So, Gurdjieff is saying that we will play our part in the cosmic food chain. It is admittedly an odd theory. Yet there is something strangely compelling about it. And Gurdjieff is the only thinker who regards these apparently inexplicable things like war and epidemic as being somehow a result of cosmic processes and needs. The most popular New Age books on spirituality are heavy on inspiration and light on discipline.
Maturity is a hard thing to gauge.
A lot of the people who are interested in this phenomenon were people who came of age in the 60s. In the sense that these people are older, the movement has matured. Personally I used to be a lot more critical of the kind of soft, inspirational material that you're talking about. But I've grown less so. More and more it seems to me that life is very difficult today.