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Rating: 
Summary: Practical advice to help you wake up during your daily life!
Review: In a spiritual school, there is much said publicly about the cosmology or the belief system of the teaching, but practical instructions are often given only one-on-one from teacher to student. In this short book, John Fuchs, leader of Gurdjieff study groups in Denver for many years, presents practical suggestions for work on oneself in the tradition of G.I. Gurdjieff. With a personal honesty and openness which makes the book very readable, Mr. Fuchs talks about his own experiences and observations and gives suggestions for efforts the reader can make to bring this work of awakening into his or her daily life. Each chapter is short, about 3-5 pages, and focuses on some aspect of the Work: e.g., attention, anger, tensions, the sitting. He includes excerpts of observations and experiences from his own journal. In the final chapter there is Mr. Fuchs' own version of an exercise to be done daily called "A Spiritual Accounting." People interested in joining a Gurdjieff group often wonder what happens in a group, what sort of tasks and exercises are given. Mr. Fuchs gives us a glimpse into the actual transmission of the Gurdjieff teaching with illustrations from his own life as a student in the Work as well as from his meetings and personal instructions to students. If one is a spiritual searcher just looking into Gurdjieff, "Forty Years" is a good introduction, although the next step would be to read something which gives a fuller, more organized accounting of Gurdjieff's teaching, such as Ouspensky's "In Search of the Miraculous." If one is already involved in the Work, "Forty Years" will offer help and an affirmation of the path they are already on. I still pick it up from time to time just for the support and encouragement it gives my own efforts.
Rating: 
Summary: Valuable and indeed practical
Review: It's a small book just shy of 100 pages. I honestly haven't read enough 4th way material to really judge this based on it's accuracy of the work. For those interested in the history of the 4th Way line Mr. Fuchs drops a few names of those whom he has studied under like Cynthia Pearce and Madame de Salzmann. The book seems to be a pocket size version of the 4th way written from the perspective of an instructor which will give those outside the movement a rare glimpse to the inner world of the work.
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