Table Of ContentIn 1923 Kenneth Walker met a
man who was destined to exert
an immense influence over his
life, P. D. Ouspensky who, in
turn, had learnt his knowledge
from Gurdjieff.
This book, first published in
1951 and out of print for many
years, sets out to give an
account of the impact of this
knowledge on a man who had
received an orthodox scientific
education and who was in no
way a searcher for esoteric
truth. It is a chronicle of a
journey through the bewildering
inner world of ideas, a journey
made by the author with two
remarkable men. It is a search
for truth.
Venture with Ideas has
undoubtedly an important
message for humanity in this
critical period of its history.
Jacket design by
EVE BLOOMFIELD
SBN 85435 291 0
VENTURE
WITH IDEAS
by
KENNETH WALKER
£ •
NEVILLE SPEARMAN
LONDON
FIRST PUBLISHED 1951’
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED IN 1973
BY NEVILLE SPEARMAN LIMITED,
I 12 WHITFIELD STREET, LONDON WIP 6dP
BY ARRANGEMENT WITH JONATHAN CAPE LTD
© KENNETH WALKER 195 I
SBN 85435 291 O
Dewey Classification
149-3
:
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
REDWOOD PRESS LIMITED, TROWBRIDGE, WILTSHIRE
USING CAXTON ANTIQUE WOVE SUPPLIED BY
FRANK GRUNFELO LTD., LONDON
BOUND BY MANSELL BOOKBINDERS LTD., LONDON
CONTENTS
F O R E W O R D
T nis book requires an explanation and it is in the
foreword that this should be given. In 1946 my
publishers were good enough to re-issue a book of
mine which, written and published several years previously
under the title of The Intruder, was both out of print and out
of date. It reappeared under a fresh name after having
been largely rewritten. To cursory readers the new book, I
Talk of Dreams, appeared to be only a rather light-hearted
autobiography but those with more discernment realized
that its autobiographical details were only incidental and
that it was primarily a study in psychology. My motive in
writing it was clearly enunciated on the first page, where the
following passage occurred: ‘This book is a record of some
of the writer’s own mechanisms. Like a teacher of biology
1 illustrate the laws of living by showing them at work on
the actual animal, but in this case I am not only the demon
strator but the object which he demonstrates. In short, I
am my own rabbit.’ A condition had been attached by
Jonathan Gape to the re-issuing of my former work, namely,
that it should be brought up to date; instead of ending in
1925 as The Intruder had done, the new book should end in
the year 1946.
What could be more reasonable and natural than this
condition and yet it was one which it was impossible for me
to fulfil. In 1923 I met a man who was destined to exert an
Immense influence over my life, P. D. Ouspensky, the author
of Terlium Organum and A New Model of the Universe. Ouspen-
■ ky was well known as a writer but what was not generally
known was that he was also the exponent of a special system
ol knowledge which he had previously learnt from Gurdjielf.
I attended the private meetings at which he expounded this
teaching from 1923 till 1947s the year of his death, and I gave
9
FOREWORD
him the promise which he exacted of all his followers, namely,
that nothing that was learnt at his meetings should be
spoken about in public or allowed to appear in print. How
then could I possibly bring my autobiography up to date
and at the same time leave out of it what was of such great
importance to me, the system of knowledge I had obtained
from Ouspensky? My publishers, without knowing the real
reason for my difficulty, were so considerate as to rescue me
from the dilemma in which I found myself by waiving the
condition they had made.
The recent publication of Ouspensky’s and Gurdjieff’s
books, In Search of the Miraculous and All and Everything, have
now freed me from my old promise and I am at liberty to
reveal what previously had to be kept silent. There is no
further need for me to stop abruptly in the development of a
line of thought because it begins to encroach on ideas I
learnt from Ouspensky. I am no longer obliged to erase
from time to time what I have already written on the grounds
that it has a too close affinity to Ouspensky’s teaching. For
the first time for well-nigh thirty years I am free to write
whatever I care to write and I am conscious of a new and
unaccustomed sense of freedom. In my opinion the system
of knowledge taught by Ouspensky and Gurdjieff is of such
value that it merits the widest possible publicity and it is
this conviction of mine which has prompted me to write this
present book. I have called it Venture with Ideas on the
grounds that a venture is an enterprise on which the adven
turer sets out without being able to foretell what will be its
outcome. The voyage of discovery on which I embarked
light-heartedly nearly thirty years ago was certainly of this
nature and it has proved to be as rich in unexpected incidents
and hazards as the journey I made as a younger man
through what at that time was a little-known part of Africa.
For it is a grave mistake to look upon ideas as passive
instruments of the mind which we can use for a period and
io
FOREWORD
then, when we have grown tired of them, throw aside. They
are powerful agents capable of taking possession of us and of
propelling us in a direction in which, at the beginning, we
had no desire to go. There are ideas so powerful indeed that
they are capable of destroying us body and soul, as the
speculations of Engels and Marx and the idea of the sanctity
of the state have destroyed many men and women who have
been rash enough to lend them their credence. It is because
I now realize how potent are the ideas I received from Ou-
spensky and Gurdjieff that I look upon my past association
with these two remarkable men as having been a great
psychological hazard. Venture with Ideas is therefore an
appropriate title for the book that is to follow.
It is not my intention to give an account of Gurdjieff’s
system of knowledge and for two reasons. The first is that
knowledge of this kind is imparted orally and in accordance
with the standing of the pupil. The second is that those
ideas in Gurdjieff’s system of knowledge which are of a more
general nature have already been published in Ouspensky’s
book, In Search of the Miraculous and in Gurdjieff’s own
allegorical work, All and Everything. It is to these that the
reader must therefore turn if he requires more detailed
information on the subject of Gurdjieff’s teaching. I have a
different object in writing this book. It is to give an account
of the impact of this knowledge on a man who had received
an orthodox scientific education and who was in no way a
searcher for esoteric truth, the man in question being myself.
The very term ‘esoteric truth’ would have elicited a smile
or a shrug of the shoulders had it been uttered in my presence
prior to my meeting with Ouspensky. Like Bertrand Russell,
a far cleverer person than myself, I believed that the scientific
method was the only instrument by which it was possible to
discover truth. The idea that there existed an underground
trickle of knowledge which from time to time made its way
to the surface and then plunged underground again would
11
FOREWORD
have appeared to me to be utterly fantastic. Yet when I now
look back at the history of Western knowledge and note the
appearance from time to time of some teacher who gathers
around him a circle of disciples, imparts knowledge to them
for a few years, and then either dies or disappears, I see no
way of explaining these events other than by the term
‘esoteric knowledge’. I am referring to such teachers as
Pythagoras, Appoionias of Tyana, Ammonius Sacca, the
teacher of Plotinus, St. Martin, generally known as ‘le
philosophe inconnu, and a long line of other men whose
names have now been forgotten. And the fact that the
memory of these teachers of esoteric truth so rapidly fades
is the second and more important reason for my under
taking this book. I wish to give an account of a modern
representative of this long line of teachers, of a man known
only to a comparative few and who in his own book gives
the following description of himself. ‘He who in childhood
was called “Tatakh”; in early youth “Darky”; later “the
Black Greek”; in middle age, the “Tiger of Turkestan”; and
now, not just anybody but the genuine “Monsieur” or
“Mister” Gurdjieff, or the “nephew of Prince Mukransky”,
or finally, simply a “Teacher of Dances”.’
It is therefore to Gurdjieff, the most astonishing man I
have ever met, the man from whom I have learnt more than
from any other person, that I dedicate this book. To end
this foreword with the customary Latin tag, ‘Requiescat in
pace would be singularly inappropriate. To whatever
sphere Gurdjieff s spirit has been called, it does not rest
there, but continues instead the struggle which it began long
ago upon earth, the struggle to reach a higher level of being.
Little London
1950
12
