The secret school

 

Tonight´s ChatGPT essay. So I just had to ask The System about Whitley Strieber. 

If the AI is correct, we are dealing with another example of a person associated with a new religious movement using the UFO phenomenon as a vehicle to dissiminate the teachings. It´s a well-known fact that some prominent contactees were strongly inspired by Theosophy. Strieber is more into Gurdjieff. That´s never been a secret, but it seems the parallels are even stronger than I expected. 

Which presumably has to be factored in when trying to comprehend his experiences...

What connections does UFO contactee Whitley Strieber have with G I Gurdjieff´s Fourth Way?

Whitley Strieber, the well-known UFO contactee and author of Communion, has acknowledged connections to G.I. Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way, though he is not formally part of a Gurdjieff school. His work contains ideas, themes, and terminology that overlap with or are influenced by Gurdjieff's system—especially regarding consciousness, self-transformation, and the nature of reality.

Here’s a breakdown of the connections:

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🔄 1. Shared Focus on Human Transformation

Both Gurdjieff and Strieber emphasize:

• The “asleep” state of ordinary consciousness

• The need for intentional inner work to achieve real awareness

• The evolutionary potential of human beings if they awaken to their true nature

Strieber often speaks of the “visitor experience” as a kind of initiatory shock that forces a person to confront their assumptions, ego, and mechanical habits—echoing Gurdjieff’s idea of self-remembering and intentional suffering as tools for awakening.

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🧠 2. Use of Gurdjieffian Language

Strieber sometimes uses terms drawn from or parallel to Fourth Way vocabulary:

• He refers to “multiple I’s”, mechanical behavior, waking sleep, and the need for inner coherence—all central ideas in Gurdjieff’s teachings.

• His “keys to awakening” resemble the Fourth Way techniques of observation, inner division (observer vs. observed), and the struggle against identification.

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👁️ 3. Experiential Parallels

Strieber’s mystical, non-ordinary experiences—whether with aliens, visitors, or entities—can be interpreted as esoteric shocks similar to what Gurdjieff described:

• Contact with higher beings or intelligences appears in both systems.

• These encounters act as tests or catalysts for awakening.

• Strieber speculates that “the visitors” might not be extraterrestrials but part of a higher-dimensional intelligence engaging humanity for evolutionary or spiritual purposes—similar to how Gurdjieff spoke of “higher influences” trying to reach receptive individuals.

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📖 4. Influence of Esotericism and Inner Christianity

Both Gurdjieff and Strieber draw on:

• Esoteric Christianity

• Mystical suffering as transformation

• The concept of sacrifice as part of spiritual development

Strieber’s later works (e.g., The Key, A New World) deal heavily with death, soul evolution, and non-material realities, echoing the Fourth Way’s cosmology of the Ray of Creation, higher bodies, and the effort to "create a soul" through conscious labor and intentional suffering.

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🧩 5. Statements of Direct Interest

• Strieber has directly mentioned Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way in interviews and his journal writings on his website UnknownCountry.com.

• He has expressed respect and interest in the Fourth Way, though he tends to synthesize it with other mystical and UFO-related frameworks rather than follow it dogmatically.

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❗ Key Difference

While Gurdjieff’s system is grounded in disciplined inner work and self-knowledge, Strieber’s path is more experiential, visionary, and mystical, drawing from alien abduction, near-death experience, and revelatory insights. However, both view human beings as unfinished and capable of spiritual development—if they awaken.

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✅ Summary

Aspect	Gurdjieff	Strieber	Connection
Human asleep state	Core teaching	Frequent theme	✅
Self-remembering	Essential method	Paralleled in “presence”	✅
Higher beings	Metaphysical, allegorical	Experiential, literal/mystical	🟡 (different tone)
Esoteric Christianity	Yes	Yes	✅
Formal study	Fourth Way schools	Independent synthesis	❌

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If you're interested, I can point you to specific passages or interviews where Strieber refers to Gurdjieff, or compare their views on death, soul-making, or higher dimensions.

Can you summarize his book "The Key" and point out the similarities with Gurdjieff´s teachings?

Certainly. Whitley Strieber's The Key: A True Encounter is a short, provocative book that recounts a mystical conversation he claims to have had with a mysterious man—called "The Master of the Key"—who unexpectedly visited him in a Toronto hotel room in 1998. The stranger delivered a series of metaphysical, spiritual, and prophetic insights that deeply impacted Strieber.

Although the book reads like a modern mystical encounter, it contains numerous themes and ideas that overlap significantly with Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way teachings, albeit with a different tone and emphasis.

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📖 Summary of The Key

🧍 The Encounter:

• Strieber describes being awakened at 3 a.m. in a Toronto hotel room by an unknown man.

• This “Master of the Key” spoke with him for about 45 minutes, delivering startling truths about humanity, the soul, suffering, technology, and the afterlife.

• Strieber took notes afterward and later reconstructed the conversation.

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🧠 Major Themes in the Book:

1. Human Beings Are Spiritually Asleep

   • Most people live without awareness of their higher nature.

   • Humanity suffers from "amnesia" about its true condition.

   • Spiritual awakening is the most urgent need.

2. Souls Must Be Created

   • A human being does not automatically possess a soul; it must be developed through conscious effort and suffering.

   • Otherwise, the essence of the person dissolves after death.

   • This mirrors Gurdjieff's idea of "creating a soul" through intentional suffering and conscious labor.

3. Suffering as Necessary for Growth

   • The Master says suffering is not meaningless, but instrumental in developing compassion and awareness.

   • The tragedy is not suffering itself, but unconscious, wasted suffering—a key Gurdjieffian theme.

4. Higher Beings and Hidden Influences

   • The visitor implies that non-human intelligences are engaged in the spiritual development of humanity.

   • These entities work behind the scenes, much like Gurdjieff's "Higher Centers" or "esoteric schools".

5. Human Responsibility

   • Humanity is failing to evolve; it must choose to awaken or face extinction.

   • The spiritual opportunity of being human is rare and fragile.

6. Technology and the Soul

   • The Master warns that our dependence on technology may sterilize spiritual growth if not used consciously.

   • This reflects Gurdjieff’s warning that mechanization leads to the atrophy of spiritual faculties.

7. Afterlife Mechanics

   • Souls that are not "coherent" disintegrate after death.

   • Those who work on themselves can pass into a higher state of being.

   • Gurdjieff made similar claims: most people die “like dogs,” without developing a permanent "astral body."

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🔗 Similarities with Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way

Theme	The Key (Strieber)	Gurdjieff's Fourth Way
Man is asleep	Humans are spiritually blind and unaware	Man lives in waking sleep, governed by mechanical habits
Soul must be created	Souls are not automatic; they must be earned	Soul is not given; must be crystallized through work
Suffering is necessary	Suffering can transform; must be made conscious	Conscious suffering is a tool for awakening
Afterlife is not guaranteed	Incoherent beings dissolve after death	Without inner development, one does not survive death
Esoteric transmission	Wisdom is passed by mysterious "Masters"	Real knowledge comes from esoteric schools
Technology and danger	Technology can damage spiritual progress	Mechanization degrades inner life
Urgency of transformation	Human extinction is possible without awakening	Humanity is at a crossroads; awakening is rare and vital

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🧭 Tone and Style Differences

• Strieber’s tone is mystical, prophetic, and often emotional.

• Gurdjieff’s tone is esoteric, methodical, and framed in allegory or parable.

• Gurdjieff's system is structured and demands years of work; Strieber's is more visionary and revelatory.

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📌 Conclusion

While not identical, _The Key overlaps deeply with Gurdjieff’s worldview**:

• Humanity is in danger due to spiritual sleep.

• Real transformation requires inner struggle.

• Few people truly "exist" in the spiritual sense.

Strieber may not have been formally trained in the Fourth Way, but The Key strongly suggests either indirect influence or a convergent spiritual insight pointing toward the same perennial truths that Gurdjieff articulated a century earlier.

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Would you like a side-by-side quote comparison or an outline of how someone might apply the ideas of The Key through Fourth Way practice? 

Not now, Whitley Strieber!

 

Just discovered that Whitley Strieber has a YouTube channel and still seems to be making content about the "Visitors". Is this guy stalking us or what?!

Should I take the deep plunge or just let it be?  

Mere anecdote

 

So I´m currently reading a book by Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey Kripal. Then I put on my TV. Guess what popped up? AN INTERVIEW WITH AN ALIEN ABDUCTEE DESCRIBING PRECISELY THE SAME KIND OF EXPERIENCE AS STRIEBER.

Co-incidence? Of course it is. There, Visitors!   

I´m signing off

 

Credit: timlewisnm

"It´s not funny anymore, I´m leaving tomorrow for Antares, I mean, I don´t want to be locked down in some bloody concentration camp together with a bunch of Nazis, come on, everyone on Antares is a good liberal, but this has gone too far, I was even willing to wear a mask, I mean I don´t want to scare the hell out of your law enforcement authorities, but this is too much I say, also it´s getting colder since you closed all those nuclear power plants, I was going to offer you free energy but I think I changed my mind, maybe you deserve being sent to camps, you are still barbarians or something, so goodbye, I will fly to Roswell to pay respects for my fallen comrades, then it´s bye bye, and if you try to impose some kind of vaccine passport on my UFO, well, let´s just say that my lasers are pretty damn effective, I mean, I saved your planet from being exterminated by the Romulan mother ship, but heck, I´m talking too much, give my best regards to Whitley Strieber, bye" 

Communion at Witch Mountain

"Race to Witch Mountain" is good for tweens and older kids, tolerable for grown-ups if you can take all the annoying clichés and the deliberately bad acting. The plot is very freely based on a science fiction novel by Alexander Key, and has been adapted for the movie screen three times by Walt Disney. This is the third version! Let's just say it involves UFOs, robots, MIBs, conspiracy theorists and a UFO fandom convention in Vegas. A bizarre detail: the guy called “Whitley Strieber” in the film *actually is* Whitley Strieber, who is thus starring himself?! OK, I admit that little detail got me hooked, and made my increase the star rating from three to four…

A message from the Pleiades

I just recieved this transmission from the Pleiades, concerning Whitley Strieber´s positively libelous book "Communion". 

My name cannot be pronounced by earthlings, but you may call me Sananda. I represent the Ashtar Command, and the entire Intergalactic Parliament. Indeed, I have been your representative on it ever since I made ascension from Galilee 2000 years ago, over-seeing your spiritual development (and it aint easy, you monkeys).

Trust me, earthling, this book is a HOAX. None of it ever happened. I teleported Mr. Strieber to Spaceship Koot Hoomi and graciously offered him an interview, but instead the rogue rushes to the printer with some kind of weirdo hash-induced hallucinogenic horror story, I dare say.

We NEVER tortured Mr. Strieber, we didn't threaten his son and wife, and the wolf wasn't me either. Nor are we a civilization of insects. I'm a human, have a turban on my head and long, golden, flowing hair. I have a golden beard too. My assistants are highly evolved penguins. They don't look like insects, unless you're high on substance abuse or something.

CITIZEN OF EARTH, do NOT buy this book! Have you read the sequel, Transformation? It was me and St. Germain who complained about Communion in that bookstore. We had to wear green masks from a nearby Halloween keg party. Strieber assumed we were evil space alien. The know-nothing.

And no, we wont steal any souls in 2012. You stole your own souls eons ago. Why do you suppose you are stranded on psycho planet instead of being up here with us luminescent Ascended Masters?

Be good to your neighbour, don't poison his dog, and don't kill each other. Make sure Georgia and Russia negotiates a cease fire, and read some good books instead. May I recommend "Voodoo Science" by Robert Park (it helped us repair those constantly malfunctioning space ships of ours - I mean, anti-gravity COME ON). Also read "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan. It may actually make you live longer, and save the planet. WHAT YOU CALL CANCER COMES FROM YOUR TEETH.

Forget about this FRAUDULENT WORK.

Master Sananda (aka The Brother of Jesus), Over and Out!

:D

The secret hoax

For the record, I´m no longer committed to the idea that Strieber is a hoax. He might have had genuine (and genuinely bad) spiritual experiences. This was written during my more skeptical period, back in 2010.

Am I the only reviewer who realizes that Whitley Strieber is a hoax?

Originally, Strieber wrote fiction. When his horror stories weren't selling anymore, he suddenly published "Communion", a supposedly true story about how Strieber was abducted, tortured and reprogrammed by alien entities known as Greys. A clever way to restart his faltering career as an author, wouldn't you say? "Communion" became a bestseller, was translated to several foreign languages, and spawned a little cottage industry of sequels, prequels and newsletters. Even later, Strieber apparently wrote and published a number of new agey books, which I haven't read. Since he's a former member of the weird and cultish Gurdjieff Foundation, he was probably well fitted for that role as well.

Logically, Strieber should be a basket case at some mental asylum. Nobody who *really* experienced the events described in "Communion" could possibly have recovered his sanity and written a bestselling book about it! And yet, the man has been authoring novels (and earning hard money) ever since.

Strange indeed. Maybe he is the Chosen One?

"The Secret School" is a prequel to "Communion". Strieber claims that he was groomed by the aliens already as a nine-year old kid in Texas. They took him and other children to a place in the woods, showed them bizarre holographic visions, and taught them the mysteries of the universe. One of the aliens was named Sister of Mercy and once took the young Strieber to Mars, where he saw the famed face-on-Mars. He was also shown visions of how the Moon split from Earth, of the Permian extinction and of a distant world in a galaxy colliding with another.

Then, I stopped reading. I never finished "The Secret School", but apparently Strieber was induced to forget everything he had learned around the age of 14. Only as an adult did he remember the whole thing, and kindly conceded to write this little novella about it. He also offer us some prophecies about the future, none of which have come to pass (yet). Apparently, the United States will be turned into a "real republic", we will crack the riddle of fusion and anti-matter, and start mining operations on the Moon. It seems the Sister of Mercy was a bad prophet.

"The Secret School" sounds like a novel. It comes across as a strange blend of the movie "Stand By Me" and a ghost story. The plot, if you can call it that, is constantly interrupted by Strieber's annoying interpretations of the lessons given him by the aliens. Had Strieber developed the story, it could have become an interesting novel (I admit that he's a good writer).

Instead, we are pretty much stuck with...the Greys.