Greg Goodwin - Welcome!

Hi Greg,

I’m going to answer this post as I read along if that’s O.K.

Greg Goodwin said...

I requested that Elena invite me onto her blog.

E. And it’s a pleasure to have you here! What matters for me is every new beginning!--------

I am not here to challenge her.

E. I’m here to challenge and be challenged. Without challenging each other we won’t move an inch as individuals or as communities. If I can learn to be challenged and challenge while still protecting and loving the people around me and being protected and loved by them, then we are developing humanism as we go along! --------

Greg: I’m here to examine the phenomenon known as the Fellowship of Friends. Point 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.

E. I can’t agree with that Greg. What ever you say is your opinion even if it might also be an objective truth. One does not cancel the other. What ever opinion I give, I give according to my level of being today which will hopefully be different to what I will give in ten or twenty years. There is no separation between who one is and what one offers in a point in time and being able to stand behind one’s affirmations even if mistaken is what makes them objectively subjective as much as objectively objective! But also what allows us to bring our being towards our ideals! If we don’t allow ourselves to fall, we’ll never learn to walk! -----------

G: 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.

E: Have you considered that hidogen 12 or sex energy can manifest itself in charismatic maniacs as much as charismatic personalities? In both cases it is very attractive but for opposite reasons and people who are not mature enough to discriminate between the two fall for the maniac with great ease because it flows down a path of massive behaviour without having to confront one’s self at every step while “charismatic personalities” don’t tend to stimulate the “tick” behavior or the "emotional crush" that develops into blind idolatry  that drags them back in their own process as much as the people who practice it. It is a low form of love that acts against the participants. ----

G: 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.

E. I’m amazed at how much credit you give him! And you’re right, it’s all there standing on its own! Still 1500 followers! Wow! But with Hitler, Mussolini, Franco it was whole nations, so why should it surprise us that people in essence are as gullible today as they were half a century ago?

The techniques for a charismatic maniac are exactly the same techniques as those for a charismatic personality just like cancer uses the same body processes to eat the organism that life does. Reaching out to the past to validate the present is valid in both directions. It’s the rhino poo what differentiates one from the other!

G: 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. Is 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.

E. Thanks Greg for outlining some of the problems again.

I might not have time to read all your posts with the same care but it sure feels good to have you here sharing your way of looking at “the world” that we all experience in different ways.