P. D. Ouspensky

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

At the top of the ray of creation, the Absolute, subject to one law

An impersonal AbsoluteInferred from their doctrine

P. D. Ouspensky approached the Absolute in two stages. In Tertium Organum (1912), before meeting Gurdjieff, he speculates on higher dimensions of space and on a cosmic consciousness the human being may attain, without appealing to a personal God. In In Search of the Miraculous (1949), where he records what he learned from Gurdjieff, he sets out the ray of creation: a scale of worlds descending from the Absolute, subject to one law, down to the Moon, subject to ninety-six; each level is more mechanical the further it is from the source. The Absolute appears there as the principle from which everything proceeds and whose will reaches directly only the first level, not as someone with whom one has dealings. His interest is not devotional but cosmological and psychological: to understand where the human being stands on that scale.

Who am I? Is there a true self?

Man has no permanent I, only many I's taking turns

There is no permanent selfStated explicitly

P. D. Ouspensky sets out in In Search of the Miraculous (1949) and The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution (1950) the central thesis of the Fourth Way: the ordinary human being has no single, permanent I. Each thought, desire or sensation says «I» for a moment and is replaced by another; there are hundreds of small I's, often contradictory, taking turns in command without any of them representing the whole. Man in this state is a machine: everything happens to him, he does nothing. Self-observation reveals this multiplicity, and seeing it is the first step. Unlike Buddhist non-self, however, the teaching holds that a real I can come to be formed through long and conscious work; the point is not to discover a Self already given but to create what does not yet exist.

Why do we suffer?

We suffer from identification, imagination and needless negative emotions

Ignorance of what we areStated explicitly

P. D. Ouspensky sets out in The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution (1950) and The Fourth Way (1957) a psychological explanation of suffering. Ordinary man lives asleep: he identifies with every thought, emotion or circumstance, loses himself in it and believes he is that. To identification are added imagination, which produces uncontrolled scenarios, and the expression of negative emotions, which Ouspensky regards as unnecessary: they have no centre of their own in the organism, are maintained by habit and justified by reasoning. Much human suffering, he holds, comes from this mechanical functioning, which passes for natural. Self-observation, non-identification and ceasing to express negative emotions make it possible to reduce it. The teaching further distinguishes this useless mechanical suffering from the conscious suffering that work on oneself may demand.

What happens after death?

Life repeats itself: eternal recurrence, which only consciousness can change

Rebirth according to karmaStated explicitly

Ouspensky defended throughout his life an idea of his own, eternal recurrence, which he sets out in A New Model of the Universe and fictionalises in Strange Life of Ivan Osokin. At death, the human being does not pass into another world or a different body: he is born again into the same life, at the same time and with the same circumstances, because time has more dimensions than we perceive. Most people repeat the same things mechanically; only someone who acquires memory and self-consciousness can introduce changes into the repetition. In In Search of the Miraculous he also records Gurdjieff's doctrine: ordinary man does not have an immortal soul already given, but the possibility of forming higher bodies through work, and only what has crystallised can survive the death of the body.

How is liberation or salvation attained?

Man is a sleeping machine; awakening requires self-remembering within a school

Through conscious inner workStated explicitly

Peter D. Ouspensky sets out in In Search of the Miraculous the teaching he received from Gurdjieff between 1915 and 1918, and in The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution the version he himself taught. The starting point is that ordinary human beings live asleep: each is a machine moved by external influences, without a permanent «I» but with a multitude of small I's succeeding one another. Evolution is neither automatic nor guaranteed; it is only possible for those who undertake it consciously. Its tools are self-observation, «self-remembering», effort against mechanicalness and work with others within a school, because no one can awaken alone. The end of that development is higher states of consciousness.

Is a teacher necessary?

No one awakens alone: a school is needed, with its system and group work

Community and traditionStated explicitly

In In Search of the Miraculous, Peter D. Ouspensky transmitted the idea, received from Gurdjieff, that a sleeping man cannot wake himself: he needs a system of knowledge and other people to remind him of his sleep. That is the reason for schools, organised groups working with rules, with knowledge coming from a higher source and with common tasks. After separating from Gurdjieff in 1918 and definitively in the 1920s, Ouspensky led his own groups in London for decades, centred on studying the system. His emphasis falls more on the school and collective work than on the personal figure of the teacher.

Is the world real?

The ray of creation: worlds of differing density and number of laws

Planes of existenceStated explicitly

In In Search of the Miraculous, Peter D. Ouspensky sets out the cosmology he received from Gurdjieff: the ray of creation, a scale of worlds running from the Absolute to the Moon through all worlds, our galaxy, the Sun, the planets and the Earth. Each level is subject to an increasing number of laws, so that the Earth, subject to many, is a place of great mechanicalness. Human beings live in one of the worst places in the universe, in the system's expression, and their possible evolution consists in freeing themselves from some of those laws. Before meeting Gurdjieff, in Tertium Organum, he had already argued that the three-dimensional world is a limited perception of a reality of more dimensions.

What is love?

Love is a cosmic phenomenon that can open onto higher consciousness

Longing and unionInferred from their doctrine

In Tertium Organum, P. D. Ouspensky treats love as a cosmic phenomenon not made to the measure of human ends: people use it for reproduction, pleasure or possession, but its nature exceeds all of that and belongs to an order of reality of higher dimensions. That is why, he holds, love can momentarily open a higher perception, akin to the mystical consciousness he studies in the same book, and also why it is degraded when shut up in the personal. In A New Model of the Universe, in the chapter on sex and evolution, he examines sexual energy as a force that can serve inner evolution or be wasted. Later, within the Fourth Way, he would add that mechanical man cannot truly love as long as he lacks a permanent I.

Are we free, or is everything determined?

Man is a machine: everything happens to him, he does nothing

We are machines until we awakenStated explicitly

*In Search of the Miraculous* (1949) records as the starting point of Gurdjieff's teaching the thesis that ordinary man is a machine: he cannot do, everything happens to him, as it rains or clears up. Ouspensky makes it the axis of his own lectures, published as *The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution*: the human being has no single permanent self but many small «I»s that take turns, and therefore has no will. Freedom is not a given but a possibility. Only through work on oneself, beginning with self-remembering, can a centre capable of doing be formed. Most people, he warns, will never leave mechanicalness.

Why meditate or pray?

Self-remembering: being present to oneself while acting

Being presentStated explicitly

In the Fourth Way Ouspensky sets out in *In Search of the Miraculous* and *The Fourth Way*, the central practice is neither sitting meditation nor prayer but self-remembering: dividing attention so that, while looking at something, one is at the same time aware of oneself looking. Ouspensky recounts that when he tried it he discovered he almost never remembered himself and that most of his life passed in sleep. To that effort are added non-judgemental self-observation and the struggle against identification and the expression of negative emotions. The aim is to wake from mechanicalness and form a permanent self; self-remembering is the first step towards consciousness.

Can reason know the ultimate?

A higher logic and a school knowledge ordinary science cannot reach

Esoteric knowledgeStated explicitly

Ouspensky trained as a mathematician and journalist, and his first answer was intellectual: in *Tertium Organum* (1912) he proposed a «third logic» to surpass those of Aristotle and Bacon in order to think about consciousness and the higher dimensions of space. Meeting Gurdjieff in 1915 convinced him that something more was needed: an esoteric knowledge preserved by schools, which, according to *In Search of the Miraculous*, is not transmitted through books but from teacher to pupil, and only to one who has prepared his being to receive it. That knowledge must be verified personally: nothing is to be accepted on faith. The ordinary, mechanical intellect cannot reach it; one developed by work on oneself can.

Withdraw from the world or transform it?

The Fourth Way requires no withdrawal: one works in ordinary life

Contemplation in actionStated explicitly

In In Search of the Miraculous, P. D. Ouspensky sets out Gurdjieff's classification of the traditional ways: that of the fakir, who works on the body; that of the monk, on the emotions; and that of the yogi, on the mind. All three require leaving ordinary life and withdrawing. The Fourth Way, by contrast, does not ask one to go to the desert or the monastery: it is followed in the conditions of ordinary life, which are considered the best possible for work on oneself, and it works at once on body, emotions and mind. The practitioner keeps his trade and his family, but uses them as material for self-remembering and for observing his mechanicalness. Ouspensky led groups for decades, in London and later in the United States, on this basis. As for society, he was sceptical: collective changes, he said, happen mechanically.

Nueva York (Upper East Side) · Estados Unidos

Gurdjieff Foundation of New York

The Gurdjieff Foundation of New York

The Gurdjieff Foundation of New York belongs to the network of foundations established after Gurdjieff's death by his pupil Jeanne de Salzmann, together with the Institut Gurdjieff in Paris and the Gurdjieff Society in London. Its first president, Lord Pentland, had been a pupil of Ouspensky before working with Gurdjieff, and many of Ouspensky's pupils joined this work. It offers weekly group meetings led by senior students, classes in the Movements, the sacred dances and exercises Gurdjieff taught, meditation and retreats. Access is gradual and begins with introductory events.

Barons Court, Londres · Reino Unido

The Study Society, Colet House (London)

The Study Society

The Study Society was registered in 1951, four years after Ouspensky's death, at the initiative of his pupil Dr Francis Roles, to continue his work as a school of the Fourth Way. It is based at Colet House in west London, which presents itself as a spiritual gateway in the centre of the city. Its current programme brings together meditation, the Movements, study groups on the Masnavi and meetings devoted to Rumi, the dervish turning and a Sunday Advaita gathering. Its main website sometimes rejects automated requests; the Colet House site responds normally.

Londres · Reino Unido

Gurdjieff Studies, London

Gurdjieff Studies Ltd (organización benéfica registrada)

Gurdjieff Studies is a London charity devoted to the Fourth Way that offers group meetings, reading groups, practical activities, Movements classes and intensive residential stays. It holds that the teaching is passed on from teacher to pupil in direct lines of transmission, and maintains two reference websites: one on Gurdjieff's life and work, with his music, dances and chronology, and another devoted to P. D. Ouspensky, reconstructing his work in England, including the Lyne Place period. It is independent of the network of foundations established by Jeanne de Salzmann.