New World Order, New Age Religion

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?

Meet Gurdjieff — and His Alter Ego, “Beelzebub”

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.

The Wisdom School

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).

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.

The First Disaster

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 Disaster

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

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.

The Angelic Rebellion

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.

The Tower of Babel

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.”

Good and Evil

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.

[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 Fundamental “Unblendability” of Buddhism and Christianity

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.

In Conclusion

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.)

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.”

Betty, I don’t think this correctly characterizes the Christian perspective of Christ or the Apostles. After Christianity absorbed Hellenism, this notion of the soul is perhaps correct. But second temple Judaism (and therefore Christianity) believed that God created and maintain our bodies. We are our bodies and the bodies are God’s creation. Jesus resurrection and our later resurrections will be bodily resurrections but “glorified.” God created our bodies and who we are. I don’t see why the notion of a separate soul is necessary for the Creator to resurrect us. He spoke the universe into being. The importance of the body is demonstrated by the crucifixion as the fulfillment of the law and it’s central role in Christianity. The body (the Temple of God) was crucified and rebuilt in three days. Had Jesus not been made of real stuff and genuinely suffered, the whole thing falls apart.

I don't know how the soul could ever be considered as "separate" from the body during its mortal existence. What I do know is based on observation: A corpse is clearly no longer a living body. Something has "gone out of it." And that something seems to be the difference between a living person and a dead body. Whatever that "something" is, its "departure" places the physical body fully and irreversibly under the control of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

Or am I observing an "illusion?"

A wise man once said, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." I do not know what form the resurrection takes, although our tradition tells us that it is resurrection in the form of a "glorified" body. If so, I really don't see why a soul "separated" at death cannot in principle be "reconnected" to a glorified body when resurrection takes place. God alone knows these details. To me, it is not the manner or the form the resurrection takes that is important, but that it does take place. Jesus Christ Himself is our proof that this is so.

Of course there is ambiguity in the New Testament on this issue. As Francis Schaeffer put it, "God tells us truthfully, but not exhaustively." Which is to say that we do not fully know what God knows, nor can we. Ever.

I sense — perhaps incorrectly — that you believe the Christian doctrine of soul was distorted by the absorption of Greek thought into Christian theology, and that the only true doctrine of soul was pretty much buried by these "super-added" materials after the first or second century A.D. That is, only the very Early Church was the "authentic" church, and everything since is a distortion or deformation of authentic Christian belief and practice.

To pursue that line of thinking, however, would probably sink us into long-standing doctrinal disputes existing between the Roman Church and the various denominations of Reformed Church. I am not the least interested in engaging in any such dispute. Of all things, I pray God to heal the divisions of the holy Body of Christ, to stop Christians from "quarreling" with one another, so we can stand together to face our common Enemy — who loves us to be engaged in such "disputes." They only prove that we have turned our faces away from our Lord....

As for myself, I just believe that Saint Justin Martyr was right: The Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ was the fulfillment, not only of the Patriarchs and Prophets of Judaism, but also of classical Greek philosophy.

Just some thoughts, dear ModelBreaker. FWIW. Thank you ever so much for your deeply sensitive and moving essay/post!

“That is, only the very Early Church was the “authentic” church, and everything since is a distortion or deformation of authentic Christian belief and practice.”

Well, not the very early Church per se—there were a lot of strange notions developed in the early church. And you can see much effort by Paul in the Epistles to get them straightened out. I meant Jesus Christ and the Apostles. I’m not a sola scriptura guy simply because the Holy Spirit is given to us. OTOH, John is really clear at the end of Revelation about what he thinks about adding to and subtracting from scripture. So I do believe that scripture is the number-one-with-a-bullet standard against which to judge doctrine. That keeps us from mistaking the Holy Spirit for our own ideas.

When we read scripture, we have to read it from the perspective of the authors, who were all second temple Jews and used words and ideas in that context. Especially Paul, Luke and James, who were fervent, observant and highly educated Jews. E.g., Paul spoke the language and thought the ideas of the Pharisees because he was a high-ranking Pharisee. Neither Paul nor the Pharisees (nor the Saducees) were very clear (or appeared to be very interested) in what happened between death and our rebirth with our resurrection bodies. (In fact, we have almost no information about what Jesus did between the crucifixion and the resurrection.)

The idea of a soul that goes down into the body at birth and then flits off at death is a Greek notion that was quite alien to second temple Jews. Those were not ideas the Apostles grew up with and we should be very careful about reading them into their words unless they are very clear about it.

So at least in our household, when my son asks what happens after we die, I tell him that eventually we are going to get wonderful resurrection bodies and live for eternity in the New Earth. On that, I think all Christian denominations should agree. But what happens between death and then is not at all clear.

It may be there is some conscious continuity between death and our resurrection. As you say, something leaves the body at death. And certainly the martyrs demanding justice before the throne suggests that there is continued consciousness at least for some of us. But whether we regain consciousness before our resurrection is not a question God chose to answer. “I don’t know” is a perfectly OK answer and I’m always suspicious about filling in big blank spaces like that with human doctrine.

Thanks for your response. I didn’t mean to write this much. That’s just how it came out.

Thanks for your response. I didn’t mean to write this much. That’s just how it came out.

And the way it came out was just — beautiful.

We have no quarrel in these matters, dear brother in Christ.

Which is good; since we both confess that we have no direct knowledge of them anyway.

So here is an idle question: Did not Paul also speak Greek? (That's a serious question for the simple reason that I don't know the answer to it.) Paul was not just a highly cultured Jew, he was also a Roman citizen — and presumably aware of Rome's "intellectual culture," which was at the time largely classical Greek.

And don't forget it was Paul who first "gave up on" the Jews, and then took his evangelization directly to "the Greeks."

God's plan infallibly continues....

Thank you oh so very much for your outstanding essay/post, dear ModelBreaker!

The quotes I often post . . . one is from 160 years ago in I think a novel.

Another is from 110 years ago.

I don’t have the link back 400 years.

The 400 year reference is basically saying that the ruling wealthy families—most from the old Roman Empire . . . have maintained and greatly added to their wealth and POWER and have long been working toward a global tyrannical government in league with satan.

About 30 families control 90% or so of the world’s banks and about 30 families control 90% or so of the major media in the world.

Here’s some of the links on such quotes:

N.W.O. QUOTES POST, Latest QX post NWO QUOTES ON FR:
.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2624713/posts?page=153#153
.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2475963/posts?page=60#60
.
colorful NWO QUIXICATION of quotes:
.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2624713/posts?page=153#153

Neither Paul nor the Pharisees (nor the Saducees) were very clear (or appeared to be very interested) in what happened between death and our rebirth with our resurrection bodies. (In fact, we have almost no information about what Jesus did between the crucifixion and the resurrection.)

Dear ModelBreaker, reflecting further on your last post, I think the question you actually proposed may have been: Is there continuity of personal consciousness between death and resurrection? But you already answered your own question, when you said: "In fact, we have almost no information about what Jesus did between the crucifixion and the resurrection."

To me, this is the real problem of the "God of the gaps." Because we cannot know what Jesus experienced in this interval, there is no possible way for us humans ever to explain what happens to us when we are in similar circumstances; that is "in the tomb."

The Good News Is: Our Lord rose and returned to us in a glorified body, and He was perfectly "conscious." He was Himself — Son of God, Logos, Alpha and Omega. That is, the "tomb experience" did not defeat Him.

And we are made in His image and reflection....

All thanks and praise be unto God!

I post this to you two because I bought both your books a while backand I greatly respect you.

The crux of the New Testament is the virgin birth, crucifixion and resurrection combination. Although the story cannot be fragmented the part that resonates most with me is the Passion of the Crucifixion. This is truly a story of Love.

Jesus basically came from nowhere, though His coming was prophesied and the angels spoke to the shepherds in the field at night, directing them to follow the star to his birth site. The shepherds, Kings, Wise Men or whomever. spread the word of a King being born, prompting Herod to kill all babies under one year old. So, He did make a big stir upon His first appearance but He then faded from sight until age twelve.

At that time He reappears by amazing the elders with His knowledge and intelligence, causing them to wonder, “Who is this kid?” Then He stormed the Temple and threw out the money changers and sellers of sacrificial animals. (What kind of sacrifice is it to buy and animal for that purpose?) He then disappears again until age thirty.

The Jewish Temple had become an entity unto itself rather than a place to worship and sing praises to God. Instead, the elders and priests had become the center. They made great public displays of their piety by praying aloud in the town square and turning the temple into a business for their purposes. They became the center rather than God.

Jesus came to change all that and to establish a New Covenant with Man, a Covenant with the God of Love as its center to replace the God of Revenge and the elders and priest who were trying to replace HIm. He also gave man a direct pipeline to God rather than having to go through the priests and elders. (Years later, the Church of Peter, the Catholic Church, sort of re-instituted the Old Covenant.) As a result, He made enemies early on.

As He wondered the hills He told his story of true salvation, of Loving thy neighbor as thyself, of helping the beggar in the ditch rather than pretending to not see him, of humbling oneself in God’s service rather than boasting of piety. Along the way He also performed a few miracles such as turning water into wine, walking on the sea and calming the storm, curing the incurable, healing the lame and raising the dead. Naturally, this caught the attention of some and He developed a small following of disciples who accompanied Him and helped spread the Word.

As He drew more and more attention from the citizens He also drew more attention from the Temple elders and priests. He was a direct threat to their livelihood. They began to complain to the powers-that-be, the Romans, and suggested He was a threat to them also. They said, “Here is a man claiming to be King of the World. We must rid ourselves of this man as he is a threat to social order.”

They frequently tried to trick Him into saying just that, that He was God or that He was a King. He always slipped the noose and proclaimed Himself the Son of Man rather than the Son of God. Still, they managed to bring Him before Pilate and demand his execution. In their fervor to rid themselves of this scourge they sought His disciples, too, and any others they could tie to Him. Those who had recently declared eternal devotion, including His most dedicated disciples, like Peter and Judas, betrayed Him, with Peter protesting he had never known Him and Judas betraying His whereabouts to save his own skin.

Here was God, come to Earth as Man, spreading Love and Salvation, and He was rejected and defiled. He had previously told His disciples that they would face the same, He said they would be persecuted in HIs Name, that the road was wide but the gate was narrow, that many would be called but few would answer.

With the repeated demand of the temple elders Pilate relented and condemned Jesus to crucifixion, the most barbaric form of punishment. Pilate offered to crucify Barabbas, a known criminal, instead, but the crowd demanded that it be Jesus.

We all know of the abuse and mistreatment He received as He was forced to carry His own cross up Calvary Hill, how He was nailed instead of tied to the cross, how the Roman soldiers pierced his head with a crown of thorns and His side with a spear, how he fell several times in His tortured journey up the hill, how He suffered in His time hanging on the cross. Yet, during all this, He was still full of Love and Forgiveness for those who were tormenting Him.

To me, that is the true story of the Bible: How Jesus, the Son of God, was sent to show us the route to salvation on Earth and Eternal Life afterward. All we had to do was believe Him. He had displayed Himself through the miracles He performed and through the Love He had shown and preached, and, yet, He was met with rejection, ridicule, and torment. Through it all, He never wavered in His devotion to and Love for us. That was His purpose and that is what He fulfilled, and most of us still reject Him.

That is my thumbnail description of the Gospel. Naturally, I invite your critique and corrections.

You wrote: “Indeed. I like this about him, too. Also his sense of humility — and humor.”

Re: humor. I love how he deliberately misspells words and even makes up words in order to convey a broader meaning.

Re: humility. Here’s one example of it:

Thursday, May 28, 2009
God’s Little Jazz Trio
http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html

“One thing about this Adventure in Christianity™ I am on is that it seems very fresh to me. Not only is every day new, but every day is renewed in a most mythterious manner. As I’ve mentioned before, an outside observer might look at my life and imagine it was boring, but from the inside, it is anything but. I feel as if I live in one of those cartoon houses, in which the walls are expanding outward from all the fun inside. Or maybe it’s a cartoon head. Either way, it’s quite animated around here. ...”

You wrote: “BTW, Dr. Godwin is not the only clinical psychologist I’ve read lately that holds much of the current development of this field in contempt.”

True. There are some psychiatrists that hold that same contempt, too. “Dr. Sanity” is one: http://drsanity.blogspot.com/

Gagdad Bob has some great commentary here on the subject:

“...the vast majority of academic “product” is merely junk food for the mind (as always, we are speaking of the humanities, or subhumanities, to be exact).”

“..A magazine such as Psychology Today represents stupidity squared, because it mostly boils down the nonsense of academia for a semi-literate audience, in the same way that Time or Newsweek purvey idiotarian liberal conventional wisdom to the 8th grade mass-mentality. “

“..Let’s spend a moment looking at this Psychology Today article, which tries to explain the underlying psychological reasons for why someone would be conservative.” .. [snip]

Excerpted from:

Tuesday, January 23, 2007
The Left Behind Series (or, Why is the Left so Intellectually and Spiritually Behind?)
http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2007/01/left-behind-series-or-why-is-left-so.html

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New World Order, New World Religion