Annie Lou Staveley (1906-1996) lived in England for more than 30 years, and it was there that she met P.D. Ouspensky, and then Jane Heap, with whom she studied the ideas of Gurdjieff in preparation for the moment, at the end of the Second World War, when she and her fellow pupils traveled to Paris to study under Mr. Gurdjieff himself.

She eventually moved to rural Oregon and started a community named Two Rivers Farm.