Occupy Your Body—Sense Always

“This work has service at its apex not its foundation.
At its foundation it has understanding what our situation really is.”—J.G. Bennett. Fallen Leaves. Private Collection, 1980.

“Tonight when we reached Hopeless Idiots, G was very solemn and after the Addition, spoke about ‘this small aim’ not to perish like a dog, and how everyone must have this. Everyone must have the wish ‘not be taxi,’ but to have real owner, not a succession of passengers. He gave us all the task of learning to distinguish between feeling and sensing*—when he sees that we do this task, and do it often, then he will be able to give us another subjective task.” — Elizabeth Bennett. Idiots in Paris p. 48

*download >> The Distinction Between Sensing and Feeling. JG Bennett, 1949.

“We had one of Madame Salzmann’s extraordinary practices: first we sat for 20 minutes sensing various parts of the body** and then the whole body: then we did a new canon with more ‘active’ sort of movements than usual: then we worked on the arms and legs, separately, of the First Obligatory, and she gave us an astonishing demonstration of how to balance; then we sat, beating rhythms on our knees, then we marched on the spot, and afterwards round the room, and then she teased us because we could not do it properly, and jumped up, with a little bounce, from the piano, laughing, and ended the class.” — Elizabeth Bennett. Idiots in Paris p. 128

On Freedom & Responsibility

“It is possible for any reasonable person to see that the greater part of the troubles that beset mankind at this time are due to the fact that those who have the power to take, take, and they disregard the consequences to those who are not able to. All of us probably feel that this is a wrong thing.”

“When we really come near this question of freedom, something in us revolts entirely against it. I remember very well when my work did bring me to a point where I knew and saw that I had the power—I saw that I knew exactly how to do it, so that I could feel exactly what I chose to feel. If I could do that, then I would be responsible for my life and I could no longer blame anything outside myself; because what was outside me could not touch me. Therefore, I had to be the answer. If I was in a bad state, I was able to change it; and if I did not change it, I could not blame any one else. But I wanted to be able to blame people. I wanted to say that it was not possible that it could have been different.”

A Transmission of Love through JG Bennett

“Love is a force, by which all life is transformed,
and everything returns to its source.” — JG Bennett

Along with ninety other students from around the world, I studied with John Bennett at his Sherborne Academy the last months of his life.

Mr. Bennett was a sincere and adventurous man filled with a visible love for Gurdjieff and Gurdjieff’s Teaching. That love radiated through to us as a transmission.

Following Gurdjieff’s advice to “find out for yourself,” Bennett risked and lost much: the approval of his peers, a career in politics and commerce, and personal financial assets.

Bennett researched and validated everything he received from Gurdjieff; and—while sharing with us what he had found—while digging in the Sherborne flower garden, John Bennett died on Friday, December 13, 1974, thirty-seven years ago.

James Tomarelli

May The Force Be With You

Attention is a force—and an energy and a mystery. As a force, attention, when directed inward, awakens in us a “sensation”—a sensitive energy.
This simple act of “sensing” is unique to the legacy of human development work transmitted by GI Gurdjieff.
In a careful study of PD Ouspensky’s Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, chapter nine, we find that being present to the “organic sensation of life” in our body allows for an accumulation of an energy without which self-observation and self-remembering are but a dream.

A Spiritualizing Action

“There is at the present time a great spiritualizing action that is preparing the [future].”
—JG Bennett in 1974 in his monograph, Gurdjieff Today. [This monograph is in Bennett’s book, Is There Life on Earth?]

JOHN GODOLPHIN BENNETT—as visionary mystics are apt to be—was ahead of his times.
In the 1970s he inspired and encouraged numerous young men and women
to work on themselves to become open to a “great spiritualizing action” which he foresaw.

Today, in Egypt, Libya, Japan, Wisconsin, and in our own homes and hearts, is not such an action at work?

Who am I?

practical |ˈpraktikəl|
adjective. Of or concerned with the actual doing or use of something rather than with theory and ideas.

Gurdjieff’s teaching is a practical philosophy for becoming whole while struggling to awaken to who we are. It is a living hologram whose three dimensions of body, mind, and heart which, when enlightened by active attention, become unique doorways into remembering “where we are” (sensing), “what we are” (knowing), and “how we are” (feeling).

Why do we need such a teaching? Is it not enough, as Sri Ramana Maharshi taught, to simply ask deeply and persistently “who am I?”

The Forgotten Language Of Children: An experiment in conscious living

In the sixties, a woman with a two-year-old daughter makes a U-turn in her life as single mother in New York City.

As her peers choose India as a destination, Lillian Firestone meets the Gurdjieff Work, stays in America, and allows her daughter’s development and education to become a living backdrop and stage upon which her own spiritual development unfolds.

This important book has many beautiful things to show-and-tell, not the least of which is a mother’s love for her child reflected through her own wish to work.

A mother who today has the commonsensical good judgment to use a child’s drawing of an elephant as the dominant cover image for her impeccably designed book.

More than a record of Gurdjieff and his Teaching’s love for children-being-allowed-to-choose-their-fullest-potential by adults who Work and care for them, The Forgotten Language of Children represents a new contribution to the literature of spiritual education and spiritual search.

Existence, by J.G. Bennett

Existence, by J.G. Bennett. Back in print after thirty-three years!
Edited & compiled by Anthony Blake.

Updated for our present time with a new chapter, “The Dimensional Framework of the Natural Sciences”, a paper by J.G. Bennett; a foreword essay by Anthony Blake; and an index of names and special words.

We turn to non-existence. In ordinary parlance, the concept rather means something that is less than existing, on the lines of “illusion.” For Bennett, it was the converse. If existence arises from a set of conditions of limitation (designed of course to be mutually consistent) then what might be the content of what is beyond such constraints? We return to the question of experience. Unless, in some way, what is beyond existence is contained in or is “with” experience it would be entirely useless to even speak of it at all. As we shall see, Bennett endeavored to see that in experience there was always something more than existence and, even, something that did not exist at all.

Welcome to Bennett Books Blog!

This blog is dedicated to nurturing, nourishing, and further developing a living legacy of work-on-oneself introduced into Western culture by George Ivanovich Gurdjieff at the opening of the twentieth century. It is a legacy of harmonious development, continuous education, ongoing practice, and lived experience in the many-faceted mystery of being human. Throughout the first half of the last century Gurdjieff intently lived this mystery with all who were drawn to him, able to bear his presence, receive his guidance, and willing to commit themselves to work in his laboratories.

John Godolphin Bennett and Elizabeth Mayall (Bennett) were two of many who answered the call. And this blog, in their name and dedicated to their memory, invites all who knew them to bring to it what they experienced through and with them.

But this blog is not limited to JG and Elizabeth Bennett’s students: it welcomes contributions from all who live, and continue to live, that lived experience of sincere work-on-oneself.