The dangers of gurdjieffianity
dea links
http://www.gurdjieff-con.net/2008/09/10/rubbish-on-kundalini-but-grist-for-the-mill/comment-page-1/#comment-43899
For a dozenth time my hostility to Gurdjieff is based on the reality that various esoteric sources were fascist, and Gurdjieff was probably a fellow traveler. In any case, his known discussions show a reactionary conservative who is against democracy and human freedom. It is the hidden vice of new age gurus in general who preach ‘postmodernism’ because they don’t like modernity, or freedom.
Gurdjieff is a clear case. He follows the Whites toward southern Russia, and is on record supporting slavery, and approving of the pre-revolution treatment of the Russian peasantry. His ‘disciple’ Ouspensky wrote a really garbage tract on the ‘future evolution ofman’ supporting the Hindu law of caste.
So the whole game is shot, yet we have dozens of liberal Gurdjieff fanatics who just don’t get it. Gurdjieff demands absolute surrender and obedience. Behind the scenes, beyond the groupie circles, that surrender is tested: will you kill Jews if the guru asks it. The realm of Gold’s gurdieffianity was the Jewish case where that issue was demanded, and we had Jewish Gold nutjobs in nazi armbands.
My caution as to Gurdjieff then is not so unrealistic as the groupie comments here suggest. You would to well to steer clear of Gurdjieff. I follow th OUspensky track: he had a falling our G, the chief disciple started the long dissent this blog proposes.
His teaching is a repackaged version of ‘meditation in action’, that’s it, and yet even this is marred by a lot of confusing junk that Gurdjieff must have made up. This teaching has produced no exemplars, and seems barren, and a good reason is that it is unclear what it is about. It cannot succeed because the core is fake. If you must understand the enneagram to achieve ‘consciousness’, that day will never come, because the enneagram is complete idiocy, as far as I can tell.
Buddhism is clear: it is about the path to enlightenment. With Gurdjieff and too many sufis there is no focus. Just a sort of groupie enthusiasm over a bait and switch teaching. The traffic in groupie disciples is a big business in the shadow realm of shady gurus.
I should caution that these problems also haunt the decayed ‘buddhism’ that has survived from antiquity. The hidden rumor is the compicity of various buddhists in the age of fascism.
The whole question of gurus is unstable in the West. Westerners almost never find the starting point because their ideas of democracy and freedom block the road to total surrender.
We should point out that most real success here ‘on the path’ comes from those smart enouugh to stay away from gurus. Rajneesh was an example. Yet his world is stuck in the same surrender game, finally.
We need a reformation of the whole legacy of gurus and paths. It is falling out of history due to the failure to recreate itself beyond the false models produced by most of the exemplars current.
I can Gurdjieff dangerous because he is so. These ghostly devils can wreck the path of those they prey on. And they get off scott free. The reality of Gurdjieff is simply unclear. He speaks only distantly of ‘enlightenment’. His state is unclear, some sort of demonic limbo of relatively high consciousness. In any case his explanations in his ‘novel’ are unclear, but probably go the route in justifying his evil circumstance.
New Man, New Age, New Socialism 