Gurdjieff and fourth way question

[Vandheer]

I hear a lot about Gurdjieff and his work, but I have zero idea about it whatsoever.

What kind of a practice he and his students did? Anyone who has at least read about his work could give some explanation perhaps?

 

[pixel_fortune]

I hope this doesn't come across as pass-ag, but Wikipedia is genuinely your best source for this... basically people have already put heaps of time/effort into explaining his ideas in brief and will do a better job than it's likely anyone here could (just because we wouldn't spend nearly as long on it and don't have a team of editors to refine it)

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(I think people underestimate how extensive and detailed Wikipedia is even on obscure subjects these days. I write for a TV quiz show, and we used to have a rule - "no questions where the answer is on the subject's wikipedia page". But we had to scrap that rule last season because wikipedia just keeps getting better and more thorough, it was too restrictive)

Post automatically merged: Jan 30, 2024

(I think people underestimate how extensive and detailed Wikipedia is even on obscure subjects these days, and think there must be no point looking. Or that it would only have the bare biographical facts about a person, not their philosophy. I write for a TV quiz show, and we used to have a rule - "no questions where the answer is on the subject's wikipedia page". But we had to scrap that rule last season because wikipedia just keeps getting better and more thorough, it was too restrictive)

Post automatically merged: Jan 30, 2024

dear god please reset the edit timer when a new post is merged with a previous one

 

[Vandheer]

I hope this doesn't come across as pass-ag,

No worries, I am just being lazy

Post automatically merged: Jan 30, 2024

(I think people underestimate how extensive and detailed Wikipedia is even on obscure subjects these days. I write for a TV quiz show, and we used to have a rule - "no questions where the answer is on the subject's wikipedia page". But we had to scrap that rule last season because wikipedia just keeps getting better and more thorough, it was too restrictive)
Post automatically merged: 6 minutes ago
(I think people underestimate how extensive and detailed Wikipedia is even on obscure subjects these days, and think there must be no point looking. Or that it would only have the bare biographical facts about a person, not their philosophy. I write for a TV quiz show, and we used to have a rule - "no questions where the answer is on the subject's wikipedia page". But we had to scrap that rule last season because wikipedia just keeps getting better and more thorough, it was too restrictive)
Post automatically merged: 4 minutes ago
dear god please reset the edit timer when a new post is merged with a previous one

Bruh chill

 

[KjEno186]

Colin Wilson (author of The Outsiders, The Occult, Beyond the Occult and other books) wrote a book about Gurdjieff and his associates called The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff. It is comprehensive while being short.

If Gurdjieff’s ideas could be summarized in a sentence, it would be that man is like a grandfather clock driven by a watch-spring. Or like an enormous water mill driven by a muddy trickle of water. The strange paradox is that in spite of the inadequacy of his driving force, an enormous and complex mechanism already seems to exist. Like a ladder, man consists of many levels. The problem, then, is clear: to increase the driving force. Man may be more than half mechanical; but he can choose whether to live in a blank, hypnotized state, or whether to live as though some immense un-guessed meaning lay on the other side of this curtain of everyday reality, waiting to reveal itself to a sense of purpose. - Colin Wilson, The War Against Sleep, (page 80, second to last paragraph of book)​

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Colin Wilson (author of The Outsiders, The Occult, Beyond the Occult and other books) wrote a book about Gurdjieff and his associates called The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff. It is comprehensive while being short.

If Gurdjieff’s ideas could be summarized in a sentence, it would be that man is like a grandfather clock driven by a watch-spring. Or like an enormous water mill driven by a muddy trickle of water. The strange paradox is that in spite of the inadequacy of his driving force, an enormous and complex mechanism already seems to exist. Like a ladder, man consists of many levels. The problem, then, is clear: to increase the driving force. Man may be more than half mechanical; but he can choose whether to live in a blank, hypnotized state, or whether to live as though some immense un-guessed meaning lay on the other side of this curtain of everyday reality, waiting to reveal itself to a sense of purpose. - Colin Wilson, The War Against Sleep, (page 80, second to last paragraph of book)​

This is great. One of my favourite Colin Wilson quotes is "The first time you listen to a song, you listen to it. The twentieth time, if you are not careful, The Robot will listen to it for you."

Or as they say in Zen: "You must keep your Zen with you every minute."

 

[Vandheer]

So I have read the wiki and after a bit of searching on reddit I am definitely going to read his books. He is impressive.

You guys can close the thread if you wish.

 

[DiLoco_DelEted]

Will read up on it. How does Fourth Way intersect with Initiation into Hermetics?