I cannot recall any such doubts during my teenage years. I was at boarding school for five years, so my life was largely determined by the goings-on there. Generally quiet and introspective, it did teach me to "stand on my own feet". I put more effort into lessons than sport or the other activities. Later on I specialised in maths and physics, which seemed "pure" rational subjects and not subject to interpretation like arts subjects. I soon lost enthusiasm for this though.

At the age of 19 I started at university, doing a degree in electronics. This was a "pure" subject, which appealed to me more than "applied" subjects. I preferred science to technology. In the first year I came to realise that there were not going to be answers to any real questions here either. I suppose until then I hadn't realised there were such things as real questions. The university course was just more problems and information, and I lost interest in it to some extent.

This was 1965, and the freedom of life at university was great! Life was buzzing with the new culture, young people were no longer held back by the old stereotyped rules. There was a new energy in the air, and I loved the new music, the new way of thinking, the protest against outdated conventions and war, the easy style of relationships, the whole "scene" had good "vibes"! Though I didn't get much involved in the social scene - regrettably - I certainly felt it. The refreshing new attitude to life did however start me looking for real alternatives to just concentrating on the degree course. I began to try to think for myself. I thought that pure science, especially modern physics and relativity, ought to be able to take in the workings of the mind, and religious beliefs and all kinds of things in general. I started writing notes about these ideas.

The possibility of travelling abroad opened up during the 1960s too, and this appealed to me a lot. Apart from all the sheer enjoyment of it, I felt to want to go to places all over the world to appreciate the scale of it, different languages, cultures, climates. I was very aware of the fact that it had not been possible to do this in previous centuries, and so I did take the opportunities that arose to see the world over the next few years.

At age 22, having got my degree and left university, I hit upon Teilhard de Chardin's books "Man's Place in Nature" and "The Phenomenon of Man". Teilhard was an original thinker with spiritual faith, and worked on reconciling man's religious experience with the theory of evolution.

I wrestled with these ideas over the next few years, bringing in parapsychology, yoga and various scientific and religious ideas. I tried to interest various people, in universities and elsewhere, with these ideas in the hope of some kind of postgraduate work or any productive way ahead at all. In 1971 I wrote a "thesis" called "Energetics: The Total System". Energetics is a word that seemed to best encapsulate the concept of the evolution of energy, both physical and psychical. I met incomprehension. I also joined The Soil Association and Intermediate Technology Development Group, in the pursuit of a more fulfilling way of life than my jobs in electronics. Then there were the theosophical writings of Alice Bailey with which I laboured long and hard.

Eventually, in 1975, I realised that studying books, whether scientific, inspirational or philanthropic, and going to conferences also, was not providing me with the key to the way ahead. I really had to find someone who knew more than I did. I had to meet personally someone to whom I could convey my heartfelt questions, someone who had been where I was and would know and show me the way ahead.

The Alice Bailey books referred to The Arcane School in which pupils wrote "meditation reports", which were replied to personally by a Secretary. This idea suddenly seemed absurd. How can anyone really help someone just by answering words with more words? I was determined to meet a Secretary face-to-face. There was a degree of desperation in me, and disappointment that all the time I'd spent searching I'd got nowhere. Maybe this was a real chance.

It was. That meeting was my first education in what opened up for me as a real sense. It set me along a new phase of my life. We talked a lot and he asked me if I knew of Gurdjieff. I had heard the name, but any consideration of what he was about must have been cursory or unappealing to me. He understood me quite naturally and talked a real "common sense" that was essentially uncomplicated and a relief to hear. He recommended I read P.D.Ouspensky's "In Search of the Miraculous", and that I make contact with someone in the Gurdjieff Work. I did.

Having searched for a real teaching I was at least open to the idea of Mr Gurdjieff as a teacher who had searched for and been able to find a source of special knowledge and thereby come to an understanding of those teachings. He had been certain such knowledge had existed in the past, but almost all traces of it seemed to have disappeared. He had then come to the West and used various means to transmit his knowledge to Western people for the rest of his life.

Working in a Gurdjieff group I was not asked to believe anything that I could not verify for myself. I was able in the course of time to verify for myself that a real teaching such as I found this to be has necessarily many practical aspects and involves individual efforts over a long period of time. I was also able to verify for myself that a real teaching can be transmitted, in the form that it was originally transmitted, beyond the life span of the original Teacher.  

Mr Gurdjieff taught that within us we each have three "centres" corresponding to the thinking, feeling, and instinctive/physical functions. In the West today, our education is based almost completely on the thinking faculty, with the inevitable result that our centres do not work correctly or in harmony with one another. Mr Gurdjieff's aim was to teach Western man in such a way that his general inner psyche would be activated not only by his thoughts but also by his feelings and his instincts. So much so that these latter would begin to predominate or take the initiative. Only in this way would a person be educated as a whole person, with the separate elements of his psyche acting in true balance with one another, harmoniously. Only in this way could a man have the possibility of living as a real man rather than, as he said, a man in quotation marks - "man".

Mr Gurdjieff lived from 1866(?) to 1949. In the 1920s, Gurdjieff founded "The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man" in France, and later he worked with groups of pupils in Paris and elsewhere. The primary method of transmission after he died was through his direct pupils, and thence through groups, who in turn take on new pupils. For the teaching to be effective today it is clearly necessary that pupils who have learnt through this process teach it.

In ways that I had not anticipated, whilst realizing that much of my previous searching had been irrelevant, what opened up through participating in group activities was a clearer understanding of where ordinary education had led me, and what was essentially wrong with it. I could begin to see for myself the true situation, which was rather a humbling experience, but at the same time it substantially confirmed my previous doubts about education in general. This was a real step forward.

Another thing I found reassuring about the Gurdjieff group was the wide range of people in it, men and women with a variety of backgrounds and occupations, and of all ages. There were usually a few children around too, who fitted into the scene so naturally and happily, and there was plenty of laughter.

The scenario suggested in Gurdjieff's teachings is that the present situation arose due to certain "mistakes" being made with the human race long ago. As three-brained beings, that is, beings with the three "centres" described above, human beings should normally live with those centres functioning correctly and in harmony with one another. Unfortunately and unlike three-brained beings might be supposed to function elsewhere in the universe, this did not occur on this planet. Although efforts were made to correct this, various illusions of the true nature of life became established, and were passed down through the generations. Teachers have been incarnated on this planet from time to time to try to put this situation right. Unfortunately their efforts have generally degenerated into religions.

Thus our education, in the broadest sense of the word, is today based on these same illusions, and passed down from generation to generation. Although we are born, in essence, with some vestigial understanding of reality, we are taught by all means to act not in accordance with that. Instead we each learn to wear the mask of personality, which is not true to ourselves but only to how we are taught to behave.

From "Views from the Real World", a talk given by G.I.Gurdjieff:

That talk was given in 1918. It may be different dirt in 2001, but dirt is still dirt. A human being develops in three stages, the first being early childhood and the second being roughly the teenage years. Maturity at about the age of 20 is the time when a person develops all the faculties proper for a responsible three-brained being. Unfortunately by the time you're 20, your sheet is dirty, that is to say the essence that you were born with has been smothered by your personality. What you were born to become has been smothered by how you have been taught to behave.

From "Teachings of Gurdjieff", C.S.Nott (1961):

It is said that young people do not take things seriously nowadays. I recall that it was a shock to me, when I left my employment in industry, how the young people taking over my responsibilities had very little interest in learning from my experience before I left. I contrasted this with how I'd felt when I'd been given similar responsibilities when I'd been younger - the worrying what I would do in various circumstances when the older person had left, taking all those years of experience! But I feel they've somehow got it right not to take things like that too seriously. Is it all that important?

It is inevitable that people acquire more "baggage" as they get older, and so get weighed down by the responsibilities and so on, and get into the habit of taking things too seriously. On the other hand, why don't we take the meaning of life seriously? Is why we exist unimportant? There has got to be some balance, and maybe the youth culture of today is a better reflection of the true state of affairs than is generally supposed. Certainly they have grounds to be passionate about things.

Ordinary development finishes once a person reaches maturity about the age of 21. Unless you can remember the essence that is you at about that age, and struggle to do something about it, your development as a human being is finished. The rest of your life, in reality, however you might delude yourself otherwise, has only a mechanical existence. Its fate is inevitable; it will run on until "the batteries run out". You will not worry about this however, as you develop an automatic self-calming mechanism. The only chance you may be reminded of any sense of reality is if you are faced with a sudden and immediate death, but this will only be momentary.

In the West our education is overwhelmingly based on the thinking faculty, and the imbalance occurs whether one is particularly intellectually inclined or not. Until recently people in many parts of the world lived according to various traditional cultures which contained many values learnt over centuries. There is evidence to suggest that true knowledge has always been passed down through small numbers of people in certain parts of the world, though this did not transmit to the majority of people, or at least only for a limited period. Thus those in the "developing world" today are not immune to the beguiling influence of modern Western education and all the trappings of Western "civilization".

What your needs are, dear reader, only you can know. Whether or not they are in any way reflected in what I'm writing, what you do next is up to you. I say this because I had so often been frustrated in reading these mind/spirit books as they always seemed to stop short of real satisfying answers. I did not realise then that they could not, as my education had not taught me any different.

Many people have at various points in their lives a wish to search for something more meaningful. Ouspensky writes that there are basically three ways forward - the way of the fakir, the way of the monk, the way of the yogi. These strive to work on the physical body, the way of religious feeling, and the way of mind respectively. All these are difficult and require a great deal of renunciation to achieve anything real through them. The Gurdjieff Work is sometimes called the Fourth Way. It is not so well known and begins much further on than the other ways as it requires working on all three parts of oneself at once. It requires favourable conditions to start, and has to be found. One can say rather that the Work finds the person. The material that life has given you already is probably the best possible for you. The Work is something to add on to your ordinary life as you live it, including your ordinary education.

If this makes you feel to want to change the world or change yourself, then go ahead. If on the other hand the situation seems hopeless to you, that could be a good start! Because the first thing would be to become more aware of yourself as you are, warts and all. When you begin to see the true situation you are in you will also begin to see your neighbour as your equal, not different as you ordinarily do. Nature provides that you can live an ordinary life without needing to know the true situation. It will conspire against you in every way should you be audacious enough to seek more. Nevertheless you were born with that possibility.

Mr Gurdjieff suggests in his writings how children may be guided in ways that will complement their ordinary education towards a more balanced view of life that will serve as useful material when they become adults.

In his book Meetings with Remarkable Men he writes of his own upbringing as follows:

It has been observed in people working in a Gurdjieff group that men tend to become more masculine and women more feminine. This seems to come about by making the necessary efforts to gradually discover one's own essential nature and being able to express it, rather than the mask of personality that society demands.

I've found within the group that real education needs to start with some critical investigation of myself. Just accepting what anyone else says is useless. Gradually I come to learn for myself how ordinarily my life is being lived for me. I learn that there are separate functions within myself that do not know each other, but their reality is not so clear.

At first and for a long time, in my experience as best I can express it, the motivation for continuing with it was based on doing what I was asked to do. I clearly understood this was to my benefit, and received from this the feel of the world for which I had been searching all along. Over a period of years, making the efforts required begin to bring about changes within myself. What had formerly been ideas given to me begins to become a struggle within myself.

There are barriers between my psychic functions, and I see something of their reality and how they affect relationships with other people. Barriers are our defences that make life easier for us, but they keep us in illusion. Learning to see something of the true state of affairs, I begin to sense the possibility that my psychic functions might through the right efforts on my part actually behave in harmony with one another and I could at least do what I'm asked to do. But at the same time, greater difficulties present themselves.

Are these conflicts so bad? Are not the difficulties of getting these parts of me to get on with one another even worse? Is it really worth all this hassle? After all, is it my fault I'm in this situation in the first place? I never asked to be taught all these things, shown all these things. I felt there was something wrong with it all along. So it's not my fault. So I'm perfectly entitled to reject all this investigation. I reckon from my past experience I know enough of who I am, who and what I love and value and care for. Life is pretty good; all in all, it has its ups and downs, the same as everyone has. It's all good stuff of course, but you've got to have a sense of proportion about these things, haven't you? So I'll get back to it in a little while.

It can become important through increased attention to put myself in the position of other people. It becomes important to work as well as I can for other people, as doing that is giving of myself and that is the way ahead. I cannot do this ordinarily as I have not the strength, but I can here and now within the special circumstances of being within the group. We are all "in the same boat". I can occasionally find the courage to be open to another person in a new way.

It is impossible to hold on to the actual experience of this afterwards, I feel its reality but it drains away, I am like a sieve and nearly all of it is lost. My head grabs what it can of the experience in the ways it always does and this brings me close back to my starting point. But I do not totally forget. It takes time, and I go back and keep on going back. In a variety of experiences making definite demands on me, if I am fortunate something in me becomes more willing to accept all this.

Then I start to be alive in a way that is truly precious to me. The creature that I begin to know as myself does not have quite the same power over me. This feels very strange. No longer does it reassure me with its quick-fix solutions to calm me down. It feels fine and fresh and faltering, a bit like skating on thin ice. But peace and freedom mean something very different now. These are moments I do not forget, and they can encourage me, and sometimes persuade me, to face the difficulties that lie ahead. This is what I call education.

During the 25 years that I have had contact with the Gurdjieff teachings, I've been directly involved in the Work for a little less than ten years.