G.I. Gurdjieff's teachings refer to the individual reality, which he calls our "Own World." It arises from the confrontation of the "inner" and "outer" worlds we represent to ourselves about the world we live in. The harmonization of them creates a unique, individual reality.
Inner World: This pertains to the realm of personal thoughts, emotions, and the psyche. It is where we have the mental associations that we experience passively as a habitual identity that gives our ways of being and acting based on the past.
Outer World: This is the realm of external influences that flood our awakened and unconscious mind from perceptions of the physical environment, interactions with society, and the people with whom we co-inhabit the world. The outer world is perceived as a space and time where inner perceptions are sourced, and tested, and where actions and preferences are expressed.
Own World: In the confrontation we experience in everyday life between the outer world and our inner world in response to it conflicting assessments can be integrated and create a new world that is uniquely subjective. This is where one’s inner experience of reactions to the world and outer actions upon the world are in harmony in a unique new world of inner-subjective experience.
When we are truly aligned and in touch with a higher level of conscious awareness experienced in the moment of living life, and capable of truly intentional actions, the true self emerges by creating one's own world. The final result of all our processes of growth and integration in life occurs as a reconciling force that is not passively but rather actively expressed by our living in the real world. This real world that we then own, is a function of our Being, and also recursively of the freedom of our attention in the moment to our Being. This is the experience of which Gurdjieff calls I Am in the title of his 3rd book entitled, Life is Real Only Then, When I Am”. A cryptic title to be sure, and one that seems to summarize his work in a single sentence.
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