Juicy Gossip About Gurdjieff

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

Date: Fri, Jan 30, 2004 3:08 PM

Noted cyberhorrorpunkSub author Rev. John Shirley just sent us an
advance proof of his first nonfiction book:

Gurdjieff
An Introduction to His Life and Ideas

(Tarcher/Penguin)

JOHN SHIRLEY, you say? Writing a book about the Greek-Armenian
metaphysical teacher (1866-1949)? WTF?

As you should know from your occult studies overviews, G.I. Gurdjieff
is considered by SubGenius scholars to be, partly because of his
penchant for teaching through "pranks," perhaps the least corny of all
of the last century's many corny teachers of the occult, and of paths
to awakening the Inner Whatever.

Oh, Gurdjieff had his Diagrams of Reality and his Bobbies and his
crazy-ass books, but from all accounts he must have maintained a
startling measure of dignity while blowing the minds of rich fucks.
Like Crowley and Hubbard -- other guys I envy for being able to keep a
straight face. But nowhere near as creepy.

I am hoping as I read John's book to gain a more mature perspective on
this influential philosopher. By that I mean, it's been a long time
since we swiped good lines from Gurdjieff. (But boy did we, and he had
plenty. To my discredit I must admit that I lifted most of them from
the movie, "Meetings with Remarkable Men," a sort of Gurdjieff bio-pic,
and from Colin Wilson's encyclopedias.)

It's about how everybody's sleepwalking through life, but some can
AWAKE from this socially induced hypnosis by various difficult
disciplines, etc.

Personally I have found that a sudden, unexpected course in The School
of Hard Knocks does the same thing for some people, but is cheaper.
"Involuntary Slack Awareness," Dobbs called it. Whereas Gurdjieff used
intricately choreographed dances and amazing stories to induce it,
Dobbs uses a two-by-four. Generally it produces either enlightenment,
or else a much deeper "sleep," either of which, Dobbs claims, is
preferable to this miserable shadow half-world through which most
people shuffle.

Dobbs himself is said to have used old Hustler magazines to help
"awaken" himself and shake off the skein of illusion.

--
4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected (Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)

PRABOB

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Subject: Re: Juicy Gossip About Gurdjieff
From: "nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

Rev. Ivan Stang wrote:
>
> ...It's about how everybody's sleepwalking through
> life, but some can AWAKE from this socially induced
> hypnosis by various difficult disciplines, etc...
>

But what if it's just the opposite? That is, life is
painful insomnia, tossing and turning trying to get
comfortable, with the temperature either too hot or
too cold, bedsheets and pajamas that get twisted and
pinch or pull off your feet; little annoying noises
and frequently having to get up and urinate because
your kidneys work overtime when the lights are out;
and somebody you *really* wish was sleeping in another
room and DIDN'T FUCKING MAKE THOSE NOISES sleeping
right next to you and being really stinky and keeps
nudging you awake to ask if you "heard that noise?"
or "do you think I'm fat?" or "if I died would you
remarry?" And ALL THE WHILE, that annoying song
keeps going around and around in your head and you
have this awful taste in your mouth and your anus
itches and you have juicy farts--or maybe diarrhea--
you just can't tell until it's too late, along with
a painful itch in the sole of one foot and a YAARGH!
cramp JUST ABOUT TO HAPPEN in the calf of your other
leg. And you realize you busted the head off of a
BIG pimple on your ass and you have been smearing
blood all over the bedsheets for TWO HOURS NOW.

Yeah, that's life.

But ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS GO TO SLEEP and all is well.

You are at peace.

--
I don't know what you're talking about.
I've never met you before in my life.
That story sounds like utter bullshit.
I wasn't there and it wasn't me.
I am *not* in denial. Shut up.
--nu-monet

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Juicy Gossip About Gurdjieff
From: "iDRMRSR" <idrmrsr@subgenius.com>

Nu:
>>And you realize you busted the head off of a
BIG pimple on your ass and you have been smearing
blood all over the bedsheets for TWO HOURS NOW.

Why do I identify so much with this?

[*]
-----

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Subject: Re: Juicy Gossip About Gurdjieff
From: hellpopehuey@subgenius.com (HellPopeHuey)

You two would make really rotten dinner companions at Red Lobster in
particular, what with the crab legs and the eyes and the fins and then
all that fart and pimple talk. SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!

HellPope Huey / www.subgenius.com
I use Godzilla 8.4
and I am covered in 3rd-degree burns

Ordinarily he was insane,
but he had lucid moments
when he was merely stupid.
- Heinrich Heine

"One doesn't spend years as a homicidal maniac
without learning a thing or two about dynamite."
- Sideshow Bob

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Juicy Gossip About Gurdjieff
From: Joe Cosby <joecosby@SPAMBLOCKmindspring.com>

ALSO SPRACH HellPopeHuey:

>SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!

Indeed.

The reality is, what is relevant to anybody is that we do walk around
in a kind of socially-induced hypnosis, and the only really relevant
task the vast majority of us have available to us is to recognize the
particulars of this trance. We ARE sleepwalkers, we DO live INSIDE A
DREAM.

The reality is, every once in a while somebody is born who for purely
pathological reasons happen NOT to have been born with whatever gland
it is that ALLOWS us to live inside a dream. Whether this is Jesus,
Buddha, Guerdjieff, or nenslo, it is a BIRTH DEFECT without which the
afflicted would have been glad to have been born.

But regardless of their best efforts to avoid it, they inevitably
attract hysterical throngs of normals.

The only reason these damned normals are attracted to the afflicted is
BECAUSE they somehow grasp that the afflicted do not live within the
same SLEEPWALK that they do.

And so peri persui, the only question which the afflicted can POSSIBLY
answer is: "how do I SNAP OUT OF IT?"

Which is the ONE question which the normals will NEVER ASK.

--
Joe Cosby
http://joecosby.home.mindspring.com

"my other ride is your daddy."

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Juicy Gossip About Gurdjieff
From: Klyf Fenderson <news2TURNIP@klyfonline.com>

And who's going to treat my damned bedsores?

--
Rev. St. Klyf "Not Max Cannon" S<=>=-M257 the Not-Quite-Sane
Remove 'TURNIP' from address when replying.

"Why is it called tourist season if we can't
shoot at them?"
--Bumper Sticker

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Juicy Gossip About Gurdjieff
From: "nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

Joe Cosby wrote:
>
> The reality is, what is relevant to anybody is
> that we do walk around in a kind of socially-
> induced hypnosis, and the only really relevant
> task the vast majority of us have available to
> us is to recognize the particulars of this
> trance. We ARE sleepwalkers, we DO live
> INSIDE A DREAM...
>

Once again, I disagree. If you were dreaming,
you would feel good, not all groggy and "I need
coffee" blecch, like you just WOKE UP AND FEEL
LIKE SHIT.

"A man eats while he sleeps", is the old saying.
It means that even in starvation, hunger is held
sway by lovely Morpheus.

Wakefulness is dreary routine, boredom, chronic
discomforts, nagging self doubts, annoying head
games with fellow LERTS, cow-orker hierarchies
and office politics. IT IS THE BAD KIND OF
STRESS.

Being awake is being IN THE MATRIX. You only
have freedom WHEN YOU SLEEP, unless you are so
PROGRAMMED by the ILLUSION of clarity that you
drag that garbage into your sleep, like Jacob
Marley wearing the chains of his income taxes,
even in death.

BEING AWAKE means you WORK. In sleep, SLACK
comes freely. You wallow in it with the PURITY
of a swine wallowing in his wallow. You are like
a COSMIC PLEASURE PIGGY, at ONE wit' de Univoise.
And the Univoise LOVES its little Pleasure Piggies
right back. The SLACK in deep and gooey and oh,
so chocolaty soothing!

But then you WAKE UP, and you instantly become an
anal-retentive WHITEMAN who MUST DO, DO, DO,
instead of just BE, BE, BE.

Who, I ask, is more AT ONE with the Univoise?

The TWEAKER, who spends all his minimum-wage fast
food job overtime pay on meth, just so he can work
overtime for his soulless boss machine on the OFF
CHANCE that SOMEDAY he might be promoted to asst.
Mgr. at minimum wage + $1?

Or the half-asleep STONER, who, if he ever even
makes it to a job interview, asks as his first
question, "Do I like have to do any urinalysis or
shit like that?", and who eventually ends up as
the CEO's drug-dealing caddy, who works one day a
week at the corporate golf course (weather
permitting), and earns as much as the senior VP
of marketing?

--
"Money can't buy you happiness,
but when you're poor, you can't
buy shit, and nobody will loan
you happiness."
--nu-monet

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Juicy Gossip About Gurdjieff
From: "Dunter Powries" <fech.redcap@spedlin>

> "A man eats while he sleeps", is the old saying.
> It means that even in starvation, hunger is held
> sway by lovely Morpheus.

Now I've got 'There's a Light (Over At the Frankenstein Place)' cycling
aimlessly through my head.

Dunty Porteous,
Human Sacrifice

--
"Oh boy sleep! That's where I'm a VIKING!"
-Ralph Wiggum

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Joe Cosby <joecosby@SPAMBLOCKmindspring.com>

"The moon is man's big enemy. We serve the moon. Last time you heard
about the kundabuffer. Kundabuffer is the moon's representative on
earth. We are like the moon's sheep, which it cleans, feeds and
shears, and keeps for its own purposes.

But when it is hungry it kills a lot of them."

- GI Gurdjieff

If Gurdjieff wasn't nuts, then he was FUCKING NUTS. If he was, he was
fucking nuts, but he was FUCKING NUTS.

In the latter case, I think he earns my $ 30.

--
Joe Cosby
http://joecosby.home.mindspring.com

Did you ever go to a party that turned into the WILDEST orgy in your
life and spend the whole night screwing the bejesus out of every
gender you can lay your hands and/or whatever on in a wild night of pagan
adenoidal ecstacy then wake up the next morning and realize you were
in the mannekin storage department at a clothing store?

I mean, there should be warning signs or something.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "gurdjieff 0f gormorrah" <iiiiii@iiiii>
Newsgroups: alt.slack,alt.discordia

"Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com> wrote in message
news:300120041508241221%stang@subgenius.com...

>
> Dobbs himself is said to have used old Hustler magazines to help
> "awaken" himself and shake off the skein of illusion.

lol... loved this !!
but ya know, when the smoked had cleared , Gurdjieff was skull fu*king
ouspensky's wife, his house was painted and his debts paid in full.
You not only lift lines from old movies and Rev. John Shirley but you
totally fail to understand that a con sees
another con from a mile away. Whereas, mystics can see 'em up to 2300 miles
away.
You are, indeed, falling short of the point, and, by the way, there's a wee
bit of yellow matter custard dripping from your chin.

don't jump in the water if ya can't swim

l0v3,
gurdjieff 0f gormorrah

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Juicy Gossip About Gurdjieff
From: Doktor DynaSoar <targeting@OMCL.mil>

May I suggest people go to the various and sundry sites for Gurjieff
worship and notify them of the impending publication? Might chalk up
a few sales for Rev. Shirley.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Juicy Gossip About Gurdjieff
From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

>
> BEING AWAKE means you WORK. In sleep, SLACK
> comes freely. You wallow in it with the PURITY
> of a swine wallowing in his wallow. You are like
> a COSMIC PLEASURE PIGGY, at ONE wit' de Univoise.
> And the Univoise LOVES its little Pleasure Piggies
> right back. The SLACK in deep and gooey and oh,
> so chocolaty soothing!

SOUNDS GREAT! Now, if only this writing about enlightenment through
sleep wasn't so exciting, then I could go to sleep. Nu-monet, these
particular teachings perhaps should be more boring, in order to guide
the student to the dream state.

>
> But then you WAKE UP, and you instantly become an
> anal-retentive WHITEMAN who MUST DO, DO, DO,
> instead of just BE, BE, BE.

Be be be be be be be be be. Hey that feels good when you do that with
your lip. Be be be be be be be be be be. Kind of flip your lower lip
with your hooked forefinger while staring slackjawed and drooling. Man
I'm trancing out into IT. Be be be be be be be. Oh FUCK. While I was so
into going be be be, I accidentally went do do do.

>
> Who, I ask, is more AT ONE with the Univoise?
>
> The TWEAKER, who spends all his minimum-wage fast
> food job overtime pay on meth, just so he can work
> overtime for his soulless boss machine on the OFF
> CHANCE that SOMEDAY he might be promoted to asst.
> Mgr. at minimum wage + $1?

"If I get this ARISE DVD out, Dobbs will start inviting me to those
parties that Philo gets to go to!"

>
> Or the half-asleep STONER, who, if he ever even
> makes it to a job interview, asks as his first
> question, "Do I like have to do any urinalysis or
> shit like that?", and who eventually ends up as
> the CEO's drug-dealing caddy, who works one day a
> week at the corporate golf course (weather
> permitting), and earns as much as the senior VP
> of marketing?

I didn't realize that you knew Sterno!

--
4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected (Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)

PRABOB

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Joe Cosby <joecosby@SPAMBLOCKmindspring.com>

ALSO SPRACH nu-monet v6.0:
>
>Or the half-asleep STONER, who, if he ever even
>makes it to a job interview, asks as his first
>question, "Do I like have to do any urinalysis or
>shit like that?", and who eventually ends up as
>the CEO's drug-dealing caddy, who works one day a
>week at the corporate golf course (weather
>permitting), and earns as much as the senior VP
>of marketing?

The point is WHO is pulling the wool over WHOSE eyes.

--
Joe Cosby
http://joecosby.home.mindspring.com

Every idol, however exalted, turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for
human sacrifice.
- Aldous Huxley

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Joe Cosby <joecosby@SPAMBLOCKmindspring.com>

Don't read this one, this is another one where I go on way too long
and get way too serious.

Usenet is starting to become a replacement for my personal journal.

I had a dream a couple months ago or a year ago, Tony Soprano was in
it, he was disguised as a mover with a van, but he was really a
mobster, and he was helping me do something or other. Carrying drugs
in the moving van or whatever. So we're talking and he says
something, I guess it is some kind of clever Sicialian mafioso adage.

So I wake up and I am writing the dream down and I am really very
interested in -what- exactly he said. I don't speak Italian so no
doubt it will be gibberish but dreams produce some very interesting
gibberish sometimes.

I am having a very hard time remembering though. The dream is still
very fresh in my mind, when you first wake up a dream can still be as
vivid as a waking life memory. I can remember every little detail but
I just can't play back the part where he was talking in Italian again.
Then finally there's a kind of 'snap' and I realize that he DIDN'T SAY
ANYTHING. Which, if you're reading this, might seem a little
confusing, because I have already said that he did say something in
the dream. I mean, he did or he didn't, right? If he didn't, why am
I remembering he did? What, exactly, am I remembering?

But it's less confusing when you bear in mind that in a dream you are
both the audience and the writer at the same time. That was what the
little 'snap' was, my perspective on the dream split into that of the
'writer' of the dream and that of the watcher. Usually you aren't
conscious of the writer part at all when you're dreaming.

So the writer part was just like 'well, he says something in Italian
here', but didn't come up with anything in time for the watcher part.
So the watcher part just gets 'well, he said something in Italian',
and just glosses over the details.

It's really not all that different from things you might do in waking
life. You hear some people talking and you realize they are talking a
foreign language that sounds vaguely Russian maybe so you just
think/perceive "they're talking in Russian or something". Maybe later
you listen closer and realize they aren't talking in Russian at all;
maybe they have heavy Russian accents or maybe it was all in your head
and they are talking more or less normally but somehow it just sounded
weird and Russian to you for whatever reason.

In order to keep the world straight at all, you have to project some
idea, some "it's like this", onto the things going on around you, or
it would all be confusing and frightening.

Of course, in waking life versus sleep, there is, at least
theoretically, some real thing going on in the world that you -don't-
make up, and you project onto that.

The only difference between that and a dream is that in a dream you
are projecting onto a 'blank screen'. You're seeing the mechanism
with which you project onto the world by itself.

And this mechanism is capable of some incredible creative feats. In a
dream things can be very coherent and amazingly complex. You can have
a completely different life with a complete detailed history,
acquaintances with well-differentiated and convincing personalities,
you can handle things physically with complete detail down to the
smallest minutae. Days or months can go by in the dream and it can
hold up, self-consistent and completely convincing.

And the thing is, your mind is doing this ALL THE TIME. Glossing
things over, and ensuring that what you see agrees with the "well,
it's like" ideas that you are familiar with. To some extent, we
assume that what is really happening out there and what we think is
happening out there are the same thing, and that we are adjusting our
mental picture of the world to account for the physical world and the
two stay in synch. And no doubt we are, but it's hard to say exactly
how much we are in synch and how much we are sleepwalking, seeing what
we expect to see. Because this dream mechanism is very good at making
everything seem smooth and consistent. We look at ourselves, and it's
hard to believe that there would REALLY be all that much difference
between what we think is going on and what is going on. But then, we
look at other people, and it is easier to see how they live in a world
which always agrees with their beliefs, regardless of if that has
anything to do with reality or not. So you have to wonder, am I
really the -only one- who doesn't do that? Or do I just not see it?

But then some people are more asleep than others.

Just now I was in the parking lot at Fred Meyer, and there's this
four-way intersection. This lady was driving an SUV and she pulls all
the way into the middle of the intersection, -then- she comes to a
complete stop and, looking both ways, very slowly makes a left turn.

Which, when you think about it, makes no sense. By the time she's in
the middle of the intersection, she would already have hit or been hit
by anybody coming.

So is she stupid? Does she just not get how to make a left turn? No
doubt somewhere along the line she learned to drive, and she learned
that you stop or slow down when you make a turn, check for traffic,
and then go if it's clear. But since then she's done it a million
times, so it's no longer a conscious act. She doesn't make a left
turn, she FEELS making a left turn. Making a left turn has become a
"well, it's like" for her. And that's how making a left turn feels to
her, that's what it's -like-, you go real slow and look around while
you are making the turn. She no longer DOES it, she DREAMS it.

--
Joe Cosby
http://joecosby.home.mindspring.com

"Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery, Hundreds Dead."
- Newspaper Headline

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Juicy Gossip About Gurdjieff
From: "nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

>
> I had a dream a couple months ago or a year ago...

http://www.slowwave.com/

--
"At the sound of the beep you will forget
the first part of this message <beep>."

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

"Bob" called himself the Gate, the Twelfth I'mam through whom one is
'opened' to the Fifth Way, the Way of the Most Sly Man. Most people,
"Bob" said, never do, they only have things done to them. This is
because the mind is actually a series of different, incomplete
personalities that endlessly bicker over which gets to run the body.
The Most Sly isolates and exploits these disconnected states, and
achieves the ability not only to truly "do," but to "do the HELL out
of" whatever he or she is DOing. And, if that is impossible, the Most
Sly manages to make everyone else believe that that is what is
happening. For, in the false reality of the Pinks, believing is all
that is necessary - and the Most Sly does only what is necessary,
leaving the rest of the time for Slack.

For my part, I thought this was all a lot of high-sounding bullshit.
But one day, that changed.

-- Philo

--
4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected (Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)

PRABOB

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Juicy Gossip About Gurdjieff
From: "nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

Rev. Ivan Stang wrote:
>
> "Bob" called himself the Gate, the Twelfth I'mam
> through whom one is 'opened' to the Fifth Way,
> the Way of the Most Sly Man.
> -- Philo

Like, I'm going to believe the disembodied brain in
jar #fhdj-362810, when I don't believe the disembodied
brain in #fhdj-362808?

--
"This hedgehog will live with us!"

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Original file name: Juicy Gossip About Gurdjieff - converted on Saturday, 25 September 2004, 02:05