Introduction
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (1872-1949) was a Greco-Armenian mystic and spiritual teacher who brought the mystical knowledge of the East to the West. He developed a comprehensive system of self-development known as "The Fourth Way" or simply "The Work."
The Fourth Way differs from the three traditional paths of spiritual development:
The Way of the Fakir - working primarily with the physical body
The Way of the Monk - working primarily with emotions and faith
The Way of the Yogi - working primarily with the mind and knowledge
Gurdjieff's Fourth Way integrates all three approaches, allowing practitioners to work on themselves while living ordinary lives rather than retreating from the world.
The 48 exercises presented here form a progressive curriculum for self-transformation. They begin with fundamental awareness of one's physical existence and culminate in advanced practices of conscious morality and cosmic awareness.
Foundational Awareness (Exercises 1-3)
These initial exercises establish the basic recognition of embodiment and the mechanical nature of human existence.
Exercise 1: Body Awareness
The effort to realize: I have a body.
This foundational practice cultivates the recognition that you are not merely your body, but that you have a body. This distinction between identification and observation is central to all Fourth Way work. The exercise involves maintaining continuous awareness of physical sensations throughout daily activities.
Exercise 2: Purpose of Incarnation
The effort to realize that I descended into and become attached to this organism (this animal) for the purpose of developing it.
This exercise extends the first by adding the dimension of purpose. It recognizes that consciousness has entered the physical form not by accident, but for the specific purpose of evolution and development. This perspective transforms ordinary life into a school for growth.
Exercise 3: Observing Mechanicality
The attempt to realize the organism's mechanicity:
(a) Its habitual reaction to recurrent situations
(b) The magnetic relationship of the centres
Gurdjieff taught that humans operate mechanically, responding automatically to stimuli like machines. This exercise involves observing these automatic patterns without trying to change them initially - simply seeing them clearly. The "magnetic relationships of centres" refers to how our intellectual, emotional, and physical centers influence each other in predictable patterns.
Observation and Formulation (Exercises 4-12)
This section develops the capacity for self-observation and the ability to formulate and communicate findings.
Exercise 4: The Driver's Experiment
Experiment of the part of the driver (intellect), in order that he may learn his business.
In Gurdjieff's allegory, the human being is compared to a horse-drawn carriage. The carriage is the body, the horse is the emotions, the driver is the intellect, and the master (often absent) is the higher self. This exercise trains the intellectual center to fulfill its proper function of observation and direction.
Exercise 5: Reporting to the 'I'
The formatory apparatus reporting the behavior of the organism to the 'I'.
The formatory apparatus is the mechanical part of the intellectual center that categorizes and labels experiences. This exercise involves using this function consciously to report observations to the witnessing consciousness - the 'I' that observes.
Exercise 6: Concurrent Formulation
Formulation of observations concurrent with the act of observation.
Rather than observing and then formulating later, this practice develops the ability to formulate observations in real-time. This requires a division of attention that itself develops consciousness.
Exercise 7: Formulating Ideas
The formulation of the ideas.
This exercise involves clearly articulating the theoretical concepts of the Work. By formulating ideas precisely, understanding deepens and the ideas become available for practical application.
Exercise 8: Understanding Ideas
The attempt to understand the ideas.
Understanding in the Fourth Way sense involves more than intellectual comprehension. It requires verification through personal experience and the integration of knowing across multiple centers.
Exercise 9: Relating Ideas
The attempt to relate the ideas and understand the relationships.
The Work contains many interconnected concepts. This exercise involves seeing how different ideas relate to each other, forming a coherent system of understanding.
Exercise 10: Defining Terms
The attempt to define terms in accordance with institute ideas.
Words in the Fourth Way often have specific technical meanings that differ from ordinary usage. This exercise involves developing precision in the use of Work terminology.
Exercise 11: Interpreting Through Work Ideas
The attempt to interpret life, human beings, etc., in terms of mechanicality, types, springs, centers, etc.
Having learned the theoretical framework, this exercise applies it to understanding everyday life. People and situations are observed through the lens of Work concepts.
Exercise 12: Reflect and Describe
Describe experience; reflect on the ideas.
This exercise combines personal experience with theoretical understanding. By describing experiences and reflecting on how they relate to Work ideas, knowledge becomes integrated with being.
Conceptual Understanding (Exercises 13-16)
These exercises develop more sophisticated understanding of cosmic principles and one's place within them.
Exercise 13: Triangulation
Triangulate, that is, have a three-fold purpose for each act.
The Law of Three states that every manifestation requires three forces: active, passive, and neutralizing. This exercise applies this principle practically by maintaining three purposes for each action - perhaps one for oneself, one for others, and one for the Work itself.
Exercise 14: Assembling Knowledge
Assemble all you know of a given object at the moment of perceiving it.
Rather than perceiving objects superficially, this exercise involves bringing to bear everything one knows about an object when perceiving it. This creates richer, more conscious perception.
Exercise 15: Constructive Imagination
Constructive imagination:
(a) Image the great octave.
(b) Attempt to realize man's position in the universe.
Gurdjieff taught the Law of Seven (the octave) as a fundamental cosmic law governing all processes. This exercise uses imagination to visualize one's place within the cosmic order described by this law.
Exercise 16: Scaling Objects
Relate each object to its position in the scale.
Everything exists at different levels of being, from atoms to galaxies. This exercise involves perceiving objects in relation to these cosmic scales, developing a sense of proportion.
Psychological Work (Exercises 17-30)
These exercises address the psychological transformation necessary for conscious evolution.
Exercise 17: Realizing Humanity's Scale
Attempt to realize the fact of almost eight billion people.
(Note: The original text stated a smaller number; this has been updated to reflect current population.) This exercise develops perspective by attempting to genuinely grasp the scale of humanity. It counters the natural tendency toward self-importance.
Exercise 18: Contemplating Death
Attempt to realize the fact of death.
Gurdjieff, like many wisdom traditions, emphasized the importance of remembering death. This exercise involves genuinely confronting mortality, which can catalyze awakening and provide motivation for the Work.
Exercise 19: Weight of Opinion
Be aware of the weight of opinion.
Most human behavior is governed by opinion - both one's own opinions and the opinions of others. This exercise involves observing how opinions influence thought and action, recognizing their often arbitrary nature.
Exercise 20: Law of Octave in Behavior
Apply the law of the octave to one's own behavior.
The Law of Seven describes how all processes proceed through stages with specific intervals where additional force is needed. This exercise involves observing these patterns in one's own endeavors - noticing where projects stall and learning to provide the necessary "shocks" to continue.
Exercise 21: Peeling the Onion
Peel the onion, that is, make notations of the various attitudes toward life, stripping off the superficial ones.
Personality consists of layers of adopted attitudes and identifications. This exercise systematically examines these layers, distinguishing superficial conditioning from deeper authentic motivations.
Exercise 22: Finding the Essential Wish
Note likes and dislikes. Find the essential wish.
Beneath the surface turbulence of preferences lies a deeper wish, what Gurdjieff called the "magnetic center" that draws one toward truth. This exercise involves observing preferences to discover this essential motivation.
Exercise 23: Finding Chief Feature
Find the chief feature.
Chief feature is the central weakness around which the false personality revolves. It might manifest as vanity, self-pity, dominance, or other patterns. Identifying one's chief feature is crucial but difficult, as it operates unconsciously and the personality protects it.
Exercise 24: Gratuitous Efforts
Make gratuitous efforts.
A gratuitous effort is an effort made for its own sake, without expectation of reward. Such efforts develop will and accumulate energy for conscious work.
Exercise 25: Casting a Role
Cast a role for oneself.
Rather than being played by life mechanically, this exercise involves consciously choosing a role to play. This develops intentionality and reduces mechanical reactivity.
Exercise 26: Pursuing Impossible Tasks
Pursue an impossible task.
The struggle against impossible odds develops strength and reveals hidden capacities. This exercise involves undertaking tasks that seem beyond one's abilities, not for the result but for the effort itself.
Exercise 27: Going Against Inclination
Go against inclination.
Inclinations are mechanical. Going against them - not from suppression but from conscious choice - develops the capacity for intentional action. This might involve doing what one doesn't feel like doing, or not doing what one feels compelled to do.
Exercise 28: Exceeding Natural Limits
Push inclination beyond the limits of its natural desire.
Complementary to Exercise 27, this involves continuing an activity beyond the point where the inclination naturally stops. This develops will and reveals that limits are often artificial.
Exercise 29: Going the Extra Mile
If a man forces you to go one mile, go with him twain.
This biblical reference (Matthew 5:41) is incorporated into the Work as an exercise in transcending mechanical resistance. By voluntarily exceeding what is demanded, one transforms compulsion into conscious choice.
Exercise 30: Determining Real Wants
Determine what it is you really want in any given situation.
Most of the time, people don't know what they actually want - they react to partial impressions. This exercise involves pausing to genuinely investigate one's true desires in each situation.
Advanced Consciousness Practices (Exercises 31-48)
These sophisticated exercises develop higher capacities and deeper understanding.
Exercise 31: Mental Gymnastics
Practice mental gymnastics relative to time, space and motion.
These exercises stretch the mind's capacity to think in unfamiliar ways about fundamental categories. They might involve visualizing time as space, or imagining movement from different reference frames.
Exercise 32: Seeking Concrete Examples
Seek the concrete illustration and examples (in experience) of the ideas.
Abstract ideas must be verified in lived experience. This exercise involves actively looking for real-life illustrations of Work concepts.
Exercise 33: Three-Centered Work
Try to perform, consciously, instructive, emotional, and intellectual work at the same time.
Most activities engage only one or two centers. This exercise develops the capacity for balanced, three-centered functioning - thinking, feeling, and sensing simultaneously.
Exercise 34: Actualizing Possibles
Try to keep in mind that at any given moment you are actualizing one of several possibles.
Every moment contains multiple possibilities, only one of which becomes actual. This exercise involves maintaining awareness of the possibilities not chosen, developing a richer sense of reality.
Exercise 35: Human and Animal Nature
Reference to human cells instructing monkey cells within brains during communication.
This cryptic exercise involves contemplating the dual nature of human beings - the evolutionary animal heritage and the potential for higher development - and how they interact.
Exercise 36: Man as Cosmos
Try to realise that man, oneself, is a cosmos.
The principle "as above, so below" suggests that human beings contain within themselves the entire structure of the universe. This exercise involves experiencing oneself as a microcosm.
Exercise 37: Observing Subcenters
Try to become aware of the operations of the subcenters.
Each of the three main centers (intellectual, emotional, moving) has intellectual, emotional, and moving parts. This exercise develops finer discrimination of these subcenters.
Exercise 38: Receiving Universal Influences
Try to keep in mind and realize that we are constantly receiving influences from our entire universe.
We are not isolated but constantly influenced by cosmic forces - planetary, stellar, and beyond. This exercise involves becoming sensitive to these subtle influences.
Exercise 39: The Bubble
Try to realize that this organism is, in reality, a mere bubble.
This exercise contemplates the temporary, insubstantial nature of physical existence, reducing identification with the body.
Exercise 40: Five-Point Activity
Give all five points the necessary activity.
This likely refers to activating multiple dimensions of being simultaneously - perhaps the three centers plus higher emotional and higher intellectual centers.
Exercise 41: Direct Mental Function
The attempt to use the formatory apparatus as a muscle, directly and independent of sub-vocalizing.
Most thinking involves subvocalization - silent speech. This exercise develops the capacity for direct thought without verbal mediation.
Exercise 42: Dual Attention
The attempt to repeat a poem and a series of numbers simultaneously.
This practical exercise develops divided attention - the ability to hold multiple streams of activity in consciousness simultaneously.
Exercise 43: Unrolling the Film
Unroll the film.
This exercise involves reviewing the day's events backward, from present to morning. This ancient practice develops memory and detachment from the stream of experience.
Exercise 44: Picture Evocation
Evoke in pictures the object to which ideas are related.
Rather than thinking abstractly, this exercise involves creating vivid mental images corresponding to Work ideas.
Exercise 45: Supplying the Third Force
Supply the base, the third force, the neutralizer, in all and every situation.
In any situation involving conflict between two forces, this exercise involves consciously providing the third force that enables resolution.
Exercise 46: Casting Spells
Cast spells.
This mysterious exercise likely involves the conscious use of attention and intention to influence situations. In Work terms, "spells" would be intentional instead of mechanical.
Exercise 47: Conscious Morality
Try to practice conscious morality.
Ordinary morality is mechanical - following rules without understanding. Conscious morality involves genuinely understanding why actions are right or wrong and choosing accordingly.
Exercise 48: The Reasonable Response
Try to think of the reasonable thing to do or say in any given situation, completing circles in circumstances.
This culminating exercise involves finding the response that serves the whole situation, completing what is needed rather than merely reacting from personal preference.
Working with These Exercises
Gurdjieff's exercises are not meant to be practiced in isolation or mechanically. They require:
Guidance: Traditionally, these exercises were given progressively by a teacher who could observe the student's development and provide appropriate correction.
Group Work: The Fourth Way emphasizes working with others. The friction of group dynamics provides material for self-observation that solitary practice cannot.
Self-Observation: All exercises are grounded in continuous self-observation. Without this foundation, the exercises become merely conceptual.
Persistence: Gurdjieff emphasized that real change requires sustained effort over time. Occasional practice produces only temporary results.
Verification: Nothing should be taken on faith. Each practitioner must verify the ideas through personal experience.
Sources and Further Reading
G.I. Gurdjieff, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson
G.I. Gurdjieff, Meetings with Remarkable Men
G.I. Gurdjieff, Life is Real Only Then, When "I Am"
P.D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous
P.D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Way
Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky