So, back to my quest to understand what Gurdjieff calls the Fourth Way, also called “The Work.” I think the word “Work” is a good choice since the Fourth Way requires work. But it’s not about sacrifice and suffering through the events in your life. Sometimes that’s easier because it’s all downhill — you give in to your circumstances and how your mind sees them. You complain, you suffer, and you react negatively. Or you run away. You just let entropy rule the day. But how do you allow those life circumstances to work for you? Let me quote from a book I read:
The Way of the Work is called the Fourth Way because we use external events of life as the material to work on rather than as events to avoid. (Gurdjieff A Beginners Guide, Friedman)
I guess I need to explain the other three ways which are methods where you remove yourself from ordinary life — for example, by going to a monastery or a retreat. Gurdjieff likens these three ways to 1) the fakir who uses his will to control his body, 2) the monk who uses his will to control his emotions, and 3) the yogi who uses his will to control his mind. (ibid.) I was not familiar with the “fakir,” so I had to look that one up. (Gurdjieff formulated his views and experiences in 1913.) However, in using any of these three traditional ways, you never learn to live in the world as a higher-level being.
In The Fourth Way, you stay in your circumstances, life, and all the shit that falls in your path. You then use those circumstances to achieve a higher level of being. This reminds me of the saying that you drink the bitter cup without becoming bitter. (I think Thom Harrison said that.) But in the Fourth Way, it does not taste bitter. (that’s why this takes some work.) As I wrote before, The work is about changing our level of being by self-observation, not about changing our external circumstances.
happy or unhappy — is dependent on our psychological state, not our external circumstances. The key is not what happens to us, but how we react to what happens to us. The way we react is our life. (Ibid. p.63)
One of the requirements of The Fourth Way is that you understand how it works.
The more we understand, the greater will be the results of our efforts. An important thing to realize about understanding is that it grows as we grow. The higher our level of being, the deeper we will understand things…Whereas before we saw only one meaning, as our understanding increases, we may see many and much deeper ones. For example, when we first read parables in the Gospels we have a certain understanding of them, but as our being develops we will understand them at deeper levels. In short, the Gospels will develop in meaning as we develop in being. (Ibid.,p.113)
Another requirement of The Fourth Way is to take nothing on faith alone — confirming evidence is required. This seems like the opposite of all religious teachings. And you may need to shift your thinking because we only accept things within the belief system we hold as true. I understood this better when looking at how difficult it is for scientists to break out new theories:
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is the realization that the theories that scientists devise are always being shaped by the presuppositions of the paradigm they’re working in. Each paradigm rests in a set of assumptions and all of the questions we can ask rest in the very same set of assumptions. Those assumptions are not just ideas we hold in our own minds, they exist in everyone else as well. (Carreira, Jeff. The Spiritual Implications of Quantum Physics: Reflections on the Nature of Science, Reality and Paradigm Shifts (Reflections by Jeff Carreira) (p. 14). Emergence Education. Kindle Edition.)
So, if I allow myself to think outside the box of the beliefs I have grown up with, I may seriously consider that taking nothing on faith — makes sense. Even though I was taught that it is necessary to believe things on faith alone, I also believed that eventually, you were supposed to know firsthand (not a traditional teaching in religion.) Gurdjieff does not want us to accept his theories by faith. He wants us to see it for ourselves — that we react as a machine to the events in our life — without thinking, we react. This happens when you’re driving. You can be on autopilot. But it happens in all other parts of our life as well. We often react the same way in a mechanical way. We lose our keys, and we get angry. That sort of thing. The work wants us
to observe ourselves and see for ourselves that we do continually react in the same way to external events. Unless we see for ourselves, we should not accept this idea…The Fourth Way asks us to continually verify ideas and methods and take nothing for granted. (Friedman, Gurdjieff, p. 113.)
Part of recognizing the mechanical way of reacting to events is to realize that when someone does this, it is so machine-like that they are not thinking — just reacting. Therefore, it should be easier to forgive others when they respond mechanically. And forgive ourselves when we do it.
One test of our level of being is our ability to forgive. Those of us who go around with all sorts of grudges and resentments against others for what they did or did not do represent a very low level of being. Anyone who has been around such a person knows how heavy it is to be around him. (Ibid, p. 114)
That’s enough for today. As I said, it is work. If you missed the first post on these ideas, read about self-observation in part 1.
And remember, go easy on yourself. And others. Observing yourself should take about two years. It’s work.
