“We wish to change and be transformed, we wish to make our lives as full and as useful as possible and to find and realize our own destiny. All these wishes have their place in all of us; they are there because there is an Ideal. All religions and all teachings agree that there is an Ideal or Perfect Man. This perfection is not our own invention; the desire for it is part of our nature.”
Most people spend some part of their life in quiet desperation while believing that we can always do better. The problem is that doing better is never easy.
People get lost in the jungle of life and never recover. Something in us knows that we could be better, but we don't always know what that better looks like, or how to get there. We seek a higher life but often struggle to find a path to it.
This persistent problem of human life has made personal transformation a subject with eternal relevance.
In the introduction to his excellent book Transformation, J.G. Bennett, a British academic, author, and former government worker, Bennett worked for the British intelligence community during World War 1, writes about this phenomenon:
“This book is about transformation, that is, the process by which a man can pass beyond the limitations of his own nature and become a ‘New Man’. I shall assume, without attempting to produce the evidence that justifies the assumption, that we all have the urge to seek for this transformation and that it is just this urge that distinguishes man from the brutes.”
Bennett makes an important distinction here. He subtly argues that transformation is not simply improvement. It is not acquiring a new skill, becoming more productive, earning more money, or becoming a slightly better version of ourselves.
Transformation means becoming fundamentally different from who we are.
Bennett argues this transformation is a continuous process, and that the process depends on four means. He calls them the four sources of transformation:
He writes: “Transformation is a process that must be started and kept going by various means. These means are of four kinds, each of which makes a necessary contribution to the right balance of the whole.”
This is one of the most interesting ideas in the book. Bennett isn't offering a single formula for transformation. He is suggesting that transformation requires several different forces working together.
We need knowledge.
We need struggle.
We need sacrifice.
And, perhaps most importantly, we need help.
Below I try to take a stab at how he explains each of these sources:
1. Learning
According to Bennet, the first source of transformation in learning. This one is self-explanatory. Before everything, we have to know.
Bennett writes: “We start from a position of ignorance of ourselves, of our potentialities, of ways, means and methods and of the laws that govern the process of transformation. This ignorance must be remedied. We must search and we must learn.”
We don't know ourselves as well as we think we do.
We don't know why we behave the way we behave. We don't fully understand our impulses, fears, ambitions, weaknesses, or desires. We don't know what we are capable of. And we often don't know what needs to change.
So the first step is learning.
But Bennett makes an interesting addition. Before we can learn, we have to learn how to learn.
He writes: “Before we can learn, we must learn how to learn. We must wish to learn and not expect to know without having learned.”
This sounds obvious. We all want to learn. We understand the importance of knowledge in almost every aspect of life. But we seldom put that understanding to work.
Bennett writes: “We may imagine that there is nothing we want more than to know the truth about ourselves and the world, but we show again and again by our behaviour that we simply close our minds to knowledge that does not suit us.”
This is perhaps one of the most important observations in the entire section.
We don't have a knowledge problem as much as we have a willingness-to-know problem. We want knowledge that confirms what we already believe. We resist knowledge that threatens our self-image. I have written about motivated reasoning before: how our need to confirm our own beliefs even when evidence suggests otherwise leads to failure and mistakes.
Then Bennett talks about another fundamental aspect of learning: being willing to be a student. We want to learn, but our ego often doesn't allow us to become a student.
Bennett puts it beautifully: “Even if we sincerely wish to learn, it still does not follow that we are willing to be taught.”
He tells a story of a seeker who asks a Sufi master to teach him. The master replies: “If I am willing to teach you, are you willing to be taught?”
There is a difference between wanting knowledge and being teachable. We talk about being coachable in the world of startups. Good founders are coachable. They can overcome the needs of their ego to be always right.
Bennett acknowledges that “some part of learning must come from ourselves.” We have to observe ourselves and learn about ourselves: “we must be willing to be sincere in our observation of our own inner states and hidden impulses as well as of our outward behaviour.” But he points out that even self-observation requires knowledge. He points out the need for learning what to learn. We may be a very good observer of ourselves, but we must also know what to observe.
We need to know what to look for, what matters, and whether what we think we are seeing is actually what is happening.
He writes: “even sincere self-observation needs to be directed by knowledge of what to look for and how to verify what we think we have seen. How are we to learn?”
This is why Bennett suggests that one should study under teachers.
In many spiritual traditions, you don't study alone. You study under someone who has already travelled some distance along the path.
The same principle applies to many forms of mastery today. Whether you are learning business, mathematics, music, sports, or writing, having someone who knows more than you can dramatically accelerate the learning process.
Bennett writes: “Ideally, we should learn from someone perfected in wisdom, who has passed along the way that we aspire to follow.”
He then indicates that finding the right teacher is also something one should be mindful about. He writes: “We are scarcely likely to find such a teacher as long as we remain in a state of ignorance, nor should we be able to recognize him without experience on which to found our judgment.”
But even finding a teacher requires some discernment. Alluding to the idea that when a student is prepared, a teacher appears, Bennett suggests that we should seek a teacher based on our stage of learning. He writes: “Many make the mistake of demanding a teacher for whom they are not prepared.”
His analogy is simple. A beginner in mathematics wouldn't demand to be taught by Einstein or Newton.
The point is not that we shouldn't seek great teachers. It is that we should find the teacher appropriate to our current level.
Bennett also discusses books as a means for learning. Books can introduce us to ideas, theories, methods, and possibilities. But he warns that real learning can scarcely come from books. Reading about transformation is not the same as transforming.
This is an important distinction in an age of unlimited information. We have more knowledge available to us than any previous generation. Yet access to information hasn't necessarily made us wiser. Perhaps the real problem is not access to knowledge.
Bennett asserts: “Reading books is useful to give us a start; but, as I have already warned the reader, techniques can only to a very limited extent be learned from the written word. We can learn from books about the theory of transformation, but their chief value is in helping us to make up our minds whether transformation is possible or not; whether it is a fantasy or, if not a fantasy, a possibility so rare that you or I have no reasonable hope of achieving it.”
2. Struggle
The second source of transformation, according to Bennet, is struggle.
Now, struggle can be many things. Some struggles are against external obstacles. But much of the struggle that matters for transformation is against our own self. Overcoming our own limitations, character flaws, habits, impulses, and inner weaknesses. Our tendency to take the easy way out.
You run into a major challenge to your goal; you work hard, focus, increase your intensity, and try to overcome it. You don’t want to wake up early; you struggle against the impulse of sloth and wake up anyway.
Then there are spiritual struggles against our lower selves.
You want to procrastinate, but you sit down and work.
You want to take a shortcut, but you refuse.
You are angry and want to say something hurtful, but you don't.
These may look like small things. Bennett would say they are precisely the kind of things through which transformation happens.
Struggle is a universally accepted form when it comes to purification and transformation. We know the common saying: a diamond is a coal that endured extreme pressure.
There is a part of us that wants one thing and another part that wants something else.
Bennett gives a simple example. We often say, “I am tired.” But perhaps it would be more accurate to say, “My body is tired.” That small linguistic distinction creates a useful separation. My body may be tired, but something in me may still decide to continue.
The same thing happens with our emotions and thoughts. We can notice that we are angry without becoming anger. We can notice that we are afraid without becoming fear. We can notice that we want to procrastinate without obeying the impulse. This separation creates the possibility of choice. And choice creates the possibility of struggle.
Bennett says that the basic principle of struggle depends on becoming conscious of a separation between “yes” and “no.”
There is something in me that says yes. There is something in me that says no. Transformation begins when I can see the difference.
Bennett writes: “There is no stable unity in us that can wish always and in all states and conditions for the same thing. It is thus obvious to us all that we have in us a conflict of wishes. In the ordinary way, we shift from one wish to another according to what happens to attract our attention or according to the habits of behaviour we have formed. So long as life goes on in this way the various impulses neutralize one another and we get nowhere, or rather we drift imperceptibly towards that gradual weakening of all wishes which is the mark of growing old. When all wishes are feeble, we drift towards death. This should be understood by everyone and probably is; but, not knowing what to do about it, most people close their minds to the situation and excuse themselves by blaming their circumstances. And yet what is required is really very simple. One must organize a struggle of desires or impulses.”
We have some power of choice: not perhaps as free as we imagine and yet sufficient to organize the “struggle of ‘yes and no’., For example, everyone can find in himself or herself inner attitudes of mind and outer habits of behaviour that are contrary to their own Ideal. He can ask himself if he wishes to keep or to be free from one or other of these. Out of this self-questioning can come a decision to struggle with the attitude or habit he has examined.
This simple example illustrates what is meant by struggle. Struggle is possible because we men are not one indivisible whole. One part of us can struggle with another, but only on condition of being aware of inward separation. This can be experienced very simply in relation to our own bodies. We usually say ‘I am tired’ when it is obviously correct to say ‘my body is tired’. Perhaps ‘I’ am not tired at all. If so, ‘I’ am separate from my body. I can then say to my body “you may be tired, but I want you to do so and so.” A struggle may follow and out of the struggle my body may obey ‘me’.
The same kind of situation can arise in thousands of ways. Together these form the second great source from which the process of transformation is kept going. Struggle with oneself can also be called self-discipline or ‘work on oneself’. It can apply to body, feelings and mind, or to all three together. It can be on different levels of understanding and intensity.”
Bennett introduces the idea of the Present Moment to explain further. We often imagine ourselves as having free will. Bennett is more skeptical. Most of the time, we are identified with whatever impulse happens to dominate the moment. We are angry, so we become anger. We are hungry, so we eat. We are tired, so we stop. We are distracted, so we pick up the phone.
In those moments, choice becomes an illusion. Bennett calls this state identification or attachment. When we are completely identified with an impulse, there is no one left to struggle with it.
Something has to interrupt that identification. A physical shock can make us notice. A mental shock can awaken our attention. A moral shock can produce remorse.
The important thing is that something creates separation. Then choice becomes possible.
This makes struggle much more interesting than simply “trying hard.”
Bennett isn't saying that we should fight ourselves all day. In fact, he warns against indiscriminate struggle. Not all struggle is useful.
We can struggle very hard toward completely useless goals. The question is what we are struggling for.
This is where learning and struggle connect.
Dissatisfaction can push us to change. But dissatisfaction without knowledge can lead us in foolish directions. We don't like who we are, so we try to become someone else. But who? And why?
Knowledge gives direction to struggle. Struggle then turns knowledge into action.
Bennett summarizes his advice through a series of practical guidelines. Among them are:
Bennett writes: “Obviously, not all struggle is for the sake of transformation. Whenever we have: an aim to be attained and find that we are not doing what is needed we ‘make an effort’. This effort is a struggle against some weak or rebellious part of our nature. Sometimes, we struggle to achieve unworthy or useless aims. In itself struggle is neither good nor bad, but it is bound to produce a result. Through struggle we grow stronger, by ceasing to struggle we grow weaker. If we can struggle with one desire, we shall find it easier to struggle with another. Sometimes, people start on the way of transformation without any idea of what it means — simply because they do not like to be as they are. This dissatisfaction is itself a form of separation. Dissatisfaction, or awareness of being deprived of what one needs, is the force that prevents man from stagnating. What he does with this force depends upon what he understands. This is why knowledge must come in at the start of transformation. So long as we are dissatisfied and do not know what we really want, we shall probably do plenty of foolish things.
Self-knowledge and struggle with oneself go hand in hand. The link between them is discrimination.”
Bennett summarizes his advice through a series of practical guidelines. He writes:
“1. Remember always that you can only struggle within your own present moment. Outside the moment of which you are conscious, there is plenty going on and you can know a good deal about it; but not struggle with it.
2. Organize your struggle: choose with what you will struggle and repeat the act as often as you become aware of the impulse you wish to struggle with.
3. Use discrimination. Do not be too ambitious. Learn to measure your own capacity.
4. Persistence will do what cannot be achieved by force. Drops of water wear away a stone: a cloudburst will leave it unchanged.
5. Don’t be afraid of struggle. No one ever made themselves unhappy or injured themselves by struggle, unless they were over-ambitious, foolhardy or vainglorious.
6. Remember that present struggle is the key to future happiness.
7. Do not chop and change. A very modest plan of action carried through to a conclusion can produce astonishing results.
8. Take decisions only when you are sure that you have both the intention and the ability to carry them out.
9. When in doubt of your ability, tell yourself that you will try your best. Then your ‘best’ must be your decision.
10. Never stop to regret failures or try to excuse them. They have gone out of your present moment, and there is nothing you can do about them.
11. Your body is ignorant; be just to it. Your feelings change; do not count on them. Your mind is volatile; do not expect that it can remain stable within your present moment. In short, be realistic about yourself.
12. Never forget that no one else can do your struggling for you.
I find the last one particularly useful. Nobody can do your struggling for you. Someone can teach you, encourage you, help you, and create the conditions for your growth. But you have to do the work.
This is probably why struggle is the most familiar of Bennett's four sources. We already understand effort. We know that anything worth mastering requires repetition, discipline, and persistence.
But Bennett adds something important. Struggle is not simply something we endure on the way to transformation. Struggle itself changes us. When we repeatedly choose one thing over another, we develop the capacity to choose. The person who learns to resist one impulse becomes better equipped to resist another. The muscle gets stronger by being used.
3. Sacrifice
The third source is more difficult to understand: Sacrifice. Bennett says that the very nature of sacrifice is that it is hidden. A sacrifice that is seen to be a sacrifice is not necessarily a true sacrifice.
Why?
Because sacrifice is not simply giving something up. It is giving something up without making a transaction out of it. Bennett writes: “A sacrifice that is seen to be a sacrifice is not a true sacrifice.”
Then Bennett goes on to explain why sacrifice is necessary and how it is different from struggle. He writes: “Before going further, I must try to answer two questions. Why is sacrifice necessary and how does it differ from struggle? Sacrifice is necessary because everything worth having must be paid for and the word sacrifice is simply another word for payment, but as I will explain in a moment, it is not the same as purchase. Sacrifice and struggle work in opposite ways. When we struggle, separation comes first and choice or decision afterwards. In sacrifice we decide to separate ourselves from something that we are attached to. Sacrifice must not be a struggle: unless it is made as a free act of will, it is not a genuine sacrifice. Nor is it a sacrifice if it is made to gain some specific benefit. That is why I say that by sacrifice we pay and yet we do not buy anything. This is the secret, even the mystery of sacrifice. In one way it is not a mystery because to give expecting a return for what we give may be admirable, but it is not sacrifice. In another sense it is a very great mystery indeed, for it is a special kind of creative act that opens possibilities which cannot be opened in any other way.”
Still, why sacrifice is necessary for transformation demands an explanation. Partly, it is about commitment and dedication. You want something to the extent that you are ready to sacrifice something dear to you for it. At the same time, if you do it with an expectation, it stops being a sacrifice. At the same time, sacrifice gives us power even when we are not looking for it or are aware of it.
Bennett explains: “To illustrate the mystery of sacrifice, let us take the simple example of ‘giving way’ in an argument when it is done by decision and not from weakness or fear. If two people are in opposition both claiming and believing that they are in the right, it is hard for either of them to give way unless they are compelled to by some stronger force. If either gives way unforced, because he chooses to sacrifice his pride or his ‘face’, the entire situation is transformed. The sacrifice creates possibilities which were not there before. The mystery of the act is that it appears externally to be a sign of weakness, and yet it proves to be the contrary. It invariably happens that the one who makes the sacrifice ends up with the advantage — providing always that he did not do it with this result in view.”
According to Bennet, sacrifice is not easy. One must learn not only to notice the opportunities for sacrifice, but also to sacrifice as well.
Sacrifice is an art that must be learned. Its operations are not obvious, but they are not beyond the scope of anyone who has once really grasped the principle. The way I explain it to myself is based upon my idea of the Present Moment as the field of action of my will. If I decide to put something to which I am attached outside of my present moment, I form a connection that goes ‘out of time’. That ‘something’, because I am attached to it, has become a part of myself: by separatingmyself from it, it becomes a channel through which few possibilities flow into my present moment.”
Bennett says everyone is attached to a picture of himself or herself. We have an idea of who we are. I am intelligent, successful, a good person, right and I am the kind of person who does X and never does Y.
These identities quietly control us. We defend them. And because we defend them, they limit us. Every time we can let go of one of these attachments, even briefly, we experience a little freedom.
This is why Bennett describes the fruit of sacrifice as freedom. He makes an important distinction between external and internal freedom. We commonly define freedom as the absence of external constraints. But someone can have enormous external freedom and still be completely controlled by their fears, desires, habits, ego, and attachments.
True freedom, Bennett argues, is internal. It is the ability to act in the present without being completely controlled by the past.
One of Bennett's examples is particularly interesting.
A woman in one of Ouspensky's groups said that she wanted to be free from herself. Ouspensky asked her what possession she was particularly attached to. She mentioned a Dresden tea set that had belonged to her grandmother. He told her to break one of the cups. The following week she returned in tears. She had tried repeatedly but couldn't do it.
Ouspensky's response was essentially: now you know the strength of your desire for freedom.
The point wasn't to destroy the tea set. The point was to expose the attachment.
What controls us is often invisible until we try to let it go. This is why sacrifice can be such a powerful source of transformation. It reveals our attachments. And once we see an attachment, we have at least some possibility of becoming free from it.
Bennett also makes an important distinction between sacrifice and loss. Sometimes something is taken from us without our choosing it. We lose someone we love. We lose money, status, a job, an identity, or the life we thought we would have.
These experiences can produce the same possibility as voluntary sacrifice if we can consciously accept the separation instead of remaining trapped in resentment, self-pity, or denial. This is difficult. But perhaps this is one of the deepest ideas in Bennett's treatment of sacrifice: Life will sometimes make sacrifices for us.
Bennett writes: “Not every genuine sacrifice is voluntary. Something may be removed from our present moment not by our own choice. If we are strongly attached — as for example when we lose a person near and very dear to us — we can respond by renunciation or by revolt. If we refuse to accept the separation and dwell upon our grief in self-pity or refusal of life, we lose the true connection, because we remain within our own present moment. If we accept the bereavement and renounce the impulse to brood over it and pity ourselves; the effect can be the same as that of a voluntary sacrifice. Indeed, the result may be extraordinary, for we can become conscious of a connection with another world ‘outside’ our own space and time.”
The question is what we do with them. Can we accept the separation? Can we let go? Can we use the loss to become less attached? Can we turn an involuntary loss into an act of inner freedom?
Bennett argues that we can. And that freedom, even when temporary, creates new possibilities.
Bennett explains: “I have insisted that when we make sacrifices we must not look for a return. This does not mean that there are no results or that one cannot recognise them. The fruit of sacrifice is freedom. Freedom is a very wonderful state of existence, for it is no less than the possibility of a creative act. True freedom is so rare in our human experience that few people can even récognize its taste. When we are free we are master of the present moment: we are not tied by the consequences of the past or controlled by influences outside ourselves. Freedom is almost the most precious thing in life: but the word has been so misused and so debased in its meaning that we take freedom to mean being without external constraints. The state of the world today gives the lie to any such definition of freedom. No one is free who is not inwardly free and this inner freedom comes in the moment of sacrifice.”
Bennett acknowledges that sacrifice is not easy. It is not something that comes naturally to us. He writes: “Sacrifice is never easy. Until the decision is taken it seems almost impossible. Not physically impossible but requiring an act of will that we refuse to make.”
But he also emphasizes that “sacrifices must be made freely” and “they must not be beyond what we can bear. And they must be made again and again,” as a sort of practice.
4. Help
The fourth source is perhaps the most interesting: Help. Bennett writes: “If sacrifice consists in thrusting something precious out of the present moment; help consists in allowing something precious to enter. It may not be at all obvious, but the question whether or not transformation is possible without help is the key to the whole problem of human life. I do not mean the question whether help is useful, but whether it is indispensable.”
Bennett asks a fundamental question: Can human beings transform themselves through their own intelligence, knowledge, and determination? His answer is no. At least, not completely.
He believes that something else is necessary. He compares this something to a catalyst in chemistry. A catalyst doesn't create the reaction. It makes a difficult reaction possible or dramatically accelerates it.
Bennett believes transformation works somewhat similarly.
Bennett writes: “Our question looks much simpler: can we expect to change ourselves simply by our own native wit and determination? In our own case, we do not need to shut out the rest of the world as philosophers must do in studying such questions as “Could life have arisen on the earth by blind chance?” We can at least draw upon the available knowledge of what can be done and how. The question must, therefore, be more carefully framed. Can we change ourselves by our own native wit, plus what we can learn from others, plus our own determination?
My personal belief, based on nearly fifty years’ experience, is that we need ‘something’ that does not reduce to any of the three elements I have discussed so far: that is, learning, struggle and sacrifice. This ‘something’ resembles what is called in chemistry a catalyst, which acts in a marvellous way to make an almost impossible process go quickly and easily.”
Bennett argues: “My own belief is that the transformation of man is by nature such a slow and difficult process that scarcely one person in a hundred million could accomplish it in a lifetime, but that help is available which makes it possible for quite ordinary people to achieve it. Help is like knowledge inasmuch as it has to enter our present moment from outside or beyond. It is unlike knowledge inasmuch as it does not enter through the mind. It is different in yet another way, namely, that it does not come from the same ‘time’ and ‘space’ as our minds and bodies live in. This is why it cannot be ‘taken’ or ‘bought’ as knowledge can be gained by learning, and strength by struggle and freedom by sacrifice.”
Learning gives us knowledge. Struggle develops strength. Sacrifice creates freedom. But help makes transformation possible at a speed and scale that would otherwise be extremely difficult.
This is where Bennett becomes much more mystical.
He talks about “help-substances,” higher emotional energy, transmission, teachers, holy people, sacred places, initiation, grace, inspiration, and moments of inexplicable help.
Some of these ideas are deeply rooted in spiritual traditions and may sound strange to modern people.
But Bennett's argument makes sense. After all, his central argument here is that we do not transform alone. Every meaningful transformation in human life involves something coming from outside us. A teacher. A mentor. A friend. A book. A community. A difficult experience. A relationship. A religious tradition. A moment of inspiration. A person whose presence changes how we see ourselves.
Sometimes we meet someone who seems to have something we don't have. Their confidence changes us. Their clarity changes us. Their way of seeing the world changes us. Their presence makes something possible in us that wasn't possible before.
We often describe this casually. “She inspires me.” “I feel different after talking to him.” “She brings out the best in me.” “He changed the way I think.”
Bennett takes these experiences more seriously. He believes that something is actually transmitted.
He tells a story about Gurdjieff giving him an exercise: remembering to say “I am” at exactly the right time every hour. He tried repeatedly and failed. Then Gurdjieff told him that he couldn't do the exercise and offered to “lend” him some of his energy. For three days, Bennett could perform the exercise almost perfectly without effort. Whether one accepts Bennett's explanation of this experience is another question.
But the underlying phenomenon is familiar. Sometimes we can do something because someone else has helped us become the person capable of doing it. A good teacher can make difficult learning seem possible. A good coach can make an athlete believe they can do something they previously thought impossible. And so on.
Perhaps this is one way to understand Bennett's idea of help without needing to accept all of his metaphysical claims.
We are porous beings. We are constantly affected by other people.
We borrow confidence, courage, standards, ways of seeing, energy, and sometimes, through that contact, we become capable of something new.
Bennett goes much further than this.
He describes traditions such as the Hindu idea of Darshan and the Sufi idea of Sohbat, in which simply being in the presence of a spiritually developed person is believed to have transformative power.
He talks about holy places, teachers, initiation, grace, inspiration, and spontaneous help.
He also makes an important warning. We should not exaggerate what we experience. This is particularly relevant to spiritual traditions. Someone experiences something real and meaningful. Then they build a much larger system of beliefs around that experience. Soon, claims multiply. One genuine experience becomes evidence for ten unsupported claims.
Bennett is surprisingly cautious about this. He repeatedly emphasizes that different forms of help may do different things. One kind of help may strengthen you. Another may purify you. Another may help you communicate. Another may give you courage. We should not assume that because something works in one domain it must work in every domain.
This is a useful idea. Don't turn a useful experience into a universal theory.
There is another form of help Bennett discusses that I find particularly interesting: help that comes in moments of despair.
He quotes Gurdjieff: “Nature hates vacuum. When you make empty, help will enter.”
There are moments in life when our usual ways of coping stop working.
We run out of answers, exhaust our options, our old identity stops functioning, something breaks, and sometimes, precisely then, something new enters.
We suddenly see a problem differently. We discover a strength we didn't know we had. We receive help from an unexpected place.
We find faith, clarity, and a new direction.
Bennett calls this help. You can call it grace. You can call it luck. You can call it coincidence. You can call it the generosity of other people. You can call it God.
The point is human beings sometimes receive help that they could not have produced by themselves. And Bennett believes that it is an essential part of transformation.
Bennett writes: “Finally, there are higher or ‘spiritual’ helps. This leads us into the domain of the supernatural. If we believe in miracles, we should probably be right to ascribe them to these higher or spiritual energies.”
Bennett then summarizes some of the situations in which he has had a personal experience of help. He writes:
“1. The presence of people who have completed their transformation or are on the way to it. These are commonly called “holy men”. I have described some ways in which they help.
2. Visiting places in which intensive transformation has occurred. These are “holy places” or sanctuaries. I would include visits to the tombs of saints, because in my personal experience such visits can produce extraordinary results.
3. The help given by a teacher to his pupils. This presupposes a teacher who has made a contact with a Source of help. This kind of help can be very specific, because the teacher can choose the right time and place to give it. The teacher-pupil relationship facilitates the transmission.
4. Special rituals or ceremonies in which the transmission is made. This is called initiation. Each kind of initiation brings the initiate into contact with a particular help-substance or possibly a combination of several. When initiation is authentic — and I am afraid this is rather seldom — the initiate receives a permanent link with the source of help and is taught how to draw upon it when necessary. I must emphasize my conviction that initiation is a specific and not a general contact. I have myself received several initiations and I have received help from all of them. But the help has been quite different in each case. Generally, one is required to keep the details and even the fact of initiation secret so I cannot describe them by name.
5. I must now refer to spiritual or supernatural help. This is called Grace and its action is of two kinds: personal and communal. The former reaches the innermost nature of man and enables him to live a transformed life. The latter — called charismatic — gives people various powers — of healing, prophecy, interpretation.
6. Spontaneous and unaccountable help. I must put this in a separate category for it is a strange phenomenon that is, above all, characterized by being noncausal. “The spirit bloweth where it listeth.” All kinds of people in all kinds of situations find that moments come when doors seem to open by themselves, when the impossible becomes not merely possible but easy.
One can call this Inspiration, but it does not cover all the varieties. Without this kind of help, I think human life would soon be overtaken by a progressive disintegration on every scale from private to planetary existence.
7. Finally, I come to the help that comes in moments of utter despair. This is different from spontaneous help because it is clearly connected with a visible and tangible situation. Gurdjieff explained it by saying, “Nature hates vacuum. When you make empty, help will enter.” There is, however, a strangely purposive quality about this kind of help. Nearly everyone I have asked — and there have been hundreds — confirms that they have unmistakably received help of this kind. It is referred to in innumerable proverbs and fables of all peoples and all times, so it must be a general heritage of mankind.”
The book is fascinating in its entirety. If you are looking for an inspiring read, I highly recommend you check it out.
