The Fourth Way and Esoteric Traditions
Do we allow the reality of what is happening to force us into in a state of fear and instinctive desperation? Or do we use these difficult times to better understand that we are, in essence, spiritual beings?
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Sometimes a wordless presence enters and shows us the ideal state we seek. Living at Plato’s Academy This is no theory. It happened to me. I was a 19-year old sophomore student at Stanford, living in a boarding house off campus called Plato’s Academy (that’s what we called it!). The time: circa 1963, during civil […]
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Plato’s principles of the ideal state apply to our inner world as well. Are we able to form a deputy steward to govern the city? To recognize the true ruler, to enable higher states to visit us?
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A Practical Choice How do we arrive at a ‘right location’ for our inner work in the Fourth Way? Horace, a Roman poet at the time of Augustus Caesar, said, “In adversity, remember to keep an even mind.” This is not just poetic or philosophical advice. It implies a practical choice to be made: where […]
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True earth arrests true lead;True lead controls true mercury.Lead and mercury return to true earth;Body and mind are tranquil and still.— Zhang Boduan, Four-Hundred Words on the Golden Elixir This little verse contains everything one needs to know to awaken. However, understanding the meaning is not an easy task and requires a conscious teacher. And […]
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Your own search may lead you to ask the question: what is our existence? You will have to find the answer yourself, feeling it by your own true sense within. Obstacles to understanding the meaning of life are many, and exist both in the external world and in our relationships to things. Further, our own identifications […]
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Who is this ‘I’ one calls oneself? My teacher recently said to us, “Remember, anything that says ‘I’ is not you.” When first reading about the division into ‘I’ and ‘David’, I did not understand it exactly. Fortunately, it was clear what we were to avoid. When we begin the work, the tendency is to […]
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When we talk about freedom, we’re speaking about the work an individual does to become free of unnecessary laws. Man as a Microcosmos of the Universe In order to understand this, it is first necessary to see man as a microcosmos. Man is a microcosmos because, like the universe, he has within him layers of […]
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In the Fourth Way, separation of oneself from oneself is a key step to inner development. If we are at the mercy of our own thoughts, impulses, and emotions, we cannot step onto the path of awakening for very long. Seeing the real and unreal in ourselves requires discrimination born of this separation. Gurdjieff, 1923: As long as […]
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Towards a More Real ‘I’ – the Changing Sense of Self through Work in the Fourth Way What is this changing sense of self that can come in the work, and how does it relate to a real ‘I’? Gurdjieff: Liberation is the aim of all schools, all religions, at all times. This liberation can indeed be […]
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