The fourth way is the way of “Haida-yoga.” It resembles the way of the yogi, but at the same time it has something different.
Like the yogi, the “Haida-yogi” studies everything that can be studied. But he has the means of knowing more than an ordinary yogi can know. In the East there exists a custom: if I know something, I tell it only to my eldest son. In this manner certain secrets are passed on, and outsiders cannot learn them.
Of a hundred yogis perhaps only one knows these secrets. The point is that there is a certain prepared knowledge which speeds up work on the way.
What is the difference? I shall explain with an example. Let us suppose that in order to obtain a certain substance a yogi must do a breathing exercise. He knows that he must lie down and breathe for a certain time. A “Haida-yogi” also knows all that a yogi knows, and does the same as he. But a “Haida-yogi” has a certain apparatus with the help of which he can collect from the air the elements required for his body. A “Haida-yogi” saves time because he knows these secrets.
A yogi spends five hours, a “Haida-yogi” one hour. The latter uses knowledge which the yogi has not got. A yogi does in a year what a “Haida-yogi” does in a month. And so it is in everything.
Excerpt taken from Views From the Real World by G. I. Gurdjieff, pub.E. P. Dutton, 1973, pp 203-204.
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