The time has come to move again.
For those of you who got here through coincidence or pure chance, this discussion is about a group called the Fellowship of Friends. I would recommend starting reading from page 1, as what is being said now is quite far removed from what the discussion was about at the beginning. Find out for yourself whether the Fellowship of Friends is a genuine spiritual school, or a dangerous cult, as believed by many who have left. Or simply enjoy interacting with so many interesting and exciting people.
For part 8 click here.
For part 7 click here.
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.
For sites in Russian and Italian, click http://fofway.narod.ru/ and http://laliberastrada.blogspot.com/ respectively.
And as always, enjoy and have fun.
To get back to the main page click here: HOME
May 11, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Dear all,
The Greater Fellowship in northern California is happy to announce a great event! We are getting together in North San Juan, outside Nevada City, to celebrate and strengthen our old friendships, make new ones, and deepen our presence together. So, IT’S PARTY TIME, and we invite you all to come make it the best ever!
The party starts Saturday May 26th at 2 p.m. at the North Columbia Cultural Center (see http://www.sierrastorytellingfestival.org/maps.html for directions).
The steering committee is providing the venue and the minimum organization to keep things flowing with ease. With this in mind, please RSVP to Ames’ e-mail (below) to help us plan things as best we can.
You bring:
• Your sweet presence
• Food for a potluck beginning about 7 p.m.
• Beverages to your taste
• $15 per adult (to help pay for renting the space, clean-up and insurance)
• Musical instruments if you have them
• Stories to tell, memories to share
• Flexibility and willingness to go with the flow.
There will be something organized for Sunday morning, to be announced during Saturday evening.
There are no camping or other accommodations, but see below.
The party is open to all in the Greater Fellowship (you know who you are!) and their families and children. If you bring children, you are responsible for them (you may want to organize activities for them, as was done successfully in 1995). The weather is likely to be great (80 degree days), but come prepared for cold or wet (we have an indoor venue if needed).
Finally—the event is a guru-free zone!
With love to all,
Ames Gilbert (on behalf of the steering committee)
P.S. Questions? E-mail me at: nancyames (at) accessbee (dot) com, or call (530) 272-4775. Party business only, please.
For questions about accommodation (if you cannot find them on the web), e-mail Cathie at: cathieleavitt (at) sbcglobal (dot) net. There are lots of hotels, motels, B & Bs, and camping available in the area—but book soon, it’s Memorial Day weekend!
P.P.S. don’t worry about any emanations from a small dissident splinter group of the Greater Fellowship based in Oregon House…
May 11, 2007 at 3:02 pm
#439/8′ For my friend: it is the most disturbing story I’ve ever heard.
I remember that story, it came out a few years ago in the same way as you wrote it and shocked all of us here. Then, almost immediately, the news came that the woman accused her husband in raping her daughter because she was jealous of him. Later the story changed again into that the girl lied because she had a crash on her mother’s husband!
How ugly, twisted and perverse this all is! Crime after crime after crime.
Robert did all in his power to turn anybody away from him. I don’t know what else the man has to do to make people wake up and leave him, to actually run away as quickly as possible from such a monster. Does he now have to murder someone? Or it would be justified again, in the same manner, as all his other hideous crimes?
I am so sorry, my friend, I hope you’ll find strength to rebuild your life. I wonder how is your beautiful daughter doing? Last time I saw her she was about 3 years old, so pretty…
May 11, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Words that may evoke a state in you 1
—– fading words
Expanding experience, leaving all that was know behind, but knowing that which is in front of my eyes, …as for the first time. Nothing that is spectacular, nothing that would need books to explain. Only that which has been visible to everyone form the beginning, is finally unfolding its scent of satisfaction, to each simple moment. The WHY is gone, lifetimes have come and gone, to make clear the many dead-end roads that the unguided existence is prone to take. To see and experience the labyrinth that is existence, only to finally be eternally grateful to the hand that lifted me out of constant desire for something different than what is available right now.
This role has come to cut through all theories of complication that fuel the vanity of self-made saints, that talk of it all “being so easy”. To unveil the great work of “contradiction” that is never digestible to the mind that wants to sleep. To those that take maps for reality, to those that live on words and the exchange of words, to those that live on the outside and get their sense of identity form being nobody, to those who fight for whatever is their current identity, to those who live on the identity of the larger organism they have disappeared into.
The world belongs to those who do not want to possess it, who do not long for security and predictability, in poverty or richness, in sickness and in health, in black or white, in all the symbols of identity. Those that do not need to complete sentences to show their mastery of grammar, to those that do not belong to the dictionary of common behavior and that do not need to go against it either. How can anything that does not surprise your self, be of any value, be not just a repetition of thousand generations. Only because you do refuse to see the larger view, does not make your life unique.
“Only what everyone agrees to is so”, if it comes as a surprise to everyone. Without an agenda living every possible agenda in the universe, living all potential possibilities, without safety net,…. is given only to those few who are hold by the hands of the gods. Who do not need to find safety anymore in ideas, in theories, in predictions because they feel the closeness of certainty, that is without words in every instance of their life. Don’t they feel pain anymore? Yes they do, more intensely than they would ever have imagined that it would be possible, without words to console, without future to hope for, without possessions that they could invest with some of their pain.
“Every saint has come to express the divine in his simple way”…. And knowing that he is not here to make things understandable, but to make them experienceable and that the feeling of “knowing” is the most decided frontier to this divine marriage. “Blessed are those poor in theory…. because to them I will give paradise” and it takes so many lifetimes to give-up,…. it is not to gain understanding, to gain knowledge, to accumulate names and constructs of descriptions but to let them finally slip out of your hand to make it free that the god that is to become your guardian angle can hold you and guide you home.
Kiran@beingpresent.net
Pictures that may reflect this state in my eyes
http://flickr.com/photos/iloveyou2/sets/72157600051093241/show/
May 11, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Old Dog Barks: Shelly #429
Old Dog remembers Shelley M (then Shelley F)…
She was a dyspeptic harpy, a privileged, spoiled daughter of a father (auto parts magnate) that funded her lifestyle.
She lorded-over all less fortunate than she. Old Dog recalls that she lived in the master bedroom on the top floor of a Town House in NYC with other students; she paying a reduced rent.
Ironic that it was the serfs that set you free when bandits invaded your lair.
How easily privileged tyrants put on the cloak of humility and integrity when they attempt to re-write history.
Homer: After Odysseus returned to Ithaca only his old dog Argos recognized him. (Argos was the first son of Zeus and a mortal woman)
May 11, 2007 at 4:14 pm
8/435 Rabbi Burns, the leading expert on awakening, forgets 2 simple but important truths:
Consciousness has degrees.
There is no permanent anything.
May 11, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Dear Knowledge,
I think your saying: “Words, Words, Words,
A Lot of Unnecesary Talk. Thousands of I`s.” – fully applies to your Beloved Teacher, to his unncecessary and meaningless verbal diarrhea, that he pores on all of you at the meetings. Please tell him this, if you dare – it would be very appropriate and honest. Just stand up right at the meeting and say it, OK?
Obviously you don’t like this discussion – well, then spare us please from your BRIEF and condescendent comments – they are truly UNNECESSARY and vain.
Say something meaningful or simply nice when you’re ready.
May 11, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Dear Sheik
can you please repeat the information where we can send money for donations to this blog.
I am sure in the 4th way everyone has learned that “payment is a principle”
thank you for your consistency
Kiran@beingpresent.net
May 11, 2007 at 5:54 pm
the gift of the doofi
Peoples peoples peoples,
Include even coot as chiding to receive with grace the presents that our salaried Defenders Of One Faith (Under Siege) friends bring.
Have to laugh, Howard Carter posits more cars caused in accident, the better the driver. And he is intellectual giant, compared to recent team-tag doofi. They wait for emotional blog incidents and jump in to claim credit. At least HC caused them.
Need not respond too much to them, coot thinking. Don’t want to fall for FOF game plan. Full-court press with little fouls to nuisance flow of attention. Note how more doofi posts when subject emotional. Actually, pretty good at it with admiration.
Appreciate emotional sensitivity of Exlax 101, name, well .. need say no more – doofus. GOlb provides sophistication rarely seen in life-peoples – coot thinking, yes – um that would be a: doofus. And Siddiq, Siddiq, what can the royal we say, bring amazing gift of sophistry unseen since days of Cratylus (proved impossibility of stepping into stream of water) but – glimmer just glimmer and maybe hope for – recovering doofus.
Can see the hidden hand of RB here. Genius really. Tag-team doofi is reflection of wizard-of-FOF.
And thus is real gift of the doofi – demonstrate without doubt with mathematical certaintude accurate level-of-be of current RBFOF. Intellectual gifts of HC, emotional maturity of Exlax 101, sophistication of GOlb. Quite impressive package indeed. (ahem)
Main reason coot understand this so well, tempering observes with a bit of …nostalgia, as in earlier days himself was doof. Maybe were you too? Someday current doofi (like others here) will be delivered as the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt.
Thus, gift of second sailing (deuteron ploun) like Socrates notes about his earlier life in Phaedo still possible for doofi, including grateful old coot.
coot very partial to second sailing (and all it implies), as serious sailors must take to oars when wind deserts their sails. Readjustment required, does not negate the voyage. Central lesson of RB, don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
And as for doofi, so much trouble to guard a half-empty house, way-station really. When the time is right, the road continues before you too… deuteron ploun – the sailor’s sole journey
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose / the more things change the more they stay the same. Nevertheless, might hoping travel progress not be a circle, my sly friend, could be ascending spiral seen from correct angle? allons
May 11, 2007 at 6:04 pm
This is a copy of the letter we send out to our friends for our departure.
Dear friends,
A certain number of questions no longer find any response today for us.
To externally consider our friends and to avoid to those who are not, to misinterpret our departure, it seemed important to us to explain those reasons and to send this letter out to all the student concerned in the Paris centre and elsewhere.
Some of you will think that we are not doing our work anymore, be sure that, we also think likewise of them:
- Not to imitate others,
- Not to conform to what the feminine dominance imposes,
- To make efforts in an invisible way, not obligatory recognized by others,
- To have a personal project which one wants and to realize it in this life,
All these points require determination.
This has determined our work, creating an environment of real situations with their own obstacles to overcome.
This personal approach of the work is not encouraged by the school, and is even judged.
We “lived with it”, during many years when our work was also to do it despite all the opposition.
Conscience has been the priority in our approach, and that is what is missing today in the school.
This personal approach has really been beneficial for us and we have obtained the results of our efforts and the conviction to have adopted the right attitude. We were lucky to save our common sense in spite of many pressures.
However, this has put us in a complete solitude towards the school.
It is by suppressing information and communication, that the school has been able to function the same way for years, without questioning itself.
This has been organized through a series of subtle exercises: not expressing negative emotions, refraining from gossiping, not to have judgement, not seeing students that have left the school, not reading newspapers, not listening to the news, …….
On one side these exercises did change our being, brought efforts and real results , but on the other hand, they have brought a disastrous consequences upon relationships among student’s, upon second line work in general, and upon the discrimination faculty in each of us.
The school ensures that each one undermines its personal experience, and even feels guilty about it.
It institutionalises the self-depreciation throughout the years.
Very few among us can affirm that they offered themselves what they offered to Robert or to the school.
Isn’t that what we call of feminine dominance?
Only a total acceptance of the third line as it is today, allows an ersatz of second line, pale substitute to the quality of human relationship, which we have the right to expect and to live.
In preventing any blossom of conscience in human relations and in the realization of our lives, we have developed irresponsibility and emotional immaturity .
Conscience, this is really the main issue:
After having during years learned the simplicity of the present, the school now asks for mental gymnastics, which excludes verification, rigour and integrity.
Who can affirm to have verified the last conclusions and deductions of the teaching (prehistoric tradition, and so on..,)?
Who among us can re-explain these elements, from the depths of themselves, without taking again the pre-established, formatted and repetitive formulations that they have recorded?
These endless research (cathedrals, prehistoric tradition…), which would amuse any scrupulous researcher, trap students in making them believe in the necessity of acquiring always more material in order to be able to be present and awake.
This approach only constitutes a deviation of our attention regarding the essential and each one has his responsibility engaged when he accepts attending a meeting whose content is vacant, without rigour nor verification. We can’t show respect for such a teaching any further.
Our responsibility has been to join a school 23 years ago, not a religious organization.
The reasons of Robert to act in this direction may appear obscure, but obviously the results are not following.
To decide to stay in the school only for maintaining strong friendship and a pleasant social life appears to us to be the wrong choice.
We leave peacefully, by taking along what we gained and what belongs to us; and by leaving behind us what is without substance and illusory.
In Friendship.
Aline C. and Alexandre K., Paris
aaxarch@wanadoo.fr
May 11, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Siddiq (437): “I never expected a personal relationship with a teacher when I joined, but since many years now I do enjoy a deep, and I trust, lasting friendship which I will never trade or betray for anything. The day before I met Robert for the first time, a student, now deceased, said to me, about Robert, “****, You’ll never have a better friend…”
For My Friend (439): “A few months later after a Margarita Dinner with the Teacher he goes to her 9 years old daughter’s bedroom at night and molests her. When little girl screams for help and tells to her mom what happened, my friend reacts as any normal mother would and immediately calls the police…RB’s comment on this was that she made a tremendous mistake to call the police. Different students would talk to her everywhere expressing their mostly judgmental opinions. Among many there were: “he is an angel, he was with Robert” “he is in essence” “it was a Play written by the Gods”… A phone call from Linda T. – “The will of your Teacher is to not divorce him. Work with your queen of hearts. Are you going to disobey the will of your teacher?”
Siddiq, I hope to see you at the Greater Fellowship Party. I’ll be the one wearing the “I’m Not Rabbi Burns” t-shirt. I’m hoping you can explain how you can believe 437 in the light of 439 and the many similar stories.
cheers, RB
May 11, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Dear friends is “Trauma and Recovery” or “Waking the Tiger” or any other book teaches you how to help an abused person to realize that he is abused and start healing? Or is it only for those who already started to look out for help or healing?
I have many friends RB’s boys who are being abused for 5 or 10 years! They “managed” their natural feelings. They never speak about IT. They avoid talking about feelings at all. They became tough, they don’t listen to their “mechanicality” and they do not look out for help.
They feel challenged to “do what the machine does not want to do”, “stick it out till the end” or feel like “this is like a prison” and don’t want to give up, but one thing they don’t know – they are sick! They don’t know that people can be nice, loving, fair, just, happy – they don’t trust anyone! They believe that this what makes them conscious!
It is a very sad story. How to help them? What words, what techniques can “un-do” the abuse? I heard that there are some practices that help abused children to open up, to see it for what it is, and get it out of their system!
May 11, 2007 at 8:48 pm
#439 For my friend
This is one of the most irritating posts I have read.
“And shame on all of you people who were so brainwashed, scared and screwed up to blame my friend when she called the police!”
Of course she did the right thing calling the police. The allegation of molestation needs to be investigated. It is against the law.
Your “Dear, kind hearted friend” is brainwashed, scared and screwed up. The “brainwashed, scared and screwed up” that chastised her are dear and kind hearted.
It is ironic that we all probably joined the fof with a somewhat sincere, though naive, desire to “awaken” many of us didn’t notice when we crossed the line into the deep unconscious roots of sleep that kept us there.
It takes two to tango. Your little story is the best depiction of the sado-masochistic dance I have seen.
May 11, 2007 at 8:53 pm
To Post 8/427
on Kiran.
You ask
“How you knew what the document said (…)?”
What?
You are saying that there was, indeed, a document ?
Since you are busy bringing/asking for clarity, I take my chance too and ask you:
would you, please, tell us what the “document” you mention was? Its origine, its content, its purpuse and function, its destination and futur ? If you have energy left, your opinion about it might help too bringing CLARITY!
(You surely know about the 10 questions anyone should ask oneself to approach intelligenty whatever subject ? Great effort from? From Gurdjieff “bien sûr”!)
Sitting on His shoulders, with anticipated thanks.
I hope you can clean my air from the smoke your own words created.
“Can I breath the open air?” (Metallica)
To Trade Marker 8/425 on Gurdjieff and Ouspensky as a Trade Mark:
I am so grateful people like you can “dance” on flames I would even not imagine to imagine.
Brilliantly disturbing…
Robert Burton should have a copy of this!
To Sheik: Complimentsssssssssss!
May 11, 2007 at 9:00 pm
# 439 The story about the men molesting his “wifes daughter”
Dear: “for a friend” and all of us…
Did you know that you can get the person out of the country by just calling and informing the INS or the Oroville church who had so many accounts and treats to the fof?
Did you realise that?
And nobody does anything. Not you, not anybody else not me ….?
Is not that strange?
Did you know that your friend has a long standing history of abuse in more then one level?
Is not that strange?
We are part of this community, we do not act nor to prevent any abuse in the further. We do not act? STRANGE….
A question for the wise…among us!
Can we really change the future? And how?
Or is change already happening now?
Love.
May 11, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Siddiq (#8-437) said,“First, thank you for the invitation to the Party. I will attend and introduce myelf to you personally”. Siddiq, you’re welcome. You should know that my idea of a party is to have fun, so if you are coming to continue in the vein of the blog, I’ll ask you to desist. Indeed, I have a suggestion—introduce yourself by your real name, and don’t mention that you are “Siddiq” (unless you really are called Siddiq). Although I have had fun guessing the identity of some of the authors who have written using code names, I have no guesses about you. The advantage is that I can meet you without any preconceptions, and I can enjoy your presence without even knowing whether you are in the FOF or out—I’m certainly not going to ask. Hmm, I can see that this is one drawback of using my real name in this blog… Maybe I’ll go under an assumed name…
Regarding friendship with Burton. I have personally seen him many times in a ‘snit’, (which describes the flavor but is totally inadequate to describe the power of his emotions—if he hadn’t told me himself that he is conscious, I’d have thought that he was extremely identified) when he is crossed by his former ‘friends’, ranging from the rants (going on for months) about betrayal when folks of the caliber of Miles B. left, to pronouncements of criminality when less important persons such as myself leave, to petty acts of revenge when some woman takes affection or sperm from one of his boys. I would call him a fair-weather friend at best, certainly no conduit for unconditional love. I’d advise you to read up on “narcissistic personality disorder’ as quick as you can, and see if the shoe fits, then study the typical behavior of a narcissist when someone in his circle withdraws support. The value of a friend is not only when the going is good, in my opinion, but when disagreements come up; when ‘push comes to shove’, a true friend tells you what you need to know, not what makes you comfortable. To me, a measure of one’s valuation for such a true friend is how one accepts the information, and how much gratitude one can bring to the situation, if not immediately, at least upon reflection. I have never heard Burton express simple gratitude for the work and being of anyone who crossed him or left the FOF. Have you?
Looking forward to meeting you!
Ames
May 11, 2007 at 9:28 pm
A Reply to Siddiq & Ames
Hello Siddiq ~
you wrote… quoting Ames
“While we may disagree on its speed (you state ‘The FOF is very slow and inefficient’)–my progress is only slowed by my own inertia, resistance, reluctance, features, weaknesses, etc.”
________________________________
Ames, tell me if I’m off the mark here.
________________________________
Siddiq,
I sense that Ames is/was speaking of ‘Third Force’, not First Force. Yes, it is true, one can say that the weaknesses are in First Line ‘first’ and this inertia flows through Second and Third; yet, when looking at Apples to Apples, a carrot is not a fruit.
In other words, for me, I see a big turnaround in your school, where before to do ‘third line’ was a sort of ‘communal, family identity’, one that is in no small way unlike most human environments built up around being satellites to a Saturn…
Of these ‘communal efforts’ even real- efforts got through the net, I am sure of this, otherwise the students would not be superseding the school’s ability to keep them, though with change in level of being follows, by Law, a change in level of effort… The efforting in your ’school’ is a bit backwards, which is how the spiritual-ego of many teacher’s works, it is attracted to the importance of god, yet not our relative position to the idea of god, this would be too hard for the pain body to digest, i.e., one’s relative being-position to one’s ideas of self or self-to-be.
Denying force reveals being:
it also reveals the ego’s incredible chameleon talents at making more form to
‘deny’ denying force’s transformation: your teacher’s contradictions are one example of this.
One must not make the mistake of thinking that the students are now what they were then; there is such a thing as ‘growth’, ‘not looking back’, ‘evolving as a being’…this is how it is possible to truly not judge oneself for a second ago, for a second ago is not the timeless progression of the one and only moment, in which one is embedded.
The real worth of the school’s essence has come under conscious scrutiny, sounds like an oxymoron, yet it is not. One may simply arrive to the point someday where you simply don’t have the time to keep pacing back and forth, waiting for the ‘labor’ to agree with the ‘birth’ to take place: simply go out and adopt one that’s all ready ‘out’.
Though this takes ‘being’, a certain level of becoming, which in itself is something that often results from having transformed the likes of the FoF… Though, my poet friends of Rilke, remember, enduring is not necessarily transformation. Rilke was a Lunar and much more, though ‘to endure’ can equate with willfullness, a kind of stubborn necessity to go against the mainstream.
Your teacher is a Saturn, it is no surprise that he has ‘naturally’ attracted ten thousand satellites round the planet of The Work…
I recall when this blog first came out: one thought came to my mind after another, thoughts I am sure students are artificiality living out this very Now, here are a few ~
Now’s the time to go to the teacher’s aid, to support the school, to show my ‘will’ throughout this difficult time, now’s the time to make efforts, this is a test from the gods, this will change the level of the school’s being and so on…
All this comes from the same place in all human beings when any small or large community receives an uncompromising ’shock’: earthquakes, terrorist bombings, forest fires (1997), family deaths, corporate scandals, etc., bring people together mechanically, it is a sympathetic device which keeps ‘the pot stirring’.
I have heard of ex students, after having found out that the other has left and who have not seen each other in 3 – 4 years, calling and congratulating the other, making dinner plans and the like…
Of course, as time will tell, all this is False Personality and will not last, its a sympathetic mind game, misery loves company, and any situation that condones the placing of the word ‘misery’ next to ‘love’ needs constant attention. This is not to say that making new friends of old friends is not possible, just keep it deeply sincere, make a profit always in Misery’s company and take off those ‘purple hearts’, ‘pink moons’ and ‘green clovers’, tricks are for kids.
The FoF has not slowed down from its original pace, perhaps many, immersed in the form and not the content, perceive it as an acceleration, yet, I do not perceive this acceleration as a change in level of being for the students, although externally there is a quickening of the form’s symbolic fruits, yet, what good is 3000 spiritual swords if everyone is standing around with hands in the pockets waiting for a General to say “charge”, whose sitting at home thinking that the battle is always tomorrow?
Perhaps its a fleshy-habit to perceive our existence in a linear way, yet, as I am sure you know, the only part of our existence that is measured by time is that part that dies in time, the mechanical baggage we are present to.
For me, the ‘Third Force’ of the FoF is slow and inefficient, not because I always saw it thus, only, because it has not been able to keep up with the ‘real’ internal growth of its participants.
Self remembering goes beyond the lessons of your teacher, it, a phenomenon unto itself, is a teacher of the self, not the teacher’s teacher of the teacher, although there are some students who seem more inclined to think about themselves than be themselves when drawing comparisons and comprehensions of the teacher and C-Influence.
For the most part, I see allot of composers of the meaning of the play according to the FoF, yet very few people able to put the book down and stop writing ‘A History of Our Struggle To Be Historical Writer’s’…
Of course such a book is another ’spiritual trap’, its very essence can never come to fruition: this is synonymous with the FoF’s stigma of Life Times.
Your school does not allow ‘Graduation’. As I believe Mr. Wheeler has partly perceived, there are ‘graduates’ who do not ‘know’ they are graduates. Its not that the Men #4 in the school are missing something from themselves, it is that they are missing something from the School, which in actuality is traditionally its own bridge for leaving itself.
This is not the case in the FoF… At best its one of those little trains that go through a forest, returning you back again at a different season to see the same forest in a different ‘color’.
There are students in the FoF that are basically the same as every Ex-member, this blog is a dress rehearsal for RB’s role ending…You think this is allot of writing from disgruntled spirits? What will follow after RB’s role ceasing will make this blog look like a spit in the bucket, a bucket that could hold Lake Tahoe.
Yet, quantity is not quality, though there is being here and essence growing with its being, that’s nearly all that counts. And if you can muster stepping back from that which the mind & body has suffered through its journey in the FoF, you will find an immense depth in your being that otherwise could not have been got: there is no fault on this Earth, yet, there is choice, there is doing, there is You and what is not You.
We do not yet have the ‘equipment’ to reconcile the actual entities of contradiction that we meet on earth, yet, we can ‘press’ on them and make choices that are not ‘first response’, H12 draining. Sometimes in order to save a beautiful building one must leave those dilapidated ones alone: spiritual demolition is rarely successful because it is aimed at the four lower centers, the effects themselves, not the causes, not the spirit…these are nearly untouchable by fellowship.
BTW…It is my opinion that it does not take 44 conscious beings to effect 2000+ humans on this planet… Just 1 can do it.
Osho had nearly 25,000 students and he was still milling around on earth at the time, collecting cars, watches and himself.
The idea of 44 conscious beings is perhaps simply another aspect of your teacher’s greed-feature. Having a pair of primary and secondary features is not a big deal in the light of consciousness. A word of advice to anyone aspiring to become a ‘teacher’, try not to make your features ‘conscious participants’, a monkey wearing a bomber jacket is not about to pilot you to Seattle…
So, take a close look at your pilot, make sure he’s not dropping banana peels, for often your falling is not ‘yours’ at all, rather, your identification with having slipped on someone else’s tramp feature coupled with personal ‘tastes’.
Love to you all.
May 11, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Dear Whalerider
Your writing style and personal expose touches me deeply everytime I read your blog contributions. Probably like many on this site, I often feel ‘boy I would love to share a coffee with this real human being’. To sit in the sunshine together and maybe not even exchange words.
I left after 20 years (recently) and yes, it took all of the that time to ‘wake-up’. Yes, I was one of ‘the many’ that did not want to know, that dennied the truth, and that was afraid to let go of a narrow set of beliefs and ‘live’. Well, it has been almost a year, and living just keeps getting better.
Life is everywhere, from the strangers dog that licks your hand at the local coffee shop, to the big round eyes watching you over dads shoulder as you follow behind him carrying your groceries, to the sweet smell of jasmine permeating the air in the neighborhood on your walk to the post office.
After 20+ years in the FoF – Adyashanti, John Wheeler , Tony Parsons and Sailor Bob Adamson and others pointed to the awareness that permeates everything, everything! To discover I am that, is something that cannot even be talked about- it would be reduced to the banal. And life is anything but banal. A mystery around every corner.
Just finishing a book by Catherine Ingram called Passionate Presence – Awakened Awareness and I cannot help but quote one small paragraph from her, which summarizes where I was for the 20 years in the FoF.
” Pretension comes in all guises. One dangerous area, for example, is in the form of spiritual teachers or gurus that have what in Zen is called ‘the stink of enlightenment’. These people who claim some kind of perfection for they claim an enlightenment that rationalizes their apparent imperfections, and they are often worshipped and codled as a result. They usually enjoy great riches and have servants for their every need. It seems the greater their pretentions, the larger their following, as so many people want to believe in something more exalted then themselves”.
Amen. I got out. The story is over. Life has too much ‘aliveness’ in it is to stay in the prison of a set system of ‘beliefs’. Good luck to those who need to defend theirs.
All the best.
Flying Free
May 11, 2007 at 10:19 pm
#452 A former student
“…I still must point out that it is the content of a post and the emotional value that really is important.”
Certainly content is important. Isn’t content what a post contains?
What terms would you use to describe someone who decides what really is or isn’t important for however many people are reading this blog?
For me, there have been a number of “intellectual turds” (when considered at first glance) that have proven quite fruitful upon investigtion.
Certainly you know by now it is how you think about things that is the matrix “emotional value” exists within. The whole fof sewer is plumbed by thought.
I have thrown out some wild shit with the caveat that i don’t know what i am blabbing about but it is stuff that has helped me think differently and perhaps it will do the same for someone else. Someone else did it and it helped me. Ain’t that the way it goes?
May 11, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Ames #1
Sounds like fun, thanks for putting the effort into this. Will you post what the response has been as you go along?
For my friend #8/439
I think this is the most disgusting story so far regarding the inhumanity of Burton and his supporters. Just completely repugnant and inhumane, really. What was even more chilling was that I had no surprise or incredulity, just sat shaking my head and thinking, “how low can you go?” The fact that it’s not shocking is what’s shocking to me.
RSVP to Kiran #8/427
I don’t know Kiran and really have little interest in his story or its basis in fact. However, your post is a bit insulting because although Kiran is known and posts under his name, you choose to hide behind your anonymity; YOU SCREAM WHEN IT’S NOT NECESSARY; and you issue veiled threats (“…YOU SIMPLY INTENDED TO DEFAME…”). Altogether, not a pretty picture. Can you at least avoid the screaming in the future? Thanks.
JoelF
May 11, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Robert created, with our help, a form for the transmission of a higher truth. I suspect it was a Truth that he was in direct contact with. I never created that form, I never saw that Truth, and I found it irksome, pretentious, and weird. Although, part of the form was the way that people relate to one another; this was magnificent! Never before had I seen this, and I loved it. I still do.
It is good, in potential.
Eventually I came into contact with Truth myself. Truth wanted to be actualised, but it found the forms I was immersed in innappropriate. Wrong sized shoes.
An internal conflict arose.
I had to listen to Truth, I had borrowed Roberts forms long enough, I needed my own. The work, my own.
Truth does not ask, it demands. There is no choice, and none needed.
The transition from a beautiful borrowed form, to a raw, but original form, is not always easy.
It hurts.
Once begun, there is no turning back.
Do not destroy your own foundation. Build upon it.
Always unfolding.
Being and becoming.
heresay.
May 11, 2007 at 11:29 pm
#419 Ask yourself
“Calling me lazy and deluded is your choice, but it sounds like what I wrote must have irritated you- not my intention.”
Sorry. Actually I read over my post later and it really did sound harsh. I was going to write an apology but you called me on it first. Can I take it back?
I think the environment yields what we bring to it. Reminds me of being a teenager living near a very large midwestern city and having a ’special place’ I went to regularly -alone. It was a desolate piece of railroad track and sometimes a long freight train would lumber thru, slowly speeding up heading…somewhere. I don’t know why but the memories of that place are vivid and the most extraordinary emotions and thoughts and energies went thru me like waves. Nevertheless it was just some dirty old train tracks.
And speaking of train tracks there was an article in the Washington Post about the violinist Joshua Bell (world famous and truly amazing – 39years old) who put on a cap and casual clothes and performed for many hours in a subway station. He performed some of the most difficult and breathtaking pieces. Anyway, it was a long article but the jist was that most people just ignored him. Here’s a quote from the article:
“In his 2003 book, Timeless Beauty, British author John Lane wrote about the loss of the appreciation of beauty in the modern world. People still have the capacity to understand beauty, he said, but beauty has become irrelevant to them. In other words our priorities have changed. But if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we can be oblivious to a world-class musician playing some of the best music ever written, then what else are we missing?”
Hey, ‘ask yourself’ are you going to the fof gathering? I’d like to meet you and apologize in person.
Best wishes.
#422 Elena,
Wow, fascinating post. A lot to digest.
Your comment: “Social orders express the state of mankind’s being and the most retrograde and pervasive idea ever presented by the Fellowship of Friends is that humanity is not in an ongoing upward and spiritual development. With that, it justifies all the horrors within and without itself.”
Reminds me of the current political energy in the US with the rise of the neoconservative movement. Much of the philosophical underpinnings of the neocon movement is right on with that statement. Maybe there’s something in the air.
May 11, 2007 at 11:50 pm
To “For My Friend” (8/439):
Your story of the rape of your friend’s nine-year-old daughter, and Robert’s silencing of your friend to protect the perpetrator, makes me completely sick. It’s one thing to seduce twenty-something young men; it’s quite another to cover up the rape of a nine-year-old girl. We’re talking nine years old, not seventeen.
If this story is true, it is beyond being a private matter between the parties involved. It is a criminal matter to be prosecuted by the State of California through the District Attorney’s office of Yuba County. Even if your friend remains under the sway of FoF mind manipulation and is reluctant to do anything, her daughter is a separate person who deserves the protection of the law. I would hope that someone could take action to put the sick fuck who did this where he belongs — not to mention those who participated in keeping it all quiet.
This is by far the most disgusting thing I have heard that relates to the FoF and Robert Burton, and that’s saying a lot. It leaves me with a heavy heart today.
May 12, 2007 at 12:04 am
To ‘RSVP’ 7#427 – You mis-quoted me, I was talking about an experience about another student called Roger who was dying that made me question RB’s conscience and feel uncomfortable, not Kiran’s story. As I said, his story REMINDED me of the Roger incident. Please refer back to my original post if you have any doubt (6#327).
Having said that, if Kiran was lying, it adds to my suspicions about him being a dubious character!
May 12, 2007 at 12:58 am
Bellow is an extract from The Case Of P. D. Ouspensky by Marie Seton (his secretary during the 1940s). The full essay can be read on http://www.Gurdjieff-Bibliography.com.
Ouspensky then asked me to go out to dinner with him…..When the coffee came, I asked: “Can you, or will you, explain how it is you could cancel a lecture at a few hours notice for the sake of this dinner? I don’t understand. And I am sorry to feel compelled to ask you; but do you lose your temper with people consciously, or because you have lost control of yourself? You do not lose your temper with me in this way…”
“They are such fools,” he said. “I’ve lost control of my temper.”
“But surely, if we are to try to control our negative emotions, we cannot learn
from you, if you can’t control yours,” I said.
Ouspensky answered bluntly: “I took over the leadership to save the System.
But I took it over before I had gained enough control over myself. I was not ready. I have lost control over myself. It is a long time since I could control my state of mind.”
“Will you not try to gain control over your temper, for everybody thinks you are
testing them when you fly at them,” I said, for it never entered my head that Peter Ouspensky was not speaking the truth.
“They are fools!” he said contemptuously.
“But I really feel I have learned something from the System,” I said.
“Then you are the only one who ever has!” said Ouspensky.
“I have really tried.” I said, “tried for myself.”
“The others are deluding themselves. They have never gained anything,” Ouspensky said.
For some strange reason I was not aghast at such revelations. I was not even
shocked. I was sorry because I did not feel for a moment that Ouspensky wanted to be in this predicament of disillusion and realisation that he had tried to become a guru when he had not attained the resources in himself to keep control of himself.
“Why don’t you give up the lectures and try to gain control of yourself again?” I
asked.
“The System has become a profession with me,” Ouspensky answered……“I have become dependent on the comfort, the luxury. I can’t give it up.”
No one was ever kinder to me in a human sense than P. D. Ouspensky. Fond he was of me, and honest with me, too; but he was prepared for me to continue doing what I had been doing, even though I knew he had lost his way. Evidently he could not feel at the time that he was wronging his followers by continuing his role of guru though convinced—if what he said was true—that no one was deriving any benefit from it.
May 12, 2007 at 2:28 am
to Joseph G.1976-2007
I must have known you because I also worked on clearing land with chain saws and worked at the lodge in the evenings.I agree with you about how the young men who spent time with Robert were treated and how they acted.
May 12, 2007 at 2:30 am
Dear Exlax and others.
Please I hope, Exlax that you are RIGHT. The worse for you said MR OUSPENSKY.
I hope that Whale rider is just fake.
I hope that you are not in the FOF, because I do not see any external consideration but…
I might be blind and been wrong before.
I hope that al these letters are fake and that Robert was not send away by Alex Horn because he could not keep the exercise of not chasing men.
I hope he did not seduce all these depended young men.
I hope he (RB) himself is not dependent on company, sex, power and that he is an enlightenment being and an angel, oooh… I do hope.
And Exlax one thing my grandmother said: Some things are better left unsaid. So if you do not have anything else to say…do not do it here please.
I am so sorry for you, you are part of my world and I love you…Pfff that was hard.
May 12, 2007 at 4:26 am
WhaleRider, I am deeply regretful for the abuse you have suffered. I commend the strength and conviction it took to endure that situation. YET, you harnessed and used that same courage, strength, and conviction to get yourself the hell out of there! To those still sitting on that fence, be inspired.
I was in the FoF 1974-1990 and had NO idea that these crimes were occurring. I used to wonder though. Although my path seldom crossed with RB’s “boys”, and I don’t recall really knowing any of those who lived with him, occasionally I’d ask an “older student” if they knew whether Robert was still celibate. Of course, the inevitable assurances were that he was. From time to time I would wonder to myself and question the strange energy that circulated around the entire Academy scene, yet I continued to embrace the commonly held paradigm/reality … overlooking my own knowing! My own intuition! My own common sense!
I believed Robert when he said he was celibate AND conscious. And what an incredibly successful deceit!!! It has been amazingly maintained over the years – just phenomenal! To have ever “believed” any of it seems spectacularly naive. Even now, the lie continues! It continues, as crimes of such nature do, held up and supported by any combination of desperation, fear, ignorance, denial, and complicity.
Irony: When I first joined the FoF one of the important features we were taught about was a feature called “no shame”. That concept disappeared pretty fast. To me, now, Robert and those who support him have no shame.
I look at my son, who is 23, and cannot imagine something like this happening to him. We think we are so wise, so knowing at that age. Instead we are very impressionable, still becoming aware of the dynamics of the world around us, still learning how to protect and take care of ourselves. Better thank that king of clubs too, we need it! How many would have kept out of harm’s way if they had just listened to their king of clubs?
In the years since leaving, I periodically need to digest different experiences I had in the FoF, both small and large scale. Mostly, it just seemed like a strange womb I had birthed out of … some past lifetime that I would never go back to. Then, after first reading this blog in March, it came as a completely unexpected surprise to be struck with an exploding awareness of the deep connections I have not only with past friends, but even with those who joined after my departure.
It is partly through these silent, invisible connections that the light of truth can illuminate the path for those who follow.
And yes, “the attitude is gratitude.” [DK]
Hello Joel, it’s a pleasure to see you here. I appreciated the lack of pretension in relaying your story about the encounter with RB at that restaurant. Very honest. I think it would be so strange to have that happen. I remember that energy, of those groups of boys and RB … unsavory. If it were to have an odor, it would be slightly rotten.
KathleenW, hello to you. Good to hear you after so many years; I hope all is well.
Bruce, thank you many times over for the direct truth-telling. I used to see an unhappiness and anger back when, so long ago. Now I understand. By the way, my husband was delighted when you wrote him.
Cathie, hello to you, too, and thanks for your balanced and thoughtful entries.
GaryW, hello. I do remember fondly our time on that beautiful knoll in La Selva Beach. Our best wishes.
Sandra, hello and I agree about the pain body concept from Tolle. One of the most powerful pieces of knowledge I have heard! It works for me.
Thanks again to our host.
In Gratitude to all!
May 12, 2007 at 4:40 am
Dear Anonymous,
You Said: 9/5,
“8/435 Rabbi Burns, the leading expert on awakening, forgets 2 simple but important truths:
Consciousness has degrees.
There is no permanent anything.”
This means that consciousness won’t always have degrees. What’s your point exactly ?
Or perhaps when you said it has degrees, you meant a sort of impermanent Bachelors, Masters and Phd?
Far out man! here’s proof the universe is intelligent – consciousness has degrees!
Could you take some more Ouspensky truth serum and get back to us, I think you’re onto something.
Love,
Ryan
May 12, 2007 at 4:50 am
I have no way of knowing if Kiran’s story about being approached on his “deathbed” by Abraham Goldman is true. When I read it, it didn’t seem that far-fetched, based on other stories that have been told about Robert’s contacts–often through an intermediary–with some dying students over the years, at least one of which (the Sharole Mannering cameo reclamation) is well documented.
I don’t know Kiran personally, but I did know Robert Burton and Abraham Goldman. I wasn’t surprised by Kiran’s story, as it didn’t seem uncharacteristic of either Robert or Abraham.
RSVP’s screaming post raises some interesting questions. It admits that Goldman did visit Kiran in the hospital in Cairo, since it asserts that “at all times” during the visit, Kiran’s family members were there.
Why did Goldman visit Kiran in the hospital? It seems reasonable to suppose that he was there in some official Fellowship capacity. Perhaps he was concerned about the possible liability of the Fellowship for the injuries sustained by Kiran and the deaths of his wife and friend. If I recall correctly, Kiran and the two women were traveling at Robert’s request, to investigate opening a center in Egypt.
This is quite speculative on my part, but what if Goldman was there to obtain a release of liability from Kiran, or failing that, to obtain a beneficial interest for the Fellowship in Kiran’s estate, should he die as a result of his injuries? It seems entirely plausible to me.
Then again, this is a situation loaded with “plausible deniability” on the part of Goldman and the FOF. It really comes down to Kiran’s word vs. Goldman’s. Tough call. Kiran was nearly comatose, undoubtedly heavily drugged. Who knows what happened, or what he thought happened? On the other hand, Goldman is a lawyer. Enough said.
As was the case with lawsuits filed against it in the past, the Fellowship’s defensive strategy is based on unequivocal denial, coupled with intimidation. We are seeing more of the same here.
May 12, 2007 at 8:00 am
Unianimo (#8-16)
Yes, the medium of the FOF was third force—very weak, hence “inefficient”. No matter how strong the first force, it ‘attracts’ an exactly sufficient second force in this situation. The imbalance, perceived as inefficiency (lack of results proportional to the effort of the student), comes from insufficient third force. If this is true. and Siddiq is unaware of third force, he would see ONLY the obstacles in his way. Whaddya think, Siddiq? Still willing to settle?
Kiran (#8-7)
Yes, it bears repeating, the Sheik works harder than we think to give us this blog.
(#7-1) “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£).”
About the reunion at the North Columbia schoolhouse:
• Things are going well.
• Adult children of anyone in the Greater Fellowship are also welcome, whether or not they joined the FOF.
• This is not a Robert-bashing event, just folks having a great time!
Love to all,
Ames
May 12, 2007 at 8:04 am
“I skip unkind and negative posts. I miss consideration and politeness in yours.”
“If you were in the fellowship, you did not got the teachings of how to be considered…”
“I hope that you are not in the FOF, because I do not see any external consideration but…”
Hey, Another Name, you’re really identified with this considering crap aren’t you?
I say what I think and try not to be swayed by cheap emotion. Its the American way.
May 12, 2007 at 9:29 am
Re; RitaP #2, RabbiBurns #10, YesriBaba #12, #14, DonJuan #22, Skeptical #19, -responses to #439’s charges
It’s disappointing & distressing to see how quickly you rush to judgement in the court of the Blog without questioning or waiting to hear more about the incident & asking for ‘other opinions’. And, somehow, some of you immediately sieze this opportunity to attack your favourite target – Robert Burton.
I’m the last person on earth to stand by his excessess, his depraved behaviour, his exploitation & by the delusional parts of his teachings- past & present; but this quick use of this incident to bedevil him without looking into the facts based only on one post is to me very disturbing. I’m reminded of lynching sentiments.
I am also unhappy to spend time on this, but I feel compelled to do so. Do not let gross distortions & gut reactions discredit & cheapen this otherwise useful, healhty blog.
(And particularly distasteful is DonJuan’s rush to judgement words in #22 ” cover up the rape of a nine year old girl”).
Here is another unbiosed point of view & facts:
I knew about this incident then from those involved and asked for more information now.
#439 wrote: ” he was an RB boy “.
-no he was not. He was on a religious visa at the time.
#439: “she was not planning to marry this guy”.
- she wasn’t that sure but she had been married before, a few steady boyfriends before and after. When she returned from the ‘other country’ she returned happily to the same person.
#439: “being a good student and a passive type”.
-she was a ‘good student’ in the past (less so now), but she is not passive nor docile: she is active, mercurial, self centered, self serving, manipulative, verbouse, even overbearing at times.
#439: “after a Margarita dinner with the teacher he goes to her 9 years old daughter’s bedroom”.
-they both returned equally very drunk that night, he apparently entered the child’s bedroom & maybe touched her. The girl started shouting. He claimed she misunderstood and the lady immediately called the police. They used to argue much, qaurrel a lot & scream. Maybe the girl was stressed as a result of the tension in the house and she reacted to something somewhat hysterically.
After the incident the lady said to her closest friends that she actually doesn’t know what happened.
In an incident involving her former husband (a very sweet person who would not hurt a fly) after a loud argument she called the police claiming physical abuse though he didn’t touch her; he was taken away & the fellowship had to pay the bail for him. The charges were dropped because the complaint was baseless.
She left the country because she wanted to leave & she returned because she wanted to return.
#439: “she came out of this with a big trauma”.
- If you only knew her…not even close. She was the same old flirtious, attractive, manipulative, partying, teasing, self centered old self.
#439:”the family could not function anymore”.
- the family situation was dysfunctional to bagin with, before & after, with former husband & boyfriends, frequent change of countries & residences.
And while she was married & living with boyfriends she continued to flirt, behave in a suggestive manner. In parties after a few drinks she could french kiss serially a few men including yours truely. In another party in which I was present her flirting almost brought two of her fans/suitors to blows.
She is not a person to easily succumb to pressure and do something that goes against her interests.
All the above said is not intended to condemn her, but to remind you that there may be another side to the story.
May 12, 2007 at 10:35 am
Ames,
thank you for your reply. Allow me some more thoughts on this. You write:
“most third line was developing the FOF property and possessions, most second line was just with other students”.
To be clear, Ouspensky defines the three lines as 1) taking, receiving, working on and for oneself. 2) giving and taking, working with others. 3) taking responsibility for the whole, giving. Would you say that 2nd line is possible with others that don’t have the same first line aim? Remember, the idea is that 2nd line helps the first line to continue. My basic question is, do you think that the 3 lines are a temporary tool that can be laid aside after we have understood and taken into our being the principles and laws related to them, or do we need them permanently, in some form, in order to keep evolving? For example, one way I can see 3 lines working outside of a community is on the smaller scale of a (spiritual) marriage.
Anyone else on this?
May 12, 2007 at 12:08 pm
#5 anonymous
Consciousness is primordial and permanent.
There are degrees of delusion which keep us from this realization.
May 12, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Dear Aline and Alexandre,
Thank you for your letter, so honest and intelligently written. I have great memories of you from the time when Ivan and I stayed at your place in Paris, so much fun and great conversations we had! Thank you and best wishes to you both.
I have a personal note (can I use the blog as a message board for once, Sheik?)
Last summer when I was away to Russia, there was an auction at the Teaching house in London where all the stuff which was kept in the attic was sold. Among it were my 6 boxes of (mostly) books and some personal belongings. I wasn’t notified about the event, so when I came back I discovered that all was gone. Since I lost by far more than that in the last few years, I decided not to count the losses and just forget about it.
However, a couple of days ago my friend reminded me of a couple of things which I would love to have back. There are 2 little picture frames, one in silver, another in gold, encrusted with small diamonds and hand made enamels, both in Faberge style. When I remembered that I had them, I was sorry to loose them, as they are a present from my dear friend from St. Petersburg, who is a jeweller and made them as a present for me. I would like to have them back and I would pay the price that was paid for them at the auction.
If you know that you have any of my other things, I would buy them back as well. There were some beautifully illustrated Folio society books which I would gladly buy back. I assume that my small archive of personal letters and photographs is gone, but if not, can I have that back too?
Thank you.
May 12, 2007 at 5:31 pm
#32, Half Life – you must be writing about a different person. She is my friend and I know her for years! She is not mercurial. you must be describing some one else… She is not flirtatious! And never been like this to my knowledge – she is not that kind of girl… You are definitely talking about someone else. And if you’re talking about my friend – you are a liar and are trying to deliberately mix her with dirt.
I heard the story first hand, right after it happened, and again later, and this is all true. Obviously, you present here some of your assumptions, which are not correct. (May be the jerk-molester is your friend?)
You are doing exactly what all of you people without conscience did and keep doing – defend a molester and blame the mother. “He was innocent! And she sucks!”
Do you need more details??? Of what exactly happened? May be let’s get the girl to tell what happened?
Your points are weak. Besides – what about RB’s loving comment, what about Linda’s call about “the will of the teacher” not to divorce the jerk for his green card? What about it? No comment from you.
All you did in your posting is tried to cover my friend with dirt. “Another side of the story”. Nice going. It realy makes sense now.
(Besides, the guy was an RB boy… Just not a permanent academy-based one. He was more like a whore-on-call type).
May 12, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Re Half Life’s response (#32) to #439. Thanks for setting down the other side of this story. Like Kiran’s Abraham encounter, we’ll no doubt never know the precise truth. But regardless of whether one or other of the main characters behaved badly, we can be sure that the FOF’s manipulative response is yet another proof of its deeply flawed nature. The FOF “culture” is rotten from the top down.
May 12, 2007 at 6:04 pm
To us all,
Gurdjieff lost “it”. Ouspensky trying to “save the system” lost it. Alex Horn lost it. Robert Burton seems to be showing he lost it…
When I started doubting the validity of the School for myself, I did not know I would have to reconsider his predecessors as well.
I was so “in Love” with the 4th Way!
Much gratitude.
May 12, 2007 at 6:39 pm
to #4 Old Dog re: my post #8/429.
Actually, my father was a petty, verbally abusive, narcissistic man much like you sound yourself. Which is probably why I ended up looking for love in the FOF.
When I was Shelley F. I completed a four year degree in nursing from NYU in two years. I was also working as RBs point person in New York arranging hotels, dinners and purchasing fine art from 1976 to 1981. I also worked as an actress on various commercials and soap operas as well as being the private home nurse for an actress friend named Virginia Vestoff who was dying of cancer at the time.(IMDB her name and you can confirm this.)
In fact, at that time I had a audition for a bank commercial where I had to act as if I’d just heard angels. At the audition I did what we used to do in the FOF when there was a mutually shared synchronicity and… lo and behold, I got the job!
In addition to that, I was the lease holder on both NYC townhouses and so was responsible for the housing of almost 20 people. And I attended the requisite two meetings a week where, probably because I was a ‘harpy’ I was not allowed to speak too much even though I was one of the people in the center who spent the most time with RB.
Around that time (1980) I also survived an armed robbery in the teaching house on 92nd Street and had a gun held at my head for half an hour by two young drug addicts. (You can ask JoelF, Sandra C. and Miles about this.)
So,Barking Old Dog, you can take your l..p d..k and shove it!
May 12, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Post 427. ABRAHAM WAS THERE…. Why was the FOF lawyer who is NOT a friend of Kiran at ‘Kiran’s death bed?’
Go figure!
May 12, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Dear Exlax,
Let me see if I get this straight. So you are saying consideration
and politeness are cheap emotions? Or at least way below the value
of following the “American way” and “saying what you think”.
Or…, are you saying that you happen to be brought up as an American,
so therefore you happen to think that everything that stands in the way
of “saying what you think” you consider a “cheap emotion”?
And are you yourself thinking “considering is crap” or do you believe
it is the “American way” to think that way?
You seem to have a high opinion of the “American way” and I dare say,
you seem proud to be one yourself.(Is not that called identification?)
God bless America.
I am sorry for you and I love, love love love you, pff still difficult although it gets easier.
May 12, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Hello Everyone,
I wanted to inform anyone that follows the monikers that while travelling recently, I used a computer that was not mine and decided to change my screen name to “ask yourself” but I’m back to “Is it possible”
Regarding the statement made by the woman who’s daughter had an incident with the boyfriend/husband and the statement made by half life (#32) regarding the possibility of this story being somewhat distorted; it would be useful to get more facts on the story from other sources. I did notice one of the bloggers blow this up to a full-scale rape and that was not what the mother had claimed. If inappropriate or criminal behavior took place then this story is indeed quite sad and has some bearing on the character of the school and Linda and Robert, et al., but it’s possible that the details were distorted and I for one would like further proof that the incident took place as described. Are there police reports?
We need to keep the level of accuracy as high as possible with ALL THE ENTRIES (sorry for yelling). Blogs have a way of creating some interesting emotional momentum.
May 12, 2007 at 7:35 pm
This post is directed at current Fellowship students who write in this blog –
I mean those who jump all over anyone who has a story to tell.
You might believe that you’ve getting in the last word, but the last word is still
a long way coming. The history of the FOF is going to be written by the
children of the students, particularly those who grew up in Oregon House.
Something is happening in the world right now, and it’s not limited to
the Fellowship.
Just as in the Catholic Church, where parents sent their children in good
faith, only to have them abused by priests, the suffering has finally
emerged after so many years. The efforts of the hierarchy to cover up
what happened in the end, just weren’t sufficient. The ironically
named Cardinal Law, who spent 30-plus years hiding the facts
now is hiding himself in Vatican City.
What finally shook this ancient institution was the power of the
children’s voices.
The Hare Krishnas were also sued by their followers’ children.
Now the Protestant churches are facing the same sort of revelations.
It’s something they have in common with the FOF.
In post number 32, there was mention of someone who was “sweet
and would not hurt a fly.” Well. When that person got out of jail,
Robert brought him to his side to make it clear that all was forgiven.
Many of us were horrified, though we didn’t do or say anything
about it. That person has a history of being an abuser, and
he casually ruined another man’s reputation — ironically,
by accusing this other man of sexual abuse — just because
it got him something he wanted.
None of this mattered because he was one of Robert’s wonder boys.
If a man sleeps with Robert, he can get away with anything.
It doesn’t matter how badly he behaves, how many orgies he
attends, how many girlfriends he has. He sleeps with Robert,
so that makes him an angel.
My message to current Fellowship students is this: People have
stories to tell. You would be better off just letting the stories come
out. I never wanted to write in this blog at all. What provoked me
to do so was the assaults of FOF students. So much for not
expressing negative emotions, by the way!
Just keep in mind that your negativity helps those who might otherwise
be silent to finally tell their stories.
A belated reply to Siddiq’s post to me: I should have said “mothers
and mothers-in-law” urged men to become Robert’s lovers. Also,
you say that children aren’t in any danger. Can you explain why,
during the years I lived in Oregon House with my children, that no
one felt the need to tell me or anyone else I knew that there was a
registered sex offender among the students I knew?
To Whale Rider: Thank you for your posts, especially your first one.
What you described was so shocking and foreign to me, that I could
never have imagined Robert behaved that way. I admire your
courage, and believe you’ve given a voice to all those who’ve
been hurt by Robert in this way. I wish that the admiration and
compassion I feel could somehow help you to heal. I’m so sorry,
and I love you.
May 12, 2007 at 7:58 pm
No Person (8/442)
You don’t like the word “awakening,” preferring to use “realization.” But intellectual realization doesn’t cut it, IMO. True, there is no destination, nothing to “become,” but the undeniable fact is that there is massive avoidance of the Now going on, and this avoidance does not (except in very rare cases) disappear just like that, upon reading a book or a blog or listening to some teacher’s words. More often, what happens in cases of so-called realization is akin to that of the fox in Aesop’s famous fable, who calls the grapes (awakening) sour because he cannot reach them. To make himself feel more secure in his chosen nihilistic non-path the born-again fox will tell others, in fervent, proselytizing terms, that practice is a complete waste of time, that you are already free, etc. This is only a partial truth. Your guru’s guru, Nisargadatta, understood this.
If one wants to abandon the term “self-remembering” because of bad associations with FOF, that’s fine, but the underlying truth that George Gurdjieff pointed to should not be casually tossed aside, IMO. Awareness is already present, yes, but let’s be aware of that awareness, always and everywhere! Otherwise we are not really living. That may sound like a lot of “doing,” or “work,” which to some nondualists is a very politically incorrect concept. But why think of it as “work”? I prefer to think of it is a “vacation” from the usual nonsense.
Here are some quotes by Nisargadatta’s book I Am That which you may find of interest:
“Establish yourself firmly in the awareness of ‘I am.’ This is the beginning and also the end of all endeavour.”
“Be aware of being conscious and seek the source of consciousness.”
“But you must be energetic when you take to meditation. It is definitely not a part-time occupation.”
See ya,
Mark H.
Seattle
FOF member 1973-78
mkhovila@yahoo.com
May 12, 2007 at 8:15 pm
re: 34/Yesri Baba:
>Consciousness is primordial and permanent.
This is a theory that cannot be verified.
>There are degrees of delusion which keep us from this realization.
This is a theory about your first theory.
May 12, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Re Trademarker’s questions:
Questions to the FOF
>Why is the Fellowship of Friends using the name Gurdjieff-Ouspensky-Centers as a marketing label?
FoF is not ‘marketing’ anything. As to why it uses the names of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, it uses them because the FoF is in the tradition of the Fourth Way. Both G and O taught that the Fourth Way revolves around being present — and that has been the consistent axis of students in FoF since it began. No change there, in spite of some people’s confusion when forms change. Gurdjieff changed forms repeatedly. Ditto FoF.
Why are you bookmarking books of Gurdjieff that you never read?
We’ve read Gurdjieff’s books, possibly even more often and more deeply than many on this blog.
Why are you placing ads in the name of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky in the internet, even though you claim to have surpassed the Fourth Way and created a new one?
There is no claim to ’surpass’ the Fourth Way and certainly no claim to have created a new way. FoF is the Fourth Way as it now is.
Why are you riding someone else’s train and trying to hitchhike on the credibility and strength of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky?
Isn’t that – Tramp?
FoF is not on someone else’s train. It also taught you everything you know about Tramp, and more that you have probably forgotten.
May 12, 2007 at 9:31 pm
Reply to Shaman (#9-33)
Yes, I would say that second line is possible with those who don’t have the same first line aim—provided one doesn’t define the boundaries too exactly. That is, I assume that those doing ‘first and second line’ actually have a ‘first line’ aim that is similar enough to find common ground, similar meaning sufficient commonality in culture, language, other conditioning, and experience. Burton makes it quite clear that there is nothing current outside the FOF that is useful for second line; for example, the ‘choices’ recently given to students who studied with outsiders, “my way or the highway” (truly Burton is a ‘jealous god’—“thou shalt have no other gods than me”).
After leaving, I found that ‘satsang’, holy discourse, works wonderfully to bring wisdom from the Ideal worlds to the present; “whenever two or more are gathered in my Name, there shall “I” be”. I’d call that ‘second line’; what could be more inspiring and energizing than to become more aware of the Godhead within one in the company of others Realizing the same?
Third line in the FOF was: work to benefit and further the aims of the school. Again, too narrow for me, and not available literally after leaving anyway; service to the larger community is not only the equivalent, but far healthier—for me.
So, as I’ve mentioned before, my experience is that the three lines, in some form, are natural and necessary for balance, and for ‘evolution’ if you’re into that. Permanently? I can’t know. Lastly, I don’t grok what you mean by ‘spiritual marriage’.
Warm regards,
Ames
May 12, 2007 at 11:02 pm
The current demographics of blog posters runs heavily to those who were big fish in the small toxic pond of the Fellowship 20 to 25 years ago. Possibly they are reliving the days of glory when they had new and impressionable members to instruct–rather like the captain of the football team who peaked at 18 and goes to class reunions to revel in past glories.
I remember when I was a new student and
Sandra C. a traveling teacher to our center. I went to her in tears over the treatment I was receiving from older students who insisted I leave my family and move into the teaching house to support it. She brushed aside my concerns and asked caustically, “Don’t you ever remember yourself?”
I remember shortly after that being at the property and dining at a table hosted by Joel. I was bold enough to offer an angle on the topic he was presiding over. He fixed me with his famous deadpan stare, paused for effect, and said, “That proves that if you listen long enough you’ll hear just about anything.”
By that time I had learned to keep a low enough profile that I never drew the fire of corrosive wits like Bruce and others.
These people were excellent teachers, and I was a good learner. It wasn’t many years before I myself was a moderate-sized fish, directing some centers and visiting many others to calmly instruct eager new students who would come to me with their pain over human involvements. I remember one young man whose wife was extremely negative, to the extent of having thrown a cup of hot coffee on him as he was leaving for the meeting. “Why don’t you leave her?” I asked him impatiently, since I was fairly certain he understood basic school principles. He was ashamed, but nonetheless confessed, “Well, I love her.” He left not long after that, which was just as well since he obviously was not school material.
And I, in spite of definitely having been school material, have now also left. But I have retained the important lessons. I can be as cold and emotionally destructive as the best of them, and find myself untouched by such despised weaknesses as warm feelings or remorse toward people I hurt.
I am not sorry, and I do not love you.
May 12, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Elax101:
Hey Tony, lighten up a little. Your sooo cute when you are happy.
May 13, 2007 at 12:06 am
Alice in wonderlust, I know nothing about the neoconservative ideas and would think myself in a different political alignment but I’d enjoy looking at the similarities you mention more closely so if you would care to enlighten me a little more about where you find this similarity I would appreciate it. My e-mail is ludoteka@succeed.net if that seems a more appropriate venue.
To the Sheik,
Although I am not organizing this Fellowship Event that is being mentioned, surely many here would find you a very welcomed guest. If you needed a place to stay you would be welcomed to stay in my house. Just another form of gratitude if you would even wish to consider comming.
May 13, 2007 at 12:22 am
#32 Half-life
Thanks for that perspective. I am not going to respond to any more of these third person anectotal b.s. sessions anymore.
My original response was of irritation because it seemed everyone involved was being stupid, selfish, manipulative and co-dependent.
But now I see I was being stupid to think there was any way that what had happened was being accuratly conveyed.
May 13, 2007 at 1:07 am
I’ve been thinking of attending the gathering over Memorial Day Weekend. While there is a positive anticipation of seeing some of the people I knew in the FOF, there is also some uncomfortable feelings about such a gathering. While I enjoy a cool drink on a hot day, it occurred to me that it almost might be a relief and even possibly intriguing if the North Columbia Cultural Center did not allow any alcohol. It hasn’t been mentioned enough on this blog, but I think alcohol has been a factor in many situations taking place on the dark underbelly of the FOF. Inhibitions-releasing, conscience-numbing, appetite-enhancing, memory-fogging. Some is fun, is more, more fun? When we were members, we couldn’t smoke, we couldn’t use drugs, does anyone remember any exercises concerning drinking? Why is that? Try this thought on. What would it be like to do an event like this sober, or even under the self-controlled limit of only one or two glasses of wine for those who can’t imagine it.
Mainly, I’d be interested to hear how others have thought generally about the subject of alcohol and the FOF.
And thanks to the Sheik for general level-headed even-handedness.
May 13, 2007 at 2:19 am
To my friend 8/439
100% True story.The raper name is Maurizio.The student from Italy.At that time he was working in landscaping.He never smiled,never spoke and always looked upon the ground. People tried to avoid frictions with him because messing with him was messing with Burton.
For years Maurizio was daily beating up Gabriella,his previous wife before his new fraudulent marriage with T. (Gabriella is a very nice and always friendly Italian lady who now married to Japanese student )
And in the school where negative emotion were strictly forbidden people were ignoring that horrible behavior and never spoke about or even mentioned that.Many were aware of his permanent violence but all of them have feared Burton’s anger.Maurizio was a Burton’s lover.He never had his permanent “serving days” and usually was randomly called.
This story is one of the best revelation of Burton’s criminal essence.
Many people were praying to see this bustard staid in jail.Where most likely he would harshly and justly die from the same reason he got in there.
After 6 month of imprisonment in Yuba City jail Maurizio was returned to his landscaping octave like nothing happened.
But fate of the depressed abandoned mother and her traumatic daughter remained uncertain to this day.
Message to his former wife T.
Dear T. we all supporting you! Your action was absolutely right.You have acted like a real mother and normal human being.We also know that you were under heavy pressure from the FOF to leave the country before the judgement day.
You will see,the Justice will arrive and every one will get what had deserved.
With much support,
your friends
May 13, 2007 at 3:35 am
last post: 8/451
Moon food or Angel food?
I’ve never been a pall bearer before. My 96 year-old grandmother-in-law was only about 90 pounds when she died, yet the oak casket took six grown men to carry. You have to take baby steps, I was deathly afraid I’d drop my end, and I stepped on the back of the shoe of my cousin in-law in front of me. The service was typical for the bible belt, “Ye, thou I walk through the valley of death, I shall fear no evil“…etc. There were some touching stories of her early life on the farm here in Zionsville told by my uncle-in-law, the strip mall millionaire. One story he recounted was witnessing as a young boy how she would deal with the one or two feisty hens that would peck at him when he tried to gather their eggs in the morning. Each hen had a name, and once the offending hen had been identified, his mother would do the following: she’d go into the hen house, stand directly in front of the hen, look that hen right in the eye, and say sternly, “Sally Mae, do you want to be dinner tonight?” Why that hen would just stand right up, and she’d fetch that egg without any fuss at all. There where also stories of how she loved animals and almost until the day she died, she’d feed some from her back porch. There was a raccoon that lived up in a tree in her backyard, and each day around dusk she’d step out and call, “coon, coon, coon” in a sweet voice and down the raccoon would come for his dinner. She was a kind person, dearly loved and missed by many, especially that raccoon. Her presence was felt by all in the room as we sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” at her request.
After the service we drove to the reception which was held at a converted church in town, of which there are many out here as one would expect. My mother-in-law attended Sunday school there. I was informed that the church had been converted into an art gallery with the works of ‘renowned’ artist, Nancy Noelle. I doubt any of you know her works, but when I entered the church, I nearly shit my pants. On every wall, and mind you this was a two-story church, were hung her paintings. OF ANGELS!!! Big angels, little angels, faces of angels, flying angels. Angels for all occasions. Almost everywhere you looked. Upstairs, downstairs. Floor to ceiling. Every wall, every surface, every nook had a painting. DEAR GOD, ANYTHING BUT ANGELS! I don’t know what I was expecting, but given all I have been going through lately, my emotional center would have felt more comfortable with Velvet Elvis’s or just frickin’ farmscapes. I had to tell myself, sometimes an angel is JUST AN ANGEL! Nancy also had a propensity for painting darling portraits of children. Angels and children… Hmmm… (My direct experience of angels doesn’t quite match with the idea of mixing the two, but let‘s just keep that perception between you and I, shall we?) Above the fireplace mantle in the cavernous front room was a large, eight foot tall painting of…an angel…that was the first one that she ever painted. There was a small sign nearby with a story claiming that “after this painting was finished, at night in the artist’s studio where this hung, voices could be heard.” Now do I believe her or was that just good marketing?
Later that evening after everyone else had gone to bed, blissfully exhausted from all the crying, I got to tune into my favorite left-wing channel, Link TV. There was a British Documentary about some tribal people in rural Afghanistan who were not very willing to accept western culture. Imagine that? The filmmakers arrived at a small mountainous village by the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, near where Gurdjieff supposedly traveled and Osama is theoretically in hiding. The tribe had never been filmed before and were naturally suspicious of the filmmaker’s intent. It would not be an easy decision, but at least the filmmakers weren’t Americans. For three whole days the jirga, or council of tribal elders met to discuss whether or not to speak with the westerners. Overhead, US Military jets and helicopters flew by hunting for the Taliban. Distant machine gunfire and intermittent explosions could be heard daily while the filmmakers awaited the council’s decision. After much debate, they agreed to speak and be filmed, due in part because they were told that it would be their chance to send a message to the entire world about their plight. The elders told stories of how they were lied to and mistreated by the Americans, and how their sons had been unjustly imprisoned for merely knowing the names of suspected insurgents in the area. The US Military commanders provided no information about whereabouts of their sons, and this was unbearably hard for the families. Normally their judicial system was communal, not hierarchical, and it had worked fine for them for hundreds, if not thousands of years. At the end of the interviews one elder, possibly in his late 60’s, addressed the camera directly and said this: (translated) “Forget about what we have told you. Forget about what you have seen. Please, for God’s sake, you Americans, please just lead a virtuous life!” And then to punctuate his message, he held his hands to his face and wept! He cried. He quickly removed his hands, one of which had part of a finger missing, and gave this really intense wordless look, with eyes that would pierce any armor, with a message that would transcend any language barrier. He spoke directly from his heart.
That is the sufi way.
At that moment I realized, after all the time I spent up close and personal with RB over several years, I never once saw him cry.
*****************************************
For Angel Aware: I read your post, and through my tears, felt you in that clear, unspeakable place in my heart! Thank you for being you.
For Flying Free: Thank you for your precious encouragement! It takes a real human being to recognize another.
My love back to all who feel mine.
WhaleRider
1979-1985
May 13, 2007 at 4:33 am
#48 I’m sorry for you Abigail. Your post shows how destructive the FOF, in league with human nature, can really be. Most of us from the “old school glory days’ have reiterated our knowledge of what assholes we were, whether from an impetus of power or anger or vanity. Some of us are embittered also. Most see it and are dealing with it, with the help of observations like yours. But your last few sentences are very sad.
May 13, 2007 at 4:57 am
Anonymous #46: It is not possible to equate bobby with Gurdjieff. Bobby is a clever camel dealer unconsious of the camel’s bite.
Bobby changed form of HIS fof by pure imagination. Sadly, his oversexed homosexual activities is his camel’s bite.
May 13, 2007 at 5:11 am
#48 Abigail
I don’t think I knew you, but I felt sad when I read your post. You sound totally miserable and bitter. Yes, the pond was toxic, but you’re out of the pond now. Why do you hold on to the toxins?
Have you considered therapy? It seems like such a tragedy to spend your life being a victim of something that happened to you 20-25 years ago. You could choose to heal yourself. Help is available if you need it.
Just a thought.
May 13, 2007 at 5:18 am
Just for you, Dick, I am sorry and I love you.
Miss you, dude:(
May 13, 2007 at 5:36 am
To: if memory serves (52)
I did mention alcohol in one of my previous posts and am also
surprised that it hasn’t come up more frequently.
After every meeting, wine was served. I don’t think everyone
indulged too much, but I’d say that most enjoyed this ritual with
verve. It is an entirely acceptable drug in the Fellowship.
Many who I became close to over-indulged with me on a regular
basis. (So, yes, I’m including myself in this observation.)
Alcohol is a clear component in the entire equation. It allows one to tell the “truth”, softens perceptions, blurs vision,
heightens emotion, breeds dreamy thinking, allows one to
behave indiscreetly, exhausts the body and skews reality.
As we all know, alcohol is a potent drug. It is, obviously, the last substance on earth that encourages consciousness.
In my observation, many members could not resist over-indulgence. It seemed that it was such a relief to have a glass of wine after hearing “angles”. Drinking alcohol was an acceptable form of good old-fashioned fun that the Fellowship allowed unequivocally.
Wine numbs the Fellowship members.
May 13, 2007 at 6:00 am
In Reply to several Posts: An attempt to tie a few loose ends that may help this ‘blog’ blog along uphill.
In reference to Post #439 and following Posts #22/9, 12/9, 32/9.
I want this to bring some ‘breathing room’ to what seems to me a bias tennis match.
Games are fine so long as there’s no winner declared before the match begins. The FoF is expert at predictions, so long as Tomorrow stays out of the way.
________________________________________
I know them well… The mother, the two children (the girl has an older brother), the real-father of the children and M., the step-father or ’subject of dispute in Post #439).
To begin I must say that I am, by no way, on one side or the other: events occur for many un-obvious reasons we cannot see, yet, this is not to say that I am trying to make this out to be a fairy tale, yet, if we were writers five hundred years ahead of the ‘plain facts’, it could be nonetheless an outline for one, for there are many lessons, undisclosed on this blog, that were born on that very odd night, for everyone within its ten mile radius, this most certainly goes for M.’s unmentioned two sisters, who, in of themselves grew tremendously through his incarceration.
Yes, incarceration… Not mentioned yet in this blog, unless I have missed a post, M. was given a year’s sentence in Yuba County jail… A sentence I am sure was shortened by A.G., though certainly not lessened to what might have been possible had it not been an FoF member. Yuba County authorities know the FoF’s carpet’s underside well and take these things into consideration.
So, a one year sentence is something that would not have occurred unless there was more than ’simple overreaction drama’ occurring: there is a 40+ step procedure in bringing about a human being’s incarceration, it is a rigorous procedure, yet, even through that many steps there have been mistaken guilt proclaimed 10 to 15 years into someone’s sentence… Yet, this is not the case here. Something occurred, this is moot now…
I trust that it happened, whatever ‘it’ was: I do not want to be a spectator of such events merely for the sake of speculation and conversation, whenever we cheer and boo from the point of view of the bleachers, we are removing ourselves from the relativity of being on the court ourselves or having been before…
The rage of being sexually unlocked by a burglar is beyond the personal realm, it touches something spirituality or esoteric circles have yet to map out, the territory is there for many, though some do not have these areas to deal with and will not during this incarnation…
Please keep it honest my friends and make sure that if you’ve never torn down an engine and put it back together again successfully, then do not jump to conclusions that the ‘noise you here’ is coming from the engine just because its under the hood: the entire front suspension is also under the hood, including loose shocks and broken springs.
The ingredients of that particular event, i.e., the material in Post #439 were incredibly precise, the timing equally awe-like, so the book of our lives goes…
I perceived the daughter before and after, the mother as well, M., the real-father, the daughter’s brother, the sister’s of M., and M. I also recall that there was a core group of people in the FoF that went to visit him on a regular basis.
What I saw in all of these ‘portraits’ was some depth had been introduced upon their beings, what they do with it is not our business, I only send them the powerful wish that they create something profound from it… It is easy to follow the Old Testament God, “An eye for an eye.” (and I don’t mean RB’s version, ‘An ‘I’ for an ‘I’.) Humanity feeds on instinctive justice, yet, this is where we live, this planet is not some other, though we often dream it so. Atlantis will not rise my friends, though we will.
In many respects, such an event is always being paid for by the perpetrator, for it has revealed a level of contradiction, a piece of the pain body’s armor has been removed forever (time wise)…
What enters upon that portion that is no longer protected by being a ‘good actor at being a normal person’ (and no one is normal when pain body is revealed or compromised) is a mysterious affair, for by no means, is the revelation of the contradiction equal to how the vision is treated by either the ‘visionary’ or those who envision the vision’s descriptions. Even the church ’spins’ the spiritual so to make it out of the reach of the regular guy, this insures that worship and hope do not achieve ‘holy reconciliation’.
One interesting aspect of the ‘whole affair’ as I sensed it, was that it gave RB a catharsis, albeit a non-genuine one, for I felt that he used it as a ’symbol’ of what students should not do to him and accordingly treated M., after his release from jail, simply the same as he wished to be treated by his students. I know that M., (his conscience) knew he (and his play, act 5,678, scene 345)was being sponged for all it was ‘not’ worth to anyone but RB.
M.’s incarceration could have, if it was not for RB’s quick ‘draining of the lake so to spite the catching of no fish’, become interpreted as a form of payment by a fellow student for RB’s ‘Eye for an Eye.” contradictions. Yet, as so many solar-types can do, a dreamy ‘Return of the Prodigal Son’ was bequeathed upon the patriarchal third dimension, hence anyone who could not access the fourth dimensional side of this affair, saw it as such…
For me, just for my readers, I do not see it at all as some archaic reference point for worship of drama and the drama it correspondingly takes to replace the untransformed contradiction into an affirmation of ~ Identifying with the understanding that ‘yes’ there is a moral at the end of the story, so what, can you do it?
On and on, true personality re-writes simple tests of will and conscious-sense,
trying to come up with the ‘ideal test’ for the ‘ideal answer’, yet since both the answer and question are ‘ideals’ at opposite ends of the octave, the in between fails, that is, the teacher does not ask its students to take the tests, only to assist him in keeping his job, make the tests more worthy of your tomorrow-self, thus insuring our employment the day after and so on and on. Does the FoF have an ‘Off’ button anywhere? A good re-booting is needed.
_____________________________________
A few notes concerning all the hoop-la over Kiran’s Egypt-bed story.
For those who are attracted to ‘first-impressions’, I happen to like Die Hard 2,3,4 and so on. Some sequels are ‘downers’, others, like the Matrix, Lord of The Rings, Indiana Jones, The Mummy and Pirate’s of The Caribbean are exceptions, up’ers, for lack of a better word.
Try to give all those who are being sought after, by their circumstances, for their hearts, the benefit of the doubt, that is, the doubt that you know anything concerning that particular entity ‘in question by your mind activity’.
I have a special jar next to my computer notebook, similar to the one my grandmother had next to the bathroom sink for her false teeth, for my brain: I would advise all spiritual seekers to fashion one of these jars and use it before looking at a person.
No one is finished down here, Kiran, like all of us, is an exceptional sequel, still being edited, not in video stores yet…Try not to sell Die Hard 3 for Die Hard 6, real movie buffs know that if Mel Gibson does not know about it, then how could we?
By the short range of peripheral vision on this blog site, I would assume that not many people read it, because even some of the ‘real time’ players in Kiran’s play could log on anonymously and take care of business the ole fashioned way, earn it by being the horse’s mouth…
Pass the oats please.
_______________________________
H#$b and T@#%y, if separated from their personal stories, could si-do all this wonderment: so, whoever is curious, call them, though remember, to get an objective account of Kiran’s play at that time would be similar to getting a good deal on an air conditioner in Hell…
Yet, for me, it is still pain body hunger, hence the capital-lock button being pushed on the questioner’s keyboard for Kiran to see-see their point in mind. I truly cannot fathom the need for more ‘proof’…I mean, if Grandma’s cooking is no good, then it is highly unlikely it will get better at the stage of Grandmother-ship. To me, wanting a pain-refinement to an already dubious environment such as RB’s ‘being’, is a personal, pain appetite issue, it serves nothing practical, unless your collecting litigation material, then, his story would be of no good whatsoever because nothing that was attempted actually came to fruition, so far as the actual ‘legal’ signing over under a cognitive state of mental affairs goes.
When Kiran signed ‘certain documents’ it was under mental distress and is immediately annulled under all legal systems of contract law. This is moot, this cannot be argued in court when looking at his ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ medical stance at the time of signature procurement.
Here’s the story…undramatized, in a nut shell.
Kiran was literally on his death bed, so to speak… this was the impression by all who had heard of his condition; there was at least a kind of 75% no/ 25% yes, he’ll make-it-feeling going around, particularly coupled alongside the reality of the two other deaths occurring alongside his injuries.
His company was spear headed by two very enthusiastic entrepreneurs, alongside about five or six other ’students’, whose only income was working for this business.
There was allot of money flowing in and out of the business, it was, so to speak, a kind of trustworthy fledgling, rooted by Kiran’s solo creation of it and solo marketing of its application worldwide as a holistic ‘tool’.
At the time there was also allot of ‘new inventions’, new ‘plans’ in the works still largely unknown even by the entrepreneurs, the staff, only known by Kiran and his computer.
There was great concern that if he were to cease existing ‘here’, that these plans could become either lost, stolen, misplaced or perhaps withheld by his family or who ever the imaginary withholder could be.
A frenzy began to insure that his inventions and company did not fall into the hands of those who where not ’spear heads’… this of course makes good business sense; after all, why accidentally leave your one billion dollar meteorite collection to your Grandfather’s garden club to make rings round their flower beds with?… It was the timing that seemed to be put under the scrutiny of various subjective conscience owing individuals: yet as I see it, it could not have happened differently under the imaginary time-line they were dealing within themselves, to keep in mind here that Kiran by no way was ever afforded the title of First Force: all this was being put upon his ‘imagined descent’ by the, relatively speaking, fearful householders.
So, there was two things happening here, neither could be treated with grace in a practical way, so it seems.
One, there was the ‘thought’ that he could go at any time. Two, there was the ‘thought’ that ‘they’ were not going anywhere else but here, any time soon.
Two very distinct time impressions, irreconcilable by normal means… so, willy nilly-ness was procured by the participants automatically.
Abraham happened to be in the right place at the wrong time; meaning that he gave his practical services to a tornado of criss-crossing interests and states of being.
Two of RB’s students had died, one injured, one ‘here’ possibly ‘there’. RB was, in some way ’symbolically’ connected to this event’s responsibility, albeit in a very odd way of defining a circumstance as an event with an antagonist and protagonist;
this is a habit of pain body to find an ‘origin’ and to bring some sort of melancholic demonstrativeness down upon it. RB termed it “The most devastating shock the school has ever received.” (This may not be the actual quote, though at least 98%).
As I see it, the school received nothing from it, had they, Kiran would never have been permitted to be asked to leave the school, nor would a teacher (who presumably got something from the most devastating shock in his 35 year experience teaching) have jumped to hasty conclusions and ‘conscious judgments’ upon such an entity having gone through and still processing a very new way of existence. BTW, there is no such thing as a definitive conscious judgment of an un definitive subjective entity, this is a oxymoron par excellence.
Yes, documents were signed, whether it leaned to the business being turned over to H. & T. or the FoF? This is something I do not know for a fact, i.e., which way it leaned more. So much of the internal FoF ‘moral & dogma’ can be rightly interpreted as ‘peas’ one day and ’soft green marbles’ the next… go figure. What I do know is that H. & T. had the reigns, by no means could I see A.G. waltzing in over the corporate authority of H. & T. declaring Kiran’s business the sole property of the FoF to do with whatever RB saw fit it something ‘final’ was to occur to Kiran’s physical condition.
What is more probable in a this miniature model of the declining Roman Empire, is that someone on the outer circle of ‘I know Robert loves me, but I don’t trust him and laugh behind his back-types’ said, “The Fellowship” tried to ….. And as usual did not know the in between stuff.
See, my readers, it would be splitting hairs to say that Kiran did not sign his business over to the FoF when signing it over to H. & T., everything in this alphabet soup is so jumbled…I’ll bet if you threw in a couple Japanese characters in this mix, no one would notice and eat the concoction none the wiser and they do.
H. and T. had allot of money invested in their half of the business… I will not dive into the pool of speculating their personal quests in taking a trip from California to Egypt so to see Kiran, how he was doing, etc.
What I do ‘know’ is that they were riding, perhaps unbeknown by some, on two distinctly different razor edges.
One was the essence-love for a fellow student in the arms of death, the ‘losses’ procured by the deaths of two incredibly beautiful people in their lives and the injury of a fourth close friend, not to mention a kind of ’symbolic’ role they played in being bringers of positive energies from the other students wishing Kiran and Nora well.
The other ‘edge’ was practical business sensibilities and an instinctive urgency to insure their uninterrupted flow.
Now, all this would seem nitroglycerin enough without a third entity rising from the ashes to proclaim itself something the fourth way is not used to seeing, at least RB’s version the fourth way, that is ~
An individual rising from “The Most Devastating Shock the School Has Ever Received”, who possessed an ongoing individuality who was now ‘practically’ indifferent to RB’s pain body.
RB’s pain body became rather, let us say, lessened in worshipfulness in light of a circumstance that another student was transforming in the moment, this challenged RB’s pain body affirmation. One could write a book about this area: this is how the pain body protects itself from the possible loss of worshipers of pain, it encapsulates another pain body’s pain-experience in a wreath of meritorious affirmations, brewing their practical being into a sort of ‘perfume’, a sort of ‘They’re experience of pain is more since I have made it into something we all can wear as a reminder that the gods are ruthless in their ways, etc.’
In such an extreme narcissistic environment as ISIS, as John Wayne probably once said, “This town’s not big enough for the both of us”, ’so take this jacket, oh, you don’t like it, bang, you loose.’
This is not to suggest Kiran was/is playing Narcissus #2: I’ll leave that to the Now to unfold.
See, it is not possible for pain body to give space and ear to anything that resembles its vibratory predicament. The predicament is a birthless-able womb…In there is trapped a thing that will not be released by any external action: though certainly, if a baby is kicking, oftentimes external music (asking Kiran to leave) will calm the kicking.
By no means is this a judgment of RB: it is simply my observation, its not ‘the truth’ or ‘the law’. The same thing happened to M., though in reverse, M.’s pain body happens to be one of the most dense and on the surface of all in the Oregon House student population, there are several more, at least 10-15 in various stages of lifestyle and becoming…
In M.’s case he was quickly identified, attracted to RB’s Saturnine pain body’s Power-feature ability to compliment its pain body’s passive-feature of being a Venusian: thus you have a Siamese-twin concoction for awhile, then it gets routine, is dropped and life goes on.
Some time’s the very ‘essence’ of chief feature is the only aspect that keeps pain bodies away from one another: in extreme cases like natural disasters or war, pain bodies are artificially ‘lifted’ to such a high vibratory level, that features drop, the sharing of this higher frequency becomes paramount for their physical bodies survival…
Hence the extreme and very successful ‘form’ of military boot camps in turning very egocentric & unique Rambo types into pain-brothers, not to forget the immensely underrated third force of ‘war’ or mortal conflict ahead of them, waiting, it is this hope of possible death by the defense of its opposite (innocence), that bonds such pain bodies in such extreme and actually wondrous ways.
For when reading war stories, one can perceive that these men and women often get closer to essential love through the irony of war than in ‘real life’, though from another point of view, this is because their’s in no intentional internal war…If the war was internal, i.e., intentional suffering for the sake of seeing the present self, physical war would be a joke on earth, a kind of mockery: yet, this is where ‘it’ is, whatever ‘it’ is.
Well, fellow readers, when the soul of things gets involved the formatory apparatus gets trampled, not to suggest that it ever looked like anything discernible before it turned its back to the stampede. I believe there is a great mystery called ‘continuance’, ‘progression’, that we often bypass in making words into sentences. The outcome is never wholly visible in this realm, otherwise prisons would be the obvious house of the greatest test for true-religion to pass with its so called ‘love’ and ‘truth’, yet 70% of all inmates return within 2-3 years of ‘freedom’… That’s because? Religion worships the pain-body: BTW there is a new Holocaust Museum for young Pain bodies ‘education’ available for tours and for those who are too short to see the ‘atrocious’ (yet) there are vision-blockades in the form of some sort of visor on the viewing glass.
Get rid of the prisons, war, unconscious competition, etc., then Jesus disappears, the identification with his struggling self, his too obvious suffering…Leaves humanity stuck with the responsibility to die for their own sins (internally), i.e., to transform oneself from the pain body interests to ’something else’.
Religions would have to start all over again and like the FoF, they have far too much invested in Jesus by now than to go and do it themselves.
Love to you all.
May 13, 2007 at 6:31 am
We can do the innuendo
We can dance and sing
When its said and done we haven’t told you a thing
We all know that crap is king
Give us dirty laundry!
Kick em when they’re up
Kick em when they’re down
Kick em when they’re up
Kick em when they’re down
Dirty Laundry
Don Henley
Re: For My Friend pro and con
Something feels very wrong about all this. There are way too many versions of “what really happened” floating around. A touch becomes rape then all of a sudden we have something out of “To Kill A Mockingbird”.
This is a powerful medium and casual third party outings of people seems unfair.
We can’t be so hungry for blood to ignore that all that has been said about this is hearsay.
What about the high road, if we, here, don’t take it, who will?
Nothing has touched me more than revelations we have witnessed here. No matter how graphic or explicit something inside feels the truth, feels the pain. Personal, first hand, this what happened to me.
It is a very dangerous precedent to condemn and pass judgment on someone without any access to the truth. No matter how much smoke there is.
May 13, 2007 at 8:18 am
Hello Mark H.,
The quotes you posted are great. And thanks for your thoughts.
“Establish yourself firmly in the awareness of ‘I am.’ This is the beginning and also the end of all endeavour.” Mark, did you notice Nizargadatta said “the end of all endeavour”? It means the end, no more practice oreffort to do something – because it’s all done.
Nizargadatta speakes to people who are still looking or seeking. Because after you found or understood, or saw – it’s done. You don’t need Nizargadatta oe anyone. You’re home. (You’ve never departed from home).
When you realize ( or establish firmly) that awareness is really all there is, there is no “we” left in the picture who shoud be aware, or should do this or that. There is just awareness and that’s it . And this is truly an end to all endeavour.
Also, it tends to happen pretty radically, as was mentioned here by other friends – like an instant internal shift of some kind, and there is no way back to illusion. And no need to practice the answer again and again – you just know it in your heart so to speak. Just like a puzzle – once you know the answer – that’s it, the end of the puzzle, no need to ask yourself again and again. Think of solving a puzzle – it could be some struggle, but then it’s like a sudden revelation – and that’s it. This was my experience.
But in no way I suggest that it is a universal path of some kind. If practice and efforts work for you – then do it, what’s the problem! Whatever works. Do self-remembering, do sequence, meditate, do whatever moves you, whatever feels right, until it’s over.
The fox in the fable was disappointed and buffered his failure. This doesn’t quite relate to my life now – I am the happiest I ever was, satisfied, content. There is no sense of achievement or failure, there is just full life. But why prove it, right? No point.
By the way, I don’t have a guru. In fact my life is amazingly simple and “unspiritual” now.
May 13, 2007 at 8:32 am
>Why is the Fellowship of Friends using the name Gurdjieff-Ouspensky-Centers as a marketing label?
FoF is not ‘marketing’ anything.
=======
You must be kidding.
Didn’t you ever attend a center directors meeting where they had people who are marketing professionals leading brainstorming sessions on how to sell the school to new magnetic centers.
get real.
May 13, 2007 at 8:36 am
To Anonymous 8/46 in reponse to 7/425
Thank you for your answers, but why are you lying?
Why do you pretend that you study Gurdjieffs books in the FOF?
RB even claims never to have read them and you know that.
If you ever have the chance to be in a teaching that is in the Gurdjieff tradition, you will be very surprised how different that is compared to the FOF. And how diverse the approach to being present. But I know you can not, because it is not allowed by RB. Wouldn´t it make sense to profit from each other?
How come that not one person, who was a student of Gurdjieff or Ouspensky, or even a student of a student, acknowledges the FOF as a Fourth Way school?
The Fourth Way happens in life, not in the FOF. So the FOF can not be the Fourth Way as you claim.
Just ask yourself, what would the FOF be, if it would not use Gurdjieffs name in their ads?
Who would ever have joined the FOF if they were not attracted to Gurdjieff? That is the decoy the FOF lives on.
What do you think would Gurdjieff say about the FOF if he would visit it today?
Would he say, “Oh that is exactly what I was teaching and what I was tought, they just changed the form a bit”?
Would be nice to hear some answers from you.
May 13, 2007 at 9:16 am
#45 Anonymous
It is not a theory for some blogging here. You are correct, however, that it cannot be verified. When you find out why you will be one of the ones for which it is no longer a theory. (May that be soon)
That it remains a theory to some only verifies the second point.
May 13, 2007 at 10:31 am
#44 Mark H.
“Awakening”, “realization”, “actualization”, “self-remembering” and on and on… It is such a word game, but you know that. There have been a number of postings critical of the shallowness of current “non-dual” presentations. I was warned earlier that I appeared to be succumbing to the “dark side” of the “non-dual”.
Way back in the fof I never understood the quote from Rilke: “To even to begin to express one Word is so difficult” (or something to that effect) but i do now.
Thank you for the post. It says clearly what needed to be said but it can’t be assumed that it is not already understood by who it was directed to. In any case the “nihilistic fox” will not be endured by it (or should I say I?) for very long.
“Self-remembering”, “Love” words so profound one would wish them on ones worst enemy. It is a difficult game but it is the only game in town.
May 13, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Laughing Love #59: If (an old angle stated that all sentences begining with IF were lies). If “I” were to intrepret Unoanimo my being released by G. Haven probably had some dark underpinings. But, it was WINE that did the toppling. Had I joined FOF in the 80’s I probably would been promoted to the INNER CIRCLE.
“If” I remember correctly the Impression octave was introduced because the zeitgeist of the times was tramp.
Keep your “I” out for the tramp features at the party.
May 13, 2007 at 4:11 pm
What was a pretty good discussion on page 8 is now descended to wild accusations.
Subjective interpretations of second-hand hearsay abound. Not knowing any facts for sure and having observed nothing—let’s scream rape…and of course LT and RB are to blame.
Not being involved in this incident in any way, RB is somehow to blame for serving margaritas and for not kicking out a student from the school, or sending the russian mob to take some action–get real folks. Are you brainless as well as spineless?
And there is no need for a fair trial, after all he has been convicted by the idiots on this blog already, not just him but by association RB and others too.
And then Kiran was asked for an explanation—seems reasonable to me considering his extreme and implausible accusations. But there is a lot of noise from idiots like Joel F requesting that no one USES CAPITAL LETTERS TO ATTRACT ATTENTION.
The only answer from the man in white and his one person entourage so far is silence. Wait and see? No, we dont care about the real facts. Hey, since it seems that it could have been true, because it does not surprise us, we dont need the real facts, right?
A little dose of thinking before writing as if something is the reality would not hurt some of us on this blog.
May 13, 2007 at 6:18 pm
#68 Look Both Ways: “A little dose of thinking before writing as if something is the reality would not hurt some of us on this blog.”
Please share with us your infallible touchstone for determining what is “the reality” in any personal story presented on this blog.
Thank you.
This blog is not a court. There is no judge, no evidence, no sentencing. We are just people telling stories. Everyone is free to draw their own conclusions. If you are concerned that the “wrong” conclusions are being drawn because all the “facts” are not in evidence, you may be trying to “buffer” what is being rather strongly suggested by all the stories here. Something is very rotten in the state of Isis.
As for Kiran’s docu-drama, unoanimo’s post #60 was interesting. Unoanimo seems to have a ringside seat. As Butch said to Sundance, “Who IS that guy???” And is he coming to the party?
[It's perhaps significant that the reunion party is being held at the site of a long-running and popular Storytelling Festival. There will be an open mike on hand.]
May 13, 2007 at 6:36 pm
64/: Trademarker:
>The Fourth Way happens in life, not in the FOF. So the FOF can not be the Fourth Way as you claim.
FoF is ‘in life’ and the majority of students work ‘in life’. Didn’t you notice? Maybe you should join and check it out.
May 13, 2007 at 6:43 pm
63: Moon Angel:
We can agree to differ over the meaning of the work ‘marketing’. From your point of view everyone from Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus, etc, on was ‘marketing’ their teaching when they tried to reach magnetic centres. OK. It’s not a word I would use, but this is part of the ‘marketisation of discourse’ in the time we live in.
May 13, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Oh, hi Anonymous. You strangely remind me of so many I have met here before. No, I am not accusing you of being the same person as them, but you carry the same demeanour.
In the last round of the on-going dicussion I tried to explain my current belief on how any belief system shapes our perception and determines how we view reality. This time around, I would like to point out another thing.
I find that it is incredibly difficult to fully grasp what other people mean by what they say or write. Sometimes you have to borrow the lens through which they view reality in order to understand what their words mean to them. Certain behaviours make this understanding impossible, particularly looking for a counter-argument straight away without taking the time to properly consider what the other person meant.
A lot of people here don’t really try hard to understand what’s being said. Instead they look for a way to attack or prove untrue what they have just read from someone else. Yes, Anonymous (and so many others on all sides of the fence), it is very simple to write a short reply to everyone on the blog and point out that there is a different way (a different angle) of looking at any issue. It doesn’t do much for you personal understanding though.
Instead, if you truly want to prove your worth to yourself and to us, take a minute to understand what other people write, try to view what’s being said in a non-judgamental manner, withour preconceptions and without looking for counter-arguments. Don’t start writing as soon as you’re finished with the reading. Sit still and observe, be aware.
May 13, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Oh, I forgot. I love you guys. I have gained a lot over the past couple of months. Thank you so much and good luck with your lives.
May 13, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Look Both Ways (68): “Not being involved in this incident in any way, RB is somehow to blame for serving margaritas and for not kicking out a student from the school, or sending the russian mob to take some action–get real folks. Are you brainless as well as spineless?”
More insults – yawn… Personally I don’t know the precise ins and outs of this particular story, but there are countless similar stories, some of which I’ve seen more closely than this and have no reason to doubt.
RB’s involvement lies in the fact that he creates the “culture’ in which they occur. He makes it clear that he himself is above common morality (“feminine dominance”) and will do whatever he likes to fulfill his desires, regardless of the sufferings of others. He persuades young men to have sex with him by, eg, telling them it is the will of “Influence C”. Of course this rubs off on the boys and is reflected in their behaviour towards others, particularly women. In fact these grasping, self-absorbed, conscience-free attitudes pervade the FOF from top to bottom.
Also, the fact that Robert does all he can to hide his activities and expects them to be covered up leads to a paranoid avoidance of THE TRUTH, especially amongst the FOF organisational bigwigs. I capitalise “the truth” because searching for and being open to the truth, spiritual and otherwise, is the best antidote for those caught in the FOF’s hypnotic web.
Sure, some blog postings are exaggerated and subjective, but taken as a whole a more truthful picture of the FOF is emerging, and for that we can be thankful to our “brainless” friends.
“Every day is a good day. These words pervade past and present, from before until after, and settle everything at once.” Blue Cliff Records
May 13, 2007 at 8:07 pm
Thanks, many of use work in “life”. And we hurry home to be at Isis, during the week or in the weekends. We juggle our work in life and being in the FoF.
Something does not fit in this easy writing “we work in life”: If you are a parent and work in “life” and have a home and garden and relationships and being in the fof..something is suffering, unbalanced, doing too much. Ask the children and the teachers.
The people who are able to work in life and balance their lives are:
The once with enough financial income and no children…..
I regret the days that I would hurry the whole day to get my householder and work done drop children at the babysitter and dress up (in skirts and trying to be beautiful) and ended up so tired at the event….regrets.
And if you do not go as often the “innocent questions”: “Are you going tonight?”.
Thanks Sheik and all of you for being here.
May 13, 2007 at 8:33 pm
The link provided by Rabbi in #24 is a real gem. Go there.
I especially was impressed with the story in link
http://www.gurdjieff-bibliography.com./Current/07_leblanc_la_machine_2004-07-02.pdf
page 10, December 25th.
It gives an interesting account of a Teacher loving and externally considering his students, and the “greater community” on a Christmas day. G. has a gift for everyone, rich, poor, student, non student, that he distributes personally through the whole evening.
This does not sound very familiar for us.
After that FOF does not look so much like a school of love.
May 13, 2007 at 8:39 pm
Anonymous Says:
FoF is ‘in life’ and the majority of students work ‘in life’. Didn’t you notice? Maybe you should join and check it out.
What FOF do/did YOU join?? The FOF is cloistered FROM life and life people are not material for awakening but, rather, ‘food for the moon’.
There is no connection between FOF and the 4th Way. There are several of us who have verified that as being true.
Sadly, many posters here are either bufferring that fact or do not know that the Tradition still exists and has always existed.
May 13, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Thank you Rita, W.K, and all the people who have answered us so positively.
Thank you to the writers here: understanding is proportionnal to payment.
Thank you also to the Sheik who is certainly a special character.
May 13, 2007 at 9:08 pm
56 Arthur:
>It is not possible to equate bobby with Gurdjieff. Bobby is a clever camel dealer unconsious of the camel’s bite.
If you care to read up a little on Mr. G, I think you’ll find that he could give RB a few pointers on camel-dealing, rather than the other way round.
Regarding camel bites, my recollection is that it was Soloviev who got bitten after he wandered off on his own. If you lose your way on this expedition, who knows what will happen to you.
>Bobby changed form of HIS fof by pure imagination. Sadly, his oversexed homosexual activities is his camel’s bite.
First sentence is your theory.
Regarding second sentence: There is one thing of supreme importance in life, and it’s certainly not sexual orientation or sexual appetite. The importance that the latter assume on this blog is reflective of the subjective morality under which most in the Judeo-Christian tradition grow up. If you look at other cultures and times, such as classical Greece, the Tibetan Tantric tradition, or the temples at Khajhuraho in India, you will see that not everyone is as horrified by sex as many on this blog seem to be. Different cultures, different moralities.
As for people being upset (damaged) after their affair ends, who hasn’t experienced such upset at the end of any affair, in or out of the school? This blog seems to have a number of ex-students who have still not gotten over the main love affair of their lives (FoF). Some of them are still bitching violently or engaging in self-withering contempt about their ex-wife/husband 20 years later.
Must have been quite some affair while it lasted.
May 13, 2007 at 9:09 pm
At 2 minutes past 6 this evening (10.02 in Isis and surrounding areas) I was driving through a tunnel and remembered about the Ho’oponopono suggestion. Remembering that it is about healing oneself, and acknowledging that I have aspects of greed, lust, abuse of power etc. as does RB, I repeated “I am sorry, and I love you”. All day and when I entered the tunnel it had been grey, miserable and rainy. When I came out the tunnel, ths sun was shining brilliantly and lasted for about an hour afterwards…great! Kind of related to our experiment, see the website:
http://www.theintentionexperiment.com/index.php/the_experiments
May 13, 2007 at 9:11 pm
sheik, I have tried to submit comments 3 times over the last 2 days and they have disappeared! What’s going on???
May 13, 2007 at 9:19 pm
72: Re Sheik’s advice.
Thank you for your well-intentioned advice, dear Sheik, and for apparently lumping me in with a crowd of FoF hooligans you’ve heard before.
I’ve been listening to the same I’s as are offered on this blog for a quarter of a century. There’s nothing new here — just the same old pain factory of life. The pattern repeats exactly the same every time: They join, they love; they leave, they hate — with some noble exceptions.
May 13, 2007 at 9:29 pm
POST 9/46-OPPOSITE “I”s,DEFENSIVE LIES.
May 13, 2007 at 9:42 pm
I viewed a film titled “Little Children” last night and found it to be a powerful experience and somewhat related to some of the discussions here about village life at Oregon House. If you haven’t yet seen it, I highly recommend it.
May 13, 2007 at 9:50 pm
To Abigail and friends,
I want to thank you for your post which much impressed me. There is so much sincerity in it that before the words and the suffering, is the source of love.
Allow me to not believe that you find yourself untouched by such despised weaknesses as warm feelings or remorse toward people you hurt. This is not really what your letter is about. What your are exposing in the purest way, is the fact that people in the fellowship acquire a tremendous ability to hurt others, the closer to Robert they become. Ironically not to Robert who is close to no one but to the imaginary picture of themselves connected to a higher being, authority. That phenomenon, that willingness to hurt others justified by serving a higher being, is what is so dangerous about patriarchal, authoritarian structures in cults or social orders. Fascism was the ultimate expression of such tendency.
You have described the horrendous process that takes place as we indoctrinate each other in the “form” of the school or the formless, merciless second line.
It is not only Sandra or Joel, but all of us in different degrees.
In the process of healing what we all need to understand is that we connected to the Fellowship form with both our strengths and weaknesses, but in dealing with what we think are our weaknesses, we must be able to see the power and the beauty behind the weakness.
Weaknesses in the Fellowship are the desire to be and to participate, to love, to play, to work. Strengths in the Fellowship are to submit, to work like a robot in any octave, to lower yourself before Robert or Robert’s assistants, close and long range supporters who decide wether you are ‘good enough’ to participate, to be a part of the whole.
We all tried both, that is, we all wanted to love from our innermost beauty and took roles in which our features hurt ourselves and others. We all tried to be part of what we thought was the will of a conscious teacher, we each gave our measure of work, love and play and we were each confronted with the fact that the Fellowship is a “being” consuming machine.
No one counts in the Fellowship besides Robert and those willing to support him have given themselves up and have totally submitted, most particularly Girard, my husband, who became the ideal model of the good student and asked anyone who was not willing to submit in the same way he was willing to submit, to leave or to accept not participating in the life of the School, with the slight difference that unlike anybody else, he was the “chosen” one. One with the Whole, the whole of Robert.
All of our plays will look like children’s delight faced with the play between Robert and Girard. They have been the artifices of each other’s fall and they have been so with the best intention. Intention alone is not enough because the feature will carry it down the darkest road, when power remains unchecked and they did not even check each other but protected unconditionally each other’s weaknesses.
Sandra and Joel, Abigail and the rest of us who have left are just survivors who were in the gracefulness of our weaknesses, unable to submit the whole of our being. Thank God for weakness.
It is wonderfully interesting and necessary to be able to look at our selves and know the deep impulses that pushed us to participate in the Fellowship in whatever role it was, because beyond the ambition to be someone in a significant role, is also the willingness of essence to be a part of the whole. When one can understand that, one can let go of the judgement that sees only ambition and embrace the spiritual “whim” (as Meher Baba called it), that wished to participate.
To live is the act of affirming the consciousness of our integrity and the fragments of our unconsciousness is what creates separation between ourselves and others. The blessing of friction is that it is only attacking our unconsciousness. The damages that most of us suffered in the Fellowship were damages to personality but the prolonged continuation of the Fellowship in its momentum to consistently deny students the ability to participate, has the horrendous potential to create prolonged damages in essence.
It is worth noting that M.Baba did not call it “desire” but “whim” because there is a difference when personality desires to i.e. marry Girard Haven so that one can “have a role” to the whim in essence that wishes to love a man and a community.
It is this difference between a desire and a wish that allows us to transform judgement into understanding. A desire is the other side of the coin of a wish and it is perfectly legitimate if the essential impulse does not degenerate into antisocial behavior, because it is in the community that the individual can develop himself in the Way of Life. The problem with the Fellowship of Friends is that it aborted the community and gave birth to a more than a few narcissistic, sex maniacs.
All the friction and pain we have endured against each other, has both components. Amongst us we judge each other in personality because personality alone can only see the desire, the ambition, the feature, the greed, but to heal, we must be able to see beyond personality the beauty with which we all sincerely wished to love and be………loved.
It is with this same rod that we need to understand Robert, Girard, Linda, Karen, Rowena, Steven, Guinever, Meredith, Collin, Robert, Kevin, Elizabeth, Frances, Elena, whalerider, Asaf, Mihai or Maurizio or any one else amongst us.
Judging each other, that is, recognizing that we have stolen each others being, lied about what the school is, and fed on each other’s weakness to support our own or Robert’s role, is as necessary a step as acknowledging that it was all, sadly, done in good will. The will to develop a conscious school in which we hoped to give our selves up to the whole but instead, gave our selves up to Robert and Girard.
In this perspective, we will not have finished healing until we can redeem them, for Robert and Girard and their close supporters are the most damaged. Robert did not become a narcissistic sex maniac in one day, or on his own, he developed it because he was supported by all of us. It is not conscious crime for there is nothing conscious about crime but precisely because it is unconscious spiritual crime, it needs to be transformed.
Those inside still sincerely believe that it is a conscious school and it is the love, the suffering they’ve put in it, the buffer that does not let them see the horror in which it has developed. Did Ouspensky not teach us that the most difficult thing for people to give up, is unnecessary suffering?
Individually, each one of us has to find enough compassion within himself to know that beyond the greed for a role, the ambition for a place in the hierarchy, was the deep spiritual “need”, “whim”, “love”, “desire”, the absolutely legitimate urge TO BE one with the whole, the absolutely legitimate right to belong to a human community.
And as a community, we must find enough compassion in ourselves to embrace the most damaged amongst us including Robert and Girard.
What is being digested on this blog in letters like Abigail’s or anybody else’s suffering, is the poisons that made us sick and we do need to recognize the poison to apply the antidote if we are to come to any healing. Hopefully we can do that now so that we don’t have to dwell on it for another three or four lifetimes. Time counts for or against us and the only consciousness that will prove worthy in our play is that we transform our suffering with infinite compassion.
Thank you Abigail and again, greatly thankful to Lady B, and each one of you for your participation in this blog, including Exlax, and who ever seems trapped in the horrors of greater pain.
May 13, 2007 at 10:02 pm
To Anonymous 8/70 and your response to 8/64 Thank you for your answer. Good to know that the FOF has a connection to life.
You say “FOF is the Fourth Way as it now is.“
How do you know? Do you think it is maybe possible that the Fourth Way does exist outside of the FOF?
On the homepage of the FOF one can read:
How is the Teacher connected to Gurdjieff and Ouspensky?
Robert Burton, the teacher and founder of the Fellowship of Friends, studied under Alex Horn, who was a student of Lord Pentland, who in turn was a student of Peter Ouspensky.
To my knowledge nobody around Lord Pentland has ever heard of Alex Horn and considering reports from Alex Horn, it is questionable that he did send RB away to teach, as RB said. But I agree that is hard to proof, so everybody has to believe his version.
Thanks for the offer to join and check the FOF out. But let us assume money, sex and power would not be an issue of concern to me, there are still some aspects that make me a little reluctant to follow your invitation.
From what I understand reading the blog the FOF has the cosmic role of building an ark that will survive Armageddon and RB is the highest being after Christ that ever set his foot on this planet. Correct me if I am wrong or I mixed up some ideas. It takes up to nine lifetimes to awaken, but most of the members have 2 or 3 more rounds to go and than you will be an angel too, like RB is already, according to himself. The only condition is, being a member until you die. The primary criteria for being a member is a monthly payment. So being in the FOF is about awakening, but it will not happen this lifetime. Apparently Armageddon did not happen punctually and the coastline of California is still waiting to find its final destination. The 10.000 members that were supposed to live at Isis for the big event haven’t arrived yet and the board of seven men with numbers >4 has still some spare seats. After joining I will learn selective perception and start to react to certain numbers. They will give me shocks to awaken me. I will learn that the appearance of these numbers is due to the work of angels that personally assist me. The reports from members of the FOF vary in their judgement, but around 90% decide after checking it out, sometimes for 30 years and more, to leave it behind and not go for the offer of a better lifetime next time around. Also the promise of being saved during Armageddon (is there a new date for it?) does not seem to be tempting enough for the ones leaving.
I guess if I would ask for recommendations for the FOF, they would be hard to find.
Please give me three good reasons why I should trust you and your offer.
May 13, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Can somebody please upload a video of RB leading a meeting on youtube.com?
Just looking at it, will explain a lot.
May 14, 2007 at 12:52 am
Lust for Life (81): As you can see at least 2 got through. Sometimes, especially if you are posting a link, a comment will be marked as spam by my spam filter which results in the comment seemingly disappearing. I check my spam filter regularly so even those comments that get marked as spam get moderated.
I am sorry if it is incovenient. Wait until the next wave of moderated comments and see then (if your comment doesn’t appear then please send it again).
I don’t delete comments unless there is a really good reason for it.
May 14, 2007 at 1:29 am
Dear Alice in Wonderlust,
I think I initially misunderstood you and thought you were saying that the perspective I’ve been seeing with was similar to the neoconservative perspective and after reading the article you sent me I realized that you very well spotted the similarities of the Fellowship phenomenon to the current administration.
If we take a quick look others might enjoy the analogy. The article, “Ignoble liars: Leo Strauss, George Bush and the philosophy of mass deception” by Earl Shorris says:
Strauss’ disciples methodically infected and then corrupted the government of the most powerful nation on earth.
His most famous student was Allan Bloom, a vicious misogynist.
These are the paradigms Strauss stood by.
1. The greatest clarity is contradiction.
For the uninitiated, contradiction is the key to the Straussian approach, and more than anything else it defines the Bush regime and its circle of influentials.
In the Fellowship, students are asked to swallow the fundamental contradiction between the theory and the practice of consciousness within its boundaries.
2. Wise men tell noble lies
“…..the provision of a philosophy of the noble lie, the conviction that lies, far from being simply a regrettable necessity of political life, are instead virtuous and noble instruments of wise policy”
In the Fellowship the justification of all the contradictions with the noble lie that consciousness is separate to functions, that a man number seven cannot be questioned by a man number 1 to 4, that the lower cannot see the higher, that we are here to work only on ourselves, “become conscious and then fix the machine,” any I besides presence is one of your ten thousand idiots, on and on, all designed to guarantee that you don’t question what is really happening to yourself and the people around you, so that you, students, continue to pay and support the establishment as it is, without questioning it.
4. All men are not created equal
5. Democracy is the rule of the wise over the unwise.
6. Nature abhors a contract.
“The Bush administrator’s held up Strausss’s version of natural law as the model, dismissing contracts as mere laws of men. Natural law, interpreted by Bush’s wise counsels, gave the President permission to launch a preemptive war through an appeal to the higher power.
…… Natural law is both divine and self evident.
In the Fellowship, student’s are to believe that it is feminine dominance to have the slightest idea or recognition of how you think a conscious school SHOULD be. Only Robert’s divinity and consciousness have the right to say how things ARE. It is “Robert’s school”. You don’t like it, get the hell out.
You are not material for a conscious school.
7. The best friend is an enemy
The only way for a liberal democracy to remain strong was to have external enemies.
The enemies of the Fellowship:
The six billion dead people in life.
The ten thousand idiotic students who left.
The descending humanity that will destroy itself in a third world war.
Women, the bearers of feminine dominance.
Biological Families.
Any other human enterprise in search of consciousness, only the Fellowship is conscious, it is the last conscious school on the planet.
8. After one, comes none.
After Robert, no one is worthy. The rest of us are all beggars.
9. The answer to the human question is to avoid it.
10. No one more than Strauss has greater contempt for the weakness of humility or puts more credence in the arrogance of the superman. The will to power, which is the will to life itself, the will to overcome, to control, to be master of all things. This is the will of the Bush Administration and needless to say of the Burton-Girard-Asaf administration.
It is interesting that during the last days we spent arguing with Girard, he said, “The Fellowship will not stop being what it is, just as the Bush administration cannot be impeached” He followed that with some justification that it was only an analogy……but the analogy could not be more close.
Earl Shorris writes in the article:
Arrogance follows elitism, it leads to cruelty, the capability, perhaps even the desire, to use people, to make them into things.
Things:
Students that dress equally silky.
Students that don’t think.
Students that work, live and love against themselves and each other.
That follow a programmed schedule to each moment of their lives. The breakfast, the lunch, the dinner, the concert, the meeting, the potager, the concert, the meeting, the dinner, the lunch, the breakfast, but
DON’T EAT.
THE FOOD IS NOT WORTH TASTING.
LOOK HYPNOTISED AT THE DIVINITY OF YOUR TEACHER AND CONVINCE YOURSELF THAT YOU ARE HAVING A CONSCIOUS STATE.
NEVER TALK TO EACH OTHER, THEY ARE JUST ‘I’S.
May 14, 2007 at 2:41 am
Thanks Sheik for your comments in post #72. I feel a little disappointed in the sniping and sarcasm and jumping to conclusions that sometimes occurs. You are so right about the effort it can take to hear and understand another.
To Trademarker, #86:
I went to a conference in England in 1996 known as “All and Everything” that occurs annually. There were people from all over the world, former students of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Bennett, etc. Many of these people had heard of the FOF and of RB and considered him a charlatan of sorts and the FOF to be a very dissident group having little to do with the Fourth Way misrepresenting themselves by using the images of G and O on bookmarks. I became friendly with a long time student of Bennett who told me that Alex Horn was never really a student. He described him as a “hanger-on” for a while at Bennett’s group in Combe Springs. Alex Horn’s former wife, who was a student of Bennett, lives in Cotati.
May 14, 2007 at 3:13 am
Anonymous #79: Camel dealers like horse traders and used car salesmen have a lot in common. Especially the mechanically criminal. They tend to hide defects from fools coming to buy.
History is replete with evidence that bad deals (FOF) come back to bite. Enron is one example and FOF will probably be on the docket soon enough.
The REAL 4th way works in life that’s a given.
This life not classical Greece, not old or modern India or Tantric Tibet.
To think the REAL 4th Way would condone the bedroom antics of Bobby is your delusion. Even if one iota that has been mentioned here is true.
Before you get lost and something happen to you, I suggest you read 9-24. I see a camel heading your way.
May 14, 2007 at 3:40 am
I wanted to apologise to trademarker for lying. The truth as most of you know, is that the school has been moving away from Gurdjieff and Ouspensky for some time now.
From the guidebook for centres. Sept. 06
“During the last year the Teacher asked that we move away from the system as presented by Gurdjieff-Ouspensky with which the school began, and move towards the “Classical Knowledge” of the ancient schools.”
It is possible that this comment was written by someone else than the previous person signed as ‘Anonymous’. — ES
May 14, 2007 at 5:44 am
Have you recently departed the FOF in the last few weeks, months, or even days?
Let’s hear from you now!
…how’s it going? Still breathing?
WhaleRider
1979-1985
May 14, 2007 at 6:24 am
wow! I was there in the early eighties. long time ago. Will stay up with the blog. What is the ultimate purpose? can we save those who are still in? Hopefully those that are out have already rediscovered themselves.
pyw
May 14, 2007 at 6:35 am
In response to 9/86, about the lineage and Robert Burton’s purported direct connection with Gurdjieff:
I wrote to the Gurdjieff foundation about the Pentland-Horn connection (claimed on FOF website) on February 5, 2007, and got this response:
“In response to your inquiry, it seems that Alex Horn, at one point, asked John Pentland if he could come to the Foundation and Pentland replied that if he gave up all the groups he was working with he could join the work at the Foundation. It’s likely that Horn met with Pentland a few times. If you have any further interest in the Gurdjieff work, please feel free to contact me or the Foundation.
Mary Rothenberg”
The FOF website, attempting to make the lineage sound legitimate, also states that Pentland was a student of Ouspensky. That is another thing that we could ask the Gurdjieff foundation about. As far as I know, they look down on Ouspensky and might be amused at the notion that Pentland was a student of O.
May 14, 2007 at 6:47 am
Ames,
I’m not sure what “grok” means, but with “spiritual” I mean in this context for instance the ability to talk about anything without expressing negative emotions.
I wonder why this question, if 3 lines are a temporary or permanent tool for awakening, is not interesting to more readers…
May 14, 2007 at 7:59 am
# 72 “Don’t start writing as soon as you’re finished with the reading. Sit still and observe, be aware.”
Dear Sheik,
you gave us very good advise on post 72.
Since the accidental discovery of this godsent blog I have noticed in myself so many emotions and reactions to what people say from all sides that I feel almost blocked in writing back.
Often it is not even clear to me where one or another blogger is standing for or defending, it is so easy to misunderstand…
Maybe this is like Babel’s tower at times…
But I am glad denial is over and people are bringing facts out in the open, even confused, it’s still all so good!
Thank you for hosting and keeping up with the blog!
May 14, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Dear WhaleRider and PriorYoungWorker,
“…how’s it going? Still breathing?”
“Hopefully those that are out have already rediscovered themselves”
I left two months and half ago, together with my husband, after 20 years “spent” in the Fellowship and Yes! I am still breathing!!!!
I prefer to say that I re-started breathing, finally, in the fresh (and free) air! I feel like I could exit a big bowl where I was floating as a fish in an acquarium…
I do not know if “I rediscovered myself” (big words at this time for me, I wish to be more intentional about what I “state”, from now on), but I can say that the simple, little life is much more delightful than I thougt. The universe is not so concerned about me, and I am happy about it.
I do not know if I will ever look for something else, perhaps I will, perhaps I will not. Now, is time for healing, and breathing, and reading, and walking, and painting, and gardening, and loving (and cooking, as Joel F., I do also love cooking).
Maybe, I was ready to leave, but if it can help someone who is in pain, and who is afraid about leaving the FOF, I wish to tell you “from the bottom of my heart”: Just do it!
It requires courage, we all know, but it is definitely worthy: Yourself is wating for you….
A hug,
GF
May 14, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Shelley, #39: well done, girl. I have no respect for those who bark anonymously at people writing under their own names here, such a bad taste!
WhaleRider #93: Leaving the school was the best decision I’ve made since I joined it. 14 years ago I needed a mental structure which could support my troubled relationship with myself and the world. Few months ago I followed my conscience and left, which brought me freedom from concepts and realization that I grew out of the need for this type of support. No regrets, in the end I can see how perfectly the whole ‘play’ worked out. We get all we need all the time, just sometimes we can’t recognize it and that’s when we suffer. That’s why, answering to prior young worker #94, I don’t see the need to ‘save those who are still in’. We make decisions when we are ready.
On the ‘ultimate purpose’ of the blog: to me it was important to write under my own name in order to let out all thoughts and emotions that were suppressed in the school. That achieved, I can move on without the baggage I carried around for years. That is to me the purpose of the public writing.
I was discussing yesterday with my friend the fact that amazes me, which is that there are so many students leaving the school at this time. I still don’t know the answer, but it seems that freedom of information works magic. Indeed, if I knew about the school and RB what I know now, I would have never joined (although again, no regrets).
For those who, like me, grew up in a totalitarian country, the freedom of information is precious. I valued the 4th way ideas greatly, not least because I met them through a friend who would copy the whole books of Ouspensky and Nicol BY HAND (because there were no copy machines available and the books were not published at that time). The originals would be badly translated and typed with lots of mistakes on a typewriter, 6 copies, each getting paler and paler. That was a true valuation; those writings were treasured as nothing else!
So, to me this blog is incredibly valuable as a great source of information and a place where one can express ones difficult memories and feelings and be free of them.
May 14, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Hi folks,
Last Thursday night I spent an exhilarating evening at the Politics and Prose book store in D.C. listening to Christopher Hitchens debate the faithful on the existence of god and the usefulness of religion. It was quite the show and reminded me more than a little bit of what is happening right here on this blog.
I highly recommend Hitchens’ book – “god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” as a great spiritual palate cleanser.
Can Atheists wake up? Discuss.
May 14, 2007 at 5:04 pm
While living in one of the FOF outposts, teaching centers or whatever they were called, I tended to listen ‘hard’.
The reason I listened ‘hard’ was because I wanted to avoid being photographed. In my mind that was being a good student of ‘attention’ to mechanicality.
One night while drinking coffee and eating cookies after a meeting, I overheard two older students say, “the teacher says ALEX IS a criminal”.
I had no clue who ALEX was and didnt bother to ask. But, after reading some of the above mentioned blogs about ALEX HORN, I’m wondering.
Does it really take one to know one?
May 14, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Living the contradiction 6
– between form and abandoning form
I was touched by Sheik’s comment #9/72 : ”Yes, Anonymous (and so many others on all sides of the fence), it is very simple to write a short reply to everyone on the blog and point out that there is a different way (a different angle) of looking at any issue. It doesn’t do much for you personal understanding though.”
As some of the posters probably think that just throwing in a one-sentence-reply shows their level of Non-identification and this for many after years of being in a school that prepares them to “wake-up”. It is revealing that an outsider like Sheik has so much more Relativity and King-of-hearts.
It is the blind spot of the 4th-Way-student to believe he is not as subjective as any follower of a any other religion. Because “we are basing all on verification – and not just believe”. But if you look closer at this common “roughness” and “lack of compassion” in general in the 4th-Way, it is just a misunderstood attempt in trying to copy how the founder “Gurdjieff” expressed himself. For him short “judgmental replies” like “You square-idiot” was a common thing and if someone came to him with a personal problem he first send him out in the garden to dig some ditch.
Fourth-Way-Students are not really interested in anyone else’s life-story as of course they cannot be so subjective and get pulled down by some emotional stories as we have Gurdjieff as our guiding figure and not Mother Theresa. Certainly you would not find that amount of acidity in a Christian chat forum, not because they are more evolved but because they did not have the same acid Role-models to follow.
As you might know by now, I am maybe one of the few that believes that RB could not have done anything else than he did and the same for Gurdjieff, because as Gurdjieff said “If things could be different they would be different”. It is up to the student to decipher these actions of the teacher and not just copy them or follow in a sheep-like fashion.
Of course for the inner circle of the FOF the fact that so many are leaving is no reason to question anything as “It is only healthy to clean the school from those people who do not have the proper valuation.” And they believe that they are part of the “chosen People” and that the school really STIL works, not because they have verified that: –they are getting happier people every day they are in it- or -that they can deal with negativity and identification every year better- or -that relationships in the fellowship are more rewarding than outside because they are made-up of two people with a common aim- or -that there is more present every day-.
No, not because of all those Verifications the average student has this gigantic vanity feature and feeling of superiority, but simply because RB has repeated to them thousands of times : “how lucky they are”, “that being chosen to be in such a school is a rare event in the universe”, “ that we own this tiny amount of justice that exists in creation”, “that we are all doing so well” and and and.
This FORM that the gods have given RB to create is like any other form useful and necessary to make growth possible but then the believe and dependence on form that is an inevitable result of time, becomes for some a pillow to sleep better. For others it some denying force to be used to transform in something higher.
And seeing the evolution of this blog it seems that it must have been given a purpose by the gods in the way it succeeds to again and again purify itself from some purely negative and aggressive posters like Be Careful, Just Observing, Howard Carter, Harriet Baker, and the many names they have already taken. They just express all the negativity that they cannot express in meetings anymore as there are no personal statements allowed and when they have relieved themselves they disappear.. demonstrating the shallowness of their being to all who have eyes to see.
Its truly is a divine comedy as maybe this planet has not seen before, for some to wake up from this cave with its projection of shadows. Its such a miniature analogy to the procession of incarnations…. For most it is only a lifetime to follow somebody, to try to quote as many eminent persons as possible and to express as much negativity as possible when one can hide behind a name or position. For others it is to verify that in order to evolve one needs Form, but one has never to become comfortable with it but truly try to pass from Form through the “transformation of Form” to another Form that only can serve for a limited time. … It needs courage, it needs not be afraid to be alone again, it needs to be true to oneself and more than anything it needs the help of the gods.
Kiran@beingpresent.net
Finding the beauty in Oregon House
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iloveyou2/sets/72157600174267957/show
May 14, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Thousands of posts have come and gone. imho, only one so far has carried sufficient being to entice me to stand and be counted. This is Elena`s 9-85. It doesn`t matter who actually wrote it. This doesn`t mean that I am pro-this or anti-that. What I mean, for the sake of much needed clarity (no pun intended), is that this post most exemplifies my present approach to the fof subject. I say my present approach because I am very well aware that tomorrow is another day.
I Have been helped to climb out of the sulphur pits. Joy has been allowed to re-enter my experience from time to time, and for this I am eternally grateful. My passive-negative-non-existant armor may be beginning to crack. There are a few good signs.
I ask what I want, and in the moment that I ask, answers begin to pop in. I edit, again and again. Soon the question becomes non-existant or nearly so.
Thank you Clara for 9-85. I can now put this blog aside and rest my aching heart. Usually, I can`t tell whether my tears come from grief or joy. Today they feel soft and tender. I am sorry as sorry can be and I love you all, till we meet again in joy. Renald J. Brisson
May 14, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Dear Fellow Bloggers,
Thanks to all the current and former members of the Fellowship of Friends who have been able to contribute in a neutral and transformative way to this internet blog. Special thanks (if that can any way to express my feelings) to Whale Rider. (Discussion #8, post [262]) Your story blew the cork off my champagne bottle. I’m talking yes, about the queen of hearts, but in her most transformative aspect: Conscience.
What your story helped me to see is that we all have been looking at the Teacher and his actions from the wrong point of view: that is, our own personal work. Anyone who is confronted with the details of Robert’s private and personal actions, must ask himself/herself, “Is this man my Teacher?”. Thus we approach the conflict ready to photograph our own ignorance, Feminine Dominance, and subjective morality. Many do that for years and finally leave. But, if we stay, we agree that he is a Conscious Being (because he is, and there’s the rub) and somehow we find a way to let the other things slide. But for those students still in the School who are reading this blog, step aside and ask yourself, what effect on his own spiritual development – and thus that of the School – does his lack of self control in his private and personal life have? Ask. Look. Feel. Think. (with presence) But don’t buffer, please, don’t do that.
When this blog entered into my cosmos sometime in January or early February, I felt resentful and defensive. Over time, I began to feel that this big interval (of which the blog is merely a part) is coming from Influence C, because it is happening, together with many other things that no human could possibly orchestrate. Thus the blog, Advaita, the Keys, the Sequence, and the Prehistorics are all connected. But how? What is Influence C pointing to? Well, take some time and try to figure it out for yourself. Everything is correct and has it’s place.
My own experience during these past few months has been that Advaita is at least one way out. This does not mean running off to join Adyashanti, but instead get a copy of “I am That” by Nisargadatta (a deceased 20th century Indian mystic) for your spiritual nutrition. You won’t regret it. His clear, precise and pointed dialogues clearly reflect the Conscious aspects of Robert’s teaching – and much more. In very practical terms he describes how to be present. He also helps to dissolve any of the less conscious aspects of our Teaching, revealing even the limitations of the Fourth Way, at least as we have been practicing it. Robert seems to be trying to extend the experience of the Fourth Way too, by exploring the Sequence and the Keys, let’s embrace it! If all Schools are the same School, we have nothing to lose but imagination and everything to gain.
But to get back to Whale Rider, to students still remaining in the School with their eyes wide open, I can only suggest to you to encourage your own fellow students to “wake up”, too. Show them a printout of the Whale Rider’s story in a non-confrontational, non-negative way. Ask yourself, ask them, have we created a bit of a monster by looking for, needing and feeding our external Guru? Has he become a little stunted in his own spiritual growth through his own excesses? And how can we help him out of it? Can we help him out of it? Read about Peter Ouspensky. http://www.gurdjieff-bibliography.com/Current/t_seton_case-of-pdo_2004-07-04.pdf And of course there are others: side tracked Gurus is a well known, yet reprehensible phenomenon. Here is a recent story. http://www.inner-quest.org/Real_Advaita.htm And we in turn, have we become some little Fourth Way monsters too by needing to suspend our own Conscience in order to stay in the School?
Dear student, be courageous. There is a way out, and it has always been the same way out, Presence, Loving Presence. Attention with affection, on your Self, in the company of Friends. Good Luck to us all!
Ann Onymous
1981 -
May 14, 2007 at 6:47 pm
I forgot to tell you about one great thing that happened to me since I’ve left the school and which I noticed just recently: I don’t wake up depressed! Last time I remember waking up happy (except when I was in love) was when I was 23! It’s scary to think that most of my life I was so self-obsessed that I couldn’t see how beautiful this life is…
It’s interesting to live with an ‘empty head’. Thoughts, ideas, creativity, concepts flow freely. I look at them, some seem interesting, some-rubbish. There is no need to cultivate any of them. Thoughts we choose as guidelines for living are no more than structures to help the mind to make sense of life which doesn’t really need any such explanations or justifications. Still, being ‘cultured’ or ‘programmed’, we can’t avoid choosing one way of thinking or another. Yet it can be a playground for the mind when it’s active, rather than a prison of our own mentality.
That to me is freedom.
May 14, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Re Traveler #195
Some more history:
John Pentland actually visited the compound at Oregon House back in the 1970s. He was accompianied by the writer/editor Jacob Needleman and they showed a film up at the lodge that had something to do with the Gurdjieff work. RB gave up his room at the Blake cottage (RB’s home then) to Pentland. Turns out, the visit was a fund-raiser for some project they had going, but RB declined to give them any money.
May 14, 2007 at 7:39 pm
SusanK #27
Hello yourself, nice to see you here, and thanks for your kind words. Hope you are well.
Abigail #48
I don’t remember an Abigail, is that the name you went by then?
I apologize if I treated you badly, or without consideration, it was unfortunately pretty common in those days. I regret it.
Look Both Ways #68
Yes, I suppose there are a lot of “idiots” posting here, and you may be right that I’m one of them. I was still disturbed by the anonymous veiled threats in the “put up or shut up Kiran” post.
I don’t know what the truth of the Kiran story is.
I don’t know what the truth of the “child molestation” story is.
I don’t know what the truth of the Whalerider or other stories is either.
This is the nature of these stories and this form of “publishing” them, and it’s up to each of us to deal with this uncertainty.
Your job is to be an apologist, so no worries about whether these events happened or not, just flame the people telling the stories. Good strategy! Congratulations! The tag team always wins!
Siddiq/Anonymous=good cop/bad cop? just wondering.
It looks like a tag team to me because there’s usually only one (or at most two) of these people posting at any one time, and when one disappears, poof! another magically appears. And if they are so proud of their association, why not post with their real names and get the glory that would surely derive from defending the fof?
Coot #8, you’re a hoot. Thanks for the “doofi”!
Anonymous #82
“I’ve been listening to the same I’s as are offered on this blog for a quarter of a century. There’s nothing new here…”
How sad it hasn’t gotten through to you yet.
Thanks for reading.
JoelF
May 14, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Rita Penfold: You rock!!!
Kid Shelleen: I would also recommend ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins, it seems that they talk about the same subject.
May 14, 2007 at 8:22 pm
#89 Elena
Yes!!! fof is life in tiny miniature. These ‘leadership principles’ are happening on a large scale at this time. I just find this interesting. And how strange that Girard used the RB/Bush analogy.
When I first read the Earl Shoris article I spent time being shocked that people had such different basic values than I do. I know, seems it should be obvious, and besides its ego-centric. But there it is. I take my basic values so for granted and this actually revealed them to me because of the comparison. It became easier for me to see how people (myself included) could be duped by liars since we assume that the liar, like us, is telling the truth, not mangling it, and if there is a lie then there is a really really good reason for it. When Dick Cheney debated Edwards last US election (on TV), he said he had never met Edwards before, which was an obvious lie. And I realized he lies just out of habit – just for the effect of the moment. Isn’t conscience involved in telling the truth? Valuing the people receiving the information enough to tell the truth?
Abigail,
I get the sense that you are directly facing your shadow – resentment towards ‘them’ and anger at self for not being like them. I don’t think its sad… I think its necessary.
I read about ’shadow’ in Marie Louise Von Franz’s books. She was a famous Junian. It made intuitive sense to me and its sort of poetic. When the light comes on the shadow is revealed.
May 14, 2007 at 8:24 pm
From that essay on Ouspensky that I quoted in post 24 (It was sent to me by a just-about current FOF student):
“But I really feel I have learned something from the System,” said Marie Seton. “Then you are the only one who ever has!” said Ouspensky.
So O. believed the 4th Way is a sham. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Gurdjieff’s version was a sham, but clearly O. thought it was.
Then O. says: “The System has become a profession with me …… I have become dependent on the comfort, the luxury. I can’t give it up.”
How honest he was! And in fact not long after this he publicly repudiated the 4th Way.
So there is a decent way out for a “teacher” caught in that situation. I wonder if Robert has ever had such a conversation with one of his confidantes? Does he realize his teaching is a sham? Could he at some point repudiate it and advise his students to give up unnecessary concepts (O. refused to answer questions about “self remembering” etc.) and instead look at what is right in front of their noses?
“A monk asked, ‘What is the treasury of the eye of the true Dharma?’ Yun Men said, ‘Universal.’ It just doesn’t allow any attempts to explain!” The Blue Cliff Record
May 14, 2007 at 9:00 pm
A visit to Gurdjieff by Dennis Saurat:
“They are inclined to ask themselves if they are duped, but they would prefer to remain victims.”
Some voices suggest “we” (not “they”) are duped, others suggest “we” are victims,
others that we are none!
Can we let go ?
If you have a chance, read the small opus titled “Secretum”.
Francis Petrarch (the father of “humanism”…) wrote it in the winter 1342 1343 (!).
Francis: What do you say ?
Augustin: That your conscience often brought you tears, but that changed nothing to your will.
Gratitude.
May 14, 2007 at 9:13 pm
#106… I was there also, serving in the My Sin room . RB gave Pentland a pillow for a gift…you can guess the not so shaded implication yourself. Needleman was strutting around with a long cigarette holder with his pinky out. RB and Pentland sort of had this humility competition going on,with their own humility “acts”. Later on the word came back that Pentland said something to the effect that the pumped up FOF extravagance was one thing he was hoping to move his students away from. Actually,I came away feeling Pentland was closer to the ideas. Just my opinion.
May 14, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Dick Moron #106
I was the “point man” for that visit, remember it well. They were raising money to finish the film of Meetings With Remarkable Men, and Burton later regretted not giving them any $$. Instead he gave Pentland an antique lace pillow. He seemed quite impressed to be meeting an actual “Lord.”
From meeting over the years with many “Gurdjieffians” in various schools/cults/groups, here is my take on their general views:
• Ouspensky never “got” what Gurdjieff was trying to teach. Although his intellect is admired, he missed the point.
• In Search of the Miraculous is an accurate retelling of Ouspensky’s story, but none of his other books are worth reading, particularly The Fourth Way.
• Ouspensky’s reliance on “self-remembering” proves he did not understand Gurdjieff’s teaching, which was centered in the body.
• The only “workbook” is Beelzebub’s Tales
• People who take any of Gurdjieff’s teachings or stories literally are hopelessly simple and probably cannot do the work.
• Rodney Collin was a weak and diseased mind subject to taking fantasy as reality.
• The only real inheritors of Gurdjieff’s teaching operate within the Gurejiff Foundation.
• All others claiming any connection to Gurdjieff’s work are charlatans, mentally defective, or criminals.
FYI, and thanks for reading.
JoelF
May 14, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Hi SusanK. Hi Joel. I disagree, I think the tag team doesn’t always win. Oh, OK you weren’t being serious, the tag team always “thinks” they win. I think they’re doing a lousy job for themselves-remember the cyclical “breathing in of the school”?
May 14, 2007 at 9:36 pm
In Reply to Post #43/9, Siddiq & #59/9
Hello Lady B., you wrote ~
“Just keep in mind that your negativity helps those who might otherwise be silent to finally tell their stories.”
________________________________________
For the sake of the truly beautiful, silent being in all of us, this, what you have written, is simply not true. For me, there is no justification possible for negativity, it helps no one. Everything said or written with a negative tonality or implication can be distilled into its ‘real’ points of interest: this is why Pain bodies ‘hate’ lawyers, for it is their business to objectify subjectivity, putting one’s ‘little self’ into the big world of relativity. One’s complaints belong to billions of collective participants; remove one person on this earth, in totality, everything disappears, particularly the remover.
Perhaps you meant well in encouraging people to express their essences, yet, I
would ask you to please go deeper into the ideas around supporting or justifying such things as the angst ridden genius, perceptions like the ‘no pain, no gain’ motto.
It is possible to laugh in the middle of a raging crying fit. This points to an incredible place within all of us, a place that intuitively knows that ~ ‘All it not what it seems’.
This is not to say that tenacity is not a welcomed ‘edge’, often its healthy to have pure H12 flowing through one’s convictions, so long as its not fueling a crusade, inquisition or subjectively omnipotent guruship.
I am not sure where you were referencing Siddiq, concerning children not being at risk in the FoF: please correct me Siddiq if I am responding to something you did not imply or say.
Siddiq,
If you did imply that children are not at risk in the FoF, children of FoF students (assuming your idea of risk involves something synonymous with the sexual exploitations experienced upon students of RB and his followers)…I must stress here, that you are absolutely mistaken: this would be an ultra-solar position to conjure upon this subject. For instance ~
There are young teenagers, not in the FoF, though daughters and sons of students, spending time with RB’s inner circle members who have the following self calming aspects of lifestyle ~
Smoking marijuana, excessive alcohol consumption, pornography, infra-sex activities, the taking of artificial drug stimulates and relaxants.
If you are someone who has a budding teenager whose spending allot of time with any of RB’s boys, particularly one whose first name starts with R., buyers beware.
This is not a judgment, like all ‘Sold As Is’ signs, it simply tells the buyer not to come back to the seller with complaints or accusations. Therefore this is a sign and only a sign.
My advice to Clara and anyone else who is one of the more ‘broad reaching types’, to spam this blog address as much as possible, via internet, postal and overseas mail, along with a few ‘key’ hard copies of this blog commentary. For instance ~ Rick Ross now has a link to this blog site.
_________________________________
In reply to #59, concerning wine consumption in a spiritual school.
There was rampant alcohol consumption by Ouspensky, Gurdjieff, Orage , etc. Both O’s and O’s physical deaths were attributed to the chronic consumption of hard liquor.
For me, it is not so much about the alcohol that’s being consumed, the self-calming aspect of it and the likes, it is the context in which it serfs along, riding a wave that’s daily disappearing into a desert of no return.
Alcohol can be an ascending octave, though this is a very unique, a one in a thousand circumstance, like having a beer after push mowing a big lawn or cooking a steak in red wine.
It is no mistake that the FoF began with a vineyard, symbolically, I see it as simply another element immersed in the structure of spiritual-school-form so to eventually bring about a graduation from it or conscious moderation thereof.
Yet in the FoF wine is mostly used to feed deeper vibrations of pain body hunger, buffer true level of being participation with the artificial prying open of higher emotional center, which results in a facial and bloodstream expression, with no mass, no content or context to personal consciousness.
As a subject of Pain-body addiction, it also protracts the pain-ego of being a movie-star-alcoholic: this is not meant to be cynical, for many do not know spiritual schools and may see it as such, though, unlike other places on the planet, ego-spiritual schools do not wear the crucifix as a necklace, they carry it around, life sized, with a little wheel attached to its end.
Wine, big money, fine impressions and the like, these do produce higher hydrogens in of themselves, though very seldom can the partakers of such affirmations match those hydrogens from within, from a point of view in being the words , i.e., can you walk the talk?
So many times I have witnessed 23,000 dollar Harleys sitting in front of incredibly ‘different’ abodes of the rider. It is interesting that one can allow the cooking stove to develop multiple layers of sedimentary food spillage, yet, a few drops of asphalt on the chrome motor initiates a one hour ritual with a toothbrush that could pale any archaeological student’s training. How is it that one can love heaven and hate life?
For me, when I see a picture of saints or angels ascending a ladder to heaven from earth, I try to see it as walking down the ladder backwards.
As in ‘the rest of life’, the same goes for the FoF… Wine and all other biological and visual aphrodisiacs are stationed on earth to graduate from, to internalize, to learn conscious moderation from a beginning point of excess usually.
So, yes, the FoF has a staggering number of closet-alcoholics and copious amounts of wine, tequila and beer are consumed at Isis; yet, so what, take a look around, America is the modern day door salesman of debauchery. Is it not ironic that after shopping for your groceries your presented at the cashier with, alcohol, sweets, gossip, cigarettes, gambling, pornography and money back, in case you don’t have enough to by these things? Sometimes its really too obvious, the messages, yet, perhaps it has to be that way.
Again, for me, its the context. The FoF has many aphrodisiacs, RB is one of them. Another is the willy-nilly-community that has formed around this so called fourth-way-school… There are so many sub-groups in the FoF, one could make a miniature replica of the 50 states in Oregon House.
These sub-groups or ‘clicks’ have developed through a hunger for individual, conscious understanding; though cannot provide much of anything substantial because ‘clicks’ click for they do not allow its participants to touch the ‘off’ button, personal buffers, feature plays, irridations, all play the major roles in what can and cannot happen within these sub-groups. For instance,
apologizing before giving a photograph,
apologizing after giving a photograph,
gossip, exaggerations, laughing at failure,
saying, “I know this is negative, but….”
saying, “I don’t want to say this, but….”
saying, “How is your misery going?”
These ‘little nests smoldering’ were also mapped out by RB, he has created the master blue print for these FoF phenomenon; yet, just like strict motor cycle clubs, its a human impulse to gather in guild-like-clusters. If you ride a BMW, you had better not have a Triumph tattooed on your bicep, if your a Bandito, you’d better not get caught golfing in Palm Springs.
____________________
Graduate, love everything. Whalerider’s recent post concerning his grandmother’s death reminded me of a story.
Equipped with my budding magnetic center, one day I was called to my great grandmother’s house to assist. I was about 15 or 16 then: my g.g. was dying, she was 99+, my father and his brother could not take the impression of her suffering, she had the appearance of a skeleton with a thin layer of skin.
It was intense as I approached the room, a caretaker had to change the sheets and needed someone to lift my g.g. up in the meantime. Grown men, in their late fifties ,leaving the room as death-awe struck ‘eight year olds’, deathbed scenes have no room for false personality, oftentimes, even essence goes out the window.
As I held her in my arms, hearing her wailing at the top of her lungs,(she was suffering primarily from chronic heart failure) writhing against my grip, thrashing to and fro, small drip-drop tears fell from my eyes, not the streaming type.
It was here that I was afforded yet another real look at love in its most bare forms: it is being ‘from’ such places we are enabled to see through the make-believe intolerances of others, the child’s play hidden inside discarded suits of armor and be quietly humbled by the true struggle to progress along this very difficult, trying, spiritual path: yet, one must press on, everything that comes to us was sent by return address.
Love to you all.
May 14, 2007 at 10:12 pm
To Elena (89)
Wonderful post.
The 48 Laws of Power are also interesting. (Just google that term if you’re interested.)
To Rita Penfold (105) Wonderful news that you feel happy. I admit that I always noticed a depressed & repressed feeling in the Fellowship.
I remember after my first meeting I drove home and couldn’t stop crying. I was somehow disappointed because the members seemed depressed. Unfortunately, I didn’t listen to that first instinct.
This discussion board is a blessing!
May 14, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Re Dick Moron on Lord Pentland visiting Oregon House. This is how the story came down to me from older students. They said that Pentland was raising money for the movie about Gurdjieff, Meetings with Remarkable Men. And that Robert had declined to give the money but instead sent Pentland a gift of a pillow! At this point in the story, the older students would add, smirking: “It was a very beautiful pillow.” They also said that Robert had commented how Lord Pentland was a sincere man number four and had a developed king of hearts, or something to that effect. Now contrast this with the Fellowship website, according to which Pentland was the Teacher’s teacher’s teacher. The Teacher’s teacher’s teacher, and not even conscious. Sent away with a pillow to ease his sleep.
May 14, 2007 at 10:27 pm
To 103: Thank you Renald for hearing and giving me feedback on the subject itself. Flattery is what I think does not help us, but feedback like yours is communication.
To the Sheik,
I wish to thank you for having opened another page for my aim to help address areas of the Fellowship that I though needed deeper addressing and move out of the bickering of the blog. I was also hoping it would be a sight that appeared where ever on the internet one searched for the Fellowship of Friends so that those searching would find not only the Fellowship view of itself but more questioning sites.
Going through that exercise I found even the blog appears way down the list and the FoF propaganda outrides the possibilities of more questioning sites.
Coming from a third world country I realize how easy it is for people to not find a more questioning site, I never even knew about the possibility of blogs and the fact that the sketchbook is only available from within the blog itself is not going to help much.
Still I thank you for having run along with me in my need to say something besides defending myself from the detractors of what I was trying to say.
Almost a month and a half has passed since I left the Fellowship and my position has moved close to 180 degrees south. In my naive conviction that something could change if we all understood our situation, in the hope of keeping the marriage I had committed to if there were any changes, I was desperate to talk but I am not desperate now. My desire to make a selection from the blog to make it easier for students to read what needs to be read, has much diminished, or the wish to save or convince anyone of the things I know for myself has also much waned. The blog, even with all its bickering, already contains more than enough of what needs to be looked at. Like eating bony fish, each one can discard his own bones.
I beg you forgive me if I’ve given you extra work and a little more work in letting you know that you can delete, erase, or do whatever you wish with the sketchbook because at this point I’ll be happy to continue participating in the blog without making any further efforts to make it easier for those inside to listen to me or others. I am leaving faster than I thought and wish to open myself to “life”.
Again I thank you and will continue to support your work with the blog.
May 14, 2007 at 10:33 pm
#89 Elena
Thank you for that post. I have thought about those parallels also. It is striking that Girard would say something like that. There is a link to a site on Mark H. #8-323 that addresses similar things in Rashneesh’s group.
Dick moron. I agree with you about “Little Children”. Definitely worth viewing.
Anyone see last episode of the “Sopranos”. Some of the most powerful t.v. especially the last 20 minutes- Tony’s son with the therapist and Tony at the casino and afterwards. It is really fascinating watching what the writers are doing with AJ.
May 14, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Bruce, #112
“RB and Pentland sort of had this humility competition going on,with their own humility “acts”… Actually,I came away feeling Pentland was closer to the ideas. Just my opinion.”
Bruce, Hi. I’d forgotten about the “my humility is bigger than yours” competition, ROTFL. Your comments are dead on, as I remember it. Pentland had a kind of gravity and thoughtfulness that impressed, and Needleman was hilarious bouncing around in the back of a pickup touring the vineyard. Thanks.
JoelF
May 14, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Hello “youmeusthey” (111),
Can you elaborate? It could be that some others understand what you are conveying, but I don’t.
For example (just one example of what I find unclear in your post), what do you mean by, “Can we let go?”
Who is we? What does “let go” mean? And what are we letting go of? And are you ASKING us if we can let go, or are you TELLING us that you believe we should let go?
I don’t mean to single you out… because I’ve seen a lot of posts like this, where I end up guessing what the writer meant, and after a few seconds simply give up trying to understand it and move on. However, if you can elaborate or describe your viewpoint in different words (more directly), I’d appreciate it.
May 14, 2007 at 11:15 pm
Shaman (#33)
On the continuing necessity of three lines of work:
“Three lines of work” is a conceptual grid offered by one tradition, the Gurdjieff/Ouspensky version of the “4th Way.” It’s only one of many such grids superimposed over reality. Try translating your understanding of the “three lines” into other language. Instead of “second line,” how about “relating to other beings in a compassionate, constructive manner, treating them as you would like to be treated, trying to help them realize their potential.” Instead of “third line,” how about “serving the community, so that everyone has an opportunity to live a more productive life.”
Do we need to be of service, or compassionate and constructive, in order to “keep evolving”? Or is it fine to be self-absorbed, focused solely on our personal salvation, until we reach the “goal”?
So what do you suppose is the point of “reaching the goal”? To check out? To exist in a state of perpetual orgasm? To be free from having to make an effort ever again?
Other traditions have addressed this question (and after all, Gurdjieff didn’t develop his grids in a vacuum). For example, one fundamental difference between Mahayana Buddhism (of which zen is one form, and out of which tantric Buddhism developed) and the practices that had preceeded it for centuries is that in Mahayana Buddhism, the practitioner vows to work for the benefit of all other beings, and to put off his own final release until that occurs. Before that, it was accepted doctrine that one worked for one’s own “evolution.” So those who developed Mahayana Buddhism, which then spread throughout Asia, apparently concluded that service to others was an intrinsic, indispensible part of the path to an extent not previously acknowledged by doctrine.
According to tradition, after his enlightenment the Buddha was not inclined to teach; he felt that people could not understand. He was persuaded otherwise by a divine spirit, Brahma Sahampati.
My own interpretation: initial reluctance notwithstanding, the Buddha’s own compassion, an aspect of his own consciousness, compelled him to serve others for the rest of his life. Buddhists before Mahayana were not necessarily lacking in this same understanding, but as in any tradition, doctrines have a way of calcifying and need to be periodically renewed. The same happened in Judaism when Jesus came along and reemphasized the need to “love thy neighbor” (not “love thy dues-paying FoF student”), and again when the Baal Shem Tov taught what became Hasidism.
Service, whether to other people, animals, the community, the truth, is not a tool for evolution. It is an expression of one’s own higher understanding, as well as a means to deepen that understanding. Service is an opportunity, a gift.
Anonymous (#45)
“>Consciousness is primordial and permanent.”
“This is a theory that cannot be verified.”
Anonymous, it is a fact you have not yet verified. As I have more sympathy with Mahayana Buddhism than that aspect of Fourth Way doctrine that teaches that all but the Elect become “food for the moon,” I expect that you will verify it.
May 14, 2007 at 11:16 pm
#100 Kid Shelleen
Whoa! You got me reeling on the back of my horse with that one! “You should see them from this side.”
When I saw that he came out with that book I was glad despite my mixed emotions toward Mr. Hitchens.
IMO the answer is yes to your invitation to discuss. It seems to me that atheists may be a little closer to the truth than believers. One less layer of delusional concepts. The question then comes up could they remain atheists after they awakened? Sure why not?
May 14, 2007 at 11:37 pm
Comments for Anonymous (#9-46)
Regarding your claim, “FOF is the fourth way as it now is…” ——Really? REALLY?
I’d be interested to see your list of verifications to support your statements of “fact”, dear Anonymous! And I’m not being facetious.
Regarding your post to Arthur (#9-70), it is plain you just don’t get it, or are pretending to not get it. I haven’t met or read that anyone is concerned with Burton’s sexual orientation or appetite (except perhaps as a symptom of something more important, in the case of the satyriasis). The concern is, the UNEQUAL POWER. Burton chooses weak young men who have little personal power or sense of self-worth. They have been persuaded to give up their will to their teacher. On the other hand, Burton has a great deal of power. So, the relationship cannot be between two equals, equal in power. Thus it follows that there is coercion, and harm follows coercion. It doesn’t matter if there is lots of accompanying flattery or wine or rewards, or even if the victim apparently gives his consent. Do you get it now? I know, after 25 years (#9-82) of denial and formatory responses, the chances are slim, but surely you do understand that your red herrings of ‘subjective morality’ or ‘horror of sex’ are obvious to everyone on the blog?
I am here because I feel some responsibility, because I might be able to help (I hope this blog or an archive will be available far into the future ‘at the touch of a button’ as a resource for anyone needing it), and because it is helping me understand myself and others better. Maybe there is bitterness for some, but with it goes a chance of healing. Look at the changes already in the tone of some of the participants as they work through their grief and anger. I wasn’t in love with the FOF, I was in love with the potential of the FOF, a very big difference. Read Elena’s wonderful post (#9-85) again to get a sense of that. And I am deeply grateful for my experiences in the FOF; there I learned to recognize and value my conscience, with all that implies. Joining was the best thing I could have done at that time; in fact it was the only thing, since that is what happened. Leaving was the same, only the reasons were far clearer—and I made the leap with the counsel of my conscience, the voice of the godhead within.
With love to all,
Ames
May 14, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Here’s more on the Pentland/Burton pillow story. The following excerpt is from p. 12 of “Taking with the Left Hand: Enneagram Craze, People of the Bookmark [that would be us], and the Mouravieff Phenomenon”, written by William Patrick Patterson, published in 1998:
****************************
Though I never met Burton, I did meet a man who was a member of his inner circle and who was present when Lord Pentland visited Burton. The film version of Meetings with Remarkable Men had been released and Burton had his students passing out flyers for Burton’s centers to film-goers. Burton believed Pentland was coming to hand over his students to him because he had recognized Burton’s “higher development” — Burton claims his is the highest consciousness man can attain. Burton even made a bet to this effect with several of his own students. In fact, Lord Pentland was coming to ask Burton to make a sizable contribution to the film inasmuch as he was falsely profiting by it. Upon Pentland’s arrival, Burton presented him with an expensive sleeping pillow. This was Burton’s idea of an esoteric joke. Several of Burton’s close students joined the two men for dinner. “Watching the two of them together, there was just no question of which man was awake and which was asleep,” the former Burton student told me, “and I left the next day to become a student of Lord Pentland’s.”
May 14, 2007 at 11:50 pm
#72 Sheik
Jacob Needleman in his book “Why Can’t We Be Good” gives an example of an exercise that he tried, where 2 students having opposite opinions on a sensitive subject were asked to do the following; one person would clearly state their position on the subject and before the other person could respond with their position they had to repeat as clearly as possible back to the first person the opinion that was just expressed. Then the second person expressed their opinion and the first person had to repeat back. This exercise forced each person to listen and digest the other person’s formulation before responding. Very powerful.
#95 Traveler #106 dick moron
Lord Pentland was a student of Ouspensky for 10 years and went to Gurdjieff (as did many of Ouspensky’s students) after O died. He worked with G for a year and was primarily a student of Madame DS. He was part of the early formation of the Gurdjieff Foundation and was uniquely suited (financially and personally) to help organize and run the New York branch of the Foundation. He later started a branch in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
After leaving fof I corresponded with Lord Pentland, as well as other students of Ouspensky, and had the opportunity to meet him and attend meetings that he conducted in Los Angeles.
I don’t think the Foundation per se looks down on Ouspensky, after all they use In Search and other O books, rather they just don’t put him on the same level as G.
Lord P visited FOF asking for donations to help fund the production of the movie Meetings With Remarkable Men. There was a flurry of excitement at Renaissance at the time because it was rumored that we would be getting movement teachers from the Foundation. All of that came to naught because RB withheld support for the movie, which probably was just as well because in James Moore’s words, “the movie was stillborn”. Anyone who has seen it can surely attest to the poor quality of the thing.
Perhaps in a future post I will tell of the people and groups I was able to contact after leaving fof. The first generation students are all gone now and the second generation students are aging (myself included)and it is truly a shame that so many wonderful people will never be known by current and future generations of 4th way students. It is a rich and varied history. And by the way, there have been tens of thousands of 4th way people who were never affiliated with fof.
Best to you all
Steve Anderson
May 15, 2007 at 2:57 am
Dear Anonymous, re#79
Suggesting that people damaged by RB’s manipulation are just “upset” and that
negative reactions to the steady stream of abuse stories come merely from the subjective morality of the sexually repressed, makes you in my opinion, the sickest, “mo fo” to have turned up here so far.
Meanwhile over on Wikipedia, the unbelievably insincere statement below has been included to explain away RB’s predictions.
“Response to critical view of predictions;
There are several places in Burton’s book where world war is mentioned. The word “war”, can be used symbolically. Symbolism is a common method of esoteric teaching. He says:
“Hydrogen warfare seems inevitable, and one no longer has to be a prophet to predict it”. [29]
Since the Fourth Way teaching says that different levels of hydrogens rule over different bodies in man [| See section on Higher Bodies], the “inevitable hydrogen warfare” Burton mentions in his book ” might well be related to this “civil war within”, since it is common for spiritual teachers to talk in parables.”
There’s a small gang of people in the FOF responsible for the Wikipedia statement and the Howard Carter, Siddiq, Anonymous tag teams. They meet regularly and obviously have a plan. Exactly why, when the whole organisation is gasping for honesty these people choose to continue to mislead is hard to understand, it’s trickle down lying and it starts from the top.
May 15, 2007 at 4:39 am
Regarding Traveler Says 9/95.
I have a close family member who was a student of Alex Horn for a number of years. He says that Alex never claimed he had a direct connection to Ouspensky or Gurdjieff.
FoF member 1978 to 1994
May 15, 2007 at 8:53 am
I guess it is clear that our white-robed new guru, former friend, Mr. Kiran (a.k.a. Ulrich Schmidt) does consider it far beneath him to address the reasonable questions posed by RSVP on the last page.
I do not care for the many responses by people who do so obviously not have a clue but do not seem to be bothered by a little detail, called TRUTH–still important to some of us.
In my book Kiran’s non-response simply proves he is admitting by his deafening silence that there is absolutely no basis for his slanderous and scandalous accusations about Abraham and Robert and probably also the accusations about being ripped off by his business partners at the time (HS and TS)–all NONSENSE, lies and a cheap ploy to arouse our disgust for the FOF. It is not working bubba.
and what is more, ALL Kiran’s postings are now seriously in doubt (especially his stories about what happened, not to mention the insincere flattering of the sheik–please where can we send donations!–give me a break!) and I for one consider Kiran nothing but a cheap charlatan, a liar and a slanderer–not worthy of any respect.
Readers, consider, if a man cannot be truthful about one thing, he cannot be trusted about other matters.
Kiran, you wrote a lot about your coma, I truly hope you will come out of the aftermath of it and have the guts and the simple decency to admit you were lying (talking without knowing the truth and just unsupported assumptions).
And here is another little fact that seems to be overlooked by Kiran and his misguided admirers: the people who visited him in Cairo, nursed him, took care of him, helped him and his family, including Abraham and Robert, were doing so out of friendship–NOT for some alterior motive. I know. There were many.
Look Both Ways
May 15, 2007 at 9:10 am
“The problem is all inside your head”,
he said to me,
“The answer’s easy, dear,
just trust influence C!”
(Let me help you in your struggle to be free,
There must be 50 ways to leave a teacher)
He said, “It’s really not my habit to drink splooge,
Furthermore, I hope my meaning won’t be lost or misconstrued.
“But let me go first”, (cuz he’s a sleazy dude)
Thank God there’s 50 ways to leave a teacher
50 ways to leave a teacher
You just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new aim, James
You don’t need to be gay, Ray
Just cut your soul free.
Hop off the bus, Gus
You don’t need to discuss much
He’ll promise you the school, Fool
Just cut your soul free
He said, “It peeves me so to see you in such pain,
But man cannot do, dear, can you just cum again?”
I said, “No thanks, but would please explain,
About the 44 angels?”
He said, “Why don’t you just sleep with me tonight?
And I believe in the morning you’ll begin to see the light.”
And then he kissed me,
Then I realized,
no one cares about my plight!
Thank God there’s 50 ways to leave a teacher
50 ways to leave a teacher
You just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new aim, James
You don’t need to be gay, Ray
Just cut your soul free
Hop off the bus, Gus
You don’t need to discuss much
He’ll promise you the school, Fool
Just cut your soul free
******************
Like others how mentioned, I also dreaded when I was “on duty” at the academy. I couldn’t get behind the symbolic way RB was feeding on our sex energy at night, in the dark. I made the effort to give up my will, but the sex was just so not me. I felt something in me shift to the side, not open up, and that made me feel gross. I think the tipping point in my ‘relationship’ with RB was when he told me late one night that the school would be mine. It felt like he was playing up to my vanity. It just gave me the creeps when he said that. He took me for a fool. I also had reason to suspect he was arranging a relationship for me with a loyal female student, so that he could maintain access to me. I had to take my destiny into my own hands.
Thanks to JoelF, for your disclosure about what RB said to you on the drive to LA. about being the next man number 5. I really appreciate that you shared that tidbit! A pattern is beginning to emerge. I wonder to whom else RB told that? I remember you, BTW. I attended a meeting you lead at Renaissance once, you’d filter the angles for everyone by playing umpire, calling this angle a slider, this one is a curve ball. Some people were entertained. Were you a Yankees fan? In your post #107 I realize you were making a point to someone else. Please don’t lump me with the others and shed doubt on my story when I poured my soul out on this blog. I was the eyes and ears for the rest of us in there. Working together, we can sort through the bits and pieces to get a clearer picture of the deception that RB foisted upon us. That’s how he keeps the FOF going for so many years; he only reveals himself a little at a time, keeping people at a distance. I am not hiding behind my anonymity. It is for my protection; it’s not a ruse. I don’t care what you think about anyone else, I’ll stand up for myself. I want you to know I’m am being sincere and telling the truth. Can you feel that?
I remember the first gift RB gave me, before the funny business started. It was a gold plated watch. Now in some traditional eastern spiritual circles, a present from a teacher has great meaning. It is endowed with the teacher’s energy. I was sincerely thankful, and gave RB a nice, warm, big hug. He said, “It’s only a cheap watch, dear.” I suddenly felt cheapened, too. It was a jab to the pit of my stomach, like something else would be expected from me to get a better gift. He was right, though, the watch fell apart about a year later.
**************************
To Rita: Thanks for your acknowledgment. Welcome to the land of the free!
Ann Onymous: Thanks for your acknowledgment, too. Let your conscience be your guide always and everywhere. You are wise to listen to it, otherwise it shrinks.
To Gabriella F: Thanks for your story; it will help others to find the beauty in life.
WhaleRider
1979-1985
May 15, 2007 at 9:29 am
Dear Kiran,
I just found this forum two weeks ago. Since then I was reading messages. I am not a member of the FOF, yet I have a general idea about the 4th Way teaching out of reading. My inner experience of myself is based on going through major illnesses throughout my entire life. I deeply know it is part of my fate and I do not compline anymore, which is the greatest relief I have ever had. I have been on the boarder of death several times and for me there is no school better than that. I was reading about your experiences with mistreat. It sounds quite unpleasant. No one can know how bad or how unfair it really was since no one can stand in somebody else’s place. These experiences can only be judged within a person’s own self. Only you can sincerely say to yourself how much of what took place there was caused by other people’s weaknesses and how much of it came through your weaknesses. It reminded me of what Gurdjieff said about people who were deliberately being mistreated and were asked to leave his group. Gurdjieff said that an honest person would still act in an honest way even in such unpleasant circumstances. I also remember reading somewhere (maybe Ouspensky) that ‘the worse thing that can happen to one is that he is right’. As I said, you are the only one who can sincerely know.
Eli
May 15, 2007 at 10:18 am
Keith (126): That’s one hell of a great exercise.
Look Both Ways (129): Reading your comments (and especially the latest one) I felt that a more appropriate way of calling yourself would have been to use the name ‘Look My Way (and share in the bitterness)’. The name ‘Look Both Ways’ implies a non-judgamental attitude and objectivity, of which you possess very little. I find your comment entirely distasteful, even though, as you very well know, I am not the slightest bit a fan of Kiran. I would also like to point out that very often people do not feel the need to show more proof after they have said their thing, simply because they have said their thing in its entirety and it is up to the reader to make up his mind. This, to me, shows a lot of maturity.
May 15, 2007 at 10:25 am
to dick moron 8/450 and
Rita Penfold 9/99
Thank you both for your kind nod.
Anybody tried Parabola Magazine?
Many who write there were influenced by Lord Pentland. http://www.parabola.org
For those of you interested in Peter Brook, director of Meetings with Remarkable Men, try this http://www.gurdjieff.org/nicolescu3.htm
Cheers,
Shelley
May 15, 2007 at 10:27 am
Elena: I have deleted the unnecessary accusations coming from ‘Plain’ and ‘Getting to the Bottom of It’ on the Sketchbook. I have no problem with advertising the sketchbook as a good resource on FoF information on every page of this discussion (in a way that would make new-comers visit it first) as long as the Sketchbook is good and without unnecessary hate, anger, or blame comments. I also feel the need for a shorter, more concise version of the discussion, and I definitely do not think that you should give up! The SketchBook is not a bad idea, but it will take some work.
May 15, 2007 at 11:09 am
To Post #100/9, #118/9,
a look at another chapter in the Lord’s visit to the FoF and an epiphany concerning the FoF’s version of The Gods.
_______________________________
Dear Kid Shelleen:
Everyone is an atheist till their re-minded of God.
Somewhere along the zig-zag road of man’s evolution (see “Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson” for references) certain beings of thoughtful influence moved from god-state aims to god-think aims: the idea of god replaced the ‘I’ of god, hence, the birth of the couch potato, a largely rounded individual with many potato-eyes, who, developing ‘underground’, never really shows what its up to, until ‘forced harvest ‘ brings it to the light of a practical appetite… the FoF is experiencing an early harvest this year… spuds are everywhere.
Don’t worry, be happy, god won’t weigh your brain instead of your heart. As I have experienced the phenomenon, on earth, people who have a fervor for re-minding themselves of god equate with the idea of non-existence, while those who un-mind themselves of god are ‘gods’, i.e., egoists .
Personal, intentional trust in a deity, other than one’s aspirations in Becoming, is a rare find. One question is ~
Can ‘i’ leave god alone and be?
______________________________________
To Elena, Post #118/9
Concerning blog exposure on the internet.
To begin on a constructive memo, as of last week, Rick Ross now has a link to this blog site: I was dumbfounded to find out that he didn’t know about the blog up until Chapter 8, go figure. Rick Ross’s site is #1 on Google when searching for the FoF.
Clara, if you wish to get higher up on the Google ratings with some sort of Journal of FoF, then you have to do the following ~
Create a hosted website, perhaps with GoDaddy.com. With this site, create many links to and from it. Host others, have your site linked by others, (share links with high ranking sites, not just anybody), etc.
You’ll have to probably set up some sort of Paypal donation, because its gonna cost to have it post higher on the ranking pages and to maintain it: call Google, they’ll tell you what you need to know concerning getting it to rank high.
Advertising other ex-students services and businesses on the site would be another way of getting support; though this blog material is pretty visceral, so, its a bit of a stretch that every business would benefit in PR terms to align itself to it’s particular ‘ambiance’. Yet, there are certain services that would ‘fit right in’ like counseling services, coaching, various therapies and people who simply know that their clients would see such a site as a plus and not controversial.
Don’t worry, be happy, this blog site is growing, not like potatoes, by the good efforts of ‘others’ who are spreading it to key areas throughout the cyber-spiritual-community.
_____________________________________
Something occurred to me today, that I sense will be of interest to current and not so current FoF students… An epiphany,
I like these occurrences, the mind can be a sort of celestial fax machine at times.
So here goes ~
For a very long time it has been the belief of FoF students that C-Influence, i.e., 44+ celestial beings, having escaped the circle in mechanical incarnations, thusly moving about freely within the cramp confounds of our solar system, are assisting and ‘positively’ supporting the FoF, its form, its teacher, its ‘way’, mapping out a new race, a new civilization. If anyone can show me a new civilization who does not have its roots or ash-phoenix from a previous one’s sweat, blood and transformed suffering, I will humbly serve your deified incarnation as a spiritual-butler, chauffeur, or gardener for a 50% reduced rate.
So, we see that this ‘new civilization’ is simply another of RB’s affirmations, an externalized symbol of what can only happen within a single person, one at a time, not without an enormous humility and conscious recognition of having once been a professional idiot.
This is not the ‘aha’ though.
It dawned on me that all of us carry around some form of celestial connection, regardless of the level of being in its realized outward form, i.e., how big of a part it actually plays in one’s practical and personal experiential-time here on earth.
Now, with this ‘little luggage’ (one’s personal relationship to ‘up there’), one enters a so called ‘esoteric school’, finding ‘big luggage’ to put one’s ‘little luggage’ into: yet, that ‘little luggage’ has not actually changed, its simply ‘in there’, i.e., in a different context.
There’s allot of excitement within the process of growing up: parties, volley ball, deep coffee talk, republican presidential races, adopting retired gray hounds, watching baby birds hatch, growing your own tea leaves, golf and loving life.
Inside all this there is an eagerness to share, to go towards some ‘bigger aim’ than one’s circular habits. Personal gain is a mysterious area, its tricky to confirm the intension’s before and afterwards…That’s why I like ‘actually meeting’ people who ‘think’ their important: they are very good at thinking their important, though ‘being’ important is a totally different ‘triad’… It’s quiet, unspeakable, requires no thought.
So, it came to me that, as I have watched hundreds travel down the FoF ‘path-way”, with ‘big luggage’ in hand, that 99% of all that they have verified concerning C-Influence has been through the faculty of mind, personal interpretation, semantics, a habit to see omens as ‘personal’, the emotional center being so fast that one does not see the construction of ‘personal’ after the ‘omen’ appears ‘true’ and ‘clean’.
It also occurred to me that C-Influence has never directly approached the school as a whole, not for lack of opportunity with all the fund raisers and stuff.
So, I asked myself, “What has C-Influence actually said about all the FoF going ons? Have they ever said ‘yes’ to that and ‘no’ to some other ‘that’? Have they initialed, personalized any one format or attitude adopted by anyone in the FoF? Have they ever said ‘This is what we wish, That is what we don’t wish?’
For me, through my whole life the answer must be ‘no’ to all of these, for I must be true to the admission of my conscience that whenever I have drawn an affirmative, communicative positive or negative, attaching C-Influence as the perpetrator’s of some ‘omen’, to its meaning or direction, it has been ‘I’, me, who has written the article under the Headline.
Again, through communications from my conscience have lead me to believe and sense this way or that way concerning the ’shocks’ placed by the celestial, steering me here and there. One can build a lifestyle around having god as a neighbor, yet, do you really know what he does on Sundays?
I could not believe it! Wow! What an Aha!
That when a student asked a question to the gods, perhaps later a ’sign’ would occur…
For instance, concerning RB’s infra sex issues ~ A student asked C-Influence about this, the next day they were walking down the street, stopping, peering inside a shop’s window, saw a pornographic video tape showing various scenes with the number of the video being 44 …
Thus, in their mind, this meant that C-Influence was creating the play, the movie, etc., somehow this justified the existence of ‘the play’ in the FoF, no matter ‘the plays’ inner-meaning or outwards repercussions upon the essential feeling-body of others …
Yet, the level of the student’s being had ‘conveniently’ left a few things out, like, the actual event itself, what ‘it’ really is in context to RB and the FoF aim to create spiritual, graduated individuals.
The interpretation of the ‘affirmative ok’ was based solely on the receiver’s subjectivity and non participation in all levels of FoF affairs, it is a far removed point-of-view, as they say, all is icing if your inside the cake. So apply this for awhile, follow your tracks and if your a new student, don’t go using bread crumbs to mark your Path.
How would a more objective look at this ’shock’ spin it?
For starters, we see, not what we want to see, rather, what we can see and have to see. Regret is simply impatience, inertia of the mind in the now. As I see it, the picture said nothing, meant nothing, it simply affirmed the existence of the form and only the form, as a creation by the gods to serve some means, though not to an end, rather to the beginning of our presence.
How else could it be: why would immortal beings have the Formatory Apparatus as part of their bath kit?
We see in the omen that which either supports our ‘personal’ work or ‘personal’ inertia, no more or less, it happens in the moment and is relative only to the now as it happens to oneself, applying an omen to a group of people from a personal point of view is, well, silly.
The FoF is reaping the fruits of RB’s ignorance with this spiritual-tool: visions are for the visionary, not for people addicted to watching anything that comes on TV. The only hydrogen-warfare that’s truly taking place or ever will, is the intentional suffering within you.
As we grow up, these ’shocks’ become more profound, less important or meaningful, yet the depth has always been there, it is us, our growth whose bring to them a new level of being in their midst.
The same goes for judging one’s parents, all is hell and brimstone so far as their injustice’s and ignorance, till one finds oneself at the beginning of the parental role, then, slowly, it dawns on one that he or she did their very best with exactly the ‘little luggage’ they had, after all, we can do no different with ours.
Everything is relative, FoF students have yet to be possessed with this level of spiritual responsibility from RB, the task of being without form-meaning, yet, as Rilke said “We are transformers of the invisible.” So, logically we must first be idiots before angels.
The form of the FoF is pure as new snow, it is its ‘meaning’ its ‘context’ and ‘personal application’ that’s corrupted.
Nearly any objectively sprinkled form will do, so long as the in-former remains transparent, RB, from the very first day of the formation of the FoF, then Mt. Carmel, has been as transparent as a bowling ball.
Go deeper into this idea of form and you’ll find that its the ‘idea’ of the form that’s missing the objectivity needed to move through it and beyond, likewise with omens, signs and visions.
Someday it will be a big ’shock’ when god is asked about the meaning of crop circles, when ‘he’ laughs, saying, “I was just doodling, you doodle don’t you, go figure.”
_______________________________
On Lord Pentland’s arrival to FoF ~
RB entered his room (stood at the doorway), as the Lord was taking a nap, seeing that he was sleeping with his feet sticking out beyond the surface of the mattress, still wearing shoes, RB commented to a student that this was proof that he was inner considering.
To me, it just looks like he fell asleep with his shoes on.
The Pain body can find pain anywhere: it loves to shop for drama and the FoF is expert at this shopping for pain, painful juxtapositions, painful contradictions, painful teacher, painful evolution, painful photographs, painful sex, painful friends, etc.
Yet, step back, take away the ‘painful’ and you have your ‘little luggage’ back, in hand, your ready to graduate, move on, keep it ‘little’; as O., would say,
“Big enough to fit in your pocket.”
Love to you all.
May 15, 2007 at 11:25 am
Dear Wonder in Alice and Friends,
You ask: “Isn’t conscience involved in telling the truth? Valuing the people receiving the information enough to tell the truth?”
Wouldn’t you say that no body lies consciously? That there have to be enough buffers in place to believe in what one is doing?
It is clear to me that I supported the Fellowship for as long as I believed Robert was a conscious being. That was the big lie. It was enough to try to transform, for seventeen years, the fact that at least I, was not “good enough” to belong to the Fellowship that he had created. Isn’t that what is really appalling about the willingness to believe that someone else is superior to one’s self?
To live the lie that to know one’s presence one needs to be in the presence of the other. I never believed that one, that is, I never went to a meeting or a dinner because it made me more present, I went to see the teacher. The show was good until the tone became clearly dogmatic. I had verified during the first year that presence is a consistent affirmation of the divine within each one of us and sincerely believed Robert’s Fellowship was an affirmation…..(The beauty, bit fake and off but it was student’s work)…….until I started listening to the way he consistently emphasized the lower self and then I knew it was subliminal indoctrination. But that was only after he’d blown me away with Dorothy. The indoctrination sounds as though he is talking about the six billion dead people on the planet but it is really talking to his students, reinforcing the separation between himself and them because of their lower self, and then he adopts all other forms to confirm the difference in status.
But didn’t I play the same game? Didn’t I participate in Girard’s dinners and events for four years, two and three times a week, supporting and loving a man who was as willing as Robert to hold himself above the rest? Did I not photograph the servers for not being careful enough to look when he had finished his meal before they took his plate? Did I not tie his shoes in private and in public and embrace his ankles with my hands?
Was giving up all our time not what was expected even if it was at the cost of our eternity? Between sixteen hours of Dorothy and Girards events, did I not end up neglecting to call anyone to private dinners in our house and settled for those few who consistently supported Girard’s events, supporting unconditionally his teacher, the LCSchool, the Arts, his students, many who, like Harriet thought I was taking too much space from the conscious being who had had the bad luck to marry me, because we sincerely struggled to help the other understand the consciousness that we had given our life to.
There are no conscious lies, Wondering Alice. There are only two lies embodied in the being of Robert and Girard and the rest of us are willing to lick the floor with our tongue to get a glimpse of their heart. The “pea size” heart, as the two of us laughed lovingly, convinced that it was growing.
For those of us who come from abroad with the dream that we’ll get to hear at least one of the conscious beings if the other one is too busy for insignificant beings like one, then the opportunity to sit in a symposium is grand and to marry him, even if one knows that he’s still far from being as conscious as Robert, is like stardust falling from heaven.
The real lie is in each of the ones who are willing to give themselves up for another. That is the germ in which the Cult can develop. The other two sit and pretend that the other is more conscious than himself and who could ever say that they are lying when they are only saying it to each other, about each other, and what one is so enchanted by is the love between them? The kiss in the forehead?
Who could prove that a narcissistic sex maniac is lying when he tells the sucker beneath him that he is an angel?
Or, who would dare to lie that Girard is not the conscious being that Robert promised and remind us of all the promised lies?
But where is the need for so much mystery when the real lie is chanted in chorus by every student, screaming out in butterfly garments their absolute conviction that the narcissistic sex maniac is a conscious being and the second conscious being gives his life to defend it with his unconditional theory that we, the students, cannot understand the functions of a conscious man, so that he himself can discard any student in the Fellowship because he/she is just a “function”, “a role”, “an I”, amongst the many in this conscious play, so that he himself can justify his own uncontrollable addiction?
Of course, they, in the inner circle all knew about his addiction but who would they tell? So many students trusted him, why would they tell? But Robert, instead of telling, used us as the scapegoats. He sits Girard in front of the meetings so that he doesn’t have to sit me anywhere, he pretends to give him his hand but takes the carpet from under his feet, the symposiums, Sea Ranch, are banned and slowly he is replaced by Asaf so that those who know can buy into Robert’s morality in chastising Girard’s immorality. Robert, chastising Girard’s inmorality so that he can continue to get away with his own, setting up a whole new generation of pimps. But to make it look even more legitimate, he sacrifices two or three more of his closest friends in the inner circle, who are too confused to understand the riddle.
But it looks good. It looks great in silk clothes and leather shoes. It looks legitimate, no matter at whose cost.
You see Wonder in Lust, when Cynthia found out that I was going out with Girard, she called me and told me that Girard was addicted to porno, child porno. I was of course shocked but precisely the day before, Girard had told me he would go back to his wife Cynthia and stop our relation, I had thanked him and accepted it. A month later he wrote to me and a week later he moved in with me. I did not know to what extent what Cynthia had said was true and even if it was true, I was convinced that the Fellowship was a conscious school, that Robert was a conscious being, that Girard was to become conscious and that with real love Girard would work himself out of such a horrible addiction, if it was as horrible as Cynthia put it, which I had reason to doubt. Of course I was terrified but at the same time I thought I was a hero serving the school!
I, myself had been bisexual for thirty years, I was in a gay man’s school who walked around with his multiple lovers, who was I to judge Girard for watching porno although he’d only actually slept with five women or so he’d told me? I am laughing at the degree of my stupidity but if you realize that I then picked Dorothy, an eighty six year old woman with alzheimer and then picked a manic depressive with a rabit who’d tried to kill herself three times, when I had only tried twice, and then picked another young woman with no less difficulties, you might understand that no one for me is bad enough to not be embraced and I do not mind if it is my stupidity or my lunatic. The king of hearts, mercury saturn, narcissistic sex maniac is not that much more convincing than any body else.
And then, Girard loved me. He loved me every bit of the way in his own very particular form. A form in which I was unconditionally loved as long as I unconditionally denied myself and supported him and Robert. The same that is required of every student, and I did, but only for four years. Then I was simply too exhausted to continue, didn’t have more being to give.
But you must believe me above everything else for it is not a lie, that Girard and I deeply loved each other like a man and a woman without any porno, even though he was unable to make room for a woman in his gay teacher’s school.
Where is the lie in a man that loves in the only way that he knows to love, even if there is no love in his love?
Where is the lie in the love of a man for his teacher when he has to deny everybody else’s presence?
Where is the conscious love of a teacher when he has to separate lovers and sacrifice friends for his own sake? When he makes pimps out of his students?
May 15, 2007 at 11:32 am
p.s. to my last post.
I’ve never lied to my children so why would I lie to you or be afraid of what I am saying?
May 15, 2007 at 12:49 pm
102: Kiran
You post is an excellent example of what it condemns.
—————-
As for the one-liners: the best way to deal with large ballons of hot air is to use a small pin.
May 15, 2007 at 1:53 pm
127: Poo-Poo
I’m not sure what it is that bothers you about sex between adults.
As I see it, your post contains two instructive examples of the abuse of sex: A moralistic indignation, and a referring to a poor anonymous poster as “the sickest, “mo fo” to have turned up here so far”.
It also contains a good example of lying (in the 4th Way meaning of making pronouncements concerning things you don’t know). I haven’t a clue who Carter, Siddiq, et al are, and there is no ’small gang’ in FoF responsible for my posts. You might be a bit paranoid on that one.
As for the stuff on Wikipedia you refer to – which I haven’t read, but will take your word for it — I agree with you fully. If someone in the school is explaining away failed predictions as ’symbolic talk’ which didn’t mean literally what it said at the time, I would consider that total nonsense.
At the same time, failed predictions are important only to those who give them importance. I didn’t join the school because of any predictions and I didn’t/don’t stay in it because of any predictions. Actually, it’s a good thing the predictions failed to materialise: not only because there’s no joy in seeing people fall in the sea or get atomised, but also because it shed those for whom predictions assumed undue importance. The end result was increased focus on what matters.
May 15, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Up to the reader to make up his or her mind? exactly–is that not where a minimum of truthful reporting comes in? There are simple and basic facts here that are being blatantly lied about on this blog.
If most do not care about the truth, that is their business, I care and many others do. A simple explanation or retraction would serve better in some cases, as people’s “opinions” are of course based on what they read.
Example, if Whalerider is making up his story, what is it worth? Same for Inner Circle facts, etc. This is not a free-for-all-make-it-up-as you-go-along, or perhaps it is and I am entirely mistaken.
Kiran is the worst example trying to get mileage from his dead wife and her friend–it is a little distasteful. To have the efforts of literally dozens of students smeared who tried to help Kiran after the accident is becoming an ugly joke. As this blog proves, the joke is on Kiran and all the gullible readers.
I look both ways, and try to be objective about it. Thanks for posting.
May 15, 2007 at 5:28 pm
To: Look Both Ways 9/129
You said – “Readers, consider, if a man cannot be truthful about one thing, he cannot be trusted about other matters.”
Does this apply to Robert Burton?
It’s interesting that the word succubus contains, in the right order, the words Self Crowned Conscious Being.
May 15, 2007 at 7:07 pm
The most amazing thing after leaving the FOF – that nothing bad actually happened. In fact – I was surprised, how uneventful and easy the departure was, like so no big deal… I was expecting very bad things to happen to me if I leave, since that’s what you are told happens to people who left. I honestly was very afraid of huge emotional pain, loneliness, disconnection, punishment from higher forces, loss of direction and meaning to my life. I really honestly thought that “There is nothing out there”. (Ha-ha!)
Well, how nice to see that it’s not so! In fact – not at all. It’s was great to discover that actually nothing bad happen if you leave. None of the things I was afraid of had occurred. In fact, I got connected to more friends, have more fun, spend lots of time doing things I really like, my business is doing just great, and there is so much beauty and meaning in life just as it is, un-keyed…
What’s gone – is fear. In fact it is so completely gone – only now can I see how many layers of my life during FOF years were completely saturated with fear and guilt! Even eating alone and catching myself forgetting this damn third bite made me feel so bad about myself. Like I failed something. Yes, I was not supposed to feel this – but unfortunately I always did, and it was like a circle of guilt and self-deprecation. It’s amazing, how a “school for awakening” can gradually make you feel so unsure, scared, contrived and guilty about the smallest things in your life. It’s like the natural joy of living was being replaced with joyless controlled rituals and success/failure of doing them.
I remember calling my friend Stephen shortly after when he left, and asked him how does he feel. And he said something so strange back then – “I feel like I just walked out of prison.” I didn’t quite understand him then, still being a member, but boy do I understand him now. It’s exactly how it feels. Walk out of a stuffy dark room to an open fresh air and feel the wind on your skin. Wake up after a dark dream and smile. Free to simply live your life, not under any one’s questionable “conscious will” or under monitoring of fellow-students who would report you if you “sinned”.
I see now that one’s conscience and common sense are great natural “built-in” guides for one’s life.
Strangely I could only see it after I had to “walk out” and take first breath of fresh air. While inside – some strong buffers are still at work, lots of things are justified, and there is a big fear that there is “nothing out there”.
Good luck, and love to all of you.
May 15, 2007 at 7:26 pm
To Comrade, post 121
You are right, the “can we let go?”,
as offered, is a many questions in one…
All valid and you exposed a rich succession of them.
Actually, I recall perfectly experiencing doubts myself while writing this words
(shall I leave it so or shall I go further ?) and, then, finaly opted for the version all could read in post 111.
“duped”,”victim” or “none” are labels, definitions through which one’s ego attempt to gain “identity”.
As one of the Non Dual teachers said and, I am not quoting word by words here but transfering the idea:
Let me be something! I’ll be anything! I’ll be a Buddhist, I’ll be a Christian… I’ll be antything but nothing!
Could be added: I’ll be a victim! I’ll be duped!
I’ll be none! Anything but nothing!
Can we let go ?
This is a sincere question one can ask oneself.
Meaning, is it possible ?
Now you could still come up with a
“Let go of what?”
I would answer: Whatever!
Let go of the question itself included!
Michelangelo Buonarroti, genious sculptor of all times, viewed his work in a neo platonistic manner. A block of marble, matter, containing a definite life and form (a soul)which was to be freed (from the unecessary).
He prayed… May the hands be guided!
Rilke invited: Be an arrow!
Petrarca had a clear perception of the “weight” of the body, the tireness of carrying it around and the “echo” of the voice of a Friend, opening up a way.
Francis of Assisi spoke about “brother donky”, he talked to birds and trees and, died singing.
Thanks for asking for clarifications, even though I am not sure I brought any clarity here…
Gratitude.
May 15, 2007 at 8:01 pm
On waiting for signs, by storyteller Brian Andreas:
http://www.davlinswoods.com/Pictures/SPP0021.jpg
May 15, 2007 at 8:16 pm
I’ll give it a try #122
“Instead of “second line,” how about “relating to other beings in a compassionate, constructive manner, treating them as you would like to be treated, trying to help them realize their potential.” Instead of “third line,” how about “serving the community, so that everyone has an opportunity to live a more productive life.”
Beautifully said. I’ve found that just the act of doing these “translations” was incredibly powerful in helping me release the “thought Matrix” developed infof and that ruled my mentation for many years. A powerful healing practice.
Keith/Steve #126
Thanks for an informative post. I for one would like to hear your stories of meeting others in the work. And although I also thought the movie rather bad when first viewed, I happened to watch it a couple of years ago and was oddly moved, finding it better and more sincere than I had remembered. The opening sequence of the music competition has stayed with me for many years.
Ryan opoo, #127
The Wikipedia entry is hilarious. Lends more credence to my theory that Burton is a prophet whose specialty is predicting events that have already happened.
Look My Way #129
“Readers, consider, if a man cannot be truthful about one thing, he cannot be trusted about other matters.”
Uhm, I think there’s someone else this applies to? RB?
Whalerider #130
May have been 1986 when the Mets made their amazing run to the World Series? Don’t remember, not a big baseball fan. Couldn’t do that at a meeting now, I guess.
“Please don’t lump me with the others and shed doubt on my story when I poured my soul out on this blog.”
Whalerider, I was trying to point out the difficulty of dealing in an honest way with stories told here. It’s just a simple fact that readers here, unless they have some independent experience of events, have no way of knowing what is accurate and what is not.
That said, I’ve found that your posts ring true to me, and your emotional honesty has been impressive. Given the events you describe, I can understand your desire to remain anonymous, although at some point that might change. Thanks again for your posts.
And thanks for reading
JoelF
May 15, 2007 at 9:56 pm
This blog has taken me back to what it was like the first few months after I departed FoF in 1984. Who knows if my experiences could be helpful to anyone newly out or still deciding, but here they are.
I had pretty much concluded that my soul would not be eaten by the moon and that my possibilities would not end with leaving, so I didn’t have those fears to deal with. I know that eased the transition.
What I remember about the first three months is an incredible sense of lightness, freedom, release and joy alongside crashing depression over what I saw as my own gullibility and feelings of betrayal. The betrayal included being betrayed by myself as well as by the school I trusted. That combination of emotions, coexisting side-by-side, is guaranteed to produce some interesting states.
I remember feeling like a child in a candy store with plenty of pocket money and no parent around. I could experiment with and experience anything I wanted. I didn’t act on that in any extreme way, but it was a wonderful feeling.
Most of the people I was closest to left within the next year or so, and we found our way back to each other, so my concerns about losing my friends were mostly unfounded.
What has been true for me since then is that a spiritual path is a path – something I move forward on rather than stop and stay forever. I’ve been more drawn to paths that are inclusive rather than focusing exclusively on my own consciousness, my evolution, my higher states, my growth, my, my, me, me. It’s not all about me, and the more I understand that, the better it gets.
Have I found any one thing that has all the answers? Nope. Every group or form of study that I’ve found valuable enough to stay and spend some time with has given me a unique piece, and I moved on with more than I arrived with – including FoF.
It is my responsibility to put those pieces together into something that works until a new interesting piece comes along to stir the pot once again. I hope it continues to be that way until I’ve skidded across home base, worn out and happy (or however that goes).
That difficult place of making the decision to go or not and the very mixed feeling of free fall after exiting will not last forever. Eventually, I was able to look back and say, “Well, that was interesting.” I don’t mean to minimize the impact of the Fof experience, but with time, it takes its place in the bigger scheme of the rest of our lives.
Arisha
May 15, 2007 at 10:09 pm
A bit of laughter for your day…..
The hot dog vendor asked the Buddhist monk “what’ll you have?” The monk answered, “Be one with all and everything, my son.”
So, the vendor gave the monk a super dog with the works. After paying, the monk asked the vendor, “Where is my change?”
The vendor replied , “All change comes from within, my son.”
May 15, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Hey
It is time for a great big, global group hug.
C’mon, just close your eys.
Sit up straight.
Take a deeeep breath.
Hold it.
Let it out slowly.
Ready, 1…2…3…close those little peepholes, here we go.
Aaaaah. Doesn’t that feel good.
Now we are all cuddly, happy teletubbies, Conscious little fluffy people with no wories and tubbie toast for breakfast in a shared moment of eternity in teletubbyland.
Loverly.
Have agreat day!
heresay
May 15, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Hello You-me-us-they (143),
Thank you for responding. After making my post, I was later thinking to myself, “Hmm, I wish I had chosen different words,” but I’m glad you responded. It was beautifully put, and much appreciated.
May 15, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Dear Anonymous #139
As you well know, the issue is not about sex between adults.
It is about, serial deception, manipulation and abuse by the deluded Earl of Oregon House.
Your continued obfuscation and dissembling around a simple and deeply disturbing issue goes a long way towards underscoring my
earlier assessment of your character or rather, the lack thereof.
Do please keep posting and focusing on what matters most i.e.
You.
Love,
Ryan
May 15, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Elena, you seem rather unhappy. After re-reading your posts, my opinion (take it or leave it) is that the main source of your unhappiness is ‘internal considering’. I recommend you re-read the section in In Search of the Miraculous on this obstacle that we all share.
When we free ourselves to some extent from internal considering (in the sense of having ‘requirements’ for recognition and identifying with imagined injustices), we are much happier.
If I may be forgiven for inserting a quote from Gurdjieff: “The chief means of happiness in this life is the ability to externally consider always, internally never.”
With the best intentions and wishing you well,
Anonymous
May 15, 2007 at 11:12 pm
To unoanimo #135: your epiphany is coming from your higher intellect. Good job listening to it! The formatory apparatus (in life AKA the associative mind) once it accepts a belief, will look for signs in life to support that belief in an effort to protect the ego or personality structure and resolve any inner conflicts. (RB winds us up with his teachings and numbers game and off we go to do this to ourselves like good little student wind-up toys. Our minds want to run smoothly, (the soul craves harmony) so if the associative mind has accepted a flimsy belief while the critical intellect was disengaged, ie, while in a trance (a state on narrowed and focused attention), the associatve mind will attempt to fortify that flimsy belief with….IDEAS OF REFERENCE…a “shock from c-influence” that one subjectively interpets along party lines (depending on one’s level of being) to ratify the unfounded belief. Welcome to the real world, dude!
To No Person #142: Thank you, Thank you, thank you for your post! You are showing true courage and transforming into a real person before our very eyes! It makes tears well up in my eyes! Let your consciene be your guide, it feels so much more liberating than stuffing feelings, doesn’t it! I commend you for bravery! You are walking the walk instead of just talking the talk.
To SusanK #27: “WhaleRider, I am deeply regretful for the abuse you have suffered. I commend the strength and conviction it took to endure that situation. YET, you harnessed and used that same courage, strength, and conviction to get yourself the hell out of there!”
We are on the same playing field! I had the sense to leave earlier than others only because I didn’t have the sense to keep my distance from RB until I could find out who he really is. I was set up…no one was talking about it because of the gossip exercise.
It’s been a good day!
WhaleRider
1979-1985
PS…if you are having trouble posting, take the cursor out of the text window BEFORE you hit the “submit Comment” Button.
May 15, 2007 at 11:56 pm
After all shocking stories, confessions and debates – the life at Isis continues as it was: meetings, receptions, events, boys. Robert travels, has lunches in town without any fear or shame. Nothing has changed and nothing will change if we turn our backs to it.
Is it possible to collect some evidence that Robert is seducing his students by telling lies, that he abuses his power, that he is not a good guy we all used to believe, that he is a liar and a pervert? Can a professional spy be hired to have some pictures and recordings taken?
How many recorded conversations, pictures, videos have to become public in order to make a difference? “Influence C will give you a Green Card.” “I am an Angel in the human body C influence wants you to have sex with me”
It is one thing to tell the story anonymously and it is another to have records of this.
May 16, 2007 at 12:10 am
#135 Unoanimo
I love to watch magicians. I especially like to go to venues to be up close such as a bar or coffee shop where a local yet highly skillful trickster performs. Watching the crowd one sees a variety of attitudes. There are the skeptics who ignore the show because they “know” it is “just” mis-directed attention and slight-of-hand so they glummily swig their swill or yuk it up with their friends. Then there are those who suspend dis-belief and reel with wonder and just got to know how they do that forgetting that when they find out it won’t be fun anymore. I usually just sit and wait for that wierd space when those 2,3,4 or 5 puffy balls show up in the other hand. Sometimes I think I would like to learn that craft which must take a lot of time and effort to develope.
Sometimes I want to ask you: “How the hell do you do that?” but I don’t really want to know.
Keep showing the tricks!
May 16, 2007 at 12:43 am
Have another look at the wikipedia entry for the Fellowship of Friends, it is starting to look as it should. I had no doubts that the final version would either be more or less impartial or non-existent, it is wikipedia afterall. And as these things go, the FoF wiki will probably very soon rank number 1 on any FoF-related google search. As it should be.
For those of you who think that there is some importance to this discussion, the link to this blog is also back. It is interesting to notice that the link to this discussion is in the criticism section.
Anonymous: I am really sorry. This morning, when I was reading your comment, I finally understood that you are currently incapable of understanding what so many here are trying to tell you/discuss with you (ie. you view what is being said from your limited perspective, unwilling to budge). I do not mean this to demean or belittle you, neither am I trying to be patronizing, I simply believe that you will be deaf to any discussion with the aim of finding a common truth, or at least a meeting point. As this seems true to me at the moment, I will not continue swapping opinions with you. Good luck to you.
Perhaps one last thing. The amount of personal accounts about the FoF and the previous court battles are a sort of a proof, as has been said before. How exactly do you think that people should back-up their personal stories? And why should they wish to? I am quite happy to listen to a number of personal accounts of the same event and make up my own mind. I may not arrive at the truth, but I will do my best.
Well, that has been almost too much activity from me in the last couple of days, back to the hole and to all of you, have fun.
May 16, 2007 at 1:22 am
153…Personally, for me, this would be the wrong process. I think it would be more profound if the FOF just imploded on it’s own dark energy. With enough money and time and slick lawyers almost anyone could be brought down. I think that would be diluting the profound corruption with an outside destructive force, and would detract from the truth. It could just pop up in a different and same form somewhere else. I think it’s the organism of the FOF that’s diseased, and I think it’s own negative impetus will eventually prevail.
But then again, what do I know? Of course Kriananda ended up having to pay $1,000,000 for sexual harassment, but I think his crowd paid for him and he’s still plying his trade.
May 16, 2007 at 2:13 am
Reading some of the surly, defensive posts from such as Anonymous, I’m reminded of when I joined the FoF thirty years ago, and how taken up I was with the FoF trip. Someone posted a link within the couple of weeks to a description of attending prospective student meetings in, I believe, Japan, and it was wonderful, and eerie, and humbling, how similar it was to my own experience. The sense of having stumbled upon something so hidden, so esoteric. Of being more aware, more evolved, than all the sleeping machines wandering the streets as I called my FoF contact from a pay phone; the cloak and dagger suspense of meeting the contact on a snowy street corner, to be driven to remote locations for my prospective student meetings; the students at the meetings dressed as if it were the 1950s; everyone so calm, so seemingly confident they knew the ultimate secret. Everything fraught with significance. And so forth.
I also remember how quickly I bought in to the notion that I had become a member of the ultimate secret society, how willing I was to start thinking of my family and friends as hapless life people, to be manipulated if possible, tolerated at best. I remember how heady it felt to be clearing trees at Renaissance, how glorious to be a part of the Great Work. It really was the most powerful vanity trip I’ve ever experienced, in which someone, no matter how modest his talents or accomplishments, could imagine himself one of the elite on earth. Considering this, teaching payments were a bargain.
I also remember a student attending my first meetings for several months who made somewhat bitter, cryptic statements about how Robert wasn’t what everyone seemed to think he was–at the time I hadn’t even met Robert, and had no idea what she was talking about, but I naturally repreated to myself the lines from In Search of the Miraculous about how people behave when they lose the school, “their little song has been sung,” etc.
I remember hearing about a student who had left the school having said that she felt like she had gotten out of a cage, and I thought, “Yes, freed from the need to make efforts, free to go back to sleep.”
I remember the first time a student told me, with some agitation, how something had happened to him at the Blake Cottage with Robert. I couldn’t understand exactly what he was talking about, because no one ever came out and just said “Robert _____ed my ___, OK? He told me to ___ him in the ___!”
So when I read a post from a student who is defending the FoF, or sneering at someone’s account of having been sexually abused, or even calmly and meticulously laying out the inevitable work angles that may be used to support any position in any discussion, I remember. I remember and try to understand what the person is defending, that asking someone to examine his beliefs about the FoF is asking a whole lot. It’s asking him to accept a huge blow to his vanity, to accept that he’s just another shlemazel. To consider relinquishing his place in the queue to paradise and go back to being what he was before, if an older and wiser version.
As Yeats put it, “Tread softly because you tread upon my dreams.”
May 16, 2007 at 2:24 am
Ames (#124),
You wrote, “I haven’t met or read that anyone is concerned with Burton’s sexual orientation or appetite (except perhaps as a symptom of something more important, in the case of the satyriasis). The concern is, the UNEQUAL POWER. Burton chooses weak young men who have little personal power or sense of self-worth….”
I can’t agree that the problem with Robert’s sex life is explained mainly by unequal power. For one thing, this strikes me as a kind of theoretical liberal ideal (and I would count myself as a liberal.) Plenty of sexual partnerships are based on unequal power – uneven balances of power between male/female, young/old, active/passive features, rich/poor, etc. Maybe you don’t see much of that in Grass Valley, but there’s a lot of this out there in the wider world. And many of the “boys” are quite strong individuals.
Robert’s sexual orientation IS part of the problem, because most of the men he has sex with are not homosexual or bisexual. Likewise, the extremity and frequency of the sexual practices and the sheer number of men contribute to his sex life being unacceptable. If he just gave the guys a kiss and a cuddle and patted their butts occasionally, but everything else was the same as it is now, I wouldn’t have so much of a problem with it. Or if he had only behaved this way with ten men in his entire lifetime, I could probably live with it. But it’s the combination of everything, including “unequal power” that makes it so unacceptable.
May 16, 2007 at 3:16 am
I am curious about what legal constraints apply to a church. Like other churches the FOF tithes its members, albeit excessively, and I have understood that churches do have the right to release members who do not pay the required tithe. Disciplinary action by the church against members who violate publicized tasks (like the smoking exercise, the drug exercise, or previously, the sex exercise) are also allowed, including fines and even “excommunication.”
However, as an institution the FOF obviously does some things very differently than conventional churches / religions.
Is it okay for a church to expel members over actions about which there are no clearly communicated guidelines or religious doctrines, nor any universally acknowledged legal or ethical non-acceptability? Many former FOF students have been “released” at the whim of its senior minister. FOF members who asked the wrong questions or used the wrong tone of voice in a public meeting, who slept with the wrong guy(s), who returned the wrong gift, who caught the wrong B Influence virus…have been summarily ejected from the FOF church. Other FOF members who enjoyed a closer relationship to the senior minister, but otherwise did the same or similar naughty acts, have historically received much less severe reprimands. Mihai and Dorian solicited sex with FOF women using vouchers for payment, and were only given a one-month timeout from the Galleria. Around the same time, Paola was given a leave of absence for acquiescing to their sleazy solicitation, ostensibly because she told a lie under cross examination (but in reality because she had been the girlfriend of Asaf). From longer ago Annie comes to mind as well. She was not only asked to leave the FOF but was literally told to get out of Oregon House by sunset (or was it sunrise?)…but this was during the Dark Ages of the sex exercise.
Also, are other churches allowed to have so many overt double-standards when it comes to what amounts to spiritual capital punishment by their own definition: i.e. in the FOF, the release of a member “by C Influence?” Are the senior ministers in other churches empowered to expel any member at any time without any due process? If the FOF only requested — but did not require — donations, this might seem less unfair; but in the FOF’s case the so-called “teaching donation” is not voluntary, and when you leave you lose access to every (material) thing you helped build with your money and/or your sweat. And what if C Influence “told” RB (e.g. through a license plate or a caveman drawing) that he should no longer let anybody stay in the school whose name ends with an “o”, or who was born in the state of Alabama, or whose skin has more than a certain volume of freckles, or who drives more than 25 mph on the property, or who does not look into his left eye during a meeting? Could he legally ask them to leave? (Don’t laugh, we’ve heard crazier ideas in the past.)
There is probably a lawyer out there who could shed some light on this.
Two last thoughts:
1) If members or ex-members of a church do have any legal rights at all with respect to discrimination or abuse at the hands of the church’s ministers, it seems to me that, for the FOF, the FOF Board of Directors may be its legal Achilles heel. Members of the FOF BOD are legally responsible for the actions of the organization, including its officers and its ministerial leadership, as is any BOD for any organization. This body has never been much more than a rubber stamp. But have they considered what could happen to them if the FOF were ever busted? Right now, May 2007, may be a good time to reevaluate.
2) Many FOF members living in the OH area are trapped by one or more heavy financial realities. Some have limited job skills. Others are nervous around “life people” and do not know how to behave in an interview. Others own houses they are not likely to be able to sell unless it is to another FOF student (not much of that happening lately). Many have jobs working for or with other FOF members, and risk losing these jobs if they leave the FOF. Others have children, which magnifies all the above. Earlier on there was mention of trying to mobilize some financial assistance for people like this, but I think another path has more potential. There are apparently thousands of us reading this blog on both sides of the FOF fence. Is there a way to create a kind of Monster.com for the FOF? Okay, I’ll put my hand up. If you are a business owner or manager who may be able to offer gainful employment somewhere on the planet, or if you are an FOF member who wants to explore his/her alternative career options, write to me at FOFmonster@sbsglobal.net and I will try to discreetly mediate a connection. No promises but what the heck, if it even helps one or two souls it’s worth a try.
With love.
May 16, 2007 at 3:18 am
Unoanimo, I’m rephrasing a question asked of you before, “who in the hell are you”? Did you find a way to hold a plug ‘up’ to your pinal gland and spark it?
May 16, 2007 at 5:51 am
A response to Rabbi (#10) who asked how to reconcile the love for one’s friends and teacher with some of the horror stories told on this blog.
Yes, there are some accounts on this blog that while I do not believe they are impossible, they are so far removed from the experiences that I have in the FOF, that I do not know what to think, let alone do.
But when I look around me, this is just not what I see and have been experiencing for many years. I am not naive anymore, and I am glad my experience is largely one of beauty, which also is one of the big third forces in my life.
For example, the stories of horrible things said and done by Robert and others are so different from what I see around me and experience personally, that I cannot believe the accounts to be completely real or objective, at least not the only truth or 100% objective.
Perhaps a true friend is someone that knows you well, but loves you anyway.
But, I do not say these accounts are not real, this is not up to me, or that they are not real truths for the posters, because I really do not know, and it is ultimately as simple as this.
Fortunately, we need not judge, or do anything about this, just love, and also, practically speaking, there is just nothing I can “do” with this information.
We may never know what really happened to this 9-year old girl, and whether Kiran for example is “right” or “wrong” about his experience, that is now his experience, even though I was there in Cairo, and was also with him in the hospital and all I saw were lots of friends helping him (including myself in my own little way) and experienced awe at the unforgiving nature of what we are involved with.
After some time digesting these postings, and yes they are shocks, I then resolve to be and to continue to attract beauty and wisdom. Strangely enough, that is what I then immediately experience. It is mathematical.
This is probably far from the answer you are looking for, but there is a sense of powerlessness–like seeing pictures of people dying from hunger in Africa, or people from Iraq dying in the war with arms and legs shot off, so painful, but there is somehow nothing that I can “do” about it in the moment.
Is the answer if the worst is true, leaving the Fellowship? Or making the Fellowship a better place? or trying at least? I know what the answer is for me but I know that for me the worst is not the case. And so we all make our choices daily and moment by moment.
I had a beautiful experience a few weeks ago, going for a beautiful walk with my beloved among the blooming Dogwood trees (nearby Isis) with their beautiful flowers, near a river–we had love in our hearts and everyone we saw and met that morning seemed to be truly having a wonderful time! All the kids we saw were just having a really good time jumping from the rock, and the adults too–it was amazing! Everyone! After a while with shock we realized this was because we were having this feeling inside of us and so everyone we met reflected it back–and that it had to be that way–is that not what a lot of us tried on Sunday morning?
To Ames #15 and 30, thanks for extending the invitation again, I really would like to come and have that chat with you! I must have misunderstood your meaning of third force–I confess an idea that I have not given enough thought to for some time. Thanks, also Unanimo.
But as I mentioned, the beauty of our friends and the teaching in general is about the highest third force I know of, because it is the angelic nature materialized…I see this (when I open my eyes) in everything, even the most intensely accusing postings, in the pictures posted by Kiran in his struggle to look in his own eyes, in the quotes and poetry on this blog, in the force and power and poetry of old friends like Whalerider, whom I knew well.
To Lady B #43 and to post #115, re the sex offender story and the safety of our kids–I feel the children are really safe here, I am not a fool, and there are drug use, marijuana, drunk drivers, unprotected sex, and sex offenders in all zipcodes. It is all relative of course, but it sure seems to me that the school has largely been a good influence all the way around.
My best to all,
Siddiq
May 16, 2007 at 6:26 am
Rosie, Sharon, Alex, Robert & The Work
The Gurdjieff Journal, Vol. 8, Issue 1, Number 29/2002
Talk show host Rosie O’Donnell’s recent televised outrage on hearing allegations that the Sharon Gans-led ‘Fourth Way’ group barred gays and African Americans from its membership was understandable. Rosie, who had only recently “outed” herself, had earlier narrated a film for the Gans group. While her reaction to what she termed “cults” could be expected, it was unfortunate in that she condemned all Fourth Way groups in the name of one.
If the McCarthyesque brandings of earlier times are not to be unintentionally repeated, a crucial distinction between authentic mainstream and faux Fourth Way groups must be recognized and emphasized. Authentic mainstream groups have a genuine connection with the ancient teaching of the Fourth Way. That is, those who take the role of teachers stand in a direct lineage that begins with G.I. Gurdjieff, who in 1912 introduced the teaching to the West. In contrast, faux group leaders not having this direct connection and the accompanying transmission necessary for inner understanding can at best have only ‘book knowledge.’ Their ‘teaching’ is composed of bits and pieces of the Fourth Way gleaned from books and other secondary sources. Discarding what doesn’t suit them, they take what they will from other teachings, salt in, knowingly or not, their own peculiarities and biases, and so concoct an eclectic and distorted stew that is Fourth Way in name only.
Faux Fourth Way the Source of Controversy
That all scandals attributed to the Fourth Way are entirely due to the excesses of faux groups is therefore not surprising. But in the public mind all Fourth Way groups are blackened with the same brush. The public can’t be expected to distinguish between the genuine Fourth Way and faux Fourth Way. The news media, harried as they are for profits, pushing reporters for maximum production, honing and spinning their own slant, can’t be expected to do so either. Rapacious for controversy and whatever easily gets attention, the media serve the secular and corporate culture and oppose and ridicule all that does not (especially the esoteric).
That the authentic Fourth Way has not defended itself, that its policy has been to remain silent however specious the charge or attack, is understandable. Unfortunately, in doing so it has allowed itself to be defined by those operating at its margins. What is risked is if wrong views are allowed to crystallize in society, then the teaching will be forever stained and scorned. The necessary result will be that the Fourth Way will go the way of the Shakers. Thus it is time to speak out.
Sharon Gans & Alex Horn
To begin with, whether Sharon Gans does or does not accept blacks and gays into her groups isn’t known. What is known is that Sharon Cans was never a member of an authentic Fourth Way group. A stage actress with one film credit – she played Valencia Merble in the film version of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five – Gans’ only connection with the Fourth Way is through her former husband, Alex Horn, who also was never a member. Horn’s first wife, Anne Burridge, as a teenager, is said to have attended one of John Bennett’s groups in England for about three years. Three years or not, her training can at best only have been preparatory as no deep understanding can be assimilated in such a short time. Vanity and self-love are simply too strong. During her time with Bennett, sometime in the 1960s, Anne met Alex Horn who had come to England in the hopes of working with Bennett. Bennett refused and warned Anne against any involvement with the American.
The Theater of All Possibilities
Horn, a charismatic personality with a strong stage presence and an uncanny knack for spotting people’s weaknesses, convinced her to marry him. He then apparently took what he learned of the teaching from Anne, combined it with what he understood from books and started his ’school,’ The Theatre of All Possibilities (the name derived from Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf), first in New York City and later in San Francisco’s Mission District. As a former student recalled:
He could intimidate people easily and would alternate bullying tactics with warm and friendly demeanor. He knew how to instinctively play on a person’s soft spots to get control over people. There was a lot of male ‘challenging’ and emotional bullying at the meetings and occasionally it would break out physically – usually between students. Although Alex intimidated people physically, he would always step aside and let someone else get physical for him. We seemed to be learning how to be ‘Alex,’ and he liked that. One of his regular themes was ‘feminine influence’ and how we had to avoid being dominated by women. He encouraged men to take advantage of women and tried to get the less adventurous of us to ’sleep around’ as a way of freeing ourselves psychologically. I think Alex was an imposter who used the Work to con people out of much money and energy.
Remembered another student of those early years:
Alex was definitely not a simple man, but a very intelligent Solar type, i.e., incredibly charismatic and smart. He had a vast knowledge of not only many Work books but seemingly much of the philosophical and poetic works of the Western world and plays going back to the Greeks. His teaching used Fourth Way terminology and also quotes from Ibsen, Whitman, Blake, Hal Shem Tov and others.
On weekends we would go up to a ranch his wife had bought up in Sonoma. I remember the camaraderie and laughter but in large part most of what I remember is Horn talking, talking and talking. He often spoke in sexual terms. People would feel loose and often meetings ended with much hugging and effusiveness.
Horn said this was due to ‘C Influence. We worked at preparing and planting a vineyard, building a sauna and staging plays. Besides this we also went on a fifty-mile hike through the Nevada Desert that was cut short to probably thirty miles and ended with a ride on a Greyhound bus to a brothel. There were a lot of rich experiences but there was no daily practice of any kind taught, and behind all the philosophical quotations there was something important missing.
“Strange School”
It’s not clear whether Sharon Gans appeared before or after Anne divorced Alex – the divorce was in 1969 or 1970 – but afterward Horn and Gans married and she became involved in his school and starred in its plays. After the divorce, Anne said that “Alex had never really been in the Work or submitted himself to a teacher.” She said she felt some responsibility for the damage that Alex had done in the name of the Work and so began to teach herself. She took back the ranch in Sonoma and many of his pupils. Horn was able to recover and he lived quite well, as his school had a gross income of $40,000 a month. That changed on December 23, 1978. That was the day the San Francisco Chronicle published a front-page article, “Strange School: Real-Life Drama in SF Theater Group”. It alleged financial exploitation of students and beatings for students not selling enough tickets to the plays. With the Jim Jones’ Guyana massacre still hanging heavy and apparently not thinking they could get a fair hearing, Horn and Gans left town for a ranch he had bought in Condon, Montana. Later the two started groups in New York City. However, by the end of 1988, Horn’s abusive behavior became a problem. A coup was staged and Horn was removed as the group’s leader in favor of Sharon Cans. Horn’s fear of “feminine influence” had again played out. It is said that he continues to lead groups in New York City.
Burton: A “Budding Man Number Five”
One of Horn’s students in the early 1970s was a tall, handsome young man with an Arkansas accent, Robert Earl Burton. After a year or so, Horn asked Burton to leave because he could not “stay on task.” The task was not to chase the other young men. Unabashed, Burton presented himself as a “budding man number five,” according to one of his earliest students. Burton had picked up from Horn the knack of spotting and pointing out the weaknesses of others. This power of observation, along with his quiet and contained manner, and his promise to start The Fellowship of Friends, a ‘Fourth Way School,’ attracted students.
Understanding the idealism that perpetuates many seekers’ search, Burton refocused the teaching’s challenge to self-love and vanity to a stress on living like a person of the Renaissance, cultivating impressions of beauty, the arts, music, poetry and fine living. Apparently influenced by Warren Miller’s best-selling book of the time, Canticle for Liebowitz. depicting a ravaged world after the world catastrophe, Burton made a number of prophecies, one of which was that California would fall into the sea on April 12, 1998 at 11 A.M. Those with him, being the elect of Christianity, would not perish. Like Liebowitz in the book, eight years after starting his school and now known as “The Teacher,” Burton stopped teaching to travel the globe to amass – he would no doubt say “salvage” – a large collection of art work as a kind of cultural ark in the coming Armageddon. (A recent auction of Burton’s collection of rare antique Chinese furniture at Christie’s in New York City brought in $11.2 million.). When the day passed for California to fall into the sea, Burton explained it with, “The Higher Powers [he claims to speak to 44 discarnate beings] have humiliated me.”
A Knack for Merchandising
Going Horn one better, Burton warned of “female dominance” and moved to the country, where he bought property he named Renaissance, now known as Apollo, created a vineyard, built a theater and a museum to house his various collections. Though a fourth grade school teacher by profession, Burton had a knack for merchandising. Recognizing that every reader of a Fourth Way book was a potential student, he had his students insert bookmarks in the books advertising his “Gurdjieff-Ouspensky Centres.” When the film Meetings with Remarkable Men was launched, Burton’s students stood outside theaters handing out pamphlets and recruiting people for his school. The ethics of Burton and his ’school’ having nothing to do with the books or the film wasn’t of concern.
Rumors kept surfacing over the years of Burton having sexual relations with his male students, all necessarily heterosexual (from the first he had outlawed homosexuals as members, probably to keep his own interests hidden and to have no rivals). His students’ reluctance and repulsion he countered by telling them “I promise you I am an angel in a man’s body” and declaring that he represented C Influence. Overwhelmed with lawsuits in the 1990s, Burton finally admitted his homosexuality. Following this admission and charges of sexual and financial exploitation, the Fellowship lost a great many American students, but its membership is said to be growing quickly in South America, Japan and Russia. A number of offshoots led by former Burton students have sprung up, such as The New American Wing.
Having made the crucial discrimination between authentic and faux Fourth Way groups, let’s examine the issues that arose out of Rosie’s reaction. African Americans, or any other people, are not barred from the Fourth Way and never have been. At the very beginning of Gurdjieff’s introduction of the teaching to America in 1924, the celebrated African American novelist Jean Toomer was a member. He worked closely with Gurdjieff and A.R. Orage, Gurdjieff’s chief deputy in America. Toomer organized and led groups in Harlem and later was appointed to found and lead groups in the Midwest.
Gurdjieff, as a Greek-Armenian born and raised in the Caucasus, understood first-hand the perils of discrimination, as his beloved father was killed defending his home against the Turks during the infamous Armenian massacres. Thus, any group barring African Americans – or any racial or ethnic group – would certainly not be in line with Gurdjieff’s thinking. He was also strongly opposed to caste systems of any kind.
Hopefully, the foregoing will give a broader and more nuanced view that puts in question the attitudes and judgments that have piled up over the years about the Fourth Way. That faux versions exist is apparently necessary, for as Gurdjieff said: The very idea of initiation, reaches people in most cases through pseudo-esoteric systems and schools; and if there were not these pseudo-esoteric schools the vast majority of humanity would have no possibility whatever of hearing and learning of the existence of anything greater than life because the truth in its pure form would be inaccessible for them.
May 16, 2007 at 7:16 am
155: Sheik:
Understanding comes from personal experience, not from the tales of others.
May 16, 2007 at 7:44 am
To JoelF (and Look Both Ways):
Thank you for your acknowledgement, Joel. As I said, I realized you were making a point about the truth of the postings here, some of which are hearsay, second hand info, and inflammatory. I, too, was appalled by the child rape story. I have children, as I think you mentioned you have one as well. I make the distinction that the experiences I speak of are first hand.
When one can intuit through mere words on a page that something has the ring of truth…I believe that is the higher emotional center at work. At this point I don’t foresee revealing my identity as I have a family and a life for which I have worked hard. I have enough business doing what I do, and I am not motivated by the hope of getting money from some lawsuit settlement against the FOF. It would be too costly, time consuming, and their pockets are deep (filled with our money.) And if there was a way I could make an anonymous deposition under oath, so help me God, I would. What good would that do?
Remember, here’s what someone said of my earlier posting:
#8-322 Roommate Says:
May 8th, 2007 at 1:31 am
“To Whale Rider, and all…
WR, we know each other, as fellow “Academians” for about a year or more in the early 80s. I can vouch for your truthfulness; your story is 100% real. I know. I will never violate your wish for privacy.
My heart bled, when you left, even though we were not close at all, me being the “junior” in the then group of 6 residents.
I am glad you found your way in the world and hope that your posting brings you peace.
Strange to meet up here in cyberspace–I have often felt that I would see you again, in some city some time, with the very powerful and unique presence you shared. I do not know why. Yes, you were, and I can read, are still, a gentleman. I can tell you, when you left, there was silence at the Academy. Also on the part of Robert.
I will never forget the time when WR had to make a key decision on life’s cross roads (not the decision to leave if I recall), standing in the room, for hours without moving, eyes closed, in silence, one of the most intense and moving things I ever witnessed. He then got up, and made his decision.
So Whale Rider, thank you for posting, and as you did not say goodbye to me at the time, I hereby take the opportunity to wish you well.
Peace to your noble soul”
I pray to God that my Roommate is a man of his word. Sheik has been pretty good at calling people who post from the same IP address, but of course, I could have used a different computer and with a different address. You have my word, for what its worth, that I did not. All that I have told you is true.
Somebody #153: I agree with Bruce #156. I think the best we could ever hope for is that RB would just go away and move to Bahrain next door to guess who.
Here’s a thought…outshine them!
Kiran: from what I gather, you are a man of some means living out some kind of contradiction. To do or not to do, that is the question. Are you really interested in your own evolution or just everyone else’s? If I was a conscious being, and you were my student, and you came to me wanting to work on your immense vanity feature (takes one to know one, dude, you are on my ladder), this is the task I would give you. Purchase some property as close to Isis as possible with a house. I bet there’s new stuff coming on the market just in the last month. Doroda’s place would be awesome, if she is willing or still there. Make this a safe house for anyone wanting to leave the FOF, with a big sign out front visible from the road. Give people one month of free rent to stay there while getting their feet on the ground. Keep it open 24/7 (or have a hotline) with several computers that would enable others in or out to read this blog or do research. You can host free lectures and seminars about cults. Support ex-members with group therapy, help them get jobs, green cards, move back home or whatever they need to reintegrate back into life, especially the Russian boys. When you open make as big a public relations splash as you could afford. Post big pictures of Brian S. and Kevin K. and any other collaterally damaged souls I don’t know about on the walls as a memorial to what can go wrong in this cult. Provide a written account of their life story. Give parties, loud fun parties. Hire well known musicians and rock Oregon House!
Here’s your new credo: this is a cult that is run by a person who fuels himself with demonic lust and greed. He used to mask his greed with his predictions, asking for more and more money because of the impending disasters. (But, gee, the predictions didn’t come true, did they?) He doesn’t generate his own refined, self-sustaining spiritual energy like the sun, he dines on other’s at night like the moon and has it pumped up through his lower chakra. There is no historical precedent for this kind of teacher. An enlightened being is able to generate his own spiritual energy out in the open, in the light, for all to see, and not in the dark. I am quite sure the public at large would support your cause. Make sure the members see the house on their first trip to Isis. You’d be a hero of substance or maybe you’re content to be just another RB?
WhaleRider
1979-1985
May 16, 2007 at 8:37 am
hey bloggers – didn’t you get it yet?
The i’s are not real?
None of them.
Not this one.
Let it go, time to move on, time to be.
Start now.
Favourite colour: Green.
heresay
May 16, 2007 at 8:57 am
To Anonymous,
The halmark of inner considering is shame and it is strange that you have not noticed that I don’t have any. Your angle is using feminine dominance wishing to put me in a place where I feel shame but it is having no effect.
The Fellowship needs to look at what is going on inside of it before it takes another step. I am telling the things I know to those that wish to hear them.
You have no idea how much less suffering I have today than I’ve had for the past seventeen years in the Fellowship. So much so that I am willing to respect anyone who wishes to stay in it and all I am doing is cleansing myself up from my participation in it. Just an aspect of good house holder.
May you be much loved.
May 16, 2007 at 9:04 am
To the Sheik,
I thank you for the stimulating push to keep working on the sketchbook. Looking at page one there were so many good posts that it seemed silly to re-post almost the whole page.
I will continue to work slowly as my eyes allow.
Thank you,
Elena
May 16, 2007 at 11:02 am
Questions to the FOF and to Anonymous, regarding your invitation to join the FOF and check it out.
Steven Hassan has developed a way to check groups. It is called the BITE model and is described in on his page. http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/articles/BITE.htm
Please let me know if any of these concerns listed below apply to the FOF in your opinion?
I wouldn’t mind an answer longer than a sentence about a needle in a ballon.
………………………………………………………………………………
Destructive mind control can be understood in terms of four basic components, which form the acronym BITE:
I.Behavior Control
II.Information Control
III.Thought Control
IV.Emotional Control
It is important to understand that destructive mind control can be determined when the overall effect of these four components promotes dependency and obedience to some leader or cause. It is not necessary for every single item on the list to be present. Mind controlled cult members can live in their own apartments, have nine-to-five jobs, be married with children, and still be unable to think for themselves and act independently.
I. Behavior Control
1. Regulation of individual’s physical reality
a. Where, how and with whom the member lives and associates with
b. What clothes, colors, hairstyles the person wears
c. What food the person eats, drinks, adopts, and rejects
d. How much sleep the person is able to have
e. Financial dependence
f. Little or no time spent on leisure, entertainment, vacations
2. Major time commitment required for indoctrination sessions and group rituals
3. Need to ask permission for major decisions
4. Need to report thoughts, feelings and activities to superiors
5. Rewards and punishments (behavior modification techniques- positive and negative).
6. Individualism discouraged; group think prevails
7. Rigid rules and regulations
8. Need for obedience and dependency
II. Information Control
1. Use of deception
a. Deliberately holding back information
b. Distorting information to make it acceptable
c. Outright lying
2. Access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged
a. Books, articles, newspapers, magazines, TV, radio
b. Critical information
c. Former members
d. Keep members so busy they don’t have time to think
3. Compartmentalization of information; Outsider vs. Insider doctrines
a. Information is not freely accessible
b. Information varies at different levels and missions within pyramid
c. Leadership decides who “needs to know” what
4. Spying on other members is encouraged
a. Pairing up with “buddy” system to monitor and control
b. Reporting deviant thoughts, feelings, and actions to leadership
5. Extensive use of cult generated information and propaganda
a. Newsletters, magazines, journals, audio tapes, videotapes, etc.
b. Misquotations, statements taken out of context from non-cult sources
6. Unethical use of confession
a. Information about “sins” used to abolish identity boundaries
b. Past “sins” used to manipulate and control; no forgiveness or absolution
III. Thought Control
1. Need to internalize the group’s doctrine as “Truth”
a. Map = Reality
b. Black and White thinking
c. Good vs. evil
d. Us vs. them (inside vs. outside)
2. Adopt “loaded” language (characterized by “thought-terminating clichés”). Words are the tools we use to think with. These “special” words constrict rather than expand understanding. They function to reduce complexities of experience into trite, platitudinous “buzz words”.
3. Only “good” and “proper” thoughts are encouraged.
4. Thought-stopping techniques (to shut down “reality testing” by stopping “negative” thoughts and allowing only “good” thoughts); rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism.
a. Denial, rationalization, justification, wishful thinking
b. Chanting
c. Meditating
d. Praying
e. Speaking in “tongues”
f. Singing or humming
5. No critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen as legitimate
6. No alternative belief systems viewed as legitimate, good, or useful
IV. Emotional Control
1. Manipulate and narrow the range of a person’s feelings.
2. Make the person feel like if there are ever any problems it is always their fault, never the leader’s or the group’s.
3. Excessive use of guilt
a. Identity guilt
1. Who you are (not living up to your potential)
2. Your family
3. Your past
4. Your affiliations
5. Your thoughts, feelings, actions
b. Social guilt
c. Historical guilt
4. Excessive use of fear
a. Fear of thinking independently
b. Fear of the “outside” world
c. Fear of enemies
d. Fear of losing one’s “salvation”
e. Fear of leaving the group or being shunned by group
f. Fear of disapproval
5. Extremes of emotional highs and lows.
6. Ritual and often public confession of “sins”.
7. Phobia indoctrination : programming of irrational fears of ever leaving the group or even questioning the leader’s authority. The person under mind control cannot visualize a positive, fulfilled future without being in the group.
a. No happiness or fulfillment “outside”of the group
b. Terrible consequences will take place if you leave: “hell”; “demon possession”; “incurable diseases”; “accidents”; “suicide”; “insanity”; “10,000 reincarnations”; etc.
c. Shunning of leave takers. Fear of being rejected by friends, peers, and family.
d. Never a legitimate reason to leave. From the group’s perspective, people who leave are: “weak;” “undisciplined;” “unspiritual;” “worldly;” “brainwashed by family, counselors;” seduced by money, sex, rock and roll.
May 16, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Living the contradiction 7
between Form and Abandoning Form
Did you ever ask by what events in RB’s life the “sequence of six” was inspired and why he chose sex and not seven or eight. Why Bi, Hold, from the back, More, deeper, Again and not other words ?
But joke aside, the idea of repeating certain words as mantra, prayer or sequence is the oldest technique in the spiritual world. But maybe never before there was such a formatory fixation on some specific words and numbers. It was always understood that its not the words but the fact that repeating those words stills the mind and does not leave much room for its otherwise quite accidental operation.
Rumi put it in wonderful words “Between voice (energy) and presence (Consciousness), information flows”. Both Information and consciousness are outside time and space and this is how the Inergetix-CoRe system can do its diagnostic and therapeutic work independent of distance, because it works on the informational level. However besides this similarity Information and consciousness have not much in common, in fact their respective qualities are almost in every other aspect contradictory.
Words and thought are a Form for information and in order to come to the realm of consciousness one has to transcend them in one or another way. Form and Abandoning-Form are two of these great contradictions that our life is made up of and where most, depending on their mechanics or based on imitation chose one or the other pole and think it is a conscious choice. However the way out of contradiction is always by transcendence of either pole and it always has an element of surprise.
In any human interaction one either follows a Form or Abandoning-Form, for example on this Blog some think, they can just Abandon-Form. However for me the Form to know the full name of the person I am talking to is essential for communication. My life has become too valuable to waste it on arguing and I certainly would not respond to shadows like “RSVP” and “Look my way” as it is missing this part of Form.
By the way I do not think that RSVP and Abraham Goldman are the same because Abe has a hearing problem and this guy apparently has a problem with his eyes as he capitalizes everything. However this shows one of the problems with this missing part of Form of not giving ones name. Many of these shadows like “becareful”, “Howard Carter”, “RSVP”, “Look my way” and the dozens more that have come and gone are incarnations of a few people. But the moment they see their case is lost, they just come up with a new name.
This is a very interesting analogy of the “Many Is”, the moment you really worn one out, and have seen its nonexistence by its countless repetition and your observation it dies and disappears. But magically it is reborn in another form with a new name and the battle begins again until you are finally understand this game and stop wasting your energy on every new I that comes along. For me this is one of the most interesting aspects of the Blog that it mimics very much our own world of the “Many Is” and having it externalized like that, helps to become objective about it and learn so much about its working.
For example to have a name longer than just a few days is a Form that has some obvious function, it is a vessel that one learns to fill with content and to back it up in many moments where it is threatened. But also the many situations where people Abandon their name like in marriage or joining some spiritual order can be very useful because this provides a new vessel to be filled.
Now it is obvious that most people start to identify with their name and are in a constant defense of it. Certainly some of you who took a handle can see the liberating power this has on ones thinking and perception. Others with a smaller being they take it as a Free-for-all to let out all their stored acidity and negativity. Its often the same people that are very “good students” when they have to wear their more permanent name.
In old age Form is usually taking over and every part of ones life is more and more fixed. What to eat, where to go for vacation, what opinion to have, what friends to meet e.g. The same can be observed in an aging FOF, everything has become so formalized to a degree that it is almost life-less. But the believers in Form those who have a lot of “earth” element, usually Jacks they feel very much at home in such an environment.
Of course also the opposite, the Abandoning-Form as maybe in the Advaita philosophy attracts certain mechanics or elements more, like “water“ and “air” as both are about flowing and the form-less, about the ability to take any form. For long-time students of the 4th-Way this is one of the reasons why they are attracted to a philosophy like Advaita that focuses more on the pole of Abandoning-Form. Life means to go from one pole of contradiction to the other until we are finally so tired of this process that something takes us by the hand and guides us to a true transformation of both poles.
Kiran@beingpresent.net
For those who want to escape the strait-jacket Form of Oregon House and ISIS and do not have the money to travel, I can recommend to go to the Mermaid restaurant in Camptonville….It’s a lot of fun and say hello to the own from me
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iloveyou2/sets/72157600200166472/show
May 16, 2007 at 12:52 pm
In Search of the Miraculous, pg.234
“This is why in true work, that is, in true ‘doing,’ the producing of infatuation in people is not allowed. What you call black magic is based on infatuation and on playing upon human weaknesses. Black magic does not in any way mean magic of evil. I have already said earlier that no one ever does anything for the sake of evil, in the interests of evil. Everyone always does everything in the interests of good as he understands it. In the same way it is quite wrong to assert that black magic must necessarily be egoistical, that in black magic a man strives after some results for himself. This is quite wrong. Black magic may be quite altruistic, may strive after the good of humanity or after the salvation of humanity from real or imaginary evils. But what can be called black magic has always one definite characteristic. This characteristic is the tendency to use people for some, even the best of aims, without their knowledge and understanding, either by producing in them faith and infatuation or by acting upon them through fear.
“But it must be remembered in this connection that a ‘black magician,’ whether good or evil, has at all events been at a school. He has learned something, has heard
something, knows something. He is simply a ‘half-educated man’ who has either been turned out of a school or who has himself left a school having decided that he already knows enough, that he does not want to be in subordination any longer, and that he can work independently and even direct the work of others. All ‘work’ of this kind can produce only subjective results, that is to say, it can only increase deception and increase sleep instead of decreasing them. Nevertheless something can be learned from a ‘black magician’ although in the wrong way. He can sometimes by accident even tell the truth. That is why I say that there are many things worse than ‘black magic.’ Such are various ‘occult’ and theosophical societies and groups. Not only have their teachers never been at a school but they have never even met anyone who has been near a school. Their work simply consists in aping. But imitation work of this kind gives a great deal of self-satisfaction. One man feels himself to be a ‘teacher,’ others feel that they are ‘pupils,’ and everyone is satisfied. No realization of one’s nothingness can be got here and if people affirm that they have it, it is all illusion and self-deception, if not plain deceit. On the contrary, instead of realizing their own nothingness the members of such circles acquire a realization of their own importance and a growth of false personality.
——————————————–
I am That, pg. 422
“The true Guru will never humiliate you, nor will he estrange you from yourself. He will constantly bring you back to the fact of your inherent perfection and encourage you to seek within. He knows you need nothing, not even him, and is never tired of reminding you. But the self-appointed Guru is more concerned with himself than with his disciples.”
- Nisargadatta
May 16, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Mifis # 147:
Your story made me look into my email archive and I dug something very funny which was written 7 years ago! I think many will guess who has written it:
A Buddhist master tired of a diet consisting mostly of oranges and obtuse questions crept out of the monastery late one evening in search of something new. Outside and alone and feeling quite small beneath the canopy of sky and bright stars, he gulped down huge drafts of air thick with sweet scented Jasmine and felt nsurpassably free. In the flowery bouquet he barely discerned another, sweeter aroma. It was something altogether unfamiliar and intriguing, something without a hint of orange that wafted his way and seemingly beckoned him towards it.
He followed his nose and came by and by to a beautiful hot-dog stand. The owner it seems was a brown mouse with a big belly and a small moustache who wore a pink apron and a huge tiara. She was, he later discovered, a former cocktail waitress, who was formerly a duchess, now fallen twice on hard times. The mouse looked the monk up and down and asked in a voice that was two parts of boredom mixed with one of contempt, an olive and far too much ice, “Can I help you Buddhy ?”
The monk unperplexed, looked down at the buns and the Wieners and onions and pickles and ketchup and mayo and mustard and said in a voice as detached as a house in the suburbs, “Make me one with everything”.
On another subject: a friend asked me if I know about the story where there was a student in the London center, who’s boy-friend sued FOF in 1985 and asked for her teaching payments to be returned. He name is Elaine. She won the case.
Does anyone know about that story?
May 16, 2007 at 3:21 pm
#157
Beautifully expressed!
May 16, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Hey Rita,
Why on earth are you interested in an old story that took place over 20 years ago about someone who got her money back (or not)? How does that nurture you?
Go and have a life, time is short!!!
May 16, 2007 at 5:36 pm
No person, post 142, said:
“What’s gone – is fear. In fact it is so completely gone – only now can I see how many layers of my life during FOF years were completely saturated with fear and guilt!”
One of the main reasons I left the FOF was the overwhelming and near-constant feeling of fear and guilt — especially guilt: guilt that I wasn’t a good enough student, guilt that I didn’t like the correct things, and so on.
Toward the end of my time in the school, I tried, on numerous occasions, to discuss my feelings with students I felt like I could confide in. But they genuinely could not seem to understand what I was talking about. They just looked at me the way a dog does when you confuse it — you know, they wrinkle their brow and tilt their head a little. That was all I got back. So in addition to feeling guilty, I felt like I was very much alone with my own peculiar form of insanity. It was only much later after I left and hooked up with some former students who had gone through much emotional pain in deconstructing their experiences that I realized that I was not so alone.
Actually, I just remembered one student who acknowledged feeling guilty to me — we talked about it on a drive up to Renaissance once, and commiserated about our inability to get any feedback from others in this area. Otherwise it was blank stares all around.
Innernaut
1981-1989
May 16, 2007 at 6:12 pm
“That changed on December 23, 1978. That was the day the San Francisco Chronicle published a front-page article, “Strange School: Real-Life Drama in SF Theater Group”. #162
What about a front-page article in the Appeal-Democrat? Could that help?
May 16, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Correction to Post #159:
The correct email address for job ideas is FOFmonster@sbcglobal.net.
Alternatively, feel free to contact me directly at joseph.granados@gmail.com.
With love.
Joseph G
1976-2007
May 16, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Here are some questions for people living at Isis;
When was the last time you dined with a student living at Isis who’s name you didn’t even know?
When was the last time you went to a wine cellar dinner? If your are a woman we already know the answer.
When was the last time you knew how much all the teaching payments from all centers added up to and what was happening with that money?
When was the last time Robert asked you to join him at his table for lunch?
When was the last time Robert asked you to take a trip into San Francisco with himself and his entourage?
I’m sure all these questions sound trivial and trite, but they start to paint a picture of the one-sided nature of the fellowship. Why do think Robert is always happy? I think it’s because he’s always surrounded by his harem and he gets whatever he wants- Period!
These remarks don’t come from any “higher” parts in myself, but they are being expressed nonetheless. What parts in Robert require the need to be with straight men? If it were a semen issue, then gay men would be just as good as straight men, right?
The school basically never talks about the sex center, yet this seems to be the part of most people on the panet (including all students) that generates the most I’s. Something seems wrong.
I’ve never experienced the four wordless breathes because it’s not going to happen from a classroom environment. The school doesn’t seem to offer any individual tutoring program, and now that any dissidents are being asked to leave, who wants to open up about questioning the validity of the teaching methods?
Wishing everyone a productive day
May 16, 2007 at 7:05 pm
I recommend this book by David Mamet ‘True and False’ which is written for actors, but is interesting as a great piece of writing to anybody.
Here is a thought from that book which I found relative to the discussion:
“The simple performance of the great deed, onstage or off, is called ‘heroism’. The person who will not be swayed, who perseveres no matter what – that hero has the capacity to inspire us, to suggest that we re-examine our self-imposed limitations and try again… that hero suggests through selflessness that we can be better than we are. The liar, the pretender, the self-promoter… that person may compel our admiration for a moment, but will subsequently leave us unsure, angry and depraved.
.. his (Stanislavsky’s in this case, but parallel is obvious – R.P.) contribution as a theoretician was that of a dilettante, and has been a lodestone for the antipractical soul. For amateurs. For his theories cannot be put into practice… They can demand fealty and long-term devotion, but they rarely, if ever, show demonstrable results. They, neither of them, tend towards closure, i.e., a completion of a course of action/study – for such closure would deprive the devotee of an enjoyable occupation.”
Hava Nagila: Where do you go to have a life?
May 16, 2007 at 7:23 pm
To Hava Nagilah (173), reacting on Rita’s post (171):
Do not call up “earth” while confronting Rita.
Such an old thing (earth!!! not Rita!!!),
as I read your statement,
should even not be part of your “life”!
I do not want to exclude the possiblity you are inviting a being
(even every being since you are surely generous)
to “Go and have a life”.
Who would not welcome any “push” ?
Thank you for this last statement of yours.
So beautiful that I will repeat it here:
“Go and have a life, time is short!!!”
Does having a life means not to scrutinate, study and get in touch with “your” past?
I truly hope Rita’s post will generate reactions from others, since, apparently, she states she does not enough herself to paint the all picture.
So, I want to thank her for bringing the topic to this blog and, anticipately, thank any further contributor(s).
More information, more material…
Yes, I want to be able to comprehend where I come from, who preceded me as well as who stands with me, right now, on this old thing called earth…
This blog is about expression, revelation(s)
and clarifications.
This blog, you felt like acknowledging via your post
(a new name… Hallelujiah!)
is about YOU-US and,
God,
even I !
Gratitude.
May 16, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Dearest Gabriella F.
Many of us who know you and M. are very happy for your new found freedom!!
Can you tell us how and if this blog is affecting the Italian centers? Are the center directors aware of what is going on and how are they dealing with it?
Grazie.
May 16, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Whalerider, I don’t know who you are, but if the years you specified in which you were a member of the FOF are accurate, then you have undoubtedly revealed your identity to anyone who wants to search the FOF membership database for members who joined and left on those years and were close to Robert. This is worth bearing in mind for anyone who wishes to remain anonymous. I’m one of them. I hope that other bloggers will respect our anonymity, but if us anonymous bloggers launch personal attacks against bloggers who post under their own names, we can hardly expect them to do so.
———–
Which brings me to the issue of recounting controversial aspects of students’ (and Robert’s) private lives. There is an undoubted value in this, because it helps us current students to assess the kind of community we live in. But it’s also very difficult to know to what extent an account is accurate, especially since these accounts tend to be accusatory. They also lack context – for instance, teen children of students also have sex with and obtain intoxicating substances with and from local young adult non-students (of the same age and older than them), and each other. For better or worse, this is part of teen Californian culture. The participation of “R” should be seen in this context, as well as in the context of being in Robert’s close circle.
I hope that Unoanimo has spoke to R personally about this at some point (and if R is who I think he is, then he is quite an open young man). If not, then it was a cowardly act.
———-
Elena (#136), since you brought this up, could you clarify which of the following most resembles the situation as you see it? 1. G was addicted to porno, period. 2. G was addicted to porno while with C but you weaned him off it. 3. C said that G was addicted to porno, but you saw no evidence of that while he was with you.
It sounds to me that C was blowing this up to put you off Girard.
Also, was G really addicted to porno, or just watching it sometimes? And porno is one thing, child porno another. Was there any evidence of the latter? And was this a result of a bad choice of porno sites while surfing, or a determined addiction? Could you be clearer about this Elena. Otherwise, what readers will remember is not that you had a porno-free relationship with G, but that he is a porno addict.
May 16, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Is I’s I’s the correct spelling of Fort Isis?
A comment about Innernaut’s guilt and fear struggle. I was expelled from I’s I’s in 1979.
I sort of came to while walking the back alley’s of downtown Long Beach after midnight.
Walking in front of me was a heavyset homeless man paid a fresh package of cigarettes to carry one of two heavy boxes of 4th Way(?) material.
Every twenty feet my Teacher of back alley mazes
would stop long enough to scratch his anus. Enough time for me to reflect on my own guilt and self-loathing. Because I thought I lost a real school.
For twenty-seven years I kept the oath. Don’t talk bad about the work, don’t talk bad about the school, don’t talk bad about the teacher, don’t hold any ill will toward (P), nor G. Haven for doing his job. You are the ultimate failure.
I’s, I’s.
Not until I found this blog did I realize that I too wasted way too much time.
May 16, 2007 at 8:27 pm
169: Kiran
Whether one signs oneself ‘John Smith’ or ‘Whalerider’ or ‘Anonymous’ is irrelevant. ‘Kiran’ is also an assumed name.
May 16, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Exlax 101 (#162), you seem to be claiming some current connection to a Gurdjieff-related group in other posts. (BTW I guessed who you are and I like you personally). Could this be William Patrick Patterson’s groups? Patterson’s anti-FOF writings are pretty suspect to me because he spends so much time in his Gurdjieff Journal trying to put down the competition.
The following discussion on gurdjieff.tribe.net is interesting, http://gurdjieff.tribe.net/thread/e347558d-52f8-4398-ad0e-242553e07ba1
“You would be surprised how the various factions of Gurdjieff Groups are so political and intolerant of one another. The Gurdjieff Foundation does not recognize Patterson’s authority, nor his approach, and he is just as critical of them. I was involved with the foundation for 10 years and with Patterson’s group for another 5, as well as a few others. Where did all this leave me?
Long seeking it through others,
I was far from reaching it.
Now I go by myself;
I meet it everywhere.
It is just I myself,
And I am not itself.
Understanding this way,
I can be as I am.
~ Tung-shan ~
(806 – 869)
Patterson prides himself on his ability to deliver “shocks” to his students. Gurdjieff is well known for his use of “shocks” to help students “see” themselves. He could sense when the student experienced an “ah-ha moment” and would proclaim: “ah, now you see.” Unfortunately, Patterson only knows how to ineptly create the “shock,” usually through public humiliation, and doesn’t know how to follow up and allow the student to “see himself.” He demands blind obedience and subjugation. His poor students only blame themselves and hope for another chance for humiliation, so they can maybe do better the next time. Gurdjieff was a rare individual with the ability see people to their core. Patterson, and the many other self-proclaimed Gurdjieff teachers (imitators), are all over and have many gullible students. Many of the groups are closer to being cults (in the negative sense) than religions.”
and
“I agree with your post. You are very accurate in your conclusions. Patterson has zero tolerance for any approach not his own. He actually left the work early on and was greatly influenced by Sunyata and Jean Klein before returning to the work as a source of income.”
That’s starting to sound familiar!
May 16, 2007 at 8:32 pm
168: Trademarker:
Excellent description of sleeping life as we see it all around us on the Earth.
May 16, 2007 at 8:43 pm
166: Elena
>Your angle is using feminine dominance wishing to put me in a place where I feel shame but it is having no effect.
No, you attribute motives to me which are your negative imagination. In fact, I wished to increase your happiness. If you think all students are monsters and have no noble motives, I can’t help that. I sincerely wish you well. The path you are choosing to make yourself feel better is somewhat dubious, however. I think it will perpetuate whatever caused you to be unhappy while in FoF — which had nothing to do with FoF, only with your inner world and what you brought to FoF. FoF is a third force, not first. Unfortunately, this is forgotten.
I have no wish to shame anyone. What’s the point in that? But there’s so much half-baked nonsense and slander on this blog that one cannot but add some counterpoint.
May 16, 2007 at 8:56 pm
150: Poo-poo
>Your continued obfuscation and dissembling
Inventing and lying about about little gangs and imaginary tag-teams is a good example of obfuscation and dissembling.
>around a simple and deeply disturbing issue
Sex is simple and beautiful. It only becomes disturbing when people have already decided to leave. They need to blame anything and everyone other than themselves.
>goes a long way towards underscoring my
earlier assessment of your character or rather, the lack thereof.
One the one hand, there are calls for input from all sides; but on the other hand some posters engage in serial abuse of others.
Serially abusing other posters is hardly going to help anyone’s understanding, is it? One also feels it’s pointless contributing if posts are met by raving lies and verbal abuse.
May 16, 2007 at 9:09 pm
In Reply to Post #153, #154, #158, #159 & #164
Dear ’somebody’ ~ (Post #153/9)
Your post reminds me of a time while I was a young teenager: we were out on the basketball court, noticing that some guy was mistreating his girlfriend, recognized that the guy was much larger than any of us and of a certain ‘instinctive magnitude’, we clustered together on the court, all turning towards the scene, like sunflowers to the sun, pointing fingers, scratching our chins, so to say ‘Whose gonna go over there and save her?’
Even in a group consciousness the individual still thinks of his own safety. Its like in a movie I once saw, a little guy is approached by a gang, they threaten him, he says, ‘Yes, you’ll probably kill me, but I swear, I guarantee, that by the end of this, one of you will have lost an eye, not one of them touched him and all left.’
Somewhere in looking at a problem or ‘denying force’ there’s some sort of leisure, a kind of si-do laziness in not bringing about an effective twist or change.
Now in certain ‘other days’ the group of us on the basketball court would have run over and served that guy a certain ‘karmic adjustment’, yet, these days are wrought with ‘fear’ of conscience, particularly the sort of lava-conscience that flows up through the marrow of one’s bones, to the tips of the fingers, pulsing there like some sort of ‘heart beat in each finger-tip’.
Yet, we do not touch and these 10 hearts eventually spiral back down to where they came from, to the regions of our unrealized being, that part which must be stretched in order to not only ‘be the words’, but also ‘pay’ for them and get a ‘certain something’.
Perhaps one could say that ‘naturally speaking’ we cannot pay enough, to consciously alter certain ‘avenues’ of mechanical flow, “cannot pay enough”, that is, the body our being inhabits, has certain ’shut off valves’, fear is one of them, i.e., a certain thought that says ‘That’s going to cost too much, It will be in court a long time, No one will really listen, It’s just their problem now, Let it implode in on itself…
While all of the above ‘phrases’ will occur naturally, without any conscious effort, in there, in the human-fact stands no-one-will, no-being-body, it is simply a collection of sentences based upon the vacancy of one’s self-will, they are all moot, indisputable realizations based upon the law of seven, that is, that man is a collection of intervals, each new ‘thing’ is so often a deviation from the last one swerving to finish itself out, si-do after si-do, lots of unfinished business keeps the circle of pain body’s chasing their tails.
someone, what I am getting at with all this is that your lazy, the King of Hearts welds the upraised sword, yet he didn’t forge it, nor will it be him who actually gets out on the battle field and puts a slight bend in the blade for having severed a vertebrae on its journey through form, back to the formless swing’s end.
A ‘famous’ person once said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, rather, ask, what can you do for your country.” Now reverse this earth-bound PR statement to your inner world tension and you’ll find perhaps that, in there, is some sort of ‘unfinished business’, some collection of yearning that’s not been brought to fruition, an energetic willingness to get out there and satisfy your wondering, your curiosities.
I would advise you to follow through with your convictions, bring them into the world of form, its out here that you’ll grow up. Its easy to be a lunar when everyone thinks your too busy to be yourself.
Inquisitiveness is beautiful, can you get your fingernails dirty?
This is America, after all, (and California)… In actuality I would suggest that, as an individual, you can do more to effect the ongoing ’solar eclipse’ in the FoF than the legal system can as a ‘do’… The legal system is perfect at the mi-fa stage, its at the ‘do’ and si-do that the individual must bear enormous stresses of being to ‘fuse’ into a being-lessen got.
This stress is unusual, ‘regular lawyers’ know nothing about its deeper implications, buffering it with coffee-talk, hypocritical judgment of their clients, lunatic energy investments, self-calming before & after rituals and fees that apply a material value to a cerebral talent of ‘being in the kings’, that, relatively speaking, is not altogether as ’special’ as our automatic desire to defer our unfinished self-will to someone else’s mechanical ‘finished’ will, to ‘be our voice’ of conscience, is.
Law is an aggravating mess and always will be, its the wrong triad, helping another to help themselves in one thing, to hold their hand inside the barrel while going off the edge of Niagara Falls is another.
There is a very firm illusion here in Oregon House, it is also crystallized in the psyche of humanity for the most part, its name is Abraham G., its other name is ‘Too much’.
Yet when you step back from the real internal world within yourself, are these ‘characters’ not simply icons of yourself?
For me, the picture of ‘The Last Supper’ is simply a picture of One Man having dinner with his mind, no one is there, save You, your right here and Here will not give you anything other than what you proportionately propose to it: and within this proposition is an enormous ‘prayer’, one that pales any you could ever send to god or angels ~
Can you be what you wish others would be for you?
So get out there and do something, finish in a Herculean fashion what your soft conscience is yearning for. You have nothing to loose in refining your scale of relativity.
RB is not a special case: if and when all this gets panned out, he’ll be lumped in with the other thousands of cases involving cult leaders and illegal INS mojo, not to mention the ‘personal damages’.
Please, do yourself a favor, don’t ‘think’ someone else is going to do it anyway, no one can remember yourself for you… grow, make the effort to pay for your yearning… deeper being-love is the profit.
______________________________________
Dear YesriBaba ~ (Post #154/9)
Curious as to what you mean by “tricks”?
Love to you.
_______________________________________
Dear Radiccio (Post #158/9)
What is UNEQUAL power? It’s too easy to state the obvious. Its like the guy who hated oak trees so much, that one day he gets up, grabs his chain saw and cuts down all the trees in the world, waving his fist to heaven says “There god, take that, you tree hugging atheist!” He sits, closes his eyes and dies of exhaustion, smiling smugly; all the while leaving behind 15,000 billion acorns.
Go back further, to the subtle details of the formation of the FoF, RB’s connection with the likes of ‘the Horns’, his treatment by his mother & sisters, his lie at the very inception of the FoF.
Things ‘do’ often end as they had began. There is nothing in the FoF ’spirit or subjective form’ that was not there, standing alone, within RB’s mechanical denying force, his pain body terrain, before, its just older, older also in the internal perceptions of others: yet the passing of time does nothing to change a Feature’s strength, its dissolution cannot occur within itself, bubbles don’t pop themselves …
All this ‘hurt’ has many roots, though only one tap-root; find that tap-root and you’ll find RB’s true-being-state, as a man alone.
The spiritual world is not concerned with justice, revenge and the like. Justice flows, it is the common sense property of conscience and nothing can stop one’s own conscience from unfolding and his will, in its own way, own time, own array of awe.
Don’t worry, be happy, RB will pay proportionately, as all of us are paying
proportionately, no more, no less, no different…he is a man, a being of a certain ‘type’, as all of us are…
Please, do yourself a big favor, get out of imagination that he’s something extra-ordinary in regards to the subject of contradiction and denying force.
Just as Venusians have ‘The Curse of Other’s Lives seeming more interesting than theirs’, Saturns have ‘The Curse of effecting satellites with the power of look-alike projects.’ Objectify RB and free yourselves from adoration of the Magi and Sith. Use the force Luke.
_________________________________
Dear Joseph G (Post #159/9)
What I wrote to Post #153 concerning inquisitiveness being beautiful seems to apply to your searching as well.
I have observed over a period of a very long time that inaction leads to greater rage, greater confusion, greater inertia and the superstition that Karma will take care of it anyway.
Where did it occur? How? That one has forgotten that ‘all is for you’, not Karma, Karma is simply mechanical balance for mechanical imbalance; how come? Perhaps its simply a concoction for us to be present to the blackboard of growing up, moving through this form, after all, form has to be sensible, since we sense.
All in all, Joseph, this ‘play’ is for you to do with what you will, not the other way around, nor is it anyone else’s ‘play’;
try to verify that there is anything outside of your perception of everything,
you cannot do it,
so, make this ‘plays’ yours, whatever that means ’symbolically’. Whichever feels true to yourself in respect to these combinations of impressions, follow your heart, conscience, you’ll probably laugh allot, see hypocritical nuances in yourself, notice that if your pursuing a right, your also pursuing a wronged, you’ll be a different being for having gone through the looking glass, Wonderland is not just for girls.
To me, the UNEQUAL power, is simply an outsider’s point of view: there is no ‘real’ power in the FoF hierarchy, only feature plays, pain body litigation, personal reinstatement of ego-drama-roles, identification with one’s role as a seeker and the sought, a teacher’s level of being, whose simply not what the doctor ‘thinks’ he ordered and an incredible amount of copious indifference to one’s conscience; yet, even that is based on certain ‘odd’ ways of growing up… In the end, which is actually a beginning, everyone crosses the Finish Line, even RB.
All this pain is not static in of itself, let it flow, it can lead you to that which brings the lotus to grow from putrid swamps.
Do your part for You, all the unequal power is an illusory image, a king of hearts static ‘idea’ of injustice, selfishness…
Step back a ways and ask ~ How is it?
not Why is it? People are imagining themselves all the time, if it looks like a dream, it’s because, it is a dream.
Try playing basketball with a golf ball.
Try golfing with a basketball.
These odd exercises will shed some light on what Unequal power really is. To me, its simply an impression from the outside, of an internal dream scape being lived out willy-nilly like in external circumstances, most of which we notice, choose, put together into our ‘little story’, all along
‘thinking’ we’re right because ‘that’s wrong’.
Well, so what? Now that RB is wrong and you are right, so what?
Go a few steps further, the FoF dissolves, RB is in jail, GH is in jail, everybody who ’should’ be there is, while others are ‘healing’, so what?
God comes thundering through the clouds, Jesus parts the Pacific Ocean, I ride my motor bike to Hawaii, then to Japan, before the waves crash down and all those who were not motor cyclists die in a swirling mass: angels descend, bikers ascend… so what?
What can we ‘do’ that does not involve our mind activity?
_______________________________________
To WhaleRider (Post#164)
You wrote, “There’s no historical precedent for this kind of teacher.”
Hummm… Well, there is, look deeper into the world history of spiritual-ego-gurus, you’ll find RB’s ‘ ‘brothers’ and ’sisters’ are numerous.
“There is nothing new under the Sun.” That goes for all the ’special’ nuisances of RB’s role as well. Everything that is not conscious in RB’s play, his role, is repeatable by another ego form or ‘player’.
What is conscious is You, not repeatable by another, since, as far as I know, no one can be you while you’re you; if so, we’re in for some funky surprises down the road.
And if so, I’m game. I recall hearing about a Indian Guru who used to tie a balloon to his toe each night. When someone asked him why he did that, he answered ~
“It’s in case I wake up in the morning as someone else, I’ll know its me.”
Yeah, give me more of that!
Love to you all.
May 16, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Siddiq, re your #161:
Disappointing. I’m reminded of a child marching around with her fingers in her ears going “Lalalalalalalala” when she doesn’t want to hear something.
In your case, you use the term “beauty” or “beautiful” no less than five times, not to mention “angelic” and “wonderful.” Experiencing positive emotions and beauty is nice. Being present is, as Martha Stewart says, a good thing. But even they can be used as buffers. In fact, I wonder whether someone else has written #161 to sully your name with a parody of how degenerate “work on oneself” can become.
Your protestations of “there’s nothing to be done” remind me of the archetypal Kitty Genovese story, about the woman who was stabbed to death, screaming, while a dozen witnesses did nothing. The phenomenon of standing around and watching an innocent person harmed, while saying to oneself “what could I do? I didn’t want to get involved” has become known as the “bystander effect” or “Genovese syndrome.” Of course, “no witnesses directly saw the final rape and attack in an exterior hallway which resulted in Genovese’s death.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese
Ever hear Phil Ochs’ “Small Circle of Friends”?
Look outside the window, there’s a woman being grabbed
They’ve dragged her to the bushes and now she’s being stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But Monopoly is so much fun, I’d hate to blow the game
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.
I’m also reminded of the Eloi, the spoiled, beautiful, simple-minded descendants of humans in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, who live a life of aimless luxury. As the Wikipedia entry puts it, “While one initially has the impression that the Eloi live a life of play and toilless abundance, it is revealed that the Morlocks are tending to the Eloi’s needs for the same reason a farmer tends to cattle – because the Eloi compose most (if not all) of the Morlocks’ diet and the Eloi are no longer capable of acting in any other role than to be eaten by the Morlocks.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloi
But as long as you do the sequence while someone else is Earl the Pearl’s prey of the day, I suppose it’s all good.
May 16, 2007 at 11:02 pm
This blog is part of the play of RB. According to his astrological life chart, something has to end in 2007. Maybe the FoF will dissolve, maybe he’ll stop teaching. This blog is the mechanic for that. Just as RB’s play is a mechanic for somebody else’s.
And that’s all and everything it is, mechanical. Do we want be identified with this? Or shall we simply try to be here now.
Amidst all the BS and self-PR, there is also an explosion of knowledge here. The new paradigm of the 3 lines of work, for example, is inspirational. It is externally considerate and such ‘I’s are the only ones that are in the same ballpark as a reality. Why not focus on external consideration.
It’s a good idea to meet each other and work on something together. There is no more need for words.
May 16, 2007 at 11:23 pm
166: Elena:
>The hallmark of inner considering is shame.
Dear Elena/All,
Your statement above is important and requires a separate response:
The hallmark of inner considering is not shame. And anyone who thinks that inner considering is embarrassment in the presence of someone else is also barking up a twig instead of up the main tree. This is a trivial and relatively harmless form of inner considering in comparison with the really humungus space taken up by the inner considering that Mr G. tries to draw our attention to.
Please read the section of In Search of the Miraculous (p.151-3 in the English edition) that I directed you to. There is NO mention whatsoever of ’shame’ or of any form of embarrassment.
Read the relevant section and you will see that many posters are mired in inner considering: FoF did this to them, and FoF did that to them, and RB did this and did that, and didn’t do this and didn’t do that. Inner considering.
It is a lamentable fact that people presume to pass expert judgement on FoF and its students, yet don’t know even the beginner basics of the 4th Way.
May 16, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Tis a noble thing you do Sheik. Just thought I’d mention it.
May 17, 2007 at 12:40 am
#157 Self Remembering
Your post brought to mind some thoughts maybe not directly related but kind of.
It may be too easy to direct culpabuility to vanity and credulity in our romp with the fof. For me , in retrospect, it is too apparent that the “special feelings” and synchronous events surrounding our meeting the fof were a shadow cast by the grand hand of a giant Daimon.
It is impossible to see directly the motions of this but for myself joining and leaving and times in between I felt this. Perhaps we were led there to learn the lessons of vanity, credulity and the ignorance inherent in conceptualization. We were “faked” into twisting this and turning it inside out and shrinking it into “c-influence”.
As with so many things it is all upside down. We are not creating a soul, Soul is creating us.
May 17, 2007 at 4:03 am
Interesting to see more postings by Anonymous. It’s helpful to be reminded how the fully hypnotised FOF mind works, using phrases that sound vaguely meaningful and ’spiritual’ but when looked at closely and in context have no substance. We can look at the FOF website and newsletter for more developed examples of the same phenomenon.
Anonymous’s sloganeering illustrates well the intellectual and emotional shallowness of those providing smokesceens for the FOF’s weird activities, the perplexing unwillingless to see Truth that is staring them right in the face.
Oh well, maybe one day!
What a contrast with some of the vivid, thoughtful recent posts from Joseph G, Radiccio and many others.
cheers, RB
May 17, 2007 at 5:07 am
Dear Annoyingmouse,
“Sex is simple and beautiful. It only becomes disturbing when people
have already decided to leave.”
That would explain why I keep having disturbing sex then?
Blistering logic, thank you Spock. Scottie beam me up I forgot my snoopy dildo.
Love,
Ryan
May 17, 2007 at 5:50 am
So many amazing posts, so little time to read and respond…
Most recently, #157, I appreciated your clarity. Thanks,
#170: I often explained the contradictory experiences I had with RB by the ‘black magician’ explanation. “Intermediate realm” of Aurobindo, also helpful for resolving contradictions he poses. Thanks for reminder.
#142: No person. Your explanation of leaving FoF, finding fresh air corresponds closely with something I wrote when I left. The metaphor I used was leaving a heavy, dense smoke-filled room I had come to imagine as fresh air…and then the amazement of walking into actual fresh air.
#141: Charles R: I like the word succubus, nice choice, it ironically fits so well what we have here: a female demon having sex with men in their sleep.
Shelly: Hello, I am sorry to have missed A. growing up and trust all is well with you both. R will be 21 next week!
#99:L Rita. Thanks for your explanation of why you write under your own name. I concur with much of what you said.
And I want to encourage anyone who is reading this and has not written yet to take the plunge. The simple act of ‘going public,’ of giving voice to these experiences, to stepping out from the invisible ‘gag order’ many of us have been under with each other has proven to be surprisingly, enormously, healing.
Healing in the sense of integrating these (for some of us) huge pieces of our lives into who we are today. Otherwise, this piece of the past, at least for me, forms a dark chapter that I have had to find ways to skip around or euphemize (is there such a word) when speaking with people who haven’t been through something similar.
It is also healing in the sense of finding myself becoming more aware, touching and letting go a deeper layer of memory, anger,joy, pain, confusion, grief — beautiful! I so appreciate the forum for this, and using my name helps shake any remaining shame, helps me to stand and be counted.
Thank you to the many people who have had kind words to say here, and to those who even directed some of those words towards me. I am surprised by how grateful I am for that. I wish I knew who you were. I do love knowing who is writing and thank you for the courage in coming forth.
Joel, you know how great it is for me to hear your responses here and looking forward to your longer thoughts too.
#55 Bruce: Thanks for your supportive post.
#48 Abigail: What to say? I acknowledge that I have behaved in deplorable ways, abused the power I was given, been cold, uncaring, superior, a know-it-all, full of myself, judgmental, obsequious, unkind, domineering, pig-headed,greedy. I’ve used and seduced others, turned a blind eye to the obvious — the list is very long. I am just glad your grievance with me isn’t more severe.
For you, since an apology may not be acceptable (although I do apologize), I would wish that you find a way to acknowledge your role in giving your power away to anyone, not just me. And that you will find your way also to acceptance and forgiveness of this and the others involved. If you are this harsh on others, I am guessing you may also be on yourself (speaking from my experience, of course). I wish for you that you find a way to the Lightness you are, to that place that sustains us and chases away the death grip we sometimes have on our pain.
Your post caused me to remember when I was first inducted to center directorship. It was 1974 and I had been a student for an entire 16 months. During that time, each week I used to drive from Carmel (where I lived) to SF then back to Carmel then to Santa Barbara and to LA for meetings that RB was leading. Then Seattle was added, and I drove there too. Kind of maniacal, but I fueled by being “in love” with the teaching,and I was not the only one.
After a meeting in Seattle, I recall RB coming over to me and telling me he would like me to lead the new Portland Center. I was flaberghasted as well as flattered, as I was such a new student, with at least 150 -200 others who had been around longer than me. I told him, stammering, that he must be kidding, I couldn’t do it. But he asked me to think about it seriously since he knew it was right for me, that I was ‘on the way’ and it was a necessary step for my evolution. (ho hum)
I agreed to think about it that night, went to sleep on the floor somewhere for a few hours,then woke in the wee hours and sat bolt upright, in a turmoil, staring at the walls, saying outloud to myself “I do not know anything, I am completely ‘asleep’ and lost here. I cannot possibly do this.” My mind was made up. The next morning, I gathered myself together and told him: “No, I don’t feel right about this. I am not ready to do this.” I don’t think I will ever forget how he handled my objection. He looked at me straight on and simply said:
“Goodness, someone has to do it.”
I think of this as an example of his ability to read people. Because for me these were the magic words, when he said that, I completely got it. This directive made perfect sense to me, and fit so well with my personality and my self-image.
I was the oldest of four, born of a troubled teenage mother and had been taking on far more responsibility than I was ready for from a very young age. So, I perfectly understood that ’someone had to do it’, even if you were not really up to it and would be better off doing other things. So, I said, okay and that was it — I was made a minister and launched into intangible sales (aka center directorship) for the next ten years.
My traveling feature days came within a year or two of that, by then I was the ripe old age of 26 or 27….wise beyond my years, of course, and full of good counsel for all, and not a bit of it went to my head. (haha)
When I left he did have the decency to say, I think I owe you a thank you for all you have done (although you are making the biggest mistake of your life).
#11: Dear Help. For what it is worth, unfortunately, I don’t think rescuing the victims in abusive relationships can work. Damn if I didn’t try for many years though! (someone has to do it). After banging my head against the wall in FoF and with my family, I finally line up with those who say that a person needs to be ready to cut the abusive cord themselves before they can begin toget away.
Then the trauma books, support from others, etc. can help to move them along and then to begin to recover from the aftermath, the “PTSD symptoms” that so many of us have had to deal with after the mind-fuck we allowed ourselves (willing victims, all) to go through. Such relationships are mixed with all those goodies, you know, and play on infantile fears and wishes we can’t even imagine when we are in their grip. Actually, it’s a miracle to get out is what I think!
One more thought, maybe it takes being out for 15-20 years, especially for those of us who spent 15-20+ years in this strangely sick, yet wonderfully life-enhancing, environment to be ready to let ‘the fine mess’ we participated in for so long in without falling completely apart. For, the whole picture of the fine mess is a big blow, takes strength to absorb, as others have said here.
So, here we are benefitting from each other, from this community of souls holding this space, listening, caring — souls who have been there and have the grit to go on…
With warm heart and appreciation — at this moment anyway.
Sandy (as I am known now by many)
May 17, 2007 at 6:15 am
Hey,Radiccio, you must be a friend of MooreOn because he also knows flattery will get you everywhere.
There is a get-together in OH Saturday. I invite you as my guest and I will answer your questions there. C U.
PS: Your i about WPP’s group is incorrect.
Wrong Paradigm.
May 17, 2007 at 6:21 am
First, thank you most of all to the Sheik & Knight for making this venue possible. Thank you all for your posts: Rabbi Burns, Yesri Babba, Unoanimo, Sandra C., Joseph G., Bruce, Skeptical Optimist, Cathie, Whale Rider, and all of you unnamed others. You have been helping me to heal. And to Howard Carter, Siddiq & others who remind me how my heart and mind were molded, beginning in those most impressionable years of early adulthood.
Some people grow up fast, having a hard life, and leave their family at perhaps fifteen or seventeen. This is not my case. I grew up a devout Catholic and spirituality was central to my life. I was not thrust into the world but allowed to grow at my own pace which I must say was slow. I arrived in the FOF at 25, but was still young and tender in my psychology. So I can see what Joseph G. is speaking about when he speaks about age not being a factor when being seduced, especially by a “conscious being”.
When I met Robert B. it was at a Christmas Party in 1973. I was introduced – he looked at me briefly and bowed his head & body three times with his eyes to the floor and backed away from me. I thought, “This is the teacher?”
It is interesting that he was already developing the holy humble act – “the man who is different from all others.” You might ask yourself where he got these acts because he certainly didn’t develop them when he was teaching 4th grade.
I did not get a feeling of love from R.B., but I did get it from the students who were very huggy and warm. Who does not need love? The warmth of the students and the three prospective student meetings had me off and running for the next 20 years of my life.
I threw myself into making myself over. I was going to awaken and nothing was going to hold me back. We were given various word “exercises” to disrupt our normal way of speaking. One of the words we couldn’t say was the word “I”, so we began calling ourselves “it” instead.
Although the word exercises were introduced to disrupt mechanicality (that word is not in the Microsoft Word dictionary, by the way) I now know that this is a classic indoctrination technique. It begins to separate and create a new reality for you from the world at large. You, as a group, become dependant on one another, and when R.B. tells you to leave your “life family” behind, it seems a natural step.
That you are only false personality when you come into a “school” is another idea that makes you throw away all your values. You must create “true personality”. While it is true that there is a continuum from shallow to deep, a true student will attempt to become a clean slate to be filled in by whatever the teacher and directors deem appropriate.
You are told how to talk, how to dress – you pick up how to act. Notice how no one cavorts around R.B.? Not appropriate! Must look intentional! It is a wonder that anyone can untangle themselves from the Fellowship. You have to determine what is true – the real truths that led you in will still be true when you leave. Figure out what you have swallowed as truth and what you have come to believe through the closed society of the FOF. And for God’s sake, please really listen to R.B. and what he is saying. Try to separate yourself from the idea that he is conscious. This is all programming. He is pulling divinations out of the air with no foundation other than your belief in what he says is true.
And dear Siddiq, I know where you are coming from in #8/421. You are a seemingly sincere person. Don’t you know how much R.B. leans on the Sufi wisdom and poetry and the countless other quotes he uses to get inside your mind and heart? He is nothing without these crutches. He uses C-Influence, 44 conscious beings, almost all are world famous men known for great works and words of wisdom which he has co-opted for his own. He is a charismatic personality with reflected glory from all these great men. Just think how he has ornamented himself by making you think that they are all working for him, in his school.
Love and gratitude to you all.
The Quiet One …speaks.
May 17, 2007 at 6:36 am
“Post big pictures of Brian S. and Kevin K. and any other collaterally damaged souls I don’t know about on the walls as a memorial to what can go wrong in this cult”
WhaleRider, as a personal friend of Brian,I find this pathetic suggestion by you to be utterly without conscience, especially from one who has been a “damaged soul”.
Although you have been milking your “without consent” story for all it is worth, I guess you are too filled with self-pity to be able to think clearly before hitting the submit button.
May 17, 2007 at 7:16 am
Hello again, Siddiq (#9-161)
I also have experience of those “golden times”. I had them before the FOF, during the FOF, and after the FOF. And, they are becoming more frequent, rather than less. So, I have questions for you.
The first question is, do you need a relationship to Burton or the FOF to have these experiences? I certainly don’t, despite his claims that presence and consciousness is only possible with his intercession (I’d be glad to post a transcription of a typical interview with him, stating this—in context, if you like).
The second question is, if you must stay in the FOF to have these golden moments (this is implied in your posts), is it worth any price? You say you can’t ‘do’ anything about a lot of things, and you’re right, but you could investigate the claims that are near to you if you wanted, just like I did. Your choice, of course. If you don’t want to, why not? Supposing you were to find substance to these allegations, then a reasonable question would be, does the means justify the end? That is, if bad things happen to others, and you have evidence of it, can you stand by and just observe, and continue to profit from the situation without compunction? Or is there a price, not all of it to be paid by others, that is too great for the personal advantage gained?
Burton claims that his ‘super-sexual’ adventures feed his astral body, the implication being that this brings advantages to the students at large as well as the students participating. Does ‘collateral damage’ have an effect on you, do you bear any responsibility? These are the questions I struggled with. You know what the answers were for me, and what I decided. My guess is, that at some point you’ll arrive at a place one day where you must answer them as well. What the correct answers are for any given individual depends on that individual, but first he has to be an individual, that is, make the questions his own, and get the answers for himself—so the usual rote angles are not going to help here!
Warm regards,
Ames
May 17, 2007 at 7:57 am
Rita,
I go nowhere. I have my life and I live them well. Reading your posts, it is evident that you are posessed by a vengeful whispering part within you. If that’s life for you, enjoy it.
May 17, 2007 at 8:04 am
To unoanimo #188:
“Well, there is, (a historical precedent for this kind of teacher) look deeper into the world history of spiritual-ego-gurus, you’ll find RB’s ‘brothers’ and ’sisters’ are numerous.”
You are so right in the sense that he has plenty of company among other frauds. My wording was unclear. Thanks for that!
I don’t believe there is a historical precedent for a legitimate enlightened teacher to act in the manner that RB does. That’s what I meant.
To Radiccio: Thanks for your concern, comrade. Miles bailed in 1985 along with an exodus of many others including myself. Guess I’ll have to take my chances. My saving grace should the FOF out me is that truth is on my side.
To Innernaut #174: Nice post. You can’t describe water to a fish. Ever read the book Flatland, by Edwin Abbot?
Heresay #165: Go hit your head against the wall if you are unclear about what’s real. BE careful though, it might stimulate actual thinking.
Anonymous #185 re:#168: Classic example of projection as a defense mechanism. Project what you don’t want to see about yourself onto ’sleeping life’. Shame on you!
WhaleRider
1979-1985
May 17, 2007 at 8:36 am
Congratulation!
Today is the Full Moon!
In FOF that usualy means a lot of trouble.Gurdjiev was saying that the Work suppose to deliberate man from external influence,especially from the moon influence but in FOF the moon acts for a God.The longer the students are stay in FOF the more they becomes affected by this idea.
During my time in FOF I was observing many students and especially the older students who were experiencing a lot of frictions and difficulties during the New and the Full moon.At the same time all of those difficulties were explained by the moon’s influence.Or by the meteor showers or by the “August” idea and of course by the “Mars is closer to the Earth”.
But since I left FOF those celestial influences are mysteriously disappeared and totally stoped bothering my mind.I have simply forgot about them.
I think this is a typical Fellowship bullshit.A kind of “a house specials”.The same way were created farther ideas such as: “9 lifetimes”,”the ideal Plato state”,”The Ark”,”the 30 imperishable stars”,the “Sequence” ,”the 4 wordless breathes” and “the Asaf”.
Even duo those ideas are ridicules in their essence,they were still keeping people in deep sleep without any hope to awaken because no matter what you will do,you still will die at the very best on your 8th lifetime.
I can only imagine how many angry faces are cursing our beautiful moon tonight,which has for centuries inspired many poets,musicians and other artists to create an eternal Beauty.
May 17, 2007 at 9:44 am
#188 Unoanimo
In that post i was comparing you to a slight- of-hand magician performing tricks. I knew one fairly well and he was almost constantly practicing his manual dexterity techniques. A lot of time goes into perfecting simple illusions.
You seem able to do the opposite. Your tricks seem to dispel illusions returning to a certain core understanding. What is so impressive is the range. I can only surmise that this is a talent first and that you have spent a good amount of time and effort to create the style and syntax.
Some people are good at some stuff others at other stuff. When I put my brain in a jar next to the computer it just sits gazing longingly at me.
It was meant to be a compliment, not an off-hand-slight.
P.S. one thing bugs me though. You use the pronouns your and their in places where the contractions you’re and they’re should be used. I hesitate to mention it because you use poetic license with quite a few words but I don’t think these are “intensional”.
May 17, 2007 at 1:11 pm
to Anonymous 8/186
Thanks for your answer. First I thought, oh well another oneliner, this guy is really too stubborn to tango. But then I realized yes, of course in your world it appears to you that everybody is under mind control and you project that what applies to you is true for the others as well. How could it be different? If you look around on the Earth, that is what your mind tells you, that everybody is mind controlled.
Maybe there is another world out there, but you have to allow yourself to see it.
I guess my post 8/168 was too much of a bombardment, sorry for that, so I like to ask you about two things in regard to your invitation to join the FOF and check it out.
1. If I would join or is there a legitimate reason to leave? I know everybody can leave if they like, but is there a way to leave and be still respected from members? Do you believe the FOF is the only organisation on the planet where people can learn something about awakening? Or is the only way not to be confronted with condemning staying and paying till I die?
2. I read the reason for the existence of the FOF is to build an ark, help humanity and that it is a school of love. So please explain, how does the FOF help humanity now? How is the love of the FOF expressed towards humanity? How is it expressed towards all the Exmembers, the prodigal sons and daughters of the FOF? How do you experience that love?
……………………………
And thanks for all the posts clarifying the history of teachers (Horn, Pentland).
May 17, 2007 at 2:45 pm
203: Full Mooner
>But since I left FOF those celestial influences are mysteriously disappeared and totally stoped bothering my mind.
This is because you are safely encased in the shell of personality once again; and your essence, which is se