| What is "the Work"? |
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Gurdjieff strongly condemned masturbation, contraception and homosexuality as affronts to the proper order of nature. (LINK)
Perhaps that helps to explain why he was a prolific procreater. According to Mark Pilkington, "He was highly charismatic and a notorious womaniser, said to have fathered over 100 children."
Much has been written about what "the Work" is (see here, here, and here). My intention is not to restate that which has been well defined.
I've been trying to come up with a suitable allegory for the Work, and what first came to mind is an automobile factory in which new cars are manufactured (new-born human beings), but soon after being driven off the assembly line the air filter is removed, the tires are slashed, it's then run on the rims, later crashed into a concrete wall, and finally gasoline is poured inside and ignited. The car is somehow driven for 20 or 30 years, and only then taken to a repair shop (the Work).
A reoccurring question for me is why has most of this secret information (the Fourth Way, for example) been out of the public domain for thousands of years and why is it now becoming more freely available (albeit some of which is being sold and not strictly free). The advent of the Internet has greatly increased the dissemination of knowledge, but Gurdjieff's information was first disseminated 70 years or more prior to the Internet – why?
The methods of the Matrix are and have always been – Deception, Division and Domination.
Up until the 20th century, this program ran as designed to keep humans oblivious to their true nature and purpose in life. However, with the advent of global communication and the resultant increase of collective wisdom, the Matrix began to lose control. Information which had been formerly tightly held under control by a select few began to experience leakage, finding its way into the public domain.
The Matrix needed a disinformation agent, and Gurdjieff, being the right patsy, in the right place, at the right time was setup to become the disinfo agent of the 20th century. He was fed just enough information to "work" with, but not the complete package. Certain key elements were omitted from the package he received – those related to the basis of the Matrix control system.
Gurdjieff was given the necessary material to counteract the effects of the Matrix upon people, and shown how to make that material "work" in an effective way for people who had the necessary prerequisite disillusionment with the Matrix and the ability to devote the necessary time, efforts and resources to the "work" of becoming whole.
In essence, Gurdjieff was setup to "fight the old", and by devoting his life to this, any chance of "building the new" was eliminated and in fact, buried deeper.
Giving Gurdjieff the package of information that he received instilled within him, and others who came into contact with this information, a false sense of hope that life could be different with the proper efforts, the requisite resources and the necessary time for personal transformation – a classic diversionary tactic which also utilizes division – those who "work" as being distinct from the mass of humanity who were too "far gone" to be saved. Domination, the Matrix's ultimate source of power would not threatened by the small group of people who might happen upon/discover and subsequently utilize this information
The Matrix is first and foremost a breeding facility – no different from a livestock farm – and incorporates hegemony, monogamy and monotony to keep the cattle under the control of the program of survival of the fittest and struggle for survival. The authoritarian family institution is one of the most important support structures of the Matrix. The maintenance of the authoritarian family institution requires more than the economic dependence of a wife and children upon the husband and father. This dependence can be tolerated only under the condition that the consciousness of being a sexual being is extinguished as far as possible in women and children.
Another key element of the Matrix control system which was withheld from Gurdjieff is the role of the psychedelic experience in suppressing the ego, a product of pathology. The suppression of the ego means the defeat of the dominators, the materialists, the product peddlers, and thus anything which enhansces the ego's suppression must be itself suppressed. Psychedelics return us to the inner worth of the self, to the importance of feeling immediate experience. And nobody can sell that to you and nobody can buy it from you, so the dominator culture is not interested in the felt presence of immediate experience.
It seems to me that Gurdjieff, at the end of his life began to question his sources, as evidenced in his reaction to the dating of the cave paintings at Lascaux, three months before his death. I've also seen references to comments of his regarding the use of "assisting factors," although the only link I had to that is now not working (The Fourth Way and Entheogens/Psychedelics/Phanerothyme [edit March 2022 - I did find this article which goes into some detail on this topic, although not from a Fourth Way standpoint. See also HERE, and HERE]). Also possibly an insight into his views on whether the Fourth Way was missing certain key elements comes from his supposed last words, "Here you are in a fine mess!"
There are those who struggle for human rights, for better working conditions and to abolish the ultimate expression of humanity’s underlying hate for life – war – what Gurdjieff, in Beelzebub’s Tales calls the most terrible of all the horrors which can possibly exist in the whole of the universe. But where are those who fight for the right of infants, children, and adolescents to fully experience the love they feel in their bodies? Do we not not care about how we manipulate lovely children into becoming as hard as ourselves as we transmit “the consequences of the organ Kundabuffer” from generation to generation?
To better understand what I refer to as the Matrix control system, I'll quote a brief passage from the longer essay, "Homeostatic Equilibrium: Cybernetics and the New World Order" [LINK].
Note: The phrases “this intelligence” and “that which orchestrates our perception of this reality” are used early and often throughout this post. There are no shortage of theories out there regarding who or what this entity is, so please insert your own views on this point whenever you see these phrases. My only intent is to acknowledge that whatever it is, it obviously exists. …
… In other words it is the virus of civilization that is spreading across the Earth, perpetuating a chronic and otherwise unnatural state of dis-ease within the perception of the beings interacting with it. When faced with the preceding incontrovertible truth, many occult apologists will appeal to a more nuanced version of the projection blame game, namely the “hidden in plain sight” version. According to this logic the intelligence orchestrating our perception of this reality does not actually hide anything that it is doing from us, so if the information is freely available and apathetic humans choose not alter their behavior in response to it, then they are indeed to blame for their own suffering, or so this line of reasoning goes. While this intelligence should be congratulated for a clever advertising campaign, this argument is just more purposely disingenous obfuscation in the context of a parasitic system that does everything it possibly can to distort the ability of its hosts to recognize truth.
To illustrate this point, take for example the theoretical life path of a being born amnesiatic within the confines of this system. Totally defenseless during its 9 months in the womb, the being absorbs – emotionally, energetically, and physically – everything that its likewise amnesiatic mother absorbs and carries any resulting pre-existing trauma with it into this reality. The being is born within the sterile and traumatic environment of a hospital, quickly taken away from the mother within hours of its birth. The being is issued a birth certificate imprinted with the “sole” of its feet so that it may abdicate its true purpose in order to conduct itself in artificial commerce when it reaches the appropriate age. The being is dosed with toxic vaccines laced with myriad destructive substances and diseases. If the being is a boy, skin from its penis is cut off in a barbaric and traumatic ritual. The being is fed a plethora of toxic foods and beverages that slowly erode its natural born resonance with the Earth. Depending on circumstances dictated by the economic position of its parents within this system of artificial scarcity, the being may or may not have access to the resources it requires and suffers accordingly, a cycle of poverty which often repeats itself generationally. Likewise given the purposeful destruction of the family unit the being may or may not have its two parents living in the same residence. In lieu of competent parental guidance the being is slowly exposed to the destructive impact of the television, ruining its reasoning capabilities over time. The being is indoctrinated with some form of religion, thus ensuring that it will never be capable of understanding the correct way to percieve this reality. The being is eventually sent to school where it becomes indoctrinated with literally nothing that is true, setting it up for a lifetime of manipulation by the media.
The being eventually obtains a cell phone and a computer, plugging itself into the electronic grid and further disconnecting it from the resonance of life. The being discovers pornography and its inherent perversion, losing all ability to truly connect with the opposite sex as naturally intended. Like all those who came before it, the being starts to self-medicate accumulated trauma with various freely-available toxic substances that further disconnect it from life. Regardless of the length of time spent in school, the being eventually acquires a slave job within this slave system because all beings have to accumulate the magick talisman known as money in order to live as a part of it. The being spends a lifetime solely focused on accumulating enough of these pieces of paper in a manner commensurate with its responsibilities, and the being is so run down as result that it rarely has the energy to pursue any sort of worthwhile endeavor, if at this point it were even capable of determining anything worthwhile beyond the subconscious vamparism cloaked within the energetic rituals known as professional sports, media, and hollywood. If the being ever does follow its muffled intuition and investigate anything worthwhile, there is already a gatekeeping network in place designed to discredit the legitimacy of “conspiracy theories”, promptly leading the being to fake truths or outright jolting the being back into the consensus norm. Due to a lifetime of exposure to a toxic environment and allopathic medical system, the being eventually develops a multitude of chronic illnesses, often resulting in bankruptcy and early death. As the cycle of disconnection is passed from one generation to the next, more often than not at the end of its life the being is eventually discarded into a nursing home by its children. The being’s physical body dies, and this intelligence uses all of the accumulated trauma against the being in order to make it feel responsible for the trail of associated regrets and beliefs, thus convincing the being to reincarnate and navigate its way through this maze of insanity all over again.
More specifically, now take for example the daily routine of the being trapped within this system of civilization. First, since this intelligence has managed to artificially structuralize the natural daily cycle of sunrise/sunset into artificial mathematical units called seconds, minutes, and hours, the being is unnaturally jarred out of its sleep by an alarm clock (and incidentally the beings entire existence is governed by the fabricated construct of mechanical time and its artificial subsidiary, the calender). The being then rushes to get ready for work, takes a shower in toxic water, and gets dressed in its appropriate societal uniform (a uniform which likewise characterizes its entire existence, and ironically enough the men with the most important jobs wear a symbolic noose around their necks). The being then probably ingests some form of the neurotoxin caffeine, most likely in the form of the especially toxic drug known as coffee, thereafter probably making the mistake of breaking its fast with some toxic “food” at some point in the morning. The being puts its shoes on and gets in its car, a vehicle powered by a “fossil fuel” which it is forced to buy at any price. The being travels through the artificially zoned concrete jungles with the other primates, governed by a street light system which intentionally produces traffic jams to stress out the travelers. When the being completes its mind-numbing work it travels home in the same fashion, by design at no point touching the grass or dirt with its bare feet to discharge accumulated toxic energies and bring it into equilibrium with the Earth’s resonance. Instead the being goes right back into its box, takes its shoes off, and finds some artificial outlet to escape the drudgery of its daily routine before it starts all over again, distractions which there are certainly no shortage of: from booze, marijuana, sex, drugs, and food to movies, television, news, books, video games, and the internet.
Obviously the preceding analysis could have gone on for much longer and included many more horrific details, however I think the point regarding the hidden in plain sight narrative has been sufficiently made. It is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst to suggest that any being somehow deserves this purposeful assault on its existence, and it is the height of absurdity to thereafter imply – in the context of an all-out and relatively covert war on their awareness – that the host beings themselves are somehow responsible for the depraved state of their existence, when by design they were never intended to be capable of discovering what had been hidden in plain sight in the first place. Worse yet, after many hard lessons, any sufficiently aware being will eventually come to the inescapable conclusion that the “secret truths” of the occult were just another layer of bullshit festering in this rotten onion known as civilization, pre-planned to be released by this intelligence during a certain window of mechanical time as a part of its larger agenda.
