Life Is Real

For third book of his series, “All And Everything,” the philosopher G.I. Gurdjieff chose the title “Life Is Real Only Then, When I Am.” He intended this book as a guide to what a ‘real’ life (and a real ‘I’) should be like, but he died before he could finish it. The content of the book is therefore still fragmentary. And yet, fifteen years elapsed between laying out the structure of the book and Gurdjieff’s death: years in which Gurdjieff used it for teaching his small band of the most dedicated and receptive students. He even told the ‘heir’ to his ideas – Jeanne de Salzmann – not to publish the third book until it was clear that the time was right. But what time?

The first book in Gurdjieff’s series had the intention of awakening people to a discrepancy, between how they surely believed themselves to be and how their actions proved them to be. It was intended that sincere readers would be put ‘face to face’ with this discrepancy within themselves – but also be offered hints about how and why they might start to address it. The second book was intended to illustrate people in whom – at least in some aspects of their lives – that discrepancy was being addressed, making those people ‘models’ of authentic being. Gurdjieff’s evident ‘requirement’ before people should have access to the material in the third book was that they, too, should demonstrate an earnest intent to become ‘real’ themselves. In short, that they should already be able to ‘master’ the function of choice.

The fundamental problem that faces anyone who desires to be ‘authentic’ is that, from birth, we are all inculcated with an ability to act out a social role. We do not exactly ‘lose’ our ability to choose for ourselves, but we are taught repeatedly that we must meet the expectations of others, or they will withhold privileges. We are conditioned, over and over, in what is the ‘proper’ way to behave. And even if we rebel against the notions with which we are presented, even the rebellion is still anchored to those notions. We do not know ourselves: only the shape of the box in which society wishes to place us.

I say, “society wishes,” but actually that ‘society’ is merely a machine – evolved through environmental pressures to aid in survival of the species. And we are conditioned – programmed – to be a part of that machine, and to pass on its rules and procedures to future generations. We are even born with a mental (thinking and feeling) capacity that not only accepts such conditioning but embraces, willingly, patterns of behaviour – stories about the world – that are offered to it with promise of reward.

Very few people encounter the kind of pressure in their ordinary life that causes them to even question what it would mean to be ‘authentic’. But there are always a few who are forced by circumstance to confront discrepancies in their acquired personality. For example, being confronted by someone who is only following orders but nevertheless earnestly wishes to kill you. And in that moment, realising that you would be the same: a robot killer, defending ideals that you have only ‘learned’ and do not actually understand. Suddenly, it’s “kill or be killed” and the ideals go out of the window. But afterwards, if you survive, you are left wondering why.

The essence of the Fourth Way work is to find and confront the ‘programmed’ aspects of the personality, because these are not real ‘I’ – they are at best a collection of social patterns. This work utilises tools such as “intentional suffering”: deliberately going against the acquired ‘should’, or deliberately forgoing the projected reward of a ‘usual’ pattern of behaviour. Each time we do this, our thoughts and feelings reveal something of how we learned a particular pattern. In short, we acquire material for “conscious labours”: work to become able to choose impartially.

We all think that we are already able to choose, but in reality almost all of those so-called choices are determined long ago, by forces that shaped the society in which we have been programmed. Our experience, growing up, reflects that history and the action of those forces. We ‘know’ instinctively, because of the patterns we have absorbed and now mimic, what is right and what us wrong. There is no real choice: the scales are already weighted to one side.

We all think that we are ‘one’ person, with a continuity of being that arises from the continuity of our physical body. But in reality, we have many – often quite disconnected – mental states, each of which uses the name “I” as if it is the whole of our being. And even our physical body is often at odds with our mental picture of it. In extremity, we’d call that ‘dysphoria’ but it’s something that we all experience at some level.

Learning how to dismantle the false personality – the acquired personality – without ‘breaking’ the whole machine of a man’s feelings and mentation: that’s what the Fourth Way attempts. And only a person who is serious about discovering what their authentic being could be should attempt that path. Those who are not truly serious will merely construct a new false personality: probably one in which they praise themselves for their authenticity, whilst totally lacking in that quality.

As a core part of the journey of Fourth Way work – which isn’t at all unique, nor even uniquely a ‘fourth’ way – the one constant, as it were, has to be the development of real, impartial choice. And for that, one has – quite simply – to be able to remember that choice from moment to moment, so that it is not displaced, mechanically, by some incoming idea of ‘should’ or ‘could’. This remembering – this being ‘singular’ – is far harder than one would imagine, if one has not tried it. Indeed, when one does really try it, it will seem impossible. And so it is, for the machine that we have learned to be.

The machine that we have learned to be operates almost entirely on what might be called ‘mechanical attention’. The mind predicts – unconsciously – what is likely to happen next and our learned attachments select a path that minimises ‘negative’ outcomes (negative in the sense of our conditioning). Every once in a while, there is not a clear enough path for this machine to select, which awakens a ‘drawn’ attention. The problem area is – if you like – highlighted, and we ‘pay attention’, the purpose of which is merely to give more data to resolve the best path of action. Repeated occurrences lay down new tracks or habits in the machine – especially if others indicate approval of our solution – and we pride ourselves on having learned how to handle that situation.

Remembering oneself, in order to make and hold impartial choices (not simply acquired leanings) requires controlled attention. And, paradoxically, that type of attention also an impartial choice. Luckily [actually, because of forces of evolution beyond our normal attention] we are born with the capacity to develop controlled attention. But we need to work at it. We need to ‘grow’ it. And for that – to put in the work – we have to be possessed of an earnest desire to have a different ‘being’ than the mechanical one with which we have been conditioned.

If you are minded to read Gurdjieff’s third book, decide first whether you even understand the nature of the acquired personality – the false personality – about which I have written, above. If you see only the ‘authentic’ in you, then his third book will do you no good at all, because it is about how to dismantle that false personality. If you sense, however dimly, that something might be inauthentic, then read the first book, but do so as if the foolish beings, favoured of Beelzebub, are really the elements of your own personality.

If you already know and realise that there is little about you that is not ‘conditioned’, and if you realise in particular that you lack almost completely the ability to remember an impartial choice (even one as simple as the choice to remember), then read the second book, but do so in light of possibility that Gurdjieff chose his ‘remarkable men’ to illustrate what maintaining impartial choice can really mean. Read it to understand (truly represent within yourself) that ordinary people can develop real choice – even if their starting point is accidental.

When you understand the nature of false personality, and when you are truly convinced that you can change – and perhaps understand something of what being authentic may mean – then read the fragments of the third book. Although not properly ‘finished’, these fragments do point at the nature inherent to both “conscious labours” and “intentional suffering”. Although this third book may appear to be in equal parts ‘inner musing’ and ‘outward teaching’, it is, in both respects, intended to trigger a corresponding reflection within the reader. It is not about Gurdjieff: it is about you, the reader – or else it has no purpose. We who follow this path do not try to emulate Mr. Gurdjieff (still less, worship his greatness); we try to find ourselves in the reflections that his writing evokes.

At the beginning of this piece, I mused on what ‘time’ Gurdjieff had in mind, for the proper publishing of the third book in his series. And here, I suggest that the proper time was when he was no longer seen as an ‘influential figure’ – the only source of some truly original ideas. Because if we were to take his ideas as merely another way to obtain social acceptability, we would be building up what he, quite earnestly, would have had us destroy. The Fourth Way is not a tool for becoming better adapted to social life; it is perhaps even the opposite. And whilst Mr. Gurdjieff was alive and ‘celebrated’, whole societies arose from the idea of being ‘better’ than others outside that society. We aren’t meant to be ‘important’ or ‘better’. And whilst we might come to understand (if we can remember that choice) what it means to be authentically human, we might well find that this confers absolutely nothing of any importance.

The essence of the Fourth Way isn’t about any destination; it’s about discovering what we already are. What we really are, rather than what we’ve learned to believe.

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