The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #436 - 18OCT25

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus asserted that it’s impossible to step twice into the same river. In other words, flux is all. In terms of religious and spiritual practice, we apply this principle to say that, to be effective, The Work must change with the times, the places, and the people.

Yet we see enacted among religious and spiritual communities well-meaning attempts to rigidly codify formulations of wisdom offered by deceased teachers, as if words themselves, or practices based upon words, could embody timeless wisdom. It’s understandable. The very human tendency is for our minds, our bodies and our hearts to seek the stability of something we believe we can hold onto, untempered by innocent, child-like inquiry. Such innocent inquiry is, arguably and somewhat paradoxically, the most direct and reliable path to re- infuse original creative energy from within a tradition.

One consequence of this situation, exemplified in many of our recent conversations with senior Fourth Way practitioners, is despair regarding the future of their tradition. For those sensitive to the feelings associated with the living, vivified expression of their tradition, they report a diminution from Gurdjieff’s time, through the long careers of G.’s many students who had worked directly with G., thus carrying on his Work, to what they mourn as the soup of the soup of Gurdjieff’s Work. This talk will strive to evoke a lively conversation about the dialectic between commitment to the living truths that emerged to embody a tradition, and the nature of creative attempts to revivify that tradition in the wake of its original exponents. We suggest that there may be no one answer, but that conversation among people of good will is a feature of how life can find its way to refresh itself.