P. D. Ouspensky

PD Ouspensky (Russian Пётр Демьянович Успенский, transcription Pyotr Uspensky Demyanovich, scientific transliteration Pëtr Dem'janovič Uspensky, Peter or Pyotr D. Ouspensky, born March 4, 1878 in Moscow, † October 2, 1947 in Lyne Place, Surrey ) was a Russian, later acting in England esoteric writer, who was a student of Georges I. Gurdjieff important and as such one of the main representatives of a so-called Fourth Way.

Ouspensky was interested in early literature and mathematics. In 1905 he wrote his first novel The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin. A short time later, he began to be interested in the forbidden in Russia at the time theosophical literature. As a result, he dealt with the question of how a synthesis between science, religion and mysticism is bringing about. This was followed by extensive travels in the Orient and Egypt. Back in St. Petersburg, he devoted himself to the study of yoga, magic and the occult.

This phase was followed again travels through India and Ceylon. His goal was to find a school where he could learn " the hidden laws of our world and the universe ." However, due to the outbreak of the First World War, he returned in 1915 to Moscow and met in Petersburg on Georges I. Gurdjieff. He was convinced that he had found in Gurdjieff a teacher who could teach him the sought knowledge. This encounter eventually led to several years of intense collaboration. Due to the turmoil of the October Revolution traveled Gurdjieff and a group of his students, including Ouspensky belonged to different countries until after Constantine Opel, where both paths parted in 1920.

The more formal and mathematically oriented thinking Ouspensky finally led to tensions between him and his teacher Gurdjieff in Fontainebleau, near Paris, founded in 1922, the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. Ouspensky broke with Gurdjieff 1924 final, but remained true to the teachings and worked in London with his own group of students in mind, mainly in the years 1915-1918 to understand teachings of Gurdjieff and shown to complement the missing areas. From this period also In Search of the Miraculous, one of his best known works, in which he represents the teachings of Gurdjieff.