The spiritual master and philosopher George Gurdjieff, after spending a long time studying the oriental ways to develop consciousness and the transcendence of the spirit, created his own philosophical vision of spirituality and inner growth, through what he called the Fourth Way or the Way of Man.
The main basis of this spiritual philosophy is that there are different ways to achieve self-knowledge and the way of the spirit, proposing that divinity exists in each one, without the need of a temple, or an external god to be worshiped. Therefore, this achievement is possible through introspection without isolating oneself from everyday life, not yielding to the passions of the body and living the present moment.
However, this philosophy, developed from 1941 by George Gurdjieff and his disciples Ouspensky and Boris Mouravieff, is also a psychological and cosmological doctrine that aims to reach, then, the evolution of consciousness and spiritual development, through a work or internal personality process, being useful for those who are truly interested in overcoming their own limitations.
However, regarding the internal personality process that is worked in the fourth way, the study of the enneagrams plays an important role; as it is well known, an enneagram is a powerful and ancient tool, used for personal liberation, the understanding of the human psyche and spiritual growth.
With this tool that appears for the first time in the Sufi tradition in the 10th and 11th centuries, the nine types of existing personalities are described and how they unfold in the different circumstances, these are: the perfectionist, the helper, the triumphant, the melancholic, the researcher, the loyal, the enthusiastic, the leader and the peacemaker.
Likewise, another method that this theory applies, is the sacred dances or the Gurdjieff movements; these are practiced collectively to reach a state of trance that raises awareness, helps in the awakening of that unconscious life that keeps the majority asleep, without the capacity for reflection and that does not allow the inner evolution of each one.
On the other hand, the fourth way tries to be more accessible to the current way of life without renouncing the needs of the body, to get the domain of it over the self; similarly it moves emotional suffering away to control human passions and emotions. The way of man seeks the domain of the emotional and the physical but not so radically, since the renunciation of the world is an option and not something fundamental, giving a more pleasant way to find spiritual connection and inner peace.
Finally, this spiritual tendency that seeks self-knowledgeIt is an individual and particular process that gives great importance to the understanding of the universe, the contact with it and the position occupied by the human being, because if this is clear, we will have an approach to the higher truth.
ALFA