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.
What is written here has neither intent to an authority nor a pretense of an authority on Gurdjieff the man or his teaching. How can it? I never met Mr. Gurdjieff: I was just five years old when he died, five-thousand miles away, and infinitely more distant in culture and class.
As for his teaching and the practice of it, I too am a novice, although one with more than forty-years time coming to the conclusion that the work is formless, the work is infinite, I must undertake to live it.
In 1974 I studied with John and Elizabeth Bennett at their Sherborne Academy in England. With one-hundred others I sat in the great hall, practiced the morning exercises and experienced in those exercises and from Mr. B. a direct transmission of confidence that another world* is within our reach.
A transmission of a living legacy is not limited to those who received it in person. Actively or passively, directly or indirectly, a real transmission seeps into the mind, heart, and body of all who through the sincerity of their own work can open to it. That day has come and is already here: the work transmitted by Gurdjieff is strongly alive in so many that many others are now opening to it. Today, more and more visible are new seekers who are seeking to understand not just “who am I?” but “what am I?” and “how can I become what I am meant to be?”
Bennett Books Blog is a place for open discussion about the possibilities inherent in the human situation and the tools for actualizing those possibilities. It is intended to be an ongoing experiment in an interactive web page for sharing ideas and comments about the role of attention, breath, and body in a self-participating work of optimal human development and how these essential gifts of life relate to continuous education, active learning, care-free health, smart culture, inclusive community, and reciprocal relationship.
And of course this blog is the latest work of Bennett Books, a home business based in Santa Fe, New Mexico (USA) and focused since 1988 on publishing and distributing JG Bennett’s writings and talks – along with other material related to Gurdjieff and Fourth Way Tradition. The founder and current associates of Bennett Books studied with JG Bennett and Elizabeth Bennett in the 1970s.
Fundamentally, it is intended to be an interactive conference point on the living legacy of ideas and practices for continuous harmonious human development brought to the West by Gurdjieff at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Whether you agree or disagree with what is now or will be written here, your personal experience and contribution to this blog is welcome. So, please, keep exploring, reading and commenting (or contact us anytime).
Be well,
James Tomarelli for Bennett Books Blog
* “I want to say something about the foundation of it all, on which everything rests. I have spoken about another world and about different perceptions. All of you are interested in this and it was part of what attracted you here. It is possible for you to achieve something in the way of new perceptions and an understanding of the higher worlds and also to change in yourselves. The foundation of this whole work that we do together is the confidence that this is really possible. The main contribution that I can make is to convey to you my own confidence that this can be done.” _JG Bennett, “Basic Course IV Inaugural Address,” October 1974, Sherborne Academy, Sherborne, England.
Bennett Books Blog 
When I went to Seattle to college in 1963 I saw a picture in a survey book of some kind in a book store, of a strange stage in New York with uneven floors and people in outfits that reminded me vaguely of the hooded outfits from the south. I learned the name Gurdjieff from that book. Later I had found Ouspenski’s Fourth Dimension, and another guy, younger than me, down in Portland, said I didn’t need that book, but someone else in town had the book I should have, which he couldn’t use. So we should trade. We drove to his place and the trade occurred. I never learned how this guy knew this stuff. The book I got was Beelzebub. I didn’t find Bennett for years, didn’t know ‘how to look’. If I had, perhaps I could have gotten to Sherbourne. I met Anthony Blake and Karen Stefano in Seattle about five or six years ago.
That’s the extent of my contacts. But this material has been the most important thing in my life for over forty years. There must be many thousand others in a similar situation to mine. This blog could become a great expositor of the new generation of experience. I, and, I’m sure, many others, have been waiting for years. Thanks to all involved, and do contribute; there were so few of you there; your understanding is priceless.