Gurdjieff who came to Russia in 1912 after traveling through Asia and Africa, brought with him a teaching that was not a religion or philosophy but a practical teaching called the fourth way, which was so named because it was not the path of the fakir , the way of the monk or the path of the yogi. Each of which requires the candidate to leave the world in order to find the luminous path, so Gurdjieff assures that all the other artificial paths that exist in the West do not lead to anything or lead anywhere, and if not exist a Fourth Way, the people of the West would not have the slightest opportunity to develop internally.
According to Gurdjieff, humanity was in a precarious period in its evolution and that the world was going to collapse unless the wisdom of the East was combined with the energy of the West in a harmonious way, this method of teaching is highly for this part of the world.
He also argued that many of the existing forms of religious and spiritual tradition on Earth had lost connection with their original meaning and vitality and therefore could not continue to serve humanity in the way that had been intended in its beginning. As a result, humans were failing to realize the truths of the ancient teachings and they were becoming more and more automatons, susceptible to control from the outside and increasingly capable of acts of mass psychosis unthinkable like the First World War.
The Fourth Way teaches that humans are not born with a soul and are not really conscious, but only believe that they are. A person must create a soul by following a teaching that can lead to this goal or "go nowhere" after the death of his body. If a person can receive instruction and find a school, at the death of the physical body "he will go elsewhere". Humans are born asleep, they live in the dream and they die in the dream, only imagining that they are awake with few exceptions.
The peculiarity of the room is that the human being must work from the changing circumstances of life. The disciple does not have here possibilities of hiding in a mountain to meditate. It must deal with the changing external conditions, maintaining the sense and feeling of work and practicing non-identification in the midst of daily events and misfortunes.