Robert Burton started an organisation called the Fellowship of freinds in 1970.The Fellowship advertises itself as Gurdjieff-Ouspensky Centers through bookmarks and in the internet. He uses fragments of the knowledge you can find in Ouspensky's books. The group has about 2000 members all around the world, who pay at least 10% of their gross income every month, plus many extra donation.

This link provides a lot of backround information
[wordpress.com]
[animamrecro.wordpress.com]

It is a blog with a few thousand posts of Ex-member and members of this organisation

Robert Burton, before he established his "Fellowship of Friends" cult, was a member of Alex Horn and Anne Horn's (now Anne Haas) Gurdjieff cult during its inception circa 1965.

Alex ousted Burton when he learned of his homosexuality.

www.davearcher.com/alex.html

The wonderful Dave Archer strikes again:

[www.youtube.com]

I have a slightly different story to tell about the Sharon Gans/Alex Horn experience in San Francisco around 1973. Apparently I was spotted early as no joiner, and maybe even a potential troublemaker, so while I worked on three shows with them, they didn't try to get me seriously involved after the first few months.

I ran into one of their ticket sellers, who just kept following me down the street. In those days I was impoverished (that may be one reason why they didn't try too hard to get me into their web--I didn't have anything to offer them financially), and finally the guy just thrust one of the tickets at me. I had mentioned that I was a theater major and had heard about the show and would be interested in seeing it, but the tickets were ridiculously priced. I found out later that he paid for the ticket himself, and that he got into trouble over it when I inadvertently mentioned ti to another member.

But I saw the awful play (Fantastic Arising of Padraic Clancy Muldoon), and was asked to stay behind and talk to Alex and Sharon after the show. She didn't come out, but Alex joined me and asked me about my theater experience. I had heard that they were going to be casting a Tennessee Williams play and expressed an interest in auditioning. Alex then asked me if I was a quick study. Turns out that a member of the cast wanted to leave and he wouldn't let her until she could be replaced. I took the role because he promised me that I coudl play the part I wanted in Camino Real.

Later I worked on the show "Danton's Death" and by that time I was all too aware that something was seriously wrong with the whole shebang. The guy who had given me the ticket tried a couple of times to get me to stay after shows for meetings, but I've always valued my sleep, and I just was not interested in hanging around what looked like a really depressed group of people. Not all of them. Some obviously were in positions of power, and they seemed always to be in a snit about something, chastising various members. Some of the members were on the edge of tears a lot of the time. I can't believe that it took me so long to realize that something nasty was happening.

I remember a couple who had been married and had a baby, but I only saw her a few times when she would show up backstage. She carried her little one in one of those soft baby-carrying baskets, and he would refuse to look at or talk to her. But she still came around, and he would just look across the room at them. Now I suspect that this was the only way he was able to see his baby, so he went along with it. I heard that she had been told not to get pregnant, so when she did she was thrown out of the group, and her husband was berated for being such a weakling.

I don't really think I escaped a life of slavery, because I essentially got what I wanted, egotistical as that sounds, and egotistical as I know it was. But I have thought about that group ever since my brother sent me a copy of the article that was in the Examiner (Maybe it was the Chron) about the scandal and that Sharon and Alex had skipped town.

For some reason the subject of these people keeps coming up, and I wonder how they keep crapping all over people and still getting away with it. Can anything actually be done to stop them?

Members can sue them and / or their organization. Perhaps it is in the works!

I would love to hear that these people are put out of business. They are the precise definition of the word "toxic."

After I posted my earlier comments, I suddenly recalled another adventure connected with "Everyman Theater." Someone got the idea that we should try dinner theater, though the meal would be enjoyed at a tiny "restaurant" next door rather than in the actual theater. Every night that dinner was served, there was just one meal on the menu. It could be lasagna with salad, garlic bread, dessert and wine one night, and chicken marsala with all the goodies another night. I volunteered in the restaurant for several nights (I think everyone had to serve a term at it, but I truly love cooking for groups even now), and then after dinner we would rush the cleanup and go do the show. It might have been for Danton's Death that we did that.

Don't get me wrong--I'm not reminiscing here. I just see all of the above and my earlier comments as a monumental head-in-the-sand time for me. However, the reason why my brother sent me the article on Sharon and Alex flying the coop was because one day we were talking and the subject came up of our theater experiences. I started telling him and his wife about Sharon and Alex, and while I was talking, little by little I began to recognize all of that for what it was. In fact, my astute brother began the process by suggesting that it sounded like a cult to him, and the more we talked, and the more I remembered, the clearer it became. It was an "Oh, my God!" experience I won't soon foirget. How can we be so dense?

In support of the squeamish feeling I had that caused me to leave, one day about a year later I got a call from the ticket-seller guy who started it all for me. He had been thrown out of the group, apparently, possibly because he had run out of money, from the sound of it, and was hoping I could take him in temporarily, until he could get himself straightened out. That was one time I knew for sure the answer had to be no. It felt like a trap, and to this day I think that if I had gone along with it, I might have found myself in a situation I couldn't dig my way out of. I saw him just before I moved to LA in 1974, and he looked as though his situation had deteriorated even further.

I sincerely believe that what goes around comes around. If I didn't believe that I'm not sure I could live through some of the things I've managed to survive. So, all things being equal, I hope that someone out there--or even a class action group--can make these people stop what they are doing and have done to what surely must be thousands of people over the years.

The following information may interest someone: David Daniels (http://www.thegatesofparadise.com/), who knew very little about Gurdjieff, Shah or Ouspensky, and very much about cultish manipulation, took over Alex Horn's New York group in the 1960's, when Horn was forced to leave town. Around 1970, Daniel's was himself forced by his group to leave NYC and set up cult near Harvard and Lesley Colleges in Cambridge MA. Horn visited Daniels in Cambridge. Daniels fled Cambridge in 1980 for Berkeley, thus imitating Horn again. Alex Horn's story is not complete without full investigation of David Daniels.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/10/2017 08:26PM by rrmoderator.

Yes, they keep coming around like a bad penny.
Can anything be done to stop them?
The website www.esotericfreedom.com has lots of valuable information. It has the truth (or at least SOME of the truth) of what they are doing. (Some things you just can't post such as who is married to who and who gave up their child to which other member of the group...)
The website has been under sustained attack by Sharon, Alex and Robert.
There are ways to beat them at their game.
As always, the question is - if they are not doing anything wrong then why don't they answer questions and tell the truth? Why don't they have a class and say "OK- Ask whatever you want. We have nothing to hide."
People who have something to hide don't go out and hire the lead attorney for Scientology to send keep sending letters to shut down a web site.

Alex Horn did not leave San Francisco until 1978. It wasn't the 1960s. David Daniels may have affected Horn's group in San Francisco in the 1960s; perhaps he even "stole" some of Horn's followers. But he couldn't have taken over the whole group until 1978 or afterward.

You must have mis-read the post.

Daniels took over Horn's group in NYC in the late 1960's when Horn abruptly left town. With irate group members threatening him, he left NYC himself, approximately 1970 for Cambridge, MA.

With two lawsuits against him, he followed Horn's footsteps to Berkeley in 1980, accompanied by approximately 50 followers, just after Horn left Oakland to escape impending indictment.

There was no assertion that Daniels absorbed members of Horn's group in the Bay Area, although you could try to follow up on that likelihood.