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The Herald of Coming Good. First Appeal to Contemporary Humanity is the first book published by G. I. Gurdjieff. [1] The book was privately published in Paris in 1933. The book was published with the help of Charles Stanley Nott a student of Gurdjieff.
In addition to the main body of the text, the book contains the following sections: [2]
Gurdjieff refers to The Herald of Coming Good Book as "... this first of my writings intended to head the list of my publications ...". It is a programmatic essay, describing the author's anthropological world view and his ethical concept of a full realization of mankind with reference to the activities of his organization, the Institute For Man's Harmonious Development .
The book contains an outline of all his other writings, All and Everything , consisting of "ten books in three series".
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff was an Armenian philosopher, mystic, spiritual teacher, and composer of Armenian and Greek descent, born in Alexandropol, Russian Empire. Gurdjieff taught that most humans do not possess a unified consciousness and thus live their lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep", but that it is possible to awaken to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential. Gurdjieff described a method attempting to do so, calling the discipline "The Work" or "the System". According to his principles and instructions, Gurdjieff's method for awakening one's consciousness unites the methods of the fakir, monk and yogi, and thus he referred to it as the "Fourth Way".
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Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson or An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man is the first volume of the All and Everything trilogy written by the Greek-Armenia mystic G. I. Gurdjieff. The All and Everything trilogy also includes Meetings with Remarkable Men and Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am'.
Pyotr Demianovich Ouspenskii was a Russian esotericist known for his expositions of the early work of the Greek-Armenian teacher of esoteric doctrine George Gurdjieff. He met Gurdjieff in Moscow in 1915, and was associated with the ideas and practices originating with Gurdjieff from then on. He taught ideas and methods based in the Gurdjieff system for 25 years in England and the United States, although he separated from Gurdjieff personally in 1924, for reasons that are explained in the last chapter of his book In Search of the Miraculous.
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The Fourth Way is an approach to self-development developed by George Gurdjieff over years of travel in the East. It combines and harmonizes what he saw as three established traditional "ways" or "schools": those of the body, the emotions, and the mind, or of fakirs, monks and yogis, respectively. Students often refer to the Fourth Way as "The Work", "Work on oneself", or "The System". The exact origins of some of Gurdjieff's teachings are unknown, but various sources have been suggested.
Henry Maurice Dunlop Nicoll was a Scottish neurologist, psychiatrist, author and noted Fourth Way esoteric teacher. He is best known for his Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, a five-volume collection of more than 500 talks given and distributed to his study groups in and around London from March 1941 to August 1953.
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Alfred Richard Orage was a British influential figure in socialist politics and modernist culture, now best known for editing the magazine The New Age before the First World War. While he was working as a schoolteacher in Leeds he pursued various interests, including Plato, the Independent Labour Party and theosophy. In 1900 he met Holbrook Jackson and three years later they co-founded the Leeds Arts Club, which became a centre of modernist culture in Britain. After 1924, Orage went to France to work with George Gurdjieff and was then sent to the United States by Gurdjieff to raise funds and lecture. He translated several of Gurdjieff's works.
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The Sarmoung Brotherhood was an alleged esoteric Sufi brotherhood based in Asia. The reputed existence of the brotherhood was brought to light in the writings of George Gurdjieff, a Greek-Armenian spiritual teacher. Some contemporary Sufi-related sources also claim to have made contact with the group although the earliest and primary source is Gurdjieff himself, leading most scholars to conclude the group was fictional.
Margaret Caroline Anderson was the American founder, editor and publisher of the art and literary magazine The Little Review, which published a collection of modern American, English and Irish writers between 1914 and 1929. The periodical is most noted for introducing many prominent American and British writers of the 20th century, such as Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, in the United States and publishing the first thirteen chapters of James Joyce's then-unpublished novel Ulysses.
James Harry Manson Moore was a Cornish author. He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and a leading authority on G. I. Gurdjieff.
Charles Stanley Nott (1887–1978) was an author, publisher, translator and a student of G. I. Gurdjieff. He first met Gurdjieff and A. R. Orage in New York in 1923. He spent time at the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man and became a close student of Gurdjieff. He helped with the publication and distribution of Gurdjieff's first published book The Herald of Coming Good. He wrote two books on his life and experience with Gurdjieff, Orage, and P. D. Ouspensky.
Jane Heap was an American publisher and a significant figure in the development and promotion of literary modernism. Together with Margaret Anderson, her friend and business partner, she edited the celebrated literary magazine The Little Review, which published an extraordinary collection of modern American, English and Irish writers between 1914 and 1929. Heap herself has been called "one of the most neglected contributors to the transmission of modernism between America and Europe during the early twentieth century."
Jacob Needleman was an American philosopher, author, and religious scholar.
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