Aside from the last post on this topic, the only times we are aware of where Gurdjieff mentions Kundabuffer are as follows:
Talk in Chicago 1924
Kundabuffer at the base of the spine prevents our seeing things as they are. If we saw ourselves as we really are, we would hang ourselves. Man must desire a way with his essence—he is really afraid to ask himself if he really wants a way. He may want the way very much with his mind, but when work begins, he finds he never even thought of wanting it.
P388-389 Gurdjieff’s Early Talks 1914-1931
Talk in New York, March, 1924
In answer to a question about the moon:
The moon is man’s big enemy. We serve the moon. Last time you heard about kundabuffer. Kundabuffer is the moon’s representative on earth. We are like the moon’s sheep, which it cleans, feeds and shears, and keeps for its own purposes. But when it is hungry, it kills a lot of them. All organic life works for the moon. Passive man serves involution; and active man, evolution. You must choose. But there is a principle: in one service, you can hope for a career; in the other, you receive much but without a career. In both cases, we are slaves, for in both cases, we have a master. Inside us, we also have a moon, a sun, and so on. We are a whole system. If you know what your moon is and does, you can understand the cosmos.
P367 Gurdjieff’s Early Talks 1914-1931
The Tales
Of course, Kundabuffer is mentioned prolifically in The Tales, mainly where Gurdjieff identifies a wide variety of human activities as “the consequences of the properties of the Organ Kundabuffer.”
When we read The Tales literally, this qualification “the consequences of the properties” seems to imply:
- The organ Kundabuffer was implanted (by an Angel, Looisos) in our ancestors thousands of years ago to force them to be food for the moon.
- If this had not been done, people would simply have killed themselves rather than play that role.
- After some time, when the organ was no longer necessary, the Angel removed it.
- However, man had acquired the habit of self-calming from Kundabuffer, and it simply proceeded by momentum passing by imitation from one generation to the next.
- These are the consequences of the properties of Kundabuffer.
However, there is a different way to interpret The Tales. One such interpretation follows:
- When Beelzebub refers to our ancestors, he is not necessarily referring to our forebears but to ourselves when we are younger. So what I was when two years old is an ancestor of what I am now. The etymology of ancestor suggests that the original meaning is simply “before.”
- Kundabuffer was introjected (not implanted) “when men had tails.”
- There is no historical or archaeological record of men having tails. However, all men and women have tails in the womb. Human embryos have a tail for about four weeks, which measures about one-sixth of their size in length.
- In theory, that is when Kundabuffer was introjected into each of us.
- It was removed after just a few weeks once we established the habits it causes.
- Another detail supporting this is the identity of Looisos, which I shall not reveal here.
- Also supporting this is this: one arc of The Tales is the progress from conception through life. Atlantis is childhood, Tikliamish, Maralpleicie, and Pearl Land is the start of adulthood, and so on.
In our view, this interpretation of Kundabuffer squares better with what Gurdjieff related in his lectures (reproduced above) and in the previous posting on this topic.
Click here for the previous article on this topic.