Don't you come walkin' through my town and dustin' yer shoes.
Posted on 03/12/2011 2:58:25 PM PST by betty boop
By Jean F. Drew
Executive Summary: Our thesis is the New World Order needs a “new age” religion to back it up. “Old age” religions obligate their followers to a moral code ill-suited to “new age” progressivist designs and purposes. So people worldwide need to be “re-trained” in the spirituality department. Perhaps a clue as to what sort of training this would be can be found at the United Nations itself. The U.N. has chartered two NGOs — World Goodwill and Lucis Trust — which serve as advisors to various U.N. Departments, including the important Public Information Office. These NGOs are devoted to New Age religious principles, and teach such doctrines as the Hidden Masters of the Hierarchy and the Reappearance of Lord Maitreya, the “true” Christ. Generally, New Age Religion purports to be a “blend” of Buddhism and Christianity. We find, however, that the two are not “blendable.” To make our case, we resorted to G. I. Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson. In his fascinating myth, we find Gurdjieff attempting to “blend” them. It seems he feels this can be done because both purportedly are founded in the teachings of a single, very ancient Wisdom School — which was founded on antideluvian Atlantis. Thus Gurdjieff’s myth is about much more than just this Wisdom School. Beelzebub’s Tales is also a myth about the entire cosmic evolution of the planet Earth. In the process, we see him either defacing Christian symbols such as, e.g., Original Sin, The Revolt of the Angels, Eden; or outright denying them. For example of the latter, he calls the idea of “objective” Good and Evil as “the most maleficent lie” ever told. We also find him embroidering Buddhism with a hierarchy of cosmic “spiritual personalities” that are not mentioned in Buddha’s direct teachings. We then speculate about the possible teachings of the putative Ancient Wisdom School, and then compare and contrast the teachings of Christianity and Buddhism, showing why they are “unblendable.” In conclusion, we proffer the idea that New Age Religion teaches its pupils obsessive self-preoccupation and habits suited to a slave society. It teaches that there is no “objective” Good and Evil. It teaches submission to the teachers. Above all, it teaches that all human thinking, feelings, beliefs, and views; morality and philosophies and politics rooted in centuries of human cultural experience and history are utterly false. Thus they must be swept away so that “Objective Science” — supposedly the basis of New World Order governance — may finally come into its own.
* * * * * * *
Social order and religious belief have gone hand-in-hand all the way back to the dawn of human history. The record shows that a social order — a society — declines and finally fails when its traditional religious symbols lose their resonance in the hearts and minds of the members of the society. When this happens, the society eventually falls apart. Then inevitably an enterprising tyrant comes along to re-engineer it in divers ways, thus to impose a “new order” on it — usually to his enormous personal benefit, at great expense to the people he would rule.
Yet, even when religious symbols have been drained of their original light and life under the pressure of the so-called scientific revolution, they can still remain as “husks” of their former selves in human personal and social memory. Although detached from living experience, still they can be usefully exploited by would-be social engineers for their “ideational content.”
Nowadays many people have noticed the planet seems to be falling into wide-scale disorder (again), via war, terrorism, environmental irresponsibility, financial malfeasance, etc. Since this disorder is not a local or regional phenomenon but extends to the entire planet, therefore, the reasoning goes, its solution must be global, too. To meet this need the structure of a universal government based on scientific expertise must be created.
In light of the connection between social order and religious belief, a global New World Order would require a correspondingly global World Religion. And it turns out there is a “religion” or “spiritual tradition” that is extraordinarily well-suited to fostering globalist goals: “New Age” Religion.
To many people nowadays, it seems that religion is all about correct knowledge. That is, it is about what one knows, and not about how one lives. Thus man, seemingly so confused at precisely this point, should be easy to reprogram with a “new religion” to fill the void of the evacuated Spirit, one better aligned with the requirements and values of the putative emerging New World Order.
An ersatz blend of Buddhism and Christianity, New Age Religion claims to globally unite all the peoples of the world — heretofore divided along religious lines — under a new spirit of “brotherhood” and “sharing.”
Let us suppose the United Nations is the model for implementing the New World Order. One then wonders whether the U.N. has any particular preference of religious or spiritual tradition suitable as an intellectual and moral support for the emerging global order it is spearheading. As it turns out, the U.N. does.
Under the U.N. organizational umbrella are two fully-accredited non-governmental organizations whose stated purpose is to advance “New Age spirituality.” The two NGOs are closely related. The first, World Goodwill, “a program of Lucis Trust,” is an official advisor to the U.N.’s Department of Public Information. It also maintains “informal relations with certain of the Specialised Agencies and with a wide range of national and international non-governmental organizations.”
The other NGO is World Goodwill’s parent, Lucis Trust itself. Founded by Alice Bailey (1880–1949), Lucis Trust is a famous promoter of Arcane School spiritualism. Lucis Trust is also Alice Bailey’s publisher: Her books bear such titles as, e.g., Initiation, Human and Solar; The Reappearance of the Christ; The Rays and the Initiations; Esoteric Psychology; A Treatise on White Magic; A Treatise on Cosmic Fire. They continue to sell well, decade after decade.
Lucis Trust’s stated mission is to “promote the education of the human mind towards recognition and practice of the spiritual principles and values upon which a stable and interdependent world society may be based.” [Emphasis added.] Accordingly, it is a respected advisor to the U.N.’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Alice Bailey was the original promoter of the doctrines of the Hidden Masters of the Hierarchy and the Reappearance of Maitreya, the “true” Christ. Her student Benjamin Creme (1922 – ) has until very recently (he’s now 89) tirelessly worked to promote these ideas, especially in Western (traditionally Christian) countries.
As a former Bailey student personally acquainted with Benjamin Creme, the present writer would describe this New Age programme as a chimera consisting of a Buddhist chassis, richly festooned with Christian symbolism and allusions. Evidently this is a bid to integrate the philosophical and religious traditions of East and West into a “universal religion.”
Yet such “blending” of Buddhism and Christianity arguably does not — and cannot — work. The Buddhist approach to Truth, as the philosopher Joseph Needleman has pointed out, is “scientific and psychological,” while the Christian approach is based on reason and feeling. Can one blend oil and water?
Enter G. I. Gurdjieff (1866(?) – 1949), and his “spiritual autobiography,” Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson.
Like Bailey and Creme, Gurdjieff is a seminal source of New Age religious ideas. But he is far “craftier” and more cunning (and conning) than they. While Bailey and Creme devote themselves to writing textbooks on human spiritual improvement, Gurdjieff is a story-teller. He purports to “blend the oil and the water” by his claim that Buddhism and Christianity (via classical Western philosophy) have a common, very ancient root located in a Wisdom School that once flourished on the “lost continent” of Atlantis. Thus Beelzebub’s Tales is a fascinating exercise in myth construction.
However, just as with Bailey and Creme, in Gurdjieff the Buddhist “chassis” seems far removed from the original teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. There is nothing in Buddha’s direct teaching that indicates the existence of a proliferation of exalted spiritual beings — “powers and principalities” — who expertly keep “all the cosmic trains running on time.” Buddha said nothing about a hierarchy of great “Spiritual Personalities” responsible for “World-creation and World-maintenance” — though certainly Bailey, Creme, and Gurdjieff do. Nor does Buddha ever speak of a Creator. Moreoever what Gurdjieff does with Christian symbols (and classical philosophical insights) is nothing short of turning them inside-out, as we shall see.
Let us grant that once-upon-a-time there was such a thing as an Ancient Wisdom school, whether on Atlantis or somewhere else. In the West, its influence would likely have first surfaced in the Pythagorean School, which marks the transition from oral to written teaching methods. Pythagoras (~600 B.C.) himself had sources — according to legend, he studied 20 years with the Egyptian priests, and also with the Chaldean priests (Babylon).
The intriguing question is: What are the sources of Pythagoras’ sources?
Yet just as a physicist cannot “see” the beginning of the physical universe, neither can a philosopher “see” the beginning of human thought and religious experience — which are universals.
Then again, Pythagoras was the teacher of Socrates, who was the teacher of Plato; who in turn was the teacher of Aristotle, the founder of “natural philosophy,” or of what we today call: science. Moreover, key elements of this tradition were later absorbed into Christian theology, via the great Doctors of the Church, notably Augustine, Aquinas, and Anselm.
Let us turn now to Gurdjieff’s myth. We open Book 1 of Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson to find Beelzebub rocketing around the Universe in a space ship, grandson Hassein at his side. Hassein is avid to hear the wisdom his grandfather has to impart about cosmic Reality at all scales.
Gurdjieff’s myth is no less than the cosmic history of the Planet Earth, understood as a constituent part of the One Cosmos, out of which issues the order of the physical Universe. The maintenance of this Universe is in the care of certain spiritual persons of exalted rank, who are responsible for ensuring that the Cosmic Plan goes forward — according to Plan.
These beings go by the titles of Archangel, Angel, Saint, etc. Their main job is to monitor and regulate “energy exchanges” between the bodies of the solar system. They must do this in a way that sustains not only the solar system and the flourishing of its various planets (many of which are inhabited by life forms), but they must do this in a way that does not violate cosmic principles (laws). Thus, these “Archangels,” etc., are experts in the field of “cosmic energy distribution and balancing.” They are the “World-creators–World-maintainers.” At bottom, they are “spiritual scientists” (forgive the oxymoron).
But it turns out they are not all-knowing, and according to Beelezebub’s tale, they can make mistakes of disastrous consequences for man.
Although it is impossible to do justice to a work of over 1,000 pages in a short article, we can sketch out some of the main ideas.
Gurdjieff’s tale commences with the first cosmic disaster ever to befall planet Earth, which he uses as the background for a concept of Original Sin strikingly different from the Judeo-Christian one.
This first disaster was the ancient comet strike on Earth that carved the Moon (in this tale actually two moons) out of the body of the Earth. It was a disaster for the very reason that the above-mentioned “saints” did not see it coming.
According to the tale, mankind first appeared on Earth shortly after this catastrophe took place. In a nutshell, mankind had to be introduced on Earth when the solar system was suddenly, unexpectedly complicated by the unforeseen appearance of two new planets, Moon and Anulios. Then mankind had to be introduced because, as Beelzebub tells us, a certain “human suffering” was required in order to smooth out the disturbances to the cosmic energy balance occasioned by the effects of the comet strike on Earth.
The Moon as a “massive body” physically torn out of the Earth, according to this myth, gained “planetary status” thereby. The unexpected separation of Moon from Earth required the “saints” to recalculate how to maintain the overall balance of energies as between the “source” (Earth) and its separated part, the Moon (actually two moons). What was required was a certain “shifting and rebalancing of energies” from precisely mankind to the Moon in order to rebalance the energy distribution of the solar system caused by this unexpected situation, thus to maintain the Cosmic Order, the Plan.
As for the “other moon,” Anulios, we are told only this: Being of exceedingly small size and inhabiting a remote sector of space, it has not yet been detected by man. Gurdjieff leaves unclear what Anulios’ “energy demands” on the human race might be.
The upshot is: The “saintly bright boys” — the spiritual scientists — who “didn’t see this situation coming,” figured they had a real problem here:
“…[I]t might happen that having understood the reason for their arising, namely, that by their existence they should maintain the detached fragments of their planet, and being convinced of this their slavery to circumstances utterly foreign to them, they would be unwilling to continue their existence and would on principle destroy themselves.”
Thus the question: What did “the saintly ‘bright boys’ who didn’t see this situation coming” do to remedy this situation? After all, they hardly wanted man to commit suicide — for Moon needed their “being-sacrifices” in order to develop its own “atmosphere.”
The answer: They decided to “tamper” with man as he then existed by installing a brand-new organ, called the Kundabuffer, into his bodily organization. This Kundabuffer is perhaps best understood as a program designed to divert human spiritual energies into the service of personal “pleasure” and “enjoyment.” Keep ’em busy with this stuff, and they won’t so much mind they are slaves…. Or so the thinking went at the time among these “great spiritual personalities” who evidently have zero foresight, and so are forever playing a game of “catch-up ball” just like the rest of us “three-brained beings” (that is, human beings, referred to often in this work as the “scum” breeding on/inhabiting the “ill-fated planet” Earth).
So the darned thing — the Kundabuffer — kicked in; and the next thing we find out is that “the saintly ‘bright boys’ who didn’t see this situation coming” came to regret their decision to install the Kundabuffer. For one thing, it seemed to lead to the propensity of human beings to destroy one another. So, regretting their unfortunate decision, they “removed” the Kundabuffer from the human bodily organization….
But too late! It had already left its mark on human nature; and moreover, this mark was relentlessly, necessarily heritable unto the generations. (Gurdjieff seems more Lamarckian than Darwinian in his idea of biological evolution.)
The point is, unlike the Judeo-Christian tradition’s view of the Fall of Man” — the Original Sin, Adam’s fatal choice, which was his alone to make, which is likewise relentlessly heritable unto the generations — Beelzebub’s account holds man himself entirely blameless for his suffering in the world. It was just a huge cosmic screw-up traceable to a certain overly-anxious Archangel, a vast cosmic mistake.
But the upshot is: Mankind has to pay for the consequences of this “mistake” nonetheless, “unto the generations.” Man’s fate is to offer his personal suffering “in service to the Moon.” This is an irremovable condition, heritable unto the generations.
In other words, mankind was created for the sole purpose of discharging a “cosmic debt.” He lives and suffers and dies in service to this purpose. And he binds his descendants to this irremovable condition of slavery simply by “breeding.”
The second great cosmic disaster to befall the Earth was the destruction of “the continent Atlantis” by means of a massive flood. The significance of this event is as follows:
According to Beelzebub, there had arisen on Atlantis a very great school of human psychology or “Ancient Wisdom” that possibly conceived of man as a microcosm of the Cosmos, a complete recapitulation of it on a vastly smaller scale. This school may have maintained that, in order for man to understand the Being of the Cosmos of which he was a living part, he first needed to understand the order of his own being. In order for him to do that, he needed to realize that the order of the human mind did not consist solely of its “rational function,” but also incorporates feeling and instinctive functions that “mirror” the order of the encompassing Cosmos of which he is a part and participant. In shorthand: “As above, so below.”
According to Beelzebub, the humans of this great Atlantean school were of such superlative mental acuity that they perceived, from their own careful measurements of “the local energies,” that some really bad thing was about to befall the Earth. And so they deployed their people out of Atlantis to all quarters of the then-known world to see whether anybody could find out anything with respect to the impending doom, so as to try to prevent it.
Thus initiates of the Atlantean School disbursed to such places as Central Asia, Egypt, and India.
When Atlantis was destroyed, the school there would have been utterly destroyed also — had it not been for this antediluvian diaspora of its initiates to other parts of the world.
In short, this school and its ideas lived on, though in increasingly degraded form over time.
It later emerges in supposed pristine condition under Gurdjieff’s symbol, Ashiata Shiemash, a holy teacher and great spiritual being sent “from Above” to revivify the ancient ideas so to guide mankind in the acquisition of “Objective Science.”
Ashiata Shiemash tells us that Objective Science begins in human “regeneration.” Human regeneration, or spiritual evolution, begins with inculcating the sense of Remorse, which leads to Conscience. This then proceeds to Gratitude, which furthermore leads, in a “properly-formed” human consciousness, to a more-or-less permanent sense of selfless Duty. His teaching method is designed to bring forth such fruits in his human subjects.
Compare this idea with the Christian teaching, “love thy neighbor as thyself.” The corresponding Shiemash formulation would go: “Love thy neighbor more than thyself.” Or even: “Love anything that breathes” more than oneself.
This regeneration/reformation of man is done by invoking the proper “being-obligolnian-strivings” in human beings. There are five such strivings:
“The first striving: to have in their ordinary being-existence everything satisfying and really necessary for their planetary body.
“The second striving: to have a constant and unflagging instinctive need for self-perfection in the sense of being.
“The third: the conscious striving to know ever more and more concerning the laws of World-creation and World-maintenance.
“The fourth: the striving from the beginning of their existence to pay for their arising and their individuality as quickly as possible, in order afterwards to be free to lighten as much as possible the Sorrow of our COMMON FATHER.
“And the fifth: the striving always to assist the most rapid perfecting of other beings, both those similar to oneself and those of other forms, up to the degree of the sacred “Martfotai” that is up to the degree of self-individuality.”
The point is, Beelzebub seems to be saying that a New Eden can be raised on these five “strivings.” People grasping these principles — new initiates — would begin to speak of them in public, and model them in their daily lives, whereupon “the crowd” would see that these were, in fact, really fine principles for ordering human existence. So they would emulate these models.
The problem is this “attractive” idea has never before played out successfully in actual reality, although this fact hardly reflects a lack of trying. The New Eden requires “chiefs,” “leaders,” to organize such an enterprise and carry it out — something like the U.N. — and a willing, cooperative, even supine body of followers to “make it happen”:
“At that period the counsel and guidance and in general every word of these chiefs, became law for all the three-brained beings there [i.e., human beings], and were fulfilled by them with devotion and joy.”
One way to read this: The human spirit’s sublime fulfillment consists in the rejection of one’s “ego” and free will, so to hitch one’s individuality up to the great star of expert opinion of spiritual activists, leading to the functioning of an expertly-guided “group mind.”
Near the end of Book 1, Gurdjieff says that if the methods of Ashiata Shiemash were to fail, he hopes the “bright boys” running the cosmic show would implant a new organ in mankind, similar to the Kundabuffer. But this time, the new organ would not be devoted to the purpose of motivating experiences of pleasure and enjoyment. It would be devoted to inculcating a sense of self-sacrifice and self-denial, in the interest of a common human “welfare” that is being defined and directed by otherworldly spiritual guides. Gurdjieff uses the word “welfare.” I take it he prefers that word to the classical philosophical word, the Good.
It is reasonable to conclude that the removed Kundabuffer and the proposed new Kundabuffer are more like computer programs than they are like any human organ we know of. But I wonder: Are human beings really “programmable” in this way?
But the problem remains, as Beelzebub himself acknowledges: The human being will do his level best to destroy the “fruits of the Very Saintly Labors of Ashiata Shiemash” any time he’s given a chance.
In the humble opinion of the present writer, this is precisely because the God-fearing individual knows as if by instinct, as it were, that this so-called “holy person” Ashiata Shiemash wants to strip him of his own holy individuality and the liberty invested in him by God, in order to make him amenable to the social reengineering that the experts of Objective Science — seers of a destroyed Atlantis — have in mind.
The third disaster to befall the “ill-fated planet” was the rising of “cosmic winds” affecting the planet, such that the very mountains were ground down, disintegrated into particles, thence distributed and deposited as sand. This “sandification” process resulted in, e.g., the Sahara and Gobi deserts. The “disaster,” from Beelzebub’s point of view, was that these sands buried virtually all extant writings of the Atlantean Wisdom School. (But not to worry. He finds them later, and “reassembles” them in his “tale to his grandson.”)
Not much to add here regarding the Third Disaster, for Beelzebub does not further elaborate. But he does suggest that yet other, forthcoming cosmic catastrophes will befall the “ill-fated planet” in due course.
Beelzebub himself is a spiritual person of exalted rank — one of those “saintly ‘bright boys’ who didn’t see this situation coming” (though probably of more “lawyerly” than “hands-on” predisposition). As he tells it, once-upon-a-time he committed a certain “youthful indiscretion,” for which reason he and certain of his friends were exiled from some undefined celestial realm — to the planet Mars. Beelzebub has a great big telescope there to investigate the doings on all the planets of the Solar System (many inhabited by living beings), and especially “that ill-fated planet,” Earth. And he has perfect means to “descend” to Earth anytime he wishes to visit: He has a space ship on constant stand-by for this purpose. He has made this journey six times in the history of Earth, typically for some “good purpose,” such as ending the practice of animal sacrifice, or ending the caste system in India.
Beelzebub is not Lucifer. Lucifer is mentioned infrequently, inconsequently. (The name Satan never appears.) When he is mentioned, Beelzebub always refers to him as “our Arch Cunning”…. Beyond that, Gurdjieff leaves Lucifer’s cosmic role seemingly undefined.
Thus Gurdjieff’s version of the cosmic revolt of Lucifer and one-third of the angels. There is no explanation of what Beelzebub’s “youthful indiscretion” was; but it seems he was a ranking member of the party of the fallen angels all the same. He is “rehabilitated” later, in the course of Gurdjieff’s myth.
In Beelzebub’s tale, the Tower of Babel was constructed on the basis of a single question: Does man have a soul? This question has two main camps: the “dualists” and the “atheists”:
“In the dualist or idealist teaching, it was said that within the coarse body of the being-man, there is a fine and invisible body, which is just the soul.
“This ‘fine body’ of man is immortal, that is to say, it is never destroyed….
“In [the atheist] teaching…it was stated that there is no God in the world, and moreover no soul in man, and hence that all those talks and discussions about the soul are nothing more than the deliriums of sick visionaries.
“It was further maintained that there exists in the World only one special law of mechanics, according to which everything that exists passes from one form into another; that is to say, the results which arise from certain preceding causes are gradually transformed and become causes for subsequent results.
“Man also is therefore only a consequence of some preceding cause and in his turn must, as a result, be a cause of certain consequences.
“Further, it was said that even what are called ‘supernatural phenomena’ really perceptible to most people, are all nothing but these same results ensuing from the mentioned special law of mechanics.”
Sound familiar? Here we see the age-old dispute regarding free will vs. determinism put into sharp relief. And also the popular scientific claim that the entire universe reduces to matter in its motions.
Addressing this situation, Gurdjieff puts this speech into the mouth of his character, Hamolinadir, a middling initiate of the Atlantean wisdom school:
There is now proceeding among us in the city of Babylon the general public “building-of-a-tower” by means of which to ascend to “Heaven” and there to see with our own eyes what goes on there.
This tower is being built of bricks which outwardly all look alike, but which are made of quite different materials.
Among these bricks are bricks of iron and wood and also of “dough” and even of “eider down.”
Well then, at the present time, a stupendously enormous tower is being built of such bricks right in the center of Babylon, and every more or less conscious person must bear in mind that sooner or later this tower will certainly fall and crush not only all the people of Babylon, but also everything else that is there.
As I personally still wish to live and have no desire to be crushed by this Babylonian tower, I shall therefore now immediately go away from here, and all of you, do as you please.
Unfortunately, Gurdjieff does not propose a way of reconciling the underlying dispute — dualist vs. atheist — in the entire tale of Beelzebub’s conversations with his grandson. Perhaps he knows that, as between “dualists” and “atheists,” there is no reconciliation on questions of Truth? That is to say, there is no common ground between them on which rational discourse could make a stand? Thus all one gets from such attempts is: the construction of a Tower of Babel that will wind up crushing us all?
Gurdjieff doesn’t declare himself on this question. But I note the myth he constructs in Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson pays obeisance to the atheists’ “special law of mechanics.”
In Book 3, Beelzebub says mankind’s understanding of “angels” and “demons” is horrifically warped, because human beings have bought into the most maleficent lie ever told: That there is such a thing as objective Good and Evil.
Beelzebub holds that what we call “good” and “evil” are merely internal processes in man. “Good” is bad, because it leads man down false paths of egoism; “Evil” is good because it is a symbol for destructive processes in Nature which are necessary to Being itself.
As Beelzebub complains,
[Man has] already based all questions without exception, questions concerning ordinary being-existence as well as questions about self-perfecting and also about various “philosophies” and every kind of “science” existing there, and of course also about their innumerable “religious teachings” and even their notorious what are called “morality,” “politics,” “laws,” “morals, and so on, exclusively on that fantastic but…very maleficent idea. [Emphasis added.]
Gurdjieff has a plan for eradicating this “most maleficent lie” from human consciousness. In the very last chapter of Book 3, he tells us what it is:
“To destroy, mercilessly, without any compromises whatsoever, in the mentation [thought] and feelings of the reader, the beliefs and views, by centuries rooted in him [by heredity and culture], about everything existing in the world.”
In short Gurdjieff takes the wrecking-ball approach to all existing human cultures, clearing and leveling the ground so an entirely new system can be erected on the razed site.
As Anthony Daniels wryly noted in National Review (“The Brute and the Terrorist,” March 7, 2011), nowadays a man best shows his “independence of mind” and “generosity of spirit” by rejecting everything he has inherited from his historical and cultural past.
One imagines that Gurdjieff approves this attitude. Evidently Gurdjieff wishes to reduce his pupil to the status of tabula raza, a blank slate on which he can write anything at all. And how better to do that than to detach from human consciousness mankind’s hard-won culture and history? With this support gone, how is man to locate himself in Reality?
The two spiritual/philosophical systems — East (Buddhism) and West (Christianity/classical philosophy) — are similar in their basic understanding of the structure of human psyche as a “three-bodied system” consisting of consciousness (rational intellect), unconsciousness (feeling), and organic instinct. They also agree the soul, psyche, is eternal. Perhaps this basic agreement owes to a far older common tradition, a school of Ancient Wisdom, whether or not it was located in “Atlantis.”
But beyond this point of agreement, the two traditions seemingly diverge. The bifurcation occurs at the question of how the two traditions deal with the proper alignment and balance of the “three-bodied system,” the human psyche.
Socrates and Plato regard this problem as solvable by giving each of the three “bodies” or “centers” its due, and then to bring them into proper “alignment.” The method used to accomplish this is relentless self-interrogation — “Know Thyself” — involving a process called anamnesis, or “recollection,” remembering.
Buddha suggests that the object of the game is to bring the “centers” of feeling and instinct under the complete control of the rational intellect. That is, Buddhism does not regard feeling or instinct as natural goods, but as something that must be overcome. Feeling and instinct must be dominated by the rational component of psyche in order for human beings to be liberated from the cycle of rebirth — samsara — and its “suffering.” And when one achieves such liberation, one attains the blessed condition of Nirvana — final release from all the pains of earthly, bodily existence.
In contrast, Socrates/Plato (and Christian theology in certain respects) regard psyche (soul, inclusive of mind) as a complete divine specification of a unique human person. Soul materializes the body, incarnates in it. Soul needs to be actively tended to by its recipient, corrected, and perfected, in order for the human being to attain the proper balance of consciousness enabling him to realize whatever “divinity” he has latently within him, according to the divine measure. And then to express this latent divinity as far as possible within his own practical existence, with an eye on his post-existence: Dike — divine Justice — is never far below the surface in Plato. Plato’s message for the ages is that all human beings are subject to divine Judgment in all matters involving divine Justice. Thus the idea of personal responsibility and accountability runs through Socrates/Plato. (Beelzebub calls Socrates “a crank.”)
In contrast it seems for Buddha, psyche is more like a “little seed” that one is born with. It is not a “full specification of the human person,” but a locus of potentiality that man must develop by his own efforts, according to his own reason (the imperfections of which will hopefully be corrected and cured in the virtually endless process of reincarnation). And its destiny is to realize itself as a “worthy particle” of the divine Prana — the divine Cosmic Essence — which realization represents the eternal merger and identification of the self-perfected personal self with the divine Cosmic Self. At which point, one can say of oneself: I AM (God).
Strange to say it, but Buddhism seems to tell us that the only personal obligation that one has is: to release oneself from personal “suffering.” The idea of Justice — as something involving the entire human community — doesn’t seem to be exactly topical in this system of ideas.
Whatever one thinks about these problems, in Beelzebub’s Tales Gurdjieff is mining a common vein of ancient thought, and seemingly very knowledgeably and skillfully — that is, “craftily.”
But as he himself tells us, he’s a “wiseaker.” It seems Gurdjieff is not so much a charlatan as he is a chameleon, even a “shape-shifter.” Furthermore, Gurdjieff may have been a practitioner of “coyote Wisdom.”
In American Indian lore the coyote symbolizes the Trickster. He excels by cunning (magic) at depicting and conveying false pictures of Reality to human beings, at the behest of a “Shaman.” And then they really get into trouble! (The humans, that is.)
G. I. Gurdjieff may be a “trickster” in just this sense.
Gurdjieff tells us that the universe is filled with a myriad of life-bearing planets. Beelzebub deplores the “fact” that the “ill-fated planet,” Earth, is the only planet that isn’t ordered under a “single King” — a global government. Clearly he feels that this situation needs to be fixed.
In common with Lucis Trust, Gurdjieff recognizes that, in order for a world government to succeed, its would-be subjects must first be educated “towards recognition and practice of the spiritual principles and values upon which a stable and interdependent world society may be based.” His teaching methods — and those of Bailey and Creme — work toward that end. In the end, the New Age Religion championed by the U.N. seems intended as the universal spiritual justification for ever-expansive global secular power. No wonder the U.N. accords them respect.
Finally, what does this teaching teach? As a practical matter, it teaches obsessive self-preoccupation and habits suited to a slave society. It teaches that there is no “objective” Good and Evil. It teaches submission to the teachers. Above all, it teaches that all human thinking, feelings, beliefs, and views; morality and philosophies and politics rooted in centuries of human cultural experience and history are utterly false. Thus they must be swept away so that “Objective Science” — supposedly the basis of New World Order governance — may finally come into its own.
Untethered from the human past, including all former religious traditions, human beings are left vulnerable to domination by any crazy ideology that comes down the pike that can project effective political force.
Gurdjieff deploys amazing knowledge and skill — craft — to sell us this dubious proposition, which seems to falsify human nature at every turn.
Yet for all his craftiness, one has little sense of the man’s character, of his moral core. Then again, the idea of “moral core” cannot be found anywhere in Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson.
And so in reading him, one is advised to recall a bit of practical wisdom, or common sense: The most successful liar is the man who can tell the truth “skillfully.”
©2011 Jean F. Drew
March 12, 2011
LINKS:
Benjamin Creme/Share International: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_International
Lucis Trust U.N. NGO: http://esango.U.N..org/civilsociety/showProfileDetail.do?method=showProfileDetails&profileCode=945
Alice Bailey/Lucis Trust home page: http://www.lucistrust.org/
Gurdjieff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gurdjieff
Ever read The Peace Child?
Treachery was the highest ideal and Judas was the hero.
Golden Rule?
Eat your neighbor rather than love him?
"One doesn't destroy what is precious unless one is ignorant or insane.
"As Schuon writes, "there is no comparison between the intellectual and moral worth of the greatest contemplatives and the absurdity that their illusion would imply were it nothing but that." Meister Eckhart or Bill Maher. Shankara or Sean Penn. Tough choice.
"Schuon goes on to say that this kind of hermetically sealed ignorance would lead us to believe that "no proof of anything is possible since every argument can be invalidated verbally by some sort of sophistry." In short, it is a reduction of integral truth to what the most common and vulgar minds are capable of understanding.
On Knowing How We Know [the atherist] Bill Maher is an Imbecile
I don't think that was Russell's position. Russell's problem seems to have been his belief that an impredicativity is logically a closed-loop "vicious circle" which he argued was inherently self-referential. (Arguably, an axiom is of this character. Axioms are assumed to be true, largely because they can't be "falsified.")
Evidently Russell believed that any impredicativity arising in material nature— or in Number Theory — was merely evidence of a "structuring mind" at work. That is, it is a subjective perception. Modern science relentlessly expunges all "subjectivity" from its methods on the supposition that only "objective" methods are reliable in the explication of the natural world.
The mathematician Robert Rosen, in Life Itself, avers that formalist mathematicians, e.g., David Hilbert and Bertrand Russell, "believe that all mathematical truth can be reduced to, or expressed in terms of, word processing or symbol manipulation."
Hence the close association of [mathematical] formalization with the idea of "machines" (Turing machines) and with the idea of algorithms. These embody purely automatic procedures, which require no thought, no perception, indeed, no external agency at all. [I.e., no "subjective" mind thinking and perceiving is needed.]In a nutshell, the attempt to reduce Number Theory to its syntactical elements alone failed. It's interesting to note that, as far back as Pythagoras, it was thought numbers weren't just manipulable entities useful in e.g., counting and measuring operations; numbers had "magnitude" in themselves. That is to say, numbers carry meaning: They have semantic value in themselves....[T]he formalist position, that the universe of discourse needs to consist of nothing more than meaningless symbols pushed around by definite rules of manipulation, is exactly parallel to the mechanical picture of the phenomenal world as consisting of nothing more than configurations of structureless particles, pushed around by impressed forces.
The formalist position seems, on the fac[e] of it, very attractive. For, by asserting that all truth is syntactic truth, it tells us that (1) we lost no shred of mathematical truth in the process of formalization, and (2) we are automatically guaranteed that mathematics is consistent. We pay for these benefits by giving up the idea that mathematics is "about" anything.... [I.e., that mathematics is more than syntax; that it has semantic content, that it "means" anything.]
The celebrated Incompleteness Theorem of Gödel effectively demolished the formalist program.... The fact that Number Theory is about numbers is essential, because there are precepts of qualities (theorems) pertaining to numbers that cannot be expressed in terms of a given, preassigned set of purely syntactic entailments.... There is always a purely semantic residue, that cannot be accommodated by that syntactical scheme....
There are thus qualities pertaining to numbers, and to Number Theory, that are missed by any such attempt; hence any entailments in Number Theory pertaining to these unencoded qualities [precisely the semantical elements, which deal with meaning] are likewise inaccessible in the formalization. It would thus require, at best, an infinite number of distinct formalizations to capture all the qualities, and hence, all the entailments of Number Theory, in terms of syntax alone.
This kind of situation is what I have elsewhere termed complexity. In this light Gödel's Theorem says that Number Theory is more complex than any of its formalizations, or equivalently, that formalizations, governed by syntactic inference alone, are simpler than Number Theory.
But this sort of thing goes entirely against the grain of the modern scientific outlook.
Wow! It seems we are really off on a sidetrack! Still, I think there's an analogy here to the type of "psychic operation" that New Age religion is designed to effect. That is, the reduction of the human mind to its analytical (syntactical) aspect only, starving out the mind's subjective aspects along with feeling and instinct. Then, when the analytical part stands alone, to destroy its main supports: Reason, and what is called "common sense."
ModelBreaker, if you can get hold of that proof published circa 2003, I'd love to see it!
Thank you ever so much for your astute insights!
Thanks for "the news". :)
What do you guys think of using Einstein’s illustration that he used to explain his general theory, the one of the passengers on a train and the people standing on the station platform, to man’s journey through life?
If you are on the train you are surrounded immediately by family and friends, or if traveling alone, by those immediately around you. Those are your peers. As you walk through the train you see many others who you do not know but with whom you do have something in common - you are all going to the same place.
During the journey you pass through many different landscapes; fertile fields, deserts, mountains, lakes, oceans, large cities, small towns, distant farm houses, dwellings close to the track, etc. All of you are seeing the same things, in general, not all will be looking at the same thing at the time and once missed it is missed, but you are taking the same route to the same destination. Basically, the landscape is time and space and you are moving through it.
From the view of those on the platform you have a peer group in each other and a common environment, the station, just as those on the train had the train in common, and you have moving scenery, the train and the people on it. Again, the platform is time and space, the ever-present present, and others are moving through it while you observe.
Are we moving through an ever-moving present or are we fixed in the ever-present present while observing the passing of the time/space continuum?
Does the Bible speak to that or is this question a waste of precious time and space?
Absolutely outstanding observation! Another wonderfully rich article from Gagdad Bob!
I just loved the way he derives the idea of a second reality from an "internalized mind parasite," a/k/a/, from some fundamental lie.
Also, I loved this: "the pressure of political correctness is an instrument of coercion designed to reconcile you to the infrahuman lies of the left."
Oh, so very true!
Thank you so much for posting this, Matchett-PI!
Gagdad Bob hits it out of the ballpark again! Home run!!!
Thanks, Matchett-PI!
To which kosta50 replied: "Not 'mere' matter. Dead matter. Dead matter is not conscious of itself. It is dead."
Questions for kosta: What is "live" matter? Is it conscious of itself?
Just an idle observation: Dear kosta seems to be a skeptic in the strictest sense, what David Hume called a "Pyrrhonian." In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume wrote:
The Cartesian doubt...were it ever possible to be attained by any human creature (as it plainly is not) would be entirely incurable; and no reasoning could ever bring us to a state of assurance and conviction upon any subject....
For here is the chief and most confounding objection to excessive scepticism, that no durable good can ever result from it; while it remains in its full force and vigour.... But a Pyrrhonian cannot expect, that his philosophy will have any constant influence on the mind: or if it had, that its influence would be beneficial to society. On the contrary, he must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge anything, that all human life must perish, were his principles universally and steadily to prevail. All discourse, all action would immediately cease; and men remain in a total lethargy, till the necessities of nature, unsatisfied, put an end to their miserable existence.... Nature is always too strong for principle.... [A]ll his objections are mere amusement, and can have no other tendency than to show the whimsical condition of mankind, who must act and reason and believe....
"...There is one additional aspect of the third commandment that I had wanted to get into, but this has already gone on rather long, and I don't really have timelessness enough to expand upon it. That is the possibility of metaphysical knowledge which is both objectively true and operative, or fruitful, in the psyche. Virtually all postmodern thought is in agreement that objective metaphysical knowledge is not possible -- that it is intrinsically “vain.” Here again we see an exact reversal of the reality, for the religious view is that human beings most definitely have access, through the uncreated intellect, to objective truth. There are eternal truths that man may not only know, but without which man couldn't know anything, and wouldn't be man.
Example?
Oh, there are so many, I don’t know where to begin. How about this one: semantics cannot be reduced to syntax. Because it can’t, language is not just a vain epiphenomenon produced by a modified primate brain, including the mathematical language that governs the physical universe, the language of DNA, the language of music, or the language of Shakespeare. Ultimately, it means that meaning is indeed meaningful and not merely a vain existential pursuit. The cosmos is not just a tale told by a tenured idiot, full of sound and fury but signifying short hours and a nice paycheck. Rather, it is a vehicle of Ultimate Meaning, as it is a lifeline tossed down from above, not an ivory tower of babbling idiots built from below, prick by prick.
You’re welcome!
Yes, he does! bttt
Atheists prove it evey day.
Much agree!
You are talking about empathy, that ability to put oneself in another's situation and feel what they feel. Those without empathy have no conscience or compassion. Following the Golden Rule prevents that.
ABSOLUTELY INDEED.
Some of us have noted such a fact in various ways to the obdurate hereon . . . of course, to no avail.
Obstinancy, etc are always sufficient gods unto themselves. And those who worship at their altars seem forever smugly confident of their correct worshipfulness.
What a Pandora’s box of idiocy.
EXCELLENT.
Thx.
“...As such, a big part of spiritual development simply involves “getting out of the way,” something that the postmodern, egocentric narcissist has a great deal of difficulty doing. Why? Because he is proud. And why is he proud? I have no idea. You’ll have to tell me, for there is no reason for a meaningless clump of matter to feel proud of itself. Unless — unless it covertly thinks that it is God. Then atheism makes total sense, for it proves the existence of God.
INDEED.
Very well put.
I think empathy . . . of any significant quality and quantity . . .
also requires
a capacity, willingness and active
SURRENDER.
Insecure and the arrogant arising out of their historic insecurities . . . are incapable/unwilling to surrender.
By surrender in this context, I mean the surrender of one’s own constructions on and priorities vis a vis reality
sufficient
to ‘slip into’ the other person’s skin and realities.
In the first place, OTHERS are too beneath the smugly, self-righteously arrogant for such a white-washed tomb to even contemplate such a refreshing redemptive experience—even if all mental/spiritual.
In the second place, the walking pit of vipers would not have a clue as to the first step toward such an empathetic experience.
So they wander around festering . . . dropping puddles of puss far and wide . . . spewing bile and venom at the slightest excuse . . . all the while congratulating themselves on how brilliant, insightful [what a paradox that is!], knowledgeable and powerful . . . or at least worthy . . . THEY are.
Barf.
I very much appreciate — and agree — with "Van" at the link you provided. But Gagdad Bob has weighed in there, too. The italics above capture what he said.
Once again, I find myself in profound agreement with his insights.
Thank you so very much, Matchett-PI!
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