The Fourth Way—Principal Ideas

Man is a machine—a machine that does not know itself. This is a very difficult concept to accept. But if we study ourselves as objectively and impartially as possible, we discover that our daily actions as well as our ideas of the world around us are the result of external impressions—someone else's idea with which we agree or disagree, the front page of the paper which splashes headlines to which we automatically react, the television and computer continually force-feeding impressions, our friend/spouse/child bringing a particular state of mind or emotion that influences how I myself feel at that moment. It all just happens. We don't do anything, yet we attribute our world-view and our way of relating to others to an individuality that we don't really possess. We are acted upon, passively and unconsciously receiving stimuli and believing it to be our own unique way of interacting with the world.

We are machines, complex machines, but machines nonetheless. And a machine is not responsible for itself—it can only mechanically react. To understand this, we have to look at the illusions under which we live. We see that our so-called creativity, artistry, and singularity, are results of reactions to life events and not the proactive characteristics for which we give ourselves credit. When we accept this at a deep level, we begin to have the possibility of developing real individuality and we can begin to take responsibility for how we live our lives.