William Patterson is the founder and director of the Gurdjieff Studies Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is also the author of eight books on the Fourth Way, and is the director, writer, and narrator of the excellent documentary, The Life and Significance of G.I.G.J.E. He presents a different perspective on life, one that defies most teachings you ve heard.
00:00:30.000This is Radio 314 on the Red Ice Radio Network.
00:01:00.000He is also the author of eight books on the Fourth Way and is the director, writer, narrator of the excellent documentary, DVD trilogy, The Life and Significance of G.I. Gurdjieff.
00:01:10.300Patterson was a longtime student of Lord John Pentland, who was appointed by Gurdjieff to be the leader of the work in America.
00:01:17.240And William is the founder director of the Gurdjieff Studies program.
00:01:20.780For many years, he has led groups as well as given seminars and talks throughout the U.S.
00:01:25.220We'll be discussing themes of the Fourth Way teaching, such as the idea that humans are not born with a soul, but must create and develop a soul through the course of his or her life.
00:01:34.160William presents a different perspective on life, one that defies most teachings you've heard.
00:01:42.140Well, as founder director of Gurdjieff Studies programs, what personally drew you to the teachings of Gurdjieff?
00:01:49.200Deeply, though I couldn't formulate it then, a desire for knowledge, why we were here, what we were doing here, what was of value, what was of meaning.
00:01:58.160I remembered kissing my grandmother's forehead after she died, and it was called like stone, and it just went right into me, those questions.
00:02:13.080But I was so young, but it created a question that then I could later formulate, is what I just told you.
00:02:20.340For those who aren't familiar with Gurdjieff, can you give us a little background into how he became such an influential spiritual teacher?
00:02:44.340And in that time, he came to the whole sensation of himself.
00:02:50.600Usually, we're just in a part of our sensation, but it was the whole sensation of himself, really vibrating.
00:02:56.720He looked around, and he saw so much misery, confusion, and what have you, that he came to the question, what was the purpose of life on Earth, and human life in particular?
00:03:09.740And with that, he set out with some like-minded friends.
00:03:14.040They called themselves the Seekers of Truth.
00:03:17.520They felt that the remote societies of the world contained, perhaps, the answers to these questions.
00:03:27.060And this eventually led him to Egypt, and he was initiated four times in the Egyptian mysteries, and began to recognize that the science of being, the teaching that predates all teaching, was founded in Egypt.
00:03:46.520And then, over time, it was dispersed northward, and then he took a second journey into the Hindu Kush, Tibet, India, Middle East, what have you, collecting the various pieces of the teaching.
00:04:04.660And then he reformulated for our time, and he brought it to the West.
00:04:10.760He came to the West in 1924, because he said, unless the energy of the West and the science of the East is harnessed and used harmoniously, the world will destroy itself.
00:04:27.160So, he felt he needed to bring an esoteric teaching into the public domain, a teaching of self-development, of coming to genuine consciousness.
00:04:41.240And this is what he called the fourth way, correct?
00:05:02.400We work on the body, the emotions, and the head simultaneously.
00:05:08.400Now, he also taught that humans are not born with the soul, and they're not really conscious, but only believe they're conscious because of the socialization process.
00:05:15.800And so, a person must create or develop a soul through the course of his life.
00:05:22.120We've all been led to believe we have a soul, though the definition of a soul and the experience of a soul seems rather non-scientific.
00:05:35.180His view was that we did not have a soul, and if we didn't create a soul in this lifetime, then when we died, we would just become fertilizer.
00:05:45.800So, do we wake up through the creation process of making our own soul?
00:05:52.780Because you talked about how everyone's in a state of a hypnotic waking sleep.
00:05:56.660Man lives life in his sleep, and then he dies and sleeps.
00:12:58.300You see, what happened when you recognized your legs were crossed?
00:13:04.980Either you looked visually or you transferred your attention into your leg and recognized that's where it was.
00:13:13.820We're so mental, we live out of the head, but if you now put your right foot on the floor and breathe into it, come to the sensation of the right leg.
00:13:43.760So does this have to do with the centers that Gurchieff talked about?
00:13:47.860Well, this has to do primarily with the redirection of the attention into the body, out of the head brain, out of the hypnotism of life, into physical reality.
00:14:01.460Your body and my body is here, but am I aware of it?
00:14:06.520Is there a conscious sensation of this?
00:14:36.860To go out of your body is to be in your body and to have the body expand that you come to what is called the blank state in meditation, where there's just subject-object.
00:14:56.520I might say before I say this, we think in perception that we're all living in subject-object perception.
00:15:05.460But if I really examine myself seriously, I'll see my attention is either out of myself or in myself.
00:15:16.300I'm either attracted to something outside or something has happened internally that has taken my attention.
00:15:23.100So I'm really not in subject-object attention.
00:15:26.560So through doing the meditation that we prescribe, you come into the body, you experience a subject-object perception, recognition,
00:15:41.740and eventually you come down through the various material you're carrying, the memories, the things you have not digested,
00:15:52.260to what's called a blank state, where there's just a subject, your consciousness, and the object that you are sitting.
00:16:01.900If you can maintain this long enough, at a certain point, you'll have a double absence.
00:16:09.000There will be no subject, there will be no object, and you'll be in total consciousness.
00:16:17.880Yeah, well, this is interesting because if we are, like you've said, bioplasmic machines,
00:16:22.280we're already programmed a certain way.
00:16:24.560Is part of what you're explaining basically a deprogramming process to override the machine?
00:18:35.880What is there is what I have, which is my attention, my energy, and my time.
00:18:42.560I have to learn to withdraw that from the ongoing hypnotic reality to myself.
00:18:49.480And then when I'm ensconced within myself, I've come to physical reality.
00:18:55.140Then I observe what is happening with me mentally, emotionally, instinctually, sexually.
00:19:03.020And I will see that I am, in fact, not an individual, but an assemblage of various eyes, according to what is going on, internally and externally.
00:19:18.060That has to be verified by everybody, because naturally everybody thinks they're an individual and awake and all of these ideas and have a soul.
00:19:35.060Well, by telling people that they are awake, that they have a soul, that they need to be societally adjusted and perform good works and so forth and so on, it makes for a society that's stable.
00:19:51.120So, how does the new era of science play into this, then?
00:19:58.040Are we just going deeper into the slumber?
00:23:25.120Trying to extend their life and upload their consciousness.
00:23:28.260I don't know if that's actually going to happen, but they're trying.
00:23:31.200The fact that they would even try seems to me to be a devaluation of the human being and his or her potential as an image of God.
00:23:40.300But I think a lot of people who we affectionately call nerds tend to be so in their heads and so quick and look down on other people and just believe there will be no more crime or war if people could become robo-sapiens or transhuman beings.
00:24:19.160So a lot of these people that claim that Earth should be a utopia or we should be a socialist kind of society, what would Gertrude say about that?
00:25:02.160So democracy, if it's really practiced, we're actually living in, I would say, capitalistic democracy.
00:25:09.820But if we really practice democracy, that gives us freedom to do and say what we wish to do, to try out new things and so forth and so on.
00:25:20.600And that's all part of being a human being.
00:25:22.780The problem right now is that there's so many soulless automatons.
00:25:25.880So if that's the majority, the democracy calling the shots, then uh-oh.
00:25:29.660Well, I die alone, I don't die with you or anyone else, I wish you the best, and I wish everyone else the best, but my concern primarily is with myself.
00:25:42.300Now, the image of the self can extend to other people, but I first have to come to my own self.
00:25:49.380Then whatever is happening in the outer world is happening in the outer world.
00:26:41.540That his belief was that by really learning to be sincere, having a desire for knowledge, practicing the teaching he brought, which is a seminal, sacred, esoteric teaching that hails from ancient Egypt.
00:26:56.120Not the Egypt we know, but the Egypt we don't know.
00:26:59.600When we practice that, we begin to receive energies and transmitted energies on a very high level that affect the world around us and the people in it.
00:27:11.960And in that way, we can have an effect.
00:27:15.320And with myself and writing these books and videos and holding seminars and leading groups,
00:27:23.120I'm hoping to bring the people who are with me to their own individuality so that they can go out and do the same for others.
00:27:32.440If we go back to the ancient teachers in Egypt, where did they receive these truths, this knowledge?
00:27:39.240Well, what I hear is, I can't verify this, but I think it's likely to be true.
00:27:47.300This teaching is extraterrestrial, that when you really open up in a conscious way,
00:27:54.720you can make contact with higher developed regions and a teaching can be given from there.
00:28:02.860Look at all the teachings that have come to us, beginning with the Hindu, the slayer and the slain are one.
00:28:12.960That's a very, very high teaching, all right?
00:28:26.700Then we have Jesus, love thy neighbor, resplendent love.
00:28:31.740And then we have Muhammad, Allah is all, right?
00:28:36.020Now, Gurdjieff comes and says, you have no soul.
00:28:40.460No matter how intelligent you are or what you do or don't do, when you die, there will be really nothing crystallized, nothing there, and you will become fertilizer.
00:28:51.380If you work on yourself, if you come to yourself, if you reclaim yourself as an image of God, then you will be working at a much higher level here on Earth.
00:29:03.660And when you die, the crystallization will pass into the solar system and eventually become immortal within the solar system.
00:29:12.440And you will do a great deal of good for yourself and for other people.
00:29:16.820Your life will always have meaning because you have meaning.
00:29:22.600So if the fourth way predates all religion, and we're just talking about extraterrestrials here, was mankind possibly seeded by an outside force on this planet?
00:29:34.480Well, we're getting into speculation, and your speculation is as good as mine.
00:29:39.300I would think so, but I cannot prove it, and I have no means of verifying it.
00:30:00.800He's talking about the ray of creation, and it all begins in the Holy Sun Absolute, and out of that come the three forces that we talked about earlier.
00:30:16.520In the world, in the universe, is a substance, primal substance, called Okidanuk.
00:30:22.980And these forces meet the Okidanuk, and they create a physical reality on their terms.
00:30:33.960And, of course, the first physical reality is barely physical at all, but there is something there.
00:30:40.420And then you come down through the ray of creation, down to our solar system with the sun and the planets, and then the earth, and beyond the earth is the moon.
00:38:42.220Mr. Gurdjieff says, if you're not in the work of procreation, then you have to create yourself through an authentic teaching that is the fourth way.
00:40:31.920But, you know, the medical industry is trying to prevent that, not letting people die, barely keeping them alive with vaccines and medicines.
00:40:39.560But then again, maybe all those things are killing them off, too.
00:40:41.900Well, you know, in every new invention or discovery they can come about, they can come forth with, it always is going to solve this disease or that disease.
00:41:20.840When you're really interested in someone, or they're interested in you, for one reason or another, you're experiencing their vibration, aren't you?
00:44:08.840So I also hear a lot of people talking about, specifically in the alternative fields and media, that they're pushing for this global shift in consciousness.
01:00:51.380And there you'll find information about the teaching, about books and other products we carry, information about me, and information about coming events.
01:01:04.580I'm giving a seminar in Casa de Maria in Santa Barbara at a retreat center.