Media Insights

There was a theater that had a magic show that went on for years. The leader died just within the past year but he was very much involved in Work, and he worked through a magic show. He had two theaters, and they put on these marvelous, marvelous programs. The public responded to this; they just loved these shows! They were very popular. Everybody in the company was a member of the group.

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At least in the English-speaking world, like in London and New York, as far as I know, in the early days especially, there was no advertising. You couldn’t find it in a newspaper or a magazine or anything like that. It was very quiet. If there were demonstrations given, they didn’t make the New York Times; they didn’t make the front page or anything like that. They were done, not hiding, but not falling into the trap of modern propaganda. I think that’s been pretty much the rule of how groups have grown. It’s either through very low key advertisement or a spreading of the word, for instance, through the school that they do in Oregon; they do in Western Massachusetts; they have their schools; K-8, and they end up reaching into the community through the school, through the kids that end up coming to the school. So, they are not all work people who send their kids to the school.

Usually at the beginning, it’s only work kids or children of people involved, who go to the school. But, over time, the neighbors find out about it builds up so that now, in the last years, at least in Oregon that I know of, easily 60 percent of the students–and they had maybe 40 students all together in the school at the end–easily 60 percent of them were from the community, and [they] felt blessed by the intimacy and personal attention that each of their kids got. A certain small percentage of them become interested enough so they would say, “I’d like to come and see how you people work on movements or this or that.” Then, maybe something would happen.

That’s how it has been. So, it’s not a refusal; it’s not a hiding, but it doesn’t use the trappings of modern propaganda, certainly. So, all kinds of efforts have to be made. The effort made by people who are, say, environmentally committed to doing everything they can to save the grasslands or to save certain varieties of plants or certain species of animal that are being exterminated and so forth. There is the very good generous work of these people, who sacrifice often everything to try. They have felt something. Something in their inner world refuses to accept the Kundabuffer, the unreality of their circumstance. They end up dedicating a portion or all of their life to that kind of enterprise.

I think we see that. There are many, many, many people, not counting any of them who belong to an organized spiritual effort. People like Jane Goodall. These are biologists and oceanographers and people of many, many different backgrounds who have grown up and they begin to see something about the atmosphere, something about pollution, something about animals dying. Because of their upbringing, they come to care very deeply about this, so that they dedicate a portion or all of their adult life to doing something about that.

These are very good things, and all of these things have to be supported. Can they make a difference, ultimately? By themselves, probably not, but when you take them all together–like I said, this is a multi-pronged problem. Kundabuffer invades every aspect of our life. Egoism is not a small thing at all. To extricate egoism is one of the last things, as Gurdjieff says a man may come to be man number six, almost man number seven, the highest possible, and he can lose everything. How does he lose it? He loses it because he believes in himself; that he is really important; that he is singular; that he is maybe somebody. I heard people speak about Rajneesh (or as he later became known as Osho) this way; that he was a man of great accomplishment but, when he came along saying “I am Gurdjieff and Ouspensky,” and began to really puff up, that seemed to be a real severe ego trip. Maybe that’s the kind of thing that Gurdjieff was talking about when he said that Man number six can lose everything because he refuses to give up his sense of “I,” as being separate from a servant of God.

There are those efforts, and then there are efforts of work on oneself, work for others, and work for the work. The work for the work can take so many different manifestations. For instance, one of the very best, I think, that is out there and very much out front, is in Athens under the direction of a very dear friend of ours, Dimitri and his wife–his wife is a powerhouse, marvelous artistic director. Dimitri is an author and he participated in the translation of The Tales into Greek. He spent 10-12 years here in the United States. He spent those years working with John Pentland at the New York Foundation. So, he has a very long underpinning. He was a friend of Michele de Salzmann while he was alive.

Dimitri and his wife started–and this must go back, easily, 20 years now–they started a theater company, in Athens. Now they have put on 12 or 13 productions, such as Gilgamesh. They’ve got a half a dozen of the great myths. Everybody in their production company is a member of the group. So, this is the group’s reach out into the community, and they never mention themselves, ever. But, they are very popular. They are greatly appreciated in the Athens Press. Here they are trying to teach these great, mythic, human values and so forth and so on, through the theater.

KB: In Beverly, MA there was a theater that had a magic show that went on for years. The leader died just within the past year but he was very much involved in Work, and he worked through a magic show. He had two theaters, and they put on these marvelous, marvelous programs. The public responded to this; they just loved these shows! They were very popular. Everybody in the company was a member of the group.

Others are seen such as the public demonstrations. There are several people now who travel the world, in the Netherlands and in Italy and so forth. They teach movements and they put on demonstrations and public things. So, in a sense, they are more out front. There is some of that, they do advertise on the Internet. So there are all these various groups. Many of them go unseen like the theatre group.

I think you see my point, that there are many ways to open doors for people to come, many different ways. So, if somebody is really interested, I think in today’s world, in the Western world, at any rate, Spanish speaking, as well, there are connections that can be made. One simply looks around, and you finally touch on something that may lead in a further connection that is meaningful.