Meetings with Remarkable Men

The second series of Gurdjieff's All and Everything trilogy, presenting his early life and travels as a young seeker in search of genuine esoteric knowledge. Through a series of vivid portraits of extraordinary individuals he encountered — dervishes, scientists, priests, musicians, and explorers — Gurdjieff traces the formation of the ideas and impressions that would eventually crystallize into his teaching. The book is both memoir and allegory, its 'remarkable men' embodying different aspects of the search for truth and different qualities of being. Gurdjieff frames the book with an ancient saying about preserving both the wolf and the sheep — the instinctive-reflex and the feeling life — under the governance of thinking, which he takes as a statement of the fundamental aim of inner development. Written in his characteristic style of elaborate digression and layered meaning, the book is more accessible than Beelzebub's Tales and has introduced many readers to his world. It was later adapted into a film by Peter Brook.