In praise of egg-heads

One of the problems the School faces at the moment is its lack of specialists. Mr MacLaren used to inveigh against "experts" and their "qualifications", which was fair enough in a way, but taken to extremes it leads to some very narrow thinking. For example, the idea that "falling still in the moment" is the only necessary thing in learning the truth.

As a consequence, we are a school of Advaita Vedanta philosophy almost entirely staffed by people who are unable to explain the word Vedanta; who do not know what characterises that philosophy and sets it apart from, say, Yoga or Buddhism; and who have no awareness of Western philosophy other than smatterings of Plato and Ficino.

I recently spoke to a new tutor who explained Advaita as "Er ... duality?"

The problem is not that most people don't know these things. Most people have more important issues in their lives, and indeed in their approach to philosophy. There is no reason for us all to be egg-heads. But some of us need to be, if we are to develop as an organisation. As a minimum, all tutors should be given a basic grounding in Indian philosophy, and a nodding acquaintance with Western thought wouldn't hurt either. That would make it so much easier for everyone else.

A knowledgeable person is like a tent pole - you don't need many of them, but without them we must all stumble around in the dark, confused.

So this is a plea for diversity. Let's celebrate the boffins - for all their strange knitted cardigans, oddly high foreheads and unkempt appearance, they also are God's creatures.

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Teachers - what makes a great one?

The recent post - In Memoriam - prompted me to remember teachers I have known and loved. What makes a great teacher? Every now and again the papers interview a well-known person about their teachers, mentors and father-figures - those older people who, through wisdom, love and attention, encourage and reveal latent talents and innate goodness.

This is a perennial theme - the passing of wisdom through the generations - and those who have received it invariably remember the teacher who first lifted the curtain, and they invariably express gratitude for the gift.

I should now like to speak about Margaret Tully. It's easy to do so because I remember her often and because she was most loving. (She has been dead for many years and the cancer which killed her was already apparent when we first met.)

I found myself as secretary in the group which she tutored - a second-year level. From the very first, she emanated love to all. She never said anything memorable that I recall or, rather, the love was so apparent that words took a secondary place. Needless to say, she never lost a student and her classes were always full. People flocked to be near her.

Such open-heartedness has its effect in trust and confidence. People spoke more fully from the heart and all observations were received in loving kindness. At the end of the second year, when we said goodbye, we were all in tears.

A remarkable lady and I feel blessed by having been in her presence.

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In Memoriam

Yesterday we had a party for people who have left our stream over the years. This unprecedented event seemed to go very well. We didn't have a huge turn out (about 20 people, plus children), but everyone who came seemed really happy to be there.

For some reason, though, I felt sad and melancholic. I couldn't really put my finger on it during the event, but I believe that it was because yesterday represented the end of an era. Old Mr MacLaren would never have countenanced such an event - he took a pretty hard line on "leavers" - and when it finally happened, at the School's Waterperry home, it seemed to hit home that he really is gone now.

A few years ago I read a book called "Built to Last", which was a study of businesses that have lasted a long time, and why. One of the case studies was Disney, a company that went through a period of drifting immediately after the death of its founder. The authors of the book said that the problem with Disney was that for 15 years the first question everyone asked was "What would Mr Walt have said?" The company only began to revive itself when the management stopped asking this question and started to think for themselves. In fact what they did was restate the company's objective, which is to create happiness. Whether or not one likes Disney films, it will be evident that "How can we make people happy?" is a better question than "What would Mr Walt have said?" ... click "Read More"

Mr MacLaren's passing in 1994 was a dramatic event. I well remember the journey to Waterperry that night. Although we didn't yet know it, the elements seemed to express what had just occurred: it was the biggest electrical storm for years in the south of England. In the papers the next day I read how a girl playing football had been killed by the lightning. He was a force of nature, and I can't resist recalling here what Andrew Marvell wrote of Oliver Cromwell:

And like the three-fork'd lightning, first
Breaking the clouds where it was nurst,
Did thorough his own side
His fiery way divide:

...

Then burning through the air he went
And palaces and temples rent;
And Cæsar's head at last
Did through his laurels blast.

'Tis madness to resist or blame
The face of angry Heaven's flame
And if we would speak true,
Much to the man is due

Or perhaps it goes back even further - to the original genesis of the School in the teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. Gurdjieff, too, was a titan, and one with iron in his soul. He taught that unless someone had come under discipline, he did not really exist as a human being. Cruel stories cluster around him: how he made a fortune defrauding small-town mayors while working for the Russian railway; how he tortured horses so that they would obey no-one but him while he made his escape from Russia in 1917; his admiration for a Corsican bandit who would stare through his gunsight at a stretch of road for hour after hour, attention never wavering, waiting for the next victim.

Of course, there is much more to Gurdjieff, but if I overemphasize the cruel and harsh, it is because I think it's that element that passed out of the School yesterday. No longer will someone who leaves the School be ostracized; no longer will the fear of ostracism scare people into staying; and no longer need we see ourselves as superior in order to justify such behaviour.

This is, of course, a great day for the School. But if it also marks in some way the passing of Mr MacLaren, then perhaps it is natural to feel a certain sober regret. For all his foibles and his hardness, much to the man is due.

It would be interesting to hear what others felt yesterday, or in general about the recent developments.

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The Trap

Last night was the first programme in Adam Curtis's new series The Trap, which is about how our society got landed with a false idea of freedom. Curtis (left) was a big influence in my life, because his earlier series The Century of the Self inspired me to become a writer. The Century of the Self was a brilliant essay on how a vision of the self taken from Freudian psychology - that is, that we are selfish, avaricious and isolated - was used to create modern marketing.

The inventor of the term "Public Relations" was Freud's nephew Edward Bernays (PR was itself a piece of PR-spin, invented to replace "Propaganda"). Bernays taught marketeers not to appeal to reason, but to the Freudian unconscious: not to say, "this lawnmower is made by expert engineers, is fairly priced and will last for at least 15 years" but "just imagine what the Joneses will say when they see this little baby!" Along the way, he demonstrated the effectiveness of his technique by persuading women to smoke, inventing the idea of "bacon and eggs", and toppling the government of Guatemala purely by PR and deceit, on behalf of the banana corporations ... Click "Read more"

What was important for me in this was (a) that our idea of the self makes a difference; and (b) that it is possible to deal with difficult subjects accessibly.

I'm not sure yet whether The Trap is going to come up to that level, but one fascinating piece of information is that John Nash, the mathematician portrayed in the film A Beautiful Mind by Russell "You'll believe a man can think!" Crowe was not a cuddly-but-deluded figure, but the paranoid creator of Game Theory, a new science that showed how to win in the game of life by double-crossing others. This eventually led, according to Curtis, to Thatcherite economics, which laid bare the essential "truth" of our selfish interactions and did away with the "illusory" ideas of public service and duty that had underpinned the old institutions. Instead of being motivated by public service, people would now act as "free" agents pursuing financial incentives.

What I find a bit limiting in Curtis's approach is perhaps that he doesn't offer an alternative. If we are not to be selfish, suspicious free economic agents, then what are the options?

This is an area the School could help with. The world needs a new philosophy: one that engages with the arguments of Freud, Nash etc and exposes their fallacies, and then proposes a better system. Whether we do it or someone else doesn't matter, but if we are going to lend a hand, then we need to make a start.

Maybe we could start by reading what they have to say? There's nothing wrong with studying the Upanishads, but we also need to engage with the present.

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Why philosophy?

Criticisms of the School often centre on its use of the word "philosophy". People often arrive expecting a course in the history of ideas or of philosophers. Or, they expect that there will be more intellectual content than there is.

Conversely, we must suppose that many people don't come because they expect something that is overly academic for their tastes or abilities.

Then, within the School itself, there is uncertainty about the meaning of philosophy. It means "love of wisdom", but is this "desire for wisdom" (as Plato says in the Symposium, when he says that no philosopher is wise, because if they were they would no longer have the desire for what they have) or is it "love for that wisdom which one has"?

I think that a majority of members of the School would subscribe to the latter view. Wisdom is contained in the "scriptures" as well as in the heart, and it is a matter of joining with the wisdom already present.

This creates a further problem, which is that once people have attended for a year or two they realise that the School does not stand for "philosophy", but for "a philosophy". In the London School less than 10% complete 3 terms, so maybe the penny drops even earlier. People do not want this.

So we have a marketing problem, and an identity problem. The marketing problem is that people understand philosophy to mean something that we do not mean. The identity problem is more serious, because in my opinion we have got it wrong. ... click "Read more"

Philosophy in the West and India are different things. In the West, we have inherited from Christianity the idea of orthodoxy (ortho = "right", doxy = "belief", "right opinion" or "right religion") - that is, that there is one view that is correct. This is why modern science and modern philosophy can be such tough going: they are competing with religion to claim the title of "the one right opinion". The School, meanwhile, makes the same mistake in a different way. It says, "modern science and philosophy are clearly wrong, therefore the religious approach must be right".

But we are wrong. There doesn't have to be a single right answer.

In India, there has never been a tradition of orthodoxy. Krishna says that "however men worship me, even so I reward them". The Indian tradition is not that of one correct opinion, but of many opinions that are all partial approximations to the one truth. It is one of keeping the doors of the mind open until wisdom dawns. The Indian idea is not orthodoxy, but orthopraxy ("right practice").

In the West, we have constrained thought and free living; but India stands for free thought and disciplined living.

That is what I believe the School should stand for: not quasi-religion hiding under the name of philosophy, but a new (for the West) idea of philosophy.

The School has an effective discipline, and a partial method. All we need to do is to free our minds from dogmatic ideas. This is already happening, I believe - see some recent posts on developments in the School - and it is just a matter of more of us lending our shoulders to the wheel.

Everyone can do this, by the way, not just egg-heads. The important questions are important to everyone, and for that reason everyone can ponder them. Just because you haven't exercised a muscle for a while doesn't mean you can't. Ultimately, no expert, guru or acharya whatsoever can do this work for you.

If you don't quite believe that this radical view is representing the tradition rightly, then you need to question what I'm saying. I would welcome any questions, especially from those who believe that this view is alien to the School they dearly love.

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Let's be seeing you!

Just drawing to your attention the Noticeboard (on the right of the screen) where you may post - or read - notices of future events or reviews of those experienced.

This Palace of Varieties won't necessarily surface in group meetings, but I guess it can be used for any worthwhile event.

I keep hearing about a world Meditation Day on Wednesday, 28 November. Anyone care to expand on this? xxxxx

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Saturday in Brighton

Tomorrow, Saturday, 3 March, Kevin will be speaking on the novel in the series History of Me at 10.30am at the Brighthelm Centre, North Rd, Brighton. Cost £5.00.

This is not about Kevin, as such (I'm pretty sure it's not...) and, if it's anything like the one I attended before, it's well worth going to with interesting ideas and plenty of time for audience questions .

North Rd is three to four minutes south from the station on the left, and the Brighthelm Centre is on the right soon after turning into North Rd. If you go past the Post Office on the left you've gone too far. At Brighthelm walk down a short flight of steps and swing sharp left at the bottom of the stairs.

Just thought I'd mention this. Kevin may be a) too busy preparing to post this invitation; or b) too modest.

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Signs of life?

This blog started 10 months ago following all of the kerfuffle over St J, created largely by an online bulletin board where ex-pupils aired their grievances. I was very frustrated that (a) all of this stuff hadn't been sorted out sooner (b) many people were still unwilling to admit that the School was at fault and (c) there was no forum within the School to discuss anything in a proper fashion.

The kerfuffle seems to have died down. I don't have any inside information on why that might be, but I would speculate that a number of actions including the official apology from the School and the truth & reconciliation meetings with governors must have helped. My feeling has always been that the people who suffered as children were mainly motivated by a wish to have that acknowledged. The dark mutterings about "hardened activists" do not seem to have been justified, on the whole.

Anyway, my concern was never primarily about St J because it really is none of my business, except in so far as it is an extension of the School itself and therefore a useful lever for change. So what sort of changes have been happening in the School? I know many people who read this blog don't have much of an idea about the experiments and new initiatives, so I thought it might be useful to list some ... click "read more"

1. Parties for "alumni"
Alumni is my term for people who spent a considerable time in School (say 3 years). The attitude to people who leave has always been that they have turned from the true path, but this seems to be changing. A number of parties are being held for such people. The intention is to expand the School's sense of its family, to acknowledge the contribution of the alumni, and to let them know that just because they don't attend any more doesn't mean they are unwelcome.

2. Experimentation with groups, study days and weekends
Experiments I have personally witnessed or heard about in the middle and senior levels include: groups sitting in a circle, students tutoring groups, students tutoring study sessions, groups being mixed up on weekends, "free form" reflection sessions in which it is left up to the intelligence of the student, experimental meditation techniques including those from other traditions. The last two study days I attended were essentially tutored by students.

3. Willingness to explore new online formats
It's now possible to download podcasts from the main web site, and the word is that online discussion groups will soon be started.

4. Links with other organizations
See "Developments" post below. This was pioneered by the Economics faculty a few years back, and - praise be - it is now filtering through to philosophy. The obvious and easiest step is to build connections with similar Advaitin/Hindu groups. I would also like to see us getting some help from university philosophy departments, initially perhaps for things like Plato and Ficino, but eventually including modern Western philosophy. Members of the language faculty attended the World Sanskrit conference in Edinburgh last year for the first time.

5. More liberal attitude to School members' time
In the last couple of years it has become acceptable to put family needs before that of attending one's group, weekend or whatever. Couples have been offered the chance to move stream so that they attend the same weekends.

6. The School asks questions
Again pioneered by the Economics faculty over a decade ago when they asked people to fill in a survey explaining their concerns about economics. The philosophy faculty (a notional entity, like the Alumni, but if you keep saying it, it might happen) seems to be starting to shift too. This is the biggest step, because if the School asks its members (or the public) a non-rhetorical question, it means that the School is finally surrendering a claim on knowledge. All of the preceding five points are helping to create the atmosphere for this.

So, there it is. My personal view, which you may not agree with, is that all of these points are positive signs of life, and that we are finally throwing off the blanket of fear that has covered us for so long, and discovering that the world is not actually opposed to us. Of course, these actions are not endorsed by all senior members - we don't have any way of knowing what they say in the smoke-filled rooms - but so far there has been no revolt.

Do you think some of these changes are wrong? Or do you, like me, agree with them? What other changes would you regard as a sign of health?

It would be very good to hear from everyone, and also from some new voices. I know we have more readers than participants.

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Er, No ...

Last night I went along to hear a talk by Lynn McTaggart (left), author of The Field, which is an excellent tour of cutting-edge science and its relation to spirituality and consciousness. She was in that film "What The Bleep Do We Know" (I'm trying not to hold it against her). She's currently involved in setting up the world's largest scientific experiment into mind over matter, which you can take part in on 24th March if interested.

She was a good speaker, but the event was hosted by The Yes Group, a London organization inspired by the teachings of self-help guru Anthony Robbins.

First up on stage were several female dancers, dressed in lemon-yellow "Yes!" t-shirts. It was quite sweet, in a way, because none of them were there for cosmetic effect, and it clearly meant a lot to them to be doing this. They danced to Dr Beat by Gloria Estefan (eek) and Born to be Wild (which they clearly weren't) ... Click "Read More"

Next up was their chair, a lady who didn't seem all that happy in herself, followed by our MC, a sharply-dressed black guy, who made us clap the people who were new to the Group, and then clap those who had been before, and introduced a "health talk" by one of their number, the Daily Star's health correspondent. He proceeded to tell us (I kid you not) about the foods that we should eat to fart less. We had to hug someone we had never met before and then exchange e-mail addresses so that we could check in with each other in a fortnight to report on our flatulence.

By the time Lynn McTaggart (who has no relationship to this group) took to the stage I was pretty well exhausted with the condescending, patronising tone of the whole experience. As soon as we got to the break my companions and unanimously decided to beat it before anyone else networked us. Someone remarked, "I feel soiled".

If the Yes Group is indicative of the general NLP, self-help, New Age scene, my worst prejudices have been realised. Despite all the positive thinking, there wasn't one person there who came over as unusually impressive, or deeply happy. It appeared to me that this group, instead of being a place that challenged and inspired, was their cosy escape from the world. Give me Old Age any day.

Does anyone else have observations, positive or negative or just interesting, about other paths?

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