa, California, walking around while "in a state of self-remembering, that is in self-sensing and true divided subject-object perception, when...suddenly there was no subject. There was no perceiver, no thought. Only perceiving—direct, global conscious perception-reception of what is present without referent to past or future." Later, he realized that this "was the living answer to the question carried for so many years about Self." It was the full integration of body-mind-senses—"the fourth state of the Self, the Heart, in that the causal heart center of Nidra, deep sleep, is opened and made the center of consciousness."

For a period of time he could not recall, he had truly "Eaten the I"; he had found himself outside the mind seeing that in reality there is no moment, no time, and he was living only in Being. As Klein described it to him later, "It was whole. There were all these moving parts, but they were all related. Nothing, no one was separate. It was all One. You are outside it, seeing it, feeling it, taking it all in, and inside it, as well, but not identified, not taking it in as a person."

But Patterson goes on to say that state of "the witness" is only temporary and for most cannot be sustained if one remains in a body on the Earth. In fact, it would be dangerous to do so because one would sacrifice one's humanity. In a private communication between the author and this reviewer, he says he wrote this book "to prove that the Work combined with Advaita can lead to the highest level for a human being to reach without forfeiting his/her humanity", and adding, "Most people think they are in subject/object perception, but if we really are aware we will see the attention goes between the object and the subject over and over again because the subject is not relatively empty and so impressions are not directly processed. It is only when the subject, the body-mind of the being, is empty is there true subject/object."

—Alan Glassman

The aim is to give an objective, panoramic view of Gurdjieff's life, the inner substance of the seminal and scientific teaching of self-development he discovered, and his unrelenting mission to introduce and establish this esoteric teaching in the West.

Included are Uspenskii's (original Russian spelling) never-before-published essays "Why I Left Gurdjieff" and "Where I Diverge from Gurdjieff"; original deleted material from Search; Uspenskii's American femme fatale, Carman Barnes; Jessie Dwight Orage's short stories "Elsie at the Prieuré" and "Elsie and Allah"; notes of Kathryn Hulme and Solita Solano (1935–39); The Science of Idiotism, and the complete scenario of Gurdjieff's ballet, The Struggle of the Magicians.

Definitive Scholarship & Critically Important
Resource & Reference

—James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief, Midwest Book Review

Presents Tradition Without Distortion or Obscuration

—Robert Black, Editor, Living Traditions

Exhaustive Compendium with Remarkably Strong Narrative Flow

—Steve Young, Library Journal

In Range & Depth Ranks with Moore & Webb

10 February 1936. Gare café, Paris. . . .Writes Krokodeel [Gurdjieff's nickname for his pupil Kathryn Hulme, who would go on to write the novel The Nun's Story]: "Gurdjieff gave us a pledge to say each time before beginning the new exercise—that we would not use this for the self, but for all humanity. This 'good-wishing-for-all' vow, so deeply moving in intent, had a tremendous effect upon me. For the first time in my life, I felt that I was truly doing something for humanity as I strove to make my own molecule of it more perfect. The meaning of this work, which at first had seemed quite egotistical and self-centered, suddenly blossomed out like a tree of life encompassing in its myriad branching the entire human family."

1 November 1936. 11 rue Labie. Georgette Leblanc knocks at Gurdjeff's door. . . .

He steps back and leans against the wall, the light from the little salon illuminating him fully.

"For the first time," Georgette says, "he let me see what he really is. It was as if he had torn off the masks behind which he is obliged to hide himself. His face was stamped with a charity that embraced the whole world. Transfixed, standing before him, I saw him with all my strength and I experienced a gratitude so deep, so sad, that he felt a need to calm me. With an unforgettable look, he said—'God helps me.'"

—Jeff Zaleski is editor and publisher of Parabola magazine.

This Man's Work Is Incredibly Important But Gets Lost Due To Controversy

The book Georgi Ivanovitch Gurdjieff — The Man, The Teaching, His Mission is a work of immense power and love by William Patrick Patterson, a teacher of "the Work," as Gurdjieff's teaching is called and the author/ producer of several books and videos on the subject. It is over 600 pages long (over 400 narrative with 200 supplementary) and is a painstakingly precise account of two figures little known in the mass media, almost overlooked in popular history, and yet who may have been among the greatest thinkers of their time.

Georgi Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (G) appeared in St. Petersburg in 1916; P.D. Uspenskii (as Patterson refers to him) met him shortly thereafter and it later turned out that Gurdjieff had sought him out for his writing ability and notoriety in intellectual circles to help build his following. Patterson has gone through the personal papers and books of Gurdjieff's students and G's own writings to piece together his early years, including his brush with death and his apparent teachers, as well as the society of seekers of which he was a member before he appeared in St. Petersburg. Patterson himself has written extensively about the teaching and some of the material, for example the section on the women who studied with Gurdjieff in Paris (a group called the "Rope") presumably echoes his earlier work, Ladies of the Rope. Patterson has also pieced together the early life of P.D. Uspenskii, including his own searches for ancient wisdom and personal relationships, and brings the two men together in the strange circumstances that were pre-revolution Russia, circa 1916.

But what is extraordinary is how Patterson describes Gurdjieff's method, wonderfully echoing Uspenskii's own description of how he was exposed to the teaching which is the spine of Uspenskii's great work, In Search of the Miraculous. Prospective students were introduced mysteriously and led to a strange space with Persian carpets and strange artifacts, where they met a man they each described as unique, powerful, insightful and with the capacity to see right through them. Everything was kept secretive and private. You had to know someone who knew someone to meet Gurdjieff and become a follower in St. Petersburg, and also later. It was also made clear that if one did not seize the opportunity to take advantage of the moment, one might never get another chance.

Uspenskii became convinced that Gurdjieff had access to ancient wisdom and wanted it for himself—but Patterson describes how at various turns Gurdjieff "played" with his individualistic personality to try to make him see his own habitual tendency – that is, to live in his head and not his heart.

The Gurdjieff/Uspenskii groups fled the Bolsheviks and survived many hardships, often through luck and more often through Gurdjieff's cunning understanding of human nature. Eventually Uspenskii could not continue to accept many of Gurdjieff's methods and peculiarities and broke away, although his wife continued on with Gurdjieff for some time.

Gurdjieff admired the energy and power of America and also satirized the materialism of the United States, and used his visits to raise capital by "shearing" the wealthy to subsidize the work and the lessons of the less fortunate. Patterson spans decades as he follows Gurdjieff to his Prieure (institute) in Paris and describes his methods of hard work to break the conditioning of students—intelligentsia would clean toilets and garden—and his conversations over meals and in cafes where students would toast themselves as various kinds of "idiots."

A major part of being an "idiot" is believing in the imaginary concepts of the mind as opposed to what one has gotten for oneself. At one point he hears Gurdjieff's voice in his head with nothing being said verbally. This is precisely the sort of "miracle" Uspenskii had been seeking and yet he needed to analyze it and could not simply accept it as a clear indication of his position under his teacher and his need to sublimate his own formative mind and the "need to know."

All of these mysterious aspects are hinted at and yet not posited authoritatively by Patterson, the consummate researcher and observer. What is posited is simply that such events occurred—the meaning and interpretation (the knowing) remains a mystery. Finally Uspenskii broke completely with Gurdjieff and founded his own school, first in England during the Second World War and then in the United States.

As Patterson calls the teaching a "sacred science," what Gurdjieff saw in Uspenskii was the ability to convey his "system" scientifically, due to his great intelligence. This would make it a bridge between East and West and comprehensible in terms of the Renaissance and Enlightenment in the West. Where Uspenskii fell short, apparently, was his own egoism and coldness—he did not seem to manifest Gurdjieff's own capacity for kindness and compassion. He did not live the Work as much as he seemed to relish the role of revered and admired teacher / writer.

Patterson follows both Uspenskii and Gurdjieff's personal journeys and describes the work of many of their followers, some self-appointed or anointed and others viable. One such personage is Lord John Pentland, who studied with both Uspenskii and Gurdjieff and later led the Work in the U.S., becoming the beloved teacher of the author.

As you read through the dialogues and studies you can't help but see the threads of modern New Age thought as well as teachings like Advaita and Nonduality, along with the historical motifs of Theosophy and mysticism that were concurrent with Gurdjieff's arrival on the scene.

For example Krishnamurti's teaching galvanized Americans, and Uspenskii is asked about him at one point: "He says a system cannot awake a man. Certainly it cannot. Mathematics cannot build a bridge. But if a bridge is built without mathematics, it collapses. If Krishnamurti keeps to this point of view–he will not be alone. Many people believe in spontaneous awakening, just be realization, and without a system and without following another man!"

Here we can sense the immensity of Gurdjieff's contribution in its effect on Uspenskii, a man who wants scientific proof of miracles but has been opened to the limitations of science by his teacher, Gurdjieff, who brought a system of "sacred science" that bridged the heart and formatory (left brain) mind (Ego).

It was no small feat that Gurdjieff attempted to introduce this system in the "Christian" west at a time when conventional religion ran the show. True Christianity was a sacred science which attempted to confront life in its full grandeur and immensity from a position of awe.

This is reminiscent of the "neters" of Egypt, where deities represented the organic reality of natural forces like the wind, sun, tide and so on, in which man plays his part naturally and without the urge to "conquer" nature. (Interested readers might look up Patterson's DVD, Gurdjieff in Egypt which traces the author's own journey to Cairo and his description of Gurdjieff's sources and influences.)

But where Gurdjieff diverges with modern Western religion is in its anthropomorphism and personalization of a "God." God and all of the vital life forces exist for Gurdjieff but at a level beyond man's scientific and logical comprehension. All is impersonal and impartial, even sex.

This goes against much of modern pop culture, psychology, conventional thought and religion and also rubs against parts of our interior conditioning— since we are committed to notions of romantic love. Gurdjieff's "love" is seemingly an impersonal and objective love of What Is –the Great System that he brings to light and tries to convey to his students both through his lectures and perhaps more importantly, through the drama that was his own Life.

In Patterson's enormous breadth of research and narration he truly delivers the reader into the full context of the historical period that is no more—before computers and the Internet –where these two men in fact anticipated such scientific wonders and saw the vast intelligence that is inherent in what Gurdjieff referred to as "Great Nature."

Many kinds of reader will profit immeasurably from Patterson's work. Interested seekers like me, who never fully committed to a "school" but were intrigued by the legend of both men and their system will gain a profound understanding of the meaning and sense of "the Work" including its historical context and the unique individuals who came in and out of the teaching. The tenor of the time is illustrated with wonderful photographs of the surroundings in early 20th Century France, Russia and the United States, and portraits the main players, along with the pithy commentary.

I am sure that direct students of the disciples of Lord Pentland's line to Uspenskii and Gurdjieff will gain a great deal more in terms of both historical context and insight to the machinations and methodologies of their teachers and fellow students. Again this amazing biography is a work of great tribute and love by a truly devoted student and teacher.

—Tom Bunzel, Collective-Evolution.com

I wanted to thank you for writing the book G. I. Gurdjieff: The Man, The Teaching, His Mission. I've read up to Part IV and it is truly a gift.

—Diana Bangrazi

"Although inclined to skepticism about Castaneda, I found myself reading The Life & Teachings of Carlos Castaneda with total fascination. As it tells just about everything, I imagine this will be the definitive book on Castaneda."
—Colin Wilson, author, The Outsider and The Occult

"Patterson brings original insight into the forces and influences that formed Castaneda's sorceric adventure. Particularly interesting are the role of Anaïs Nin and the revelation of the source of many of Castaneda's supposedly sorceric ideas."
—Mary Ellen Korman, author, A Woman's Work: The Life of Ethel Merston

"A must read for anyone who has followed Carlos on his extraordinary journey. The way William Patrick Patterson expounds on Carlos' teachings is astounding!"
—Margaret Runyan, author, A Magical Journey with Carlos Castaneda

"This is the most brilliant and insightful rendering to date of the 'Ultimate Impeccable Warrior,' Carlos Castaneda, my father."
—C.J. Castaneda

"A lucid and compelling account of conflict and charlatanism surrounding one of the most important alternative spiritual movements of our day. Indeed, one sees the crisis unfold before one's eyes, for the author does not hesitate to charge those he finds responsible for debasement of the message of George Gurdjieff with opportunism and self-inflation. This book is important as a 'white paper' for those concerned about the broader Gurdjieff movement, and as a case study for all students of contemporary spiritual movements."
—Robert S. Ellwood, Chairman, Dept. of Religion, University of Southern California.

"William Patrick Patterson's Taking With the Left Hand deals with esoteric teachings in a modern context. In this collection of three essays about various aspects of the legacy of the influential spiritual teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff, the author tackles the enneagram craze, the teachings of Boris Mouravieff and a Gurdjieff splinter group, expanding his discussion of these relatively parochial issues to raise more universal questions about the nature and transmission of spiritual truth."

—Publishers Weekly

"Taking With the Left Hand is quite remarkable. I have read it with great pleasure. Patterson always writes absorbingly, and there is no one in the field of Gurdjieff/Oupensky studies that I respect more, or regard as having more authority."

—Colin Wilson, author, From Atlantis to the Sphinx

And so we sit with the author at the lunches and dinners, hear Mr. Gurdjieff recounting his English, Scottish and Irish jokes and, of course, toasting to the idiots, the toasts usually not getting beyond nine or ten idiots. (Mr. Gurdjieff says he is Idiot No. 17.) Recounted are Gurdjieff 's insights into the various idiots. For example, there are three kinds of Compassionate Idiot. The first sees a man in need of help and immediately helps him, even giving him his own shirt. The second does exactly the same, but only because his fianceé's father is observing. The third kind, says Gurdjieff, "So-so-so, sometimes he gives and sometimes not, depending on many things, perhaps even the weather."

One day Lord Pentland, his wife, Lucy, and young daughter, Mary, came to lunch. Mary sat by her mother's side and just in front of Gurdjieff. She became very bored. Suddenly, Gurdjieff spoke to her: "In life never possible do everything." Having puzzled the child, he points to the mess she has made at the table. "On my table you cannot make this mess. Perhaps at home Mother permits." If she wants to act this way, she is to stay home. But then she won't be able to be here. "So you see," he says, "you can never do everything." In the evening at the end of dinner, Gurdjieff asked the little girl, "Who do you respect the most?" Her mother has to interpret: "Who do you think is the most important person here?" Without a moment's hesitation, Mary replied, "My Daddy." Gurdjieff beamed: "I am not offended. God is not offended either." He explained that he who loves his parents, loves God. If people love their parents when they are alive, then, when their parents die, "there is a space left in them for Him to fill." He patted her on the shoulder and said, "For my aim, I want twenty such. If I had twenty like her, I get my aim. Not because she special, but because she not spoilt."

Whoever has contact with reality is an Idiot, the word having two meanings: 1) to be oneself; 2) being so, to those in illusion, such a one behaves like an idiot. From ordinary man to God, idiots comprise 21 gradations of reason. Among the idiots are: ordinary; super; arch; hopeless; compassionate; squirming; square; round; zigzag; enlightened, doubting; swaggering, born; patented; psychopathic; polyhedral. Idiots 17-21 constituted a spiritual hierarchy; 21 being the reason of God; idiots 19 and 20, the sons of God. Idiot 18 was the highest development of reason with which a human being could resonate. Having attained #17, to go on, the individual had to descend to the reason of Idiot #1, that of the ordinary idiot. Some say it happens with #10.

"The life of a seeker of truth, Ethel Merston, is recounted in this English language book. Her extraordinary quest for enlightenment which led her to meet many of the eminent spiritual figures of the last century: G. I. Gurdjieff (and others in the Fourth Way, to which she remained faithful her whole life—P. D. Ouspensky, J. G. Bennett, Mme de Salzmann and Lord Pentland), Krishnamurti, Anandamayi Ma, Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Ramana Maharshi, to name only a few. We follow her on her voyage from bourgeois England to the heart of India, a voyage as much exterior as interior. Her journal, kept daily, serves as Ariadne's thread for the author of the biography, who presents Ethel Merston's impressions and comments restored to us in all their freshness, and what each encounter brought forth in her. With Gurdjieff, she learned of the separation between the "I" and the "it," that is to say to realize that "it" thinks in us, that "it" moves, that "it" reacts, all automatically. This teaching was for her a valuable tool of discrimination in all her future encounters. She wasn't touched by Krishnamurti's teaching, although she found in it emphases on the conditioned mental process familiar to her. Of particular interest are her direct accounts of a meeting between Krishnamurti and Anandamayi Ma, who questioned Krishnamurti about the reason for his refusal of gurus, and the meeting between Anandamayi Ma and The Mother of Auroville. But it is Ramana Maharshi who made the greatest impression on her: "The idea of time is only in your mind. It is not in the Self. There is no time for the Self. Time arises as an idea after the ego arises. You exist even in the absence of time and of space." Of this Ethel Merston wrote: "All was new for me." She would return regularly to Ramana Maharshi's ashram, even being present at his death. The biography makes clear the differences between the teachings, and the bearers of these teachings, as experienced by Ethel Merston. It is thus a first hand testimony of evolved beings, with strong references to contemporary spirituality, as well as the impressions of a woman animated by the wish to awaken, with her doubts, incomprehensions, rejections and resistances, and her flashes of understanding, her maturing. An interesting work, reflecting an epoch and a search."
—Revue 3e millénaire

"There are few comprehensive accounts of individual Western pioneers who were interested in Indian spirituality in the first part of the 20th century. Ethel Merston left an intimate record of her journey as she constantly questioned and searched for a remedy to relieve the malady of her soul. We owe to Mary Ellen Korman our appreciation for chronicling that time and bringing to life many of the people Ethel Merston encountered, and who we never quite knew as fellow seekers committed to the search for higher truths."
—The Mountain Path, The Journal of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi

"I found Ethel Merston's life story fascinating. The narrative completely absorbed me and I was captivated from the first sentence by both substance as well as style. Ethel Merston was an exceptional individual and it is wonderful that her story has finally been told. An important work with considerable research."
—Ram Alexander, Author, Death Must Die: A Western Woman's Life-Long Spiritual Quest with Shree Anandamayee Ma

"The prose is seamless. Mary Ellen Korman has done exemplary work combining her own writing with that of Miss Merston who kept a diary of her life, travels, and reflections. Passages from this diary and other works are introduced into the narrative. The two voices are one voice, rather like the chanting of one of those Tibetan monks who is able to intone both a tone and an overtone in one breath simultaneously."
—John Robert Colombo, author, Poems of Space and Time and O Rare Denis Saurat

A gem of a small book filled with practical wisdom drawn from the author's own craft of pottery. Above all, for Harry Remde, a craft is the study of how to be, and what is discovered may be applied to every aspect of one's life from cooking to dancing. The author's description and application of three inner laws of building is unique and surprising. He calls them simply the law of the body, the law of the head and the law of the emotions. A special effort of attention is needed to fulfill these principles. Artifacts made in this way are said to be rare and as marvelous as light. Life lived in this way is said to be equally rare and marvelous.