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Title |
Author |
Publisher |
The Dramatic Universe, 4 vols.Vol. 1 The Foundations of Natural Philosophy |
John G. Bennett | Bennett Books |
The Wholeness of Nature - Goethe's Way of Science |
Henri Bortoft | Lindisfarne Press |
The Moon of Hoa Binh (2 vols.) |
William Pensinger & Nah Trang | Autopoy |
Beautiful Painted Arrow
|
Joseph Rael | |
Holism and Evolution |
Jan Smuts | The Gestalt Journal Press |
As he worked on this book over the years, his understanding changed. In his first volume, he presents a series of new forms of thought, following the injunction of Ouspensky to 'think in new categories'. These are used to describe the twelve levels of existence, from undifferentiated hyle to the total autocratic universe. He introduces his original work on the six-dimensional geometry, which includes three kinds of time. And he gives us an understanding of his fundamental triad of reality as Function-Being-Will.
The first volume concerns the domain of fact. Moving into value, his second volume tackles 'moral philosophy'. Most of this volume is taken up with his astounding concept of will as the triad. The ideas presented here go back to his work with Ouspensky in the 1930's. Broadening the scope of his concern with new categories, he takes the 'qualitative significance of number' to new heights. If Will is the triad, then Being is the tetrad and Essence the pentad. He presents an original scheme of essence-classes with the pentad, or five-term system, based on Gurdjieff's 'diagram of everything living'.
By the time of the third volume, Bennett has come to see the qualitative significance of number as the key element in his method. In this volume, the method becomes explicit as systematics. He introduces systematics as a way of understanding organised complexity and goes on to apply this method in a variety of areas, including values, anthropology and human society.
This leaves him with the subject of time and history for the fourth volume. By now, he has come to see the concept of the present moment as of critical importance and has begun to glimpse, as he confesses in his introduction, that there is a uniqueness in reality that always escapes the generalities of universal patterns. His theme is 'the war with time'. He takes on an historical perspective that spans the whole of the existence of the planet and ventures into the near future.
He ends with a prophecy of the synergic epoch, in which co-operation will become the key master idea implicitly governing human thought. Epochs of approximately 2500 years mark radical changes in the human mind; but they are not the history of the soul. For the human soul, there is an historical great cycle of some 25,000 years (corresponding to the cycle of rotation of the plane of the ecliptic). In this, he sees the time of Christ as pivotal.
The scope of these volumes is breathtaking. However, Bennett himself felt that his main contribution was to draw attention to the universal significance of hazard. Everything that exists is subject to uncertainty of a kind that renders acts of will meaningful. He also later remarked that almost no one had seen that this was what he was after.
He began this monumental work with the assertion that the old absolutes were 'dead'. His task was then to form a cosmology that would be 'open' and capable of creative exploration without limit. The old mental set has led the majority to consider his work as definitive instead of a point of departure. Whereas nearly all philosophy or teaching obscures itself with beliefs and images, Bennett's work aims for optimum transparency. In place of, or alongside, a mass of words, he presents simple diagrams that make his assumptions clear.
The universe is dramatic because our own acts are significant. So are the acts of any essence-class. Everything 'that lives' has an independent role to play and makes a difference. The existing universe is not a whole but full of 'holes'. If the pentad introduces the reality of the essence-class, the hexad gives us intelligence.
Henri developed much of his understanding working under David Bohm on the problems of interpreting quantum mechanics. In this book, he concentrates on the idea of 'organic unity'. Much of his illustration comes from the world of biology. He provides rich material to help us shift our concept of unity or oneness towards the realisation that unity of an organic kind always entails diversity. When we begin to study concrete examples of organic unity the whole way in which we understand the universe has to change.
In the final part of the book, he ventures into new ground, following the injunction of William Blake to adopt a 'two-fold vision'. He argues that both forms of perception - the reductionist concerned with separate objects and parts, and the holistic concerned with wholes and diversity in unity - are valid and need to be practised hand in hand.
This must be one of the most extraordinary novels of the last decades. It is a detective story, an exploration of alternative forms of consciousness, a prolonged thesis on modern art and quantum mechanics, an investigation of sexuality and politics, an account of the failure of American intelligence in the Vietnam war and an exposition of some of the major ideas of John Bennett on time and on what the authors call 'multi-value'. The 100-page bibliography is worth reading on its own!
William (Larry) Pensinger was in American Intelligence and also became a fully realised Japanese landscape gardener. His wife, Nah Trang, was a Professor in Vietnamese literature and folklore. Between them they can cover an enormous amount of ground. The novel, ten years in the writing, includes the most remarkable almost Joycean detail of life in Saigon, that renders the story vividly compelling.
The central thesis of 'multi-value' is a totally original form of similar ideas such as those of Bennett's systematics and David Deutsch's multiverse (see his Fabric of Reality). The idea is that everything has ranges of 'values' that are intrinsic to its existence. This includes the possibility that our own identity has multi-value. The authors spend a great deal of time on the exploration of the multiple alternative identities enfolded on us that we can access through participation in various modes of group consciousness, including those accessible in sexual activity.
For anyone inspired by Gurdjieff and Bennett, by the release of new perceptions that entered the world in the form of modern art at the turn of the century, by the sense that science is being radically challenged to create new understandings (and has still largely failed to even begin to take this on), by the more esoteric significance of sex (remember the intense interest Ouspensky had in this!), etc. this book is essential reading.
(William Pensinger was a major presenter in the Baltimore seminar 'All of Everything' held in February/March 1997.)
Joseph makes extensive use of the meanings carried in the sound- syllables of the Tiwa language and provides detailed and original expositions of Amerindian teaching stories. Of some interest to students of systematics is his interpretation of the first ten integers, particularly in 'The Way of Inspiration'.