Smash the fossil and start all over again

No matter how powerful the teacher, his followers can always be trusted to bring his world to a halt. This they generally do by creating a cult of personality around the teacher himself, and fossilizing everything in exactly the form it was given. Using this fossilized teaching, they engage in mechanical repetitions of certain patterns of behaviour, assuring themselves and each other that they will attain liberation and higher consciousness as long as they never, never make the slightest change in anything the master taught. But life is change, and what is appropriate for one period is not necessarily valid for another. So all this effort to hold on to certain forms only results in the arrest of development. So another teacher has to appear, smash the fossil and start all over again.'
Robert de Ropp is referring to the Gurdjieff cult. But his words apply equally to the cult of the anniversary composer.

Quote comes via Stairway to the Stars: Sufism, Gurdjieff and the Inner Tradition of Mankind by Max Gorman. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images etc to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Also on Facebook and Twitter.

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