The Fellowship of Friends Discussion, part 2(3)
October 23, 2007 by Pavel
This is the 23rd rebirth of the FoF discussion – enjoy and at least attempt to stay civil.
For previous parts click on home and scroll down.
Posted in Cults, Esotericism, Fellowship of Friends, Fourth Way, Gurus, Spirituality | 608 Comments
1122 unoanimo
Who said I have to have a point? After all you can’t hammer a nail with a nail (or can you?)
Hard to respond to this particlar post of yours without seeming pedantic. As several posters have remarked previously, much of what you write is just sophistic twaddle.
I think there should be a point to what we post here. Rap videos need more to qualify them than that they have Robert in the title. Whatever your own insufficiencies, keeping a high profile on the blog by way of compensation is not a real solution.
Play well with others
Good grief guy, it was for Vinnie, mind the gap.
1109 unoanimo
“That’s because they are immediately expelled from the school, shipped back to the country they (having been measured and photographed for Robert Burton’s secret approval)
Hang themselves,
Drown themselves,”
What’s this mean, measured and photographed?
Have there been many suicides in the FOF?
4 Vinnie
_______________
It means that ‘certain boys’ are photographed and their penis sizes are sent to Robert Burton for his personal picking and ‘conscious’ considerations.
Yes, I mean, “many” is a relative word, though there have been suicides in the Fellowship of Friends; Robert Burton and ‘Friends’ consider them “CRIME SCENES” and do not post the students death on the gate house board and shun services for them as well; and, yes, certain students teenagers have tried to end their lives as well…
Vinnie, I thought you were in the Fellowship of Friends?
“… Furthermore, one individual may affect another in a poisonous way, although his effect upon someone else may be good. It is wise not to have too much contact with those who discharge negative, disagreeable currents toward us. The powerful radiation of disagreeable thoughts and distracting attitudes of certain people will poison us and sap our energies.
However, if we resent and strike out against such people, the unpleasant reactions stirred up within us are intensified and the poison is increased. We become infected by the poison which permeates our whole system. And our actions are then contaminated with the same venom which had repelled us.
On the other hand, when with conscious inner acceptance we do not resist the disagreeable effects someone else has upon us, we are inoculated against their poisons by our own inner balance and consciousness. The poisonous matter will not then fuse with our own inner substance and our actions are free from negative influences. Being in possession of this knowledge, Jesus said: ‘Resist not evil’.”
(Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, ‘The Struggle Within’, p. 51)
Testing
Tried to post a couple of times first of last week. My name had disappeared from the reply box and the new posts said ‘waiting to be moderated’ and then just disappeared.
Very nice post, Alice E.
I look at post #5 by Uno, and I realize exactly what it was (and what it is) that all of us have been involved with.
Is there really anything more to say on this blog, except, “Why don’t we open our eyes? Why don’t I open my eyes?”
As long as many of you continue to expose the truth about this cult (as Uno did above in one post), this blog is doing its part.
Robert Burton and the leaders of the Fellowship of Friends claim that the group is about “awakening.” But the biggest goal of this cult is to close people’s eyes to the truth. What could be more ironic?
Here are some statistics about the blog. Has it had, is it having an effect? That can only be answered by each individual who has had contact with it.
Sheik posted his initial observations Sunday April 16, 2006
First comment on these observations: June 24, 2006
Part 1—First 300 comments, ending March 1, 2007
Part 2—Next 338 comments, ending March 11, total 668
Part 3—Next 333 comments, ending March 22, total 1007
Part 4—Next 312 comments, ending March 29, total 1313
Part 5—Next 391 comments, ending April 8, total 1704
Part 6—Next 408 comments, ending April 20, total 2112
Part 7—Next 397 comments, ending April 28, total 2509
Part 8—Next 453 comments, ending May 11, total 2962
Part 9—Next 452 comments, ending May 22, total 3414
Part 10—Next 534 comments, ending June 5 , total 3948
(Note: change of format occurred here…)
Part 11—Next 715 comments, ending June 13th, total 4663.
(Note: no moderation, numbering screws up, FoF spam attacks repelled!)
Part 12—Next 647 comments, ending June 21st, total 5310
(Note: changed to limited moderation here)
Part 13—Next 829 comments, ending July 3, total 6139
Part 14—Next 595 comments, ending July 13, total 6734
Part 15—Next 516 comments, ending July 22, total 7250
Part 16—Next 577 comments, ending July 28, total 7827
Part 17—Next 654 comments, ending August 8, total 8481
Part 18—Next 561 comments, ending August 20, total 9042
Part 19—Next 547 comments, ending August 30, total 9589
Part 20—Next 628 comments, ending September 17, total 10,217
Part 21—Next 761 comments, ending September 30, total 10,987
Part 22—Next 1123 comments, ending October 23, total 12,101 Over 180,000 hits…
Thank you all, and especially the Sheik!
“Vinnie, I thought you were in the Fellowship of Friends?”
Uno, I don’t think Vinnie is in or ever has been in the fellowship of friends. I think its some sorry person playing cool-dude-guy and playing macho. Who knows. But he/she/ thought that Robert Burton had been in Alex Horn’s school for 30 years, and he/she does not know about the current teaching and never comments about that at all. He/she is not the type of person the fof attracts. Just my opinion. If he/she is in the fof he/she is playing stupid and has a very dark and huge shadow. Whoever he/she is, playing here on this blog does not seem like a casual pastime – but a suckage of energy. Sad, really. (sorry Vinnie)
9 Bistro: “Is there really anything more to say on this blog, except, ‘Why don’t we open our eyes? Why don’t I open my eyes?’”
Too true. This directly addresses the brief debate towards the end of the Part 22 about “to stay or not to stay?”. At this stage, the ONLY reasons people stay are fear, laziness and buffers. As soon as enough buffers fall away and you see clearly, you leave. When you can honestly look at the Fellowship as a complete entity, with you in it, with all its corruption and hopelessness, there is no choice. Until that time the mind confuses you with ideas like “helping friends” and so forth, in other words reality continues to be buffered. The movement towards real seeing is a natural process which can’t be forced. So don’t worry, just watch it happen!
12 Charles T
Yes, although I doubt some members will ever leave, because the idea that they have been suckers, or the prospect of facing and working through the monetary/instinctive hardships, is too frightening; or they cannot give up the illusion of being one of The Elect and live as just another member of the human race; or they have a role that they can never hope to approach if they have to compete in the workforce on their skills, rather than their loyalty to Burton; or because they don’t want to “sell” their “investment” in the Fellowship while their “stock” is down, even if it never rises again; or they will then have to face the reality that they have been a part of a corrupt enterprise with actual karmic implications without the insulating cocoon of Fellowship defense mechanisms; or they may have been one of RB’s boys and will have to live their life dealing with their history of abuse straightforwardly, without the numbing reinforcement of the illusion they’ve been sucked off by a goddess; or they haven’t explored beyond their own back yard enough to understand that there are many, many opportunities for personal growth that put the Fellowship to shame on every level, and so will continue to sit on their thumbs and sigh, “But there’s nothing out there.”
Charles T 12
Agree with what you say. Maybe with the added caveats that the penetration of the realization is a process. And may be moderated by the circumstance that people find themselves in (such as marriage, etc.). Everyone’s situation is different and it can sometimes take a while to negotiate one’s way out of a cult.
For example, I’ve seen Fellowship persons nobly carry a number of people out with them – in a situation that they nurtured for months and years for their friends – and to apparently make amends for having helped others in.
If Mary B from the last page is imagining that Bass Ackwards is endorsing the Fellowship, I think she has fully misread the situation.
Also, for what it’s worth, personally I think the current form and size of the Fellowship of Friends is headed for a collision almost certainly within two years – possibly earlier: my math a couple of pages back. So that except for the true culties (what, 400?) it may not matter much.
One interesting factor will be Robert Burton. Whither travels a man who acts in ways such that he needs a trap door in his bedroom, and thinks in ways that includes a trap door in his bedroom?
Apart from being a physical coward and dripping with self-pity from imagined future events – he is nothing if not finely geared toward self-interest and survival. I expect that he will act before we might expect.
KA ~
Right, yet, there are hundreds of people who are ‘in’ the Fellowship of Friends and yet ‘not’, if you know what I mean; I think they secretly golf in the vineyard at night and lick the remains of the disposed of wine bottles and kitchen dinner-dump-can afterwards, helping themselves to the unlocked freezers containing Robert Burton’s ‘little goodies’ for breakfast in the morning, then merrily disappear up over the horizon by Dawn, turning back into the ‘deers’ they really are…
So, Vinnie, if you’re one of those ‘deers’, remember, the red mushrooms with white dots are indeed closer to Robert Burton’s wallpaper, yet, don’t eat those, nibble on the white ones and hoof-beat down the puff-ball-mushrooms, you’ll be right at home with all those spores and smoke clouds, and wherever you go, walk backwards, you’ll be able to practice the Sequence longer.
:.)
P.S. I recall in the town hall when Steven D. (not the place to be) announced that “Our teacher Robert Burton is a Homosexual”… I was not sure whether the gasps were for Steven or the ‘unknown fact’ was piercing through their psyches, causing a little psychic ’soft fart’ like a stray, English Pub, well honed black goose feathered, Dart would a mildly deflated, extra large birthday balloon.
Halloween is coming, whose going to dress up as Robert Burton; I think I’ll hire some Fellowship sculptor to model a rubber mask, patent it and sell it on Ebay?
Just catching up this morning.
Agreeing with Old FOF.
Mary Battista, regarding your post of the previous page, I can only hope you were kidding or being sarcastic somehow. I do not endorse joing or rejoining the FOF. There is so much truer teaching out there.
Good luck to you…
Bass
I am amazed Unoanimal, you are such an exemplary scumbag, who is actively out of country boredom shooting off all possible and impossible shit about Fellowship. And generally I am so glad that you are guys on this blog produce such a pure impression on the newcomer . You really are what you think.
Re: Fellowship of Friends
private interest(s) benefit
(a.k.a. private inurement)
Is IRS & CA FTB watching?
Is this 501 (c) 3 charitable
corporation material?
Several members of the Fellowship of Friends were (presumably) gifted their real property, either directly or indirectly, from the assets
of the Fellowship of Friends. (Or, fair market value exchange did not take place, or, was faked.)
Those persons would be: A…r…h…m,
S…e…en D…,
C…r…os/E…i…a,
and possibly others.
There are likely many insidious examples of the transference of FoF assets to its preferred
members, often under direction of Robert Burton, personally, that could constitute:
‘engaging in activities that result in inurement from the church’s or organization’s income or assets to insiders (i.e., persons having a personal and private interest in the activities of the organization).’
Now perhaps it is not desired to see persons who have worked hard for many years be deprived of their ill, or not so ill, gotten gains. Possibly the recipients were in a ‘quid pro quo*’ situation. That is, in return for doing something for Robert Burton, Robert Burton would do something for them. Could these be examples?:
See subSEQUENCE post.
Could these be examples?:
1.
As a Fellowship of Friends’ and Robert Burton’s attorney (and FoF member, simultaneously) one might be expected to compromise one’s professional
and moral integrity in representing such entities
and put at risk the ability to practice professionally.
[Not to mention, conscience and any oath there might be to uphold the United States Constitution in practicing law.]
Therefore, this should be highly rewarded to the extent that Fellowship of Friends’ prime real estate, The Shakespeare Knoll (familiarly named), be the prize.
What price loyalty?
[Alas, what was the Fellowship of Friends and Robert Burton to do when the prior attorney,
C. M., quit due, in part, to the moral repugnance the role presented? You, AG, were the only one! And, with your rich nest egg that you sat on that
you received as a personal injury attorney that
participated in the Dalkon Shield settlements,
(see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalkon_Shield
) you were the perfect choice. It could be said, 'Bad wombs have borne bad sons,' to put a
spin on Shakespeare's words - still propheting from the misery of others (and 'still quiring to
the young-eyed cherubims'). That is the FoF story of late: 'Misery loves company.']
More examples:
See subSEQUENCE post.
Could these be examples?:
3.
Be my, Robert Burton’s, permanent personal secretary
(read: slave), indulge the sexual proclivities involved and/or look the other way, get permanent status to stay in the
United States, and enjoy the American Dream while putting
on the show of a normal happy marriage so that there is
credibility for the form the Fellowship of Friends (read:
Robert Burton) wishes to project.
Therefore, this should be highly rewarded to the extent that Fellowship of Friends’ prime real estate be the prize.
What price loyalty?
[Not to mention, the significant assistance on building a house, getting a mortgage, furnishing
the place, and affording the payments, that are enjoyed at the expense of persons who have worked hard for many, many, many years and have gotten little but grief and the chance to pay; not that your circumstances are without their
own set of grief, for surely, there is a price to pay to be so exalted. Robert Burton does not
sell favors lightly. How does it feel to be the prince and princess of I'si's? Child, who's
your godfather? Or is that: Child, who's your sugar daddy?]
*What is quid pro quo according to IRS?
Quid Pro Quo:
A contribution made by a donor in exchange for goods or services is known as a quid pro quo contribution. A donor may only take a contribution deduction to the extent that his or her contribution exceeds the fair market value of the goods and services the donor receives in return for the contribution.
[Quick, let's put that property back in the name of the Fellowship of Friends before anyone notices, or while we are being watched, and later it can
be appropriately readjusted. Wink, wink.]
[Can sperm be considered a donation? People have said here on the blog that the appearance of shills promoting the FoF point of view, from time to time, was the equivalent of an email spam attack. No!, dears, it's a sperm attack,
ladies and gentlemen. Time for more donations. Zip, zip.]
Now, I ask you, how is the above activity directed towards this goal:
‘beneficiaries of an organization’s activities must be recognized objects of charity
(such as the poor or the distressed) or the community at large (for example, through the conduct of religious services
or the promotion of religion)’?
Is IRS & CA FTB watching?
Could these be examples?:
2.
Have undesired sex with me, Robert Burton, or not, or better, state publicly, before hundreds of members at meeting, that sex with me, Robert Burton, The Teacher, the prime minister of Fellowship of Friends, is an OK thing to do; say that, ‘I had sex with Robert and have later said no to it,’ so that the stigma of such activity is minimized along with the entire pain body of: 1) the current membership, ~1500 people, and, 2) the ~15,000+ former members (persons who have worked hard for many, many years).
Therefore, this should be highly rewarded to the extent that Fellowship of Friends’ prime real estate be the prize.
What price loyalty?
[Not to mention, the preferred, and likely almost exclusive, access to the use of Fellowship of Friends' land for personal business purposes,
A...o...lo O...i...e O...l; see:
http://www.a...o...loo...i...eo...l.com/
Did you know that olive oil makes a good substitute
for K-Y Jelly as a personal lubricant? See K-Y Jelly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-Y_Jelly
That certainly would be needed on the Ark for that reason, in addition to its culinary and medical uses.]
Now, I ask you, how is the above activity directed towards this goal:
‘beneficiaries of an organization’s activities must be recognized objects of charity
(such as the poor or the distressed) or the community at large (for example, through the conduct of religious services
or the promotion of religion)’?
Is IRS & CA FTB watching?
Associated Press ~
Rock on!
This morning message from ‘the teacher’:
wow!!
Dear Students,
Although you may have read or heard something different, all students are reminded that the exercise of not spending unnecessary time with former members has not been changed. All members are also requested to refrain from reading and participating on what is known as the “Blog” and the “greater fellowship” or similar websites.
Robert stated: “This exercise comes from Influence C. You can support Influence C and not be a denying force to Influence C.”
The Fellowship of Friends
.
Pensate un attimo 21
What an intelligent strategy. NOT!
Yes, we can really see higher mind at work here.
One editor’s comment on the “Talk” page on the wikipedia article:
————————————-
Talking about “how the article can be improved” starts with acknowledging that several of the editors do indeed have a conflict of interest and are simply articulating the viewpoints of an organization of which they are a member. I completely agree with the following comments at the top of the main page: “The creator of this article, or someone who has substantially contributed to it, may have a conflict of interest regarding its subject matter. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia’s content policies, particularly neutral point of view. Please discuss further on the talk page.” If we are sincere about creating an “improved” article, this issue must be discussed. I participated in the editing of this article to a limited degree a few months ago, and have observed this website closely over the past several months, and nothing has improved. It’s fairly obvious that a number of editors are working feverishly to delete many relevant facts about the Fellowship that reflect poorly on it. The goal of Wikipedia is to present an article that is fairly balanced, but this is NOT what we have here with this Fellowship of Friends article. And no doubt we’ll hear an outcry and negative response from the very editors to which I refer. Here they come. Artnscience 09:44, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
******************
One suggestion… It might be helpful to organize an army of editors to counter-balance the nonsense that is being written on the wikipedia page. Usually, it’s 5 full-time Fellowship editors versus one or two part-time activists who are trying to keep the article balanced. It’s a little tough to keep up with it that way. But if enough people are willing to participate, it will be harder and harder for these people to continue the propaganda. On the other hand, it’s my viewpoint that one link to this page (the blog) goes a long way. It’s one of the reasons they are consistently writing extremely looooong paragraphs — because they’re hoping the blog and Rick Ross and other “negative” links will be so far down the page that no one will notice.
Daily Card:
Wednesday,
October 24, 2007
The sequence is a reflection
of prehistoric man.
Its simplicity had to arise
from such a psychology.
One can awaken without
the sequence; however,
the sequence is a perfected
school method for awakening.
Love, Robert
In between tracking mastodon by their poops (at least 6 poops) and hunting them as a third line octave, prehistoric man, who likely had single syllable vocabulary, found themselves perfectly suitable for developing the sequence in their spare time. And, so it has been written and pass down to us from ancient times.
I certainly thought Bass Ackwards was standing strongly for the Fellowship and presenting it as though the bear was not as dangerous as it is so it could be put up with especially in his last sentence proclaiming that he would rather the Fellowship left him than he leave the Fellowship.
If that was a misunderstanding, I beg you forgive me for the strong reply Bass.
Pensate un attimo 21
Robert stated: “This exercise comes from Influence C. You can support Influence C and not be a denying force to Influence C.”
Maybe it makes more sense if we spell it out:
Robert stated: “This exercise comes from Influence Constriction. You can support Influence Cohertion and not be a denying force to Influence Compliance.”
alternative spelling:
Robert stated: “This exercise comes from Influence Corruption. You can support Influence Complacency and not be a denying force to Influence Concealment.”
16 Associated Press
“…………..Several members of the Fellowship of Friends were (presumably) gifted their real property, either directly or indirectly, from the assets
of the Fellowship of Friends. (Or, fair market value exchange did not take place, or, was faked.)
Those persons would be: A…r…h…m,
S…e…en D…,
C…r…os/E…i…a,
and possibly others.
There are likely many insidious examples of the transference of FoF assets to its preferred
members, often under direction of Robert Burton, personally, that could constitute:
‘engaging in activities that result in inurement from the church’s or organization’s income or assets to insiders (i.e., persons having a personal and private interest in the activities of the organization).’……………..”
————————————————————————–
This really sucks !!!!(no pun intended)
Without asking permission from Arthur, I think he feels like me about the above.
There may be more than one thief!
21 Pensate.
I hope any current Fellowship members reading the above posting can understand what it signifies.
Do you really think there’s something wrong with spending time with former students? Do you see that this message is being sent out as a form of mind control to ensure you don’t start to think for yourself?
Can you see the lying involved in claiming this exercise “comes from Influence C”? Does the invocation of “Influence C” evoke fear in you, as it is intended to?
Do you see the corruption involved in using higher forces as a justification for reinforcing a crumbling structure whose principal purpose is to provide instinctive comfort for Robert Burton?
Or do you put all this in the compartment marked “unpleasant things I prefer not to deal with”?
To “members” who read the blog “on the sly”, who have to “break the task” to answer their inner questioning…how does it feel to have an old flaming fag dictate what you can and cannot do or read?
You all really know better now. Aren’t you ashamed to have to sneak around? Any wish to reclaim your lives? How much more absurd does “the teaching” have to get before you shake it off and walk away, and reclaim your journey?
Remember the old story about the man who died and went to hell. He was shown several rooms. He could pick which one he would spend eternity in. After seeing truly horrid tortures, he picked the one where everyone was standing around in shit up to their knees drinking tea. He thought “well, this doesn’t seem to be as bad as the other rooms” so it’s the one he chose. He stepped in, was handed his cup of tea, and just chatted with the other unfortunates. Five minutes later a little red demon came in and said “OK assholes , tea break’s over, everyone back on their heads.”
13 Old FOF
Hi William,
“Everyone’s situation is different and it can sometimes take a while to negotiate one’s way out of a cult.”
Yes, for sure.
“I’ve seen Fellowship persons nobly carry a number of people out with them – in a situation that they nurtured for months and years for their friends – and to apparently make amends for having helped others in.”
I don’t buy this. You can help friends from the outside much better than from the inside, especialy now. While you’re inside your judgement is clouded. Even if you think you don’t believe any of the nonsense you’re still affected by it. You don’t realise this clearly till you leave. Students I’ve met who claim to be remaining to help others are still buffering their situation, in my opinion.
regards, Charles
21 Pensate un attimo
This morning message from ‘the teacher’:
wow!!
Dear Students,
Although you may have read or heard something different, all students are reminded that the exercise of not spending unnecessary time with former members , etc.
———————————
If there has been any doubt about RB’s ability to think clearly, this should lay them to rest. That he would consider this is an effective tactic, at this point, shows how out-of-touch he is with reality. He doesn’t get it.
Charles, I don’t want to get into a big old yes/no thing here. (also am not William)
But (is this my downfall?), I have seen this phenomenon 4-5 times, or on reflection maybe more.
Maybe the biggest was Miles. Followed (in size) by an unnamed student S. who is on the blog (or at least was) and whose largely East Coast (then) helpees are active on the blog now.
In the above examples, the persons were unusually responsible types. They felt responsible not just for themselves but for a group of others (or from the outside it looked so) and acted not just for themselves but for a group of others. They were what my grandmother might of called “old souls.”
It’s probably going on right now – again. It takes a lot of courage to act in these ways. If Bass Ackward is who I think they are, they would fit this mold.
Once we snap out of the cult mentality – it seems at least unusual that ANYONE would or could stay. But the human psyche is complicated – and can act with noblesse in any number of manners.
I value your input and do not mean by these comments to diminish but to possibly augment? Truly.
#21 Pensate un attimo
“Although you may have read or heard something different, all students are reminded that the exercise of not spending unnecessary time with former members has not been changed.”
That ‘s fine, no one is spending unnessary time here.
Aline
RE: Associated Press 16-19 Untouchables/Al Capone
Scam #1: Members are invited to a restaurant to dine w/ “El BJ”. All pay cash to the bagman for their meals (+tip). Company credit card pays the actual bill & writes it off to “membership development”. Net Gain = $$$ & No taxes.
Scam #2: “El BJ” buys gifts for members while traveling about. Company credit cards pay the bill & writes it off to “membership development”. Company gets members to pay for gifts. Net Gain = $,$$$ (No Taxes).
Don’t get me wrong I’m in favor of no taxes.
Associated Press x 3
Yes, there was a lot of private inurement in the Fellowship of Friends. There is collective memory of this going way back. Also, not even sure if it is legal in the U.S. for a non-profit church to require a specific donation level for an individual to remain a member.
Pensate un attimo 21
Bares Reposting 25
Please note the new relativity injected in the ‘Sequence” message. Also, the open acknowledgment of the blog and GF.
Contrast this with what one of the Defenders was saying a page back — that the blog was having no influence on the Fellowship of Friends. That was probably a hundred ex-students ago.
Finally, the bizarre wording and concept around the “Influence C” point. It is all there — the arrogance and ignorance to imagine students even could be a denying force to Influence C.
These are not the words of a conscious being – but rather the self-serving words of a shopkeeper (and I mean no disrespect to honest shopkeepers).
Also, the reinforcement of the shunning “exercise” probably means: no more Vinnie.
That the (possible) PR firm has been fired – please note that the constructs dropped off one at a time: Lateral Drift, fat boy and now Vinnie.
Of course, Vinnie doesn’t follow rules, so …. Vinnie?
There is a timing coordination that one senses to this in that they all three feathered to a stop, followed by the written reinforcement of “the exercise” organization-wide not by Nick S this time, but by Robert Burton.
So maybe this was the PR firm after all – someone in any case clever enough to finally realize that the various Howard Carters were doing more harm than good.
And the other imputed (between the lines) message is that the vicious cycle will continue — Burtonism can not bear sunlight. And as long as no adults step forward to deal honestly with the rot, the slide will continue.
“There may be more than one thief!”
____________________________________
Let’s see, why, yes, there just might be more than one indeed,
and more than one type of ‘thief’, particularly those ‘fine artists’ still using the facilities within the Fellowship of Friends funny farm fence belonging to Robert Burton, who is talking up a storm ‘underground’ about not ‘BEING’ in the school, although still (in) for various ‘other reasons’… WTF?
Let’s see, how about Robert Burton’s ‘invisible smurfs’?
Like the foreign center directors who harvest the ‘manly details’ via prospective students or inform of a new and beautiful female ‘hook’ whose dying parents are rich; hummmm, new sort of thiefy chattle there, yes? WTF?
Let’s not forget those like Marcus L., Michael (not so good win), Allison, Linda, Eliza, Lucas C., etc., etc., all those ‘Robert does not want me in bed, though beating the streets with my education and ‘hook, line and sinker charisma’ will do… Could there be such a thing as coerced psychic thievery? WWF (World Wrestling Federation)
Then there’s all those fine administrators at Lewis Carroll School who are doing what in the eyes of the children growing up knowing about Robert Burton’s sex life, yes, 7 year old gossip too (?) The children know there’s something wrong, yet, all smile everyone, say cheese!
There are parents who are already ‘grooming’ there 8 year olds by having them watch Robert Burton teaching videos… WTF and WWF!
Let’s see, how about all those businesses who use Robert Burton’s participation with them to hype up and attract business?
At let’s not forget Robert Burton’s visits to the Agora, that always turns a simple ‘county fair’ into a Galleria Reception.
Then there are those ‘blinky thieves’ who, take and throw away in a blink of an eye…
The ‘boys’ walking around in your teaching payments, $3000 dollar suits, $400 dollar shoes, $80 dollar silk socks, (no underwear of course, can’t have any unnecessary denying force for the Man #7.6) the $550 dollar hats (only in the Springtime though), $300 dollar shirts, $1500 dollar woven gold chains, a few $5000 dollar Greek rings, $200 dollar Italian belts; not to mention the ‘perks’ Robert Burton sends home to his ‘boys’ ‘girls’, so to keep the woman in (his place TO BE), not hers.
Then theirs the coerced abortions and hysterectomies; I would consider this a sort of thievery.
How about those like Wayne M., building a studio to frame pictures for Robert Burton’s octave? Well, hey, that’s practical.
The Robert Burton ‘throw aways’ sent hither and thither as ‘divine gifts’ to center directors, newbie families, old students needing a little ’spark’ to get their hash going…
Let’s not forget the ’slave labor’, the awesome disproportionate amount of monies spent on Robert Burton’s personal whims, not the ‘Church’ itself, it’s members welfare and care…
And the list keeps going, you name it, Robert Burton’s fucking it, like a quivering rabbit whose got one day to live.
I am just glad I did not build my house facing Robert Burton’s ‘rear’ entrance.
_____________________
l.t.y.a.
Regarding the reinstated exercises:
This idea of an angry God that punishes those who do not follow the prescribed requests is as old as the hills and quite effective for many people who have fear in that area.
It requires a healthy mind to realize how ridiculous this is. RB has always played on people’s fears in this manner when he wants something to go his way so this is nothing new.
Anyone who has successfully left the Fellowship and found that their spiritual life has not only remained but actually become ten times better will tell you how foolish this is, and is nothing but another way of controlling the remaining members.
Trying to control people is fear based and has nothing to do with people growing spiritually.
36 unoanimo
The jewelry for the boys…. just another way of “branding” his cattle. Sure signs they’re either pitching or catching. What a weird and embarrassing “badge of honor”. They might as well wear advertisements for Preparation H on the backs of their Oxford jackets.
37 wake up little suzy wake up
Trying to control people is fear based and has nothing to do with people growing spiritually.
—————–
Growing spiritually or any other way requires going out and having our own experience of things and learning/growing from those experiences. Controlling people prevents them from doing that and stunts growth.
If you are allowing yourself to be controlled by Robert Burton, you are allowing yourself to remain a spiritual, intellectual and emotional child.
A true spiritual teacher offers guidance but encourages students to mature and find their own way.
Assoc Press, PA, Bass and anyone who knows– Are these kinds of decisions ( the financial stuff mainly, but also the pointed exercises) made exclusively by RB or do the board of directors confer and make basic institutional decisions? Does anyone know the extent that RB runs the institution or depends on his top tier and then mostly uses veto power? I’m sure if there have been legal offenses then the board would be culpable. Maybe they are insured? But you cannot be insured against illegalities.
Robert stated: “This exercise comes from Influence C. You can support Influence C and not be a denying force to Influence C.”
Of course in Bob’s school the “C” stands for Crazy.
In a false school everything is reversed, as the Ark sinks rather than abondoning it the rats run toward the captain who howls crazed in the wheelhouse shouting orders to no one.
How appropriate that so many Fellowship people spend time in Egypt traveling Da Nile
KA ~
The Fellowship of Friends Board of Directors oversee the official stuff that Robert Burton is too conscious to Householder and too adolescently stubborn to care to say ‘Yes’ to;
for the most part they are a collection of GQ and VOGUE postures and attire;
Like Fat Albert would say, the Fellowship of Friends Board of Directors is like school in the summertime “No Class”.
Mainly they meet to ’soften’ the legal and personal impacts of Robert Burton’s alpha male fangs in the necks of his ‘discharged’ males and females, older students and the ‘too many questions dears’, legal ram-if-fications, counter lawsuits, how to legally get rid of certain ‘things’ and ‘deeds’, how to move around thousands of dollars through students personal checking and credit card accounts and back into Robert Burton’s cum-fund…
There is no veto power, unless, after Robert Burton has had everyone (including his lawyers) jump through every mercurial and conniving (redundant?) hoop on the planet earth and failed; then they tell him outright that he himself could go to jail, hence, he says ~
“Well, dears, let’s obey the divine will of Influence C and transform this shock; Leonardo is being particularly ruthless today.”
Proof of no veto you say? ~ Well, take the Theatron for instance; every professional and wiseacrer-er on that project knew that it was illegal from the start and that Fellowship of Friends members were in grave danger of having to assist in paying large fines from the county and possibly loose their multi-million dollar investment’s use entirely (which BTW they didn’t even meet and agree to);
yet, in the face of such an enormous day-dream-fart,
Robert Burton said “Do it!”
So, from that level of power you can discern the rest of the levels and how they might ‘not work’.
Yes, the Fellowship of Friends Board of Directors are “culpable” and BTW Charles T., I would watch my back; although you’re out of the Fellowship of Friends, any Board Member whose name or signature is on any piece of Robert Burton’s illegal doings could be hauled into court or into a INS, FBI, IRS popcorn party, etc.
So, even Ex-members are still ‘members’ in some cases of Fellowship of Friends paper trails;
be prepared for some current members trying to ‘pass the buck’ onto their ‘ex-old conspiring friends’.
Everything is exclusivly decided by Robert Burton and if you believe that’s not true, think about the hundreds of decisions that the Fellowship of Friends ‘Bored’ of Directors have wiseacred a ‘yes’ about and Robert Burton has Un-decided for them once he found out by some ‘BOB-informer’, who, Robert Burton plants in the midst of the Fellowship of Friends Board of Directors membership so to keep an eye on those self-proclaimed in the moment Men #8’s.
KA, here’s the “extent”, from the illegal building of the largest single investment (save Robert Burton’s ‘personal lifestyle’) in Fellowship of Friends history to having your wife get an abortion against her conscience; I think that pretty much covers it: I mean, I have heard of his boys just opening students doors to their houses and just walking in to inquire about the whereabouts of one of Robert Burton’s ’sore’ boys and having not gotten a ‘consciously’ acceptable answer, then, Robert Burton himself comes trotting in to triple dip the inquiry…
In some places there’d be a cap in his ass for stuff like that, but, not in a cult, whose always present, can’t put a cap in a conscious being’s ass while dividing your attention, but you sure can put some other things up there while dividing his.
________________
l.t.y.a.
In a world full of liars it is advisable to profess to believe in lies, it is possible to so carefully speak the truth as to it make it seem like an outlandish lie. Flatly face those lost in deceit with integrity and steadily confront the truth when all that is ever spoken here is false. They behave far more dishonestly than do thieves while sensing superiority over those still unlearned of these promises of higher mind.
* * *
Rage as a reaction to the conditions of this world is merely the result of identifying with the wrong world. There is another world of balance and order where everything radiates with the emotion of higher intelligence.
* * *
The living organism is a complex generator for the existence of advanced life. Focus everything on that being that breathes through the eyes. Let the perceptions reach into the inner sight at the peak of the mind where that pinhole opens onto the starlit theater of eternity.
* * *
At various times it is possible to understand without ambiguity that there is no energy to spare for the luxury of annoyance and therefore a man tolerates the intolerable because he needs his attention more than he enjoys his reaction.
* * *
Only a moron seeks out unmistakably bad conditions to live in on the distant chance and faint rumor that the productive quality of his work will increase, before anyone can appreciably remember the work he must first remember reliable standards of sanity.
* * *
Social change does not come from human action, it comes from the sky. Men are pawns of the planets and the stars, even the great spiritual teachers were lit by these specs in the night. Humanity is a reflection in flesh and bone of energies radiating between worlds and history is cosmic waves translated into the rush of events.
* * *
Once you actually have the being then you can assume the act of someone with the being, otherwise the being-act is just another lack of being.
* * *
Men are born of essence and spend a lifetime struggling for their souls while around them personalities rattle and chatter oblivious as to the real point of it all. Life is that thin veneer of theater that conceals the timeless performance hidden in the wings.
* * *
In authentic psychological work there is no rank. The higher are only recognized as such when they wish to be recognized and even then they are only recognized by those uncorrupted by that fog of ambition that thickens the atmosphere in the proximity of the pretentious show of prominence.
* * *
As the disturbance rummages through this internal cage inciting every weakness resolutely recognize the lack of will and no longer pretend to possess the being that is imagined when relaxing in quiet. There is no sleep deeper than mistaking common and mundane perceptions as all that is necessary or all that is possible.
* * *
First remember the mindful men that lived and worked throughout the history of human life and then with this appropriate intensity of emotion remember yourself. To remember yourself is to feel the link that reaches through time to connect each being striving for completion.
* * *
If a particular esoteric teaching appears conspiratorial and manipulative to the passing glance of outsiders then it is in fact conspiratorial and manipulative. Outsiders are not so unperceptive or uncomprehending as the esoterically initiated believe. A way of development that cannot be practiced out in the open without attracting suspicion is certainly corrupt. There is no need to hide the practice of genuine development because it is obviously beneficial to the general interests of decency.
* * *
It matters very little how many miners there are in the group, what matters is whether or not the effort strikes gold. A crowd of diggers imitating the activity at a famous goldmine is not actually a goldmine if all that happens is the breaking of rock. Men are naturally proud of their collective efforts, but if they waste their time, exhaust themselves and end up dusty and destitute then something was certainly missing in the enterprise. Not all those that come to dig end up wealthy.
* * *
Once an acquaintance becomes even mildly dismissive of your presence then do not wait for the coldness to descend into antagonism, cut the connection completely and without hesitation. The negative halves are an endlessly worthless investment.
* * *
There are always two characters in the process of the furtherance of knowledge: the man whose genius conceived the significant advance forward and the man whose opportunism sold it to the world.
* * *
It is never enough to oppose an ignorant simplification, it is also necessary to provide the insightful exposition that makes deeper understanding possible. Most arguments are merely the slightly more sophisticated dismissing the unsophisticated with the same level of simplemindedness.
* * *
The citizens mercilessly suppress all spontaneous creative urges developing within themselves simply to avoid appearing out of the ordinary, lives lived under the tyranny of conventionality are terrorized by any potentially unfavorable or unpopular collective judgments.
* * *
The mind invents what is mistaken as reality through the layering of associations on what is incorrectly perceived from an erroneous point of view as the center of significance. When a man observes he suspends all judgment while attempting to connect the centers at the intellectual story and open up to higher centers of consciousness. The physical vehicle becomes a passive tool for an active sense of awareness, one that inherently knows the true quality of things.
* * *
There is only weakness in numbers; the strength in numbers that the urban legend acclaims is actually the brutality that naturally arises when courage is bolstered by the numerical superiority of a mob. The majority is always dangerous because they inevitably declare themselves righteous. The will of the people is the way of the imbecile. The mainstream is mainly mindless. The more the merrier, while at the same time the more moronic. When people congregate the alpha wave activity of their brains synchronizes in such a fashion that no one among them is capable of an independent, original or intelligent thought.
* * *
Beware that ambitious smile that tenaciously hunts down new and old acquaintances, it is always the most conniving social predator of the pack. Collecting promissory notes for insincere goodwill from as many eager patrons as possible is vanity’s version of a blood sport. The prey is slaughtered with conversation between jousts of knives and forks and finally captured as a perpetually expected and expecting guest that is never touched with heartfelt thanks or ever thanked with heartfelt touch.
* * *
The mind and the heart constantly calculate the connotations registered in the subtle psychological perceptions detected by the instincts and thus fill the world with a sense of dramatic effect, most of the appraisal is filtered through the sieve of self-interest, self-importance and self-preservation and is therefore distorted beyond any possibility of recognizing reality.
* * *
It is natural for the ineffectual and the incompetent to admire the active and proficient, but it is a disaster when the incompetent try to imitate the capable. The simple imitation of external action never succeeds because what the exterior activity never reveals is the internal will and the concealed motivation enabling the means by which conditions get converted from a lesser quality to higher property.
* * *
A man needs to speak his mind regardless the mood of the crowd, he should never speak to the mood of the crowd disregarding the convictions of his mind. Such a speaker will never acquire popularity among the many, but he will never lose support among the discriminating.
* * *
Hypocrites have notoriously made much public use of the word love. The sense of love is necessarily private because it is impossible for more than a few to share it meaningfully. Those that say love to everyone have no idea what it actually means.
* * *
There is a distinction between the nonsense coming out of the fantasies of madmen and the unfamiliar perceptions coming from the deliberations of the sane. Those preoccupied and distracted are equally uncomprehending and repelled by both.
* * *
When left alone without the deliberate labor to return to reality the internal devices of narration concoct elaborate scenarios that compound doubt and suspicion. These organs involuntarily generate vigor within themselves and left unattended they devour their own surplus and digest it into a poison.
* * *
The invisible laws governing the lives of people are the unspoken regulations of social standardization and emotional imitation. Sustaining a sense of the familiar so that no one is startled by the unexpected or made seriously uncomfortable is what really rules the land.
* * *
Others’ vanity is a glaring irritation while one’s own is a soothing dream.
* * *
Those that keep entirely silent delude themselves when they imagine that mutes are immune to scrutiny or criticism, clearly their brains produce nothing of use and thus their exile to the gallery of expendable onlookers. A lifetime of silence earns an eternity of emptiness.
* * *
Only lunatics live in such hysteria that their religion calls for the end of the world as a specially arranged compliment to their unique existence. The historical record, replete with numerous clans living in similarly self-deceptive ultimate panic, hardly offers the latest gathering of the suspenseful a moment’s hesitation from their dire predictions.
* * *
The mask vanity puts on when it is angry is that of light-hearted mockery, beneath the forced smile is stored enough violence to kill. Vanity is always frustrated because it is trying to do the impossible: make a lie seem like the truth.
* * *
Profitable criminals are always supposed intelligent, but the genuinely intelligent could never be criminal. There is no ignorance more complete than criminality because unlike the intelligent the criminal supposes that the only law he might have to answer to is conceived and enforced by men.
* * *
The majority of men accept the instruction of a teacher because of an ignoble, automatic need to please authority. The intelligent separate what they are told from the personality of the instructor and examine it without the undue influence of his position.
* * *
A normal man cannot think and express himself using low slang and at the same time experience the necessary quality of emotion needed to bridge the interval to higher emotion.
* * *
The potential to avenge an insult or an injury is depleted by half the moment a man expresses his fury to his associates. The explosive capacity of contained anger is twice that of anger that has been relieved through talk. A man interested in neutralizing anger and transforming it into self-control will gain far more from the effort if he resists releasing the pressure to his acquaintances.
* * *
Non-identification is a far different sort of condition than the diversion of all doubt and contradiction into an unassailable self-confidence that is the bulwark of vanity.
* * *
Instead of imagining and speculating about what master you might meet in order to relieve this anxiety that continuously haunts the empty and bewildered interior, consider making an effort to meet yourself. If another man gives you a sense of yourself then he can take that sense of self away.
* * *
Stop pretending that you are not identified, because there is no illusion produced by the machinations of personality that is more false. Non-identification does not mean that a man feels nothing or that he only feels good, he may in fact feel deeply troubled and be sorely pressed upon by life. Non-identification requires of a man that he first use his inner strength to separate an observer from his feelings and then begin to turn the pressure into moments of satisfaction at simply having the opportunity to live and encounter all the aspects of experience that comprise his existence.
* * *
Ordinarily a man’s reaction to events is entirely dependent on the involuntary activity within his own mind and feelings, a man that can actively influence his thoughts and feelings so as to moderate their excesses while in the pursuit of an aim can eventually witness events impartially and therefore objectively. Ultimately even physical afflictions can be regarded impersonally if a man can develop into an observer that resides above this organic assembly arranged by the laws of nature.
* * *
Many times throughout history society has felt the impact of the force of objective truth as it emerged into the general population, always factions began to congregate exclusively with those of similar mind and separate into disparate groups convinced that only they understood the actual reality of truth. Any revelation of truth is soon lost among the political philosophies of opposing populations; truth released into the population only reliably succeeds at making men organize themselves into conflicting clusters of madness.
* * *
When it becomes necessary before revealing a daring attitude to calculate the possible unfavorable reactions of half a dozen people, including estimating the emotional sensibilities of partners eager to maintain a complex web of social alliances, then a man has lost any hope of experiencing external freedom or inner honesty. Emotional entanglements wherein a man exchanges the autonomy to act out the manifestations of his nature openly, instead stifling his expression for the sake of preserving the promise of company while also promoting the continued possibility of domestic intimacy, is a barter that will eventually cost him his soul.
* * *
Ordinary life is an entanglement comprised of three dilemmas: the first is the insatiable hunger to achieve ambition, while the second dilemma is the eventual empty satiation felt after achieving ambition. The third is the attainment of an inexplicable appreciation while continuously feeling dissatisfied.
* * *
A man’s living conditions are a reflection of his psychological condition. Look around a man’s home and witness the attributes of his spiritual being. The ostentation of wealth is no sure sign of inner development and in many cases it is rather just the opposite while the untidiness of poverty is never a virtue. The environment a man lives in while on this world is an indication of the condition of his soul.
* * *
The cold-bloodedly sensible and solemn survey the clientele of artists excited by their passions over the arrangements of color and shape and pities them their frivolous diversions, meanwhile the artistic feel sympathy for those solemn accountants and their days of efficient dearth.
* * *
Clumsiness and mishap are an indication of a wrong line of occurrence and it is not the objects or events but the wits of the craftsman that are off the mark. At the first stumble or dropped article immediately stop and gather attentiveness. Then begin the undertaking with a new line of work.
* * *
Dear Pensate,
Thank you for the update (#23-21 or thereabouts). Parsing the message, we see that apparently the new freedom of contact between ‘in’ and ‘out’ was not (ever?) officially sanctioned. But nevertheless, this area of freedom became a fact. I have to assume that the rumor grew out of a combination of need (cry from below against the unbecoming manifestations from above, as Gurdjieff put it) and verification that not only does such an exercise do no good, it actually does harm. But authoritarian claims to speak on behalf of invisible and unverifiable forces (of the sort that strangely and coincidentally act solely for the benefit of Burton and against the welfare of the rest of the inhabitants of this planet) will only wring obedience from those who are in a fearful state of juvenile dependency. Fear only works as a suppressant if one is subject to fear.
Parsing right along, let’s see what else is in this message. Burton claims again to be the intermediary/interpreter between his followers and their Selves; thus, necessarily, that C-Influence acts externally, so he can be the intermediary. He claims that C-Influence has set this exercise; the same C-Influence that supposedly is encouraging our spiritual growth also wishes us to be in perpetual dependency on Burton. And the old, old variation on “God wants, needs and expects a bunch of little helpers/worshippers—and woe to them who don’t meet his needs”. Denying force to Influence–C, indeed!
Hopefully the era of relative freedom (which I have recently experienced and enjoyed in personal interactions with present followers) will not be ended by a few words like these. Nothing but good has come of the breath of fresh air, to my knowledge. Fresh air and sunshine are the enemies of stagnation and corruption on every level, from the physical to the mental to the spiritual. If Burton insists on carrying on in secrecy, hiding behind closed doors, in the dark, then it not only a natural assumption, but actually a law, that there corruption and stagnation will flourish.
With love to all, ‘in’ and ‘out’,
Ames
Wanted to make sure to thank Pensate un attimo and Bares Reposting for their efforts. Thank you.
On the message from “the teacher” from 21 — I’d like to observe that it is a very odd two-part construction: the exercise followed by the Robert Burton quotation.
It is almost not of a piece? The quotation could have been made at any time about any exercise.
And the odd signature “The Fellowship of Friends.”
Not sure what this may mean, but does it seem strange to others?
Uno, don’t tell me-us-them you read it all!!!
46 Old FOF
And the odd signature “The Fellowship of Friends.”
Not sure what this may mean, but does it seem strange to others?
—————————
Yes, it seems strange. Is Robert Burton saying that he IS the Fellowship of Friends? Sure sounds like it.
Or perhaps it’s a way of saying if you’re “in” (The Fellowship of Friends), you’ll do what you’re told.
Whoever wrote it sounds a tad desperate.
“Emotional entanglements wherein a man exchanges the autonomy to act out the manifestations of his nature openly, instead stifling his expression for the sake of preserving the promise of company while also promoting the continued possibility of domestic intimacy, is a barter that will eventually cost him his soul.”
______________
Amen brother, can I hear a Halli Lu Ya?
48 WasKathleenW
Agreed. But I was wondering if it could be a hoax?
Have other current students received this message?
Or maybe Pensate un attimo could you explain the means by which you received this?
Thanks in advance …
Clarification:
To Unoanimo, and all, just in case,
By “it all” in my last post (47 for now) I mean Graduate, post 44 (for now!).
Gratitude.
If you are a member of the FOF and you reading this it is a good sign, because you are on your way to regain emotional autonomy. You start to believe your own heart and understanding more than the words of Robert.
It is painful to realize that one subordinated oneself to wrong powers and false gods, we all did, but avoiding that pain doesn´t help either.
Keep reading :-)
Here’s a possibility ~
Since Robert Burton has used the ‘members’ of The Fellowship of Friends and their money, aborted fetuses and family heirlooms to self calm his despicable and redundantly relentless rodeo bull balls riding merry-go-round, as these buffers begin to lift the prehistoric scabs from his unsalted wounds, exposing his pristine hide to those who thought him a martyr, they themselves will begin to pay the price, rather than he whom the price has always been buffered away from, in other words, as the current members loose their houses, friends from deportations, IRS tax returns, INS statuses for returning to the country (BTW Edward S., what are you doing living in Holland?) Robert Burton will still continue feeding off your poor carcasses just as he did your once rich one, so, tie your camel to a Jumbo Propeller and start your engines… brace yourself, you’ll be the last to know that Robert Burton is now living on some remote island while the boys run the show till he’s dead and gone.
“Emotional entanglements wherein a woman exchanges the autonomy to act out the manifestations of her nature openly, instead stifling her expression for the sake of preserving the promise of company while also promoting the continued possibility of domestic intimacy, is a barter that will eventually cost her her soul”
Now, that reads much better. It is mechanical for many men to NOT ‘do’ those kinds of emotional entanglements but many women do. Almost reads like a feminist statement because it directly counters the cultural (meaning it’s everywhere) programming that women get. Men don’t get this programming nearly as much, if at all.
KA ~
Well, believe me MEN do, well, at least some, that’s why I said ‘Amen’, yet, I was not cheer leading for men, rather, the idea itself, we are drama shoppers and simply need to stop it and look around once in a while; often, it takes someone to take a look at us not looking to bring us about face, towards the sun behind the sun, the one shinning the other way.
40 KA
RB makes these decisions. He is influenced to an anknowable extent by his closest minions, but RB has the final word. Anytime the BOD has attempted to act as anything other than a rubber stamp someone has been slapped down or kicked out, often with scathing photographs about being a denying force to Influence C. I am told that no one currently serving on the BOD has sufficient net worth to be of much interest to the IRS / FTB or potential civil plaintiffs. However, there may be a question of legal exposure for ex-BOD-members as well, some of whom do have substantial assets. Board members are not insured…at least not by the FOF.
Besides BOD members and RB’s belovedly inured beneficiaries, there is also MAJOR legal exposure to whoever takes care of RB’s personal financial records if they are knowingly abetting criminal activity (e.g. fraud).
50 Old FOF
I saw this message in the email of a current member before reading it this morning on the Blog. It’s not a hoax.
Strategically it seems to be a big mistake, especially if any enforcement is attempted. Pointed questions or threatening phone calls are not likely to go over well in the FOF’s current reality. On the other hand it almost seems in hindsight to have been inevitable. The Blog and GF were irresistable bait to RB’s delusional sense of power. Now beware the wrath of great Influence C, ye heathens!
so the last page was indeed some sort of bloody interval!
Just as I thought…
I see you guys are going strong, and I have such a good feeling in my second chakra right now I could waltz like a hundred whirling dervishes! Is anyone else feeling the wind of kundalini rising?
Clearly the same energy is simultaneously sinking Robert’s ark and blowing our sails.
the whole catastrophe should pretty much quickly run its course on autopilot from now on… (the future may prove me wrong, but I wanted to share this intuition/happy thought – after all, aren’t we all entitled to make our own realities and predictions?)
uno and Greg rock on, oh you prodigal sons! :.)
keep the car running…
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=PI2qlr8aPmU
57 Joseph G
Good to know – thanks.
What Burton has in the FoF that the Blog does not have is art. We need art. In the spirit of competition some of us should put some art on the Blog so that current FoF members will come here to get higher impressions in order to be present.
Blueprints for Modern Art
Installation #1:
After a good sized crowd enters the gallery a rotating red light and siren begins to operate on the wall directly over the usual urinal exhibit. The urinal exhibit is located in a back corner and appears as follows: there is a tiled area of wall and floor space, the urinal is set in the tiled wall and a cleaning woman with mop and bucket stand nearby. As the gallery patrons gather to look at yet another urinal exhibit, remarking that “this has been done before,” suddenly a flashing red sign invites the onlookers to “flush the toilet.” When an adventurous soul steps forward into the installation and flushes the toilet cerulean blue paint rinses through the urinal for a few moments. Just as the flow appears to taper off the urinal slowly over flows onto the floor, the flow begins to increase and eventually fifty gallons of cerulean blue paint flows out of the urinal across the installation and onto the gallery carpets. The cleaning woman is in the expanding swamp of paint pushing it around with her mop. The gallery spectators eventually are dismayed at the extent of the mess.
Installation # 2:
The large six foot by six foot painting is simply a reproduction of a dartboard hanging on the wall about four feet off the gallery floor. Eight feet from the painting is a long table with darts arranged in an inviting array of colors. The small placard invites the spectators to throw the darts at the painting. As the gallery patrons consider whether the invitation is serious or simply part of the not-to-be-touched art exhibition, eventually someone picks up a dart and throws it at the painting which immediately falls off the wall and crashes loudly to the floor. After a moment’s hesitation the wires attached to the painting’s corners snaps it back up on the wall. The gallery spectators are dismayed at the somewhat nerve shattering prank.
Installation #3:
The painting is flat black, no detail, no surface relief. There is a small placard next to it on the wall that reads: “WARNING (then in very small print) stand back.” As the gallery spectators approach to read the small print, from holes in the painting several strong streams of very cold water spray onto the approaching patron…
Installation #4:
The show opening is that of a well-known artist, so the attendance is high. As each spectator enters the gallery he or she is given a pair of expensive sunglasses and is asked to keep them on while in the gallery. He or she is also served a large glass of very expensive Champaign, the labeled bottles are on the serving table so that the generosity of the gallery does not go unnoticed. The gallery is very bright, enough to pain the eyes if seen by the naked eye. The famous artist’s new works are nothing more than stained glass renderings of chess pieces, and as the crowd grows between the roped-off viewing area the dissatisfied grumbling (instigated by gallery shills) increases. Suddenly what appear to be police officers burst into the gallery and begin shooting the stained glass art objects with shotguns loaded with rubber riot slugs and the movie-glass chess pieces are destroyed. The crowd is annoyed.
Installation #5:
On January 31st of every year everyone in New York City is required to wear a tangerine colored suit while going about their usual duties and business. All tourists are required to wear pink.
Installation #6:
On January 31st of every year each vehicle in Los Angeles is required to drag six Campbell’s soup cans behind them everywhere they go.
A longtime friend still in the FOF after 30+ years came for dinner last night. The first baby steps are being taken, but it’s a long road out in this case. I introduced the GF website and we looked at all 30 pages on the members list. My friend delighted in knowing the site exists and finding many lost friends there among almost 600 members.
We spoke of many things, past and present, including how the blog has provided a real-time place for personal stories to be shared and that a recurrent theme of manipulation has been uncovered. I explained the vitality and general well-being I see in those who have left is largely due to no longer being under the influence of that manipulation and that this becomes more evident with some distance.
I said let’s look at the blog for the heck of it and see what’s there right now. We found posts 16-19 from Associated Press disclosing misuse of funds, then reinforcements:
********************
21
Pensate un attimo
This morning message from the “teacher”:
wow !!
Dear Students,
Although you may have read or heard something different, all students are reminded that the exercise of not spending unnecessary time with former members has not been changed. All members are also requested to refrain from reading and participating on what is known as the “Blog” and the “greater fellowship” or similar websites.
Robert stated: “This exercise comes from Influence C. You can support Influence C and not be a denying force to Influence C.”
The Fellowship of Friends
********************
In spite of some discord along the way, I think this blog indeed works in real-time. Thanks for posting, Pensate un attimo.
=======================================================
33
Old FOF
For what it’s worth, I have never bought Bass Ackwards’ rationalizations.
=======================================================
44
Graduates
I appreciated your observations – all 45 of them.
I can guess some of the background to the new message about contact with ex-students. A few days ago, someone emailed around a correspondence with L-nda T concerning the exercise. She had pasted in a message from Dorien saying that Robert was currently allowing students to decide for themselves, then there was the usual stuff that real students wouldn’t want to mix with ex-students anyway, because they would want to spend time with other people who are trying to be present. And that it was good not to talk to ex-students so that they could realize they they had lost Influence C and could rejoin the School. So the insistence on keeping the exercise is probably a reaction to that.
BTW, R-dney C was Robert’s bookkeeper for a number of years, maybe even now. The poor man has a minor cancer, so pleas go easy on him.
To Joseph G. re:#56
I was recently told that the members of the board of directors have been instructed and advised by FOF authorities to get private liability insurance to cover them in case of a law suit.
Draco ~
I remember once (speaking of cancer), there was a student dying, literally on her death bed (maybe it was a he), Robert Burton possessed and played the putrid luck to spin it thusly ~
“Yes, she is suffering much, she’s transforming her final hours of her play and is the closest student to my constant state.”
Robert Burton, you Earl Cracker!
Installation #7
___________________
A longtime friend still in the FOF after 30+ years came for dinner last night. There are baby steps are being taken, but it’s a long road out in this case.
I introduced the GF website and we looked at all 30 pages on the members list. My friend delighted in knowing the site exists and finding many lost friends there among almost 600 members.
We spoke of many things, past and present, including how the blog has provided a real-time place for personal stories to be shared and that a recurrent theme of manipulation has been uncovered. I described a vitality and general well-being I can see in those who have left and freed themselves from the influence of that manipulation and that all of this becomes more evident with some distance.
I said let’s look at the blog for the heck of it and see what’s there right now. We found posts 16–19 from Associated Press disclosing misuse of funds, then this reinforcement:
********************
21
Pensate un attimo
This morning message from the “teacher”:
wow !!
Dear Students,
Although you may have read or heard something different, all students are reminded that the exercise of not spending unnecessary time with former members has not been changed. All members are also requested to refrain from reading and participating on what is known as the “Blog” and the “greater fellowship” or similar websites.
Robert stated: “This exercise comes from Influence C. You can support Influence C and not be a denying force to Influence C.”
The Fellowship of Friends
********************
In spite of some occasional discord ;-) it seems this blog is relevant and working in real-time. Thanks for posting, Pensate un attimo.
======================================================
33
Old FOF
For what it’s worth, I have never bought Bass Ackwards’ rationalizations.
======================================================
44, 60
Graduates
Appreciated your 45 observations in post 44, but post 60 is too funny. You are very bad.
Graduates: Installation #7
A really inviting painting of a bowl of vegetables hangs on a false wall. There is a hidden camera where the artist – behind the false wall – can view the viewers. The sign says “Please Scratch and Sniff”. Before anyone actually scratches the painting the artist activates tiny holes in the paintings which emit very strong smells when a viewer gets close. The smells are horribly horribly putrid and nauseating. Everyone is annoyed, especially the gallery attendants and the artist is run out of town. Then the gallery attendants go out drinking to clear their minds – but no vegetables. What an opening!
—————-
Vena, can one be insured against criminal activity and if there are infractions by the fof can the board members be insured retroactively? I would guess the 501c3 will be soon in trouble. Didn’t ‘Mole’ speak of this? I would be very nervous if I were them.
Not to forget his ’soul-mate’ ~
Most of all, what you stole Robert Burton ~
Had not been able to post lately for some reason. Mostly went back and read old pages, while I kept up with what was going on in the present. Read old posts until I was close to vision impairment. I cried several times. It becomes more and more apparent to me where the energy of this blog comes from. You folks are quite amazing. I am both energized and educated by what I read here. I spent much less time in the fof than most of you. I did give prospective student meetings for a while in Detroit and a part of me wishes I could find all the people who came to those and joined the school and apologize to them. ‘ton- you would be the first.
Thought for a moment or two there was an interval near the end of the last page as Laura stated. If there was, you people have blown right through it.
There was the idea somewhere a while ago that attacking R personally was not an effective method for helping people disentangle themselves from the fof. To me it seems useful to keep reminding people who may come here as to who he is and what he has done, but perhaps more could also be said on the methods and the supposed results of those methods that he uses and purportedly teaches. A number of the apologists for fof speak of what they continue to gain from staying there. What I would like to hear from all of you about is the ’states’. It would seem that the energy (if that is what it could be called) that was/is? in the fof, and the experience of so-called ‘higher states’, is a large part of what may keep students there, and makes them hesitant to leave even after finding out that their teacher is, at best, a very suspect character. Now the reason I am asking about this, besides for educating myself, is that perhaps it is an area that should be discussed and explored in order to let those in the school know that these ’states’ and experiences exist outside the fof. Not only other groups, or all by oneself, but there are a number of substances a person can ingest if he simply wishes to experience altered states. There is also the idea that these states can be quite misleading given what interpretation is applied to them either before or after the fact. They can become an aim and end in themselves. Higher or altered states can bring many unusual experiences and perceptions, but it is my understanding that they are not in themselves what we truly seek. They may be a bi-product of work and can give wonderful glimpses, but they are not an assurance of making something, what the fof might call, ‘one’s own’. Even that term ‘one’s own’ seems somehow suspect to me. The times when I have had a little deeper glimpse into what I thought afterwards may have been ‘THE MOMENT’, one of the most powerful parts of the experience was that there was nothing there that you could call ‘one’s own’, except for the illusions that we suffer from. The feeling of being someone separate, which I suspect R’s version of the 4th way ideas perpeutate, may be the crux of our deepest error. The fof sells the same idea as dogmatic Christianity in that God (C influence) is something outside and beyond us (only R having the contact). R’s system infers that he himself is outside and beyond his students. The fof teaches that the school is separate from and somehow beyond ‘life’. My own experiences tell me that the these ideas are actually refuted in the present moment. It makes me wonder if some of what people are experiencing are some sort of ‘trance state’ where one becomes even more crystallized in the error that we are separate from our Creator and from each other.
Sorry for the clumsy wanderings above but I wonder when you combine the fear of not being able to do the work by oneself, and you put that with the fear that one may lose contact with these higher? experiences; does that provide part of the barrier and fear factor that keeps students under the spell of the fof? Is it a part of what causes them to turn a blind eye to who this man really is and what he has done and continues to do? The core of the fof, from what I have read here, appears to have been rotting for quite some time. Again, from what has been shared here, many of the older and once quite influential students have left. There is a part of me that is just amazed that this thing called fof has continued and not already collapsed in upon itself.
My ego got quite a boost today. Imagine: me, a denying force for C-Influence!
It’s nice to know I’m still relevant in this universe.
Recently, when a student informed RB that he was leaving the Fellowship, he received a phone call. He was told that North Korea soon will have the ability to deliver nuclear warheads to the continental U.S., and that 2012 is coming! So, RB continues playing the ‘fear card’ to keep his dear ‘flock’ cowering and in line. Similar, in effect, to the warnings in the recent Daily Card, discussed on the blog, to not dare be a denying force to Influence C by schmoozing with ex-students. Ooooooh, we are so scared! Halloween is coming! Trick or Treat!
I was a “denying force for C-Influence” back in 1993 when I pulled my children out of the Lewis Carroll School. My nine year old son was being bullied by older boys to the point where he was wanting to kill himself. When I brought this to the attention of the school teacher no action was taken. However, when it became know that I removed my children from Lewis Carroll, I got the call that Robert thought I was a deny force for C-Influence.
Should read, denying force for C-Influence.
Wildz – after all the stories one would think this is mild, but it really got to me. The fof politics around children is wrenching.
“All members are also requested to refrain from reading and participating on what is known as the “Blog” and the “greater fellowship” or similar websites.
This exercise comes from Influence C. You can support Influence C and not be a denying force to Influence C.”
Bob is in total panic. He is the one who is scared shitless. He is so f-kin desperate.
Oh, and we are so scared of “powerful Influence C”! All it did so far is issuing false predictions about end of the world and earthquakes, and silly exercises. Oh yeah, and liscence plates…And finally – the dumb sequence!
C-influence a-la Robert (although supposedly mighty gods that control everything) are actually pathetically dependent on our little support and can’t deal with our denying force. Robert’s “Influence” lies a lot too, and likes raping young boys…It wants you to pay money to Robert and obey his orders. Which kind of “gods” are these?
What bullshit. No one buys it anymore, Bob. Just call it what it is – your own f-kin delusion – and quit hiding cowardly behind some “higher forces”.
By issuing this lovely “reminder” RB hammers another nail into FOF coffin.
Keep up the good work Bob!
Who said “another 2 years for FOF”?
No way, it’s gonna be over much sooner than that!
1076 Elena
Former StudenT
“Your tone is less agressive but you wish to suppress Graduates’ participation indefinitely and that is as mean and inconsiderate as anything Graduates might say in his frustration.”
Please take the time to read what I wrote about Greg. I suggested banning him because it is one way to show how lunatic he becomes. Facts seem to have little relationship to your opinions.
It is a fact that he freely admits that he likes starting arguments on the internet.
It is a fact that he ha
no training in logic or debate and consistently reduces any
disagreement with him to the level of personal insult.
It is a fact that he has been banned from every other internet group he has done this on.
It is a fact that I in a professional capacity as a member, peer counselor and and mental health worker have participated in many different groups. That these groups are composed of individuals real difficulties and often very dysfunctional backgrounds and that Greg behaviors would not be tolerated.
It is also a fact that while you tried to gain a position of authority in the Fellowship through a relationship with a badly damaged person I have been helping individuals improve their lives. One person at a time.
It is only Greg’s paranoia that finds the idea of dealing with another human being in person with out the protection of the shield of the internet to protect his freedom to act in a sociopathic way a “threat”.
It is unfortunate that a description of Greg’s behavior comes across as an attack. Any sane person would understand that as in the Fellowship the solution is not to remain quite but to address the issues with honesty, courage and compassion.
So save any shallow sanctimonious opinions for someone else. hit.
1083 KA
“Greg, I just read thru your entire post about the GF and Duncan. I had read some of Duncan’s posts on the GF and this caught my eye especially:
“I do find it difficult to deal with Greg’s anynomity, his hiding his
contact as I have no problem calling him or visiting him in person to see how he deals with real people. I am simply not used to tolorating such extreme rudeness. I mean I deal with pimps, whore’s, drug addicts , alcohol’s and Hell’s Angels none are as rude as Greg and his behavior would not be tolorated in any group.”
That really creeped me out and I emailed William to say so because it read like a real threat to me. I know Greg, personally, and he is really OK, a bit gruff sometimes. He is adamant, intelligent, sensitive and passionate and loves the 4th way, and really knows it.”
I think that if you can not grasp the concept that Greg’s behaviors are inappropriate in situations were individuals with serious social problems and difficult backgrounds are involved. How much more so in someone who as you yourself say are a serious student of the 4th way. Greg is a cyber bully, he is an intellectual and moral coward, he lacks any sense of conscience in relation to his behaviors on the internet. He treats others as “things” he is sociopathic. If you know him and find this acceptable than you yourself have some serious problems.
That idea that a peer counselor a trained mental health worker is going to confront him and give him an opportunity to deal with his issues is a threat , something so serious that you must at all costs help protect him is one more instance f his cultivate relationships with females to protect him from the big bad men who just don’t understand his sensitive nature.
If I am unclear let me quote Bruce GFY
A Google Note:
Please, if you can, spell out “Fellowship of Friends” and “Robert Burton” instead of ‘fof’ or RB; it assists in the ratings and any find via this blog site from prospective students searching the web for flies that have yet to be taken from behind by Robert Burton.
OK, Former Student,
Please STOP.
We really, really REALLY had enough of it all on a previous page!
Lets get over it, OK?
ENOUGH!
A Former Student ~
You might add more names to your address than the easiest like KA’s; mine and Laura’s for instance… your continued ‘war’ is no better than the last one that ended, actually, it’s twice as worse since you’ve learned nothing from your first and second mistakes; seems to me that Graduates has dropped the situation for now, yet, you continue to try and burn a pile of cinders… (?) Grind sand into a blind man’s eyes… what’s the point here (?)
BTW ~ Graduates ~ That “blind man” does not refer to you.
.
1092 Graduates
“How many people would read that threat from Duncan and worry about hurting his feelings if it were deleted from the GF site? No one. William’s posturing was simply more deceptive squirming from a passive-aggressive personality who got caught playing a dangerous game of mess-with-your-head with wrong martial. He’s not qualified to be an administrator or anything else requiring good judgment.”
Greg my “threat” is what exactly? That I will show up and give you the sociapathic coward who has been insulting people for years the opportunity to do so in person? What is it you fear that I will counsel you to death? I am a trained mental health worker and peer counselor. I resolve issues in person. I don’t spend my life picking cyber battles with individuals like you.
Now you are whinning and complaining ,again, that some one has threatened you. It is not a threat Greg. It would be a step in the direction of working out your issues in a more positive way to learn to treat those who you communicate with on the internet as people with feelings like yourself.
You are a poor excuse for a victim. That’s what it comes down to now it is poor Gregy the mean man is threatening you. Get over it.
As far as William not treating you as you deserve I agree he should have kicked your sorry poor little victim whinny ass of the site, as every other moderator has done. When will you gey over yourself. You are offended that I don’t put up with your crap.
Greg as irritating as you try to be you are really an amateur in being difficult. Drug addicts and alcoholics on withdrawals are difficult, mental ill individuals off their meds are difficult. That my stock in trade you are just a pathetic, whiny, needy, shallow , obsessively egotistical cyber bully who cries that he is a victim when challenged and now your crying that the big bully is picking on you?
How is it Greg that it is OK for you to write anything you want but have a different standard in regards to your own self. Is it you imagine that other owe you something
?
Thanks, KA, I have many stories related to the children in Fellowship of Friends.
Victoria Z
Peace, friends!
It’s ‘Mercury Retrograde’ out there in the solar system. This means communications breakdowns of all kinds here on Planet Earth. Are we not experiencing this, and trying our best to transcend and move on? Great. Let’s do more!
Let’s take out our Halloween “witch’s brooms” and give the ol’ blog a good sweeping! We’ll all enjoy the oxygen! Can we accommodate you and your agenda, Graduates/King of Clubs? No way? Okay… Hasta la Vista, Baby! Sheik, are you there?
Fellowship of Friends Bookkeeper Reincarnated ~
Don’t worry, I will save him ~
A Former Student ~
You wrote ~
“You are a poor excuse for a victim. That’s what it comes down to now it is poor Gregy the mean man is threatening you. Get over it.”
“I am a trained mental health worker and peer counselor.”
____________
Note ~ Many ‘trained’ rottweilers have been known to sink their teeth into the newborn infants belonging to their owners due to some predisposition to sink their teeth into the newborn infants belonging to their owners.
Graduates ~
Please, hold your own this time, let this guy fizzle out and watch “Laughing Girl” at least six times a day till ‘he’ dwindles into the root stem from where it all originated from; please do not take the bait this time, for your own heart-sake.
Wildz, if you are so inclined please share a few of your stories. As a mother and aunt I have a very dear place for children in my heart as do most of us here. Teenagers are not adults and it is most upsetting to hear of damage done to teens (many of RB’s rapes seem to have been (barely?) legal age teens). I was friends with a teen when I lived at Renaissance and just thought the world of her (two actually and one is on the GF). She was much younger than me but seemed just as mature (hmmm). She has had so much trouble in adulthood – I wish I could just make it all better for her, but …. Knowing more now of what her life was like it is no wonder. There are so many culpable and the children are the most likely to bear the scars. I admire your presence, Wildz, to your children. They are lucky.
84 Wildz
Please post some of your stories if it is appropriate.
I think telling our stories is one of the best ways to expose the truth of the matter. Stories are far more accessible to the inquiring agnostic than are diatribes, and they add to our humanity.
77 Former Student
I respect and admire your professional qualifications, but do not agree with you on this particular matter.
a former student – recent posts various
You are an intelligent fellow – but your demons seem in ascendancy.
Please stop trying to bait Graduates again.
Please stop soiling the blog.
He is not the problem.
Stop the Brawl.
Let it go.
Please.
A Tale About Children…
Jan and Johannes are the children of G. and R.R., from Germany. Later, G. and B. had two children, male and female, who are younger than these two, and who have been very well cared-for by B, bless her sweet soul!
This is to correct some incorrect information posted earlier on the blog by Joseph G, with the best of intentions, according to his memory.
Long ago, I read bed-time stories to these two young babes, who reminded me of the story of the founding of Rome… Romulus and Remus, sucking the Wolf’s tits.
These babes are now splendid, gifted, handsome, and intelligent young men, and are quite well able to take care of their Selves, vis-a-vis the Fellowship and Robert Burton. So, no need to worry on their account, IMHO.
There may, however, have been innocents along the way who did not fare so well as J and J. For them, we may well be concerned…
Actually Duncan you do deserve acknowledgement for your accomplishments and respect for the schooling you had the fortitude to complete. It would be dishonest to continue to pretend that you are dismissible which was an entirely wrong and an uncalled for attitude all along. Anyone that doesn’t treat others equally does not deserve equal treatment from others. My hat is off to you for becoming a professional mental health counselor, helping and serving people in need. Here is my unconditional apology for the many barbs along the way and my genuine good wishes for the way ahead. The mutual anger is and was a mutual waste. There are plenty of subjects that raise the blood pressure in life, it is useless to take perceived cyber villains seriously when there are real issues to deal with.
94 Graduates
Well said. Thanks for this.
94 Graduates
This is the most encouraging, heartening post I have read on the blog for a long time.
62 Vena
Good information on the Board of Directors insurance. Thanks much Vena.
I would have expected that the Fellowship of Friends would have a standard over-arching “errors and omissions” policy for the board members. But in the olden days the Fellowship of Friends did not, so maybe they actually don’t. Bizarre.
One advantage of insurance coverage at all – is to cover legal / lawyer expenses.
I believe that in California a law requires that all 501-c-3 non-profit organizations have to carry this coverage — or else the individual board members are PERSONALLY LIABLE for all damages of liability, etc..
Also, how Fellowship-ish to advise board members to get their OWN private insurance. The left hand commits the acts – and expects the right hand to take the fall — and by the way Bub, pay for your own insurance.
It will be tough for Board members to get any such insurance at all – and in line with what KA has noted if got – it will likely not be for retroactive acts — and will not cover fraud and other forms of criminal activities that one might surmise might be the final common pathway of legal proceedings.
Finally, this information indicates a “take it to the mattresses” fortress mentality of the organization — as more and more students continue to slip away without much by way of replacement.
The alternative is evidently unthinkable — clean up the corruption.
65 Across the River
I do hope that I am right on the Bass situation. Sometimes rationalizations are the way that true conflicts hold place – while being worked through. I take your point – I’ve been wrong a time or two before, but I wish for the best here …
Bravo Graduates, is there an apology in there Old Fish and others you have barbed along the way?
Pensate (21)
This morning’s message re-affirming the FoF as resisting the powers of the lower self (Blog, GF, ex-students) is politically not so silly as it may seem. The alternative – that of a newly liberalized and community-minded group that had begun to embrace the growing number of ex-members – would seal the fate of the FoF. The FoF needs to limit exposure to information about the covert activities of the group, of Robert, and especially about the psychology of belief. With any attempt to become more open, revelations of this kind would be – nay, have – eroded confidence and broken down fear, and so the disintegration of the myth follows. As long as there are sufficient numbers that fear the word of C Influence, polemics is the better choice.
Perhaps Robert received some crisis councelling on his recent visit to New York, from the same guy that gave him all these bright ideas in the first place.
Graduate, post 94
If this all could morph into your post 94, there has been, then, no waist of time!
Trusting you are sincere.
Thank you
PS: You “installation” sery was fun!
#93 my2bits
You are correct, both about J & J’s family tree and about my memory these days. Sorry to anyone whom my mistake may have offended. I was simply trying to help Laura contact B, who certainly treated these two boys like her own sons.
I have a few children’s stories…but they’re not of the bedtime variety. It’s too late now, and these stories deserve time and respect in the telling.
We hear about many kinds of victims of the FOF here on the Blog, but children are not frequently mentioned. IMO child abuse in the FOF has always been encouraged to the point of being institutionalized. This may be because children in the FOF are more often abused through passivity and neglect, whereas most of the adult victims we talk about were hurt by some form of active force (e.g. deception, coercion, violence, rape). Children are always the truest victims because they are the most vulnerable and defenseless. They have no options and no power over what happens in their own lives. The prevalent neglect of FOF children over many years appears to produce many negative side effects: from low self esteem to chronic depression to suicidal acts…and even possibly to bullyism for all we know. The potager and the agora are weak charades of FOF family values today, where the second class status of children is communicated in countless subtle and not so subtle ways. There are some fine parents in the FOF, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule. And even if their hearts are in the right place, way too much income is diverted away from taking care of family in the form of teaching payments, cultural events, or simply accepting a low-paying salaried position that places one’s family below the poverty level. The result is often squalid living conditions for the kids that parents learn to buffer and justify over time.
Linda T once told me that family and children are A Influence, an attitude I’m quite certain is shared by Robert Burton. How can you get any lower on the scale of priorities than that?
I made many mistakes in the name of the FOF’s “higher right” raising my own two oldest sons, and in refusing to repeat these mistakes with my younger children I’m sure I also presented denying force to RB and his perverse child-neglecting gods, a decision I have never regretted.
Joseph G
RB wrong, wrong, wrong teaching:
today’s daily card:
When one is present, everything else is only what
it is – not the present.
Love, Robert
I thought that presence was everything and that nothing exists except the present…but now we have something that ‘..is not the present..’
Do a favor to yourself and read real ‘teaching’, open your eyes friends, LOOK! Stop with all these bs around c influence
RB is the teaching of imprisonment.
Thanks to everyone who both here and privately wrote with news about B., I was very happy to find out that she and the children are well and happy.
And thanks Joseph for #99, spot-on.
Like a real live ogre, Robert clearly dislikes children (unless they are his supper), and that’s just one external manifestation of his spite for the inner child in all of us.
The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach:
The Ogre cannot master speech.
About a subjugated plain,
Among it’s desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.
W.H.Auden
… now, how ’bout some songs for the children, both inner and outer, in and out of schools, may they be healthy and happy and live in a world where they are cherished and allowed to manifest and blossom!
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=m5t9I0-7PEc
three “happy” in the previous post, sorry, evidently happiness can turn into sloppy writing…
I am still trying to get an answer from anyone, just to make sure my posts are really posted, I am trying for over a week already.
Re: post 70
Tim Campion wrote:
” My ego got quite a boost today. Imagine: me, a denying force for C-Influence!
It’s nice to know I’m still relevant in this universe.”
Absolutely! For all who are still keeping score on your Fort Yaweh scorecards, I believe the unverifiable theory holds that even the g_ds (cde&f influence) need friction and denying force to continue to evolve. Correct? Or, does it only come from above, this friction? If so, why do all these stupid people get on my nerves?
13, 17, 28, 38, 39, 67, 103, 106 and 114 are newly moderated.
Thomas:
The system works as thus: the discussion happens in real time but in order to be able to participate you need to have one moderated comment (in other words all your comments will be blocked until at least one of them gets moderated by me). Even then, were you to change the name you use or the e-mail address that you use, you would go back to square 1 and would need to get one of your comments moderated in order to participate in real time. So, once you are in, don’t change your identity unless you want to wait until I have the time to moderate, sadly enough I don’t have much time.
Requests to ban participants:
I have a look every now and then to see that everything is going fine, that there is nothing too volatile around here and that there is no dangerous material being posted. I will not ban anyone unless absolutely necessary. Learn to live with people disagreeing with your point of view.
I brought the first infant into the Fellowship, worked at the “Children’s house” and have some tales to tell. I will get moderated, and then join the fray.
Stage Manager
Young Russian FOF ~ 17 ~ (Fellowship of Friends) wrote ~
“I am amazed Unoanimal, you are such an exemplary scumbag, who is actively out of country boredom shooting off all possible and impossible shit about Fellowship. And generally I am so glad that you are guys on this blog produce such a pure impression on the newcomer . You really are what you think.”
_____________________________
Ah, what’s the difference between two types of shit?
And how exactly does one become an “exemplary” scumbag? I mean, are there visible degrees (like in Freemasonry) and invisible degrees (like in Freemasonry), I know that my 32nd degree rank is a bit tiny compared to the Tiananmen Square massacres, yet, well, thanks for the spin on my name, but, no thanks…
It seems your woven gold chain needs to be let out a bit.
:.)
109 Pensate un Attimo you said:
“…Do a favor to yourself and read real ‘teaching’, open your eyes friends, LOOK! Stop with all these bs around c influence
RB is the teaching of imprisonment.”
——————————————
Pensate un Attimo : you go straight to my heart.
Yes RB is really the teaching of Imprisonment!!!
I felt that a few months after joining the fof, then of course I buffered it.
I needed to belong, at the time I was not well adjusted in life, I was at the edge of what people considered Normal.
Leaving a broken crazy marriage, without a home I was of course glad/(sad?) to be with the group.
But I could see how quickly my freedom in small things was stifled, from a bit rough, street wise person I learned to no leave trace behind: the empty cup of coffee in the sink, the bathrobe on the hook, little things like that to elevate impressions and teach me obedience and order.
Of course that made sense at the time: sacrifice your will, be a good student, go from silver to gold! and please the teacher in all his whims, whatever it takes…the obedience was almost sickly exciting!
I do not know why but by some kind of association
it feels like some of us were like Little Red Riding Hood and RB the BIG BAD WOLF!
Thank you Sheik for the ranting space…
Just what we needed, another Russian boy.
You know, I have always deeply loved Russia, its earthy roots and inherent melancholy, its profound emotionality and incredibly rich cultural legacy. Mayakovsky, Cvetaeva, Tarkovsky, Nabokov, Tolstoy, Prokofiev, Dostoevsky, Nijinsky, Chagall, Bulgakov, Eisenstein, Kandinsky, Gurdjieff himself, just to name a few….
You have no idea how it saddens me to see how far this once deeply spiritual country must have descended if its young people buy into something as shallow as Robert’s contemporary brand of “every-man-for-himself hallucinatory teaching”.
Good job Brother Stalin!
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=xxM0b2CYlzQ
83 Former Student
Hello Duncan, thank you for the attention you give me, it is always an opportunity to enhance our selves in the sharing.
1076 Elena
Former StudenT
“Your tone is less agressive but you wish to suppress Graduates’ participation indefinitely and that is as mean and inconsiderate as anything Graduates might say in his frustration.”
Please take the time to read what I wrote about Greg. I suggested banning him because it is one way to show how lunatic he becomes. Facts seem to have little relationship to your opinions.
Elena: Duncan, the facts are what I base my opinions on. In your posts against Graduates you seem unable to take anything into account but your fixation on his having to be banned. You may be a mental health worker but I would be terrified to be one of your patients because you seem to need them to stay as they are to keep the job and have no interest in healing them or recognising that there are parts of their being that are not mentally ill. You also seem extremely far from understanding the Chinese Culture in its concept of madpeople being divine people or people who have accessed the divine without legitimate awakening. In other words, people who have reached high states, altered states, from extreme unresolved suffering rather than from consistent inner work. This makes you more dangerous than any lunatic because your lunacy wishes to crystallize people in their process. Healthy communities will help heal individuals faster than any of your mental institutions in which the healers like you are more sick than the patients.
Duncan: It is a fact that he freely admits that he likes starting arguments on the internet.
It is a fact that he ha
no training in logic or debate and consistently reduces any
disagreement with him to the level of personal insult.
It is a fact that he has been banned from every other internet group he has done this on.
Elena: It is also a fact that Greg is a human being like you who has been seriously hurt by being simply banned from all places instead of having his frustration being listened to. Listened and embraces instead of simply being rejected.
Duncan: It is a fact that I in a professional capacity as a member, peer counselor and and mental health worker have participated in many different groups. That these groups are composed of individuals real difficulties and often very dysfunctional backgrounds and that Greg behaviors would not be tolerated.
Elena: Indeed, people in charge like you think you are justified to send anyone out who does not comply with your establishment. How else do you think the Fellowship of Friends has been going on for thirty five years?
Duncan: It is also a fact that while you tried to gain a position of authority in the Fellowship through a relationship with a badly damaged person
Elena: Oh what a precious piece of information you’re letting out Duncan. Tell me, would you be saying the same thing if I were an American woman or is this desire to gain position only an aspect of being Colombian? “Marry an American and get a visa so that one can work for a decent amount in your country that lives on the huge amounts it has stolen from countries like mine? Surely the whole lot of you on this blog agree with you Duncan since you elegantly avoid his attack on me but are quick in defending each other for much more minor things. Do you still think the rest of the world is begging for a place in your empty throne’s, good lord, Duncan, you don’t hear what other’s say even when they split five hundred of your lives against your twin chairs.
Has any one of you ever worked on your nations programming? A fact that I tried to gain a posi tion of authority in the Fellowship, really? What kind of position of authority do you think I am trying to get on the blog fighting with everyone inside and outside of it? That is not the pattern of oportunists Duncan, but it does seem to be the pattern of people in power who comfortably fit in with each other’s lowliness. Have I consistently shown any sign of bending over at each post to try to gain a friend? I am afraid it is you who have not payed enough attention to my statement on why I married Girard Haven and I will gladly repeat it for your deaf ears.
At the time, I was still convinced Robert was a conscious being and that Girard was unable to grasp the miracle of higher states. Had you even attempted to tell us Duncan, or any other one of you bloggers who had known so much for so many years and still allowed for latin idiots like me to fill the accounts of the Fellowship of Friends without doing anything about it but protect the few friends around you?
He did seem to be suffering, repeating himself. I did not at the time see clearly into his psychology to think that there was anything seriously wrong with him except the direction of his own personal efforts and I ascribed that to being too occupied with his commitment to helping students. I had of course, fallen for the fact that if Robert said he’d become conscious, he would and had seen him working incessantly to hold the School together with Robert at the top. I had not lived in Isis enough to really understand what was happening inside. I began courting him even before I met him, from the mere fact that a conscious being was going to come for breakfast in my place in London, so I went out and bought a beautiful tea pot. Just for him. Was there anything wrong in wishing to be with a conscious man? Was I supposed to be more attracted to the unconscious ones who I had had enough of a taste of? That was seventeen years ago and I continued to court him at every other opportunity, amazed at his ability to rationalize things and inspired by the tenacity of his work. I did court him but never overtly. He did have to give the first overt step, which I was all too willing to accept. The talents people have are no less there because they decide to use them against themselves and others and I was much seduced by Girard’s talents. If I had been less convinced by Robert it would have added up differently but I was definitely convinced that self remembering had given enough fruit in my work to believe both Robert and Girard were a fake. When Cynthia told me about Girard’s pornoaddiction, Girard and I had separated the day before because he had told me he wanted to continue his marriage and I did not think I would have to continue the relationship. When Girard showed up a couple of months later saying he wished to continue our relationship I placed enough conditions that if he was willing to work with them, I was willing to try. My aim was to help a man that I believed had given his life to the Fellowship on whose shoulders I had seen innumerable students stand and I myself had stood on for support, innumerable times. He did seem to be falling out of priviledges in the Fellowship but I ascribed that to the Fellowship’s lack of being in taking care for someone who had given it so much. As with Dorothy and with the aim to find solutions to the problems I found, instead of simply criticizing others for not taking it upon themselves to do it, I decided I would love this man to eternity. My dear Duncan, if you even imagined what it was like you would realize how an opportunist would not have lasted a month in Girard’s company, no matter how much she would have wanted a position of authority.
For the first two years Girard hit himself and swore like a lunatic almost every day. Hit me when I argued enough that there was no respect for me, my presence or our space when he expressed that kind of violence and certainly no self remembering or respect for himself either. Neither of you in or out realize the conditions in which Girard found himself when he moved in with me. If one could picture a perfect machine that once in a while remembered that he was a human being and not a machine, then one would be close to what Girard’s condition was at the time. The most human moment, ironically, was actually when he exploded into a madman heating himself and swearing at the horror of being himself. If you really understood crazy people Duncan you would know that the expression of anger and violence is the only outlet they can finally resort to after their essence has been almost completely anihilated. The violence of a madman is his most human expression. There is nothing to judge in it. It is not just a negative emotion. It is a human cry for help.
Having tasted enough of that pain myself, I was not willing to leave him for expressing it, on the contrary I was willing to deal with it and skip the blows as best as I could, hit back and confront it but not leave him. When it became so difficult that change seemed impossible and I decided to leave him, he actually changed gradually and started controlling this outbursts. It took two years to get there. You see, the sad thing about this story is not that Girard did not recover a little of himself from our marriage, it is that he did not recover enough to protect his wife in the process. He even stated that I was crazy when I began writing on the blog. He had been allowing himself and a thousand others to be so abused by the Fellowship of Friends and Robert for so long, that he could not even help himself or his wife when she confronted the Fellowship of Friends for its inhumanity. I lost Duncan, I much lost, everything but my integrity.
Girard Haven was not willing to help his wife or himself in relation to her, not even after seeing her work for him and Dorothy and Heather and Eileen for four years, not even if she was falling sleep at noon because the accumulated exhaustion did not allow her to live the day. Not even if she had assumed as many damages of the Fellowship as she could, because she still thought Robert Burton was a conscious being and the rest of the students had probably never suffered enough to know that the only thing that matters for some of us, is that the most damaged ones are taken care of. It is not that I would not like to learn a trade and do something with myself in it Duncan and hence, need to marry a man in high places to achieve something, it is that I deeply believe there are more important things to take care of than showing my talents in any trade. I’ve voted for the trade of being simply human and taking care of what is needed when I’m presented with it which is far from meaning that I do not wish to participate in the life of the community I belong to. Oh yes, it was already very clear to me, when I married Girard, that I had something to give and if the community would have been healthy enough it would have found a place for it. Does it really surprise you that it didn’t? That people who had accepted to abort their children, leave their parents, brothers and sisters, friends, and adapted to live the frozen life of modelling their silk clothes in the galleria receptions, would not support Girard Haven or his wife when she decided to warm up his life or thaw the crystallized damages the Fellowship of Friends was willing to impose indefinitely in his being, Dorothy and the rest? Unfortunately our plays evolve from critical points to critical points and when Elizabeth B. told me that the Fellowship of Friends HAD NEVER BEEN a place for healing and that Robert has asked to look for a home for Dorothy because I asked for help after two and half years of healing her from the lunatic students that were looking after her before me,who had not given her a bath for a year, who’d left her finger nails long and black and allowed her to stink and wear the same clothes for days, Elizabeth melted the Is within me that had believed for seventeen years that Robert Burton was a consicous being. I went home and cried for two days and left the Fellowship a couple of months after, only because the decision to look for a home for Dorothy was retrieved when I said I would immediately leave the Fellowship of Friends, that same day. Retrieved behind Robert’s back, Robert and his Dorians, because Elizabeth was willing to say that it was much cheaper to have me pay with the salary I got for the state for Dorothy’s extra help with four hundred dollars than have the Fellowship pay for a home after she was confronted by JC., which was perfectly true and it was all I was asking the Fellowship for so that I could get some extra help, because I was so terribly exhausted that I had had to stop travelling with Girard in the middle of a trip, had had to quit a job I had been offered teaching in a School in Grass Valley and was falling sleep at dinners and meetings because I could no longer hold myself up.
Girard Haven’s opinion was that it was my mistake to ask Robert for help with such a long letter that I will post soon, because he was too busy to deal with such minuscule issues and they had to be presented in a particular way that only people like him knew. But he had not once offered to help me which I understood as being alright to not use his authority where it was for Robert to decide. Girard said that if the four women in the head of the administration of the Fellowship of Friends had treated me like a crazy criminal who had to be banned from their presence,as another of the conditions given to me, after asking for help, it was because they too, did not have time to deal with such minorities and with that he lost a wife. These women, who I had never addressed, had to give themselves importance and send me this message and everything I’ve written on the blog is an answer to all of their messages, Robert’s, Girard’s, these women, and the rest of students trying to become conscious while life pours out of their ambitious hands. My hands were not wide enough to hold the death pouring out of the Fellowship of Friends. Thank God they’re out.
You might think you have some compassion in your being Duncan, but you’ve never seen enough sanity to know where you’re heading with your patients. If after six months of writing on these blog all you can say about me is that I was looking for a place of authority in the Fellowship, you are more sick than Robert and Girard and the rest of the people in and out of the Fellowship of Friends. You have so much envy, you do not see anything of value in yourself. Envy for Graduates and myself who at least still scream while you only call for people’s pettiness to help you. Keep hitting lad, and we might just get you to stand on your feeble fit for a longer length of time.
Elena: “Has any one of you ever worked on your nations programming? A fact that I tried to gain a position of authority in the Fellowship, really? What kind of position of authority do you think I am trying to get on the blog fighting with everyone inside and outside of it?”
Your painful wrestling with conscience vs. hope and idealism is palpable. I don’t think you are an opportunist, tho you are not stupid and are able to recognize/utilize opportunities. Reducing your amazingly alive inner world to ‘opportunism’ doesn’t seem right at all! Reading your post – in the middle, where your post flows off the top of the computer and off the bottom too – I felt adrift in the mind of an extremely passionate person. I would feel crazy except that my messy desk keeps me grounded (because it is so annoying and I should clean it up and my cat keeps walking in front of the computer and then biting my ear). Then you said this:
Elena: “you would know that the expression of anger and violence is the only outlet they can finally resort to after their essence has been almost completely anihilated. The violence of a madman is his most human expression. There is nothing to judge in it. It is not just a negative emotion. It is a human cry for help.”
The depth of understanding here is inspiring. Recognizing one’s essence, then another’s, then recognizing a healthy essence in oneself -and others- is a lifelong challenge IMO and a higher spiritual development has to have a healthy essence to start. Which means often a sort of digression or regression. To let oneself be the broken essence one actually IS …and to value the reality of that, …the real bits of intact essence,… and RE-MEMBERING a strong healthy essence seems like a lot of unglamorous work. So much more glam to steadily ascend to great awakenness and hey, everyone can see that in me so it MUST be true. To step back from -that- after a day, or half a century, is painful! Plus it is good to be reminded (thanks Elena)…. I know for me, its just so easy to forget to RE-MEMBER myself.
————-
I wonder if now Vinnie and Fat Boy and others will not post. Maybe Vinnie is a real fof-er after all. Odd, but now that they are not actively posting I again miss them. Go figure.
Elena, I am very happy to see you here, although I cannot right now tell who I am. I am still in the fellowship, but it has become very clear that it is a matter of short time till I get certain things done and leave.
I am touched by your sincere expressions on this blog and I am sure your efforts in showing what kind of situations you were involved during your time in the FOF and specially in your time with Girard will help heal all possible scars created in the process.
This is also happening with me, a certain healing process, a kind of “dehypnotization” (if it exists such a word), from believing one was being taken to heaven to realize one has been simply used in different ways.
I have to confess, however, that certain things in this blog still makes no sense to me. One of then is the fact that everyone here, in one way or another, was and still is (I am sure), a human being looking for ways to develop its own consciousness, i.e., its own spirituality. I got the feeling that some have already found their nex step in that process, like many who expressed their recent understanding of the value in non duality, Nisargadata, Adyashanti and so many others. I am personally touched by the deep truth pouring from those very special human beings.
The problem, to me, is that we have to leave behind us all that (FoF stuff), exchange the lessons of course and even do whatever it can be done to alert people of the risks and dangers in the FoF, but at some point we MUST move on, we must not allow this influence from keeping consuming our energy and time.
Since it is the first time I am writing in the blog there is also some others comments I wanted to make. First, regarding Robert and his sexual life. Many years ago, perhaps 17, he tried to have sex with me, but I said no once and that was it, he never tried again and never acted as if I had being wrong with him or influence C. I also realized that I had to have a life, my life, meaning a career, family (being a student or not, it never really mattered) and pursue the aims that any man also have. I wanted to experience life in a way that I would look back and feel that I had done what I needed to have a happy life. In short, although I was being consistently photographed for being in the “external circle”, I can look back now and be convinced that it was the right thing to do.
On another subject, I never accepted to give large donations that would eventually help Robert buy expensive shoes and jewels for his lovers, NEVER. Perhaps that could mean, also, that I was never really part of the “school”, buffering the fact that I really never liked the way things were done.
In any case, I am not saying I am right and people are wrong spending their time here. Perhaps I am saying that certain values of the “System”, the real system and not the distortions we see right now in the FoF, are still valid and point our attention to live life this very moment, whithout carrying weights in our backs that does not belong to us any more.
However criminal certain acts from Robert or any other student, I prefer to think that somehow it was a very important step in my life, one that I look with gratitude.
But since this is the beggining of my process of “cleaning out”, perhaps I am simply being naive and still trying to hold to some idiotic fantasy.
Thomas
At post 121 KA wrote:
“I wonder if now Vinnie and Fat Boy and others will not post. Maybe Vinnie is a real fof-er after all. Odd, but now that they are not actively posting I again miss them. Go figure.”
Here’s the interesting thing though: doesn’t the energy and tone on this page feel different? It seems to me that when we are not arguing the finer points of the imaginary system with the usual suspects, the station switches to the healing channel. Our focus changes and it becomes clear who in here wants and needs real help and we try to supply our own truth balm as best as we can. I love a good debate as much as the next fella’, but does anyone think we convinced anyone of anything?
A couple of weeks ago, I had dinner with a current student and asked her if she had ever read the blog and she responded, “Yes, I looked at it for a bit, but it seemed to be just a bunch of crazy negativity.”
So, I’m here to just keep ringing the alarm bell for those who might stumble in and ask, “So, is the Fellowship of Friends the kind of organization where I can find out the meaning of my life? Is Robert Burton a man who can show me the way?”
122 Thomas
“Perhaps I am saying that certain values of the “System”, the real system and not the distortions we see right now in the FoF, are still valid and point our attention to live life this very moment, whithout carrying weights in our backs that does not belong to us any more.”
A couple of points:
Some ex-FoFers continue with the Fourth Way and derive great value from it, and why not? On the other hand, for myself and many other recent leavers, the Fellowship teaching began to crumble until concept after concept fell away and soon there was nothing much left. Then the process continued with the Fourth Way, most of which also fell away and was seen to be more or less meaningless. There are a few good ideas there but they are so buried and confused as to be rendered useless. At least that’s the way I see it.
Even after all that, for some of us a strong connection with the Fellowship remains. It’s not necessarily critical or negative. I guess it will diminish naturally over time unless the Fellowship is resurrected in a new, pure form (you never know!).
“However criminal certain acts from Robert or any other student, I prefer to think that somehow it was a very important step in my life, one that I look with gratitude.”
Me too.
“But since this is the beggining of my process of “cleaning out”, perhaps I am simply being naive and still trying to hold to some idiotic fantasy.”
It doesn’t sound like it. The cleaning out is a natural process that takes its own time. It’s a wonderful, positive experience, nothing to worry about.
James 76
I hope you don’t mind if I quote you here…
“R’s system infers that he himself is outside and beyond his students. The fof teaches that the school is separate from and somehow beyond ‘life’.”
IMO: this is a “symptom” of his psychopathy… others refer to him as a sociopath… I hate to throw jargon around but it seems an apt description.
“Not only other groups, or all by oneself, but there are a number of substances a person can ingest if he simply wishes to experience altered states.”
Could be G’s way of the “sly man” or might otherwise be considered way of the shaman…
Tim 77
that’s a good one…
To real friends – you know who you are – champagne!
and to sham friends…
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=82G6UxbLH0Q
‘ton – No, I do not mind anyone using anything I write. I often feel I have little to add to this site.
How does one go about contacting the GF? I would very much like to be able to just say hello, and check on the well being of some of those people with whom I made friends so long ago at the ‘ranch’ and in some of the teaching houses.
My email is j.mc@earthlink.net
James– I just sent you an invitation.
James, will contact you via your email address.
Thanks (again) Xena, I’m a bit of a luddite when it comes to this… tried to send an invitation and got tangled up in technology.
But I can still do the utube…
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg7BEHIo-g4
Hello Charles, good to see you here too! It’s been a while since we last spoke, I believe at a dinner maybe two years ago. I am also happy to see you are doing well!!
Let me say something about my own perception of the fourth way, because one of the possibilities for this blog, as I understand it, is to revalue the knowledge and practises we have done during the time in the Fof and what could be the implications in ones work once we are no longer connected to its limited approach.
About three years ago I began reading Non dual teachers, Ramesh Balsekar, Nisargadata, Wayne Liquorman, Eckart Tolle, Gangaji among others. During one of the readings I had an experience that seemed like a crack in my mind, as if something had being diluted . I stayed in that uncomon state for about two weeks to the point that I was physically exhausted. In any case, the point I am trying to make is that I did live a kind of awakening, as I was reading, but it simply “happened” to me. As you know very well, in the fourth way we were taught that higher states comes only as a result from our efforts…efforts. So I realized that some teachers (better say some “Ways”) give us pointers that indicate the need for certain “doing” regarding our inner world, while others seems to perceive our evolution as something we cannot either make go faster or slow by our own actions.
The FoF (sequence) focus our attention on a certain illusion, the illusion that we can decide to awake, and at the same time we also created an attitude that few, very few will ever awake. I think this is part of the agony of a student in the FoF. While we are surrounded by beauty, higher impressions, the atmosphere of higher beings around us all the time, we are also living in a very dry and negative aproach of ones possibilities: “Just do whatever you can in this lifetime, someday you will wake up”. After you create that attitude in students you can do almost anything with them: manipulate, play with fear, elevate their spirit when it is convenient and throw them ashtray when they disagree with you.
I am not sure my thoughts are clear since it is obvious that english in not my native language. Therefore I will stop here…but will try to develop it more shortly.
Thomas
Hello Duncan, Here is the letter I sent Robert asking for help for Dorothy. I hope it clarifies your mind and if not, maybe you can tell me what authority was I trying to gain in the Fellowship when I decided to adopt Dorothy.
Isis
15th of June, 2006
Dear Robert,
Since I have received no answer to my letter that I considered somewhat urgent I am afraid I may not have been clear enough and left you with many doubts on wether you would consider it worth while for you and the Fellowship to become somewhat more involved in this octave. I am therefor wishing to present you with the complete story which is unfortunately not short nor easy but very real. It may be that it is a worthwhile story for any medical record. I have actually been wishing to tell you this story since the beginning for it much horrified me but I wanted to get some serious results before I could tell you that Dorothy is worth all our effort. Please forgive me that I cannot make it shorter than it is.
Dorothy and I met about five years ago when I volunteered to look after her six hours a week in the afternoons. She was fairly “normal” at the time and very sweet, I would take her for a sandwich at Apollo D’oro and drive her around the property and she would do little dance steps for me when she felt very happy. I noticed that her fingernails were not very clean and began cleaning them in water and with my own hands because she became terrified if I tried to use any tool. Years later, when I was back at what was then Apollo I again volunteered to look after her and found her living in a place where she had not been given a bath for a year, smelt badly, her nails were long and black in dirt and she ate about five loafs of bread a week with a few other things. She seemed extremely sad and angry, walked around with a bag and a doll that she would never let go of, sit on a chair all day and say she was hungry. The generalized attitude amongst the people looking after her was that she was “a shell,” alive, but with nothing worth the trouble inside of her. Someone that would shortly be disposed of in an old people’s home because it had become impossible to look after her. While I was still looking after her she had her first seizure, an attack in which she rolled her eyes back, fainted, went cold and white for a minute and then recovered. I asked Janet if she would let me bring Dorothy to my home because I did not think the people where she was liked her but she told me there was a one year commitment with them and that she could not just brake it. I told her it was too much suffering for me to see her in that state, that I would not continue volunteering to look after her. Three months later she called me and asked me if I would take Dorothy and I said yes and we agreed she would bring her the next Monday which was the end of the month but she called me on Friday and asked me if I could receive her that same day. When I asked why, she told me Dorothy was being drugged and that she didn’t think that was necessary. She brought her to my house unable to walk and totally drugged and told me to call her when she died.
I did indeed receive a crazy woman. For the first five days she asked something of me every five minutes, was totally frantic and got me up many times during the night. After five days I was so tired I realized I wasn’t strong enough to keep her much longer in that state but still believing there was someone worth my time inside of her I shook her, screamed at her, told her I could not take care of her like that, and that she had to help me or she would go to an old people’s home. She screamed back at me and we fought like dogs but after that she started helping and I knew that there was someone in there that still understood under enough pressure. It took me six weeks to stabilize her and get her back to a situation one could call “normal”. That is, a person that could have breakfast, lunch and dinner and sit around calmly, go food shopping with me on a wheel chair, enjoy ice cream more than anything else, sleep the night with only one or two interruptions and constantly express her gratitude in the deepest and most touching words. Although it took her a year to actually smile, she began saying the deepest words I’ve ever heard shortly after our “dog fight.” “Thank you, you understand things” was the one sentence that amazed me the most for I knew she also understood things. The only “therapy” I used besides feeding her good food, keeping her clean, taking her out a little and a lot of rest was to caress her hair and face for twenty minutes in the morning and in the evenings.
Indeed it was not easy and we continued to fight over many little things to get her into a “decent” routine. It took me five months to get her to allow me to cut all her fingernails and clean them, working on one or two every other day. I gave her a bath as soon as she was strong enough to walk, fighting and screaming but clean and she was thoroughly grateful after, and our lives became a pushing and a gratitude: Pushed to have a bath every week and be washed everyday; Pushed to get out of the house and into a car and a wheel chair; Pushed to go to bed at night from the chair because at the same time she did not really understand the difference or the need for it. She started getting better and better.
When I had to leave with Girard six weeks after she arrived Dorothy was stable but the work of keeping her routines right, food love and care had to be continued and I never imagined what would happen.
We were away for three or four weeks and when I came back I found Dorothy totally drugged with the worst drugs for crazy people, held to the bed with furniture around her, hardly eating, taking drugs to poo because the drugs totally constipated her and people expecting her death. I had left her with a lady that had been taking care of her in the other place for many months, seemed caring and understanding enough although I had some fears but no one else was available. Indeed this lady left Dorothy with her sixteen year old daughter most of the time, Dorothy was highly neglected, started acting crazy and pooing on herself which the young lady couldn’t deal with so they called in the people from the hospice and they drugged her as much as they could. As soon as I arrived I took her off all the drugs and Susan Willoughby and I sat next to her bed for three days thinking that indeed she would die. I fed her water and royal honey I had brought from Colombia (for you), every fifteen minutes and she would not take anything else. Three days later she started eating again. Much weaker and with more damage in her head our work began all over again. It took about four months to put her back into shape but I was thoroughly exhausted and we asked for your help with another student. Perhaps the greatest difficulty I’ve come across working with most of the students is that they come and see Dorothy as a fairly normal person and think it is all so simple but the truth is that what is “normal” in Dorothy is that when we are on our own her routines are worked out in an almost mathematical schedule and as long as I can keep a reasonable stability, everything runs along smoothly. When these are disturbed by people who think that it’s alright to let her sleep longer or eat later or let her rest on a chair for ever without feeding her any other impression, then it becomes very difficult. This is how I’ve come across a great amount of friction trying to ‘train’ people who don’t really understand that although she looks normal, we still have a very unstable person inside, we still cannot guide ourselves from what she herself wants or doesn’t want and have to keep insisting on what is better for her. This is how I’ve come across wonderful people who with all their best intentions ended up feeding her yogurt and apple sauce because they themselves ate hardly anything but starch and Dorothy began having seizures again from physical malnutrition, people who become negative because I taught them to sit her down but then let her sit down on her own, hurt her back and lie in bed for three weeks creating the most difficult situation for us both because I am not physically strong enough to carry her and move her on the bed and a few people like Elizabeth L. who after working as a nurse for over twenty years can thoroughly look into the octave and see what is the value of it or like Agnes L. who is a trained therapist and started challenging Dorothy to read and have conversations and has managed great improvements with her. Last night a lady from life came to look after her for the first time, she asked her how old she was and she started counting on her fingers then said she couldn’t remember, the lady asked her if those were her dogs and she said yes, then she asked her what her names were and she said she did not know (she still doesn’t know my name) and they continued to talk like this for over twenty minutes. It may sound insignificant but it has taken a year and a half of minutious work to get Dorothy to a point where she can have such an easy and real contact with anyone just walking in. It has not been easy. There has been a lot of caressing and a few serious ‘dog fights’ and an always excessive amount of ‘pushing’.
Hopefully this will be enough for you to realize that there is indeed a sick person inside Dorothy but one who has been fighting her illness back with all her strength. I do not wish to see this go into the garbage and this is why I have asked you to support us with another person for I am unable to continue the octave as it is. While I wanted to keep you from my own sufferings and hope you would take my word for it that I need some help with this octave, I can also understand you need a clearer vision of the situation to be able to asses it. I am afraid I am not physically strong enough to continue looking after Dorothy 123 hours a week and be helped with only forty five of them. If I can look after her only eighty three a week and have two other people doing the other eighty five I think I can manage. It is from one angle surprising that I have managed this long but presently I am yawning all day and in pain most of the time and have no energy to do anything else. I have two deformed vertebrae thanks to which I crawled for a year and a half five years ago, unable to get up from the floor. The doctor told me to bear with the pain for the surgery was horrendous and would leave six of my vertebrae fixed. My back feels like a broken broom. When Dorothy was in bed for three weeks, three weeks ago, my back got so bad that I felt I was going to start crawling again. One day I told Girard I could not carry her the next day to sit up and eat or go to the bathroom and that night she started to walk again. While it is a fact that I am always in some pain I tend to recover overnight and if I look after myself the pain is not so intense but I have not been able to recover so quickly this time and am often in pain before I get up and taking pills to bear it. I am also not being able to heal overnight and have the fear that if I keep pushing I don’t know for how long I will start being unable to get up from the floor.
Also, from hurting myself twenty years ago, I still see double and get very bad headaches if I work consistently writing or reading or having to focus my eyes. I am usually looking down because I can only focus in certain position.
I have been trying to manage the octave in such a way that I still don’t have to ask for help, having people stay with us and sharing the house and car, but some of the caretakers have become often more of a headache than Dorothy and I realize I need a real solution.
I am presently receiving close to two thousand dollars from the In Home Support Services (I thought this was her insurance) for nine hours of work a day. They recently raised it from five dollars to seven dollars an hour. I have a person on salary from eight to five when I can find one and pay seven dollars an hour some evenings and weekends to alleviate the work for myself. At this point the problem is that if I payed someone else the other shift so that I could get some serious rest and did only the nights from ten to eight in the morning, there would be only four hundred and sixteen dollars left for me. And I would still be training people, managing the octave, checking much more seriously on what Dorothy eats and on the caretakers keeping her routines which is a whole octave of its own and I cannot at this point push myself to do this for four hundred dollars a month. If you were to help me pay the fellowship the six hundred dollars I am offering I would have fourteen hundred dollars left for myself, that is I would be getting payed one dollar and sixty six cents an hour, for the eighty four hours I will be working. Ten hours at nights from ten to eight and fourteen more once a week and while it is true that Dorothy is finally sleeping most of the night I still have to keep a baby monitor and check on her fairly often like when she runs into some strange misunderstanding of what she’s suppose to be doing and takes her diapers off to pee on the bed.
Even if you did not find it possible to help me I would try to continue with the octave for I cannot really see myself letting her go anywhere where most people will simply drug her to keep her calm for a few months and induce a quicker death. While I pray that she dies soon for we are, no matter what, not having much fun, I will do my best to keep her in the best possible conditions until she is really ready to do so and hopefully a quick and fast illness or weakness overtakes her. In the meantime she is to me a perfect being, worth every effort anyone is willing to make. I guess having a place called “On Caressing and Healing” is a dream that I have, for even the healthiest amongst us are ill and the most sick are worth curing.
Finally for July and August while I travel with Girard, I have finally been able to come to some agreements with people and cover the octave. We will be paying a total of 2,847 dollars in different ways including offering a room and a car and four vouchers.
E. who is absolutely essential to guarantee Dorothy’s well being for she has the depth that is needed could not do it for less than the salary, three hundred dollars more and four vouchers and will work from eight to five. Ig C. who is learning some depth after great friction but brings her flowers and immense joy is working 29 hours a week for 807 dollars. Sandra, a lady from life will only be working Wednesdays so that people can go to the meetings. (It is the first time I have someone from life, it was never easy for me to go to the meetings) and will get payed 140 a month. Paulina from Chile will also be working covering the nights and twenty four hours during the days for four hundred dollars, a room and a car, roughly a total of seven hundred dollars.
It was the best solution I could find until we come back but I hope you will still consider helping me with another person when I do come back.
Probably only Girard and I and for some time Susan Willoughby have seen the intricacies of this octave, like not being able to have her doctor come and see her and have to fight to get an antibiotic for a bad cold that she got because the attitude was that she was not to be treated in any way and to be left to die if anything went wrong with her. But no one dies in my house over a mild illness. Or to ask for a small moving toilet when she hurt herself and have to wait two weeks to get it because no one realizes the amazing pain I have to go through to change her in bed. Since she came here, of the six people that were volunteering to look after her for nothing in the other place not one ever showed up, and some consistently told me Dorothy should go to the old people’s home. Only Elizabeth L. cleared my mind about an issue I knew was not right. A few weeks ago, she said, “Dorothy is not a person for an old people’s home.”
May you continue to be well.
Sincerely yours,
“Through his allegiance to the Master, the aspirant realizes that all problems of life are aspects of one problem, so that he arrives at integration, which is different from mere compromise”
Meher Baba
108
JosephG
“The prevalent neglect of FOF children over many years appears to produce many negative side effects: from low self esteem to chronic depression to suicidal acts…and even possibly to bullyism for all we know.”
And what about the children who join the Fellowship of Friends in hopes of finally becoming worthy and of some value in their parents’ eyes?
======================================================
120
Elena
“Surely the whole lot of you on this blog agree with you Duncan since you elegantly avoid his attack on me but are quick in defending each other for much more minor things.”
Dear Elena, Duncan no longer has the consideration of most here because he continued to show a critical lack of thoughtfulness in his recent posts. I think most feel enough has been wasted in attempts to communicate with him at this time and hope that he’ll recover himself. I don’t believe that reflects on you in any way, friend, (except that you answered him!!!). . . . . .
======================================================
122
Thomas
It seems that the history of the Fellowship of Friends is being written through this blog, and that’s why I continue with it. Authenticity and historical perspective is founded in the “digested” personal stories told here as well as the collective agreement of the FOFs true nature. For those who find it worthwhile to have the true story told, it doesn’t necessarily mean the effort consumes excessive time and energy or keeps anyone from also moving on. In fact, participation can serve as a catalyst for the process of moving on in a responsible and thorough way.
129 Elena
Didn’t you realize that RB would never have used his time reading and digesting such a long letter? It’s just not in his self interest. The only time he would listen to a long dissertation on something is if he suspected that that is what it would take to get fucked at the end of his “listening”, and then again, it would have had to be from a “boy”. He certainly wouldn’t put that time into a woman- unless she just received an inheritance, and he thought he would be able to “drain” it, like he did with William M____s’s many years ago.
Don’t you think you should have known, by that time, that if it doesn’t directly effect RB’s self interest, it doesn’t fucking matter to him, or his flying monkeys.
“I would be getting payed one dollar and sixty six cents an hour…” Elena
_______________________________________________
While students of the Fellowship of Friends were cult-ily coerced into donations totaling $30,000 dollars to replace stolen jewelry via Robert Burton’s suit case rifling via a recent trip back from Mexico…
Now that’s ‘true love’! WTF?
Whew! What a Pink Cracker!
The perfect metaphorical symbol of a new student’s essence being introduced to Robert Burton’s ‘conscious’ aims…
____________________________________________
130 Across the River
I agree that for some people the process may include expressing, talking and reliving it all till the digestion fully takes place.
I did not try to criticize those who feel they have to do that. I was trying to say that for me it is more a question of seeing the gaps in the work there (some will say there was never any work at all, therefore it is like starting from scratch), which is after all the reason I joined an organization I supposed was a school. Where my work will take me next, that is my question.
Bruce, I might sound as if I knew everything I’ve written from the beginning but I didn’t. I didn’t have friends in the Fellowship of Friends. I deeply believed in Robert until Dorothy’s situation cracked it up. I never looked at it with discriminating I’s until it started to become clearer and clearer that the boys around him were just using him as much as he was using them. I lived with Girard and the other eleven years I was mostly away from Isis. There is no excuse to my stupidity but I was as indoctrinated as anybody else or more. I actually believed in the Fellowship, consciousness, struggle….. but at the same time it made no sense and I felt under so much pressure between Girard and Dorothy. Maybe I should have known but I didn’t. If it had even occured to me, it would not have shocked me so badly.
UNO-OMG. I was going to take a break from work tonite and check the blog and there is the baby video. You are diabolical for posting that…and I -like- snakes.
135 Elena
I apologize if I sounded a bit harsh. We’ve all been there. We all lived with what we each thought RB was, in order to not see what he really was.
Pensate un attimo:
today’s daily card:
When one is present, everything else is only what
it is – not the present.
Love, Robert
I thought that presence was everything and that nothing exists except the present…but now we have something that ‘..is not the present..’
___________________
This is exactly it, Pensate un attimo, this “daily card” clearly shows how flawed and distorted Robert’s view is. He got carried away with his duality obsession – us versus them, school versus life, higher self versus lower self, present moment versus…what?
Is there anything here that is… NOT the present?
KA ~
As a child I was obsessed with drawing cobras (?)
Don’t worry, you’ll get over the initial ’shock’, though hopefully the resuscitated heartbeat will remain.
: >)
Elena, Thank you so much for caring for Dorothy. She was a dear woman. She worked very hard and lived very frugally so she could be in the Fellowship. I took many ballet classes from her at the town hall and in Oroville. Very few people take on what you did unless it’s for a close family member (and often not even then). You have a big heart.
Elena,
There was only sincerity and love in that letter.
Friday , October 26, 2007
Now that we have received
the sequence,
we can understand
why we have had Influence C
in our lives all along.
Love, Robert
http://www.apolloauction.org/files/Visit-Isis-8.jpg
EVENTS WITH ROBERT AT YOUR HOME
Prepared and served by the Galleria Staff
Invite your closest friends to share one of four special events at your home with the Teacher. The elegant intentionality of these events is sure to set the standard of presence in your home for years to come. You will receive a CD-Rom containing photos of the event, in the addition to other offerings that recognize you for your generous support. You are bidding on a single event. You may choose to share the expense with your guests. The number of guests (both seated and standing) will depend upon the size of the designated space within your home.
http://www.apolloauction.org/files/HRHM1.jpg
Breakfast
Prepared and served by the Galleria Staff
$3,000.00
High Tea
Prepared and served by the Galleria Staff
$3,000.00
Teaching Soiree
Prepared and served by the Galleria Staff
$3,500.00
Reception
Prepared and served by the Galleria Staff
$2,500.00
Contact: Auction Fulfillment at: auction@b…..p…..t.org or by calling at 6..-8216
Scheduling: Autumn 2007. Depending on the Teacher’s availability.
Robert Earl Burton
http://beingpresent.org/index.php?act=img&id=64
Robert Earl Burton is a spiritual teacher and founder of the Fellowship of Friends. As a young man, Robert studied intensively the teachings of the Fourth Way, as presented to the West by George Gurdjieff and Peter Ouspensky. He focused on the practical side of this teaching, and quickly grasped that self-remembering was the basis of the system. His book Self-Remembering, published in 1991, provides a collection of personal insights into the practical nature of this spiritual work and its application in daily life.
The course of Robert Burton’s life as a spiritual teacher is indistinguishable from the growth and development of the Fellowship of Friends. Robert has worked single-mindedly to create an environment of inspiration at Isis that is conducive to awakening, and at the same time he has labored to extend his spiritual teachings to interested people around the world. Through the efforts of Robert and his followers, the Fellowship has opened and continues to maintain centers in dozens of cities on every continent. The Fellowship became, and remains to this day, international.
Throughout the years, Robert’s spiritual teaching has never strayed from focusing on the practical moment-by-moment efforts necessary to awaken from sleep. He has taught the same message at all Fellowship gatherings, and has striven to be personally accessible to each member of the Fellowship. He has tirelessly sought new inspiration, introducing fresher approaches to each member’s internal efforts, and always providing loving guidance and support.
Robert has come to understand the esoteric nature of all spiritual teachings throughout recorded time. He has concluded that all religious traditions are the same and that the basis of all great spiritual work is the same–to escape from imagination and the lower self and to awaken and recognize one’s Higher Self. Today the Fellowship focuses on these basic spiritual ideas common to all esoteric traditions.
The Work of Our Spiritual Teacher
The principal work of our spiritual teacher is to initiate and prolong Divine Presence in the lives of Fellowship members. He does this in many ways: by conveying special knowledge; by offering exercises, personal tasks, and opportunities to work; and by simply being and allowing us to be. All such efforts spring from his own Divine Presence, and his desire to convey this reality to us.
How does he work in the moment? At one level, he may use an inspired reference to something close at hand as a way of bringing a person out of an inattentive state and more deeply into the present. At another level, he may use all methods and instructions as a way to sustain presence once it has been achieved.
After a period of sincere effort, a member comes to understand that awakening is neither the practice of one exercise nor the overcoming of one obstacle alone. It is a way of life. Awakening has become the way of life of our Teacher, and he invites us to join him in this life.
Our Teacher provides direct instruction. Direct instruction means both using words and communicating without words. It would seem that the use of words is more direct, less subtle and easier to follow. Yet all forms of instruction and learning require effort, and each person must learn to learn. Learning to learn means recognizing and acting upon the obvious, as well as acknowledging subtle, wordless indications that lead to presence. Each person must value his or her time with the Teacher, be it several days or only a few minutes, to garner what he or she can and make further use of it. In addition, a person must recognize opportunities for effort without expecting the Teacher to request them.
Awakening is a personal experience, and our Teacher can provide each member with lessons that are subtle and direct, and unrecognized by others. A simple indication or request, if followed, can open the door to new worlds and possibilities. The Teacher is motivated to work with and for his students because, though he is more advanced, he understands that a sincere person trying to awaken possesses the same potential that he does and will at some time attain what he has attained.
Members have the opportunity to verify that the Teacher is more knowledgeable and experienced in awakening than they are, and that he is even more interested in their spiritual growth than they are. It is on this basis alone–on the verification that one does not know as much as one’s spiritual teacher with regard to awakening–that a right relationship can develop.
Great sincerity is required to accept that although we originally formulated the aim to awaken, our own desire is insufficient. And yet we are never closer to the truth than when we remember this.
Developing a personal relationship to the Teacher does not depend upon proximity to him. His influence permeates through all aspects and dimensions of the organization he created, and the moment a person connects to this organization through any channel, he or she will experience the Teacher’s loving influence directly.
#144 Bares reposting:
Thank you for posting the most amazing collection of lies!
I wonder how the most sincere students are rationalizing all this gold bull crap.
Last night I dreamed of a student who passed away: Agnes, the older lady who seemed always so positive…
I think of other students who passed away into the lie of their life called fof…this is truly a sad situation.
———————————————————–
#129 Elena,
about your letter to RB, I think you were a bit naive in going into so many details with him, his attention span is not long as he pretends to have, he needs the sequence after all like an elementary school kid to prolong what is always here…, anyway it is not too late for us to see such letter and realize in what kind of state was Dorothy, the quality of her care in your absence, and with you. You went trough hell lady! You gave Dorothy the most difficult and beautiful gift of compassion and dignity, this is priceless and I do believe in some kind of karma, you have done a great thing. Thank you so much.
#144:
Sounds like a Madison Ave sales pitch. Sincere spiritual teachers like Thich Naht Hahn, Eckhart Tolle, the Dali Lama, etc. don’t try and recruit members with this type of sales pitch.
#142 Bare Reposting:
I am not done:
is that a picture of the Mouth Of Truth (RB’s mouth perhaps) by a fence in front of a squalid vineyard? How gold!
Elena,
you are very sensitive to the suffering of others. You volunteer to go a long way to take care of the needy ones – you adopted dogs from the shelter, you married a half-paralyzed man, and you took a lady with Parkinson disease – all at the same time! I think even one of those would be more than enough to handle, but you take more and more weight on your shoulders!
Imagine one giving birth to the twins, getting a new job which requires a lot of travelling, starting a business, and opening the home for the elders all in the same time. How is it possible to achieve?
I think you are a sweet and sensitive person, but you are just not realistic. You probably suffered a lot in your life, and now you can’t be indifferent to the suffering of others.
I just wish you loved yourself and first helped yourself before you do your heroic deeds… One person is incapable to help every one in the world.
147 ~
Nope, that’s an artist rendition of the ‘original’ Bacchic/Zeus-ish giant marble medallion (4′ x 4′) situated in the ‘palm’ garden (ahem). And it’s pasted up there on a stage ‘erection’ scaffolding. Since Robert Burton has yet to learn the fine succubus art of sucking the bone marrow from the dead’s bones, he has to ‘bend’ and have artist’s paint replicas of what he already has, how original!
Famous Robert’s “chrystallization”, described by the author himself:
http://img510.imageshack.us/my.php?image=crystal446yh6.jpg
What’s with the face expression, Bob?
“Developing a personal relationship to the Teacher does not depend upon proximity to him.”
-How about we ask some of his boys AND their wives about it. The teacher develops close “personal” relationships only with those who are of selfish interest to him – people with money or with young attractive male bodies. Oh yes, also with “inner circle” devotees who execute his orders.
Let’s see if a simple salary student, let’s say an an older female from another country can have a close personal relationship with the teacher. What, this never happens? What a surprise.
His influence permeates through all aspects and dimensions of the organization he created,
-No kidding! He is a total control freak. It’s his way or the hi-way.
and the moment a person connects to this organization through any channel,
– meaning: through one’s bank account/teaching payment check. How else can you “connect”, through which other channel? Oh yes, through anal sex in case you’re a young male…
he or she will experience the Teacher’s loving influence directly.
-Remember, I love you now and forever. (As long as you keep paying me, dear. Remember: No money – no loveee…)
143 Bares Reposting
OMG, what is Robert Earl Burton wearing in that photo?!? A buttercup-yellow suit and matching tie? It may have been said before, but it “bares reposting” — he’s not on Leonardo’s ladder, he’s on Liberace’s.
Does he go out in “life” dressed like that?
143 Bares Reposting
Oh, and if you do shell out 3 grand for “Breakfast with the Teacher™” — better hope he doesn’t remember that he’s left his cufflinks somewhere else.
143 Bares Reposting
“The elegant intentionality of these events is sure to set the standard of presence in your home for years to come.”
If this was an intentional parody of a money grabbing pseudo spiritual teacher it could not be better expressed. It sounds like a spiel from one of those cheesy TV channels where they sell crappy furniture and jewelry to people who are easily conned.
Thank you KA, Thomas, Across the river, Bruce, Draco, Vera, Xena and somebody. Thank you very much. It is good to hear this things sometimes.
Duncan, please forgive me for my explosion and harsh words to you, I felt terribly insulted but it is not really my wish to shun you out of the blog. Please continue to share with us your thoughtful angles. You are as valuable here as anyone else.
128 Thomas.
What you say is clear and true. Several of us have had similar experiences and realisations.
regards, Charles
A Slight Historical-Fact Modification Catharsis Pendulum
___________________________________________
Robert Earl Burton is a sexual predator and floundered the Fellowship of Friends and enemies. As a young man, Robert studied intensively the pre-school children he taught, particularly those who closest resembled the nude young boy painting now for years is situated on the Fellowship of Friends Galleria wall, as presented to the West by his sex slave and Russian artist in resident. He focused on the practical side of zipping down zippers, and quickly grasped that self – ‘members’ were the basis of his narcissism system; he’s currently still working on zipping up zippers, particularly his own.
His book Self-Remembering, published in 1991, provides a collection of personal coercive platitudes into the practical nature of how to quote oneself re assuredly alone (while practicing how to smile) so to get someone who has allot of money, time, naive spiritual enthusiasm and (if he’s really lucky) a large ‘member donation’ into his sexual predation work and its application in more sexual predation work.
The course of Robert Burton’s strife as a spiritual teacher is indistinguishable from the growth and development of the fungus that paleontologists now believe rocked the world of the woolly mammoths, causing them to charge head long into thinly iced over, bottomless mud pits.
Robert has worked single-simplemindedly to create an environment of desperation at Isis that is conducive to giving him more and the giver less, and at the same time he has labored to extend his penis, hand/wrist and tongue to interested people around the world. Through the efforts of Robert and his cult followers, the Fellowship of Friends has opened and continues to maintain his sexual predation in dozens of cities on every continent. The Fellowship of Friends became, and remains to this day, hell’s rendition of The International House of Pancakes.
Throughout the law suits, coercive rapes, excommunication of those who “Just said No to Hugs”, Robert Burton’s sexual predation has never strayed from focusing on the practical sex-by-coercive fear-efforts necessary to awaken from sleep and roll over to the next one sleeping in his bed (it’s a big bed folks).
He has teased the same psychic massage at all Fellowship of Friends grumblings, and has striven to be personally re-accessible to each member and ‘member’ (ahem) of the Fellowship of Friends, if, they pay to see him alongside 43 others who have also paid to hear the same thing the other 44 the night prior heard, but slightly different due to the logical progression in the pronunciation of the proceeding different day’s names spelling; hence, Tuesday is pronounced differently than Monday, so, ‘logically’ the literary script is simply not the same; we at the Fellowship of Friends appreciate that all seven days are spelled differently, this gives our Second Coming of Christ a great opportunity to diversify himself and to repeat daily the spiritual ‘double-dribble’ we’ve all come to love to just let him get away with on the big galactic basketball court of the universe.
He has tirelessly sought new perspiration, introducing fresher sexual predation candidates to each member’s external orifices, and always providing ‘rape-like’ guidance and support.
Robert Burton has come to underestimate the esoteric nature of all spiritual teachings throughout recorded time and before recorded time (it takes a special person to finely hone prehistoric history into a pencil eraser). Therefore, like a bright eyed high school student tapping the pencils end on his forehead during an exam he simply forgot was ‘today’, he has concluded that all religious sexual predations are the same and that the basis of all great sexual predation work is the same–to escape down his secret trap-door in his bedroom in case a furious, conscience intact, non-member-man-parent, father (or mother) to one of his sexual predation ‘meals’ aftermath were to get past his guard house and make it into his ‘lair’ looking for a bit of old fashioned ‘Medieval Tweezer Fun’ for his imagination and lower self and to awaken and recognize his Rapist Self.
Today the Fellowship of Friends focuses on these basic spatial deals common to all acidic traditions.
The Work of Our Spitting Preacher
The principal work of our spitting preacher is to initiate and prolong his and his sexual predation partners and victims penises with Viagra, Anti-depressants and high definition pornography in the lives of Fellowship of Friends members. He does this in many ways: by conveying all sorts of coercive ‘goodies’ attributable to all sexual predators in positions of power, where another’s (the victims) personal welfare and family’s safety has found itself in bondage within such clutches; by offering money and expensive ‘high-end’ clothes, travel, jewelry and political power for sex, personal one-on-one rape sessions, and opportunities to work in harvesting new, fresh victims for his predation by becoming ‘traveling teachers’ and simply going home to visit the family for awhile; and by simply lying and allowing us to become liars too. All such efforts spring from his own pants, and his desire to convey this reality to us.
How does he tweak in the moment? At one level, he may use an anti-depressant, sit on a pillow placed on an already plush seat during meetings, reference some distant dead person’s quote that’s been ‘trimmed and shaved’ to something closer at hand, as a way of bringing a person out of an inattentive state of historical honesty and more deeply into the present state of media manipulation, conspiracies to defraud and all around hypnotic debauchery that pretty much any relatively healthy powerful sexual predator would say is redundantly and methodically customary to their class and rank.
At another level (underneath the bottom of the barrel), he may use all drug methods and pornographic instructions as a way to sustain erectile function once it has been achieved.
After a period of sincere rapes, a member comes to understand that awakening to Robert Burton is neither the practice of one exercise nor the overcoming of one obstacle alone, it’s all of the above, excluding god of course. It is a way of life. Awakening to Robert Burton has become the way of life of our spitting preacher, and he invites us to join him in this life (of course he doesn’t invite the ones already members of the Fellowship of Friends, since, after all, we’re already here and would have to drive back and forth from home twice.)
Our Creature provides direct reanimation of buried traumatic pains. Direct reanimation means both using his penis and someone else’s without words (of course that’s because he cannot actually pronounce anything with a penis in his mouth.) It would seem that the use of coercion is more direct rape, less subtle love and easier to follow through to another rape without any pausing for that pesky critter called ‘Conscience’.
Yet all forms of coercion and systematic hypnotism of ‘all the others not waking up to Robert Burton in the morning’ require effort to keep the puke down (regurds are true suffering at it’s finest acidic level), and each person must regurd to regurd. Learning to regurd means recognizing and acting upon the obvious position of the putrid glob somewhere between the Adam’s apple and the little floppy thingy that hangs down from the entrance of one’s esophagus, as well as acknowledging subtle, wordless bouts of confusion that lead to alcoholism, spousal abuse, elderly abuse, child abuse, poverty wages, sexually transmitted diseases, abortions, hysterectomies, suicides, unwanted children and adoptions, illegal immigration, tax fraud, moral turpitudes and all around other fun stuff.
Each person must value his or her money donations to the Creature, be it several young sons or only a few minutes of unexpected oral sex or coerced anal penetration, to garner what he or she can and make further use of it. In addition, a person must recognize opportunities for effort without expecting the Creature to request them, he does not like to ask for the same thing twice; remember ‘The Four Wordless Breaths’ refer to how long it should not take to answer the Creature’s demand for sexual predation-food.
Awakening to Robert Burton or any of his numerous sexual predation co-conspirators is a personal experience (indeed!), and our Creature can provide each ‘member’ with lesions (little blisters and red swelly smelly things) that are subtle and direct, and unrecognized by others, particularly in the dark.
A simple-minded indication or request, if followed, can open the trap-door to new worlds of pain and possibilities of sexually transmitted diseases, rape, trauma and spiritual entrapment. The Creature is motivated to work with and for his students because he’s a millionaire sexual predator for having done so well at it for 37 years, though he is more advanced, thanks to those in the Fellowship of Friends who simply can’t get enough of hell on earth, he understands that a sincere person trying to awaken to Robert Burton possesses the same potential that he does when he practices, once again, to smile in the mirror and will at some time attain what he has attained prior to what he had attained previous to where he attained it.
Members and orifices alike have the opportunity to verify that the Creature is more knowledgeable and experienced in sexual predation than they are, and that he is even more interested in their erectile tissue growth than they are (sorta). It is on this basis alone–on the verification that one does not know as much as one’s spitting preacher with regard to awakening to Robert Burton–that a right angled rape-relationship can develop into all sorts of traumatic heirlooms for the participant’s family, friends and of course ’self’.
Great sin is required to accept that although we originally formulated the aim to awaken, our own desire is sufficient, no need to go and satisfy it and graduate from any painful toil, we like pain. And yet we are never closer to the truth than when we remember that we forgot it and continue to do so.
Developing a personal relationship to the Creature does not depend upon proximity to him, don’t worry, we’ll find you one way or another. His influence permeates through all aspects and dimensions of the prostitutions he’s created, and the moment a person connects to this prostitution through any channel in Robert Burton’s mouth or anus, he or she will experience the Creature’s gloving influence directly.
Attention: Geezer Alert!
In reference to photo
http://img510.imageshack.us/my.php?image=crystal446yh6.jpg
Question:
“What’s with the face expression, Bob?”
Answer:
“That expression, Dear, is the expression one wears on one’s face upon hearing Rod McKuen’s first album the first time!”
Innernaut wrote:
“OMG, what is Robert Earl Burton wearing in that photo?!? A buttercup-yellow suit and matching tie? It may have been said before, but it “bares reposting” — he’s not on Leonardo’s ladder, he’s on Liberace’s.
Does he go out in “life” dressed like that?”
Actually, right after dinner, he was headed down to the the Sleep-well pavillion in Marysville, where he was playing bass for Prince. Hey, a gig’s a gig. It also explains the deafness.
152 Innernaut
Does he go out in “life” dressed like that?
———————–
I recently saw a photo of him wearing a bright orange jacket, a pink shirt, pink tie with burgundy orchids on it, topped off by a hat with two feathers on the side. The ensemble appeared to be silk and probably would have covered a month’s rent for at least a couple of salaried students.
I’d like to share this portion of a letter I was writing to a friend and open the posibility of a discussion in this direction which is not questioning the Fellowship so directly but still questioning the teaching and at least trying to explore where the richness of our individual experiences lie, which were not allowed to be expressed in the Fellowship. I also wish to apologize if I offended any one of you beside Duncan for the harshness with which I replied to him. I still need to have enough will to not answer immediately.
“You had another remark in your previous letter about not being willing to accept that we had wasted all of our time in the Fellowship. Of course we have not wasted any of our time in the Fellowship. Don’t worry about that. It will only become a waste if we cannot transform it. So much shit transformed must produce the most exquisite flowers! I think a lot of the value will start surfacing when we share how we each tried to work with the little serious guidance we got from Robert. There were some advantages to that lack of guidance because it gave us some inner freedom. The fact that he would not get involved with students was interpreted by me, with allowing students to find their own way instead of pinpointing the fact that he didn’t have the foggiest idea of how to help us. He was unable to move beyond self remembering or beyond himself to the practice of being a teacher or actually dealing with helping students develop themselves, because he himself was unable to go beyond his personal conditionings. Things like alchemy, which I at some point appreciated greatly in his teaching, became the precious tool of condemning students to a slavery to beauty a la Robert Burton. Many areas of life in the Fellowship actually turned against the possibility of students as free individuals, to expresss themselves and participate and we all started allowing for the deep indoctrination to override our souls.
Thank you for tapping in and sharing.
158 Kid Sheleen
“Rod McKuen’s first album ”
now that’s going too far. You’ll surely go to hell for that one. Isn’t that the one with the famous song:”You aught to see Oliver, go go Oliver, you aught to see Oliver twist”?
There has been the occasional mention of a trap door in the floor of RB’s bedroom.
Does anyone know what it leads to or why he feels it’s necessary?
Bruce,
Listen To The Warm. Need I say more?
http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Warm-Rod-McKuen/dp/B000000I7D/ref=sr_1_10/102-4932427-8585730?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1193420047&sr=1-10
Like many of us: Rare and Out-of-Print.
“I recently saw a photo of him wearing a bright orange jacket, a pink shirt, pink tie with burgundy orchids on it, topped off by a hat with two feathers on the side. The ensemble appeared to be silk and probably would have covered a month’s rent for at least a couple of salaried students.”
Please, please, please, please, pleeeease find this photo and post it.
I’ll examine why I feel the need to see it later.
163 WasKathleenW
I thought the trap door was the other end of RB’s anatomy. Where does it lead?…why, enlightenment of course.
165 Kid Shelleen
Please, please, please, please, pleeeease find this photo and post it.
————————–
Can’t, sorry. It’s an “event” photo, and RB happened to be in it along with several others. Even if I had access to it (which I don’t, it’s not mine), I wouldn’t post it without getting all those people’s permission, and I don’t know who they are. Been gone a long time.
From NY Times magazine 10/21/07
Speak No ‘Evil’
By DAPHNE MERKIN
Not long ago I saw “Terror’s Advocate,” Barbet Schroeder’s chilling, mesmerizing documentary about the French defense lawyer Jacques Vergès. The film made me ask myself, What makes Vergès evil? And what, more worrisomely, makes him possibly not evil? Can a man who might be a sociopath but who is not accountable for a specific “crime” be held liable? I was left in such existential discomfort that I saw it again the same week.
The cagey Vergès, now 82, has a long history of defending infamous public figures. He came to prominence by representing members of the insurgent group that spearheaded the Algerian uprising in the 1950s and ’60s (the woman he married faced the death sentence for terrorism), making use of a legal defense known as the “rupture strategy” in which he accused the prosecution of the same offenses as the defendants. Vergès is like a Zelig of the radical left; according to the documentary, he had a long friendship with Pol Pot and also met with Chairman Mao. His client list of killers and would-be killers included Carlos “the Jackal”; the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie; and Anis Naccache, a Lebanese-born agitator who claims to have received personal assassination orders from Khomeini. Vergès last made news when he offered to represent Sadaam Hussein.
Which brings us to a possibly more disquieting question: What does evil — a term that came into general use only in the 15th century, originally referring to the overstepping of proper limits — look like these days, when so many of us are wary of reductive terms, unsure of our own convictions and easily persuaded of the moral relativism of our values? (The Oxford English Dictionary notes that the word is “little used in modern colloquial English.”) Does it have a particular smell, like teen spirit? Does it come wearing a hood, as in the movies? Or, again, does it look like you and me, sitting over dinner and enjoying a glass of vintage Bordeaux?
For much of history, when an ironclad trust in a divine maker still prevailed (however many plagues or earthquakes he might have arranged), the question of “evil” was contained by one of two rationales: that people deserved it because of wicked behavior or that it was part of a larger, unknowable celestial plan. That attitude, gullible as it now seems, had the benefit of keeping this particular epistemological dilemma outside the human purview. It held steady until the emergence of a philosophical tradition that, beginning with Immanuel Kant’s questioning of God’s pivotal position and reaching an apogee of unbelief with the arrival of Nietzsche, put the concept of evil right in our laps. As Susan Neiman says in “Evil in Modern Thought,” from the Enlightenment on there have been two views: “The one, from Rousseau to Arendt, insists that morality demands that we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Jean Améry, insists that morality demands that we don’t.”
Hannah Arendt predicted that, post-Auschwitz, the problem of evil would be a primary focus of contemporary life. And it might have been, except for the fact that, in a destabilized and reflexively ironic age, we are always checking to make sure we haven’t overlooked a mitigating circumstance or an admirable principle gone wrong. Fearful as some of us are about exhibiting a too-primitive and “demonizing” attitude — the kind of macho Us-versus-Them, Axis-of-Evil line of thinking that has made Bush and Company figures of easy derision — we have become increasingly tentative about assigning this stark designation. (In “The Myth of Evil,” Phillip Cole says that his book “asks the question whether evil exists at all and one possible answer I take very seriously is that it does not.”) Few of us would be hesitant to use the word to describe the genocidal regimes, for example, of Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Milosevic. But for the most part, we post-Manichaean postmodernists are more like Neville Chamberlain hoping to win over Hitler with a bit of coaxing than like Winston Churchill, who committed his country to fighting him. Given our a tradition of broad civil tolerance, it makes uneasy sense that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the half-buffoonish, half-demonic leader of Iran, was invited to speak at an ivy-towered bastion of learning, where he gave voice to his hate-mongering views.
Today, the 19th-century critic John Ruskin’s observation that “the neglect of art . . . has been of evil consequence to the Christian world” sounds so overwrought to us — so filled with moral outrage — as to verge on the unintentionally hilarious. Like Maria Wyeth, the jaded narrator of Joan Didion’s permanently contemporary novel, “Play It as It Lays” (published in 1970), we are too weary — or leery — to parse out the whys and wherefores of even Shakespearean villains: “What makes Iago evil? some people ask,” goes the opening sentence. “I never ask.”
As I watched “Terror’s Advocate,” it struck me that Maria Wyeth’s cynical counsel is not easily dismissed. Is Jacques Vergès guided by idealistic beliefs about colonialist injustice? Or is he an opportunist who delights in upending any judicial system he comes across — a present-day incarnation of the monstrous? Barbet Schroeder has referred to Vergès as a “perverse and decadent aesthete,” and yet his decision not to take an overt position in the film is precisely what makes it so unnerving. That and the notion that evil often arrives with an insinuating charm all its own, so much so that sitting down to a glass of wine with the courtly Vergès might beguile you into overlooking the murky path that precedes him.
Dear all,
The Fellowship of Friends “come–on” (#23-144, or thereabouts) stimulates me to offer a list of questions that a prospective student should ask, in one form or another, before joining. I started this list because a friend who has been through the Fellowship experience joined another 4th Way group (started by an ex–FoF student!) and had some second thoughts, and asked for input. I’d say that any prospective student owes it to his or her self to not only get answers (and write them down, in detail), but to have someone less partial go over the answers with them. Ideally, some one who joined would also have a “buddy” to check in with after agreed periods of time to see if pre–stated aims and directions were being adhered to, and in general provide a ‘reality check’ and grounding. Ideally!
This list can surely be improved, so I put it out there as a group project…
Some Questions to ask before making a commitment
QUESTIONS TO THE TEACHER
Mechanics and set–up of group/school:
• How are payments structured?
• Is the group organized legally as a non–profit or church for IRS purposes?
• How transparent is the accounting?
• What power does any board hold?
• Do you serve at the pleasure of the board?
• Exactly what degree of independence does the board have?
• Please give examples of when the board effectively countered your decisions?
• Are board meetings open to students, or do students have access to minutes of meetings?
• If there is no board, what steps have you taken so students can hold you accountable for your actions, including financial decisions?
Relationship with teacher:
• How do you measure students’ abilities beforehand to undertake difficult work?
• What methods, in detail, do you use to prevent students entering a dependent role?
• How do you prevent infatuation?
• How do you deal with fear?
• How do you prevent ‘spiritual materialism’ developing in ‘your’ students?
• Do you feel invested in the success or failure of your students?
• What do you do with failures?
• What value do you place on the idea and practice of personal verification?
• Are your students required to give up their will to you, as their teacher? If so, is this permanent or for a set or limited period of time?
Sex energy:
• Are you married?
• Do you claim celibacy?
• Do you undertake to never have sexual relations with your students?
• Please give examples of tasks concerning sex energy.
• Describe how you presently channel/use sex energy, and will you describe your history in that regard?
Exercises:
• Do you give out generalized/group exercises?
• Are any exercises individualized?
• What are the criteria for making such exercise ‘individual’?
• Do you fully explain the purpose of the exercises beforehand?
• Do you have helpers, and if so, what are their qualifications, and are they permitted to set exercises themselves?
• Are there rules or codes of behavior that must be followed by school members? If so, what are they and how are ‘infractions’ handled?
• Is there any appeal from your decisions, and if so, how is this handled?
• Do you and your students work with the Fourth Way idea of Good Householder, and if so, what forms does this work take?
Dynamics of student body/school/group:
• Is there a limit to the number of students you are willing to work with?
• Is there a hierarchy?
• If so, what is its basis?
• What steps do you take or intend to take to prevent the needs of the organization overtaking the needs of the students with time?
• Are you prepared to dissolve the organization if this happen?
Measurement of progress:
• How do you test for the necessary ‘normalcy’ required of prospective 4th Way students?
• What do you do if mental illness manifests nevertheless?
• How do you describe the nature of the risks necessary to face before graduation?
• What criteria do you and the student use to measure progress?
• How do you empower students or teach them to take back/discover their own power?
• How do you define conscience?
• What is the use of conscience?
• What are your teachings regarding conscience?
• How do you separate conscience from subjective morality?
• At what point is there graduation?
• What happens to graduates?
On asking questions:
• Will there ever be any questions on any subject that are unsafe, unpalatable, or otherwise objectionable if asked in good faith?
• Will you take personal questions, that is, questions about your path, your conduct, your history?
• Do you make contracts with your students, specifying goals, payments, efforts, limits, and results, concerning the temporary giving up of will to the teacher apparently requested of 4th Way students, and what steps are taken to ensure that this is indeed temporary and results/goal driven?
• Do you in any way put pressure on students to limit their contacts with non-students, family?
• What are your policies regarding talking about the work, exercises, meetings, experiences with the teacher, with non-students?
• With ex–students?
Group work:
• Do you organize group projects?
• Do you join in them yourself?
• Do you join students in experiments whose outcome you do not know (take risks)?
• What is the primary objective/aim of your school?
• What are secondary objectives/aims of your school?
Your work:
• Do you believe the ends justifies the means? Regarding awakening?
• Do you have a sense of humor?
• Do you encourage a sense of humor in your students?
• Do you regard yourself as still being on a journey yourself, or do you regard yourself as in any way ‘completed’?
• Do you believe that you can learn from students or situations as they present themselves?
• Do you claim to be conscious or enlightened and, if so, do you classify yourself (per the Fourth Way tradition) as a man #4, 5, 6 or 8?
• Who are/were your teachers and what is their lineage in relation to the Fourth Way or other schools of awakening?
• Why did you decide to become a spiritual teacher?
• What are your personal goals/aims as a spiritual teacher?
Other sources, inspirations, teachings:
• Apart from your own book, do you use or recommend other 4th Way books?
• Those by Gurdjieff? Ouspensky? Bennett? Orage? Nicol? Others?
• How do you feel about other teachers, other teachings?
• Do you ‘mix and match’, and if so, what are your criteria?
• Do you require exclusivity? That is, can I also study/meet with other teachers/traditions?
• Do you make specific claims about your level of being?
• Do you claim powers?
• What levels of obedience do you require (tasks, suggestions, orders, etc.)?
• Does your school have a ‘task’ or aim beyond teaching paths to increased consciousness of students?
• Do you consider your school to be a ‘Fourth Way’ school?
Access to students or graduates:
• Are there students available who I can talk to, over a period of time, so I can judge their degree of dependence or infatuation or fear myself?
• Who can (voluntarily, of course) speak something of results gained, states attained, exercises and tasks they have undertaken, and results gained—or are they asked to withhold this kind of information? I’d also be looking for differences between ‘resident’ and ‘non-resident’ students, including, if possible, results.
• Do you have any objections to me asking the questions below of current students?
• What do you think of these questions?
• If you were asking questions of a teacher or students, what would they be?
Relationship to students who have left:
• What is your policy regarding the relationship between current and former students?
• If there are restrictions, what is your policy if those rules are broken?
QUESTIONS TO ASK OF CURRENT STUDENTS
• What methods, in detail, do you use to prevent becoming dependent on the teacher?
• How do you recognize and prevent infatuation?
• How do you recognize and deal with fear in the student–teacher relationship?
• What limits, if any, do you place on what the teacher asks you to do in order to awaken?
• Do you think that you have an operating conscience?
• Do you think that conscience can be developed?
• Do you believe the ends justifies the means? Regarding awakening?
• Are you willing to act on your conscience if it tells you that the teacher is wrong, or is setting you wrong tasks?
• Are you willing to leave the school if your conscience says you should or must?
• Do you think you will be in this school for the rest of your life?
• If not, how long is the most you will stay?
• How do you think you will recognize that you are ready to graduate?
• If you believe that you are ready to graduate, will you act on that, or wait for the recognition or permission of the teacher?
• What methods do you use to prevent becoming dependent on the group?
• Would you take a paid position with the group?
• If so, what precautions do you or would you put in place to prevent you becoming dependent on this position a) psychologically, and b) materially?
• Do you have a position of authority within the group? If so, please describe your role and its importance within the organization.
• If not, would you take a position of power/responsibility with the group?
• If so, what precautions do you or would you take to avoid becoming corrupted by the power?
• How long would you hold such a position?
• On what basis would you or do you hold or transmit authority within the group?
• Please describe the chain of authority between the teacher and you.
• How do you view the legitimacy of each person in authority of those ‘below’ the teacher and ‘above’ you?
• What do you think of these questions?
• If you were asking questions of your teacher or students, what would they be?
…a lot of questions to be sure, but you are putting your time, money, effort, body and even your life on the line, so why not try to make the right decision? You cannot have too much information in these circumstances.
From someone who’s Been There and Done That,
Ames
Kid Shelleen,
There are several pictures of Burton ‘in all his glory’ on the GF website…
Ames,
Oh, I’ve seen most of those, I just wanted to see if the image I conjured from WasKathleen’s description (Austrian pimp-daddy) fit the reality of the photo. It’s a slow Friday.
Can anyone send me the link to this Great Fellowship web site that a few have already mentioned on the blog? I have never seen it.
Thanks
171 Kid Shelleen
“Austrian pimp-daddy” — LOL!!!
169 Ames
“• What do you think of these questions?”
_______________________________________
There’s the rub. I suspect that many Fellowship members, and even former members, might feel that expecting to get answers to such questions is unreasonable and inappropriate in a “school.” I’d be tempted to say that this is the result of Fellowship programming cultivated by Burton for his personal self-interest–and it certainly is–but it’s also the result of the pseudomystical “esotericism” presented in Gurdjieff’s and Ouspensky’s books that Burton took advantage of and abused.
G. and O. lay down all sorts of supposed “laws” of “school work” that leave the impression that any sort of thinking for oneself is the result of delusional self-hypnotism, and blind obedience is the only way, all talk of verification notwithstanding. Reading through In Search of the Miraculous these days–which had a tremendous influence on me, and which I still consider very valuble–I’m struck by G.’s constant harping on “this is the way it must be,” and “people always think this, but in fact the opposite is always the case,” and his constant scoffing (according to O., anyway) at any suggestion that anyone ever had a good idea except for G. himself. I have no idea what working with G. was actually like (notwithstanding all the “life with Gurdjieff” memoirs), but O. (a brilliant but vain man) clearly couldn’t get enough of feeling as though he was special for having stumbled upon something that imposed all kinds of requirements that ran contrary to anything he might otherwise have considered rational. Burton saw this clearly and drove it home with a vengeance; many people in the Fellowship are/were attracted to it precisely because it has these trappings, including the idea that the member is incapable of having an intelligent thought that does not come from Burton or has been approved by him.
None of this suggests that G.’s methods didn’t work (or that they did), but there’s no particular reason to believe such rules are actually “laws,” other than it says so in a couple of books. There’s a section in In Search in which G. (supposedly) says that a person must accept everything the teacher says and does. If there’s any disagreement, the person should leave and look for another teacher, or try to work alone. Importantly, G./O. then says something like “Of course, this will be useless, but staying would be worse than useless.” Lines like this were custom made for a sociopath.
I’ve had personal experience with a group run by consensus among people who act like adults, under the guidance of a teacher who is greatly respected but not treated like a god. Getting answers to the questions Ames poses in that group would be treated as common sense. But in the Fellowship, it is highly threatening to the concept of “school” as somehow different from all other forms of organized work, primarily in its adherence to authoritarian malarky.
At a certain point everyone has to take a chance with their own understanding and their own being and strike out on their own to find a will to work that is not imposed from the outside. Those that fail to take this fateful step eventually fail to develop.
Thomas,
you’ll have to extend some trust, and tell us how to tell you! The GF site is by invitation only. Any current ‘member’ can send you an invitation, but you have to provide an e-mail address to send the invitation to. When you accept the invitation, the site will ask you to make up a password. You can always change your e-mail and other information after you’ve joined…
Let’s ‘fellow ship’ Uncle BoB
on to the Ark and send
him back to Arkansas
where he belongs!
http://www.thnews.com/article.php?id=3691
Community Relations Board
learns about sex offenders
in prison
Published: October 18, 2007
© Times-Herald of Forrest City, Arkansas
All rights reserved.
[Forrest City: Home to the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) - Medium security facility housing male offenders.]
David Nichol, T-H Staff Writer
Sex offender programs at federal prisons were among the topics at the Wednesday meeting of the Community Relations Board for the Federal Correctional Complex at Forrest City.
Dr. Alison Leukefeld, chief psychologist at the complex, said those actually convicted of violent sexual crimes are sent to higher security institutions than at Forrest City. However, she said many of those incarcerated have past charges or convictions of sexual crimes on their records, and may end up at the complex.
Janet Herman Peckham, case management coordinator, talked about civil commitment of inmates once they are released from prison. She said that was inspired by the Adam Walsh Act. Signed by President Bush in 2006, it is named for a child kidnapped and murdered about 26 years ago. The child’s father, John Walsh, is host of “America’s Most Wanted.”
“What started out really as an act to increase funding to target the registration for sexual offenders, has turned into a large act with a lot of different provisions in it,” said Peckham.
One of the act’s provisions is for civil commitment of an inmate determined to be a “sexually dangerous person.”
“Once the Adam Walsh Act became applicable, instead of just having notification procedures in place, and then releasing our inmates, we now have to look at them to see if they meet the standards for civil commitment. Basically, what we are told to do now, is look at their conduct and express whether they are deemed to be sexually dangerous to others prior to the Bureau of Prisons releasing them.”
She said case managers review records to decide if further investigation is needed. Conduct records while in prison are also taken into account. That information is sent to a review panel made up of clinical psychologists and others. That panel decides if further review is needed.
An inmate may be transferred to a sexual abuser treatment program. The assessment is continued. If an inmate is considered sexually dangerous, that inmate may be sent through the court system again, with another psychological evaluation. It will then be decided whether the the incarceration can continue as a civil commitment.
She said there have been two individuals locally who have been referred to a sex offender treatment program.
Peckham also said there are 329 inmates at the complex with some kind of sex offense in their backgrounds.
“They are not allowed to be in our camp facility,” she said. “They have to be behind a secure environment. They are not anyone who would be placed out in our camps, working on community service projects or anything like that.”
Leukefeld said that while the number of sex offenders may seem high, that it is in keeping with the general prison population across the country. She also said there are degrees of sexual offenders, from possession of child pornography up to actual molestation.
She said the vast majority of sexual offenders are male, better educated than the general prison population, began offending at a young age and have had more than one victim. They also come from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds.
She said management programs are being set up across the BOP to manage those who continue with inappropriate sexual activity while incarcerated.
“Maybe they are creating pornography while in prison. Maybe they are caught trying to contact or groom a potential victim outside of the prison,” said Leukefeld. “We want to manage that behavior closely.”
While management programs are mandatory, treatment programs are voluntary, she said. And there is no forced medication.
“There isn’t necessarily a cure for sexual offenders, but we can teach them skills so they don’t relapse into those kinds of behaviors,” Leukefeld said.
There are also non-residential treatment programs for inmates considered moderate or low-risk.
Re: Paul post # 174
Pretty much how I see it, too. “In Search…” now strikes me as a spiritual adventure/fairy tale. Quite the page turner for the young and impressionable magneto center.
169 Ames Gilbert
Ames,
You are a killer! Thank you!
I wish I would have had a half of such a relevant questions in my head before I’ve joined.
That certainly would save me years of costly hassles.
129, 117 and 181 are newly moderated.
Fun for all.
165 ~ Kathleen ~
You said/asked ~
There has been the occasional mention of a trap door in the floor of Robert Burton’s bedroom.
Does anyone know what it leads to or why he feels it’s necessary?
______________________________
Yes, it leads to Satan’s bidet.
Stage Manager #117
I look forward to your tales. They are important to tell.
Victoria Z
Thomas, I’ll send you a GF invitation if you send me your email address and tell me who you are. I won’t blab it. Christina
cmsabin@infostations.net
This is how this pseudo-teaching is fabricated: random image hunt plus insane interpretations…
You can do it too! Just try to see the keys around you. Make sure you count things – this is the most important – the numbers! Use a calculator if you have to.
Guidelines from Propylaya for “researchers”:
Collecting Images for the School
Students are encouraged to research school sources, particularly those located close to their center, in literature, museums, churches and other places where schools may have left traces. Following are some guidelines:
· Make your own photographs of images and architecture, if the situation allows it.
· You can send in images from the Internet, but please include the URL where you found it so we can keep copyright information.
· For any image, send a note describing your perception of the keys in it.
· In any image, look for the keys. Look for the same simple ideas: the nine of hearts, the sequence, the steward, the lower self, the higher centers. Robert said ‘don’t look for different answers’…
-(Yes, look for hands, feet, stars, poops, Jesus, goats, giraffes, crocodiles, toes, vases, deer, pubic hair, arrows, devil, breasts, circles, triangles, dots, lines, squares, blue color, red color, yellow color – well, pretty much anything will do. Just go and take pictures will you, and then we’ll key them for you.)
· Don’t hesitate to count things in images – there are many numbers that now have significance for us.
-(That’s where the calculator comes in handy)
· If what you find in an image is too complicated, let it go for now. The keys are simple, as if designed for children.
-(Well, actually this is precisely designed for brainwashed cult members since children will not go for it.)
· The images are not only for the school, but for those who find them – it is a great opportunity to make the keys our own.
-(Yes make your own keys! Or make something up and then key it. Use your creativity and Photoshop!)
· Robert very much enjoys seeing the images that students send and sees most of the images that are submitted.
-(And the rest of them are keyed by Dorian and Mihai, but it is equally valid, besides – who cares. Robert very much enjoyes images of poops, genitals, toes, feet and various sexual acts so please look for those images during your search. Lots of such images -copyright free by the way! – can be found on youporn dot com)
· Please send in the images you find to xxxx@xxx
Now, doesn’t it just makes you want to follow this fresh home-made “teaching”?
I wonder how many idiots are actually reaching for their cameras in response to these “guidelines”…
Laugh,
PA
One for “the spitting preacher:” bring a megaphone and cd of this to the next OH pile protest, play it loud and repeatedly. (Hey, it worked on Noriega).
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=9do-xN52Gxo
Keying from Robert:
A drawing by Leonardo da Vinci
in the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, depicts the
Vitruvian Man (1492). Leonardo put what looks like
the face of the lower self in the abdomen as a
reminder of its location. The man has eight limbs,
representing the inhalation and exhalation of the
four wordless breaths. However, only one toe—long
BE—is outside of time.
- Face of Lower Self? Gee, what’s he looking at???
http://img137.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pillar8thoughtandartvittd8.jpg
Laugh,
PA
The face of the lower self.
http://www.space1026.com/site_images/07.%20Penis%20Face.jpg
188 PA.
Again, beyond parody.
Obviously Leonardo, like the caveman artist in the famous poop scene, was working with “the sequence”, which is why he hid these “keys” in his drawing. It’s the only possible explanation, right?
It crossed my mind that it’s a drawing depicting how the human body fits into a square and a circle, but that “I” must have come from the Lower Self.
Ames 171, you’ve probably seen this?
http://www.xs4all.nl/~wichm/psymove.html
I think I see the face he is talking about. The belly button is the nose. I’ve always been good at finding faces in things–the grain of wood, clouds etc. When I was little I used to see faces in the roses of the wallpaper in my bedroom. Their presence was a bit frightening and comforting at the same time.I don’t see it as a sign of anything except an active imagination.
186 Purchasing awakening
189 Just Another Voice Out Here
You both have cracked me up!!!
Xena 192 — I see it as a sign of an artist.
James 76, re: “states” thanks, food for thought…
http://www.realitysandwich.com/acceptance_speech
Is nothing sacred? RB bitch slapping Leonardo’s cannon of proportions. RB’s nose has been in the gutter for so long he is not only not a man number…whatever, he’s not even a man, and certainly not a princess trapped in a man’s body. He’s a walking (barely) talking gargoyle.
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=Di2kpGmYL8M
I die to the day,
sweet dreams friends.
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=lOgQyIMX_XU
‘ton– I opened up the Brian Eno piece on snapshot on this page and a little while later I opened it up on YouTube so it was playing double ,but with different starting times. This usually sounds awful, but this time it didn’t sound any different at all.
To the previous poster that has the gall (or more likely, just the ignorance) to equate Gurdjieff’s teachings with RB and guru worship:
Despite professing to be a one time student of the Fourth Way, it appears that you have missed the Mark by “a country mile” as they say.
If you want to begin to know what Gurdjieff was “up to”, I suggest that you skip “In Search of the Miraculous” and go directly to “Beelzebub’s Tales”. There you will see (provided that you are able to “see”) that Gurdjieff considered the modern human propensity for “suggestibility”, gullibility and the uncritical acceptance of the “wise-acreings” of so-called authority figures to be among the greatest hindrances to spiritual development.
In view of Gurdjieff’s widely renowned personal charisma, it seems to me that, had he wished to, he could have had a flock of obedient, “dues paying” followers numbering in the tens of thousands and could, like RB, have spent the majority of his life living “high off the hog” as they also say. Instead, Gurdjieff went to extreme lengths to push people away from him, even to his own personal detriment, so as to give those many wanna-be “sheep” an opportunity to develop a proper valuation for and understanding of the Fourth Way outside of the hypnotic sphere of Gurdjieff’s personal influence.
Thank you Mr. Gurdjieff!
O.k., one more just for a few yuks…
http://www.maxusability.com/test/Psychiatric_Office_Answering_Machine.mp3
199
The “gall” to think for myself! I love it!
Here’s the section I was thinking about:
“If a man begins to distrust the teacher, the teacher becomes unnecessary to him and he becomes unnecessary to the teacher. And in this event it is better for him to go and look for another teacher or try to work without one. This will do him no good, but in any case it will do him less harm than lying, suppression, or resistance, or mistrust of the teacher.”
Is this a “law”? Mistrusting a teacher is more harmful than looking for another teacher or working without one? Oh, really?
Unoanimo 42
You mentioned Lucas C in your post. Do you know him well? Am trying to find out as much as I can about his status in FOF.
Walking around in the crud – my feet get heavy and my mind gets numb, I trudge on only for one more breath to go on further.
Who gets to be God ? The last one standing is only the one with less mud on his ankles and more food in his mouth.
The top of the heap.
Paul (Around #201):
This is a relatively early “edition” of Ouspensky speaking at a time after he had completed his travels in India looking for a “Teacher”. He was still fixated on the whole Eastern idea of the “Teacher” as guru. As I said in my previous post, why let Ouspensky filter Gurdjieff’s ideas for you when you can go directly to the source.
Gurdjieff never spoke much about Teachers and never referred to himself that way except for the modest title of “a teacher of dances”.
In any event, it makes sense that if you don’t trust someone then, as a practical matter, you are unlikely to learn anything from him.
199 Still trying and 203
Sounds like someone from one of the other branches. No problem with that, but why not put it up front where it can be seen plainly. They all have their own flavor. Just lay it out there without the mystical bullshit.
Paul @ 201
199
The “gall” to think for myself! I love it!
Here’s the section I was thinking about:
“If a man begins to distrust the teacher, the teacher becomes unnecessary to him and he becomes unnecessary to the teacher. And in this event it is better for him to go and look for another teacher or try to work without one. This will do him no good, but in any case it will do him less harm than lying, suppression, or resistance, or mistrust of the teacher.”
Is this a “law”? Mistrusting a teacher is more harmful than looking for another teacher or working without one? Oh, really?
************
In any case if there is some metaphysical law behind the teacher-student relationship then it wouldn’t actually apply to a psychotic fruit in a banana suit anyway.
I think G. and O. were in the guru business and all the admonitions about losing “schools” and “teachers” can be dispensed with under the heading of teachers building a fence around their esoteric sheep in order to secure their income. However, if it weren’t for their “schools” we’d know nothing about these particular ideas of psychological evolution. Personally I very much doubt Gurdjieff invented “the system” himself.
Still trying @ 203
Paul (Around #201):
This is a relatively early “edition” of Ouspensky speaking at a time after he had completed his travels in India looking for a “Teacher”. He was still fixated on the whole Eastern idea of the “Teacher” as guru. As I said in my previous post, why let Ouspensky filter Gurdjieff’s ideas for you when you can go directly to the source.
**********
“All and Everything” including “Beelzebub’s Tales” is a sophomoric practical joke that eventually backfired, even sucking the author into his own tom-foolery. Only the most unsophisticated rube would take that silly mess seriously. Those organizations, such as the Gurdjieff Foundation (read: Gurdjieff Museum), that canonize that long-winded Jovian excuse to overrun the brains of fools with the force of an ego gone berserk are graveyards for people that prefer superficial propaganda to living, practical concepts. As powerful a figure as Gurdjieff was he was also a bit of a loon. Beelzebub’s Tales is a perfect example of a lunatic effort.
#186 PA
I’m confused.
Which part of this was real and which part was you being facetious?
“Beelzebub’s Tales is a perfect example of a lunatic effort.”
_______________________________________________
That’s just silly Graduates: have you ‘really’ read it, I mean, with heart, mind and being side by side?
I would hope that it takes more than the superfluous efforts radiating out from a lunatic effort to change my life like the reading and sensing of that book did, yet, who knows, maybe its lunatic efforts that actually do change our lives outside of their actual obvious first and second impressions, their mind based impressions… Many drop the book based on the very opinion you stated in #206 and to me, that’s exactly what the nature of such a book gets based on its ‘constitution’… By all means you’re entitled to your opinion so long as you allow a ’somewhat friend’ to suggest peacefully that you may not be speaking objectively here, although it seems that you want the reader to think you are. (?)
What’s the gist of your beef with the book?
199 Still-trying writes:
“Instead, Gurdjieff went to extreme lengths to push people away from him, even to his own personal detriment, so as to give those many wanna-be “sheep” an opportunity to develop a proper valuation for and understanding of the Fourth Way outside of the hypnotic sphere of Gurdjieff’s personal influence. Thank you Mr. Gurdjieff!”
In response (and I quote):
“When trying to join a group, the harder they make the barriers to entry, the more you value your membership. To resolve the dissonance between the hoops you were forced to jump through, and the reality of what turns out to be a pretty average club, we convince ourselves the club is, in fact, fantastic.”
http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/10/how-and-why-we-lie-to-ourselves.php
And the source of the “living, practical concepts” would be… Graduates?
Beelzebub’s Tales:
I read it about twenty five times, including twice standing on my head, read it aloud etc etc. I thought it was wonderful, mysterious, incomprehensible, full of meaning, and so on. This was years ago. I looked at it again recently and would now concur with Graduates that it’s a sophomoric practical joke that backfired.
Why did G have to make overything so obscure and complex? Because he set himself up as a teacher and enjoyed received adulation, money and sex from his moonstruck followers, just like you-know-who. He had to make it appear that he had spiritual attainments that his followers did not, that these attainments were difficult t o achieve (=worth paying for), and that he was the only one who could help them.
It’s an age old story. My advice: beware of anyone who professes to know more than you do, especially if they ask for money in return for “teaching” you.
The original ideas that G and O confused and intellectualised may well be useful, however.
Eternal recurrence
Eternal recurrence
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1L547VLxh38
My take on G and O :
We can probably never know exactly who these two gentlemen were, but it seems that if it were not for them, we may never have gotten the ideas to work with. Even if you dismiss Ouspensky, he was still probably the starting place for most of us in finding these remarkable ideas. I believe even G stated that the system was not his, but something he found in his personal search. It would seem like we are always standing on people’s shoulders who have gone before. They could even have made serious errors in their thinking, but it does not have to nullify what they had to offer. Seems like branches of science are much the same. People make ‘discoveries’ that are later proved to be in error, and yet the fact that they pioneered some new area made it possible for those who followed to take it further. Freud was seemingly wrong with some of what he postulated and yet made it possible for people like Reich to find a starting place for their investigations. Walls become windows and windows become doors, and doors become walls again. I always thought that when Ouspensky told his followers to ‘abandon the system’, he may have meant that no matter what path you are on, there will come a time when you need to remember that the finger is not what it points to, and that you do need to reconstuct everything for yourself. If we are searching for something beyond words then it would seem we will have to leave all words behind, no matter whose.
However, I do not think Robert Burton can be compared with either O or G. My gut feeling is that no matter what we think of O and G and what mistakes they may have made, their intentions, at least for the most part of their lives, were to try and help people evolve in some way. I no longer think that Robert Burton ever had these sincere intentions, or if he once did they played a role somewhere in the background, way behind other motives.
One more thing – Unoanimo – thanks for your post – Beelzebub’s Tales was a very powerful book and experience for me. Read it twice many, many years ago and have thought recently of re-reading it.
——–
Just realized that my name is gone again from the ‘reply box’ so this will probably have to go through moderation.
213 James
I sympathise with your viewpoint, and agree that G and O are so far in the past we can’t be sure about their motivations.
Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence to suggest they weren’t all sweetness and light. This discussion arose earlier in the blog. A posting was made referencing an article by a lady who was O’s secretary. Apparently one night he cancelled the scheduled fourth way meeting and took her out to dinner. After a couple of glasses he told her that the system didn’t work but he was addicted to teaching so couldn’t give it up.
I don’t have the article in front of me, but if anyone can find it it might be worth reposting.
It’s hard for us to admit that G and O might have been charlatans similar to RB, but it’s for sure posssible.
On the other hand, RB is likely further gone than O in that it’s hard to imagine him admitting that his teaching doesn’t work. A friend of mine recently described RB as “crystallised in ego” and opined that he would need to burn in the fires of purgatory for thousands of years to be broken down and born anew (this friend is currently seeing things in christian terms). Could be….
213 James
I sympathise with your viewpoint, and agree that G and O are so far in the past we can’t be sure about their motivations.
Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence to suggest they weren’t all sweetness and light. This discussion arose earlier in the blog. A posting was made referencing an article by a lady who was O’s secretary. Apparently one night he cancelled the scheduled fourth way meeting and took her out to dinner. After a couple of glasses he told her that the system didn’t work but he was addicted to teaching so couldn’t give it up.
I don’t have the article in front of me, but if anyone can find it it might be worth reposting.
It’s hard for us to admit that G and O might have been charlatans similar to RB, but it’s for sure posssible.
On the other hand, RB is likely further gone than O in that it’s hard to imagine him admitting that his teaching doesn’t work. A friend of mine recently described RB as “crystallised in ego”. Could be….
James McLemore
“My gut feeling is that no matter what we think of O and G and what mistakes they may have made, their intentions, at least for the most part of their lives, were to try and help people evolve in some way.”
This we’ll never know. We can certainly guess al we want about their true intentions, but there is no way to know for sure. I hope so too, but who knows, really.
I have a guess, or a gut felling, that if one sincerely wishes to help others, one does it without or with minimal monetary reward. It becomes selfless, charitable giving or sharing of one’s knowledge.
When serious money compensation is present – to my opinion it is no longer “help for others”, it becomes one’s job or business, selling of one’s talent or knowledge. Just like any other job – exchange of goods or services for money.
Can it be called “helping people”? I guess we can call it so, as long as a car mechanic helped me with my car for $900, or a restaurant helped me with my meal for $70, or a college helped my son with education for thousands and thousands of dollars.
Many spiritual teachers fall into this pattern of making a business out of it and eventually become completely dependent on their student’s “teaching payments”.
It is a sad reality.
I would be very careful about any “teacher” who doesn’t have another job besides “teaching”. He must have a personal interest in you as a student, since his livelihood depends on you.
And as for Robert – it is pretty much clear that there was never any intention to “help” anyone. It is a well-organized business, based on fear and obedience, designed to cater for his luxurious lifestyle and insatiable and pathological sex obsession. No one is being “helped” there, but all get ripped off in one way or another.
Suppositions about O or G or ABC just don’t seem fruitful to me. We don’t motivation, aims or purpose. We can only judge the “seen” part of “incidents”. For me, Beezlebub’s Tales might have been simply to shake people out of preconceived conclusions. The “truth” is fleeting and fluid, the intent and purpose we can’t know for sure. We can only mold it around how we presently see things.
The incident of O with his secretary… we can’t know for sure that he didn’t say what he said simply to elicit something from the secretary. Maybe he felt it’s what she had to hear in that moment, for her work, whether what he was saying was his truth or not. Maybe he was pointing out her addictive personality, and what he was saying was a gift to her. Or he might have been truthful, or maybe he ws talking out of his ass and just expressing I’s. The point is…we just don’t know anything about anyone else except ourselves, and even then, we usually don’t know.
218
Should be “We don’t know motivation, aims or purpose”.
The Case of P. D. Ouspensky
Marie Seton
Seton, a Russian translator, was Ouspensky’s secretary and confidante during the 1940s. Although convinced of his goodness and honesty, she writes pointedly about the corrupting influence of being a guru.
J. W. D.
It is twenty years now since the things I am going to write about happened. They have not been written before and seldom discussed. There was no reason and I felt no desire to expose a person while alive for an inward failure. Who was I to set myself up as a revealing judge? But I did learn a lesson as to what could overcome a guru.
This is written now because the case of P. D. Ouspensky is not an isolated one. It is a situation that may be typical of a man whose fate is to become a successful guru and, then through the force of outside circumstances, find himself unable to cope with his own reactions and hence, for a time at least, lose his way. I have been told, though I do not know it first hand, that during the last year of Ouspensky’s life, he found his way back to control of himself. I hope this is true because by nature Ouspensky was essentially a good man and not a dishonest one.
The case of Ouspensky has, perhaps, a special meaning for India since India has swamis and gurus of every kind, male and female. For many people—Indian and foreign—India is the fountain of ancient or Eastern Wisdom. It is a paradise for those who seek to be gurus, and those who want to find a guru to direct and lead them. The point is, perhaps, that here and there exist true gurus. But as the Tantras recognize, true adepts in spiritual understanding are very rare.
To a lesser degree the West is also prone to what can only be called ‘guruism.’ By no means is all of this search on the level of the Billy Graham kind of evangelism—a popular appeal to the sentimental religiosity of the under educated, or unhappy individuals whose empty lives cry out to be called back to the fold of God whom they ignored while they were reasonably happy. A sense of having strayed, or a feeling of emptiness envelopes such people and they imagine they are being granted a revelation. In such a state any God-image will do. Only God give me something to hold onto! But Gods rarely make their appearance by themselves. Usually they require to be introduced by a guru, one that is within the frame of a particular orthodoxy, or one of those non-conformist fellows, or ladies, who puts in a dramatic magnetic appearance.
The need to find a guru is not restricted to the ill-informed, the romantic, or those with a secretly bubbling well of potential hysteria or delusion. The need is also often lurking in people who in intellect are far above the average. At least three distinguished writers in the English language—T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, and the clever, if acid, Evelyn Waugh,—found the answer to their spiritual search in orthodox Christian religious faith. And the faith—the act of faith—is identical whether it is devotion to Brahma, Jehovah or Allah.
Then there are intellectuals like Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden, Gerald Heard and, the most famous of this group—Aldous Huxley—all four once ardent rationalists with two of them having once shown a left-wing bent. Suddenly they tipped over to one or another form of mysticism as a way out for some sense of frustration. Huxley now writes articles about the marvelous visions he enjoys as a result of experimenting with certain drugs. One wonders whether this is a very morally responsible thing to be advertising to the world as a way to find ecstasy.
Huxley commenced his search for ‘The Perennial Philosophy’ in the mid-1930’s by trying to find the answer for himself in the Know Thyself philosophy and method of Peter D. Ouspensky. Huxley soon went on elsewhere; but that was not Ouspensky’s fault.
At that time in London, Ouspensky was the most likely guru—though he never called himself that—to make an appeal to the educated, reasonably intelligent person who had no place within orthodox religion, nor any special inclination to be. The sort of people who were interested in Ouspensky’s ideas were those who had some interest in the idea of self-knowledge and were seeking a philosophy to live by which was not orthodox materialism. Ouspensky mainly appealed to the rational person who questioned whether it might not be true, as said by Hamlet, that ‘there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in our philosophy.’
Ouspensky, a Russian émigré, who looked infinitely more like a doctor, or science professor, than any conventional image of a mystic, had a far-reaching intellect and an interestingly creative mind. He was someone alive and provocative. Hence his capacity to attract men like the prolific doctor-writer, Kenneth Walker. Ouspensky had the added attraction of sophisticated culture with not a vestige of fakir eccentricity. He was a sensible guru if ever there was one. And extremely well dressed as a middle-aged man verging on sixty.
P. D. Ouspensky made an impressive figure calmly sitting, presiding at his lectures, which were read for him. Today more than fifteen years after his death quite a lot is being written about him in Europe, especially in England.
My attempt to take a relatively short period—a little less than six years altogether of his fairly long life—is not to discredit Ouspensky, and particularly not to discredit his writings. But rather to induce people who are uncritical of themselves in relation to gurus to see that they themselves can unconsciously contribute to their beloved guru slipping, let us say, from ‘grace.’ Hero-worship is not necessarily respect. It can become slavish dependence which ends with an overwhelming temptation to the guru to lose all respect for those who have made themselves his disciples. It should be remembered that since man is not super-human, it is only too easy for the well-intentioned person to either develop delusions of grandeur, or become a dictator provided they are surrounded for long enough by people who say ‘yes, yes’ to them and their ideas irrespective as to whether or not their own conduct merits such awe. The political dictator has been the scourge of modern times as well as ancient. The rise of such dictators, frequently believing themselves to be their nation’s saviour, and their entrenchment, is aided by uncritical passivity and adulation, the very thing that devotees of gurus are most prone to.
If the guru ends in exploiting his disciples, they themselves have contributed to the distortion of his power.
II
The Ouspensky group, or school, in the 1930’s was esoteric. There was considerable secrecy maintained. Nobody could just be brought along to Mr. Ouspensky’s lectures in a casual way. A person had to be introduced by someone who, rightly or wrongly, had gained the impression through their own knowledge of ‘the System’ that such and such a person had what was termed ‘a magnetic centre.’ This was an element of personality which made this person suitable for the Ouspensky method of Self-Knowledge and Self Development.
I can only say what it was in my case which caused someone I met to conclude I had such a magnetic centre: the person—an artist—who introduced me into the group observed almost at the moment of our first meeting that I had certain poses—this was quite true—but when criticised in regard to those poses I did not reject the criticism out of hand. I was responsive because I wanted to know myself better. I was receptive. Presumably, all the people who came to the group were receptive in different ways.
When a person with the so-called magnetic centre was discovered, the discoverer then consulted with Mr. Ouspensky either directly or through one of his secretaries, both of them Russians, as to whether so and so could be invited to the lectures. Both the secretaries as I knew them—one a woman, the other a highly cultured man—were nice people.
The initial intention of this careful selection on the basis of psychological potential was no doubt very valid so long as the head of the group—and this applies to any group—was in a responsible state of mind. The reason given was that if unsuitable people came they would go out and misrepresent ‘the System’ which had come to Ouspensky from the famous Gurgieff [sic. Gurdjieff]—thought by some to be infamous—to whom, for example, the well known writer, Katherine Mansfield, had gone not very long before her death.
The danger in this reasoning about misrepresentation was that if something really went wrong—out of gear—within ‘the System,’ reasonable criticism and questioning could be shunted aside on the grounds that the would-be student and not ‘the System’ was at fault in understanding. I do not know if this ever actually happened in the earlier phases of Ouspensky’s work. I do not know what doubts there may have been in the minds of other people at the time I am going to speak of because I did not discuss my own observations, questions and reactions with anyone except P. D. Ouspensky himself. But if there is excessive secrecy, it is a pitfall to trap the unwary—both the guru, who is protected by it, and the disciple who can be exploited through it.
Madam Ouspensky, a very extraordinary woman older than her husband, had met the Gurgieff system in Russia before her marriage to Ouspensky, and before the Revolution of 1917. It was Madam—then either a widow or divorced—with half grown children, indeed, almost grown, who had followed the writings of Ouspensky who had been attracted for a number of years to philosophic speculation and mysticism. He had traveled far to investigate some of his interesting speculative ideas about the knowledge to be discovered through understanding of certain buildings and works of art. He had visited the Taj Mahal, about which he had some very interesting thoughts, and he had been to Ceylon where one particular Buddha greatly impressed him.
He had expressed some fascinating ideas in his writings published in Russia. Before he came under the influence of Gurgieff he had written the book Tertium Organum, which was the book which enticed Gurgieff to desire Ouspensky as a collaborator. Subsequently, there appeared the impressive book of daring speculations, impressions and experience—The [A] New Model of the Universe.
But ‘the System’ was something in practice outside of Ouspensky’s writings, and ‘the System’ was divided into the theoretical with which P. D. Ouspensky was concerned, and the practical application which was Madam’s province. It is not possible to detail the whole theory, nor even the whole practice. But the intention of this System was that it should be a way towards the unity of personality through self-awareness. It was to be applicable to people living in the world. It was not the religious way of the monk, nor the way of the fakir’s austerity, nor yet the way of the yogi’s contemplation.
The main thesis was that people live in a state of ‘sleep,’ but think themselves aware and awake and master of themselves when they only react to outside stimulation—to what other people think of them—or what in Ouspensky’s terminology was called ‘considering.’ It can hardly be denied that almost everyone is cluttered up with what can be called ‘false personalities.’
But, according to Ouspensky, people with ‘magnetic centres’—that is, the potential to become aware and, perhaps, reach a unified and transformed state of being—have within them a Higher Intellectual Centre and a Higher Emotional Centre, the latter being more important for man’s self-development than the former. There was much additional theory of potential chemical change in response to psychological change through the pursuit of becoming ‘awake’ and overcoming the mechanical aspect of most behaviour.
I met this system of thought and it greatly appealed to me on account of its reasonableness. I was not of a religious turn of mind, nor one who had a drive to pursue mystical experience by artificial means. I thought there was a great difference in levels of consciousness between those moments when any person was in the grip of ‘negative emotions’ and at any moment of detachment; or between the moment of ordinary consciousness and that of the creative moment. It seemed to me quite true that I, and indeed everybody else, was subject to the domination at times of ‘false personalities.’ I am quite sure that the Ouspensky system was of concrete use to me, and that his own loss of way for a period was not from an inherent flaw in the theory of the system.
First I attended the lectures only.
In due course, I was allowed to pass from theory to practice. Practice at becoming aware of one’s thoughts, actions, mannerisms, feelings—of oneself—the false and ‘asleep’ versus what might be one’s state if one was more and more ‘awake.’ Special conditions of physical work and the planning of it—gardening, housework, cooking—were organised in a country house where the Ouspenskys lived. This work was conducted under the eagle eye of Madam.
A cruel critic of Madam might say she was a dominating woman who enacting role of a guru, consciously or unconsciously, lived in very comfortable circumstances with all her housework done on a grand scale by mostly sincere men and women who were under the spell of her magnetic and mystic personality. I don’t know whether she was genuine or a charlatan; or whether she was simply a commanding type of neurotic. It is immaterial. I never really knew her well enough to be able to judge. I never fell under her spell. But I think she had great power over people whose imagination was captured by her.
I am sure I learned a good deal about my own mechanism from what she sometimes had me do by way of ‘work.’ Probably anyone could have learned something useful provided they were more interested in the work of self-knowledge itself than in the commanding personality of Madam.
One ‘test’ has always remained in my mind and it can symbolise the sort of controlled conditions in which anyone could observe something about themselves if they had a mind to: I had always liked my hands and I supposed I could dislike nothing more than picking fish to pieces to feed the cats. Not at all in my line! One day, I got the thoroughly unpleasant job of taking apart fish heads for the cats’ lunch. I observed myself at this nasty job. The truth was that a superficial vanity and not genuine repulsion had me think my hands (and myself) too good to do any such thing. Inside, I noticed I remained unmoved while de-boning the heads with my fingers. Through Madam’s choice of a job for me, I saw I could quite well do a very nasty messy job and not really hate it at all.
This had a kind of liberating effect so that I felt at the time, and still feel, that I benefited from the Ouspensky system. But I never lived in the house for any protracted period—some people did—and so I never became dependent upon Madam in order to feel myself ‘awake.’ There is no doubt that Madam exerted a tremendous influence upon the minds of the people who chose to live constantly within her shadow.
III
I was absolutely nobody in ‘the System’ in England from 1936 to 1938. But for the fact that I was a writer who at one moment was involved in collaborating on a translation from Russian into English of Checkov’s play The Cherry Orchard, and another piece of writing, I might never have come into contact with Mr. Ouspensky outside of the lectures and at the country house. But I did. He asked me to go and see him privately in a house in London, and he read the Chekov translation.
In consequence, he knew something of me, and I of him outside of the framework of the guru-disciple relationship. He was, I think, nearing sixty and I was twenty-six. I knew his homeland—Russia—from which he had exiled himself. He liked me and I liked him. But he did not become enamoured of me, nor I enamoured of him. This was never a factor in our relationship. What happened was that a friendliness developed, principally, I think, because I was not afraid of him, and perhaps there was an attraction in having a ‘system’ person who wanted to learn without being exactly of the foot-touching devotee type. I greatly respected P. D. Ouspensky and I was very willing to learn from him. And I honestly believed I had learned.
I do not think that anyone was ever kinder to me, nor that anyone ever respected me as a person more than P. D. Ouspensky. What happened later never affected my regard for him as a human being. I do not think I was even disillusioned because of an acceptance that men, even saints, have feet of clay. I will always be grateful to Ouspensky for what I believe I learned from his system.
But…well, my one experience with a guru who lost his way has made me sceptical of the wisdom of any man thinking himself fit to be a guru.
I feel quite sure that when P. D. Ouspensky committed himself to follow Gurgieff and married Madam, and left Russia during the Revolution because it boded ill for the pursuit of what he believed in, he was sincere. He was no less sincere, I think, when he broke away from Gurgieff in Paris because, as he told me: “Gurgieff had gone off the rails—become mad—and I wanted to save the system.”
Perhaps, indeed probably, Ouspensky remained in possession of himself throughout his period in England. I was in no position to judge. I don’t know. But in the autumn of 1940 he and Madam, as well as about half a dozen American members of the System and a couple of English ones arrived in New York, where there was a wealthy young couple, students of the Ouspenskys, who paid the major bills.
I, who had been only on the very periphery in England, had gone to America to do a job and was caught there by the outbreak of war. By chance I ran into one of the members and learned that P. D. Ouspensky and his wife had arrived: that already a rather large country house in New Jersey had been obtained for practical work and a studio apartment in an expensive area of New York was being negotiated for.
Because I believed I had gained much from the Ouspensky system, I was very glad they had come. Within a few days I was astounded that he should ask me to act as his secretary to do the arrangements for lectures and look after his living conditions for the days each week he would spend in New York. Why me? When all the people, save the young couple, were much older members of the System than I was. The only reasonable answer to this question was that I was the only person among those who were available to Ouspensky who had ever been in Russia. And P. D. Ouspensky for the second time in his life was now an uprooted man.
This sudden promotion, as it were, did not prevent me from carrying on my own outside work. Perhaps if I had not had a life outside of the System, I would not be writing this today. For some months I greatly enjoyed the work because I had no doubt at all that Ouspensky’s particular system was one of great help to anyone who wished to gain insight into themselves for the purpose of living in the world and being able to cope with the problems of living. I thought it was a means of establishing a fair amount of equilibrium though I did not notice any appreciable expansion of my consciousness. I can only claim that it made me moderately observant of my own reactions and gave me some sense of independence in decision. It did not lead me to mystical experience, real or imagined.
I cannot say there was an exact day when it struck me that P. D. Ouspensky was strangely extravagant considering that the young couple were paying the bulk of the bills. But he would direct me to buy the most lavishly expensive fruit, cheese and delicacies for his personal consumption. I wondered was I a puritan to think this a curious indulgence. It was not that eating and self-awareness were in conflict. But did a person choose the most expensive things when someone else was paying the bill?
One day I noticed that the people who actually paid the bills were not asked to share these expensive foods. But sometimes I had a goodly share of them. I was very appreciative of the good things of this world whether in food, or clothes, or the decorations of a house. I liked luxury and comfort and never held that a hair shirt was the slightest guarantee of spirituality in and of itself. It could too well be exhibitionism. But I did not think, or rather feel for myself, that I had any desire to be a slave to the need for luxury as a sign of anything at all.
When I went to the country house for practical work, I began to notice what I had not noticed in England: that the people who were the ‘old members’ and had been long under Madam’s discipline were drab in clothes, joyless, and strangely close-up people one with another. All were fearful of her displeasure. They were no less in awe of Mr. Ouspensky, though sometimes he seemed to extend a certain kindness towards them. I began to wonder why the pursuit of self-knowledge had to, as it seemed, eliminate an atmosphere of warmth between people and something that might be described as a lack of lovingness.
Again, I cannot pin down the day when I began to speculate about the inner state of P. D. Ouspensky. Increasingly after a lecture he would ask a few of the group, including the young couple and myself, to go out with him to supper at a not very distant restaurant. At first, these suppers seemed to me very pleasant. He would order drinks and something to eat and time would pass. Every evening there was a lecture the party—for that is what it was—would break up later and later. The young couple usually, if not always, paid the bill.
Ouspensky was often sharp with them and they took this, as others did to whom he was no less sharp, as a ‘test’ to ‘awake’ them up to self-awareness. But to me he was not sharp or sarcastic though I was well aware that I was no outstanding example of self-awareness. I deserved just as much ‘ticking off’ as anyone did.
The only, difference between the people Ouspensky increasingly ‘ticked off,’ and ever more harshly, and me, was that while I respected him I was not in awe of him. They lived to gain his approval and the more they hoped for it the less they got it. Sometimes he became furiously angry, particularly with the young couple who paid the bills.
The next stage, if you can call it that, was that Ouspensky began to show a greater disinclination to leave the restaurant where we would all go. The others would leave and he would ask me to stay on. With the others gone he would have another drink and another and yet another, though he never became drunk; or at least, did not show it. One, two, three, four in the morning and still he would urge me to stay longer. And hour after hour he would talk—extremely interestingly—about his homeland which I could discuss with him; about his life, but it was always about things before he ever met the system of Gurgieff.
He did not talk to me night after night because he had become enamoured of me, but because his assumption of the role of guru had cut him off from the normal avenues of friendship because, unfortunately, people who become devotees do not bring with them a sense that human beings, even if they are the most enlightened, are also human enough at bottom to require friends. But if a person, by reason of his greatness in the eyes of others, remains too long in a friendless condition then even when he meets someone who is willing to give of himself in that subtle relationship which is that of friendship, this may come too late to help him overcome the corroding effect within of having lived upon a pinnacle.
Ouspensky was no longer the guru of a system or I any longer a member of his group during those long hours over so many nights that we sat in New York, both of us having come from thousands of miles away. I was a companion for nostalgic memories. I was just someone to talk to and who would talk back. Though he did not say in so many words that he was extremely unhappy, I knew he would not take so many drinks if he were happy. He was fond of me because I was companionable.
One day, a nice middle-aged couple, rich, who had become breathless devotees of P. D. Ouspensky, shocked me by saying: “You must be very highly developed to work so closely with Mr. Ouspensky.”
It came as a shock because I saw I was flying under false colours for I was no more ‘highly developed’ as a result of what I was now doing than I had been when I was in England on the very periphery of the System. I knew it. The danger to myself of being supposed to be ‘developed’ far in advance of what I was, loomed into my mind. Here was a temptation to pose staring me in the face.
Then I became aware that Ouspensky had a certain interest in a man, a businessman, who had money and a girl friend. In short, a very unattractive man who kept an expensive mistress. Suddenly, this woman introduced the presumably rich widow of the long dead film star, Rudolph Valentino, to the lectures. What were such people seeking? Or was I wrong to think that people like this went from sensation to sensation because they had nothing else to do with their time?
One day Ouspensky instructed me to chastise on his behalf one of the people who had come from England with him after many years in the System, someone who in England had been almost as close to the central core as I now was. I could not do it. I would not, because I felt I would be doing something wrong towards this person and no less wrong to myself. Maybe, the person was a fool, but I was not going to be the instrument for chastisement for some minor thing, so minor that I have even forgotten what it was.
This incident, plus the remark of the couple who assumed I must be highly developed, disturbed me because it seemed an invitation to begin exerting power over people. I did not want to believe that Ouspensky had lost insight, and yet I felt that he had, or he would realise that however good or agreeable to him my intelligence might be in matters outside his System, I was not fit to be thought of as being in any way superior. I thought that the very last thing anyone should be encouraged in was arrogant action. I had that potential and I knew it.
Soon after this, Ouspensky mentioned he had heard of an exceptionally good restaurant where he intended to go to dinner some time. Then an afternoon came when he instructed me to cancel the lecture set for that evening because he wanted to go to dinner at this restaurant which had very good food and wine. I cancelled the lecture and informed as many of the people as possible. Ouspensky then asked me to go out to dinner at this restaurant with him. It was a most excellent dinner, but during it I felt the time had come when I must ask him for an explanation as to how he could consider that this dinner justified the sudden cancellation of a lecture. Where did such action fit into the System, and where also did his violent temper towards some people fit in?
The thought went through my mind several times: Is it I who do not understand? Is it I who have lost all sense of proportion? Is it I who am being temperamental in feeling that I have a right to seek an explanation and not to take all this for granted as being in order?
When the coffee came, I asked: “Can you, or will you, explain how it is you could cancel a lecture at a few hours notice for the sake of this dinner? I don’t understand. And I am sorry to feel compelled to ask you; but do you lose your temper with people consciously, or because you have lost control of yourself? You do not lose your temper with me in this way…”
“They are such fools,” he said. “I’ve lost control of my temper.”
“But surely, if we are to try to control our negative emotions, we cannot learn from you, if you can’t control yours,” I said.
Ouspensky answered bluntly: “I took over the leadership to save the System. But I took it over before I had gained enough control over myself. I was not ready. I have lost control over myself. It is a long time since I could control my state of mind.”
“Will you not try to gain control over your temper for everybody thinks you are testing them when you fly at them,” I said, for it never entered my head that Peter Ouspensky was not speaking the truth.
“They are fools!” he said contemptuously.
“But I really feel I have learned something from the System,” I said.
“Then you are the only one who ever has!” said Ouspensky.
“I have really tried.” I said, “tried for myself.”
“The others are deluding themselves. They have never gained anything,” Ouspensky said.
For some strange reason I was not aghast at such revelations. I was not even shocked. I was sorry because I did not feel for a moment that Ouspensky wanted to be in this predicament of disillusion and realisation that he had tried to become a guru when he had not attained the resources in himself to keep control of himself.
“Why don’t you give up the lectures and try to gain control of yourself again?” I asked.
“The System has become a profession with me,” Ouspensky answered.
There could hardly have been a more honest exchange of question and answer and I respected P. D. Ouspensky for admitting his predicament. I did not feel he had defrauded me because I had not built the whole of my existence upon the System and I was not a devotee who would be lost in despair if my guru turned out to have feet of clay. I spoke to no one for I hoped that Peter Ouspensky would decide to bring his lectures to a halt and seek to gain control over himself.
As the days went on I thought of the predicament I was in with the young couple paying not only the rents and the bills for Mr. Ouspensky and Madam, but, that up to that moment, they had handed to me any amount of money that P. D. Ouspensky had told them to. And he had insisted that I take some of it for my own expenses.
“Will you not give up the lectures?” I asked later.
He did not say yes, or no. I waited a week and then another. We often went out and talked a great deal. It was often about the attitude of the people who stayed in the country house. He knew they were afraid to be on their own. He was never indignant or enraged at my questioning him. I feel that he would have liked to halt the situation. But the question was how?
One day he said something that was somehow more revealing than anything else as to the way a man becomes entangled in a role, or a vocation.
“In Russia,” said Ouspensky, “there used to be a thousand or two thousand people at my lectures. Here there are a hundred—too few.”
Was it that a thousand or two thousand ordinary people did not corrupt P. D. Ouspensky? But one hundred rich people ready to enshrine him as a Master of far greater development, as they supposed, than they could ever hope to attain had exerted the power to lead him to abandon his desire for control of himself? Or weakened his will to set about it?
One day he said: “I have become dependent on the comfort, the luxury. I can’t give it up.”
As I said earlier, no one was ever kinder to me in a human sense than P. D. Ouspensky. Fond he was of me, and honest with me, too; but he was prepared for me to continue doing what I had been doing, even though I knew he had lost his way. Evidently he could not feel at the time that he was wronging his followers by continuing his role of guru though convinced—if what he said was true—that no one was deriving any benefit from it.
I said I must leave the System, and I left. He wrote me a letter and from that letter I sensed that he had from affection told me the truth about his predicament. But he accepted that he could not extricate himself from the hold professional ‘guruism’ had gained upon him. It was years before I ever learned anything more about P. D. Ouspensky.
Here was a man who was at heart honest; a man who was not by any means devoid of compassion for people. But adulation and comfort and the dearth of friends and the terror of a period of war had sapped his will to keep theory and practice united. It was only after Ouspensky died that I was told by the person who had first introduced me to Ouspensky’s books and the System, that towards the end of his life he found his direction again and had made a great effort to correct himself and his own system.
If a man of the undeniable qualities of Ouspensky can go off the track and become absorbed in egotism and dependence on easy living, and become callous as to the effects on himself and on others, what of the gurus who are less basically honest?
Being a guru is one of the riskier occupations psychologically, and being a devotee is no less risky. I have sometimes wondered how much damage P. D. Ouspensky did psychologically speaking to the people who were his devotees during the period he lost himself. I have also wondered what it was that shocked him out of his cynical and exploitive state of mind—if it is true, as I have been told, that he found himself again before he died.
One can only conclude that hero-worship under the guise of the guru-devotee relationship is just as often spiritually deadening for both sides as it is spiritually enlightening.
_
Janna -
I agree, and point well taken, that it is just wishful thinking on my part to assume that G and O had good intentions. I think the main idea of my post would have been better served had I left that sort of guesswork out of it.
We do both agree that it does not require guesswork any longer to see that Robert Burton certainly did not have good intentions.
Thanks for the reply.
Bruce – 217
Thanks for the reminder, in your usual simple/direct manner, of what the ‘bottom line’ is.
220 Pensate un attimo
I can’t imagine anyone who is truly on “a journey” not to occasionally, or periodically have to work with a “dark night of the soul” concerning their work. I would guess that O’s journey “continuum” contained spaces of time that are similar to the anecdotal period that the secretary discusses, but her portrayal is simply (while also being useful) a “cut-out” without the context of what was really going on “in” O. I think there are numerous hints within her story that indicate her work more than O’s.
Gurdjieff was financially dependant on his students?
From all accounts, Gurdjieff had a natural flair for business and had amassed a considerable fortune prior to organizing his school at Fountaineblue. If succeeding financially and living the good life was his Aim, it seems to me that he never would have bothered with the Fourth Way.
Beelzebub’s Tales was written using traditional esoteric literary devices (metaphor, etc.) and speaks to people on various levels of meaning according to their ability to “see”. The book is no doubt difficult to comprehend but that is because there is apparently no other way to circumvent the Formatory Centre and reach people in a place where the teaching will do them some objective good.
220 Pensate un attimo
And the fact that O probably struggled with “guru syndrome” is, to me, a fairly positive sign. Guru syndrome, and all that it implys, is a real biggie. One of the first tests of a teacher, and the one most teacher’s fail readily, with the help of their power and prestige hungry sycophants. Can you imagine RB having a prolonged thought concerning where he is, what he is and what he’s done? Not gonna happen. I don’t think he has prolonged thoughts about anything, except, maybe, where the next cock is coming from. He has the attention span of a twelve year old, and is readily attracted to bright, shiny objects. Remember Guru maharji (or whatever his name was) the twelve year old chubby incarnation of enlightenment. It just RB in a different body. Most all of the gurus eventually succumb to drugs, sex and rock and roll (and/or money).
224 Still trying
We’ve all (or most of us) have read that stuff before (Gurdjieff foundation dicta etc.) . We haven’t just hopped off the banana boat.
Ames Gilbert @ 210
And the source of the “living, practical concepts” would be… Graduates?
********
You’re right, obviously I’m in no position to offer something better so should hold my tongue. The problem is I really like to dismiss BT because even though I’ve read it half a dozen times and revered it in my youth it really is crap. Just on the simplest level the associative nature of the writing is obviously not the product of higher mind. I do feel that Gurdjieff was/is an advanced and developed man though; even so his book is a failed experiment that it in my opinion puts people to sleep more than it wakes them up.
When Gurdjieff emerged into Western history in Moscow and St. Petersburg he was obviously fresh out of some esoteric teaching and what he taught to Ouspensky then was as yet unadulterated by his later harebrained scheme to create a religion. Once Ouspensky recognized the deviation that Gurdjieff was insisting on he left and in my admirably humble opinion actually carried on the “C influence” teaching while Gurdjieff, conscious though he may well have been, created what can only be recognized by serious thoughtful people as B influence. In my experience the Gurdjieff Foundation is an organization filled with nice people that have carried on the authoritarian “we are it” tradition that G. established using the unnecessary trappings of G.’s creative experiments as a hallmark of their authenticity. As an example, obviously it is not necessary to practice the Gurdjieff Dances in order to understand the Work and yet these people insist that it is absolutely necessary to practice them in order to understand the Work – already it is possible to see the degeneration into man-number-one superstition.
224 Still trying
And your uninspiring regurgitation of the dicta is pretty damn formatory on it’s own, wouldn’t you say. I mean it sounds like it’s pretty fucking verbatim. I doubt I’m the only one here who’s familiar with the accepted instructions on how to approach Beezlebub.
Bruce -
“He has the attention span of a twelve year old, and is readily attracted to bright, shiny objects.”
Wow!! I literally did laugh out loud.
Bruce (around #227):
My “uninspiring regurgitation” is meant for those on this site who might have “ears to hear with” and “eyes to see with”. It is not meant for the “hugely buffered” types.
Still trying @ 229
Bruce (around #227):
My “uninspiring regurgitation” is meant for those on this site who might have “ears to hear with” and “eyes to see with”. It is not meant for the “hugely buffered” types.
*********
You’re mind is stuck in a cult-formula mode of perception.
Graduates (around #230):
I trust you can do better than playing the “you are a brainwashed cult member if you don’t agree with me” card.
230 Still trying
Please. You sound like a 4th Way automaton. Yes, yes I know, to sleeping people those who are more awake often seem more asleep themselves. The fact that you don’t see WHO you are speaking to only indicates the depth of your own sleep. You might try it on the more uninitiated. Unless you just like to see your own words on the screen.
230 Still trying
I remember you from many pages ago espousing the same shit. Don’t you have any pressing “work on yourself” that you should be doing rather than steering us lost souls back onto the path of 4th Way redemption?
206 Graduates
I agree with most of what Graduates writes about All and Everything here. I think there are some well-observed nuggets in there (from the small amount of it I’ve read), but it’s just overwhelmed by so much junk, so many tedious made-up words and endlessly long sentences. G is said to have read sections to his students, and if they ‘got’ them, he’d say, ‘Must bury the dog bone deeper.’ So he wanted to encode the knowledge and make people work for it, but as Graduates said, it backfired — he buried it so deep that almost everyone who picks it up is so put off that they never finish it. If some others have profited from reading it, more power to them. But as I’ve said before, at one point I threw away my copy, and said good-bye to what I feel is one of the worst-written books ever.
Tsk, Tsk, Bruce. Perhaps you will be so kind as to enlighten me as to just WHO I am speaking to – lol. The fact that you may have been in the FOF for a considerable time is surely no sign of advanced being or understanding.
Innernaut (around #234):
I think your nick name here is great. I wish I had thought of it.
Gurdjieff didn’t say, “must bury the dog bone deeper”. He said, “must bury the dog deeper”! A bone is a object and what Gurdjieff was trying so hard to bury was, and is, a living teaching.
Should read % _ _ _ object” but the first word was filtered out of my post.
Great filter! Let’s try “inanimate” object.
Actually, I meant to say I agree with everything Graduates wrote about BT in post 206.
236 Still trying
That’s very true, but there are many here who have 20-30-40years experience swimming in the pond that contains G’s wisdom (or whatever you wish to call it) and when we hear (or rather I hear) the same basic crap espoused like we’re prospective students, it’s irritating, and shows that you haven’t yet mastered “being and seeing the person you are talking to”. You’re non-recognition of your audience and their experience just shows that you are either fairly new on your own 4th Way path, or someone with ample experience and little being, and even less relativity and scale.
Bruce (around #240):
It seems likely to me that you were only “swimming in circles” all those years.
242 Still trying
Yes, I figured you’d say that. You’re completely predictable, unfortunately for you.
242 Still trying
Of course your prowess at “seeing” another person is greatly underwhelming and does little to further your particular 4th way niche. But hey, onward and upward.
Still trying -
Are you presently in a school, or possibly the teacher of a school, and looking for students?
I ask because I am confused as to your purpose, unless it is just to educate those here who you suppose have less understanding than yourself; and if that is the case, from your tone, it seems you would think it would be a waste of your time.
Daily Card:
Saturday, October 27, 2007
If one continues eating
when one is full,
one ceases to taste
the food.
Love, Robert
When your cup runneth over
it is time to get out
and share your abundance
with others.
210 Pensate
Thanks for reposting that article. Personally I find it more sincere and believable than most Fourth Way memoirs.
(second try)
The Case of P. D. Ouspensky
Marie Seton
Charles T @ 246
210 Pensate
Thanks for reposting that article. Personally I find it more sincere and believable than most Fourth Way memoirs.
*******
Keep in mind that Marie Seton became a card-carrying member of the Gurdjieff Foundation which is where she wrote her ‘heart-felt’ recollection about Ouspensky. The Gurdjieff Foundation has been on a campaign from its inception to remove Ouspensky has a household name and replace him with Madam de Salzmann. So far the effort has proved futile.
223 Still Trying: “If succeeding financially and living the good life was his Aim, it seems to me that he (G) never would have bothered with the Fourth Way.”
This raises an interesting point. Seems to me that the dread “teacher syndrome” has a number of manifestations in its advanced state. These include obsession not just with money and sex, but also with power. The teacher has almost absolute power over his students. They adulate and worship him. Even a glance from him will keep a student glowing for hours. And if he says something complementary to you: complete bliss! (And don’t forget to tell your friends.)
On the other side is utter terror of offending the teacher in some way. What worse humiliation could there be than having D come up to you after a dinner and tell you you can’t attend any more events for a while because RB saw that you weren’t looking in his right eye all the time? (The news spreads like wildfire: you’re not a “god student”.)
This kind of power is addictive. The addict will do almost anything to retain it.
PS Still Trying, there are those who say that it’s only when you stop trying that you achieve your aim.
247 Graduates.
Thanks, I didn’t know that.
In 248 I meant to write “good student”.
Charles T
“In 248 I meant to write “good student”.”
Still, both were correct. :-)
Lovely Freudian ……
I much enjoyed reading Belzebub after the fourth chapter. The first four I had to read various times to grind the language but once I digested it, it did not seem so difficult.
In fact, the first chapter seemed a very accurate description of the process of self remembering described in terms of how a rocket launches itself, propelling itself with nothing but the impulse. It was so exciting I still remember the emotion although its been at least twelve years since I read it.
One of the wonderful aspects of the book is that it is definitely a workbook but also a fairy tale and I think it reaches it’s second aim better than its first one in some aspects and viceversa in others.
I’ve read little science fiction but what I liked about the science fiction in it was that it was held together piece by piece. For some it may be nothing but science fiction but no one has given me more relativity about looking at Earth and human beings with as much distance. Belzebub stands so far away that while he cares enough for humans to work for their development, he seems to give them little or no credit. One way I interpreted the book is that he actually stands as far and unidentified as one would need to stand from one’s self to watch one’s life play itself out. Only he uses the perspective of humanity and higher beings considering its difficulties.
Another aspect I much enjoyed was the tone. Each writer has a tone which says as much about him as what s/he writes about. There is again great separation in Gurdjieff’s tone, he does not feel “identified”. To me there’s value in that very emotional coldness. It’s the first time I think of it but it actually feels like the work of the higher diamonds.
The fairy tale may be a bit too complex but given the credit it is not after all meant to be a fairy tale but what seems a sincere and detailed exposition of The Work from a man who is still terrified to expose so much knowledge from Eastern Schools to the Western mind. I take no credit away from the effort and still taste the memory of it with great joy and gratitude.
236 Still Trying
I wrote a response but it disappeared into the ether. That’s never happened.
I’m quite certain the expression he used was “dog bone,” not just “dog.” I have a photographic memory for certain things like this, and I can remember, even though it was 25 years ago, thinking that ‘dog bone’ was an odd expression, instead of just saying “bury the bone deeper.” It seemed like the kind of phrase someone for whom English is not their first language would say.
Also, the idea of burying a dog alive is rather bizarre. Not everything has a deep metaphorical meaning — as in interpreting what he said as refering to a ‘living teaching.’ In my first flush of enthusiasm for the 4th way, I can remember trying to read metaphor into everything — but some things just mean what they mean.
Making things sound obscure is a typical technique in poetry to try and make things sound more meaningful than they are. The reader — especially a reader of the 4th way who’s probably prone to self-doubt — thinks that because they can’t understand something, it must contain wisdom beyond their ability to comprehend. If it doesn’t sound impressive when stated simply, chances are it isn’t very impressive to begin with.
If a doctor tells you that in order to be cured of your flu you need to swallow 4 aspirins a day during 6 days.
If you instead only swallow 1 aspirin a day during 3 days (or 10 aspirins during 4 days, or whatever else than the doctor’s prescription…), and afterwards still feel ill.
Do you then have the right to complain that the doctor is wrong?
Gurdjieff has said one should read his books (all his books, not only Beelzebub’s Tales!), in a definite order, and 3 times each (once ordinarily, 2nd time aloud, 3rd time to fathom the gist).
No one who thinks of him or herself as an honest and integer person has the right to criticize Gurdjieff’s writings before s/he has read them as prescribed.
There exists no one in the world – and there shall never exist anyone – who has read the books as indicated and who will pass negative judgment on them.
There’s a very good reason for that – which I invite you to discover for yourselves.
Don’t believe me?
Well, do apply the fourth way (not the caricature of it depicted in some of the replies on this page) – and do not believe me but verify for yourselves.
And if you don’t wish to verify it, than at least have the integrity to refrain from lying and slandering.
Re: 253, Innernaut
Dog, bone or dog bone?
I had thought just like Still trying, that G used the formulation ‘bury the dog’.
After reading your reply I went a-googling to verify this.
I found some quotes with ‘bury the bone’, and some with ‘bury the dog’.
I didn’t find any with ‘bury the dog bone’ (which doesn’t necessarily mean that none exists; but if it does, it’s not the only version in circulation.)
Here’s one with ‘bury the dog’, from Bennett:
“If Gurdjieff had intended his meaning to be readily accessible to every reader, he would have written the book differently. He himself used to listen to chapters read aloud, and if he found that key passages were taken too easily – and therefore almost inevitably too superficially – he would rewrite them in order, as he put it, to “bury the dog deeper.” When people corrected him and said that he surely meant “bury the bone deeper,” he would turn on them and say it is not the ‘bones’ but the ‘dog’ that you have to find. The dog is Sirius, the dog star, which stands for the spirit of wisdom in the Zoroastrian tradition.”
J.G. Bennett (1897-1974) , “Gurdjieff – Making a New World”
(http://www.siriusresearchgroup.com/artikel/Beelzebub.shtml)
253 Innernaut, re: 236 –
There’s a pun or a freudian joke in this somewhere…
RB burying it’s “bone” (?)
Where’s Malcom when you need him?
255 Alice E
Sorry Alice, but I read those books in the correct order several times and practiced the Fourth Way for many years. My conclusion was: it doesn’t work.
At the same time, I respect you and others here who still find it useful.
But I’m not lying, I’m speaking from direct personal experience.
Charles,
can you specify how you read them?
- which books exactly?
- which order?
- did you read each book 3 times before moving to the next book?
- did you read each book aloud on the 2nd reading, and struggling to fathom the gist on the 3rd reading?
254 Alice E. (Still trying)
Give me a break.
J G Bennett (quoted above): ” When people corrected him (G) and said that he surely meant “bury the bone deeper,” he would turn on them and say it is not the ‘bones’ but the ‘dog’ that you have to find. The dog is Sirius, the dog star, which stands for the spirit of wisdom in the Zoroastrian tradition.”
Doesn’t this sound amazingly like Mr Burton? I’m surprised he doesn’t add “The dog has four legs, representing the four holy breathes, and a tail, representing long Be.”
As far as I can see these guys all had “teacher’s disease”, manifesting in this case in the ridiculous idea that you have to make a concept more obscure in order to make it properly understood. Of course, when you force yourself to read all this nonsense three times and then suddenly have a cosmic realisation, it proves that you are one of the chosen few.
This happened to me fairly frequently when studying the enneagram over the years – it was fun admittedly, but didn’t lead anywhere useful.
In my experience, real spiritual teaching is completely clear and simple.
258 Alice
Alright, you caught me out, I read MWRM first, then BT three times, then MWRM again twice, then LIROTWIA three times. If I go back now and start again do you think it might work?
Charles,
your last question was probably not seriously meant.
never mind, here’s a serious answer: yes, definitely it will work; and add HOCG as no. 4 on the booklist (also to read 3x).
219 Pensate un attimo
The Case of P. D. Ouspensky
Marie Seton
I found that fascinating, pretty much how I imagine Robert gradually acquired his current ‘characteristics’, not through evil intent as such, but an inevitable consequence of the combination of hero worship and his own tendencies.
To the recent commentators on Gurdjieff and Beelzebub’s Tales (“BT”), pro and con:
Well done! Now we are “cooking with gas”. At least we can have something to discuss other than RB’s silly ideas and ual perversity for a while.
Alice E. (around #255):
Thanks for the quote from Bennett re: bury the dog.
Elena (around #252):
Great post. Thanks. Regarding your comment on Gurdjieff’s tone in BT, what “tickles me” most when reading BT is G’s finely honed sense of humour.
Charles (around #248 and #260):
Regarding the P.S. in #248, well done! I was wondering when someone would see the potential for a “play” on my blog name. There might be some truth to the idea of trying too hard or too much, but I can only wish that my Work efforts were such that I would be in danger of that.
But in #260 I think you make the mistake of seeing a similarity in two things (RB and Gurdjieff) which have nothing in common beyond a superficial surface likeness.
262 Alice.
What do you think I will achieve by doing that?
264 Still Trying: “There might be some truth to the idea of trying too hard or too much, but I can only wish that my Work efforts were such that I would be in danger of that.”
It can happen when you deeply realise that all your efforts are getting you nowhere and you finally give up.
Innernaut (around #253):
You said, “If it doesn’t sound impressive when stated simply, chances are it isn’t very impressive to begin with.”
Do you think this statement holds up when one considers the Bible? Did not the apostles question Jesus on why he spoke (at times) more or less plainly to them but to the masses only in parables? Is there much of importance in the Bible that can be read “simply” (literally)?
267 Still Trying: “Is there much of importance in the Bible that can be read “simply” (literally)?”
Of course there is. That’s why you don’t need a degree in spiritual studies to understand it, in fact you don’t need to be educated at all. Children relate to it immediately and directly.
“Spiritual teachers” love to emphasise the secret, esoteric aspects (“we are the only ones with the real keys to the Bible”), but this is totally unnecessary. Innernaught hit the nail on the head.
Charles, I get the feeling that your starting to talk out of your ass again.
258 Alice E
I suspect that, if anything, G was hoping we would realize our gullibility and susceptibility to suggestion for those that felt duty-bound to read the books as prescribed. What magic exists in the world cannot be found in reading books as though incanting spells.
In relation to “bury the dog bone,” I’m pretty sure I read it in “The Harmonious Circle,” which I do not own, so I can’t check it out. But I’m quite certain I read it somewhere, for what it’s worth (not much, just an odd turn of phrase).
Still trying — thanks for the compliment on my handle.
Charles T — thanks, I think you nailed it as well. For many centuries, the Catholic Church made a business out of religion by keeping the keys to the bible to themselves — in this case, the keys were simply literacy, and access to the texts.
On the topic of G’s writings, Graduates mentioned his tendency to play practical jokes. Doesn’t ‘Life is Real’ end when he’s just about to reveal the meaning of life, and then it simply stops? I fell for that one for years.
271 Innernaut
“For many centuries, the Catholic Church made a business out of religion by keeping the keys to the bible to themselves ”
I agree.
“in this case, the keys were simply literacy, and access to the texts.”
I don’t agree, …
except on the most basic level of apprehension of the bible text. I don’t think you can look at a work like the bible through one broad lens. Works such as those, at least minus some of the corruption that they have accumulated, have important information available for several levels of understanding.
Personally, I can look at the major religious works from varied beliefs and sift through the rubbish to find the same things being said over and over, in different forms to suit different societies and peoples. Some, I think, are meant to be understood with different parts of one’s being. Some with words, some with parable, some with symbolism. They all speak to the common person but also to what one might call an aspirant, or novice, or adept. This is where eyes to see and ears to hear comes in, IMO.
272 Bruce
Yes, you’re right about the deeper symbolism. I suppose that’s what G was attempting with Beelzebub, but his level of success is what we’ve been debating. He could definitely write well and clearly when he wanted to though.
As Graduates said, Beelzebub was an experiment, and some of us think it failed, others don’t. When I bought it while in college, my mother was worried it was about satanic worship. When I told her it was by a Russian mystic, she was worried it had something to do with communism. Once I reassured her it wasn’t, she was fine with it.
“It’s hard for us to admit that G and O might have been charlatans similar to RB, but it’s for sure possible.”
________________________________________
Actually Charles, I think it’s very possible that Ed Gein and Anatoly Onoprienko are indeed similar to Robert Burton; so, get on out there on that limb and ride it dude, rock on!
:.}
I have no idea why G wrote what he wrote. It’s just as possible he wrote it and directed how it was supposed to be read so people could see how fucking gullible and absurd they were. I don’t think that’s the case, but it could be. Just as he put some pretty outrageous statements in his work that were, when you look at them, not any more outrageous than the stuff society already believes…like monkeys came from man rather than the other way around. Wasn’t there a part where men and women on earth were separated from each other by some cataclysm and because women couldn’t control their sexual urges they mated with animals, and thus the apes were begot. Something like that. No one would believe that of take it literally, but it illustrates how we don’t really know shit about anything (well, not “anything”).
245 Bares Reposting
“Daily Card:
Saturday, October 27, 2007
If one continues eating
when one is full,
one ceases to taste
the food.
Love, Robert”
This, from the world’s greediest living person. And what if one continues to buy yellow, pink and orange suits when you already have a closet full, more jewelry, shirts, and above all, cufflinks.
Bruce ~ 275 ~
“like monkeys came from man rather than the other way around.”
_____________________________________________
What? I thought we were from Mars and Venus? WTF?
275 Bruce
“I have no idea why G wrote what he wrote. It’s just as possible he wrote it and directed how it was supposed to be read so people could see how fucking gullible and absurd they were. ”
Yes, I believe that’s where all the nonsense about “food for the moon” came to be, and the idea that the moon will become the earth, and the earth will become a sun. It’s like, “You actually believe this? You need more help than I can give you.”
I think it’s clear, though, that, whatever their shortcomings, G & O were of quite a different order than Robert Earl Burton. RB seems to actually believe his own BS.
Innernaut (around #271):
You are mistaken.
As I understand it, G died part way through the writing of “Life is Real”. The first part of the book is G’s writing, the rest is a compilation (overseen by Mme. De Salzmann, I believe) from notes left behind at the time of G’s .
Apparently, G. told De Salzmann that there was no need to publish the book (“because it was done for another purpose” that G did not specify) but she could publish it if and when she thought it might be useful.
Also, I am sure many of you know that “All and Everything” (the entire series of 3 books) were eventually published after his . The first series, BT, was published only when G was nearing the end of his life notwithstanding the fact that it had been written many years before that time. It is clear that G never had any expectation of making any money off of his writings. They were his gift to us. A legacy that he bequeathed to any of us able to make use of it.
Why is the word % _ _ ” being filtered from my post?
?????? the 5 letter word that starts with D and ends with H and is associated with the word “deceased”.
The Official Field Guide to Beelzebub’s Tales
to His Grandson (G. W. Goodwin)
(Lesson One)
CHAPTER 1
The arousing of thought
AMONG ALL the convictions formed in my “common
presence” during my responsible, peculiarly
composed life, there is one unshakable
conviction that people – whatever the degree
of development of their understanding and
whatever the form taken by the factors present
in their individuality for engendering all kinds
of ideals – always and everywhere on the Earth
feel the imperative need, on beginning anything
new, to pronounce aloud, or if not aloud at
least mentally, that particular invocation
understandable to even the most ignorant person,
which has been formulated in different ways in
different epochs, and in our day is expressed
in the following words “In the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost
Amen.”
That is why I now also, in setting forth on this
venture quite new for me, namely authorship,
begin by pronouncing this invocation, and
pronounce it not only aloud but even very
distinctly and, as the ancient Toulousites used
to say, with a “fully manifested intonation” -
of course only to the extent permitted by data
already formed in my whole presence and
thoroughly rooted in it for such a manifestation,
data, by the way, which are generally formed in
man’s nature during his preparatory years, and
which later, during his responsible life,
determine the character and vivifyingness of
such an intonation.
Having begun thus, I can now be quite at ease
and should even, according to contemporary
notions of “religious morality,” be completely
assured that from now on everything in this new
venture of mine will proceed, as is said, “like
a pianola.” In any case, this is the way I have
begun, and how the rest will go I can only say,
as the blind man put it, “we shall see.” First
and foremost, I shall place my hand, moreover
the right one, which – although at the moment
it is slightly injured due to an accident that
recently befell me – is nevertheless really my
own, and has never once failed me in all my
life, on my heart, of course also my own – but
on the constancy or inconstancy of this part of
my whole I see no need to expatiate here – and
frankly confess that I myself have not the
slightest wish to write, but am constrained
to do so by circumstances quite independent
of me, though whether these circumstances
arose accidentally or were created
intentionally by extraneous forces I do not
yet know I only know that these circumstances
bid me write not just some trifle for reading
oneself to sleep, but thick and weighty tomes.
***
Keyword: Toulouse, ancient city in Gaul
conquered by the Romans who made it a
the center of the Narbonne region.
Relevant history:
The development of the Cathar heresy served as
a pretext for the conquest of the area by armed
forces from the north of France and of Europe
(Albigensian crusade). The treaty of Paris
restored peace in 1229, and the county was
added to the territory of the French crown in
1271. The university was founded by the
Inquisition to propagate “orthodoxy”.
Center of the Cather Heresy (Gnostic Dualism):
The Cathars were heretics without a name. The
word Cathar is a slang name, used by Catholics
as an insult. The words Perfect, the elect,
and Credentes for the followers are similarly
lifted from the annals of the Inquisition.
They called themselves Good men, Good Women or
simply Good Christians. They were, undeniably,
dualists who believed that there were two Gods
– the good God of the spiritual world and the
Bad God of the material world. Accordingly the
material world was of no interest. They
believed that you had to reach a spiritual
enlightenment in order to finally reach the
Good God. The Catholic Church with its
sacraments, relics, rules and prohibitions was
seen as, at best, an irrelevancy to the
Cathars. Catholics had simply missed the point.
The Albigensian Crusade
(named for its center in the town of Albi):
The Albigensian Crusade, which threw the whole
of the nobility of the north of France against
that of the south and destroyed the brilliant
Provençal civilization, ended, politically, in
the Treaty of Paris (1229), which destroyed
the independence of the princes of the south
but did not extinguish the heresy, in spite of
the wholesale massacres of heretics during the
war. The Inquisition, however, operating
unremittingly in the south at Toulouse, Albi,
and other towns during the 13th and 14th
centuries, succeeded in crushing it.
The (unspecified) target of the Crusade was
Ramon V of Toulouse and his vassels, but
Ramon rather cleverly joined the Crusade
himself. This meant that he and his vassels
came under the protection of the Church.
That is why the first stages of the Crusade
were directed against Beziers and Carcassone,
which did not belong to Ramon of Toulouse,
but to a close relative Ramon-Roger Tranceval.
The trick did not work for long, and soon
Ramon was excommunicated and his castles
were under attack.
Basically “The Inquisition” began in Toulouse,
there 20,000 inhabitants were murdered for
their non-Catholic beliefs, the murder was
ordered by Pope Innocent III who said, “Kill
them all and let God sort out the true believers.”
When Gurdjieff says:
“In the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Ghost Amen,” and continues,
“pronounce it not only aloud but even very
distinctly and, as the ancient Toulousites
used to say, with a “fully manifested
intonation”, he is being intentionally
sacrilegious, because the ‘ancient
Toulousities’ rejected this formulation of
the Roman Catholic Church, indeed were
murdered for their rudeness.
When Gurdjieff says:
“…”religious morality,” be completely
assured that from now on everything in this
new venture of mine will proceed, as is said,
“like a pianola.”
What he means is, the book is going to be
a practical joke played against those who
who take seriously any form of ‘modern’
religious orthodoxy, that is in effect, the
underlying mentality of western man, and as a
method of increasing that type’s self-calming
the joke is going to operate on them like a
“mechanical device.” Subsequently the only
type who will understand, that is, read the
invisible print hidden between the lines, will
be those who have thoroughly removed from
their psychology the cultural sense that God
through Christ has created our civilization
for good men to live correctly. According to
Gurdjieff’s hidden message, all the “good
Christians” were murdered during the
Inquisition and an entirely evil and false
’social Christianity’ took political control.
What western man now considers good is
simply the political agenda of a murderous
cult of A influence.
Gurdjieff’s trick is this, when socially
engineered men see certain formulations
they instantly, without even a second’s
worth of thought, experience an emotional
instinct that causes them to believe that
behind certain activities ‘blessed’ by a
combination of words is a well-meaning
God who in some way influences what
happens to his ‘chosen’, namely his
believers, but the truth is God has no
say so on this world whatsoever and
his name is only evoked here to
manipulate fools to offer their services
to those already established in power,
Gurdjieff right from the beginning evokes
the usual hypnosis in the hopelessly
unconscious types and then begins to
occupy years of their time with his crazy
stories. Meanwhile, he clues the
cleverest in on what he is up to. If you
watch carefully during formal readings
one will notice that certain people can
hardly contain their peals of laughter,
because they see the joke, while most
are ridiculously absorbed in a false
state of religious reverence. Right
from the beginning Gurdjieff begins
his mission of revenge against those
susceptible to such self-righteous
hysteria in that their genetically influenced
off-spring will likely kill thousands in the
name of their “Saint Gurdjieff.”
******
“Just what this particularity of terrestrial ‘morality’ is you can
easily represent to yourself and understand if I tell you that,
both inwardly and outwardly, it has acquired the unique
property that belongs to the being named ‘chameleon.’”
G. I. Gurdjieff. BTTHG
This is one of the “invisible words” hidden in the
Gurdjieffian Code: ‘chameleon’. It is one of the central
psychological traits used by Gurdjieff in his practical
joke on the readers of his book. Make a man believe
even just a little that he is in the presence of an
authority on one subject or another and instantly the
non-unified creature begins to imitate all the attitudes of
the authority figure and even the followers of the said
authority figure. In the Official Field Guide a man that
is always ready to change his own spots in order to
at least outwardly appear to conform to those
personages he believes are in the position of authority
is known as a Gurdjieffian Chameleon.
The curious thing is, that, for me, although much ‘literature’ could/can be written concerning the ‘literary’ and ‘illiteracy’ of Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, the ‘effect’ it had upon me I could never translate into words, something was infused, almost electrically from that book’s ‘intent’, not to say that this/these events that touched me deeply were the only ones available, not by any means, yet, they stand as silent witnesses to a deeper sense than that one we can either gain a frown or a confident smile via the assistance of our left and right hemispheres (IMO)…
Thank you for that Gurdjieff, if you knew anything worthwhile, then, like Rumi, you could never have said it to satisfy everyone anyway; there’s always a little left unfinished, otherwise there’d be no need for friends, lovers and the beloved to keep opening your books and finding themselves in and out of their contents.
282 Graduates
Appreciate your comments here on Gurdjieff in BTs, especially your points on the humor.
From my very first reading of Gurdjieff’s works I felt an underlying humor – the trail of the joke after it had barely turned the corner out of view. I came to realize this quality as irony. And have thought a bit on it.
Irony in its highest form is infused with humanity, and is essentially always the device of the “superior” man as related to others. In the higher sense irony is not intended to hurt others, but to – an extent – let them however incompletely in on the joke. As it is presented (even in the highest form) from a place of hubris, if it is offered without grace it can wound.
In Gurdjieff’s written works we hear the barbs but do not feel the wound – we feel a rough compassion – and urgent leading to help the reader to discover for himself the basis for the device.
Might I note in passing that Socrates also was highly ironic – both as presented by Plato and by Xenophon. The simplest example of this is his being the self-proclaimed wisest man in Athens as he knew that he did not know anything. Irony abounds with Socrates. You can see it in the brilliant “dialogue” Symposium which acts on so many levels. It is ostensibly a contest between poetry and philosophy over which gives access to the highest wisdom. But Plato also acts subtly to exonerate Alcibiades from the serious charge of desecrating the Eleusian mysteries, defends Socrates from the savage (and very “modern”) play “The Clouds” by Aristophanes that parodies Socrates (living in his “thoughtery”) – and which play likely eventually set in motion the series of events that led to Socrates death, explicates Eros, presents Socrates’ daimon (the intermediary to the gods that “spoke” to him), and introduces us to Socrates’ self-proclaimed greatest teacher Diotima – a woman (for that age: irony).
I commend a careful reading of both Symposium and The Clouds to ex and current students – if you are so interested. Please be armed with an appreciation of irony. I’d have to note that Symposium is not merely the simplistic defense of pederasty and homosexuality that was presented in the Fellowship of Friends. The full discussion of Eros is very rich.
The Socrates daimon apparently primarily warned him what actions not to take, often at great personal sacrifice. For example, he relates that it led him the defense to take at his trial that led to his death. Socrates was warned by friends against this approach – the outcome almost surely poor. But his personal character was such that he followed his view of the higher despite the likely cost.
Could I note here in a discussion with Donald McD, one of the “conscious beings” some thirty years ago. Donald mentioned that he had introduced Socrates’ idea of a personal daimon to Robert Burton. In my view, this idea, as perverted into an Old Testament Jehovah idea, has become the strange tool that is currently presented by Robert Burton. As have been many unfortunately things about the Fellowship of Friends, they are borrowed by the Sorcerer’s Apprentice and without true understanding or appropriate will – and have become instruments of intellectual limitation and the justification for personal character weakness.
Also, these Robert daily cards from the Fellowship of Friends as presented here are so laughably off of the conveyor belt from a fairly low “card” in the deck. They are infused with a flat literalism and corny earnestness that are so unfortunately telling. The tone belies the message and says all. More Wal-Martism. If one needed a reason to leave, these cards could well serve to tip the balance. They certainly would ruin one’s breakfast.
And ask yourself about the works and words of Robert Burton. Where is the irony? Where is the depth? Where is the art? Where is anything but the simplistic presented in hushed tones or proclamations – almost (to be generous) devoid of real understanding,
We can’t know the man Gurdjieff but we can see his works – and with THEIR corniness and mechanistic views that were so prevalent in that age – where science took on aspects of magic that would seem so dated in the decades since. You can note this in Freud who was trying to present the science of the psyche with brilliant insights and somewhat laughable reductive limitations as he tried to corral quicksilver into a kind of spreadsheet.
But for all its failings, “The System” is/was a way for (some of) modern man to begin to try to penetrate the joke. For us post-modern types that were raised on the cheap sitcom irony of mass media, this can seem pretty dated and off. But the Gurdjieff works still carry the humanity and a more rounded and rich sense of the joke.
And of course, if you have left the Fellowship of Friends (or not yet), the books are perhaps interesting and perhaps even inspiring – but perhaps somewhat immaterial. You are hopefully already in on it – and it may have left its indelible trace. The realization, however fleeting and incomplete, of the ongoing contradiction and pull between the concerns and efforts of one’s little self against the EVER-PRESENT miraculous. But one has to live in the now (at least part of the time) to get this. Not just be reading or just be typing – but living the I Am.
Old Fish says:
“…the concerns and efforts of one’s little self against the EVER-PRESENT miraculous. But one has to live in the now (at least part of the time) to get this. Not just be reading or just be typing – but living the I Am.”
******
As it happened to Gurdjieff in his rambling writings your thoughts turn a bit embarrassing because you seem just a little off and a little weird due to taking yourself a little too seriously. Whenever the subject of consciousness attracts the enthusiasm and the voice of a revivalist it is a wrong triad.
Thank you Elena, Still trying, Bruce, Graduates, Old Fof for your insights in BT.
I also loved the book for its humor and irony. It is for a large part a 20th century version of “Gulliver’s Travels”. Here’s one instance: ch. 18, the Arch-preposterous: when Beelzebub visits his scientist friend on Saturn, and takes part in an experiment that made him fear for his life (he went in a special construction completely detached from the rest of the world): it is analogous to Swift’s satire of the flying island of Laputa, that abstract world of scientists. Beelzebub ridicules and deplores modern science which seems to focus on theorizing and is completely abstracted from human concerns (it is a sort of science-of-knowledge); later on Beelzebub takes on himself the education of his Saturnian friend’s son, and the result is a very different kind of scientist, one given to a science-of-being, a science for the good (of humankind).
around 285, that’s Old FOF…not Old Fish
279 Still trying
Sorry, whatever the “facts,” you can’t convince me that that “cliffhanger” wasn’t intentional.
284 Old FOF
“As it happened to Gurdjieff in his rambling writings your thoughts turn a bit embarrassing because you seem just a little off and a little weird due to taking yourself a little too seriously. Whenever the subject of consciousness attracts the enthusiasm and the voice of a revivalist it is a wrong triad.”
Point taken; food for pondering. I hadn’t realized the importance placed on not coming off as weird, Greg.
And thank you for comparing me to Gurdjieff – this will undoubtedly help me take myself less seriously.
Yours in understanding.
To all of the recent posters on G. and BT:
Wow! Interesting and thought-provoking stuff.
Graduates (around #282):
You wrote a book called the Official Field Guide…on BT? The first lesson was quite interesting.
Unoanimo (around #283):
Yes, Yes! The “feeling” the book engenders in a person is likely more important than the information it provides. Irony (and thanks for your input Old FOF around #284) seems to be one of the tools G. uses to make this “magic” happen.
Innernaut (around #288):
Could it be that the “cliffhanger” ending to “Life is Real” is G.’s final and ultimate use of irony in that he had already, in his previous writings, given us the secret to the meaning of life?
“Whenever the subject of consciousness attracts the enthusiasm and the voice of a revivalist it is a wrong triad”.
I’d add that, in my opinion, whenever the subject of consciousness attracts the enthusiasm and the voice of a fundamentalist, it is also a wrong triad, or rather, a triad trying to work in isolation.
Fundamentalism is a hallmark of excessive order and a lack of awareness of recpirocal maintenance (which includes concepts such as feedback, sharing of responsibilities and power and the innate connectedness of everything).
And I freely admit that the term, “reciprocal maintenance”, and any ‘understanding’ of it, came from reading BTTHG. For me, that was an enormous earthquake, and not only in my intellectual center. The tremors continue to shake me…
… and that is a Good Thing (for me).
While I think I’ve made clear how much I disagree with Robert Burton’s methods as a human being and a Teacher, it also seems wise to realize that hanging off a pendulum and going into extremes about the inner being of an individual, is appreciating only an extreme aspect of the pendulum without visualizing the centre where it becomes balanced: The essence of the individual.
The impulse in recent posts to suddenly make the work of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and even Robert Burton a complete failure, seems the expression of too many hearts going into social queens.
Again, I think Robert Burton should be stopped, fully stopped, because I am convinced that he is harming students so much more than helping them. That human beings have only so much time to gain themselves and the practice of giving their responsibility, their self away to Robert Burton will put them back in their process for a lifetime instead of pushing them ahead, as it is believed by people in the Fellowship of Friends. Students of the Fellowship of Friends give away their integrity in numerous areas, in fact, in every area of first, second and third line and are loosing themselves in the process. Instead of “Remembering Themselves” and claiming their own presence in every aspect of life, they have been renouncing to it and sacrificing it to Robert Burton and those in the Fellowship of Friends whose features have adapted to making a living out of it. It is a horrendous spiritual butchery.
Nevertheless and for whatever it’s worth, we are too old to kill, even if still young to die for what is worth living. The more I look at people, the clearer it becomes that no one, no one in our times has all the answers, for each one of us is as much of the question as the answer. I cannot deny that I stood for Robert Burton’s dream for seventeen years and inspired more than a few who still remain in the Fellowship of Friends and will not tred on my own feet and deny what I was standing for, however mistaken. The mistake is not so much in the inspiration as it is in the practice of the ideal.
I will not tred on Robert Burton’s dream but will continue to slaughter his practice without stepping on his dignity as a human being. I would treat him with the same love I treated Dorothy and with a hundred times more firmness than she required. I would send him to jail if that were the only way to stop him and still hold up his dream.
It is not for me to judge the way Gurdjieff and Ouspensky lived their lives who I don’t personally have to suffer now. Once people die, the beauty of their soul is revealed like a spiritual balm. A man’s work may be little, but only his work, what he did for others, counts. His failures only count for himself and it is for them that he’ll need to keep recurring. It is in that sense that when we take upon ourselves to rid a man from hurting others, we free him from further damaging himself. If students seriously loved Robert they would stop him immediately, they would close the Fellowship down so that it was clear to everyone that the era of economic, sexual and spiritual abuse is over.
It is not for love of Robert Burton that the likes of Girard, Linda, Robert T, Steven and Meredith, Kevin, Rowena and the inner circle of the Fellowship of Friends does not close it down, it is because they cannot let go of their own imaginary picture, their vanity, power and the instinctive centre’s addiction to the State the Fellowship of Friends posesses and have to continue to count on the young people’s unexperienced heroism to carry on their shoulders a failed cause and support them. At this point they are not trying to save Robert Burton, they are trying to save the piece of land and the piece of feature that they have become addicted to with the help of the seventeen hundred of us who played in chorus along with them: Those of us who were begging for a piece of the cake to develop our talents with the magnifying glass of false personality’s search for space or true personality’s right to participation. One, at the other extreme of the other. This last one was what could not develop in the Fellowship of Friends because there’s no room for it in dictatorships.
It is important for one to realize that there is nothing wrong with the desire to participate and develop one’s talents, what is questionable is where the fruits of that effort are directed. False personality cannot direct them beyond itself because it is essentially a limit, while true personality knows they cannot develop without the whole. It is always a gift from the individual to the community in gratitude for allowing h/im/er to develop him/herself. A tribute.
Once we become clear about that, our existence becomes an exchange of gratitudes for the act of giving and receiving, receiving and giving: spiritual digestion.
I’m deviating from the issue of Robert Burton’s dreams. There was nothing wrong with his dreams except that they became a nightmare! Judging and slandering everything he did lacks objectivity and judges and slanders whatever within one’s self was pure and beautiful. He too had his moment of purity and beauty. In fact, he continued to fight for it above the human invasion of blind believers over the weakness of his will. The sequence is a valid tool like so many other tools in esoteric practice. Like prayer. Many a sincere yet blind student will still profit from it. The problem is not the tools Robert Burton uses, it is the network of practices of the Fellowship of Friends what is extending so much damage. It is because his tools are still valid that so many in the Fellowship have turned bling eyes to the actual practices and reduced themselves to using the tools against themselves.
Robert Burton is a limited man but still a product of his age and time, an expression of his nation’s will and family’s upbringing, like the rest of us. We are all connected to those wills within him in different ways. So many of us supported the American Way of Spiritual Life, so much for its rootedness on the individual and at the cost of the rootedness to humanity, denying our own will, our own nations and and our family’s. It may have been a foul mistake for a small generation and for half of our lifetime but if that is the payment to understand the point at which the individual cannot stand above the community just as the United States cannot stand above the whole of humanity, then we’ve made a worthwhile payment and reached an understanding worth any School. There is no room for war where everyone is too sick to fight. Then it is time for healing, the time of many generations to come.
Old FOF,
thank you for your insights, I appreciate them. I particularly liked the analogy of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. I’d even go further, since I’ve never seen any evidence that Burton was even an official apprentice; Burton is more like a burglar who broke into the Sorcerer’s house, turned on the lights, and took some potion, mistaking it for the whiskey.
…or maybe he drank some whiskey, mistaking it for a potion.
Ames,
Nice to see you back,
You wrote ~
“Fundamentalism is a hallmark of excessive order and a lack of awareness of reciprocal maintenance (which includes concepts such as feedback, sharing of responsibilities and power and the innate connectedness of everything).”
_________________________________
Of course, real power comes after all that stuff is prerequisite-ly fulfilled for the gears of reciprocal maintenance to issue out from one’s efforts and attention;
sure, many herein the blog say that the moment never goes anywhere, yet the quality sure does, yes? So, your post gives me an ‘aha’ of sorts on this Sunday morn, that their is Spiritual Fundamentalism too, that many think there way into their daily ‘I gotta be esoteric’, hence the ole license plate I saw the other day ~ WELUV RB: that plate give me the willies every time it sneaks around the corner, it’s the Cujo of license plate in Oregon House.
end of part 1
Ames, you wrote ~
“Fundamentalism is a hallmark of excessive order and a lack of awareness of reciprocal maintenance (which includes concepts such as feedback, sharing of responsibilities and power and the innate connectedness of everything).”
_________________________________
Of course, real power comes after all that stuff is prerequisite-ly fulfilled for the gears of reciprocal maintenance to issue out from one’s efforts and attention;
sure, many herein the blog say that the moment never goes anywhere, yet the quality sure does, yes? So, your post gives me an ‘aha’ of sorts on this Sunday morn, that their is Spiritual Fundamentalism too, that many think there way into their daily ‘I gotta be esoteric’, hence the ole license plate I saw the other day ~ WELUV RB: that plate give me the willies every time it sneaks around the corner, it’s the Cujo of license plate in Oregon House.
So, back to ‘dream working’ ~ Yes, there’s a mental attitude that barely gets off the toilet, starts reading the newspaper and forgets what it came there to ‘do’… your post is a good reminder that talk is cheap and cheap talk is expensive…
I saw a sign the other day with John Waynes picture and a quote, it said ~
“Life is tough, it’s tougher if you’re stupid.” John Wayne
I would exchange it for the word ‘ignorant’… so, thanks for the posting, it’s emotional to know that underneath forgetting there’s millions upon millions of acorns who ‘remember’ how to be forests.
________________________
Love to you all.
Uno, what’s with the ‘there’ and ‘their’ thingy?
Word?!
Elena (around #293):
I agree with your sentiment regarding RB (although I barely know him).
While it may be right action for the gardener to pluck the weed from the flower bed because it is stunting the growth of the flowers, it is wrong work of the emotional centre for the gardener to give himself or herself permission to hate the weed while he does it.
294 Ames Gilbert
LOL Ames – thanks. (“… mistaking it for the whiskey”) HA !
This business of reminding ourselves to try not to throw the baby out with the bathwater – should indeed command hazard pay. Maybe that is why the dog had to be buried so deep?
It confounds the impulse of become an expert at commenting on the commentators about the baby, OR of becoming a babyology or bathwaterology expert.
And it is so deeply weird that in fact we ARE the baby…..
293 – Elena
That was a quite powerful and thought provoking post.
Thank you.
The following is an excerpt from “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D.
—————–
I can admit it freely now. All my life I’ve been a patsy. For as long as I can recall, I’ve been an easy mark for the pitches of peddlers, fund-raisers, and operators of one sort or another. True, only some of these people have had dishonorable motives. The others–representatives of certain charitable agencies, for instance–have had the best of intentions. No matter. With personally disquieting frequency, I have always found myself in possession of unwanted magazine subscriptions or tickets to the sanitation workers’ ball. Probably this long-standing status as sucker accounts for my interest in the study of compliance: Just what are the factors that cause one person to say yes to another person? And which techniques most effectively use these factors to bring about such compliance?
——————
They know what works and what doesn’t; the law of survival of the fittest assures it. Their business is to make us comply, and their livelihoods depend on it. Those who don’t know how to get people to say yes soon fall away; those who do, stay and flourish.
Of course, the compliance professionals aren’t the only ones who know about and use these principles to help them get their way. We all employ them and fall victim to them, to some degree, in our daily interactions with neighbors, friends, lovers, and offspring. But the compliance practitioners have much more than the vague and amateurish understanding of what works than the rest of us have. As I thought about it, I knew that they represented the richest vein of information about compliance available to me. For nearly three years, then, I combined my experimental studies with a decidedly more entertaining program of systematic immersion into the world of compliance professionals–sales operators, fund-raisers, recruiters, advertisers, and others.
——————
Much of the evidence presented in this book, then, comes from my experience posing as a compliance professional, or aspiring professional, in a large variety of organizations dedicated to getting us to say yes.
One aspect of what I learned in this three-year period of participant observation was most instructive. Although there are thousands of different tactics that compliance practitioners employ to produce yes, the majority fall within six basic categories. Each of these categories is governed by a fundamental psychological principle that directs human behavior and, in so doing, gives the tactics their power. The book is organized around these six principles, one to a chapter. The principles—consistency, reciprocation, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity—are each discussed in terms of their function in the society and in terms of how their enormous force can be commissioned by a compliance professional who deftly incorporates them into requests for purchases, donations, concessions, votes, assent, etc.
——————
Finally, each principle is examined as to its ability to produce a distinct kind of automatic, mindless compliance from people, that is, a willingness to say yes without thinking first. The evidence suggests that the ever-accelerating pace and informational crush of modern life will make this particular form of unthinking compliance more and more prevalent in the future. It will be increasingly important for the society, therefore, to understand the how and why of automatic influence.
This may be a somewhat off-topic ramble, but threads from several different posts wove themselves together this morning and called for a response.
One of my criticisms of the fellowship and the Fourth Way has been the navel-gazing aspect of it. So much about ME, my evolution, my state of consciousness, my spiritual growth, my, my my.
I have spent some years working with a path that takes another approach. Wait . . . I’m not about to prosletyze.
This path teaches that if we do our spiritual work with the intent of establishing a relationship with the other forms of consciousness that we share this world with, both on- and off-planet (C influence and other humans included),that spiritual and personal growth will come naturally. If we work in relationship (reciprocal maintenance) with that which we are part of, we will benefit as well as contribute. I have found this to be true.
However, I have also learned that our responsibility to be psychologically healthy and aware can get lost in the shuffle. It can be ignored as less important than service, communion, consciousness expansion, etc. The awareness of the role or responsibility of the psychological “I” in “I Am” can get lost. Our ability to contribute to the greater whole is hindered by our inability to see who we are and how we screw things up
In the really, really bigger picture, the role or responsibility of the “I” is probably immaterial, yet here we are having an “I” experience in the physical dimension, as far as the carrying out of our day-to-day lives is concerned. If this isn’t real or important, then why are we here?
The fellowship’s stye of teaching the Fourth Way stunts students’ sense of connection with the world they are part of. Focusing exclusively on reciprocal maintenance with no attention to how our personal weaknesses and subjectivity put sand in the gears isn’t the answer either.
Perhaps this is creeping old age talking, but lately it seems to me that what I do is less important than that I do something and do it in as healthy and aware a manner as possible, looking out of my eyes at how I might make a contribution. If I find a way to do this that’s fun, juicy and feels spiritually connected to something powerful, then so much the better. Working on the mechanical glitches that came with this package is important , but *excessive* focus on them seems like a waste of time when I know they will fall away anyway when this body wears out. The soul (that I already have) will have learned something from the effort of paying attention and will move on to the next project.
I guess this has been a wordy way of saying that balance is everything.
290 Still trying
“Could it be that the “cliffhanger” ending to “Life is Real” is G.’s final and ultimate use of irony in that he had already, in his previous writings, given us the secret to the meaning of life?”
Yes, or poking us toward an understanding of how we incessantly desire that someone else spoon-feed us the meaning of everything, including ourselves.
301 WasKathleenW
I appreciate your post in so many ways.
It also just now helped me understand a thought offered me years ago and long after leaving the Fellowship of Friends by an ex-member which just didn’t compute at the time – along the lines that the subjective is the objective.
The “creeping old age” aside appears so true now — a number of intensely important spiritual concerns from my 20s have seemed to have largely fallen away – to be replaced by what – less focused more gentle considerations.
Maybe it stems from the realization of how close death has become? In scale, how fast one’s life has gone by. An impetus for a better understanding of the nature of the soul.
Interesting story of his harrowing ordeal from the BBC reporter Alan Johnson, who was kidnapped for 114 days in Gaza.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7048652.stm
This is the poignant conclusion of his tale:
With its locks and chains, its solitary confinement and moments of terror, it was a kind of dark education.
I lived through things which before I would have struggled to imagine and maybe, in the end, I will be stronger for that.
I have gained too a deeper sense of the value of freedom.
Perhaps only if you have ever been some kind of prisoner, can you truly understand its worth.
Even now, more than three months after I was freed, it can still seem faintly magical to do the simplest things, like walk down a street in the sunshine, or sit in a cafe with a newspaper.
And in my captivity in Gaza, I learnt again that oldest of lessons. That in life, all that really, really matters, are the people you love.
From the aforementioned:
BBC reporter Alan Johnson story:
‘I dream sometimes that I am in captivity again, and I cannot tell you how good it is to wake and gradually realise that, actually, I am free. Safe, back at home, on the shores of…’ [consciousness.]
[Emphasis is my own.]
more food for thought…
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=nNnxDaclHFY
#299 Old FOF
Thanks for that post and the excellent one last night. So many Good posts today.
To my mind one of the puposes of the blog is the agitation of the bathwater to give the baby a quality cleaning. I think this gets drowned sometimes in the bickering and argumentative hubris.
We all know words make poor bristles, but we can keep scrubbing away with conceptual approximations ’til it all comes clean.
Vinnie, are we actually witnessing the movement of your soul? They are beautiful no matter where you stand.
Vinnie, are we actually witnessing the movements of your soul? They are beautiful no matter where you stand.
285 Graduates
I was thinking about your comment and I realized that it never occurred to me (until now) that you might be right. Sorry.
So let me ask you this. I don’t know if we agree on this, but if we do – how would you express the idea that the “work-books” or even sacred books are in the end, just the instructions.
That the practice or the results of the practice by an adept are of a higher order than the “mere” instructions.
Thanks in advance.
Old FOF
What’s an adept? Have you ever met one? I’m asking because I never met one myself and I doubt whether they exist.
affectionately, CT
Waskathleen 301 thanks for that posting, the idea of “reciprocal maintenance” is essential… if I may quote you:
“In the really, really bigger picture, the role or responsibility of the “I” is probably immaterial, yet here we are having an “I” experience in the physical dimension, as far as the carrying out of our day-to-day lives is concerned. If this isn’t real or important, then why are we here?”
IMO (and not just mine), the “I” works through, in and with matter, which makes the “I” in a sense, “material,” it is a factor… through “I” lies the possibility of change, “making a difference” — materially. I like where you are coming from here, an expanded notion of “self” is an antidote to the “I, me, mine” mentality… a mentality which (to me), is even more abhorrent in matters of so called “spiritual development.”
…what we do in life…
echoes in eternity.
maximus
310 Charles T
“What’s an adept? Have you ever met one? I’m asking because I never met one myself and I doubt whether they exist.”
That’s a pretty ridiculous statement. If you don’t know what it is how do you know you’ve never met one, and how can you deny the existence of something if you don’t know what it is? The statement is about on par with your declaration that the bible is understandable simply by the access to the text. Do you think about the things you say before you state them?
This will turn up again as part of another post that is awaiting moderation because I included some links. Wanted to repeat this part right away to credit Ames appropriately.
311 ‘ton
———————
The idea of “reciprocal maintenance” came from 291, Ames Gilbert. It fit really well with what I wanted to say.
311 ‘ton
———————
The idea of “reciprocal maintenance” came from 291, Ames Gilbert. It fit really well with what I wanted to say.
And,
306 Laura
more food for thought…
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=nNnxDaclHFY
————-
Thank you for this, it’s great! There are two more videos on that page, done by the same people. One is the subconscious mind speaking and one the unconscious. Love the presentation. Some of what ‘ton addresses in his #311 post is touched on in the unconscious mind version.
Here are unconscious and subconscious version links:
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=GZvJIs2ZhB0
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=EZMhKP57M6I
310 Charles T
Not sure if you are serious, but the question I asked Graduates was not meant to be controversial.
I was using the term “adept” in the general sense of a person who is/has been working on themselves.
Yes, I’ve met many of them – in and out of the Fellowship. As I’m sure have you.
I think I’m going to attribute this latest to playfulness. Or is there a more serious underlying point that you are making?
Thanks.
312 Bruce
Come on Bruce, it’s not so hard to understand. I was asking Old FoF what he understood by the the word adept, and stating that using my own understanding of the word I’d never met one.
With the Bible issue I was saying children can understand it easily (in contrast with Beelzebub). I wasn’t saying there aren’t any deeper meanings.
But if you get a kick out of attacking me, feel free….
Charles, take a look in the mirror, therein you’ll see an ‘Adept’, sorta ~ Cause, an adept is someone who is usually initiated into an order of some sort, i.e., the Golden Dawn, the Freemasons, The Theosophical Society, Rosicrucian’s, etc. It can also be a person who has enough of a ‘magnetic center’ to study themselves, hence, Rilke, Goethe, Ouspensky, Nichol, Collins, etc., etc.
So, just to stay on the ‘ole fashioned side’ of the meaning, again, it’s someone whose been initiated and has passed through at least 4 to six degrees of whatever ‘camp’ they are in…
I like to use the word somewhat more artistically and include individuals who simply do it themselves, who work to be all three forces in the ‘Adept Triad’.
:.)
314 Old FOF.
Thanks for elucidating. I thought you were using “adept” to mean some kind of spiritual teacher type person. As you no doubt realise I’ve got a bit a thing about people who claim to be teachers.
cheers, Chas
315 Charles
“With the Bible issue I was saying children can understand it easily”
Exactly, Charles I think we live on two different planets.
“I was asking Old FoF what he understood by the the word adept, and stating that using my own understanding of the word I’d never met one.”
Makes more sense to just ask the above in the first place, doesn’t it. I’m a simple person, it probably just flew right over my head.
Bruce, why are you being so obtuse about this? I’m agreeing with you that the Bible can be read on many levels. But it’s obvious that children can get understanding from it too, isn’t it?
314 Old FOF
316 Uno
Thanks – understood.
319 Charles T
It’s not my experience that children understand the bible “easily” under almost any circumstance, except on a very basic, formatory and almost useless level. But I’m not going to argue further about it, or about your fast and loose style and generalizations. Have at it.
Some posts ago I mentioned I did not have friends in the Fellowship but the sentence keeps coming back to me with images of a few people with whom we talked and shared sometimes. I take this words back on their honor. There are many more friends now than I ever had inside. Thank you for your private letters as well.
Elena
test post
…Old FOF @ 309
285 Graduates
I was thinking about your comment and I realized that it never occurred to me (until now) that you might be right. Sorry.
So let me ask you this. I don’t know if we agree on this, but if we do – how would you express the idea that the “work-books” or even sacred books are in the end, just the instructions.
That the practice or the results of the practice by an adept are of a higher order than the “mere” instructions.
Thanks in advance.
*******
To begin with a would-be adept needs something more than the general knowledge available in everyday life and today there is a significant range in quality of ‘esoteric-like’ knowledge in books. Ordinary religious instruction is likely not objective enough to lift a man out of the delusions of the general mentality of the social order which is based on buffering the shocking and uncertain aspects of life, the very things that can awaken a man to the fact that he is only alive for a period of time and that his body is going to die. Will he really go to Heaven for an eternity of satisfaction afterwards? Is the way he lives, thinks and feels all that is required for eternal enlightenment? Is anything wrong at all? Is everything really just the way it should be? These questions need examination and there has to be an initial input of better information than what people say over the dinner table or out at the pub.
There has always been esoteric (meanings behind life and death) books circulating in civilization since the invention of writing and the reason is perhaps three-fold at least: one, they are created for the sake of creating art and as a benefit during the process potentially higher consciousness is also created; two, they are the recorded understandings of someone that had something valuable to say on a high enough level that the message could not be entrusted to be passed along through word of mouth without fear of the meaning being distorted; and three it is a reliable method of developing the lower centers to a significant enough level that the higher centers become available. The connection between the mind and heart, between the practical, rational details concerning why a person is alive and what he does with his life and the general emotional “intuition’ about those kinds of aims, is generally by far very little developed in people. It is even very little developed in people in “schools” because they do not reason things out for themselves, instead they take the word of other people, an