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

Gurdjieff's family entrusted Bennett with the publication of G's unfinished third series. Unfortunately JGB died before completing the task. His introduction was published separately after his death. It is a shame that it was not used in the published edition of the third series, as it is far better than Jeanne de Salzmann's introduction. De Salzmann may have inherited the direction of the Work, but Bennett was the heir of G's spirit, to the extent anyone was.

Bennett provides valuable show more background on G's writing, especially on the composition of Beelzebub and an excellent short biography. He describes the selection of unpublished talks to round out the surviving fragments of the third series. Bennett also discusses the concepts of conscious labour and intentional suffering at some length, clearly defining what he sees as intentional suffering. He concludes: "He was an extraordinary man who understood the necessity of being also an ordinary man." This little book is quite useful to anyone reading the third series or with an interest in the Work in general.

NB Bennett was using a ms. version of the third series that does not always correspond to that which was subsequently published. show less