The 4th Way

The teachings of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff cannot be reduced into a sensible description. The process of waking up from a state of dreamlike consciousness, from a mundane mechanical state of going through the motions is not easy to understand for many because it begins with an insult.

By all measures, telling someone that they are asleep at the wheel of their life is an insult. It is to say that you are not in control. If there is one thing that ego centric, highly programmed and reactive humans cannot be told, it is that they are not in control because their belief system and their surrounding economic system is based upon control. It undermines both the man and his nation to tell him that he is asleep. And yet for most people alive today, it is true. 

To awaken, I believe it is key to understand one concept, one which is unique to Gurdjieff, as far as I know. It is that our level of knowledge is greater than our level of being. What is a level of being? To Gurdjieff, it is the quality of food, air and mental impressions a person takes in. It is also what constitutes food for a being higher in the chain. How can a level of being be raised? Gurdjieff lays out that two fundamental practices exist for this: relaxation of muscles and self remembering. Self remembering stands in contrast to direct normal perception. At every moment, along with every outward perception, one must remember themselves.

The practice of remembering oneself goes hand in hand with elimination of wasteful mental energy. Daydreams, monologues and expression of negative emotions are all types of waste. It is one thing to understand the complexity, the variety, the ferocity of Gurdjieff's teachings and it is another to put them into practice. In my time as a human being, the teachings of Gurdjieff surpass any teaching on any subject in any format that I have ever encountered. The place to begin is the book written by his student Peter Ouspensky called In Search of The Miraculous.