Mister Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way

TO THE READER
In this new century and a new millennium, both at the
beginning of the “Age of Aquarius”, there is a great pollution
with numerous “Spiritual” self-proclaimed “gurus”, “adepts”,
“teachers”, “masters,” and “leaders”. To future generations, the
enigmatic George Ivanovich GURDJIEFF, who claimed no
other mode of address than plain “Mister” and described himself
simply as “Teacher of Dances”, will doubtless seem to be
an exceptional Individual and, as an authentic Great Master of
the twentieth century, perhaps the only one.
Many very different opinions exist about MG. Some have
seen him as nothing but a pretender to occult knowledge, a
charlatan, or even as a “black magician”; some called him a
“mystic”, a “genius”, or a genuine and inspired “teacher”; others
believed in him as a reliable “Guide for the Perplexed” and
as the “Leader on the Way of Return”; and a few recognised
him as a real “Master” and a true “Messenger” sent from Above.
His teaching was not widely known in his lifetime, for he
avoided all notoriety or proselytism. But he managed nevertheless
to transmit an entirely practical method of Work-on-Self,
solidly based on a coherent theoretical basis (which he called
“Objective Science”) and with techniques and exercises of
proven efficiency. This practical method MG called THE
FOURTH WAY. He had a sure and deep knowledge of the Laws
of Creation and of Maintenance of the Universe, a unique synthesis
of Occidental and Oriental Traditions coming from the
Primordial Source of all genuine Knowledge. And he also had a
deep understanding of human psychology that made it possible
for him to always know what a particular follower needed
to experience here and now in order to obtain an expansion of
Consciousness.
This book is the result of over half a century of study of
many branches of “Esoteric and Occult Sciences” whose real
meaning did not begin to be clear to me until I met P. D.
Ouspensky’s exposition of MG’s Teachings. Thus it was only in
1958 that I began to understand what the word “Esoteric” truly
meant, in the light of MG’s “Ideas”. For “Ideas” is the word he
preferred to use when explaining his teaching and method of
Work. He studiously avoided all dogmatic or sectarian expressions
and would not permit any blind acceptance by his pupils
of any statement, even by himself. He never wished to be
placed on a pedestal or to be treated as an unimpeachable “authority”.
To avoid this, he never hesitated to tread heavily on
“the most sensitive corn” of any follower who tended to worship
him.
An early, and shorter, version of this book was published
under the title A Look at Fourth Way Work (Edinburgh, 1983).
The schematic steps described here in Chapter 4 are not in
fact the exact way the Teaching and Work are presented in the
authentic preparatory groups. They are meant only to provide a
possible way to start Work-on-Self in the absence of contact
with a genuine group, correctly related to the centre of the
Work. They are what helped me most, as well as many others
known to me, while waiting to find a suitable teaching and
school to follow. So I do hope that these exercises and techniques
will also be able to help other genuine seekers who have
not yet found the Way possible to them.
And I often remember, especially when faced with some difficulty
or problem, the words of encouragement of an older
and more advanced Companion in the Quest:
THE PATH OF RETURN EXISTS—WE CAN FIND IT!
TO THE READER

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	ABOUT THE AUTHOR Nicolas TERESHCHENKO was born in Odessa (then in Russia, now in Ukraine), which his parents left in 1920 to go to Serbia, where he had his primary schooling. In 1926 the family moved to Paris, France, where he completed his secondary education, and in 1935 went to live in England, his father having become a lecturer at Balliol College, Oxford. Nick completed his university studies in London in 1941, volunteered for a war commission in the Indian Medical Service, served in India and Assam, and was demobilized in 1946. Married in 1942, divorced by mutual consent in 1963, he had four children, five grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren as of 2002. He was interested in all the branches of “occultism” (in the widest sense of this word) from a very early age and, since 1952, was admitted as an initiated member into several fraternal organizations. He began to study the Tarot in 1956 and to write about it, and other subjects, in 1973. In 1958 he met George Ivanovich GURDJIEFF’s Teaching and from then on studied the Fourth Way and followed the Work assiduously. At the time of his death in 2002, he was living in South Australia, where he was continuing his studies and research on several Esoteric subjects, including Freemasonry, the Golden Dawn, and the Rosicrucians. But mostly he was studying Mister GURDJIEFF’s Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, now published in the original Russian, and was working with Mister Gurdjieff’s practical Work techniques.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank all those who selflessly and patiently sat in front of groups, in France, Australia, the United States of America, and elsewhere and did their very best to transmit their understanding of the “Ideas” and “Work” Mister Gurdjieff brought to our ailing world, and also all his other followers, “Beelzebub’s grandchildren”, “Companions of the Book”, and “Fellow Travellers on the Fourth Way” whom I have met, but most particularly Madame Jeanne de SALZMANN, Lord PENTLAND (Henry John SINCLAIR), Charles Stanley NOTT, Rina HANDS, George and Helen ADIE, Olga de HARTMANN, Dorothy DARLINGTON, Dr. Michel de SALZMANN (who, in spite of his exacting profession as a psychiatrist and of his busy Work life, following in his mother’s footsteps, travelled all over the world to help groups and still found the time to look through my manuscript and to advise me on this book’s first two chapters), Annie-Lou STAVELEY, John Godolphin and Elizabeth BENNETT, Maurice DESSELLE, Marguerite JURÉ (who so ably led in Paris a study group on Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson), Henri TRACOL, Frédérique FRANÇOIS-MARTIN, Gabriel MÉCHAIN, André DIEBOLD, Yvonne JOYEUX, Jacob NEEDLEMAN (whose remarkable talks on Mister GURDJIEFF, his Teaching, and Its Relationships and Correspondences with Other Traditions, given in Paris in 1992 at the Sorbonne’s “École Pratique des Hautes Études”, have very much helped me to improve some parts of my original text), Josée de SALZMANN, Solange CLAUSTRES, Louise WELCH, Pauline de DAMPIERRE, Peter OULIANOFF, John MIQUEAUX, Nicole GOBERT, Neil DOUGAN, Charles WRIGHT, Eli MORDECAI, Seymour B. GINSBURG, Dr. Herbert J. SHARP, Natasha WILKINSON, Ken PLEDGE, Russell SMITH, Dimitri PERETZI, Keith and Marlena BUZZELL, Harry BENNETT, Robert H. CURRAN, and the many others whose names I have forgotten, who all have helped me in the Work in one way or another.		MISTER GURDJIEFF AND THE FOURTH WAY Also I wish to thank Dr. Marie-Christine DAUGEGEOFFROY for her help with perfecting the presentation of this text on a computer and in particular for the diagrammatic illustrations and for showing me how to prepare the synoptic tables. In all fairness, though, I must put on record that the late Henri TRACOL, then President of the French “Institut G. I. Gurdjieff”, and some other self-appointed “VIPs” and “leaders” in the “Establishment” strongly disapprove of all comments on and explanations of Mister GURDJIEFF’s writings, published and unpublished, and most especially of any exegesis of Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, as well as of the publication of any of the Work techniques, and therefore of this book, which, in their opinion, is “dangerous, as it reveals too many secrets, notably the exercises”. I have already amply dealt with such a point of view in my various epigraphs and other statements, so no further comments are necessary.