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He called it the fourth way because he essentially is taking all that knowledge from all those schools, combining them, and trying to find practices that affect the mind, body, and heart at the same times.
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It takes really long when you go one of the ways instead of all three of the ways at once.
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I also loved his idea that no belief is required.
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So, there's a practical element involved with it.
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He told people that faith is not required because he wanted you to experiment with these ideas.
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This is not acid philosophy in any way, shape, or form.
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It's all about understanding, but also in some sense befriending your different centers to get them on your team.
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What resonates with me is the need for a very high sense of agency.
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Try to understand yourself so that you can, you know, understand the world better. Well, hello everybody.
0:55
It's Jim O'Shaughnessy with yet another Infinite Loops.
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Today's guest actually got me to reread the philosophy of the fourth way.
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I discovered your account on Twitter because you are actually one of the best memers I have ever come across.
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They are often both very meaningful and yet also quite humorous.
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We're We're going to get into the power of symbols later on.
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But then I discovered your YouTube channel as well, uh in which you talk at length about the philosophy of the fourth way, which was developed by George Gurdjieff and P. D.
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Ouspensky, two very fascinating men who I did a lot of research on.
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The ultimate aim of the fourth way is to achieve a higher state of consciousness and self-awareness, leading to a more fulfilling life.
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In many respects very very practical almost William Jamesian in its practicality, but welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Glad to be here.
2:09
So, let me ask you first about the memes that that you put up on Twitter.
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I I honestly think you're one of the best accounts in terms of the memes that you create.
2:21
Walk walk me walk me through that.
2:21
I know how they kind of relate after doing a lot of research to to the fourth way, but they don't always and and and walk us through those before we get into looking at the fourth way. Sure.
2:34
Well, it actually has something to do with the fourth way in that I kind of take some of the things that Gurdjieff mentions about how it's a sort of alchemy essentially where you take he had this phrase called impressions are food.
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What that means is you know, that certain types of impressions create almost like chemistry or alchemy have a different reaction with the different sensations in your body, the food that you're taking in and the the air you're breathing in and also the impressions that you take in are all combining to
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create new, you know, mixtures of different, you know, forms of chemicals and you know, different types of food for example, you know, higher forms of philosophy, higher forms of religion, things that come from a certain what you call the higher intellectual center or the higher mental or the higher emotional center. Those types of metaphors,
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Those types of metaphors, mythology, you know, all this kind of stuff is just wrapped up in this idea of information density.
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The right type of information density almost creates almost like neuroplasticity or you know, kind of better connections among the neurons I think, you know, different things that can alter your mind to think differently, get you outside of the normal dualistic way of thinking and try to add, you know, a different element in it.
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So, that's, you know, that's kind of what I'm trying to do with the memes in a sense and the, you know, different things that I post is to try to um alter the perception of reality just a little bit.
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Uh make make people see things differently.
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And that was also one of the goals of Gurdjieff, yeah?
4:20
Uh he he liked that idea of a shock. Exactly.
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interrupt your what he would say your sleeping state, I guess.
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If correct me if I'm wrong, but Exactly.
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One of the things that that he and Uspensky focus on I I find it interesting.
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It's kind of a fusion of Eastern and Western mystical thought.
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With Gurdjieff being more Western in his outlook, uh Uspensky being more Eastern.
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And that's kind of how they got to calling it the fourth way, right?
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The the the three other ways, the way of the body, the way of the monk, the way of the mind, and then and then the combinatorial way educate us and me especially and and hopefully our listeners and viewers on on how how they work their way up to the fourth way. Sure.
5:15
So, the one of the interesting things that I found about Gurdjieff, and this kind of made me, you know, when I first discovered it, I kind of took a deeper dive once I started to kind of understand where he had come from.
5:29
Uh because he had come from a long line of different mystery schools from different religions.
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And he had also managed to team up with a bunch of people that were also interested in similar things.
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He called them the seekers of truth, I believe.
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And he said that that uh one person alone could not have learned what he learned in those mystery schools.
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They all combined their knowledge and all went to different mystery schools and they came all came back and kind of combined all of their knowledge into these uh different systems.
5:58
And what he discovered was you know, while all of these different mystery schools focus on different things, they were all basically connected.
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There was some type of ancient teaching that connected all of these different mystery schools and he was wanting to bring that out.
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And what he discovered and he and this leads us back into the how he called it the fourth way because he kind of divided all of the mystery schools up into three basic types of schools.
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You had the the fakir type of school which mainly focus on the body, improving the body.
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Um it basically uh trying to establish your will through the body.
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And uh you know, that was often done by, you know, some of these um yogis would, you know, spend, you know, 30 years with their hands above their head or you know, something like that, you know, as a it was an act of will uh devoted to, you know, whatever um God, you know, they were, you know, devoting that action to.
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And then he said sometimes what would happen with those um types of people is that once they gained a degree of will, they would be taken out to a yogi school, which is a school of the mind.
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And they would be taught in the ways of the yogi and they you know, knowing that since they had developed a will, they they could progress more quickly through the school of the yogi.
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They were a good candidate for for that.
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But he said the down the downside of that is that it takes really long.
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When you go one of the ways instead of all three of the ways at once, it you you're slowed down in your development because you you get really developed in one center and then it's like you have to start all over.
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Um you know, kind of like the guy who developed will in the body, he goes to the yogi school, the school of the mind and he had basically has to start all over.
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But it it may be quicker for him now that he's developed the will, but you know, that's kind of how that works.
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And then the the second school is the school of the emotions.
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school of the emotions. You know, that's almost like the way of the monk, the someone who's like praying to God, trying to connect their emotions to, you know, a higher a higher source, but um you know, again, the the downside of all three of these ways, the way of the
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mind, the way of the yogi, or which is the way of the yogi, the way of the emotions, or the way of the body is when you don't combine them, um you know, then your development can stall, it can get off-center, and then you have to, you know, basically start all over. So, he called it the fourth
8:15
So, he called it the fourth way because you know, he essentially is taking all that knowledge from all those schools, combining them, and trying to find practices that affect the mind, body, and heart at the same time.
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So, you know, exercises that try to combine those into one exercise instead of you know, having to basically, you know, learn from scratch, you know, three times in a row for all three centers.
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And he thought that's why he called his center the center for the harmonious development of man, because he saw that we have all these different parts to us, and it matters how you advance each part, and the ratios, and you don't want them to get too far apart, or else you'll have an imbalance, um you know, kind of type of inner structure.
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So, that's what the fourth way was all about, was trying to create this harmonious way to develop internally.
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And I was struck when I was going back over everything, uh they they have what they call the laws of three and seven.
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Uh the law of three is the triad is kind of an active force, then that is confronted by a passive force, and there's a reconciling force.
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As by way of example, if you want to actively change uh a way that you're living, that would be the active force, the the passive force might be a habituated way of behaving that is going to offer resistance to that.
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And then the reconciling force uh would be your being able to work with those two to come up with a new way of doing it.
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I it struck me as being so similar to Hegel's dialectic where he's got the thesis and the and the thesis and synthesis.
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Was a lot of this based on some of the more traditional philosophers?
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Certainly Gurdjieff was familiar with the philosophers and Ouspensky definitely was.
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Um but how much of it was taken from what is really hard to tell because Gurdjieff was a very mysterious you know, type of character and he never exactly said where his sources came from and even some of the places that he did say that they came from, it's historians are still kind of not really sure if he was just saying that as a teaching, you know, tool or whether he was actually serious.
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So there is a good bit of mystery by where exactly did some of his ideas come from and how much of them were his own modifications and how much of them were you know, what he learned straight from the source.
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So yeah, that's that's a tough question.
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Yeah, and and I just see similarities everywhere to many people that I've read.
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Like Jung for example said, you know, until you make the unconscious conscious you you you will look at your life and call everything that happens to you fate. Right?
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And and what I liked about Gurdjieff was he just seemed to be like the best time to start is now, right?
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So don't don't worry yourself about where you've been, start now.
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I also loved his idea that no belief is required.
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That's very unusual in these sort of philosophical enlightenment uh uh courses and and philosophies.
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And and the other thing I like very much is action and aim is critical, right?
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You you've got to have you've got to This is not a passive philosophy in any way, shape, or form.
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And it it requires that you uh you know, basically pay attention to yourself, right?
11:58
In terms of uh self-auditing your thoughts because he kind of basically says that there are what? Four ways of being.
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Uh the first uh is kind of being asleep.
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Uh for our social media fans, that would be the classic NPC.
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Uh just uh sleepwalking through life.
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Then there's waking sleep in which he puts the vast majority of people.
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In other words, we're doing things on autopilot.
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We are not uh self-remembering.
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We are not like and analyzing our thoughts at all.
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We're just going through the motions.
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Then self-remembering and this is what I'm going to talk about because he says this is the key toward uh taking the first step toward uh awakening and discovering objective consciousness, which he views as the highest state.
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But let's let's start at uh it let's assume that maybe a maybe a larger percentage of people who are fans of Infinite Loops might uh be in the self-remembering uh part.
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Uh but let's let's take it from waking sleep where we find the vast majority of humanity.
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And and then talk a bit about his idea of self-remembering and getting to this objective consciousness.
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So, um I guess probably the best way to start cuz there's a lot of ways we can get into it, but is this idea that of Gurdjieff calling mankind asleep or he would frequently call people machines meaning, you know, just very automatic reactions to things.
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Um, and his idea was that we were essentially hypnotized to act in certain ways and and, you know, it was essentially a problem of consciousness.
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consciousness. Um, one of the interesting things about Gurdjieff as well is um, it, you know, from his background he was not just someone who studied a lot in these spiritual schools, but he also at times was a professional hypnotist and
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he could uh, hypnotize people and, you know, a lot of people came to him for, you know, your typical I want to stop smoking or I want to stop eating as much or, you know, those types of, you know, standard things that you go to hypnotist for, but in his uh, hypnotism he really
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learned a very hands-on um, way of how the subconscious actually functions and he noticed that we have all these different essentially sub-agents within us that are always fighting and, um, you know, one of the key problems he said that
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humanity faces is that we um, you know, we label ourselves a certain name, you know, like Andrew or something like that, but really we've got a hundred different people, you know, in us that all call call themselves Andrew and they're all fighting for control. And,
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And, um, you know, and he he would also say things like, you know, psychology, you can't start with psychology because psychology is applying applies to people who are relatively stable and solidified.
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You have to really think about mechanics first.
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And the mechanics of the unconscious and and how it reacts to things are paramount.
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So, you have to be aware of all of the different sensations, all of the different motivations within your psyche, all the different things that you normally you we normally have these things he called buffers, which are you know, essentially psychological tools to get us to see things the ego's perspective.
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Like if someone were to cut you off, you know, you would immediately blame the other person and get mad. Oh, they cut me off. How dare they?
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Blah blah blah blah blah.
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Not seeing that it was some type of internal motivation, some type of internal anger that you haven't dealt with that caused you to do that.
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Your buffer directed it toward someone else. So, that's step one.
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You have to notice your buffers.
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You have to notice the things that you don't want to see about yourself.
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And then as you start to understand yourself, you start to gain some self-knowledge, what happens is that you have all these different, you know, sub-agents, these different brains, he called them, within you.
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So, you've got and science I think has proven that we, you know, medical science, that we have these different we have a heart brain that thinks on its own.
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We have a gut brain that thinks on its own.
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You know, our mental brain thinks on its own.
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All these different brains are fighting each other for control of our identity, essentially.
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And we have to notice and integrate those aspects of our subconscious, you know, almost like Carl Jung going through the uh individuation process.
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We have to take all of those various sub-agents and we have to unite them into a common whole.
16:53
And I think it also has to do a lot with um I'm sure you're familiar with like the master and his emissary, like the left brain, right brain, and how they also have different ways of viewing the world.
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And that's another area that has to be, you know, reconciled.
17:05
So, you have all of these different perspectives in the brain.
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And you have to um self-remembering is all about noticing those uh different motivations, noticing those different reactions that you have, and then trying to combine the attention of the centers into a commonality.
17:27
So, you know, he he would It's all about, you know, understanding, but also in some sense befriending your different centers to get them on your team, to get them, you know, to understand that it's actually better for them in the long run if they cooperate rather than trying to get things done their own way.
17:48
But, in order to do that, you have to kind of learn the language of these different centers because they all kind of speak a different language, and we don't speak it generally, and we think that we do.
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We come up with all these reasons, all of these, you know, thoughts in our brain as to why we're acting this way, but we have we haven't actually listened to what's actually going on down there.
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So, we don't actually know what it's trying to tell us.
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trying to tell us. But, once we trust start listening, once we start remembering ourselves, we start to speak the language, and then we can have a dialogue of um you know, this is the best way to do this, you know, try to be more aware,
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and then, you know, true self-remembering is that, you know, up till because up until, you know, you get to a certain point, you're really just attempting at self-remembering and trying to be persistent at it, knowing that you're probably not doing it right. But, the
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But, the more that you persist, um eventually you get to a point where um it starts to become more automatic, and you start to unite the attention within the centers.
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So, you're you're constantly engaged with your heart, you're constantly engaged with your body.
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And so, when a psychological trigger comes, you're you're already there, your attention is already locked in, and you can respond in a way that you choose instead of having that done for you, which is the way of hypnotic sleep.
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When you, you know, it's all about your triggers, something happens, you react, something happens, you react, you know, you get in a bad mood.
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You do, you know, you yell at someone, you know, whatever it is.
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You There's a lot of different ways you can react, but you're when the trigger comes in, if you have the inner stability, you have the, you know, the different centers on your side, then you start to change the way you act.
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You start to change the way you see things.
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And that, you know, literally changes everything.
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And that's, um, Gurdjieff described that as, you know, kind of gaining new, uh, you gain new abilities, you gain new, um, you know, a level of consciousness.
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And there are different He described different levels of how far people can go, but, um, you know, it's it's really just a system of transformation.
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He kind of made different analogies and different ways of looking at alchemy, looking at, um, psychology, mythology.
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He just, you know, combined all of these different, um, fields of study into this, you know, very systematic approach that, um, you can take it in pieces, but when you start to look at holistically, it forms, you know, a much larger mosaic. So.
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The thing that I find fascinating as I was, uh, rereading and and then looking at notes that I'd made is, for example, I love Walt Whitman, right?
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And his classic line, I contain multitudes.
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Uh, it seems to really vibe with, uh, the outlook in the fourth way.
20:43
The The other one that really fascinated me, and I was just like immediately ran back to my notes on on Nikola Tesla, right?
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He He basically said that we are all one.
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We are only separated by ego, beliefs, and fear.
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And and but then he also was hinting, "Hey, you want to know the keys to the universe, you need to understand energy, frequency, and vibration.
21:08
And sometimes he would say he would refer to them numerically, right?
21:13
Uh if you want to know the magnificence of the universe, you have to understand the three, six, and nine.
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And in a in a similar way, uh the fourth way looks at the law of three and the law of seven, right?
21:29
And I think that this idea of trinity is showing up, triads showing up everywhere.
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Uh I find really fascinating.
21:39
But if you if you and and of course, the law of seven or the law of you know, octaves, right?
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That's all the way back to Pythagoras.
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Who who did you know, basically developed a cult around the the idea that the music of the spheres, I guess we would call it today, uh was a was a great way to understand things.
22:01
But but talk a little bit about this idea of the the the law of seven and the law of three.
22:11
Um I I I was really fascinated.
22:11
Three is pretty easy cuz it's the active force, passive force, reconciling force.
22:17
Um and it it corresponds to the three the the way of the body, the way of the monk, the way of the mind.
22:26
But I'm fascinated about the law of octaves.
22:29
Talk a little bit about the the law of seven and then bring in what you need from the law of three to help our listeners and viewers understand. Sure.
22:38
So, the law of octaves was essentially how he thought the entire universe operated.
22:43
And he pretty much everything could be divided into vibrations, which can be divided into different ratios of patterns.
22:54
So, and that that is the scale of the octave.
22:58
So, um it he I believe he called it the law of hep- hepta- parshad I'm butchering this name, but hepta-parsha parshan of or something like that.
23:07
He got some some name that he made up for this uh law, but he combined this in the enneagram.
23:15
So, you have essentially the law of seven and the law of three make up the enneagram.
23:18
Um and the law of seven is the law of motion.
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So, it's how you're moving through, you know, pretty much anything, you know, like a musical scale.
23:30
And he what's interesting about and how this applies to the law of three is he the law of three corresponds to something that he called shocks.
23:41
Um shocks are essentially something that is outside of the normal octaves.
23:49
Um the normal pattern of octaves.
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It's almost like the you know, in a in a musical scale, you go up by full steps except for when you go up by a half step.
24:00
To him, that would be the shock.
24:02
You know, you're changing the pattern slightly.
24:04
And now you have to, you know, he he essentially envisioned the law of octaves like a circle.
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And so, it's, you know, you go 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 around the circle.
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And at certain points, you're advancing.
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So, let's say you're going up to one, you're going up to two, and then three, you get a shock.
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So, what happens at this point is the shock can either be overcome and you keep going up the octave, or if you do not have the energy to uh essentially bridge the gap of the shock, then the octave starts going in reverse and you start falling.
24:39
So, you have this, you know, pattern of ascension, and then the shock comes, and then it, you know, sends the thing either in a higher direction or in a lower direction.
24:48
Um and that's the way that he thought pretty much everything worked.
24:52
And he had he essentially divided up the universe into these different levels of cosmoses.
25:01
So, you have the um and I think he numbered them 1 through 7.
25:04
And they're all essentially like fractals.
25:07
They're nested within one another.
25:09
But you go down, you know, to the very atomic level, you know, all the way to the, you know, giant, you know, the solar system or the universe at the macro level.
25:17
But then you have all these levels in between.
25:18
And we're kind of at the, you know, just kind of like we're the seventh or, you know, the third planet away from the sun.
25:25
I believe that we're also the third um you know, level of those octaves of the nested universes going up and down.
25:31
And it's kind of our job, you know, he had he also had this, you know, huge cosmology.
25:36
So, he everything that he did he did on the cosmological level, he did on the internal level.
25:44
So, everything was supposed to mirror each other.
25:45
So, everything you learn about cosmology, you could also apply to your inner development as well.
25:51
And he thought that they mirrored each other.
25:52
So, um that's the other thing that's interesting as well.
25:56
So, when you look at the law of octaves, you know, we have just like a musical scale has the law of octaves and just had like the universe has the law of octaves, we also have the law of octaves.
26:05
We can also we're made to ascend the octaves, but we have to overcome the shocks uh in our lives in order to ascend to the next level.
26:18
So, that's, you know, it's kind of metaphorical, but it's also, you know, um and he thought literal literally how the universe worked.
26:26
So, Yeah, and he called it the ray of creation, right?
26:30
Uh with the absolute, the highest level of consciousness.
26:35
What what strikes me is just the similarities with so many other um uh spiritual or enlightenment studies and and actions like you know, I I was reading that and then of course you immediately think of the unnamed Tao, which is the mother of all things, right?
26:53
The named Tao or sorry, the unnamed Tao cannot be described.
26:56
The named Tao is the mother of a million things, but it's also really similar to Brahman being universal consciousness. He creates Atman, right?
27:06
Because he he which is him, but he takes his memory that he's Brahman away.
27:14
Uh and and then you and then you move on to the kind of the Christian hierarchy as outlined by Thomas Aquinas.
27:18
And you've got the same thing.
27:21
It's it's divided into three triads, the angels or spheres.
27:26
The first is the cherubims and seraphims and thrones.
27:29
The second is dominions, virtues, and powers.
27:31
The third is angels and archangels.
27:34
I'm fascinated by the way all of this, as I review all of the notes like that I've made as I've studied these things, start to seemingly seemingly say the same thing. Yeah. Absolutely.
27:53
And I am a inveterate rabbit hole diver.
27:57
And uh what one one of the things that I started thinking a lot about was I'm I'm not traditionally religious in any sense.
28:05
I'm not an atheist because I think that requires an equal or greater amount of faith than than traditional believers in religion.
28:14
Um and I think the world's a a lot weirder than most of us think it is.
28:17
Um but I started to sort of think about uh the the biblical uh stories.
28:25
And basically, they're all metaphors, right?
28:27
And and the idea that all of these I am statements in both the Old and New Testament, uh really led me towards I wonder if they mean not I as in I am Jim, but rather I am the shepherd.
28:45
I am the door, I am the alpha, the omega.
28:47
God answered Moses, I am who I am, buddy.
28:53
And I and I and I and I and I wonder whether that actually means I am consciousness. Right?
29:00
I I think that this idea that and and not to go all the way to like panpsychism, you could, but just the idea that maybe this idea that things are external You use the example of when somebody cuts you off in traffic and you you know, you son of a you bastard, you point the finger at the other person, right?
29:22
We all do that endlessly.
29:27
And one of the things that I've learned or think I've learned, I probably haven't.
29:31
Uh not entirely, but the the desire to make anything that goes wrong in your life somebody else's fault, I think is uh incredibly detrimental to both your own growth, your own outlook in life, uh everything.
29:51
And when I look at at the these two, I'm also really struck by when you look at their characters, right?
29:58
Uh Gurdjieff and uh Ouspensky, what's really interesting to me is they seem to be yin and yang, right?
30:06
You have Gurdjieff much more Western-oriented, much more action-oriented, you have Ouspensky much more Eastern-oriented, much more kind of life of the mind.
30:20
And you know, it's it's putting those two guys together that creates this really interesting combination in terms of the the way that they they look at the the whole, right?
30:37
And one of the things that I found fascinating, I actually did a thread on it based on somebody else's idea of the thinking and the prover.
30:46
Uh you know, we can think whatever we want, right?
30:48
And and the minute we decide that something is true or something is us, then we kick it over to the prover.
30:56
And and the prover's only job is to prove that we're right.
31:03
And so, like I'm a huge fan of Robert Anton Wilson and and he had this great quote, which is the sad man lives in a sad world, the angry man lives in an angry world, the hopeful man lives in a hopeful world.
31:16
And one of their big things in the fourth way, which is another similarity I found to um William James, is this idea that you can reprogram your brain.
31:29
That we are living life mostly on auto uh pilot.
31:32
We have to do this self-remembering and observing of our thoughts, our physical feelings, our emotions, not just our thoughts.
31:41
But I'm wondering is when you reference the hypnosis.
31:45
I've been fascinated by a hypnosis.
31:47
And and I think that like I I think that there is something to this idea that essentially socialization, indoctrination is kind of a form of hypnosis. What do you think? Oh yeah, absolutely.
32:02
And and even the way the way they just said that hypnotism works is by basically you tell one of your centers something and that it will block out the other centers.
32:13
So, like for example, you tell um the emotional center, um you know, no more eating ice no more eating your feelings or whatever.
32:23
Um and then, you know, when it comes time to do that, the emotional center, you know, will not listen to, you know, the body that's hungry or the mind that's sad.
32:32
It will just not do that thing.
32:34
will just not do that thing. You know, and so that's kind of what what happens to us on a normal level, too, except it's not put into us by hypnotist, it's put into us by the collective unconscious or, you know, whatever you want to call it, but, you know, some
32:47
type of experience that we've had and then, you know, let's say, you know, our body has a negative reaction to something and it you you know, suddenly we we just can't do that thing anymore or, you know, we hear something, you
32:59
know, some piece of information that makes us hate you know, a certain celebrity or, you know, it makes us, you know, feel resentful against, you know, someone, you know, one of our family members or something like that and then suddenly that, you
33:12
know, that piece of us develops a personality, it develops its own um kind of wants and fears and desires outside of, you know, the scope of what we're consciously aware of and that's um what causes those reactions whenever we're triggered by something. So, it is it's
33:28
So, it is it's it's a different it's a form of hypnotism, I would say.
33:32
Um you know, maybe we're a little more awake than we are when we're sitting, you know, being hypnotized by a hypnotist in the chair, but we're always walking around taking in information and that information is is affecting us in some way.
33:44
It's like garbage in, garbage out.
33:46
If you, you know, if you take in this information, um you're it's going to be sitting there in the back of your mind.
33:52
in the back of your mind. So, it is, you know, important that you um are careful what you take in, but also that you are when you are taking in information, you're very aware of how you're taking it in and uh you know, exactly what it's doing to your psyche
34:08
um because, you know, you can you can take in information in different ways and this is something that, you know, Iain McGilchrist, you know, says very strongly as well as the you know, the way that you attend your world is how the world appears to you and that's literally how you shape your world. And I think it almost has like
34:24
And I think it almost has like implications in the quantum realm as well, you know, the way that the way that you collapse the wave function, the way you think about things is the way that things, you know, you can literally alter your reality by changing how you view something, I think, so.
34:39
That's the other commonality that really fascinates me.
34:43
I've been fascinated by quantum physics since I was a teenager.
34:48
Um, you know, it it feeds I've been fascinated by Taoism since I was a teenager.
34:55
William James on the more practical side.
34:57
And and I you you know, I I try to keep it open-minded things like manifestation, right?
35:03
And and I think that so much of it just sounds very woo-woo.
35:09
But if you get down and if you just kind of like clean out the like Hercules, clean out the stable, the Augean stable, there is there are some pretty standard, very non-woo-woo things at at the center of all this, right?
35:26
It's kind of like we the the Buddhist notion you become what you think you are, right?
35:32
And that's kind of the way that I guess Gurdjieff would call it the esoteric knowledge means objective knowledge, and he talked quite a bit about the mysteries.
35:43
And in fact, I think that that was the title of the first book, right?
35:48
The uh by uh uh Ouspensky wrote the most famous book about Gurdjieff, In Search of the Miraculous. Right. Yeah.
35:59
And which of the various books on this do you find the most like if if we're if we're going to outline a a curriculum for our listeners and our readers and they're like, wow, this guy's this fourth way sounds really interesting.
36:16
What what would what would be your first, second, third steps for for them to start taking?
36:23
That's a good question cuz it's such a very complicated blend of literature.
36:28
It's It is kind of hard to know what to recommend because there's so much out there and there's And you know, I could recommend that people start with Gurdjieff himself, but you know, you kind of have to almost understand something about Gurdjieff before you actually start reading Gurdjieff because he the way his writing style is he can be sometimes very purposefully opaque.
36:51
And so to start off with you know, he's probably most opaque book, which was his first book Beelzebub's Tales is just, you know, he literally makes up like uh 500 to like a thousand words that he just makes up.
37:07
Like he he spoke like 12 or 13 different languages and so he would just take these concepts that didn't really exist or if they did exist, he would put their own spin on them.
37:17
And he then he would take these combinations of different, you know, Greek, Russian, you know, English, you know, all these kinds of different languages and he would just make up a word and then that was part of his um you know, curriculum in a sense was to try to throw out these bizarre words that you would have to actually spend mental power processing and try to understand and that would, you know, that was he he was all about the work.
37:42
He wanted you to work for it.
37:42
Um he said that he placed all of the keys in Beelzebub's Tales, but not all of them were near the locks.
37:49
Um so you know, he wanted you to kind of dig into the book and kind of discover and try to get out of your normal way of perceiving the world in order to really, you know, understand his work.
38:01
So if you try to start off with Gurdjieff, you you may end up just being really confused.
38:05
Um the way I got it with the way I got into it was through Ouspensky because I kind of identified with Ouspensky in a way because um his journey was very similar to my journey and I also had um I also had just started um looking at the Enneagram personality system.
38:26
I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, but um when I started reading it, I'm a five by the way, and when I started reading it, I I immediately noticed that Ouspensky was a five.
38:34
And his his whole mentality and his whole way of writing and thinking just like resonated so deeply with me, and I kind of had already started reading Ouspensky when I uh cuz he wrote some books previous to uh meeting Gurdjieff.
38:51
And actually their tale is like super interesting.
38:53
It could could really be a movie.
38:56
Uh it's it's so um it's so fascinating just the way that they met.
39:00
Um and I'm sorry if I'm I'm not I'm taking the long way to answer your question.
39:04
I hope this is okay, but No, it's absolutely fine.
39:08
Uh so I I immediately recognized Ouspensky as a five, and I when I started reading the Gurdjieff stuff, I had recognized that Gurdjieff was an eight.
39:16
And uh a five to eight um is the an eight is the is a five's um growth point.
39:24
It's you know, it's the it's the part it's the it's the action that we generally don't take because we're too busy studying.
39:30
Um and so I think, you know, Gurdjieff, you know, meeting or Ouspensky meeting Gurdjieff was kind of like fate in a sense for him.
39:39
You know, that's his growth point at eight to meet.
39:40
And he was looking for someone just like Gurdjieff.
39:42
He had gone to all these different mystery schools because he was just he was this just just very smart person who had read pretty much all the important works of Western literature.
39:53
He had read most of the works of Eastern literature.
39:55
He was part of the intelligentsia, which, you know, it it's was kind of like a, you know, the teapot of, you know, 100 years ago.
40:06
There were all these people who were sharing all of this mystical and scientific information, and they were holding conferences and all these kinds of things.
40:13
And so Ouspensky was, you know, pretty much at the the top of the intellectual / spiritual, you know, world at the time.
40:21
He was, you know, one of the forefront thinkers.
40:22
And he had read all of this, you know, esoteric literature, all of this scientific and philosoph- philosophical literature.
40:29
And he was still feeling like he was missing something.
40:33
Like, what is the answer?
40:35
Where, you know, there there has to be an answer somewhere that where I can find more information because I I just don't feel like it's out there.
40:42
And so, his answer was, "Okay, well, there's got to be a mystery school out there that has all the secret information that I want to know."
40:50
So, he went on a journey. He went to India.
40:51
He went to, you know, different places looking for these different mystery schools.
40:56
And he did find some, but they were, you know, either they didn't, you know, kind of jive with him or some a lot of them wanted him to take an oath of silence, um, so that he could not spread, um, you know, these ideas.
41:12
And that's exactly what he wanted to do is to to write about these ideas.
41:17
Um, and so, he he goes everywhere, goes around the world looking for them. He comes home defeated.
41:24
And then a few months later he meets Gurdjieff in Russia, where he lives.
41:26
And it was just kind of like fate.
41:28
And then Gurdjieff is like, "Hey, you don't need to go to India or wherever.
41:32
I I I can teach you all the stuff that you're looking for."
41:36
And so, immediately he, um, he becomes a student.
41:39
He actually puts Ouspensky through a test where he, um, it's kind of one of those classic guru tests where they they try to trick you into, um, saying something.
41:51
Like, he told Ouspensky, um, he gave him a he put him in a room and gave him a blank piece of paper.
41:57
And he said, "Uh, now I want you to write down everything that you know."
42:03
And Ouspensky, you know, labored for on this for hours and couldn't write a single thing down on the piece of paper.
42:11
And, um, you know, and kind of smiled.
42:13
It was like, "Okay, I'll take you as a student."
42:15
Um, and so, he started his tutelage under Gurdjieff.
42:21
Um, and he immediately saw that this man knew way more than he did, and he he was a intellectual of the highest degree.
42:30
And Gurdjieff outclassed him by 100 to 1.
42:32
And he was like, "I can I can learn so He He says, I believe in In Search of the Miraculous that, um, you know, Gurdjieff was a man who was so far above him, he couldn't even imagine being there.
42:44
But that doesn't mean that he couldn't learn a lot from him.
42:46
So, it doesn't It didn't even matter to him that he could never get to Gurdjieff's level.
42:50
He was just going to learn as much as possible as he could from him while he could.
42:53
Um, and so, Ouspensky, you know, starts learning from Gurdjieff.
42:58
And then eventually he starts introducing him to some of his fellow intellectual friends.
43:03
fellow intellectual friends. And that's when Gurdjieff really becomes unleashed in a sense because he starts going from country to country, holding all these lectures, and you know, so many people are showing up, all these artists and intellectuals that, you know, pretty much the finest minds
43:17
and thinkers and writers and poets, you know, he was surrounded by all of these, you know, musicians and different, you know, high-level people that were looking for uh, for something, you know, famously um, you had someone named Maurice Nicoll, who was one of Young's Carl Young's closest students and friends. Um, when he met Ouspensky in like 1921
43:38
Um, when he met Ouspensky in like 1921 or something, he like pretty much sold everything and moved to France where Gurdjieff was opening his institute to learn from him.
43:47
Um, and so, you know, you had Gurdjieff, you know, attract all these, you know, kind of um, intellectuals of the time.
43:53
And a lot of them have also written things about Gurdjieff.
43:57
So, there's a huge amount of literature to choose from, you know, both for his students and Ouspensky.
44:02
And Gurdjieff himself wrote some books.
44:04
Um, so, I think that Ouspensky kind of had the clearest intellectual take on Gurdjieff in terms of, you know, his systems and things like that.
44:17
I don't think that Ouspensky ever truly got the emotional side of what Gurdjieff was trying to do.
44:23
He resisted that a little bit and that's kind of why I don't think he ever really got to Gurdjieff's level is because he was so um you know, just very five-like, just very closed off emotionally and and had a hard time opening that up, but intellectually I think he was the best kind of um the you know, students of Gurdjieff in terms of his system.
44:46
So, how I would start with getting into Gurdjieff would probably be read to to read The Fourth Way by Ouspensky and then In Search of of The Miraculous is kind of the the other book I would recommend cuz it takes you through the entire story of how Ouspensky and Gurdjieff met and, you know, it also adds in different elements of the system as well.
45:07
Um but, you know, that that book is a lot more complex, but um it it's definitely very fascinating for someone who wants to dig in.
45:14
And then Gurdjieff's books as well, you know, once you kind of have an idea of the system or or very good, but you have to kind of take each one of them separately cuz they're very different um in what he was trying to do.
45:26
And then also that person I mentioned um Maurice Nicoll also wrote some psychological commentaries on the work that are very good.
45:37
He wrote like four or five different volumes of psychological commentaries on the work, which are quite excellent.
45:42
Um and uh there's there's a lot of books that have been written about him um you know, in different avenues, but you know, so you could really um get lost in the literature, but um but yeah, so that's kind of if I were to tell someone how to start, I would probably with a Spinsky uh maybe read a little bit of Nichol.
46:06
Read a little bit of Gurdjieff's work.
46:06
I wouldn't start with the first book Gurdjieff wrote cuz that's definitely the hardest one to understand.
46:10
The The second one is probably the best way to start cuz he kind of tells a little bit of stories about his life and stuff like that.
46:17
Um and the third one um is a little bit easier to read than the first one.
46:25
So, I I actually started with the second one, read the third one, and then the first one because, you know, the the first one is just, you know, very very um dense and hard to uh understand if you're not already familiar with some of the ideas.
46:40
Uh you're being very modest.
46:40
I would also urge my listeners and viewers to check out your YouTube uh channel in which you uh cover a lot of this.
46:47
One of the other things that really struck me um then you were just talking about it uh was I I used I used the term well before Word Cell and Shape Rotator became popular.
47:00
I used to call certain types of people symbol manipulators.
47:03
And and as I was reviewing this work I really resonated with me that they kind of look at it the Gurdjieff especially looks at uh that kind of the same way.
47:18
The artists, the magicians the shamans, if you will are are the ones who understand symbols, understand how to manipulate them, how they how much information they communicate and convey.
47:35
Thinking like the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, you know, the Seal of Solomon.
47:40
And and that kind of made me start thinking about sort of Jason Joseph Campbell and the hero's journey.
47:45
Then I came across a quote as I was uh reading by Einstein where he says, "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
47:54
It is the source of all true art and science.
48:00
And yet when I also think about like kind of the citadel of science, what rules there it seems to me is this idea of materialism, right?
48:12
Uh where which kind of sees humans as machines, sees that the universe is dead and out there.
48:21
Um and we are alive and here.
48:25
But do you note that same sort of conflict when you look at, you know, traditional scientific materialism which people like Rupert Sheldrake and a host of others uh have a big issues with?
48:36
I I would certainly think that uh Gurdjieff uh and Uspensky would as well. What do you think?
48:47
Yeah, I definitely think that science tends to focus on the abstraction.
48:49
They they deaden the world by taking it in silos.
48:55
You know, if you take um you know, if you take a cup of water out of a river and you examine the the cup, you can certainly, you know, see a lot of elements in the cup, but that's not the river anymore.
49:06
You know, it's it's all they're taking some part of it and they're simplifying it down, they're taking the motion away.
49:11
But, you know, you can't really um tell the universe apart from from the motion involved in it because it's all just these, you know, in my opinion, just all of these electromagnetic waves moving around.
49:26
Um and so, you can't ever really get the whole from the parts.
49:28
And that's one of the things I think that science is a bottom-up system where they're looking at the parts and trying to reconstruct the whole.
49:37
Whereas, Gurdjieff's cosmology is a top-down system.
49:41
You know, you're working from a place that you already know that the world is a unity.
49:44
It's only a matter of how now you divide it up.
49:49
Um the ratios in which it is divided.
49:52
coming from a more top-down view, um you can really get the sense of unity.
49:57
unity. Um and that's one of the things that how that ties into myth and symbols and all this kinds of stuff is um Gurdjieff said, I believe, in one of his lectures to Ouspensky and in and in Search for the Miraculous, he starts talking about the uh the mystery schools and how they used to teach people and they would teach people through metaphors and symbols and what they would try to do is you know, perhaps they would use some
50:25
type of psychedelic drugs, perhaps they would use some type of ritual, some type of chant, some type of singing, some type of, you know, something, but something that would essentially evoke an emotional response that would send up this wave of emotions that would take the heart and mind and combine them and uh you know, up the level of objective consciousness where do you realize everything is one. And then once
50:48
And then once you've done that, then the student has evolved their consciousness to the point where they can understand the mythology and the symbols and it all, you know, kind of works psychologically because all these are essentially psychological tools in order to get you to um advance your consciousness in some way.
51:10
And that's what Joseph Campbell says in his um his ideas, I think he called it the four functions of the myth.
51:15
One of one of the functions is to evoke in you the all of the infinite mystery or something like that.
51:24
And then the other one is to psychologically take you from one stage to another.
51:28
And so, um the mystery schools knew how to do this.
51:31
They knew how to create this sense of unity um and then they knew how to take that feeling of unity and understand how it, you know, essentially manifests itself throughout the universe.
51:46
And that that's part of the Gurdjieff method.
51:48
It's It's uh and he mentions, you know, this is also mentioned, I think, in the the Emerald Tablets, where they have, you know, as above, so below, and all these other things.
51:57
It's It's a mirror of the outside is always a mirror of what's inside.
52:03
It's kind of like uh Penrose's explicate and implicate order.
52:09
You You What What I find really interesting is you just find all of these similarities even if you're studying like Penrose looking at uh scientific things, David Bohm, same sort of thing.
52:21
Um and and then Gurdjieff's objective consciousness, which he looks at as the highest state.
52:29
And And I find it interesting because he says it's essentially a clear, unbiased, objective, and unblemished by personal biases, unblemished by the ego.
52:42
And it reminded me of uh Philip K.
52:45
Dick's line, which is, "Reality is that which, once you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
52:53
And I kind of I really enjoyed that.
52:53
Um but to get to that objective consciousness, like if if somebody came up to you and said, "Wow, I love your channel.
53:02
I love everything you're doing.
53:06
How How Give Give me uh a little homework assignment.
53:10
Tell me, how can I begin self-remembering?"
53:15
Well, um I'll give you a kind of a parable that Gurdjieff used, and maybe this will, you know, help help simplify the concepts.
53:25
So, he compared the mind, body, and spirit to a carriage, where you have the You have the driver, you have the horse, and you have the carriage.
53:38
And you also have the different lines connecting each to the other.
53:44
I mean, you've got the reins that connect the horse to the driver, and then you've got the the lines, you know, the spindles or whatever that they're called that connect the wheels to the you know, to each other and all these different parts.
53:57
And so, and a lot of people, their different parts, you know, their wheels are rusted, you know, the the you know, the the reins, you know, are are old and moldy, you know, the Um and you have to do some work on your your different parts in order to get them functioning correctly.
54:14
So, you have to you have to take the horse in this case or the emotions, the carriage in this case is the body, and the driver in this case is the mind.
54:24
And then you also have the master who's in in the coach, but uh he doesn't speak until really the the carriage is in good condition in a in some sense.
54:36
So, the driver has to be in line with the horse, and the the carriage has to be working and doing what the driver says.
54:43
And so, we have to be very aware of the body, we have to be aware of the emotions, we have to be aware of the mind, and we have to get them on we have to get them doing each of them has a job, and they have to be doing their very specific job.
54:59
The body has to be um you know, usable and and fresh and has to be, you know, responsive and you know, above all, he said, you know, the body needs to get the tension out.
55:11
The more tension the body has, the better.
55:13
So, the you know, the any way that you can learn to relax your muscles, especially the muscles in your face, the muscles in your body, the more relaxed and um kind of easygoing and healthy your body is, the better.
55:26
And then you have your emotions.
55:28
emotions. Um Emotions are a difficult thing because we have a lot of negative emotions, and those are something that we have to observe very carefully and we have to understand the roots of why we're feeling certain ways and get to the bottom of them and really um learn to face our emotional fears that
55:50
we have and and learn to determine what is what is uh you know a legitimate thing that we need to work on and what is just you know some some something our mind's made up about a certain scenario that maybe we're projecting onto someone else or or projecting on a situation where it's really something that we can fix without us. And then in terms of the
56:06
And then in terms of the mental center, we have to um really clear out a lot of our misconceptions and um you know kind of delusions as well and and we our we have to really our mental center is is really where we find our direction.
56:24
So he said that it's very important to have an aim.
56:26
That's like one of the key points of the system is the mind is the place where you set your aim.
56:33
You so you have to kind of understand what your body and what your what will be best for you uh in terms of your inner development. What should your aim be?
56:43
And it needs to be an aim that's actually good like I want to be the master of myself or I want to um you know be you know a better person.
56:54
You know diff- different aims are you can have you know different aims for different reasons, but the most important thing is that you have an have an aim and that you're persistent in it and then you can also bring your other centers on board.
57:04
Your your horse wants to go in that direction.
57:07
Your carriage is able to go in that direction.
57:09
Your mind is able to hold that direction and without getting distracted or without you know going into a ditch or you know something like that.
57:18
And then once all of those um once all of those centers are aligned that's when it can hear the voice of the master and the master will say, "Okay, now that we're on a road, you know go down to this castle down here that I own or you know, something like that.
57:34
You know, you can you start to gain um not just more autonomy, but you also start to hear the influence of the higher mental center, the higher emotional center, which will give you these you know, these different intuitions, impulses, whatever you want to say that are of a higher nature that will will kind of point you in an even better direction sometimes.
57:56
So, um but the the goal of the Gurdjieff system is and this kind of relates in in the sense I don't know if you're familiar with that Rumi poem um this life is a guest house.
58:08
Um but it's you know, it's very similar where he also had a guest house analogy where he you had um something called the deputy steward and the deputy steward is is kind of like a metaphor for the mind.
58:22
So, the deputy steward the whole goal of the deputy steward is to get the servants that are in the house to actually do their jobs and stop griping, stop, you know, fighting, stop stealing.
58:33
Um kick the ones out that you need to reform the ones that you can reform, but get the house in order.
58:41
And once the house is in order, then the master's voice can be heard.
58:45
The master will come back into the house and will start giving the deputy steward steward orders.
58:48
And so, that's kind of the goal of the system because that you know, that's one of the problems I think sometimes with you have these enlightened gurus and they'll just say all everything is one and um you know, everything is love and everything is beautiful.
59:03
It which is not not a lie, that is true, but they don't necessarily give you a method methodology of how to get there.
59:09
Whereas this is kind of the methodology.
59:13
Gurdjieff had a very specific you know, kind of methodology.
59:15
If you get your house in order, if you put the deputy steward in charge and you know, and then they can in in a very like master and emissary way then the deputy steward's job is to hand over control to the real master. He can then come back.
59:32
So, you have this aspect of the self is kind of ordering itself, getting everything aligned, and then it's in a place where it can actually hear the true master who can give the real um direction as to to what that person should do.
59:51
Um So, yeah, I just threw like a bunch of metaphors out there, but I hope that it all made sense.
59:56
The thing that I find interesting is that it if you strip away a lot of the esoteric part, right?
1:00:03
It's actually a very pragmatic uh way and guide to not just spirituality, but to a lot of a lot of things in life, right?
1:00:14
Like persistence, having a aim, having a purpose.
1:00:17
Like if you want to be an entrepreneur, for example, you would do very, very well to study this, because when when you when you I love your your metaphor of the carriage and and the horse and and driver with the silent master uh sitting by, and as well as the deputy steward of of the guest house. Oh.
1:00:43
What it really boils down to, in my uh estimation, is kind of universal in the the advice that can give, right?
1:00:52
So, have a purpose, have an aim, understand the varying parts of the system.
1:00:59
In this case, if we're looking at ourselves as people, right?
1:01:01
There's the way the gut thinks, there's the way the heart thinks, there's the way the brain thinks, and integrating these things.
1:01:10
Again, now we're kind of back to Jung, right?
1:01:12
Where his whole deal was you really have to learn to integrate your shadow, integrate the unconscious part of your nature.
1:01:20
and and really they're just sort of practically giving you a system for doing that.
1:01:26
What the other interesting I've thing I found about these two guys is they seem really improbable together in many respects.
1:01:38
Gurdjieff was like very charismatic, very extroverted, believed in doing things in groups, loved shock and awe, uh where Uspensky was much more uh in the mind, uh much more scholarly, um more more interested in life of the mind.
1:01:59
Uh but the part of this that's really interesting is that if you get to really understand what they're talking about in the system that they're presenting, it's ubiquitously helpful, right?
1:02:10
It can be helpful in both your personal development, but if you're an entrepreneur or you're an engineer or whatever you are, right?
1:02:21
Following this path, it's kind of reminds me of uh I'm a huge fan of Taoism.
1:02:27
And and in Taoism, it's everything is in a constant state of becoming, right?
1:02:33
And and that echoes Heraclitus, who was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher.
1:02:37
But the other idea from Taoism that I like and and Gurdjieff would probably agree with is that life is movement.
1:02:48
Uh without movement, you're fall into stasis.
1:02:50
Stasis is basically death.
1:02:54
And and when you look at what dies, what dies is that which can't change, right?
1:03:02
Like uh Laozi often gives the example of a tree of really, really old tree branch that has snow accumulating on it.
1:03:10
And it's so old, it's become brittle, and the branch breaks off and falls to the ground.
1:03:17
And he contrasts that with young trees or saplings where this all when the snow hits them, you could double the snow, triple the snow, and they just bend.
1:03:29
And then when the snow melts, they they they go back.
1:03:32
Do you see similarities in uh the fourth way with things like Taoism, with things like pragmatism as advocated by William James? Yeah, absolutely.
1:03:44
Especially like the whole Wu Wei, you know, action within an action or whatever it's called.
1:03:51
Um Yeah, Gurdjieff used to have this saying, um something like, here we don't create help, we can only create conditions.
1:03:59
Um and to me that almost sounds a bit like chaos theory where, you know, how everything is, you know, basically how the change of the system over time is completely based off the initial conditions.
1:04:12
And really you can only create those conditions within yourself.
1:04:18
You can't actually, if you're focusing on the results of what you're trying to do, um instead of the actual actions it takes in order to make that happen, that, you know, that's the only thing that you have power over is the current conditions that you're working with.
1:04:30
And so um really, you know, he would also say, you know, like everything in the world happens the way it has to happen.
1:04:38
And so it's pretty much useless to think about how things could have been different.
1:04:47
The only thing that you can really focus on is what is happening now, what can you change now?
1:04:51
Because, you know, maybe if you change right now, you could change your future.
1:04:54
But if you don't change anything, it's just going to keep going in the same direction.
1:04:57
Um creating the conditions while also having an aim.
1:05:02
See, that's And that's one of the things that is it's almost it's hard for me to understand some days because it's like you have this you have to keep your aim while this at same time not expecting the immediate results from that aim happening.
1:05:20
You have to focus on the very immediate right here right now.
1:05:26
Um what is what is happening inside of me? How am I reacting? How am I behaving?
1:05:29
Do I have the awareness of that or not or am I asleep?
1:05:33
And that's something that you know, I kind of at this point I you really have to be somewhat persistent in your self-remembering, but eventually you develop this alarm clock where you go hey, was I asleep just then?
1:05:45
Oh, yeah, I've been asleep for like the last couple of hours just kind of going around doing stuff not really paying attention.
1:05:52
Um but you know, I do have this alarm clock that goes off more and more it's like, oh, yeah, like wake up like pay attention.
1:05:59
You're in control of the situation even though um you know, it appears that everything is not going well, you know, you can you can still have control over your actions, you know, your own um you know, how you approach the situation, how you treat others, you know, all of that is is within your control regardless of the circumstances.
1:06:20
And that's what I think Gurdjieff was trying to um to get out of his teachings, which a lot of his students just flat out didn't understand.
1:06:27
Like I think a lot of the people like Ouspensky they really wanted the intellectual side of it.
1:06:35
They wanted to know the they wanted to know the theoretical aspects of it without understanding the more practical aspects of it.
1:06:43
And Gurdjieff would used to to say this um I was actually just reading something where he was like he was talking to one of his students and um he was like, "Oh, you Americans, you always want um the answers for everything without understanding what I've already told you first."
1:07:01
Um because he understood that knowledge comes in stages and that you can't he can't tell you everything up front because you wouldn't understand it. He has to work you up.
1:07:09
You have to progress in a certain for you know, very specific progression of knowledge in order to truly advance your knowledge.
1:07:20
And so if he tells you everything up front, uh you're not going to understand it.
1:07:24
It So there's a practical element involved with it, which is one of the reasons why he said, um you know, he told people that faith is not required because he wanted you to experiment with these ideas.
1:07:34
These ideas weren't just meant to be theorized over.
1:07:39
They're meant to be literally practiced, to be experimented with, to have to try to understand what uh try to understand yourself so that you can um you know, understand the world better.
1:07:52
You know, cuz the more you understand the world, the more you understand yourself.
1:07:54
The more you understand yourself, the more you understand the world.
1:07:57
And Gurdjieff knew that this was kind of a back-and-forth process and that if you tried to put all your focus like Ouspensky and try and to understand the world, you're not going to have that level of understanding cuz you don't fully know yourself.
1:08:09
So you have to you have to treat it like uh um you know, kind of this dual aspect and one can't get too far ahead of the other or else it won't fully, you know, integrate that knowledge.
1:08:22
And one of the things that is a big takeaway for me as as I read both of them is the what resonates with me is the need for a very high sense of agency, right?
1:08:34
And um the one of the things that I find threaded through all of these things that I've learned over my life is it you know, if you if you have low agency, chances are your your life is probably going to go not well.
1:08:55
Because you will be reactive, you will blame others, you will um you will be It's kind of like learned helplessness in my opinion.
1:09:06
And and that leads to passivity and wanting other people to do for you as opposed to doing for yourself.
1:09:14
And I I just think that agency is such an important component of a well-lived life.
1:09:20
It doesn't have to be a life of commerce.
1:09:23
It can be a life of learning.
1:09:25
It can be a life of sports. It can be a life of art.
1:09:27
It really doesn't matter. Back to the aim, right?
1:09:30
If you have an aim that you can articulate and that you resonates with you, the only way to get there is to take action.
1:09:43
And you know, ideas the thing that separates a daydream from something that is actionable is that.
1:09:53
You can come up with a great idea and if you do nothing and stay on your couch, it's just a daydream.
1:09:59
But if if you have an aim that you then take action against, that indicates that you have higher agency.
1:10:08
And that seems to be one of the things that as I study very successful people from a wide variety of careers, aspirations, etc.
1:10:17
The the one thing that really they seem to have is this persistence and a very high degree and sense of agency.
1:10:30
What would you say to people who that that sort of believe that I used to I used to put up my own meme.
1:10:37
You're the master of memes, so I'd refer to you.
1:10:40
Uh but I used to put up a picture of a guy who's got a cloud over his head and it's pouring rain just on him and there's everywhere else is covered by sunshine.
1:10:51
And and the the tagline of of is, "Everything is luck."
1:10:55
said the most unlucky man in the world.
1:11:01
What sort of practical takeaways would you would if you were giving somebody advice on, hey, you really got to check out the fourth way.
1:11:08
This is why I think it's good.
1:11:10
Like what would be your pitch?
1:11:12
What would be your pitch?
1:11:12
So, I would just say that um it's it's a it's a way for you to advance your state of consciousness and I think that that is ultimately, you know, if you look the reason I got into this form of uh philosophy, I guess you would say, is that I saw that um you know, I had these experiences that led me to believe that the almost in a pantheistic way that everything was essentially consciousness in some form or fashion.
1:11:46
So, if that is the baseline of of reality, why would you not want to have increased your level of consciousness?
1:11:53
Um you know, I think that it's it's beneficial in multiple areas, but most importantly it increases your satisfaction of life, which I think is really what we all want is at the end of the day is, you know, not necessarily money, although that could be nice.
1:12:08
It's not necessarily, you know, the things or um the status of life or whatever.
1:12:12
It's we all just really want to be happy and I think that one way of doing that is to advance your level of consciousness so that you are have some agency over your life.
1:12:24
You can direct your life.
1:12:24
You can have some semblance of control over, you know, where things are going and I think that's you know, really good for everyone.
1:12:33
Um one of the interesting things uh one of the interesting ways you could do that, Gurdjieff had these um that he used to say something to the effect of the only magic is doing.
1:12:48
And doing is what he described as, you know, actually having some degree of agency over your life.
1:12:55
So, if you're if you're just an NPC, if you're just going around, you know, kind of half asleep and just allowing life to happen to you, you're not actually doing stuff.
1:13:05
Even though you think that you're doing stuff, what's actually happening is you're just um you know, you're responding to stimuli and you're, you know, unconscious is kind of leading you around.
1:13:17
I think you know, Carl Jung had this saying that uh you know, you will if you're unconscious, you will fate will direct or um the unconscious will direct your life and you will call it fate or something like that.
1:13:29
I forget exactly the quote, but um that's kind of how it works, you know, you if if you're unconscious, you will you may run into the wrong kind of fate because of that unconsciousness.
1:13:42
Whereas, if you are conscious, you have some, you know, kind of way to redirect your life in in ways that kind of suit your own particular um you know, life story, your own, you know, your own soul, your own higher self, you know, whatever you want to call it.
1:13:58
Um and the way that Gurdjieff said that magic was done is by combining your three um centers into one kind of overarching motivation.
1:14:11
So, he called there's essentially three elements.
1:14:15
The body is the will, the heart is the wish, and the mind is the aim.
1:14:20
So, the mind sets the aim, the emotions set the wish, and the body sets the will.
1:14:28
And if you can combine those three, that's what he calls doing, the ability to do, which is to it's essentially manifest manifestation in some sort, but he didn't really believe so much in the law of attraction as he did in, you know, the universe will help you go in that particular direction if you are if you're unified with your will, your wish, and your and your aim.
1:14:53
And if you can kind of combine those three things into a unity, then you're someone who's able to actually do your will, just to accomplish something not accidentally, but on purpose.
1:15:07
Yeah, that resonates very strongly with me.
1:15:10
I think that um you you you achieve things through taking action against your aims, as you just said.
1:15:18
Uh and trying to um I the way I look at it is happiness is more of a byproduct.
1:15:26
You you I think people look for happiness like it's some external thing.
1:15:34
And I think that it's much more what you just said.
1:15:38
Happiness is a byproduct of taking action against your aims after having aligned in a holistic way all of the the mind, body, and heart.
1:15:46
Um What what would be your What would be your um pitch to somebody who's just like eh you know, I I I I I just do what I feel like doing at that particular moment, and and you know, I I find that that you know, I go with the flow, baby, or things like that.
1:16:14
Uh like I I personally think that they can be integrated, but how how would you get a person like that to get interested in the fourth way?
1:16:22
Well, it's interesting because I Gurdjieff had this attitude, and I think the more I get into it, the more I kind of agree with him.
1:16:33
He used to say something like to those who do not wish to awaken, at least let them sleep well.
1:16:43
Um and I think that Gurdjieff's work is really for those people who discovered that they want to wake up. They want this.
1:16:53
And if you don't want it, there's there may not be convincing you.
1:16:56
You have to actually want to work on yourself.
1:17:00
You have to actually want to develop your consciousness.
1:17:02
And there are some people that are happy as they are and you know, that's perfectly fine.
1:17:07
I mean, I don't hold I don't necessarily I don't think I'm better than anyone for because I do this thing be but I actually want to to do this.
1:17:17
And I think you have to have that motivation.
1:17:18
He also used to say like the fourth way was for people who have tried and tried and tried all of the traditional ways and they can't find the answer.
1:17:28
And the fourth way is for those types of people who they've been looking, they've been trying, they can't figure it out, and then this comes along and they're you know, it kind of cuz what he said is ways are ways are help. That's all they are. It's It's just help.
1:17:44
So, if you if you want the help, you can have the help.
1:17:45
If you don't want the help, then you know, don't take the help.
1:17:48
But you have to actually for for the ways to work for you, you have to actually want the help, need the help, take the help, you know, implement the help.
1:17:58
And then you know, eventually you have to kill the Buddha, you know, in a sense.
1:18:01
You have to throw you know, you have to throw away the system, you know, once you've learned it because eventually you can't just get wrapped up in it because you know, the goal is to advance your consciousness, not to get stuck theorizing you know, a system like Ouspensky did, you know, the goal is to actually live your life more fully, to have a deeper knowledge, to have a deeper wisdom, to help yourself and others.
1:18:23
You know, that's that's the goal of I think at least myself and a lot of people who kind of take this path.
1:18:30
But if that's not what motivates someone, I mean, I personally think it is it's it's a better way to live your life, but if someone said it should not, you know, I I have no I really am not looking to convince people to take this road as much as I'm trying to get the word out that, hey, this is, you know, if you're looking to improve your life, you know, there are a lot of, you know, helpful things here. So.
1:18:54
And it kind of resonates with Hesse's Siddhartha, you know, the story where he he goes through all of these various things, like the aesthetics, right?
1:19:02
And you know, he they drink their own urine and do all this kind of stuff, right?
1:19:08
But then he just leaves because he no longer feels like he can gain any new knowledge from them.
1:19:14
And I love that passage in that book because so many people miss that, right?
1:19:19
They they they find some outer thing and and they just want to be dedicate themselves to that one thing and you know, that is like this external truth that exists over here.
1:19:33
And and in Siddhartha, no.
1:19:36
I mean, it's like the story of the guy who goes in search of these great seekers, right?
1:19:41
And he finds himself in this very remote monastery in the Himalayas and he's sitting with the master and he asks him point blank, he said have all of your people stayed here?
1:19:53
And the master said most have but a few have left and and moved on.
1:20:00
And the guy immediately gets up and says, where which way did they go?
1:20:08
He he wants to follow he wants to follow the people who aren't content just, you know, with this particular level of awareness or consciousness.
1:20:16
He wants to find the seeker and that's the other thing that attracts me to this.
1:20:20
Is I and I completely agree with your assessment.
1:20:28
You're not telling anyone they have to do this. No one has to do this.
1:20:30
No No one actually has to do anything.
1:20:33
And and the world just seems so filled with people who want to dictate to you, this is how you must live.
1:20:40
This is the way you must follow this particular process. Not really.
1:20:46
No, I mean, if you want to stay asleep, make it a good sleep. Have good dreams.
1:20:51
And and it just seems that um some of the more recent mind viruses over the last decade or so have have been these things where, you know, I will tell you the only way that you can live is X, Y, or Z, right?
1:21:04
And I'm very opposed to that uh just in in general because who am I to tell you how to live your life?
1:21:14
It's your life, not mine.
1:21:15
Uh and and that seems like uh to be very much uh imbued in in this philosophy.
1:21:22
Well, this has been absolutely fascinating and great, and I thank you for reawakening uh me to this.
1:21:31
I had kind of I'd I'd read it a while back and and I hadn't read it really thoroughly.
1:21:36
Uh so, thanks to first off, your great memes and your wonderful sense of humor.
1:21:42
Um and and that is that part of the shock that it when you look into the fourth way, uh what you see there is a lot of the you're a master of being funny, but also there's a shock there that makes people It's kind of a little bit like you're reaching through the computer and hitting at people and saying, "Wake up a little bit." Yeah. Yeah, no, exactly.
1:22:04
That's exactly what I'm trying to do.
1:22:07
what I'm trying to do. And and just because I'm not necessarily trying to convince anyone to you know, awaken or you know, kind of go through the the fourth way process or whatever, I do think that it's good to throw out a little bit of positivity, a little bit of different ways of thinking out into
1:22:24
just the collective unconscious to get people thinking in a different way, to kind of elevate the conversation a little or you know, kind of put some of these higher ideas out just like little seeds into the subconscious to see what grows and um you know, so that's you know, partially what I'm trying to do as well. Well, I think you I think you are
1:22:43
Well, I think you I think you are succeeding at it because I I absolutely love your stuff and I I send a lot of it to friends and the feedback is always really interesting like wow, okay.
1:22:57
I didn't think about it that way.
1:22:57
Well, if you're familiar with infinite loops, you know that our final question, essentially we're going to set you up as the emperor of the world.
1:23:05
the emperor of the world. Now, we've just gotten done telling that we both we both agree that we don't want to tell or compel anyone else to do anything, but as emperor of the world, you can't kill anyone, you can't put
1:23:20
anyone in a reeducation camp, but what you can do is we're going to hand you a magical microphone and you can speak two things into it and the entire population of the earth is going to wake up whenever their next morning is and they're going to think to themselves, you know, what? I've just
1:23:35
I've just had two of the greatest ideas and unlike all the other times I've had these great ideas, I'm actually going to act on both of them.
1:23:47
What what two ideas are you going to accept into the world's population?
1:23:51
Idea one would probably be I need to understand myself better or we need to understand ourselves better as as humanity.
1:24:00
Like that that that idea, you know, however you want to phrase that, but just the idea of something needs to change and it needs to start with us inside.
1:24:09
Um the second idea would probably be to um uh get rid of all the existing politicians and start from scratch.
1:24:24
Amen to that one, brother. Yeah.
1:24:27
I think that uh uh we potentially on both sides of the aisle, so I'm not playing favorites here.
1:24:34
Um I I guess I belong to what Bridget Bedesi would call a tribeless tribe.
1:24:38
Uh because uh I think we have like one of the worst political classes globally, not just in the US.
1:24:45
Globally, that certainly if you're a big fan of history, it's hard to find other periods of time where the political class was so uniformly awful.
1:24:58
Um and yeah, I I love both of those.
1:25:03
Uh well, thank you so much for being with us.
1:25:05
Uh people can find you both on Twitter and YouTube.
1:25:07
Uh they're very different accounts.
1:25:10
Uh the YouTube is is more focused on uh the fourth way.
1:25:15
And you're also doing some work with enneagrams, right? Correct, yep.
1:25:20
I do a little bit of enneagram consulting, um mostly personality stuff.
1:25:25
So, if anyone, you know, wants a consultation or uh just, you know, kind of tips on how to integrate the enneagram into their kind of spiritual practice, that's that's what I'm all about. So. Perfect.
1:25:36
Well, thank you so much for coming on.
1:25:38
It was finally great to meet you and uh learn on. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. All right. Cheers.