#jg bennett

‘If we had no egoism, then we should be like Angels, who are not capable of transformation. They can't be transformed because there is no denying principle. It is the same way with suffering. Without suffering there is no possibility of transformation. But the way in which suffering serves us is not just by giving us something to overcome, to be patient with, to be good about. The real thing about suffering is that it enables an action to proceed in the depths in us, it enables us to get below the surface, to get below even the ordinary depths, to find the place where there is no suffering. In everyone there is the place that is free from suffering. This place we have to find.

The way to it is through learning how to suffer and accept the action of suffering in ourselves; accepting it to the point where it is complete when the breakthrough comes, and we arrive at that place in us which is free. So it says 'If you knew how to suffer, then you would know how not to suffer'. Not-suffering does not mean being without any enemies or harmful actions. Not-suffering means to have entered into a particular place which is the sacred place inside us where there is no suffering, because it is a place of God. To find a way to that place is one of the great things. It is there that we come to the threshold of unity. So that saying is a good saying.’

Well hello to you too, Mr. Bennett. Long time no see, huh?

You know, if you want me to help you, the least you could do is learn my name. ‘You, acrobat,’ is no decent way to greet a colleague.

As it happens, I’m afraid I can’t help you much, anyway. The last I saw of Mr. Barnum, he was a bit drunk and mopey. Haven’t seen him much around the circus today. He might still be in his office, or perhaps he went down to the docks. He does that sometimes when he’s battling a headache.

Best of luck.

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"In old Russia there were very devout people, but they had a great number of beliefs that couldn’t find a place in any ordinary idea of Christianity. They believed that there were spirits in forests and spirits in houses, and if one undertook something one should ask the spirit of the place to allow and help it. And life was very good, although it was very hard.

These people felt that they were in connection with the spiritual world all the time—and they were.

It is through this sense of the sacred being open in us that we can get into the world which in Sufism is called the alam-i arvah, the world of spirits. I have said that the spiritual power is like the Sun and that we do not see the Sun. What we see are carpets, chairs and so on—the light of the Sun reflected in these things. In some kind of way the alam-i arvah is a reflection of the power of God, of the Spirit. If you believe and accept that you are in that world, you really are in it. And when you accept the movements in such a way, then what one could call “the spirit of the movements” comes into what you do. It is even possible to say that every movement has its own spirit and sometimes you can feel that it is the spirit doing the movement. This does not mean that God is doing the movement—God is a long way beyond that. It means that something is at work which is not of the bodily world. We should believe that there is a spirit world, because there is. Everything has its own spirit for which there is an invocation or prayer. Buddhism told people to be very careful not to think of God in the way that they had been doing. But it never discouraged belief in the spirits.’

~ JG Bennett, 'The Way to be Free'

“True inner work is timeless. It’s only the preparation for it that takes time.”

Drawing by Federico Fellini

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Gurdjieff on Freedom

“You must understand that you cannot begin with freedom–freedom is the goal, the aim. People say that God created man free. That is a great misunderstanding. Freedom cannot be given to anyone–even by our all-loving Creator Himself. God has given to man the biggest thing he can–that is the possibility to become free. The desire for freedom exists in every man worthy of the name–but people are stupid and they think they can have outward freedom without inner freedom. All our evil comes from this stupidity. Unless we desire, first of all, to be free from our own inner enemies, we shall only go from bad to worse.

Therefore everyone must examine himself and try to find in himself a sincere wish to be free from the forces of Vanity and Self-Love acting in him. That inner slavery is the worst degradation for man, it is the Hell in which man allows himself to exist. The sincere wish to be free from that degradation is the beginning of Real Pride.”

~ Gurdjieff, via JG Bennett