work has not begun. So, obviously, I can have no part in it.
Moreover, when it does begin I shall view it critically as I
did view the work in 1924; and on the basis of my judgments
I will enter it or not.

In fine, just now I find myself a "free agent". I am again
in my own private life. From this point of view I look back
over what has happened during the past eleven years or twelve
years.

In writing this book I am overcoming several obstacles
in order to fulfill certain definite aims.

The obstacles are mainly two; first, that I am reluctant
to do anything which might in any way give a onesided and there-
for misleading picture of Gurdjieff and his work: students
have a way of misinterpreting the teachers, and it is so easy
for the listener to assume that these misinterpretations are
the original teaching - and thus confusion is put into the
world with the best of intentions; and, second, because in
writing this book I will have to mention not only my relations
with Gurdjieff and his ideas but my relations with those whom
may be called my own students, who came to me as a patient
to a physician and who told me things about their lives in a
confidence which I have never yet violated.

My aims are these. In a sense, I consider the writing
of this book as a continuation, on another plane and through
another medium, of the work I began in 1924. This book is XXX
in the nature of a reflection - I mean, active thinking and
ordering - upon what I experienced and did. By means of this
book I hope to digest what was a very rich and substantial meal.