The Reality of Being
Jeanne de Salzmann
Translated by Alexandros H. Peretzis in collaboration with the Gurdjieff Foundation of Greece
BASDEKIS Publications
ISBN: 978-960-8273-69-6
Price: 20€
Based on notebooks kept by Jeanne de Saltzman, G. I. Gurdjieff’s closest follower, this book offers new insight on his spiritual teaching- a way of gnosis or “knowledge of being” passed on from remote antiquity. It is a complete and uniquely authoritative guide to the great teacher’s ideas and to his methods for liberating ourselves from the state of “waking sleep” in which most of us live our lives.
Gurdjieff respected traditional religions and practices concerned with spiritual transformation and pointed out that their different approaches could be subsumed under one of three categories: the “way of the fakir”, which centers on mastery of the physical body; the “way of the monk”, based on faith and religious feeling; and the “way of the yogi”, which concentrates on developing the mind. He presented his teaching as a “Fourth Way” that requires work on all three aspects at the same time. Evolution on the Fourth Way is attained through the practitioner’s conscious efforts towards a quality of cognition and emotion, generating thus a new possibility of seeing the world clearly and of a new conception of love in the World.