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Ouspensky describes in his book In Search of the Miraculous four states of consciousness. These are:
1. Sleep (nightly sleep)
2. Waking state (One's normal state - walking about)
3. Self Remembering, or Subjective Consciousness
4. Objective Consciousness
These higher states (3 & 4) can be acquired through work on oneself, and in fact the third state (self remembering) is our right - we can have it by making efforts right now. The difficulty is the illusion that we already have access to this state. In fact it is possible momentarily - but the slightest distraction and we fall back to waking state. The question is then, how to remain awake to the higher state?
Through making efforts of Self Observation, and by studying the principles of Fourth Way psychology, it is possible to begin to free oneself from the sludge of ordinariness.
Group work is the key to making right effort in the direction of self remembering. Working with others of like mind can help to accelerate one's own efforts, which usually fade after a short time when working alone.
The group in Leeds follows the principles of the Fourth Way, and you are welcome to make contact should you be interested in the ideas of the Fourth Way System.
(The Leeds Fourth Way Studies group follows the tradition of the Fourth Way of G.I. Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky, which has been active in the Yorkshire region since the mid 1950's. This tradition also encompasses the work of A.R. Orage and J.G. Bennett (who gave talks in the Northern UK in 1955).
These are held in and around Leeds in the North of England.
For details, see Meetings and Seminars page, or Email:
info (at) 4thway.org.uk
After a lifetime spent in the teaching of a system of knowledge which he gave only to a small circle of pupils, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff decided shortly before his death in October 1949 to publish the first of a series of his books which expresses his ideas in the form of a ‘cosmological epic' called 'ALL and EVERYTHING' --- whose characters come into contact with mankind whose strange customs and problems are described with deep compassion and at times with superb humour'.
All and Everything is of special significance now, when the world is helplessly struggling to control the intensification of technical achievement which threatens to destroy the essential values and purpose of life. This book rediscovers the path which man was destined to follow in the universal scheme and from which he has gone so far astray.
All & Everything - An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man.
Paperback edition. Published by Routledge & Kegan Paul.
A rural setting near Otley which provides a special venue for meditation and sacred dance.
George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (ca. 1870–1949) was born in Alexandropol in the Caucasus. He spent the first part of his life undertaking anthropological and archaeological research in Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. His search took him to the lamaseries of Tibetan Rimpoches, to the libraries and mosques and monasteries of Asia, and to the great religious centres of Echmiadzin, Jerusalem and Bokhara.
After visiting many countries he reached the conviction that his researches had led him to a valid conception of the meaning of human existence, and having discovered methods, some ancient, others new, for the development of the powers latent in the human psyche, he founded in 1912 in Moscow the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. After the Russian revolution, this was moved to France.
In the years preceding 1920, one of gurdjieff's pupils, A,R. Orage, had formed a group of practicing psychologists to study psychoanalysis from all sides. This group, which included Dr. Maurice Nicoll - one of Jung's foremost exponents, - reached the conclusion that the need in psychology was not psychoanalysis but psycho-synthesis. In 1920, P.D. Ouspensky, who had met Orage in 1914, arrived in London. Ouspensky talked with Orage about the ideas of G.I. Gurdjieff. These talks convinced Orage that a practical psycho synthesis was now in existence through the teaching of Gurdjieff.
In 1922, Gurdjieff opened the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, in Fontainebleau, near Paris. It was here that Orage worked with Gurdjieff, and became his representative in America. Although Gurdjieff studied and worked with many esoteric schools prior to arriving in the West, the system he brought is not a religion, nor a philosophy, but a practical method of developing consciousness. This system is thought to have originated in Pre-dynastic Egypt, fragments of which have survived in the rituals of the Red Hat LLamas, the Sufis and the Essenes. Gurdjieff's mission was to reawaken the West to the possibility of discovering what one truly is - one's essence - and all this without reference to religion or modern occultism.
Gurdjieff said that 'Man's possibilities are very great' - however we suffer from vanity, pride and self-love to such an extent that our possibilities are virtually non-existent - that is in terms of reaching an advanced state of 'being'. In fact the gulf between knowledge and being is the crux of the problem. As in Alchemy, a purification is needed before the real work can begin - work towards a higher level of being.
The purification and subsequent journey are described particularly well by P.D. Ouspensky, in the books - In Search of the Miraculous (1950), and The Fourth Way (1957). More recent editions are available from:
For more information about G.I. Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way, please visit The Fourth Way Foundation web site.
