.......As vulnerable, as needy and as absolutely surrendered as a five year old innocently naked!!!
That innocently naked is what makes us so vulnerable!! You should've seen us in the cult. We were all like that but pretending to be adults! No one wanted anything as strongly as to completely surrender themselves to something higher!! And we were just children with an adult disguise!
I thank you infinitely for allowing me to speak and bringing out this truths or this invented lies, I don't know any longer what exactly reality is if not a petal falling one after another in the mist of this flowering!
May your days be showered with gratitude-light!
Hi Elena
ReplyDeleteI have appreciated your post on Addiction and Culture. The question I would ask is - "Do we have enough of an inner reality beneath our present-day cultured programming to let go of the monster-of-ourselves that we have let culture create?" I kept stressing on the Discussion Blog that in the FOF it was very little work on Essence for most people and a great deal of the Afford. Robert would stress that "Technology is our art form", mainly, I think, to keep members happy with their alpha-numeric careers. God! I could hardly imagine myself thinking in the way of a computer, just to make a living - but people did. There would probably be an angle for the corporate headhunters - "You have finance in Essence, dear". Actually, as you yourself would probably realize, Essence has very little interest in making money or 'climbing the corporate ladder'. It is what it is, and does what it does - no impressing people, and no interest in turning people around to its own way of thinking. This is a big area and I hope we can expand on it.....LBO.
I requested that Elena invite me onto her blog. I am not here to challenge her. I’m here to examine the phenomenon known as the Fellowship of Friends.
ReplyDeletePoint 1: Is Robert Earl Burton “conscious,” meaning does he possess psychological insight superior to the rest of us, or superior to highly educated and competent citizens?
My opinion on the subject is meaningless. Opinions based on nothing more than emotional reaction are meaningless. So, since this is the central claim the Fellowship makes, that their teacher is a higher, “conscious” man, how can we typical and or ordinary human beings gage the truth of the statement?
Some insist that the ‘proof’ is discovered in direct contact with Burton. That his higher energy is apparent to those tuned to the higher frequency of consciousness, but the same kinds of claims have been made for those that eventually turned out to be dangerous criminals. Charles Manson, Hitler and scores of other charismatic maniacs evoked irrational admiration from seemingly ordinary people, so the insistence on direct contact and perception of higher energy is not an entirely persuasive argument. In Burton’s case scores of people that were once close to him for long periods of time now disavow their positive view of him and reinterpret their perceptions of Burton in a negative light. The result is that direct contact with Burton does not seem to be a clear method of determining whether his claim of higher consciousness, a consciousness far superior to that of average people, is a fact.
Another method of determining consciousness is an examination of the actions of the individual in question. One argument is that because Burton has managed to act the role of “conscious being” for 40 years without perceived ‘failure’ or falling out of character it is proof of his consciousness. The problem with this argument is that there is no reliable standard for the character or quality of actions of a conscious person. Indeed, if Gurdjieff’s behavior is taken as the reliable standard then virtually any kind of odd behavior is acceptable. Eccentric behavior alone cannot be taken as an indication of possessing consciousness. Otherwise every kind of kook would be a candidate for consciousness being.
Burton has consistently insisted that he is the most conscious person alive and has consistently insisted that only he has the sanction of higher powers to operate a school of consciousness. His students point to 40 years of such absolute insistence and conclude that such resoluteness is proof of consciousness. Of course the rest of us see the obvious self-serving nature of such a conclusion.
Burton has amassed a fortune in his position as spiritual messenger. He has accumulated hundreds and at times thousands of followers. Some followers have been his disciples for up to four decades. His organization has been in continued existence for four decades without interruption. But the Scientologists with their obviously silly and deluded beliefs have been in existence longer and own far more money and property than Burton does. In fact the followers of Scientology include famous and extremely wealthy celebrities while Burton has failed to attract such a level of student.
One possible indication of Burton’s fallibility is his several failed predictions of world events. He seems to be at a loss when what he insists is going to happen fails to happen. Another indication of Burton’s lack of insight is his recent teaching. The entire prehistoric interpretation phase has been a disaster for the Fellowship in terms of numbers and revenue lost. The students outright laughed at the serious tone used to interpret ancient sexual depictions in terms of esoteric meaning. There is no doubt that this line of teaching is anything other than very amateurish and bungling guesswork. There even seems to be an indication that Burton’s mind is succumbing to routine aging and losing the cutting edge ability to manipulate followers using the mystical traditions of history.
(continued)
Then there is the question of sexual impropriety. Why would a conscious man, someone not identified with basic desires and impulses, need to gratify himself in such an obviously selfish and in fact gluttonous fashion? He wouldn’t. Burton demands that he is above reasonable behavior to due his conscious being status and indulges to the maximum his abnormal appetites, explaining his behavior to his followers proudly and unapologetically as the incomprehensible actions of a man beyond the judgment of normal understanding. Of course there are always going to be out of balance fools willing to believe such justifications for abuse of power, but intelligent people will always tire of such obviously self-serving manipulations.
ReplyDeleteIs Burton conscious? He insisted right from the beginning that the reason his school was brought into existence was to save a kernel of humanity from the total destruction that was to come. That destruction didn’t come. Just as total destruction failed to come when dozens of similarly deluded prophets claimed that it was only days, weeks and months away from the end. The original reason for Burton’s school is no longer even a remote probability, even after Burton has adamantly insisted on the end of the world for over 30 years. If he was conscious, if he could see into the future and into the motivations of higher powers able to manipulate events, then he would have to admit that his experiment has been abandoned by those higher powers. Instead he insists that doomsday is now merely moved a few more years back in time, anything to buy time in the ongoing main aim of making money off the distribution of esoteric talk. There will be no doomsday because such predictions are never the product of consciousness, but rather the product of self-serving delusion. Those that believe in such predictions and gather around such “prophets” are typically the least intelligent and least rational people in any society.
Greg W. Goodwin