IN SEARCH of BEING
The Fourth Way to Consciousness
G. I. Gurdjieff
the first principle is that nothing is to be taken on faith.
Who am I?
Know thyself (yourself).
Are we free?
How we can become free?
In order to “do” we must know,
but to know we must find out how to know.
Being
Act consciously and according to one’s will.
The aim must be to
study oneself, to know oneself, in the right way.
Self-study
Primary method of self-study is self-observation,
we need freedom from every kind of attachment.
The religious person, who believes in God and the future life, sees in man his immortal soul confined in a perishable terrestrial envelope, which is surrounded by temptations and leads him into danger
All the differences which strike us among people can be reduced to the differences in the consciousness of their actions.
WE ORDINARILY LIVE exercising only a minute part of our functions and strength. This is because we do not know ourselves. We do not recognize that we are machines, and do not know the nature and working of our mechanism.
Man is born with a mechanism created for receiving many kinds of impressions. The perception of some of these impressions begins before birth, and during his growth more and more receiving apparatuses appear and become perfected.
Wars - Can we (man) stop it?
One particular aspect is the question about war. People ask how to stop wars, but wars cannot be stopped, because they result from the slavery in which we live. Strictly speaking, man is not to blame for war, which in fact is due to planetary influences on a cosmic scale.
If we can achieve freedom from surrounding things, we
may then become free from planetary influences.
We are slaves.
We cannot find this out
by ourselves
If a person in prison wants to have any chance at escape, the first thing he must do is realize that he is in prison.
Concepts and Methods
man is “asleep”
we have no unified “I”
the need for self-knowledge
- functions of the human “machine”
- states of consciousness
levels of being
three centers: moving, emotional, and thinking
personality and essence
the possibility of self-development
self-observation
remembering oneself
conscious evolution
the law of three forces
the ray of creation
the law of octaves
the Enneagram, a universal symbol
the variety of spiritual ways
esoteric Christianity
working in groups
the necessity of schools
- functions of the human “machine”
there are four minds that control our ordinary actions: thinking, feeling, moving and instinctive mind, which we shall call “centers.” Each center is independent of the others, having its own sphere of action, powers, and ways of development.
- states of consciousness
- The fourth state of consciousness is called “objective consciousness,” a state in which a person is able to perceive things as they are.
All the great religions hint at the possibility of attaining this state, which they call “enlightenment”
- Sleep
- Awake
We cannot control our
thoughts, our imagination, our emotions or the focus of our attention.
- “self-consciousness,” consciousness of one’s being.
We do not see the real world, which is obscured by the
veil of our imagination. We live in sleep.