Collections of essays, articles, and reviews under the title Material for Thought were published sporadically under the direction of John Pentland by members of the Gurdjieff Foundation of California from 1972 until 2000. Those who produced it were concerned with an inner search for meaning and in their own words they ask: "What does it mean to be practical, spiritually? Surely the real sense of community, so universally wished for, cannot exist without each of us learning to think.” These periodicals, published in limited numbers, are now rare and out of print. Here are the highlights for this issue.

• Fragment - Attributed to St. Ephraim of Syria

• Excerpts from a Conference at the Gurdjieff Foundation in San Francisco - The Inner Search in Everyday Life

• Gurdjieff and the Metaphysics of Human Relationship - Jacob Needleman

• Beyond Beauty: An Interview with Paul Reynard

• An Invitation Declined

• Where Is Buddhism Now? - Stuart Smithers

• The Presence of Life - Mary Stein

• From the Mat to the Street - Richard Hodges

• Hadji Gholamreza Rahimpour of Shiraz - James Opie

• Interspersed excerpts from Episodes with Gurdjieff by Edwin Wolfe