Eulenspiegel said:
Looking at his other books, he seems to have produced an awful lot of books on various "occult" subjects, with a particular fixation on sex and mystery.
Well a flag pops up right there. So often the ideas of 'sex and mystery' are hooked up together the notion of 'kudalini' energy and G’s views on that were
very different to almost every other source you come across on the subject. G was very firm and insistent that this kind of thing is not desirable at all, and that if anything that it only make matters worse and man falls deeper into sleep, al the while imagining he is awakening.
There’s a thread on the theme
here with some useful quotes to illustrate the point:
[quote author=CassWiki]Kundalini
Esoteric teaching on kundalini and its meaning varies greatly from source to source. All sources agree that this is a sort of force or effect that is localized at the base of the spine and can be activated either spontaneously or through deliberate exercises.
Kundalini is said to rise from the first chakra, along the spine, possibly all the way to the crown chakra. It is sometimes compared to a serpent that lies coiled at the base of the spine. In most teachings, awakening this serpent is claimed to bring great powers and benefits.
George Gurdjieff's view on the matter differs from most sources. He agrees that such a thing exists but teaches that it is the source of false imaginings, an actual bane of man, the remnant of the ill-famed 'organ kundabuffer' which is discussed extensively in Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. Kundalini is in effect the spell by which the 'evil magician' has hypnotized man to believe himself to be a magician while in truth he remains a sheep. Awakening the kundalini causes man to plunge deeper into illusion and is ruinous to the Work, says Gurdjieff.
The kundalini is often compared to a serpent, maybe because of the undulating sensation that can be felt along the spine when doing certain exercises. Boris Mouravieff writes that this is what the serpent of Genesis actually represents. [/quote]
and here’s G on the subject from the same thread:
[quote author=In Search of the Miraculous]In so-called 'occult' literature you have probably met with the expression 'Kundalini,' 'the fire of Kundalini,' or the 'serpent of Kundalini.'
This expression is often used to designate some kind of strange force which is present in man and which can be awakened. But none of the known theories gives the right explanation of the force of Kundalini.
Sometimes it is connected with sex, with sex energy, that is with the idea of the possibility of using sex energy for other purposes. This latter is entirely wrong because Kundalini can be in anything. And above all, Kundalini is not anything desirable or useful for man's development.
It is very curious how these occultists have got hold of the word from somewhere but have completely altered its meaning and from a very dangerous and terrible thing have made something to be hoped for and to be awaited as some blessing. In reality Kundalini is the power of imagination, the power of fantasy, which takes the place of a real function.
When a man dreams instead of acting, when his dreams take the place of reality, when a man imagines himself to be an eagle, a lion, or a magician, it is the force of Kundalini acting in him. Kundalini can act in all centers and with its help all the centers can be satisfied with the imaginary instead of the real. A sheep which considers itself a lion or a magician lives under the power of Kundalini. Kundalini is a force put into men in order to keep them in their present state. If men could really see their true position and could understand all the horror of it, they would be unable to remain where they are even for one second. They would begin to seek a way out and they would quickly find it, because there is a way out; but men fail to see it simply because they are hypnotized.
Kundalini is the force that keeps them in a hypnotic state. 'To awaken' for man means to be 'dehypnotized. ' In this lies the chief difficulty and in this also lies the guarantee of its possibility, for there is no organic reason for sleep and man can awaken.
Theoretically he can, but practically it is almost impossible because as soon as a man awakens for a moment and opens his eyes, all the forces that caused him to fall asleep begin to act upon him with tenfold energy and he immediately falls asleep again, very often dreaming that he is awake or is awakening. There are certain states in ordinary sleep in which a man wants to awaken but cannot. He tells himself that he is awake but, in reality, he continues to sleep-and this can happen several times before he finally awakes. But in ordinary sleep, once he is awake, he is in a different state; in hypnotic sleep the case is otherwise; there are no objective characteristics, at any rate not at the beginning of awakening; a man cannot pinch himself in order to make sure that he is not asleep.
And if, which God forbid, a man has heard anything about objective characteristics, Kundalini at once transforms it all into imagination and dreams.
Only a man who fully realizes the difficulty of awakening can understand the necessity of long and hard work in order to awake. [/quote]
I think a lot of good people can easily get sucked into this line of thinking, and deepen their illusions, especially on the themes Churton is preoccupied with, if that’s the case. In terms of the framework we study within here too, worth keeping in mind that those forms of illusion play very well for 4d STS, a whole lot of emotional / sexual energy being siphoned off to 4d by people thinking they’re raising their frequency or level of consciousness through it. So worth pondering the themes and different sources take on it within the STS/STO framework I think. I haven’t read Churton, but that in mind you wonder whether any subtle (but possibly very important) twists are being added to Gs ideas and teachings. I mean why the heck put the words "spiritual magician" into the title for starters!
), relying on hypnotism, psychic research and spiritualism
