No Heretic

No Heretic!

I can still remember the thrill as John Godolphin Bennett was coming to the end of his talk in the Onward Hall, Manchester, early in 1957. Some 250 people packed the hall, largely through the efforts of the small Group of people studying the ideas of Georgy Ivanovich Gurdjieff under Mr Bennett. As he came to the conclusion of his lecture he spoke in a way that I, who had already studied with him for 7 years, had never heard him speak before.

“And lastly I believe that there is a Higher Power, a Higher Will, that is the friend of the Will in each one of us. This is the Will that helps in the process of the awakening of the Will in all separate beings, but that Higher Power or Will I will call the ‘Essence Individuality’. It is one everywhere. It is the One Awake Will.”

There was an almost palpable thrill that passed through the audience as he spoke these words, and I can feel that same thrill as I read those words again some fifty years later. Little did we know then that JGB had already been opened in the movement that is called Subud. And little did we realise that this same Mr Bennett, who had been a close disciple of Gurdjieff’s, and who had some 400 pupils in England alone and possibly double that number worldwide, was about to lead his legions in. All this I have described in my book “My Stairway to Subud.”

It is curious that even those that are agnostic, even determinedly atheistic, could find a sort of reverberation in those words. For those who reject the idea of some Jove-like figure sitting on a diamond encrusted throne high up in the sky, surrounded by angels and cherubim and seraphim, those same people could hardly reject the idea of a Higher Will; and the awakening of the Will in every one of us could be accepted by religious and irreligious alike.

For the religious, for those that are Christians, there could be no exceptions, since the words about Will are enshrined at the very epicentre of Christianity. Our Father that art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done….” There it is: “Thy Will be done.” This is absolutely central to the Christian creed, the idea that we should all submit, that we should all surrender to this Higher Will. And what about Islam? The very word Islam means to surrender to the Will of God. And the idea of surrender is echoed through the Old Testament, most particularly with the Holy Prophets Moses and Abraham.

In fact this idea of Surrender to God’s Will, is so central to the three major religions of Judaism, Christendom and Islam, that it must come as a major surprise to any thinking man, that there could be any differences between them. How has it come about that Muslims wage war against their Jewish brethren? How did the Crusades come about? I remember asking Mr Bennett about this, for while Christians think of the gallant Crusaders marching to the defence of the Holy Places against the scimitar wielding Saracens, the Saracens for their part considered that these same Crusaders were a drunken unruly horde, bent only on pillage and plunder. How could Muslims fight Christians and Jews for that matter, when the Holy Prophet Mohammed himself had no quarrel with them. On the contrary! What makes this even more absurd is that Nabi Ibrahim, which is Abraham, and Nabi Isa, that is Jesus Christ, are included in the pantheon on Islamic Prophets!

What is even more insane is this. How come that Christians fight Christians? How did the evils of the Inquisition come about? How could Christians show so little mercy that they were prepared to burn each other at the stake, that is to say Catholic and Protestants? Nearer to us we have The Troubles in Northern Ireland where Catholics bomb and slaughter Protestants, where Catholics blow the knee-caps off of those that disagree with them, where there is a lingering suspicion that the priests of the Catholic Church condoned these bombings and supported the IRA; while on the other side of the fence the Reverend Ian Paisley vented his anti-Popery spleen, and galvanised the Loyalists, so-called, to similar sorts of atrocities. Could both these parties truly be called Christian?

What was even more absurd was the recent war between Iran and Iraq, both Muslim countries? How could two nations both espousing the Religion of Compassion blow each other to smithereens with a ferocity that had to be observed to be believed? And now they are at it again, Sunni against Shi’ite, blowing each other to Kingdom come, destroying the country and its wealth in a totally insane way.

So absurd are these contradictions, that most ordinary sensible people just wash their hands of them. The Irish, they say, will never solve their problems! They engage in a Peace process, but it is regarded as a sham. We all know in our hearts that the protagonists do not want Peace, they only want Domination. It is the same with the Sunnis and the Shi’ites – they will blow each other to bits, until one side comes out the victor. It is as crude and as savage as that. The Diplomats may talk about the ‘road-map’, but we all know that this is a pretence. It is almost a relief when such an anti-Jewish movement as Hamas openly avows its aim as the destruction of the Jewish state. At least they do not pretend to be seeking Peace, when they are bound on extermination!

What makes all of this even more terrible is that so much of this is done in the name of Religion. We see pictures on our screens of Kaleshnikov waving mobs, chanting Allahu-Akbar, God is most Great, while being clearly in the grip of the lowest forces of self-will, impelled by their nafs. Where is there mercy there? Where is there Compassion? Where in all of this is the Love of God? Where is the Love of one’s fellow men? All that one can see is blind rage and hatred. Where then is the Religion in all of this? And who in reality are the Infidels?

In fact, we all know it, in all of this, Surrender to the Will of God is a million miles away. What we observe everywhere are the crude and blatant manifestations of self-will. It is as if Mankind is sliding down a slippery slope of their own making, and that they are deliberately choosing both Hell on earth and Hell in the Hereafter.

For surely that is just what self-will is – it is the road to Hell, it is the road to Destruction. And all the while there is this Higher Will that is the friend of the Will in every one of us that is beckoning. Surrender to that Higher Will is the Way to the Kingdom of Heaven; it is the route to Peace on Earth and to happiness in the hereafter.

Francis Thompson in that great poem The Hound of Heaven put it thus:

I fled Him down the nights and own the days
I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind….

This is a poetic expression of the same idea that Bennett had enunciated. This Hound of Heaven is the same Higher Will that is the friend of the Will in mankind.

But what is this Will that is in man? It certainly is not what is normally called will power, which we all know is simply the automatic manifestation of strong desires. We know that this Will that is in man is something totally different. In fact it is so latent in man, so hidden in his essence, that for the most part he does not even suspect its existence. In the language of Gurdjieff man has no Will, he has no ‘I’ , he has no permanent and conscious centre of initiative. All that he has are a number, a large number of separate ‘I’s which form his Personality. The Will that should be in him, to all intents and purposes does not exist.

So this Higher Will that Bennett speaks of is the friend of something that is hidden in man, something that is latent, and something that is covered up, something that is real but something that is in the subconscious. Again in Gurdjieff’s language it is in the Essence, but not in the Personality.

This is a difficult concept for those who have never been in the Work, or for those who have never been opened in Subud. But for those who have been in the Work the concept is readily accepted by the mind, while for those in Subud it is an experiential fact.

I am afraid that I am going to mix languages a bit, but that is only because that everything that Gurdjieff expounded can be found again in Subud, though perhaps in a slightly different form, like notes on a piano played in a different key or higher octave. That is why I have also said that everything that I formerly learned as a pupil of John Bennett, I have never had to repudiate. In fact I would go farther and say that some of the ideas of Gurdjieff, some of the things that are central to his system, can only really be understood after experience of the Subud latihan. For example, what is the real meaning of self-remembering? Why did the Gurdjieff pupils struggle and struggle to remember themselves? In fact what is it that they were trying to remember? And why was it that those who really tried could only observe failure? P.D.Ouspensky coined it most dramatically, “ we need to find the way to the opening of the Higher Emotional centre and we have not found that way.”

Now Bennett in his talk at the Onward Hall thrilled his audience, precisely because he intimated something, he conveyed something to that audience that was beyond their logical minds, actually that was beyond his logical mind, that struck a chord deep in their emotions. So it was.

This Will he spoke of is known variously. It is called the Inner Light by the Quakers, it is called the Atman by Vedantins and followers of Shankara; in Christendom it might be called God Immanent, in Christian Science as Principle, or it might be called the Soul or the Jiwa.

Now it is not uncommon for the existence of the Soul to be doubted. In fact it is totally reasonable to doubt its existence. Why should any sensible person believe in the existence of the soul? Why believe that there is an Atman, or that Atman and Brahman are one?

In fact I will go farther. It is entirely logical for a man not to believe anything. For if it is correct that there are many ‘I’s in the Personality, who is believing anyway? And then what is belief? We know that we are all immensely gullible – we can be persuaded to believe almost anything. Lots of people believe that aliens have visited us from outer space. Lot of others believe equally strongly that this is nonsense. Some people believe that men walked on the Moon, while others seriously contend that it was a put up job, filmed on some desert site in California.

Now these things are matters of opinion, not very serious. But when it comes to saying “ I Believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth” this is not a light thing, but something of the utmost seriousness. So we must respect those who cannot believe, equally with those that can. But I am minded of what Icksan Ahmed said to me all those 50 years ago, “Same difference – no experience.”

The truth is that we can only assert something, we can only truly believe something if it is a fact of our experience. If it is not from our experience, then it is only from ‘the labyrinthine ways of my own mind’, as Francis Thompson had it. John Bennett would have said it was from the ‘formatory apparatus.’ Pak Subuh referred to such ‘thinking’ as ‘akal-fikiran’.

Now this brings us to a very curious position, which it this. In our normal state we cannot help lying. We lie all the time. What I am saying here can easily be misunderstood. I do not mean that we are always telling ‘porkies’ though that may occur often enough. What I mean is something much more complex. We cannot help lying because we don’t know who we are. Of course, we think we do. I am Tony Bright-Paul – who else do you think I am? But the fact is that this Tony Bright-Paul consists of a thousand and one personas. All his thoughts and opinions and convictions and so on and so forth belong simply to his functions.

However, when a person is opened in Subud he or she begins to be two. The jiwa, which is the Real Self, begins to move. This movement, this stretching of one’s jiwa is so strange, that it is difficult at first to recognise it as one’s own inner content. This is the beginning of the growth of one’s own ‘I’, the development of the psyche, the exercise of the soul. It is not so much that one has one’s own ‘I’ – that would be entirely presumptuous – but that that jiwa begins gradually, gradually to begin its own transformation.

I was very struck when writing the beginning of this treatise by the often-overlooked words in the Lord’s Prayer, which is “Hallowed be Thy Name.” What exactly does that mean? Does it just mean that God’s name is Holy? Does it mean that we have to assume a pious voice, when we say the word God, as so many pious clergy are wont to do! Chod! Do we have to pull a long face and lower our voices? No, not at all!

In our normal state – what Gurdjieff called the state of ‘sleep’ – we can do and will do what we like. But when the soul is awakened, then a person who is an agnostic or an atheist might cry out to Allah, while his jiwa is being exercised, equally with a person who is a devout Jew, or Christian or Muslim. And just what does this word Allah mean? It means that God is everywhere, that God penetrates and permeates all things, that God was before existence and will be after everything has gone. Actually, I am only repeating here what Pak Subuh has said, and I only repeat it because some people imagine that Muslims are worshipping a separate God – that Allah is somehow different to Jehovah, or Yahweh, or Tuhan, or Dieu. On the contrary the fundamental assertion of Islam is that there is one God, and that is something that neither Jew nor Christian can quarrel with. We all believe that there is one Great Power, we all believe that there is a Higher Will. It could hardly be that there are two of them knocking about, creating and ruling the universe!!

It is a fact that Ouspensky observed that it is only in an awakened state that some things can be understood – he cited the Gospel of St John – which cannot be understood unless the feelings are wide open. If read in one’s normal state it makes no sense at all, or very little. In my opinion, such a state of the feelings is necessary for the reading of the Koran and of course the Psalms.

It is likewise true that only in a certain state can we speak the Truth. In fact it is only when we are surrendered that we speak the Truth, because then what arrives arrives spontaneously from a Higher Source, and not from our thinking, not from our ‘akal-fikiran’.

OK, this is a difficult concept, but it has a bearing on “Hallowed be Thy Name.” In our normal automatism it is all too easy to take the Name of the Lord our God, in vain. It is all too easy to claim that God is on our side. Funny! He is always on the side of the big battalions! Strictly speaking all claims like this are a form of unconscious blasphemy.

Now while I have emphasised the common factor that unites all religions, namely the idea of Surrender to the Will of God, it is amazing then that all Religions are not totally united, totally at one. But we all know the very reverse is true. In fact – get this - in Christendom there are 34,000 different sects or Groups! 34,000!! There are 1,200 separate Groups of Christians in North America alone!

In Islam the most well known Sects are the Sunnis and the Shi’ite, while the Sufis are famed to all those interested in Islamic mysticism. But there are also Wahhabis, Ismailis, Zaidis, Fatimids, Nizari, Alawis, the Druze, the Baha’is and the Ahmadiyyah sect.

There are groupings in Judaism also, but in general the question of Jewishness depends on matrilineal descent. In consequence they take on more the nature of a nationality with religious beliefs in common, or rather religious practices, than different sects.

But the point is this. The Prophets of the Old Testament or the Torah are revered equally by the Jews, by Christians and by Muslims! So how come that they are always at each other’s throats? How come that Jews know so little of Christianity and Christians so little of Islam, when their basic and fundamental tenets are the same?

That the Prophets of the Old Testament, that the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ are revered in Islam is so little known that I am constrained here to quote from the Koran. I am quoting from p.34 of the Penguin Classics version on the Chapter entitled Mary:

“Such was Jesus, the son of Mary. That is the whole truth that they are unwilling to accept. Allah forbid that He Himself should beget a son! When he decrees a thing He need only say: ‘Be,’ and it is.

Allah is my Lord and your Lord: therefore serve Him. That is the right path.

Yet the Sects are divided concerning Jesus. But when the fateful day arrives, woe to the unbelievers! Their sight and their hearing shall be sharpened on the day that they appear before Us. Truly the unbelievers are in the grossest error.”

So here we see that the Prophet Mohammed not only supported Jesus, but chastised those Sects who were unwilling to accept Him. In no way is this an anti-Christian attitude. On the same page we find references to Abraham:

“You shall also recount in the Book the story of Abraham: He was a Prophet and a Saintly man…..
And when Abraham had cast off his people and the idols they worshipped, We gave him Isaac and Jacob. Each of them We made a Prophet, and we bestowed on them gracious gifts and high renown.
Tell also of Moses, who was an apostle, a Prophet and a chosen man.”

Now I am not a Muslim and it was many years before I read the Koran. I hope that these extracts will be as astonishing to you, my Readers, as they were to me. At once one can see that the Holy Prophet Mohammed entirely approved of the Prophets of the Old Testament or the Torah and that he castigated those who were divided over Jesus. This is a totally different picture than is often portrayed of a violent religion on the march against the Prophets of the past.

In my next Chapter I will attempt to examine just why there is such an impasse, such major misunderstanding between the Religions of the World.


Anthony Bright-Paul May 2006