The Ideal State Archives - Fourth Way Today

Perfect Harmony – the Ideal State

When we make the movement to divide attention, the certainty of a state emerges—an ideal state of clarity. This is a perfect harmony.

by Benjamin B

External Consideration–a tool for spiritual growth

There are aspects of presence that can play in our favor. One is battling imagination, the many I’s comprising our inner world. A major tool for this struggle is external consideration, the work of being present to another human being.

by William Page

We Always Make a Profit

Can we always make a profit? Toward the end of In Search of the Miraculous, Ouspensky describes a newspaper reporter’s conversation with Gurdjieff at a train station. Gurdjieff made a number of enigmatic statements about business and the Russian Revolution. The reporter asked, “Don’t you make profits, too?” [Gurdjieff] smiled… and said with gravity: “We always make a […]

by Ruth Atkins

The Ideal State & Philosopher Kings

What Plato achieved in the imaginative and conceptual worlds of poetry and philosophy far outshone his achievements in politics. The social ideas outlined in the Republic and his other works referencing the state were largely impracticable, and often seem to verge on fiction.

by Walther Sell

Striving for Justice

If there is ever to be an ideal state, it requires not only a Sage King but also citizens who strive for internal justice. Though there will always be people striving for justice in the external world, if one doesn’t strive for justice in one’s own internal world, nobody else will.

by David Tuttle

School Traditions and the Ideal State

In Hugh James’ book, The Story of Man, the ideal state would transmit higher values to citizens to enable them to fulfill their possibilities.

by Ernst Newman

Wishing You the Ideal State

Plato’s ideal state was never meant to include everyone, only those who support it. In Athens there were many who wanted Socrates put to death. Internally, the many I’s will never really support self-remembering. Only a small inner circle of work I’s will promote the presence of higher centers.

by Natassa Cavalli

Working Towards the Ideal State

Working within the Fourth Way towards an ideal state, my soul grows up. It rests on a steward that aspires to balance the functions of the four lower centers. A true steward works from the intellectual part of the emotional center. This part is now my acquired center of gravity, from where my work on self-remembering springs. […]

by Patricia Stahl

Uncreated Light and Plato

Presence is the illumination of our soul’s efforts to re-member itself. It is the revelation of the divine nature of a human being. It can be the lighting up of an individual’s life with the eternal matrix of being from which the soul springs. This is the uncreated light from which it was born.

by Steve M

The State of “Good Householder”

We need a community where practical external good householder is developed. How can this be done? Through the creation of beauty that leads to internal good householder. And this produces an inner sun of harmonious action in the present.