Volume 14, Issue 1, 2023
Joseph Azize
Pages 47-67
https://doi.org/10.5840/asrr2023830101
P. D. Ouspensky¡¯s First Revision of Tertium Organum
When P. D. Ouspensky (1878¨C1947) is noted today, it is generally as a quondam pupil of G. I. Gurdjieff (c.1866¨C1949), and the author of In Search of the Miraculous, an account of his time with Gurdjieff. Ouspensky had a considerable reputation in Russian esoteric circles before he had met Gurdjieff, and it is sometimes asserted that Ouspensky¡¯s standing as an independent thinker has been underestimated. The English translation of his book Tertium Organum has been cited as evidence that Ouspensky had already anticipated some of Gurdjieff¡¯s leading ideas. However, a comparison of the 1911 Russian-language edition with the 1920 English translation of the 1916 Russian revision of Tertium Organum establishes that the 1911 original lacked key ideas found in later editions, most of which are distinctively Gurdjieff¡¯s. This shows the extent of Ouspensky¡¯s debt to Gurdjieff, and casts a different light on the relationship between Gurdjieff and Ouspensky; namely, that there was more collaboration than previously known, and that Ouspensky¡¯s account of his agreement with Gurdjieff about committing Gurdjieff¡¯s ideas to writing, was tendentious, if not misleading.