@Andrew
Thanks for the quotes.
Well, I don't represent any tradition but I recognize some lack of understanding of Gurdjieff. When he said everything is material he did not mean everything is the material world. He had developed and explored various energetic powers and internal process, that was why he was recorded by O as being telepathic and demonstrated it in a meeting in the gardens of the Priore much to everyone's shock. It appears it is conducted by a part of the emotional body.
Very few people have such power or have technical knowledge of the layer of the being through which it functions, but Gurdjieff did. The reason he did is because ... well there is the story that he stayed up all night with his carpets at his shop and a small piece of metal to find out how to fix them. He had hired a specialist carpet repair man to repair the defects in some of his carpets but that man would not teach Gurdjieff the skills of how to do it, although G offered him money. So instead G watched his body movements from behind and then spend many hours all night trying to replciate the body movements in order to understand how to weave repairs into the carpets.
Very few people have this kind of insane technical desire, the desire to know.
And he had the same desire to know with the esoteric, hence his discovery of the technical structure of telepathy and so on.
It was rare.
And he earned it all himself. It is possible that some of his knowledge was channelled, he mentioned something like that once.
But his whole raison d'etre was to personally earn knowledge, because otherwise it does not become part of your being.
To do, to work.
That is what these word mean.
He could see then that powers, identiy, consciousness and so on ... these were not mystic imcomprehensible things. They were simply the result of various layers of material bodies, of a more and more refined type. And their functioning, each body has a system "a blood" that makes the body function.
The only body visible to human beings is the first, the physical, others can only be felt by those who also have that body.
Therefore everything is material, and material becomes more and more refined.
And the bodies are related to God's plan for the universe, the subtle structures and energies and so on.
Gurdjieff also prevented people from entering his teaching, it is not a general teaching, but is for very few souls. So any negativity towards society is not damaging, Gurdjieff is not damaging society. But his students use very unusual methods which may appear negative from the outside.
As for "Souls", I have heard this convincing explanation from a teacher:
- who is it that will reincarnate? Is there anything individual inside you, anything permanent? If not then there is nothng to reincarnate and so perishing is permanent. It is not a punishment but simply the lack of flowering.
We can see this in nature, as above so below, acorns and oaks. It is partly by chance, partly by effort. As above so below.
The idea that all souls already exist ... seems like wishful thinking to me.
Many people are actually the same soul, the "general-human-soul", and so are not individuals. When they die that face is not coming back.
It's like when you go to sleep somebody in Taiwan wakes up... life continues but it is not your face, not your eyes.
So, spirituality is actually concerned with the individualisation of people who separate from the general-human-soul, the splinter off through a painful birth as an individual. That is what spirituality is, that cleaving off.
I find this explanation reasonably good because it follows nature and does not give humans any special category. After all why would souls be here, why don't they remember, and why can't they leave?
If they are already souls why do they suffer.
The journey of the soul is from God back to God, but initially it is from a collective soul and when he returns he is individual.
If we were already "souls" then there would be no reason to continue on this planet, and there would be no reason to do anything as everything is "protected" like the social-care system in society. It is a Marxist idea.
But I prefer the idea that life is real, meaning there are real possibilities, like becoming as miraculous as Jesus, and real downsides. Life is real, it is not a dream. It is actual. Death is actual. Merit and reward is actual.
This gives life a lightning like energy, it is true and real.
It is open, anything is possible for the soul that wishes the stars.
And if it's not like that, it's nothing.
... that's what I think ...