21-11-2009, 05:59 PM (This post was last modified: 21-11-2009, 07:30 PM by Helen Reyes.)
Keith Millea Wrote:Yes,how about some more on Gurdjieff.If I remember during the Russian civil war he left with his adepts,and traveled to somewhere in Persia.Was that Turkish land or Iran?I believe he was studying the sufi mysteries.:joyman:
Hmm, I didn't find any itineraries for Gurdjieff, but this is interesting:
While the educational work was progressing, Bennett learned of Idries Shah, an exponent of Naqshbandi Sufism. When they met, Shah presented Bennett with a document supporting his claim to represent the 'Guardians of the Tradition'. Bennett and other followers of Gurdjieff's ideas were astonished to meet a man claiming to represent what Gurdjieff had called 'The Inner Circle of Humanity', something they had discussed for so long without hope of its concrete manifestation.
This is undoubtedly the Sarmoung Brotherhood Gurdjieff sought to contact in Central Asia, and claimed he had, I'm fairly sure.
It would be fun to speculate Sarmoung originates in some corruption of Sarnath, which is both a city in India and the city in Arabia Petra in Lovecraft's The Doom that Came to Sarnath, (and there is another connection here: Lovecraft wrote it was located near the Pillars or Irem, which turn up in Shah's work and are apparently an authentic tradition of a lost city or civilization located in the Empty Quarter in Arabia), but it might just as well be a corruption or alternate form of Shakyamuni, see Shakya and compare with Bön, Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring and Mount Kailash. This seems a better fit for what Gurdjieff is talking about.
John G. Bennett was the founder of a Gurdjieffian schookl in England, knew him personally, and had performed various intelligence and diplomatic functions in Turkey, including issuing a visa to Kemal Ataturk. His school at Coombe Springs, an estate in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, eventually gave its name to a publishing venture which published, among other things, Sufi, Mulsim and Traditionalist Rene Guenon's Lord of the World, a book about the secret ruler and/or rulers of the world in Central Asia and the fusion of temporal and spiritual power in a single monarch.
Probably coincidentally, "Gurdjieff established the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man south of Paris at the Prieuré des Basses Loges in Fontainebleau-Avon near the famous Château de Fontainebleau. Gurdjieff acquired notoriety after Katherine Mansfield died there of tuberculosis under his care on 9 January 1923." This was the favorite haunt of French/Lithuanian symbolist, poet, Catholic Traditionalist Oskar Wladyslaw de Lubicz Milosz, who used to speak to the bird there, by his own account, and died on the eve of World War II there in 1939. Gurdjieff went on to live through the German occupation of France. Milosz was concerned exactly with the those aspects of spiritual and temporal power Guenon was (a symptom of the age?) but believed the Pontiff as the builder of bridges would eventually rule over a renewed world based on Catholic science.
It's interesting the Milosz's cousin Czeslaw Milosz, the Nobel Prize Winner in 1980 for his 1953 work The Captive Mind, devotes a lot of that book to retelling a novel (Insatiability by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz) about the Murti-Bing pill, a sort of instant gratification medication from the Orient, and connects it with the importation of Asian religion into Christian Europe at the expense of the ancien regime. Czeslaw Milosz connects this directly with Nazi flirtations with Buddhism, iirc. Nominally his book is about the effect of Marxist-Leninist doctrine on the populations of the Soviet satellites.
Captive Mind... Mind Control,... hmmm. Great White Brotherhods, the Mahatma Panel, Sarmoung Brotherhoods, renegade sufis in Eastern Afghanistan...
In Exegetic Notes to The Poem of the Arcana, Verse 81 The Tool Bag, Oskar Milosz explains:
Quote:In the commentary to verse 56 we have mentioned one of the most peculiar events of antiquity, the Persian communist revolution of Mazdek, a disciple of Mani. The Medes and the Persians were Indo-Europeans. Their native country was neither the Susiana of the Achaemenids, nor the mountainous region of the Parthians. Before they invaded these areas and founded their empires there, they had, for thousands of years, led a nomadic existence on the steppes of mysterious southern Russia, a land which in the night of prehistory seems to have influenced decisively the destiny of the Aryan race ... Were the "mushki" of Asia Minor simply Muzhiki? ... To come back to Mazdek and his communism, could it not be simply an attempt to return to the natural system of the Scythians, a system which, under the form of "mir," has survived until the present throughout the entire Muscovite empire, offering prepared ground for the Bolsheviks' social reform? Russian Communism is as old as Russia itself. Western Communism, a new and perhaps temporary form of theocratic Monarchy whose universal rule seems to us inevitable, certainly will be very different from Scythian bolshevism characterized by a double, Mongolian and Orthodox, imprint, as well as by a centuries-old tradition of groveling before German pedantry.
The East no longer has anything to offer us. ...
(The Noble Traveller, O. V. de L. Milosz, 1985, Lindisfarne Press, West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, pp. 371-372)
The concept of mir as the original social unit, akin to a commune, of the Slavs was a favorite idea of early 20th century pan-Slavicists. The word also means world, and peace, in Russian. In Central Asia it can be a temporal and/or spiritual leader, and is usually thought to derive from Arabic, as in emir. The semantic node covers a lot: cosmos, society, order, leader. I like to think Pamir is related, pa- meaning geographically proximate, so that the Pa-mir is the Edge of the World, or perhaps at the edge of the great ice sheet, and, at the same time, the sole village is the entire extent of the known world, or at least of society. But that last bit is pure speculation.
Chris Bowen Wrote:the following text refers to something that this thread has reminded me of , from the following book by a former adviser to Hitler :..
I can't help thinking Vril stands in for virility, Odin Force is Orgone Energy and the abbreviation Od lies somewhere between the Id and Oedipus
Chris Bowen Wrote:[size=12]the following text refers to something that this thread has reminded me of , from the following book by a former adviser to Hitler :[/SIZE] Wagener, O. (1985). Hitler—Memoirs of a Confidant (Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. Ed.). (Ruth Hein, Trans.). London: Yale University Press. (Original work published 1978) It appears that Hitler did approve of close and affectionate relations between older and younger men, and found a compelling theory to legitimize this in Karl von Reichenbach’s half-baked ideas on personal magnetism, or “Odic force,” as Reichenbach termed it in the mid-nineteenth century. Otto Wagener describes how Hitler became positively thrilled as the former explained Reichenbach’s scheme—“Hitler grasped my arm and looked at me as if he were facing a glittering Christmas tree.” What had caught Hitler’s imagination so immediately? Reichenbach postulated that there was an actual, magnetic, “Odic force” that humans produced, most strongly when they were young. The old could produce only inadequate amounts of the force, but they were able to soak up the overproduction of the young through contact with them, though only if both parties were compatible (—the force did not flow randomly). Hitler did not understand this necessarily to be physical contact, but he did view the flow of these magnetic waves as the very key to the success of any military or para-military unit. The officer and his men ideally formed an “Odic community.” The same would be true for the Nazi Party as well: “Wagener, the mystery of the political organization and the organization of the SA has been solved! It’s not racially determined, it’s grounded in this problem!” The more Hitler thought about it, the more he became convinced that he had felt this Odic force: “…it’s the same when I spend time with young men. I have always said that I draw strength to continue my work from the beaming eyes of my young storm troopers. It’s the very same thing.” Countless contemporaries have reported the mesmerizing effect of Hitler’s staring deeply into their eyes. And that is the extent to which one would expect the intimacy to go, given the later homophobia of the Nazi state. But in 1930 Hitler apparently gave a cautious endorsement to more physical contact. He had rushed off to read Reichenbach’s book, and reported to Wagener that he was applying the ideas to his own thinking. Speaking explicitly of the attraction that young men and boys must feel for a suitably creative older man to whom they wish to transmit their surplus Odic force, the Nazi leader stated: “In my judgment, this has nothing to do with sex. But since the transference of Od energies occurs with greater force and more immediately through physical touch—shaking hands, caressing, even kissing—the urgency of the Od contact also releases a desire for this kind of touch.” Hitler did not consider this inappropriate, as long as it did not deteriorate into a sexual encounter, and there he drew a definite line: “It seems to me all the more abominable if the older man allows this cuddling on the part of the younger man to seduce him into lewd acts or even to go so far as to exploit him for that purpose.” The extraordinary point about this remark is that Hitler does not seem to view a clearly erotic embrace between two men to be reprehensible per se. It was simply a means through which to stimulate the flow of Odic waves. http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/publications/occasional/2002-04/paper.pdf
Chris, in the event you haven't read it there is a very interesting book on Nazi buggery, or what we would today call homosexual paedophilia that was rampant throughout the Nazi Party and especially in its early enforcer outfit, the Brownshirts. Indeed, the chief of the Brownshirts, Ernest Roehm, was a very active players in these "manly" games.
The book is called "The Pink Swastika" by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams and is well worth reading imo.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Keith Millea Wrote:Yes,how about some more on Gurdjieff.If I remember during the Russian civil war he left with his adepts,and traveled to somewhere in Persia.Was that Turkish land or Iran?I believe he was studying the sufi mysteries.:joyman:
Hmm, I didn't find any itineraries for Gurdjieff, but this is interesting:
While the educational work was progressing, Bennett learned of Idries Shah, an exponent of Naqshbandi Sufism. When they met, Shah presented Bennett with a document supporting his claim to represent the 'Guardians of the Tradition'. Bennett and other followers of Gurdjieff's ideas were astonished to meet a man claiming to represent what Gurdjieff had called 'The Inner Circle of Humanity', something they had discussed for so long without hope of its concrete manifestation.
This may be slightly off topic so please forgive me.
Many years ago now, as a young City acolyte, I was poached by animator Richard Williams to run the day to day matters of his London studio. I was employed to replace the brother of Idries Shah, namely Omar, who Dick believed had spelled him or otherwise gained a deep control of him. That at least was the story Dick told me at the time. Prior to my arrival Omar had run the studio with an iron fist apparently and Dick was clearly terrified of him. For years Dick had cherished a major film project he called "The Thief" which was loosely based on Idries Shah books on the Mulla Nasrudin. This ambition only came close to fruition after he made the Disney film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but ultimately failed.
My time with the studio lasted, as I recall, exactly 28 days. On that 28th day I arrived in my office - previously Omar's - wet to sit in my comfy executive chair - also previously Omar's - to find a letter with a cheque for 3 months pay and a polite letter asking me to fuck off. Dick was in hiding.
Being young and daft I had earlier had the stupidity to honestly answer a question asked by Dick what I thought of his pet Thief film after he showed me the rushes of it. I told him I thought the character was flat and one dimensional. Bad move. :burnout:
What fun life is.
And how often these curious synchronicities turn up.
Okay, sorry for that trip down memory lane. Now back to the matters in hand.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
It's interesting the Milosz's cousin Czeslaw Milosz, the Nobel Prize Winner in 1980 for his 1953 work The Captive Mind, devotes a lot of that book to retelling a novel (Insatiability by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz) about the Murti-Bing pill, a sort of instant gratification medication from the Orient, and connects it with the importation of Asian religion into Christian Europe at the expense of the ancien regime. Czeslaw Milosz connects this directly with Nazi flirtations with Buddhism, iirc. Nominally his book is about the effect of Marxist-Leninist doctrine on the populations of the Soviet satellites.
(My bolding)
I imagine (but certainly don't know) this is equivalent to the "pill of immortality" of Taoist alchemy that is aimed at sublimating the libido towards greater consciousness-spiritual growth (much like the abstemious practices of Catholic monks) and which I believe had it origins (like Chinese Shoalin Temple martial arts) in India, and which almost certainly equates to Arabic and European Alchemy in the production of the wondrous elixir/Philosophers Stone.
What this thread is telling me is that there is a common fountainhead to all these subjects and that the passionate hunt over untold decades for the underlying truth and knowledge of them is imbedded in the very nature of mankind.
But then as you all know, I am inclined to wax poetical in these subjects.:hmmmm2:
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
21-11-2009, 10:30 PM (This post was last modified: 21-11-2009, 10:33 PM by Helen Reyes.)
David: Nasrudin aka Hasrudin is the famous sufi sage/mystic/jokester. If memory serves his real life personality was from Afghanistan or nearby. The famous sayings all come back in a rush: Nasrudin instructs his students to ride on a horse sitting backwards into the desert without thinking of the horse's left eye. Or one day Nasrudin walks into a shop, walks up to the proprietor and asks "Have you ever seen me before in your life?" "No, sir!" "Then how do you know it's me??" etc etc.
On Murti-Bing, I think Milosz said exactly what you did about it being the Taoist pill of immortality (ma huang and ginkgo pits/silver apricots aren't good enough for them I guess), but I don't have a copy of his book handy to check.
I thought Roger Rabbit was horrible, incidentally, and never understood why it got so much praise. Unless of course you happened to work on it, in which case it was a fine film, perhaps overly ambitious, but not my cupa.
David Guyatt Wrote:Chris, in the event you haven't read it there is a very interesting book on Nazi buggery, or what we would today call homosexual paedophilia that was rampant throughout the Nazi Party and especially in its early enforcer outfit, the Brownshirts. Indeed, the chief of the Brownshirts, Ernest Roehm, was a very active players in these "manly" games.
The book is called "The Pink Swastika" by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams and is well worth reading imo.
Helen Reyes Wrote:I thought Roger Rabbit was horrible, incidentally, and never understood why it got so much praise. Unless of course you happened to work on it, in which case it was a fine film, perhaps overly ambitious, but not my cupa.
I had left Dick Studio well before he made Roger Rabbit and, sadly, returned to the City -- and my best friend who was a principal animator there had also left to set up his own studio.
So yes, it wuz 'orrible! :dancing2:
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
22-11-2009, 02:40 PM (This post was last modified: 22-11-2009, 02:43 PM by Helen Reyes.)
Thanks, Magda! My friends in Austria who do "Queer Studies" at an academic level are going to love that, if they don't know it already!
David, so this Omar Shah character had the power to mesmerize or do some kind of mind control on others? Does this relate to the money Mr. Williams said went missing? And how did he get onto the Nasruddin track, was that his own idea or was it suggested to him?
Sorry if this is too personal, but I think it completely relates to the topic.
Also, one of Puharich's friends from Netherlands wrote a biography to try to rehabilitate him, from what accusations I'm not sure, but there it is. Interesting enough, the biographer changes the name of one rich Puharich patroness whom I'm pretty sure Puharich names by name in Sacred Mushroom. She was one the Nine, which, according to my thesis, were the transplantation of the Mahatmas/Sarmoung/Kings of Agartha/Shakyas/the ancient Indian Nine into the American paradigm of the 1950s, as aliens in UFOs, ultimately for MK purposes.
I'll see if these are attachable.
Yes they are, but sacredmushroom.zip.txt needs to renamed sacredmushroom.zip, it contains a plain text html page sans images.
Helen Reyes Wrote:Thanks, Magda! My friends in Austria who do "Queer Studies" at an academic level are going to love that, if they don't know it already!
David, so this Omar Shah character had the power to mesmerize or do some kind of mind control on others? Does this relate to the money Mr. Williams said went missing? And how did he get onto the Nasruddin track, was that his own idea or was it suggested to him?
Sorry if this is too personal, but I think it completely relates to the topic.
It's not too personal at all Helen. Yes, you're on the right track to the extent that Dick was certainly frightened, if not terrified, of Omar and during conversations it was clear he had had a very strong hold over him. I forget whether I knew or not about the money issue. I think I probably did and that this formed part of Dick's story to me. It was almost 40 years ago now...
It was a pity that I never met Omar as I was very interested to know what made him so frightful in Dick's eyes. I am sure that it was though Omar's brother Idries, that Dick got hooked on Nasruddin in the first place. And it became an all consuming passion for him.
Quote:Also, one of Puharich's friends from Netherlands wrote a biography to try to rehabilitate him, from what accusations I'm not sure, but there it is. Interesting enough, the biographer changes the name of one rich Puharich patroness whom I'm pretty sure Puharich names by name in Sacred Mushroom. She was one the Nine, which, according to my thesis, were the transplantation of the Mahatmas/Sarmoung/Kings of Agartha/Shakyas/the ancient Indian Nine into the American paradigm of the 1950s, as aliens in UFOs, ultimately for MK purposes.
This makes perfect sense to me.
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The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
![[Image: 800px-Kailash_north.JPG]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Kailash_north.JPG/800px-Kailash_north.JPG)
