Fourth Way School page
Fourth Way Information
Learn why The Fourth Way exists and why a teacher is necessary.
Fourth Way Introduction
Learn about the main ideas of the Fourth Way.
Fourth Way Teacher
Learn about a modern day Fourth Way teacher who is conscious.
Fourth Way Books
Ebooks by a student in a Fourth Way school, along with a list of recommended Fourth Way books.
Email us:
[email protected] |
|
Fourth Way School
copyright © PantheonPress 2003 · all rights reserved · copying of this material by permission only
Fourth Way schools, large and small, now number close to a thousand worldwide. Most of them propound the teaching of George Gurdjieff whom they regard as an enlightened being. Some, not all, give equal credence to Peter Ouspensky. Some are regarded as cults. Some teach highly distorted versions of Fourth Way ideas.
Of these many organizations, where is the needle in the haystack? Where is there a teacher who is actually awake and conscious? To anyone searching for the truth, these are serious questions that go well beyond an intellectual interest in the psychological ideas of The Fourth Way.
A complete Fourth Way school is rightly called such when the teacher is conscious, awake. According to the Fourth Way, this means that the teacher has one or both higher centers functioning; that he is a man number five or higher. If the teacher is not awake, then the organization is incomplete and is more accurately called a group, not an actual school. A group of people are studying the ideas of the System and perhaps working together in some fashion, but no one is actually conscious. Even if they are sincere, they are, at best, guessing.
Yet, how is it possible to know if someone is conscious? Both Mr. Gurdjieff and Mr. Ouspensky made it clear that one can only recognize another person’s knowledge, not their being—not their inner state of consciousness. They even said that someone who is awake may appear less conscious to those of a lower level of being than themselves. As Mr. Gurdjieff put it, the lower cannot see the higher.
Apart, then, from the teacher’s level of knowledge, is there a way to distinguish an authentic school? Mr. Ouspensky explained that a school can comprise different levels. One level is where the school consists of men number one, two, and three who are trying to become men number four; that is, people who want to move from a position of mechanical sleep to a more objective position of consistent efforts to remember themselves and be awake. In such a school, the teacher may or may not have passed through a school himself, and may or may not be conscious.
Mr. Ouspensky further explained that a Fourth Way school is organized around three lines of work: work on oneself, work with others, and work for the school. The idea is that a balance of three lines is necessary to keep one’s efforts moving forward in the same direction without deviating or losing energy. A related idea is that a Fourth Way school, apart from the people in it, has a purpose of its own in relation to the historical period it appears in, and that this purpose legitimizes the third line as something which produces a result for itself and for humanity, as opposed to being just a medium for the work of its students. Understanding this purpose and knowing how to achieve it while also using it to help students achieve their own aim is a characteristic of a conscious teacher.
A second level of school—which, according to Mr. Ouspensky, may exist inside a school of the first level—is where men number four, who have acquired sufficient school knowledge and being, are working to become men number five. That is, they are trying foremost to promote the functioning of higher centers in themselves. And they are doing so with the help of, and under the conscious watchfulness of, a teacher or teachers who are more awake than they are. A teacher can never do the work for his students, but he can aid them by repeatedly pointing them in the right direction and by alerting them to the inevitable pitfalls of self-deception they encounter along the way.
People require a guide in forests, in foreign countries, even in finances. What then of a journey across the steepest psychological terrain in oneself into higher realms of consciousness, the implications of which no one can understand before getting there?
The purpose of a Fourth Way school is to teach students objective knowledge about the nature of this inner journey, and to teach them how to apply the knowledge correctly in their attempts to awaken consciousness and penetrate the present more deeply.
|