The Fourth Way and Esoteric Traditions
Self-remembering is awareness of the presence of God. – Rodney Collin This may be a surprising statement for some people that are involved in the Fourth Way. Some feel that the power of Fourth Way is that it stays away from religion and focuses on the psychological and spiritual aspects of awakening. One reason that people who became […]
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The very idea of finding one’s self is problematic because we are the never the same. If you think you have found yourself—a solid, unchanging self—wouldn’t that imply that you’ve stopped growing?
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How does self-observation develop our sense of I? A Sequence of Work ‘I’s Once, during an elementary school break, as I now remember, I started playing hide and seek with children from all six grades in the school. Then an older girl yelled at me: “What are you doing in the game? Cockroach! Eh, cockroach! […]
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Work in the Fourth Way requires efforts–but sometimes higher states come of themselves. We can term our efforts ‘Created Light,’ and those of presence coming on its own—‘Uncreated Light.’
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How do our patterns of movement and sleep interact? Seminal Fourth Way authors G. Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky describe how unnecessary movement and sleep–our old patterns–pose obstacles for one seeking consciousness. P.D. Ouspensky, from A Record of Meetings: The Role of the Moon in Mechanical Movement and Sleep At present all our movements depend on […]
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The author describes how, in a school of awakening, one uses methods to develop a steward to empower ‘Real I.’ We may wonder each moment, where are we going? When this question touches on our need for divine guidance, it can be a moment of awakening. Gurdjieff writes that all phenomena in life arise from […]
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The author describes how the tools of scale and relativity help us awaken from sleep, to reach an awareness that is more in touch with reality. Our Changing Connection with Reality Our inner lives comprise moments of varying profundity or depth. Depending on the activity at hand, the mood we are in, or the influence […]
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A School Requires Special Efforts It is not necessary to awaken to satisfy all the demands of life on the planet earth. Consequently, awakening requires that one make efforts beyond those one would make in life. This is the idea of “super-effort.” Ouspensky describes, in In Search of the Miraculous (page 347), when a man, after […]
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Editor’s Note: Studying objective symbols such as the four heavenly gods in Buddhism, one can better understand the concept of the four “kings” of centers in the Fourth Way today. The Four Kings of Centers and the Four Heavenly Kings One of the basic concepts of the Fourth Way is the idea that man has […]
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Editor’s Note: In the Fourth Way today, how do we untie the Gordian knot of sleep? How can lower centers convey messages from higher states? And what role does objective art or music play in awakening? Objective Art, Beauty and the King of Hearts How does an artist use the various lower centers—instinctive, moving, emotional and […]
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