Hawes mentions his encounters with Bass while at a Synergia in Australia, where he saw how Bass cowered around Allen. Bass was largely responsible for supplying tens of millions of dollars to fund the Biosphere 2 project in Arizona, for example, which Allen cofounded. John Allen was adept at manipulating his wealthier students, most notably Ed Bass (born in 1945) who became a Synergist in his twenties. This end-justifies-the-means tactic tends to run through Fourth Way cults that use the Way of the Sly Man terminology, and that includes Allen’s Synergias. Gurdjieff believed that tricking the wealthy to contribute to his cause was ethical because of the importance of his work. Gurdjieff devotees who read Peter’s book may find it revealing about the master’s foibles, but they also find it humorous to read how Gurdjieff manipulated seekers who did not grasp the guru’s intentions. Peters was 11 when he first lived, through his teens, with Gurdjieff as his cabin boy in France. This memoir by Daniel Hawes echoes Boyhood with Gurdjieff, by Fritz Peters (1964), whose parents were students with Gurdjieff at the cult’s Prieuré commune in France. Gurdjieff’s ideas have had a significant influence throughout dozens of sects, gurus, and celebrities, including cult leader Osho/Rajneesh, Zen teacher Alan Watts, and architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The distinctions between these ways break down because Fourth Way leaders seemed to employ all ways. The three lesser, slower ways to enlightenment were the ways of the mind (yogis), the emotions (monks), and the body (fakirs). Among other descriptors, the Fourth Way approach was referred to as the Work and the way of the Sly Man. Daniel Hawes had no choice: His misfortune was to be born to parent–seekers who already began to submit to Allen’s projects, ideas, and will. If that sounds like crazy circular thinking, it is and it is exactly how otherwise intelligent and caring people get caught up in elitist cult circles. The assumption was that only those ready for awakening could see the emperor–guru’s clothes. To attain this “higher octave” or sustained gnosis, one needed an already enlightened teacher such as Gurdjieff. The self to be remembered was a gnostic self, or the divine spark within-the seed of God, if you will-that only the elite in society could possibly notice. or being acutely self-aware of action in the moment. Gurdjieff taught that irrational means, trickery, repetitious bodily labor, and abuse were necessary to shock the student into emerging from the “machine” self into self-remembering. Gurdjieff (1866–1949), a cult leader of the Seekers of Truth, which he formed and led early in the 20th century. 150) by repressing the lesser ego, or “idiot,” in the body–machine created by society and evolution.Īllen borrowed and repurposed most of his ideas from the Fourth Way teachings of G. And that was the goal of Allen’s cult: to create a “universal human being” (p. The model for justifying these beatings was the leader, John Polk “Johnny Dolphin” Allen (born in 1929), who used verbal assault and punching as a useful teaching tool to bring students into a higher state of awareness. We learn from this memoir that verbal and physical beatings of children (per Hawes, the “people”) by adults (per Hawes, the “idiots”) devoted to Allen’s intentional communities, called Synergia s, were so common as to be expected daily. has given me deeper insight into how pathologically elitist and inhumane Allen’s teachings were. I first started tracking Allen’s cult in 1975. In this book, Daniel Hawes describes in visceral detail his horrifying experience growing up among the Synergists, led by Johnny Dolphin Allen. Nothing is more telling about an intentional community than how it treats and teaches children.
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