We Are The New Ark

The Work is the distillation of the inner teachings of the world's great religions. The religions closest to it in spirit and in practice are the Catholic and Orthodox Christian denominations, while Orthodox Judaism and moderate Islam are also very near.

Anyone following such a path as a Good Householder will eventually reach enlightenment and attain immortality within the limits of the solar system, as Gurdjieff taught. The Work offers us a short cut, as it were, to the same end, and preserves the Essence of all true religions. We are the contemporary form of the Sarmoung Brotherhood: we gather nectar from all traditions.

For almost two millennia the West has sought to spread the Christian faith throughout the world. Our laws and our customs have embodied the Judeo-Christian precepts on which our society is built. Most people, at least until the late 20th century, tried to live according to the principles of the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Even when dissenters claimed to be atheists or agnostics, the Judeo-Christian tradition formed the background of their lives, and most would have agreed that, even if they personally failed to live up to them, the demands of Christianity were the highest and best way to shape our lives, both as individuals and as a society.

Today, however, we are in the midst of a huge resurgence of paganism. We are throwing our Christian principles - the very building blocks of our society - out of our collective windows with both hands, and we have found nothing save the very vaguest of ideals to put in their place. Notions of "green" living, while admirable, are only a very small part of the stewardship of the planet and the survival of our species. They are important, but cannot take the place of the religious teachings that are now in danger of vanishing.

The original meaning of the word "religion" comes from the Latin "religio", to bind together. Without religion binding members of society together, everything disintegrates. To quote Yeats, "things fall apart, the centre cannot hold". We are seeing the truth of his prophetic poem today.

Living as a Good Householder in the 21st century is even more difficult than in the past, because society no longer supports such a goal. We are daily bombarded with messages from the media that our only problem is lack of money - we need to make more and more cash so that we can buy more and more stuff, have more and more sexual encounters, and so on. Hedonism is the new normal. A Christian man or woman in the Catholic or Orthodox churches faces criticism and risks the loss of his or her job if they dare to voice any dissent from the appalling new norms.

In England, people have been fired because they insisted on wearing a small cross, or have offered to pray for their colleagues. Where once they would have been commended, today they are disciplined and censured.

Politicians holding traditional Christian beliefs now face calls for resignation; apparently, it is impossible for a real Christian to hold high office unless he is willing to jettison his beliefs about abortion, marriage, various sexual activities, and so on. And yet, only 50 years ago, such a person would have won respect, not condemnation, for views which were then held by the majority of people in Western, Christian countries.

It was these commonly held views which bound society together. Inspired by the Bible, they encouraged an ordered, compassionate and sane community. They created the blessings of hospitals and schools, all forms of reciprocal care and consideration for one another. Today, these attitudes are under fire, and unless we ourselves become an Ark we shall all descend into a living hell where mutual help is discouraged, prayer is forbidden, and altruism considered just plain stupid.

Last week I wrote about the expansion of the demonic realm in our times. This sounds sensationalistic, but it is quite real. I suggested that, as others have said, the Holocaust opened a portal to the underworld and that we are now living in the Devil's Century.

The devil hates marriages, hates loving families, hates the God who created us, and in every way possible he seeks to frustrate the divine plan for our lives.

We can only imagine what Gurdjieff would say if he returned to modern day Paris or London! Instead of honouring the ideal family structure as containing a man, a woman and children, we have now encouraged two men or two women to adopt children, creating babies through surrogates if necessary, and raising those children in a completely unnatural environment.

Studies are now being published showing the ill consequences of forcing children to be raised by homosexual couples. Such children are often confused, ill equipped to deal with the opposite sex, and unsure and unhappy about their own sexuality. I am not making this up: the results are now clear and undeniable, yet they must be denied and children must be forced into psychologically abusive situations so that these harmful but politically correct principles are not questioned.

Today we even encourage boys and girls to question their own gender identity from a very young age, forcing them into basic uncertainty and causing much insecurity at a time when they should be learning how to read and write. We have become obsessed with sex in all its forms, and no longer accept the gender into which we were born. Freud once said that biology is destiny. Today he might be locked up for daring to voice such politically incorrect views.

Of course, someone who is born male and wishes to become female is now able to have mutilating surgery performed - at public expense - and a lifetime of expense hormone treatments given, again from the public purse; but this does not make a "he" into a "she". It is all quite senseless.

Catholic adoption agencies have now all been closed down in the UK, because they refused to allow children to be adopted by homosexual couples. Far from extending tolerance to all, society now only tolerates what we all once thought to be the abnormal and unnatural. Christians, Jews and Muslims holding the views of their religions are now forced into silence and forbidden to express their beliefs publicly. Gurdjieff's own teachings about sexuality, abortion and society are today very counter-culture, but they express the principles of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, which have not changed.

Many Catholic parents now home-school their children rather than expose them to the politically correct but completely unChristian attitudes that are forced upon them in public schools.

This evil is now becoming a socially enforced norm. This intolerant "toleralism" is destroying our Judeo-Christian heritage, and sowing entropy throughout every level of society. If we no longer know what a real family is, how may our children grow up secure and confident? If we no longer honour lifelong marriage and fidelity, how may we be trusted to fulfil other commitments?

All these horrors are new in the West - new, that is, since the collapse of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Dark Ages. From the depravity that reigned at that time the monks and nuns of Western Europe salvaged hope in the form of the Gospels and the teaching contained in them.

When the great darkness had passed, the Christian message could again begin to spread light throughout the West, and civilization grew in the wake of the great monasteries which had preserved this message intact, an Ark for their times.

Today, we in the Work are tasked with keeping the teachings of the Fourth Way - the inner teachings of all true religions - intact in the face of an equally damaging social upheaval and disintegration.

Christians, Moslems and Jews following the way of the Good Householder may have to do so in secret, but they will surely continue to hold to their beliefs and to practice them while the persecution of believers is taking place.

We may support them and encourage them in their great task, while carrying on our own personal work in silence.

We may have a general idea about the end times, but we don't know how this particular story will end. Christians have the assurance of the Bible, that all men and women of good will shall some day be welcomed into the next life, but meanwhile there are great dangers surrounding us that threaten to bring about a new Dark Age.

Gurdjieff has warned us that our species is an experiment, and experiments may fail.

But whatever lies ahead, in the end the struggle is an unequal one, and the side of the Good will always have the ultimate victory. The Devil has been loosed on the world, and with him the 30,000 fallen angels he allegedly seduced from heaven, but he has only one third of the total spiritual kingdom. God has at least 60,000 angels, according to tradition, as well as archangels, thrones and dominions - and He has us and all those who've preceded us in keeping faith with the truth. All Conscious Humanity is engaged in this Holy War, and they lend us their help as we struggle with our own demons.

Keeping our inner Ark safe, refusing to abandon what we know to be true, continuing to work on ourselves and persevering in the face of huge odds, all this is necessary now - and as we preserve the teaching, so it will surely preserve us.