Welcome to a series of podcasts based upon the teachings of Russell A. Smith, a man who discovered an objective and accelerated way to attaining personal unity, and awakening higher consciousness, the seats of conscience, pure reason and impartiality. Russell’s work expands upon the Fourth Way teachings of George I. Gurdjieff, and deciphers much of what Gurdjieff left behind. 

In this series, we bring you powerful excerpts from Russell’s classes. This episode explores the unique role of grandparents in passing down spiritual wisdom and higher values, enriching the practical knowledge parents provide and bridging generations with lasting cultural and spiritual continuity.

INTRODUCTION

Grandparents, having completed their life work and accumulated wisdom, traditionally serve as sources of spiritual and esoteric knowledge for their grandchildren, passing down values and higher ideals that parents, who are often more engaged with the demands of daily life, may not have the time to impart. In the example of the little American Indian boy raised by his grandparents while his parents hunt and gather, it is the grandparents who instill in him the importance of connecting with nature and seeking spiritual understanding, preparing him for future stages of life. As the boy reaches maturity, this grounding in higher ideas gradually influences his view of life, guiding him beyond mere survival or success and encouraging deeper reflection on existence and purpose. 

While direct practical knowledge—like how to hunt or build—is traditionally given by parents, grandparents are viewed as uniquely suited to pass on the "higher order" wisdom, often through subtle, memorable moments that resonate later in life. This model also speaks to the importance of family hierarchies, where generational roles contribute distinct teachings, each level reinforcing different life aspects and collectively helping to preserve cultural and spiritual continuity. Just as grandparents provide this guiding influence, one could compare their role to "assisting octaves,” where certain elements support and elevate growth in broader creative or spiritual processes.

We begin with a question asking how we might be of best help to our grandchildren in giving them a magnetic center.

The original model is in the older days it was the grandparents that raised the kids because mom and dad are out engaged in life. I tell the story of the little American Indian boy who grows up in the teepees, and it's the grandparents that are in the teepees. Mom and dad aren't there. They're out hunting buffalo or picking berries or doing what they do. So, most of the awake moments of the day when they're sunlight, dad's out hunting and Mom's out gathering.

And the grandparents then are the influence on the important ideas of life. The wisdom of life comes from the grandparents. And when the little American Indian runs up to his grandfather and says guess what granddaddy? When daddy comes home tonight, he's going to show me how to make a bow. And grandfather says, “Oh that's wonderful little one, but you know life really isn't about making bows. Look at the spirit of the mountain and the spirit of the eagle and think about the ancestors and smell the earth.”

“Oh, that’s really nice grandfather, but guess what? I get to make a bow when daddy comes home.” So yeah, the dad's going to teach all the kids the skills because kids want to emulate their father. They want to be like their dad. If their dad was a tent maker then the kid hangs out when he was making his tents and learns and learns those skills from his father. And that's where the skills in life come from, from the parents.

And so, the little American Indian boy gets all this data from his mom and dad. But he's raised by his grandparents because mom and dad are out working. So, the wisdom of life, the great ideas, the important things that are developing the man's being are conveyed to this little kid, this little American Indian boy from his grandpa. And you know year after year as the kids grow enough he keeps telling this granddad how dad said he was going to show him how to ride a pony this week or do this with him this week. Grandpa says “Wonderful that's so exciting but you know look at the spirit of the mountain. Smell the earth. See the spirit of the bear and the eagle.” And these higher ideas are imparted to this kid. Now, at some moment the kid has to grow up and leave the influence of his parent.

For those who went to the book and learned about oscillations at some moment he leaves home he gets into the gap. He's no longer able to be protected and raised and taken care of by his parents, fed and clothed and sheltered. He has to actually become a brave, a contributing member of the tribe. And we'll say that our little kid reaches that gap and doesn't know what he wants to do. For you and me it means we're off to college and we leave the oscillation of our parent. Those that haven’t been through my book won't understand this but those who have will see the gap, but the model still is the kid has to develop himself. He has to come to the model for himself and he decides he's going to be a hunter. And so now every day he's up early and off into the woods chasing down a deer, running him until he's so tired he can't run any farther.

Finally, he's able to get close enough to kill him, stab him, catch him and bring him home over his shoulders and throw him down by the fire in front of the tribe. “Look at me, there's my great contribution.”

Now to those who understand the structure he'll do that for 13 years of his life. And then he reaches midlife and it's at midlife that the real influence of his grandfather is supposed to enter. But usually by then grandpa's dead by the time the kid's about 40 usually. But, yet he's out hunting one day, and he starts to think, “Is this all life is? All life is a hunting. That's it? I can look forward to look behind me at all the years I've been a hunter and now look forward to nothing more than hunting?”

“I'm a good hunter. I'm one of the best hunters that has ever been. I've memorized all the trails, I know where all the deer go and the things that I'm hunting and I don't have to spend as much time hunting. But is this it? There's nothing more to this than this life than just being a hunter?”

And who knows, at that moment maybe an eagle flies over and screeches. And this Indian looks up at the sky and wonders why the eagle flew over that moment and screeched. And then he remembers what his grandfather told him when he was a little emerging child about the spirit of the eagle. And he contemplates it. Is there such a thing? He takes a moment and looks over at the mountain in the distance and thinks about the higher things in life. The things more than just making a living that consumed his father when he was a kid and are now consuming him. And since nobody's looking, he looks down and scoops up a handful of earth and smells the earth. And so now this influence of his grandfather starts to enter and carry him from midlife to where he becomes both. He becomes the great hunter and also out while he's hunting, he remembers these ideals of his grandfather. I won't go more in that scenario because that's for those who got into chapter seven and gaps and oscillations.

But the idea of the grandfather is the guy that's supposed to pervade the wisdom to the grandchildren. Because the parents are too engaged with life and staying alive and paying their bills, but the grandparents can care for their grandchildren, teach them wisdom, teach them the higher ideals of life, teach them the spiritual quest that they're supposed to be on, and tell them about the spirit of the mountain and the spirit of the eagle and smelling the earth. When mommy and dad are just so busy, they don't get a chance to do those things.

So, we're the wisdom givers. We're supposed to give our wisdom. When I go down and visit my grandkids, they listen to me like you never saw. If I say something, it's like God spoke to them. I know they’ve got parents, and they get information from their parents all the time, but I'll be down there one day and I'll say to my grandson when he's six or seven or eight, and he's with his sister, and they're around the house and they asked mom for something, and I said, “Oh, no, no, you never asked that way. You always say, can I have a cup of milk, mother, dear?” And the kids, the grandkids love that. Everything they say to them from that on is, “Will you do it for me, mother, dear?” And my son and his wife just kind of smile because the grandkids pick up that wisdom, that idea of right human beings of treating our parents with respect from the information I give them. And it's so refreshing to see them interact with each other. The sister and the brother not fight because I tell them, “You're never going to have a closer person than your sister, your brother, cherish them, love them, thank them. See what you can do to help them.”

And then they are, “Can I do anything for you? Do you need any help?” They pick up on those ideas that are, and I'm sure the parents told them things like that, but I don't know why. I don't know why when I speak those words, that they just, there's something about them that they want to believe that those are the real stuff that come to us from our grandfather.

And so, you have an obligation to impart the important wisdom to your children about the spiritual nature of life to your grandchildren, about the spiritual nature in life. So, as they grow up later on in life, when you're probably not even around anymore, those ideas will still be there in the background and they will enter their life when they start to question, “Why am I here? And is this all, it is about making children, and now my children are up and grown, and I'm a woman, and all my center of gravity has been in my kids all my life, and now is that it? That's the meaning of life, and there's nothing more for me?”

And then that child remembers the wisdom that was imparted to her by her grandmother, or that man to the wisdom that was imparted to him by his grandfather. And then they have a better chance of getting through the Harnel-Aoot, and establishing something of the spiritual quest, because hopefully by then they've done pretty well on the material quest, and now they can start entertaining higher things.

It was then asked what are some fun exercises that a grandparent can do with their grandchildren to help them develop focus and awareness, like going out pretending there are sabre-tooth tigers out there, and really listening, or walking silently.

Yeah, that's a great idea. We know from my model that the reason men fell asleep is we quit using our centers. We didn't need to, but kids love it. We're going to play the slow game. Let's see who can walk the slowest. Everybody shut your eyes, and you get to go first grandson, and we're going to see if we can hear you moving. And you're going to have to move from here into the kitchen and get that cup on the sink and bring it back to here, and without any of us hearing you. See if you can walk so carefully that no one knows. Kids love that.

When I was a kid, I loved playing freeze tag. You know, oh, I get to freeze and hold myself still. Look at me. So, I do anything that will help the kids develop their centers again that have become atrophied. Now, I didn't do this to my children because I wasn't awake then, but my grandchildren, I'm the man of wisdom, and I can see that they need the moving center, the instinctive center, and the emotional center to be developed with right values. So, let's, you know, let's smell the air. Let's taste the air. See if you can taste the air. There's a scent of a scent. I can taste it. See if you can taste that scent, and they stick their tongue out, and they try and understand what tasting the air means, and they get a sense of that, or hearing. Listen, can you hear that sound way off in the distance? It sounds like a little bird crying somewhere. Listen, and the kids stop, and they start to listen for the first time.

So, anything that will help them develop their centers, grandkids, little kids, love to do that kind of stuff. Moving center, you know, hop on one foot. Let's see how far we can go hopping on one foot. You know, let's see if we can somersault all the way across the front yard. Wow, that's cool. We can do that. And they will love to participate, and the process is, they get their centers developed. So, they'll win in the development themselves, and those things will carry them into their future. So, anything that can involve them like that, memorizing something, they get there a little bit of an intellectual center. "I'm going to say something. See if you can remember what I said. Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. What did I say?”

Now you go, “Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.” Okay, cool. You did that. You're wonderful. You're so smart. And I'm reinforcing all the wonder of developing their centers by giving them little games to play and stuff to do that involves that, and instead of just sitting down and being a good babysitter and watching them.

A question was then raised as to how parents can discourage unwanted behaviours in children, such as writing on walls and being artistic, without subjugating their will?

That's a good model.

The kids are writing on the wall, and I don't want them to. Yes, I can look at reasons. Oh, they're going to be an artist someday, and they're practicing their talent. They like to draw. And that's a wonderful thing that I have kids who are interested in drawing, but you're right. We shouldn't be drawing on the wall. Do I need to buy them some colouring books? Do I need to go out and spend a few shillings on a blackboard I can hang up with different coloured chalk, so they now have the proper tools to express their artistic things on an erasable board, that can be wrote onto again and again and again and again?

Or I guess there's actually paint that's made that's, you can paint a wall that could be written on and erased if I got the right kind of things that are erasable. So, there's methods that can be done to allow them artistic creation or give them a proper place and say, “Oh, you know, the fact that you drew on the wall, you know, that's great art, but you know, the wall isn't supposed to be drawn on that stuff doesn't come off easy.”

We got to buy paint. We got to do all kinds of things. So what we're going to do is get you see this blackboard right here? This four foot by four foot blackboard, and here's the red and the white and the blue and the yellow and the green chalk and they can all write on that blackboard. And then when you're done, there's this little thing called the eraser. Cool name eraser. You can take it and you can erase it and make it all clean again, you know, and then draw something else. And maybe get, you know, direct their attentions to some place else.

Now, if you do those things and they still keep drawing on the wall, then maybe some disciplinary result that can be discussed and say, “Okay, here's what we're going to do. The rules are we don't want you to draw on the wall. So, we need to set down consequences. If you draw on the wall again, this is the result that will happen.”  And they’re all, “I don't want that to happen.”

And they draw on the wall again and you, you apply, administer the chosen decided upon what result would be. Now, hopefully it isn't chopping off their hand so they can't draw on the wall again and you start with something a little bit more mildly like, you know, they've got to go sit in their room for ten minutes or, you know, can't go to the park or can't ride their bike or get a one whack on the butt or something. I don't want to be advocating, you know, wupping your child, but, well, I got wupped a few times, but it straightened me out a bit.

But the whole idea is rules have consequences. You know, this is the fine you pay if you speed. Okay. And if you speed, they apply that fine. And if you speed and get caught again, they take away your license. The rules and the consequences accelerate. And the more you don't follow what the rules are.

So, sometimes setting those boundaries down for a child is a good enough thing. And especially if you're enforced the boundaries, then you find the boundary that the kid doesn't like and therefore he stops the manifestation and it might be, you know, jail for a year or whatever it might be to actually get the human being to stop those undesirable manifestations that aren't deemed proper by the rest of the world.

So, you know, if they're defacing the property in town, I'm sure there's consequences if they get caught. And if they get caught again, the consequences will be more dire. So, we have to set those boundaries with our kids. We have to look for ways to redirect that on the things that aren't harmful. But initially, yeah, we say, okay, that's the nature of the kid. He's showing some initiative. He likes to draw. Ain’t that wonderful? All right. But we still want to put an end to that manifestation. And we're not just going to make the house a blank slate for him to draw on.

But you can always look for some alternative. If it was a kid drew on the wall and say, “Oh, look at that. That's wonderful. You know, you shouldn't draw on the wall. Do you know why? Because you can't take it with you. If you draw on this page, you can take it with you. You can come in and show me. You can say, ‘Look what I drew.’ And you can have that page.” And whenever you say, “Daddy, I drew something,” I always say, “Show me.” And you can't show me if it's on the wall or drawn down the street on the side of the building. So, you have to draw in this booklet etching thing so you can carry it and come show me. So, you find some alternative reason to do that to try and, you know, give them a good model.

It was asked if teachings about using the senses and staying awake could be shared with someone outside the school, such as a daughter, to help guide a granddaughter’s development?

Indeed, first of all, if you don't share these ideas and affect the life of your grandfather, of your grandchild, you would be remiss in your duties. Secondly, we all would have been in the work in the fourth way, and we were all told or read about. Don't talk about this outside the school. Why? There's no objective ways before that, so they knew if you tried to talk about it, you would be adding your own subjective way to it. You know, look at me. I know something. You don't know. Let me tell you about it. And it would just make it more convoluted. They didn't want you to do that. They wanted to stick with the truth as much as they could.

I suppose that's why in the Bible they say, if you change a word of anything in here, you'll go to hell. Because they know the best chances for trying the truth the way it was written, instead of every generation changes it, or every guy that gets his hand on it changes it a little bit by the time it gets to the end of the line. The last guy won't have any idea what was said at the beginning. So, we were told not to do that, but on the contrary, oh my God. I'd walk down the street to imitate the story about how apes in the curve rock. I'd give them everything.

The podcasts are open to the universe, or at least the people on the earth who have a computer or a headset or something, where they can click on anchor.fm and listen to it. They can go to Google search on, I'm sure, the fourth way, or go to find links to it or indications of it. So, anybody could listen to the chapter on how men fell asleep and listen to these, I think, pretty darn good ideas, of what we would do to our children to reinvigorate their various centers, and certainly share it with your daughter. And certainly, if your granddaughter is over visiting, play games. Let's play the listen to the stuff game. See if you can hear this. Okay, let me go turn it down. I'm going to move it to another room. See if you can find it. See what you can smell is in that cupboard. I put something in that cupboard. And if you can tell me what it is, I'll give it to you. But you've got to smell and try and catch the air as it comes around the sides of the door there and see if you can figure out what that is with smell. Ooh let's go for a walk. Oh, step on a crack. And you and my back will break. I want to say you break your mother's back, like we did when we were kids. Maybe you do, but you're playing a game. They're taking big steps. Their moving center has got attention. Yeah, we can develop them things in our grandchildren. And certainly, our children should pass them on to their children, because if we don't, like you said, we fought asleep because it's all just been given on a plate.

Gurdjieff said the cart was designed to ride on bumpy roads, and now all the roads are paved. So, we can intentionally do the things and have the slow zones and God play freeze tag and do things. They'll make kids use those centers again.

And yeah, we have permission to share this work with everybody. As I tell everybody who's come here, you can give any of my exercises to anybody in the world, except April Fools. That's only for people who went through the book. And so now we provide it to people who go through the book of the actual coup de grace exercise that shows them how to understand it, how to unify their centers, and damn good chance. If they follow the process, it's going to work.

Everybody, this is the bit, this is our right. You know, it's like there's a secret manual for how to make oranges. No, they're not. All trees that can make oranges make oranges. As long as they're finding good soil and have some water thrown on them once in a while, so they get the water in the other overlying trees that are blocking the sun, you know, the canopy cut down so some sun gets through. That's their right. It's in their genes. It's what they're supposed to do. Well, you know, if you have a new sapling on the street and you put it in the right condition, this is probably going to make oranges, too. Now, you put it in the wrong conditions and feed it false stuff, it’ll stop.

Oh, my God, I love that movie. I forget the name of it right now. It was about stupid people. Some guy was in the military and got some dust job down in the basement. And because he wasn’t doing anything, you know, not the big human guy, just an amateur guy, they brought him up and put him in a special program. He got into the device, and it was a time device that sent him into the future. But there was a big accident, so they didn’t bring him back. He ended up waking up hundreds and hundreds of years in the future.

Well, the movie was about how people were becoming more stupid because they were just mating as often as they could and weren’t doing the right things. The real smart people said, ‘Well, we’re not going to have children yet; we need to finish our education and stuff.’ But the so-called not-so-smart people, all they did was copulate and make children, and the world got dumber and dumber and dumber. By the time he woke up in the future, he was the smartest guy in the world. Everybody else didn’t know anything.

It was such a funny movie that they were so ignorant. I mean, they—somebody made some drink that was green and had electrolytes in it, and that’s what everybody knew. So, this is what we put on our plants. And, of course, all the plants died and all the fields because they needed water. And he said, ‘Just water them,’ and when they watered them and the plants grew, they knew he was a genius and made him president.

But it was such a fun movie that when the wrong ideas spread, it’s easy to pass those on because everybody wants to believe in any old tale. But objective ideas, if they’re studied and understood, will lead to an objective result. So, there you go.

Finally, it was asked if an analogy could be made between the way relationships like grandfather-to-grandchild work in teaching, and how it relates to assisting octaves and their roles in our creative processes?

Yeah, if you remember the story I told of the little Indian boy, remember that one? Then we can see the grandfather's influence on the granddaughter and on the grandson is given to them when they're little tykes, and he's around their life then. He's not in a big position of working. He's older and he's just sharing his wisdom and knowledge and probably gives them the spiritual ideas, or like my grandma used to say, "Oh, Ruth, let him eat it while it's fresh, make sure they have plenty of cookies." And so, we get that influence in our youth from our grandparents, which then carries us into our midlife and maybe something higher for ourselves, but the direct teaching is probably always from mother and father to their children. Those are the ones that show them how to make a bow or ride a pony, but it's the grandparents who inject the ideas of something higher because they've already made it through life. They're still engaged in trying to be a success, where the grandparents have already probably got enough of that success that they are then in the position of passing on the wisdom, apart from telling them how to be a good hunter.

So, we can find those as well, and yes, you can diagram just about all of those and see mother and father and grandfather. But again, as we go to grandparents and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, we have less and less influence on them because the way the model works is just not designed to be that way. But, you know, that doesn't mean that we wouldn't have an input in those kinds of things. I might be the one that shows my kid how to make a teepee because, you know, his father got killed in the Indian war. So, I have to step in and be the father. Somebody will step in and provide that line of training or influence that's supposed to be given, you know, from father to son or grandfather to grandson and so on.

And yes, direct teaching and knowledge are supposed to come from mother and father to their children, but the esoteric line of knowledge is given to the grandparent to convey because they've already done the success part of life. And now they're engaged more so in what's life really about? It ain't so much about just being, you know, working in a car dealership.

SUMMARY

That concludes our podcast where we explored the role of grandparents in nurturing their grandchildren's values and spiritual understanding, highlighting how the wisdom grandparents offer becomes a guiding presence in midlife when individuals start to question deeper meanings in life. We discussed how lessons of mindfulness and self-awareness can be shared through engaging activities, fostering balanced development and an enduring legacy that equips future generations for their own personal quests.

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Thank you for listening.

If you would like to learn more about Russell’s work on how to become objectively conscious, simply visit our website thedogteachings.com and acquire Russell Smith’s book, The Blueprint of Consciousness - An Accelerated Path to Awakening, which is also available as a PDF download.

There, you will also be able to listen to other talks, access transcripts of these podcasts, diagrams, animations, supporting videos, and much more.

But most importantly, you may fulfill your true potential, which is your right, and it no longer takes a lifetime to achieve.

And as a reminder, we have two ZOOM classes every Sunday to assist you; one is for purchasers of Mr. Smith’s book, and the other is for those who have additionally obtained the Master Exercises and the Double or Nothing Exercises to awaken the Higher Mental Center. See under Resources/Zoom Classes for more details.

At the thedogteachings.com. 

That’s T H E D O G  T E A C H I N G S  Dot Com.

Goodbye, until next time.