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The book

USA:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/0956549780

Contents
The arousing of thought
Cult versus belief
The arch-absurd
How I came to be in an esoteric school: SES
In search of the miraculous: the Fellowship
An early warning
Things that can be tested
 Basic ideas of the fourth way
What is the fourth way?
Self-remembering
A state of hyper-vigilance
Exercises and failing at exercises
The mystery of consciousness
States of consciousness: first, second and third state
The third state, self-remembering and mindfulness
You are not your thoughts
Mantras
Inner considering and external considering
Identification
The non-expression of negative emotions
Voluntary suffering and unnecessary suffering
True and false personality
Inside the fellowship
 Meetings
Centre dinners
Impressions of Renaissance
Under a starry sky
A doorway to the fantastic
A very brief history of the fourth way
Influence C in the Fellowship
The fourth way to what?
Fourth state
Man no.s 1, 2, 3
Man no.s 4 and 5
Centres of gravity and body types
The enneagram
The food diagram
Higher hydrogens
Higher worlds
Food for the moon
Feminine dominance
The law of seven
The law of three
Intentional insincerity
The Ark
Reason
Knowledge and belief in Ouspensky
Reason can take you to the door
The sleep of reason
The problem of received knowledge
A new muddle of the universe
The mystical world
What knowledge can we get from 'higher states'?
Cosmic consciousness
Time
Recurrence
Time is a factor
Immortality
Disquieting tales
How they treated outsiders
How the Teacher treated his own
Rumours
Teachers of Spirituality
The circle of illusion
Limits to following a teacher
The power of a Teacher
How to verify a teacher
Do schools of awakening help the world?
Abandoning the system
Why did I stay?
Questions I should have asked
'Life'
Why I left-message to the Centre Directors
Summing up the journey to the absurd
Why the magic stopped working
A reason for not believing anything I have written
The burning of Paradise
I abandon the System
The sunk costs fallacy
Be ordinary
Who am I anyway?
To be a beginner
Two key issues
On being ordinary
Bibliography

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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
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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
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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
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