Masters of wisdom, demiurgic nonsense, and the key to world history’s design
Bennett wrote a book on this topic, before he died…
The question of Gurdjieff, sufis, and my antagonistic stance, reflects the issues of the ‘masters of wisdom’ question, or the Khwajagan topic of Bennett’s last book. I know nothing much at all about this, but I do sense a larger dimension to sufism, and this is one of them (the resemblance to buddhism is no accident).
I think that my references to Bennett’s The Dramatic Universe have backfired, and I need to revise my thinking here. The problem is that Bennett’s discussion of a hidden realm of demiurgic guides in history is mostly a lot of crap. His take on world history is so very odd I couldn’t for a long time put my finger on the difficulty.
First his entanglement with Gurdjieff made him dishonest, as Gurdjieff was dishonest. The whole book is a compromise, as he failed to pursue his own vision, mixing in the crap from Gurdjieff to put the work in two modes. The enneagram is crap and Bennett must have known this, but he introduces the idea in the middle of DU to the confusion of the whole text. That’s one out of three dozens major issue, like the use of the model of the Great Year to clock his epochs.
it gets worse in his later books and the twin dogmas of the law of three and law of seven become the core of a Gurdjieff myth. He was far closer to something good before that. Not that Dramatic Universe can be rescued.
In any case, the idea of a group demirugic guides mixed with the Islamic versions of this idea, plus the unknowns of such groups as the Khwajagan vitiates Bennett’s whole account.
Bennett’s take on world history fails in the end, but I respect his work up to a point because he resisted the antimodernist new aging of the folks in the new age movement.
But his section of the rise of the modern is very poor.
Here’s my view: if you want to consider the action of higher powers in history you must reckon with my WHEE. And there you confront something far more difficult than the idea of some angelic hallucination tinkering with history. But noone will even consider this work.
I hope I didn’t spoil my Descent of Man Revisited and Last and First Men with references to Bennett. They were kept to the Preface to make a point. But in the end I think I must invent new terms and induce the final break with anything Gurdjieffian.
The term ‘demiurgic powers’ is a good one, but Bennett uses it up and it is beyond rescue.
New Man, New Age, New Socialism 