Gurdjieff makes a host of statements and claims about ancient spiritual paths, but naive readers seldom think to ask for some kind of reference, documentation, or clarification of these claims. The result is a new series of myths about esotericism that can only be called shaky. Not a single utterance of Gurdjieff has panned out in this regard. 

To say that much has been forgotten, lost, or suppressed may well be true, but to announce, for instance, that the fourth way first appears in pre-sand Egypt, while a provocative idea, is nowhere given even the slightest shred of evidentiary backup. This and many other statements by Gurdjieff end up by casting his whole enterprise under suspicion. The demand to take everything said on faith on the basis of an equally suspect authority is more than otherwise openminded students of religion should accept. As with Blavatsky much of the material is under increasing suspicion of being simply made up. 

Further, it is easy to document the woeful lack of historical understanding in many 'New Age' figures, especially as they begin to castigate modernity vis a vis the spiritual attainments of ancient civilizations. 

We can put these statements to a test, up to a point, by considering the analysis given by the eonic effect, starting with its sub-component the Axial Age. It is significant that nowhere have any of the gurus of Eastern thought taken into account the discovery of this phenomenon. It is a reminder that their much vaunted claims to higher knowledge must in some way be either exaggerated, or non-existent. It is possible for an ignorant man to reach 'enlightenment'! 

The Axial Age shows us the emergence of two world religions in a synchronous framework, and much, if by no means all, of what constitutes spiritual tradition revolves around these two developments. This applies at best, however, to religion on the large scale. 

The eonic effect suggests a kind of 'sampling' effect as certain strains are amplified in the periods (e.g. Axial) of transition, and this mysterious process shows us at once one key to the complexity of Indic religion as one strain of its legacy suddenly crystallizes as an Axial Age phenomenon, leaving another legacy that is representative of that great, but almost unknown, tradition, one probably going back to the Neolithic. A great deal more can be said here. But it is important to note that no 'guru' can compete with the scale seen here. In fact 'enlightened' sages are still far from the knowledge required to assess the evolution of religion, whatever their claimed knowledge of the particulars of the various spiritual ways. It is hard to see this point, or to cut through the hype factor of those whose consciousness might be one thing, but whose knowledge is still very limited. 

It is nonetheless true that much in the way of spiritual practice and knowledge might never register in the large-scale action on and through religion that we see in the eonic effect. There is every possibility of there being a host of lost traditions or constellations of religious activity that pass through the sieve of the large scale dynamic seen in the world historical process. This was the point that animated Gurdjieff's protests, but he was unable to get the history straight. 

But unfortunately claims after this fashion are likely to be altogether suspect. When it comes down to basics, the eonic effect shows us only one great exemplar of Eastern religion, the Upanishadic  to Buddhist (Jain) emergent interval. The outcome of this Axial transformation leaves in its wake an ambiguous legacy of Hinduism, but one truly global,  'cleaned up' spiritual path, set to proceed on the way toward globalization, Buddhism a very dangerous term, since its interior subsequenct development is complex, and not validated by Axial association in its later manifestatiosn. Gurus keep trying to match this, but never succeed, and they never understand why they can't proceed beyond the ashram to the world where Buddhism was tailor-made to do just that, speaking of its premodern history only. 

 The author of this statement is not a Buddhist, nor is this a recommendation one way or the other. Buddhism is one of the very few instances where history meets greater nature in the foundational moment of bestowing a pre-digested way for man, as he is. Such a statement must be taken carefully, since the Hindu matrix from which it springs might contain a larger field than the streamlined 'package' emerging in the Axial interval. And the term 'Buddhism' is hopelessly inadequate, its character changing greatly over time. We are referring to the proto-Buddhism emerging in the Axial interval, which is actually something of an unknown. Tibetan Buddhism is a much,  much later development, and has no claim on standing in for early Buddhism at all, as such.

 The point is simply that anything that passes through the eonic sequence will emerge at a higher level of quality, and will have a boost given by the eonic sequence to its emergence, but not necessarily to its larger/later manifestations, which may deviate from the source point or degenerate in medieval contexts. This is a big study, but the issue might help those confronted with the facts of the case with Gurdjieff, to see what might be possible for an accomplished sufi of some type, but who is not a person in a position to lay the foundations of a spiritual tradition. These statements leave the issue of Jesus and Mohammed unresolved, but these cases we can at least agree are not associated directly with the Axial interval, although they may echo its action. We must leave that issue to further study. But all at once we know one thing: these religious source points are different from the action of the Axial type of religious transformation. The reader will have to read between the lines. 

The confusion that arose at once in Gurdjieff's activities is direct evidence of this. The whole effort is out of time and out of place, and simply chaotifies at once. For all of Gurdjieff's claims about objective knowledge, his sources are eclectic concoctions of medieval sufism, gnosticism, and what have you, and presume a knowledge that he did not have. 

A concluding consideration of the eonic effect is with respect to the transition to modernity itself, a genuine Axial Age period in its own right, yet one constantly denigrated by the reactionary style of the flood of Eastern sages and gurus, Gurdjieff among them, attempting to roll back this period with a restoration of their ancient obsessions. The modern age doesn't show the formation of a new religion, for it has outsmarted the crystallized traditions by moving to the core issue, the freedom of the individual. 

And this New Age is on a far larger scale than this and contains the potentiality for the resolution of the question of religion in a secular context. 

And there we see a different significance to the labors of Gurdjieff. He is not a spiritual teacher, but an archaeologist. At many points he correctly points to what any student of the eonic effect suspects, gaps in our process, or religious zones of influence that the eonic sequence simply left behind in the stupendous motion of its greater action. 

A good example is Gurdjieff's fussy obsession with Ashieta Shiemash, evidently a Zarathustra surrogate. Fine, but what real light has he thrown on all of this? It is all a mess of pottage. 

We see in the eonic effect the great enigma of the emergence of the Occidental monotheistic series, beginning with the Israelite carrier, briefly mixed with Persian zoroastrianism. The correct study of this possibly lost component to the sources of Judaism/Christiantiy/Islam finds very little that is clear or definite in Gurdjieff's obscure pronouncements, probably hiding some kind of mischief labeled 'estoeric'. There was another rascal here, Nietzsche. What's going on with all of this? Impossible to determine. And yet if one is going to found a new tradition it requires something more than dabbling in esotericism and speculations about the past, mixed with the allergy to ethics spouted by impostors like Nietzsche.  The flood of gurus in his wake 'beyond good and evil' is a sordid joke played on those who claim spiritual powers but can't do better than the stylistic hypnosis in Nietzsche's pop philosophy. Therefore, while the efforts of archaeological enquiry should be respected as such, these are not likely to be the grounds for creating schools or religions of the future. 

Without giving  an overemphasis on Buddhism (we are not in the business of recommending spiritual paths), and evading the distraction for a moment, of its friction with its parent 'Hindusim', shows the job of religion creation done right, by honest men, who had the capacity to do what was needed, and succeeded in their endeavors because they had a larger force behind them, a higher power, ironic phrase, that operates across a larger history. They were unaware of this factor. The Israelites detected its action, but could not understand it. 

The efforts of Gurdjieff cannot match this in any way, and much of his exhumation of antiquated material (none of it documented, possibly made up)  misses the point. 

There are really only two 'ways' or paths, that in time and that moving beyond time. Buddhism shows an instance of the latter, while the former is a purely logical deduction from the nature of the case, one that a Buddhist would find samsarically spurious. We see no exemplars. And yet, we do. The great monotheisms proceed by default to exclude the path in time by usurping its place, no doubt because it is beyond the capacity of man as he is, who is an instant screw up in need of redemption. Here Gurdjieff is a genuine Frankenstein of the will, a sort of 'higher spastic' attempting to realize the 'path of the will in time'. His refusal of enlightenment in a path of recurrent soul formation is a deviant monstrosity of the logically derivable possible 'path'. He deserves to packed off the a Zen monastery and 'historically terminated'. 

Here we can see what Gurdjieff is driving at, but without understanding. The 'fourth way' was defined to be one immersed in ordinary life, without we presume the world renunciation seen in the mirror image way. It is no accident that Gurdjieff mentions thus the issue of the 'path of the will'. But this is caught up with much dross, and much occult nonsense, as to be virtually unusable. The successful occultist must be superman, and ought to pull rank on his inferior fellows to be top dog in a spiritual organization of the future. Rubbish. The whole thing is a hack. 

The real fourth way is something much larger, and less exotic, the disposition of human evolution in time toward autonomy, freedom and self-realization. This path, which we would most certainly confuse by using the term 'fourth way', is omnipresent in the context of (modern) civilization, and yet rarely if ever realized, even as the great religions move to coopt its potential in form of guardian churches  We can see the smoking gun evidence in figures such as Gurdjieff of people stumbling on its potential, but unable to successfully realize that as a social movement. It is hard to know what the future holds here, but the spastic disorganization of an association of occult cut-throats, sufi predators, and esoteric pretenders is not going to foot the bill. Sufism we should note peaked before the sixteenth century. What is left is a kind of wasteland.

Greater nature has shown us the default form of the 'fourth way' in its staging of situations for the realization of freedom, and what this portends for the realization of future truly real and adequate religions, is at yet unknown. We can accept the archaeological suggestions of a figure such as Gurdjieff, but his obscure and exploitative activities are out of sync with the modern transformation and do a disservice to what we can deduce up to a point as the real 'fourth way', a term we should abandon at once as corrupted. 

Ouspensky said it well, fragments of an unknown teaching. All in a day's work for the archaeologist. But it is not a spiritual path for the times. 

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