"Our lives with Mr. Gurdjieff" by Olga and Thomas de Hartmann

The deHartmann's book is mostly a sequential narrative of the events that happened to the Moscow and St. Petersburg groups of Mr.Gurdjieff during the October and Bolshevik revolutions in Russia and afterwards on their trips in Constantinople, Berlin, London, Paris and America.  There is very little "real food" for Work in this book, having mostly being written as a memoir. Thomas de Hartmann was an aristocrat and already accomplished composer when he was 'entangled' in the St. Petersburg group, allegedly on instructions by Gurdjieff himself (who also did the same thing with Ouspensky, Mr.G liked to call himself sometimes "a collector of men").

Thomas' (or Toma, as the Russian colloquial vocative form stands) married Olga Schumacher, also a Russian-German aristocrat early on, and she staid with him until the end of Toma's life.  Olga was performing the duty of personal secretary to Mr. Gurdjieff, and also took down all his writing, namely 'Beelzebub' and the 'All and Everything Series.'  The book is written mostly from Toma's notes, but Olga's notes are included at different places, where her memories were unique and different from Toma's.

It is useful to read this book in parallel with Ouspensky's "In Search of the Miraculous" since Ouspensky only gives initials of people (like Dr. S, P., etc.) while Thomas de Hartmann spells out the full names (Dr. Stjernvall, Petrov, etc.).  It can be said that Ouspensky describes the teaching and system, while de Hartmann describes the actual day-to-day lives and activities of the students of Mr. Gurdjieff's system.  There are some parts that Ouspensky doesn't talk about much, on purpose, and more light is shed on those sections of the time span by de Hartmann.

Ultimately, Gurdjieff chases away the de Hartmann's who don't have much contact with him for the last 20 years of Mr. Gurdjieff's life, although all of them live in Paris and its surroundings.  Thomas never made any contact with the group during those 20 years, although still retaining, internally, Mr. Gurdjieff as his teacher, while Olga had occasional contacts with the de Salzmanns, especially Jeanne de Salzmann, who emerged as the main successor of the Work after Mr. Gurdjieff's death.  Madame de Salzmann summoned the de Hartmann's after the interment of Mr. G's body and they together organized most of the New York and New Jersey groups (with Mrs. Ouspensky) and Thomas and Olga de Hartmann organized the first Canadian Gurdjieff Foundation group in 1953 in Toronto.  Thomas de Harmann passed away in 1956 without finishing his book.  Olga de Hartmann finished and published the book and passed away in 1973.

"Beelzebub's Tales to his grandson" by George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff

Beelzebub. Who can review Beelzebub? Is there anything that can be said about it that is not refuted on one or another page of the book itself? It is a large book by modern standards, almost 1,300 pages.  And it is intentionally made difficult to read and comprehend.  Some sentences are half a page long with several subjects, objects and digressions in them.  By the time you get to the end of the sentence, that lonely period at the end, one is already struggling to keep the beginning in mind and all the in-between.

Gurdjieff loves to talk pages and pages about one thing, proving its necessity and utter importance, just to dismiss it as garbage 500 pages later.  It is a book that requires critical thinking on every page.  Nothing can be accepted at face value, and yet, there is a lot of face value in the book itself.  Gurdjieff said that he didn't care about ordinary human consciousness, which is an artificial construct with no real value, but that all his books, teachings and methods are meant to go directly into the subconsciousness. 

Beelzebub works unconsciously, without even the reader noticing, bypassing all the censors and gatekeepers "proper" societal upbringing and education has instilled in our human-machines.  It brings perspective, some calm and a lot more understanding, mostly of oneself, and mostly during the frustrations which the book was written to create in the reader.  It is all for the better.  It is all for becoming a better human being, working on oneself.