Asaf Braverman

20 years ago, I began exploring how to bring ancient methods of self-development into the modern age. Groups that were still employing these methods as a rule shunned the Internet. In their minds, modern technology was incompatible with ancient teachings. They had been established before the digital age and categorically dismissed the potential of online connection. This seemed a crucial oversight. People were increasingly interacting online and I wondered why it should not be possible to bridge between ancient methods and modern ways of learning.

The obstacles weren’t just technological but essentially human: how could an online school foster the intimacy needed for inner work? How could it create the necessary creative pressure? The downside of the Internet was obvious: its babel of voices threatened to drown meaningful exchange as it quickly veered towards argument, gossip, and slander. However, alongside this, there were unprecedented advantages. It was now possible to reach seekers worldwide unlike any other time before. Moreover, an online teaching would literally fit into people’s pockets; they could practice its methods in the midst of their everyday lives rather than apart from it, using their daily challenges—at work, at home, in relationships—as catalysts for growth. This integration of practice with modern life avoided the age-old trap of misusing spirituality as an escape. I found this possibility deeply compelling.

What followed was a 2 decade voyage of trial and error that would eventually give birth to this school. But to grasp how it unfolded we must start with what drove me to undertake my own journey in the first place.

Early in life, I was overcome by a paralyzing aimlessness. The prospect that lay ahead of me—being stamped with a degree, shaped by career demands, and packaged into family life—felt like entering a vast factory where humans were processed into socially acceptable products only to be discarded at the end. Yet who was I? Where was I? And why was I here? My elders dismissed my questions as inconsequential, though I could see through their practiced indifference. They were only further down the assembly line than I was, their edges smoothed, their questioning already dulled. I resolved to either find a deeper meaning to life or die searching for one.

My initial attempts came up empty. This was before the Internet, when knowledge was bounded by the walls of bookstores and libraries. Western psychology offered dense theoretical frameworks that seemed disconnected from my existential crisis. Eastern spirituality and self-help literature swung to the opposite extreme, presenting superficial solutions that seemed to mask rather than address the underlying questions. There were a few exceptions that inspired without instructing. They did little in paving a way forward.

I had to broaden my search. I had to reach out beyond books and meet like minded seekers, or at least people who might point me to them. I began frequenting different discussion groups and gradually observed them fall into familiar patterns. Some created environments of enforced optimism, where questioning itself was seen as negativity to be overcome. They offered emotional refuge in communal bliss, treating my doubts as illusions of the mind rather than gateways to understanding. Others wrapped themselves in philosophical discourse, building elaborate mental frameworks that never touched ground in daily life. Still others prescribed rigorous physical regimens—diet, yoga, meditation—as if the riddle of existence revolved around a healthy body. They improved my physical well-being without answering my questions.

Just as I was about to surrender to bitter cynicism, I encountered a group that felt different. It didn’t fall neatly into any of the categories I had come to hold in suspicion. It was not large—perhaps twenty people or so—but they were very diverse. They practiced what they called The Fourth Way, not a tradition in itself, but rather a synthesis of many traditions. They claimed its origins were ancient, speaking of hidden connections between teachings of the past, though remaining vague about what these connections might be. This intrigued me. Had past ages known the answers to my burning questions? And if so, why had these answers not been available to me at the outset of my search?

I had always harbored the romantic thought that the riddles of mankind were known and understood by our ancient ancestors. On one hand, we moderns assume we stand at history’s pinnacle. We map galaxies, cure diseases that decimated our ancestors, and connect across continents in seconds—surely we must understand more about existence than those who came before us. Yet how then to explain the achievements scattered throughout history? The architectural perfection of Saqqara Temple, erected at the dawn of dynastic Egypt with no clear precedent. The engineering marvel of Angkor Wat, built by a farming civilization in 12th century Cambodia. The psychological depth of Shakespeare’s characters, crafted by quill in candlelit rooms. The emotional nuance captured in Rembrandt’s self-portraits, or Chinese Buddhist sculptures, or Russian Icon painters, that seemed to breathe with life across centuries. These weren’t mere technical accomplishments but expressions of profound understanding. Perhaps human development wasn’t simply linear but cyclical—peaks and valleys of wisdom rising and falling throughout time. If so, might they contain insights into human purpose and potential that our technological progress had obscured rather than illuminated?

I would gradually learn that the group I had joined was a local branch of an international Fourth Way school called the Fellowship of Friends, with other sub-groups in different cities around the world. At the time of my joining, the organization had been functioning for 25 years and had accumulated in its wake the debris of cult and scandal. The founder, Robert Burton, was controversial. When I eventually met him in the year 2000, I saw the reasons for the controversy but I also recognized a method in his madness. There were too many genuine practitioners in his wake to categorically discard his school. Sensing an opportunity, and feeling I had nothing to lose, I put myself at his service and eventually became his right hand man, handling issues that ranged from teaching to human relations and from logistics to finances. I often fulfilled the delicate position of intermediary between him and his students. This brought me in intimate contact with almost all the practitioners of his school and exposed me to their difficulties, challenges, and successes.

These practitioners defy easy categorization. They come from extraordinarily different backgrounds—artists and accountants, teachers and technicians, doctors and designers—yet share an uncommon dedication to inner development. While most people organize their lives around career advancement, relationship milestones, or material accumulation, these individuals have reoriented their priorities around self-knowledge. Their primary aim is to know themselves and be themselves. This isn’t merely intellectual curiosity or spiritual hobby, but a fundamental commitment that informs their daily choices. The results are evident in their demeanor—a certain groundedness, a capacity to remain impartial towards themselves even in difficult situations, and a refreshing lack of the typical neuroses that dominate most social interactions. Through this shared commitment, they form bonds of unusual depth. Their friendships are based on witnessing one another’s struggles and transformations. These connections possess an intimacy and authenticity one rarely encounters elsewhere, transcending the superficial camaraderie that passes for friendship in conventional social circles. One typically overlooks the importance of these practitioners (I certainly did). One either becomes enamored with the teacher or the teaching, but rarely does one acknowledge these practitioners, although they will often play as important a role in one’s work as the teacher and the knowledge themselves—if not more.

My collaboration with Burton peaked in 2004, by which time my position became very specified. The frequency of his teaching events had increased and I was entrusted with giving them content and structure. Teaching requires repetition and repetition is always threatened by dogma. How could we repeat our lessons without allowing them to lose their vitality? We tackled this challenge by expanding our sources beyond the Fourth Way to the historical traditions of the world. We were learning and teaching simultaneously, and this infused our presentation with the thrill of discovery. It forced me to dig up the hidden roots that the Fourth Way had claimed to have, but had never explicitly exposed. We worked intensively during this period, sometimes hosting three teaching events per day. The volume of knowledge I had to sift through was vast.

My aim during these years was straightforward: to put myself in the service of a higher cause. The role’s creative demands provided the perfect conditions for this challenge. Burton’s purpose however, was harder to gauge. Sometimes we worked in perfect synchronicity, at other times one doubted whether he himself knew where he was headed. And here I learned another unsuspecting lesson, one not featured in any of the books and that cannot be learned in any other way: the teacher’s aim is secondary if the student is clear about his own. This can hardly be overstated. Many came and were used and abused because they forgot why they had come, if they had ever at all known. The importance of aim in inner work—of the need of keeping it always and everywhere in perspective—would ultimately inform my teaching methodology as an indispensable first principle.

Our connection ended abruptly. In 2007, the Fellowship of Friends came under the scrutiny of the US immigration department and the foreigners in my position were forced to promptly leave the country. After seven years of complete dedication, having all but died to my former life, I was exiled from my friends, commitments, and belongings, overnight. There was a good deal of panic and mishandling, and those sent away felt betrayed—the Fellowship saving face at our expense. On my part, along with the hard feelings was also an auspicious air around this unlikely turn of events, as if it were so bizarre it had to be meaningful. Deep inside, I knew that my years of apprenticeship were over.

Rumors of my exile spread and members around the world invited me over to brave the storm. For a while I was on an open ended trip. Cut off from my past obligations, I had ample time to visit Saqqara Temple in Egypt, or Angkor Wat in Cambodia, or the Taj Mahal of Agra. And as this interim of uncertainty turned from days to weeks and from weeks to months, I became exposed to the major historic monuments of the world that I had formerly researched so thoroughly.

My experience of these monuments was doubtlessly influenced by the psychological pressure of exile, by grappling with betrayal and injustice, and by the vast and daunting unknown that lay before me. And yet, it was this very pressure that enabled me to look with unprecedented clarity. The thread of exile runs straight through the tapestry of human history. I could see Adam exiled from Paradise, or Odysseus exiled from Ithaca, or Rama exiled from Ayodhya, at eye level. Time and distance availed not; they were with me, those mythical figures of ever so many generations past. The more I observed them in a stained glass window, or a relief of a temple pillar, or a mosaic in an archeological ruin, the more I could see them from their own standpoint and understand their story. Something significant was at play through this fateful synchronicity, and its propitiousness lightened my burden.

I would spend the next two years scouring the museums and monuments of the world, and would find the same unorthodox meaning everywhere: Egypt, Greece, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Mesoamerica—all taught a lesson essentially the same, rendered different by the veil of religious misinterpretation. Indeed, the deepest questions of life had been answered in past ages, and answered well. Why did none regard these truths, hidden in such plain sight? There had to be others that would be as touched by them as I was. So along with my exploration grew a sense of responsibility to record and present my findings methodically.

The unknown foundations of the Fourth Way were being revealed, an unveiling made possible through the strange confluence of circumstances that had ensnared me. But how could they be given contemporary form? I had no structural foundation at my disposal, no institution, no location, no following—only the conviction that these truths were pertinent to contemporary seekers.

The Internet was the obvious path forward. But it demanded a clear framework to navigate its inherent challenges. I knew an online teaching would need to both unify practitioners on a common trajectory and give them flexibility to address their individual struggles. Otherwise, we would succumb to the Internet’s cacophony of perspectives that so often reduces meaningful exchange to argument and misinterpretation. Drawing inspiration from the agricultural metaphor embedded in ancient wisdom, I arranged the central concepts into twelve monthly labors, creating a yearly cycle of symbolic cultivation tasks. As a farmer daily tends to his crops within the larger rhythm of seasons, so does a practitioner daily work on himself within this annual framework. We too experience seasonality and fluctuations in our inner states; we too are at the mercy of natural forces beyond our control; but we too gain expertise as we cycle through one year after another of inner work. This format could keep everyone aligned while allowing personalized application. Soon, a hundred people committed to practicing this cyclical teaching on a regular basis. This was the beginning of my school.

Practitioners tested these methods in their daily lives, reporting back their successes, failures, and insights. Everything had to pass the trial of practical verification. Some exercises proved too obsolete and were discarded; others yielded consistent results and were refined. Month after month, year after year, this collaborative experimentation congealed into a distinct teaching addressing the crucial aspects of inner development. The curriculum that emerged wasn’t just a collection of ancient wisdom, but a living method forged in the crucible of contemporary practice: an Old New Method.

A teaching rooted in the rhythms of farming yearns to touch earth again—not just metaphorically, but literally. After a decade of online work, practitioners began moving to live together to establish physical communities. These outposts serve as laboratories where the principles of inner farming meet outer cultivation, where abstract psychological concepts take tangible form in soil and structure. This is where we stand at the time of writing—at a threshold between what has been established and what now becomes possible. The momentum is palpable; what began as a digital experiment is evolving into something with deeper roots and broader reach. We see the first signs of a Renaissance of ancient wisdom adapted to contemporary needs: communities where inner and outer work unite, where daily challenges become opportunities for transformation, where individuals support each other’s growth through shared purpose. The seeds planted a decade ago in digital soil now seek fertile ground in which to fully flower. Though it is too early to predict the exact shape of what emerges, the potential energy accumulated through years of dedicated practice now presses for manifestation in ways that honor both tradition and innovation.

Asaf Braverman
2025, San Miguel de Allende