The fourth way to nowhere by Martin Braybrooke
Description
My father was by turns a Quaker, a Catholic and a Buddhist, my mother an atheist, and my primary school teacher believed that her dog was the reincarnation of her previous dog. Thus I grew up a natural skeptic. It is odd, therefore, that I ended up believing a large number of the unprovable fragments of an unknown teaching that is Ouspensky and Gurdfjieff's fourth way, as embellished by the leader of a modern fourth way cult.
This book is a careful critique of a whole set of beliefs related to, but not exclusive to, the fourth way path of inner development. At the same time it is a personal history of how the author, despite a modern education, got drawn into a cult, and believed (to quote the White Queen in Alice), at least 'six impossible things before breakfast.'
Those readers already familiar with the fourth way, and perhaps even members of one or other of the organisations that have sprung up in connection with it, should find the analysis in this book useful and perhaps challenging. There are indeed ideas in the fourth way worth considering, not least the idea of self-remembering, which has a lot in common with more recent movements such as mindfulness. There are other ideas which are questionable, or remain to be proven, such as the fourth state of consciousness or the idea of recurrence: Ouspensky's version of re-incarnation. No genuine seeker after truth should be deterred from asking her- or himself, "what do I really know, what is merely provisional, and what is likely to turn out to be wrong?"
This is also a plea that one aim of any spiritual or psychological practice or movement should be kindness, if humanity is to survive the various catastrophes that now threaten it, and an assertion that aspirants to self-development can arrive, with the right efforts, at a place where it is no small achievement to be content to be ordinary.
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Maurice Nicoll : Forgotten Teacher of the Fourth Way by Gary Lachman
£25.00
A biography of the influential teacher of the Fourth Way In 1922, Maurice Nicoll (1884-1953) abandoned his successful London psychiatry practice and his direct studies with Carl Jung to move his family just outside of Paris to the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, a center recently opened by philosopher, mystic, and spiritual guru G.I. Gurdjieff, the founder of the esoteric system that became known as the “Fourth Way.” Nicoll went on to become one of the most passionate teachers of the Fourth Way, committing the final three decades of his life to teaching “The Work” in his own unorthodox style. In this revealing biography, Gary Lachman draws on recently uncovered diaries to explore the unusual, syncretic approach Nicoll brought to his teaching of the Fourth Way.
He shows how Nicoll is unique in having Jung, Gurdjieff, and Ouspensky as teachers and to have known each of these important figures in esoteric history personally, yet—as Lachman reveals—Nicoll was not a blind devotee by any stretch. The author shows how he incorporated elements of Jungian psychology and Emanuel Swedenborg-inspired mysticism into his exploration and teaching of both Gurdjieff’s and Ouspensky’s ideas, as well as into his best-known work, Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. Lachman reveals the unorthodox side of Nicoll in fuller detail than ever before through excerpts from recently shared diaries, in which Nicoll included detailed accounts of his own solitary “self-sex” erotic experimentations to reach visionary states, along with recordings of his dreams and other personal and mystical reflections.
The social details of Nicoll’s life are also examined, including vivid portraits of the occult scene in the early-to-mid-20th century and the communal living situations in which Nicoll sometimes resided. Drawing on his familiarity with hermetic practices and his own experiences with “The Work,” Lachman comprehensively explores the significance of Nicoll and the novelty of his thought, offering a profound, needed, and sympathetic but critical study of this man so instrumental to the development and legacy of the Fourth Way.
