29.10.09

Bennett on modernity

Posted in Uncategorized at 5:11 pm by nemo

From Vol IV of The Dramatic Universe.
I have proceeded rapidly to the end of DU, having bypassed the project of a more detailed commentary. It might help to start over with a shorter summary (and critique).
The passage scanned here can conclude the scanned material and is of interest because of Bennett’s Great Blunder, saying something nice about modernity. Towards the end of this passage is the comical citation of the Communist Manifesto in favorable terms andn in terms of the ‘new age’ or Synergetic Epoch in Bennett’s timeline.
Comical, to me, because it innocently blew itself out of the water as far as the G work is concerned. You just don’t go around citing Marx’s Communist Manifesto in the Gurdjieff hotbed of fascist reactionaries. Bennett’s account here is typical of his style, and his manner of making things up as he goes along. Bennett is truly unique, the only writer I know of who uses a design argument to explain modernity.
His manner of depicting his theme is suspect at all points, including the name and starting point of the so-called Synergetic Epoch.
But at least Bennett realized that the modern world had to be taken into account as a valid phenomenon of evolutionary progression. The anti-modern reactionary complot of the Gurdjieff work is simply a form of New Age stupidity.
Read this passage with skepticism

Btw, look at the eonic effect, if you want to get the issue of epochs and modernity straight.

http://eonic-effect.net

Until the seventeenth century we can see the progress of mind and
soul going hand in hand. The ideas and techniques came from the sam
sources and flowed through the same or closely allied channels. Th:
distinction between clerical and secular schools had relatively little
importance so long as a common understanding of the Great Work
linked artists, scholars, priests and laymen in pursuit of the one aim:
to prepare for the Kingdom of God. ‘*’

The seventeenth century was the parting of the ways. We have seen
reasons for believing that men connected with the Hidden Directorate
guided England towards parliamentary Government and, in effect, the
end of monarchy. We also have seen the explosion of creative thought
that transformed the pace of progress in Europe so that within two
centuries Asia, Africa and, temporarily, America were left behind. This
was the time when belief in Divine Providence as the guiding principle
in the working of nature began to give place to belief in Natural Law and
hence in the possibility for the mind of man to grasp and even to control
every kind of natural process. The seventeenth century also marks the
decline of religion, not only in Christendom, but remarkably enough in
Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist countries also. The last two centuries of
the Epoch-i.e. from A.D. 1650 to A.D. 185o-were to see the culmina-
tion of the tendency to exalt the human mind alone and to interpret the
Megalanthropic Master Idea in humanistic terms.

Nevertheless, the Path of Accelerated Transformation remained open
for those who knew where to seek. In England, William Law (A.D. 1686-
1761) and in Germany, Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), gathered
ups about them to work upon the transformation of energy according
the ancient tradition. There is little doubt that there were also hidden
ups who undertook the task of preserving and transmitting the secret

•ence. From the standpoint of visible history, these movements appear
be aberrations having no practical significance and indeed it does
rn that European spirituality sank to a very low ebb.

One symptom of the age was the tendency to equate soul with mind
d to ignore the responsibility that attaches to the self-hood of man.
‘he Industrial Revolution, the Slave Trade, the oppression of subject
people and the decline of Objective Morality were all consequences of
fthis central mistake. It was assumed by religious people that all men have
souls and that the soul is assured of immortality with little risk of
damnation. Non-religious people were content to accept man as he is
and build upon the natural powers of the mind. In a word, the psycho-
static attitude to human destiny took possession of people accom-
panied by the growing confidence in temporal progress.

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars scarcely interrupted
the progress of science and industry. The Treaty of Vienna, based upon
prejudice and fear, gave Europe a long period of peace in which to build
up the material power with which the Megalanthropic Epoch drew
to its close.

Throughout Christendom men continued to profess religion and to
believe in God and the soul. But neither Christianity nor the other great
religions founded at the beginning of the Epoch had brought mankind
to the realization of the significance of Love and especially of the Love
between God and man. This apparent failure was accentuated by the
success of humanism not only on the material plane but also in the
improvement of edaphic, political and social life in most parts of the
world. The sense of religious failure was accompanied by the expecta-
tion of some great change. During the decades from 1815 to 1845 many
prophets of the End of the World appeared from China through Asia
and Europe to North and South America. This remarkable phenomenon,
apparently destined to ridiculous disappointment-was in reality a sign
of the times. The old world of the Megalanthropic Epoch was dying:
but a new Epoch was in the throes of birth.
17 ,49.8. THE SYNERGIC EpOCH

According to our reckoning, the change of Epoch can be detected
in the seven-year period from 1844 to 1851. There was no sudden, and
certainly no catastrophic, occurrence. The causal influences in history
operating on the economic, political and social levels, prevent sudden
changes. An immense inertia binds the great majority of people, of the
psycho static orders of society, to their prevailing conditions of existence.
Nevertheless, the influx of a new and immensely powerful influence can
be recognized as having reached its maximum intensity in the year
A.D. 1848.* In the midst of a tense and uncertain political and economic
climate a new Master Idea began to find expression in ways that the
contemporary world almost totally failed to recognize. Only those whose
attention is directed to the total human situation are likely to discern
the Message of the Age. For others, the Master Idea takes many different
forms and may be expressed in ways so different as to appear contra-
dictory. We use the term Synergy to express the notion of structural
cooperation and we shall refer to the Synergic Epoch as that which
began in the middle of the nineteenth century and will probably con-
tinue to dominate history for the next two or three thousand years.
The term structural cooperation should not require much explana-
tion. It represents a stage of integration in which the parts of a whole
surrender some of their independent existence, in order to partici-
pate in a higher gradation of being. The ideal marriage in which husband
and wife are merged in a common soul exemplifies structural coopera-
tion. The healthy organism is another example where we can see that
more than functional unity is involved. The mind of humanity con-
ditioned by a hundred generations of Megalanthropic individualism, and
still dominated by the taint of Egoism in the soul-stuff, was far from
prepared for the change. The premature explosion of the French
Revolution, with the slogan Liberty, Fraternity, Equality, demonstrated
the inability of people, however well-intentioned, to live by the principle
of Structural Cooperation. Nevertheless, once the moment arrived, the
new Master Idea began to influence the minds of men in new and
unexpected ways.
As we look back over the short period of one hundred and twenty
years since the change of Epoch, we can recognize several forms in
which the Idea has already found expression. These include the doctrine
of Universal Evolution and the Unity of Life, the theory of Relativity
and the rejection of Absolutism, the belief in Cooperation and the need
for large-scale organization and the gradual and so far scarcely per-
ceptible transition from emphasis upon man’s individual greatness to
emphasis upon the greatness of man’s collective destiny.
*’ This was the year in which a wave of revolution overcame nearly the whole of
Europe. Within a year the revolutionaries-urging the destruction of the old class
society and the implementation of democratic reforms-found themselves defeated
after an enthusiastic triumph.

The Syn~rgic Epoch is a stage in the evolution of Mankind marked
b.y a new kind of cooperation between levels, requiring and made pos-
Sible by, new forms of communication and organization of human
societies. The responsibility for human destiny should in future be
rather a matter of cooperation between the Orders of society than of the
intervention by the Hidden Directorate. For this to be achieved great
changes are required.
The Megalanthropic Master Idea had lent itself to absolutist doc-
trines in politics, philosophy, religion and even natural science. * The new
Master Idea tends to encourage the synthetic search for structure rather
than for analysis of situations in terms of things and laws. The belief in
Natural Law gives place to confidence in the structural unity of the
Universe, Life and Matter. This, in its turn, leads to relativistic doc-
trines and practices in all domains of human thought and action. The
Megalanthropic quest of the Absolute led to contradictions and absurd-
ities in thought and to monarchy, dictatorship and revolution in society.
It was a passing phase in the development of the human mind and it is
now giving place to a new phase made possible by the enhanced powers
of communication and concerted action that are among our legacies from
the Megalanthropic Epoch.
The synergic impulse began to make itself felt in the middle of the
nineteenth century and it did this in so many different forms that no
contemporary observer could possibly have recognized their common
relevance. The difficulty of seeing what was happening and about to
happen was enhanced by the inertia of the old ideas. Although the
Doctrine of the Absolute may be said to have died with Hegel (1770-
1831), it continued to haunt philosophy like a ghost until well into the
twentieth century. Though untenable from the moment that translations
of the Sacred Books of the East demonstrated to impartial European
students the profound significance of all the religious traditions, and
from the time that the literal truth of revealed scriptures could no longer
be sustained in face of the progress of science from Copernicus to
Darwin, absolute and exclusive claims continued to be made by nearly
all the world’s religions, including the most insignificant sects and cults.
Although belief in the possibility of establishing an ideal social order
could scarcely survive the collapse of monarchic rule and the social
disasters of the Industrial Revolution, the realization that no functional
reform could yield anything but relative and transient benefits to man-
kind did not come in spite of the accumulated evidence yielded by
historical research and by current events alike.
The Master Idea did not take root by intentional action on the
part of rulers or ruled, of scientists and philosophers, of reformers and
religious people, most of whom, on the contrary, resisted it tooth and
nail. Many were aware of the need for change, but this was so grievously
misunderstood as to produce results quite contrary to the synergic
principle. This is strikingly exemplified in the Tai P’ing Movement
in China, initiated in 1850 by a member of the Triad Brotherhood,”
Hung Hsiu-ch’uan, who claimed revelations that were to found a new
religion and a new society derived from Christianity and Taoism. The
Tai P’ing rebellion cost China 20,000,000 lives and untold suffering
until suppressed-chiefly by Gordon’s ‘ever-victorious army’. It would
indeed have been a discerning eye that could see in these events the
germs of a synergic structure; and yet, after a hundred years, we can
see that the intellectual climate of the Far East was already moving
away from the absolute and isolationist principles that had for so many
centuries cut the region away from the rest of the world.
Another movement-on the face of it, a disastrous failure-was
initiated in the Middle Eastern region that we have associated with the
presence of the Hidden Directorate. This movement, now known as the
Bahai Faith, was founded in 1844 by Mirza Ali Muhammad of Shiraz
who was given the title of the Bab or Portal of Paradise. The martyrdom
of the Bab in 1850, the cruel persecution of his followers and the remark-
able teachings of his successors Abdul Baha and Bahaullah concentrated
a force that has led hundreds of thousands in all parts of the world to
believe that in the Bahai Faith all the religions of the world have found
their consummation and their unity. The Bahai teachings are eminently
synergic and may be destined to contribute an important element to the
New Epoch. It cannot be said that Bahaism has made any considerable
impression on those outside the faith. The same is true for a third move-
ment which originated at the same time as T’ai P’ing and Bahaism; this
was the Indian Brahmo Samaj, founded in 1828, which gathered mo-
mentum in the 1850′s and 1860′S, as a syncretistic fusion of Hinduism
and Christianity. The greatest exponent of the synergic doctrine was the
outstanding Indian Saint Ramakrishna (1834-86). Ramakrishna can be
recognized as a forerunner of the New Epoch in his declaration that,
having penetrated to the heart of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity,
he found them to be one in their essence and their origin. His ecstatic
lov~ of the Di.vir:e Mother can be interpreted as a foretaste of an age in
which the umfymg role of the Mother of God will become apparent.
.In Europe, a younger contemporary of Hung, the Bab and Rama-
kns~n~ preached to an unresponsive world the doctrine of existential
relativity and the necessity of hazard. This was Seren Kierkegaard
(1813-1855) who unexpectedly has come to be known as the founder
of the existentialist philosophies and the ‘dialectical theology’ of Karl
B~rth. * The significance of Kierkegaard lies not so much in his break
with Megalanthropic notions of art, ethics and religion; as in his insist-
ence upon human responsibility as a necessary and yet impossible
contribution to the ‘Stages on Life’s Way’. t He saw that man is obliged
to accept a responsibility for which he is not fitted, and this led him to
reject Hegelianism together with all easy-going interpretations of the
Christian message. The full significance of existentialism in all its forms
is not yet apparent, but it can already be seen to be far more in keeping
with twentieth-century modes of thought than with those of the 1840′s.
This brings us back to another premature document: the Communist
Manifesto of 1848, which, because of its association with the revolu-
tionary movement, turned out to be a programme-statement of the
Communist League founded in London in 1847. The Manifesto was
on the visible level a reaction to the Industrial Revolution and the rejec-
tion of nearly all the attitudes of the Megalanthropic Epoch; but it was
also an expression of a new and essentially synergic mode of thought.
The responsibility of man for his own future and the necessity for
stages in the realization of the communist society, though expressed in
revolutionary terms, are ideas that correspond to the conditions of
human progress towards the New Epoch.] In so far as the Communist
Manifesto was a declaration of the Synergic Principle, its contents have

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