Editors’ Note: A student in the Fourth Way today shares what it is like to work towards external considering, an aspect of treating others consciously, in the context of school work.
Working with Others – Moving Past Mechanics
Self‐remembering, the pursuit of presence, is a personal experience. A person cannot nurture and sustain presence entirely by himself. We need other individuals who are working along the same line, with the same valuation of for self-remembering. As explicitly stated by Gurdjieff and Ouspensky:
“A man cannot work alone, and only the combined work of many people together can produce the necessary results.”
“The system is arranged in such a way that you cannot get anything from the first line if you do not work on the second and third lines. In the first line you can get certain ideas, certain information, but after a while, you come to a stop if you do not work on the other two lines.”
We join a school and are happy to meet others. We discover that our internal features or obstacles become more apparent and more exaggerated with other people. Mechanically, we react; we put each other to sleep.
Buddha: As the light of a small candle will spread from one to another in succession, so the light of Buddha’s compassion will pass on from one mind to another endlessly.
Yet school work means learning to help each other awaken. Our mechanical relationships are based on inner considering, and our school relationships are based on external considering.
Studying Inner Considering and Practicing External Considering
According to both Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, external considering is a critical aspect of self‐remembering:
“Only external considering on a man’s part shows his valuation of the work and his understanding of the work, and success in the work is always proportional to the valuation and understanding of it.” – Gurdjieff
“External considering is very important for self‐remembering. If we have not got enough of it, we cannot remember ourselves.” – Ouspensky
Studying inner considering is essential for understanding what we do not want concerning other people. Our focus on externally considering others involves transformation. As Gurdjieff said:
“The chief means of happiness in this life is the ability to consider externally always, internally never.”
Externally considering requires a complete shift of perspective. We are no longer the center of our little universe. We awaken—to see that there are others who are struggling just as we are. Gradually, we see the consequences of our actions on others, and their actions towards us, as an interplay of evolving beings. From this state, from this perspective, it is not about who is right or who is wrong. What is important is whether we are helping each other or veiling each other in negativity and imagination.
External considering is a form of self‐remembering in relation to people. You take other people into account. You do not what is pleasing to you, but what is useful to them. It means you do not walk over people without seeing them. Whereas internal considering means that you walk over them without noticing.
Relationships with Others – Maintaining Presence
The highest form of external considering is relating to each other through higher centers and not lower centers. As people generally connect through the instinctive center, in a school we can learn to relate with purified emotional centers. Without a school, these connections can be accidental and unreliable.
Certainly, external considering cannot exist for an emotional center filled with passions. “Passions” cloud the heart under a veil of imagination. Fortunately, attempting to externally consider, especially when we don’t want to, develops the emotional center. By this effort, we emerge from inner considering, from our private universe, towards the larger world with other evolving beings.
Thus in a state of presence, we desire to help those around us to reach the same state. When present with others, we seek to fortify each other and remain in this state.
As we have been given, thus shall we give. While we have made a commitment, a noble pledge, to realize our higher self, no less must we help the evolving beings working with us realize their higher self.