"In the ordinary conditions of cultured life the position of a man, even of an intelligent man, who is seeking for knowledge is hopeless, because, in the circumstances surrounding him, there is nothing resembling either fakir or yogi schools, while the religions of the West have degenerated to such an extent that for a long time there has been nothing alive in them. Various occult and mystical societies and naïve experiments in the nature of spiritualism, and so on, can give no results whatever.
"And the position would indeed be hopeless if the possibility of yet a fourth way did not exist."—Search, p. 48

These words struck me when I was beginning to investigate the teaching of G. I. Gurdjieff (G). It was clear to me that the first three ways did not exist, or at the very least were not accessible to me in my work on myself, and I was heartened by this idea of a fourth way. However, I never considered whether or not the fourth way did, or could, exist, mostly because I wanted to believe that it did. Now I question this concept, which I accepted on faith and have continued to accept on faith through the years as I have practiced this work of G’s. Of course, accepting things by blind faith goes against G’s instruction, but it is only now that I have noticed this! Perhaps you too have not noticed this and will benefit from this investigation.

To begin this investigation, I propose to look at the elements of the fourth way as given by G. Since G has first given us this term, it must be his definition that is most accurate. Failure to include any of these elements will indicate for us, at the very least, that it is not complete. On the page following the above quote in Search, G says, "Then the fourth way differs from the other ways in that the principal demand made upon a man is the demand for understanding. A man must do nothing that he does not understand, except as an experiment under the supervision and direction of his teacher." So it is clear that we must have a teacher and that this relationship, or connection, must be well defined; any vagueness whatsoever makes it something other than what is indicated.

Unless we have a teacher all to ourselves, which G says is not likely, then the teacher is part of a school, which again G gives very clear characteristics. If the school is big enough, then groups are organized within it according to ‘types.’ My experience is that people claim to be part of groups, or even start groups, that have no connection to a school. In fact, many people talk in a vague way about the ‘fourth way’ or the teaching as a school, when G tells us this can never be so.

The fourth way is divided into three lines, or phases; work for self, work with others, and work for the school, or, as G often said, "work for me." Here we can make some interesting connections. Ouspensky, in his book The Fourth Way, especially in chapter 11, makes a big point that third-line work is for the school or even for the work itself. This runs in contrast with his statement on page 368 of Search that "from this moment there began to take place in me a separation between G. himself and his ideas." Has Ouspensky led us astray? And what exactly is G wanting from us? Toward the end of his life, G wanted the disparate groups of his followers to join together, and he made this clear in a number of ways. Yet this has union never happened; over time these differing groups have grown even farther apart. So if we are to ‘work for G,’ we can be sure that this ‘coming together’ is something he wanted.

On page 312 of Search, G is quoted as saying, "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." So there is definitely a problem with all the ‘institutions’ and ‘forms’ that we find currently passing themselves off as the fourth way; even Ouspensky’s word "system" indicates form.

G then adds that there must be some definite task or undertaking for a fourth way school to make an appearance and that fourth way schools never exist for the purposes of education and instruction. This is the opposite of what Ouspensky has said; he has the cart before the horse! G also says that once having attained its aim, the fourth way then disappears. When asked his aim, G replied, "I certainly have an aim of my own. But you must permit me to keep silent about it" (Search, page 99). To my knowledge, G never shared this aim, or undertaking, that called the fourth way out of hiding.

In Views, page 203, G mentions "the aim of all religions and all schools" as being the crystallization of higher being bodies. Here he is speaking of esoteric schools in general of all ways and not particularly of fourth way schools, which as he said are different. However, if we take this general aim as the reason for G’s beginning the fourth way, we must ask, whose bodies? Perhaps G’s? If so, then did G close his institute "completely and forever" because he had attained his aim? His language on page 1185 in Tales is interesting in this light; the "charge-and-crash" into the "observer and reckoner of the passage of centuries." Was this "accident" really a verification that the higher bodies existed and could rehabilitate the physical body? There may be no real way to answer questions like these and others brought on by this investigation.

Perhaps the most telling evidence of this subject follows the above quote on page 313 of Search, where G speaks of what happens when the fourth way disappears, having attained its aim. The only hope, he says, is for people to encounter the fourth way as it is beginning its undertaking; those who join later see only the work from an outward aspect, and when the fourth way disappears, they take this outward aspect as the whole. This should set off some alarms for us! "Having no doubts whatever of themselves or in the correctness of their conclusions and understanding they decide to continue the work. To continue this work they form new schools, teach people what they have themselves learned, and give them the same promises that they themselves received." If we look impartially at what is called the fourth way, we cannot help but see that this is exactly what has happened!

To conclude, I will say that my personal work will be on the watch for the ‘forms and institutions’ that call themselves the fourth way. Frankly, it is amazing to me that so large a contradiction exists within Ouspensky’s own writings and no one has brought it to light before now.

I also bear in mind that Beelzebub tells us in Tales that neither he nor his tribesmen may tell the three-brained beings on the earth the truth . . .

KSR 1/30/02

[This article is more or less a summary of the presentation of the same name on The Gurdjieff Hour #6 television show.]