Life Is Real Only Then, When "I Am"

The third and final series of Gurdjieff's All and Everything trilogy, published posthumously in fragmentary and incomplete form. Gurdjieff began writing it in November 1934, intending it as the culmination of his literary work — a direct transmission of what he called 'the previously unknown mysteries of the inner world of man' — but abandoned it abruptly in April 1935 and never returned to it. His family published it at the urging of Jeanne de Salzmann, who provides a foreword explaining the circumstances and Gurdjieff's final instructions to her before his death. Where the First Series was designed to destroy rooted beliefs and the Second to provide new material, the Third was intended to assist the arising of a genuine, non-fantastic perception of reality. De Salzmann's foreword makes clear that the book was conceived not as doctrine but as a living instrument — chapters to be read aloud in Gurdjieff's presence at precise moments to bring pupils face to face with their inner contradictions. Incomplete as it is, the text opens with Gurdjieff interrogating his own capacity for self-remembering, and stands as one of his most intimate and searching documents.