Overview
Gurdjieff's followers believed he was a spiritual Master, possessing higher consciousness; a human being who is fully awake or enlightened. He was also seen as an esotericist or occultist. He agreed that the teaching was esoteric but claimed that none of it was veiled in secrecy; rather, Gurdjieff claimed that many people either don't have an interest or the capability to understand certain ideas. When asked about the teaching he was setting forth, Gurdjieff said, "The teaching whose theory is here being set out is completely self supporting and independent of other lines and it has been completely unknown up to the present time." The exact origins of Gurdjieff's teachings are unknown, but people have offered various sources.
The Fourth Way teaches that humans are not born with a soul, and are not really Conscious, but only believe they are Conscious because of the socialization process. A person must create/develop a soul through the course of his life by following a teaching which can lead to this aim, or he will "die like a dog," and that men are born asleep, live in sleep and die in sleep, only imagining that they are awake. The system also teaches that the ordinary waking "consciousness" of human beings is not consciousness at all but merely a form of sleep, and that actual higher Consciousness is possible.
As exercises in attention, Gurdjieff taught his pupils "sacred dances" or "movements", now known as Gurdjieff movements, which they performed together as a group. Gurdjieff left a body of music inspired by what he heard in visits to remote monasteries and other places, which was written for piano in collaboration with one of his pupils, Thomas de Hartmann.
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