Catalog
A discussion of the three elemental parts of the intellectual part of the emotional center, identity, will and conscience. Although class work returns to these subjects often, this paper is the first introduction to these concepts for new students.
The original text of Brain Systems as it was written for class use. This paper offers a class room version of excerpts from several Fourth Way writers who contributed to the original discussion of centers accompanied by original teaching material required to complete the concept. Directly cited: Gurdjieff (in Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous), Ouspensky (in The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution) and Speeth (in The Gurdjieff Work.) The paper continues beyond the concept of centers to develop of an entire model of the human brain and to describe additional features...
At last, a nice little three page allegory with more questions than answers. This popular class study guide addresses World Creation and World Maintenance in an understandable and accessible description of meta-level logic. It is about toy trucks.
[The summary discussion of both papers is combined.] Self-selection answers the puzzle not only of how we know “What is this?” but also accounts for the incredible dynamism we employ as we initiate center activity to process our models of reality. Can you recall the last time an optical sight entered your modeling system in a state of complete incomprehensibility? Humans are designed to live here. We may not always know, for example, what something does, but we always seem to know what it is, or, at least, something else that it is “like” either a lot, a little or...
Gurdjieff offered this question, then he set about transmitting an answer to us. Now that you have read all that he wrote about it, have you crystallized his answer to your own satisfaction? This paper, while not the entire temple fit to hold that wisdom, may suffice as one of its pillars. Perhaps the ugly one of the lot, tucked away out of sight in some corner behind something else. Still, the students in this school must start somewhere. Exploration based on honest stupidity is seldom arrogant. This class study refers to Planetary Imperatives, a necessary creation of this school;
... This paper is dedicated to one of the most popular and poorly presented topics of Gurdjieff’s lectures in “In Search of the Miraculous.” It seems that numerous authors have studied his work only to immediately launch themselves into a thoughtless misdirection of it. This short paper prepares students to understand both the transformative nature of the enneagram concept and “down to earth” methods for the creation of one and its interpretation.
