A Real School dedicated to the practice of living in the present. With centres worldwide Welcome to the Fellowship of Friends! All rights reserved.
We are a group of men and women, young and old, who have gathered together to share the lifetime pursuit of being present. We have cultivated "being present" as a daily, even moment to moment, practice in addition to whatever we are doing, and want to help others to find their way to this practice. On this page you can inquire about practical questions on pursuing the present. Based in London, with centers located worldwide, our School provides a place for aspiring souls to live and work together in an atmosphere of beauty and effort, under the guidance of a conscious teacher. The Fellowship of Friends was founded fifty years ago on the Fourth Way teachings of George Gurdjieff and Peter Ouspensky. Today we embrace the practical wisdom of all great spiritual traditions, recognising that all esoteric schools teach the same thing: how to be present to your own life. To learn more about our school, and about the art and science of living in the present—working with a precise method, a teacher, and the help of other dedicated people—we invite you to visit our pages, hear what our members say, or find the center nearest you, at www.LivingPresence.com. Copyright Fellowship of Friends 2022. Images courtesy of The Fellowship of Friends and public domain. Images reproduced from other sources are for spiritual and educational purposes only, and are not to be used for any other purpose.
01/03/2026
The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I s***f the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?
Walt Whitman
"There are worlds beyond worlds and times beyond times, all of them true,
all of them real, and all of them (as children know) penetrating each other."
Pamela Lyndon Travers (August 9, 1899 - April 23, 1996),
23/02/2026
Der Versuch, die Aufmerksamkeit zu teilen, katapultiert uns weit über die Ebene des Lebens hinaus. Wir sind Menschen, für die geteilte Aufmerksamkeit Lohn in sich ist - es ist unser wahres Spezialgebiet, das allerdings als solches für die Masse der Menschheit nie sichtbar werden wird. Es gehört zur Natur des Selbsterinnerns, unsichtbar zu sein; die Ergebnisse jedoch sind tiefgreifend.
An einem bestimmten Punkt der Evolution eines jeden von uns ist, verglichen mit geteilter Aufmerksamkeit, alles andere Unsinn. Es ist ein Witz, davon durch irgendetwas abgelenkt zu werden, nur geht der Witz leider auf unsere Kosten. Und wenn die Ablenkung ein zu großes Ausmaß annimmt, wird es ein schlechter Witz.
Robert Burton / Die Magie des wunderbaren Selbsterinnern
14/02/2026
Every human being is a slave to various illusions.
Joga Vasistha
Self-observation reveals where one is asleep.
P. D. Ouspensky
Self-examination is the first ascent.
Plotinus
Walk with presence – do not walk by
presence.
Robert Burton
13/02/2026
In the modern world, we can be anywhere
in the world tomorrow, but the secret is to be here today.
Robert Burton
Where are you hurrying to?
You will see the same moon tonight wherever you go!
Izumi Shikibu
"We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon"PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
What profit have ye from your blind pursuits?
Ye all return to the great ancient mother: even the memory of your names is lost. Of your unnumbered tasks is there
e'en one that is aught more than merest vanity?
Petrarch
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Denkt an alle Unterbrechungen und Pausen in eurem Leben, an all die vergeudete Zeit. Ein Student, unterwegs zu einem anderen Zentrum, fragte mich einmal, ob er eine Botschaft von mir überbringen könnte. Ich antwortete: "Nein, es gibt keine neuen Botschaften, es gibt nur geteilte Aufmerksamkeit."
Kinder leben aus dem Wesenskern, aber ihr Wesenskern ist im permanenten Zustand der Faszination. Seid ihr im Wesenskern, so versucht Eure Aufmerksamkeit zu teilen. Versucht, diese Blumen zu sehen, und seid Euch gleichzeitig dessen gewahr, dass ihr sie seht. Geteilte Aufmerksamkeit bringt uns zum Wesenskern. Jesus sagte: "Wenn ihr nicht werdet wie die Kinder, so werdet ihr nicht ins Himmelreich kommen."
Robert Burton / Die Magie des wunderbaren Selbsterinnern
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What would a school of the Fourth Way look like in our decade?
It would probably include all the classical teachings from around the world.
A narrow minded, regional approach does not belong to our age. To study only the Fourth Way, and to memorise its words and ideas, as if it were a religion, will not take us anywhere.
A modern school would also probably use technology to help its members evolve and stay connected to it. While the Fourth Way was formulated at the dawn of the machine age, we are now in an electronic age where technology is the god.
We still understand the metaphor of the machine, but it does not have the immediacy that it perhaps once had.
Nevertheless, man has not changed. The basic human problem, at least in my experience, is still imagination.
Most people are in imagination practically all the time. How many people in the world are able to stay out of imagination all day long, every day?
One thousand, one hundred, ten?
But isn’t this the promise, the birthright of being human? We are born with the equipment for it.
Because of this, the teachings of Gurdjieff are still very valid for our time. The psychology of human sleep, of imagination and identification, of wrong work of centers where the precious higher energies generated by the machine are simply thrown out uselessly, has not changed for hundreds of millennia.
To break this sleep, a school is necessary.
“No real development of being is possible without schools, or rather, it is possible to a certain extent, but it is generally incomplete.
Right development of being is impossible without schools, because one cannot look after oneself, one cannot be sufficiently strict with oneself. And it is not only a question of being strict—one simply cannot remember things at the right time, one will forget, or one will make things easy for oneself.
If it were possible to work by oneself, schools would be a waste of time and systems would not be necessary; but since they exist, it means that it is impossible without them. …
“From the first days at school a man begins to study mechanicalness and to struggle against mechanicalness in himself, against involuntary actions, against unnecessary talk, against imagination, against the expression of negative emotions, against daydreaming and against sleep. In making a step along the line of knowledge a man must make a step along the line of being.
“The principles of school work, all the demands made upon him, all help him to study his being and to work to change it.”, remarks Ouspensky in the Fourth Way
We are a group of men and women, young and old, who have gathered together to share the lifetime pursuit of presence using Fourth Way methods. Through Self-Remembering, a practice similar to "Mindfulness", we have cultivated a moment-to-moment discipline that allows us to be present to our lives.
The aim of this page is to help others find their way to this practice. You can inquire here about practical issues regarding the pursuit of this stairway to a higher state of consciousness.
Based in London, with centres located worldwide, we are part of a School that provides a place for aspiring souls to live and work together in an atmosphere of beauty and effort, under the guidance of a Conscious Teacher.
It was in 1970 that Robert Burton founded the Fellowship of Friends, in the Fourth Way tradition taught by George Gurdjieff and Peter Ouspensky. Today we embrace the practical wisdom of many of the great esoteric traditions, recognizing that all true esoteric schools teach the same thing: how to Be Present to the states of Higher Consciousness always available in our daily lives.
To learn more about our School, and about the art and science of living in the present - working with a precise method, a Teacher, and the help of other dedicated people - we invite you to visit our pages, hear what our members say, or find the centre nearest you, at www.LivingPresence.com.
