The spiritual teacher and philosopher George Gurdjieff, after spending a long time studying the Eastern ways to develop consciousness and transcendence of the spirit, created his own philosophical vision of spirituality and inner growth, through what he called the Fourth Way or the Way of Man.
The main basis of this spiritual philosophy is that there are different ways to achieve self-knowledge and the way of the spirit, proposing that divinity exists in each one, without the need of a temple, nor of an external god to be worshiped. Therefore, this achievement is possible through introspection without isolating yourself from everyday life, not giving in to the passions of the body and living in the present moment.
However, this philosophy, developed from 1941 by George Gurdjieff and his disciples Ouspensky and Boris Mouravieff, is also a psychological and cosmological doctrine whose purpose is to achieve, then, the evolution of consciousness and spiritual development, through an internal work or process of the personality, being useful for those who are truly interested in overcoming their own limitations.
However, Regarding the internal personality process that is worked on in the fourth path, the study of the enneagrams plays an important role.; As is known, the Enneagram is a powerful and ancient tool used for personal liberation, understanding of the human psyche and spiritual growth.
With this tool that appears for the first time in the Sufi tradition in the 10th and 11th centuries, the nine types of existing personalities are described and how they behave in different circumstances, they are: the perfectionist, the helper, the achiever, the melancholy, the investigator, the loyal, the enthusiast, the leader, and the peacemaker.
Also, another method that this theory applies, are the sacred dances or Gurdjieff movements; These are practiced collectively to reach a state of trance that raises consciousness, that helps in the awakening of that unconscious life that keeps the majority asleep, without the capacity for reflection and that does not allow the inner evolution of each one.
On the other hand, the fourth way tries to be more accessible to the current way of life without giving up the needs of the body, to achieve dominance of the body over the self; Similarly removes emotional suffering to control human passions and emotions. The path of man seeks the domain of the emotional and the physical but not so radically, since the renunciation of the world is an option and not something fundamental, giving a more pleasant way to find spiritual connection and inner peace.
Finally, this spiritual trend that seeks self-knowledgeis an individual and particular process that gives great importance to the understanding of the universe, the contact with it and the position that the human being occupies, since if this is clear, there will be an approach to the superior truth.