The legacy of Gurdjieff and guruism as class warfare
One of the puzzles of the behavior of figures like Gold and Cohen as gurus is the way they tend to trash disciples. It is a curious tactic that is so completely counterproductive that it leaves a puzzle in its wake.
But there is no puzzle at all if you look at the influence of Gurdjieff on subsequent so-called teachers. Gurdjieff was the first (in the Western public sphere, anywhere) to indulge in disciple trashing.
I recall see the tactic in E.J. Gold who would do that on people he met the same day, not yet even knowing their names: an important hint the tactic hasn’t much to do with ego, but some other agenda.
And that agenda becomes clear in Gurdjieff (and the hidden influence of Nietzsche), the posture of the self-styled overman beating the lower caste of subhumans to keep them in line, old tactics from colonial days, and degenerated sufistic circles, no doubt.
The class warfare in Gurdjieff is veiled, until it becomes transparent: after all this was a teaching that took on the Russian revolution. There are a thousand ways a Gurdjieff could have critiqued that revolution, but instead he chose to defend the Tsarist treatment of peasants.
In any case, the ‘shockabooku’ tactics (which produced their vocabulary) that became public in the Gold sphere, bypassing the sweet tempered Lozowick (I think, ???), and reappearing in Cohen, have a known false legacy.
To be fair, the harsh treatment of people no doubt has a sufistic lineage, but, in any case, its class warfare overtones, which seems outlandish to point out at first, should become apparent when you realize that those who perpetrate them, like Gurdjieff, Gold, and now Cohen, are not enlightened, and have no call to ‘destroy ego’ when their own ego nexus is untouched.
The Gurdjieff teaching wasn’t a teaching at all, but a rightist authoritarian initiative to establish some kind of conservative spiritual authority, making the disciple a cringing dog.
Harsh tactics are a sign on non-enlightenment, and don’t appear in real gurus, with important exceptions, no doubt.
If a guru tries to trash you, fight back at once. If you see him do it to another, call him on it.
New Man, New Age, New Socialism 