Introduction

“I’ve always felt that the ideas of the Work were to be used. Not just to be ‘bees in amber.’”
~Rina Hands

Please read this chapter. It will be easier to profit from this book if you do. The book intends to help the reader gain a deeper knowledge of objective science than can be acquired simply by reading In Search of the Miraculous by P D Ouspensky and deducing what you can from Gurdjieff’s obtuse descriptions of objective science in various parts of The Tales.

The descriptions of objective science that haunts the pages of In Search of the Miraculous are over 100 years old. And while the explanations of objective science in The Tales are only 90 or so years old, they are far less accessible to the average reader. There needs to be a modern context within which these ideas can be pondered and comprehended. This book seeks to provide it.

Our Dubious Inheritance

Each of us possesses a readily available collection of low-quality information. Some of it is the residual imprint of our education. It also includes information about contemporary science fed to us by modern media, and books we have read. We formed our personal world view from this material and, most likely, embellished it with personal beliefs that have been neither pondered nor tested.

The author hopes that if such a dubious inheritance sullies the reader, he or she will gradually turn away from and discard that influence as they make their way through the pages of this book. Ideally, they will restate or redefine their “first principles”—the basic principles they employ to understand the world. Objective science provides that opportunity, but the reader has to choose it.