Higher Centers Explained: Gurdjieff’s Path to Awakening
Gurdjieff’s higher centers—the dormant emotional and intellectual capacities beyond ordinary consciousness. Learn why they don’t function and how to activate them through Fourth Way practices.
Underground Study Groups, and What Traditional Texts Assume You Already Have
When modern seekers encounter traditional spiritual texts—the Upanishads, the Yoga Sutras, Plotinus’ Enneads, the Tao Te Ching, Sufi poetry—they often experience one of two responses: either the texts seem impenetrably obscure, or they seem deceptively simple. Both responses signal the same problem: the reader lacks qualifications the text assumes are already present. Traditional teachings were …
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Against Academic Consciousness Studies: The Epistemological Fraud of Profane Inquiry
The field of Consciousness Studies presents itself as the cutting edge of interdisciplinary inquiry. Neuroscience meets philosophy. Psychology engages with contemplative traditions. Eastern wisdom and Western science bridge together. Consciousness Studies practitioners speak of “neurophenomenology,” “contemplative science,” and the “hard problem of consciousness” with an air of profound discovery. They talk as if materialist reduction has matured …
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Conflicts aren’t Real: The Parasitic Concept of Opposition
There are no Conflicts The so-called conflicts you’ve read about in history books or experienced with the people around you are merely unfoldings of what is. Conflicts have no ontological weight. Opponents also do not exist. Conflicts only exist internally. Holding on to internal conflicts — seeing parts of unfolding as “conflict” — only weakens …
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Efforts are Unnecessary: The Vestigial Faculty of Discipline
The End of Struggle Efforts are not the expenditure of energy — they are the misuse of energy that leads to fatigue and inauthentic action. The need for effort is an obstacle placed by the sense of importance. Contrary to the mind-worm’s logic, efforts are not necessary. In fact, whatever you think requires effort can …
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Carrot and Stick: The Vestigial Faculty of Self-Assification
We first used the carrot and stick on donkeys— indeed, the life of an ass is nothing more than being motivated by reward or punishment. However, humans have made themselves to be more asinine than their four-legged counterparts. The donkey is at least free from the carrot and the stick while its master is away. …
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Polypsychicism: The Doctrine of Many Selves
The Polypsychic Being Part I — Origins of the Idea of Many Selves In the early twentieth century, Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky and his teacher George Ivanovich Gurdjieff introduced a psychology that still feels ahead of its time. They began from a simple observation: a human being does not think, feel, or act as …