John G. Bennett (1897–1974)

I had been aware of J.G. Bennett's standing as a teacher in the Gurdjieffian milieu for some decades, but had not had any particular interest in reading his work. A used copy of Bennett's Hazard fell into my hands serendipitously just after I had encountered the esoteric emphasis on "hazard" in The Magus by John Fowles, and that was sufficient motivation for me to read this brief volume of six lectures, with some audience Q&A after each, and three short appendices.

In the first lecture, show more Bennett puts forward his definition of hazard as "directed uncertainty" (132), relates it by etymology and concept to games of chance, and offers a preliminary demonstration of the importance of the concept. Over the next three lectures the focus is on showing the value of hazard to individual human fulfillment. In the fifth lecture he discusses the operation of hazard on the level of entire human societies, and in the last he applies it theologically. This final item is especially novel, in that he contradicts the theological traditions--dominant in almost all "world religions"--asserting the omnipotence and omniscience of the godhead. Instead, Bennett says, a power and intelligence greater than humanity should participate in hazard to a correspondingly greater degree.

The appendices set forth in a more systematic way Bennett's general metaphysical ideas, with reference to hazard, but without it being at the center of focus. The end of the first appendix and the whole of the second are concerned with his philosophy of will, and the third appendix introduces his conception of love as a metaphysical phenomenon.

Bennett's prose is clear throughout. He coins a small amount of reasonably euphonious jargon to carry his concepts, and his level of "woo" is markedly low for a teacher concerned with spirituality. In the Q&A that follows each lecture he shows a gentle lack of toleration for mystical currency in "pure consciousness," "selflessness," and the like. I found no significant conflicts between Bennett's principles here and my own progressing perspective, and I am certainly open to reading further in his work. show less

It is hard to know where to begin with a book like this. As a review on another printing mentions, Bennett takes all of human knowledge as his purview, so it is rather expansive.

To back up: Bennett has over fifty books to his name, many of them collected transcriptions of talks he gave over his lifetime, many published posthumously. The Dramatic Universe is an exception to this trend: it is a saga written explicitly in the form of a book. Volume IV is the final volume.

This book's subtitle is show more called "History," but the vast majority of the book focuses on what historians would refer to as "pre-history," and also focuses a lot on metaphysics.

The heart of the book is a force that Bennett refers to as demiurges—intelligences that are lesser than God or the Creator, but seemingly infinitely more all-knowing than humanity. Bennett makes the case for demiurgic intervention of the history of the development of earth and humanity. Although this is something that cannot be proven (and such a mindset comes from the wrong epistemology), Bennett does make a number of good points that, mathematically speaking, the richness and complexity that we find in life would be impossible through truly random chance. This misconception—the significance western thought places on randomness—still plagues our society today.

One of the challenging places for Bennett for readers picking up the text fifty years later is that he cites science of the time extensively, and as he himself calls out, the vast majority of this science has shifted substantially since its writing. For this reason, many of the specific examples Bennett cites are no longer applicable.

That said, his predictions about the future are spot on, and impressively prescient. In reading about the coming age of humanity, Bennett could be writing an opinion piece about social media, alternative facts, or Trump.

Another discomfort to the contemporary reader: Bennett espouses eugenics to the point of breeding superhuman. He doesn't spend much time on this topic, but it is clear why he goes here, as he is trying to make the case for a continuous progression that must necessarily surpass our current state of development. This mindset can feel uncomfortably imperial to those of us that have given up on the myth of progress and have instead given preference to the dimensions of eternity and hyparxis that Bennett frames out here. Even though Bennett clearly understood time in a far more nuanced way than most ever reach, it seems his cosmology overly preferences the importance of linear time.

If you're a Bennett fanatic, you'll love this book; get yourself a reading club and pick up a copy! If not, you will likely find it a slog, and are probably better off with Volumes II and III. show less

Growing up in a Fourth Way community, I've been aware of the this four-volume magnum opus for many years. A year and a half ago, I started a book club with some friends to get going on this series, and it took us that long to make it through this first tome! Most people we spoke with about the series suggested we start with the second volume, but we planned on reading all of them anyways, so we pushed ahead.

Volume I of the DU extremely dense, philosophical, and scientific. In reading it, you show more feel as though you need a PhD in history, physics, philosophy, chemistry, biology. Being able to speak Latin and French would also be useful, as he'll often use those languages without translation.

We found that the only way to get through the book and understand some portion of it was to read each chapter aloud. This certainly helped in slogging through the difficult bits.

All of this said, this book is a monumental achievement, and Bennett is the most impressive intellect I’ve ever encountered.

Bennett’s goal in this book is to outline a twelve-fold structure of existence in three spheres with two transitions:

Hyponomic or physical
I. Existential Indifference, Wholeness—Emergence of Materiality
II. Invariant Being, Polarity—Neutrino, Electron, Positron, Photon
III. Identical Recurrence or Relatedness—Protons, Neutrons, Nucleons, Heavy Mesons
IV. Composite Wholeness or Subsistence—Things, Atoms, Pebbles

First Transition: Active Surface

Autonomic or animate
V. Self-renewing Wholeness, Potentiality—Viruses
VI. Reproductive Wholeness, Repetition—Cells
VII. Self-regulating Wholeness, Structure—Organisms
VIII. Self-directing Wholeness, Individuality—Species

Second Transition: Biospheric Wholeness

Hypernomic or cosmic
IX. Sub-creative Wholeness, Pattern—Earth
X. Creative Wholeness, Creativity—Sun
XI. Super-creative Wholeness, Domination—Galaxy
XII. Autocratic Wholeness, Autocracy—Universe

Humans find themselves in the approximate middle of this progressive schematic—as they should—both in terms of scale (between electrons and galaxies) and complexity.

This structure is nested within the six dimensions of hyparxis:
I. Time
II. Eternity
III. Hyparxis
IV. Space (3D)

Continually through the book, I found myself feeling that, although Bennett’s structures make sense, they sometimes feel arbitrary, and occasionally, even a little forced (such as in dropping a few planets so that the solar system only has seven “true” planets). In other words: sure, a twelve-fold structure could work, but is there anything universal about it? Aren’t there numerous other models that could capture some of the same dynamics, and possibly in a more intuitive and succinct fashion?

Ultimately, it’s an amazing work, but also an extremely difficult read! I will say that I’m looking forward to the next volume. show less

About the Shivapuri Baba

The Shivapuri Baba [SB] was born in India in 1826. At the age of eighteen he denounced worldly life [an acceptable path in his culture at the time] to join his grandfather as a traditional forest hermit. He remained in perfect solitude in the jungle for twenty-five years after his grandfather’s death, and returned “liberated yet embodied,” according to Jivanmukta.

Crossing the oceans was considered a cardinal sin in Hindu, then dominant, yet he ignored this, and show more took on what he considered to be his duty, a thirty-five-year transglobal pilgrimage. He was not a guru. He preferred to work with the influential. He lived and taught in a simple fashion.

He died in his small hut in the forest near Kathmandu, Nepal, at the age of 137.

J. G. Bennett wrote this book under the direction of SB.

Key Notes from the Book

Man’s Three Duties:
Physical and social [livelihood]
Personal and moral [Truth]
Spiritual [worship]

The Four Charities:
Think only good thoughts of others
Speak only good words of others
Do only good deeds to others
Give of your substance to help others

The Twenty-Six Divine Endowments:
Fearlessness
Purity of Mind
Stability of Character
Charitableness
Self-Mastery
Readiness to make Sacrifices
Studiousness
Ability to make Efforts
Straightforwardness
Non-Violence
Truthfulness
Freedom from Wrath
Renunciation (of the fruits of action)
Tranquility
Aversion to Slander
Compassion towards Living Beings
Non-Covetousness
Gentleness
Sense of Shame in doing evil actions
Strength of Mind
Energy
Forgiveness
Endurance
Chastity
Absence of Malice
Aversion to Praise

The Six Demonic Endowments:
Ostentation
Arrogance
Excessive Pride
Anger
Hardness of Heart
Ignorance
These endowments are contents of the mind and can be altered.

The Three Stages of Meditation:
Steadiness [dharana]
Concentration [dhyana]
Diffuse contemplation [samadhi]

Reception

The key aspects of the book is the Shivapuri Baba’s emphasis on what he called the Three Disciplines - essentially: the self-care, care for one’s community, and striving to know God. This is Right Life. It’s reassuring in it’s simplicity, but daunting in the discipline demanded.

The second half of the book get’s pretty technical [into the details of India spiritual tradition], and wasn’t as useful for me. Although on takeaway from this section is that the Shivapuri Baba considers the “Bhagavad Gita” to contain everything we need to know about living in this world.

I liked the book, but I think that Zen Buddhist and Bill Plotkin’s Soulcraft approaches are more useful for me at this point in my life.

Excerpts

On the cycles of civilization show less