Can the Fourth Way save us?
Considering the state of the world today and considering how we are entering a phase in which humanity seems to be at a crossroads of sorts that is comparable
with the state of affairs existing during the time of Nazi Germany (but on a much larger scale), the question that might be asked is can humanity be helped to see the lies and deceptions that presently make people completely blind to this state of affairs? Can we ever hope to see our way through this curtain and maze of lies and deception that descends upon us like a cozy sleeping blanket, where George Bush and the government of the United States are taking the lead?
Judging from the profound state of hypnosis that we are all presently under it appears that there is little hope. But there might be some hope to wake us up from this deep slumber so we may be more able to recognize what is really happening around us. There might be a way to help humanity to see the reality of the world and help others to see it in a more objective way that may help to cut through this maze of lies and illusion that we presently find ourselves in. One 'way' that was brought to this world was a system of ideas called 'The Fourth Way' by a man by the name of George Gurdjieff.
Anthony Blake from the Duversity speaks of the Fourth Way as follows:
"The idea of the fourth way is strongly associated with Gurdjieff, who appears to have been the first to use this phrase. The bulk of his discussion of this idea is to be found in Ouspensky's record of his teaching in Russia, In Search of the Miraculous. In his own writings, the idea is implicit but never mentioned as such (this is similar to his teaching on the enneagram). In Russia, he referred to three traditional ways:
"Way of the Fakir, involving effort in the body
Way of the Monk, involving devotion and concentration of feeling
Way of the Yogi, involving largely mental attention.
"In the fourth way, effort is made in all three: body, feeling and mind. This is harmonious development, as in Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. To some degree, his series of movements or 'sacred gymnastics' epitomised this approach (in the learning of them rather than their performance). His inner exercises, insofar as these are reported, usually involved an act of mental concentration combined with physical effort; the feelings are also involved but spontaneously in the 'I am' state.
"As with the other ways, the fourth requires its own kind of social organisation. How this has been interpreted has varied from group to group. However, in contrast with the traditional ways, the fourth does not require separation from conditions of ordinary life. Indeed, Gurdjieff often indicated that these conditions were ideal, especially in times of turmoil, for the 'awakening' process that he so strongly advocated and which is integral to the effectiveness of the fourth way. At the same time, work with others of like mind is essential.
"Some of the reasons for this are:
"(a) Different types of people see the same thing differently and thus a group working together can get an all round understanding (this is only valid if the 'work group' contains enough diversity, which is often not the case).
(b) Differences between people can lead to useful 'friction' providing energy for inner work. It should be noted here that the latter consideration has led to considerable indulgence in negativity amongst Gurdjieff groups, and it must be remembered that such friction, to be useful, must be entirely voluntarily entertained and intelligent. Gurdjieff also said: 'In the fourth way there are many teachers'. This belongs to the same requirement for diversity of vision. In the fourth way here should not be adherence to ritual, blind obedience or pursuit of a single idea, but understanding.
"The fourth way is also the way of the sly man. Of him, Gurdjieff said that if he needs to obtain an inner result, he simply 'takes a pill'. To obtain the same results the traditional ways would take days, weeks, months. The pill in question is probably not a psychotropic drug but a capsule of 'intentional suffering'.
"Why would the fourth way be introduced in this time and, is it something new? To answer the last question first, it is probably not; but, every time it is introduced it has to take a new expression. To a large extent, Idries Shah claimed that Sufism incorporated Gurdjieff's idea of the fourth way; but it is common to find explanations for the sources of Gurdjieff's ideas from whatever tradition one upholds. However, the Sufi idea of 'being in the world but not of it' strikes a resonance with the fourth way. To answer why it was introduced at this time is not easy. There are suggestions that, in this time of rapid transition and exceeding turmoil, new impulses need to enter humanity and these cannot be transmitted fast enough through the traditional ways.
"This is problematic. There are no clear cut indications from Gurdjieff about the relation between 'fourth way people' and the rest of humanity. At the same time, we assume that Gurdjieff being an intelligent man did not believe that his ideas were the sole source of fourth way initiative in the world. One of the models for Gurdjieff's own endeavour is provided by Arnold Toynbee's concept of 'creative groups' that withdraw and concentrate and then re-enter their civilisations with new ideas and impulses.
"The practice of the fourth way seems to require a special very adaptable know-how and cannot be followed by adherence to any set of standard procedures. Needless to say, the form of the fourth way has become ossified in many groups which have settled into a pattern of working together that has its roots in previous experience. But, if understanding is crucial to this way, then it must be creative and find ways of challenging itself. Understanding requires conditions of uncertainty, change, diversity and challenge. We believe that this understanding is not at all the same as seeking to understand what Mr Gurdjieff meant. In the literature, reference is made to the critical transformative step called the 'second conscious shock'. It is said that this must always and in every case be unique.
"This leads us to suppose that there is a whole class of approaches similar to the fourth way which exhibit various degrees of uniqueness and specificity. In this context, we need to develop our own way in every moment.
"The fourth way is associated with the term 'work', which had great appeal in terms of the Protestant ethic. This term refers to conscious efforts by an individual to change herself and also the whole 'enabling means' that makes this possible, sometimes called 'The Work'. The 'work' divides into three aspects: (1) work for oneself; (2) work for the group; (3) work for the greater whole (the 'world', the 'Work', even 'God')."
As Gurdjieff defined it, the Fourth Way cannot be understood by the other three ways. He called it the way of the sly man, the way of the ‘rebel.’ It begins beyond the way of the yogi. Furthermore, Gurdjieff points out that:
"The fourth way differs from the old and the new ways by the fact that it is never a permanent way. It has no definite forms and there are no institutions connected with it. It appears and disappears governed by some particular laws of its own."
It is most clear that this world is in bad shape but what is the aim of the Fourth Way and how can it be utilized to help humanity at a time when it is most needed? Perhaps it can now be utilized to shine some objective light on all the collective darkness that blinds humanity in these dark gloomy times of war and terror?
Objective light is needed. But what is objectivity and subjectivity and how can we distinguish between them? How can we see objective reality and distinquish it from
our subjective belief systems?
Carlos Castaneda, in his book The Fire From Within, speaks of our understanding of objective reality in terms of an alignment. Don Juan says to Castaneda:
"When seers see, something explains everything as the new alignment takes place. It's a voice that tells them in their ear what's what. If that voice is not present, what the seer is engaged in isn't seeing .
"It is equally fallacious to say that seeing is hearing, because it is infinitely more than that, but seers have opted for using sound as a gauge of a new alignment.
“The voice of seeing is a most mysterious inexplicable thing. My personal conclusion is that the voice of seeing belongs only to man. It may happen because talking is something that no one else besides man does. The old seers believed it was the voice of an overpowering entity intimately related to mankind, a protector of man. The new seers found out that that entity, which they called the mold of man, doesn't have a voice. The voice of seeing for the new seers is something quite incomprehensible; they say it's the glow of awareness playing on the Indescribable Force 's emanations as a harpist plays on a harp".
Mouravieff in his three volume book 'Gnosis' has an interesting perspective on objectivity and subjectivity that relates to his discussion on Time. Mouravieff states in Vol.I page 115:
"In studying Time, we must never lose sight of the subjectivity of our senses. We cannot reach the objective except through the medium of the subjective. This is the underlying reason for esoteric studies: they allow the exterior man to give objective validity to his subjective mentality.
"He can achieve this by a technique analogous to one we apply to precision instruments before putting them to work, we determine the reading error of each. By taking the 'subjectivity' of instruments into account in this way, we obtain correct readings from them, in spite of their flaws.
"To observe the phenomena of our internal world and those of the external world with precision, we must have recognized and determined the reading error of our mental instrument, one of the main tools of the Personality. All esoteric teaching is oriented towards this goal, which is reached with the second Birth-- when man attains a new form of consciousness and existence which is quite different, objective-- and which exterior man can only represent to himself in a vague and obscure way.”
So I gather from reading Mouravieff that objectivity has to do with knowing the limitations of our perceptual 'reading' instruments and then taking them into account when we study the nature of the external world. Perhaps the Fourth Way is a way to calibrate our reading instruments so we can accurately access in an objective way the nature of our reality, which includes the present state of the world, and then be more able to inform those whose reading instruments are more skewed
because of the vast propaganda machine that we are engulfed in which makes us blind to the horrors of war and to the lies and propaganda of those who perpetuate this horror and who wish to destroy everything good for our children and our children’s children?
Laura Knight Jadczyk has a most interesting point of view where she speaks of objectivity and subjectivity in terms of how the universe sees itself. In her website an excerpt taken from the following link describes this very well.
http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/signs20041031.htm
“Our universe seems to be made up of matter/energy and of consciousness.
“Matter/energy by itself "prefers", as it seems, a chaotic state.
“Matter/energy by itself doesn't even have a concept of "creation" or "organization". It is the consciousness that brings to life these concepts and by its interaction with matter pushes the universe towards chaos and decay or towards order and creation.
“This phenomenon can modeled mathematically and simulated on a computer using EEQT (Event Enhanced Quantum Theory). Whether EEQT faithfully models the interaction of consciousness with matter, we do not know; but chances are that it does because it seems to describe correctly physical phenomena better than just the orthodox quantum mechanics or its rival theories (Bohmian mechanics, GRW etc.)
“What we learn from EEQT can be described in simple terms as follows:
“Let us call our material universe "the system". The system is characterized by a certain "state". It is useful to represent the state of the system as a point on a disc. The central point of the disk, its origin, is the state of chaos. We could also describe it as "Infinite Potential." The points on the boundary represents "pure states" of being, that is states with "pure, non-fuzzy, knowledge". In between there are mixed states. The closer the state is to the boundary, the more pure, more 'organized' it is.
“Now, an external "observer", a "consciousness unit", has some idea - maybe accurate, maybe false or anywhere in between - about the "real state" of the system, and observes the system with this "belief" about the state. Observation, if prolonged, causes the state of the system to "jump". In this sense, you DO "create your own reality", but the devil, as always, is in the details.
“The details are that the resulting state of the system under observation can be more pure, or more chaotic depending on the "direction" of the jump. The direction of the jump depends on how objective - how close to the reality of the actual state - the observation is.
“According to EEQT if the expectations of the observer are close to the actual state of the system, the system jumps, more often than not, into more organized, less chaotic state.
“If, on the other hand, the expectation of the observer is close to the negation of the actual state (that is when the observer's beliefs are closer to being false than to being true according to the ACTUAL state - the objective reality), then the state of the system, typically, will jump into a state that is more chaotic, less organized. Moreover, it will take, as a rule, much longer time to accomplish such a jump.
“In other words, if the observer's knowledge of the actual state is close to the truth, then the very act of observation and verification causes a jump quickly, and the resulting state is more organized. If the observer's knowledge of the actual state is false, then it takes usually a long time to cause a change in the state of the system, and the resulting state is more chaotic.
“What this means is that order can be brought out of chaos by observing chaos as it IS and not pretending that it is otherwise.
“In short, everyone who "believes" in an attempt to "create reality" that is different from what IS, increases the chaos and entropy. If your beliefs are orthogonal to the truth, no matter how strongly you believe them, you are essentially coming into conflict with how the Universe views itself and I can assure you, you ain't gonna win that contest. You are inviting destruction upon yourself and all who engage in this "staring down the universe" exercise with you.
“On the other hand, if you are able to view the Universe as it views itself, objectively, without blinking, and with acceptance, you then become more "aligned" with the Creative energy of the universe and your very consciousness becomes a transducer of order. Your energy of observation, given unconditionally, can bring order to chaos, can create out of infinite potential>".
So why is the world presently burning in a hell pit? Why is it so chaotic? How did Americans get so stupid? Is it because there is a misalignment between what we perceive to be true and what is really true? It certainly appears to be so and it seems to me that the Fourth Way is needed more then ever and it might indeed be our only hope.
with the state of affairs existing during the time of Nazi Germany (but on a much larger scale), the question that might be asked is can humanity be helped to see the lies and deceptions that presently make people completely blind to this state of affairs? Can we ever hope to see our way through this curtain and maze of lies and deception that descends upon us like a cozy sleeping blanket, where George Bush and the government of the United States are taking the lead?
Judging from the profound state of hypnosis that we are all presently under it appears that there is little hope. But there might be some hope to wake us up from this deep slumber so we may be more able to recognize what is really happening around us. There might be a way to help humanity to see the reality of the world and help others to see it in a more objective way that may help to cut through this maze of lies and illusion that we presently find ourselves in. One 'way' that was brought to this world was a system of ideas called 'The Fourth Way' by a man by the name of George Gurdjieff.
Anthony Blake from the Duversity speaks of the Fourth Way as follows:
"The idea of the fourth way is strongly associated with Gurdjieff, who appears to have been the first to use this phrase. The bulk of his discussion of this idea is to be found in Ouspensky's record of his teaching in Russia, In Search of the Miraculous. In his own writings, the idea is implicit but never mentioned as such (this is similar to his teaching on the enneagram). In Russia, he referred to three traditional ways:
"Way of the Fakir, involving effort in the body
Way of the Monk, involving devotion and concentration of feeling
Way of the Yogi, involving largely mental attention.
"In the fourth way, effort is made in all three: body, feeling and mind. This is harmonious development, as in Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. To some degree, his series of movements or 'sacred gymnastics' epitomised this approach (in the learning of them rather than their performance). His inner exercises, insofar as these are reported, usually involved an act of mental concentration combined with physical effort; the feelings are also involved but spontaneously in the 'I am' state.
"As with the other ways, the fourth requires its own kind of social organisation. How this has been interpreted has varied from group to group. However, in contrast with the traditional ways, the fourth does not require separation from conditions of ordinary life. Indeed, Gurdjieff often indicated that these conditions were ideal, especially in times of turmoil, for the 'awakening' process that he so strongly advocated and which is integral to the effectiveness of the fourth way. At the same time, work with others of like mind is essential.
"Some of the reasons for this are:
"(a) Different types of people see the same thing differently and thus a group working together can get an all round understanding (this is only valid if the 'work group' contains enough diversity, which is often not the case).
(b) Differences between people can lead to useful 'friction' providing energy for inner work. It should be noted here that the latter consideration has led to considerable indulgence in negativity amongst Gurdjieff groups, and it must be remembered that such friction, to be useful, must be entirely voluntarily entertained and intelligent. Gurdjieff also said: 'In the fourth way there are many teachers'. This belongs to the same requirement for diversity of vision. In the fourth way here should not be adherence to ritual, blind obedience or pursuit of a single idea, but understanding.
"The fourth way is also the way of the sly man. Of him, Gurdjieff said that if he needs to obtain an inner result, he simply 'takes a pill'. To obtain the same results the traditional ways would take days, weeks, months. The pill in question is probably not a psychotropic drug but a capsule of 'intentional suffering'.
"Why would the fourth way be introduced in this time and, is it something new? To answer the last question first, it is probably not; but, every time it is introduced it has to take a new expression. To a large extent, Idries Shah claimed that Sufism incorporated Gurdjieff's idea of the fourth way; but it is common to find explanations for the sources of Gurdjieff's ideas from whatever tradition one upholds. However, the Sufi idea of 'being in the world but not of it' strikes a resonance with the fourth way. To answer why it was introduced at this time is not easy. There are suggestions that, in this time of rapid transition and exceeding turmoil, new impulses need to enter humanity and these cannot be transmitted fast enough through the traditional ways.
"This is problematic. There are no clear cut indications from Gurdjieff about the relation between 'fourth way people' and the rest of humanity. At the same time, we assume that Gurdjieff being an intelligent man did not believe that his ideas were the sole source of fourth way initiative in the world. One of the models for Gurdjieff's own endeavour is provided by Arnold Toynbee's concept of 'creative groups' that withdraw and concentrate and then re-enter their civilisations with new ideas and impulses.
"The practice of the fourth way seems to require a special very adaptable know-how and cannot be followed by adherence to any set of standard procedures. Needless to say, the form of the fourth way has become ossified in many groups which have settled into a pattern of working together that has its roots in previous experience. But, if understanding is crucial to this way, then it must be creative and find ways of challenging itself. Understanding requires conditions of uncertainty, change, diversity and challenge. We believe that this understanding is not at all the same as seeking to understand what Mr Gurdjieff meant. In the literature, reference is made to the critical transformative step called the 'second conscious shock'. It is said that this must always and in every case be unique.
"This leads us to suppose that there is a whole class of approaches similar to the fourth way which exhibit various degrees of uniqueness and specificity. In this context, we need to develop our own way in every moment.
"The fourth way is associated with the term 'work', which had great appeal in terms of the Protestant ethic. This term refers to conscious efforts by an individual to change herself and also the whole 'enabling means' that makes this possible, sometimes called 'The Work'. The 'work' divides into three aspects: (1) work for oneself; (2) work for the group; (3) work for the greater whole (the 'world', the 'Work', even 'God')."
As Gurdjieff defined it, the Fourth Way cannot be understood by the other three ways. He called it the way of the sly man, the way of the ‘rebel.’ It begins beyond the way of the yogi. Furthermore, Gurdjieff points out that:
"The fourth way differs from the old and the new ways by the fact that it is never a permanent way. It has no definite forms and there are no institutions connected with it. It appears and disappears governed by some particular laws of its own."
It is most clear that this world is in bad shape but what is the aim of the Fourth Way and how can it be utilized to help humanity at a time when it is most needed? Perhaps it can now be utilized to shine some objective light on all the collective darkness that blinds humanity in these dark gloomy times of war and terror?
Objective light is needed. But what is objectivity and subjectivity and how can we distinguish between them? How can we see objective reality and distinquish it from
our subjective belief systems?
Carlos Castaneda, in his book The Fire From Within, speaks of our understanding of objective reality in terms of an alignment. Don Juan says to Castaneda:
"When seers see, something explains everything as the new alignment takes place. It's a voice that tells them in their ear what's what. If that voice is not present, what the seer is engaged in isn't seeing .
"It is equally fallacious to say that seeing is hearing, because it is infinitely more than that, but seers have opted for using sound as a gauge of a new alignment.
“The voice of seeing is a most mysterious inexplicable thing. My personal conclusion is that the voice of seeing belongs only to man. It may happen because talking is something that no one else besides man does. The old seers believed it was the voice of an overpowering entity intimately related to mankind, a protector of man. The new seers found out that that entity, which they called the mold of man, doesn't have a voice. The voice of seeing for the new seers is something quite incomprehensible; they say it's the glow of awareness playing on the Indescribable Force 's emanations as a harpist plays on a harp".
Mouravieff in his three volume book 'Gnosis' has an interesting perspective on objectivity and subjectivity that relates to his discussion on Time. Mouravieff states in Vol.I page 115:
"In studying Time, we must never lose sight of the subjectivity of our senses. We cannot reach the objective except through the medium of the subjective. This is the underlying reason for esoteric studies: they allow the exterior man to give objective validity to his subjective mentality.
"He can achieve this by a technique analogous to one we apply to precision instruments before putting them to work, we determine the reading error of each. By taking the 'subjectivity' of instruments into account in this way, we obtain correct readings from them, in spite of their flaws.
"To observe the phenomena of our internal world and those of the external world with precision, we must have recognized and determined the reading error of our mental instrument, one of the main tools of the Personality. All esoteric teaching is oriented towards this goal, which is reached with the second Birth-- when man attains a new form of consciousness and existence which is quite different, objective-- and which exterior man can only represent to himself in a vague and obscure way.”
So I gather from reading Mouravieff that objectivity has to do with knowing the limitations of our perceptual 'reading' instruments and then taking them into account when we study the nature of the external world. Perhaps the Fourth Way is a way to calibrate our reading instruments so we can accurately access in an objective way the nature of our reality, which includes the present state of the world, and then be more able to inform those whose reading instruments are more skewed
because of the vast propaganda machine that we are engulfed in which makes us blind to the horrors of war and to the lies and propaganda of those who perpetuate this horror and who wish to destroy everything good for our children and our children’s children?
Laura Knight Jadczyk has a most interesting point of view where she speaks of objectivity and subjectivity in terms of how the universe sees itself. In her website an excerpt taken from the following link describes this very well.
http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/signs20041031.htm
“Our universe seems to be made up of matter/energy and of consciousness.
“Matter/energy by itself "prefers", as it seems, a chaotic state.
“Matter/energy by itself doesn't even have a concept of "creation" or "organization". It is the consciousness that brings to life these concepts and by its interaction with matter pushes the universe towards chaos and decay or towards order and creation.
“This phenomenon can modeled mathematically and simulated on a computer using EEQT (Event Enhanced Quantum Theory). Whether EEQT faithfully models the interaction of consciousness with matter, we do not know; but chances are that it does because it seems to describe correctly physical phenomena better than just the orthodox quantum mechanics or its rival theories (Bohmian mechanics, GRW etc.)
“What we learn from EEQT can be described in simple terms as follows:
“Let us call our material universe "the system". The system is characterized by a certain "state". It is useful to represent the state of the system as a point on a disc. The central point of the disk, its origin, is the state of chaos. We could also describe it as "Infinite Potential." The points on the boundary represents "pure states" of being, that is states with "pure, non-fuzzy, knowledge". In between there are mixed states. The closer the state is to the boundary, the more pure, more 'organized' it is.
“Now, an external "observer", a "consciousness unit", has some idea - maybe accurate, maybe false or anywhere in between - about the "real state" of the system, and observes the system with this "belief" about the state. Observation, if prolonged, causes the state of the system to "jump". In this sense, you DO "create your own reality", but the devil, as always, is in the details.
“The details are that the resulting state of the system under observation can be more pure, or more chaotic depending on the "direction" of the jump. The direction of the jump depends on how objective - how close to the reality of the actual state - the observation is.
“According to EEQT if the expectations of the observer are close to the actual state of the system, the system jumps, more often than not, into more organized, less chaotic state.
“If, on the other hand, the expectation of the observer is close to the negation of the actual state (that is when the observer's beliefs are closer to being false than to being true according to the ACTUAL state - the objective reality), then the state of the system, typically, will jump into a state that is more chaotic, less organized. Moreover, it will take, as a rule, much longer time to accomplish such a jump.
“In other words, if the observer's knowledge of the actual state is close to the truth, then the very act of observation and verification causes a jump quickly, and the resulting state is more organized. If the observer's knowledge of the actual state is false, then it takes usually a long time to cause a change in the state of the system, and the resulting state is more chaotic.
“What this means is that order can be brought out of chaos by observing chaos as it IS and not pretending that it is otherwise.
“In short, everyone who "believes" in an attempt to "create reality" that is different from what IS, increases the chaos and entropy. If your beliefs are orthogonal to the truth, no matter how strongly you believe them, you are essentially coming into conflict with how the Universe views itself and I can assure you, you ain't gonna win that contest. You are inviting destruction upon yourself and all who engage in this "staring down the universe" exercise with you.
“On the other hand, if you are able to view the Universe as it views itself, objectively, without blinking, and with acceptance, you then become more "aligned" with the Creative energy of the universe and your very consciousness becomes a transducer of order. Your energy of observation, given unconditionally, can bring order to chaos, can create out of infinite potential>".
So why is the world presently burning in a hell pit? Why is it so chaotic? How did Americans get so stupid? Is it because there is a misalignment between what we perceive to be true and what is really true? It certainly appears to be so and it seems to me that the Fourth Way is needed more then ever and it might indeed be our only hope.
posted by Capricious Mad Hatter @ 1:21 PM
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