Seeing What is in Front of Us
When we experience true seeing, the temporal, fugitive, and fleeting human being touches the eternal. This very act of self-awareness in a given moment ennobles us and produces eternity.
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Reality as Higher Centers
The inner work that leads to a connection to higher centers is individual and takes patience, struggle, and time. There are no shortcuts in this work because it follows natural laws. It is not a way that ends with a single revelatory experience. The achievement of this system is a regular connection with higher centers, and that requires a buildup of a particular energy, and that energy is subject to organic laws.
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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 […]
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Using Intellectual Parts of Centers
How do we use the highest parts of ourselves to work towards awakening, and rest when needed? Intellectual parts of centers need to work together for us to truly remember ourselves. The Four Lower Centers Fourth Way authors alert us to the fact that we have seven brains, rather than one. Two of them function in times […]
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Fourth Way Authors on Movement and Sleep
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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Sharing the Light in our Work with Others
How do we work with sharing the light with others? The Wish to Prolong Presence The human machine is a wonderful invention. It is a machine that can produce consciousness. That consciousness has degrees. It can be closer or further away from what Gurdjieff and Ouspensky called the second state, or day-dream state. Some higher […]
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Ouspensky on The Three Lines of Work
Three Lines of Work in a School The following outline is from Ouspensky’s The Fourth Way: The first line is work on oneself: self-study, study of the system, and trying to change at least the most mechanical manifestations. This is the most important line. The second line is work with other people. One cannot work by […]
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The Concept of a School’s Task
In Search of the Miraculous Why, when we travel or study, do such monuments as the Sphinx, the pyramids and temples of Egypt, the Parthenon, Delphi, and statues of Greece attract us emotionally and psychologically? Because they are miraculous. Monuments like these tell us stories and show us truths beyond our scope. They bring a clarity […]
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What Do You Want?
The Question “To be or not to be” may be the question. However, what do you want? Reading this, likely you have a sort of awakening aim, in whatever terms you couch it. You have your aim: you want to wake up, be more awake, be self-aware, conscious. That aim is in place, with subsidiary aims, likely. […]
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Real Life in a Fourth Way School
What is the Aim of a School? The aim of a Fourth Way school is to help people to awaken from the state of sleep in which they spend their whole life. The first step is becoming more deeply aware of this sleep in one’s daily life. Ouspensky said, “Schools exist only for those who need […]
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