P. D. Ouspensky
Russian esotericist, philosopher, and chief literary heir of G. I. Gurdjieff — the man whose 1949 In Search of the Miraculous became the canonical written record of Gurdjieff's oral teaching of the Fourth Way, and whose own books Tertium Organum (1912), A New Model of the Universe (1931), and The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution (1950) developed an independent line of esoteric philosophy alongside the Work. Born 1878 in Moscow, Ouspensky encountered Gurdjieff in 1915, worked closely with him until their split in 1924, then taught his own groups in London for the rest of his life. He died in 1947, two years before In Search of the Miraculous was published. Through that book — and through his pupils, who include Maurice Nicoll, Rodney Collin, and Lord Pentland — Ouspensky became one of the principal channels through which Fourth Way teaching reached the English-speaking world.
quotes in library
Quotes by P. D. Ouspensky
115 quotes“Effort changes you. And only a changed you can understand.”
“This is why most reading is fruitless.”
“It produces information without producing change.”
“Schools exist for those who want change, not for those who want information.”
“If you want only information, you have many places to go.”
“If you want change, you must accept the discipline of the Work.”
“And the discipline begins with self-observation.”
“Without self-observation, all other practices are empty.”
“With self-observation, the path opens.”
“Tertium Organum is a third logic — beyond Aristotle and Bacon.”
“It is the logic of intuition, of higher consciousness.”
“In ordinary logic, A cannot be both A and not-A.”
“In the higher logic, A may be both A and not-A.”
“This is not nonsense. It is the recognition of a higher dimension of reality.”
“Mystics in every tradition have known this logic.”
“It is the logic of the awakened.”
“Sleep is real. We are asleep most of the time.”
“To know that you are asleep is the first step toward awakening.”
“Without that knowledge, you have no chance to awaken.”
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