Cheshire Cat

Understand the nature of the industry and you'll know why the mere concept of your quest should turn you away from the spiritual path. Welcome to the Dao Bums

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It's funny how the little scriptural basis of Christianity is mostly derived from taking quotes out of contextual history and circumstances. Jesus' group was financed by rich women who payed the bills (there are explicit scriptural evidences). Jesus was simply saying "join our group to seek the kingdom of God and we'll provide food and clothing ". Take Jesus' words literally and out of contexts as they were referred to you now, and you'll have some bad experiences.

I sincerely hope that - if he still exists--the God of War described in Bible doesn't even think about me. Jesus? No, thank you

Jesus cared about me as much as Alexander the Great did. The reasons are pretty much the same: different hairstyles, different languages and 2000+ years of history.

Why not?

I don't need Jesus and he didn't care about me.

Scribes were expensives: he wrote much of the new testament by himself :-D

From an historical perspective, I think it's worth mentioning that Paul's letters were written long before the gospels...

Everything ends up in Jesus

Not to mention the resurrection of the deads...

The general understanding is that to endure your tapas, you are forced to develop willpower. The common understanding is that the God to whom you dedicate your tapas becomes pleased and grants siddhis.

To assume, to deduce and to think are our mental faculties. As functions in themselves, they're supported and produced by biological processes: they're not distinct eternal individualities.

This would be the case for most because we've been fed with philosophical abstractions since childhood: ideas like "eternity" and "omnipotence" shape dreams and fantasies in the western world. The consequence is that to imagine an immortal soul in the afterlife makes more sense than the idea of turning into rainbow unicorns that defecate stars and galaxies. According to your logic we are to bound to "know for sure" if each one of our fantasies is reality or not, in order to be satisfied.

People die. To assume that there's something eternal in your soul is a palliative to get some temporary relief.

The only problem is that we die when we don't want to. There are plenty of supposed solutions, and there are also people who cope with the problem with imagination and philosophy.

Cultivation systems are integral components of various philosophical systems. People think that cultivation produces the proper perception of reality beyond philosophy, but is that true?

What do you mean by opening the chakras? Which effects/symptoms/results are supposed to accompany the opening on a subjective experimental level and on the objective level?

I would say that it's more of a relief than a pleasure since my starting point with Gudjieff was to acritically accept everything he wrote and taught, but allow me to take another step and quote a Master from the past that Mr. G. considered to be supreme in understanding and wisdom. "By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. [...] Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them." Jesus Gurdjieff's fruits are of a rare kind: delicious, but without flavors. Colorfuls, but invisibles. Essentially non existents. He might be an inspiration to esoteric thinkers as much as the manchineel is an inspiration for the apple tree.

That book which I mentioned is one of the two books authored by Gurdjieff himself, the other being Belzebuub's tales. I would suggest to actually read the real Gurdjieff's stuff before trying to depict him based solely on the impressions that he left on other people. I don't think it's relevant that his students wrote books which describe him as a saint and psychic master: the profound psychological impact that specific behaviours have on certain individuals is something that never fails to surprise me and I've met modern masters of the art that deploy similar strategies with similar results.

Notably, most of the stories are in his own books which sadly most of his modern followers failed to read. But most importantly, I don't care enough to debate about this matter: it will suffice to read " Meetings with Remarkable Men " and see the stories for what they are behind the veil of his narrative. Gurdjieff was a refined scam- artist that literally carved his own legend out of a self-referential narrative and a multitude of stories, superstitions and myths from the eastern world which he held to be true. Most of the stories were -of course- his own inventions: you may read for example the chapter on Tibet and Lamaism in the Belzeebub's tales. When he talked about a particular aspect of his personality or his approach to life ("never do anything as others do", etc...), he did so to inspire his followers to think differently and it was functional to his own purposes: not to be critical of his works and teachings, for example.

A golden coin in a poor hand is such a big treasure, isn't it? Because he used to believe blindly in all sorts of myth from the eastern world. Some yoga teacher told him that he should eat slowly and carefully... and he followed the advice. Then he met another yoga teacher who instructed him to do the opposite, and he followed the advice. He slept on the bare ground for many years because some naked beggar told him to do so. Etc...

Yes, Gurdjieff was particularly guillible and when he said that something spiritual was BS, it probably really was.

She's so beautiful