BENNETT’S TEACHERS

 

This is a set of thumbnail notes on Bennett’s main teachers, and a brief sketch of his association with them. Biographical facts are available elsewhere and are largely omitted.

 

GEORGE IVANOVICH GURDJIEFF:

 

Most of what we know of Bennett’s actual relationship with Gurdjieff is recorded in “Witness: The Story of a Search”, with a few personal details in “Idiots in Paris”.

 

Gurdjieff’s birth date was either November 28 or January 13^th in either 1866, 1872 or 1877 depending on whose version you subscribe to He was born in Alexandropol, Armenia. He died in Paris, France on October 29^th, 1949.

 

JGB met him in 1919 in Istanbul. In 1922 he visited him briefly at Gurdjieff’s Institute, then set up at the Prieuré, in Fontainebleau, near Paris, France. The following year he spent thirty-three days there, after which he did not meet Gurdjieff again for 25 years. In August 1948, he met Gurdjieff again in Paris on the advice of Mme. Ouspensky. From then until Gurdjieff’s death on October 29^th, 1949, Bennett spent as much time with him as possible, including meetings with Gurdjieff in New York, when Bennett was there on business in January 1949.

 

Bennett brought as many as he was able of his own pupils and friends to meet Gurdjieff, including his second wife Polly, and Elizabeth Mayall, whom he married on Polly’s death in 1958.

 

Just about everything about Gurdjieff is controversial and debatable, beginning with the date of his birth, and it seems certain that he intended it to be this way. In 1959, Bennett wrote: “Gurdjieff left behind him many groups of followers whom he made no attempt to weld into a single whole.” In his “Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson”, Gurdjieff devotes a number of chapters to an account of the fictional “Very Saintly Ashieta Shiemash, sent from Above to the Earth” and “his holy labors”. Chapters 25-28 concern this person’s mission, the description of which could almost wholly be applied to Gurdjieff himself. The details suggest that Gurdjieff understood from an early age that he himself had a Divine mission, that he saw his task in terms very much longer than mere lifetimes, and that he chose to use, not the means chosen by previous Messengers, but a new approach, which he termed “Legominism” which would protect itself from the tendency of all teachings to become corrupted or degraded. In his account however, Ashieta Shiemash’s work was destroyed by the absence of conscience as embodied in the character Lentrohamsanin.

 

Gurdjieff made clear that his ideas would not be easily accessible, and although “Beelzebub’s Tales” is a most difficult book to read, he seems to have succeeded in presenting his written works in such a way that they are actually read carefully and intentionally by those how wish to understand, which set them apart from most of the previous serious texts which merely sit on people’s shelves awaiting the arrival of a simplified version, précis or “Made-for-TV” version.

 

The accounts left by Bennett and others indicate clearly that Gurdjieff well understood the factionalism that was already in his lifetime setting the different groups of followers against one another. Bennett reports on conversations in which Gurdjieff intimated to him that he would play the role of Judas, the arch-betrayer. But he also told Bennett that Judas was the best and truest friend of Jesus, and the only one of the Disciples who understood the full meaning of Christ’s task. On the other hand, Paul Beekman Taylor in his “Gurdjieff’s America” has stated that almost all of the stories Bennett tells concerning Gurdjieff are invention, thus fanning flames of contention that Gurdjieff himself ignited. The trick is to see the purpose behind all of this. All who claim to be the one true path actually are required constantly to attempt to outdo one another in efforts and achievements, all denouncing the others as “Shachermacher workshop booths”. Go figure.

 

What Gurdjieff taught probably far exceeds the range of our ordinary perceptions, and can only be grasped by applying oneself mercilessly to the whole

 

A film entitled “Meetings with Remarkable Men” was made in 1980.

 

Gurdjieff’s major writings are:

 

All and Everything

First Series:

 

“Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson,

or An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man.”

 

Second Series

 

“Meetings with Remarkable Men”

 

Third Series:

 

“Life Is Real Only Then, When “I AM””

 

Many books have been written about Gurdjieff, mostly personal accounts. James Moore published a biography entitled “Gurdjieff: Anatomy of a Myth” (Moore himself told us that he encountered hostility for this book both on the grounds that it was too iconoclastic, and also too sycophantic!) and Bennett wrote a number of books about him, including:

 

“Gurdjieff: A Very Great Enigma”

“Gurdjieff: Making a New World”

“Is there “Life” on Earth?”

 

PIOTR DEMIANOVICH OUSPENSKY

 

Ouspensky was born in Moscow in 1878, and died in England in 1947. Bennett met him apparently by chance in Istanbul in 1919 at almost the same time that he met Gurdjieff. When Ouspensky arrived in London, Bennett visited him whenever possible and when not travelling, attended group meetings with him. Bennett began to meet with some of Ouspensky’s students outside of the groups, and these eventually began to form into a study group for which Bennett took personal responsibility. Later Bennett disobeyed Ouspensky’s ban on writing anything down. In 1945 Ouspensky engaged lawyers to demand  the return of all materials that Bennett had supposedly stolen from Ouspensky, and simultaneously all Ouspensky’s pupils were instructed to break off all relations with Bennett, and never again to communicate with him on any subject (“Witness” Bennett Books p 168). After Ouspensky proscribed Bennett from contact, Bennett remained in contact with Sophie Grigorievna Ouspensky, who was able to help him in many ways and enabled him to re-establish contact with Gurdjieff in1948. He saw Mme Ouspensky for the last time in 1959.

 

Ouspensky’s books are mostly still in print and available from the usual sources.

 

 

MUHAMMAD SUBUH SUMOHADIWIDJOJO – “Bapak”

 

Bapak was born in Semarang, Indonesia in 1901. He died in Indonesia in 1987, at the age of 86. He is the founder of Subud. There is much information available about Subud and Bapak on the internet. Bennett met him in England in 1956, through a traveller named Husein Rofé, who had met him in 1950 and became the first Western member of the Subud Brotherhood. Bennett was opened in Subud by Rofé in 1955 and invited Bapak to come to England to stay at Coombe Springs the following year. Bennett was immediately struck by the extraordinary action of the “latihan” and soon most of his pupils were opened and began to practice regularly. This period was of limited duration.  In “Witness”, Bennett says: “By the autumn of 1960, the realization came to me that I had ceased to work on myself and had relied upon the latihan to do what I should be doing by my own effort. Without telling anyone, I resumed the discipline and the exercises I had learned from Gurdjieff and almost at once I found that my state changed for the better.” Although by his later accounts Bennett continued for the remainder of his life to practice the latihan on his own, and indeed opened several people to it (including myself) he resigned his role as a Subud helper, and only met Bapak once more in 1969, in Hampstead, England.

 

Bennett’s own books include “Concerning Subud” (1957) and “Christian Mysticism and Subud” (1960). [BB]

 

 

SHIVAPURI BABA

 

The Shivapuri Baba was born in Kerala, India in 1826, and died in Kathmandu, Nepal 1963. In brief, his life story is that after a period of discipleship to his grandfather, he entered seclusion and lived in the forest for 26 years alone. After spiritual discoveries and illumination, he embarked upon a pilgrimage during which he circumambulated the globe on foot, over a period of 40 years. When he returned to the place of his birth, after an absence of more than 60 years, no trace remained of his family, and he thereafter moved to Kathmandu which is where he spent the remaining years of his life. The main source for enquirers about the Shivapuri Baba is Bennett’s book “Long Pilgrimage” written in 1963 in collaboration with the Shivapuri Baba’s devotee, Thakur Lal Manadhar. Although currently out of print, a new edition of this book is in preparation by Manandhar’s son Giridhar, and will be available shortly. Bennett met the SB in 1961 and again the following year.

 

 

HASAN LUTFI SHUSHUD

Was born 1901, died January 1, 1988 in Istanbul. Professionally he worked first as a teacher of French and German in Turkish schools, and later in a bank in Istanbul. He subsequently became Private Assistant to the Turkish Finance Minister in Ankara. According to his own account, he was descended biologically and spiritually from Sadreddin Konevi (or Qunawi), who was the step-son of Muhyid’din Ibn Arabi, and also the father-in-law of Jellaludin Rumi. In my hearing, he used to refer to the “Mathnawi” of Rumi, and also to the “Fûtûhat el-Mekkiye” of Ibn Arabi, a huge text of such technical and linguistic complexity as to virtually defy translation into English. I have always assumed that by these references and his emphasis on Konevi that he was pointing us to these teachers.

 

The tomb of Sadreddin Konevi is in Konya, Turkey, and HLS asked me to go there and pray, which I have done on more than one occasion.

 

The most useful information about HLS is the “Discourses” assembled by a group of his pupils who met him weekly in the last 20 years of his life.

 

Bennett met HLS in 1962 but his close collaboration with him did not begin until 1969, and thereafter the two men were extremely close until Bennett’s death in 1974. There is extensive and detailed correspondence between them. JGB addressed his letters to “My dear teacher…”  and Shushud replied “Cher Mâitre…” (Dear master…) Shushud had been initiated into certain practices at the age of 26, but is most notable for the way that he developed himself in his 30s, and which he called “İtlâk Yolu” or the “Way of Absolute Liberation”. He taught perpetual zikr with retention of breath and fasting, “each person according to their capacity”.  HLS openly discouraged many of the popular practices of the spiritual paths.

 

HLS wrote two books: “Hacegan Hanedani” 1958, translated into English and published under the title “The Masters of Wisdom of Central Asia” is a review of literature, some of it contemporaneous, relating to the Sufi masters of Central Asia in the 12^th to the 15^th centuries. “Fakir Sozleri” 1959, is a collection of aphorisms having particular relevance to HLS’s own teachings. [BB]