What Do You Love?
The way of love—is this a path we can follow?
“Follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy.”
– St. Paul, to the Corinthians, 1:14:1.
Love is a much-used word. What do you love? And what do we mean by it, here?
The Fourth Way describes different levels of man. There are men number 1, ruled particularly by their instinctive and moving functions, the doers and workers of the earth. There are men number 2, emotional in focus, who serve often in the arts or human sciences. Men number 3 are intellectual types, drawn by knowledge, and tend to earn a living with ideas. These general centers of gravity in each of us dictate to some extent what we love most.
Man number 4 is a product of work in a school of awakening. He has a center of gravity attuned to what helps him awaken. While man number 5 begins to be a man “not in quotation marks,” as Gurdjieff put it, a man more awake, able to remember himself fully. We will not describe higher levels of man here.
Love must also have levels. All humans experience love of a kind. This includes the instinctive love for children, pets, and family. There is also emotional love for friends, country, and principles. There is an intellectual love of knowledge. Center of gravity affects how deeply we love particular things, but we all can experience most of these. Whereas students in a school of awakening tend most to appreciate and seek glimpses of higher consciousness, higher states.
The Fourth Way makes it clear that man as he is born is not unified. Can a man beset by the many ‘I’s truly love? As P. D. Ouspensky wrote, “In the real meaning of the word, mechanical man cannot love–with him, it loves or it does not love.” When we are not awake, one moment we feel love, but the next moment, it can vanish. A change of mood, of heart, and we are on to another emotion altogether. It takes unity, in fact, to love truly, love objectively.
“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds,
or bends with the remover to remove.”
– William Shakespeare
A man or woman who can bring their instinctive and moving functions, emotions, and thoughts into a harmonious balance can begin to love objectively. This unconditional love begins with a man number four. Further, one who has unified his identity altogether, a state the Fourth Way calls ‘crystallization,’ can love without ceasing, ‘pray’ without ceasing.
In our highest states, consistently channeling the energies of higher worlds, we start to taste a cosmic love. And this is the love that is unwavering, unconditional, lighting the very light.
“Light rare, untellable—lighting the very light!
Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages!
For that, O God—be it my latest word—here on my knees,
Old, poor, and paralyzed—I thank Thee.” – Walt Whitman
Rowena Taylor is one of the editors of FourthWayToday.org. See earlier articles by Rowena here: https://fourthwaytoday.org/author/rowena/.
Alfred Orage was a student of Gurdjieff in the twentieth century. To read Orage’s essay On Love, see: https://www.holybooks.com/on-love-adapted-tibetan-orage/.