An Introduction to Maurice Desselle

“Maurice Desselle was a pupil of Gurdjieff. After Gurdjieff’s death in 1949 he carried on with the transmission of inner Work, alongside such people as Henriette Lannes, Henri Tracol, and other contemporaries, under the guidance of Mme. de Salzmann. In addition to groups which he took in France, he devoted much of his time and energy to groups in England.”

The Work in Life

Notes taken from a weekly meeting on June 6, 1964 in Paris attended by both made by Maurice Desselle and Henri Tracol. “My work will not be in my life except at the moment or moments when I try to understand that I belong to two masters between whom I am never able to choose.”

Georges Gurdjieff: A French Documentary Film

“With him [Gurdjieff], you had an extraordinary impression. When he was speaking with you, you continually had the impression that you were, for him, the only person who existed in the whole world. That is something very rare. One second later he would shift his attention to someone else and you no longer existed but that was normal. It seemed very normal to us. It’s something that everyone, to some extent, has a taste of—this potential which is impossible to realize by oneself—it appeared when you saw that man, when you saw him in himself, complete, missing nothing that was happening, noticing even the tiniest details. It was visible in his carriage, in the way he held himself. He was always very calm, quiet, completely and precisely corresponding to what the moment demanded.”