Beyond The Fourth Way

"Beyond the Fourth Way" is an exploration of aspects of the Fourth Way, a methodology whereby an ordinary person can be awakened, developed and transformed so that they become a harmonised, conscious being. It explores selected principles and techniques contained in Fourth Way material with a particular view to how valuable their application is for each person in daily life. This very rich teaching system is then blended with the profound spiritual understanding of the Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, to provide a deeply meaningful and practical approach to inner development and soul growth.

An important book on liberating ourselves from the state of “waking sleep” in which we live our lives, as taught by one of the most influential spiritual teachers of the 20th century As the closest pupil of the charismatic spiritual master G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949), Jeanne de Salzmann was charged with carrying on his teachings of spiritual transformation. Known as the Fourth Way or “The Work,” Gurdjieff’s system was based on teachings of the East that he adapted for modern life in the West. Now, some twenty years after de Salzmann's death, the notebooks that she filled with her insights over a forty-year period (and intended to publish) have been translated and edited by a small group of her family and followers. The result is this long-awaited guide to Gurdjieff's teaching, describing the routes to be traveled and the landmarks encountered along the way. Organized according to themes, the chapters touch on all the important concepts and practices of the Work, including: • Awakening from the sleep of identification with the ordinary level of being • Self-observation and self-remembering • Conscious effort and voluntary suffering • Understanding symbolic concepts like the Enneagram • The Gurdjieff Movements, bodily exercises that provide training in Presence and the awareness of subtle energies • The necessity of a "school," meaning the collective practice of the teaching in a group Madame de Salzmann brings to the Work her own strong, direct language and personal journey in learning to live that knowledge of a higher level of being, which, she insists, “you have to see for yourself” on a level beyond theory and concept. De Salzmann consistently refused to discuss the teaching in terms of ideas, for this Fourth Way is to be experienced, not simply thought or believed.

Discusses Gurdjieff's spiritual teachings, offers a brief profile of the philosopher, and assesses his influence on the modern world.

Learn from global lessons of successful educational change! Deep and lasting educational reform doesn’t happen overnight. This example-packed sequel to The Fourth Way draws upon inspiring examples unearthed by brand new research to challenge educational leaders, teachers, and policy makers to put proven strategies to work promoting student achievement and the high quality teaching that drives it. With striking success stories from diverse systems around the world, Hargreaves and Shirley discuss: The real-life, nitty-gritty challenges facing change leaders Stumbling blocks to enacting best principles and practices Developing and implementing a plan of action to overcome challenges to lasting change

BEFORE I BEGIN TO EXPLAIN TO YOU in a general way what this system is about, and to talk about our methods, I want particularly to impress on your minds that the most important ideas and principles of the system do not belong to me. This is chiefly what makes them valuable, because if they belonged to me they would be like all other theories invented by ordinary minds—they would give only a subjective view of things. When I began to write A New Model of the Universe in 1907, 1 formulated to myself, as many other people have done before and since, that behind the surface of the life which we know lies something much bigger and more important. And I said to myself then that until we know more about what lies behind, all our knowledge of life and of ourselves is really negligible. I remember one conversation at that time, when I said, ‘If it were possible to accept as proven that consciousness (or, as I should call it now, intelligence) can manifest itself apart from the physical body, many other things could be proved. Only it cannot be taken as proved.’ I realized that manifestations of supernormal psychology such as thought transference, clairvoyance, the possibility of knowing the future, of looking back into the past, and so on, have not been proved. So I tried to find a method of studying these things, and worked on that line for several years. I found some interesting things in that way, but the results were very elusive; and though several experiments were successful, it was almost impossible to repeat them. I came to two conclusions in the course of these experiments: first, that we do not know enough about ordinary psychology; we cannot study supernormal psychology, because we do not know normal psychology. Secondly I came to the conclusion that certain real knowledge exists; that there may be schools which know exactly what we want to know, but that for some reason they are hidden and this knowledge is hidden. So I began to look for these schools. I travelled in Europe, Egypt, India, Ceylon, Turkey and the Near East; but it was really later, when I had already finished these travels, that I met in Russia during the war a group of people who were studying a certain system which came originally from Eastern schools. This system began with the study of psychology, exactly as I had realized it must begin. The chief idea of this system was that we do not use even a small part of our powers and our forces. We have in us, so to speak, a very big and very fine organization, only we do not know how to use it. In this group they employed certain oriental metaphors, and they told me that we have in us a large house full of beautiful furniture, with a library and many other rooms, but we live in the basement and the kitchen and cannot get out of them. If people tell us about what this house has upstairs we do not believe them, or we laugh at them, or we call it superstition or fairy tales or fables. This system can be divided into study of the world, on certain new principles, and study of man. The study of the world and study of man include in themselves a kind of special language. We try to use ordinary words, the same words as we use in ordinary conversation, but we attach a slightly different and more precise meaning to them. Study of the world, study of the universe, is based on the study of some fundamental laws which are not generally known or recognized in science. The two chief laws are the Law of Three and the Law of Seven, which will be explained later.

The Ultimate Medicine is not for those who like their spirituality watered down, but for serious students searching for awareness. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897-1981) lived and taught in a small apartment in the slums of Bombay. A realized master of the Tantric Nath lineage, he supported himself and his family by selling cheap goods in a small booth on the streets outside his tenement for many years. His life exemplified the concept of absolute nonduality of being. In this volume, Maharaj shares the highest truth of nonduality in his own unique way. His teaching style is abrupt, provocative, and immensely profound, cutting to the core and wasting little effort on inessentials. His terse but potent sayings are known for their ability to trigger shifts in consciousness, just by hearing or reading them."The point is that man freed from his fetters is morality personified. Such a man therefore does not need any moralistic injunctions in order to live righteously. Free a man from his bondage and thereafter everything else will take care of itself. On the other hand, man in his unredeemed state cannot possibly live morally, no matter what moral teaching he is given. It is an intrinsic impossibility, for his very foundation is immorality. That is, he lives a lie, a basic contradiction: functioning in all his relationships as the separate entity he believes himself to be, whereas in reality no such separation exists. His every action therefore does violence to other 'selves' and other 'creatures,' which are only manifestations of the unitary consciousness. So Society had to invent some restraints in order to protect itself from its own worst excesses and thereby maintain some kind of status quo. The resulting arbitrary rules, which vary with place and time and therefore are purely relative, it calls 'morality,' and by upholding this man-invented 'idea' as the highest good–oftentimes sanctioned by religious 'revelation' and scriptures–society has provided man with one more excuse to disregard the quest for liberation or relegate it to a fairly low priority in his scheme of things."