What matters

The Possible Evolution of Man

The Fourth Way: an inner transition for every individual.

The Fourth Way, the inner development method of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, is it still relevant, or up-to-date? Absolutely! More than ever, in fact. On one hand, our era offers many advantages: we’ve acquired individual freedom, many dogmas and taboos have evaporated, and there are countless information and communication opportunities. On the other hand, people often still fail to live according to their essence and identify themselves (both individually and collectively) with trends, booms, and beliefs in various areas more than ever before. People do not seem to have truly awakened since the time of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. However, a real understanding of their potential inner evolution can help overcome unconscious thinking, feeling, and acting. The Fourth Way, a combination of three traditional paths – of the Mind (the thinker), the Heart (the devotee), and the Body (the body controller) – teaches us to purify our mind and use it appropriately. A development of head, heart, and hands.

Because we still don’t fully understand the workings of our mind and are unaware of it, we often act out of habit and conditioning, constantly identifying with concepts, emotions, and situations. This is called waking sleep in The Fourth Way. However, if we learn to remember our Self and truly wake up, we will start living according to our true essence. By following what we learn – autonomously, as one’s own life coach – we eventually achieve inner unity in the state of Self-consciousness, and we are at peace, regardless of what we think with our head, what we feel in our heart, and how we act with our hands, in any situation. We will unceasingly and inwardly be completely free of ourselves and others.

The Vedic Principles

The Vedic philosophy also provides a clear picture of how a person can achieve inner liberation and self-realization. Like The Fourth Way, this philosophy offers a pure mindmap of how our mind works. Just as our body has organs, our mind also has a number of vital subtle ‘organs’ that make it possible to achieve our full human potential. We only partially understand these spiritual instruments, which means we often let them malfunction. However, if we awaken from the aforementioned waking sleep, we can completely purify our minds. We then become aware of our true spiritual potential and let our spiritual instruments work properly. We then also discover what this brings us and what it (thankfully) relieves us of.

This process of acquiring self-knowledge is a fantastic opportunity! This way, a balanced liberating development gets underway in our daily lives, steadily and at our own pace.
Both ‘paths’ are unique and reinforce each other, as they align seamlessly. The possible evolution of humanity becomes clear and executable. Contrary to popular belief, humans have not finished evolving!