I. A Course in Fourth Way Methods
Books on mindfulness are widely read because we know instinctively our daily awareness is not at all what it could be. Humans today are more like automatons than any time previously, a predicament that may increase with the merging of humans and artificial intelligence. Attention deficit disorder is not the exception but the rule.
The feeling there is something more to life than our “normal” state of being is nearly universal. Religion has always pointed the way, but so have myths and fairy tales. Jesus said we see through a glass darkly and Alice goes through the looking glass to see what’s on the other side. The movie Groundhog Day portrays living the same day over and over, looking for an escape to freedom. The Matrix horrifies with the realization we could be trapped in a simulation of genuine life, blocked out of real existence. All of these strike a deep chord because we suspect they are true.
One wakes up preoccupied and in a hurry, thinking of the day’s responsibilities getting dressed and eating breakfast, absorbed in tension and anger on the way to work, getting lost in tasks, always thinking of the next moment or the next day, and the present goes unappreciated. Projections of unrealized aspirations and memories of the past alternate with waking up for brief seconds after driving or working at a computer, realizing one was running on automatic pilot, then just going back to sleep again. Every night there is a feeling the day was not what it was intended or wished to be. There really must be something more.
Methods for transforming that everyday consciousness to something higher were long held in the domain of religion or the occult. Gurdjieff and Ouspensky’s Fourth Way system was the best effort of the 1900’s to put those methods into secular and scientific language, to place them in reach of everyday people in their normal lives.
The stunning simplicity of this method is one of its few flaws, and can lead some to suppose there can be nothing in it, or that they possess already what it promises to deliver. Do not be deceived. A short practice with the exercises described will expand attention and reveal previously unknown abilities.
This book brings the Fourth Way system into the 21st century, casting aside the occult and mystical language that still encumbered the writings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.
This dynamic way to higher consciousness is explained in modern terminology and outlined in clear, sequential steps.
Terms are explained in commonly used language.
Exercises are clear and simple.
One step logically leads to another.
All information can be self-verified.
Fourth Way Exercises 