Bennett/Idries Shah
MBTF said,
16.07.09 at 11:51 am · Didnt Bennett get ripped off by letting Idries Shah the pseudo-Sufi con him into believing that he, Shah, had access to the true source of gurdjieff’s much vaunted system?
And after Bennett was assured that Combe Springs would be used as a study center, signed it over to Shah, Shah then evicted everyone, then sold the property and made a tidy profit?
Some die hard followers of Bennett insist that the old man did this willingly, perhaps because it was painful to face their leader had been hoodwinked in old age.
Robert Graves was persuaded to make a translation of the Rubayat of Omar Khayyam from a manuscript allegedly known as the ‘Fishan Khan MS’, property of one of Idries Shah’s ancestors. But Shah and his brother never did produce the original and Robert Graves, himself an old man and vulnerable, was left holding the bag.
For more, read the two volume biography of Graves, written by his nephew Perceval.
Show old men some mercy.
For one day we all shall be old, if permitted to live long enough.
These depradations of Idries Shah are important to recall.
But my complaint is that it is ultimately futile to extricate the useful material from The Dramatic Universe, because it rigged with Gurdjieff’s very dangerous ideas, ideas that will lead to destruction of human life.
Bennett became aware of his dilemma, but unlike Ouspensky was unwilling or unable or too afraid to resist.
my complaint is that Gurdjieff thugs will claim this work of Bennett as their ‘property’ and/or make their intepretation seem to be ‘objective knowledge’ when in fact everything they do is a devious dishonest scheme.
New Man, New Age, New Socialism 