In 1915, Ouspensky (1878-1947) one of the most prominent thinkers of the 20th century, met G.I.Gurdjieff, who revealed to him the system of ideas he had been searching for in his studies and travels. Throughout the rest of his life, Ouspensky continued to promote Gurdjieff’s system as the practical study of methods for developing consciousness. He devoted his life to teaching the ideas now known as the Fourth Way.

He lived unobtrusively in England after 1921, exerting considerable influence among writers, conducting his own study groups and publishing The New Model of the Universe in 1931. In 1940, he moved to the United States with some of his London pupils and continued lecturing until his death in 1947, shortly after returning to England.

The austere manner in which he delivered lectures, in accordance with the times, won him the reputation of a severe intellectual, but, as these books show, he was also a warm-hearted man with an extraordinary insight into people, as well as history and science.