Click on the above image to listen to the podcast. The Mystical Positivist, is a broadcasts radio series hosted by Stuart Goodnick and Dr. Robert Schmidt, who are also denizens of The Seeker’s Café. This podcast hosts Stephen Aronson. Until he retired after 43 years in clinical practice in 2013, Steve was a highly qualified psychologist and psychiatrist, and a published author. In 1982 Steve...

Click on the above image to listen to the podcast. The Mystical Positivist, is a broadcasts radio series hosted by Stuart Goodnick and Dr. Robert Schmidt, who happen also to be denizens of The Seeker's Café. In this episode the hosts converse with Stephen Aronson, Fourth Way group leader, writer, and retired psychologist. Steve received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of...

Americans are masters of compartmentalization with lives routinely segregated into neatly packaged channels of experience: the work day, family, vacations, hobbies, time for worship and meditation, etc. Perhaps the greatest divide is between our day jobs and the rest of our lives. Those with a yearning for spiritual unfolding often see professional existence as the biggest obstacle to enlightenment. Fantasies of chucking it all and going to live in an ashram somewhere merely feed the sense of spiritual isolation felt amidst the daily grind. In this talk we will explore how the work-a-day world is in reality no different that any other aspect of our lives when it comes to genuine spiritual work. In fact, by realigning our sense of practice with life as we find it, we can turn the work space into a highly efficient engine of spiritual transformation.

When the airliners crashed into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, America went into shock. For a brief few days, we did not need to drive our SUVs so much, we did not rush to pack the kids off to Disney World for a distracting weekend, we did not need to fill our voids with the Pacman-esque consumption of everything that lay in our paths.

The Work offers the idea that the human being can be viewed as having three controlling functions or brains: The intellect which resides in the head, the moving-instinctive brain which resides in the spine and the emotional brain which is centered in the solar plexus, but disperse to some degree throughout the abdomen. Gurdjieff presented this in an analogy of a horse, carriage and driver. Here...

“All the beings of this planet then began to work in order to have in their consciousness this Divine function of genuine conscience, and for this purpose, as everywhere in the Universe, they transubstantiated in themselves what are called the ‘being-obligolnian-strivings’ which consist of the following five, namely: “The first striving: to have in their ordinary being existence everything...

Read this slowly, several times, for full impact… “First of all he decided to attain without delay such a ‘potency’ as would give him the strength and possibility to be quite sincere with himself, that is to say, to be able to conquer those impulses which had become habitual in the functioning of his common presence from the many heterogeneous associations arising and proceeding in him and which...

He who knows what his moon is and does can understand the cosmos. ~ Gurdjieff Gurdjieff told the Eastern parable of The Magician. It is this: There was a very rich magician who kept many sheep, so that he could shear them for wool and kill them for mutton. The magician was frugal. He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want to erect a wall or fence about the pasture where his sheep were...

“The highest limit of human achievement is to be able to do.” ~ Gurdjieff In the Work it is asserted that man is mechanical, that he is a machine rather than the master of himself. In fact, it is stated that “mechanicality” is the general state of humanity. Consequently, it is our state most of the time. We "know" this only intellectually, in the sense that we may think of ourselves as...

The following text comes from the notes taken at a lecture by Gurdjieff given in New York on 6th February 1931. There are two parts to air, evolving and involving. Involving part only, gives vivifyingness to “I.” Only enough of this part is taken now for the Trogoautoegocrat. Not until you have a conscious wish can you assimilate more of this good part of air. This involving part comes from the...

From The Tales… [Written impromptu by the author on delivering this book, already prepared for publication, to the printer.] ACCORDING TO the numerous deductions and conclusions made by me during experimental elucidations concerning the productivity of the perception by contemporary people of new impressions from what is heard and read, and also according to the thought of one of the sayings of...