Medhavi said:
For some time, I shared your view on this topic as well and actually, I still feel uneasy about it. From a scientific perspective, I just can't take Gurdijeff as a reliable source on such matters considering that he is so opaque about where he got what kind of knowledge. I want to separate the man from his message and G. obviously had his own assumptions.
The observable fact of the matter is that Gurdjieff's information is clearly on target regarding humanity's state and human behavior. Your issue with his 'source' is not really relevant, when one understands his work and how clearly he describes human process and awakening.
No one source contains all truth. My issues with his sources are relevant for one can't just take words from a system alien to one and change it around(Kundabuffer?) to fit one's own theories without providing sufficient evidence that comes from primary sources or known people. Most of what makes up the legacy of Gurdijeff are actually quotes written down by the people he came into contact with like Ouspensky. So we have second hand accounts and texts like Beelzebub which got edited down, as Bennett reports, and even if you look at the draft, this got to be the most cryptic and confusing of his books. Do I fail to understand his work then? I leave this open as I am still studying his books again and again.
m said:
I know that the perception of Kundalini in the West has largely been shaped by the predecessors of and the Human Potential/New Age movement itself. Now we have several articles here exploring how the New Age movement is a diversion and a trap.
Because it is a trap, as are many (if not all) eastern traditions. It can be no other way, Medhavi, at this point in the history of 3D STS planet earth.
You make rather strong statements considering that I just said that most of what is understood as Kundalini in the West now is largely derived from New Age interpretations of questionable sources(such as Gopi Krishna's popular account). Do you think it is wise to make broad assumptions about things that haven't been thoroughly researched and practised? The common practises that are done here(proper Diet, Breathing Exercises, Prayer, Self-observation) have been done before in what G. simplifies as the three paths. To simply design "them" as traps for the soul, even though all traditions are just sources of information which contain both false and true knowledge to various degrees, is a sign of a closed mind, wouldn't you agree?
m said:
The interesting thing here is that in the scriptures I've read and the people I've talked do catalogue "the fierce woman" or "the serpent energy"(because the strong energy feels like it coils itself around the central channel) as a natural phase of the path, but neither do they connect it to anything specifically worthwhile dwelling on nor as anything else but a natural progression of a revitalising progress(which is why it's called the access to pre-natal chi in Taoist schools)
I see no data to indicate that this does not mean that it is the source of man's dreaming. Man's dreaming is a 'natural state'.
How do you know that the phenomena discussed is related to deepening one's waking sleep in the first place? What is the source of this data, despite Gurdijeff?
m said:
When I first learned about this information I was already acquainted with the sheep believing themselves to be magicians allegory and was looking for this and that trap all over the place, yet I noticed that in whatever phase practitioners were in within the Eastern schools, it didn't seem to be clouding them in a dream bubble as I initially suspected.
And you think you are capable of telling that? I think it would be worthwhile for you to consider that you might be blind due to your interest in such traditions (i.e. you are identified).
As part of my research, I have to study the theoretical and practical aspects of some of the paths that you broadly design as "the eastern traditions" .
Since the work done by this group here so far has helped me a lot, as well as my areas of study, I am taking both into account.
I am as identified with my own research as you possibly are with yours. I hope you don't claim that it is possible to remain entirely detached from any extended research you undertake that has yielded benefit to yourself. I could ask the same questions about you, considering that you write your statements in a rather confident and fact-of-the-matter style.
The way you become able to tell to discern something from another is dependent on your intellectual framework and corresponding experience which results in different degrees of awareness. The same way you become able to do what you can do on this forum through research and experience.
m said:
Their presence was strengthened but otherwise, the search for knowledge went on.
How do you know that their 'presence was strengthened'? I posit that you cannot know such a thing.
You have more than a purely intellectual stance. Doesn't mean I am blindly following my feelings but the very topic of this thread is about that: There's many ways to get information without intellectual guesswork, and we have more than one sense organ. What we can "tell" about others, is derived from the sum of our sense organs(whatever their number may be). If someone has strong electromagnetic fields emanating from his body due to his practise, you can certainly feel that if you're in the same room.
m said:
That does not mean they were not more deeply lost in their waking sleep.
Are you making the assumption that there is no possibility that all throughout the ages, anyone not officially associated with G's depiction of the Fourth Way may have been trying to look for an objective sense of reality, the same way you are, and may have attained different degrees of success or failure?
m said:
Now there are stories from India which suggest people who got fixated on this particular thing at this stage and they certainly seemed to be playing around with powers and appeared deluded in general. But then I asked myself: what use is my awareness if I can't discern knowledge from ignorance and become enamored with some neutral process going on in my body. And it is emphasised that it is largely a physical process.
I'm not sure what your point really is with the above, can you clarify? In general, actually, it would be appreciated if you could work on being more concise with your posts. It is externally considerate to do so.
I am avoiding completely foreign terms as much as possible and trying to clarify matters where people are easily tempted to put up an indoctrinated view(which citing G. on such matters actually is) that lacks qualified evidence to back it up.
What I meant was that most traditions associated with pursuing knowledge warn of such people that get obsessed at such a tempting stage. Obsession, as we know, leads to stagnation and delusion. The analogy with the obsessive diet researcher was used to depict that, and nothing else was intended.
The point is that the process or phenomena itself is rarely the culprit, but the wisdom or lack of wisdom of the being is.
m said:
So what I am left with is that the West has made a great fuss out of this particular stage(since it appears so early; simply synching breath and thought provokes it already) and made it into a kind of goal. Now while I actually doubt that many achieve genuine cultivation of this stage, it is pretty clear how this goal setting makes people ignorant of the overall process who then proceed to believe themselves to be magicians. And that's where a soul gets stuck.
But then I ask, is it the energy, which according to the traditions I've researched, is an inevitable part of life, or the wisdom of the practitioner that is at fault here?
I think that is a false dichotomy you are setting up. It matters not whose 'fault' it is - the energy itself is the source of man's dreaming - it is the veil that keeps man trapped in his current condition. To strengthen that energy is to strengthen the sleep and delusion.
Again, you seem to be sure that your premise- that this energy is what G. says it is- is beyond challenge. I think it may be profitable for you to notice that you state things in a factual manner, even though you know that G. is not exactly a good source for this kind of thing, by all standards of research. I might similarly ask you if you are not overly attached to his every word?
m said:
After all, I might get enamored with adjusting my diet and researching this and that diet style for all my life, and might stop to do any self-observation or anything else at all, keeping me stuck in 3rd density.
I think this is an uneven comparison. If you're trying to say that obsession at any stage is stagnation, I would agree but that doesn't make the kundalini energy anything other than what it is.
You claim absolute knowledge of "what it is". The C's have stated that it is crucial to think in limitless terms. For that, you have a rather narrow view of what is and what is not.
m said:
but G.'s description doesn't seem to match anything coming out of non-Gurdijeffian traditions.
That does not mean that he is not correct. You seem to put a lot of stock in many eastern traditions and an objective look at the state of those people and those societies might help you to realize that they are lacking. If they were not, things would be different - it can be no other way.
Do you "want" him to be correct? All I am saying is that there is not much credible evidence outside of his own writings that what he writes in regard to what he has neither experienced nor researched can be taken for anything other than an interesting story.
Of course, and that is what I have been asking before, is his Kundabuffer related to the actual Kundalini, if it exists, or is his depiction designed to, as has been suggested, deconstruct the assumptions of the people of his time that were influenced by such hodge-podge groups like the Theosophical Society of the Golden Dawn? That man's dead, so we can't ask him. So you have to look for sources beyond his statements.
An "objective look" at any kind of society reveals its ugliness. What has that to do with what has been developed within them? Do I dismiss Gurdijeff or Castaneda based on how their disciples ended up? Do I dismiss Fulcanelli because various alchemical societies before and after his time might be shady in character? Can I actually take "an objective look" at any kind of society or groups of individuals without exactly knowing what they do for what reasons and what kind of layer they are part of?(Like Exoteric, Mesoteric and Esoteric)
I am not sure if you are intending to do this, since I respect your work here, but you come off as quite arrogant with these statements.
The way you put your words suggests that by just making me take an "objective look"(by what standards?) I might just realise them to be something that you already have pre-defined. Of course they are lacking, like every other source or tradition, but you come off like someone who has done an incredible amount of research into all matters discussed here so far and can easily judge what is and what is not. On what kind of supposedly immense knowledge is this based?
m said:
The Ch'an school in China doesn't even really mention Kundalini, yet the practitioners pass through this stage without losing their awareness; at least the one's I've seen.
Again, I find it really interesting that you think you could tell whether or not someone has 'lost their awareness'.
Of course I might deceive myself but it doesn't mean that I can't attempt to judge people in terms of their own systems and what I know from outside of their own, to see whether or not things work. To be able to tell things from another, it requires diligent study and I am not expecting people here to take up such matters in these directions themselves. All I am looking for is some kind of open-mindedness and your strong statements on matters little discussed and not sufficiently researched seem to be rather uncalled for.
m said:
What my personal question is, before anything fruitful can be accomplished here, is why Gurdijeff changed "Kundalini" to "Kundabuffer" if they are the same.
What difference does that make? G often wrote and spoke in metaphor. It actually has no bearing on the truth of the situation at all.
Of course it makes a difference. You can't even have a sensible discussion before you clear up the definitions on the table. You seem to insist that one kind of truth is absolute and that what other traditions write and do is simply irrelevant. Do you sincerely want to learn and expand your learning to gain more knowledge or have you already solidified a view that you have become attached to?
m said:
How Kundabuffer is defined is pretty clear initially, seeing as he made it one of the main topics of Beelzebub; it is the source of delusion and grandeur and along with the moon, it was created through a "cosmic accident". But he also reasons something along the lines of civilization being increasingly controlled by this Kundabuffer, as time progresses, and therefore becoming machines instead of waking up.
Yes.
m said:
This particular notion puzzled me because here, it gets cosmological significance, whereas in the eastern cultivation traditions, it is part of the mind-body transformation and it is left at that.
I don't think so. Everything has "cosmological significance", as you put it, including mind-body aspects of reality - and it has mind-body significance, there is no difference, so I'm not sure why you're stating that there is.
What I mean is that G. is likely taking things out of their context, renaming them and constructing a certain view. Even though most of what he has written is relevant and helpful, certain assumptions of his, or at least the textual depictions we are left with now, have to be tested for their validity, especially when they sound rather questionable, given the decades of research since his demise.
m said:
If someone gets all heroic and deludes himself into believing to have achieved true transformation, he is reminded that he is at the initial stages of the overall path, so awareness is applied to keep him progressing.
Perhaps, but if a person is convinced that he can tell whether or not others have 'lost their awareness' isn't that the same thing? Can you consider the idea that you may not understand what you think you understand?
No, it isn't the same thing. There's many gates to the Truth, and what I am stating here is that people ain't stupid everywhere. Gurdijeff isn't the first guy to do this kind of work and there's huge amounts of research to be done in various traditions to see what can be done and how it was generally done. I brought up patterns I've observed in a concise form, since people want to read about other things as well. You refine your understanding through learning so there are of course errors in my statements but I simply think that quick dismissal of traditions not at all researched here is not that objective.
The moment I mentioned pre-natal Chi/Kundalini, I knew that people would start quoting Beelzebub and ISOTM again and again in a reactive fashion.
But you seem to add rather sweeping statements even though you know that most, if not all, who have commented on this so far, are not people undertaking to get any kind of deep understandings of these kinds of things we discuss. And it takes a long time to be able to tell lies from even half-truths. The key is in the willingness to even inquire. You might say that this line of research isn't of high priority but then it is a good idea to be careful about generalising statements.
m said:
But then again, why did Gurdijeff alter the name significantly if it's referring to the same thing?
Because he wanted to?
What is important is his intention behind such changes, not what he simply arbitrarily changed around. If he intended to relay an important message, it would have been a good idea to use fitting words and not just borrow terms from systems alien to his own and even provide bogus evidence to back up changes in definition(for example, his Sanskrit etymology and depiction of "Indian psychopaths" is just plain laughable)
m said:
Or was he aware of something that all traditions accustomed to it were not? This is an interesting line of research, in my opinion.
He was merely stating the observable facts of the matter. fwiw.
etc. But you just might end up missing the forest for the trees.
:D. 
