Barbarians Inside The Gate

A while ago someone lent me a copy of The Gurdjieff International Review and in it was an article comparing Gurdjieff's work to such "spiritual" practices as Advaita, Zen, Yoga, transcendental Meditation, Sufism, and so on. I put the word "spiritual" in quotes since we often fail to realize that anything that we can consider to be spiritual is really just the opposite since to think of anything in terms of "spiritual practice" is really just a MENTAL ACTIVITY and this has nothing to do with REAL spirituality at all. Real spirituality is beyond thought and anything that we call spirituality is really a self image that we have of ourselves in relation to our thoughts about something that we cannot know, that is, it is really just our identification with our own thoughts and so if we can think about it then it is simply not spiritual.

A paradox for sure.

Basically "spirituality" is something that is felt when there are no thoughts and to try to sell it or "package it" in some way is to really prostitute it. If we can talk or think about spirituality then its simply something else.

Well, in the magazine article that I mentioned above a question was asked to a direct student of Gurdjieff about what he thought the essence of Gurdjieff's teachings might be. The students response to the question was rather perplexing to me. The student responded by saying that he was once with Gurdjieff and observed him walking from the back. He said the essence of Gurdjieff's teaching was right there, while he was watching Gurdjieff from the back. At that moment the essence of his teachings was conveyed to him in an instant. No words could convey what he saw. No system could represent what he saw. But the essence of Gurdjieff's teaching was conveyed to him in that instant. It was all there, while he watched him from the back. That's all he said in response to the question.

Well, after reading his response I didn't understand what he meant so I put his perplexing answer on the shelf (so to speak) and left it there with all those other mysteries that I can't quite fathom. Then a few days later, in a flash, I completely understood what he meant.

I suddenly had a "flashback" to a moment many years ago when I was part of a Gurdjieff group that was taught by a direct student of Gurdjieff. I was working with some of the older students and I remember glancing at one of the senior students who was sitting with his back facing me on the outside lawn and he was not doing anything special. He wasn't meditating or really doing anything in particular. He was just sitting there. I remember glancing over an observing him. And then I remember my first impression as I observed him.

The essence of the Gurdjieffs teaching was all there in that student, at that particular moment. I can't explain it but it was at that moment that the essence of his teachings were conveyed to me. The older student was just sitting there but it was something about the WAY he was sitting, it was something about the way he was moving, although he was moving very little.

It was all there in his back. He wasn't trying to control anything. He wasn't trying to change anything. He wasn't talking about or trying to "be spiritual." He wasn't trying to impress someone or thinking about impressing anyone. He wasn't at that particular moment identified with anything. He was simply sitting there. He was simply present to himself. That's all. And the essence of that was conveyed to me in that instant. It was the essence of Gurdjieff's teaching. It was, for me, the real essence of spirituality, the real essence of religion.

I was thinking about this while reading about the recent bombings in Cario
on the SIGNS OF THE TIMES
website. It's just a matter of time that all this hate and violence that the US is injecting into the Middle East will escalte into nuclear activity of some kind. I quickly realized that it is was this false "spirituality" that people have sanctimoniously adopted from our leader-psychopaths such as Bush and Sharon that leads us to do "good" in the Middle East when it is this very "spirituality" that leads to even more dehumanization, bloodshed, mindless violence, and TORTURE


It's an example of Jevons Paradox where we try to help those who we really hurt, where we really hurt those who we try to help, where we really destroy that which we try to create, where we really hate those who we love, where we really love those who we hate. We try to help Iraq by destroying it. And we love them for it.

And this is all done in the name of "spirituality" and religion, which for the
Psychopath is nothing but a control device, a policeman, to control the thinking of the people to foster the belief that they can help those who they are really killing.

America is
becoming a nation of psychopaths led by George Bush, the pied piper of psychopaths.
George Bush is a reaction machine, a tin man. He does not 'act,' but only 'reacts.' He has the sense perceptions, feelings and thoughts and other functional activities of a "man" but not of a human. For him religion and spiritually are nothing more then a paper map to get him to where he wants to go to further dominate and control this planet. There is nothing in him that can really feel anything human apart from that which is within in him that is controlled by the changing influences of the environment. He is simply a reaction machine, a terminator, an imaginary human, and he is nothing more then simply an amalgam of memories, experiences, and habits completely divorced from anything higher within himself that has any resemblance to what we can call a real human being.

In short he simply reacts, he cannot act on any human impulses within him, and he is completely controlled by his environment and the psychopathic need of the American people to control, dominate and destroy other cultures in the name of "moral imperatives," religion and "spirituality" so that they may live a more comfortable life for themselves.

With Bush, the puppet has become the master and the reaction machine has come to behave as if it is the owner of the machine.

With the American people, we have become the skunk that looks around to see where the stink is coming from.

Jan Cox says it well in his book 'The Dialogues of Gurdjieff'

"Ordinary men live the greater part of their brief lives with their head stuck in a map. Discussing how they think things should be, Arguing over how they should be. Crying out about their search for truth and reality. But what truth and reality is to be found in a map? The map truth, which may or may not bear any resemblance to the reality of things-as-they-are."

"...So people are dying across the world. What can we do? What does it matter to us? Nothing and everything. It is as it is. But a mechanical do-gooder would scream,
"But we must dream of how things might be." And it is true: they must dream; dreams make their lives bearable, but does not produce understanding."

"A fool and a do-gooder, should he be able to obtain any real power, would be a danger that would even make an earthquake tremble."