One of the foundational pillars for work in the Fourth Way is verification. You are not to accept or reject anything until you can verify it for yourself. This is part of what makes the Fourth Way a journey to self-knowledge and conscious life.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the 18th century statesman, poet, and scientist, stated, “Men need to be taught that beauty is a necessity.” Esoterically, we could interpret this as “Men need to be taught that presence is a necessity”–for consciousness.

There are concepts in the Fourth Way that we can verify at once. Are we dividing attention while reading this? Can we refrain from expressing negative emotions? Given all the writing in the Fourth Way about the different lower centers, have we observed that we are four brains, in fact, and not just one? Are we using the tools we have to awaken?

Peter Ouspensky stated that a school is for people who need it and know that they need it. It is reasonable, then, that one of the most important verifications anyone interested in awakening can make is that a school is necessary for the development of consciousness.

As P. D. Ouspensky wrote, in In Search of the Miraculous, “As soon as a man awakens for a moment and opens his eyes, all the forces that caused him to fall asleep begin to act upon him with tenfold energy and he immediately falls asleep again, very often dreaming that he is awake or is awakening.”

We can verify by experiencing something is true, and remembering it. If you ask me to prove that higher centers exist, or that you need all three lines of work, or that expressing negative emotions is a weakness, I cannot. No one can verify for another. And there is nothing stopping you from verifying the usefulness of the aforementioned practices. Furthermore, if you do verify these, you will also verify that awakening is a profoundly personal experience.

The accompanying image of St. Veronica with the Veil is from the Catholic tradition. According to legend, Veronica was moved with sympathy seeing Jesus carrying the cross. She offered her veil so that he could wipe his forehead. After he passed along the way, she saw on the veil the image of his face miraculously captured on it. This led to the name Veronica, from the Latin phrase ‘vera icon,’ meaning ‘true image.’

The word ‘verify’ stems from the same root. When we verify the system, we arrive at the ‘true image’ of our condition, that is, the objective truth about the machine and the beautiful truth of our divine Self.

Each man to himself and each woman to herself is the word of  the present, and the true word of immortality;
No one can acquire for another—not one, Not one can grow for another—not one.                                                                    

– Walt Whitman

Charles Robertson has been a student of the Fourth Way for several decades. For another article by Charles, see: https://fourthwaytoday.org/author/charles-robertson/.