Friends of Philosophy

It seems like dark days for the School of Economic Science. The old scandals of The Secret Cult have come back to haunt us, the Inquiry has failed to stem the tide of protest, and with Channel 4 behind us we apparently have ITV to come ... this time the "deny it all / say nothing" approach won't work.

Although we all know that big lessons were learned, still we seem to be surrounded by enemies intent on our destruction. There are whispers of mystery wealthy backers (who may or may not be former governors of St James!), pending class-action suits, Dutch internet cult-busters, and the prospect of endless bad press interfering with the schools and the School, condemning us all to some kind of cult ghetto along with the Scientologists and the Jehovah's Witnesses.

But are things really that bad?

I will argue that they're not. If Advaita philosophy has taught us anything, it ought to be that where there is apparent duality and opposition, we can find unity, truth and reconciliation. It seems that many have already given up this struggle, but why? The battle here is not to defeat an enemy, or to hush things up, but to show the way forward. Talk of there being conspiracies against us is no more than giving in to fear. If there are conspirators, people who are in Mr Townend's words "negatively inspired"*, then we have to face up to them; but until they show themselves we should follow the philosophical way, and go forward with the assumption that we can find common cause with all reasonable people. There is no justification for worrying about the bogeyman. At this moment, the School's dedication to unity and truth is being tested. Whether we will come through depends entirely on how we conduct ourselves.

There is no dignity in hiding, or pretending that someone else will deal with the problem; even less in lashing out in anger. We are a School of Philosophy. It is time we started to behave like one.

The fear is that the people who have had a bad experience at St James or St Vedast or in the School have turned against the truth. Shantananda did once mention this phenomenon. But we must remember that we had a very different version of the truth in those times. It was influenced by Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, and even 20 years after the first Conversation with His Holiness we had not really adopted his message wholeheartedly. He said there was to be no pressure. We used pressure. He spoke of devotion as the "royal way"; but we refused to listen, saying that we were on the way of knowledge. He said "tender advice, showers of love, and a little hard discipline" was the way to teach. Let's look at that sentence, and at the three nouns in it. Advice should be tender; discipline, though hard, should be little; but love ... should be showered plentifully. For His Holiness, only love comes without qualification.

This was the message we could not hear in 1965.

We have been a somewhat immature organization in the past and we still have some way to go. Therefore, those who have turned away from the School may not reasonably be assumed to be the enemies of philosophy: many may be its friends.

* If you have not read the Townend Report, visit http://www.iirep.com