Rebecca Nottingham - The Fourth Way and Esoteric Christianity: An Introduction to the Teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff

Early in the Twentieth Century, a Greek-Armenian esoteric teacher walked out of Russia and revolution with a small group of students. His name was George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. Eventually, he made his way to France and established a teaching center he called the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. There, Gurdjieff taught a developmental system on personal transformation that he called The Fourth Way.

In this, what he managed to do was to make metaphysical, spiritual instruction accessible to the rational scientific mind, uniting spiritual teaching from the East with the science of the West. The value of this particular accomplishment is immeasurable. Without Gurdjieff, the practical path of enlightenment called "the Work" may not have reached into the twentieth-century western world. His formulation of this esoteric teaching made it available to the general population where previously it was only found in small exclusive groups few ever heard of.

There is endless gossip about the very enigmatic Mr. Gurdjieff. About his outrageous behavior, about his intentions and moral character, and about his sources. However, there is still much more debate about the system he called The Fourth Way. There seems no end to the constant need to argue or prove the validity of the Fourth Way by way of linking it to esteemed or mysterious sources. More importantly, there seems to be no clear understanding of the subtle, transformational psychological practices of the "Work"which is the heart and substance of the Teaching. Therefore there are constant questions about how to practice it or why do it at all or what the aim and result is. Gossip and debate will lead you nowhere in your search for meaning and Truth in the Fourth Way. Slander is as easy as idolatry. Only experiential understanding and verification of this Teaching through the practice of it can impart its significance.

Once you have the kind of verification that comes from practice, you cannot misunderstand the aim of it. And once you understand the aim and the Objective Truth found there, you will know how valuable Gurdjieff's contribution was. In the light of it, gossip, personality characteristics and debating the original sources are all irrelevant.

What we have been given in the Fourth Way psychological teaching called the "Work" is a practical, verifiable instruction on the self-development possible for a human being; a process for the real transformation of human consciousness. It teaches self-generated self-transcendence: evolution. It is direction on how to grow in consciousness. By giving you a new perspective and awakened conscience, the Work gives you a chance to choose to become real.

Each of us is born with a nature that springs from the strongest drive in a human being. That drive is self-preservationthe primary survival imperative. The psychological nature produced by this necessary element is based on self-interest and power-seeking is its expression. Human beings naturally strive for power over their environment to help ensure survival and satisfaction. You will find that nearly all that you do can be traced back to one of these elements as motivation. The development possible beyond this automatic self-interested motivation for life is psychological evolution.

Each person's unique essential nature in interaction with its individual environment creates all of the infinite variety of individuals who nevertheless all have the same basic drives creating the same conflicts in lives and events, even in history. This condition would most properly be called humanity's animal level of being. Nearly everyone will live their whole life at that level and die there too, unaware that there is any other way to live. Yet there is much about this level of being that is beneath even animal level behavior, such as killing for pleasure, cruelty, vengeance, sexual perversion, making war, and malice. These things define most people's nature as something below animal nature in character.

A person like this can be said to be in a state similar to being asleep. Governed by self-interest and being automatic in behavior, the person is a stimulus-response organism acting without free will, and is unaware of it. This person spends their life and energy responding mechanically to every changing circumstance, both in external life and in internal states. Each event engenders a response that is subjective and is motivated by gratification-seeking. Constantly changing outside events and internal states create a seamless life of responses one after another. This condition is called Sleep. Everything happens automatically and mechanically.

This is the state of humanity: ASLEEP. From this condition arises every sort of conflict, from resentment to thermo-nuclear annihilation; and every cruelty, every bit of malice, every act of violence. But this is not all what a human being is. In each of us there is also something authentic, with purpose. The Fourth Way calls it "Real I" and teaches that it exists as a possible, that is, reachable state existing within you above the level of the sleeping state of consciousness.

This level is open to the inspiration of Objective Truth which always expresses Goodness because Goodness is above Truth. The direction or inspiration you can receive in this awakened state is from a level above you, from the dimension of Spirit. Therefore, you must raise your own level of consciousness to a place where you can hear higher consciousnessspiritual direction. That means you have to choose, in the moment, to be self-transcendent over all other possibilities.

The possibility of living this wayin the Workgives meaning to everything in your life. But living it means doing it. It means practicing the exercises and studying the ideas and it means constantly choosing self-transcendent Goodness. One of the most important points to be made concerning "choosing" is that it is an intentional conscious act: you have to make the effort yourself. That effort provides the energy and material for transformation. This is something you can only do by choice, willingly. Choosing Goodness above self-interest creates psychological evolution which happens one person at a time making self-transcendent choices one at a time.

The development or evolution that is possible for a person on this earth in their lifetime is psychological. The result of that self-generated psychological evolution is spiritual growth. Spiritual growth, psychological evolution, higher consciousness, and developed being all mean essentially the same thing: they are describing a higher level within you. All legitimate paths lead in that direction.

From our ordinary state of consciousness we can have very little understanding about how to actually go about becoming a transformed person. Learning to become self-transcendent requires enlightened instruction from someone who possesses an understanding of esoteric teaching. Ouspensky stated, "You must learn from someone who knows". With that instruction, plus knowledge and practical Work, you can create an understanding which raises your level of consciousness. It is your existence in that higher level that manifests your Real I. This can only be a momentary experience at first but it can be built up by conscious intentionality through doing the Work. So there exists real knowledge of how to go about transforming your level of consciousness but it is a painful arithmetical truth that, although the knowledge and the means are available to everyone at all times, few are interested in esotericism and fewer by far find real permanent evolution in the nature of their charactertheir Being.