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.
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