First, Second, Third, Fourth State

Gurdjieff explained that there are four states of consciousness accessible to a human being. With his usual directness, he called them the first, second, third, and fourth states of consciousness.

These states vary according to the ability to grasp reality.

The first state is ordinary sleep. While I sleep, my grasp on reality is tenuous. If there's a fire, I could die. I witness dreams, images that follow one another without my control; this phenomenon continues in the second state, in the form of “the many 'I’s”—the flow of imagination.

In the second state I get out of bed, I go to work, I act in the world. But I'm still not awake. If there's a fire I'll react, of course. But my grasp on reality is still limited by imagination. My body is in the office, in front of a computer, busy with some calculations. But my mind is elsewhere, seized by associative thoughts, feelings, memories, regrets, resentments, hopes, daydreams. It is a different, lighter form of sleep. I can't say I'm awake until I'm in the third state.

In the third state, body and mind are in the same place. If I drink a coffee, I taste the coffee. I'm not veiled by ceaseless thoughts. There is a heightened sense of clarity, reality. I am present to what is in front of me and I include myself in the scene; I know I am here. Thoughts of imagination continue to present themselves (they will never stop), but I watch them go by and realize that this 'I', my real identity, is something apart from them.

In a school one learns to evoke and prolong the third state, in other words, to be present to one's own life as it passes. We don’t often experience the fourth state. It is a very high perception of objective truth and reality, like the visions of certain mystics or prophets. We may have had flashes of it in situations of great danger, such as a car accident. For us now, it is more practical to focus on the third state.