The time has come to move again.
For part 6 click here.
For part 5 click here.
For part 4 click here.
For part 3 click here.
For part 2 click here.
For the article that I wrote so very long ago, and for the first and potentially most enlightening part of the discussion click here.
And as always, enjoy and have fun.
April 20, 2007 at 3:35 pm
So, after thinking hard on whether to add a paypal donations button to Animam Recro, I have chosen to go through with it.
If you wish to make a donation to this blog, you can do so from the main page of the blog (ie. click home in the top right corner of the screen and look for the paypal donate button on the right). The donation would be in £GBP, not $US (currently the exchange rate is roughly 2$=1£).
Thank you.
April 20, 2007 at 3:35 pm
To Howard #6/406.
For your reference, Howard, I have not posted on this forum under any other personas – just Anonymous 6/376.
Your reply neatly illustrates the problem with formatory thinking and the mind behind it.
You use the word ‘verification’ as merely that – a word. As your level of being changes, so your verifications change. After all, your own inner world is becoming slightly different, so the chemical combinations with anything outside you, including ideas (such as Robert’s divinity), are going to be different too.
And verification is not either linear or black-and-white. In my experience it is cyclic, you are returned to the same spot – in familiar circumstances – again and again… and every time you return, the ‘verification’ is not quite the same as before. It seems to me that your understanding of ‘verification’ only works on the level of words.
And you are mis-understanding the steward comparison (deliberately?). The point is that we need to be convinced that Robert has swept all of HIS rooms clean – particularly the room containing identification with his sexual needs – before he can ‘mind’ ours – or put our evolution first, as you said. If some of the accounts in this forum are true, there indeed seem to have been many occasions when the two have come into conflict. And because Robert seems to have a conflict of interests, every student in the School experiences it too in some form or other.
Must you not be able to practice non-identification in your favourite ‘room’ before you can preach it meaningfully?
Have you ever thought why (about a year ago) two students of the ‘inner circle’ started selling vouchers for Robert’s events in return for sex? It was because they thought it was permissible, they were following the model they saw in front of them…
April 20, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Living the contradiction 4
—– SELF-remembering versus “love they neighbor”
Every spiritual movement is a reaction to what is there. So the focus on one’s own SELF in the Fourth Way is a reaction to the fact that the Christians (generally speaking) went over board with the idea that loving and caring for the people around them would get them into paradise.
Therefore the gods brought Gurdjieff onto the World-stage promoting, as he stated “You have to become a conscious egoist”. This is one of those contradictions that sheep never can live. Therefore most Fourth Way followers live only half of this Contradiction, and the Fourth Way has now an over population of Egoist who call this SELF-remembering.
Before these events in Egypt I was a good example of this mis-development. Loreta reminded me of the last lunch Cassandra and I had together with her before leaving for Egypt. We talked about our 5 years in India where RB had send us to open Centers. Cassandra told Loreta that at one point she almost died there and Loreta then said to her “Now in Egypt you will take better care” and before my dear Cassandra could answer I stated “We will do what is required”.
Its this spirit that is praised very high in the Fourth Way, they call it “Total dedication”, but in fact it is a lack of feeling based also on the nature of its founder Gurdjieff who was inhabiting a “King of Clubs” mechanism.
Loreta today said to me that for her it had always been clear that RB is also a King of Clubs who is trying to educate his King of Hearts and although I had never thought of that, many things suddenly made a lot of sense. For example, why he always painted the KOC as the main enemy? Simply because everyone is most aware of what is a large part of oneself. Also this explains why he surrounded himself with so many instinctively centered machines.
But what was so shocking that he obviously used the tragic events in Egypt for his promotional purposes and that he never expressed any emotions to me in this respect. On the contrary it was clear that my presence reminded his KOC of Death and that was the reason why he put me out for the stupid reason of not accepting his gift of a jacket.
As before I do not any less think that he is conscious, which for me means “to be a perfect tool of the gods”. But different than my naïve previous believe “that one has to follow anything what this messenger asks”, is now the understanding that the gods want one to become a “Conscious Egoist” and not just “Conscious Sheep”. Such a man is the tool, the channel, that the gods use to create a play that is full of Contradictions and that some can use to wake up.
As I stated before, it is clear to me that the play that is unfolding carries the message for those that can hear and do not only follow their momentum and fears, that it is time to start something new. Its as simple as that, no need to blame the past, RB, or oneself.
There is a total lack of compassion in Fourth Way hardliners inside and outside the school as one could also feel in the acidity of some comments on this Blog. For example today I was leaving Café Collage and Thomas Fenn met us outside. He was the last one who met all three, Daniela, Cassandra and myself together in Rome and even then asked me to lead a meeting, shortly before the death of Daniela and Cassandra. Now this evening he would not even respond to my Hello.
What made this lack of compassion particularly clear was when I send out a message to all my customers last week telling them what happened for me in the last 18 month and I got so many loving replies like the following:
“Kiran, I was stopped in my tracks just now this morning when I was reading unread emails and came across this deeply personal sharing from you. By now you may be in the joy state regarding the blessing of the time on earth you had with your wife, I hope so. I am glad you survived and are bringing your gifts more to the sharing arena with us who are being touched by your application of the many things you know.”
“Kiran. It is breathtaking and spiritually uplifting. I think that all of us on this email are lucky to be alive and practicing in the alternative medicine and spiritual spheres.”
“I am a firm believer in the eyes as being the entry to the soul. Your eyes show the kind of person you are, and I believe your eyes show honesty and integrity, as well as, a deep thinker and creative artist. I can’t also help but say, there’s a bit of ego left there, but it’s been calmed to the point of humility. Ego is not always a bad thing, and I think most outstanding creators of any kind need to call on the ego to accomplish their goal.”
“This was a moving and inspiring address. I hope you get the response that it merits and I am happy to hear about what you experienced since what you describe is part of my experience of life as well. Although I did not have to suffer through so much…”
And so many more of this kind, from people I did not meet once. And now the stunning fact is that I did not get one e-mail message from one of my hundreds so-called Friends in the FOF, that I was spending time with for the last 20 years, in the last 18 month…. Just ponder about, what this fact tells you.
Just as the devoted Christians loose themselves in helping others, the dedicated Fourth Way student is lost in his wrong concept of SELF-remembering that leaves no space for compassion.
Living the Contradiction also in this respect will only be for few, it needs courage, observation, thinking, being true to oneself and of course feeling. I know all this payment of Cassandra and Daniela was only to that end that some wake up and transcend Contradictions.
Greetings from Oregon House
You can e-mail me at Kiran@inergetix.com
Or you can see some more pictures here
http://www.beingpresent.net
April 20, 2007 at 4:15 pm
HC said:
“One doesn’t have to keep re-verifying it. If one feels the need to keep verifying it, it only means one has not really verified it to begin with.”
Reminds of a definition I once heard for the word conclusion: The place where I got tired of thinking.
April 20, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Hey lovely cyberseekers,
I too, have felt somewhat discouraged by the tone of the blog in general. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in a little slump…. Everything seems to coalesce in such amazing ways, and not all of them are joyful. It’s painful to see where I have failed to love and beloved.
It’s a bit stale by now but Howard, dear, don’t turn your circular reasoning on me and think I’ll belly up to your insulations that I’m being formatory. I’m not the one who belongs to a group claiming to “own” C-influence and the shocks they deliver. I know how the school defines formatory thinking and I think you’re swimming in it. You ain’t got nothing on my sweet mama.
Practical (6/382): “That is why this blog is so depressing. It is based on the assumption that because the Fellowship did not help some people in their search, that it cannot help anyone.”
If you have truly read my posts or many of the posts of people who have been in the FoF for ten, twenty years, and who are part of this discussion, I don’t think you would say that. I, for one, have never said that you can’t be helped by the school.
The problem is, and all you defending the FOF, please try to let this sink in… Be clear about what you’re defending! It’s not that the FoF isn’t full of wonderful, well-meaning people, or that there are some working ideas and aspects to the teacher and his approach to awakening, it’s that there are some very ugly aspects to his “system” which are incredibly painful to confront if you have the courage to leave. Practical wrote, “Why assume that students are so mindless they cannot take what is useful from the teaching and put aside the rest?” Fine, on the first part but consider this: What you are “putting aside” is ME and other’s like me; personally, what is being “put aside” is a totally inclusive relationship with my mama (and her community), what you are “putting aside” are all the living, breathing individuals who have left and been condemned, if by no one else, than by your teacher (isn’t that enough!?), as “food for the moon”. Sure, go ahead put it all aside. Cause I’ve had to put THAT painful untruth aside to live my life.
And for you non (in my opinion) non-dualists out there. Sorry, but I can’t apologize if you don’t get my complaints about what seems to me going from the frying pan into the fire. In the words of John Wheeler: “What I am is that pure, non-objective presence-awareness that cannot be doubted or denied. What I am not is the body, emotions, mind and — most importantly — a separate person or character created in thought.” That’s not helpful talk to me. It is, in fact, very dangerous talk to me. It’s the kind of talk that has allowed people for centuries to destroy, deny, and debase the bodies, thoughts and feelings of others.
I want to respect my self and others —in body, thought, heart and soul— I want to live a full life here and now. And that means looking at it all clearly and accepting that it’s all going down as it is in this body, with these thoughts and feelings …it’s in realizing that I can take responsibility for some small portion of how my life unfolds, and connect to the I Am that we are at the same time that I fearlessly dive into this experience of Being Human.
I’m tired of intellectualizing my life away. I want to live it.
Join me in NYC sometime and we’ll see if we can make the gods laugh in and through and with us….
love,
Jules
Julescaz(at)earthlink(dot)net
April 20, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Dear All,
Yesterday I’ve received a message from my close friend Kosta Dmitriev from St.Petersburg, which he sent to the students in Russia.
I thought that it was quite funny (if it wasn’t sad), and asked Kosta if I could translate it and post it on the blog, to which he agreed. If you have any questions, you’re free to ask Kosta directly, his email address is: shantiway@yahoo.com
To those who don’t know Kosta personally, I am pleased to tell that he is one of those handsome young Russian men who rejected Robert’s advances.
———————————————-
Dear friends,
Thank you very much for the time we spent together, it was wonderful.
As many before me, I decided to leave the school when I discovered the details of sexual ‘adventures’ of the teacher.
Of course, as everybody else in the school, I knew that Robert is a homosexual. So what? So many great people and even our friends were and are homosexuals, bi-sexuals, transvestites – nobody is shocked by this nowadays. Especially among the different kinds of ‘spiritual seekers’, where there are always many, let’s say, exotically oriented people. That’s not the case, as me and my wife too, sometimes doing such things, that… let’s not talk about it.
Back to business, here are the results of my observations and investigations.
The school as organisation and its exercises are intended to:
1.Attract sponsorship for the very expensive and exquisite erotic games of Robert and Co. Teaching payments are spent on expensive clothes, often made to order for the boys and the entourage; original Viagra pills which cost $50 per tablet (completely identical ones in India cost $0.5). Air tickets and 5-star hotels for the harem; fake passports which are bought from Italian mafia, for the especially treasured lovers from Russia, and of course, for the new centres in developing countries, where new ‘members’ (‘member’ in Russian is the same word for penis – Rita) are so cheap. Also, 5-figure sums for the lawyers and parents of some of the ‘woken up’ underage victims of the teacher’s ‘mischievous’ activities.
2.Cover up the very fact that those orgies are taken place just before and after the meetings and are the main interest of the teacher in his school and the reason for its existence.
The cover-up is necessary in order to prevent students from thinking about how the teacher was using his mouth just before he kisses their foreheads. Many wouldn’t like to think about it at all. Of course, there will always be those who will work with acceptance and continue to be present to any sort of madness. But most students would leave the school to be present elsewhere.
Robert is interested only in young men, only straight (otherwise it’s not such fun to ‘get’ them), usually in financial need, preferably spiritually unripe and, what’s called in Russia, ‘without a King in the head’, and with high level of conformity of behaviour. That’s it.
Yes, my friends, it’s all about ‘members, members and more members’. Preferably big in size and several at the time. But if only that was all…
The stories of the participants are beyond even the most perverse sexual imagination.
One student has almost chocked on the teacher’s penis while giving him a blowjob. He had to be rescued by his fellow orgy-participants from the unstoppable in his sexual urge teacher.
The ‘height’ of those stories is the ‘Fountain of Eternal Youth’. What do you think that would mean? Very simple. Students are pissing in the teacher’s mouth. One at the time, or all together. I asked about the next, you know, logical step… They said – yes! That step has been taken. Sometimes all would get smeared. And why? You won’t believe… Gurjieff ordered from the astral plane!!! In order to be more present!
It’s understandable that such moments of presence will never be forgotten. You’ll be in the third state without any effort, and maybe even beyond third state, as many afterwards live their lives, wearing ‘horse faces’ forever.
You will ask me, what makes these people do this?
It’s very simple, really: everybody does it, they say. It’s accepted behaviour. You know about ‘norms of group behaviour in the totalitarian sects’.
Strangely, but many continue to interpret what happened to them in terms of the enlightenment. As a special, mystical experience of presence, which they would not get anywhere else. And, at the same time, they hate Robert for what he’s done to them and cherish plans for revenge (usually blackmail of some kind). It’s understandable, because otherwise you’d have to admit that you’ve been simply ….. .
Some invested too much in the school, suffered, paid; some simply have nowhere else to go. Most students simply don’t know many things, despite the fact that all information is published on the Internet. And, except for the ‘special’ details, it’s known to the ‘old’ students. I didn’t know the details myself, so I was hoping that Robert’s ‘antics’ were simply ‘free love’ with a bit of tantra. But, according to the participants, the whole thing is completely rotten and Robert is a typical ‘post-traumatic psychopath’. Of course, you can continue as if it wasn’t true, but then you’ll have to pay him, and that is a question of moral standards which, as any case where one is trading one’s conscience, is deeply personal. For me, it’s simply too much. It’s your business now, think for yourselves.
I wish you with all my heart to wake up before, and not during, the time when you are asked to piss someone in the mouth, given the reason of working on the 3rd line of work.
Thank you. You are welcomed any time to call or to write me.
Kosta
April 20, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Howard:
“At the core of verification are two things: constancy, and trust. These attributes come into play after one has verified something. In the school one’s verifications are tested often over time… If one has verified the school is real there is a finality involved. One doesn’t have to keep re-verifying it. If one feels the need to keep verifying it, it only means one has not really verified it to begin with.”
Complete and utter horse shit, designed to perpetuate the status quo, and just another step in the cult dynamic.
And if you’re going to mention “being tested” let’s discuss “guru syndrome”. You know, where one starts a group for supposedly altruistic reasons. Slowly the power hungry and sycophantic followers huddle around the “teacher” supporting his image of himself, like worker termites having to roll the fat lazy Queen termite from one part of the nest to another. Eventually he, or she, begins to believe their own myth. Before you know it, it’s drug, sex and rock and roll (maybe without the rock and roll). I’ve known or come into contact with a few “biggies” as far as gurus in my life, and the VERY FIRST TEST they get as a teacher they invariably fail. They become corrupt, some quickly, some slowly, but invariably they do become corrupt.
This does not, in any way (to my way of thinking) negate the “rightness” of one’s path, including the FOF, but facts are facts. Just because the cop on the corner can directly and safely direct you to the grocery store you’re looking for, that doesn’t mean he isn’t also a psychopath who’s keeping children chained up in his basement.
Maps can be useful, but remember that the lay of the land can change fairly quickly, and there you are holding an obsolete map.
April 20, 2007 at 8:13 pm
#407 To Joe Average
Thank you, thank you, thank you! This letter is so complete and pentetrating, I will send it on to a few ‘committed FoFers” that I particularily care about with the vague hope that they recognize their situation.
Perhaps others would consider doing the same.
After this letter, all words pale, all thoughts that continue to defend the FOF and REB are just that.
Good Luck to us all!
April 20, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Suggest that current ‘FoFers’ read # 407 from Joe Average . And then re-read it.
It tells it all. What more do you need to know?
April 20, 2007 at 8:40 pm
Esoterica wrote, 6/404:
“This “Howard Carter” is putting the issues neatly and directly in front of us and argues them well. It seems that you cannot deal with it, because of course the matter of joining or staying in the FOF cannot simply be summed up as reducing the experience of students to wanting to be “special”…if that was the case, someone as smart as you would have left a long time before you did, yes?”
Esoterica, do I know you?
My post about realizing the fof is not “special” was just one note in a larger work, not the whole of it.
Looking over the posts of the entity calling itself “Howard Carter” is enervating. I find no humanity, no warmth, no humor, no concern for the suffering of individuals, no depth of personal introspection, no engagement with the larger world, and no great intellect whatever. It is the disembodied voice of a mind wholly controlled by dogma.
Burton’s mind-control cult of personal aggrandizement called the Fellowship of Friends is no longer of much interest to me–been there, done that, came out the other side.
So no, it’s not that I “cannot deal with it” but that I have no interest in doing so. I was an apologist myself for some time, maybe as adept as “Howard” at circular logic, and there’s no joy engaging in that world any longer.
I don’t see the fof as different in any substantial way from any other high control, high intensity closed group (see the brilliant Da Free John post above, for instance). I’m not very interested in what’s going on infof now; I’m sure I no longer know many people still infof these days; and I don’t really care what happens to it as an organization.
(Although I have to say I’ve gotten some really good laughs out of “The Sequence” posts. Hard to imagine a “practice” that would so decisively take me out of the moment I’m experiencing. The “discovery” of “ancient wisdom” just struck me as hysterically funny, like if SNL did a parody of cults. Can’t you see Bill Murray as the cult leader poring over cave drawings of defecating boars, divining great wisdom from the shit-drops?)
So no, I don’t think “Howard is putting the issues neatly and directly in front of us and argues them well.” These are not my issues, I don’t find any originality in his posts, and frankly they bore me. Just more intellect gone to waste rationalizing the guy who’s holding him a mental prisoner. You debate him if it’s important to you. (And would you mind not flaming me? Thanks.)
Thanks for reading
JoelF
April 20, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Howard:
Since you’ll do what Robert asks you to do, seeing as how he’ll never do anything to harm you, I respectfully suggest that if he asks you to place your penis in his rectum, you insist on wearing a condom. Otherwise you will likely contract herpes. I did. It’s inconvenient.
Please pardon my anonymity.
April 20, 2007 at 8:50 pm
To: Crouching Tiger, 7/2:
I wasn’t suggesting you are third pig, just putting two answers together as they were quite simliar.
As far and two “Inner circle” members selling seats at Robert’s meeting for sex; who said the inner circle is free of mistakes of judgment?
It is clear to many inner circle members, maybe two more now, that one can’t try emulate Robert in all ways, or at all times.
At the risk of incurring another “formatory” photo, I would say Robert is under different laws than students and one of the mine fields of the school is to know when to emulate him and when not to.
April 20, 2007 at 8:58 pm
White Knight #388, yes, and wasn’t there an earlier Kornfield book in which he went into these problems in some depth? Thanks for a lovely post.
Kid Shelleen #392, thanks, I remember that meeting also. lol. Stories, hopefully, will continue to come from all sides.
Joe Average #407, brilliant, thanks for taking the trouble. Yeah, I can see the twinkle in Margaret’s eye now. Did she ever tell you about the cult based on horse training? You gotta laugh, man.
April 20, 2007 at 10:34 pm
TO Howard Carter, 6/406
I am not use to send long post but this affirmation of yours changed that. I am not sorry nor proud… Just informative.
You write:
“At the core of verification are two things: consistancy and trust.”
In the world of science, it is well known that you work to verify WHAT you postulate or formulate as a theory.
It is simple:
Picture a hollow tube, you put something in the tube (your hypothesis)and you place the tube containing your hypothesis under different conditions.
What will you verify?
What you put in the tube!
Concerning the hypothesis and the conditions?
Will they be the same if you are a FOF Student or, as an ex., a Church of Scientology member ?
As a scientist, you record every possible (postulat, step, and so on) for you to validate or in-validate your postulat.
It takes time… we know,
but 20 and more years in the FOF is time enough!
Let’s be practical and FOF orientated:
In 1998, who did not see/read/verifyied signs of the possible fall of California (1998)?
Who did not see,
in the many signs,
an omen
and,
in the omen,
a very private relationship with Higher Forces, Conscious Influences guiding FOF members towards consciousness, creating the School, using Robert Burton as the main point of contact between the two worlds or realms?
Howard Carter, I do picture you as a “mature” FOF student and the 1998 periode is surely meaningful to you:
Did you see/shared signs ?
Did you make clear deductions/verifications then ?
What are they now, verifying/knowing what you know?
Any conclusion(s) ?
Interval: Funny quotes from students at that time, during a meeting:
“I can tell the grand son I don’t have:
“I WAS THERE WHEN IT DID NOT HAPPEND!”
“HERE IS MY TUNA CAN! WHERE IS YOUR HEARTH QUAKE ?”
This was the tragi/comic interval, here come the second part of this post:
Isn’t it so that most meaningful scientific discoveries came as “accidents” occuring in the tube or in the circumstancies it was put under ?
Do you think that spirituals beings, truth lovers and seekers, should be less rigorous than scientists to verify the “ideas” or record the “accidents” ?
Do you really propose “consitancy and trust” as tools for “verification” ?
When the School disgarded Mister Eckart Tolle (author of “The Power of Now” a book we were invited to book mark but not read!),
when the school labeled Adyashanty as ” B influence virus”,
was you not doubting the conditions with which you can properly study what you could put in the tube ?
When I was told a list of students attending a “B influence virus” was made, I was not that surprised (we are what we are and we mean well…) but when I knew Robert himself called some of the “dissidents” up, not to study, explore, investigate but to give them an ultimatum (you have to choose!), it was all very embarrassing.
The “Verification tool” the way it is proposed in the FOF, is, I am afraid, rethorical and marketting orientated, not a reality.
Someone suspected the FOF is a “monk way”,
not as a turn even, but as a starting point!
I surely failed myself working, with rigour, with verifying this hypothetesis :
Is the FOF a 4th way School… ?
Now, if I sincerely try to consider Robert as a leader of a Monk Way, I understand something:
He should not be there to convince his student.
He should teach what he has to teach and recieve support from them!
“Accidents” still need to happen because great discoveries are to be made!
Good luck to us all!
April 20, 2007 at 11:21 pm
#6 Ha-ha-ha! This is grrrreat! THAT’s what I want to hear. Tell me MORE! Tell me more what Robert does in his bedroom and how Girard curses on his computer and his wife. That’s what I am talking about!
Forget about all your alternative solutions, let’s talk BUSINESS here!
April 20, 2007 at 11:24 pm
BREAKING NEWS!!
4/20/07 Friday, 1:40 pm Central Time
MILES O’Brien reports by phone to CNN that an armed EMPLOYEE broke into a MEETING room in BUILDING 44 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas and ordered everybody out of the room except one person. An E-MAIL was sent by Public Affairs to all employees that shots were fired, building 44 is in lockdown, employees have been evacutated and roads to it have been cordoned off. Building 44 is the communications center for tracking satellies, the international space station and the space shuttle.
Johnson Space Center is described as a secure complex which, nevertheless, has beautiful green lawns, fountains and a large park-like setting.
This is a real news story happening at this very moment with too many parallels to ignore.
April 20, 2007 at 11:25 pm
To Rita, 7/ 6
It was a long time we did hot have a “salty” view of Robert’s bedroom.
I turned into a voyeurist. Feels bad!
You introduced the translated letter with a “funny ” while a timid “sad” appeard between parenthesis right after…
The “SAD” deserves capital letters and should appear first!
Since someone introduced the exisitence of a blog similar to this one in Russia, for Russian, would you say more about this ?
It seems to me you are the “perfect” link.
We can only benefit from using more ways to inform and be informed…
Thanks.
April 20, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Hi Howie, me again.
When you wrote in post 341/6 -HC
“We understand, from several sources, that Influence C sets the curriculum and the teacher, as their intermediary, interprets their wishes”
Would this include Gurdjieff ordering from the astral plane through RB as intermediary that students should crap on Robert, “In order to be more present”?
Maybe you could submit your Willie to the teacher and tell us what you verify?
Ryan.
April 20, 2007 at 11:37 pm
#407 joe average
Thanks joe. Anyone in the fof who can read that letter and not have their eyes opened is in a hopeless situation.
“You are required to adapt to a complex, sophisticated technology of mind and emotion, through which you understand yourself and upon which you view the world.”
Chew up the map. Choke down the plug. Change the topography. Print out more copies and resume gnawing away, all the while pooping out paper turds for poor souls to follow.
April 20, 2007 at 11:46 pm
Donations anyone? Ridiculous!
May the sheik gets what he deserves! This is now no longer different than the Fellowship exploiting its members, now we have to pay you for showing us we were fools in the first place?
I thought the Sheik told us on page 1 he thought the FOF should be free of charge, but he wants to charge for his services–what is the world and this blog coming to?
Fed Up with all the BS!
April 21, 2007 at 12:21 am
Jules #5:
I worked in the office at Renaissance in the early 80s, and sat next to your mom for a while. Such a sweet lady, I remember her well. Didn’t see much of you in those days, but we met a few years ago at Burning Man. So, hi there.
You write about the non-dualist approach: “It’s the kind of talk that has allowed people for centuries to destroy, deny, and debase the bodies, thoughts and feelings of others.”
I’m not here to defend Wheeler or anyone from the non-dualist perspective, but it seems to me you’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. (coot made me say that!)
(aside to coot: maybe you do Frying Pan/Fire for Dummies?)
The idea the non-dualists are trying to get across, as I understand it, is that I don’t have to IDENTIFY with thoughts, emotions, body, personality, etc.–in other words, all that impermanent stuff that’s NOT my true nature. It’s not a license to deny, destroy or debase anything or anyone. In fact, it seems to me just the opposite, in practice. There’s an openness, a curiosity, a lack of judgment (not to be confused with discrimination, which is certainly encouraged), with respect to self and others.
I think it’s possible for any truth to be distorted, to be misinterpreted, depending on the hearer’s being, and this may be the danger you’re pointing to. But this danger is not unique to the Advaita tradition.
You also write: “I want to live a full life here and now. And that means looking at it all clearly and accepting that it’s all going down as it is in this body, with these thoughts and feelings …it’s in realizing that I can take responsibility for some small portion of how my life unfolds, and connect to the I Am that we are at the same time that I fearlessly dive into this experience of Being Human…I’m tired of intellectualizing my life away. I want to live it.”
Yes, beautifully put! And I don’t see anything there that would be at odds with the non-dualist approach. To “connect to the I Am that we are” is exactly the point, it seems to me.
Blessings and thank you for being here.
April 21, 2007 at 12:42 am
Verification has been mentioned a number of times recently. I wonder what it means?
In my early years in the FOF verification was strongly emphasised. Looking back on it, however, what was actually occurring was that I (and others, as far as I could tell) was trying to fit my experiences into the FOF and 4th Way concepts with which I was being presented, even if it meant adding to or distorting the actual experiences.
Verification was often connected to “third states”. For instance, I was sitting in a railway compartment and became intensely present. I looked around and saw that my fellow passengers were not very alert: reading newspapers, dozing, etc. Then, into my mind came the thought: “yes, I am verifying that human beings are sleeping machines!” But wait a minute – that’s not what I saw. I saw a particular group of people in a particular situation, most of whom were not very alert. That’s real enough. What’s not real is the mind adding the “verification” that human beings are asleep.
Similarly at RB events I would sometimes enter that very intensely present state. Then the mind would say something like: “yes! now I’m verifying that the school is real!”. But actually all that was happening was that I was being intensely present and the mind was adding its usual irrelevant commentary. No doubt if I was a Catholic listening to the Pope in St Peter’s Square and I entered the third state my mind would say: “Yes, the Christian religion is the only true faith!!”
Girard used to say that if you’re not verifying something in the present moment then you have no verification. In other words, memories of verifications are useless.
I would go even further and suggest to those who still find this concept alluring that you simply watch what’s going on in the moment and ignore the mind’s commentaries, even if they confirm RB’s teachings or whatever you want to believe. The “verification” is completely unnecessary. What’s actually happening in the moment is the only reality.
RB
PS thanks again to Howard Carter for having the courage to present the FOF hard line viewpoint in a clear and sympathetic way.
April 21, 2007 at 1:21 am
FedUp #20:
What part of VOLUNTARY do you not understand?
April 21, 2007 at 1:51 am
“Practical” (6/382), you ask many familiar questions – familiar to both current and former members. I hope you take the time to carefully read and think upon the comments made by “I’ll Give It a Try” (6/397) and how they might apply to your work.
To some of your questions, I would like to reiterate earlier postings as food for continued thought:
“FenceRider” (5/140)
The sex is not the issue for me. Without going into detail, it is the abuse of power, misuse of resources, continual excesses, stifling of open discussion, lack of compassion for the other side of the fence, encouragement of borderline ethics, poor judgment, unreasonable interpretations of events, and use of fear and unfounded promises to control others that are at issue. It is not the money. It is not on that scale. It is about what we support. It is about conscience.
“coot” (6/215)
Older non-leader student think what happens off-stage does not affect your “work?” Deadening of conscience does not affect your work? Does not apply? Two words: Brian Sisler and Kevin Kelly. You know. You know you know. And knowing, must finally “at long last” come to understanding that if price of FOF is allowing vulnerable to be preyed on for YOUR apparent progress, then there is no progress – only hole in heart.
The painful thing for me after all these years is the growing realization of the extent of RB’s depravity. I feel a deep sadness and a deep anger at the same time. However, I want to not allow this to taint the true and countless meaningful moments I experienced as a fof member (yes, including many moments with Robert). Believe me, I understand about not wanting to accept that this could be true and buffered the facts for many years – in and out of the fof. It’s a crying shame and I truly hope that Robert gets the help he so desperately needs.
April 21, 2007 at 1:54 am
To I’ll Give it a Try and Traveler:
No, I am depressed because all the ‘I’s, and everyone believing them, are clouding the main issue: are we present with every breath we take?
You have neatly dissected my post, and in doing so, have proved my point. You cannot accept that the school can be real for yourself or for anyone else.
We each see the world as we see it, and what we see wills it into being. For those who see it one way, the Fellowship is a mystical, transformative journey. For those who see it another way, it is a sorry joke. Who can explain why we see and love what we do? It is therefore best to refrain from judging, and to let the judging be done elsewhere.
There are many stories like the Emperor’s New Clothes that illustrate the folly of missing the obvious absurdities in front of one. There are also many stories to illustrate the reverse, about missing what is high and noble in front of one — the story of Jesus being the foremost.
On the last day of our lives do you sincerely think you will be able to say that you lived more truly than me?
Adieu bloggers… I am so fond of so many of you…
April 21, 2007 at 2:01 am
This message was written by an unknown author — ES
I am surprised at how many individuals have opinions on the FOF.
There seem to be a number of repetitive theme’s
1) IS R conscious
2) is the FOF a real school
3) is the FOF the only way
4) can one evolve with out staying in the FOF
In regards to #4 my opinion is yes former students as well as those who have no contact with the FOF can evolve.Consider what we know. Ouspensky left Gurdjieff. We do not know Gurdjieff’s teachers and why he left. Nicoll left Ouspensky. Collin continued after the death of Ouspensky. Robert was kicked out of Alex Horn’s group.In my opinion a student can reach a point where the correct action is to leave a teacher. There is no one answer.
Another opinion is R’s false propecy’s I consider it possible that R either intentionally or not is lying. There appears to be some outrage that R is not a nice man and those who seem to insist that it is important that one be nice in order to be conscious. I consider this a confusion of ideas. There are those that follow a spiritual path that embraces goodness. R has never taught this. In the early days of the FOF when I was a student R spoke of the neccessity of acting as a corporate executive and against “femine dominence” which might be construed as others ideas of what is good. I do consider that the FOF is indeed a preporitory school for the real 4th way which is work done in life. R fails to teach his students how to deal with the results of efforts, that is the experience of higher centers. I do not endorse his methods in this and believe them counter productive. In my opinion there are better models for a school than a rigid heirachy.
Fi\or the sake of arguement consider that If the FOF is a true school it is still not the same for each student. Some are ascending some are descending, some need to be in the school some need to be in life. I do not pretewnd to understand the scale of school on earth. The members of the Gurdjieff foundation are just as formatory in their claims to own the true liniage as the FOF is in claiming it is the only true school.
As for cost that is the single most ridicolous arguement. In “life” to attend a highly rated University to the level of recieving a Doctorate can easily cost $100,000. If those who are members of the FOF think they have verified the reality of self remembering and that the FOF can help create this in them then cost should mean nothing.
April 21, 2007 at 2:05 am
Fed Up Says: “Donations anyone? Ridiculous! May the sheik gets what he deserves! This is now no longer different than the Fellowship exploiting its members, now we have to pay you for showing us we were fools in the first place?”
LOL I knew it was just a matter of time before this exact sentiment was expressed. “This is now no different than the Fellowship exploiting its members” I hope you can see the hypocrisy of this statement. First you are willing to pay thousands and thousands of dollars year after year in order to buy yourself entrance to the FOF property and a status of a chosen saved one, then you blow up when someone suggests voluntary donations to the Sheik in any amount, should you perhaps feel you want to thank him for his time and server space. Because money is dirty, and should never be exchanged for intangible benefits, right?
April 21, 2007 at 2:09 am
Some fantastic posts recently, in case you missed them:
I’ll Give It a Try (6/397) carefully turns over every rock to reveal the unexamined assumptions that underlie justifications for remaining in the FOF.
Traveler (6/405) gives a well-reasoned response to Practical, including this excellent point:
“Isn’t it odd that, in the school, we are asked to examine our attitudes and see our mechanicality, but our relationship to the school and to the teacher is not included in that examination, as if it were something that is beyond investigating?”
Rabbi Burns (7/22): Points out that “verification” is merely the mind fitting one’s experience into pre-defined concepts.
Thanks for writing.
April 21, 2007 at 2:53 am
#20 Fed up…take a chill pill dude. No one’s demanding anything of you. Are you looking for a target for your animosity?
April 21, 2007 at 4:27 am
Hey, Fed Up (#20): Why don’t you LOOSEN up and WISE up!
And consider the following:
1. The FOF Discussion forum is already in its 7th incarnation and is only 1 of 27 other categories covered on the Animam Recro website.
2. Giving bloggers the opportunity to help financially with the upkeep of this site was not the Sheik’s idea, but was suggested by 2 other bloggers (#6/345 & 6/350). And even Martin from Berlin took some unjustified flak from another blogger who mistakenly thought he was “selling” 4th way ideas (and later apologized).
3. No one is required to log in or donate any money to continue viewing or contributing to this site. It is still free to all.
But I guess we already have your contribution (post #20), don’t we!
Why don’t you just sit down, loosen your underwear, and relax! And do your research before you go off half-cocked!
April 21, 2007 at 4:54 am
Dear Rita and Kosta,
Thank you for the letter and the translation. Well written and honest.
Have the students in the FoF signed an agreement of insanity? What is it going to take before normal, intelligent people, many who I have a high regard for, and have been friends in the past (until they stopped talking to me after I left) realize what they are paying for?
The other day I was stopped by a Green Peace person in the street and handed a brochure describing all the wonderful things these young (and not so young people ) are doing in the world to slow down the process of destroying nature , our natural resources and the environment we live in. They asked for a contribution. Did I give it? You bet I did! I thought of all the years of paying into something that was perverted at best and illegal at worst (a church using its money to perpetuate the leaders perversions and insatiable greed). At least these Green Peacers show something for their efforts as they work toward preserving (in whatever small ways they can) the environment for future generations.
And this guy RB calls himself a ‘teacher’ and suggests that he is preserving something for future generations. Ha, Ha, Ha!
Next time you go to a $125 breakfast or dinner with RB, and Dorian is carrying a cushion for Robert to sit on, think about it. Or when you are sitting there waiting for him to come out, and it is taking a verrry long time, think about it! And then think about the donation you made just a few days ago and how it is being used. Just listen to your conscience (the quiet voice that you keep overlaying and squashing). Wake up and listen.
April 21, 2007 at 5:18 am
This is a message directed mainly to students in centers around the world.
Dear Friend,
I write to you as Clara Elena Gutierrez de Haven, Girard Haven’s wife and a student. I am in no way writing as an official representative of the Fellowship of friends who I have left and Girard and I are in the process of separating.
I nevertheless know that I am responsible for having inspired a few of you to believe in the Fellowship because I believed in it and wish to let these inspirations go where ever else they need to go. Very particularly I address this letter to the students that joined while I directed the centre in Colombia and the students in the centres I visited with Girard in India, Kiev, Italy, Greece, Istanbul, Brasil, Argentina, El Salvador, Mexico, Budapest, London, any other I might forget and those few students at Isis that might have ever been inspired by me to continue in the Fellowship.
Please forgive me for having supported the Fellowship for so long and helped convince you that it was worth supporting it. It has taken many years for me to understand why it is not only not worth supporting it but it is harmful to each individual to support it, with the structures that it holds today.
It harms the soul to give itself up for other’s benefit at its own cost. It is an extremely defficient first line, very blind second line and third line has never really existed in the Fellowship of Friends because the Fellowship of Friends has never sincerely worked for the benefit of humanity. The third line has become an imaginary divinity called Robert Burton.
I do not wish any harm to any one or have any “personal” attacks but I openly question the institutional role of Robert Burton: the teacher of this school; Girard Haven: my husband and main supporter of this school; Mr. Braverman and every other student who continues to say that this is a conscious school working for your benefit and I state that they are lying to you and wishing to take money from you at your own cost.
Each one of them has their own reasons to keep the school as it is and they may be very valid reasons when looked at them from their point of view but they are no longer valid from the point of view of a School that presents itself as a conscious school in the fourth way tradition.
What “works” spiritually in the Fellowship of Friends today is, as always, every sincere effort that each one of us is willing to make. There is no question about that. What doesn’t work is that the teacher and many students in the establishment have stopped working on themselves and crystallized in a position that allows them to live a fairly comfortable life around Isis or in centres, protecting their roles or the monetary investment that they have put into the development of Isis and Oregon House.
Students who have lived here at Isis, for many years, have developed small and bigger businesses and live on providing the school with services, the students that come from abroad to rent or buy the properties they’ve developed, or selling the products they produce. While a great deal of this effort has been a sincere attempt to support a conscious teaching, a lot of it has now rooted on the instinctive centre disallowing many to push their work forward and question the Fellowship of Friends as a school or Robert Burton as a teacher. Most of us have gone about trying to transform what we don’t understand for too many years and have finally accepted it without seriously considering the issues involved.
The few other students that have painstakingly laboured in whatever area of the Fellowship to make it “work” are somewhere in the outskirts making their own businesses or working inside with enough limitations and conditions to not allow them to develop a serious and objective second line. The privileges abound and the so called inner circle keeps tight reigns so that they don’t loose power. Indeed, they have enough power to not give opportunities to anyone they don’t like without any objective guidelines.
I do not need to prove to you that the Fellowship has become big business because at Isis as much as in any centre the focus of our work has gone into how much more money we can give to support the school.
If I sincerely believed that this conditions were not harmful I would not be writing to you or on the Fellowship blog on the internet but I sincerely believe that it is harmful to each one of us individually and all of us as a school to support the money making institution in which Robert and his followers have turned the school into.
Besides being one of the strongest supporters of Robert’s teaching for the past seventeen years, you will also remember the innumerable times that I have questioned the lack of second line of work in the Fellowship and my husband’s statements that support consciousness without functions, which is the main ideological pillar to accept the Fellowship as it is, by granting a status of man number seven to Robert and justifying the greed and abuse of his functions, without questioning them.
The other pillar on which my husband stands and wishes others to stand, is his own very personal commitment because who, of any one individual can question another’s personal commitment? Isn’t his relentless commitment what each one of us has been so inspired by? Haven’t we all stood on his shoulders and deeply loved and admired his stoicism and commitment to Robert? Unfortunately, yes. We have stood on his shoulders to push him down as much as to push ourselves up, The main portion of the inner circle, continues to stand on those shoulders to keep the school running especially in these times of crisis, because they do not have enough substance of their own to keep it running, not the conviction nor the cause.
Is it really that surprising that Girard Haven would support the teacher at no matter what or whose cost so that at least one of his teacher’s prophecies could become true? Is it not perfectly human, no matter how mistaken it might be? Who would not have wished for that role or made that commitment? Is it not simply what any one else having been given that role would have done? But Robert has not done as much damage to any other student as to Girard himself. The damages are not only physical but emotional and intellectual and if you have any serious doubts, you can ask any one who trully loves him about the excrutiating price that Girard Haven or those around him have had to pay for it, without any conscious living in return. Being married to The Fellowship as some students proudly say about Girard, is no marriage at all, no life of its own and there is nothing noble about giving up one’s life to an imaginary role so that one does not have to face the simple facts.
Friends are not those that accept everything they see silently but those who are willing to challenge us at every turn and with no one else to question, no one in the Fellowship stands a chance.
It is not easy for a woman to stand against her husband on no matter what issue, but it is not against my husband that I stand. There is no love in sitting and watching Girard, Robert or any body else, take the lot of us and many more innocent than us, down this descending scale. Has it not crystallized enough that no matter how many or how much others have tried, it continues to descend? Has any dissent inside the Fellowship, ever been possible when people are not even allowed to talk?
If I sincerely believed that letting things be, would make anything better in the long run, I would have perhaps left quietly but I do not believe that. I have seen the way in which Robert discards people who are no longer of any use to him, including Girard.
I have spoken with many students who have given their lives to the Fellowship before leaving, and begged them to defend Robert so that everything I was seeing could be a mistake and they have consistently told me that they cannot “defend the undefendable” and that there is “no unconditional love in Robert Burton”.
I cannot continue to support the damage that Robert has put on Girard by placing him as his second man or the damage that Girard is placing on students world wide by placing Robert first at the cost of himself, his wife and his friends, disguised under a robe of stoicism and self sacrifice. Nor am I able to support Mr. Braverman and the continuation of a structure within the Fellowship that instills in each one of us the pattern that there are individuals better than any one of the rest.
Robert and Girard or Asaf and any travelling teacher that pretends to have reached some level of awakening and hence can justify his support for this school, or shows superiority to anyone else, are no better, not a hair better than any student or human being inside or outside the Fellowship of friends.
If we wish to develop ourselves more consciously as individuals or schools, it will not be by re-enforcing the old authoritarian structure that holds any man better than his kind or an institution that reinforces the hierachy that such patterns generate.
I am not writing as a member or even an ex member of the Fellowship of Friends but on my own name or the I that was there to meet students when they travelled two days or worked them, to come and listen to what Girard had to say. I stood by him and tried to meet your expectations of a beautiful awakening. It is mainly because of the immensity of your rather innocent devotion that I can no longer stand by Robert, Girard or the Fellowship even at the cost of loosing a man I love, or a highly cherished relation with my daughter and friends.
Who else but someone that loves him enough can really say these difficult things? Not one of his many friends have ever layed the cards out and the whole deck is falling out of our hands before anyone is willing to play the right card and stop this blatant cheating that the Fellowship has become.
If it is at my cost, let it be at my cost because I am more willing to pay that price than the other one of keeping silent. My daughter and the young people ahead are also at stake and they are learning to accept corruption as their main course, so much so, that they themselves have indulged too much in it already.
If I have stood for CHANGE and continuation of the Fellowship, it has been because if there are any real students or teachers still in it, we know that being human IS failing, acknowledging the failure, IS necessary and correcting the direction, IS the solution. Only people with very personal agendas can want the Fellowship to continue as it is.
I have also wished this option possible because I am not interested in destroying the Fellowship and abandoning those who have put sincere efforts into building it but no matter how much I have tried to address what I consider serious issues about our lives, I have consistently been silenced.
The totally inadequate response of the Fellowship to the blog on the internet, with cheats and lies, is a reflection of the inability of the Fellowship to respond with any integrity to sincere questioning and suffering.
My husband, Girard Haven, had very clear motivations to stop students from reading the blog, not because it is criminal as the Fellowship has made students believe, or because it wishes to harm anyone physically, but because it deeply questions the School and each of our lives in it.
By stopping students from reading it suggesting it is not worth doing so and standing on the love and trust the endless adepts have on him, he is keeping students world wide from thinking and deciding for themselves what is best for them to do with their participation or non participation in this school and I have to oppose him as his wife, as a student and as a human being. This inability to question the school is the frightning expression of his own crystallized self.
With this letter I am letting go of the ties I have established between each one of you and whatever connections you might have to the Fellowship, through me. Let it be known that nothing in me is willing to support the Fellowship of friends anymore, and you must do so on your own with wide open eyes and love.
I beg you forgive me for the length of my discomfort.
April 21, 2007 at 5:24 am
Fed Up (#20) writes:
“now we have to pay you for showing us we were fools in the first place?”
From the perspective of one who has been fully indoctrinated and come out the other side — Is this not the net result of the 4th Way in general, and the FOF in particular?
April 21, 2007 at 5:30 am
I would be happy to pay for the services of using this blog which is taking someone else’s time to keep going.
While it may not be a huge sum, it may be the sum that one values it by. The blog will not last long and it has already demanded much from the Sheik.
I do thank you.
April 21, 2007 at 5:47 am
Hey, Fed-Up, don’t be silly. Sheik doesn’t WANT to charge you, the blog is free to use. It was simply suggested here by OTHERS who feel that it would be just FARE to compensate his efforts in moderating all the stuff we write here. He doesn’t have to put up with this, you know. It takes time to moderate stuff, probably hours. He’s been doing it for long time already, selflessly, providing us with a place to talk openly. Now some people wish to thank him by sending money. Don’t you think it’s fare?
If it’s not cool for you – just relax, OK? No need to get enraged. You are not being exploited here, buddy. Keep your money to yourself, or donate to RB -it’s dealer’s choice.
If you’re fed up with BS – then don’t post it here.
April 21, 2007 at 5:49 am
Cathie (#21) writes:
“The idea the non-dualists are trying to get across, as I understand it, is that I don’t have to IDENTIFY with thoughts, emotions, body, personality, etc.–in other words, all that impermanent stuff that’s NOT my true nature.”
I raised this issue in an earlier post, but it seems there were no takers. Where is the evidence to show that our thoughts, emotions, body, etc are NOT our true nature? In other words, I would agree that our awareness is part of our true nature — but why any more so than our bodies? Why the separation between body and awareness? What if awareness arises in the same way emotions do — that is, from our bodies, in some combination of brain activity? I’ve read of scientific research that suggests this. If true, would this demean us somehow, or make awareness any less real?
I agree with Jules that describing our awareness as true nature and our bodies as not our true nature just seems like intellectualizing. In my earlier post, I said that my body certainly seems real to me. My awareness may have degrees, but my body is pretty constant by comparison.
Non-duality sounds like it is falling back on the old duality of “consciousness is not functions”: consciousness versus the body, emotions, etc. What’s wrong with the concept that we are physical beings, whose physicality includes emotions, sensations, thoughts, and, yes, varying degrees of consciousness?
Not arguing, just trying to convey how things seem to me these days.
April 21, 2007 at 6:10 am
I’ve seen many posts earnestly trying to respond, directly and point by point, to posts from (apparent) FOF members. If any member puts a question up here, there will be posts from people trying to be helpful, or at least responsive, often painstakingly so.
May I request the same from those who approach these issues from the perspective that the FOF is wonderfully valuable, real, and so forth?
For example, Howard Carter, I find your posts parry every statement in a manner familiar to almost anyone who’s ever been an FOF member, choosing one of the stock angles that have been used for decades to counter the various “I’s” that question the FOF line. The more pointed issues, without obvious counter-angles, are generally ignored.
Would you be kind enough to set those refrigerator magnets aside for a moment and respond to the following, without trying to be “right,” or to justify your continuing loyalty, and without worrying about whether your response risks altering your role as Defender of the Faith on this blog:
What would it take for you (and I welcome a response from any member) to come to believe that there are fundamental flaws in the FOF, or with Robert, that are serious? Could anything possibly do that? My thesis is that there is nothing that could do it, because you believe that the FOF is a conscious school with a conscious teacher and, accordingly, by definition the only flaws that could exist are in the student’s understanding. For example, is there any sort of behavior in which Robert might engage that you would see as good evidence that he is anything other than a great conscious teacher? So far, it appears that, whatever anyone says about his behavior, your response is, “Maybe so, but all that means is that he’s under different laws.” Are there any limits to your willingness to resort to this perspective? Are there any limits to the perspective that as long as you’re trying to be present, nothing else matters, and the more outrageous the behavior, the more grateful you should be for being shaken out of your sleep?
Thanks for your consideration.
April 21, 2007 at 6:33 am
Hello to all, and warm greetings to all I knew in the FOF, and thanks to the Sheik for shakin’ things up.
I joined the London center in 1978, and was thrown out in 1994. I promised myself that I would not say anything publicly about the FOF for ten years, and apart from papers subpoenaed by Abraham Goldman for the Troy Buzbee case (sealed in any event as part of the settlement), I kept that promise.
I spoke and wrote to others about what was happening in the FOF for a couple of years before I left, and finished off with the letter below. I offer it for two reasons. First, some of the content may actually help readers. Secondly, it is has receded into history, so to speak, meaning that it can help one see that these disturbances in the FOF arrive in waves, and I was a part of just one of them, and what is occurring now is just another. From Ronald Macdonald leaving with about one third of the members in the early 70’s, through the Samuel Sanders, Miles Barth, Troy Buzbee, and other cycles, to the present, the waves are a feature of the FOF. So, as you can see from the letter, I expected change, and I am sure the other particpants in previous waves did also. Robert is still there, only his appetites, always prodigious, have grown a bit. I cringe at some of the contents of my letter of thirteen years on, but what the heck!
I had to retype the whole thing, the original files are in a now-defunct program, so forgive any errors, but it is unaltered apart from typos. As before, I have no problem signing my name—Ames Gilbert
14 November 1994
Here are some thoughts I am circulating among a few friends:
There have been quite a few letters and other materials passed around in the last few weeks, and I have been responsible for some of this. I felt that spreading information was the most practical act of regeneration to counteract the crimes of closing down and censorship that have been taking place in the Fellowship, spreading light to counteract darkness. Because I have nothing to fear and nothing to be ashamed of, I have taken full responsibility for my efforts by signing my name to everything that I originated, although I also re-printed and circulated anonymous letters when I felt it was right.
You may have heard about the meeting last Saturday, led by Linda Kaplan with the help of Girard Haven. If you have not, I feel you missed an unusual happening, and I advise you to talk to someone who was there. I feel that we were all given a great gift, that there was a demonstration of the rigidity of the form and its mechanical response to what Gurdjieff called the sacred cry from below against the unbecoming manifestations from above. I also feel there was a demonstration that we all get exactly what we ask for. Some have asked for the courage to obey the Master within, our consciences. Others sought an important external role; they have been given it, and they demonstrate daily how they use the opportunity. Some wanted to give up all responsibility for their evolution to others; their wish has been granted. A few wanted to buy an insurance policy to heaven; they are comforted in their illusion. Some gave themselves unconditionally to support someone else’s vision, believing it to be noble. They are noble slaves. And I believe the majority of students have some or all of these aspects. They see some of the dichotomies, and are sincerely struggling to resolve the good they have verified with the difficulties they see. They want to stay positive and comfortable. I understand. I want the same.
You may not know that the next day after the meeting, Howard Kingston, Stephen Merryweather, Ramona Merryweather, and Emily Gordon were given lengthy leaves of absence from the school. Cynthia Kingston was asked if she wanted to take a leave of absence, and I was told to leave the school permanently. You may not know that the day before, James Battaglia was given leave of absence for distributing copies of a telephone conversation with Robert. If you wish to ask the others the reasons they were given for these actions, I invite you to ask them individually. The reason I was given by Robert via Peter Bishop was, “Ames does not understand the purpose of meetings”. I have been trying to make transcripts of some of the “exit conversations”, and these may follow in due course; they may help you see the situation in a new way. For me, these dismissals constitute crime by the organization against the school, and the crime emanates from the highest source of authority, Robert. If you have any doubts, please study the situation—and please tell me if you reach different conclusions. At any rate, for me it is right action and regeneration to expose these crimes, and others, and shed light on them.
The rest of this letter constitutes my personal opinion about the situation in our school. But, these conclusions are not pleasant! Please believe me when I say that I am writing from a good place, the best that I can find. I acted and continue to act according to my conscience, which I came to the school to learn to do. I am confident that when I decided to act, I was given the help that I needed and asked for. I am confident that this will continue. I do not claim to be right, only that I must act according to my conscience, no matter what the consequences, and that is the right way for me.
My own difficulties with the form began fifteen years ago when I was at Renaissance. Robert entered the bedroom of my good friend John M., in the London teaching house. Robert was nude, armed only with an erection and overwhelming psychological power. He told John that he was an angel, and that C-influence wanted John to have sex with him, that he should externally consider the needs of his teacher. As a result, my friend left the Fellowship in agony. But, I personally did not act. I abhorred what had happened, and yet justified it by telling myself that I was getting great benefit from the school, and that I was not personally harmed. And this pattern has repeated itself many times since: each time, though, I was left more distant from the form.
I feel that we are in the hands of higher forces, and that a great play is unfolding for our benefit. The play so far has been a mixture of hope and tragedy in the finest tradition. I have come to think the following. With the help of higher forces, Robert was allowed to start the school for reasons that from the beginning were not entirely altruistic, and this has spoiled the possibilities for him, and at the least delayed them for us. The average student, like myself, came to the school with a spiritual longing. We also came with psychological dysfunctions of varying severity, problems from our previous life that we had not resolved. And we dumped all responsibility for the answers we sought on Robert Burton. For most of us, this was not the careful, partial and temporary lending of will advocated by the system, but the giving of everything, including the individuality we are supposed to reserve to ourselves. Robert even told mothers to give up their children, and many did! I know how this can be, because I too gave up almost everything in the name of something higher.
To try to understand what is happening now, I looked at Robert’s past. According to my sources, Robert Burton was asked to leave Alex Horn’s school after eighteen months of work on himself. He was given the task of not sleeping with other men, and failed this task from his teacher. But, Robert is very intelligent and had learned the outward form of how to run a Fourth Way school from Alex Horn. He had enough theoretical material, he was mechanically a gifted teacher, he felt qualified to teach others. Perhaps he hoped, as ordinary educators do, that he could stay one step in advance of his pupils, in this case a spiritual step. And, because he was emotionally centered with chief weaknesses of dominance and greed, he saw the opportunity to have others support him materially. However, Robert from the beginning mistook the weakness of signals from his poorly developed conscience for impartiality, and then took this sense of impartiality as an objective indication that he was free from certain laws. Please understand that he carried with him the part that won out when he failed his task; he brought his weaknesses. And I believe he did continue to work on himself, but only in order to learn to intentionally use World 12 creative energies, which are accessible to everyone unconsciously.
However, he soon began to take advantage of the enormous accumulation of trust, power and money that came with the complete abdication of responsibility by his students. Each time he ignored his conscience, it became weaker, and Robert’s conscience became completely buried after about ten years. He started to explore new areas of power with complete impunity. He found that because of the blind adoration of his students, every action remained unquestioned, and in fact students eagerly leapt to provide explanations that defied commonsense. He found that every indulgence could be satisfied. Anything could be explained by appealing to the inexhaustible credulity of a group of people that deliberately trained themselves to excuse everything in the name of ‘crazy wisdom’. His instinctive center started to enlarge, as it perceived it had no limits, unrestrained by increasingly feeble messages from his emotional center. At this point, his psychopathic development was complete; he is now a part of a group of people who are often intelligent, personable, charming, charismatic—a typical cult leader. They just happen to be devoid of conscience. The intentional absence of precautions against sexually transmitted diseases is just one aspect of this. There are now thousands of people who have had direct and indirect sexual contact with Robert. The implications are horrifying.
With the acquiescence of Fellowship doctors, he became addicted to painkillers and to Valium, a drug that allowed him to maintain a calmness we mistook for spirituality. At some critical point (between 1979 and 1981, in my opinion), his emotional center lost all contact with his instinctive center, and started to starve. His conscience is now inaccessible to him; buried under layers so thick that nothing but melting energies from higher forces can penetrate. The ‘emotional’ and ‘spirituial’ energy we think we are receiving is now being emanated from his instinctive center, his new center of gravity. And, his instinctive center is addicted to unlimited sex, money, and power, so it works to attract these things to itself, day and night. We are seeing him possessed, truly a blind Christ.
However, Robert is a very clever man, and we are very gullible. Once his quiescent conscience was buried, he had lost his internal guide. Se he started to look for signs outside himself, and there are plenty of signs if one looks for them. This has become a major interest for him—you cannot have failed to notice. Now, no longer a teacher, he encouraged his students to start looking for a guide outside as well. And all the while, higher forces are indeed managing the play! They gave signs, not necessarily the right ones; the rightness depended on whether the higher or lower was looking at the time. Those students seeking something higher received beneficial shocks, as many as their being could use. Those seeking self-aggrandizement received confirmation of their sense of self-importance. And now we have an organization where conscience is credentialed, a religion or cult, alongside a school where, if one wishes, one can verify that consciousness cannot be credentialed. Ah, the sweet beauty of Howard Kingston’s photograph to us all! How can we tell if another person is a man number five? Why would we believe Howard? Why would we disbelieve him? And, how can it matter to anyone else but Howard?
Consider the current situation. We have Robert Burton, who celebrates his consciousness in outward displays—parties, announcements, even estimates of degrees (7.3 last month); we have Girard Haven who coyly announces last week that he is a man number five. We have a teacher who says he is needed to tell some one that he is, or will be conscious, and that consciousness cannot be achieved without his intercession. Robert claimed last week that we only achieve higher states because of him! And at the same time we have people genuinely trying to work on themselves, students that are making progress, who have verified that they are being helped, who are clearing away the rubbish of false personality from around their consciences. From time to time, some of them stumble across their conscience when it has grown too large to ignore. This is a critical point, and for me there is nothing more important in one’s evolution than what is occurring at this time. If we take Robert’s direction, that is, we accept his claim that he is the centrally important guide or permanent star in our spiritual firmament, then we must squash conscience. You might be interested in these words from Peter Bishop. Last Sunday, he delivered Robert’s message to leave the school. He was asked, “What is conscience?”, and replied, “Conscience is a collection of subjective I’s. If a student accumulates too much material there, he should leave the school.”!!!! Well, I say, on the contrary!! I say if we realize that there can be no external master, and that our highest duty is to serve the Master within, then we are finally safe, we have found what we are looking for! And certainly, we cannot serve two masters at the same time.
So here we are, in a marvelous situation. It seems higher forces used Robert to gather 1900 students together, for reasons not yet fully apparent, and the process affected and linked multiple thousands more. Robert withdrew from his conscience into his fantasy. Higher forces are now withdrawing their support for him. His play is being made manifest to us. Unfolding before our eyes, if we wish to see, is a play of epic tragedy, a lesson for the ages. We are seeing how power attracts the corruptible, and how absolute power attracts the absolutely corruptible. We are witnessing the absolute of corruption, and we must learn the lesson, embrace the pain, allow it to penetrate the very core of our being. Then, when we in turn are tested to see if we have learned the lesson, at those moments of choice when our fate hangs in the balance, we may be able to turn the powers offered to us and dedicate their use to higher service.
What now? If these theories have any basis in reality, we can expect Robert to become more and more frightened, because he has nothing real to retreat to. We will be able to feel the fear emanating from the center. For example, today (11/18) Michael Goodwin called ex-students in the area to tell them they were forbidden to cross the property to come to La Cucina, a public restaurant. Bizarre, and illegal! We can look for and expect the actions of a scoundrel, a psychopath. There are several possibilities.
Robert might announce his retirement, on his terms. This would be a slow-motion, but nevertheless large-scale looting of resources. Such a turn would make him conveniently inaccessible, even more unaccountable, but with access to the same large amounts of money, power and sex. Or, he might liquidate all the assets he can here, including the Ming furniture collection, borrow as much from his American students as their credulity, savings, and credit cards will allow, and abscond to Europe to reign in the relatively undisturbed feeding grounds there. Perhaps he will try to hold out, exhibiting increasingly bizarre and out-of-control behavior, by clamping down on all dissent, increasing his reliance on external signs, making more claims of near-divinity to bolster his weakening authority. If he takes this course, it will probably end in both external and internal tragedy. There are other options. Whatever happens, I think it will happen quite soon and quite quickly. The structure he has created is too inflexible, too fragile, and his compulsions too great to allow the present illusions to continue for much longer.
Friends, it is of critical importance for us and for him that we do not let Robert go on his terms. It would be the end of all possibilities for him; that is, he would have lost his last chance to ask for help from higher forces and from us. And, he cannot receive help unless he asks for it. Even the angels must obey that law. And for us, we would have no way to repay the help and high favors we have received, form him and from higher forces. This mess is not Robert’s alone. There is only one of him, and thousands of us. It is our mess, too, and each one of us bears individual responsibility for feeding his addictions. We dumped all our problems on him. We gave him our birthright of power and individuality. We gave him huge resources; our time, our money, our labor, our love, our obedience, and some of us, our bodies. He could not resist the temptation, and is corrupted. There have been many warnings. We would not listen. We swallowed a ball of dung because it was gilded with gold. We heard voices, our consciences, tell us something was wrong and getting worse. We pushed those inner voices away, and sinned by using those most precious and beautiful gifts, the system and the tools, to explain away the discomfort.
My conscience surfaced for what I intuitively knew would be the last time, a few weeks ago. I knew that if I pushed it under one more time, it would become so weak that it could not speak to me again. I knew this was my last chance. I am so glad I took that chance! And so, I appeal to your conscience. I do not advocate those in the Fellowship leaving, or those outside the Fellowship taking action, or indeed taking any particular course. I just appeal to your conscience. It will tell you what to do. When you obey it, you are obeying the only true Master, the Master within. Trust it, and you can make no real mistakes. And this is true even if, and perhaps especially if, everything I have put forward about Robert and the state of the school is mistaken.
I do not seek to destroy the Fellowship, as Robert and the hierarchy that support him claim. I cannot be a “traitor to C-Influence”, as Robert has claimed before, even if I wished to. Think of the scale—how could an atom betray a man? It is my school, too, and to harm it would be like cutting off my arm. But the form is crumbling, according to immutable laws, as energy is withdrawn from it. All external structures descend. That the body of the Fellowship is throwing out healthy cells in such numbers, turning on itself, is a signal of present and impending trouble. There may now be more being outside the formal Fellowship than inside it. And if my own actions, which are internal, are wrongly perceived as external threats against the organization, there is indeed rot, and the form is tottering.
For myself, I pray that we will bridge this interval in the octave of the school together. I pray that the affirmative forces that Robert represents can be harmonized with the denying forces that have arisen to meet it, that both “sides” can come to see that they are both necessary for a healthy future. If either of these forces overwhelms the other, the school will be destroyed. We know that there must also be a reconciling force. I pray that I can recognize it and align myself with it. I pray that Robert will ask for help, and allow higher forces to redeem him, and that he can rediscover his Self. I pray that when my tiny mite of help is asked for, that I will not turn aside. I pray that Robert will be able to resume his Path, that he will be able to see that his journey is by no means completed. Indeed, I feel that the longer we support what he has become, the further back on that Path he will have to go. I pray that we can continue the journey together, helping each other as we are able, learning to love and care for each other, able to explore our humanity fully, but fully understanding that we are alone and responsible for our Selves and to our Selves, and that our plays are in the hands of higher forces, not in the hands of an external teacher.
Whatever you do, and whatever you think about this letter, please heed James Battaglia’s splendid advice. Keep you eyes and ears open, and try to be in the moment. Please do not copy or distribute this letter, although you may let others you trust read it.
Sincerely,
Ames
April 21, 2007 at 7:23 am
To: Skeptical Optimist, 7/10
“Although I have to say I’ve gotten some really good laughs out of “The Sequence” posts. Hard to imagine a “practice” that would so decisively take me out of the moment I’m experiencing.”
It seems you may have been mis-informed about the use of the sequence. We in the FoF don’t use the sequence when we are present, just when we’re in imagination.
The purpose of the sequence is to evoke presence, while at the same time disrupting imagination.
I assume when you say “take me out of the moment I’m experiencing” you are talking about presence, not imagination.
April 21, 2007 at 8:07 am
Rabbi Burns (22)
Reminds of the joke in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon:
“There are three men on a train. One of them is an economist and one of them is a logician and one of them is a mathematician. And they have just crossed the border into Scotland (I don’t know why they are going to Scotland) and they see a brown cow standing in a field from the window of the train (and the cow is standing parallel to the train). And the economist says, ‘Look, the cows in Scotland are brown.’ And the logician says, ‘No. There are cows in Scotland of which at least one is brown.’ And the mathematician says, ‘No. There is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown.’”
April 21, 2007 at 8:45 am
Howard Carter really Coward Harder, real FOF member, also known as Pinoccio, wooden puppet wishing to become real boy. Upon partial realization, relative awakening, to real boy, he meet with Robert Burden and is ‘exposed’ for what he really is: wooden object to be fondled and used for burden’s pleasure; nothing else. This is no fairy tale, possibly fairy tail, but more likely one aweful nightmare that lasts lifetimes for many like him. He is advised by Jiminy Cricket, his CONSCIENCE,
‘Let your conscience be your guide,’
but is this heard? Is this verified? I don’t think so (Si-Do or So-Di or Do-Si-Do or So-Di-So; most likely: Do-Si-Do-Si-Do-Si. That makes a sequence simultaneously with representing
begining of descending octave (x 3):
Do-Si-La-Sol-Fa-Mi-Re-Do
2, 4, 6, 8, who do we appreciate? What a dance!)
So maybe help is needed from Harder Gavin, the supposed man 5 pronounced by burden’s proof. But Harder Gavin is no more real boy than man in moon is made of green cheese, if such a thing exists at all, ask his wives and children. Harder Gavin will argue point, along with Coward Harder, to act as foil extraordinaire on this blog to bend the truth to FOF benefit, no matter what, due to desperation infinatuum. Woe unto FOF as deception continues. Law of Karma exists whether you like it or not or belief in it or not. Get ready for Karmic pay back like FOF never seen before. Or,
would you like to swing on a star; carry moon beams home in a jar; or be better off than you are; or would you rather be a….
mule? (or substitute your own imagination.)
Descending ever so slowly,
Coward Harder
April 21, 2007 at 8:48 am
Regarding post 7/20
Excuse me, but if the dishwashers at Isis can be compensated, than so can the Sheik. If people want to compensate him for his time than they will do so (I already have).
No one seems to have brought up the point that European students pay about 25% of what American students pay. Why the sliding scale???
Listen people, the only reason this blog seems a little unbalanced is because it hasn’t found it’s real “voice” yet. It will. Everyone please keep posting. There really is alot a being in the people involved in this and it’s only a matter of time before we
get ourselves organized so that we can really feed each other.
Wasn’t it about 15 years into the schoool that Robert was hosting “motown nights” (before my time). How does that correspond to awakening?
This “school” is nothing more than an interesting country club.
April 21, 2007 at 9:16 am
To Howard 412/7.
No more debate. You might consider comparing the state you were in writing this post, with the previous two…
To an outsider, in this one you seem very much closer to reclaiming your own real life, or responsibility for it. Now… if only you can bypass that “Robert is under a different set of laws” group of ‘I’s’!!!!
Good luck!
April 21, 2007 at 9:23 am
I felt compunction for flaming the Wheeler “dealers” here– sorry that was harsh…maybe you’re right Cathy, I’m just scared by how those ideas can be used to abuse (but I’m always open to a jam, Bman or Woman;).
Letting all the feelings surge through me without judging them is still a new experience. The anger helped me move past the inertia and sadness. Maybe that’s why anger can be so valuable–and necessary to control by those who don’t want us to move through anything.
Aloha Advaitas and Aspirants of all time and space!
April 21, 2007 at 9:24 am
This post is directed to those who find joy in both posting or reading sensationalized information about Robert’s private life; information whose only purpose is to attack his character and otherwise discredit him.
You must know that none of these reports posted have gone through any means, legal or otherwise, to prove their authenticity or accuracy. By life’s standards one has to go through many steps to prove an accusation about someone. Accusers would have to be sworn in (with the possibility of being charged with perjury if caught in a lie), deposed, cross examined, etc. before a jury could convict someone for a supposed crime.
None of these conditions of proof exist on this blog. To make matters worse, most of the material posted is of an anonymous nature, with no repercussions to the posters or readers and is submitted by people with a pre-existing bias against Robert or the school. In other words, with axes to grind.
I wonder how these joyful bloggers would feel if they were held to the standards they themselves have encourged and promoted?
How would blogger X feel if he/she answered a knock on the door and found a policeman staring back who asked the blogger to come with him to the station?
The blogger would ask what it’s all about and the policemen would reply that some people called the station saying that blogger X was doing “bad things” with other people in their apartment behind closed doors.
Blogger X would of course ask who these people are who were making these accusations. The policeman would reply he did not know because they called in from the “anonymous” line. The anonymous line! Surely you must know their names! No, usually they leave false names; you know, they don’t like to get involved once they make the claim.
As the blogger is led away in handcuffs he/she asks the policeman when he/she can talk to a lawyer. The policeman matter of factly states that the blogger won’t need a lawyer, as they have already been convicted. Convicted, how is that possible?
Well, unfortunately you were reported by more than ten people. If you were to have been reported by one to nine people you could get a trial, but ten or more and you’re automatically convicted. Why is that asks the blogger? Well, we figure ten people can’t all be wrong, so why waste the taxpayers money.
End of story, except if you buy into some Enlightened Beings suggestions that at some point in time we must suffer all that we inflict.
April 21, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Fed Up (20): Yeah, donations are voluntary and will not affect this discussion in any way. But thanks for you time to post that meaningful thought.
April 21, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Howard Carter 45, You did not read the stuff about cognitive dissonance did you? Look it up, and PLEASE listen to what the bloggers are saying about seeing what is in front of you! In FOF terms STOP BUFFERING! Has RB committed any crimes? Not perhaps in the legal sense, as we are all consenting adults, but in a moral sense he has, and because of our human failings and ability to explain away our actions to reduce cognitive dissonance, we have been reinforcing the corruption in him.
To be able to admit to this, you will have to undergo feelings of an incredible sense of stupidity, shock and horror at your gullibility, disbelief that so many of us could have been so hypnotized etc. etc…are you man enough Howard Carter? I only hope you have posted under a false name, as this may assist the process some small way.
Is RB delusional, a sex addict or both???
From wikopedia on delusion:
“Grandiose delusional belief – inflated worth, power, knowledge, identity, or special relationship to a deity or famous person”
About sexual addiction (from channel 4 health website):
“Achieving sexual gratification for a sex addict is like alcohol to an alcoholic, and as with any other addiction, the sex addict gradually moves away from what is classed as ‘normal behaviour’. The addict finds it harder and harder to control their addiction and regulate their behaviour and views himself or herself as an object merely having sex with another object. No intimacy is built and no friendship or trust is formed. Behaviour becomes obsessive, repetitive and habitual; achieving ‘the fix’ often begins way before the sex act.”
some excerpts on sex addiction from wikopedia:
“It is a secret.
It is abusive or degrading to self or others.
It is used to avoid (or is a source of) painful feelings.
It is empty of a caring, committed relationship.
Prior to acting out sexually, the sex addict goes through a period of mental preoccupation or obsession. Sex addict begins to disassociate (moves away from his feelings). A separation begins to take place between his mind and his emotional self.
Altered state of consciousness / a trance state / bubble of euphoric fantasized experience.
Sex addict is disconnected from his emotions and he becomes pre-occupied with acting out behaviours. The reality becomes blocked out/distorted.
Rituals are a way to induce trance and further separate oneself from reality. Once the addict has begun his ritual, the chances of stopping that cycle diminish greatly. He is giving into the pull of the compelling sex act.
The next phase of the cycle is sexual compulsivity or “sex act”. The tensions that the addict feels are reduced by acting on their sexual feelings. They feel better for the moment, thanks to the release that occurs. Compulsivity simply means that addicts regularly get to the point where sex becomes inevitable, no matter what the circumstances or the consequences.
Risk factors for the addict include unstructured time, need for self-direction and demands for excellence, because they all push the addict toward restarting the cycle.”
RB’s way of avoiding cognitive dissonance?
April 21, 2007 at 4:39 pm
To Howard Carter post 45,
funny post, WHAT YOU ARE NOW THREATHING PEOPLE TO WATCH WHAT THEY STATE ON THIS BLOG JUST CAUSE YOUR LITTLE FEELINGS ARE HURT. Seems to me your effords are in the WRONG PLACE.
Howard you are a product of brainwash and a not so bright one at that!
I’ll be more than HAPPPY to drop a box of kleenex off at the Pyle gate for you!
marys_angels@peoplepc.com
April 21, 2007 at 4:56 pm
I really don’t want to support the dialogue with HC as it is rather a downer. It feels like trying to talk intelligently with an aged aunt who just is incapable of going beyond her certainties and whose stories you have already heard many times.
I don’t understand the FOF’s stance or what they are doing. HC is a self avowed ’scout’ so one has to assume that he/she/they are reporting back to the establishment and have a brief to represent certain opinions publicly on this blog. HC and some other posters can be taken to be the voice of established interests in the FOF.
How dumb to incite rather than placate. HC, in his post 7/45 is effectively soliciting people to prove that what they are saying is true. I would ask what proof would suffice to give him cause to admit the truth of allegations.
Does RB need to be subject to criminal proceedings? Does the FOF have to be subject to another audit? Are sworn, notarized, statements from a certain number of people enough? How many is enough?
HC is making it far more likely that former and current members will group together and press home an attack that is currently just a threat to membership numbers. I do not think the FOF could sustain a series of law suits and if evidence was forthcoming that gave law enforcement a handle on this, and it was in the political interests of an agency to prosecute the cause of the FOF’s destruction, the FOF could suffer a mortal blow.
In the end it is this kind of thing that will destroy the FOF, not posts on this blog and HC is making it much more likely.
I am stunned by the ineptitude of these people. It really is shocking that the FOF should be so hamstrung by their reliance on RB, that they should be incapable of intelligent damage limitation.
It feels like a real F OFF situation.
April 21, 2007 at 5:01 pm
32# Elena;
I appreciated Girard as a man who wished to awaken, and I respected that (and still do). I will walk away from anyone who proposes to awaken, or Liberate me.
Robert did not make me do anything. Nor did Girard. I left house, home and family, the only family I ever had. The actions were my responsibility, no one elses. If my life as I knew it was ‘destroyed’, well, it may not have been much of a life to begin with. I joined the Fellowship because I saw that Gurdjieff had something that I too wished for myself. That was to be a free man. It was not consciousness, awakening or enlightenment.
I can only repeat what I said in a previous post. Sooner or later you will be pushed into a place where you have to choose. Either choice will mean suffering (Sophies Choice). All you have to ‘do’ is choose
Alexis
104# Yesri Baba:
You just had to be there.
April 21, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Howard, you’re starting to sound a bit too much like honest Abe. Your thinly veiled threats are beginning to motivate me to tell my own RB horror stories. Keep talking.
April 21, 2007 at 5:09 pm
Hey Ames and N. Love you guys.
April 21, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Dear Howard,
Before today your postings didn’t move me enough to write a reply, because I didn’t find a space for discussion with you. What’s the point in sharing one’s understandings with someone who ‘knows it all’ and gives predictable answers to everything? That to me is a comfort of having set belief system and, as I wouldn’t try to share my thoughts with orthodox Christians, Muslims etc. believers, I wasn’t interested in doing so with you.
A friend of mine pointed out to me that it looks like you get ‘kicks’ out of attracting reactions and attention to your persona, rather than investigating the truth for yourself. So what was the point in writing you? Until today, when I read your last message #45, which is worth commenting on.
As usual, I didn’t find a space for discussion there, so my only reply to your words is: what load of bollocks, man!
And I know what you are going to say if you write back. How sad.
April 21, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Dear Sheik,
Congratulations again for your initiative
(this blog as a result) and your consistancy!
Could you give us fresh information on the number of hits this blog is receiving?
Some will not fail making all kind of calculations and perhaps deduce that, by now, almost everyone in the FOF reads the blog!
On Robert Burton and us:
Let it not be the morality of a fish and nor the gratitude of a dog!
There are not “others”!
Much appreciation.
To the bloggers most fitted to deal with the net:
How is the Wikipedia situation going ?
April 21, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Dear All,
I want to express my view on the subject of non-duality.
Although I read Advaita writings for some years now (but only Adya, Nisargadata and Ramana, Wheeler just lately), I don’t know much about the tradition as such and I am not competent in discussing the subject ‘professionally’.
However, Advaita or not, what I got from John Wheeler’s pointing and from my own experiences and understandings is of value to me. The basis of my current understanding is that all I see, feel and think is happening within impersonal awareness. Obviously, there is a body and mind of Rita and the world around her which she perceives through her senses. Yet, all is happening within this awareness. It’s not ‘hers’ as it is ‘nobody’s’, it just is and the body and mind are one of its manifestations. With this basic understanding, one feels united and in love with what is, it’s just a reaction of the body and mind to this realization. So, the questions of moral character, of integrity and choices are taken care of naturally, because one can’t harm what is oneself. One can harm oneself and others if the realization of this unity hasn’t occurred yet.
(a girl passed by, wearing T-shirt with words ‘love peace unity’ printed on it)
Really, if this basis is understood, things are unfolding naturally. Maybe there’s more to Advaita, but for now this perception is sufficient for me to be and live without fear or any kind of ‘need’.
April 21, 2007 at 5:59 pm
I personally find it hard to believe what Kosta or Inner Circle say about RB.
I wish someone could SHOW me, prove me that it is true. Majority of students would LEAVE if they knew it for sure. Can someone take a camera or a cell phone to bring the evidence from his bedroom out here? If RB is only pretends to be a teacher but in reality is a psycho and a pervert – why not everybody see it this way? PROVE IT!
I was told that he is using sex not for pleasure but for getting fine energy and then transforms it into a conscious energy for a meeting or a dinner to ignite our Higher Centes. And that he does not force anyone to do it!
April 21, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Re Howard (post 45)
Howard why are you saying this? I’m baffled. If you’ve been in the FOF for 20 years you must have known about RB’s habits for a long time. If you have any doubts that this stuff is going on, just go and ask one of the hundreds of young men who have been or are involved. Many of them are quite open about it.
You appear to be reasonably intelligent. Either you’re lying or you have your head so far buried in the sand you wouldn’t notice if a rhino was crapping on you.
disappointedly, RB
April 21, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Re Sydney (post 26)
Very nice to hear from you Sydney – much to savor in your posting.
But the following is a bit odd : “As for cost that is the single most ridicolous arguement. In “life” to attend a highly rated University to the level of recieving a Doctorate can easily cost $100,000. If those who are members of the FOF think they have verified the reality of self remembering and that the FOF can help create this in them then cost should mean nothing.”
Sounds reasonable in a theoretical kind of way, at least for the giver of money, but it ignores the corrupting power of money on the receiver.
We’ve read here about numerous “teachers” who started well but were later consumed by the desire for sex and money. It seems like money is an early test for someone who considers him/herself enlightened enough to be conducting spiritual teaching. It starts with collecting money for reasonable expenses like renting a hall. Then the “teacher” collects enough money to support himself and his key followers. Then he starts living lavishly. Then he starts supporting his lovers. And so on. It’s a common story.
In the FOF it’s reached an extreme level where the desire to “shear the sheep” overshadows pretty much everything else.
By contrast, Adyashanti asks for a voluntary donation of $10 to attend a meeting and there are no complications, rules, strings attached, auctions, special donations. Plus, he is actually a much more effective spiritual teacher than RB at this stage. Maybe RB was effective in his early days, but he’s clearly running on empty now.
John Wheeler works as a technical writer and is scrupulous about only accepting money to cover expenses.
Nisargaradatta supported himself by selling cigarettes and refused offers from his US students to set up a foundation for him. He lived in a tiny apartment in Bombay till the end of his life. Clearly he was not corrupted by money or sex, and as a result his students could have a simple trusting relationship with him, based solely on effective spiritual teaching.
If only that were the case here!
RB
April 21, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Innernaut #36:
You write: “Where is the evidence to show that our thoughts, emotions, body, etc are NOT our true nature? In other words, I would agree that our awareness is part of our true nature — but why any more so than our bodies? Why the separation between body and awareness? What if awareness arises in the same way emotions do — that is, from our bodies, in some combination of brain activity.”
My first thought on reading your question was of William Blake and Walt Whitman, two magnificent, eloquent proponents of the idea that the body is not separate from the Soul–is, in fact, the divine expression of it. To this point of view I have no contradiction. It seems true for me.
Also, from the non-dualist perspective as I understand it, there is no separation between awareness and all that arises within it: thoughts, emotions, bodies. But there is a distinction between what is unchanging and undying, and what is transitory and illusory.
Maybe the fundamental question you are raising is, does consciousness arise from the brain activity in the body or does the body (and by extension, all manifest forms) arise from Consciousness?
I cannot prove it, but I think the latter. Although, on second thought, maybe both are true.
(coot, here we need “Chicken/Egg” for Dummies)
It may be that proof, in the sense of having scientific evidence, is unobtainable. I could stipulate that it’s all a product of brain activity, but this explains nothing. It is still an unfathomable Mystery. To enter into it, one needs to let go of the need for proof, or any notion of certainty. Proof and certainty are what the mind wants. But, marvelous as it is, the mind is only one facet of the totality of what we are.
There is nothing wrong with the concept “that we are physical beings, whose physicality includes emotions, sensations, thoughts, and, yes, varying degrees of consciousness.” I would just add the concept that this transitory physical being is at the same time an expression of, and a connection to, the Ground of Being (or whatever you call it–or don’t call it anything!)
But like all concepts, these are limited by language. Concepts can only ever point to Truth.
Idea for bumper sticker:
“Mystics do it in the body.”
April 21, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Innernaut Says: Where is the evidence to show that our thoughts, emotions, body, etc are NOT our true nature? Non-duality sounds like it is falling back on the old duality of “consciousness is not functions”: consciousness versus the body, emotions, etc. What’s wrong with the concept that we are physical beings?
As far as I understand at the moment, non-dualism is not about denying your body, emotions, thoughts as unreal and something to be looked down on and to be abandoned for a higher cause and for some abstract pure consciousness. Rather it is to be joyfully in the body, thoughts, emotions, live and breathe them fully yet know that these are NOT ALL that you are, you know, as in not attaching to them in particular, not taking my body and my personality as something that needs to survive forever, but rather taking them playfully and living through them.
It seems that defining your true nature as any one thing would be mistaken and limited. As I understand it, you are all that, and more, we are what all this stuff consists of. But now I’m speaking beyond my experience. So I’ll just add one more comment. It seems that religions are generally and exoterically concerned with achieving ‘my personal survival after death’ (including the FOF religion, e.g. Creating a Soul, The Prize is Eternity). In that sense, non- dualists seem kind of atheistic, but happily, rather than cynically so.
April 21, 2007 at 6:46 pm
In the early 80’s I didn’t leave when the Sanders case revealed information about RB’s sex life. Instead it created a feeling of sympathy for him. And I thought I was learning to be open-minded.
In the early 90’s, I didn’t leave when the RL and TB incidents happened, because I thought the school was working for me and I needed to go beyond feminine dominance. If I had seen the letter that AG just posted it might have made a difference, or if there had been something like this blog, but there was not, and my life continued in the school.
And then came the 30 works I’s followed by the “precious” sequence. It seemed like a strange way of being dominated. So what had worked for me was being undermined with new methods. Now there are reports of orgies. It seems like things are getting worse. I wouldn’t want to stay around and see how much worse things can get. Risky business.
April 21, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Howard Carter says: ‘…sensationalized information about Robert’s private life; information whose only purpose is to attack his character and otherwise discredit him. You must know that none of these reports posted have gone through any means, legal or otherwise, to prove their authenticity or accuracy.’
Life is not an artificial courtroom. There is such a thing as common sense. If very similar reports of Robert’s extreme behavior keep surfacing for decades from all these different people, it is simpler to conclude that there must be a fair amount of truth to them, rather than to conclude that there is a worldwide conspiracy spanning numerous people and years, whose only purpose is to discredit and harm innocent Robert.
April 21, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Re: Legal action against FOF –
“Sometimes the only way someone will respect you is if you sue them.” (Robert Burton c. 1992)
Thanks for the forum, Sheik.
April 21, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Hi, Howard,
You want proof… Do you know that a cel-phone VIDEO exists of what happens to people in RB bedroom?… No, it is not supposed to be a Teaching video, although you may accidentally learn something from it.
If “read” and “think” doesn’t work for you, may be “see” and “hear” will? Would you believe then? (Or you need “touch” ,”smell” and “taste”, too?)
There are many proofs out there, in fact so many – it’s not funny. People have been holding lots of disturbing things to themselves so far, for various personal reasons, and may or may not continue to do so. Time will tell. If you keep asking for proof – you may finally get it, I guess.
To me, hearing a disturbing story from dear personal friend is more than enough, no need for them to swear on the Bible. I don’t see why they would lie to a friend they know for many years. I don’t need to actually see it all to get proof.
One’s conscience is a very good guide, unless it’s totally numb of course.
And it’s not about “accusation”, but rather it’s about exposing lies, shedding the light on something kept in the dark, opening people’s eyes to something they buffer. It’s not RB’s private life only, it involves others, who are actually being emotionally and physically hurt, and lots of others who are paying big money for it and being repeatedly lied to and misled.
I wish you were as eager to find the proof for all the bizarre pseudo-teaching you’re now fed ( and eagerly supporting), for all these pre-historic off-the-wall-interpretations… Which proof do you have for this, Howard?
April 21, 2007 at 7:21 pm
To Sydney in post 7/26:
You wrote:
“As for cost that is the single most ridiculous argument. In ‘life’ to attend a highly rated University to the level of receiving a Doctorate can easily cost $100,000. If those who are members of the FOF think they have verified the reality of self remembering and that the FOF can help create this in them then cost should mean nothing.”
Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I struggled with the money issue for quite a long time, but after much soul searching I was able to look the other way as I paid my college tuition. Because it’s well known that university presidents and chancellors use that money for trips around the world with an entourage of sex partners. But that meant “nothing” to me because I received my cherished college diploma.
Anyway, just pointing out one of the many absurdities of your analogy.
If “cost should mean nothing,” why do you still have a bank account? A home with equity? A 401k? Why worry about retirement? Why not sign over all of your money today?
Rhetorical questions. You don’t take these actions because cost does mean something to you, as it does to all of us. Each of us here may disagree about the threshold, but I doubt that anyone sincerely agrees that it means “nothing”. Remember: The less money you make, the more the percentage of your yearly income that goes to the Fellowship. You make $50,000 a year, and you pay 19.5% of your gross income to the Fellowship, and this doesn’t include the hundreds of dollars that you might pay each month to attend Isis dinners and meetings. (See post 3/239 for a breakdown of these numbers.) Is that getting close to your threshold?
Even if it isn’t, see post 6/407 by Joe Average, and tell me you are still not concerned about the money.
April 21, 2007 at 7:40 pm
Dear Elena
I though I would add or elaborate somewhat on my recent comments to you.
Most of my long working hours are taken up by talking to clients on a global scale, most of the conversations are brief and to the point, so when I contribute to this Blog, which I do in the quiet moments during work it is unavoidable to carry some of my states into the writings. I neither mean to be blunt nor brutal nor indifferent to your feelings.
I could leave my contributions for my days off when I have more inner quiet and write something more elaborate and more in touch with you on an emotional level but the last thing I want to see on my days off is another monitor.
It is very evident that most of us take each others contributions out of context, this is unavoidable, as are the misinterpretations. So much is missing, the voice inflections, the gestures, the eye contact, the human warmth and empathy, and misunderstandings are bound to occur, and this is really unfortunate and sometimes leaves a bad taste.
I don’t know if this has made things somewhat less through a glass darkly..
Alexis
April 21, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Supporting Rabbi Burns’ comment, 7/58.
Let me tell a short story:
I was a very young student and I asked questions about the money:
- do we have to produce “papers” so that you verify the 10 or 12% are actually given ? (tax like!)?
NO! Your own conscience will guide you.
- Where do the money goes ?
The School and part is yours.
There is a beautiful property called Renaissance? You will visit one day soon…
- The Teacher ?
He recieves a salary.
- Do we know how much?
I do not know and it is not interesting.
We have such better subjects to discuss!
Would you ask your sport teacher, if you have one, how much he earns and what he does with the money he earns ?
At that time really I did not know this “reasonable” answer was pernicious…
For years, I did not dare to “touch” the subject ever again, even innerly.
Conscience was not supposed to be part of that game!
Even now, with all I know
(the 5 stars life style for himself and his enourage not really compensated by generous moves he does take, like helping some students facing financial difficulties)
I still feel unconfortable questioning but because I understand that the abuses are partially allowed by the money I contribute,
I can’t be indifferent any more.
To Confused, post 7/56
Photos of Robert’s bedroom activity?
You made the right choice with your name!
I can see you coming up, once one photo will be displayed:
‘It is not true, too hard to believe!
It is easy for anyone using well Photoshop to make a montage!
I guess Robert would have to let you in!
We never know, his fantasy/needs might push him in that diretion someday.
Standing place:150 Dollars.
April 21, 2007 at 8:13 pm
No more angles or questions are allowed at meetings. Why?
In Russia a male student openly asked about Roberts sex life. Nex the discussion list was shut down and the new format appeared with the quote cards.
Teaching payments? Membership payment more likely.
If one wants teaching that’s an xtra $60 per meeting.
Meetings: Not a clue what’s being taught anymore. Cave coppulation image: Guy -its done doggy syle, is the Steward
completing the sequence, woman is the 9 of hearts. The poop thing….. I realy dont get it
Still on the fence, but not for much longer
April 21, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Re: Skeptical Optimist 7/10
“Looking over the posts of the entity calling itself “Howard Carter” is enervating. I find no humanity, no warmth, no humor, no concern for the suffering of individuals, no depth of personal introspection, no…”
For all my lack of humanity I’ve not had cause to refer to any person on this blog as “the entity calling itself” – Be it Innernaut, or Elena, or No Person, or whoever I’m addressing.
And Joel, in case you’re wondering, no, we don’t know each other.
April 21, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Yeah Sheik, my voluntary donation is being sent next day delivery, sorry everyone, I did not read it was “voluntary”–guess I have been brainwashed by too many years in the FOF!
However, I am sure that the Sheik will assure us he will not spend the money for his own depraved, perverse, subhuman, extreme, etc. appetites (for cakes? or ???).
Nobody here could possibly agree that the money collected by donations is for the sheik to do what he chooses? right?
April 21, 2007 at 8:54 pm
Kiran #3 – wow man, you are scary! What the hell mumbo jumbo computer analysis therapy thing have you made up? Technically impressive, but looks like a load of baloney to me, in terms of real therapeutic value! Sorry not to be impressed, unlike some of your ‘clients’…why did you feel the need to post the glowing references to yourself? Even including the one about ‘humble ego’? And as for “Living the Contradiction also in this respect will only be for few, it needs courage, observation, thinking, being true to oneself and of course feeling” – that is so scarily esoteric teacher-ish! Don’t you realize we are unlikely to fall for that line again! I was right – you ARE hoping to start up a new ’school’! Watch out for the tendency to manipulate your subordinates, and remember to look for signs of power-crazed addictive behaviour, or is that what you are hoping to achieve to help yourself feel important? You seem to have left the FOF but have taken with you some of the hare-brained ideas with the idea of starting again. Just go the whole hog, and abandon the lot if you dare. Start from what you really know which, if you are truthful, is very little, and beware of falling into the same trap of reinforcing your sense of importance through joining, or in your case, setting up, some other cult or group.
Elena #32 – now you are making more sense! I hope your letter reaches all the current students. You have done what you can regarding the FOF, now get on with living and best of luck!
Innernaut #36 – good points, I would like to see the non-dualists in the throes of physical agony and ask if they still claim to experience purely “impersonal awareness” or whether they might feel that they are their bodies too at that point!? The implication that there is no responsibility or choice, everything just happens within this awareness I also find difficult to swallow. Same as you, I am don’t want an argument, nor do I really wish suffering on anyone, just discussing and exploring.
Coward Harder #41 – very funny!…I would rather be a pig.
I see said the blind man #49 – brilliant description of Howard Carter as aged aunt, maybe we should just treat him as one, be polite and humour him and he will perhaps come to see things differently in time. In a lot of ways I was like him, wanting desperately to cling to ‘reality’ as I saw it then, because it so badly threatened my identity. It has taken me a while to gradually see how genuinely corrupt the FOF really is. This blog has certainly helped.
Confused #56 – yes, I was told that story about RB needing the energy to evolve, kind of makes sense if you go along with all the other lies, that is why it is so difficult to admit you have been an idiot, all that time and effort you put into ‘verifying’ ideas, following the rules, now you have to go back to square one and start all over again – bummer!……but it’s really not a bummer at all, now you are free to really be what you are, find out and explore what you are and what’s going on, find out that you don’t know what you are and don’t know anything much at all really, but find out that it’s fine, and keep being wary of not falling in the same trap of conforming, keep following your own ‘inner pilot’…go for it!
Sheik – ’shake your booty!…you rule!’
April 21, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Wouldn’t it be great if the school could dissolve before Robert dies? The school created a lot of being in the time that it existed. Where are we at, 35? It also accumelated a lot of baggage and garbage. The community is in the same shape as our FOF relationships. When Robert falls away what a powerstruggle will appear.. All so civilizedly fought.. Going totally formatory.
A very dark place to be.
There’s still some time left. But I am not going to be around for those parts.
April 21, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Confused (56): “I was told that he is using sex not for pleasure but for getting fine energy and then transforms it into a conscious energy for a meeting or a dinner to ignite our Higher Centes.”
Please, C, apply some common sense. Does this not sound like a desperate attempt to justify/buffer some very weird behaviour? How would your informant know it’s true? Why would you believe it?
Try giving ten blow jobs in a row and see if it “gives you fine energy”.
Isn’t the sex addict explanation a bit more credible?
RB
April 21, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Confused Says: ‘I was told that he is using sex not for pleasure but for getting fine energy and then transforms it into a conscious energy for a meeting or a dinner to ignite our Higher Centes. And that he does not force anyone to do it!’
Dear Confused, you sound like a really nice and sweet person who is able to see things from a positive side and does not get distracted by gossip. That’s why I feel confident to tell you that I, too, have become a conscious being. When that happened, I discovered that Robert was right all along. As a conscious being I no longer indulge in ordinary sex, I have super-sex and transform this sexual energy into more consciousness. You are absolutely right. Since you already understand this, I will send someone to bring you to my room tonight so we can have super-sex together. I will help you ignite your higher centers through my emanations and you will be grateful. Don’t worry if it’s against your sexual orientation or if you don’t feel any such desire, those are all just I’s from your functions and belong to the lower self. I, in contrast, am really an angel, not this body. Yes, you’d better believe it, because it’s true. And I’ve received a communication from other angels in my room just half an hour ago: they told me that they wished the two of us to have sex. Let’s work towards our common aim, dear, to fulfill the wishes of higher forces. Just relax, let go of your body, I’ll take your pants down, here you go, and now I’ll suck you. It’s to create more presence. We all want to create more presence, don’t you agree?
Why do people choose to believe Robert when he talks like this? Because 2000 people have agreed to agree that he’s a conscious being and therefore anything he does must be right? Dear Confused, once upon a time all men agreed that it was OK and natural to keep other people as slaves. Does a majority opinion make a statement true? What do you think?
Confused says: ‘I personally find it hard to believe what Kosta or Inner Circle say about RB.
I wish someone could SHOW me, prove me that it is true. Majority of students would LEAVE if they knew it for sure. Can someone take a camera or a cell phone to bring the evidence from his bedroom out here?’
Which part exactly do you want proof for? How many people he has sex with at the same time? The details of whether they really pee on him? Is that why you would leave the Fellowship, if you had firm video-recorded proof that they really pee on him? There is already more than enough evidence that he abuses his position of power without consideration for his students as individuals, that he uses them as impersonal means for his gratification, that he is obsessed with himself. Some of his boys enjoy the attention and special status that being his chosen ones affords them. If you have not been able to see that, you must have buffered very hard. I suggest you start talking to people and asking them unpleasant questions.
There is nothing that Robert can do wrong if you believe him to be above human laws. If video material of his orgies actually appeared, I’m sure it would be reasoned away by true believers. It is not about the details of his sex life. It is about his personal integrity. How much do you know about Robert Burton as a person, what has been your actual one-on-one experience and interactions with him, and how much of what you know about what he is like comes from a myth that he creates about himself and lets his students repeat it?
April 21, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Dear Alexis,
I hope you never loose your love, I haven’t. But to love each other does not mean we agree on everything we each do at no matter whose cost.
If as you say, no one ever affected you why do you even try to affect any body else?
If you love only yourself, there’s no love.
If you love a few, there’s no love.
Love is willing to respond for each one of us, or it is not love.
If as a member of the Fellowship, anyone believes that they are not responsible for the 25 year old boy that comes looking for a school and ends up as a whore, then they are not in a conscious school but a brothel. I can do nothing against a brothel when people know that is where they are going but change the name and I’ll stop hammering.
“The Fellowship of Friends Brothel”, doesn’t it suit it well? It might even make more money than now!
If you think I am so naive to expect to ever be embraced by the Fellowship again, you are even more naive than I am. It is much better to be in your company that somebody else’s.
April 21, 2007 at 11:18 pm
In reply in Post #45/Discussion-blog #7 & all those to follow in the same ’spirit’.
It has been my observation that ’spirit’ is not ‘feeling’, ‘feeling’ is not ‘conscience’ and ‘conscience’ can only be wrought from personal experience, of which many in this blog have none concerning the target of their negativity and positivity.
The question of legitimacy has occurred and will continue unknown by those who have not braved to do it themselves (yet).
So far as Post #294 via Blog #1 and Post #6 via Blog #7 (a similar observation, also made by a Russian student). The ‘contents’ of Post #294 has been verified by one of RB’s closest and trusted people, who added that its ‘mood’ was a bit exaggerated, though its contents was/is all true.
I would advise all those participating in this blog not to address comments to HC: as I see it, his particular ‘entity’ is a deviation for you, a placebo for your own HC needing attention and a very poor ’symbol’ for your ability to speak through your conscience without having to be prompted by such an obvious ‘contradiction’ to do so outside yourself. HC stands for an affirmation within you, one of a false sense of chivalry, i.e., to save the woman from her pet dragon.
What you would rather tell RB, HC takes his place symbolically, i.e., sugar pill, not wise man pill. Do yourselves a great service and let this affirmation go…HC is a test between resentment and continuance: please do not resent him or praise him, continue without his need for the affirmations of your compliments and negative drama, i.e., Pain-body-food from your reactions to his particular level of being, tennis matches are not real, nor the ones running alongside the net, picking up the things that drop off the net, having not made it over everyone’s expectations of the players.
What you expect of HC, you yourself have yet to untie within yourselves…he is a symbol of a contradiction within you and all energy ‘directly’ addressed to him only stalemates your position of going beyond the symbols of contradiction and affirmations of that which will ultimately graduate you from spiritual schools on earth.
Love to you all.
April 21, 2007 at 11:55 pm
I was wowed when an old friend sent me this link a couple days ago. What an outpouring, to which I want to add my voice. I joined TCB in 1972 — 35 years ago! and left in 1992. I realized it is the first time since 1972 that there is an avenue for open communication between those who have left with other friends who have left and those who remain.
For many years now, I rarely think about Fof. But what an opportunity I sense to reflect on and share what has been learned from an enormous chapter in my life and to perhaps discover more in the writing.
First, I am deeply touched by the concerns expressed here, the soul-searching angst by the ‘newly departed’ and those considering leaving is particularly familiar to me and my heart goes out to you. I remember the turmoil leading up to and the confusion and disorientation that accompanies leaving.
One part of my story I would like to share is an experience I had a couple of days after I left officially in 1992. I was sitting in a meditative space paying attention to my breath & body sensations when I began to tremble uncontrollably all over my body. Although I had not been aware of it prior to this moment, I realized that I was terrified! Terrified! I was in a black swirl, falling through space in my mind, my emotions churning. It slowly dawned on me that I was terrified of losing my ‘contact with Higher Forces’, with my Self, as I understand it now. This state lasted for nearly 20 minutes and I emerged from it realizing that this unconscious terror was part of what had kept me in the school for so long, despite my rationalizations for staying.
It was only once I faced this fear that I could acknowledge to myself that the fueling of fear was one of the mainstays of FoF/RB teachings. I also learned later that this playing on unconscious fears is one of the hallmarks of cultic (mind enslaved) relationships. I began keeping a log of any and all conscious moments –moments of awakening, beauty, clarity — I experienced now that I was not longer in ‘the school.’ Happily, there were plenty of log-ins to make for several weeks until I had enough evidence to counter that deep fear that somehow my spiritual well- being was inextricably linked to FoF.
Another related story: I was a stellar student at least in my mind, haha — especially adept at not expressing negative emotions. At the ten-year point, due partly to the dissolution of my marriage, I ventured into a body/work therapy workshop (then forbidden),spent about two years occasionally pounding pillows in that work, protesting all the time that I had no anger! When I finally did get beyond my prodigous defenses and started to experience anger in myself I was amazed at how much about myself I had to discover. Gradually unfolded sadness and grief and fear and panic, a world of emotions that had been shoved underground for many years in the name of nonexpression…I was an actual feeling human being and what a world it was, what a wake up call to one who imagined she was quite awake.
These personal realizations about my own ’shadow’ or unconsious, forced a melt down in me around my love of the system, and I went through the despair of ‘leaving the system.’ But I felt tremendous responsibility for others, and spent a good part of the next ten years trying to make up for having helped to bring so many people into the fold — by talking to others, writing articles and running workshops to introduce people to what I had been learning about the effects of the unconscious, about emotions and the amount of emotional repression that is encouraged by the teachings. ‘Savior feature’ dies hard.
Anyway, onwards…
Today, I believe that growth of consciousness has different requirments for different people. Some need to stay in an abusive, restrictive environments, dysfunctional relationships or groups; some need to break out. Some need to divorce, some to stay married. Some to die addicted, some to go through recovery.
(I have watched my parents in a 60-year abusive relationship, riddled with alcohol abuse, which has contributed to my meditations on this subject).
These hard decisions emerge from each individual soul. I believe only each one can know whether it has taken courage and conviction, has been an opening, a step into deeper, unexplored, more expansive inner territory to remain — or if staying has been a hiding place, a refuge from the unknown, from scarey expansion and growth in ourselves. In any event, I think we do our best, we learn as much as we can learn while we live. I vote for more gentleness as well as courage in all this.
For what it is worth, I think this is the number one learned lesson of my FoF days: I believe I have been immunized against most fundamentalist thought. For some of us, it apparently takes many years (maybe a lifetime?) of commitment and passion to a system, relationship,or organization for it to build up enough psychic importance so that the ultimate disillusionment will BREAK DOWN the ancient mental/emotional tendency to grip onto a belief to ward off deep-seated anxieties (fundamentalism in my definition). Such beliefs become part of one’s very identity, one’s sense of separateness.
Through this deep dive into commitment to FoF (to me it was more intense than falling in love, I would call it a conversion experience) and the disillusionment that followed, I was loosened up from one more huge, but subtle block to the dissolution of my sense of separateness, a dissolution that often now opens me to the Beauty & Grace & Love inherent in my depths. I believe FoF experience has helped to break in me a long-held mental tendency to fundamentalist, mind enslaved thought, and that leaving helped give me the courage to face many difficult aspects of not only myself but of being alive.
Finally, and most importantly in all this, I want to share with you my how much awe and gratefulness I feel — most recently for Roger C (and his family)…. and Neal O. and Stanley R and Peter B. and Rosemary M — great soul friends, all who died as FoF members.
I also have deep appreciation for Kristina N and beyond all, my late husband, Dennis K, both who died as former members, DK by my side. These great beings have opened me, each in their own way, to the mysteries of death, what I understand now as the release of the soul from the body.
Through their deaths and my bonds with them, they have shown me that they live on, that the mystery of our connection continues — and that in/out group boundaries are irrelevant mind constructs that do not stand this final test.
Thank you to everyone who is letting their voice be heard through this amazing medium.
With as much love as I can muster,
Sandra
April 22, 2007 at 12:19 am
Robert Burton,the TEA-CHER or the CHE-ATER?
April 22, 2007 at 12:39 am
Inner Jewels (#44) wrote:
“Letting all the feelings surge through me without judging them is still a new experience. The anger helped me move past the inertia and sadness. Maybe that’s why anger can be so valuable–and necessary to control by those who don’t want us to move through anything.”
YES! This is a critical step in healing from the FOF mind-bender. Acknowledging how we feel without judgment or trying to change what we’re feeling.
See. Accept. Repeat.
April 22, 2007 at 1:06 am
Confused #56: A lot of intelligent people were had but not suck’ered, to expect all these people to be had again is your dilirium.
April 22, 2007 at 1:10 am
Hello.
This is such an amazing site!
The most interesting posts are those that are to the point and simple.
7 (6) in which Kosta simply tells it like it is is so refreshing.
7 (38) in which Ames simply and clearly tells the truth inspires me.
I sincerely hope that their posts enlighten those who are still within the cult walls justifying and believing lies that are obvious to any.
April 22, 2007 at 1:44 am
Dear Elena
Congratulations to your post #32
I would say this seemed to be inspired, the style that you present it, is nothing less than the Gettysburg address. The request that you make to all the people for who you were a third force to connect them to the school, to relieve you from that connection is very honorable and is in fact important as a invisible but never the less very real and strong bondage has to be severed.
This informational bondage and addiction is in fact more strong than any drug dependence and that is why for most it is so difficult to make a clear cut… they rather let things run out half-heartedly for example by not making teaching payments anymore than by making a single decided statement to that point.
I want to follow your example and also ask all the people for who I was instrumental to connect them to the school to release me form this informational link. This “giving-up” is just as important as a marriage vow, to the opposite effect. And of course at this point I certainly would have left the FOF if not RB would have released me, but believe me the last year I was simply to busy digesting the loss of my wife, my best friend and my family that adding to that the loss of a few dozens friends by leaving the FOF was simply not something that was too urgent then.
To all those who are still trying to gather the courage to make this step I can say that I verified Goethe’s advice also in this respect:
“Once you make a decision, Magic and Power moves to your aid”
There is nothing to blame, nothing to defend just the whole world to embrace in a new and amazing way, to merge into a new existence that would not have been possible without all that we have gone through.
My love to you all
Kiran
April 22, 2007 at 2:25 am
Howard Carter (post 45):
This is the silliest thing I’ve read so far on this blog.
You claim to be talking about “sensationalized information about Robert’s private life.” I’m sure you realize that NO ONE IS DISCUSSING ROBERT’S PRIVATE LIFE. This is NOT ABOUT SEX, and it is NOT A PRIVATE MATTER.
The personal accounts of experiences with Robert Burton are about his abuse of the power of being a teacher; his abuse of the trust placed in him by his students; his diversion of tax-deductible donations to an ostensibly non-profit “charitable” organization to his personal — and quite lavish — use; his use of the organizations resources to pimp for him and attract eligible young men to him for his uses . These issues have nothing to do with Robert’s sexual preferences.
And because these matters are inextricably interwoven with his fitness to be a teacher, they are PUBLIC, not private matters, within the community of those who are, and have been, members of the Fellowship of Friends. And to the extent that criminal activity is involved, they would be public matters for the larger society.
And as to your policeman-arresting-the-blogger/legal-standards-of proof scenario, surely you are not so naive as to think that people are just making this stuff up. No one is seeking to prove anything here; people are recounting their personal experiences. But I guess that would be incomprehensible to you, as open discussion is forbidden in the Fellowship.
April 22, 2007 at 2:41 am
Dear bloggers,
my intention was to come on and post another response to HC and so I will still carry through with it to some extent, but after reading the comments in this last section and seeing how insightful they are, and after reading Ames’ post and how it has all been said before ,and with so much clarity, I see that there is no need for me to remain stuck in this loop and I believe I will spiral out of existence in this form. Have enjoyed your company, and hope to see you in the fourth dimension.
Howard,
Two experiences to share. First as a teenager attending a youth meeting when a speaker got up and started to get very evangelical.He started waving his arms in the air and asked everyone to do the same,so I found myself uncomfortably doing the same. My friend gave me a wierd look and said “I’m not raising my arms just because he said to”. In that moment I felt intense shame at having so willingly given myself away to become a sheep(i’m a pig,no).The second experience was I think my last visit to the academy when I had offered to serve at a breakfast. I arrived just in time for the event and was met with this intense, identified energy and a maitre ‘d who told me to hurry and quickly put on this serving item. The “item” was extremely small and the body was extremely big and I had this picture of a rhino with a bikini stretched over it,so I protested but was eventually convinced to follow through with the octave but couldn’t help being penetrated by the absurdness of the situation,indentification and the school in that moment,and afterwards had a small wave of shame that connected me back to waving my arms about as a teenager.
You see,I had just given myself away again ,and my higher self saw that.The normal “balanced ” response to seeing that the slipper didn’t fit would have been to accept that I wouild have to serve without the “item” or some other alternative but the level of identifacation and feminine dominance that surrounds RB and the inner minions , and then ripples down the line,makes one realise that something is rotten at the core.Anyone who is a parent will tell you that if your children are displaying it, most likely it’s coming from you.
Also, in relation to working on will, you say that you have never placed a stop point as to how far you will obey RB.How will you ever develop will then?. The final act of creating will in an environment where you are asked to comply is surely to say NO.
Howard bend over
yes
Howard bend over
yes
Howard bend over
PISS OFF
Ahh, now you get it.
One last comment.I think you are stuck in family mode in relation to FOF.When I think of my mother and her responses to acts that people did around her.If they were “family” then they basically were a good person who had slipped up. If not family, then they were probably a bad person.All your defense of the school smacks of this.
If you want to dissect and convert this post to work language you are most welcome, but remember that FOF actually give you little or no information about higher self(start with intuition and move on from there)other than it’s out there somewhere.IT might just reawaken conscience.
Goodbye and have fun with your experience,sorry,work hard at your experience.
pigs no more
April 22, 2007 at 2:49 am
“If there is a theme to this journal it is that body, mind, and soul are not mutually exclusive.
The desires of the flesh, the ideas of the mind, and the luminosities of the soul- all are perfect expressions of the radiant Spirit that alone inhabits the universe, sublime gestures of that Great Perfection that alone outshines the world. There is only One Taste in the entire Kosmos, and that taste is Divine, whether it appears in the flesh, in the mind, in the soul. Resting in that One Taste, transported beyond the mundane, the world arises in the purest Freedom and radient Release, happy to infinity, lost in all eternity, and hopeless in the original face of the unrelenting mystery. From One Taste all things issue, to One Taste all things return- and in between, which is the story of this moment, there is only the dream, and sometimes the nightmare, from which we would do well to awaken” – Ken Wilber
April 22, 2007 at 3:06 am
Presence is the inner means of all Teachings, and Religions,
“A man should be willing to sacrifice his will to God’s, hold on to what brings
him nearer to God, and shun what places him at a distance from God.”
Al-Ghazali
There is nothing more mechanical that Imagination and Negative Emotions.
It`s Incredible the ammount of I`s. Almost All seems to me like a Elimination Process.
This Blog It`s an Enterteinment for the King of Clubs in us.
observe yourself.
April 22, 2007 at 3:15 am
Alexis 7/50:
“Robert did not make me do anything. Nor did Girard. I left house, home and family, the only family I ever had. The actions were my responsibility, no one elses.”
The really evil thing about having been subjected to thought reform is that the individual, looking back, sees a series of actions that she took and is prone to own up to them. However, she does not see that her choices were not truly free, but resulted from a compromised ability to choose.
We cannot choose freely when information is withheld from us. Who among us would have joined the Fellowship if we were told at the first prospective student meeting that the teacher was a single man pretending to celibacy while secretly seducing hundreds of young heterosexual men; that he was preparing for Armageddon by buying European art, Meissen teacups and Ming Dynasty furniture and storing it in a Versailles-like palace in rural central California; that if we joined and later decided to leave, it would be better for us if a millstone were hung round our neck and we drowned, because we had turned our back on the angels? More than likely, we would have left before intermission.
No one told us these things until our ability to evaluate them was impaired by our implementation of a technique >emanating from the same source
April 22, 2007 at 3:25 am
coot appreciate cool person jewels tuned out to be, thanks for cathie, sincerity of rita penfold, funny of o’poo, honesty of bruce, scale of joel, recent bone honest posts of various and mostly all. Interesting group we turned out.
Worry that most salacious of kinky sex stories may overstate case (as don’t know source), but that case need not be overstated to be already grotesque – for any person, much less a trusted teacher of most personal psychology of possible evolution. Break of trust. And heart. RB terrible role. Various Howard Carters have terrible roles. And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab …
So catch you further down the trail, but for “be here now” are:
Five easy pieces:
coot thinking central lesson of FOF experience is beware of cult leader with small penis (but repeat myself).
From here forward phrase “sequence” (for those inner circle) is “assonance.” Consists of definite nine steps – first seven same, last one wipe poo-poo off.
Unalists and dualists need not be duelists.
Isis really Isntisnt.
Ridicule is only love left that dare not speak its name. too sad for words …..
April 22, 2007 at 3:38 am
Confused (56), it’s very hard to understand how you could possibly have read through all of the posts on this site and say what you’ve said. You demand “proof?” Don’t be ridiculous! Hundreds of FOF members have known what’s been going on for decades for an absolute fact, since hundreds have had sex with Robert. Do you think it’s all a huge conspiracy to sully Robert’s good name, and that we have nothing better to do than try to trick you, and get pure-hearted students to abandon their noble work? This subject has been discussed and discussed, on and on, year after year, decade after decade. Every ten years or so another few hundred can’t stand it any more and leave, and the ones who stay tell themselves that they stayed because they’re “real students,” and the ones who left were “fake students.” Anyone who doesn’t know by now that Robert is a smiling psychopath doesn’t want to know, but prefers the comfort of believing he is a “real student” in The Great and Only Conscious School. You sound distressed, but there’s a point at which I can’t sympathize any more with people who insist upon the right to be blind, lashing out at everyone who tries to speak the truth to them.
You don’t believe it? Fine. Pay your money, and wait. Sooner or later, it’ll all become clear to you. Dear.
April 22, 2007 at 3:41 am
Thank you Ames, for an extraordinary letter(7/38). I just wish someone had shown it to me back then. While I can understand Ames’ promise to not speak of the FOF for 10 years, I urge you all not to follow the example. Tell your stories. Tell them to your friends. Write them here. Do it now.
Despite what many may think, the history of abuse in the school is not so widely known. If you have spent most of your time in the school in Oregon House and kept your ears and eyes open, you may have heard quite a lot, but I can guarantee you that very little ever gets out to the centers around the world. Most students know little more than the sanitized version put out by the FOF itself to newspapers, that Robert is rarely intimate with his students and when he is, it is entirely consensual. There has been no television coverage, no books other than adulatory ones by current students, just a handful of newspaper articles from LA, SF and San Diego, most of them from the 1995-1996 period. Every suit by former students has been bought off, their silence insured. Even the Rick Ross site in earlier years only carried some tepid remarks from TE about being taught by Robert how to piss properly and Stella mourning her dogs. Not very compelling stuff. When Veronica posted the material about FOF student suicides, the name of Brian Sisler only created a ghostly echo for me. It took me days before vague memories surfaced of students murmuring his name in hushed conversation, shocked, tearful eyes, frozen faces. I tried repeatedly to get information from them about what happened as it so clearly overwhelmed them. As a group, and later singly, they refused to talk about it.
I was not in Oregon House at the time of the dramatic meeting in 1994. I heard rumour only that something controversial and quite out of the ordinary had happened. Despite asking many people I could get no real accounting. Finally one person described it as a bunch of people declaring themselves men number five at the meeting and demanding to be heard, while angelic LT patiently guided the meeting back on course each time. I was told nothing of the actual content of what these people said. Case closed.
There was a similar meeting in Russia, I think around 2000, when several Russian students asked Robert directly why he found it necessary to have quite so many young lovers among his students. They were, of course, also excommunicated after the meeting. The only reason I heard about that one was that one of the students involved managed to write about it to the former FOF discussion list before being expunged.
So please do not assume that everyone knows or that another old story will not help. It will. Robert has thrived on silence for 35 years. He is terrified of open communication. You will not “bring him down”, but you will help a few more people crack open their cocoon of buffers and rationalizations by the sheer weight of open testimony.
April 22, 2007 at 4:29 am
Dear Ames # 39
Thanks for the letter. It is nice to hear your voice after these many years. I remember when you left I was afraid to read any of your letters which a few friends wanted to share. Much like many fof students like
# 57 “Confused”, who keep denying the truth until one day it smacks you along side the head (reality hit) and you just feel sick all over.
Our friend “Confused” needs proof. Well, I would guess they are a female, or they would have proof a plenty if they were a young male student (or I am hearing that they do not have to be so young of late) regularly invited to cellar dinners and to Roberts bedroom by his personal pimp (no names mentioned!).
My dear # 57 ‘Confused”, it is ok, we all went throught the same panic -NO, NO, this can’t be true! Robert has sweet homosexual encounters with a few close friends whom he loves dearly- to give him a higher state. Right? Well,think again- how many ex and current students have to give you the gory details of his sexual exploits ,which , (as per Ames’ letter from 94) have increased to bizarre and perverted proportions with an additional 13 years to go unchecked.
You do not want to know the extent of his harem and how many male students in the community are affected ( yes many of them married- who cannot and will not talk about it except to very, very close friends- and even then rarely). Some can only talk about it now, after leaving the FoF, and needed time and even help to heal. Wake up sweetheart – this is your life.
April 22, 2007 at 4:50 am
Dear Sheik,
I suspect that you are only publishing 1% of the letters that you receive in praise of the FoF. I hope that you will at least begin to re-balance your blog by publishing this.
——————————————
As an advanced member of the FoF i must redress the balance that the weaker people who use your site have created.
The problem with so MANY small thinkers who write to you is that quite simply, they do NOT understand the FACT that Robert IS AN ANGEL and therefore far removed from the silly ideas of ‘good’/'bad”right’/'wrong’ ‘truth’/'lie.’
Robert simply can do no wrong. It was many years ago that Robert ‘opened’ me, both physically and spiritually. YES, he has enabled me to build my soul and truly appreciate how dead are the poor lost souls around me. How the rest of the world outside The Fellowship is a nightmare full of dreaming people living in their imagination.
If Robert called me to turn myself inside out and follow him into the fiery furnace I would gladly follow, knowing that he could save me.
SO MUCH complaining about sexual encounters! I was happy to share my body with Robert. Fourteen years ago he gave me his higher love, causing me to awaken with his beautiful conscious energy, just as I now share myself with the many women who are grateful for my spiritual fluid, my divine energy to help them awaken, divinity created by Roberts own divine energy still inside me. His golden fuel for eternity inside my soul.
Robert guides us to live with delightful presence. How can all those life people complain? They know NOTHING!
YES Robert shows us sexual and other excess but, ‘THE ROAD OF EXCESS LEADS TO THE PALACE OF WISDOM!’ An angel CANNOT spread disease.
Every day as I cycle to work, in and out of the zombies, past all those dead faces and eyes living in their imagination, 99.9% of the population just bags of bones that jostle around this ant hill of London, soulless people as in all the other cities around the globe, I give thanks! I sing a hymn of light for the Crouch End Teaching House and all the other Teaching Houses that ROBERT has founded around the globe.
Praise the Gods! Thank God for Robert!
If you care enough to repent your negativity, then email me and i will reply, once only, to help you back onto the true path, the path that leads to salvation of the soul,away from the bag of bones that is you! You have your chance, be strong!
highercourbet@yahoo.co.uk
April 22, 2007 at 4:53 am
To: Howard Carter
Well, you have confirmed my suspicions about you:
I believe you are planted by the FOF board to keep up a debate with Bloggers. They were hoping that the debating would be a distraction from bringing in information that sheds light on RB and the lie that exists today called the FOF. Well, sorry it is not working – because it is coming in, in bucket loads (past and present).
If you are on your own (which I really doubt), are you really that stupid? What hole have you had your head buried in?
April 22, 2007 at 5:17 am
To whoever it is responding by the name of Howard Carter in 7/69:
Joel F. is obviously describing you as “the entity calling itself Howard Carter” because there’s more than a little doubt that you exist as a single individual by that name. One theory is that you are a small group of people within the Fellowship who are working hard to counter the information being released in this open discussion.
Even if that theory isn’t true, you are still someone within the Fellowship who is working hard to counter the information being released in this open discussion.
But if the theory IS true, the next question is, “Why pretend?”
Maybe I missed it, or maybe your info is unlisted, but that last I checked the FOF list, there’s no one there by “your” name. Seems rather odd.
April 22, 2007 at 5:44 am
Sandra:
So good to read your post. For all the complicity we all shared in perpetuating the Fellowship, you were a real help to many — certainly, to me. Sounds like you’ve gone on to much better spaces.
Paul A.
April 22, 2007 at 6:07 am
Confused, I must apologize for my snarling post. My frustration was misplaced. Yes, you’ve been duped, but it’s not your fault. We’ve all been there. Now, you have to figure out the truth for yourself. We’re here to help.
April 22, 2007 at 6:18 am
Hello, my name is butterfly and I am a FOF member.
Many of my years in the school were very rewarding. some of the most memorable experiences were with other students, some of whom I found to be amazing people.The Sunday morning meetings at Apollo D’Oro, held outside when the winter passed, were some of the best moments.Listening to Jonathon Parks describe the last movie he had seen and draw parallels with some work idea and to Harry Chrisakis who always said something wise and worthwhile. The blue sky, the birds, sitting under the trees. It was springtime for Robert and FoFland.
There was and are a lot of intelligent people and some could speak eloquently, delivering great points. At the Wednesday night meetings there would always be some good angles. I remember Peter Ingle tell us how his hangers in his closet were all’facing’ the same way, but he could also say things that made great sense.
Then onto Apollo D’Oro. And dinner too. And then home.
These were the times I could best be at peace and self remember. But things changed, for reasons I came to accept, as I accepted many other things.I did not like change but I understood it was good for my development.
There used to be an on-line FOF list/discussion that helped, amongst other things, students in outlaying centres stay connected. It was closed down after a student told Robert of a perceived slight. The freedom to discuss together publicly, were taken away.
This blog gives us that freedom again. Freedom to see what I accepted in the past, from a different perspective. Perhaps Robert did not take away the meetings for my own best development, but just for more money. This blog is giving me the freedom to see how I was comfortably numb.
I am awakening in other ways. Some students are still ignoring Roberts behaviour arguing that it does not affect them personally, and that they can still get the benefits of the system. Self Remembering at any cost.
We believe in 9 lifetimes but make no mention of Karma. Are we not damning the very souls we are trying to make eternal. Conscience is ignored, its Christian feminine dominance. But is not Christ one of the 44, Buddha too? Is everything they said to be ignored.
I can see us now as a school of selfishness, emulating our teacher.
Honour seems like an old fashioned word, but with memories and no honour, how will we be judged?
April 22, 2007 at 6:20 am
Strange…
Howard Carter was not asking for proof, but somehow the “truth” (and we are left to wonder if this is the WHOLE TRUTH and NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH–I doubt it!) must be forced down his throat by some of the more adamant posters here.
I wonder why? What causes this infatuation with the gory details? Never been in an orgie perhaps? Too bad for you! They sure CAN be fun, (mind you, I personally would not want to be at the scenes described here, but, different strokes for different folks!).
If you have, you know that unless something really sick happens, you CAN WALK AWAY at any time!
Sex is a situation where it really takes two (or more!) to tango!!! Oh, and besides the Viagra pills, how much does it cost to throw these parties together? So what exactly is the problem here? Our teacher has an appetite? Good for him! What about you? Do you just masturbate a lot by reading this blog? Get real and mind your own bussiness! You are probably too afraid to have an orgie!
Oh yes, I forgot why i was writing, some of you want all of us to be very very upset about what is going on behind the big bad closed doors at the Academy. sorry! I cannot get riled up about it. And if we all must leave the FOF because of this, you really got me puzzled.
Has it occurred to anyone on this blog that most decent, “normal,” balanced folks in the FOF will never be part of the “depraved sex scenes” that are written about? Or perhaps they have their own, and they are not written about! Why not? Come to think of it, none of the actual participants are stating that they have…probably too busy recovering from last night’s heroic work efforts!
That only people who apparently need this “experience” have always been and always will be the ones going through this, the ones too impressed or cowardly to say “no” to the psychopath, sex addict teacher–but the truth is that contrary to the public poll on this blog, these are not kids!
Even Kostja was happily walking away from it and lived to tell about it! Good for you Kid!
And even Inner Jewels admitted to having a perverted thought now and again! I’d rather read about that!
I also heard a lot about the local hetero super active swinging scene-this sounds a lot more interesting! Can we get more details about this?
So RB is a psychopath sex addict? Good for him! At least he is true to himself! He does something about it and seems to have no trouble!
So why is it so upsetting to read about Robert’s exploits? perhaps if you wish your teacher to only read the Philokalia! We all know that can be a little dry!
Should all of this cause one to leave the school? probably not. Why should we?
Let the sleazeballs (if they are in fact sleazeballs) go through their sleaze (some of them certainly look the part!–no names here but you know who you are!)–and if it pays for their fancy clothes and position of bringing RB’s pillow, and being able to sell a few vouchers for sex with the more liberally minded girls, so be it–more power to them!
(for all of you gone for all these years, the girls here have learned a few things too!–the universe is not standing still!–wouldn’t you rather be around now than in the old days when any sex was banned? Bet you are Ames, Joel, Bruce and all you other old farts!)
And should anyone complain about the STDs? If you are so stupid to go through this shit unprotected, with all these sleazeballs all half a dozen together, you are simply asking for trouble! Who said you have to be naive to be on the Fourth Way? Has no one ever heard of herpes? LOL!
Also, even more, if it is really a high experience for some of them so much more the better! Keep going! If this is love, you WILL get more!
But in short, where is the beef in all of this? I just don’t see it. Call me stupid, call me dumb! Hey, just dont call me late for dinner at the Academy!
And don’t tell me to “wake up, Dear”–I am really trying!
LOL
April 22, 2007 at 7:18 am
Thank you to Somebody 6/#395 for the catch. Looks like many missed it so here it is again.
GIRARD HAVEN IS HOWARD CARTER
See Clara Elena’s post 6/#362 which has many specific references to Girard. Note also how Howie’s “friendly-FOFer-official-shill” style changed to “standard-Girard-speak” in just a few posts after the all the attacks in set 5 and early 6? Below are excerpts from Elena’s comment to HC/Girard from #362. There are many more references in her original post which is worth re-reading to see for yourself.
From Elena…
Why haven’t you reached consciousness then after not twenty but thirty three years that you’ve been living in it?
Here you keep trying to reinforce the same old stereotyped ideas into the few followers that may still be reading the blog …and …you, Robert’s faithful student. You, Howard Carter, who had to give up talking like a “Friend” because the “friend’s” personality and arguments were so easily toppled over …
Again, you’re only trying to reinforce the old mind structures with which you’ve held the Fellowship together at everybody else’s cost and sadly, even yours.
You misunderstood it wildly, my love. …and your discourse is meant to instill a particular kind of thinking in the students so that they continue to support Robert and the school and not decide for themselves wether what they are seeing is really worth supporting. They want to believe in you but you cannot be believed any more.
…Has it come back with vengeance against you and crippled you? Has, trying to recover not demanded to let it be? Are you trying to convince us or yourself in all your postings that it was worth it? …
Although only a few students come to your dinners, the rest of them trust that you’ll give them legitimacy although they can’t really bare you or your choices and when able, make fun of your repetitions. They know the double morality and standards that you have stood for in your role
After instilling all the thoughts students can have to feel comfortable where they are, as you have done for the past thirty three years, you also instill the thought that they are thinking for themselves, feeling for themselves and give them the confidence that they are following the school curriculum and will sooner or later graduate.
…or is it just that you are a “a friend” too? The “friend” “Howard Carter”: The Girard haven role, and the middle class honest student programming role? The RTs that you wish to address? You’re coming more together in your recent postings dear, only together in the fatal way.
I guess it is not tragic enough for most of your and the Fellowship supporters that the ear is deaf, an eye doesn’t see, half of the body doesn’t move or can stand erect and they’ll continue to support the unnecessary suffering until they themselves start falling apart, which by far they are.
April 22, 2007 at 7:19 am
Hey, I agree with Lust for Life (#71) with his message to Kiran: “Don’t you realize we are unlikely to fall for that line again! I was right – you ARE hoping to start up a new ’school’! Watch out for the tendency to manipulate ..” etc.
My bet is on Kiran, he sure has a lot nicer letters written about him than RB!
Kiran even got his website www,beingpresent.net to mirror teh FOF www,beingpresent.org–FUNNY!!!
Wish only we could see what everyone is up to a year or two in the future! But that machine has yet to be invented!
Keep LOL
April 22, 2007 at 9:24 am
First I would like to say that I have been deeply moved emotionally by many of the posts. I feel a great compassion and respect for those people who have had the great courage to move away from fear of retaliation and post their true feelings, observations and experiences. It takes great courage to openly talk about abuse. As a therapist, I know this from direct experience. There are also many who post in response to those who have been hurt by saying something like, “quit being a victim. You’re responsible for your own thoughts, feelings and actions!” To these people I would say, you obviously have no experience being a spiritual teacher and understanding the responsibilities that go along with it.
You obviously have never been formally trained by other spiritual teachers in a monastic setting and understood how to work with students. Many people do not understand the profound issues around transference i.e. transferring the unmet needs of childhood, such as those we never got fulfilled from mother and father onto the spiritual teacher. This is always a huge reality, always. It is unconsciously done by all of us of course. Anyone that argues this point, I would challenge that they have never acted as a spiritual teacher, and challenge their experience to speak on such subjects.
When students come to study with a spiritual teacher, there is always transference. It is different for everyone, of course. The teacher, who does not know what they are doing, does not know how to respect and work with the transference of the student, as Robert Burton clearly shows by example.
I see several themes in these posts:
1) People who have had their trust, misused and abused.
I notice many people discussing the work on the ego without really mentioning the need to surrender to Allah rather than a teacher.
2) People who feel taken advantage of financially, spiritually, ethically and morally.
3) People who try to give hope and help to others
4) Posts from the FOF written to tow the official line in some form
5) Arguments about what enlightenment means.
6) Discussions around the interpretation of the fourth way system. And what it really means.
7) I notice many people practicing or discussing self-remembering but no discussions on the importance of meditation.
9) People who drop into the post not to discuss their own personal spiritual experiences and how it relates to the experiences of others on the post, but rather, they drop in as a sort of arrogant observer, being sarcastic and making light of others situations. As though they are sitting in Hightower, looking down on others and saying, “How could you have been so stupid?”
10) Numerous reports about the sexual abuses done by the teacher
11) People who claim that even though the teacher might be deluded and have his own problems. They still enjoy the friendships of others who are spiritually minded and living in a community, but they believe they can continue to do the fourth way work on their own with the teaching. Even though they fail to realize that a teaching or Baraka is always influenced by the inner life of the teacher.
Here I will cite a quote by Merlin the magician to King Arthur, something that my spiritual guide told me before putting me on the path to teach. Merlin said, “You in the land are one. As you do well so the land shall do well with you. If you fail, the land will fail with you.” This is also restated in a sense in the Bible, in the book of Revelation. “When it says you shall know them by their fruits.”
Thus another theme I see in these posts, which I see as very positive. Are people who are beginning to question their verification, after all this time in the school. What have I realized? Have I awakened have I created the higher bodies? These are very important questions to ask oneself. As the Buddha stated, there is not much time, one lifetime is very short. So we must use that time, very wisely and very efficiently to work on ourselves. To have spent 10 to 20 years within a teaching and then to reflect on one’s insights is very wise. To ask oneself. Have I in fact been able to attain some of those things that the teaching claimed it could lead me to?
Before I go further, I would like to ask people to read this post of mine in a different way. The disadvantage of reading writing on the Internet is that there is no emotional tone within it. In other words, the reader always projects the emotional tone into the writing of a letter based upon their own views of what is the truth. So you may read this letter, and hear an arrogant tone or yelling tone or someone may hear a calm soothing tone. heheh. I understand I have tended to do this myself on many occasions with letters. So I would ask please that you might assume the calm soothing tone, the compassionate tone, because I have truly been moved emotionally by what people have written on these posts. And I wish and pray very deeply that all the people here are able to find a path back to their hearts. Maybe some already have. I clearly cannot speak for everyone but myself.
I would like to use the rest of this post, however, to express openly my own spiritual experiences, and I will do so in a way that will be extremely open and no doubt controversial to some of you. I in no way am attempting to proselytize or put myself in a position to lead others. I’m only going to relate my own experiences in my own knowledge. As a possible guide for others to reflect upon. To reflect upon other possibilities.
20 years ago I attended the first three meetings of the fellowship of friends, though I was at that time also studying with another teacher, who I later verified was in fact, using fourth way terminology, a man number five. This meaning that he had created what the alchemists called the To Soma Heliokon or the Solar Bodies. What the Kabbalists call the Mercabah. He had the astral mental and causal bodies.
At the time I had went to the fellowship of the friends. I did not have any verification of this within him yet. So I was still searching within many schools, and also investigated other Gurdjieff type schools. I had come away from being a Zen Buddhist monk for three years.
At the end of the third meeting with the FOF, I asked some of the members if they knew what the astral body was. I asked them if they had been taught how to create the higher bodies? For I had already been taught this and for no fee I might add. In fact I have always been taught for free. As the truth does not belong to anyone and it was Jesus who turned over the money changers tables in the temple and said do not make the house of GOD into a market.
When the members told me that they were paying 10% of their earnings and yet did not even know what the action of the astral body was i.e. They were not even learning how to leave the body consciously at night, in order to begin to activate the astral vehicle, I realized then that this was an incomplete teaching, and that there was something wrong with the founder. As I had investigated other teachers, schools and asked various direct questions, I have realized that very few fourth way teachers indeed have created the astral mental or causal bodies. In fact, I have met none to this day. Further on in this post I will discuss how one can verify whether or not a teacher has such bodies.
At the FOF meeting, I was also very much put off by the fact that they had to pay so much money for truth that I had received so often for free. I have nearly traveled around the world studying investigating various spiritual teachers, and while at times I have freely donated money called Dana in Buddhism, I was never told by a teacher that I had to pay or else I would not receive a teaching. This I believe is a form of spiritual extortion. I want to emphasize that I never paid any money. And yet I learned how to create the higher bodies and have done so. I am, what by fourth way definition would be called a man number five, though in the school I belong to this is not a big deal. It does not put me in a higher position above other people. In fact, to go higher on the ray of creation means to become simpler, more of a servant and less important to others. In our school, being a man number five or woman, number five for that matter just makes you feel more normal. More in touch with your own GOD and the heart. It doesn’t entitle you to special treatment by others. It is usually something that is not publicly discussed however, as one needs to keep one’s own spiritual development between their body and their God. Im sure just saying this will upset some people and its understandableas many people have a lot of dreams and intellectual theories about what it means to have the soul. I only discuss it openly here, in order to let others know that it is possible to do such work without paying extraordinary amounts of money or submitting to the sexual whims of a diluted teacher. It is also something that anyone can do, provided you’re willing to follow certain ethics, which are not followed by Robert Burton.
I would like to make some suggestions to people who are searching, who are suffering, who are looking for a change or more simply looking for how to figure out the truth within themselves regarding whether or not they should leave the FOF.
Here are some of the things I have been taught about the path.
First, I was taught the importance of verification. It is a tricky business, working on the ego, and one thing that I have come to understand as a therapist working with many people who have been damaged by spiritual work. Is that one must begin the path with a fairly healthy or normal working ego structure before they can begin to take the ego apart and dissolve it.
Verification to me is based upon a few things. 1st is what the person teaches consistent with what the ancient masters taught about the path? For example, The Bible, Koran, Mahabharata and other Vedas and sutras tell us that adultery and certainly to cause others to commit adultery is a great sin. I would assume that since Mr. Burton ignores what Jesus and other great Masters have said regarding numerous teachings on fidelity and continence, that he is a false prophet especially since he considers himself a man 7.3, just under Jesus who is a man level 8.
I was taught that it is important to have a good foundation regarding the understanding of the spiritual path. Based on reading the ancient scriptures, in other words, I was told to read all the foundational scriptures of the ancient religions to be aware of the path as described by the ancient masters. Reading gurus who interpret for us the scriptures is not a substitute for this. The Bible, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Koran, Egyptian book of the dead, the sutras of the Shakyamuni Buddha, and to study the writings of various Sufi masters and Buddhist masters. One must have a global view of the path of self realization and avoid reading New Age teachings whenever possible. I want to talk specifically here about two Buddhist scriptures.
First, the Vishuddhi magga.(In English: the Path of Purification.)
This is a 2000 year old outline of almost every possible state of consciousness that a meditator can encounter on the path. One of these sections is called; Purification by knowledge and vision of what is and what is not the path. Chapter 8 tells us about investigating the consciousness of others, which I will now explain how to do.
1st one must enter samadhi in meditation. Samadhi is of course the stillness and silence of the mind. Though there are 8 levels of this described by the Buddha as the Jhanas, arriving at any one of them will do. Arriving at a place where there is no thought and you are relaxed. Second, just focus on feeling in your heart your love for your Being, your love for your GOD. This cannot be done without a surrender to your GOD. After a while place a prayer into that silence not so much using words but the impulse or desire of your heart to find the answer of the question that you seek. i.e. What is Robert Burton? or should I leave the FOF? Next, wait patiently in the silence for the answer to arrive without expectations or ruminations. Just have faith in your own heart, in your own GOD and the answer will arrive. Provided you do not project thoughts into that silence. You will see the truth here, the truth relative to your karma and your silence. Follow it.
Another level of verification is learning how to leave the body consciously and praying and asking your inner GOD to show you, the essence, what is the truth of Robert Burton. Many teachers teach astral travel and it can be done even without the full creation of the astral body. The main point here is
no matter how asleep all of us may be at various levels, trapped within various levels of karma, there is a part of God that lives in the heart of everyone. Even the worst murderer. Everyone can tap into that, if you have faith in a quiet mind. Trust your heart, which is also the same as trusting your being, trusting God in the silence. Listen to the voice of the silence. I believe many who post on this website already understand what I’m talking about.
If one has a mental body created or a causal body created, which some of us have created in a previous life, you may be able to find a teacher who can show you how to reactivate those bodies. This involves eliminating a certain amount of ego. If you can reactivate your mental body you can also investigate the consciousness of Mr. Burton in the mental plane. Here you will truly see the reality of this man, who is a black magician.
I was always taught that the one we must surrender to on the path is our own inner god and divine mother not a human being no matter what level of their being. We must find the one who is within us.
I realize my post is quite long and I apologize. I’m almost done. The last thing I would like to address is sexuality on the spiritual path.
There is no stab that hurts more than the one of spiritual cruelty. Thus, the poor souls who long for their superlative perfection and for their spiritual Self-ennoblement suffer the unutterable on their journey, when they search for the Truth inside all of those famous spiritualistic schools.
Hence, there is no stab that hurts more than the spiritual stab. Ethics and morals given to us by the ancient masters were meant to help us to reduce our karma and become more receptive to the Being.
My friends, have you never read Leviticus? Where it says we should not expel the sexual energy.
In the 6 yogas of Naropa he is very clear that the loss of the sexual energy through orgasm harms all spiritual practice. The Dalai Lama, Muhammad, Buddha and others have talked to us about the importance of the conservation of sexual energy why? Because you cannot create the higher bodies without it. I know this as a fact because I have lived it. I lived in spiritual communities as a monk and expelled energy and attained samadhi but never created the higher bodies.
Have you ever noticed that there are no translations of higher Buddhist Tantras available? When I was in India studying with one of the Dzogchen Lamas and asked him why this was, he told me, “Look what you in the west have done to Tantra. You have degenerated it into something ridiculous.”
If you feel that the view and practice of Dzogchen (Tantrism) is quite simple, it is a sign that you have not understood it properly. It would be quite ironic if the highest of the nine vehicles, the Great Perfection, were the most simple. That would be very ironic indeed. – The Fourteenth Dalai Lama
The sexual energy is the philosophical mercury of the alchemists. It is the energy needed to create the material prima and make the philosophical stone. The Diamond soul. Regarding homosexuality. Have you not read what the ancient scriptures say about it? Read Corinthians 6:9-10
No homosexual can create the higher bodies because only a married male and female yogini in a monogamous relationship can do so. Let me explain why it is impossible. Chi is electricity is the hydrogen’s or Prana. It’s all the same thing. You can not run a current of electricity without the positive, negative and neutral forces. You cannot run a current with a + and +. Therefore it is against nature. You need the Yin and the Yang together to create the higher bodies. Have you never looked at the plates of medieval alchemy?
This is aside from the fact that no one can claim to be working on the ego without dealing with the issue around Lust. Has no one who defends Robert Burton ever read the scriptures on Lust? I notice you use the various scriptures on the website to promote self-remembering but self remembering alone will never create the body kasjdan. Or will one of you come forth and admit that you have created it and have verified it without Robert Burton? I’ve noticed in posts reports of the teacher always swallowing all sperm. Do you not know that the semen is a form of consciousness and that he is using them to awaken himself negatively? The white magician seeks to dissolve his I’s. Each I is like a bottle that traps a small fragment of consciousness. When the bottle is broken through comprehension, the consciousness returns bit by bit to the essence. Black magicians awaken the consciousness that is trapped within the I’s. Visualize little light bulbs. They do it through the practices of Black Tantra which involves the expulsion of sexual energy. This I have verified as my wife is a former member of the Satanic church and was a student of Anton LaVey. As well from studying with the shamans of the Amazon in Columbia.
As someone in a previous post said, not one person in 30 years has been said to reach a similar level to the teacher. DO you really think that the Masters of the internal worlds are so uncompassionate to all the rest of us as to only speak with Robert Burton? I feel sad for Burton, for the karma that he is incurring is mighty indeed. Karma, which is the law of cause and effect means that no matter how asleep you are the law always returns what you give. Do you really think the Lords of karma will only help those who come to the FOF? My consciousness having had the grace to experience the Masters of C influence as you call it, can tell you, There is more compassion, patience and help offered to other teachers and other schools. Finding the whole and complete is hard yes. But it is not impossible and it certainly is not exclusive to rich people. The truth belongs to everyone.
All my information is accurate and real. I can be contacted for any questions or requests for help with anything. I will do very best to help anyone who asks without asking any payment in return. Everything I give I give freely. respiau@comcast.net
May all who read this find peace and the capacity to follow their heart instead of their mind upon the path.
April 22, 2007 at 10:33 am
6/407 Joe Average
Very interesting to read that letter of the Ex-Student of Adi Da.
I asked myself, what did the members say, and how did the story go on with Adi Da and checked on the net. Well, the group has still 2000 members, the leader, a god like avatar is still living on his Fiji Island. He now is educating his student with fine art, for the good of humanity. The art he produces himself is not even bad, lots of naked female bodies on it of course. There are many rather professionally made videos from the group on youtube. People talking about how great it is to be near this godlike man …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-7oa1itUSU
Compare with
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glKW3GguRB4
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I suspect that the FOF will also continue, whatever stories, photos of films appear on the net. It is said to run a dictatorship one needs at least 5% hardliners to support a suppressive system. I am sure there are enough of them out there. So do not wait for it to end or expect it to fall. Still I see the responsibility and the need to make inside information available.
Many years ago I came across a ‚Fourth Way’ group mainly situated in Sweden. It turned out it was started by an ex-student of the FOF, who had left in the seventies. It was a copy of the FOF. I think it was called Linbu. And here comes the interesting part. It worked for many years — at least as a “conscious school” for the members. They used the same ideas as the FOF, body types, deck of cards, C-influence and the teacher gave himself a number. Their shops, dealing with semi-precious stones were called Arcena (the Arena of C-Influence). Apparently the members had no idea about the origin of the ideas and the form of the school (Correct me if I am wrong). I am sure they verified C-Influence within there frame of thought and believed they are part of a conscious school. Maybe somebody knows, what happened to them.
Recently another Ex-Student started a new “conscious school”, something called “The academy of European art”. I would not be surprised if people there also deeply verify that they are in a “conscious school”.
There is a place for this kind of game and there is something in us wanting to play it. There are many self declared Avatars, realized persons, conscious beings or whatever out there. All their members ready to defend their teachers and special teachings at any price if contradictions appear.
I was very surprised reading the Christian mystic Theresa from Avila’s book “The inner castle”. How precise she described these group dynamics and aspects of feeling special 450 years ago was amazing.
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6/242 Mr SERRE Hugues
… it was an affirmation in me that I would leave only for another teaching worth more than this one, but not for nothing.
Thanks for your honest open posting. I think many of us have or had that affirmation. To value something more takes time and courage if everybody around you calls it “just B-Influence” and your own experiences, thoughts and feelings “just I’s”.
In the end we all have to rely on ourselves .
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6/384 You-me-us-they
Thanks for your kind apologies. I think the word donation triggered a wound in many person and lead to a little misunderstanding.
April 22, 2007 at 10:48 am
Dear Innernaut and Jules,
I don’t see awareness as something separate from bodies or functions. I guess we get entangled in words, and misunderstand each other (what else is new).
When it was pointed to me, it sounded somehow like a process of “separation” of what is permanent and unchanging in us from what is (obviously) changing all the time. It was an inquiry, a research, so to speak. The question was: who am I? Logical answer: probably something that is always there, something non-disappearing, non-changing – that should be my true nature, I guess… Because if it disappears – then I have to disappear too, right? But I exist and don’t disappear… So I looked for something that doesn’t disappear or change, something permanent in this mixed bag of things called me. There is nothing wrong with what is impermanent or changing in us, it’s all part of our nature, really. But in order to answer this question: Who am I? there was an attempt to find something permanent within us, if there was such a thing.
Our bodies, although are totally real, however are not constant. They renew most of their cells in period from 5 days to 16 years (except for brain cells). So in a way, 16 years ago you were a pretty much completely different body! (No wonder you looked younger.) And if you look at the pictures when you were a kid it’s even more obvious that this body on the picture and this body now – are very different bodies. So how can you place your identity in something that contains billions of dying and regenerating cells, something that pretty much replaces itself each 16 years? Again, it’s just a way to look at it, nothing wrong with the body – it’s part of our nature too – a beautiful, ever-changing part.
So are the thoughts and emotions – all are fine, all are in a way part of who we are. They are just non-permanent, ever-changing, that’s it. So if you place your identity in this particular thought – then who are you when the thought is gone?
Whatever is “real you” , or our essential quality, has to be there always, logically speaking.
The only “thing” that seem to be kind of unchanging – is this awareness or sense of living, aliveness. The same awareness was there when we were small kids, and it’s here now when we grew up. It’s there when we think, when we experience emotions, when we age, get sick, exercise or get fat. It seem to be the only “thing” that doesn’t ever change or go away. We don’t usually notice or acknowledge it because it’s so common, and subtle and so “with us” all the time. Could it be just a brain activity of some kind as you suggest? I really don’t know. I think scientists are not sure either at this point. But it is (whatever it is) the only unchanging principle I found so far about myself, it’s this alive awareness, and the rest moves, comes and goes, morphs and changes. I see this awareness in others, in everyone around, manifesting beautifully through their bodies, thoughts etc.
May be that’s why it was called “our true nature”, but who cares really what’s it’s called? Call it what you want: “life within you”, “the beloved”, “unconditional love”, call it “unchanging universal principle”… It was called all these names before, while it’s really nameless.
As Rita mentioned, this realization somehow brings freedom from questions and needs, something inside truly relaxes, as if a tight spring has been released, and existence become rich, engaging and deeply satisfying. Things are not taken personally in the way it was before.
When we talk about it – it immediately becomes intellectual, but so are words… However, for some people simple words did the trick and triggered a shift in perception. What’s nice is that wherever these words came from: advaita, non-dualism or whatever – they played their role and are not needed anymore.
Just like Rita, I don’t know much about advaita, didn’t study it (and are not planning to), and don’t follow it as a tradition. No interest, no need. I just live my life, with much enjoyment.
Someone here asked what happens in some extreme painful conditions. Although I only had moderate pains so far, I can say that simply pain happens, and there is awareness of the pain. It is not pleasant, and naturally there is an impulse to relieve pain, but somehow it is not “my” pain anymore, mind is not claiming ownership of it and starts complaining, blaming or whining about it like it did before in similar circumstances. It’s just seen for what it is and dealt with naturally, according to the common sense. Once it’s gone it’s quickly forgotten and other things that are unfolding are being experienced.
BTW, Jules – we are often getting together in NYC or close to it for a dinner. May be we can meet sometime if you would be interested. There is usually 6-8 of us, ages 29-40s and we like to have fun, love music, and nice conversations. We are not “advaita people”, just regular (nice) guys.
malaec@yahoo.com
April 22, 2007 at 12:11 pm
I think it may have been Gurdjieff who said something to the effect that … we only disagree to the extent that we do not understand each other.. if we understood each other we could not then disagree…
There is only one truth.
Make your aim to approach this truth, and from there, look again.
There is a time to choose sides, to vent, attack, defend, cherish, hold, drop. And a time to be beyond conflict.
And all this in the name of the Absolute?
Your choice.
Your time.
Always new.
April 22, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Fed Up #70:
I wonder why do you worry so much about donations to Sheik? I bet you haven’t even paid yet, but still worry about how he’s gonna use his money. Would you like a written agreement that Sheik would only spend money on charities?
You said: ‘Nobody here could possibly agree that the money collected by donations is for the sheik to do what he chooses? right?’
HA-HA!!! No comment here.
April 22, 2007 at 12:43 pm
dear elena
you are a star, a beautiful bright shining star that is a sincere and wholesome guide to others
long may you see the naked truth.
April 22, 2007 at 1:27 pm
I understand that the FOF does work for some people. So, let’s be supportive.
The same way I benefited, somehow undeniably, from my 17 year in the FOF
(Still “in” by the way but almost “in spite” of myself if you can follow what I mean),
the new turn my path seems to be showing is based on that, just like a land I can walk on. Some lovely comments have been made reflecting that possiblity.
Also, I understand it is necessary to express what we think “need to be said” at a given moment, meaning to express doubts and questions.
Could we unite the points of view with the simple trust the reader finds his/her way through all this, a way made of moments of inspiration, realisation and errors?
Demonizing, turning FOF in ridicule (too easy really!) or celebrating it like a devotee (too easy really!) would turn this discussion into mere entertainement.
Freedom is freedom for the FOF to exist and
Anti-cult campains are nothing but another form of inquisition… In that sense we have to defend the possiblity for the FOF to exist, maintaining valuation for our personal opinions.
On a large scale, we do not want to see a lack of choice of beliefs extablishing itself with the deseapperance of so called “minor religions”, do we ?
This blog is playing its role, a role we could not even imagine when it started, aprecious role actually. We have to keep it free from fanatism, pro or anti.
As other said: cool down, relax, keep focussing to the point and, I would add, enjoy your freedom of speach!
April 22, 2007 at 1:42 pm
One thing that we haven’t touched upon yet is the game aspect of this discussion.
HigherM (92) and NudaVeritas (106) come from the keyboard of the same author, yet the voices tell a different story.
We can have a normal, sane discussion for a week, then all in one day come new (slightly surreal) voices of LoL, Robert and the above-mentioned. Strange.
First one to develop a Dissociative identity disorder (split personality) is the winner.
April 22, 2007 at 4:16 pm
This risky behavior on the part of the harem concerns me. I sincerely hope that the participants of these ’so-called’ orgies are taking precautions. The easiest way to catch HIV-AIDS is through anal intercourse. I wouldn’t worry so much about the herpes, chlamydia, and a wide range of virulent bugs that come with the exploration into the anal area.
April 22, 2007 at 4:30 pm
O dear… HigherM. If this is not a fake, then you are someone who I know (various clues in your message made me think so).
What happened to you? You, so reasonable, sane, reserved, kind? Or was it always this bad and I just never saw this side of you? You sound like a evengelist, a preacher, a fanatic, almost a madman. In spirit of your message, I pray that your heart will open to beauty of life and you stop seeing dead bodies around, what a scary place you’re living in! Sending you my love.
April 22, 2007 at 5:05 pm
I’m having trouble with the idea of non-duality. I have not noticed any discussion of non-duality and the idea of death other than traveler’s noticing that it seems to be missing (7/60). It would help me to understand what this idea may be about if someone could explain this.
o How would one see the difference between the bits that may survive death and the bits that do not?
o Is there a conflict in agenda between these groups of bits?
o Is death something we have to prepare for or do we just cross that bridge when we get to it?
o And if we do need to prepare for death, how do we work with the bits that have no interest in this?
Thanks to anyone that can give me some insights into this.
April 22, 2007 at 6:11 pm
It looks like this blog is starting to appear from the outside to be a “meat rack” for up and coming “mini-gurus”. Pretty interesting.
I used to tell my two wonderful children if you can “see” someone’s “inner work” you can be 99 & 44/100% sure they’re full of shit. I still stand by that. My apologies to the .66% who are the exceptions, and that I’ve never met, and who are not on this blog.
I also believe that the more words one needs to explain their “way”, the less they know what the f*** they’re talking about.
Call me crazy (please).
Bruce
PS Hey Sandra, love to you.
April 22, 2007 at 6:42 pm
My name is Sydney Russell, I am a member of The Fellowship of Friends and I did not post message 26 on this discussion list. I would appreciate it if you would indicate that my name is being falsely used and remove the posting.
Regards,
S. Russell
Done. — ES
April 22, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Sheik, what happens when 2 or more people share the same computer? Often students (and ex-students) live together. My boyfriend and me share the same IP address, and when we had a bunch of visitors here they used my computer for reading the blog and possibly posting from this address under their names. So may be there are actually different people posting different things from the same place…
Just a thought.
April 22, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Hi Sydney. I wish I could reveal my identity to say a more personal hello, but I can’t at this time for social and professional reasons. I’m gratified to see that you, among so many, are thinking deeply about the ‘school’, the Teacher, the teaching and your relationship to it. Simply on the basis of your own soul-searching, it really shouldn’t be so surprising as you have said, that so many ‘opinions’ are being expressed about the FoF. Opinions aren’t bad things in themselves (unless you subscribe wholeheartedly and unquestioningly to the idea that opinions are ‘just I’s’ and so on that basis, are valueless). It is my opinion that well-considered opinions offer more of value to us than any alleged irrelevancy that may be ascribed to them, unless we choose to live alone, debrained, deboned, and dehumanised in the ethereal regions of the invisible inner spaces of ‘consciousness’. I suspect you agree in your own way, as evidenced by your willingness to read and respond to The Sheik’s blog with a word or two of your own. Thank you for sharing yourself.
I’d feel remiss on a blog, the majority of whose contributors have worked sincerely with Gurdjieff’s particular version of a gnostic dichotomy of consciousness and functions, if I didn’t give a plug and three cheers to the dignity and capacity of human beings. I feel it’s a good antidote to the over-emphasised ever-elusive chimerical monster called ‘states’ or ‘consciousness’, especially when pitted over and against devalued human ‘functions’. We possess the faculties of thought, speech, and language for very good reasons, I suspect, one at least being for the purpose of communication: we can share our thoughts and feelings with each other, we LEARN from our mutual exchanges, we are endowed with the capacity to create mutually beneficial relationships which spill over into creative activity outside our own limited spheres. The span of human history, the part accessible to us, which inspires or horrifies us, testifies to the intrinsic value of this highly interactive human exchange, and the necessity, dare I say, the preciousness, of this more than animal function (traditionally recognised as the chief characteristic that makes human beings in the Imago Dei, the image of God). That isn’t to say that all opinions are of the same value, of course. But I feel secure in not needing to belabour the point, since any reasonable person would understand this already.
Back to you, Sydney. You’re spot on. There are concrete problems with RB’s teaching. You rate his school as merely preparatory, your reason being that he doesn’t teach what to do with higher centres (I leave aside for now the question of whether or not higher centres really exist). You go on to say there are better models for a school than a hierarchy. I’d like to point out the connection you have made here (whether intentionally or inadvertently), between not being taught what to do with higher centres and your concern for the optimal model of the social organisation of a school. To repeat, you said that a rigid hierarchy is not the best model. I assume by the context, you probably mean not the best model for the expression of the consciousness that results from work on self-remembering. Your view that ‘goodness’ or ‘being nice’ is not intrinsic to consciousness or the exercise of it by a person possessing consciousness is key to the issue of social organisation.
The issue is not one of confusion or conflation of incompatible ideas, between consciousness and goodness, as you have stated, but one of entire disconnect between the two: between what is inner and the outer, visible and invisible, the soul of a person and its outward manifestation. Consciousness and goodness are not mutually exclusive ideas or the adulteration of a purer idea with a secondary or non-essential one. Again, you have intuited the real issue: what does one do with higher consciousness? especially relative to those who supposedly aren’t at the same level? This is the fundamental problem in the FoF, beginning at the apex of the hierarchy, in the Teacher and trickling outward and downward into the FoF social organisation.
I see your attempt to grapple with this issue. I think it’s too easy, however, to fall back upon the rote, taught response, resolving a dilemma too quickly for any learning to occur. You said: ‘There are those that follow a spiritual path that embraces goodness. R never taught this. In the early days of the FOF when I was a student R spoke of the neccessity [sic] of acting as a corporate executive and against “femine dominence” [sic] which might be construed as others [sic] ideas of what is good’. Why do you accept his teaching as truth? Because he said so? What if he had something different? And why must ‘others ideas of what is good’ be necessarily wrong or of no value? Why do most people agree that murder, rape, embezzlement, stealing, and manipulation and exploitation of the weak are evil? Is it because we know already in our heart of heart that they are, or do we see these things as not-so-nice, not-so-good, simply because we are stupid and just accept ‘others ideas’ of what is good or bad, which is what you seem to be implying? I think you should give yourself and other people more credit than that.
The necessity of goodness to spiritual growth or the growth of consciousness is a confusion of ideas? I would suggest that anyone who holds this view seriously can only have succumbed to a corrupted ideology or theology. I assume that from the few times I have met you Sydney, that you are far too intelligent and may I say, far too ‘nice’ to subscribe unthinkingly to this viewpoint. We have only to think about the self-serving kinds of people who stand to benefit from believing and acting according to this point of view. You will surely find them in the category of the reviled and for good reason: the narcissist, the criminal, the fascist dictator, the false prophet all see common morality as an obstacle to the fulfilment of their desires and plans. No one ever understands their true value, no one understands that what are perceived as injuries inflicted and crimes committed are not really injuries and crimes at all, but only seem so by the weak and the uncomprehending, by those who lack true vision.
Aside from the real harm perpetrated on other persons in the fostering of a so-called something ‘higher’, the scariest part is how the promulgator or follower of this brutal and mindless ideology is able to state quite succinctly and cold-bloodedly their insane truth as if it actually were true. The tragic irony is that these mindless antinomian a-moralizers believe themselves to be the strong and the pure since they brook no kind of ‘sentimentality’ from the feeble who still wear their hearts on their sleeves. I submit that these misguided ideologues could never have subscribed to such an absurd belief in the first place, certainly not persisted in it beyond an excusable period of ignorance and immaturity, if they actually possessed real strength of character, real consciousness, and real integrity or ‘unity’ of being.
All is not lost, however. It is still intact, somewhere inside and begs to be reintegrated, brought forth again into the light so that it can shine brightly in the soul where others can see it, plain, obvious, and simple. People can and do regain the ability to be human again, and are doing so, in droves. Being human does not rule out the possibility and reality of transcendent divinity. Don’t be frightened of losing anything real. After all, the lesson to be relearned is an elementary and a most challenging one. As a very highly regarded spiritual teacher once said: Love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your mind and do unto others as you would have them do unto you. There is, I’m glad to say, having struggled 20 years to rediscover this truth, no esoteric hidden mystery about it, no secret special knowledge to be attained for very special people to impress themselves and each other with their spiritual prowess, no ‘My states are longer than your states’. There is living, and living with each other and acknowledging that we stand in relation to something far greater than ourselves.
A short word about external consideration, a term which outside of the Fourth Way has long been known under such names as kindness, thoughtfulness, graciousness, putting oneself in the other person’s shoes. I regret to have seen recently on this blog the original definition of external consideration transmogrified into ‘seeing beyond the machine.’ A most deplorable corruption and descent into meaninglessness. External consideration used to be the second element in a pairing of contrasting ideas: external consideration being the antidote to or result of working against the weakness of ‘internal consideration’. ‘Internal consideration’ or ‘inner considering’ meant that one was too identified with one’s own inner world, one’s own feelings, wants and needs, rendering one unable even to see and respond properly to the wants and needs of others. In other words, it was a recognition that we all tend to be damned conceited and selfish and that we ought to do something about it. We should stop flinching under every insult or imagined insult. We should learn to see beyond ourselves to the other person, not into the ether. Through external consideration, we can learn how properly to treat other people. External consideration until recently has not refer to the bogus unformulated concept of a mere looking out of or ‘going beyond the machine’.
I invite you all to move beyond the sterile concept of being ‘a machine’ and recommend as a healthy and vigorous alternative, that you try on ‘human being’ again for size. It may also be time for some of you to begin to deconstruct the Fourth Way itself, Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Collin, the validity of the idea of a ‘conscious school’ and of ‘consciousness’ itself. I think a partial explanation of why so many students accept and defend the Teacher’s treatment of his students and their treatment of each other, is that a precedent for such behaviour exists in the tradition of the Fourth Way. We know Gurdjieff was not known for his ‘niceness’. He liked to step on people’s corns, didn’t he? and increasingly more often and arbitrarily. The laudable desire for and recognition of the need for discipline in a spiritual life, in any human life for that matter, can become overly externalised. The more externalised it is, the more one is convinced of the need for help from outside. At greater levels of external dependency, the religious force required to bring a sense of the sacred into one’s life in order to feel that one is spiritually advancing, can result, in persons of a particular disposition and level of emotional immaturity, to accept a less than perfect teacher who may use immoral or even brutal methods, whether the spiritually ‘educative’ attack be intellectual, emotional or physical. So, one hires a person to step on one’s corns to wake one up, or if one is truly desperate and dependent, one moves from allowing one’s corns to be stepped on, to allowing oneself to be sexually assaulted and one’s pockets emptied. In such a case, it seems to me that the genuine spiritual impulse for transcendence has been filtered through pathological and gullible elements in a person of relatively immature and undeveloped moral sensibility. This coincides with either a lack of ability to think clearly or the giving up of this ability over to the misguided authority in charge. A sadomasochistic aspect of the psyche wishes to subject itself to this particular type of discipline as well as to be the inflictor of it.
In closing, there may possibly come a time when one’s frame of reference will no longer be that of the Fourth Way, when for example, one does not back up one’s point of view based almost exclusively on the putative truth of what Ouspensky or Gurdjieff or Collin or Robert or Girard or anyone else associated with the Fourth Way tradition or the particular FoF experience have reputedly said or done, but from a lovely, new frame of reference. That takes time, isn’t necessarily easy, and is a process which unfolds individually.
I apologise for the length of this post.I just want to say that after having been away for many weeks, I came back to find that all was proceeding very well indeed and that there are some very strong, sane and loving voices speaking the truth that will set themselves and their and my friends free.
My very best wishes to you all.
April 22, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Joel, Helena and No person thank you for responding.
About religions. Is it Okay to make fun of other people religions (FOF, Islam, Christianity)? Does any one make sense of the Islam, which has a Billion (more of less) followers?
Joel: I am confused a bit
You said that you are not interested Infof (been there done that) but you have been posting here like crazy. Are you doing the blog in between cycling and kitchen so you can say about the blog been there done that too? If anything is important to you, you send us on a “link”; these links are they not like quoting conscious beings Infof? I really have hard time understanding where you are coming from or where you are going. What is your spiritual path? Thanks.
Helena: Did you want students in FOF to read the blog?
Kiran:
We were good friends once, I was at the “foundation party” for your house, helped to bury the “Self remembering” book in the ground.
Since you came back from Egypt I said hello to you few times but you ignored me each time, you walked by lifting up your head as if I did not exist. So I do not know where is your compassion. Your friends were trying to help you but you ignored them. So with Thomas Fenn, if you ignore people they will ignore you back.
Can you please tell me “why are you and Loreta wearing white cloths”? If you do not want to answer please say so. Thanks.
A word of advice for you is to stop preaching. We all know too much already.
Rita:
I was watching the photos from the east coast – John Wheeler. One of the photos was of you smiling. Now I know what was behind that smile.
Ames:
Can you please tell me in few words what did your conscience say before you left. What is your spiritual path now? Thanks.
Sydney:
Why do students in FOF have to pay Teaching payments and on top of that pay for meetings which teaches them about self-remembering?
April 22, 2007 at 7:36 pm
To The Sheik:
One possible explanation to the same use of a computer by different students is that different students in a teaching house are using the same computer. There are about forty students in the London center so it is not that surprising.
On Howard Carter,
If Howard Carter is one student, the relentlessness with which he is posting and the tone of consistent narrow affirmation of stereotype but very effective thinking within the Fellowship, can come from only very few students that have crystallized to see only one side of the coin and are unable to address other issues presented.
Most other students participating on the blog tend to break down in extremist positions by the pressure of the dissonance but Howard coolly continues to affirm his position under seemingly very reasonable thoughts.
Only students with a great deal of practice can do this and it would not be surprising if a few who trust each other and have acquired similar thought patterns and positions, were acting as Howard. The tactic being that since Mr. Haven asked students not to look at the blog, they need to show very few are actually participating. The different Howard Carters address different areas of opposition so that if one is subtle to breaking down the other one can pick up. It is possible that they are all sending their e-mail to one of them so that the Sheik does not observe different computers.
The sadness of the tactics is that there are many students in the Fellowship who have sincerely worked for years without having to crystallize, who have done as beautiful a job as they could and who are really what is precious about the Fellowship. The weakness in these students lies in that they are holding to their personal little self, their personal suffering and investment to not confront the overall effect of the Fellowship and its tremendous contradictions and the subtle but nevertheless huge damage that it is imposing on specific individuals in particular and all students in general.
The specific damages to individuals include
1) Those that have been sexually used and abused by Robert.
Of these, some have been too young to avoid the situation, others, much more dangerous and prevalent in the Fellowship are the men that indulge into having sex with a “conscious” being and at the same time cannot develop true marriages with a woman and jump from one marriage to the next.
These are men who held stereotype macho programming and Roberts second hand treatment of women reinforces their own patterns. It weakens their ability to develop their ‘manhood’ and allows them to simply discard their relationships protected by the overall attitude of “feminine dominance” that any lawful behaviour between a man and a woman might develop.
In general the men in the Fellowship have tended to become, either more “feminine” in the way they present themselves or extremely “macho” like, without either one being able to develop the female within himself or the male in their body. In other words, without being able to develop their emotional or sex centre, correctly.
2) The damage to the women who have beared with the phenomena of the Fellowship with a sincere trust on a ‘conscious’ being. Not one of them wanted to judge homosexuality and accepted it whole heartedly but still had to accept the effects of being put down as second class beings, who if, tried in anyway to challenge the situation were labelled to be under “feminine dominance”.
The main aim of Robert Burton’s teaching, the most prevalent idea current in the Fellowship of friends, is the freedom from “feminine dominance.” With it, ANY behaviour is condoned.
It is interesting that the positive side of freedom from feminine dominance is the possibility of a man going beyond the social realm into the family realm and holding both together while for a woman it means, going beyond the family realm into the social realm and holding both together. Traditionally this is the crux were both men and women cannot go beyond their programming. Men who cannot join both aspects tend to give up their families for a cause, be it money, power or other, and women, fall apart in their family dependence, without being able to extend themselves into the social realm. They passively accept what their husband struggles for.
These are some of the women in the Fellowship of Friends. Some of the others, are those who actively participate in the support of Robert and the form. They are male like. They have adopted macho attitudes and are willing to give up their marriages as much as the men, to support Robert’s cause: The divine, man number seven, and yet weak human being whose unlimited weaknesses they are willing to forgive so that they can express their “motherly” self. The “feminity” that they had to give up with their own private family.
These multiple failures are what is holding the Fellowship of friends together. Everybody’s integrity is filled with holes. Human holes and human struggles that are the struggle anywhere on the planet and that are not to be criminilized but need to be carefully examined and overcome especially those that have tended to become criminal as is the abuse of young men under a robe of legitimacy.
No matter how legitimate it looks, it is a very dangerous set up because it reinforces the weaknesses in men and women alike and is very far from making any one of them more conscious.
3) The damage to any one specific person who came to a school looking for consciousness and had to put up with years and years of transforming the contradictions at the cost of silencing his/her own consciousness, his/her right to think for himself, to be himself, granting only Robert the status of “being” by placing such a tremendous difference between his/her condition as man number one, two, three, vs man number seven. This has been consistently implanted by the few men that are allowed to speak in the fellowship, very slowly permeating the being of those who hear even if they don’t listen. The general acceptance of a dogma that subtly indoctrinates them and allows for the school, to turn into a cult.
4) The tremendous damage done to those men and women that have become so crystallized in their understanding, that can deal with no questioning and that are prooving themselves to be very dangerous fanatics.
It is not without great fear that I write what I write and the temptation to use a false name is great, but someone has to be willing to suffer the consequences of helping us heal from the great unnecessary suffering that the Fellowship of Friends and each individual inside of it has fallen into. If it were just real suffering, we would be correcting and continuing in short lapses of time while sincerely embracing each other and not falling apart.
I beg those of you that think this is a personal witch hunt against Robert or my husband Girard or anyone else in the Fellowship, deeply listen to what I am trying to say and move away from the witch hunt in which they themselves wish to indulge. They are not helping the objective, sincere and very compassionate questioning that The Fellowship of Friends requires.
If it has taken me much time to distill these understandings and have indulged in ridicule of the Fellowship, please forgive me and yet what is ridiculous about the Fellowship, doesn’t stop to be even if no one ridiculizes it. The inability of students to discern between real beauty and “made up” beauty is one of the damages the Fellowship has done on every one of us.
April 22, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Hello All,
Joe average #7/90, Here is the letter written about the St. Petersburg meeting that you mentioned. Please note it was originally posted on the fellowship discussion list. It is much longer even than this, but here are the pertinent sections.
“Dear friends, all who read this discussion list and
those who have received their personal copy.
Immediately, a lot of the things about our School
became clear and obvious.
Some are helpful and cannot not to be easily found
outside (that is, the students and their efforts) and
others proved their nature today at the meeting led by
Robert.
Many of Robert’s actions were earlier explained using
the idea of the machine being separate from
consciousness and therefore doing what it’s doing when
one is simply observing it.
However, who said it? Ouspensky said that even the
smallest change in one’s level of consciousness
changes the machine a lot. Its functions work better,
it’s usual I’s disappear and new ones appear. All the
ancient teachers say that an awaken being can be
recognized by his behavior. This behavior is based on
complete non-attachment, desireless and absolutely
equal attitude towards any object.
Today the meeting started with Robert’s words about
Influence C.
Then, a question:
“Robert, after watching recent videos I feel that our
School direction becomes more and more religious, as
you offer ideas which cannot be verified as clearly as
others. So, it involves belief, which is opposite to
the Fourth Way principles. For example, the idea of
Influence C working directly with us. What can I do
with it?”
It was asked in English and Robert made a mistake – he
asked it not to be translated into Russian and than
said that he didn’t like the question and wants to
skip it.
We moved further and he expressed his I’s about having
a little time and using our time wisely without asking
“wrong” questions. After a few of his angles a new
question asked:
“Robert, you pointed out that immortal Gods are
working with the School directly. Then, what is the
main reason that in these 30 years none of your
students became a fully awaken?”
This time Robert lost.
His calmness completely disappeared and he repeated
that the questions were wrong and not helpful. He was
touched. After a few words he said that he was that
one who was a fully awaken being. Then he added, that
the meeting at Apollo was also somehow strange and he
thoughts that it is a good idea to have a list of
questions before the meeting so he could skip wrong
questions.
Then we moved our usual way speaking about Plato and
Influence C. There were mostly Robert’s words and one
question about taking practical aims because awakening
seems to be too far. Robert spoke about using the body
for creating third state, developing Apollo etc. Then
he said about being present to the beauty of the room
and enjoying arts. Than he moved to the efforts to
separate from the negative I’s and I gave an angle
based on the teaching expressed:
“If one is consistently trying to separate from I’s,
keep the silence inside and separate from the objects
which come through the senses, one can come to the
realization of one’s true Self. And from here one sees
that there is no “Me” and “You”, no world, but just an
illusion, maya, and one is that very consciousness
that perceives it”.
The angle is neutral and there is nothing to add or
remove from it. It belongs not to mine, but to a
higher level of being. Robert looked up, said “Yes…”
and continued further:
You, I, real school, angels in the room, sleeping
machines and the other things that make this world
seem real and you as one of its objects.
Than, another question:
“Robert, why to you make your male students to have
sex with you?”
Robert was digesting for a while, but he looked ready
and gave a long thread starting with the idea of
people interested in other people’s sexual life and
little by little moved to Plato, Leonardo and
Shakespeare having sex with males. Then he said about
Sapho being a beautiful lesbian being. Then he said it
was the most beautiful part of his life. And what can
be more beautiful that being present to your lover?
Than he added that those males who were having sex
him, had a sex with an angel in the human form. We are
accustomed to the unconscious sex and he has conscious
sex.
Few more angles, one from the jack of hearts, so every
laughed and felt easy and than the angle that the
meeting was for some reason very different and strange
with too many wrong questions at it.
Than a poetic quote and the end.
It is 99.9% probable, that you will never see this
meeting, even though it was recorded.
At this meeting Robert betrayed himself.
All of my previous attitudes to Robert (which were
sometimes not easy to create after working at the
Academy and looking at him closely) are ruined.
The attitudes about the form of the School and not
expecting it to be perfect either.
All the Gurdjieff’s words appeared as alive:
Western art is totally subjective and based on
imagination.
Greek-Roman culture was that very culture which
brought more harm to the humanity
than any other.
Greeks destroyed the objective knowledge by their philosophy.
Romans destroyed human conscience by their behaviour.
It and many others things can be all found and understood in his “Beelzebub’s tales”.
And after that Robert’s words that he was not sure if Gurjieff was a conscious being at all and that Ouspensky did a mistake on every page of the “Fourth Way” to escape formatory thinking and that many
conscious beings were naïve saying different things
because Influence C kept they away from the truth.Recently he said that he might become a man #8depending on the hydrogen warfare.
Earlier, when he was giving his first meeting, he
said:
“It began in Russia, and it will end in Russia”.
When he was asked about the meaning, he replied that
he didn’t know, but these words appeared in his head
and he said them which gave him the creeps.
After today’s meeting it does seem to be true.
I guess, it would be useful for all of us have this
message printed in our Forum, but somehow this idea
seems to be a very naïve one
All these words are just I’s of this machine, but they
reflect other.
With love and friendship from Saint-Petersburg”
April 22, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Clarity
If all there is is Consciousness, if there is only Consciousness, then why or for what
are you still seeking? If there is only Consciousness then right now you must be That and
every thing else that appears in and as awareness must also be That, including any sense
of separate self. Any appearance of mundane, ordinary existence can be no less of
Consciousness than any appearance of unconditional love, wholeness, bliss, stillness,
silence or anything else. Does anything really need to be transcended,
found or let go of?
This is from:
http://www.nathangill.com
If you have some time have a look at the site of this guy. Very honest, very pure, beautiful food for the soul…if we have one.
April 22, 2007 at 8:36 pm
And here is an e-mail that came out a month or so later. I don’t remember how much discussion the petersburg e-mail generated, but things got heated enough to justify this;
“Hello friends,
The Teacher reminds us to be intentional when using the tool of e-mail. He asks that we avoid unnecessary talk and use this form of communications for true personality.
In particular, Robert observes that those of us with power features
need to be especially careful in our use of e-mail.
Robert further suggests that we can help C Influence with their
work by not using this medium for sharing insubstantial ideas”
April 22, 2007 at 8:45 pm
#77 Sandra C
I was hoping you might show up here eventually. At least so I knew that you made it out. I doubt I would have joined without having met you. I saw the weak side to the fof (not the criminality) within the first two years, that it was formatory devotional and not 4th way. I left after 4 years. With time I have been able to forgive you, myself and others who were so foolishly duped and who in turn took part in the duplicitousness. Ran into Edward H. this past January and we talked about you a little. He is well, more handsome than ever, and seems to have a good balance in his life. I’m sure he would like to hear from you. Send me an e-mail so we can reconnect, if you like.
Be Well
Steven Anderson (Portland 1974)
theplace@rockisland.com
April 22, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Sheik #108: “First one to develop a Dissociative identity disorder (split personality) is the winner.”
Another possibility presents itself in this thought-provoking article, linked on the animamrecro home page:
http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=26
“Under these conditions, it becomes obvious that under each mask is just another mask, and so on, until we come to the abyssal Void itself. This Ground of Being exists, as the Buddhists say, beyond namarupa (beyond “name and form”). We learn that our game rules, social presumptions, and perceived realities are as much a virtual construct as anything in cyberspace.
“As the world stage and its play-acting become more obvious to more people, the jaded ennui and existential depression will eventually be faced, accepted, and understood. It will fall away as it too is rooted, not in the revelation of the truth beyond name and form, but in fearful attachment to the roles we play.
“Inevitably, the Internet’s MTV montage approach to reality selection will have far reaching results. First, no doubt, we will experience this liberation process as a plague, like some alchemical poison released just before the dross of life is transmuted into philosophic gold. This is to be expected when we learn to integrate a new level of perception. In time, however, we may reap the rewards of this digital revelation and role-playing may teach us how to swim in the deep waters of ecstasy, how to navigate the formless truth.” -Brian Corra
April 22, 2007 at 9:50 pm
To “unoanimo” in 7/76:
Nice post. I also suspect that ignoring “Howard Carter” is not a bad idea for many of the reasons that you state.
On the other hand, HC has provided some nice material for this discussion. Whoever HC is (one person? two people? a group of people?), HC has motivated many current and former members of the Fellowship to post some interesting comments to this blog that otherwise may not have been posted. If HC continues to inspire people to post, that’s a good thing. If HC’s intent is to dilute the discussion or provide a strong counterpoint, it’s not working. In fact, just the opposite.
By the way:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellowship_of_Friends
Please see the post by Sheik in 6/344 and HELP! in 6/338 for more information about the FOF Wikipedia page. They are asking for help.
Someone is doing some outstanding work in literally battling the army of FOF-connected editors who are deleting sound and legitimate contributions to the page. One of the obvious tactics of the FOF editors from the very beginning was to write text that’s as lengthy as possible. This would result in pushing all content that criticizes the Fellowship as far down the page as possible, including the link to this blog. The FOF posters are writing wordy “essays” as opposed to writing concise, fact-oriented paragraphs that are more appropriate for Wikipedia.
Those trying to include pertinent facts and criticisms of the FOF are making heroic efforts (thanks from all of us inside and outside of the Fellowship for doing this), but it’s fairly obvious they need more help. The effort by the Fellowship representatives to delete their edits and posts is fairly relentless. It’s quite strange. You can view some of the actual names of those making these edits by clicking the History tab, and you can also view a fairly lengthy discussion about the page by clicking the Discussion tab. In fact, the discussion page and the edit page are a lot more interesting than the main page, because these pages reveal the amount of effort that FOF editors are making to delete any criticism of the FOF.
Now, the question that continues to pop into my head is, “Why?”
Why do these people feel justified in trying to delete all information that is unfavorable to the Fellowship? Now, they may respond by saying that they have a right to defend the Fellowship. But as an Anonymous poster wrote in 6/376, quoting from a Chinese proverb: “Only lies need to be defended. The Truth defends itself.”
The next question is whether these FOF editors are doing more harm than good to their cause. While on the surface it may appear that they are creating a nice bit of propaganda to attract new members, the amount of negative publicity that’s coming from the Wikipedia page is also interesting. For example, you can surf the dozens and dozens of pages on the Fellowship of Friends websites and see nothing about this blog or other criticisms of the Fellowship. But the Wikipedia page, no matter how packed with propaganda, still provides some nice links to this blog, and other sites critical of the FOF.
In the end, I see it as a net loss for the FOF censors.
April 22, 2007 at 9:53 pm
To LOL, 7/98:
Irony ?
If not, you obviously found the right Teacher.
By the way, the Academy,is, since quite a while, called Galleria. Just in case you received an invitation and never reached the place…
To Robert, 7/101:
Any recomandation(s) for those who might be interested in your teachers ?
Strange times!
Much love to us all.
April 22, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Robert (101):
I appreciate you taking the time to present your discourse, and your kind invitation to be of service to those who might be interested. I have no reason to doubt your statements about your experiences, or your sincerity.
But you lost me when you said “No homosexual can create the higher bodies.” I happen not to be gay, but I’m quite confident this statement is nonsense. If you believe that–and, even more, are willing to assert it as Truth–apparently because of a translation of a statement attributed not to Jesus but to my namesake, you missed a step somewhere along the line. I have a lot of respect for scriptures of all traditions, but this passage is as good an example as any of the limitations of attributing to scripture infallible truth.
April 22, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Dear Friend Flying Free
(7/31} “Have the students in the FoF signed an agreement of insanity? What is it going to take before normal, intelligent people, many who I have a high regard for, and have been friends in the past (until they stopped talking to me after I left) realize what they are paying for?”
Life for me, before the school was a little too tough. There had to be more than this? This couldn’t be all there was? I constantly had this shallow, empty feeling.
Then the FoF. Suddenly, I was part of something vibrant and magical. It became the reference point for every aspect my life for more than twenty years. It worked for me: self-remembering, the sense of community and the people – incredible people. And yes, I felt Robert had something special going on.
But I’m Old School, no way around it. Can’t connect to the new form. Can’t pretend what is happening isn’t happening.
So why the reluctance to leave? Why so slow to make the move?
I seem to be imploding. Not only do I have to confront my relationship to the school, but my relationship to myself. Where am I in all of this? Where did I go? And fear, where is all this fear coming from?
Maybe this is the process that other have spoken of. My world is small and the thought of becoming even smaller is scary. And there are many people I will miss so much.
And what will life be like post-FoF? So many of you seem to be happy, glad to be rediscovering yourselves. Not so sure about myself, though. Said I wouldn’t jump without a net. And so far, no net in sight and I’m teetering.
best to all
Cake
p.s. Flying, may call you up after one too many nights of vodka shots and trying to engage my dog in meaningful conversation. cp
And to Sheik, so many thanks for keeping the party going.
April 22, 2007 at 11:55 pm
What after the FOF?
I’m posting this in the hope that people leaving or contemplating leaving the FOF can see that there is plenty to do (not a series of impositions but an invitation to explore with fellow humans) when they have cut the cord. Everyone’s path will differ, but reading this brief summary of some aspects of mine may give encouragement.
When I got the boot from the FOF after sixteen years, I decided to try to rethink everything I had taken for granted, as best as I was able. From the start, I recognized that there were necessarily limitations to this process, starting off with the obvious, that here I was (and am) ‘swimming in the soup’ of the culture at large and the particular culture of the FOF, and it is nigh impossible to see outside the soup bowl. I felt I had done good work in the FOF trying to see the limitations of the general culture, and so chose to start with the FOF culture first. In one sense, this was de-programming, in no way different from the work taken on when joining the FOF or any other path of spiritual “evolution”.
Early on in my examination of the “wrongness” that caused me to leave, I could see that one basic precept to work on was the way the FOF culture separates the body from the mind. So, I set to work to re-integrate my body and mind, to start respecting and learning to love my body again, to see that the various centers permeate the body, and how the body in turn informs the mind, that they are one and inseparable. On the practical level, I threw some wild parties with plenty of dancing, then took workshops for people who recognized that they had fractured or remote relationships to their bodies. After some time, this led to the conclusion that separating the mind from the body was not only wrong work, but actually a form of blasphemy, the throwing of the gift of the body into the teeth of the giver, so to speak.
Then I examined my relationships to some of the exercises I had tried so faithfully to follow, that seemed to be the bedrock of the FOF and the Fourth Way. For example, one in particular, the non-expression of negative emotions. I realized early on that for most members of the FOF, including myself, it had instead come to mean the suppression of negative emotions. I found qualified fellow-travelers to help me release the resulting gigantic constipation in my emotional center; and I learned that the exercise should have been “The non-appropriate expression of negative emotions”, and that, as I had previously suspected from time to time, that the ‘negative’ halves of centers are valid, necessary and as perfect as their ‘positive’ counterparts. The suppression was another of the blasphemies (rejection of blessed gifts) taught by Burton. A side effect (everything is connected) was the re-establishment of friendly relations with and a deeper understanding of my instinctive center, the infamous enemy, the king of clubs.
The next belief I worked on was the idea that my present life was somehow lesser, somehow imperfect and needed correction, and that some reward lay in the future by denying myself the rich experience of living fully (and taking risks) now. I began by trying to accept the cards I had been dealt with, both physical and psychological, and making the most of them. Believe me, living life with maximum juiciness, and without worrying about accumulating spiritual points is like being reborn! I came to see that the idea of imperfection, expressed as ‘original sin’ or any other equivalent (Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Burton were all raised Catholic/Orthodox, and it shows) thought pattern was just a part of the patriarchal cultural spasm of the last 5,000 years; the accompanying corollaries, that present sacrifice is necessary for theoretical future reward, and that external intermediaries such as priests or gurus are necessary between oneself and the godhead within, are equally invalid.
Now I was on to the next stage, trying to become an ordinary person again. No matter how it was presented (“We are not special, just lucky”, or, “Isn’t it amazing luck that C-influence has chosen us from among the millions to awaken”), the FOF culture told us that in fact we were special; I incorporated this message, as did almost every other member. For me, this one task is taking years (maybe a lifetime), and is a huge undertaking just by itself. One result of this work is the realization that ‘seekers’ in general are not special. There is nothing magical or superior about a seeker, it’s just the random assortment of genes or circumstances, and is no more or less necessary to the Lela, the dance, the play (whatever you want to call it) than the ‘banker’, the ‘tailor’, or the ‘candlestick maker’. I am a seeker, that’s the way I am, so I’m not going to deny or suppress it because of this realization, I’ll still seek self-understanding and enjoy the exploration, but it’s not important in of itself.
Next, I tried to examine the weaknesses that had led me to join the FOF so wholeheartedly, with particular emphasis on the relinquishing of responsibility onto Burton. For example, I took two workshops that dealt with the issues I had with my parents, one for my mother and one for my father. Each multi-day event in the hands of experienced leaders jolted me to my foundations, and I came to a whole new relationship to my parents, much more truly as an adult. The resolution of so much unfinished business also made me realize that this is some of what I had sought of the FOF, and enabled me to complete some more transitions from the FOF culture, and simultaneously from the general culture. Burton’s screwed up relationship to his parents makes the FOF the last place on earth to help in this area. This enabled me to do another related workshop to help resolve unhealthy dynamics between the sexes (another of the wrong results of general culture); now I have lessons learned I try to bring to my marriage.
Which leads me on to love. Back here in “mere” life, I have seen and felt far more love from perfectly ordinary people by the day than in most of the FOF over all the years. Truly, the FOF should be renamed the Fellowship of Conditional Friends! Here in “life”, a term Orwellian in its depravity as it has come to be used by the FOF, I have learned love overflows in abundance. Some is indeed also conditional (that is the human state), but plenty is unconditional, and comes from a multitude of surprising sources. In the FOF, I learned unending distrust; many tales were told of me and others and reported to Burton and acted upon in the most unloving manner. I came to see I could not trust people I had known for years, let alone Burton. So many ‘photographs’ used as weapons, not intended as help, leading to more distrust, the System misused by sleeping leaders to put people back to sleep, in fact to make them sleep more soundly. So now I am learning to simply ‘put what I have to offer out there’, learning to trust that the response will be rooted in the Intelligence in everything that is Love, as I understand the meaning of the parable, “Consider the lilies of the field…”
So, though there are some thoughts and practices above that might be helpful, I mostly offer encouragement. Personally, I felt strongly that moving on to another formal teacher/teaching (at least straight away) would not be useful; I looked for teachers in the people around me, and some experts in specific areas. I did not expect everyone to provide services for free. What I paid for, I considered in every case to be good value. But most of the time, there were lessons for the taking from the Extraordinary that is in every person, so I didn’t have to look far! This was true in the FOF also, by the way.
Finally, everyone who has left has had different experiences. I invite anyone who feels so moved to share what processes they have found useful on this blog; they could be valuable to others. And again, thank you, Sheik, for the forum.
With love,
Ames Gilbert
April 22, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Reading ‘Robert Says’ 7/101 puts me in mind of an aspect of our situation as former or soon-to-be former students of the FOF. It is reminiscent of the end of a marriage where you suddenly find that you are open to dating again and discover that things have moved on since your time. When you were married you had driven past queues of people outside the clubs on a Saturday nights thinking how grateful you were not to have to do that anymore; you walked past courting couples cooing like doves and thought how sweet, I had my share when I was young. Now you are alone again, you are more inclined to wonder how to get back into the fray and whether the experience of simple love is open to the middle aged.
I go back to the analogy of the end of a relationship to help understand what is happening as one begins to separate from and ultimately divorces oneself from the school, as it seems most apt. The parameters of your relationship have in both cases defined you, the choices you could make and your reasonable expectations of life. Suddenly, you are no longer subject to the form that gave your life shape and there is the risk that you ooze out a shapeless mess. I am sure people who have gone through the death of someone very close will have found themselves in a similar situation.
The crux of the matter is that previously you were contained in a fairly limited version of life that no longer exists and now the whole world is you oyster (please bear in mind that oysters can make you very ill indeed).
No matter how wise and true what ‘Robert Says’ describes might be, I have had my ‘master-devotee’ experience for the moment and am not going to jump back into bed with another mumbo jumbo merchant on the rebound. Let that experience be for the star-struck young things who are at the time in their lives for such things.
A profound realization is how common this all is; this is the kind of thing that has happened countless times before and will happen countless times again, just like love, no matter how much we personalize it. There is a very real risk that on leaving the school behind one may entertain possibilities that are just not wise at all and find one self drawn into a new relationship or series of relationships for the wrong reasons and with the wrong people. I mean wrong is the relative sense. As a mature ex-member of a cult one has a certain amount of ‘being’ but can still easily be seduced by those who are more artful. If we take one lesson with us it surely has to be that we were tricked and that we are the kind of people who are vulnerable to people like Robert Burton and institutions like the FOF.
I would warn my fellows who are contemporaries and alumni of the FOF from the same batch to be aware of (and beware of) what allowed them to fall for the school hook, line and sinker in the first place. Some of us might benefit from professional help. How about thinking about half your teaching payments for the next year as being due for this purpose? We will all find ourselves with much more time and more money to spend, which is something to look forward to with some apprehension. We will have to make decisions on our own and be responsible for the consequences.
The fence is a place from which you can derive some of the benefits from being part of as well as being independent of the school, but once you step onto the side of being independent you no longer have the support of the school. It is obvious, but not to be underestimated as a threat and as an opportunity.
In the FOF we have apparently been learning to anticipate the death of our bodies by investing in an awareness that is independent of the physical body. Well, this is a little test of that awareness. There is the danger that this awareness once released after the death of our marriage with the FOF will condense against another cold surface.
During my divorce I spent several days purposefully remembering my life from the earliest I could remember to the present moment. I looked at old letters, photos and souvenirs and thought on people I had loved and who had loved me as well as those I had wronged or who had wronged me. It put my marriage into context. My life was big enough to accommodate this experience and to anticipate a worthwhile future and even hope for more on the evidence of what had gone before.
The FOF is all about creating memories with no place for remembering them. My wish for those in the process of leaving, which includes myself, is that we should fit our experience of the FOF into our lives and in so doing, reclaim them. For years we have been told to do the opposite in order to be malleable, now we must take back what is ours and rediscover it’s potential.
April 23, 2007 at 12:34 am
Hey all you buttheads out there,
I am going to let you in on a secret, HC is one single person, not some group of people. It apparently does not take much to keep you idiots happy and busy. Just one person who does not lose his cool! Thanks HC for all your hard work–it is apreciated by many.
I happen to know who HC is, it is NOT Girard. And you folks will just never guess because you are too busy reacting and writing your shit.
You folks, sheik included, are just full of yourself, get your heads out of your asses and wake up!
Beavis.
April 23, 2007 at 1:46 am
HCarter #69:
“For all my lack of humanity I’ve not had cause to refer to any person on this blog as “the entity calling itself” – Be it Innernaut, or Elena, or No Person, or whoever I’m addressing.”
Point taken. Are you 1 person or a group?
LOL #98:
“wouldn’t you rather be around now than in the old days when any sex was banned? Bet you are Ames, Joel, Bruce and all you other old farts!)”
May seem odd to you young farts, but there was actually sex going on even then! But if you’re asking me if I’m bummed to have missed out on banging lots of women because I could have used my “role” to my advantage instead of being a “goody-goody”, then I’m at a loss for words to reply. I had other aims.
Chop Sticks #116
“You said that you are not interested Infof (been there done that) but you have been posting here like crazy. ”
You have a point.
“If anything is important to you, you send us on a “link”; these links are they not like quoting conscious beings Infof?”
It was just the one to the yezidi cicle story, wasn’t it?
“I really have hard time understanding where you are coming from or where you are going. What is your spiritual path? Thanks.”
My spiritual path is called “life.” Your welcome.
Hey Bruce, love your posts. Any idea how to contact MJahoda? Peace-out.
JoelF
April 23, 2007 at 2:07 am
Dearest SandraC:
So many years so many lives…
I have fond memories of you and JF leading the meetings in NYC. Gosh, we even smoked back then!
Sorry to hear of DK’s passing. We were friends back then and I guess I introduced D and J to the FOF…
But we digest, process, transform and move on.
My love to you.
April 23, 2007 at 2:13 am
“Earlier, when he was giving his first
said:
“It began in Russia, and it will end in Russia”.
When he was asked about the meaning, he replied that
he didn’t know, but these words appeared in his head
and he said them which gave him the creeps.”
This is a quote from Gurdjieff.
April 23, 2007 at 2:43 am
I fully appreciate that there may be more people using the same computer, yet, when two new voices enter the scene at the same day (coming from the same IP address), I become suspicious. Don’t worry, such comments will not be deleted.
I think that it is painfully obvious that some of the people writing here are taking the piss, or using other people’s names, or adopting fake personas with the aim of creating a negative image for the other side. While I do all I can to keep this minimal, a lot of it still gets through. So I am sorry to all those of you whose names have been used by other people, without your consent, against your wishes. I will try to battle this (and if you make me aware of any such behaviour, I will make other readers aware of it). BTW, HigherM is another one of those jokers (he isn’t who he is implying he is).
On the one hand, it’s a real bitch to those whose names get dragged around here (a lot of us are very glad for our anonymity, me included), on the other hand it creates a lot of fun (and detective work), trying to figure out who’s real and who’s not (eg. John, or Howard Carter). I guess that you will have to start having some fun, and take it all a bit less seriously. I will do my upmost to keep the discussion name-free, stress-free, and anonymous. I won’t always get it right. BTW, HigherM is another one of those jokers.
Butthead (129): I believe that I repeat myself, but thank you for taking the time to leave such a meaningful comment.
April 23, 2007 at 2:51 am
To Posting 101/7:
A reply and one kind word of advice.
To your question of “Or will one of you come forth and admit that you have created it and have verified it without Robert Burton?”
I can say this, that I have verified it without RB, way before joining the school, when I was around 13 or 14 years of age, now I’m nearly 40. Did I create it without RB? well that’s a bit silly, that’s like asking “Did you cut yourself without the knife?” or “Did you mow the lawn without the grass?” I can say that ‘it happened’ and continued to occur throughout my life so far, with allot of in between experiences, physical oddities, perceptions, energies, events, etc.
So there, in other words, Yes, there is someone who has verified their astral body without a fourth way school.
I liked your letter’s intent, its ’spirit’ to touch others with your compassion, yet I believe I can rightly say, based on its proceeding length, that your scholarly passion for esoteric justifications as to ‘how you see The Way’ overcame your initial intent to allow others ’space’ enough to be considered compassionate-able recipients of your ‘being’. Goethe once said, “If I had more time I would have written a shorter letter.”
I like that, allot…he’s spot on and knows the functions of the machine all too well, admitting truly that his presence is needed elsewhere than writing a letter, though a little slice will have to do to consider another’s need of a reply.
___________________
A kind word of advice ~ Just for ‘fun’ and certain ‘other reasons’, even if your name is ‘Robert’, make something else up, like,
‘Trebor’ or R or Rob… just for the sake of automatic associative stuff.
Be Well and thank you for a very interesting read…BTW, take a peek into “Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson”, i.e., Gurdjieff’s comment that “Your sexual fluids are your most precious possession.”
Now step back and consider this one line coming from such a being as George Gurdjieff, a man who ‘had it all’ forty times over, his incredible sufferings, transformations, teachers, travels, Ouspensky, efforts, etc… All seemingly ripe to be ‘drama’ consideration for ‘First Place’ status, yet, he chooses to say that, only that.
He also speaks about the scourge of self-calming (of which this blog certainly functions on a high level for many), etc. Too, he was planning to write a book called “The care and maintenance of the astral body.” – Perhaps his ‘being’ may help slim down your approach to this subject, which in my opinion, must be very not academic and important, rather, everyday life practical and verifiable in the tactile sphere.
Love to you all.
April 23, 2007 at 3:11 am
To Higher M (post# 92)
Hope you get some psychological assistance, you really need it. It might be very useful for you to contact some therapist that can help people who have been or still are part of a cult, to go back to normal. In any case, I wish you soon recovery, from my heart.
Shall I say that we met in South America fifteen years ago? Maybe not, as it is very hard to believe that you are the same shy, innocent guy who was looking for the Truth, travelling with Girard around the centres.
My suggestion, do not get back to me or anybody else in the blog, better use your time to look for help.
With much Love!
April 23, 2007 at 3:36 am
There is/was another Sydney Russell, long–time student, loved by many of us from the early days, perhaps one of the posts was by her?
#131: Thanks for the note, wish I could place who you might be.
#112: Hello, Bruce, back. I think of you often and have enjoyed your voice here.
#95: Paul, if you are who I think you are, I am so pleased to contact you here, for one regret that I have had was that once when you called me to try to discuss RB’s sexual overtures, I turned a deaf ear, was not ready to hear it, and I have wished I could have been there more to hear you. I appreciated your courage in even bringing up this then-very-taboo subject with me. So, thanks for identifying yourself and giving me this chance to tell you how that all settled for me.
#121: Stephen: I do remember you, looong ago and far away in a Portland coffee shop, the memory flashes. Hello to Edward H and thank you for bringing both of you back into my mind. I may send email as you suggest.
April 23, 2007 at 3:46 am
A few lines of Hafiz offered as a toast to the helpers past, present, and future:
Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.
April 23, 2007 at 3:46 am
Hey Joel. He’s listed in Grass Valley.
April 23, 2007 at 3:56 am
Chopsticks asked (#116):
Ames, can you please tell me in few words what did your conscience say before you left. What is your spiritual path now? Thanks.
I assume you are asking in good faith, and I will answer likewise. I’ll be as brief as possible, but perhaps still longer than you wished. My conscience doesn’t speak to me in words. It is much more like a little flash of illumination, and I see whatever the situation is in a different way, which I have learned to trust is, for me, the truth. Learning to see this was my main education in the FOF and was mostly despite the FOF, in that I had to find out what were the voices of conventional morality, of my mother, what the neighbors might think, what Robert or Girard or fellow students might think (most ‘angles’), and so on, and disregard those voices—a very long process for me, I’m afraid, over many years, leaving the “small still voice”. Once I got the flavor, it became easier and easier to recognize. Nor has it ever let me down.
So, to answer your question specifically; at the time I mentioned in that letter, I was running up on Mt. Renaissance, not many I’s circulating, enjoying the breathing, grateful for my strong, well-functioning body, and I experienced the ‘flash’, and I FELT what it was like to be the lonely young man I had talked to a few weeks before, a South American in Burton’s entourage who had told me that he felt “like a slave” and that he had no escape from his plight. In that one instantaneous insight, I felt not only remorse (I even started crying as I ran), but certain that I was indeed connected directly to him and that I did have responsibility for his pain. That, Chopsticks, was it, best I can do in words.
I ran straight back home, and wrote down what I could of the experience.
The energy from the flash continued to fuel my writing for twenty minutes, and became a personal essay on how my contributions to the FOF enabled Burton in all his excesses, and the pain and blind alleys to which he was leading all the young men. I realized in the fullest way that because I lent energy to Burton and the structure, I was part of the input, and so inevitably I was responsible for the output. At the end of this, another flash; I have an obligation to do what I can to ameliorate the situation, that is, heal (regenerate) according to my power, within the structure. Another flash; to refrain from acting according to my gifts and power is a large ‘sin’ against myself.
So, that was it.
My spiritual path now? Partially answered by my post # 127. In no particular order, other explorations did include two sessions of magic mushrooms, and one of ayahuasca, years apart, which taught me what fragile, chemically controlled body/minds we have, and also new depths of ecstacy, gratitude and worship. A month after leaving, I spent three days alone awake continuously, fasting and meditating in the Yuba Gap (past the power station, quite remote), a quarter mile from James Battaglia, who was doing the same. This purged me of much turmoil and useless emotions connected with being thrown out of the FOF. A few months later, I spent many days and nights going through “a dark night of the soul”, in which, recorded in writing, I confronted many demons and dark parts of myself, and was shown (by grace) some hard, hard truths about myself and our situation.
I read the book by Satyam Nadeen, “From Onions to Pearls” and was deeply moved. I went to one of his week-end sessions in the Bay area (someone said he’s moved on now), and he helped me move much emotional shit in a huge catharsis, for which I was profoundly grateful. He also helped me see that my expectations for spiritual evolution were mostly imaginary, and were getting in the way of living a full life. He sent me on my way, neither of us expecting to see each other again, (which we have not), grateful for the insight that ‘I Am That’. With that insight, it is not necessary for me to have formal teachers or a teaching; I can find a teacher in the person next door at the moment I look. And I can, whether conscious or unconscious, provide the same service for others.
A conclusion I reached later: this was actually also happening in the FOF, but I didn’t recognize it fully at the time. I was in a school, separate from the cult of Robert Burton, and to an important extent, independent of Burton. My teachers were other students, often without them knowing. They provided the energy I enjoyed; theirs was the hard work. Externally, they built the vineyard (think about it, most of the external work was done by students long departed…). It’s true that Burton provided the initial vision, but the best, and for me, the most important, was the efforts, internal and external, of the rest of us. Burton turned into the uber tax collector, a vampire of the energies, and we let him.
Hope that answers (at least on one level) your questions. I’m sure it was more than you wanted, but that’s the risk you take!
Ames
April 23, 2007 at 3:59 am
Reply to Comrade 123/7
Comrade Says:
April 22nd, 2007 at 9:50 pm
To “unoanimo” in 7/76:
Nice post. I also suspect that ignoring “Howard Carter” is not a bad idea for many of the reasons that you state.
On the other hand, HC has provided some nice material for this discussion. Whoever HC is (one person? two people? a group of people?), HC has motivated many current and former members of the Fellowship to post some interesting comments to this blog that otherwise may not have been posted. If HC continues to inspire people to post, that’s a good thing. If HC’s intent is to dilute the discussion or provide a strong counterpoint, it’s not working. In fact, just the opposite.
__________________
Hello Comrade:
Yes, all that is obvious reason to see HC as a dutiful precursor to a good ole intellectual/emotional romp in the hay, yet, what about the starving cows in the field waiting for all that love making to finish before nightfall?
In otherwords ~
The “may not have been posted (if it were not for HC)” is moot and cannot be otherwise, yet, a refinement can be considered.
It could be said that all the games of tennis have been nothing but the pursuit of the ultimate racket, yet, the drama sure seems real, that is, outside the ‘truer’ pursuit of the ultimate racket there are thousands pursuing themselves and others ‘to win’, while the evolution of the racket goes unsung, so to speak.
Well, there you have it…It’s not the racket I was referring to when I suggested people stop writing ‘to’ HC (please read my post again)…
Rather it is the impetus, the kaffeeklatch behavior (within the form of the HC reply-blogs), which is an all too ’self calming’ virus among material & spiritually seeking people…
That somewhere hitting the target anywhere becomes more important than the aim.
Does ‘loosing one’s temper’ equate with ‘finding ones self’?
This is my only ‘wish’ concerning the ‘HC tennis match’~ To consider the ‘kind’ of energy invested towards HC, which simply, unconsciously, boomerangs back to the ‘player’, like in an ‘important’ game match-point, where so much ’sexual fluid’ is spent screaming, yelling, frustrated, efforting, concentrating and the like.
Everyone has the building blocks within them to become conscious in this one and only moment (There are no ‘many moments’, only intervals where we could not see it as continuous, an uninterrupted One.)
Whose burning your blocks when your not looking; perhaps this is how it is, that so many end up with half-villas and not the originally planned castle.
Certainly, something is happening here, regardless of the blog-forms ‘little details’. It is no mistake that the owner of this blog-site is ‘The Sheik of Inner Confusion’, i.e., the very ’state of affairs’ which gives birth to aimless blogging. The HC phenomenon reminds me of my story called ‘Spirit Bear Hunter’.
Spirit Bear Hunter
_____________________
One day a certain someone exclaimed he could attract ‘food to the table’ without actually going out and hunting it.
Many gathered round to see this claim come true and the ‘joking’ man became nervous, thinking to himself “Gosh, what a fix I’m in now, can’t tell the truth that I was kidding, so many people, certainly they’ll punish me harshly for this trick…gotta concentrate…”
So he did and did and did…for forty days and forty nights he concentrated, while all those round him (in the desert) also concentrated on his concentrations…
They sung, discussed, had visions, saw footprints, noises, even at times exclaimed they smelt ‘dinner coming’… though no Bear.
Until one early morning, on the brink of starvation and death, the Bear appeared…
right there in the middle of them all…
crawling, moaning, giving thanks to the spirit bear hunter, they reached out, right through the Bear…
Yes, the Bear did appear, one that the mind could eat, the one that the mind created and hunted, finally it appeared as an effect of a cause-offering to the mind having ‘trapping it, surrounded it’, yet, this was not the intention or was it?
Love to you all.
April 23, 2007 at 4:16 am
Dear With malice toward none, thanks for your question. (#111)
First of all, I think we can only guess about death, since those who really died didn’t come back to tell us, and whoever is alive can only guess. (RB has quite a story about what happens after death of a student/non-student, about Limbo and multiple chambers or – the Moon, but this never appealed to me somehow…)
At this point in life I honestly don’t have questions about death, simply because life is so full and satisfying. I don’t know for sure if non-duality actually focuses on this idea. From what I’ve read, non-duality is a very practical and concentrated way of pointing to the core of our being, it doesn’t seem to have much complicated theory or system of ideas. (it’s based on what I’ve personally read, it all was simple and brief).
From one point of view, why discuss something that no one really has any idea about? It’s like, let’s discuss dragons, their habits, their behavior, what do you think about them, where do they over-winter… Has anyone ever seen one? Or are we discussing some imaginary stuff?
So is with death… No one really knows, until they are, well, dead.
But since you asked about death, I’ll share my thoughts, which are – just thoughts, assumptions, creative imagination, because really – until I die I cannot tell much about it…
It seems that the impersonal life principle that is our essential quality is never ending. It’s like the electricity I once used as an example of a life force. With the death/destruction of the vehicle this principle should not disappear. It may stop manifesting in the same way through this particular body. The body obviously dies, with all it’s unique qualities as a specific life form. That we all saw many times. I think that what makes us alive, that principle, energy or life force, or conscious-awareness – never goes off, just goes to another form, manifests somewhere else, just like electricity would not be gone when the bulb burns out.
Again, I don’t really know about death, I just share thoughts on the subject.
The thing is, that what we truly are is impersonal, selfless. We are basically life itself, playing through this particular body. When you see and recognize this, you stop worrying about death in a way you did before. What’s going to die if you think about it? Not WHO you really are… What you truly are cannot die, because it’s life itself. But this little body-mind mechanism is totally mortal. This guy dies and gets recycled, I don’t think there are any hopes for him.
I think when actual death happens we will know for sure! There is no getting out of it!
I really like the analogy I’ve read in some non-dual books about the ocean and the waves. (This is an interpretation of it, more or less how I remember). Each single wave has it’s personality and uniqueness, and is still in it’s essence just ocean water. It may think that it is unique and separate and independent, but it is not, it is totally connected to the ocean and other waves. And the big ocean doesn’t care if one wave doesn’t know the truth of what it truly is. Wave’s ignorance does not diminish the greatenes of the ocean. When wave finally breaks – it returns to what it always was – ocean water. It’s shape and qualities are gone, but it’s essence as ocean water cannot disappear, it’s in a way immortal. And more and more new waves are being constantly created out of ocean water, each will have it’s unique expression, qualities and story. I always found it a beautiful analogy.
A little story about preparation: when I was preparing to move to Europe ( from Russia) I didn’t know what to take with me. But I wanted to be prepared so I packed my bags with lots and lots of household items. I had so much stuff with me… Upon arrival I realized that all these things are not needed here, either there is no use for them in Europe, or they are so readily available – there was no reason to drag them across the country. I should have just relaxed and traveled light. But I was so totally worried (identified) about my future life in Europe, I wanted to be prepared.
Well, until you get there, you really don’t know do you…
Dear friend, don’t spend your life preparing for death – accept a gift of life, enjoy it now as it is, be who you are, because this is truly a wonderful gift.
April 23, 2007 at 4:53 am
(116)
Elena: Did you want students in FOF to read the blog?
Dear Friend,
Of course I think it is important for all students to read the blog.
I only needed to read four letters to understand that I had a thousand questions many of which no one from the Fellowship has been willing to answer.
I have been in the school for many years not knowing these issues because you people don’t talk. Everything I have said is what I’ve seen. We never talked with Girard about the Fellowship. It was his “job”.
The facts do get covered by your silence and the pretty clothes and one continues to try to transform the difficulties without understanding why you are all so cold. We give each other kisses for seventeen years but never go beyond.
And if one does ask, then one is told that it was vanity that made Miles leave, that the sexual cases were just one or two, that there’s nothing to worry about.
The Fellowship is far crystallized because it has lived an unexamined life for too long. Robert Burton has crystallized and is hurting people. Listen to the tone of those who do defend him with conviction like higher M and tell me if the weaknesses in that man have been reinforced or weakened by being in the Fellowship. (It is not the courbet some of you are thinking, I hope. My friend Courbet was never that close to the teacher).
Do you really believe the formatoriness with which A friend or Howard Carter defends the Fellowship? Is that stand what you really want for yourself or do you actually have one that you can give, instead of just asking questions?
It is alright though if you’re looking for answers because we all need them.
You might loose a thousand students if you encouraged them to read the blog but if you were sincere about the measures that need to be taken to continue as a conscious school you would gain another two thousand or more. Many of you have the being. We have all suffered much. We have all given up too much and it is time to recover it.
Don’t be afraid of a surgery when it is needed to keep alive.
From one angle everything is wrong and from another, every thing can be repaired.
When I began writing on the blog, I felt it necessary to listen to it, just as I felt it necessary to bring Dorothy home when I saw her suffering. There is not much we can do to repair the suffering that has been done in the past, but acknowledging it, without fear or judgement is necessary to heal. And we can stop it. We can stop hurting people. We can stop hurting each other. We can stop any one’s excesses. Who ever it is necessary to stop, can be stopped. Without violence, without blame. Simply controlled. We all need to check and control each other because we are all weak and full of features as well as beautiful and divine beings. So we check what needs checking and encourage what is great.
How much longer do you really want to prolong the condition for yourself in which you cannot talk your heart to the people around you?
That you have to run around serving a man with severe addictions?
That you have to justify yourself because he is “superior to others”?
How deeply do you really believe that?
Do you not remember that the higher serves the lower and that the higher a man’s being is, the less he would undermine others? Separate himself with expensive clothes? Rigid forms? Very extreme and questionable stands?
When has Robert been open to you? Wide and generously open with his heart? To you? And not to a general public in a well set show? Firm with his love and not just a smile or a heart?
Can you really tell me that he has unconditional love as you would expect a man number seven to have? For whom?
April 23, 2007 at 4:56 am
Greetings, friends, new and old, from Asahi! So good to see all of you here.
Since departing the Fellowship, numerous wondrous changes have befallen me and I am now announcing that I am started my own school.
This is no ordinary school. We have 45 conscious beings working with us; a sequence that has seven, rather then six, steps, which takes you further, deeper and higher; and all the contradictions that you could ever want. Plus, lots of sex!
You can view my photo with my first student, Veronique, and the place where we live and meet, at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7933492@N07/
Please note that for a limited time only, we will meet or beat any teaching payment price from any other teacher by 10%. Details to follow!
April 23, 2007 at 4:59 am
Group myth 1: The Fellowship was something that started out good and true and right and wholesome and somehow along the way became corrupt or faltered or something.
Response to Group myth 1: The Fellowship was thoroughly, fatally corrupt from the very beginning.
(Which is not to say that all the people, or even most of them, were or are corrupt. The key thing is deception. The more innocent, naive and idealistic the person, the more manipulable he or she is, generally speaking. And deception works even better when people at all experience levels are led to disable their critical thinking faculties by “separating from the ‘I’s.”)
Foundation for response to Group Myth 1: Accounts of Bonita G. Discussions with Harold W. and the late Stella S. Discussions with the late Don B. Discussions with Jordan F-S whose whole family was in FOF in 1971. Discussion with respected student who left in 1971. Attendance sheet from 1971 showing the degree to which peoples’ attendance at events was monitored. Handwritten note in R.’s handwriting from period of silence stating “It is good when weak students leave as they are weight. It used to bother me but now it’s like a useless object being gone.”
According to people who were there, R. intentionally broke up almost all marriages and relationships of people who joined during the first two years. Someone knows the quantity of relationship splits; I don’t. The number I heard was in the 20s or 30s, a huge number in a small group.
In 1971, R. screwed Student #1 (female), who had separated from her husband after she had an affair with another FOF member. The day after, R. told her she hadn’t valued the experience of sex with a conscious being enough, and made a public announcement, reported in the Via Del Sol Journal, that he had been celibate since the beginning of the school. Her response was “why would he lie? It just didn’t make sense.”
After the end of 1970, R. began to require people to give him large amounts of money in order to continue to remain in the group. R. had been living at home with his mother and decided that people should give him money so he could get wheels, a VW bus. From dismissed elementary school teacher (March 17, 1967) to living with Mom at age 32 and giving tennis lessons at the Claremont, to conning Student #1, a woman older than he was who was obviously fascinated with him and was a married with kids in school. He soon monopolized her time 6 days a week. Go figure that one out. She’s married, she has responsibilities to husband and kids, but he monopolizes her time. The word parasitic comes to mind.
Anonymous 1971 defector, who knew nothing of FOF’s subsequent history, stated, “During the period of silence, R. would blow kisses to people. The ones he blew to me were contemptuous. There was something contemptible and contemptuous about him. I sensed in him a radical lack of integrity. My take on him was ultimately sociopathic. This was the social archeology of 1971 cognitively uncontaminated by anything that came later.
Don B. indicated that when R. used to park at Nut Tree he would take up three spaces so as to keep anybody from scratching his Rolls Royce. Classic narcissistic behavior immune from standards which apply to other people.
The thing I have never quite fathomed is that, if accounts of people without axes to grind are to be believed, R. was a popular and well liked elementary school teacher by both students and parents. How did he go from that to creating, in the FOF, such a hostile environment for children?
April 23, 2007 at 5:20 am
Thank you for the many great posts that are coming in.
As someone said: if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
It seems we’re still far from the solution and need to keep looking at the problem so that it is fully recognised. But like any problem, there are solutions.
April 23, 2007 at 5:29 am
Definitions:
Sorry, I don’t remember where I got this information. It may be from “The Guru Papers”.
“In a cult there are few, if any constraints on the founder. They are the creator of the truth – through free rein – and are the actual manifestation. The leader is the main source. The leader is a Living God, or God’s unique vessel.”
“Followers have an internal cohesiveness and they actively protect purity from outsiders.” (We are elite!)
“Should the guru become paranoid, greedy or bored (as many do), they can get their disciples to do almost anything.” (Uh oh!)
“There is a belief that the Enlightened one is of a different order. They are beyond the foibles resulting from ego.” (Pedophilia is okay!)
“What grabs the followers is not a specific leader or ideology, but a configuration of emotions that is part of the state of surrender. This arouses intense emotion and there is extraordinary passion in surrendering to what one sees as a living god. They also withdraw from life and renunciate world views.”
“Even with the best intentions, assuming the role of spiritual authority for others, sets in motion a system of interaction that is mechanical, predictable and contains the essence of corruption.”
“Especially insidious are the images of superiority tied to the presumption of greater wisdom, moral purity or an enlightened state. It always includes renouncing self-centeredness. It also maintains that no ordinary person can know enough to take issue with beliefs.” (No questions please!) “There is a manipulation of fear and desire.”
This really helped me in understanding my involvement. I hope that it helps others.
Keep in mind that this is not a description of the Fellowship of Friends. Instead, it a description of any, very typical cult.
Peace & Love!
April 23, 2007 at 5:30 am
Hey Steve (6/281),
You describe a state of awareness and ask: “Is this essence manifesting?” Later you ask: “But isn’t this after all just another step on the way? Isn’t this a plateau where maybe we can rest a while before moving on? I don’t know.”
Join the club. I don’t know either! But not-knowing gets an undeserved bad rap. My late friend and mentor Jean Klein titled one of his many great books Open to the Unknown. We are desperately hanging onto the known, seeking security in the face of an unfathomable mystery. We want to know where we stand. So we ask questions like: Am I on the path yet? Am I enlightened? Am I in essence? Is this a plateau?
But what does this have to do with RIGHT NOW? Aren’t these scorekeeping type questions a little like asking: “Am I having fun yet?”
We tend to make awakening very complicated and confusing, but I think it is actually quite simple. Embrace life fully, 100%. Welcome what comes. Don’t escape, don’t refuse, don’t resist anything. Effort and struggle are indicators of resistance.
By not resisting I don’t mean we should meekly submit to injustice. On the contrary, we should face injustice, like everything else, head on. We might choose to fight or not; that’s not the point.
We want what we don’t have and we don’t want what we do have. Let’s turn that around. Why not want what we have and stop wanting what we don’t have? Does it take effort to do this? Some say so. I call it a great relief!
However, despite having been a student of nondual teachings for many years, I part company with those in the “neo-Advaita” crowd who say that all practice is unnecessary, or even harmful. There is a lot of pseudo-realization going on these days which amounts to little more than slapping on a happy face and shouting: “I’m free, I’m free!” IMO, most of these folks have just traded in one security blanket for another. They are afraid to truly embrace not-knowing.
I am a big fan of practice, whether it be self-remembering, mindfulness, self-inquiry, meditation, dancing, or whatever tickles our fancy. But let’s do the practice for its own sake, because we love it, not for the sake of some hoped-for results. If we don’t love it and are only thinking about what we are going to get from doing it, why do it? That’s just living in Becoming, not Being.
Hint: If it feels like “work” we’re still resisting.
OK, I’m off my soap box now.
Mark H.
mkhovila@yahoo.com
FOF member 1973-78
April 23, 2007 at 5:46 am
Reality is only agreement!
April 23, 2007 at 6:15 am
#135 When I read post 92 I couldn’t take it seriously. It had to be someone’s little mind game (as perverse as it is). I can’t imagine the existence of the kind of person who could write that in seriousness. It had to be some kind of dark type of satire, gone amok and on LSD with just a touch of psychopathology. No one could walk around like that, even in the FOF, without everyone wanting to beat the shit out of him.
April 23, 2007 at 9:06 am
JoelF (6/281)
Good to see you posting here! I still remember you leading my first prospective student meeting, when you were an “older student” of maybe a year. Obviously I was impressed enough to come back for meeting number 2. I always valued your insights and your sense of humor.
As to why many ex-FOFers don’t post under their own names, I suspect they don’t want to be Googled by employers or curiosity seekers. I handled it by using my initials and last name in my email address (see below). Other solutions might be to put spaces between the letters of your name or to spell it backwards (accompanied, of course, by: “this is my name spelled backwards”).
I have some questions for you and others such as, for example, my old friend Charles R. who were in leadership positions and stayed in the FOF for quite some time after RB’s abusive activities became known. What was your mindset at the time? Were you still thinking that he was a “conscious being”? Were you hoping to change his behavior? Did you confront him? I’m curious why you stuck with him as long as you did. I think a few words about this could be helpful to current and former members.
Mark H.
mkhovila@yahoo.com
FOF member 1973-78
April 23, 2007 at 9:20 am
#111 with malice towards none
Close your eyes and imagine you are god. Out of yourself create 1,000,000 gazillion things. These things are the bits that don’t survive you are the bit that does.
April 23, 2007 at 10:03 am
Regarding the despicable name-stealing: Yes, a very childish, creepy, dishonest, and criminal theft of identities. For those who do this, why do you do it? It helps no one. But helping must not be your aim.
There was a poster way back in Discussion 1, who took upon him/herself to change a personal factual story I had related on this blog, in this way potentially discrediting my story and attacking my integrity. When I confronted the person about this, s/he explained it away glibly as an attempt to communicate a message THROUGH ME and my story. What on earth makes people think they have a right to co-opt and USE other people in this way? I did not give my permission to be used as a vehicle through which this arrogant self-appointed angel could communicate.
Those who use these sorts of underhanded tactics do not speak well for themselves. Don’t be immoral sleazebags. Nothing justifies this. The end does not justify the means, and if your end does, the end must be foul.
My apologies Sydney, I thought it was you. And I repeat my fond hello. Used to be an active member of the London Centre some years ago. Enjoyed our time together in Amsterdam and hope you are feeling well.
April 23, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Robert7/101
Very interesting post and I agree with you in many of your points.
My own experience is that we all have an inner picture in our hearts about how a spiritual teacher and his or her teaching should be.
And if we hold on to that inner picture and compare, it finally leads to a teacher, that meets our highest expectations.
The best is just good enough and we are all worth it!
Greetings from Berlin
April 23, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Dear Sadra c (#77), I appreciate your sincere and moving description of a fascinating spiritual journey. I knew you and D.
I have questions: You write that the function of the grip to a belief is to ward off deep seated anxieties, and “such beliefs become part of one’s very identity, one’s sense of separateness”. Farther down you write “…taught of the mysteries of death…what I now understand as the release of the soul from the body”;
1) What do you consider wrong with separateness? Is it an illusion or belief that’s based on ‘deep seated anxieties’? What are those anxieties?
2) Do you mean to say that you believe that there is a soul and it somehow survives death? What’s the base for this belief and why is this one different than the ones grounded in ‘deep seated anxieties’?
(If there is nothing that survives death is a life lived fully less meaningful?).
April 23, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Bruce #149, Rita #110,
Regarding #92 HigherM; Bruce, there are many like him and in your time in the school there were many as bad or even worse. Remember the guy who was reported to have said that he would kill for Robert Burton? I heard a woman say she would die for him. And I know many who given the chance would express themselves in a way similiar to Higher M. The sad part of the story is that nobody would press this person to seek help as long as he acts normal. And would a RB’s school as it is now would want to ‘reform’ such an asset? To curb such a sickly devotion?
Yes Rita, I saw in him this madness and heard the underlying hardcore fundamentalism. Good manners, good looks & ‘making sense’ can hide peversions especially from naif eyes. We can send him compassion & love but hope he gets the straight jacket too.
April 23, 2007 at 3:20 pm
I hope you can have a look at this site, there are videos, audios and readings. Something beautiful can happen and may be after that you don’t need many more words.
No numbers, no sequences, no stuards, no lowers selves or higher selves, no short be or long be, not even medium be, no wordless breaths, no Isis or Neftis, no images, no form, no first bite or last bite….just the essential.
Girard why don’t you try to see what this is about, I am sure you’ll recognize something good in it.
From: http://www.theopensecret.com
Until your life is lost you will always wonder why . . .
for what you seek cannot be known, but neither has it ever been lost.
That is why there is nothing in The Open Secret message for the seeker to grasp and claim ownership of . . . no special states of bliss, stillness or presence are on offer.
The fallacy of the need to attain earnestness, acceptance or refinement of the body mind is exposed. You will not be invited to look within and discover that state of awareness which promises so much but comes and goes so quickly. There are no spiritual lollipops of any kind on offer here.
There is no compromise with the seeker’s need for guidance, process or teachings of becoming . . . nothing is for sale but the fairystory of the little “me” could expire.
The gift of being together in this palpable boundlessness is that already what you are is seen as wholeness, without expectations or demands. Confusion and resistance can dissolve in the light of openness and nothing will be left. Out of that nothingness emerges the indescribable fullness and wonder of simply being.
Tony Parsons – April 2007
April 23, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Lust for Life #71, regarding the Wheeler brand of Non-duality you write “the implication that there is no responsibility or choice, everything just happens within this awarness” is ‘hard to swallow’.
I would say this is an understatement; it is much more than merely ‘hard to swallow’; it is scary, it can quickly turn malignant. That’s the very type of thought & sentiment that gives narcissistic people like Robert Burton, Rajneesh-Osho, Jim Jones & all the like and their followers, the carte blanche to be demanding, abusive, exploitative & sliding in many cases towards criminality. There is no personal responsibility because they believe they are part of a supernatural entity, answer to a higher call, have to tend to ends that justify the means (such as secular or religious autopias). In RB’s case it is consciousness & C influence and please ignore the idiosyncracies of the particular mechanicality (the man behind the curtain).
Those Panpsychist mystics (believers in the world being all psychical, sentient or conscious), or what we agreed to call here ‘non-dualists’, should be hit many times over the head with variuos HigherMs and Rb’s excesses before realizing that those are the very consequece, the natural & logical conclusion of any eradication of personal identity, of separateness, of individuality.(And I could describe how it can also result down the road in concentration camps).
Wheeler like Non-dualists & No Person (#141) may express their credo in very sexy ways copying ancient sufi ecstasy with poetic imagery such as ‘every drop has the ocean in it’ and so on and so forth. It may be cute, uplifting, motivational and benign up to a point. It may even comfort some, the sort of comforting that a lovely almost illiterate babushka may feel when she brings her misery to the church and kisses the yellow idol of a Jesus; for awhile her suffering is aleviated by the ‘oceanic feeling’ of a merging with something greater than herself.
But this is a pseudo- solution for the masses and the feeble minded. And for those who need to feed on junk- psychology, on american instant & simplistic solutions. And there are many HigherMs and RBs that thrive in this soil with a bit more complex, baroqued spiritual systems that function in exactly the same way. The fourth way, particulrly RB’s 4th way is the same ‘all is consciousness’ or ‘all is awarness’ story told differently: the world of lesser laws (consciousness) is real while the world of the functions is less real when its experienced from the point of view of the higher world.
All religiuos sentiment is based on an escapism. Any form of religious superstition does more harm than good: it impedes openess, humanity & the progress of knowledge. And the individual is reduced, denied rights and has little chance to develope properly. In this context he is usually viewed as an abstraction (Wheeler;’…within awarness with no reference to a limited, separate person’).
The ‘Wheelerites’ seem to get high on the the idea of ‘all is consciousness’ and look at the world thru those supposedly uplifting (rosy) fixed glasses.
But I do appreciate Adyashanti; he seems to invite to a continuous, free flowing & conscientious self observation and practicing non identification without putting an idea or ideology up front like a carrot before an ass.
April 23, 2007 at 4:43 pm
The only people interested in using student’s names to discredit the blog is student’s themselves in the Fellowship who need to light the animosity against it.
It was very clear that the letter sent to students about five weeks ago stating the “danger” of the blog, with such stories, immediately had a negative reaction on everyone inside the Fellowship, myself included. If a friend had not insisted that I look at it more carefully, I would not have done so.
These tactics are no different to others they’ve used, like saying that people in the blog wanted to murder Robert and the lying and deceit that they keep falling into without being able to confront the issues and deal with them.
April 23, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Dear Traveler, I think I mentioned it before, but saying it again won’t hurt: I love your postings!
Dear Ames, thank you for sharing your experiences. It was very powerful for me to read of the moment your conscience woke up(#139).
Dear Cathie, thank you for the way you express your thoughts, elegantly and clearly.
Asahi (#143): good laugh, thanks!
April 23, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Thank you, friends, for helping me in my confusion.
After all your replies I run to my friend who is RB’s boy and begged to prove it wrong. He said: “It is true, but – so what?”
“So,- I asked – when we are waiting the beginning of the meeting Robert is not sipping a cup of tea and discussing his last details of “performance” with Asaf?
“Earlier he does but before the meeting – he sucks someone.”
I asked: “Why you guys not stop doing it all together?”
“Because we don’t want to go back to Russia” was his answer.
Here is where my confusion is:
Will anything change if EVERYBODY who are in the room waiting for the meeting to begin will know that? Or just a few ladies will faint and a few leave?
If people become slaves by their own will or stupidity – do they need to be saved?
Can RB still be a Conscious Teacher regardless his behavior?
If RB is “self-announced Avatar”, self-serving psycho and a pervert, tyrant, harmful or dangerous jerk – do we leave it as it is or DO something about it? What?
The sex might not be an issue – the abuse of power, the lies – are the issue. Now I need the proof of lies and the power abuse in my deep confusion.
It is not clear yet. Let us judge carefully. And please, don’t yell at me!
April 23, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Dear Unoanimo, thanks for your reply in post 140. I did re-read your post 76 this morning:
“What you expect of HC, you yourself have yet to untie within yourselves…he is a symbol of a contradiction within you and all energy ‘directly’ addressed to him only stalemates your position of going beyond the symbols of contradiction and affirmations of that which will ultimately graduate you from spiritual schools on earth.”
It rings very true to me. And after reading your thoughts and some of the other comments on this blog yesterday, for some reason “forgiveness” came to mind last night. Maybe it relates to some of what you wrote.
I sense that it’s our inability to “forgive” that keeps us attached to “issues” that we could otherwise leave behind. For some of us, that may be the Fellowship.
Like many other things, it’s a lot easier to talk about forgiveness than it is to be in the actual state of forgiveness. Part of what prevents us from being in the state is that we forget to direct forgiveness inward — toward ourselves. I often have the attitude that forgiveness is all about forgiving “them” for being a-holes, jerks, idiots, etc. But forgiving myself is more important than anything. (And, ahem, having a better sense of humor at times.)
Secondly, when we do feel forgiveness toward others, that’s a very good thing, but it helps to realize that others may not acknowledge it. If our “forgiveness” is simply an attempt to get other people to acknowledge it, it quickly becomes something else — maybe an attempt to “be liked” or “be understood”, or the seeking of some form of validation. But forgiveness is less an action, and more a state of mind and heart. And like so many other things, our friends, family, and colleagues simply may not see it, or they may not want to see it.
This is true with all of our “work” — including what we’ve been calling self-remembering, divided attention, and transformation of suffering, etc., or with any of the spiritual practices described in this blog:
“It”, whatever it is, is invisible.
And yet we often think that “it” can only exist if others see it in us, and we take great pains to make sure they see it. This is one of the dilemmas with all “religious groups” (not just the Fellowship): We make our supposed “efforts” based on a seeking of validation from others. We form our thinking around that. We form our opinions around that. But ultimately “the work” is something inside of us. It originates in us. It does not originate in a book. It does not come from Robert Burton, or Gurdjieff, or the Fellowship, or from any of the screen names on this blog. It comes from you, whoever you are. While our friends can and do help us at times, we ultimately are left only with ourselves. It can be no other way.
Incidentally, forgiveness is very compatible with keeping our eyes opened to the world around us, and not being naïve to the ways that people can harm us. That means being aware of the motives of others and acknowledging those motives to ourselves and — if we think it may help — to others. It can be done without negativity, anger, resentment, and bitterness. That’s where forgiveness comes in.
————–
From “A Song for Occupations”
There is something that comes to one now and perpetually,
It is not what is printed, preach’d, discussed, it eludes discussion
and print,
It is not to be put in a book, it is not in this book,
It is for you whoever you are, it is no farther from you than your
hearing and sight are from you,
It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest, it is ever provoked by them…
The sun and stars that float in the open air,
The apple-shaped earth and we upon it, surely the drift of them is
something grand,
I do not know what it is except that it is grand, and that it is happiness,
And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation or
bon-mot or reconnoissance,
And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us,
and without luck must be a failure for us,…
-Walt Whitman
April 23, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Dear Butthead (129)
Isn’t there a suggestion in the FOF not to express negativity, or was that dropped along with the 4th Way? It’s odd how the really mindless, negative postings mostly come from FOF believers. I guess you don’t like having your cage rattled.
RB
April 23, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Dear # 126 ‘Cake Please’
and #97 ‘Butterfly Says’
Both of your letters touch a deep cord within that reminded me of the past struggles, confusion, anger and sadness that I went through before leaving the FoF. Actually it went on for about 3 years. I hear you both!
When I joined the FoF some 20+++ years ago, I too had become disenchanted with life, and needed something that would explain life and why I was here. I wanted relief and any help from the confused and unhappy life I was leading. And the 4th way system and friends of the FoF gave me everything I came for. Explanations, concerts, wonderful reading, friendship (that is what I called it then), a common ground to talk to all my fellow spiritual travellers . Yes, “Cake Please” you describe similar experiences to my own. It was not wasted time, nor was it a bad time. Living and travelling to many countries, meeting like minded people etc etc was all part of the gorgeous package. A wonderful dream that I did not want to wake up from. Robert ,at that time was almost irrelevant. My fellow travelers and I had built an ‘imaginary picture’ of RB as a teacher, a spiritual guide. It was what I and my fellow travellers really needed and believed in. We all came to a mutual unspoken agreement that we really had something special and RB reinforced and confirmed it in us all.
That was then.
Part of the maturation of a person (both chronological age, experience of life and spirituality) is to wake up from the dream, let go of it (as painful as it may seem at the time) and reconnect back to LIFE. Since leaving the school, there is only life to be lived. The Big Bad World out there is fabulous. The people in it are like you and me – all struggling, all trying to understand, all trying to keep it together, all experiencing their moments of joy, sadness, hurt, love etc etc. I cannot get enough of life. It is wonderful- everything happening around us, it is all flowing around and through us. And I have never experienced more presence than I have in the many, many , many months since leaving the FoF. That is because I no longer am a ‘special person’ and all those other guys out there are asleep and have no possibility. What a con game we were in. The kernel of truth is there in the 4th Way System – the rest was a dream (albeit really nice at times).
Your spiritual life does not end just because you leave the FoF. And friendship today – well it sure takes on a different flavor and meaning than what I thought it was in the FoF.
You are YOUR spiritual life. You are THAT. And you cannot deny your conscience any more.
It would take too many words and pages to begin this discussion and this letter is long enough.
“ Cake Please” Please call when you get tired of talking to your dog. Our door is always open. And yes, I am probably up the street from you. I would be happy to share my experience with you any time.
So, to my suffering comerados,
“Afoot and lighthearted , I take to the open road …. Henceforth I ask not good- fortune, I myself am good fortune … strong and content I travel the open road” Walt
I cannot help but print one of my favorite Walt Whitman Poems, which I read many times before leaving the FoF.
O ME! O LIFE!
O me! O life! Of the questions recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me interertwined,
The question, O me! So sad, recurring- What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer:
That you are here – that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
With much love and respect to you all
April 23, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Ames:
My question to you was in good faith.
Thank you for your response.
Sydney:
Sorry I did not know it was not you.
April 23, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Rita #55 on non-dualism – beautifully distinguished. Also well expressed Cathie 59 and Traveler 60. And Coot (88) puts in perspective = “Unalists and dualists need not be duelists.”
Then four related questions are asked in post 111:
#1 o How would one see the difference between the bits that may survive death and the bits that do not?
Yesri Baba answers: Close your eyes and imagine you are god. Out of yourself create 1,000,000 gazillion things. These things are the bits that don’t survive you are the bit that does.
Non-dualism as understood here might state that the “bit that does” (survive) is ALL; the other bits whether imagined with closed eyes or eyes wide open are dreamt/imagined/seen/created from within THAT
o Is there a conflict in agenda between these groups of bits?
Of course – groups of bits are born and die – You do not…
o Is death something we have to prepare for or do we just cross that bridge when we get to it?
Yes/yes and no/no – if the bridge is really there, you have to cross it whether prepared or not; who can NOT work with their own understandings…
o And if we do need to prepare for death, how do we work with the bits that have no interest in this?
The same way you work with the bits and pieces announcing hunger, sexual urge and so on
It seems here that any true understanding of non-dualism undoes the questions. Which is not to say that there is something that could be called ‘true understanding’ about anything here. (Or that there should have been or could have been in the questioning). I am not sure of how this fits with other so-called non-dualists; but here – the very nature of non-dualism leads to (in sane moments) an intentional placing of self in a place of “I don’t know”. And the experience from here is that this is the place from which great swaths of understanding can occur – though out of that, again “I know naught”
So here I want to repeat what another (Rita) posted on the subject of her understandings of non-duality (and after saying she was no ‘expert’ on the subject) (coming from “I don’t know – but here is how it ’seems’?):
“Obviously, there is a body and mind of Rita and the world around her which she perceives through her senses. Yet, all is happening within this awareness. It’s not ‘hers’ as it is ‘nobody’s’, it just is and the body and mind are one of its manifestations. With this basic understanding, one feels united and in love with what is, it’s just a reaction of the body and mind to this realization. So, the questions of moral character, of integrity and choices are taken care of naturally, because one can’t harm what is oneself. One can harm oneself and others if the realization of this unity hasn’t occurred yet.
B
April 23, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Dear #97
I really ment to extemd my invite to you also – call anytime. I know you don’t have a dog to talk to like “Cake Please”, so I may hear from you sooner. I am up the street from you at OH.
Dear #143 Asahi. I can’t join right now- I am broke after many years in the FOF, but would you consider if I just became one of your sexy lady consorts. I really don’t care too much about the contradictions teaching ( I actually have a lifetime of them from my many years in the FoF), really I am only interested in the sex. Maybe you can consider a deep discount if I only participate in a partial package. On second thought, maybe you can pay me.
April 23, 2007 at 7:38 pm
I would like to chime in and ask Joel, Charles, Ames, Bruce, Sandra, and all the other older students who left long after they found out about RB’s lifestyle, what made them stay in the FOF and what it really was that made them leave after all that time…please give us your honest assessment if there was a part of you that did not want to work on yourself anymore.
April 23, 2007 at 7:47 pm
If the real Sydney Russell is out there, howdy to you from out here. Hope you are well.
Sandra #77, very interesting and heart-felt. Thanks for posting.
Bruce, thanks for the pointer, I’ll look him up.
MarkH #150, good to hear from you, too, and you seem well. My first 10 years infof I was pretty gung-ho, trying to be “perfect” and thinking I was going to be the next conscious being.
(an aside: I remember driving down to LA with RB early in my time infof, and him telling me that after Miles, it would be “my turn” to become the next conscious being in the fof. This comment paralyzed me, and I was unable to respond except for a grunt. I estimate this one comment, in my impressionable state, contributed to me losing about 10 more years to fof than otherwise might have been the case. Beware.)
The later 10 or so years I spent in New York City, kept my head down, gave up my “roles” infof, and gradually expanded my interests, particularly in publishing and connecting to many other Gurdjieff-inspired “groups.” I stayed away from California as much as possible, and “choose” to ignore whatever was happening there and with RB as much as possible. It took some time to be able to imagine leaving, between the attractions of the “community” and the “wall of fear” that kept me in the group, and which had been constructed within me. I didn’t have elegant rationalizations, I just avoided the whole thing.
When my wife and I moved to California in 1993 with our newborn son, I told her that it would mean me leaving fof, and it did. She left a few months later.
Thanks for reading
JoelF
April 23, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Veronicapoe #144, thanks for the “ancient history” post, and for debunking the myth. Did you see the post #102 about the group in Sweden? Might have been Bonita’s boyfriend, I seem to remember they had gone to Sweden.
Another side of this myth is that “the excesses have worsened, but we can correct the problem and make our school whole” frequently with plans to use the board of directors, or to discipline rb, or some other fantasy. Many such can be found on this blog, and the earnestness is endearing.
In fact, the nature of the group, as you point out, is corrupt. IMHO there is nothing to “save.”
Life itself is astounding, harsh, unfair, dazzling, lucky, ludicrous, shot through with everyday miracles, spiritual and otherwise, difficult, brutal, banal, full of dangers, replete with amazing people, hopeful, and brilliant. It’s no wonder we sometimes want to bury ourselves in a “community” that helps buffer the incredibly intense and relentless experience of being alive as an individual.
JoelF
April 23, 2007 at 7:59 pm
Re: #150 Hi Mark. I’ve had the same questions over time. Let me preface that I like and respect Charles quite a bit. I have occasionally ruminated about the fact that people who were on the upper end of the hierarchy in the FOF were staunch supporters of RB and the FOF during the various cyclical crises. I would occasionally internally, and sometimes externally judge these people for being so vocal about the crimes when they left and just as vocal about defending them when they were in. For me, I’ve come to the conclusion that we’re human. Being “in power” can be a distinct disadvantage in one’s work. You’re invested in the power, you’re invested spiritually, you’re invested financially- and we’ve all probably experienced this either in the FOF or other areas of our lives. It’s probably VERY difficult for someone who supported the status quo to look at themselves in light of their perpetuation of the whole gig. I had a hard enough of a time coming to grips with my own part of the play, that did NOT overlap into many people’s lives. I would think it’s incredibly hard to take a look at the influence, outside one’s self, that one is responsible for. At the same time I believe that the work we each have is EXACTLY what it’s supposed to be, whether it was defending RB within the school, or judging those who did the defending.
We can speculate, but we can only really know our own shit for sure, and probably RARELY for sure.
I look at my internal answers from 1985 when I left, and my answers now, and they don’t even resemble each other.
April 23, 2007 at 8:08 pm
hmmm and more of non-dualism from a posting above that one or more students think is the beginning of the end for FOF (ie. starts in Russia and ends in russia):
A question is asked in russian meeting:
“If one is consistently trying to separate from I’s, keep the silence inside and separate from the objects which come through the senses, one can come to the realization of one’s true Self. And from here one sees that there is no “Me” and “You”, no world, but just an illusion, maya, and one is that very consciousness that perceives it”.
As seen here, a question trying to verify all that non-dualism is about..
Robert looked up, said “Yes…” and continued further:
You, I, real school, angels in the room, sleeping
machines and the other things that make this world seem real and you as one of its objects.
Before this question were questions (see 118, David D) which Robert decided were “bad” questions and after was a question about Robert’s sexual predation (my word). And the posting intimates and many of us were around to see that this was when the meeting questions/angles started to be provided on pieces of paper for students to ask/give and the FOF form was shut down. So, via my perhaps delerious estimation, non-dualism begins to arise as FOF begins to fall. Of course no words are ever really true (or false!); nevertheless, I’ll stick with those for a while…
April 23, 2007 at 8:13 pm
and hmmmm – more…
What would non-personal conciousness look/seem/smell/taste/sound/be like?
How about non-localized conciousness?
April 23, 2007 at 8:13 pm
#167 While I try to make it a point to not explain my beliefs and decisions to anyone, in this case it seems harmless to answer. I left in 85, but I actually left a couple years earlier internally. I wanted to make my decision to leave not about money, so I decided that I wouldn’t formally leave until I had paid back a loan (with interest), and was current with the FOF financially in whatever way I was aware of. That was for ME, what I had to do. Having been in the frying pan, it was an excruciatingly painful place to be for a year or two. But evidently, that was what I had to do.
April 23, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Just imagine that one day you will spend all eternity in Paradise with people like Lust-for-life #71, LOL”100, Chop-Sticks #116, Butthead #129 …. All long time FOF students.
This all reminds me of the experience I had with my first girl friend, she was raised as a “Jehovah’s Witness” after she moved in with me her brethren were making Shit, Kaka in front of our door, but if you can do that on our teacher, why not in front of a former students door?
Just continuing to discuss if there is “Still value in remaining in the FOF” is a waist of time at that point… better discuss “How much will it hurt your soul to stay any longer”.
Greetings to all the shadows behind the handles
And to those who do not have the courage to express themselves
But don’t mind to read and to follow
Anyway I prefer to spend time on the moon with girls like Loreta , “no person”, Rita and Elena than in paradise with the above shadows.
Sorry for the different tone but I did not want to appear preaching, at least this time
Kiran
Enjoy my “Jews for Jesus” pictures from this weekend
http://flickr.com/photos/iloveyou2/sets/72157600108304437/show
April 23, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Story:
I returned to FOF after 13-14 year absence in Sept, 2003 and attended meeting with RB in NY about two weeks later. At that meeting, after being told of my return, RB quipped, “The school has its rudder back; we are back on course”. I think I mumbled under my breathe something from Lewis Carroll – “and the rudder gets mixed with the bow spirit sometimes…”
Couple of years later, I was kicked out for smoking – as Girard said, “interfering with Robert’s will”. Not that it mattered here, I had already planned to leave in about 6 months and my second sojourn in FOF was not so naive or ‘needful’ as the first; indeed, I felt I had just needed to verify a few ideas that had formed about FOF during my absence. No more rudder and no more mixing with the bow spirit (never did mix as some others did; happily I was never the type to be on RB’s sexual radar).
At any rate, that’s why the FOF is in such a tissy now – no more rudder. That’s my opinion and I am sticking to it….
April 23, 2007 at 9:43 pm
#111 with malice towards none – on death:
April 23, 2007 at 9:56 pm
To Confused, 7/160 and Chimes, 57/160
Someone (far earlier post) asked (not quoting word by word):
How many predictions will it take ?
How many abuses ?
And Chimes asks for “honest assessment” so it can be explained why those who left did it “long after they found out”.
I wish I had objective answers.
I can only be personal here:
the wish to free myself from “ordinary morality”, “ordinary sanity” (why do I admire Gurdjieff so much ?) and the deep recognition/acceptation that I value “ordinary virtues” (why do I admire Meher Baba so much ?) is “my” contradiction: I can admire opposites!
I leave the School at 10:00;
at 10:30, I am convinced I can benefit by giving it a longer try.
I trust Robert at 3:00pm,
at 5:00 he is a predator.
When you look at such a messy house, you just want to go for a walk !
Time passes (that never fails)and the mess seems to grow at the speed of the success of the FOF (more success/money/forces, more abuses).
When Chimes suggests the one leaving are not willing to “work” on themselves any more so any excuse will do, it might have some validity (the going for a walk!)
but it is too much of short cut and the condamning tone with which this words are offered simply generates fear.
If at least, dear Chimes, that realisation was clearly percieved!
It is not so… at least, not so easy (again because I do not want to exclude the possiblity).
Many voices expressing themselves here,
in this blog you should not be reading deFOF friends,
do show their willingness to continue “photosynthesis” light,
FOF or not
and they sound concern by the possible limitations a guide like Robert might impose.
Continue to be kind and above all, true to yourself.
April 23, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Duplicate post. Deleted. — ES
April 23, 2007 at 10:05 pm
#167 Chimes: Incidentally, “not working on myself anymore” had nothing to do with the decision to leave. Even asking that question that way reveals more about where you are coming from than an answer would assuage your curiosity. Keep talking.
April 23, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Bruce #173–thanks for your response. Not leaving for the money shows character. However, what made you really leave then? Surely you knew about RB and it does not sound you are the “sheep type”–thanks.
April 23, 2007 at 10:27 pm
I am sure most have read and re-read post 7- #115 but to those just joining the dialogue or the few who have skimmed over it i would just like to remind of its existence.
April 23, 2007 at 10:30 pm
re: 141 No person
“Dear friend, don’t spend your life preparing for death – accept a gift of life, enjoy it now as it is, be who you are, because this is truly a wonderful gift.”
Thanks for your thoughts. I don’t however see the contradiction between preparing for death and enjoying the gift of life. I actually see each endeavor enabling the other. I would wish your beautiful formulation to be true but it sounds too good to be true.
It seems that the great teachers/esoteric traditions of the past (Jesus, Buddha, Don Juan, the Sufis, etc) emphasize preparing for death; to live one’s life as if death is stalking one because it is. This does not mean worrying or obsessing about death. It just means for me finding out what one might be able to do in preparation and then doing it.
re: 151 Yesri Baba
“Close your eyes and imagine you are god. Out of yourself create 1,000,000 gazillion things. These things are the bits that don’t survive you are the bit that does.”
I think I may have exhausted the possibilities of drugs in the late 60’s/early 70’s but if I ever leave the Fellowship, that will be the first thing I try to re-verify for sure. Thanks for the flashback!
April 23, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Kiran, what’s with all the closeup shots of your face, time after time? What am I missing here?
April 23, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Hello, everyone!
I entered this conversation late; I am trying to find the time to give previous entries the attention they deserve, but there are so many! So, this subject may have been covered, and better, before.
My rhetorical question is: What is the nature of the acquiescence or permission that young men give when Burton demands sexual favors from them?
Most people defend Burton, and Burton justifies himself, by saying that the young men have given their permission freely. A necessary part of this defense is that the law says that they are of legal age to give consent (mostly true—the case of Troy Buzbee was an exception probably because Burton allowed his lust to overcome his need for a little basic pre-sex research). For a while, I used this argument myself. Here, in my opinion, are the fallacies.
The law can only be basic guidance. Different societies around the world have formulated their own laws, so the age and even the idea of consent varies globally, but we in the U.S. have chosen an age and embodied it into law based on custom and experience. It basically recognizes that before this age, most people are not qualified to make a sound judgment on their own behalf, and after this age, they are. But, of course, the law is a gross generalization. We can all find examples of precocious juveniles and adults who are irresponsible to an extreme. The law cannot take these into account. So we have to apply other factors to help us make a judgment.
To me, the major other factor is power, and the balance of power. It is a given, a presupposition, that people who enter agreements and relationships are empowered to do so. This means that they have roughly equal power. If not, there is coercion by one party, and some degree of force enters the equation. I’m pretty sure that most of us know this in ourselves, and have a flavor (we may disagree about degree) of what constitutes too much imbalance. We see this argument going on in society right now as to what constitutes rape, and most folks agree that because humans are sexually dimorphic, with the weight/strength advantage on average going to the male, the physical power imbalance calls for extra protection for the female. And so it goes with psychological power. Most of us are revolted by the bully, or the concept that might makes right, and we loathe someone taking advantage of someone else who has a degree of helplessness (unless one is a psychopath or sociopath, in which case it is silly weakness to be taken advantage of).
So here we have Burton, asking a young man to have sex with him. He chooses weak young men. He chooses vulnerable young men, who are perhaps here on questionable visas, have little money, and little wriggle room. Each of these young men has a choice, yay or nay. Each has ‘given up his will to the Teacher’. At the slightest hesitation, or even preemptively, Burton pronounces “C-influence wants you to have sex with me”, or “I am an angel, you must externally consider me”, or whatever. Heavy stuff! Often, the young man will be drunk. He may have been pre-pared by an older student (breakfast with Sheila G., anyone?) or another of Burton’s boys. And it is not as if Burton does not have charisma. He has tons, and can bring it to bear in an incredibly tight focus. He also has the support of the whole FOF, the permission given by thousands over thirty-five years. The entire culture of the FOF supports him and his actions; remember, the young man has deliberately thrown out the mores and traditions of the old “life” culture, and embraced wholeheartedly the new FOF culture (reprogrammed). And if at first the young man refuses, he is asked again and again, plied with wine and favors and flattery and the pressure from his peers. Who could resist? Few do. And who can blame them? Most in the FOF envy them, “getting closer to the Teacher”.
After saying “yes” there are many extra reinforcements. There may be actual pleasure (I am the last to claim that there is less pleasure getting a blow job from a man than a woman. I don’t know, but I can’t think of any reason why it would be the case. Same with prostate stimulation, and so on.). The approval of peers. The rewards, money and favors (though that may link into another disempowering pathology of Burton’s—the reduction of the young man to Prostitute, a negative archetype in our culture). The increased attraction to women in the FOF who want to bask in the aura second-hand. The sense of specialness and self-importance. And so on.
Who in his heart of hearts could claim that the power in this relationship is equal? It is manifestly not so. It has to be unequal to overcome the natural resistance of the young man (that equation thing again). Remember, Burton is not seeking homosexuals, he is seeking straights, because he enjoys overpowering them. But, I’m not getting into his pathologies or sexual practices here, just discussing the unequal power thing.
Any psychologist or psychiatrist worth his or her salt has studied human dynamics and power deeply. They know all healthy relationships are based on give and take, which is another way of talking about the distribution of responsibilities and power. But, all healthy relationships are based on roughly equal power and mutual agreements. It seems perfectly amazing that psychiatrists in the FOF have not stepped forward and educated the laity about the imbalance of power between Burton and his young men, for surely they have recognized it for what it is. But seems their consciences are quiescent, and they have to bear the consequences. The job of some of the psychiatrists and doctors in the FOF is clear; it is to prescribe Viagra and act as procurers for whatever other drugs and medicines are needed to keep the show on the road.
Now for the fair-and-balanced part, which concerns my personal history.
I am one of the young men that Burton chose, and I refused. That’s probably only because I misunderstood the situation, as the patient reader will see. I didn’t even know I was being courted, until things clicked into place, much later. When I joined in London (with my girlfriend, Frances) I was specifically told by Peter Bishop and Christina Neilson (soon to marry each other) that Burton was celibate. I also read it in the Via del Sol papers and in the Mt. Carmel Journal, which I bought complete back issues of soon after joining (still have them—waiting for offers!). So, I took it as gospel. (And imagine my shock when fifteen years later, Peter Bishop told me that he was having sex with Burton at the time I joined and asked that question!). Soon, I went to Renaissance. Burton was fascinated with King of Spades people at the time. I accepted an offer from him to stay at Renaissance, and the invitation extended to my girlfriend. He started bringing me over to the Blake Cottage to work on projects, like cleaning a fountain and polishing his silver, and took to watching me all the time, paying little compliments, and making pronouncements like, “You are on C’s (another King of Spades) ladder, but you are further along than him”, or “You have beautiful hands”, or “Negroes are a criminal octave”, or “C-influence wants us to become friends”, or “It is significant that you are the only person in the school born in the Southern Hemisphere” (which I was, at the time). I contributed nothing after he told me that being silent would be an act of external consideration to the teacher. So, I was muddled by the random pronouncements, but flattered by the single-minded attention.
Then he starts taking me on trips, and taking to holding my hand (and wiping it with a Swiss lace handkerchief when my nervousness makes it sweat mightily). Fine dining. Shopping. One day, a trip to L.A. and the Bel Air hotel. Colin leaves us to go to his room, bids goodnight. Burton tells me to sleep on the floor, near his bed. At dawn, I hear his voice, “Come here, dear”. I wake up and get up, dressed only in my underpants. Luckily, after a horrible night’s sleep on just some hotel cushions, I don’t have my morning woody! “Get into bed with me”. So, I do. His back is turned towards me, and I am having thoughts from a D.H. Lawrence novel—no kidding—about men mature and strong enough to hug and cuddle other men, to give strength and support in a totally non-sexual way, and pitying Robert who has no one because he is celibate and nursing his energies for higher work, and so on. I get into bed and put one arm around him, and hug him chest to back, but keeping an inch away lower down, sending warm thoughts and encouragement, drowsing off. After ten minutes: “That will be all, dear. Go back to your bed”. So that was that.
Then more trips, now with lots of “C-influence wants us to be friends”, but no more invitations for anything more. On one trip to S.F. Robert tells me that he wants me to have the orange Mercedes, go tell Kenneth. I go to the consigliore and main driver of the Rolls, Kenneth W. and tell him. He nods, then says, “Are you sure you can pay the price?” I am in shock. What does that mean? Mechanically, I say, “I don’t think so”. I take it as a gift and a warning (really, what could I possibly do to deserve a Mercedes, on any level?), and don’t pursue it (later I find out that the same car was given to a number of favorites in turn).
Time passes, and at the completion of the Academy, the downstairs rooms are ready. Burton asks me to move there. Now he is very, very insistent that “C-influence wants us to be friends”. I protest weakly that I don’t know how to be friends with him, but he says, “Yes you do, and C-influence want us to be close. Come and live with me in the new house”. I say, driven by something I can’t understand that says this is imperative, “No, I can’t, Robert”. He turns away with a cold, stern look. That’s it. I’m dropped. No more trips, no more energy, though a polite nod from time to time. The girls who fawned on me, invited me to dinner, praised how I read poetry before dinners, fade away. The guys who sit next to me and who ask me what it is like to be close to Robert, and can I share angles he has given me, cease to do so. I’m not “in”. I can’t understand it. I talk about it with a couple of older students. “You refused to go live with him? You idiot!” These students turn out later to have full knowledge, at the time, of what the invitation would have probably meant.
So, Burton’s overwhelming psychological advantage was balanced by something else in my case. In the scheme of things, something integral seems to be looking out for me. Some sense of knowing, including but larger than the instinctive center What made the difference? Did I refuse, not from knowledge of the situation, but because I was especially naive, and that acted as a sort of armor? Was there some knowingness that giving in would mean the death of something essential? Or is this just another way of describing ‘common sense’?
A couple of postscripts. I promised myself I would not mention the story to anyone (it wouldn’t lead to anything but gossip). A few months later, my friend John M. from the London center, referred to in a previous post, flew over to visit. One evening, he asked me, “Do you think Robert is a homosexual?” After I got over the shock, I said, “John, I have reason to know he is not. I’m not at liberty to tell you why, but I can assure you from my own knowledge he is not”. John left soon after. Burton had appeared in his bedroom in the London teaching house and told him that he was an angel and that C-influence wanted John to have sex with him. I heard the details about this eight years later, when rumors of Burton’s homosexuality started to circulate more strongly, and conversations ensued. Each time, I protected Burton’s reputation with the same patter, and I guess I was convincing, as I believed it completely myself. I cringe…
Years later, after I interviewed some of the “boys” to get first-hand information, it turned out that Burton probably wasn’t really even trying hard with me, or had in the meantime become quite pitiless. And it was certainly obvious they didn’t have whatever it was that I had, had no internal support. Some, more honest perhaps, admitted to losing their essential integrity, and were sad and lost. Some said, it seemed with an air of bravado, that it had been great, a huge aid to their evolution. I wish I could believe them, but of course, it may have been true.
So, to the young men facing the choice today or tomorrow, I paraphrase Ouspensky. He said one has to give up one’s will to a teacher, temporarily. He also said you have to retain common sense. He said common sense is the sense common to all centers. If the moving-instinctive center, the emotional center and the intellectual center all agree, that is common sense. Common sense is given to protect you until you can distinguish conscience. If common sense says, “No!” to a suggestion of the teacher, do not fall for the line that it is willfulness, or that C-influence wants it, or that it is good for your evolution, or that you should be externally considerate of the teacher. Run, don’t walk from that situation, preferably right out of the Fellowship.
To the young men who are hurting. There are estimates of a couple of million sociopaths just in the U.S. They all leave a trail of harm behind them. Seek professional help; there are many, many experienced counselors available, dedicated to service, who have made it their life work to try to clean up some of the mess sociopaths leave behind. Some will work for free if you cannot afford it. Do NOT go to psychiatrists or doctors in the Fellowship. They have already betrayed you and their explicit and implicit oaths to help you; they are partners in crime. The same goes for “older students”, especially those in positions of power. Get outside help.
Ames Gilbert
April 23, 2007 at 11:19 pm
#167 Chimes,
“…please give us your honest assessment if there was a part of you that did not want to work on yourself anymore.”
No, I think you might have this backward.
If I wanted to stay in a status quo situation and just coast, with plenty of “cover” from an institution and enfeebling “practices” (like “the sequence” or “non-identification” etc), and with no reason to ever confront the fixed and limiting beliefs within myself, I could have STAYED infof. If I really wanted to “work” I would have to leave.
JoelF
April 23, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Mark H.
I justed want to relate a memory of you, it may have occured around 1978. I was walking into one of those forlorn mobiles scattering the landscape in the “sticks” of Oregon House. You were sitting on the floor meditating and gave a warm and, it seemed, somewhat sly smile as i walked by. I rememember this, i believe, because it sparked a memory of recognition of the value of meditation that had atrophied during my time in the fof.
Meditation is a discipline i have returned to since and consider an invaluable practice. It is a labor of love-one of many.
It is good to hear you are doing well.
April 23, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Lust for Life (176): Beautiful.
And thank you so very much to all of you who made the choice to donate some money to the blog. I am extremely thankful. I don’t believe that I deserve any money for what I have been doing with the blog, or for (unknowingly) starting this discussion. But it will make my life a bit easier and make me able to spend a bit more time doing the things that I enjoy doing. No, I will not use the money for sex, drugs and other hedonistic drives, even though the option is rather attractive.
I guess that the donations worked more as a sign of appreciation than anything else, and it is a beautiful feeling to know that your best efforts are appreciated by other people.
So, once again thank you very much.
April 23, 2007 at 11:41 pm
We all play the sheep at one time or another, just as we all play the fool. My reasons were many, and mine.
April 23, 2007 at 11:45 pm
On Robert having sex right before the meeting.
I suddenly have a very vivid memory of a Sunday morning
meeting in the Galleria. Robert and the front row panel sat down,
and one could clearly see that RB’s fly was open. Wide open. Martha R, now Leila R, who was sitting next to him,cleverly distracted audiance and camera by pointing to the ceiling and then quickly warned Robert that his zipper was wide open!
And there we sit, in our Sunday best, paying good money,
trusting the teacher to inspire us while he just had/ performed
a good blow Job?
April 23, 2007 at 11:51 pm
RE Butthead #129:
WOW! You really know who HC is? Please take time, when you are not too busy reacting to this blog, and let us all in on your little secret, so you can keep us “idiots happy and busy”.
And thank you for your thoughtful commentary on the arguments posted here. It definitely clarifies for us your position on the issues. And you managed all this without loosing your cool, as evidenced in your final comment! Bravo!
And, finally, thanks for the compliment! Even YOU admit that at least we are full of OURSELVES.
Which naturally begs the question: “Then what are YOU full of?”
(But I think the word that applies here is the one at the end of your second paragraph. Thank you for saving me the trouble of repeating it.)
April 24, 2007 at 12:25 am
some more history …
Strange I did remember there were brave questions about RB&sex around 2000 and some Russians were immediately asked to leave but I completly forgot the main theme. It was an early challange of the “advaita” approach.
___________________________________
see the discussion list July 2001:
“From: “Vladimir Smirnov”
To:
Subject: [FoF] A message from Saint-Petersburg
Date: July 14 2001
Dear friends, all who read this discussion list and
those who have received their personal copy.
(Dane, Rulik, Girard, Synthia, Carlos, Thomas, Robert,
Rowena, Peter and Victor).
Thank you for your sincere help in the past and
understanding in the present.
Read the following carefully and use it to your best.
Recently when being in one of so called intervals when
the machine is stressed and trying to understand what
the next step is, something changed and a new teaching
appeared face to face.
The document which was sent to the list yesterday
contains the excerpts from it.
It is the teaching of Sri Ramana Maharshi, he is
probably a complete man #7 in our terms.
A man who experienced a state of objective
consciousness and after that spent next 50 years of
his life sitting near the mountain and teaching all
those who wanted to be taught.
The idea is to make efforts to keep your mind quiet,
separate from the physical objects, entering through
the five senses and ask every thought with words “Whom
is this thought for? Is it me? Who is this me? Who am
I?”
This very effort will bring one to the realization of
one’s Self. And this Self is GOD and it is your true
nature, for GOD is not outside, but inside of you.
The illusion arises because I (that is You) identifies
itself with the body, when at the same time the
Absolute is shining alone within one’s machine. (It
reminds Gurdjieff saying that higher centers are fully
functional and working, but one does not listen to
them).
Consciousness is not the functions, but they are
connected. As Ouspensky and Girard pointed, there is
no greater stimulus for the machine other than the
presence of consciousness.
If one identifies with one’s eyes, the objects become
real. Than the forces that make the machine work and
all its results become real. Its likes and dislikes
become real. You start acting. Success of it brings
joy, fault brings suffering. Understand the illusory
nature of things and your suffering goes away. It is
hard to separate from negative emotions, when you
believe into the reality of their subjects, but if you
remove the objects – you are free.
Buddha, Meher Baba, sufi masters and other great
teachers say that if you separate from this body and
all what it brings with it, you will come to the
realization that all the visible world is just an
illusion, maya, play of the mind, whereas the Absolute
is like on ocean where souls are like drops.
There is no me looking for God and trying to be
present to the world around, but there is a drop which
looks for the ocean, when it is already there, being
part of it. Read Rumi, Lao Tsu or Hafiz to understand
what this experience is like. It is that very state
where endless consciousness, unity, love and will
live.
When Jesus said “I am the Son of my Father and I am
Him” meaning that he is in the state where he
experiences himself as the Absolute, when he is the
Ocean and not the drop. It makes one compassionate to
look at the drops in the ocean and see how they
believe to be individuals.
Now, when having modern science and Rodney Collin
books, we can understand it with our intellect.
However, experiencing is not the intellect.
Here one can see that the system of Gurdjieff and
Ouspensky is just a brilliant package of objective
knowledge acceptable for western mind, because western
people are too much in “Me” to understand that there
is no “Me”. And self-remembering helps to understand
that there is no me, I’m just a point from which the
awareness comes and that’s it. From here we start.
Now, what the school and the teacher are for?
To create conditions and opportunities for those who
want. If one understands that one’s Self identifies
itself with the body and it is in the prison of the
physical world, one needs something, which will
destroy this identification.
Thus, one forgets about things that support the
reality of the sensible world and looks for something
which frees his consciousness. Gurdjieff was laughing
if hearing someone delighted with works of western
art, as he saw it as fully subjective. Real art, he
said, is created to help. It is based on objective
laws and contains within it a higher state (and not
the machine, but consciousness).
Immediately, a lot of the things about our School
became clear and obvious.
Some are helpful and cannot not to be easily found
outside (that is, the students and their efforts) and
others proved their nature today at the meeting led by
Robert.
Many things were earlier had to be adjusted to fit
into the picture. But for the last two weeks it seems
to become more and more clear that the essence of
attitudes is the same as of buffers. That is, if one
cannot handle something, one is forced to do something
with it. If you have no will not to express negative
emotions, you believe thinking that you are always
right or you have to use your king of hearts to help
you and create a working attitude. If your will is
strong, you simply separate from the machine and it
will separate you immediately from its senses, objects
they perceive, reactions to these objects etc.
If one is conscious, one simply becomes separates and
controls it, without thinking or feeling.
Many of Robert’s actions were earlier explained using
the idea of the machine being separate from
consciousness and therefore doing what it’s doing when
one is simply observing it.
However, who said it? Ouspensky said that even the
smallest change in one’s level of consciousness
changes the machine a lot. Its functions work better,
it’s usual I’s disappear and new ones appear. All the
ancient teachers say that an awaken being can be
recognized by his behavior. This behavior is based on
complete non-attachment, desireless and absolutely
equal attitude towards any object. The Master sees
everything including his body as a visible expression
of the Absolute while being himself united with IT
internally and invisibly. He is like a crystal through
which the light comes. This is called being objective.
Today the meeting started with Robert’s words about
Influence C.
Then, a question:
“Robert, after watching recent videos I feel that our
School direction becomes more and more religious, as
you offer ideas which cannot be verified as clearly as
others. So, it involves belief, which is opposite to
the Fourth Way principles. For example, the idea of
Influence C working directly with us. What can I do
with it?”
It was asked in English and Robert made a mistake – he
asked it not to be translated into Russian and than
said that he didn’t like the question and wants to
skip it.
We moved further and he expressed his I’s about having
a little time and using our time wisely without asking
“wrong” questions. After a few of his angles a new
question asked:
“Robert, you pointed out that immortal Gods are
working with the School directly. Then, what is the
main reason that in these 30 years none of your
students became a fully awaken?”
This time Robert lost.
His calmness completely disappeared and he repeated
that the questions were wrong and not helpful. He was
touched. After a few words he said that he was that
one who was a fully awaken being. Then he added, that
the meeting at Apollo was also somehow strange and he
thoughts that it is a good idea to have a list of
questions before the meeting so he could skip wrong
questions.
Then we moved our usual way speaking about Plato and
Influence C. There were mostly Robert’s words and one
question about taking practical aims because awakening
seems to be too far. Robert spoke about using the body
for creating third state, developing Apollo etc. Then
he said about being present to the beauty of the room
and enjoying arts. Than he moved to the efforts to
separate from the negative I’s and I gave an angle
based on the teaching expressed:
“If one is consistently trying to separate from I’s,
keep the silence inside and separate from the objects
which come through the senses, one can come to the
realization of one’s true Self. And from here one sees
that there is no “Me” and “You”, no world, but just an
illusion, maya, and one is that very consciousness
that perceives it”.
The angle is neutral and there is nothing to add or
remove from it. It belongs not to mine, but to a
higher level of being. Robert looked up, said “Yes…”
and continued further:
You, I, real school, angels in the room, sleeping
machines and the other things that make this world
seem real and you as one of its objects.
Than, another question:
“Robert, why to you make your male students to have
sex with you?”
Robert was digesting for a while, but he looked ready
and gave a long thread starting with the idea of
people interested in other people’s sexual life and
little by little moved to Plato, Leonardo and
Shakespeare having sex with males. Then he said about
Sapho being a beautiful lesbian being. Then he said it
was the most beautiful part of his life. And what can
be more beautiful that being present to your lover?
Than he added that those males who were having sex
him, had a sex with an angel in the human form. We are
accustomed to the unconscious sex and he has conscious
sex.
Few more angles, one from the jack of hearts, so every
laughed and felt easy and than the angle that the
meeting was for some reason very different and strange
with too many wrong questions at it.
Than a poetic quote and the end.
It is 99.9% probable, that you will never see this
meeting, even though it was recorded.
At this meeting Robert betrayed himself.
All of my previous attitudes to Robert (which were
sometimes not easy to create after working at the
Academy and looking at him closely) are ruined.
The attitudes about the form of the School and not
expecting it to be perfect either.
All the Gurdjieff’s words appeared as alive:
Western art is totally subjective and based on
imagination.
Greek-Roman culture was that very culture which
brought more harm to the humanity
than any other.
Greeks destroyed the objective knowledge by their
philosophy.
Romans destroyed human conscience by their behaviour.
It and many others things can be all found and
understood in his “Beelzebub’s tales”.
And after that Robert’s words that he was not sure if
Gurjieff was a conscious being at all and that
Ouspensky did a mistake on every page of the “Fourth
Way” to escape formatory thinking and that many
conscious beings were naďve saying different things
because Influence C kept they away from the truth.
Recently he said that he might become a man #8
depending on the hydrogen warfare.
Earlier, when he was giving his first meeting, he
said:
“It began in Russia, and it will end in Russia”.
When he was asked about the meaning, he replied that
he didn’t know, but these words appeared in his head
and he said them which gave him the creeps.
After today’s meeting it does seem to be true.
I guess, it would be useful for all of us have this
message printed in our Forum, but somehow this idea
seems to be a very naďve one J
All these words are just I’s of this machine, but they
reflect other.
If you wish, you can contact me at volodya@comset.net
With love and friendship from Saint-Petersburg,
Vladimir Smirnov
P.S. Practicing the method explained above gives a
very strange feeling that I’m addressing it to myself.
As if it is one big thing remembering itself in
different forms.
Quotes to Sri Ramana Maharshi:
1. What is the nature of the Self?
What exists in truth is the Self alone. The world, the
individual soul, and God are appearances in it. Like
silver in mother-of-pearl, these three appear at the
same time, and disappear at the same time. The Self is
that where there is absolutely no “I” thought. That is
called “Silence”. The Self itself is the world; the
Self itself is “I”; the Self itself is God; all is
Siva, the Self.
2. Of the devotees, who is the greatest?
He who gives himself up to the Self that is God is the
most excellent devotee. Giving one’s self up to God
means remaining constantly in the Self without giving
room for the rise of any thoughts other than that of
the Self.
3. What is the relation between desirelessness and
wisdom?
Desirelessness is wisdom. The two are not different;
they are the same. Desirelessness is refraining from
turning the mind towards any object. Wisdom means the
appearance of no object. In other words, not seeking
what is other than the Self is detachment or
desirelessness; not leaving the Self is wisdom.
4. What is release?
Inquiring into the nature of one’s self that is in
bondage, and realizing one’s true nature is release.”
April 24, 2007 at 3:12 am
To Asahi (143)
Brilliantly hilarious!
Thanks for the hearty laugh.
April 24, 2007 at 3:38 am
To everyone on this list, for or against FOF I highly reccomend 2 books that can help make more sense of this situation and perhaps help the healing. I work as a therapist with spiritually damaged people and Ive seen a lot ex-teachers. These 2 books are very helpful
1 – Halfway up the Mountain; The error of Premature claims to enlightenment by Mariana Caplan
2- After the Ecstasy, the Laundry by Jack Kornfield
Both of these books examine the problems within spiritual communities without taking a fanatical “there all cults” like stance and the chapter on transference in Halfway up the mountain is fantastic especailly for any of the aspiring 4th way gurus that might be here.
Blessings to all of you
La ella ha el Allah
(There is no God but GOD)
April 24, 2007 at 4:21 am
Sheik, see how the mind works, now multiply the “donations” a few thousand times–add to that the sincere flattery from the bloggers (let’s say triple it) and then pretend you are no longer confused…now starting to feel a little like a cult leader yet? Are you sure you are going to give the money to some Mother Theresa as is expected of you? Of course not, you know that these former intellectuals have given their pounds up freely for you to do as you please…is this really so different from a Robert Burton???????????????
April 24, 2007 at 5:00 am
To #154: Half Life
Thank you for asking. I hope you will understand that I don’t care to go attempt an exhaustive explanation of my current worldview, it would take too long, also I don’t know who I am addressing, I don’t know your language.
I will say that separateness is okay, but not if you are trapped in it and don’t feel connection, communion, love, beauty, a sense of ‘oneness’as a regular part of life.
Our little sense of self seems to be based on fear,anxity — ironically, fear of the vastness we can be.
Maybe this vastness can be called the ’soul’. Deaths of those close to me have increased my “faith” (substance of things unseen)that something of the essence of the dying person lives on.
Sandra
April 24, 2007 at 5:37 am
To #167 & Chimes:
This is a huge question. I can’t say that I actually know, but I will throw out a few things in response.
After ten years in FoF (around 1983) I ‘found out’ that RB was homosexual. This was a blow enough for me, after believing he was a celibate straight man and telling that to so many othrs! I also heard he was involved with one of his close students. I recall writing him a ridiculoulsly long letter — 8 pages, single-spaced, with tons of taboo questions. He called me when he received it. The unsatisfactory with him conversation left me knowing I could no longer continue in any kind of responsible position with FoF (directing NYC at the time). Soon afterwards, I did resign after 8 years of leading centers.
Ultimately, however, I could not focus on RB’s behavior as a reason to leave the school. And I don’t see how anyone who tried to live the teachings could either. Here is why: If you accept that you are asleep and this other guy may be awake, not just as an idea, but based on
years of experiences of altered states of consiousness in which you see, you really get it — what ‘maya’ means, what it means that we are characters in a play, all participants in a dream — it makes perfect mystical sense that this guy who has brought 1500 people together and held them together for 15 years maybe IS in a different state of consciousness. You all know the thinking: perhaps it is crazy wisdom, putting you to the test, on and on, all these explanations for his behaviour cannot be so lightly dismissed.
Therefore, coming to conclusions, judging, if you like RB’s behavior — was not an option for me, not an acceptable route for making a decision to leave. I could not have been in MY integrity at the time and done that. His behavior did bother me enough that I no longer wanted to be in an active role with regards to others, and I was disheartened enough that I didn’t want to do much of anything for the school after that.
My attraction to the school was initially and always at heart an attraction to The System, the amazing impact the ideas had on my sense of myself, my life, the world. I loved the system, I loved Gurdjieff & Ouspensky’s work.
So,what really put a crack in my relationship to the school were my sojourns into my own psyche, and I permitted myself these sojourns after I ‘found out’ about RB. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I began to question the usefulness of the system for my work. Among other things, I became convinced that for many people, myself included, the “nonexpression of negative emotions” was effectively a repressive silencer of conscience, a barrier to truly knowing myself. I also found that formal vipassana meditation was a helpful adjunct to my everyday efforts to be present.
I did run a workshop for interested students for almost 3 years in which I
tried to set up exercises so others could experience what I had been learning in the taboo environments of body therapy, meditation workshops, really scores of outside “B” influences were proving so helpful to me. I wrote some articles, I told people what I thought. I felt responsible for undoing some of the encouraging I had done to bring people into the school. I was not all that popular at the time!
As Bruce said (thanks for your great #170 post), the answers I have now don’t ressemble what they were when I left.
Finally, when my husband was diagnosed with cancer in 1992, I knew I had to leave. In my mind I told myself, “I have to take care of my own family; I can no longer afford to try to take care of my FoF family.”
I waited a month, then sent back my sapphire ‘marriage’ bracelet to RB (I could kick myself for that romantic gesture, it was a very valuable bracelet!)and told him I was leaving.
After leaving is when the trance really started to lift and the grieving set in. One Eastern teacher I read said that when a marriage ends, it takes half the life of the marriage for the ‘etheral bonds’ between the partners to dissolve. I considered the relationship with FoF similar to a marriage, and it has taken time for the bonds to dissolve. There is much more to say, as evidenced by these outpourings, but I will end there.
Thanks for asking & reading.
Sandra
April 24, 2007 at 5:46 am
to Isiswideshut #189
A correction – not in defense on anything or anyone but for the sake of plain truth.
I was at that meeting and saw it a little different. Actually when someone whispered to him that his fly was open he did a little intentional act: he turned to the student on his left and asked him to repeat what was said in his ear, and then he asked him to say it to the student on his right and if I am not mistaken he asked him to say it out loud too. He eventually fixed his fly, but the lesson I learned was that Robert did not have inner considering and instead he used this little embarrassing shock to create the state to the audience. People were laughing with him and not at him.