'Struggle of the Magicians: Exploring the teacher-student relationship', not to be confused with the ballet of the same name by Gurdjieff, is a biographical book depicting the lives of Uspenskii (also written Ouspensky elsewhere) meeting with Gurdjieff, an Armenian spiritual teacher who brings the teachings of the East to the West, during the difficult period in Russia just before WW1. The book follows the the interactions of the two, describes some of Gurdjieff's teaching and most notably his magnetic presence which makes everyone around him listen, and the struggles that the Gurdjieff groups encounter as the students learn from the teaching and must navigate the chaotic geopolitical landscape between WW1 and WW2, often having to relocate their activities to entirely different countries.
Eventually, Uspenskii breaks away from Gurdjieff, having a deep respect for the man and his teaching, but feeling like there are "two sides" to him, one good, and the other too prone to play games with his students to "challenge" them in ways he doesn't see helpful. We then see the teaching of Gurdjieff spread to America, which leads to scattered groups in there, as well as some parts of Europe, and the clash between his various students who want to imitate G. and be a teacher like him.
An interesting book if you know and are interested in Gurdjieff, the man, his teaching and especially the history of esotericism, because Gurdjieff is probably the most notable contact between the East and the West in the 20th century. I don't think this is too particularly interesting if you haven't read other books related to him however, such as In search of the Miraculous by Uspenskii, or A Study of Gurdjieff's Teaching by Kenneth Walker, to name the two that I have read, because you would miss why exactly Gurdjieff is considered so important to those people, and what he has to teach.
"Professors were killing Science in the same way that as priests are killing Religion" quote by Ouspensky describing his loss of interest in Science during his youth. (Part 1)
"Ordinary life forces one to swallow customary forms of lying and living in lying" upon meeting Gurdjieff. (Part 1)
"A man will renounce any pleasures you like, but he will not give up his suffering" (Part 1)
"We are governed by external circumstances. All our actions follow the line of least resistance to the pressure of outside circumstances" (Part 2)
"He became unable to miss a shot at gold without glancing round anxiously in fear that some stranger had noticed the blunder" (Part 2)
"What is the use of a man knowing about [eternal] recurrence if he is not conscious of it and does not change?" (Part 2)
"You know, Orage, when you give something to a man, or do something for him, the first time he will kneel and kiss your hand; second time, he takes his hat off; third time, he bows; fourth time, he fawns; fifth time, he nods; sixth time, he insults you; and the seventh time, he sues you for not giving him enough" (Part 2)
"To write my book for conscious men would be easy, but to write it for donkeys—very hard" (Part 2)
"History, Gurdjieff said, had proven that politics, religion, and any other organized movement which treated man in the mass—and not as individual beings—were failures. The separate, distinct growth of each individual in the world was the only possible solution" (Part 2)
"To stimulate his writing, Gurdjieff sends packing all who make his life too comfortable" (Part 2)
"Our intellectual life is based on chance associations which have become more or less fixed. Only when those are broken up can we begin to think freely" (Part 2)
"You do not know how to give, you only let others take. Let them take, you do no good: you lose and they get dependent. Not easy to give. Learn how to give, and you make other people free." Letting other take is cowardice and fawning, whereas giving is love, which also works by not giving paradoxically enough, the gift of rejection to someone who has lived a spoiled life (Part 2)
"Mr Uspenskii controls himself until he is completely suffocated."
"One must distinguish between what is the teaching from what is just Russian"
"The Russian temperament is either to be a total slave or a complete tyrant" (The Great Bequeathing)
"He could not leave Russia. Nostalgia chained him to that land to which he could never return" (The Great Bequeathing)
"It has nothing to do with methods. Your trouble is that you always make false starts. All your work consists of false starts. And if you keep returning to the starting point, how can you hope to make progress?"
"In my opinion, writing [the Work] is not useful. [...] If you do write, it can only be to convince yourself that it is impossible" (The Great Bequeathing)
"[Uspenskii] had lost his power and wrecked his health by indulgence in two poisons: alcohol and nostalgia"
"He understands that he shouldn't drink but says it is the only thing he can do to relieve his boredom." (The Great Bequeathing)
"I began to see the pursuit of self-knowledge had to, as it seemed, eliminate an atmosphere of warmth between people and something that be described as a lack of lovingness" (The Great Bequeathing)
"The catastrophe of this war has proved the sensitivity of the system of modern civilization evolved in the course of centuries. Now we know that we do not live in an earthquake-proof structure. The build-up of negative impulses, each reinforcing the other, can inexorably shake to pieces the complicated apparatus of the modern world. There is no halting this process by will alone. The danger is that the automatism of progress will depersonalize man further and withdraw more and more of his self-responsibility." (The Great Bequeathing)
"Each must find for himself the particular personal difficulty that prevents remembering" as in, self-remembering (The Great Bequeathing)
"In the way of true development true knowledge must first be acquired and then abandoned. That exactly what makes possible the opening of one door may make impossible the opening of the next." (The Great Bequeathing)
"He withdraws from life, sees very few people, and rarely speaks. But his silence is alive" (The Great Bequeathing)
"He watches the cat eat in the peculiar way well-fed cats have who will eat things they find for themselves, but to which, if offered in a dish, they would pay no notice" how much we want to feel independent (The Great Bequeathing)
"A knight sets out on a great adventure. He arrives at a place where the road divides into three. Unable to decide which to choose, the knight sees an old man, who tells him that if he goes to the right he will lose his horse, to the left he will lose himself; while if he takes the road in the center, he will lose both himself and his horse. The knight reasons with himself that a knight without a horse is helpless, and a horse without a knight is useless, so he might as well risk losing both. He chooses the middle path, and after desperate adventures, in which the old man's prophecy is fulfilled, he finally reaches his goal."
"Uspenskii told Bennett, 'You are now in that position. But I may as well tell you that if the knight had chosen either of the other two paths, it would have been the same in the end. Only it was necessary that he should persist and never give up. That is the only condition.'"
(The Great Bequeathing)
Gurdjieff saying Au revoir tout le monde! before being taken to the hospital where he will die is a good one. (The Great Bequeathing)
"Those who look for the world to be saved by a single teacher in a given time are shirking their own responsibility. They wait in the hope of a 'second coming' with no effort on their part—indulging in the disease of tomorrow" (The Great Bequeathing)
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History Esotericism Spirituality Media
2026-05-05