Coming the book from a couple of members of the Gurdjieff's group,and covering a 20 years period it has a lot of information.Being also incomplete and subjective it is of interest as a history of the good and bads moments spent with Gurdjieff.

It's a pity this is out-of-print; it's a gem if you can find it. The De Hartmann's became acolytes of the later-to-be-world-famous guru Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff just prior to the First World War. Thomas De Hartmann was an officer in the Imperial Guards, a position of some wealth and position in Imperial Russia. As world war gave way to revolution the De Hartmann's, together with Gurdjieff's other followers, including the famous P.D. Ouspensky, fled from St. Petersburg to Turkey as civil war ebbed and flowed around them.

This is an off-hand adventure story told as part of spiritual quest. The matter-of-fact tone belies the wild subject matter. The narrative is chiefly concerned with the mysterious Mr. Gurdjieff, author of such spiritual classics as 'All and Everything', 'Meetings with Remarkable Men', and 'Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson'. Though Gurdjieff never quite emerges fully this is part of the fascination of the story, which ends with his death at the Priory outside Paris after the Second World War.

The books starts from when Thomas de Hartmann met Gurdjieff in 1916 in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and ends in 1924 in France at du Prieure soon after the first voyage to America and Gurdjieff's near death accident. Thomas De Hartmann was an officer in the Imperial Guards and when he met Gurdjieff he was already a known composer. As the Second World War paved way to the October revolution the de Hartmann's, together with some of Gurdjieff's other followers travelled from Petrograd through Caucasus eventually to arrive in Constantinople in 1920.

Part of the contents are written by Olga de Hartmann, who later became Gurdjieff's long time secretary and took down notes of his books. She describes some of the 'special assignments' from her teacher.

'Our Life' appeals to the emotions rather than the intellect. If you are looking for ideas you may be disappointed. But there are many examples of Work in the book. Unlike Ouspensky who wrote about ideas from the same time in 'In Search of the Miraculous', Thomas de Hartmann describes many of the emotions he and his wife experienced in their 'escape to the West'.

Thomas de Hartmann's great achievement was to compose with Gurdjieff appr. 300 pieces of music - almost all of them for the Movements and Sacred Dances. Some of the late music he wrote down after Gurdjieff's death.