Between Two Worlds
My Fifty Years in the Gurdjieff Work
James Opie
Foreword by Jeff Zaleski
Paperback
ISBN 9781966608356
$29.95 US
eBook available
May 26, 2026
A memoir of adversity, hope, and the value of the Gurdjieff Work
James Opie’s spiritual autobiography is a story of continuous movement. Episodes of youthful right-wing politics, racism, and drug use move into resistance to the draft and Vietnam, and eventually connect with the teaching of G.I. Gurdjieff. Opie even enters the same line of work that the spiritual master maintained—becoming an Oriental rug dealer. There are travels to Iran and Afghanistan, and colorful characters as Opie plies his trade with distinction. Opie moves through several marriages and other personal turbulence. Fourteen years in a Gurdjieff center in Oregon come to an end in 1988 when Opie runs afoul of the motherly but overbearing leader of “The Farm.” But by then he has spoken with Madame Jeanne de Salzmann, Gurdjieff’s most devoted pupil who remained with him until his death in 1949 and for forty-one years worked to transmit his teaching and preserve the content and meaning of the Movements. Opie also learns directly from the leader of the Gurdjieff Work in North America, Lord Pentland. In the end, this memoir-with-Gurdjieff reveals how inner efforts and fortuitous help incrementally make a man more mature and serious, though still remaining a beginner.
James Opie graduated from Ohio University in 1962 and taught in a rural high school for two years before moving to Big Sur, where pot and LSD were readily available. By 1965, LSD “trips” so reoriented his life as to risk being homeless. Moving through this crisis, he discovered the spirituality of Gurdjieff and began to engage in “the Work.” After additional years as a public school teacher, he also began a lucrative Oriental rug business, and began to write. Opie has published several books on Oriental rugs and many articles in Parabola and other magazines. In 2002, he and Jacob Needleman founded The Gurdjieff Foundation of Oregon, where Opie served as president for ten years. During the pandemic, Opie left Oregon with his wife and moved to upstate New York where he continues to write and enjoy many in-person and virtual contacts, including ties in the Gurdjieff world.
“Like Thomas Merton in The Seven Story Mountain and Augustine in his Confessions, Jim Opie bares his sins and personal flaws, giving the text a bracing honesty that creates a baseline from which the reader can assess what effect a half century of inner and outer work have had on the author.” —Jeff Zaleski, editor and publisher of Parabola
“Through the lens of autobiography, James Opie offers us refreshing insights into a profound spiritual path.” —John Shirley, author of Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas
“I found your book as engaging as a gripping novel.” —Beresford Parlett, Professor Emeritus of Pure and Applied Mathematics, the University of California at Berkeley
“In Jim Opie’s writings, personal narratives point the way toward the fundamental questions of life, and answers we all may find.” —Jacob Needleman (d. 2022), philosopher, scholar, mystic
“‘What makes a man is his ability to question himself’—words from Michel de Salzmann recorded in this book and speaking to what the book is. Reaching a plateau from which he could view his life as a whole, Jim Opie shares the joys and sorrows, luminous encounters and instructive errors that have been his lot for a half-century. I have long known Jim as an expert on Middle Eastern carpets—but I didn’t realize that he nearly belonged for years to the weaving and merchant communities of Afghanistan and Iran. I have known Jim as a seeker of truth in the full Gurdjieffian meaning of those words—but until reading this book I couldn’t trace his itinerary among people and places, some little known and well worth knowing. This is the record of a multi-colored life, well-woven.” —Roger Lipsey, author of Gurdjieff Reconsidered
