The Nature of the System

The Fourth Way is a complex system with many facets that have to be understood in order the understand the whole system. There are laws and features that are interwoven and need to be all taken together and integrated into a coherent whole. This is part of the difficulty of the system because so much needs to be learned and remembered before the System begins to make sense. This requires great patience.

To begin is the structure of the human organism itself. Gurdjieff delineated the structure of the organism, the human machine, in a number of ways and described how it works in great detail. But it takes a great deal of effort and study to take all this information in and assemble it into a coherent whole. This is a task that G. leaves to the student.

First there is the pschological structure of the organism. This consists of the seven mental centers. Each of these requires its own study. A certain emphasis is put on some centers more than others. The reasons for this become clear with more study.

Second there is the physical structure of the machine as it processes the energies it gets from the environment that provides what is needed to sustain the organism. These energies, and understanding how they are used in the body, are also crucial to understanding the development and evolution of consciousness and the individual. This is its own field of study but cannot be properly understood without other factors as well.

Third is are the universal laws by which the whole organism, and the whole Universe for that matter, operates. Understanding these laws is crucial to understanding how the machine works and Man's place in the Universe. All these are factors that come into play when attempting to understand how to develop and evolve one's individual machine.

Fourth is the study of the machine on a practical level. The practices that must be applied in order to actually effect and change one's consciousness. Self observation and Self Remembering are the primary and initial practices that Gurdjieff said were fundamental to developing one's consciousness. These form the basis of the rest of The Work. Without these there is no reason to study the rest.

This is just an initial outline that gives a sense of the complexity and depth of the System. There is much more to be considered and incorporated into one's understanding of the Fourth Way. All of this is designed to further the evolution and development of the individual. None of them can be considered in isolation or disregarded as not useful to the overall purpose of the system.

The same can be said for these papers. They are observations about the work that are not designed to stand on their own. They are pieces of the puzzle that must ba assembled by the reader in the proper fashion to form a coherent whole. Some aspects may not make sense or seem to fit in the beginning but this is inconsequential. The Work can only be considered and understood as a whole and such an understanding cannot be achieved in a day. It takes most of a lifetime.