
Publisher’s Note
The two series of talks and discussions presented here were recorded at Denison House, a rented auditorium located in Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, near Victoria Station and long-since demolished. Little more than six years since the end of the Second World War, Great Britain was still subject to food rationing; most attendees arrived by bus or underground, and the hall was draughty with hard wooden seating; London was notoriously smog-bound in the Winter of 1950-51, but even so there was an energetic attendance. The talks were open to all comers and were well attended by audiences of up to three hundred people. A small admission fee was charged. All attendees were invited to visit Coombe Springs, Kingston-upon-Thames in the South-Western suburbs of London, where there was a community of residents, and regular groups meetings, work days and Summer intensives.
Recording of the talks was made by a team of short-hand typists, highly skilled and rigorously trained to write down normal speech verbatim and subsequently transcribe all on manual typewriters. These were exclusively women and their names are not recorded anywhere, but three at least are known to have worked on these talks. Some of the questioners were known to the scribes and are identified by their full names, others by their initials, still more unidentified, except sometimes with an indicator as to the gender of the questioner. Some questioners, which includes his own sister were known to Mr. Bennett, while others were newcomers.
The first series of talks presented here date from September 1950, ten months after the death of G.I. Gurdjieff, whose work and teaching provides the underlying theme. Audience members were encouraged to read Gurdjieff’s “BEELZEBUB’S TALES TO HIS GRANDSON” and terms and words taken from the text are marked with bold type. It should be noted that references to All and Everything referred exclusively to Beelzebub’s Tales, since the books that form the second a third series of All and Everything were not published until some years later. P.D. Ouspensky’s book “IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS” had recently been published and this is referred to equally by its subtitle “Fragments of an Unknown Teaching” shortened simply to “Fragments”.
Initially occurring monthly, the talks were later scheduled fortnightly and finally weekly. After an hiatus of three years, the second series of talks begins in the Summer of 1954, and it is known that between the two series, Bennett had made two trips to the Middle East, the first being of four month’s duration and unaccompanied, the second of two weeks duration accompanied by Elizabeth Mayall.
At the time these talks were happening, Gurdjieff’s name was almost entirely unknown and had not appeared anywhere in print except in Bennett’s two books, “THE CRISIS IN HUMAN AFFAIRS” (1947) and “WHAT ARE WE LIVING FOR?” (1949). These and the lecture series “Gurdjieff: The Making of a New World” – later published as “IS THERE ‘LIFE’ ON EARTH?” – were the first public lectures given after Gurdjieff’s death.
We are grateful to Greg Stott, who prepared the transcripts of the talks for print. JGBF
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Denison House Talks, Questions and Answers 1950-1, 1954
J.G. Bennett
The Collected Works of JG Bennett, Volume 44