“If you have not by nature a critical mind, your staying here is useless.” – Study House aphorism

“I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.” – Views from the Real World, p. 78

Verification is a foundational idea in Mr. Gurdjieff’s teaching: to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself. It is important to note that he does not say to disbelieve everything that you cannot verify, because disbelief is merely belief in a negative. That which we have not yet verified is neither believed nor disbelieved but should remain categorized as unverified.

Yet… we very often believe (or disbelieve) without verifying. Why?

To start, we are lazy by nature. It is simply easier to believe or disbelieve without verifying. Intellectual rigor is too much work! To check all the incoming information, especially in this so-called “Information Age”, is a daunting task.  

In our thinking, we are undisciplined, and we may briefly categorize new information as unverified, but over time this information leaks into the general pool of what we think we have verified. 

Also, we are not comfortable with the feeling of dissatisfaction that comes from delaying gratification until we have verified something, and rather than sit with not having yet verified, we fall into automatically believing or disbelieving.

Sometimes we may forget that our experiences are subjective, and we tend to believe our potentially faulty interpretation of them without question. Seeing is believing, right?

Sometimes we believe or disbelieve because the information agrees with our biases—news that is too good to check.

Sometimes we believe because there is external social pressure to accept what we haven’t verified. On the other hand, we may also believe because it is less of a hassle to seek peer input on what we ought to verify, whether our peers bring social pressure or not.

In terms of the work itself, we need to establish a framework of precisely what we are verifying. We need to establish precisely what was said. This is part of the reason Mr. Gurdjieff preserved his teaching in written form.