Fellowship Of Friends/Fourth Way School/Living Presence Discussion – Page 172 March 25, 2019
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Fellowship of Friends - Living Presence Discussion 
These pages contain plenty of warnings for spiritual ‘seekers’ about Burton, the Fellowship of Friends, his disciple Asaf Braverman and his Ark in Time / Beperiod.com offerings. That is mostly ‘pushing away’.
Does Ames have any positive advice to offer seekers who would like to avoid the many, many pitfalls, and the many, many predators who seek to take advantage? Something to embrace?
Yes. Here goes:
1) Take your time. There really is no hurry. Ask deeply within yourself what you are searching for, and why. Record your thoughts.
2) Sign up for courses in Logic and Critical Thinking at your local college. Push your teacher beyond what is presented in class, try to get your classmates to push as well. Become familiar with the ‘givens’ of your local and national cultures, the origins and assumptions, “common” knowledge and “common” sense. Become familiar with all aspects of propaganda and how it is used. The knowledge you gain will be of inestimable value for the rest of your life, in every area of your life, not just in sussing out esoteric teachings.
If you can’t do this at college, at least study some books or online courses, preferably with others to keep each other honest and spur each other to actually do the necessary work. That’s right, it takes major efforts to protect yourself and recognize the magical thinking and naïve hopefulness in oneself for what they are.
3) Sign up for a course in Comparative Religion at your local college. You will gain valuable insights into the history and setups of all religions, and you will recognize the classic appeals when you come across a new one. If you have a really good teacher, pump them for more individual insights.
4) If you decide to give any organization a tryout, write down the terms of that ‘tryout’, in detail, in advance. Write down your goals. Decide, in advance, on time limits. Decide how you will measure ‘success’. Share all this with a good, trustworthy friend who is NOT going to join, and make a deal that you will, come what may, meet and go over these goals together at intervals agreed in advance.
5) Ask the questions of the organization and ‘teacher’ previously listed on these pages. Ask every one of those questions and any more that occur to you as you go along. Write down all the answers; if not at the time, before the end of the day. If you don’t understand the answers or their implications, ask them again. Share these answers with the same friend you chose in #4.
If you follow this advice, it will only be through the worst of luck that you end up in an organization like the Fellowship of Friends or one of its offshoots like Spiral of Friends or Asaf Braverman’s Beperiod gig—or the literally thousands of other organizations set up by charlatans to take over your life and part you from your money.
The 3 characteristics of cults:
1. A charismatic leader who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose their power.
2. A process called “coercive persuasion” or “thought reform”.
3. Economic, sexual, and other exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling elite.
Source: “Cult Formation” by Robert J. Lifton, MD (“The Harvard Mental Health Letter”, Volume 7, Number 8)
Link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/co4j0u0na995np4/Robert%20J.%20Lifton%20-%20Cult%20Formation.pdf?dl=0
So-called “doomsday cults” have a fourth characteristic:
4. Proclaiming that people in the organization are the only ones that will survive an impending catastrophe, apocalypse or Armageddon.
Another source of knowledge about cults is the book “The Guru Papers”, by Joel Kramer & Diana Alstadt.
“Four Days of the Fourth State
Page 171 – Posts 70 and 106
If one can wade through the amount of irrelevant and repetitive dross of these posts, there can be provocative questions, both positive and negative, to address.
Post 70 seems like reshuffled/edited notes from the high school notebooks of Richard Dawkins (“The God Delusion” and “The Selfish Gene”) and call to mind the fact that a pompous writer can deny the transcendent or numinous and call it ‘a trick of light’ or ‘auditory hallucination’ or any such track that leads the writer of the above post (70) to assume that we are not connected to the universe, cosmos or even the ‘heavenly orbs’ (must be some reason why they whirl around up there?!) and that THE ACCIDENT THAT IS LIFE EXPUNGES US INTO NON-EXISTENCE-AFTER-DEATH AND MAKES YOU WONDER WHY ANYTHING AT ALL CAME FROM ‘THE PRIMAL OOZE’/UNIVERSAL MUD AND WHY ANYTHING BOTHERS TO DO ANYTHING…questions, questions, questions…do not answer too quickly – “Live the questions” (Rilke).
Post 106 has more meat – more relevance – to the writer, who I would presume has experienced the Fellowship of Friends and to ex-students and current students, new and older…STATES!
I fully agree that the Lycra babes ‘pump up the wow’ and scream their delight among their peers at the flashiest workout gym in town, the evangelicals ‘get off’ on their canonicals and addicts to uppers (as correctly mentioned, artificially stimulating serotonin and dopamine for the endorphins – no argument there) are in a crumpled mess when they ‘fall from the grace of the drug’, which will always let them down – I am almost certain this is irrefutable among the medical fraternity.
How many remember the Kronos (time passing) and Kairos (time of higher opportunity) in the Fellowship and taken from older teachings – an interpretation of the cross principle. What if the need were not to get sky-high, not to see Super Strawberry rise out of the woodwork in your LSD trip and circle your head five times before disappearing, but just to “FULFIL THE DAY”, to realise one has given of one’s best, one has made a new friend, one is more clued in about others you naively trusted. The BIG WOW will blow you away, so just reach up for some help (symbolically) with the truthful side of your nature and you will not need huge congregations, huge intoxicants and huge acts of perversion (hint, hint!).
As Walt Whitman so beautifully put it…
“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere – on water and land.”
Sid, what happened to Art? Where’d 44 go? What have you got to hide?
109. Golden Veil – March 25, 2019 (Page 171)
You asked:
Does anyone know with any certainty if there are any countries in which RB cannot travel due to arrest warrants? And what are the charges?
A friend of mine who is a former member but is still in contact with members told me that there is an arrest warrant for Robert in the European Community and that is the reason why he has not traveled to Europe for more than 10 years. My friend did not mention any specific country or the charges.
I highly recommend “The Guru Papers”, too.
Cults, including Scientology, Moonies, First Church of Christ, Scientist, TM, etc. are all outlawed in France. I’m fairly certain burton is persona non grata there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_Commission_on_Cults_in_France
There is no one alive who can tell you with rational scientific certainty that there is life after death. No one has any credible mystical proof of it tucked away in their “fourth state” intuition. They do not have a soul made out of undetectable by science Hydrogen-12, 6 or 3 that assures them of life ever after . They’ve merely got their desperate fingers crossed and that is it. All this “work” to radiate “presence” on your “8th lifetime” in a “conscious school” is laughable. You are foolish people living in a sick dreamworld of delusion.
Now, lend me your handkerchief so I can get down on my knees and polish the holy boots of the Absolute King of Clubs. I don’t want to get mine dirty. LWD…
Laughing while dining.
One more thing, don’t kill yourselves morons because this is it–one life.
“To achieve, you need thought.
You have to know what you are doing and that’s real power.”
– Ayn Rand –
Remember, if you engage you prolong the manifestation, just like scratching a herpes sore.
An anti-cult blog stacked with cult minded people prone to herding themselves into cliques based on who believes in life after death.
“I think Gurdjieff really had his shit together.” ~Cult “Survivor’s” Hero
LWD.
That was brucelevy pal.
Cult Survivor, those are such succinct summaries in you posted in #2 and 3 and so complementary to Ames Gilbert’s excellent advice to seekers.
Pseudonym Sid, you are a brave one, a steadfast reader to take the time to parse and analyse the writings of Four Days of the Fourth State!
Whalerider, I think I had heard that about France. I’ll look at the book that you and Cult Survivor recommend. Thanks!
6. Artemis44 – March 26, 2019
Thank you for your swift response! Ten years is an awfully long time for a cultural hound like RB to stay away from Europe.
Insider, can you please confirm how long it’s been since RB paid a visit to Europe – and the Fellowship of Friends Centers there?
13. Golden Veil
“Insider, can you please confirm how long it’s been since RB paid a visit to Europe – and the Fellowship of Friends Centers there?”
I don’t know. I know for sure that he went to Egypt in October 2010. I’m not sure if there were more visits after this. Based on my archive of FF emails, I tend to think not.
On most of his trips to Egypt, RB had a stopover in Europe, often in London. I’m pretty sure that RB did not go to Europe, separate from visiting Egypt, from 2010 to the present.
If the final (and 30th, more or less) visit to Egypt was in October 2010, that would also have been, potentially, his final visit to Europe.
14. Insider – March 26, 2019
If there are warrants in Europe, they have surely put a crimp in RB and his harem’s penchant for Europesn art and restaurant tours (sorry, I mean sports bar crawls!). No Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam, Venice, Florence, Rome… I wonder what happened?
I don’t think that Egypt counts as Europesn travel; it’s on the continent of Africa, isn’t it?
If one can “read between the lines” of Greg’s posts without judgement, you will find a person who is inextricably invested in communicating to others (especially anyone in a position of authority or whom displays even a whiff of superiority) the apparent meaninglessness of life in an effort to expose our denial of what he believes is objective truth.
He is attempting to capitalize on humanity’s greatest weakness: the denial of the inevitability of death…trapped, if you will, in a paradoxical validation of the ultimate invalidation of our existence… not a big moral builder.
The result is a lonely cult of one, a difficult position to occupy by himself, yet IMO, despite what is likely to devolve into vicious personal attacks against anyone hooked into challenging his objective truth, I believe he is still a person worthy of compassion and understanding, like just about everyone in life.
Since we are getting personal here, I will oblige as well. WR you really do need to abandon this post FOF delusion you cling to that you are a psychiatrist. Stop trying to convince the microscopic world of the FOF blog readers that you are versed in the soft science of psychology. It’s embarrassing.
You love to talk about yourself just for the sake of getting attention and have been doing so on this blog for as long as it has existed. Drop the pretense that you are practicing psychiatric medicine.
17. Four Days of the Fourth State
My real name is Lynne. You do not need to know my surname. I work closely, as a friend and confidante, with a blogger known. I have problems with negative stress, causing anxiety and depression. My sleep pattern is horrendous, overcoming difficult episodes, interrupting my workload in employment as a mental health carer. I am training up to be a Mental Health Counsellor.
Those who have truly experienced life, with the shit given them and offering back a garland of roses (see “Humanity Rose” – emblem of the International Red Cross, which goes into war zones to SAVE LIVES, NOT CONTINUE THE KILLING) are to be adhered to – and I believe the Fellowship of Friends, as it has been brought to the light to show its darkness and the total pathology of its leader (we have cults in our town and we warn against them).- are to be shunned.
I found your name was Greg by the obviosity of your moniker giving forth GREG GOODWIN. As I recently am observing, although the past would seem similar, you are an incredibly negative and destructive individual who has not done even the least part of veering away from revenge to giving ‘the outstretched hand of healing’ (many could be quoted here, but you should do your own work in life, as all should).
Either that oer you remain the naughty boy who always wants his butt smacked.
Lynne, since you don’t speak English very well and don’t reason very clearly I won’t bother to defend myself to you. Good luck with your mental symptoms.
I do want to say: I am not the point here and my contributions are not about me. The fine people of this blog made me and my name the point as an ad hominem fallacy argument against what I had to say. Somehow in the minds of a few mentioning my name somehow negated my message. This is how ignorant people argue against ideas that offend their beliefs.
Once again, if you engage you prolong the symptoms. The best thing is to ignore. From one point of view, that is compassion since we are not feeding the disorder and the negativity that it generates.
This is my last comment on this topic.
Advertising signs that con you
into thinking you’re the one
~Dylan
Fundamentally insecure human cult societies are fond of reinforcing their faith in their invented fantasy gods through the expression of religious zeal via enormous monumental emplacements.
The Corcovado Mountain site in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where the statue of Christ the Redeemer stands over the city at the height of 2,300 feet (the statue itself is 130 ft tall with pedestal) is just such an expression of monumental imposition. It also subconsciously expresses an obvious attempt on the part of the devout builders to squelch stubbornly lingering doubts about the credibility of the religious inspiration motivating their society. These insistently imposing monuments erected in the name of faith are themselves proof of an underlying fear on the part of the believers that somehow their magic tales and fanciful myths are not altogether reliably ‘concrete’ proof of fact. The mentality behind such constructions as the giant Christ in Brazil is, first, to prove the significance of the subject of veneration by making it possibly the biggest, tallest thing in the world and, second, dwarf the viewer by impressing the stature of the subject of veneration on the physical sensations. The builders of the particular religious society make this message tactilely unmistakable to the individual: “This is how big Christ is compared to the size of an insignificant human like you.” The suddenly dwarfed ego of the primitively minded individual believer automatically responds to the outrageous imposition on the senses with, “Look, my mystical, magical hero is a giant who can do anything! I’m so lucky he’s on my side!”
In the fantasy world of the religious/superstitious mentality size definitely matters. The tallest religious statue in the world is the Spring Temple Buddha in Lushan, (Henan) China at a total of 502 feet. Next is the Laykyun Setkyar Buddha at Monywa, Sagaing Division Myanmar at 427 feet. Third is the Ushiku Daibutsu Buddha at Ushiku, Ibaraki Prefecture Japan at 394 feet. The Buddhists far and away over express their sense of supremacy when it comes to erecting giant images of their prophet. The Buddhist rely heavily on a show of exaggerated proportions to celebrate their ascetic religion of “no-ego”.
The Vrindavan Chandrodaya Mandir Hindu temple under construction in Mathura, India when it is completed in 2024 will be the tallest religious building in the world at 700 feet. The Hindus will finally out strip the Buddhist when it comes to proving whose monument is bigger and therefore whose belief is more legitimate, more compelling.
The Great Pyramid of Giza is 481 feet tall and is possibly 4.5 thousand years old. This is obviously the most monumental of all the expressions of afterlife promotional spiritualism. It took 20 to 30 years to complete. What does it express? Basically that the Egyptian Civilization was the preeminent spiritual society, the first in the world able and willing to focus the entire society on the construction of a spiritually inspired monument of such dimensions that it will in fact survive as long as mankind survives. The Great Pyramid is certainly the ultimate in who-will-live-forever bragging rights. The ancient Egyptians enjoyed their ultimate claim to fame longer than any other human anthill civilization so far.
This ability to organize and focus the energy and activity of the entire culture on the expression of some superstitious, spiritual impulse is the whole point of primitive religious practice. “We human ants spent our entire lives laboring to honor the great God of geometry in the form of an artificial, geometrically precise mountain.” These ancients seem to be challenging all who come after them: “Let’s see you beat that!”
The Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest building for 3,800 years until the British built the religious structure of Lincoln Cathedral in 1300. Lincoln Cathedral, celebrating Catholicism, was the tallest building in the world for 238 years (until the spires collapsed and were never rebuilt).
Some of the granite stones for the Great Pyramid were transported over 800 miles away from the construction site. An estimated 5.5 million tons of limestone, 8,000 tons of granite (from Aswan 800 miles away) and 500,000 tons of mortar went into the construction. What was the purpose of the monument? The Great Pyramid was supposedly built as a tomb, but no one was ever buried in it. The Great Pyramid was built as the paramount spiritual signpost by a compulsively constructing primate species that is primarily motivated by its projected imaginary interpretation of what it believes created it, that is, mystical forces not of this world. It is said by experts that the modern world could not reproduce the Great Pyramid due to construction costs and the lack of any economic incentive.
In the case of Stonehenge the monument is possibly arranged to record the solstices, both the spring and the fall astronomical events acting as critical calendar dates for agrarian cultures, and was a gathering point for ritualistic observances. The site likely began as a fortress with a circular ditch, an inner circular mound and a wooden fence. Eventually the location became a significant focal point of Stone Age spirituality for populations in both Britain and France. The stones of the monument, which as the research stands is possibly 4.5 thousand or so years old, were brought by dragging them from considerable distances across the countryside from a location in Wales. There is evidence of human sacrifice and cannibalism. The population of at least the British Isles would make pilgrimages to the Stonehenge site at various times of the year and the forerunners of, or actual Druid priests themselves, would sacrifice captives and members of the congregation alike and then eat them (according to recent evidence).
On Easter Island the inhabitants carved and set up 900 statues called Moai as a form of deification of their ancestors. The largest was 33 feet tall and weighed 90 tons. All of them were carved at a distant quarry and dragged by possibly hundreds of men to their final locations. What it is that possibly motivates this kind of activity in humans, say rather than developing stone buildings and installing sewer systems on their island, is perplexing. What is clear is that human beings, especially primitive human beings, prioritize their fanciful imaginings concerning the supernatural world that purportedly exists in the invisible realm while influencing and ruling over the ordinary physical world over basic improvements for the population in general.
In South America enormous pyramids based on calendar calculations that were in some cases more accurate than the modern Gregorian calendar served as a stage for a horrendous nonstop ritual of torture, disembowelment and cannibalism. The priests believed they were feeding the rotation of lights in the sky sacrifices as insurance against possible catastrophe. The Aztecs dined on as many as 50 thousands sacrificed humans each year.
The historical record of humanity is one of profound superstitious ignorance that somehow inspires the stacking of one rock upon the other in more and more sophisticated methods as a means to reinforce the psychopathic beliefs devised by one round of society or another. Can there really be any wonder why modern people, full of anxiety about a world choking itself to death with population and the resulting pollution pouring forth, turn to the basic primitive human instinct to collect together under the authority of a master priest elaborating on the magical unseen world that secretly controls everything and huddle there hoping for certainty in this life and security in the next life?
Here we go again. It was only a matter of time.
Asaf Braverman launched his Instagram:
https://instagram.com/beperioden?utm_source=ig_profile_share&igshid=t4gqm2nng538
I was under the impression you’d prefer I did not address you directly, but apparently that’s not the case, so it’s my turn to oblige.
Greg, you’re not in a position to suggest what I need to do, and neither am I for you.
I’m also not under the illusion you are seeking my help or anyone else’s.
You’re here to tell the truth as you perceive it. So am I. We’ve basically both been here from the start.
BTW, the practice of psychiatric medicine usually involves prescribing toxic and debilitating drugs, which is the last thing in the world I’d want to do. I’m not much of a proponent of psychotherapy or psychoanalysis either.
I believe in self-empowerment, which I sometimes promote here, that’s about it. I also employ psychological language as a means of communicating a set of behaviors and personality styles, not as a means to label or devalue others.
So whatever you perceive as my weakness is actually my strength, and believe it or not, I perceive the same in you.
Cult Survivor,
Thanks for taking the trouble to keep up with Asaf Braverman’s shenanigans. I’m so out of it (and old), I don’t even know what Instagram is or how it works; I’ve heard of it, but just assumed it was another of the plethora of ‘social media’ sites that exists to vacuum up all the details of the lives of those who subscribe, and who then resell that data to advertisers so they in turn can present customized adverts back to the naive subscribers—who gave up their data for free.
Like Facebook, but with more pics.
Anyway, I clicked on the link, beperioden, and then on one of the images that came up. This led to a quote from Maurice Nicoll and below that a bunch of tags, like so:
#spirituality #spiritual #spiritualawakening #meditation #life #wisdom #fourthway #gurdjieff #ouspensky #consciousness #soul #awakening #enlightenment #mindfulness #awareness #thirdeye #spiritualgrowth #higherconsciousness #esoteric #fourthwayschool
… which I assume are set up so that anyone using those words as search terms in a search engine will be directed to one of Asaf Braverman’s honey traps, like BePeriod or an intermediary like his Facebook page, or Instagram, or whatever. Is that how it works?
I tried clicking on a couple of those tags, each of which is also a live link to somewhat relevant Instagram pages, and then on the trail either back to the beginning or to increasingly irrelevant pages. I couldn’t see the point, but then I’m a newbie…
Anyway, for anyone landing here looking for more about BePeriod and its leader, Asaf Braverman, there is plenty about him on previous pages of this blog. Long story short, he is an ex–disciple of Robert Earl Burton, the fraud who runs the infamous Fellowship of Friends. Sensing competition, Burton blew up, with the result that Braverman, having spent twenty years learning all the tricks from his master, is now busy running his own independent scam.
Run, don’t walk, from them both!
25. Ames Gilbert
You got it right (may be you are not so old…). Instagram replaced Facebook as the social media platform for the “millenials” (21-37 years old). The average age of the Facebook user is 41 years old and for Instagram is 29, so Braverman is trying to cater to a younger audience since those are the ideal candidates to join an “online school” and pay $50 per month for weekly “virtual workshops” and $100 for each “private Skype session” with Braverman himself. The two 5-day “world gatherings” ($2,000 plus plane ticket) per year attract 12-15 people in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s from the 100+ membership. This older group usually joins through Google searches (Asaf’s Beperiod site ranks on top) and the well established Facebook page at:
https://www.facebook.com/beperiodEN/
That page has been around for 6 years, has 2,000 posts and 15,000 followers. The new Instagram page, by the way, is a replica of the Facebook page (same images, same quotations).
Regarding the “#spirituality, #fourthway, #gurdjieff, etc” at the end of the posts, those are called “hashtags” and they are used in all social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat, etc.) to connect posts to areas of interest inside the platform, meaning that if this were a social media platform and I included the hashtags #cult or #cultawareness at the end of this post, people on other WordPress blogs would see this post if they clicked on those hashtags or if they were following them.
O brave new world! One thing remained the same: cult leaders with an insatiable appetite for money and sex.
Regarding Instagram’s promotion of some posts over others, it’s not the number of followers one has – but the percentage of one’s followers that actually look at a post, and how long they look at it – that matters. Those two aspects are perceived by algorithms and Instagram will feed the next post to more people – based on those two aspects. If you want to assist Asaf Braverman’s promotion of his BePeriod Instagram account, go to Instagram and look at it! To find out more on how the algorithms work, see this video.
Thanks, Golden Veil, that’s a very educational video. So the bottom line is that it’s all about “engagement”, not followers.
It may sound impressive to hear that Braverman’s Facebook page has 15,000 followers but that’s understandable considering that it’s a “nice” page with inspiring images and quotations and that it has being around for 6 years (that’s almost 7 followers per day).
Now if we look at the number of likes of yesterday’s post, that’s a different story: only 25 likes, or 0.2% of the followers. There are no comments or questions either (no “engagement” whatsoever), so basically Braverman is showing people inspiring images and quotations on Facebook without getting any “students”.
That may be the second reason behind his new Instagram account, the first being to attract millenials as I mentioned in my previous post.
To me it looks that Braverman is experimenting with different ways to attract people to his “online school” to see what works, similarly to Burton when he moved to the Sierra foothills with a bunch of hippies in the early seventies.
All cults go through an initial phase of trial and error, that’s a fact.
The broken branch falls from the great old oak tree: a spontaneous commentary by Dorian Matei on the departure of Asaf Braverman from the Fellowship of Friends. Matei’s talk is also an outline of Fellowship of Friends cult beliefs, especially regarding the school’s direction and guidance by “shocks” given by “Influence C.”
Matei describes the trigger Influence C received by the “play of crime” of Asaf Braverman, a student who studied with Robert Burton for about two decades, then started an online recruiting branch of the Fellowship of Friends, BePeriod. Matei describes Braverman as a former conduit for the transmission of “Influence C”, now broken. He was condemned for the ostensible success of his online creation and forced to either destroy it, or leave the school. Like Robert Burton did before him with his own teacher Alex Horn, Braverman was forced to make a choice. This talk was one of a series given by Robert Burton and the inner circle of the Fellowship of Friends, all of them together a big, desperate spin on the event of the departure of someone who was believed by many to be Burton”s heir apparent.
Given the fact that a tree is made up of dead wood inside, and the actual living part of a tree trunk are the outer rings, then Dorian is right…it appears an oak tree is an apt metaphor for a cult.
A huge broken off tree limb doesn’t fall far from the tree, and doesn’t bode well for either the branch or the old decaying tree.
Re: the instagram link above – it seems to me it’s nothing but empty platitudes and ‘pretty pictures’ calculated by a hollow man to attract other hollowed-out souls… re: the video @ 29 – I couldn’t stand more than a couple of minutes before the stench of horse shit and the buzzing of flies became too much.
Don’t forget that Dorian Matei will be the leader of the FOF when Burton abdicates or passes away (if Asaf Braverman is not called back from exile by Dorian’s opposition, namely Greg Holman). Dorian is currently married to one of the women that had a threesome with him and Mihai back in the day, so she would be the first lady.
If Dorian becomes the leader of the cult I pity the people that will have to attend events with him and swallow the bullshit. Actually no. We get what we deserve.
172/32 Cult Survivor, 172/31 ton2u:
“Actually no. We get what we deserve.”
The platitude once was:
“Your being attracts your life.”
So, “horse shit and the buzzing of flies” would certainly well describe what is attracted. Continuing the metaphor, there could be some good fertilizer there. 😉
~~~~~~~~~~~~
That 400+? year old venerable oak tree, called Goethe Oak, has been dropping major branches for decades; so, what’s new? – the people watching have not paid attention, have not been around long enough, like to make up a good story, and/or are in need of more good fertilizer; that is, more horse shit.
29. Golden Veil
That video brought some memories from my fof times back. I remember having lunch with a friend after attending a meeting lead by Dorian and suddenly she started to sob. I asked her what was wrong and she told me ‘I couldn’t understand anything that Dorian said. I think I’m being controlled by the lower self.’ I didn’t know what to say because I hadn’t understood anything either so I said ‘you have to separate from those I’s’.
What a weird cult the fof is. Palms, camels, gardens, fountains, Gucci shoes, classical music, Renaissance paintings, Romanian guys leading meetings and saying a bunch of horseshit… All cults are weird but the fof is weird in a special way, if you know what I mean.
Well, isn’t that Special?
Insider:
Do current followers ever talk about their vivid dreams…or lack of dreams?
I presume the party line is that dreams would be discounted as just “the machine” having the dream, like a form of imagination…yet I do recollect burton mentioning a frightening, apocalyptic dream he had prior to 2006 that he interpreted as a validation for his prediction.
Here’s an interesting thought about sleep deprivation while attempting to be “awake” for long periods of time…
“Recent findings suggest that sleep plays a housekeeping role that removes toxins in your brain that build up while you are awake.”
https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/Patient-Caregiver-Education/Understanding-Sleep#5
So are you aware of any current practice or tacit recommendations of limiting or depriving followers of sleep (AKA 1st state) “Nature’s soft nurse,” as Shakespeare wrote?
Interestingly, one of the reasons chronic meth users can develop paranoid delusions and hallucinations (amphetamine psychosis) is due to lack of sleep.
Sleep deprivation compromises emotional regulation and attention span, which could serve as a kind of institutionally designed failure mechanism in the cult to cause followers to feel like failures at staying present and positive-out maneuvered by their “lower self”, which in turn might make them more dependent upon burton or older followers for validation that they are still more “conscious” than “life people”, when they secretly feel like failures.
I was definitely sleep deprived as a follower. My experience was that the cult surrounded itself with objects of beauty, with nearly constant classical music playing, to help with emotional regulation and useful as a distraction from my compromised state.
33 AP
Re: horse shit and “good fertilizer” – in this case it’s only good for growing more crops of submissives and narcissists.
36. WhaleRider
Not directly related to your question but still relevant in my opinion.
I was in the FoF for 28 years and left 2 years ago. I have vivid dreams about the FoF (sometimes nightmares) often. Is that something people here experienced after leaving the cult?
Cult Survivor:
I can empathize. I left 34 years ago and still have dreams about burton and the FOF, and none of them pleasant.
I’m expecting that after burton expires, his ardent followers, if they haven’t already, will start to have vivid dreams about him too, in compensation for the loss, and will use those dreams as a verifabrication for life after death, etc.
38… I left 36 years ago and I still have occasional FOF dreams… months or maybe even a year apart now. In the past they were much more frequent, with regular recurring themes – mostly involving being on the outside and sneaking back into the cult undetected in order to make contact with some of the old friends.
I wouldn’t call them nightmares but there was always a high degree of anxiety within the dream – trying to avoid getting caught. The anxious feelings persisted upon waking. There was concern about the regular recurrence of the dreams, and especially why they should persist so many years removed from leaving the cult. My “layman’s” take for what it’s worth – the dreams are a way of processing the experience and processing this rather “abnormal” experience takes time to “properly” digest… it may even take an entire lifetime in some cases.
40. ton2u
I wouldn’t call them nightmares but there was always a high degree of anxiety within the dream – trying to avoid getting caught.
That’s exactly what I experience in my recurring dreams about the FoF — I couldn’t say it better.
I remember once when I was in the FoF I asked an “older student” why some former members leave the FoF and stay in Oregon House or Nevada City and meet to talk about the FoF (there was no blog then) and his answer was “their sleep has been disturbed and they can’t go back to sleep”.
At that time his answer made a lot of sense — it reinforced the feeling that leaving the cult would be a terrible thing, like so many other things that were said in the FoF — but now I realize that it is literally our night sleep that has been disturbed by years or decades of abuse.
Related to that, FoF members don’t talk about this blog because there is a task not to have contact with it, but when a “new student” asks about this blog they say things like “it’s a site for broken machines” or “our school has 15,000 former members, the small percentage that has mental issues is on that site”.
Burton once said, “Influence C writes every single word on the blog” (that was when this blog started so it was damage control, of course).
That’s very good news my friends, since according to Dorian Matei the aim is to be a clean channel for Influence C so we are all conscious beings here 🙂
cult survivor… re: “broken machines”
IMO –
I doubt there’s anyone here who is more damaged than burton, and I’m pretty certain no one posting here has done as much damage to the lives of others.
41. Cult Survivor
I don’t know why people who left would remain in Oregon House but Nevada City is a pretty great place to live. For me it has nothing to do with any fof bullshit. In my opinion Oregon House represents the diseased asshole of Northern California.
ton2u:
Interestingly, my FOF dreams are also anxiety laden and often contain the theme of being ‘discovered’ for what I thought was not paying teaching payments.
I realize now how deeply ingrained is the fear of getting kicked out of the group for basically doing what costs nothing and comes naturally anyway…being self-aware.
It’s the ultimate scam, first convince people they are sleeping machines that don’t have souls, and then they will pay you anything to “teach” them how to grow one in order to enter paradise…a place no one can verify even exists.
And burton thinks we’re crazy??!!!
brucelevy:
For being the asshole of NorCal, I hear people grow some pretty killer weed up there in OH, apparently from the over abundance of fertilizer.
44. WhaleRider
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon or rocket scientist to grow weed. Just greed.
It’s been 36 years since I left the FoF, and for 30 years after I left, I had one reoccurring of the FoF, with some variation, but generally always about not paying my teaching payments while still being a member, and not knowing how to resolve my dilemma — wanting the friends and the conversation but not wanting to pay Burton for what we ourselves were making and contributing and not knowing where else to go or live. Would he find me out? How long could I go on being a sneak? — a recurring dream of guilt and alienation.
I feel that I opened a can of worms, in a good sense.
45. brucelevy
There there is a fuckload of greed in Oregon House.
https://www.appeal-democrat.com/oregon-house-pot-bust/image_75ad47b2-c961-11e8-8966-5b24d35a44dc.html
Bigger than that only the FOF pot bust in 2012. I knew Andreas, Juan Jose and Elizabeth — they lost 100’s of thousands. Another FOF member, Emilio, lost 150K.
49. Cult Survivor
https://culteducation.com/group/927-fellowship-of-friends/7220-yuba-countys-fellowship-of-friends-decry-feds-pot-busts.html
47. Cult Survivor
My comment referring to my FoF dreams wasn’t inspired just by your comments but those of Whaleride and Ton2u as well. I’ve been relatively free of this anxiety-provoking, reoccurring FoF dream for several years now largely due, I think, to following this blog and the other FoF blog (and videos) exposing Burton. Subconsciously, I still believed in Robert Burton’s “power,” and once I saw him as a sick, perverted and manipulative man, and knew him as such, not just believed him to be a sociopath or psychopath, I was free from that whole realm of anxiety. So this blog and the whole panoply of discussion helps. It takes a very long time to decompress and un-link spiritually and psychologically, but without this blog and others like it, it could have taken much longer for my recurring dream to stop.
51. JoeyVirgo
That’s very interesting. I noticed that my FOF dreams are less frequent and less intense since I started writing here, so this is like cult survivors’ therapy (pun intended).
When I joined this blog I mentioned that and Ames said that the Greater Fellowship site was the place for cult abuse recovery. I went and checked the GF site and it’s a ghost town so this is it.
52. Cult Survivor
Yes, the GF site is pretty much of a ghost town, except for the occasional obituary notices. The only other blog I’ve found helpful is the one I think you already know: the Robert Earl Burton and the Fellowship of Friends: https://robertearlburton.blogspot.com
My problem was that I secretly didn’t want to give up the special connection I felt with the FoF. It gave me an identity I didn’t have previously, even after I had become a “life person.” I secretly held onto some FoF shreds — whether it was Bach’s music or just appreciation of silence and quiet or being occasionally “intentional” in my movements so as to not make a lot of noise — and I identified this “essence” (or remnants) with the FoF and as part of my inner self. Plus, I still felt Burton had a “power” (over me) that was beyond the Beyond. So I was invested in the FoF secretly and silently well after I had left the FoF a long, long time ago. It was my own self-deception, my own psychic trickery at play. Burton has no power. I gave that to him, and that was the most difficult task for me to grasp and recognize. And I also had to find a non-FoF relationship to Bach and to silence if I wanted not to have recurring FoF dreams, a relationship that was uniquely my own and from my everyday self, since abandoning either wasn’t an option for me. Getting real is the applicable phrase, but what that is and how it fits into one’s life is the work, the goal, to be free of the FoF. And there’s a lot of reality on this blog – and definitely some unreality — but that’s the human condition we all share. Getting to figure out what is real and how we can be real to ourselves and to others isn’t easy or merely intellectual work. Iris Murdoch said, “We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.” She even went to Krishnamurti and had talks with him. They’re on YouTube.
Whalerider:
“It’s the ultimate scam, first convince people they are sleeping machines that don’t have souls…”
Ya, the scam is based on accepting the idea that “I am not conscious.” If you’re gullible enough to believe that – (I was), it’s a small step to being convinced that consciousness is something that can be acquired… the acquisition part is tailored for a mentality that’s the “product” of overly and overtly materialistic enculturation… no fault therein – it just happens to be the social conditioning we’re raised with and live with as adults. So “conscious bob” is selling consciousness – the sad but true irony of the situation is that we already have it… that’s the scam – the “student’s” part in this is being foolish enough to deny one’s own consciousness… hell, my dog and cats are conscious… it’s dog and cat consciousness, but consciousness nevertheless.You go to bob’s consciousness store – (he claims to have a monopoly on it, so where else would you go?), where you can buy more and more and more and more… it will only cost you your soul.
https://qz.com/1184574/the-idea-that-everything-from-spoons-to-stones-are-conscious-is-gaining-academic-credibility/
and –
JoeyV…
Worthwhile listening – for the philosophically inclined. Thanks for the recommendation:
Cult Survivor,
Regardless whether Wikipedia administrators approve, the decidedly less rigorous EverybodyWiki has already published your draft Fellowship of Friends entry on their mirror site. It will be interesting to see how it places in search results. Thanks for taking on the challenge, and good luck in the NEW Wikipedia battle!
54. ton2u
I remember writing Stella Wirk a letter. I still have it. In which I asked her, “How do I know when I’m conscious?” Stell wrote, “You’re the only one who can know.” Weirdly, her response puzzled me. If I know I’m already conscious, why the hell am I in the School?” Believing there had to be a better answer than what Stella gave, I spent six full years seeking for what which I already had. Though I will say, I learned more about attention and acquired more focus than I had previously been able to exhibit before the FoF. Still, rigorous study in logic and philosophy helped sharpen even these skills, which were not at all obtainable in the New Age-style miasmas of FoF group-think.
Cult Survivor.
Thank you for the EverybodyWiki page on the old dandy who only has eyes for young, FoF and male eye-candy. I echo Tim Campion’s sentiments — thanks for taking the challenge and best of luck on this battle.
re Dreams
One of my vivid fairly rare (once per 6 months) FOF dream is similar to what many have mentioned. I am at a FOF event or reception in the gardens or gala or something and in the dream I have stopped paying Teaching payments or believing in anything a long time ago, and the dilemma in the dream is that people there will know – – that is the anxiety provoking part. Its funny or the anxiety is basically that I am there at all, and then I wake up, but its funny cos when I wake up it takes a few minutes to realize that its over. I did actually leave. I am no longer in the FOF since quite a few years ago. The sense of relief is quite strong. I made it out!!! Not everybody does.
59. Nevasayneva
I’m not sure but in my recollection I don’t recall having even one dream about the fof after I left. In my head I left two years before I actually did. I remember the profound relief the day I called the office and let them know.
ton2u:
Spot on. Haven nailed it, too.
That’s exactly what burton is selling:
dog consciousness.
Be aware hyper aware of your surroundings, bark at strangers, eat shit, fetch, roll over, and faithfully serve your master.
Joey Virgo;
Thank you for sharing your story. Stella gave you, sir, an incredible gift: the key to your freedom that marked the end of your slavery to the cult. Only you know if you are conscious. It is our human weakness that we could be convinced to doubt just about anything, even our own self-awareness…just ask the Flat Earth Society.
nevasayneva:
Thank you for sharing your story. IMO, dreaming is a necessary part of mental processing the events of our lives. Similar to your experience, it has been my experience working with others that people recovering from an addiction will also report dreaming about using their drug of choice, only to wake relieved that they have not.
I wonder if this theme of being “discovered” may be related to what is known as “the Imposter Syndrome”…
I can see how a deep seated insecurity of being discovered as an imposter is a condition the cult would exploit in followers and prospective followers, offering them the chance to identify with their “conscious higher self” instead of their “unconscious lower self”, which IMO is just trading one “act” for another. I certainly fell for it.
But eventually the “good student act” started to feel just as false and insecure, (due in part I believe to the underlying fear of “losing the school”, not being able to afford teaching payments, or getting kicked out for some random reason), because despite the cult’s beliefs otherwise, IMO, humans will always be both conscious and unconscious at the same time: the so-called, “states” are not mutually exclusive. That’s what contributes to the Imposter Syndrome, IMO.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome
Whalerider: I see why you would wonder if the “imposter Syndrome” is somehow connected… there is certainly a strong connection where fraud is being perpetrated by a charlatan. Maybe in that sense “subconsciously” the fraudulent nature of being involved in the cult bleeds into one’s soul – as if by osmosis.
IMO If one is to glean something meaningful from dreams, the meaning must somehow fit with the context of one’s personal experiences in waking life… IMO dreams can and do reflect what the dreamer is living through in life… but it’s up to the dreamer to make sense of it – that is, to make the connections between the dream and waking life – to “amplify” the dream, or not, one can maybe more easily call dreams “mental detritus” and carry on as if that’s the case. IMO dreams can be imbued with meaning only through reflection and personal interpretation based on waking experience… bringing the seeming polarity of “unconscious” and conscious into relationship.
“Thumbnail” interpretation of (my) dreams involving anxiety over being caught upon revisiting the cult scene (reading the link to the impostor syndrome, it doesn’t feel like a fit – for me). Looking back I think the motive in the dreams had to do with reconnection, compensation for the waking-life (“real”) loss of idealized love and friendships. The anxiety of being caught had to do with the policy of treating the ex-student as anathema… the heresy of leaving the cult was drilled in from the beginning and apparently it penetrated very deeply – this policy of shunning, treating the ex-student as a heretic, was a main control mechanism for the cult in maintaining the invisible fence – leave the cult and rejoining life meant you were in a sense damned… that’s the belief I left with. I think the anxiety experienced in the dreams had partly to do with the isolation and alienation which was experienced very strongly during my waking life – this came from leaving what was seemingly the caring, even loving embrace of life inside the cult, and dealing with the harsh reality of trying to gain a foothold, trying to “adjust” to living in ‘life’ after living at “Renaissance” for 5 years… I’ve related the story here previously I don’t have to go into it again.
ton2u:
I agree with you in taking a phenomenalogical approach to dreams, with each individual interpreting their own meaning, which I urge others to do…and not from “objective” books on dream symbolism. IMO and experience, the same symbol appearing in a dream in different people will have a different meaning, depending upon the person.
I’m unclear what a person suffering from Imposter Syndrome would dream about. (Not meant as a diagnosis, here).
It’s an interesting connection to me, since it happens for some in waking life, the fear of being discovered is probably reflected in dreams to some degree in others, and if I were to wake in in another dream like we’ve been talking about, I’m going to make the effort to be discovered and confront the fear/anxiety.
It’s evident that compensation for and processing of the anxiety caused by the self-doubt instilled in followers about “false personality” (which has now morphed into a personification of “the lower self”) causing one to “lose the school” or be kicked out thrust back into life without the means of emotional regulation the cult provides takes many forms in the psyche…and is tacitly leveraged as a binding mechanism to inspire followers to stay in the cult long term, IMO.
62. ton2u
Your “thumbnail” interpretation of the FoF dream relating to anxiety and isolation was well-written but I also want to tell you I completely resonated with what you wrote. Your experience was also my experience. You really said it all.
In relation to the dreamer’s characteristic of being a fraud and not paying the teaching payments, I don’t know if others had this experience, but once, and only once, Linda Rockwood, on orders of Robert Burton, sent the Center Director a letter that I was to be excommunicated for failure to pay a teaching payment. I was in my second year of the FoF when this happened. Everyone with whom I was living was informed about it and they were all aghast — the Director as well as all of the “older students.” I had paid my teaching payment, but somehow the teaching payment had gotten mislaid, and I was labeled as someone who had had Tramp Feature for this. When the mistake was discovered, my name was never cleared. Months later, I needed money to renew my driver’s license, but since I was as poor as a church mouse and didn’t have money to renew my license, I asked the Director if I could simply borrow the money and pay him back later. “No,” he said. “You have Tramp feature.” I lost my license. It was through having a license I could drive a cab — as one of my three jobs.
Four years later, I learn through Stella Wirk and other investigations of mine, that Robert Burton was (and is) a homosexual predator, and I’m now preparing to leave the Fellowship of Friends, following on the heels of Stella who left months earlier. However, the semi-annual teaching payment of $1,500 was coming due. This was October/November. Do I pay it? Or do I leave? I figured that since I was still in the FoF at this point, I’d pay it, even though my heart wasn’t in it. I wasn’t going to be one who got labeled for taking something for nothing. It was what I thought of at the time as a matter of conscience. I was working on Tramp feature.
How ironic then that for years afterward, my dreams of the FoF involved me still being in the FoF and not being discovered that I’m not paying my teaching payments for months and months.
When I left the FoF, I left with David G. and Suzanne G. They both said, “We thought we were going to be in the FoF for life. We thought we’d die living at the FoF compound because we felt our destiny had been fulfilled when we met the FoF. Who woulda thunk we’d one day be on the outside one day? We never prepared for such an outcome.” Like ton2u’s words about his dream, the Guido’s words about their destiny completely resonated with how I felt.
Working through such negative feelings and such feelings of hope, disappointment, and abandonment took a long, long time. “If you want to go on a spree, go the whole hog, but include the postage,” said Gurdjieff. Well, I feel I’ve finally paid the postage, paid for that spree I took so long ago when I first started out at 26 years of age.
Getting kicked out, I shuffled around for awhile,but
eventually ended that 5 year chapter of wrong school
Didn’t G, say it’s easy to find a wrong school……or
something
65. rich
There’s a person (JS) quite knowledgeable about Vedanta (the ancient Vedic teaching, not the modern-day, watered-down version called “non-duality”) whom I enjoy reading and listening to. He tells a story of meeting his teacher in India. Early on, the teacher told JS to do all he could to learn as fast as possible, and then “get the hell out of here to make space for someone else.” I don’t know if that’s an example of a “right school,” but it at least avoids a “wrong school” requirement of staying with your teacher forever.
66. Insider
nice story….of course all these teachers/gurus and saying
they are the ONE….
Help in avoiding the “wrong school” and getting out of the Master Game altogether, I found two authors highly instructive. One is JanWillem van de Wetering and his book “afterzen” — really supportive. He takes all the romance and illusion out of what “doing Zen” is all about. And the book, “The Courage to Stand Alone” by U. G. Krishnamurti leaves no stone unturned. The pursuit of “enlightenment” will wreck your life if you go the whole hog, which is the theme of most of U.G.’s work. The whole life and work of U. G. Krishnamurti will shake anyone’s “chakras” and bring you back to reality.
Just sayin’.
In the book Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman
Dr. Herman relates that cult survivors can be people who have suffered prolonged, repeated trauma.
Chapter 7 outlines the relationship between therapist and patient for recovery from a traumatic experience such as cult abuse.
Pg. 157 Explains her 3 stage recovery process which gives the reader an idea of how recovery therapy might be structured.
1. Safety: The need for an environment of safety where a person can feel they are among people who share their experiences without fear of judgement.
2. Integrating experiences : Experiences are then integrated into one’s life. By relating experiences and moving away from isolation and self judgement. By talking to others and a therapist the memories and experiences become integrated into your present life and cease to have power. Survivors learn that there terms to describe and articulate the experiences.
3. Forming new relationships: Healthy relationships based on mutual moral support, consideration, Family love. Bonds of trust.
Pages 189 – 193 Outlines how mourning is an important aspect of recovery. Trauma inevitably brings loss.
Survivors often resist the mourning process as a way of denying the perpetrator victory. Three ways resistance to the mourning process may manifest are:
Revenge: The survivor imagines they can get rid of the shame and pain through retaliation. Revenge fantasies can be intrusive, violent and frightening. They are also frustrating since revenge can never change or compensate for the harm that was done.
Fantasy of Love and Forgiveness: Survivor imagines they can transcend the rage and erase the impact of the trauma through a willed, defiant act of love and forgiveness. Like revenge fantasies of forgiveness can become intrusive and frustrating as forgiveness remains out of reach for many people.
Fantasy of compensation: The Fantasy of compensation is fueled by the desire of victory over the perpetrator. Fantasies of apologies or public humiliation of the perpetrator still tie the victim to the perpetrator. Paradoxically the victim may be liberated when they renounce any hope of compensation.
I’m confirming the dinner on Monday April, 29th at 7PM at the Alloro Ristorante in Grass Valley located on 124 Bank St. across the street from the Miner’s Inn hotel.
I reserved a round table for 8 people — ask for the “School Reunion” when you arrive.
Web site:
https://allororistorantegrassvalley.com/
70. Cult Survivor
I’m planning to attend.
Cult Survivor and Golden Veil, thank you for educating me about Instagram. I hope you are right about the hashtags only working within Instagram, that is, a Google or DuckDuckGo search for, say, “mindfulness” will not bring up one of Asaf Braverman’s Instagram pages based on the tags he has included within that page.
Meanwhile, more news from the Funny Farm. And if you are thinking of joining the Fellowship of Friends, pay close attention! This is just a taste of what you are in for…
Apparently Burton arranged thirty–three meetings or breakfasts or other get–togethers over the 13th to the 30th of March just ended, the so–called “Spring Journey Forth”, commemorating the self–reported ‘crystallization’ of Burton on March 19th, 1976. This has left his followers exhausted, overwhelmed and much, much poorer in both wealth and, of course, understanding. Basically, he ran most of the meetings himself, handing over these duties to Dorian Mattei only occasionally. More on these later.
A brief recap on these Celebrations for those not completely clear on the subject.
There used to be 4 “Journeys Forth” a year:
• Spring Crystallization Journey Forth
• Summer Journey Forth
• Meeting Influence C Journey Forth
• Holiday Journey Forth
These used to be a time of extra visitors, but not so much anymore, as there are now other days–long “celebrations;” e.g. 5 days of Valentine’s Day (there are rumors of Burton establishing two Valentine’s Days a year, he has such fun that one is not enough), Burton’s birthday (not sure which of the various days he has claimed as a birthday over the years, maybe all of them, so there is a week to cover all the possibilities), 4th of July, Thanksgiving, etc.
• There’s usually a ballet, symphony concert and/or theater during the “Summer Journey”, (this year August 2nd–11th).
• The anniversary of the self–reported meeting with Alex Horn (and thus, Influence–C, yay! on Sept 5th, 1967). Another days–long celebration (this year August 30th to September 8th).
• The “Holiday Journey Forth”, starting December 20ththis year, and which spans Christmas and the New Year.
Why “journey”? That comes from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a.k.a., Journey Forth by Day.
But wait, that is now old news!
Burton has just decreed that there will now be a “Journey Forth” event each and every month, which actually is pretty similar to what occurs in an ordinary 7-10 day period over there at Apollo, except there are maybe 3–4 more fund–raising breakfasts added to capture every possible Benjamin.
There is also a new task for followers in Oregon House: not to make travel plans during these “Journey Forth” times.
Yikes! Astute observers will note that Burton is really tightening his control of his followers’ time and energy and wallets, so that there is little or none to spare after attending or supporting all of Burton’s events. Remember, every single one of these requires planning, resources, and an enormous amount of time from volunteers. As just one example, a crew videotapes each meeting/fundraiser, edits the tape, converts it for viewing, and posts the video on a private website so that followers from all over the world can review and bask in the glory that is Burton.
So, what happens at a typical meeting? Fortunately, Tim has somehow obtained some recent footage for your delectation and education, and has posted it over there at the Robert Earl Burton website, so you can see the general layout for yourself:
https://robertearlburton.blogspot.com
As you can see, Burton is—as always—at stage center, with a large screen in front of him so he can follow along with the conscious prompts from his minders, each of whom is armed with an iPad. There are two large screens facing the audience, one high up on each side of the stage, which display appropriate graphics. Whenever a new slide/graphic (for example, a painting by an Old Master) is put up, Burton is stimulated to start pontificating. The discourse wanders all over, a neutral observer might think, randomly, but we know better, this is a display of one conscious thought after another. If he consciously forgets what he is going to say, or there is a consciously awkward silence, Dorian or another minder leans forward to prompt him or fill the gap with some highly esoteric observation of their own.
Nowadays almost every meeting/dinner/breakfast has Burton telling the audience that:
• There are only two places where ‘consciousness’ exists in the entire universe, there at Apollo, and ‘Paradise’.
• Everyone there in the room is ‘conscious’ (but one assumes that anyone, anywhere writing a check to him that month is included)—and destined for Paradise.
• Everyone else (he uses the figure, 8 billion) is unconscious and doomed
• ‘Divine Presence’ is a synonym for ‘consciousness’.
• The ‘sequence’ is the pathway to ‘Divine Presence’
• Looking at the slide, Burton observes esoterically significant numbers of whatever, holds the matching number of fingers up in the air, intones something from ‘The Sequence’, calls any spaces between the painted objects (no matter their actual shape) a ‘square’, throws in something about ‘Short Be’ and/or ‘Long Be’, consciously exhibits his new teeth, consciously mumbles, “Go ahead, dear”, and then leans back, waiting for the next prompt or slide.
Ever the one to introduce new and stimulating topics to enhance the ‘consciousness’ of his followers, Burton often takes a break from this same–old same–old to announce the latest additions to his ever–burgeoning collection of esoterica. Right now, he is trying to collect every antique clock he can lay his hands on, ditto chandeliers. During ‘Crystallization’ breakfasts, attendees were treated to news about fresh acquisitions, and for each one, Dorian or Sasha held up iPads with photos of the actual objects incoming.
What happens next? Well, as many clocks and chandeliers that can fit in the Galleria are displayed on shelves installed on every surface, except the ceiling. That is reserved for chandeliers (and frescoes), and Burton is more than happy to share the exact number of crystals in the chandeliers above, his audience thrilled to the core that the only fully enlightened being on the planet deigns to share this highly significant esoteric knowledge with them.
Highly trained observers of conscious farce, such as myself, can accurately estimate the degree of thrill by measuring the vapidity of the smiles of those around him; the scores often reach 118% of the theoretical maximum, and on occasion the width of the grins actually exceeds that of the owners’ faces, like the Cheshire Cat. Could there be a finer homage to Lewis Carroll, one of the angels circulating in the room?
My source has been unable to discern exactly why Burton is rapidly adding so many new–to–him clocks and chandeliers to his treasury, but one can safely assume that various angels have determined that they are vital to jump–start the Forthcoming New Civilization™. Apparently even the camels are not safe, they are being sold off to pay for these latest emergency purchases.
Hey, doubters might well ask, whatever happened to Conscious Bob’s former claims that many, many camels were essential to any well–equipped Ark?
If you have to ask, you are unworthy, and should hasten to rinse out your lower self with soap and water…
Post-Cult After Effects
Margaret Thaler Singer, Ph.D.
‘After exiting a cult, an individual may experience a period of intense and often conflicting emotions. She or he may feel relief to be out of the group, but also may feel grief over the loss of positive elements in the cult, such as friendships, a sense of belonging or the feeling of personal worth generated by the group’s stated ideals or mission. The emotional upheaval of the period is often characterized by “post-cult trauma syndrome” . . .’
https://cultrecovery101.com/cult-recovery-readings/post-cult-after-effects/
“Son, Observe the Time and Fly from Evil”
~Ecclesiasticus 4:23
By collecting clocks, burton is unconsciously attempting to buy more time, and IMO, indicates his time is running out.
Thanks for the update, Ames.
And thank you Linda Jo, for the post cult prognosis from Dr Margaret Singer.
The sad part for me is to realize how much burton is invested in making it as traumatic as possible for a follower to leave his rape factory.
Cult Leader Elevates His iPad to Consciousness
Oregon iHouse, CA– In an amazing new development in the evolution of calculating machines, Robert E Burton, tone deaf leader of the enigmatic Northern California hypnotic ticking clock cult, has announced to his pathologically accommondating followers that his beloved and handy iPad has attained “divine presence”, since it is now always in his presence.
“This is great news for all of us”, said the hard working lawn mower, “now I have something to look forward to in my next lifetime after I’m burned out and replaced by a shiny new machine.”
Other machines like the dish washer, clothes washer, floor polisher, and various other vehicles also appeared enthusiastic about the news. “All these years of hard work and machine learning are starting to pay off”, one machine said, barely audible over the classical music playing nonstop in the background to keep them distracted.
“Other machines on the planet will simply be tossed onto the scrap heap of history, and eventually recycled into something else like all matter in the Universe, but our leader promises we get to go to some place called paradise instead”, said the clothes dryer.
But apparently some overworked machines were not so enthused, “Each day has been just a grind to me”, said the coffee maker, “With all the extra celebrations these days I never get a rest!”
75. ha, ha…
Thanks for chiming in Ames… the incisive wit and wisdom is always appreciated…
I held my nose and looked at the posted videos linked at Tim’s site… (many thanks to you Tim for keeping track of things more or less in real time – as long as the cult persists, your work represents a true public service). I say I had to “hold my nose” in looking at the linked videos because of the stench of horse shit piled on top of horse shit… the shared delusion continues to dumbfound… after all the “conscious” nonsense involving symbolisms of numerology, waving hair, exhalations, inhalations, imagined ‘squares’ that aren’t there, etc, etc… it’s ironic that the only real symbolic aspect in the videos is the prompt from over his shoulder by a ‘minder’ for this pervert to zip his pants…. now that’s symbolic!
Thanks to Bryan Reynolds for the excerpts from Trauma and Recovery – very apropos… Joey @ 64 reminds me of what was lost by involvement in a cult… some “things” are never to be recovered… the experience can be rationalized using hindsight – life is for learning, we learn from mistakes… For me the lesson was a difficult one in “the school of hard knocks.” It shows how seeming certainty based in vanity and arrogance of youthful naivete’ gets turned upside down and inside out. Do I want revenge? do I forgive? do I want compensation ? No, I don’t think I ever wanted or had expectations about any of this… but I have learned to forgive myself for being human, for the foolishness of youth, for the mistakes that come from living. Posting here for me represents a continued processing of the experience and maybe, if an altruistic motive can be ascribed, posting here may serve as a cautionary tale for others who are doing due diligence in researching the cult and seeking first-hand accounts.
Thanks to Linda Jo for the link to “cult recovery 101.” Over the years since leaving I feel that I’ve experienced to some degree, the entire check-list of stages and symptoms outlined… it’s “spot on” in identifying the range of experiences characterized by “post-cult trauma syndrome.” I think this list of post-cult after effects would help give a sense of support to anyone who is trying to adjust to life after leaving the cult… knowing that there’s a commonality of experience is somehow reassuring, that it’s not “just me.” Knowing that there’s a community of folks who have gone through the trauma you’re experiencing is an aspect of support that I never had when I left 36 years ago… where does the time go?
Thanks to all who continue to post here… sunlight, (and laughter) is the best medicine.
#75 Cult Leader Elevates His iPad to Consciousness
reminded me of this little ditty
Thanks John Harmer, that was totally lit, watched it twice, had a good laugh! Made me want to go for a good hike in nature.
The Sharon Gans Cult News Blog
http://sharongansrobertkleincult.blogspot.com/
Glad to hear Elizabeth and Bradley left. I appreciate these sort of updates more than anything else.
Re 81.
I am glad also to hear they left. When I do check here, I do so much scrolling up and down, that I usually miss such details. I am glad to hear that anybody left. What is the point of it? Its hard to rationalize being in such an organization. Its not all that much fun being in the world without something like FOF, especially since so many of us got so uprooted and topsy turvy through the whole carry on. But its OK. It is what it is. And I would rather take off the rose colored FOF glasses and see the world as it is anyway, or what else did they call it, stepping out of the FOF bubble. And as for staying for your friends and the social life etc, you end up writing a check every month so you can have friends. That’s a funny one to be sure. I remember being told by one of the high ups that nobody ever left FOF because of money. I suppose I was a pioneer so, because it certainly played a strong part in my decision to head for the exit.
“Its not all that much fun being in the world without something like the FOF…”
Life is only as fun as you are.
Speaking for myself, it certainly was not fun at all being “on duty” at night in the rape factory as one of burton’s sex slaves, servicing the sex machine.
And then having to hide what was going on behind closed doors? Yuck!!! It was so gross, really.
But it’s not just about the Benjamins. Others have to pay an even steeper price for FOF “fun”…it costs them their dignity and/or their compassion for others, valuable human qualities one can still possess while broke, facing hardship, without friends, and among strangers.
Re: ‘sex slaves’
the morning newspaper had a short article about a court case involving Allison Mack who recruited human “fodder” for yet another “garden variety” cult…
https://www.vice.com/en_us/topic/keith-raniere
82. Nevasayneva
I remember being told by one of the high ups that nobody ever left FOF because of money.
That’s a common cliché in the FOF (another one is “Robert said once that the school never lost a real student”). Just different ways to keep people in the cult.
It’s not a cliché, Cult Survivor. It’s a lie, and indeed the only way to keep people in the cult.
I think that these types of Fellowship of Friends bullshit assertions
are both clichés and lies. Here’s another one.
“You must work against “feminine dominance.”
87. Golden Veil
I sit corrected.
re: “I remember being told by one of the high ups that nobody ever left FOF because of money.”
lie, cliche’ – whatever the case don’t believe it.
I left because of money. And because my lower self had more sense than many others’ higher self.
86. Tim Campion
When a lie is repeated too many times it becomes a cliché, like “That’s fake news”.
85. to 91.
This discussion of lies repeated by Burton and virtually all “older students” prompted me to list a few more, all related to shaming people into remaining in the Fellowship way past their expiration date. I know there are many more, and look forward to seeing them. Anyway, here’s what I came up with so far:
If you leave the FF, you:
…were in an interval and could not bridge it.
…were never a real student.
… are identified with A Influence.
…have turned your back on C Influence.
…refused to bend, and so you were broken.
…could not give up your willfulness feature.
…have chosen the moon over Paradise.
…will die like a dog.
…are worse off than never having met the school.
…threw away the only opportunity you will ever have of working with C Influence.
…no longer exist.
Before founding the Fellowship of Friends, but after his 18 month study of the Fourth Way with Alex Horn, Robert Earl Burton suffered sever head trauma in a car accident. After recovering from the car accident and while living with his mother, he found work teaching tennis at the Claremont Hotel and / or the Hiller Highlands Country Club.
What is it about tennis players – and Leonardo da Vinci? The below link and commentary is taken from a post on another website frequented primarily by former Fellowship of Friends students where someone (not you, Someone) recently wrote
“…that “tennis pros” are often people of marginal tennis skill but well-honed sales skills who get rich clueless would-be tennis players to pay them large sums of money for very basic skills training. Kind of leads well into being a cult leader. ” and also “…Dorian Matei, was also a tennis player in his teens. I met him when he was a depressed 18-year-old in Bucharest who stated bluntly that he was desperate to get out of Romania and would do anything to accomplish that.”
From amateur tennis instructor to Leonard da Vinci-inspired cult leader – not as uncommon as you’d think!
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/02/18/australian-cult-leader-who-saw-vision-on-toilet-says-hes-da-vinci-reincarnated/
93. Golden Veil
Upon arriving at Apollo, Dorian was then desperate to get into the Galleria, and Burton’s circle of power, as quickly as possible. He was initially assigned to work with painting sets for an upcoming opera production (back in the pre-ballet days when an opera was produced each year, and performed at Apollo and in Grass Valley). According to his “octave leader,” he quit after 1 day, and drifted over to the Galleria where he managed to get noticed and hired. It’s been up, up and away ever since.
Thanks for posting that video, John (#77), I thought it was very funny and pertinent. Trevor Moore has a lot of talent, IMO. There is some good rap, clever lyrics, and really excellent production values!
Insider and all the others above, thank you for these examples of how groupthink develops and is reinforced. And the process, in my opinion, is a great example of the banality of evil.
Whether they are lies or clichés or both, these kinds of self–calming statements are important tools to help the “Fellowship Powers that Be” group mind, that is, Burton–and–his–minions, control the narrative. Which is, we are special, we know things ordinary people don’t, we are sharp observers, we are more conscious, we are saving the best of civilization, we are bound for Paradise. But these lies are horribly corrosive, both to the person telling them and to the person who incorporates them into their worldview. The person telling the lie obviously has not and cannot have verified the statement in question, yet the implication is that they have. A ‘newer student’, for example, although knowing that they themselves have not verified the statement, will naturally assume that the ‘older student’ has done so. This transfers a certain amount of power and authority to the ‘older student’ that they do not deserve, and this transfer, made in good faith of course, diminishes the ‘new student’ by the same amount. Finally, after hearing the same thing repeated enough times, the ‘no longer so new student’ will gain confidence, and start passing this on to whoever will listen, basking in the feeling that they have done someone a favor in their turn and ‘shared some important esoteric wisdom’. Moreover, the assumption is that any of these statements actually are inherently verifiable will also be passed with them.
The astonishing result is that all the parties have in fact ‘gone to sleep’, and moreover have buried their consciences that much deeper with each repetition of the lie.
In my opinion, this is an example of how those in the bubble help each other define the boundaries of their delusions, reinforce their common beliefs, and reduce cognitive dissonance.
And those who do this the best, become part of the Inner Circle™…
Good faith, honesty, true verification, open–mindedness, trust, curiosity, experimentation—all the virtues—fall by the wayside, are sacrificed for the illusion of being part of a special group.
Little by little, evil—while calling itself the highest virtue—takes over.
92. Insider
The video below of Robert Burton condemning Asaf Braverman for leaving the FOF has a couple of gems from Burton regarding what happens when you leave the cult:
• (Regarding Asaf leaving the FOF) “Now what is left for him is (inaudible) his lower self, the instinctive center”
• “When you leave the school and go against the school you go all the way to the end of the ray of creation, it goes from bad to worse, and we go from better to best (Paradise)”
According to Gurdjieff’s cosmology, the end of the ray of creation is the Absolute (see image below), so it’s actually a shortcut 🙂
What really happens when you leave the FOF:
1) you put your destiny in your own hands
2) you can finally can let go of all the bullshit, delusions, and superstitions about the moon out to get you
3) you can be relieved of seeing messages and signs in everything
4) you get to see the true character of your cult relationships and learn to make better friends
5) you can start to view others as equals again and learn to have compassion for those less fortunate
6) you can start to save money and learn to live within your means
7) you can have children or begin to repair broken family relationships
8) you can laugh as loud as you want and enjoy comedy again
9) you can learn to express anger in appropriate ways instead of repressing it
10) you can have better rest at night
11) you can stop doing the sequence in your head and experience the delight of free attention
12) you can wear blue jeans or go bare foot again
13) you can explore free expression in modern art, modern music, modern literature, and modern dance
14) you can go to college or university and learn something new, maybe update your understanding of science and psychology
15) you get to stop living like burton’s dog or sexual play thing
16) you can experience your existence independent of what burton thinks of you
17) you can discover and follow your own inner compass
18) you don’t have to ask for permission and can learn to trust yourself
19) you can start seeing the positives in others instead of their deviations
20) you can strive to make Earth a paradise for generations to come
21) you can stop trying to impress others and learn to be inclusive instead of exclusive
22) you get to turn your back on a life of slavery and a cruel master who would not hesitate to turn his back on you
23) you can warn others about joining a cult instead of being expected to recruit them into slavery
24) you can actually learn how to live without judging others
25) you can learn to accept your imperfections while striving to change what is possible to change in yourself which helps you to have compassion for others
26) you get to free yourself from male dominance
27) you can take better care of your body and physical health instead of fighting with it
28) you can learn what it means to be a whole, integrated person, instead of split off parts of the self.
29) you get to have an opinion, and learn how to think critically, instead of parroting the thoughts of others
30) you can learn to value the humanizing experience of grief and sadness
Whalerider, leaving the Fellowship is kind of like that country song, “Backwards”:
You get your essence back, you get your real SELF back, you get your human dignity and respect back. You get your common sense back, and you get your own, unique path to maturity, compassion and Self-realization back.
So true, Whalerider and Nancy Gilbert. Contrary to what Robert Burton tells his flock, those who leave are the real winners.
100. Nancy Gilbert
You also get your family back.
100. Nancy Gilbert
You lose 1,500 shallow conditional relationships in exchange for just a few deep friendships.
172/92 Insider:
“If you leave the FF, you:
…” lost the battle with False Personality. 😉
If you leave the FF, you allowed doubt to creep in and spoil the lovely fairy tale you once believed in. We can’t have doubters threatening to pop our comfortable, self-calming bubble existence.
104. associated press
When leave the FOF you may experience a ‘very loud’ popping sound, as your False Personality, ‘I Am So Special and Superior to all Those Lowly Life People’, bubble bursts. Tinnitus may result from this big bang, but it is a small price to pay for escaping this cult bubble world that feeds false personality day in and day out with spiritual materialism and visions of eternal grandeur.
Speaking of doubting: Two events happened in the past week that have a lot of followers wondering about Burton’s mental condition.
The first was an urgent announcement, which was the following:
“Dear friends around the world,
“Robert is now asking us to let go all of all records of all past teaching events up to the year 2019.
“Specifically, we are to throw away or permanently erase any pre-2019 teaching material (both center library material and personal collections, including daily cards, videos, printed material, and any electronic copies) produced by the Teacher or students in the school. However, this erasure does not include the published books authored by the Teacher, Self Remembering and Awakening, at this point.
“The Teacher explains that this is not the first time our school is undergoing a process of shedding; as we have been given the complete System, we want to pass it on as such to our ‘ascendents’ and not force them to reinvent the wheel. Moreover, the legacy of schools is a complete, finished product–and not the journey it took to get there.
“In relation to this, Robert quoted Berenson, who said, ‘A cultured man is the result of what he has forgotten.’
“Robert added: ‘For us, a cultured man is the result of what he has released, forgotten: the sequence. He has become the culture.'”
The very next day, just when his loyal followers were planning a massive bonfire of Daily Cards and Girard’s books, Burton withdrew the above directive without any explanation.
The second event, a day or two later, occurred at a meeting. First Burton made yet another prediction, that he would continue running the show only for 2 more years. He then woke up briefly, possibly prodded by Dorian, to realize that this contradicted what he had said a month or two earlier; and thus he changed the immediately-preceding prediction from 2 years to 10 years, no doubt to a huge collective sigh of relief from the believers in attendance (except for Dorian, who now has to continue wiping food from Burton’s beard for 10 more years).
107. Insider
Kafkaesque black comedy, with a touch of Brecht.
I thought it was a parody like Whalerider’s until I realized it was true. Surreal indeed.
#107 insider confides ““Specifically, we are to throw away or permanently erase any pre-2019 teaching material (both center library material and personal collections, including daily cards, videos, printed material, and any electronic copies) produced by the Teacher or students in the school.”
I would like to imagine that this strange directive arose because Burton happened to look at some videos of himself running meetings, and suddenly noticed what a complete and utter twat he looks, with his gormless fixed rictus grin, and obvious “look how humble I am” act, and shuddered as he imagined people laughing and giggling at his pomposity in times to come.
I’m convinced it’s advanced senile dementia (when I left 2 years ago it was in the early stages).
The worst is yet to come… It would be an opera buffa if it were not tragic.
172/111: Cult Survivor:
“The worst is yet to come…
It would be an opera buffa if it were not tragic.”
Yes, the Fellowship of Friends is opera buffa and
Robert Earl Burton’s rôle is opera buffo.
And, if I did not know better, I would assume that
opera buffo means: a work of a buffalo sh!t artist.
Don’t ya know?:
“The best actors in the world, either for tragedy,
comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,
historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-
comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or
poem unlimited . . .”
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Act 2, Scene 2, lines 396-400
Words spoken by Polonius
William Shakespeare
172/35: WonderingWhosWatching:
“Well, isn’t that Special?”
Cult Leader Proposes Bizarre New Diet
Origami House, CA-Robert E Burton, the leader of a Northern California Culinary Cult recently asked his pathologically consuming followers to make a rather unappetizing addition to their meal plans, apparently in a brilliant effort to increase their daily fiber intake, enhance the process of elimination, and erase the competition.
As of today, Burton, who early in his tenure was once obese himself, demanded his corpulent followers start actually eating the cherished and ubiquitous “Daily Recipe Cards”, they have been issued and have collected over the past 3 decades.
“It’s time for you all to shed some weight”, he was reported to have said between mouthfuls of Coc au Vin, “my recipe book is all you’ll need from now on.”
“I was wondering what to do with all them”, said one plump follower, “I have tons. This morning I made a ten card smoothie.”
According to inside sources, the real reason behind the smooth move is that Burton’s rotund followers have started to have great difficulty fitting through the ever tightening hoops that he has them jumping through in his circus.
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