During the mid-thirties in Paris, Gurdjieff drew together four women: Solita Solano, Kathryn Hulme, Alice Rohrer and Elizabeth Gordon -- and formed a special, mutually supporting work group.

In allegory he explained: You are going on a journey under my guidance, an "inner-world journey" like a high mountain climb where you must be roped together for safety, where each must think of the others on the rope, all for one and one for all. You must, in short, help each other "as hand washes hand," each contributing to the company according to her lights, according to her means. Only faithful hard work on yourselves will get you where I want you to go, not your wishing.

Among themselves they called their foursome "The Rope."

The company around Gurdjieff's table, his principal teaching site, soon expanded to include Louise Davidson, Margaret Anderson, Georgette Leblanc and Jane Heap.

"The writing of 'The Courage Machine, ' which covers ten years, was retarded by illness. For a long time I lived beside death. But I had a presentiment that something essential -- something foreseen in New York -- would develop for me during these last years. I was not mistaken.

"This book follows an evolution which, for me, is not a curve but an ascending line. There is a beginning and an end; a new beginning, an advance, and a new search; then again an advance -- but this time on an essential plane, where the great events are inner ones."

Georgette Leblanc's first encounter with the celebrated mystic, teacher and philosopher, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, was the turning point of her life. Impressed by his vast knowledge and "unknown doctrine," she attended his Institute at the Chateau du Prieure in Fontainebleau-Avon for two years. From then on, she continued to live according to his principles, absorbing his doctrine more and more deeply. Her effort to incorporate what she had assimilated during her years with Gurdjieff is recorded in the last part of the book.