This group is dedicated to discussing the philosophy of the works of George Gurdjieff, Boris Moravieff, P.D. Ouspensky which have formed the tenets of the Fourth Way spiritual practice.

Despite parallels in other esoteric traditions, Gurdjieff's teaching is a special balance of Western rationality and Eastern gnosis. Gurdjieff ridiculed occultists, and warned about charlatanism. Gurdjieff scholar and Professor of Philosophy Jacob Needleman asserts, "For Gurdjieff the deeply penetrating influence of scientific thought in modern life was not something merely to be deplored, but to be understood as the channel through which the eternal Truth must first find its way to the human heart."

Gurdjieff asked that his students verify, repeatedly, the reality of their esoteric perceptions. Since we're in a constant state of self deception anyway, he knew how easily - indeed, how inevitably - the imagination would distort esoteric work. "In most cases," Gurdjieff remarked to Ouspensky, "what is called 'cosmic consciousness' is simply fantasy, associative daydreaming connected with intensified work of the emotional center. . .a subjective emotional experience of the level of dreams."

As he told his students at his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, "If you have not by nature a critical mind, your staying here is useless."

Introductory Reading:
In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching by PD Ouspensky (Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch).
[The best single-volume introduction to the Gurdjieff ideas].

Views From the Real World by GI Gurdjieff (Arkana Books)

Meetings with Remarkable Men by GI Gurdjieff (Arkana)

Our Life with Mr. Gurdjieff by Thomas and Olga de Hartmann (Penguin)

All and Everything: Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson by GI Gurdjieff (Dutton)
[NOTE: This is Gurdjieff's magnum opus, an extremely challenging book.)

Related Works:

Mount Analogue by Rene Daumal (Shambhala Books)

Gurdjieff: A Biography by James Moore (Element books)

Living Time by Maurice Nicoll (Shambhala)

The Heart of Philosophy by Jacob Needleman(Harper San Francisco)

A Sense of the Cosmos: The Encounter of Modern Science and Ancient Truth by Jacob Needleman (Arkana)

Money and the Meaning of Life by Jacob Needleman (Doubleday)

Links

The Gurdjieff Foundation

George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff

The Gurdjieff Teaching

Gurdjieff International Review