"The Struggle of the Magicians" a Ballet Scenario by G.I. Gurdjieff

This is a little booklet, about 44 pages, and is one of the earliest texts that Gurdjieff wrote.  Actually, it was his ad in a newspaper in Moscow about staging this ballet that started his first school with students who were Muscovites.

The ballet has several acts, alternating between showing the life of Gafar, the rich prince, who is infatuated with Zainab, a beautiful 20 year old female student of the White Magician.  The White Magician's school is shown and when Gaffar cannot get Zainab with money and fame, he turns to the Black Magician, whose school is also shown, as anti-thesis to the concepts in the White one. 

Eventually the Black Magician casts a spell on Zainab to submit herself to Gafar, but the White Magician breaks the spell, and the ballet ends with Gafar, although initially angry, actually submitting to the White Magician. 

Probably the most important part, for me, was one of the last sentences of the the siget: "Lord Creator, and all you His assistants. help us to be able to remember ourselves at all times in order that we may avoid involuntary actions, as only through them - can evil manifest itself." 

Automatic, mechanical, involuntary actions being the root of evil and by remembering ourselves at all times, we prevent yet another outlet for evil. 

"Life is Only Real When 'I AM'" by G.I. Gurdjieff

This is the third and final book of the All and Everything trilogy and, by Gurdjieff's own words, should be a primer of development of a new reality for the student who had his old reality destroyed by Beelzebub's Tales.  If that is so, then all that has flown way over my head.

The first 2/3 of the book is mostly an exposition of the organizing of Gurdjieff's American groups, chiefly in NYC and the problems arising from Orage leading them.  Gurdjieff does some funny experiments with the Orage groups, getting them to sign an affidavit that they will cut all connections to Orage.  The funny part was that Orage signed the affidavit too (cutting connections to himself? old self? died to the old self?) and subsequently the Orage followers in NYC were made to pay fines to re-join the newly formed group by Gurdjieff, the highest fines being charged to people who willingly gave up on Orage on Gurdjieff's request.

The English translation is not very good, which adds additional comprehension problems, in addition to Gurdjieff's (intentional?) convoluted writing style.  For example there are expressions which are literally translated from Russian like 'honeyed' which have no idiomatic meaning in English of the same strength/context they do in Russian. 

The last third of the book talks about some practical exercises, which are described only cursorily, and some further theoretical expositions of his system.  Probably the most oft repeated phrases in the entire book are "my ideas" and "by me." 

The most interesting part is the last chapter, which is a separate essay on the "Outer and Inner World of Man" which indeed is written very well and is very interesting, but ends mid-sentence just when things are getting very, very interesting.

I guess there's a meaning in that too, but I just don't get it.