Peter Demianovich Ousepnsky (1878-1947) was born in Moscow. He became one of the most important writers on abstract mathematical theory in the early twentieth century. Ouspensky searched throughout Europe, Egypt and the Orient for a teaching which would solve for him the problems of Man and the Universe. In 1915, in St. Petersberg, he met with George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, who taught that most humans do not possess a unified mind-body consciousness and thus live their lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep", but that it is possible to transcend to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential.

This is the record of Ouspensky's eight years of work as Gurdjieff's pupil. It combines the logic of a mathmetician with the vision of a mystic.