Gurdjieff’s “Friendly Advice” to the reader is to read his writings “thrice”:

1. as one is mechanized to read books and newspapers
2. as though reading aloud to another
3. to fathom the gist.

He gives two reasons for this.

1. Contemporary people’s minds are dull (low “productivity of perception”)
2. It is wise according to a popular saying regarding the answering of prayers by Higher Powers.

As regards the first reason, Gurdjieff seems to be saying that people are slow witted and therefore the book will require more than one reading.  As any student of the Tales understands, the Tales requires many readings, far more than three!  The knowledge that the Tales must be read far more than three times in order to be understood gives us our first clue that Gurdjiff’s “three reading” advice is not literal but indicates three levels of understanding.

As to the second reason, he recounts a “popular saying” which claims that prayers must be “uttered thrice” to be heard by “High Powers”.  These three utterances are:

1. For the welfare or the peace of the soul’s of one’s parents.
2. For the welfare of one’s neighbor.
3. For oneself personally.

Several questions arise when examining this piece of “popular wisdom”, which one may reasonably suspect Gurdjieff has himself invented.  Why are there three utterances required?  What does the pattern of these three utterances represent? Who are the “Higher Powers”?

First, we may notice that there are three utterances required for the answering of a prayer, which lines up with the fact that Gurdjieff is requiring three readings of his book.  The fact that both come in lists of three indicates that perhaps Gurdjieff wishes us to draw a parallel between the three utterances and the three readings.

Several considerations come out of this.

First, it causes us to consider that reading the Tales is somehow like uttering a prayer.  Likening the reading of the Tales to praying is an odd thought, but perhaps it communicates a sense of the whole-heartedness with which the Tales must be approached.

Second, we may look at how each of the “utterances” relate, respectively, to each of the three “readings”.  The prayer for the welfare or peace of the soul’s of one’s parents lines up with the first reading, which is “as one has been mechanized to read books and newspapers”.  One’s genetic predispositions and conditioning as a child come largely through the influence of one’s parents.  Resolving any karmic knots associated with one’s parents and unraveling unnecessary or outdated childhood conditioning is a key component of individuation and spiritual development according to Gurdjieff.  In this sense, the prayer for one’s parents, wishing them well, shows this purification, while the mechanization shows the negative affects of a lack of individuation.  After all, a mechanization of one’s reading is equivalent to a lack of freedom of thought and understanding.   In any case, the first of each triad shows a complementarity.

The prayer for the welfare of one’s neighbor lines up with the second reading for the welfare of one’s neighbor.  One can immediately see the symmetry evoked by the focus on other.  The prayer for one’s neighbor shows a purity of feeling towards others, one step further along the scale of moral development from purity of feeling towards ones parents.  Reading aloud as though to another adds a second dimension to the reading.  The reader now views the book not only from his or her own point of view but begins to imagine at the same time how the book sounds from the point of view of another person.

The prayer for oneself personally lines up with the third reading in which one tries to “fathom the gist”.   The idea that one would pray for oneself personally only having wished well for one’s parents and for one’s neighbor first is interesting to consider.  One way to think about this moral progression is to consider that perhaps one can only truly wish well for oneself after one is individuated, that is, after one truly is oneself.  That means not living out the conditioning received from one’s parents or simply in a state of reactive competition with other people around oneself.  What do we truly want when these two outer influences have been cancelled?  The ability to fathom the gist of Gurdjieff’s writings requires the ability to think independently, calling balls and strikes objectively as Gurdjieff spins out his stories.  The fact that one may only “fathom” the “gist” simply implies that a great deal of careful consideration is required to understand rather than a small amount.

Regarding the sayings of popular wisdom, we may also ask what Gurdjieff means by “Higher Powers”?  The words “Higher Power” here form an associative cue and reference the “Power Possessing” beings throughout the Tales.  The Power Possessors throughout the book represent both literal power possessors such as people in positions of power and authority as well as an internal authority within the psychology of human beings.  If one thinks about this in the context of the three-scaled tier of moral development laid out by the three utterances of the prayer, one may understand the internal meaning of these Higher Powers:  the purity of feeling must be agreed to and accepted as a part of the structure of one’s own Ego.  A prayer to higher powers is a prayer to one’s self to be on board with a particular aim.  One must get consent from oneself to carry out an Aim.  To have free will, that is, to be able to truly choose an Aim and carry it out, one must be individuated, and this requires freedom from one’s heredity, childhood conditioning, and reactivity towards other people.  Free from these external influences, one can then choose one’s life with clear eyes.

So we have two reasons Gurdijeff has identified for reading the book “thrice”.  The first reason is that people are unperceptive and he wanted reader’s to understand that his book would require a lot of effort.  The second, explained through the saying about prayer, indicates that a process of individuation and moral development is required as a part of the process of understanding.  In fact, we understand that the purpose of the process of understanding the Tales is the purification indicated by the prayer and the moral development that purification engenders.