don't give up "ouspensky"

From Bennett’s Gurdjieff: Making a New World:

So far as I am concerned this material, which Ouspensky used for his own teaching in the years from 1922 to 1940 when he had his groups in London, constitutes the most valuable corpus of ideas and methods that I have come across in fifty years of searching. Nevertheless, something essential was missing. Not only did Gurdjieff say nothing – or at least nothing was reported by Ouspensky – about his work in Central Asia and the aims that he had set himself in coming to Russia; but he gave the impression that the work depended exclusively on personal effort that each man had to make for himself. The idea, which is so important in Christian doctrine, of enabling Grace, without which work on oneself is impossible, was never mentioned. Nor was the Sufi notion of baraka, which refers to the same supernatural action that must be transmitted from person to person. I have no doubt that Gurdjieff was fully aware of the importance of this action because he spoke to me personally about it only five years later at Fountainbleau.

Bennett continues:

How did it come about that Gurdjieff gave out such an incredible wealth of ideas and teachings on almost every subject of interest on the transformation of man, and did not refer to the key to making it all work, the transmission of higher energy or baraka? I believe that the explanation is to be found in what Gurdjieff wrote about in his original plan to set up his Institute in Tashkent. His aim was not to initiate an action, but to study people of many types in order to find a way to help them to liberate themselves from the universal disease of suggestibility, which makes them ‘believe any old tale.’ If people came to him and were ready to work with him on his own terms, but without losing sight of their own aim, they could profit from the contact. ...

In Witness (p. 129) Bennett shares :

I said to Ouspensky: "I am sure that his work can lead to the attainment of Consciousness and Immortality, but I am not sure if I can reach it myself. The more I learn about myself, the les do I seem able to achieve anything. In fact, in the last year I have gone back rather than forward."

... He sighed deeply, and said: "You say that you are sure that this work can lead to consciousness and immortality. I am not sure. I am sure of nothing. But I do know that wee have nothing, and therefore we have nothing to lose. For me it is not a question of hope, but of being sure that there is no other way. I have tried too much and seen too much to believe in anything. But I will not give up the struggle. In principle, I believe that it is possible to attain what we seek - but I am not sure we have yet found the way. But it is useless to wait. We know that we have something that has come from a Higher Source. It may be that something more will come from the same Source."

(typing that i'm even more struck about what Ouspensky said he would not give up! - of course i know that a couple of paragraphs cannot do justice to the vicissitudes of Ouspensky's daily efforts and lack of efforts and even taking a break, but still, I associate reading somewhere that following Bennett's tremendous exertions Gurdjieff told Bennett to rest but Bennett not resting until eventually when he did he found that what he needed was to be passive) and (p. 196):

[Ouspensky] went on to say that nothing new can be found by intellectual processes alone, and that there is only one hope: that we should find the way to work with the higher emotional centre. To this he added the sad comment: 'And we do not know how this is to be done.'

(not that Ouspensky was seeking by intellectual processes alone - Ouspensky's response was to a theory of higher dimensions set forth by Bennett; nonetheless, the response is telling. especially as Bennett did try to relate to Ouspensky about miraculous experiences at the Prieuré, but Ouspensky was not particularly open or interested. Bennett's constant deference to Ouspensky was as if Ouspensky was on a decidedly higher level. Still, it is hard to imagine that Ouspensky was utterly baraka blind. I don't know about his pillow-talk with Mme. Ouspensky, but while it was Ouspensky's ideas, it was her presence that animated the Ouspenskys' venues; also, later, to Bennett she alluded to some other quality, indicating,

Since Mr. Gurdjieff went, I have been waiting for someone to come. I still wait, but he has not. Perhaps he will not come in my lifetime." She asked [Bennett] some questions and then said: "If a new teacher comes, how do you know you will recognize him?" [Bennett] replied that he would bring something entirely new and that we should recognize it because we had been prepared by Gurdjieff. She did not wholly approve of what I said, but wouldn't disclose her own thoughts.

notably, according to James Moore it was Mme. Ouspensky who admonished students wont to sit still, "We don't meditate!"

still, while entertaining positivist notions of negation, according to B'sTs:

The Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash taught nothing whatever to the ordinary three-brained beings of the Earth, nor did he preach anything to them, as was done before and after him by all the other Messengers sent from Above with the same aim. And in consequence of this, none of his teachings, in any form whatsoever, passed from his contemporaries even to the third generation there, let alone to contemporary beings.