The Strange Life of P. D. Ouspensky (15 page)

Yet Nott, who saw something of Ouspensky in New York, felt that he had lost the old drive. Nott attributes this to the infirmities of age, but in fact Ouspensky was only 63. The real problem was almost certainly that he had been uprooted once too often. He was drinking too much - Nott says that he was imbibing strong concoctions that required a stomach of iron - and obviously felt that he had simply not achieved the inner freedom he had set out to attain. By nature, he was a gentle romantic, whose attempts to turn himself into a kind of scientific guru were an affront to his fundamental nature. He told Nott that his strong potations were 'the only thing that relieves the boredom and depression that comes over me at times'.

In fact, Ouspensky's alcoholism provides us with a vital clue. The immediate effect of alcohol - particularly spirits - is 'uplift', an increase of 'inner pressure'. It is as if one has closed certain inner valves and ceased to 'leak'. 'Depression' means, literally, low pressure. Now any form of purposeful activity has the effect of closing the leaks and raising our inner pressure. For romantic intellectuals of Ouspensky's type, the best possible remedy for depression is creative thinking or writing. But Ouspensky had ceased to do any original thinking many years ago.
Tertium Organum
and
A New Model of the Universe
lay decades behind him. He had learned to achieve his 'intellectual feedback' through other people; he was at his best lecturing to an audience. It brought out the 'iron man', the scientist, the psychologist. But when he was alone, he had a sense of anticlimax. There was 'nothing to do'. These were the times when he enjoyed relaxing with friends like Nott, or his new disciple Rodney Collin (who had travelled over on the same boat), and reminiscing nostalgically about St Petersburg. But if there was no one to talk to, he seems to have become subject to depression. It was at about this time - in 1942 - that he wrote to Bennett that man's only hope is to work with the higher emotional centres, and added gloomily: 'And we do not know how this is to be done.'

Ouspensky had now turned his back completely on Gurdjieff. When Nott told him that Gurdjieff might be moving to New York, he replied that in that case he would go to California. Nott was asked to take an active part in Ouspensky's New York group, but felt unable to do so because he would not have been allowed to mention Gurdjieff or
Beelzebub's Tales
.

In the autumn of 1942, the Ouspenskys acquired a new 'headquarters' - a vast house called Franklin Farms in Mendham, New Jersey. It had 300 acres of land, and when the Notts paid a visit, it struck them as a re-creation of Lyne Place - in fact, many of the people
were
the same. There was also something of the same air of regimentation - pupils were not allowed to address one another by their Christian names, and Nott was again forbidden to mention Gurdjieff. He and his wife taught Gurdjieff's dances there, but he was not even allowed to reply to questions about their creator. When, on 7 December, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour and America entered the war, Ouspensky was probably relieved that Gurdjieff would not now be returning to torment him.

At Franklin Farms, Madame Ouspensky became increasingly the dominant force; Ouspensky often sat apart, silently drinking wine. Madame had become more despotic than ever, and the tap of her stick made the pupils look at one another nervously. One of them compared her to Gurdjieff - but she seems to have lacked the Master's kindness. Nott was one of the few who had the courage to stand up to her: before leaving Mendham to teach at a progressive school in Vermont, he shocked her by telling her that trying to teach 'the System' without mentioning Gurdjieff was like trying to teach Christianity without mentioning Jesus Christ.

Ouspensky's depression was making him increasingly bad tempered. When a new edition of
A New Model of the Universe
appeared with a blurb stating that Ouspensky was working in a group with Gurdjieff near London, he flew into a rage and proposed to call a press conference. Nott tried to persuade New York editors to send representatives and discovered - not surprisingly - that no one was remotely interested. And when Ouspensky heard that Bennett was teaching the System in England, he wrote him an angry letter pointing out that he had been sworn to secrecy. Visitors to Mendham heard Bennett described as a plagiarist and a thief.

When Nott returned to Mendham after a year in Vermont, he found conditions relatively unchanged. Madame Ouspensky as bossy as ever, and as paranoid about Gurdjieff. It was this that led to his decision to leave. He had been invited to dinner by a couple he had known for years, pupils of Ouspensky. They began to ask him about
Beelzebub's Tales
, and since they were dining at the couple's home, Nott felt free to talk about it, telling them that it was 'the Bible of the Work'. When they asked where they could get hold of it, he referred them to Madame Ouspensky.

The next day he was summoned by Madame, who accused him of breaking his promise. Nott replied that he had kept his promise not to discuss Gurdjieff at Franklin Farms, but when he was elsewhere he felt free to do as he liked. She described this as mere quibbling. Nott then pointed out firmly that she was teaching Gurdjieff's System at Mendham. Madame Ouspensky became angry, and Nott ended by telling her that her pupils were all stuck at the 'mi' level, and that if they were to progress to 'fa', they would need a shock - the kind of shock that could be provided by Gurdjieff and his book. This was the end. Nott announced he was leaving and they shook hands; he never saw her or Ouspensky again. In his second
Journal of a Pupil
, Nott states his considered opinion that after Ouspensky cut himself off from Gurdjieff, his work began to lose its value.

He was probably right. Yet it is equally clear that Ouspensky could not have remained with Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff needed disciples, and Ouspensky, for all his weakness, was too big a man to be anyone's disciple forever. The dilemma was insoluble.

What seems very clear is that Ouspensky had lost his mainspring. He felt he had reached a dead end. He had caught his glimpses of freedom, of the higher emotional centres; now he felt stuck in everyday reality, too old for further mental effort. Towards the end of the war, he seems to have thought constantly about returning to England. One reason was probably the increasing dominance of Madame Ouspensky at Mendham. She was suffering from Parkinson's Disease, and it seems to have made her even more domineering. Nevertheless, Ouspensky was not ignored - on the contrary, some of his pupils were inclined to worship him. One woman who fell on her knees before him was sternly told to get up at once and never do it again. Even his habit of sitting silent as he boozed was interpreted as a teaching gambit. It must have struck him as ironic to be regarded with so much reverence when he felt that he had lost all the answers. When his step-daughter asked him for advice on how to combat her depression, he could only snap: 'Pray, Lenotchka, pray!'

In spite, however, of his indignation with Bennett, Ouspensky himself was now thinking of publishing something about the Work - a series of lectures he had given in England in the late 1930s. But he seems to have had difficulty finding a publisher, and the book,
The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution
, was not issued until in 1950, after his death. During the war, Ouspensky was also engaged on the lengthy account of his years with Gurdjieff, 'Fragments of an Unknown Teaching', which, as already mentioned, was later published under the title
In Search of the Miraculous
.

Towards the end of the war, two English followers, who had been in charge of Lyne Place, made their way to Mendham. James Webb quotes them as saying that they found Ouspensky disabled 'as if by a stroke', and that he was virtually a prisoner. He asked them to try and get the Hammersmith house back from the Navy (who had requisitioned it) and prepare it for his return.

Yet by the end of the war Ouspensky's health was so poor that there seemed doubt whether he would be able to cross the Atlantic. (He was suffering from a serious kidney complaint, exacerbated by his heavy drinking.) But he finally arrived - without his wife - in January 1947, and was driven straight to Lyne Place. Kenneth Walker comments that they hardly recognized him; he was 'a man on whom Death had already set its mark'. Ouspensky was deeply preoccupied, as if 'his mind was deeply engaged on some problem'. That problem, Walker thinks, was probably that of 'Eternal Recurrence', and the notion that he would have to return to live his life all over again - and try and do better next time.

A few weeks later, on 24 February, 1947, the 'Historico-Psychological Society' met at the hall in Colet Gardens. Ouspensky's English follower Dr Francis Roles had organized a large audience, but they were dismayed by Ouspensky's appearance and manner. He was hobbling on a cane, and looked old, bent and sick; his English seemed less comprehensible than ever. He used a kind of private secretary called Miss Quinn - from Mendham - to take questions, but he seemed impatient of most of them, and kept snapping: 'Be simpler' or 'Start from what you know.' When Kenneth Walker asked if he had abandoned the System, he shocked everyone by answering: 'There is no System.'

Walker gathered that Ouspensky had evolved some new plan for the Work in London, but could also see that he was too weak to carry it out. It seems possible that it was based on his idea that everyone should spend time remembering his life in detail, to fix it in memory for the next incarnation.

At the next two meetings, on 5 and 12 March, it became even clearer that Ouspensky had somehow lost his belief in the System. When people talked about being mechanical, he asked them who had told them so. He even dismissed self-remembering. When someone asked him how to find harmony, he replied: 'This is your question? This is my question now, and I have no answer.' He no longer believed in the possibility of change. To a lady who asked why he would not help them, he replied that he had no help to give.

But, interestingly enough, he told his pupils that they must have a straightforward, everyday aim, and that only by working alone could one make progress. This was a flat contradiction of Gurdjieff's teaching that nothing could be achieved by working alone. Was this a sign of Ouspensky's disillusionment, or was it, in fact, a new insight? There were three more meetings, and at the last - on 18 June - Ouspensky again emphasized the importance of the individual finding out what he or she wanted and then pursuing it. It was as if he recognized that 'enlightenment' should not be pursued for its own sake, but as a by-product of some other work. His own problem was that he
had
pursued it for its own sake, and now had no 'work' to do.

Clear evidence of his loss of direction and purpose is provided by the fact that he decided to return to America - an obviously retrogressive step. Then, at the last minute, when his pupils were all on board, ready to leave, he arrived in his wheelchair and announced that he had changed his mind. He was now behaving with the same lack of consideration of which he had accused Gurdjieff, although it is not clear whether this was intentional - to administer a 'shock' - or merely the result of illness.

Ouspensky spent much of his last months in England revisiting places associated with his past - evidently in an attempt to fix them in his mind for his next existence. On one occasion he decided not to get out of the car at Lyne, but sat in it all night, surrounded by cats. (He believed that cats are the only animals that possess astral bodies and that this is why witches use them as familiars.) One lady stood by the car, her arm raised in solemn salute.

But the end, after all, was not to be pathetic and anticlimactic. James Webb's researches into Ouspensky's last days reveal that his pupils were convinced that something strange had happened. Ouspensky seemed to become telepathic, to such an extent that people in attendance on him became worried, and asked him to use words to communicate. Lyne seemed 'full of presences', and when one day a powerful presence seemed to manifest itself, Ouspensky asked: 'You notice?' His pupils became convinced that he had achieved 'Cosmic Consciousness', and one of them described him as 'an angel'. Another witness said that 'what was going on was God's business', apparently meaning that supernatural forces were now intervening. Rodney Collin was to declare that he felt that a Christlike being was presiding over Ouspensky's death.

Collin seems to have taken it upon himself to try to make Ouspensky 'die consciously', and to make sure that he did not 'go gentle into that good night'. Others state that Ouspensky needed no encouragement, and spent his last days making 'super-efforts', even waking his pupils up in the middle of the night. It was, according to Collin, in his arms that Ouspensky finally died at dawn on 2 October, 1947, after dressing himself and summoning the household for a 'final briefing'. Not long before his death he had repeated: 'I abandon the System. Start again for yourselves.' He was buried in Lyne churchyard.

Collin retreated to the dressing-room next to Ouspensky's bedroom, and locked himself in for six days. When someone tried to climb up a ladder to look into the room, the window opened and Collin pushed the ladder to the ground. Finally, Collin rang the bell that Ouspensky rang when he needed attention. He was found sitting cross-legged on Ouspensky's bed, dirty and unshaven, and he asked his wife Janet to bring him lime juice. He later told her - and his sister-in-law, Joyce Collin-Smith - that he had been in communication with Ouspensky during all this period, and that the disclosures were so important that he was determined not to be disturbed. The result of this communication led him to formulate a theory of 'four worlds', each on different vibrational rates, and to write a book called
The Theory of Celestial Influence
.[1] He was to die, under mysterious circumstances, on 3 May, 1956, after falling from a tower in Mexico.

Now Ouspensky was dead, the faithful asked Madame Ouspensky what they were to do. To their amazement, she answered that they were to contact Gurdjieff in Paris. Gurdjieff himself wrote to Lyne: 'You are sheep without a shepherd; come to me.'