In the West now the second type of psychology is passing through the birth pains with Abraham Maslow, Eric Fromm, Janov and others. It is a wholistic approach: not thinking in terms of disease but thinking in terms of health; not basically concentrating on pathology but basically concentrating on healthy humanity. The second psychology is being born, but still it is not complete. That’s why I say that it is just in the birth pains, it is coming into the world. Sooner or later it will start growing fast. Only then is the third type of psychology possible. That is why I say that it never existed.

Buddhas have existed, millions of them, but no psychology of the buddhas, because nobody ever tried to search the awakened mind especially to create a scientific discipline out of it. Buddhas have existed, but nobody has tried to understand the phenomenon of Buddhahood in scientific ways.

Gurdjieff was the first man in the whole history of humanity who tried. Gurdjieff was rare in this sense, because he was a pioneer into the third possibility. As it always happens with pioneers, it was difficult, very difficult to penetrate something which had remained always unknown; but he tried. He has brought a few fragments out of darkness, but it became more and more difficult because his greatest disciple, P.D. Ouspensky, betrayed him. There was a difficulty: Gurdjieff himself was a mystic not versed in the world of science; he was not a scientific mind. He was a mystic, he was a buddha. The whole effort depended on P.D. Ouspensky because he was a scientific man: one of the greatest mathematicians ever born and one of the most profound thinkers this century has known. The whole thing depended on Ouspensky. Gurdjieff was to sow the seeds and Ouspensky was to work it out, define it, philosophize it, make scientific theories out of it. It was to be a constant cooperation between the master and the disciple. Gurdjieff could sow, but he could not put it in scientific terms and he could not put it in such a way that it could become a discipline. He knew what it was but the language was lacking.

With Ouspensky the language was there, absolutely perfect. I don’t see another comparison – Ouspensky could write so perfectly that even an Albert Einstein would feel jealous. He had really a very trained, logical mind. You must read one of his books, the Tertium Organum. It is a rare phenomenon. Ouspensky says in the book, just in the beginning, “There are only three books in the world: one is Aristotle’s Organon, the first organ of thought; the second is Bacon’s Novum Organum, the second principle of thought; and the third is my Tertium Organum.” Tertium Organum means the third canon of thought. Ouspensky says – and when he says this he is not proud or egoistic or anything, “Even before the two existed, the third was in existence.” He says in Tertium Organum, “I am bringing the very base of all knowledge.” And it is not egoistic; the book is really rare.

The whole effort of Gurdjieff depended on a deep cooperation between Ouspensky and himself. He was to lead and Ouspensky was to formalize it, to formulate it, to give it a structure. The soul was to come from Gurdjieff and the body was to be supplied by Ouspensky, and Ouspensky betrayed him in the middle. He simply left Gurdjieff. That was always a possibility because he was such an intellectual and Gurdjieff was absolutely anti-intellectual. It was almost an impossibility that they would continue their cooperation.