The Fourth Way Book

When I read this book it literally made me angry to know just how flawed the teachings and the way it is taught is. There are quite a lot of concepts covered, but the main ones are that we are not conscious, do not self-remember, are mechanical and have 4 centers: moving, instinctive, emotional and intellectual. The idea in principle is good; that we need to work toward self-development and growth by becoming more aware of the multiple "Is" that we have through the centers and understanding how they can be used appropriately to transform ourselves.

The problem is that Ouspensky hides behind words and fails to explore his ideas any further than what he wants to focus on. He doesn't explain why we lack consciousness and why we don't self-remember. If you take it by it's literal definition, we are conscious and we do self-remember. I am aware of myself, my surroundings and can remember it. So what does he mean by it? Its his own made up definition of these words. So if he has his own definitions then he should firstly call it something else, secondly explain what he means by those definitions and lastly provide evidence for the phenomenon behind the definitions.

But when you look at the dialogue between Ouspensky and the other person, they are insistently asking what Ouspensky means by some of his definitions, but he refuses to answer and repeatedly says "figure it out for yourself by practice and you will understand". The problem is there is no way to figure it out, because we don't know what to work on. If we try to 'self-remember' then we might think we're self-remembering when we're really not. And since we have no definitions or explanations for it then its pointless to tell us to do something that we don't know.

The vagueness of his terminology not only becomes a problem for practice, but also for validity. How do we know that we actually aren't conscious or able to self-remember? Ouspensky doesn't substantiate his claims. He just tells people to accept his ideas and practice it. This is what irritates me the most. He acts like some authority who has special knowledge over others without actually caring to explain why his knowledge is factually accurate. He just makes the assumption that people will believe whatever he says and that they should learn how to practice it on their own. Believing in his ideas without actually seeing results is blind faith. It is making people work toward something that isn't even a sure thing.

The responses to the questions are also quite disturbing. Usually the person who is asking the questions doesn't understand a shred of what he's saying, they ask for clarification and Ouspensky looks down on them for not understanding. Again, it is him acting like an authority who has special knowledge. He is an elitist and a false prophet, who again, hides behind his words. I can't put it any less harshly.

But when I put my feelings aside and try to interpret the meaning of his ideas (without explicitly knowing), they still don't make sense. From what I gather, what he means by lacking consciousness is the fact that we are constantly doing things without knowing the reasons why we do it - which according to the system means that we are mechanical. To put it in psychological terms that actually make sense this is the distinction between automatic and controlled thinking. I agree that oftentimes we are more in the automatic state and seldom in the controlled state. But this doesn't mean we need to always be controlled. Automatic thinking serves a purpose. If we were always controlled in our thinking it would be impossible to filter out certain information and would result in information overload.

Self-remembering in the system really means that we often forget why we act in certain ways. Some ways we act contradict each other. We are also unable to remember a total self that is congruent with all sides of ourselves. Again, this is true. But he goes to the lengths to say that if we have positive emotions one minute and negative emotions another minute it is not self-remembering, because we're contradicting ourselves. This isn't true at all. For example, I could be trying to relax, which is positive, but when someone interrupts me I get angry, which is negative. They are both perfectly congruent with one another, but Ouspensky acts like it isn't.

Which brings me to why Ouspensky has no grasp on emotions. He basically says that there are "wrong emotions" and that there are "right emotions" and that the "wrong" ones need to be discarded. The wrong emotions are basically negative emotions: anger, sadness, anxiety etc. But anyone with a basic understanding of the human psyche knows that these emotions serve a useful purpose. When we are anxious it alerts us that our body is in a dangerous situation and that we need to deal with it appropriately.

There is nothing inherently wrong with negative emotions. But Ouspensky actually goes so far to call these emotions unreal. If he doesn't see these emotions in himself all he's doing is repressing them. And by telling other people to abandon their negative emotions, he is effectively telling them to repress theirs too. He said that you need to ignore negative emotions. Research suggests that repressing emotions actually make it harder for the emotions to go away. First of all, anyone who is in the daunting position of repressing thoughts knows that it is harder to ignore those thoughts than dealing with them. Usually the reverse of what you want happens: you end up thinking more about the thoughts you're trying to avoid. But even when you are able to put them off, because something else distracts you, the feelings don't go away, they just build up. And the more they build up the harder it is to deal with them.

When you examine Ouspensky's other ideas, they just come accross as completely ridiculous. In one chapter he says that the moon controls our behaviour and that we communicate with the moon. This is nothing more than pseudoscience. He says that when we die the moon eats us, because it is hungry. He goes on about how we consume "impressions" in this convoluted explanation that lack any parsimony. I don't see what benefit there is for believing in any of this nonsense.

It is no surprise to me that Ouspensky abandoned the system long after people already committed to following his outrageous ideas. I literally thought to myself "he probably abandoned the system" before having read it, because there's no way anyone could rationally live with such absurd beliefs. I realize that a lot of my criticisms don't just fall on Ouspensky, but Gurdjieff for postulating them. But I take it how it is. Whether or not these are Ouspensky's ideas, he still believed in them and should still be accountable for it. I probably wouldn't be so bothered by the system if it was actually clear on what the terminology means and how it should be practiced. Even though Ouspensky consistently says that the system is practical and not theoretical, there is really nothing that actually tells you how to self-remember or become conscious, so your guess is as good as mine how to actually practice this. Until then, I find the system and his teaching style discouraging and is not worth my time.