In Search of the Miraculous: Ouspensky

In Search of the Miraculous : Ouspensky

Ouspensky is one of most prolific writers of all the Gurdjieff students. He wrote several books that describe his relationship with Gurdjieff including In Search of the Miraculous. His book The Fourth Way gives the most coherent explanation of the Fourth Way thinking and the conditioning that puts us to sleep. He broke with Gurdjieff, but continued to teach from the Gurdjieff view. His writings have probably been more influential on my Work thinking than those of any other of the Gurdjieff students.

Ouspensky begins In Search of the Miraculous, by stating that he had often felt that beneath the thin layer of false reality that we take as real there exists another layer from which we are separated by a thin film. The way through that film is the way of the miraculous.

We can only get through the layer of lies through which we see the world by acquiring entrance into the Unknown. Ouspensky spends a lot of time in his teaching talking about the lies that we tell in attempts to hide our sleep. He says that if man could be classified as an animal, it would be the animal that lies. That is what bests describes man at this level. Most of the lies are not intentional lies. We lie because we do not really know what we speak of.

I saw the meaning of this on a Sunday morning walk recently. I was passing the huge dairy farm that is near the last part of my walk. I saw a worker on a cab-enclosed front-end loader lifting manure out of a twelve-foot high hundred yard long pile. The gray cover was off the pile and I saw that it really was manure, even though it was mixed with lots of straw. I remember several years ago arguing with my friend, Alex, that those huge stacks in the barnyards of the large diaries are not manure. “They are silage,” I told Alex.

I knew that dairy farmers back East used silage as a main source of food. They kept it stored in tall silos. Since it is more practical to store silage on the ground out West, I assumed that these huge piles were silage. This is what Ouspensky means when he says that man constantly lies. We state something as the truth when we think it is true, even though we don’t look deeply enough to see reality of our statements.

Though out In Search, Ouspensky gives fragments of Gurdjieff’s teachings as they were presented to him. He also gives descriptions of Gurdjieff’s method of teaching and how he was very practical in his application of work ideas to life. Ouspensky felt that real work on oneself could only be done at schools. He argues that man has too many weaknesses that must be over come to work on his own, that a man alone does not have the will to over come the obstacles that will arise when he begins to awaken.

Ouspensky joined the group that Gurjieff had started in Russia and became on of Gurdjieff’s chief disciples. He was instructed that he could not write about the Work until he was convinced that he understood it fully. After several years in the Work Gurdjieff encouraged him to begin his writings.

The Fourth Way is a record of Ouspensky’s lectures, student questions, and the answers that he gave to these questions. In these lectures, he discusses the universal laws that govern mankind and he also describes what we can do to escape the prison of our sleep. I found that I was more interested in how to awaken from sleep. He states that we must think in a new way in order to change our level of being. He argues that in Bible the word repent comes up very often, but it is misinterpreted. Repent does not mean to regret or to ask forgiveness. Repent means to think in a different way, to think beyond the senses.

According to Ouspensky, ancient knowledge exists that could lead us to a higher level of being if we could find and understand it. We cannot put to practice the concepts of the Work if we do not know them, and we can only know them by talking to people who have this higher knowledge or by reading about this knowledge. We cannot put to practice Self Remembering if we have never heard about it. If we do not have the knowledge of how our machine works, we cannot make repairs to malfunctioning centers. If we do not know that we are asleep, we cannot make efforts to awaken.

Ouspensky maintains that Mr. Smith, or whatever your name might be, is not real I. Mr. Smith is the ‘I’s that are created by your relationship with the world you live in. Mr. Smith is what you become through your education, family relationship, and field of work. Mr. Smith is a combination of hundreds of ‘I's making up false personality. You need to separate your self from Mr. Smith and develop psychological forces, Observing I, which can eventually grow into chief steward. Observing I, and deputy steward are terms for psychological forces that can step aside and constructively observe your relationship with the world.

Mr. Smith is created by self-love, pride, and vanity. He is kept going by chief features. Chief feature is made up of ‘I's in yourself who pivot around a certain weakness in your false personality. These ‘I's come into existence whenever certain stimuli excite them. And, you always react to the stimuli in the same way, through these ‘I's. Chief features come in pairs. They show the contradictions in ones self. These contradictions are kept separate by buffers. Buffers are created by unconscious self-education. We are not aware of the contradictions in our self because when we are on one side of a buffer, we believe that this is true ‘I’. When we are on the other side, again we believe that this is true ‘I’.

The above is just a small sample of the detailed explanation that is given in The Fourth Way. This series of lectures was recorded after Ouspensky broke with Gurdjieff and set up his own school in England. Though he and Gurdjieff had no contact after the break up, Ouspensky continued to teach from the Gurdjieff point of view though his methods of teaching were far different.

I feel that Ouspensky is a little too academic in his presentation of the Work. He gets away from his early emphasis on the miraculous. However, because he is so through in his explanation, much of my work thinking comes from his writings. Anyone that is new to the Gurdjieff branch of the Work should start his or her studies by reading The Fourth Way.