December 13, 1974 ~ On The Death of Mr. Bennett
MEMORIAM JOHN GODOLPHIN BENNETT 8 JUNE 1897 - 13 DECEMBER 1974
MEMORIAM
JOHN GODOLPHIN BENNETT
8 JUNE 1897 - 13 DECEMBER 1974
Mr. Bennett was capable of learning from anybody about almost anything. But every certain vision he had of reality he would attribute to a Higher Intelligence. Towards the end of his life he would frequently bear witness to this Intelligence and draw those around him into this perception. He had a direct vision which was of a present action. Increasingly, he emphasized the need for people to develop finer perceptions to enter into this action wherein a man can "do". In conversations, he revealed his concern over the negative bias that had been given Gurdjieff's ideas in the presentations current in the world: Man, cannot do, he is a machine, and he constantly deceives himself, and so on. All of that was true, but it ignored Gurdjieff’s clear indications of 'higher mind', of the almost limitless potential of human beings. Because the world needs conscious people, everything that can should be done to attract people with potential and encourage them.
Mr. Bennett had the intellectual caliber of a Pascal. His books, particularly The Dramatic Universe show a genius of the highest order. Future generations will recognize the power of his ideas, especially the extraordinary and unique treatment of Will which has no parallel. This, combined with the evident depth of his inner life, presents the image of a superman; but that would distort the true and more extraordinary reality. Side by side with making revelations of the nature of reality and actions belonging to the higher worlds, he would disclose himself as a very ordinary man. He could blunder and the irritation he aroused in other people was by no means always a matter of his intentional stimulation in people of 'work on themselves'. In later years, he was most explicit that deliberate manipulation of people from outside -doing things to people -was in the long run, nearly always to the detriment of their development and interfered with the action that could come from within, or from the higher worlds. Life itself gives the conditions for work.
Intellectual giant, holy man and ordinary, blind and weak like the rest of us, Mr. Bennett exemplified the enigma of being human. His concern was freedom. He wanted no slavish followers who would become parrots of his words. He had seen many times spiritual leadership, even when based on a genuine illumination, turning into a conditioning process. Mr. Bennett often laid himself open to attack from people concerned with other ways just in order to realize for himself and others that there was no complete answer.
It was probably not until the early 1960’s that Mr. Bennett began to have the confidence that he had something genuine of his own. As he describes between the lines in Witness, his autobiography, he spent a very long period of time in making the step of freeing himself from this physical world. It was in the late 1960's that he went through the initiation in which he became free of the mind or the world of spirits. He constantly insisted, however, that there was no need to "waste time" as he had, in relatively ineffective efforts. One never knew how to take this: the years of struggle had given him a strength and freedom that could not be acquired cheaply.
Probably, the answer lies in the idea of the development of the whole man. Few people take this seriously. The majority seek "esoteric activities" that tend to lead to imbalance and are very incomplete. Unless all aspects of our nature are brought into the action, things will go wrong.
Before he died, Mr. Bennett disclosed that his personal task went beyond the setting up of schools such as the Academy and even beyond the initiation of psychokinetic communities for the future such as at Claymont. His task lay in the evolution or creation of a form of worship that would work for contemporary people. His revolutionary disclosures of the true nature of the Last Supper and its misinterpretation in the ritual of the Mass were part of this task. He also brought to people the seeds of a new regenerated vision of Nature as a spiritual reality and tried to show that Nature loves us in a way quite beyond our sentimentality and exploitation. What to do was left undisclosed. It would have to be something: that could not be put together by cleverness; that took into account the fact that the old sacred images were for most people quite worn out or degraded; that would not force people to pretend to an inner feeling they did not have, and might even speak to people who found themselves unable to accept special teachings, techniques or labels.
As far as can be seen, nothing can answer these requirements. Yet it is needed and we should remember this. In comments, lectures, books and activities, Mr. Bennett manifested echoes of the future. When it comes, it will not be what we expect.
Putting aside the cult of personality, we can see Mr. Bennett more as a mode of life that is a present reality, than merely an extraordinary person.
(Published in The Enneagram #1, March 1975)
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