My understanding of the Gurdjieff’s thoughts-2

I first have to assert that the Fourth Way has nothing much in common with Nietzche’s Superman. The concept Superman, Michael’s comments read, “was a being who can bear recurrence in a meaningless world where god is dead; a meaningless ensemble of the most mechanical materiality of brute facts”. My assertion simply meant rather a comparison with the equivalent Western concepts. Gurdjieff proposed a philosophical paradigm upon which Ouspensky made efforts to methodically wake humankind up from the dream of ideal-types and to transform them into fulfilled Self conscious beings.

The Fourth Way is about various ways to increase and focus attention and energy on Self awareness, and to minimize daydreaming and absentmindedness. Inner development i.e. being resolved in Oneness will bring about further process of change, leading one into what Gurdjieff termed as the Sly Man.

The Fourth Way system of self-development is a compilation of the lectures and accompanied question and answer sequences of P. D. Ouspensky at London and New York, 1921-1946, published posthumously by his students in 1957.

The Forth Way consists of either different consciousness levels: the physical, emotional and intellectual, or all levels simultaneously; as called the "Fourth Way". As opposed to the three traditional ways that call for retirement from the world: those of the fakir, the monk, and the yogi, the Fourth Way holds a balanced development of human's growth to its heightened glory.

The Fourth Way mainly addresses the question of people's place in the Universe and their possibilities for transcending themselves into a higher state of consciousness. People normally lead their lives in a state referred to as "waking sleep", but higher levels of consciousness and various inner insights are possible. A transformed person, even in slavery, remains a master of a higher consciousness Order. We need to be aware then and search for the Reality and learn to separate the fine from the fake.

While Gurdjieff demonstrates his ideas through metaphor, parables or analogy, Ouspensky comes from a scientific background and approaches mysticism in a more rational and discursive way. However, their works represent a relentless attack on our complacent, half-waking state. Amalgamated with oriental philosophy, The Forth Way is an attempt to wipe away the illusions we live within every day of our lives. To be aware of what you're doing; requires you be observant of your behaviour from the outside in. When you don't remember yourself you are in mechanical or auto-pilot mode.

Most of us go through life asleep, and to be awakened, we need others to help keep reminding each other to 'wake up'! It is not possible though to transmit essential states of being to anyone. It should be yielded by the individual and through desires and inner experiences. 

It is only the individual who is able to define what kind of transmutation is needed and where to get it from. We have to bravely, sit at the steering wheel and re-define Knowledge for ourselves so as to make our way to the ultimate source. Working with a living teacher or master is of great help, but most of us cannot stay with that teacher all the time. It is helpful if followers meet often to remind themselves.

As Michael said, it is true that Ouspensky broke away from late Gurdjieff maintaining that (according to Michael’s comments) “we ought not to confine ourselves to formal systems”. Ouspensky set the task of bringing this ethos of Higher Knowledge or this First order of mind to a wider audience in an unadulterated form.

Most of Gurdjieff’s early philosophy corresponds to methods and means to self knowledge and is conspicuously non-dualistic because it is difficult to assume that the body of his work be lacking a mystical core after his level of search for truth in esoteric traditions.

Western philosophy from its antiquity has had dualistic features; invariably more in common with inherent logics of languages. Western thought has always been logocentric and the metaphysics had above all been regarded as the search for the ‘other’ nonmaterial truth. I have to clarify though that it is quite recent with the advent of post modern thinking that the legacy of the modernity and the nature of linguistics have come to critical revisions.

As the logos of meaning implies, all knowledge is merely idealistic. Thus there is no objective truth of reality. From a postmodernist angle, nothing, nothing at all, exists outside the epistemic apparatus and the logocentric thought. In ‘non dual advaita’, you don’t remain at the superficial locus level where truth is represented within the logics built into the language. Non-dualism can’t be explained in rational language because it is a model of experience. What it implies is that everything is part of one whole; there’s just One beingness. In dualistic philosophies, you get a whole variety of dichotomies. With non-dualism, everything is perceived as part and parcel of one substance of Consciousness.

In Advaita, the discriminative wisdom refers to the ability to see beyond the world of appearances and go to the ultimate cause, which is itself causeless. That is why most traditions of Sufism break away with sermon adhering with Silence as the source of wisdom. From Rumi’s perspective, life and all the various forms and events that have happened on the face of the earth, are all a part of this whole Oneness. Rumi’s poetry in the Mathnavi and the Diwan-e Shams-e Tabrizi actually is identical to Advaita; it’s a nondual teaching with a very strong emphasis on Love.

Rumi often uses the analogy of the mirror and polishing the surface of the mirror as a process of becoming transparent and awakened. The ability to master yourself will result in the better control of your body functions. One has to drop the “EGO" and open himself to the Reality. The more life goes on, the more you are just learning to trust life’s process. Do whatever is the raison d’être of your being alive. We need to trust life and love existence and by doing so, things will fall eventually into their place like jigsaw parts. Once we access your true Being, i.e. the great Stillness that lies beneath our true nature, we get looked after one way or another. The Stillness lies behind the psyche and the thoughts and feelings.