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Saturday Evenings at mmendhamSaturday Evenings at Mendham - Madame Ouspensky's talks to her pupils - 1945-1947 - is now in print!


This book provides entirely new source material for the Gurdjieff Work. It is an authentic transcription of talks given by Madame Ouspensky to her group at Mendham, distilled from notes taken by her pupils at the time.

Students of Gurdjieff's Fourth Way know little about Madame Ouspensky's thought or teaching because she left no written body of work—although some of her sayings were recalled by Robert de Ropp in his short account of his time with her. That has been virtually the only material extant. Until now.

Now, this authentic transcription of talks given by Madame Ouspensky to her group at Mendham has been published by Heritage Editions. The talks, distilled from pupils notes, were painstakingly compered and edited by the late Dorothy Darlington who spent years with Madame and Mr Ouspensky and who had a special affinity with Madame.

Dorothy DarlingtonDorothy wished this part of Madame's legacy to be preserved. And only now is this unique and priceless record finally accessible to those studying Gurdjieff's ideas,

The book, originally published as an eBook on this site, is now available from many sources: By the Way Books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Google Books, Thrift Books and numerous other retailers.

Read the Preface here:


Madame Ouspensky's place in Gurdjieff's System is relatively unknown. Her role was never publicized. People on the periphery were not even aware that her House in the country existed.

Madame and P. D. Ouspensky had both very specific functions in the work. His was to disseminate the Ideas in pure form. Hers was to work with people individually who, as she said, 'already knew what they wanted.'

When she left the Prieuré in 1929, Gurdjieff gave her a MS copy of Beelzebub's Tales with the words, 'Go and help your husband in London.'

For this purpose she organised a House for Work based on the principles laid down at the Prieuré. Here some people could live, others visit.

To show people what they actually were and to fight on the side of the 'eternal against the temporal' was a task that aroused little gratitude in unprepared people or in those who defended and protected their little selves whose very life was threatened. But to those who really wished to see themselves—to see what IS—she gave inestimable help.

I was present at her reunion with Gurdjieff at Mendham in 1948. It was as though they had never been apart. And because I was with her, he gave me some experiences that after the passage of thirty years are still vividly present.

During this, his last visit to U.S., Gurdjieff told Madame Ouspensky: 'I need you to help me in my work for the next ten years.' He himself died the following year but she carried out his wish to her own final illness—just over ten years later.

Dorothy Darlington