Tertium Organum

Book excerpt: Tertium Organum, or the third canon of thought, gives a new view of the perception of the world. In Tertium Organum, the author offers the shift of the paradigm and speaks of higher consciousness, or the consciousness of the fourth dimension, the domain for the personal development of the human, the ability to control your emotions and actions. The book is inspired by the teachings of Gurdjieff about the Fourth Way. According to this philosophy, there are three ways of self-development: the Way of the Fakir (developing physical body), the Way of the Monk (dealing with the emotions), and the Way of the Yogi (mastering the mind). Yet, there is another way – the Fourth Way that enables a human being to combine all three ways and live in harmony of body, spirit, and mind. Ouspensky applies this theory to the study of time and space, where he defines time as the fourth dimension of space and personality. The book's name is the allusion to the Organum of Aristotle, which laid the basis for the development of science, and the Organum Novus by Francis Bacon, who defined knowledge as only those facts that can be checked empirically.