Why the teaching's of Gurdjieff and Jesus Christ are hated in the modern world.

Gurdjieff’s and Jesus Christ’s doctrines on human “mechanicalness” or “spiritual sleep” are despised in the modern world because they expose the foundational myth of contemporary culture: that the autonomous, self-expressing individual is awake, free, and morally sufficient. In contrast, these teachings unveil modern humanity as spiritually anesthetized, morally compromised, and enslaved to internal impulses and external systems—an intolerable indictment in a society built on the sacralization of the ego and the commodification of desire.

The Doctrine of Sleep as a Rebuke to Modern Self-Deification

Both Gurdjieff and Christ proclaim that human beings live in a state of unawareness—automatons governed by mechanical habits, unconscious impulses, and illusions of selfhood. Gurdjieff taught that "man is a machine, but a very peculiar machine," one who believes himself to be free yet is governed entirely by forces he neither understands nor perceives (Gurdjieff, In Search of the Miraculous, 1949). Similarly, Christ declares, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32), implying that one is not free prior to this illumination, but enslaved—“blind guides,” “whitewashed tombs” (Matthew 23:27).

This diagnosis runs entirely counter to the anthropological dogma of the modern West, where the self is idolized as both source and arbiter of truth. The existential call to "authenticity," the postmodern emphasis on "lived experience," and consumer capitalism's relentless flattery of personal choice are all built on the assumption that the individual is already awake, conscious, and free. To be told that one is asleep, deluded, or mechanical is not merely offensive—it is heretical within the secular liturgy of the self.

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Awakening is predicated on "seeing", for oneself, the deep rooted sleep of our living that is nothing more than blind, reflexive actions. Until the light of consciousness dissolves our basic illusions that we are conscious agents, humbling us in the face of everything, we are prone to view that awakening is simply "adding" to what we already have.

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Hedonism as the Engine of Sleep

In both Gurdjieffian and Christian cosmologies, the path to awakening demands suffering—not merely physical pain, but the inner agony of confronting one’s illusions and attachments. Gurdjieff stated, “Real self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity for self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes” (Ouspensky, The Fourth Way, 1957). Likewise, Christ asserts, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross” (Mark 8:34).

Such prescriptions are radically incompatible with the hedonistic imperatives of the modern age. Our culture regards suffering as pathological and inconvenience as injustice. The modern individual is catechized to pursue pleasure, avoid pain, and externalize all responsibility. To suggest that pleasure is often the narcotic of sleep, and that spiritual awakening requires voluntary suffering, is not only counterintuitive—it is blasphemous to the modern ethos.

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We avoid suffering because we do not understand it, as it touches the core of our Being. The antidote to suffering is not avoidance, but suffering consciously. This is what is means to grow up.

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Economic Systems Require the Mechanical Man

There is also an economic subtext to the hostility toward these teachings. The consumer economy thrives on predictability, impulsivity, and emotional manipulation—attributes of the mechanical man.

Gurdjieff’s vision of "awakening" threatens not only psychological comfort but systemic functionality. An awakened individual, free of internal compulsion and mass suggestion, is a poor consumer and a bad citizen by contemporary standards. In this sense, the spiritual ideal of freedom is economically subversive.

Similarly, the early Christian community’s rejection of the Roman Empire’s idolatries—materialism, militarism, and political absolutism—was not merely religious dissent; it was a revolutionary undermining of empire. The same remains true today: a truly “awakened” person poses a silent but existential threat to a world order premised on spiritual unconsciousness and material desire.

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Human-made law can never compete with God's law. Period.

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The Deep Hatred of Self-Knowledge

Ultimately, the teachings of Gurdjieff and Christ are hated because they confront the individual with the terrifying prospect of self-knowledge. They pull back the veil and show that the self we worship is not a god, but a puppet. This exposure is unbearable. As Plato notes in the Allegory of the Cave, the prisoners “would kill” anyone who tried to drag them into the light (Republic, Book VII).

Both Christ and Gurdjieff, in different ways, suffer this fate. Christ is crucified by those whom his truth offended; Gurdjieff, though not martyred, was routinely vilified, misunderstood, and dismissed as a dangerous mystic. In both cases, the response of the “sleeping” world is not merely disagreement—it is hatred. For to awaken would be to die to the self the world has told us we are. And that, perhaps, is the most intolerable truth of all.

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Now behold, one came and said to Him [Jesus], “Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?” So He said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God.

Matthew 19:16-17 NKJV

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