The Seven Types of Man
Gurdjieff's provocative map of human development — from mechanical reaction to conscious living A practical interpretation for leadership, self-awareness, and personal transformation Are you living your life — or are your habits, emotions and thoughts living it for you? George Gurdjieff, the influential twentieth-century spiritual teacher associated with the Fourth Way, proposed a challenging idea: what we normally call a “human being” is not one finished state. Human beings differ not only in personality, intelligence, or temperament, but also in the degree to which their inner life is organized, integrated and conscious. His model of the Seven Types of Man is therefore easy to misunderstand. It is not a personality test, and Man No. 7 is not simply a more successful version of Man No. 1. The first three types describe different centres of gravity in ordinary human functioning. Types Four through Seven describe a progressive development of balance, unity, an...