Path 1:

I followed from Osho. This leads to, at this moment, though there are others–Vishrant.

Once a person moves toward their own emptiness,

when they find a teacher who has developed qualities in their emptiness,

intimacy, warmth, enjoyment, love, connection—

when their being is exposed to a teacher who has done this,

Their space of emptiness begins to transform.

If their space transforms,

then they may connect with that which exists in that space.

If a person were to bring these certain harmonious qualities into their space, they might connect to that which shares those qualities.

This can be understood by Gurdjieff’s statement,

“Knowledge by itself does not give understanding. Nor is understanding increased by an increase of knowledge alone. Understanding depends upon the relation of knowledge to being...It appears only when a man feels and senses what is connected with it.” - George Gurdjieff

Knowledge may have no connection.

What we call understanding is:

When we connect to an understanding that exists outside of ourselves.

We do not feel knowledge, but we feel–we sense– understanding.

When two people feel an understanding, they are sensing the same understanding. The understanding is outside of them.

Consider what a person like Osho is connected to, where he says,

“See that all of existence is celebrating.. The rivers and the oceans are wild, and everywhere there is fun, everywhere there is joy and delight.
Watch existence, listen to existence and become a part of it.” - Osho

Can you fathom how Osho is connected to this, and how he intends to bring others into this?

If we connect to the things that are of a similar quality,

If we identify the quality of existence,

Then we may become connected to it.

If the fundamental quality of existence is celebration,

And we connect to celebration,

If the same quality of celebration is cultivated within our being, within the space of our own emptiness,

Then we may connect to the quality of celebration outside of us.

The direct word for this is:

Love.

The metaphorical word for this, which is easier to comprehend, is:

Music.

If you work it out, if you understand that we connect to understanding,

then you know that the idea of connecting to the quality of the universe is not imagination,

It is the work of what we call science and mathematics.

This is describing a mechanical, mathematical process to “connect to creation.”

That is, to, in a single moment, “become one with the universe.”

PART II

Inner Quality = Outer Quality.

As with many things in this world, connecting to existence is a “fake it till you make it” process.

As you cannot cause a connection to take place; you cannot cause yourself to fall in love with someone, it can happen when you are near them. It might not happen. It might.

If your lover is at the river,

You will never meet them where you are now. You will have to go to the river to meet them.

You might see them the first time you go to the river, you might not see them for years.

The connection part is not under your control, but,

one day it might happen.

The odds of you hearing the “song of the universe” when you are with a person connected to this song is high.

There is only one issue with the first path.

It may be easy for a person to connect to the song one time, a first time.
It may be easy to make contact, but it is not so easy to stay connected.

Part III

Only a person who has exhausted his desires for this world could ever be ready to stay connected, to live totally in the song.

Only a person who has said,

“I have had enough of this life, I have tasted all I wanted to taste and done all that I wanted to do, and now I am ready to rest, I have had enough.

I am ready to go in a different direction. I am no longer concerned with my mortality.”

Only this person could live totally connected to existence.

This is because you still have things to do.

As long as you have things to do, the first path is not available to live in.

This is what philosophy calls, “your egoic pursuits”.

Your egoic pursuits are the dreams you want to finish, the people you want to prove wrong, the statement:

“All that I’ve done and worked for cannot have been for nothing. I must finish what I started.”

These fundamental drivers are not compatible with connecting to and living in the song, the harmonious existence.

This is because when you follow these pursuits in your mind, you conflict with the deepest desire in your true heart, in your soul.
This desire you may have long forgotten–though it is always there, even if it must be resurrected.

Simply put, the heart lives and operates a certain way.

There are things it does and does not do,
there are things it wants and does not want,
there are things it strives for and does not strive for.

The difficulty with this path is that the world is currently incompatible with the heart,

and so there is guaranteed confliction and consequence of suffering due to the outside world.

Part IV

The heart is like this,

“No, I don’t think I will do that anymore. I don’t care. I would rather die. Being that way is unhealthy for me, and so I won’t do that anymore.”

These changes, these choices, they change the quality and trajectory of our life.

If there were two simple categories for these two kinds of stances,

one might be based in the commitment to our own health, our own worth,

the other might be avoidance of pain.

Part V

The heart, as wild as it is, as religions of mind have so aptly rejected, is radical, uncompromising.

The open heart might say,

"I won't do that because it is not nurturing to me, I just can't do that anymore."

Or it might say,

"I will be kind to everyone even if they reject me, because this is true to me in my nature."

This first path is not possible to access with egoic pursuits because, when you strive for your pursuits, you create a confliction between yourself and your own heart.

That is, you force yourself to be other than you are, you force yourself to reach in a way you do not wish to reach.

Even if you were not following egoic pursuits, this world will punish, hurt, and attack you for not doing things you do not wish to do, or, that your heart does not agree with.

This the the statement that: "You must do this because everyone does this whether we like it or not." The heart does not comply with these motivations and demands.

In this way, the first path, a path of heart, is incompatible with the world.

This means there are two choices,

• 1. You are incompatible with yourself, your self is incompatible with your heart
• 2. Your self and heart are aligned, and you are incompatible with the world.

As this is the fundamental issue,

the first path is not what people want.

What people actually want:

"I want to be happier and feel better while I pursue my goals and finish what I started. If there is a power to help me, if there is a God to help me, I want him to work for me. Yes. I will accept assistance on the path if it furthers my goal."

This is the second path I have found, the path which Gurdjieff gave access to.

It should be noted that the desire of self can be sly, that it can appear to be one thing but in truth be another,

as an example,

"I want to live for God" might be the statement, the reason, the purpose of the self on the surface.

but underneath this might be,

"I want to live for God --if it creates a story in which I am seen in a certain way --if it creates a story where I am victorious --if it makes me good or a holy man – if it is according to my doctrine and creed."

This is the biggest obstacle to the modern Christian in his circumstances,

she prays, "God, use me for your purposes. Anything, God. Anything. I will do anything to serve you."

Unfortunately, the prayer is more truly, "God, use me for your purposes if they are shown to me in a way which I understand and which makes me feel in a certain way and which looks in a certain way."

This subtlety of the ego on the path of surrender means that this person is currently on the road of self, egoic pursuits.

As such, Gurdjieff's path is the path they desire.

Deep down, they want God to work for them, they desire for God to help them feel a certain sense of worthiness, meaning, value, from the results of their pursuits.

So, if the power to fulfill your pursuits is what is sought, you are, at this time, looking for this second path.

You may even have negative beliefs about power, and yet, power to power your ambitions is what you seek.

Part VI

This second path, in essence, is exactly as described,

The power to operate and fulfill the desires of your self while retaining the incompatibility between your self and your heart.

To understand how Gurdjieff made this possible,

you must understand that the desires of your true heart are the same desires of the whole universe, the whole real existence, and it is set up that way so that we exist in a perfect creation.

And so, if you were following your true heart, you would be connected with all of existence.

And so, following the path of egoic pursuits is a disconnection with all of existence, to receive the desired goals of ego, "accomplishment to end my lacking self worth, to prove I'm not unlovable, to make sure I'm not abandoned.."

Gurdjieff made this possible with his technique called Self-Remembering.

Self-Remembering is exactly that, accessing the power of the universe and the power to take control over your own person, without the total connection to the universe, that is, without the true heart.

The difference between these two experiences is as such,

an enlightenment through Osho's way of heart is an enlightenment within you, outside of you, with everything,

the universe outside of you penetrates you from outside and works its way inwards.

an enlightenment through Gurdjieff's Self-Remembering is an enlightenment within your mind, your mental space,

Gurdjieff's Self-Remembering is obviously much easier, and it is what people want, the ability to control yourself and have the power to further your ambitions.

This is why his schools were so successful for many decades and extremely appealing to an American audience.

Part VII

What does it mean to control yourself?

It means to not be distracted by one thing and then another, "now I'm hungry, now I want sex" "Now I feel bad and I want to feel better" "Now I feel sad and I want to do this",

For most people, you have never lived one day in your life presently, in which, from 30 minutes to the next 30 minutes, you were not pulled by the next desire that arose within you to feel better, and escape what has been called something like, the "ambient dread".

Due to this, it has been impossible to consistently move toward a single goal, as you are not the same person with the same motivations at noon that you are at 6pm.

Gurdjieff's Self-Remembering allows this path, and it involves "activating your higher functions" so that you can operate from your higher functions of mind to control your lower functions of mind, no longer swinging this way and that.

This path is unfeasible, but dangerous for one reason, it means you will be driving the car.

Part VIII

To use the car metaphor, there are three options:

0 - There is no driver at the wheel. You feel angry and you react to it. You feel depressed and you find a means to appease it. The steering wheel moves toward whatever desire or thought arises in you.

1 - God is at the wheel. He teaches you, grows you, and you learn, while your ego is dragged along in the back seat, assuming you still have an ego.

2 - You are at the wheel, the self is at the wheel.

It may seem that 2. is devoid of God, but this is not true. You are at the wheel, and you can turn the wheel towards working with God, or away from working with God. God will always work with you, whether you are at 0, 1, or 2.

Part IX

The second path, Self-Remembering, is feasible, just dangerous, for this simple reason, your own wisdom is limited. You cannot always know the full consequences of your choices, you cannot always know if you are in harmony with the universe or out of harmony.

This is like operating with the full power of a god with no safeguards. What this means is, when you have the wheel, you pursue a goal,

and if it aligns with God's will, it works out, perhaps miraculously.

Or, it is out of alignment with God's will, and it has the opposite effect, a complete reversal of your hopes, and it absolutely destroys you.

This is why most people who went on occult paths or followed Gurdjieff were completely destroyed.

You could actually destroy your life in the blink of an eye by having control of the wheel, having full control of yourself.

You would hopefully quickly learn that if you were to actually get the things you most wanted, you would be near instantly destroyed.

And you would find that being able to operate as you wanted, that it turns out, your self is a complete and total monster.

Part X

A very careful person, as Gurdjieff might call, a very sly person, might avoid catastrophe in the short term,

you would just have to hope that in the long term, your larger vision is within God's will, else, you would end up like Hitler, whose dreams of creating a proud German people inversed completely and ended with only shame, the exact inverse of his vision.

Hitler is a good example, he used the power of God himself to realize his vision, but it was not within God's will. The desired result inversed.

The result can swing either way, but the difficulty is, you cannot know until your "project" is far beyond the stage known as "the point of no return," which means that you won't know if it will work out or not until you have gone far to far to turn back or cancel the project.

Path 0, no driver at the wheel, could only certainly end at average results or destruction,

but it is safer than path 2, in the short term.

There is only one reason it is safer, is that when you are not at the wheel at all, you are subject to those who are at the wheel.

So, path 0 is like rolling the dice, hoping that the circumstances of your life will be fortuitous, hoping that the force of will you've fallen into will have a good result.

Perhaps on path 0, you will meet Tony Robbins, and he will take you to the stars.

Or, on path 0, you will be medicated by the pharmaceutical industry,

or you will be subject to the fentanyl epidemic.

There's someone at the pharmaceutical industry at the wheel, and you're now heading toward the realization of his vision.

There's someone creating fentanyl at the wheel, and you're now heading toward the realization of his vision.

At path 0, you're helping realize the vision of wherever you happen to land, the force of your life is helping further McDonald's, or Hollywood, or The United States of America, or NASA, or Christianity, or YouTube, or Discord, Silicon Valley, BMW. At the top of all of these is a person behind the wheel.

The result of their aims are not necessarily negative.

At path 0, if you're lucky, you are in the "conscious stream" of people behind the wheel going in positive directions and furthering the aims of 'humanity'.

You could also be incredibly unlucky and fall into the "unconscious stream" of politically motivated people, with faulty beliefs systems leading surely to death

Part XI

Path 0: We connect to whatever forces we may come across. We remain a victim of circumstance.

Path 1: We connect to an understanding that exists in the whole universe. This is the path of true surrender and our true heart.

Path 2: We connect to our higher faculties, but retain independence. This is the path of control and power, for better or worse.

What Path Am I On?

I am, as circumstances permit, on Paths 0, 1, and 2.

written in 2024. Published in 2026