Freshly Laundered & Hanging Out to Dry: A memoir from the boomer generation
I’ve written a book about my experience during the second course at Sherborne (1972-73). I’ll be posting it in segments on this blog and invite you to read it. With about 500 graduates, why hasn’t more been published? The only writings I know of are Allen Roth’s Sherborne and a delightfully humorous article by Lynn Quirolo called Meeting J.G. Bennett. Please let us know if you’re aware of others.
The current economic and environmental crises are what inspired me to finally sit down and put my experience on paper. The economic and environmental issues were at the forefront of our thought at that time.
In the 60s and 70s visionaries such as the economist E.F. Schumacher, social critic Theodore Roszak, anthropologist Gregory Bateson, linguist Noam Chomsky, and consciousness researcher John Lilly tried to awaken a different way of seeing our world. Though their books were best sellers, they did not receive much attention from the power brokers. Are they seen as visionaries now or do university professors mention them at all?
Young adults were hungry for answers. They traveled and experimented with drugs, joined ashrams and searched for teachers who would offer information about living in a different way. J.G. Bennett’s school at Sherborne House was a unique experiment. Instead of an ongoing living situation he condensed into a ten-month course the information, practical and meditative exercises he thought that generation needed in order to walk a different path.
February 14th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
I have read about MrGurdjieff,MrOuspensky,MrBennet,Mrkenneth walker ,MrMaurice Nicoll,MrNott,MrRohert De Ropp,Rodney collins,Margaret Anderson,and many others Rene Zuber etc.MrGurdjieff as a person embodied eastern as well as western spiritual approaches.He devised modern system to suit the modern man for spiritual understanding of human existence.The ancient tradition of spiritual teaching was slowly on verge of vanishing in the midst of modern techno driven world.He appeared at the right time with the ancient spiritual teaching to preserve it and impart.He did a great service to the western world and humanity at large.MrBennet was one of the early follower of MrGurdjieff `s system of spiritual teaching and he rightly in his effort to live teaching and at the same time create condition in which other seekers of truth participate and preserve this ancient spiritual teaching which otherwise would have slowly disintegrated it seems.MrOuspensky did remarkable job of putting the basic tenets of the teaching in his much read book ‘In search of miraculous’.What is written here is only outer form but what is crux of the matter is to work on oneself in order to effect the transformation of the very being which is otherwise in sleeping state.Self-Remembering which is the key in Gurdjieff`s teaching which is equalant to Jiddu Krishnamurti`s often repeated phrase ‘Awareness’.Though Gurdjieff devised a system to impart the teaching ,Mr Krishnamurti vehemently denies methods or system to arrive at ‘Truth’.He declared Truth is a pathless land in his landmark pronouncement and further maintained that Guru-disciple relationship is based on exploitation of each other.But this is not to say that what Mr Gurdjieff that system devised for imparting the spiritual teaching is not applicable.Gurdjieff saw Man is asleep and to wake him up from his conceptual sleep it is necessary to inject shock in him and precisely the system works on this principle.He too said that work on oneself is ardeous task and needs constant attention as we are so much habit bound that everything we do in our living is immensly mechanical and there is no element of awareness in it.