Introduction to A Spiritual Psychology by Anthony Blake

Introduction to A Spiritual Psychology

Anthony Blake

Bennett Books 1999 www.bennettbooks.org

" Integrate Without Rejection"

     I was privileged to participate in the seminar in 1964 from which this book was made. It was the first Summer School I attended at Coombe Springs, the headquarters of John Bennett's Institute and the center of his work. I was a young man and found it all remarkable. Mr. Bennett would give an introductory talk in the morning on the theme of the day. We would then do practical work, movements (the dances created by Gurdjieff) and the latihan (the exercise transmitted from Pak Subuh) and gather together at the end of the day to share our thoughts and observations and to listen to Mr. Bennett's comments and ideas. It gave us the sense of participating in a revelation.

     Bennett gave us the sense of inquiring into reality itself. His spirit took root in many of us and inspired us in later years, as we grew in confidence, to seek ever new landscapes of meaning and participate in new revelations. It would be hard to pin down what "Bennett's work" means today, because it is alive in a rich variety of individuals rather than in any institution.

     The range of experience and knowledge which John Bennett encompassed was formidable. Born in 1897, he was wounded in the First World War and had his first visions of a reality beyond "this world". He had a checkered career in military intelligence and later in life took up industrial research before devoting himself full-time to establishing "conditions for work". He knew several languages and made contributions to mathematical physics. After meeting the extraordinary spiritual teacher Gurdjieff in Turkey, he took him as his central guide but always remained open to other ways. He came to find guidance from Sufism in the tradition of the Khwajagan, the "masters of wisdom" of Central Asia and in the method of Subud, arising in Indonesia through Pak Subuh. He also had strong relations with the way of Absolute Liberation-Itlak Yolu-taught by Hasan Shushud and with the "new wave" of Naqshbandi Sufism associated with Idries Shah. In Christianity, he found guidance in the Rule of St Benedict and, eventually, adopted Catholicism. In Buddhism, he practiced the way of meditation taught by the venerable Cambodian monk-known in brief as "Bhante" (still alive today at the age of 107). In Hinduism, he found the practical teachings of the Shivapuri Baba (another "Methuselah" who died at the age of 137). He was familiar with the work of Krishnamurti, the Maherishi Mahesh Yogi and with Rudolf Steiner and Alice Bailey. Throughout his life, he sought after a truly "harmonious development" of the whole human being and followed the dictum of Gurdjieff: "Take the wisdom of the East and the knowledge of the West and then search".

     As his son Benedict recently reminded me, Bennett's experience with running a research organization very much influenced his approach to the guidance of others in spiritual search. His "management style" was one in which individual creativity was allowed a great deal of scope. His contribution was to provide an overall framework in which a variety of contributions could find their place. The attitude he had to research prevailed later on. First of all, in operating in terms of research at all. This is not usual in the realm of spirituality, where fixed authority systems prevail. Secondly, he allowed for diversity. Countless numbers of people sought his advice who were by no means "followers" but were following other traditions or methods. It is for these reasons that we find today Bennett's strongest influence mostly evidenced by diverse individuals who are making original contributions of their own.

     He was also, as we suggested, concerned with "framework". His master work The Dramatic Universe, which he worked on for at least twenty years, aims to provide a set of "working hypotheses" concerning the very fabric of reality. I was privileged to assist him in the writing of the last two volumes and witnessed his continuing creativity and willingness to think it all through again and again.

     However, his first books-Crisis in Human Affairs and What are We Living For?-were concerned with addressing the perceived vacuum in values in contemporary society. He attempted to make a spiritual view of reality rational and accessible. It must be remembered that he lived most of his life in a time period of radical transitions-the extensive world wars, the rise of technology, the emergence of entirely democratic societies, explosions of creativity in the arts and sciences and the breaking down of institutional authority systems, including those of the churches. The old world was gone but nobody seemed to know what to do about a new one. Many harked back to the "good old days" and wanted to restore things as they were in ancient times. Others were caught up in the global tendencies driven by economics and technology. Bennett strove to connect past and future. Being a product of his times, he saw the reconciliation of science and religion as a major and urgent task. It was perhaps for these reasons that he adopted the principle of integration without rejection.

     The principle is not obvious. We remain still in a world dominated by countless numbers of attempts to establish the "core" reality-the underlying or most true knowledge. Such attempts clash and vie with each other everywhere. Each wants to be an old-type authority system and impose itself on all the others. All the "old" knowledge systems have been concerned with the need to establish control over people's minds, and this need is an integral part of the way they are constructed. It still prevails today, in spite of the growing experience of the unreliability and incompetence of all authorities and "experts." Gurdjieff warned of this long ago when, for example, he would quote his father's saying: "If you want to lose your faith-go to the priest".

     To "integrate without rejection" does not mean just to accept everything. The task of integration remains a process of discovery. For Bennett, this integration was not a matter of putting bits and pieces together-as it were "from the outside"-but realizing them together on the inside. He himself undertook such an integration, and it led him into endless trouble. At first, his attempt at integration took the relatively external form of producing a "systematization" of what he had primarily obtained from Gurdjieff. In the 1940s he was convinced that Gurdjieff's ideas could be integrated with modern science-through his innovation of a six-dimensional framework science-and first persuade the intellectuals and then the general public. In this time period, he attempted to set up a "refuge" from the chaos of Europe in South Africa, only to be put straight by the great statesman, Jan Smuts. From then on, his quest led him into a more interior way which he would first practice in himself and then share with others. He founded his Institute for the Comparative Study of History, Philosophy and the Sciences to investigate "factors affecting the progress and retrogression of individuals, groups and societies".

     As he searched so others would follow. At every juncture, some would continue to follow while others left and yet others joined. In contrast with many other Gurdjieff exponents, he attracted people of diverse backgrounds and temperaments (or "types'). Still, during the early period of the 1950s, he was renowned for his strictness and even harshness in advocating "struggle with oneself". But he came to admit that what he was doing did not work. He had been taught by Gurdjieff to work on himself and acquire his own "I" but found no evidence of such a reality in himself. In time, he would move away from the idea of some central authority figure or master as "I" towards new ideas of wholeness.

     Subud came in 1957 and Bennett became central in propagating it throughout the world (Concerning Subud, Hodder and Stoughton, 1958). The impact of this was formidable. The practice in Subud of the latihan was one of surrender and not of effort. It must be remembered, however, that other Gurdjieff teachers had also come to adopt alternative eastern teachings. Kenneth Walker had turned to Vedanta and Dr. Rolles to Transcendental Meditation (and it is still common to find followers of Gurdjieff's ideas eventually turning to eastern teachings and methods). But, for Bennett, Subud was a revelation. Putting aside all his Gurdjieffian practices, he devoted himself full-time to assimilating what this new way could give. In four years, however, he came to see that the practice of Subud led to many unfortunate side-effects and was in itself incomplete. He came to see that what was needed was a combination of both active (for example, Gurdjieffian) and receptive (for example, Subud) methods. Only such a combination could address the whole being. However, nobody appeared to know how to integrate these two sides of our nature.

     It was at this time that religion began to be crucially important for him. Through Subud, he made a contact with the Benedictine monastery of St Wandrille (renowned for its Gregorian chant) and became a convert to Catholicism. He distinguished the spiritual but still natural action of Subud from the supernatural action which was the object of faith. If spiritual practices such as that of Subud addressed the "inner being" then the supernatural addressed the "will". There were then three aspects of every human: the functional or material; the being, which inwardly was the spiritual, and the will in which the supernatural could have effect. As Steiner did, he saw the Christ as manifestation of the Holy Reconciling Force being neither active nor passive. In this, he felt he was following Gurdjieff's deepest intuitions. It is generally recognized that one of Bennett's most revolutionary ideas was to consider God as will and not as a being. In one stroke, he could claim God as real and also that God did not exist.

     There remained quite another big question, which concerned the historical process of influencing human evolution. Throughout his life, Bennett remained convinced that the intervention of higher powers into human affairs was a reality. He felt that, without a connection with this intervention, we could not find our way. In the mid 60's-after the seminar at Coombe Springs which resulted in this book-he spoke very much about the necessity for "communication with higher intelligence', resurrecting in a new form Gurdjieff's contentions about "higher influences" and his assertions about the operations of various "brotherhoods" throughout history. Such concerns led him into contact with Idries Shah, a traumatic time which coincided with him coming near to death, and out of which he emerged with the confidence that he had his own contact with the higher powers. His last act was to conduct a remarkable experiment with "courses in accelerated transformation" that scandalized just about everybody; but he admitted in conversation (for example, with myself) that his real task was to find a new way of worship. He would simply say: "There are supernatural energies that work and we must connect with these". He attempted to create a new sacred image of unconditioned Nature that would appeal to the modern generation but found no way of establishing this beyond an idea. Hence, his search for the way of the truly supernatural was not to be realized for others.

     The present book, then, represents an interim phase of his search. It was produced at a time when he was occupied with the practical problems of what he called "psychokinetic" people-that is, those who are undergoing change or movement in themselves through an interaction between their material and spiritual natures. Such people were to be distinguished from the "psychostatic"-those who were established in life but only in touch with their spiritual nature unconsciously-and the "psychoteleios" or "realized" people who had integrated their two natures and were engaged in supernatural action. He strongly felt for the troubles of psychokinetic people who were "caught between two stools"-the material and the spiritual-and who were experiencing the pain of this contradiction in themselves. He saw that there was no adequate guidance for such people. What was being offered in the form of various teachings and gurus, etc. did not serve. All such offerings failed to supply adequate intelligence to the individual process. They were too caught up in propagating their own system and none of them appeared capable of developing counselors able to offer real help. Bennett had seen this to be the case in both the Gurdjieff work and in Subud.

     What is offered in A Spiritual Psychology is a framework in which to locate what might be happening to people on the quest. Here we must address the question of psychotherapy. Bennett himself had little direct experience of this field, though he was more than interested in the work of Carl Jung, for example. The field itself is a rapidly changing one and has been concerned, especially of late, with the question of spirituality. In Bennett's time, however, this was still far away. Hence, Bennett's conclusion that by and large psychotherapy could only address the material nature of a human being. It is still a common thing to find people associated with such as the Gurdjieff work saying: "first sort yourself out-get some psychotherapy-and then get on with transformation". Unfortunately, this is not realistic. In the psychokinetic human both the material and the spiritual natures are involved, willy-nilly. What comes into effect in the one affects what might come into effect in the other.

     There is another important aspect to the role of psychotherapy. This concerns the modalities adopted for helping people. Included in this sphere is the fact that the psychotherapist does not necessarily claim that he or she is at a higher level than their client. This is in contrast with Bennett's own position. Over the course of his life he talked individually with thousands of people about their problems and became wise in this. Yet it would be, for the most part, from the position of someone further on in the process and, therefore, seeing more. It is just not possible, in practice, for us to rely on the availability of such a person. It may not even be entirely desirable, either. As people often felt with Krishnamurti, for example: "It is all very well for him to tell us to get on with realization but he is not starting from where we are." In a more extreme situation, we may have a "saint" or psychoteleios person giving "darshan" and conveying an inner energy, but this does not seem to enable people to understand what is going on in them.

     In psychotherapy, there are "rules of engagement"-a neutral framework for the interaction-that enables the two sides to co-operate together on the process. In an interview with Bennett, one was conscious of being with someone "on a higher level of being". Part of this may have been the result of unconscious assumptions that they were making, but the result was that the "rules" were simply his by default. Possibly, Bennett was conscious of this. There is little doubt that he not only tried very hard not to impose his authority on others, but also tried to avoid conducting himself like a "being on a higher level': he did not try to cover up his own faults, or make himself appear special. Nevertheless, his history determined that the "line of authority" would prevail. Gurdjieff himself predicated the construction of "work groups" on the presence of a "teacher" who would be the absolute authority for the group. And this has led to very unfortunate consequences, including the rise of cults dependent on a charismatic personality.

     It has only been since the 1950s and much more recently that new ideas on the working of groups have arisen. The question now being addressed is precisely how can people come together to co-operate in finding their way-without authority being invested in one person? This has a strong bearing on the present book. Bennett shows us a model of the combination of our spiritual and material natures-but only for the individual. In practice, our search and experience and practices take place within a "community of selves" and not in isolation. The collective situations in which we find ourselves can largely determine what it is possible for us to realize. We have to address how we are together if we are to make headway in our quest. This means that we have to address how we can communicate on the more subtle levels of experience. Strangely, this has never appeared as a prominent feature of the methods used in spiritually-oriented groups. For this reason, such groups have tended to revert back to old models of authority-based guidance.

     If we introduce A Spiritual Psychology simply as part of a "work in progress" and not as any final or complete solution it is to celebrate it as such. Bennett was extraordinary in his openness and candor about his own place in the spiritual process. He would smiling agree that he might be seen as a "holy man" but would point out that even such do "make mistakes". It is in this sense that his spirit is still with us now. He gave us an opportunity to appreciate the human complexity of the search and gave us the confidence that even "ordinary" people such as ourselves could play a significant role, each in our own way. In doing so, he connected us with the prospect of a "western way', a way born out of the traumatic and complex experience of a world subject to rapid change but inspired by ideas of human equality and co-operation in the place of hierarchy and authority. As we witness the troubled world today, we see the viscous resurgence of fundamentalism and ethnic hatred and need to learn to treasure the virtues of what Karl Popper called the "Open Society': a society in which people could question what was going on and seek to discover the humanity in which we share by existing on the same planet together.

     Readers will find most of this book devoted to an exposition of the "material" side of our nature and relatively little on the truly "spiritual" side. In a way, this relative silence is apposite. The spiritual is in principle "beyond reason". In another way, it is a legacy of the Gurdjieff days in which talk of "higher things" was frowned on. It was not until the advent of Subud that Bennett could be heard talking about God!

     Even more elusively, the aspect of the supernatural and of the will is tantalizingly brief. The cry of Jesus on the Cross: "Forgive them for they know not what they do" has a revelatory poignancy because this is our very condition. Our natural powers of experience are a veil. But I vividly remember asking Bennett a question about the basis of our true equality-which came to me during the seminar as the most important question possible. I had thought of it in terms of the "true self" of his scheme. He answered that our equality was entirely in the will. This answer has inspired me since. His "will" was a far cry from our ordinary conceptions of "will-power". It was of the essence of the "reconciling force" of Gurdjieff's teaching, which was the "very representative of His Endlessness". It neither affirmed nor denied. In this, Bennett's vision of Christ as the Cosmic Individuality became something immediate and concrete. What first appeared to be infinitely far away turned out to be at work everywhere.

     This is the underlying message of hope which is encapsulated in this book. We ascend towards the center of our being through purification and realize it through purgation. What we find there is just what we have in common with all human beings. Some of us are called upon to undergo a sometimes "heroic" struggle of suffering and search but this is not superior to any other kind of life. What we might celebrate in Bennett's honesty and breadth of vision is the opening of a door to this realization.

     Our final remarks must be about the central theme of guidance. In his introductory chapter to the 1974 edition of the book (which is the one we are reproducing here) he looks at four ways of influence and guidance. The first is that of a brief but direct transmission from a more realized person to a lesser one. The second is by attachment to a tradition which conveys a "baraka" which has an effect of its own. The third is conducted by a teacher who-if it is rightly done-takes on a very few pupils and is able to give them exclusive attention. The fourth he proposed was that of the "fourth way', a way based on service to humankind, that was for him the way given by Gurdjieff. In the fourth way, there has to be a "school" under the direction of someone who understands what is to be done. What has to be done depends on time, place and circumstances and no "fourth way school" is permanent.

     He himself undertook a fourth way task in setting up the International Academy for Continuous Education. An important aspect of this school was to attempt to solve the "numbers problem"- in which we have relatively few people who really see and a need for many others who can participate intelligently in this vision. In contrast with the practice of typical "Gurdjieff groups" who continue to meet over decades, he aimed to achieve this in just ten months. Needless to say, he scandalized the orthodox yet again.

     Alan Roth has recently written an account of what it was like to be a student at the Academy: Sherborne: An Experiment in Transformation (Bennett Books, 1999). I myself was both student and "teacher"-becoming heavily involved in running the courses after Bennett's untimely death in 1974. I was able to see how much was being accomplished by compression within a short time-frame-such as could not be accomplished over a more extended period. It was, in this sense, a piece of applied research. About a hundred people a year went through the course for five years.

     Bennett intended to take the experiment further by creating a "psychokinetic community" (a property was purchased in the USA and an organization set in motion just before he died). The reason for this was to provide an effective social structure in which guidance could be incorporated. In his view, there would have to be a representative of the "realized" class of humanity, an initiate, as an integral part of the structure. There would also have to be counselors capable of giving impartial advice. It was clear to some that the Sherborne experience was incomplete precisely because its "graduates" still did not know what they were doing.

     We can understand what was at stake in terms of Bennett's own contention that we had to take into account the significance of what he called the "realized" or psychoteleios class of humanity. To really take this into account meant that we had to have a social organization in which there was an active interface between those who searched and those who had found. Just as psychokinetic people often find themselves at variance with psychostatic humanity (with all its attendant dangers of elitism) so can such people find themselves unable to connect with those who see. An important aspect of this problem is that the psychokinetic person may be unable to perceive who it is that sees. Yet a further quandary is that people who have some kind of "enlightenment" may be still fixated in a partial view of reality and even more strongly than before, because of the sheer impact of the higher energies. Bennett was always pointing this out. He was highly shocked to encounter on more than one occasion "saints" who remained full of prejudice.

     His experiment in psychokinetic society might well have been the dawn of a new era in spiritual research. It had long been his heart-felt desire to have such a thing. It was an ultimate dream of "integration without rejection', covering the whole of human possibility.

     However, we must return to an earlier theme of "higher intelligence". In the introductory chapter we reprint here, Bennett affirms the view that there really is a class of beings that take on this role in relation to humanity, for whom he used the term Demiurges (that is, "workers" and not merely angels or messengers). Strangely, he says that these are the same as Gurdjieff's "sacred individuals"-strangely, because in Gurdjieff's scheme, there is indeed a class of superior beings responsible for world maintenance that he calls "angels" or "archangels" but these are clearly distinguished from the true "scared individuals" who are concerned with individuality. We are left with an awful ambiguity. In various traditions, a careful distinction is made between the creative powers which inform the evolution of life and the "compassionate powers" which watch over the care of souls. Inherently struggling with this dichotomy, Bennett focused-as we mentioned earlier-on the possible formation of a new sacred image of unconditioned Nature. This led him into embracing ideas of ecology, alternative technology and so on and almost to the adoption of "green politics". In the contemporary world, the picture is far more complex. Ideas of ecological balance and self-sufficiency have come under heavy criticism because of their limited understanding.

    To undertake a "conscious service of life on earth" is now seen to require a vast investment in research into what the biosphere really is-which at present we barely know. Significantly, some people who became deeply influenced by Bennett's ideas came to make such an investment and their contribution to this new science is foremost in the world. No doubt, if Bennett was still alive, he would have become heavily involved in the project himself! As it was, he remained locked into the assumptions of his time.

     The question of guidance, then, is not only an issue of the "care of souls". It involves knowing what to do. If the Fourth Way is predicated on being engaged in a task to serve humanity, then this includes service to the planet, to Great Nature. To fulfill such a service, we are required to understand what we are about. In contrast, the main outcome of the Sherborne experiment was to focus people's attention on "personal salvation"-as has been the case with nearly all of Gurdjieffian followings. When E. O. Wilson wrote of "biophilia"-the love of life-as being necessary for a right understanding, no doubt Bennett would have approved. He struggled to convey to people that, not only did we have to integrate the different "classes" of human society but that this society needed to be integrated with the greater whole of all life on earth.

     Whether considered as a success or a failure, the Sherborne experiment was just that: an experiment in a very western and practical sense. In fact, there is no such thing as a failed experiment; and Bennett himself described as spiritual what was beyond the scope of either failure or success. What it certainly did was to throw into question nearly all traditional modes of providing guidance to people on the spiritual search. We must remember that Gurdjieff himself said that his attempts to transmit what he understood to people through personal contact failed, and that this was the reason why he fell back onto writing. This raises the whole specter of humankind's problematic relation with the higher powers. Many of us may feel the reality of such powers and even suppose that we are vouchsafed glimpses of them, but the reality remains that they are "beyond consciousness" (whether within us or outside us) and we just do not know for sure. The higher powers are necessarily relevant just because of this. The guidance that we seek is from a "present moment" that is not restricted by the kind of psycho- organic existence that we have.

     Bennett's contention is that we are involved in a handing over of responsibility for the planet from the higher intelligence to ourselves. We have to "grow up". It may well be that the apparent absence of the higher powers from our experience is a feature of this transition. If we are to take on this role of responsibility then we have to realize the higher intelligence in ourselves. This also has a bearing on the role of "realized beings". We have to realize that such enlightened men and women cannot give us the answers that we must create for ourselves. What we can receive from them is something that works deeply in our unconscious. We must, therefore, be prepared to operate in terms of our irreducible ignorance. What we can bring into consciousness can only serve for the moment.

     What I believe Bennett gave us was an example of bringing people together in their search so that something could be created in them and by them. The reality of the teachings and methods and tasks is in us. The role of Bennett at Sherborne and in other places in earlier times was to enable powerful concentrations of humanity to come into effect. He set up places of meeting. In this, he was a prophet of the new age which will no longer require certainty but which will be capable of operating in the confidence that what is needed will be revealed when it is needed-but only for the next step.

Anthony Blake, 1999 United Kingdom (c) Bennett Books www.bennettbooks.org