Education
Ethel Merston first met Gurdjieff in London, through P. Doctorate. Ouspensky and Doctor Maurice Nicoll, and went to France where she lived and studied with Gurdjieff at the Prieuré from 1922-1927.
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Ethel Merston
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She wrote a memoir based on her diaries giving a keen insight into many of the seminal teachers of her times. An energetic worker with organizational and administrative abilities, she managed the school in Mr. Gurdjieff’s absences.
Foreign some years, as Gurdjieff wrote his magnum opus All and Everything, she was one of the principal translators.
Though she left the Institute in 1927, Gurdjieff remained an important influence in her life. Financially independent, she traveled the world, settling in India in 1934.
The great sage Ramana Maharshi was the one she chose as her lifelong guru. She left the village for Ramana Maharshi’s ashram, and was with him until his death in 1950.
In her memoirs she gave a first person account of his death, and also the meeting between The Mother and Anandamayi Ma, with whom she traveled for some time.
Though making India and Ramanasramam her permanent home, she returned to England periodically in the 1950s, living at the Coombe Springs Institute, founded by J. G. Bennett, a former student of Gurdjieff. Returning in 1959 to Ramanasramam, she built a house and lived there until her death in March 1967. A spiritual biography of Ethel Merston was released in 2009, A Woman’s Work with Gurdjieff, Ramana Maharshi, Krishnamurti, Anandamayi Ma & Pak Subuh, by Mary Ellen Korman with a foreword by William Patrick Patterson.
Membership
She first met him while living in a rural village near Benares where for seven years she managed a farm and became a trusted member of the community through her mediation skills, leadership ability and tremendous energy.
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Born
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Died
March 19, 1967 (aged 84)