Master Disaster: The Inner Lives of Gurdjieff, Meher Baba, Idries Shah, Omar Ali-Shah and Mother Meera

How do you write a book about teachers one never studied under? Expensive waste.

How could the author combine so different people together?This alone is an indicator that he is a rather slapdash observer. Most of the characters are obvious cheats or at least lost souls, and about the psychological mechanisms leading Westerners and others to be conned, one can read much better expositions than this sketchy superficiality. Tahir Shah (son of Idries Shah) wrote an excellent book "Godman" which reads like a nice book of fiction but describes deeper truths (as he and his father do in their other books). In Gurdjieff there was something, an introduction of Eastern wisdom for naive Westerners, and this one is best introduced in the format of a travelogue "The Teachers of Gurdjieff". The real teacher in this group was Idries Shah, and he wrote dozens of books, translated into dozens of languages and selling in millions of copies in many countries. A most scholarly presentation was recently published in EIGHT volumes as "Idries Shah Centenary" but it is probably not for a beginner. The beginner should either get one of his books of teaching stories, or if you are a more serious reader, then get his "Knowing How to Know" or "The Commanding Self" with questions and answers, lectures plus teaching stories.