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What is The Fourth Way?
Gurdjieff's mission was to bring a method of self-development, based on a powerful ancient teaching, to the West. He said:
“The Fourth Way is a teaching for our time and one which is whole and complete in itself and never before known up to our present day.”
The aim of The Fourth Way is a high and noble aim:
“If a man develops in himself a permanent ‘I’ that can survive a change in external conditions, it can then survive the death of the physical body. The secret is that one cannot work for a future life without working for this life. If a man can become the master of his life he may become the master of his death.”
“In the ordinary conditions of cultured life the position of a man, even an intelligent man, who is seeking for knowledge, is hopeless, because, in the circumstances surrounding him there is nothing resembling either fakir or yogi schools, while the religions of the West have degenerated to such an extent that for a long time there has been nothing alive in them."
"The Fourth Way requires no retirement into the desert, does not require a man to give up and renounce everything by which he formerly lived. This means that a man must be prepared for the Fourth Way through being involved in ordinary life, fulfilling the requirements and embracing all conditions.”
“Then in the Fourth Way the first principle is that man must not believe anything; he must learn; so faith does not enter the Fourth Way. One must not believe in what one hears or what one is advised, one must find proofs for everything. If one is convinced that something is true, then one can believe it, but not before.”
“People believe or disbelieve when they are too lazy to think. You have to choose, you have to be convinced. You are told that you must remember yourself, but it would be wrong for you to remember yourself because you are told. You must realize that you are doing it for yourself, not because somebody told you.”
Because of the friction of ordinary life, the Fourth Way can be the shortest route of all to self-realization:
“It can be the shortest of all, because more knowledge enters into it. The Fourth Way is sometimes called the way of the ‘sly’ man”.
This means that the ‘sly’ man chooses the path which provides the most intelligent but often the most indirect route, and for this knowledge has to be available.
“Thanks to this the Fourth Way affects simultaneously every side of man’s life, man’s being. It is working on all three aspects at the same time. (The fakir works on the physical; the monk on the emotional; and the yogi on the mental.)”
“What is similar in all the ways is the possibility of ‘changing being’. If you think of all that makes up being, such as wrong work of centres, identification, considering, negative emotions, absence of unity and so on, you will understand that all this can be changed in each of the four ways,” (but the Fourth Way strives to produce a balanced and harmonious working of all aspects.)
“The more a man understands what he is doing, the greater will be the results of his efforts. This is a fundamental principle of the Fourth Way. The results of the work are in proportion to the consciousness of the work.”
“Furthermore, the Fourth Way has no definite forms like the ways of the fakir, the monk, and the yogi. And first of all it has to be found. This is the first test. It is not as well known as the three traditional ways. There are many people who have never heard of the Fourth Way and there are others who deny its existence or possibilities.”
Frank Pinder has said this about the work of Gurdjieff:
“Gurdjieff came to sound a big ‘Doh’ – to help the up-flow of the law of seven, against the current of mechanical life. Gurdjieff came to give us a new world – a new idea of God, of the purpose of life, of sex, of war. But who are ‘Us’.
‘Us’ are those who accept him and his teaching and help to carry out this work. This world of ours cannot be saved in our measure of time. Had it been possible it would have been ‘saved’ long ago by prophets and teachers who have been sent.
Those who look for the world to be saved by a single teacher in a given time are shirking their own responsibility. They wait in the hope of a ‘second coming’ with no effort on their part – indulging in the disease of ‘Tomorrow’”.
Extracts taken from the books of P.D. Ouspensky:
In Search of the Miraculous
and
The Fourth Way
Last updated 14.02.08 | site design copyright © 2008 Sirian Designs