The Master Georges Ivanovič Gurdjieff, During his numerous travels in Central Asia, Tibet, the Middle East and in India, learns a multitude of knowledge on the verge of oblivion that lead him to trace a possible "Fourth Way" of personal inner evolution to be preferred to the three traditional ones he classified,

The Fourth Way is a new way of living, a valid and real system on Man and the Universe to return to what he called "Self-remembering".

The spiritual traditions existing at his time (early 1900s) were basically three.

• The First Way, the "Way of the Fakir", of Sufi and Hindu origin, which works above all on the education of the body.
• The second, the "Via del Monaco", of Christian tradition, which works above all on education to sentiment.
• The third, the "Way of the Yogi" of Sikh, Hindu and Buddhist origin, based mainly on a work of education of the mind.

According to the Master's opinion, each of the ways listed above is doomed to inevitable failure, even more so especially for contemporary man of Western culture, because it requires total dedication and perseverance to the point of making it almost necessary to abstract from the ordinary way to concentrate. on the body (First Way), on the feeling (Second Way) or on the Mind (Third Way). This is unthinkable in modern times unless a radical choice is made to withdraw from the world.

The Fourth Way decrees that man must study himself and proposes a path of self-awareness that is difficult but achievable for those who are willing to persevere.