10: Exercises and failing at exercises

The School had various exercises which changed from time-to-time, designed to interrupt the automatic and mechanical functioning of the mind (or ‘the machine’ as it was referred to).

Once I started to follow the Fourth Way, for a long time I fought feelings of inadequacy and guilt that I could not remember myself consistently or do the prescribed exercises (like remembering to keep my feet flat on the floor while dining). After a while I realised that the exercises are merely tools—there is no merit or demerit in doing or failing to do the exercises. I was doing the work for myself, so other people’s opinion didn’t matter, and in any event, for the most part they couldn’t see whether I was doing the work or not. Succeeding or failing is irrelevant: the point is to awaken in the moment.

In the words of the late, great physicist Richard Feynman, “What do you care what other people think?”

A further point, well made by others in the School, is that the moment you realise you have ‘failed’ in an exercise is a moment, albeit brief, of awakening. Progress is not always about success but about speed of recovery from failure.

For the guilt I do not blame the System but rather my own programming. Another saying of my early time in the School was: things as they are, myself as I am. Judgement of oneself and of others was not encouraged, so the System was not at fault in this.

For all the grievous faults and corruption in the heart of the Fellowship of Friends alleged elsewhere, it is possible for good advice to come from a bad source. To reject everything associated with a cult that one finally leaves is natural, but a mistake. Truth is truth no matter who says it, and good people can learn even from a bad teacher (but it’s not an ideal way of spending time).

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3.2: Influence C in the Fellowship

When I joined the Fellowship I never questioned its authenticity as a fourth way school. I simply accepted the rules, did the exercises and enjoyed the sense of being on a meaningful journey. I felt I was able to verify the teacher through the people around me and the teaching itself. At no point did the question of lineage arise as a problem for me. Once I was asked about it in a prospective student meeting and replied that the System came to our teacher through Rodney Collin and Alex Horn, Robert Burton’s teacher. After the meeting another student quite rightly said to me that we shouldn’t claim a connection with Rodney Collin because we don’t know this for certain. Lineage was always claimed by Robert Burton through Alex Horn, but it is not at all clear what connection Horn had with the fourth way of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. There is a suggestion that Horn visited Collin in Mexico, but there is scant evidence that he stayed for any length of time or learned anything from him. Howeve

3.7: Centres of gravity and body types

You’re nothing but a pack of cards! —Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland I do not recall reading anywhere in Gurdjieff’s or Ouspensky’s works the idea of body types or centres of gravity. The idea of body types appears to derive from Rodney Collin’s Theory of Celestial Influence and that of centres of gravity is, as far as I can tell, an innovation by Robert Burton, although I do not know for certain. In essence both sets of ideas are peripheral to the aim of the fourth way, but they have their uses. Both sets of ideas provide a framework in which one can identify the mechanics of one’s ‘machine.’ This enables one better to understand one’s mechanical or automatic reactions to people and situations and thus become more forgiving and accepting of oneself and others. The idea of centres of gravity appears to be an embellishment on the division of the body into head, heart and guts, or intellectual centre, emotional centre and instinctive-moving centre, which is discussed in In Search

3.3: The Fourth Way to what?

If I were to formulate from today’s understanding what my aim was when I first joined SES at the age of seventeen, it would be to acquire a sense of peace and that clear state of awareness that went with it, and also the delight of understanding the world from a set of ideas that made it make sense. It is hard to accept that sometimes it doesn’t. Stepping back, what is the aim of the fourth way from the point of view of its basic texts? The most fundamental texts are arguably Ouspensky’s The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution and his In Search of the Miraculous , also Gurdjieff’s All and Everything . Life is only real then, when I am starts with a summary of the intended results of Gurdjieff’s All and Everything , of which Life is the third series. The summary is as follows: FIRST SERIES: To destroy, mercilessly, without any compromises whatsoever, in the mentation and feelings of the reader, the beliefs and views, by centuries rooted in him, about everything existing in the

The fourth way to nowhere

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