The being of two people can be more different from each other than the being of a mineral and an animal.  – G. I. Gurdjieff 

The idea of states of being is an esoteric one. 

Human life is not lived from one fixed inner condition. A person passes through many states during the course of a day: moments of clarity, imagination, identification, fear, resentment, attention, distraction, vanity, sincerity, friction, and sleep.

A person may say, “I was angry,” “I was anxious,” “I was distracted,” or “I was more present then,” but he may not see that these are not merely passing moods. They are indications of different states from which life is being met.

The same event may be experienced in one way from a lower state of being and in an entirely different way from a higher one. What overwhelms a person in one state may be observable in another state.  What creates resentment in one state may become material for work in a higher state.

The Fourth Way holds the promise of raising one’s state of being, first in brief moments, then more regularly, and eventually with a degree of permanence. This is not simply a matter of acquiring ideas or adopting a philosophy. It is a practical work on the whole of oneself. The aim is not only to think differently, but to live differently.

In the Fourth Way, ordinary psychology is often described as a study of mechanics. The person lives under the influence of the automatic mechanics of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse, imagination, and reaction. The machine one is born with has its own habits. It reacts before it understands, and speaks inwardly before it listens. It imagines before it sees, and identifies before it observes.

Even our suffering is experienced through mechanical reactions. A person is taken by fear, resentment, self-pity, anger, anxiety, or inner argument, and believes these movements to be himself. He does not say, “A reaction is occurring in me.” He says, “I am angry,” “I am hurt,” “I am right,” “I cannot bear this.” In that moment, he is identified. He is not separate from the mechanical responses taking place in him.

One sign of a raised state of being is the ability to transform periods of friction or suffering. Friction is unavoidable in life. There are disappointments, demands, insults, delays, losses, failures, and misunderstandings. In ordinary states, these frictions deepen identification. They strengthen the familiar sense of ‘I,’ the feeling that life is against me, that others are to blame, that my suffering is special or justified.

But in this work of the Fourth Way, friction can become material for creating being. When suffering is met with self-observation and self-remembering, it is no longer only mechanical suffering. Something in the person begins to stand apart from the automatic reaction. Suffering is still present, but it is not identified with. The reaction is still occurring but not wholly believed. The machine continues to produce its habitual responses, but the person begins to discover that he is not identical with them.

This is the beginning of conscious suffering. Conscious suffering does not mean the pursuit of pain, nor does it mean passively accepting everything that happens. It means meeting unavoidable friction with presence, observation, and non-identification. What would otherwise deepen mechanical sleep may become a means of awakening. Through this transformation, the level of being from which life is met is raised.

A second sign of increased being is the ability to maintain attention to incoming internal and external impressions in a more conscious and continuous way. 

In ordinary life, attention is unstable. It is captured by internal thought, imagination, memory, anticipation, emotion, or by external circumstances. A person is either lost inside himself or pulled outward by events. He forgets himself in both directions.

A higher state of being introduces a different possibility. The person can remain aware of inner activity while also remaining present to the world outside. He can observe thought, emotion, sensation, posture, impulse, and reaction while still seeing the room, hearing another person, responding to circumstances, and remaining connected with the external environment.

This is not mere concentration. Concentration often narrows attention to one point. The attention required in the Fourth Way is broader. It includes both the inner and the outer. One is present to oneself and to the world at the same time. This divided or inclusive attention is central to self-remembering. 

Practical exercises support this work. A person does not begin with grand claims about attaining awakening or permanent being. He begins with small aims.  These aims must be exact enough to verify. For example, he may practice maintaining attention from gazing from one object to another. Or focus on an object in the distance and attempt to maintain attention to that space. If attention fails, the distance is shortened. If it fails again, the distance is shortened further, until a real starting point is found.

This is important because the work must begin where the person actually is, not where he imagines himself to be. If he cannot maintain attention across a long distance, he must begin with a shorter one. If he cannot remember himself for ten minutes, he must begin with one minute, or even with a few seconds. 

The beginning of work is not fantasy about higher states, but honest contact with one’s actual level of being.

All these exercises lead to an increase in control over the lower functions of one’s psychology. This control does not mean suppression. It does not mean forcing oneself into an artificial state or denying the movements of the machine. Rather, it means gradually becoming able to observe and direct the machine instead of being ruled by it.

The lower functions include thought, emotions, bodily habits, sensations, instinctive impulses, imagination, and identification. A person begins to see that these functions operate automatically.  Thoughts arise by association. Emotions are triggered by familiar patterns. The body assumes habitual postures. The voice speaks in accustomed tones. Imagination produces scenes, fears, arguments, and justifications. 

The person begins to understand that what he has called “I” is often only the movement of the machine.

This recognition is the starting point for the Fourth Way. Without it, a person remains under  the illusion that he already possesses unity, will, and consciousness. He believes he is choosing when he is reacting. He believes he is thinking when thought is merely happening within him. He believes he is present when he is lost in imagination. 

Work begins when this illusion is disturbed.

Within a real school, one will also find more experienced students who are able to demonstrate these efforts and give practical guidance in the increase of being. These students have worked long enough to show how certain exercises are approached, how attention is lost, how identification enters, and how small aims can be made more exact.

The work cannot remain theoretical. A person needs examples of effort, correction, verification, and failure.  He needs to see that others are engaged in the same struggle with attention, imagination, reaction, and sleep. Through contact with more experienced students, the work becomes less abstract. It is no longer only an idea about being, but a practical discipline that can be observed, attempted, failed at, and attempted again.

Older students may show him when he is confusing tension with attention, emotional intensity with sincerity, imagination with understanding, or passivity with quietness.  Their help is not the same as the guidance of a conscious teacher, but it is valuable at the earlier stages of work. They help establish the conditions in which a person may begin to verify the teaching for himself.

Beyond these exercises, however, the work moves toward maintaining presence in silence and extending the periods of that ability to “be.” This is a more subtle stage. 

Attention is no longer held only on externals nor only on particular inner processes, but on the silent fact of presence itself. The aim is to remain inwardly collected, awake, and less dependent on the changing movements of thought, emotion, and circumstance.

Here, the danger of imitation becomes greater. A person may easily mistake quietness for being. Or mistake concentration for consciousness, emotional exaltation for awakening, imagination for vision, or self-satisfaction for inner growth. A pleasant inner state may be taken as a higher state. A strong emotion may be mistaken for depth.

For this reason, deeper work requires the guidance of a conscious teacher who has already penetrated higher and more permanent levels of being. Such a teacher is necessary not merely to provide ideas, but to distinguish genuine inner change from the many imitations produced by ordinary psychology. Without this guidance, the machine may turn the work itself into another form of imagination.

Such a teacher opens the doorway to higher states, creating these states as a sign of real work, work that raises our level of being directly.

The Fourth Way therefore begins with the recognition that man lives in changing states of being, most of them mechanical. It proceeds through self-observation, self-remembering, small aims, work with attention, transformation of friction, and increased control over the lower functions. 

School conditions support this work. Further support comes from those who have already made some practical efforts. But its deeper aim is the possibility of a more permanent state of being. That is, a state in which presence is no longer accidental, attention is no longer entirely at the mercy of the machine, and life is met from a higher level within oneself.

Work on being is therefore not an ornament to the Fourth Way, but central to it. To know more is not enough. Nor is to believe more enough. To speak about consciousness is not enough. The question is whether a person can begin, in fact, to be more present. To be more awake, less identified, and more capable of transforming whatever happens in life into the material of inner work, and from there, into higher states.