An irreverent look at Robert Burton's teaching from former Burton "classmate" Dave Archer
According to
Dave Archer, fellow member in Alex Horn's school:
"Teachers hate the I.R.S. more than pimps, counterfeiters, and safecrackers put together. They never pay taxes on the cash they rake in, and the I.R.S. is missing out on millions. It's the Number One reason for Gurdjieffian secrecy. Although, they are Objective thieves remember, which makes it okay for them to steal from Uncle Sam. It's a cash business. Gurdjieff ain't no religion. Don't forget to Self-Remember that. It's a School."
One day some Magus--tripping Gurdjieff "student" sent me an e-mail from Afghanistan I thought must be a put-on of some sort. 2004 I think. I don’t know. I figured it was the FBI updating my file again. The sender said every word was direct from an official, “student eyes only,” monthly note-sheet, purporting it to be the actual words of G-penis, Robert Burton. Evidently they had picked up his newsletter while kicking around the weekly goat-testicle-meeting at Saturday Market in Kabul. And, they were actually requesting my comments on it because I’d shot my wad off about Gurdjieff in this stupid article, and they wanted more. I also figured it could be from Burton himself, as a joke. You know, what do you do after you collect all those paintings and sculptures? Collect more? Or goad some ex-guppies for a few laughs between giving conscious blow jobs and kicking people out for waking up. So I e-mailed back hoping to give the Feds, or R, or both, a bit of sizzle-frival, completely forgetting the impossibility of either of them groking the ravings of the Central Casting "G" Type I am, which is: Lunatic Type, not to mention bum and tramp.
"Lunatics", said Mr. Ouspensky, "are like politicians, people who think they can do, people who think that they can change life by means of themselves, people who, if they put their theories into practice, create greater disorder because they do not calculate Second Force. (Oooo, Second Force, all bow before the Queen) This means that they think they can change everyone by some new enactment and do not realize that to change a person is a very difficult thing. These are the Lunatics, and again, they do not see the fool in themselves."
Oh really. I see it alright. The King has me in his court for just that reason. I make him laugh at himself.
Hubris, always my strong suit.
You mean Lunatic Type like Gurdjieff himself? I assume Ouspensky included himself in my G catagory too, since the man went completely mad and died a terrible paranoid death from giving away his life to an amoral man who used him like a box of Kleenx for writing and publishing secrets G was never supposed to reveal. No wonder Gurdjieff and Ouspensky produced so many sociopathic teachers, without a single hint of shame, kindness, caring or concern for the people they stomped into the dirt and left in the road behind them. Oh bs Davy ... calm down. Breathe. Your case worker will get upset and take away your shapes-tray again. Remember how you were just in another bipolar swamp that day? –––
not to be sucked with ––– otherwise you might have dumped the e-mail from Kabul with your other spam? You are not a Lunatic Type Davy, not at all. You are officially mentally ill, remember? After you left Gurdfjieff behind along the trail of lost men, and got diagnosed by Doktor Doomphobia, and he put you on lithium and Prozac? Remember how your kids had to pull you out of the woods that day, talking to a boulder? And the boulder was talking back? In iambic pentameter?
How you were hallucinating the
little people on the Doktor's face and screamed when his receptionist walked in? How you thought he was Belfegore in drag?
Fine, the truth will out.
The e-mail claimed Burton wrote:
The mechanical I's represent chaos: the work I's represent harmony
I thought, sure, get lost in your I's for me please, so “I” can continue vacuuming up the rest of your dead mother's money.
Over the years I had received a lot of godforsaken Burton-dirt from folks that claimed they were there at his infamous Ranch, then left in abject depression, broke, broken, angry and extremely vengeful. They wanted the man’s elderly balls staked to the walls of their cave apartments for Christmas decorations. Then too, Robert and I were together in Alex’s group so hey, I really got "into it" that day, yep, just went for the neckulars. Just laid back blurting my tonsorials out, and those b-oysters had been yanked by Doktor Torquemada when I was fine. I couldn’t help myself though. Never could. Of course, I didn’t know Robert during "who's got the biggest swinging-dong competition" on Red Mountain. Nobody did. The Group was huge. Well, and Robert had already mastered the ancient art of magick invisibility, thus giving him the opportunity of self-remembering himself while remembering he was, without any of us however, remembering him. Cool move. Bingo!
Number Jive man.
Burton said this? I doubt it. This has to be the FBI:
In relation to rearranging one's thinking to bring one closer to consciousness, I noticed that my queens were about to express self-pity, and I said "Stay in the Kings".
I thought, man, that tops Long Dong Silver. Arrrrrg! We should go out tonight Bobby, full-moon-it so to speak, you know, gig us up some bullfrogs, have a fire, gobble legs, melt up some smoores, then pee our names together on the pond-bank, okay? Five merit badges for one event! Five apiece!
Then Burton supposedly said: Give the queen and inch, and it will take a mile.
I thought, oh shit, that means four and a half inches is too short. I’m screwed . Oh well.
I love this one, and, I believe Bobby did say this one for sure: If one uses the TWELVE mechanical intellectual parts of centers correctly, they produce the conscious world twelve.
Jesus H. Cripe!
Because ... now the student has TWELVE (count them) “mechanical” Intellectual parts to drive them crazy, on top of the twelve non-mechanical ones already orphaned in their Gurdjieff gland. Okay, do I have to explain everything? This is a Mighty Morphin’ Magus move. He's acting as absentee landlord for gullible psyches or my name ain’t Yosemite Sam. Buy into this one and you just rented a brown recluse web for your next apartment. A magician opens free space in “baby-brains” slicker than geeks do with extra server-space. It’s lesser-magus-magick, to “charm” you, then it’s the whole Intifada sucker, wallet, carpentry skills, inheritance, talents, loyalty, trust, ranch, home, cow, geese, children, wife, except the lesbian with the wooden leg, your dog, plus every speck of true pride you ever cobbled together in your rooster-tail existence, not to mention dad's Mercedes. Ah yes ... the coffers of Kings and Queens.
Robert Burton said?: We urgently need to dispel imagination and to be present to each other.
I shit you not. Especially you. Beware of all the warnings about imagination being bad. Perhaps Robert, as played by the FBI, means a different sort of imagination than the painters used to created all the artwork he paid millions for? Gurdjieff had an incredible imagination, which he used to amass a fortune and live for decades as Cock on the Dunghill. Especially that painting Burton has of an Angel with a hardon. Alex Horn hated “imagination” in us students, then used it himself every day. After all, Mr. Diabolically Yours, wrote truly “imaginative” stage plays that left every audience pondering, “what the fuck was that? Could Alex Horn really be that bad a playwrite?”
Then, supposedly, which I seriously doubt: When one is present, one has solved the mystery of the universe: to produce conscious beings.
I get this one! "Being present,” as when getting a blow job from your teacher!
And this?: I am more grateful for my students' gift than my own, for what is one compared to thousands?
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your grappa grow? With twinkle bells, and cockel smells, and pretty boys all in a row. Oh please, and gobs of gay-fabulous paintings? I will never believe Robert Burton said that, in writing or otherwise. Naw, he did.
Or this: "From fairest creatures we desire increase ... that we use our physical bodies to produce our astral bodies”.
If Robert Burton said that, G bless him. I weep for his loss, and thank you Rick Ross, now down on your knees, and diddle the boss.
Robert Burton said?: Because of the relative difference between the second state and the first state, people do not even suspect that they are asleep.
No kidding Karl G-ung, which is exactly the lesser-magick a Magus employs to make millions off his followers for buying up painted masterpieces he claims belong to the “Work”, while ever demanding more cold cash & hot sex. Gurdjieff said, “I sheer sheep”. This can only be gotten away with so long before a great chorus of “baaaa’s” rises over the vineyards.
Then?: Through religion, man has created an imaginary picture of his life after death.
And Gurdjieff offers, let's see, a shimmering ether-bod of aerosolized hydrogen's bug-splattered over some interior “imaginary” lattice of false hopes and night terrors, all for the God they are becoming? Whew. Make sure you get your left shoe on the right foot when you boogie out the backdoor of that sugar-shack.
This cannot be Burton: (Upon passing a cemetery:) I looked at the gates of the cemetery, and for a moment, in a flash, I saw that for us they are the gates to Paradise.
Dungeons and Dragons?
Stop Robert! Never admit you said this next one. Well, you no doubt never did: Although the opportunities to judge life are endless, why waste one's time judging people who are wasting their time answering your supposed questions, like Dave the Lunatic Tramp?
Hey, pay no attention to the snuff-snorting dwarf in stripped trousers hiding behind the Royal ass.
He never said this for sure: “Ouspensky survived the death of his physical body. He became the "flame that needs no fuel".
Okay, gloves off, do we get Hieronymous Bosch & Lomb aviator goggles, or bring our own? Can I earn a pair for doing the best loop-de-loops over Mona Kea in full eruption? Actually, Ouspensky went stark raving mad toward the end, writhing in paranoia, finally imploding into one final frozen heap of psychic-snow-peas when he “woke up” and realized he’d just spent the bulk of his precious life, money, skill, and trust, glorifying an uncaring Magus who only used him as his Scribe, thus ripping off yet another human life. Poor elderly Ouspensky on crutches and drugs must have zombified-out years before he gave up and traded in his donkey for the Grief of All Grief's. No, this e-mail from the Middle East had to have been another swishing expedition from the tax wasting FEDS.
Hold up there pilgrim. Robert did have his secretary call you around a year ago, (2008) several times, remember? Asking if you could remember the location of the Victorian house in San Francisco where Alex had us all hopping around the room (his words): hoochie-koochie dancing, molding, floating, flying, and radiating, not to mention braying like boozed bonobos, yowling like Sphinx cats, and barking like elephant seals on Ano Nuevo Island. Man oh woman, those were important Gurdjieff exercises for sure. The morning I started with Alex Horn on Sterling Benell’s ranch on Sonoma Mountain Road, neighboring Gurdjieff teacher, Robert de Ropp, on his way to his Zen garden, took two of us aside and warned: “If you sup with the Devil, have a long spoon”. The Victorian? I confess to wondering at the time, not for very long however, why the hell Robert Burton wanted to know where that house was? And why he didn’t just call me himself? I don’t bite, physically. Plus, I am loved by movie and rock stars, writers, poets, painters, standup comedians the world over who call me when they’re down and need a good laugh. At least the Federal Bureau of Investigation usually has the good manners to drop by the studio for personal interviews. In fact, the last one (before my Kabul communiqué) had the decency to bald-face lie to me during a jam-packed; searchlight opening of my (even if I do say so myself, and, I do) amazing paintings, telling me he was my biggest fan ever, then inviting himself over to my secret-bunker studio so I could teach him how to paint a tact-squad on glass while he checked the place out for revolutionary techniques. Yep, Special Agent, Ed Davis, left that day after a very enjoyable visit, went back to the Federal Office Building in San Francisco and actually painted a tact-squad glass-painting as a gift for me. Cool beans. Then Ed delivered it by hand in a "surprise" drop-by two weeks later; Not only that, the man has evolved into a really good painter now. A famous artisté, producing silhouette cops better than any I have ever seen. I love his new work. But I, international celebrity painter that I am, hold the unique privilege of owning Ed’s very first endeavor. Eat your heart out Robert Burton. I especially love it in the corner of the frame where Ed signed: To Dave Archer, with many thanks for the TIPS! " Now, ya’gotta love that. (Come on Ed, I kid, okay?) Still, if I were you I’d check out Robert Burton next time instead of me because that guy has a collection of paintings that museums worldwide would not only give their double-fuzz-nuts for, they’d throw in five Dave Archer's to go with them. And talk about some true super-decor to complement your Ikea collection. Just think of the chicks man. The chicks!
