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The Fourth Way Up: Practical Esoteric Work in Gurdjieff Groups

Author: Anatoly Arlashin

The Fourth Way Up is a modern textbook on the development of consciousness. It can benefit both students of Gurdjieff's teachings and those on the spiritual path in other traditions.

Book description

In the West, the Fourth Way has become overly formal and, at times, dull. It has lost most of its esoteric core. For example, self-remembering, the central practice of the Fourth Way, has been reduced to merely tracking one's actions at any given moment. Watching one's steps is helpful but hardly exciting. This book, in turn, reminds us that remembering oneself is a gateway into a different reality, where one realizes that they are a spirit, not a body.

Another aspect that has been largely omitted from the modern interpretation of the Fourth Way is the practice of techniques in altered states of consciousness. Gurdjieff gave a vital part of his knowledge to his students while they were in a trance-like state. That state of consciousness is where the real magic of internal transformation happens on the Fourth Way. Learning how to use that state is often overlooked in many modern Fourth Way schools. The only trace that is left is the so-called "morning preparation" practice. This book, in contrast, thoroughly explains how different altered states of consciousness work and which centers of the human psyche they engage. There is no empty theorizing in this book. When discussing states of consciousness, higher centers, and kundalini, the author draws on his own experience and that of his students.

The current situation with the objective laws, the Law of Three, the Law of Octaves, and the Enneagram, is equally disheartening. People with a good imagination and limited understanding have come up with absurd theories related to the Enneagram. Those individuals have written numerous books and created considerable confusion. This book outlines the objective laws as Gurdjieff presented them. A significant number of practical examples supplement the theoretical explanation.

About the author

Born on September 17, 1942, in Orekhovo-Zuevo in the Moscow Region, Anatoly Romanovich Arlashin embarked on a remarkable journey of intellectual and esoteric exploration. During his studies at MIPT (Mendeléyev Institute of Higher Chemical Technology) between 1961 and 1967, he independently mastered both Hatha yoga and Raja Yoga. His early career included working with extraordinary practitioners of telepathy, such as actor Karl Nikolayev, biophysicist Yuri Kamensky, and hypnotist Vladimir Raykov—as well as learning from other renowned figures in the domains of clairvoyance and psychokinesis.

Further enriching his path, he studied practical yoga under esteemed Indian yogis and received training in psychiatry from Professor Yuri Nikolaev. His exploration into parapsychological phenomena introduced him to ancient traditions of practical clairvoyance related to Grigori Rasputin, passed down from a monk in a Tobolsk monastery. In 1965, his involvement with the Fourth Way began with participation in a group run by Fyodor Veryovin, a direct student of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff.

Since 1996, Arlashin has led a Fourth Way school, publishing twenty-five audio practices and fifty-five audiobooks, produced together with Tatiana Orbu.

The author has also collaborated with numerous consciousness researchers, including his fellow-chemist Alexander Shulgin.

Contents

• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. The Strategy and Tactics of the Fourth Way
• Chapter 2. Consciousness
• Chapter 3. The Law of Three
• Chapter 4. The law of octaves
• Chapter 5. The Ray of Creation
• Chapter 6. 28 types of essence
• Chapter 7. Man as a chemical factory for food processing
• Chapter 8. The enneagram
• Chapter 9. Control centers of the human psyche
• Chapter 10. Interaction of the centers, the magnetic center, and false crystallization
• Chapter 11. Incorrect functioning of the centers
• Chapter 12. Types and forms of consciousness
• Chapter 13. Levels of Human Development
• Chapter 14. Self-observation
• Chapter 15. Correction, development, and opening of the emotional center
• Chapter 16. Development of the intellectual center
• Chapter 17. Development of the motor center
• Chapter 18. The chief feature and false personality
• Chapter 19. Survival in the city
• Chapter 20. Intrigue: how it works and how to combat it
• Chapter 21. Magical inventions
• Chapter 22. TWIN and esoteric practices
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1. 10 Commandments of the traveler
• Appendix 2. The nine beatitudes of Jesus Christ
• Appendix 3. The ten commandments of Moses
• Appendix 4. 28 Lunar types of human essences

Preface

The Fourth Way is the path of developing consciousness in an urban setting.

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff was the most famous conductor of the teachings of the Fourth Way in the 20th century.

This book is food that can be your spiritual bread if you manage to digest it. What is offered here is not magic recipes but methods of working on oneself. The development of consciousness has never been easy. The purpose of this book is to help people seeking knowledge about developing their consciousness in the aggressive environment of a modern city, not in a monastery or an ashram. There are a certain number of intentionally unfinished points in this book. This is the tradition of the Fourth Way teachings so as to oppose the second and seventh components of the “Naloo-osnian-spectrum-of-impulses.” This is an obscure phrase from Gurdjieff’s book Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson; however, there is no doubt that the inquisitive mind of the seeker of truth will not be confused by this.

You should not believe anything said in this book. Be sure to test everything from your own experience. Make your faith conscious. Use this vital principle of the Fourth Way:

KNOW—FEEL—DO.

“Sidewalks are paved with truths,” said the ancients. Knowledge only has value when it has become part of our innermost being. Only then will a person be able to realize the knowledge gained.

Our world is full of teachings about developing consciousness in one way or another. Some lead to God, some to the devil, some to nowhere. It’s hard to sort out what’s what. In this regard, it is explicitly stated that the Fourth Way leads to restoring our lost openness to God.

It is a psychological teaching that allows us to recapture the joy and love without which it is so difficult to live on Earth. Here, it does not matter what religion you follow or what nationality you belong to. Gurdjieff said, “Here there are neither Russians nor English, Jews nor Christians, but only those who pursue one aim—to be able to be.” (Gurdjieff 2009) There is one God behind the symbols of every religion. Names aren’t the point. It is important that your heart be filled with love for all creatures created by the Creator. Then, religions or doctrines will not divide people as they did before and do now but unite them.

Power-hungry and greedy people, who differed only in appearance from beasts of prey, used people’s faith in God to incite hatred and wars of conquest. They planted their faith by fire and sword and did not shy away from robbing converts. All this reflects the constant inner conflict between the lower and higher natures of man or, in the language of the Fourth Way, between the lower and higher control centers of the psyche. Every religion has tried in one way or another to help man overcome this inner disharmony. But unlike fairy tales, on our planet, evil triumphed over good. And this state of affairs is not accidental. According to the law of creation, we are a considerable distance from the source of harmony in this place of the universe. Disharmony and chaos prevail. A person always faces a choice, but which path to take? Unconsciousness and violence or consciousness and love? On the Fourth Way, the choice is to increase awareness and cultivate divine love in one’s heart. You make your choice. But be sincere, because people’s words, feelings, and deeds are located in different mental centers and do not necessarily coincide.

The Fourth Way of spiritual development is practical and realistic. What does that mean? This suggests that you should act with knowledge and experience in any endeavor. For a person to develop, he must know not only the structure of his body and its functioning on many levels but also the real state of the human machine. In this case, it is clear how the machine fails and how to eliminate such malfunctions. In addition, the core knowledge of the Fourth Way allows us to know and understand all possible structures of our world and the place of human beings in it. The Fourth Way combines the best psychotechniques developed in other spiritual traditions and is suitable for working on oneself in an urban setting. This is the specificity of the Fourth Way. On the other paths, a lot depends on the teacher. The disciple must mechanically and thoughtlessly do whatever he is shown and ordered. This state of affairs is unacceptable to people seeking to develop consciousness.

The Fourth Way has little to say about God, but instead uses concepts such as the Absolute and consciousness as a primordial property of matter. It is also said that the mind of the Sun is divine in relation to us. Yet somehow, there are few emotional appeals to love God here. And what about the fulfillment of the main thesis of the Fourth Way regarding the use of psychotechniques from other paths of spiritual development? The realism of the Fourth Way suggests that modern man, overwhelmed by a mass of lies, negative emotions, and pride, cannot truly love God while being deeply psychologically closed. Modern man is incapable of opening himself essentially to God. Every possible form of fear constrains the heart, and the attempt to love God by such people in their ordinary state of consciousness is reduced to imagination or pretense.

That kind of love is worthless. Will God hear such a false heart? Only a person who has purified his spiritual heart can distinguish between idle talk and truth. Such a seeker of truth opens himself to God. Adepts of the Fourth Way, who have achieved direct perception of God, speak of the experience as follows: “I communed with the Sun of truth, wisdom, and love.” Communion with God purifies the soul, gives real wisdom and knowledge, and reveals the essential purpose of a particular person’s life. It is a state of direct knowledge of the essence of things. Adepts of Raja-yoga call this perception of information Apta. At this level of consciousness, understanding occurs due to direct perception of the essence of phenomena by the higher psychic centers.

Realistically, for most modern people, God has become an unattainable abstraction. But those who are deeply spiritual know the main principle of God is maximum accessibility to people. God is the source of real spiritual knowledge and wisdom in the Fourth Way. That is why it requires the heart, the emotional center, to be purified from all kinds of negative emotions, such as pride. Most of the problems of our time stem entirely from people’s disconnection from God. Man perceives the absence of divine love as a terror of inner emptiness and loneliness. This terror often develops into a sense of the meaninglessness of existence. It’s one of the leading causes of suicide.

In an attempt to protect himself from the horrors of this inner emptiness, a man places the image of a beautiful “self” instead of God in his heart. This lying to oneself is pride. It is masked by various concepts such as self-esteem, authority, knowledge, diplomas, degrees, and so on. But without knowledge of God, human life is only vanity. It is empty, sorrowful, and hopeless. People deprived of true spiritual support try to drown their pangs of longing by drinking wine, taking drugs, hoarding huge sums of money, gaining power over others, or using any other form of putting their troubled minds to sleep.

This world is overflowing with material wealth, yet it always seems in short supply—never enough. Without having conscious contact with God, people do not even guess that their essence is a particle of God, that all people on the divine level are one whole, and that the real value of this and other worlds is consciousness as a creative manifestation and power of the Father Creator. Jesus Christ, who was a man number eight according to Gurdjieff, with tremendous power over the world, did not turn his torturers into dust precisely because he felt his deep spiritual unity with the essences of all men. Jesus Christ was only in human form in order to communicate properly with people, being in reality the representative of the Divine Mind. However, not only ancient but also modern man is not ready to interact with other forms of consciousness.

When it comes to turning to God, the process is not easy, even for a prepared person. Man is too identified with his selfish interests. His requests have, at times, such a strange appearance that God either does not respond to the request or teaches the supplicant a good lesson. Some people try to make God their helper or servant. This is an important point for selfish people. God loves those people who genuinely love him. Such loving hearts receive much from God. Consider how Christian saints received their extraordinary qualities. These magical abilities are the grace of God given in accordance with humble service to the Lord.

The Fourth Way also utilizes the techniques of esoteric Christianity. Only the traveler of the Fourth Way who has passed all the preliminary stages of training can make real contact with God. These include complete neutralization of blocks of negative emotions, sustained self-remembering, relinquishing of false personality, overcoming selfishness, high levels of focus, and more. Therefore, the Fourth Way suggests that people first bring their mental mechanisms to a normal state, enabling them to truly love God wholeheartedly. There’s no way you can learn that from books. This training is only possible in groups led by people who have achieved real results.

The teachings of the Fourth Way are always against mystification, the exploitation of people’s imagination. The herald of the Fourth Way in the twentieth century, Gurdjieff, pointed out that one of the fundamental qualities of matter is the property of consciousness. From this point of view, the whole world is an information system, or better said, an organism. We see nothing surprising in the information processes we observe in different organisms or between different beings. Our perception of different levels of consciousness is primarily limited by the degree of our own development. Ouspensky (a disciple of Gurdjieff) was struck by the fact that Gurdjieff spoke of the Sun and planets as living beings. A highly evolved person can communicate informationally with higher and lower forms of consciousness and beings. For him, unlike less evolved humans, the whole world is alive; the self-realized spirit of man has considerable power over matter, space, and time. What seems unbelievable to one level of consciousness is quite a common reality to a more evolved being. The wonders of our civilization evoke a mystical horror in savage tribes. An unusual phenomenon produced by people with advanced consciousness is similarly shocking to civilized people, although it is not unattainable or mystical. People open their eyes as they grow and know why they live and what they must do in this life.

All that is said here about attaining a real perception of God is the experience of travelers on the Fourth Way. Success in the spiritual field depends on the sincerity of our search and the depth of our understanding of ourselves. Sincerity is up to you. You will gain the knowledge to understand yourself in this book, but you can only turn knowledge into understanding by working hard on yourself in a group of like-minded people.