Editing George Gurdjieff (section)

===First car accident, writing and visits to North America===
{{anchor|First car accident, writing and visits to America}}
Starting in 1924, Gurdjieff made visits to North America, where he eventually received the pupils taught previously by A. R. Orage. In 1924, while driving alone from Paris to [[Fontainebleau]], he had a near-fatal car accident. Nursed by his wife and mother, he made a slow and painful recovery against all medical expectations. Still convalescent, he formally "disbanded" his institute on 26 August (in fact he dispersed only his "less dedicated" pupils) which he expressed was a personal undertaking: "in the future, under the pretext of different worthy reasons, to remove from my eyesight all those who by this or that make my life too comfortable".<ref>Life is Only Real then, when 'I Am'</ref>{{incomplete citation|date=March 2025}}

While recovering from his injuries and still too weak to write himself, he began to dictate his magnum opus, ''Beelzebub's Tales'', the first part of ''All and Everything'', in a mixture of Armenian and Russian. The book is generally found to be convoluted and obscure and forces the reader to "work" to find its meaning. He continued to develop the book over some years, writing in noisy cafes which he found conducive for setting down his thoughts.{{cn|date=March 2025}}

Gurdjieff's mother died in 1925 and his wife developed cancer and died in June 1926. Ouspensky attended her funeral. According to the writer Fritz Peters, Gurdjieff was in New York from November 1925 to the spring of 1926, when he succeeded in raising over $100,000.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Taylor |first=Paul Beekman |title=Gurdjieff's America |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=50w1tPTV0EEC&pg=PA103 |page=103 |year=2004 |isbn=978-1-904998-00-6 |quote=What Gurdjieff was doing during the winter of 1925–1926...|publisher=Lighthouse Editions Ltd }}</ref> He was to make six or seven trips to the US, but alienated a number of people with his brash and impudent demands for money.

A Chicago-based Gurdjieff group was founded by [[Jean Toomer]] in 1927 after he had trained at the Prieuré for a year. [[Diana Huebert]] was a regular member of the Chicago group, and documented the several visits Gurdjieff made to the group in 1932 and 1934 in her memoirs on the man.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|url=https://www.scribd.com/doc/253516461/Diana-Faidy-Reminiscences-of-My-Work-With-Gurdjieff|title=Diana Faidy – Reminiscences of My Work with Gurdjieff|last=Faidy|first=Diana|access-date=12 February 2019}}</ref>

Despite his fund-raising efforts in America, the Prieuré operation ran into debt and was shut down in 1932. Gurdjieff constituted a new teaching group in Paris. Known as The Rope, it was composed of only women, many of them writers, and several lesbians. Members included [[Kathryn Hulme]], [[Jane Heap]], Margaret Anderson and [[Enrico Caruso]]'s widow, Dorothy. Gurdjieff became acquainted with [[Gertrude Stein]] through its members, but she was never a follower.<ref>{{Cite web
| first= Rob | last= Baker | year= 2000
|title=No Harem: Gurdjieff and the Women of The Rope|url=https://www.gurdjieff.org/rope.htm|access-date=2023-03-20|website=www.gurdjieff.org}}</ref>

In 1935, Gurdjieff stopped work on ''All and Everything.'' He had completed the first two parts of the planned trilogy but then started on the ''Third Series.'' (It was later published under the title ''Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am'.'') In 1936, he settled in a flat at 6, {{ill|Rue des Colonels-Renard|fr|vertical-align=sup}} in Paris, where he was to stay for the rest of his life. In 1937, his brother Dmitry died, and The Rope disbanded.{{cn|date=March 2025}}