Quite recently, I came across a convincing argument that Gurdjieff was also using the experimental method when he was running the groups that Ouspensky attended, memorialized in the book In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching. In his eye-opening book Hidden Meanings and Picture-form Language in the Writings of G.I. Gurdjieff: (Excavations of the Buried Dog), John Henderson also identifies the various incarnations of The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, prior to and including the Prieuré at Fontainebleau, as part of Gurdjieff’s “experimental period”. Henderson quotes G. as saying so – in conversations reported by senior students in books they wrote, as well as G.’s own writing, in the only substantial piece of his work published while he was still alive and able to prevent the posthumous revisions – “Wiseacreing” – which G. foresaw as the inevitable fate of his writings.

Are familiar with Henderson’s book? If you have read it, I would be very interested in your reaction.