1982!

Discussion of the SES, particularly in the UK.
peter piper

1982!

Postby peter piper » Wed May 19, 2004 2:27 am

The advertising was more ambiguous then.

Yes, I *did* want to hear about Kant, Schopenhauer and Hegel. Instead I got a journey to the Absolute on the installment plan.

Well, why not? The problem, let me give it away up front, was the lack of depth (in my humble opinion).

Everything is presented as simple and obvious, in a way I later came to associate with timeshare sales. Keep answering 'yes' and just get sucked along by it. The next thing you know you're repeating the name of someone else's god for several hours a day.

It's simple and obvious because it's all presented as from the School. There are no other Schools, only people who are not of the finest. Where are the roots? Giordano Bruno and the Shankaracharya of the North according to the most delicate questioning I could muster. I came to the conclusion our lecturer probably believed this. I came to the conclusion it could not be true.

The dropout rate on the first three or four lectures was frightening. Let me tell you, the people who turned up at the old Town Hall, Croydon at 1900h on a late summer's evening in 1982 were a mixed bunch. By a month in we were down to about a fifth of the initial group, and we became oddly intimate as a result. I'd got used to tea ladies wearing long dresses, our lecturer's unusual but oddly appealing beard, and the sound of questions being turned back on the person who asked.

How many of us were looking for a group? A group to ignite, to blast us into contact with the ancient masters? How many of us were just having an hour out a week? An hour of quiet and calm, listening to some stories being told, playing some quiet games? The scratching of the chalk on the board. There will not be a test at the end of this lecture. Talk it over with a cup of tea.

I realise it's not polite just to say "didn't you steal that idea from xxxxxx?". Everyone steals stuff from everybody else, it's hardly surprising. But our lecturer and others I spoke to were solid in claiming it all came from the School, via the Fundamental Unity of Everything. Probably the School had existed forever and just bubbled up here because we all needed to hear the stories. That's what I mean by lack of depth, a necessity to claim the Only True Wisdom for oneself, or one's School.

In those days I was on the edge of acceptability for SES. Scruffy, young and liable to ask awkward questions I felt I was part of someone's outreach project. The rest of the students were mostly the bewildered end of the professional classes.

So month after month the slowly dwindling, remerged, slowly dwinding group heard the stories, did the exercises. Just one philosophy, a very chaste truth. I got initiated into the School of Meditation, the most formal religious rite in my life I think. I went on a residential weekend near Reigate, where we heard a very grand lady explain to us the different roles of men and women as determined by natural law. I also got the opportunity to saw up a lot of wood, and got told off when I didn't do it fast enough.

After that I came to the conclusion I could no longer lend my support to this project. Saying goodbye seemed an unnnn-necessarily complicated process, but I suppose I was dumb enough to explain what I was going to do. Maybe because of the outreach thing. It cuts both ways.

I loved the tiny interior cultiness of it. The beautiful sensation of being in a group of people where you know no one's going to rock the boat at all, no matter what outrageous tosh you're going to get told. We're just going to talk it over later with a nice cup of tea.

I suspect animals were being hurt in the performance: our lecturer seemed like a man on the edge and people would mutter about the 'tremendous discipline he puts himself under'. He seemed to be having to train up a bunch of new lecturers, most of whom seemed quite confused, along with starting new groups and meditating every other waking minute in the day. His theory that no one needs more than six hours sleep a night seemed contradicted by the occasional tremor in his hands, the dark rings beneath his eyes. It seems unfair for an organization so to consume its members, given the power relationship of the group and the committed individual.

Their attitude toward children and women was fine provided you weren't a child or a woman.

Really, it's a known-to-be-synthetic religion, made up by a handful of people the day before yesterday out of the bits they liked from several traditions. It isn't 'philosophy' it's a very partial philosophy with a lot of arbitrary rules claimed to be 'natural laws' on no evidence at all. Its curiousity about and understanding of anybody else's philosophy was zero in my experience, any inconvenient concepts being described as 'daemonic'. That's not to mention the huge swathes of art and science also consigned to that category.

It took some time for me to find that out because of the amazing opacity of the organization. Blanding over the bits between Economic Science (a fine oxymoron in itself, imho) and delivered Truth was a positive artform.

peter

guest daina

Postby guest daina » Sat May 22, 2004 2:43 pm

I enjoyed your post. Although I was only in the school for 2 sessions I still find myself thinking about the school and wondering where I might have been at fault in feeling discomfitted. I suppose this kind of self critiquing could be more MY problem than anything that happened at the school.

I joined looking for some practical help in living; a forum to discuss great thoughts through the ages without having to take a test at the end. In a large city it's not always easy for a newcomer to make connections with like-minded people. Yes LOL I suppose there is a community of like minded people at the SoP but I was looking for openminded thoughtful people.

A lot of the ideas I heard in Session One were reasonable. I felt good about there being absolute truth for one. I've always believed in a divine order / Creator / Oneness which for me PERSONALLY was developed though the Episcopal church. The news stories are filled with acts of hatred and rejection of other people's differences and I think more people need to work towards common understanding and in Session One the readings came from a variety of religioius, philosophical and literary sources so I got the feeling that this was a place where people would work towards that understanding. I did notice a lack of Islamic quotes though and I would have liked to add ideas from that culture to the mix. That did not seem a major problem in Session One as I felt that I could look for those kinds of things and bring them to share.

In session two I started to feel a narrowing of the discussions. It was a little like those "interest" and "personality" tests where you have to decide where you are more like answer "A" or more like answer "B". Maybe more like political "opinion" polls designed to elicit a certain slant of answer. We were given a reading in class that I think most people would not argue with such as "All people deserve to be happy" and this was contrasted with "it is good enough that a lot of people are happy." (Not exact quotes but I think close enough) There was a lot of nodding going on in the class. Later on we were told that happiness is in found in acting according to one's true nature and that misery is characterized by complication.

One of the things I still wonder about is whether my understanding was at fault or whether the readings were actually meant to convey that happiness is simple but complication creates misery (and therefore whenever one complicates a simple truth one is creating one's own misery and the school is all about simple truth so if you complicate the teachings by questioning them then you are creating your own unhappiness).

I do I believe that simplicity is a good thing. I believe that clutter of possessions and of thoughts is counterproductive and I have found happiness in simple things like the slap of water at ocean's edge and in simple decisions that are made between obvious choices. But the way the teachings came at me with the tutor's reading I found myself nodding that "yes complication is a bad thing". After leaving the class that day and pondering the readings I started to think a little differently. Complication does exist in life and sometimes we have to deal with it and sometimes that can create confusion and unhappiness. That doesn't make Complication in and of itself a bad thing.

I wonder if I was the one who applied the judgement quality to Confusion or if the reading was meant to be accepted that way. We were always told in class to "not accept....not reject...just experience it" but while I think that sounds like a reasonable approach I wonder if it's not just a non-threatening way of getting people to agree. I tell my nephew to "just try one taste. He doesn't have to like it but he should try one taste" and this is the way I got him to eat yoghurt.

Too much navel gazing I would warrant and perhaps now's a good time to trim the hedges.
Daina

Alban
Posts: 271
Joined: Wed Feb 18, 2004 11:23 am
Location: London

Postby Alban » Sat May 22, 2004 5:17 pm

Value for money? or did you feel conned?

Has anyone asked for their money back....and if so, what response did they get?

Guest

Postby Guest » Wed May 26, 2004 4:02 pm

Yes, people do ask for their money back sometimes. It is always returned without question.


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