Gurdjieff said that the Fourth Way is a process of personal evolution which consists of four recognisable stages. The aim, he said, is to be ‘born’, which is a rediscovery of essence, and its growth into an individuality and the beginning of real ‘I’.

But he explained that, in order to be ‘born’, one must first ‘die’, which means to free oneself from all petty attachments and identifications. What are these attachments and identifications? They are attachments to imaginations, insults and opinions of others, to one’s own ego, to one’s own strengths and failings, even to one’s sufferings, possibly to one’s own sufferings more than to anything else.

But before one can ‘die’, one must ‘awaken’. And indeed, awakening helps one to deal with all those attachments and identifications. Because they are nothing more than groups of ‘I’s. Every subject of your thoughts is surrounded by its own set of ‘I’s in you. To be awake means that your observer can see these ‘I’s as ‘I’s occurring inside you. Awakening means that you can (begin to) observe that “you” are not one person but that you are just those many ‘I’s.

To awaken means to know how utterly false and mechanical you are. Not merely to recognise the truth of it but to actually see, feel, and be confronted with it every minute of your life. And – to accept that.

This is called “recognising your own nothingness”. Only when you recognise you’re own nothingness, without lamenting it or being depressed about it, but simply accepting the fact, only then can you say you have awakened.

But in order to awaken you first have to know that you are asleep. Being asleep means believing all your ‘I’s about yourself. And of course if you believe those ‘I’s, you are probably believing thousands of other ‘I’s about other things as well.

Work an awakening is a very long process of continually discovering one more group of ‘I’s that you had not seen before, and separating from them.

So we have the four stages: 1) Knowing you are asleep; 2) Awakening; 3) Dying; and 4) Being born again

These stages are not entirely separate. Knowing you are asleep in one area of your life leads to awakening – but in that area only. This goes on, so that you are awake in one area but not in another. Similarly, being able to give up one’s attachments in one area of life (‘dying’ to it), does not mean dying to everything, though it does make the next time easier.

And indeed, you may sense the inklings of being ‘born’ before you have succeeded in all areas of sleep, awakening and dying. It does not mean your work is over, but it does give you encouragement to go on.

The work never ceases. You will be working on yourself for the rest of your life.

John Stubbs is the author of “Inner Connections”, available on Amazon.