Jack Preston King
Sep 2, 2018 · 2 min read

Now, the same cannot be said about spirituality

We’re really splitting hairs here, but even this depends on what you mean by “spirituality.” Of my various spiritual affiliations over the years, I’d say I learned the most, and experienced the most, and was changed the most via my involvement with the Gurdjieff Work — which is decidedly an “organized social structure with hierarchy and certain level of control of its members.” It’s not a cult like Heaven’s Gate or Manson’s “Family” or anything over the top like that, but it is definitely an organized social structure with hierarchy. Gurdjieff called it a school, rather than a religion, and I agree with that. Public education meets the definition of an “organized social structure with hierarchy and certain level of control of its members.” Left entirely to one’s own to figure out spirituality, it probably wouldn’t happen. Where would you even begin? It helps to learn concepts and techniques somewhere. Even Buddha was a Hindu monk for a long time. This is what I think is the legitimate role of religion in society. It should act as a school, teaching people concepts and techniques that allow them to fast-path to personal experience of the supra-human. To move the assemblage point. This has been religion’s failing in our time (pretty much all of them). They have held onto the colorful outer trappings while abandoning the inner teaching function. They hold up their images of God, but no longer maintain their path to God. That’s fixable, though. The paths are still there, embedded within the religions. Some few find them, just as things are. But the roadblocks should be cleared and the paths opened to the many. It is this abandonment of esoteric schooling by the churches, plus the embrace of materialism in the culture outside the churches, that creates the appearance that religion and spirituality are two different things. It’s like a broken mirror, reflecting in two directions. The solution isn’t choosing one reflection or the other. It’s repairing the mirror.

Jack Preston King

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