The need for this second edition is a tribute to Gurdjieff and his ideas. It is also a tribute to P.D. Ouspensky, who developed and taught those ideas and was able to relate them to the intellectual, scientific and artistic heritage of mankind. Then, the credit for these concise notes is due to Boris Ferapontoff, who studied their teaching, interpreted it and made it his own, to an extraordinary extent. The very fact that notes of such impressive quality and novelty were possible within six years of Gurdjieff beginning to teach Ouspensky, shows what masterly guides those two were. The need for this second edition is also a tribute to the skill and craftsmanship of the publisher. In preparing this preface for the second edition, I have also taken the opportunity to add an index.

When I worked on the book, I thought that the table of contents, with its fifty-two chapters, would render an index unnecessary. However, as I returned to this volume in the course of my own studies, I found I was wrong. More than I had initially realised, the notes formed an integrated and cross-referenced whole, and the table of contents, although useful, was not sufficient by itself. -From the Preface to the 2nd Edition by Joseph Azize.