From: Chapter 67, Looking Ahead

Real People: From the Pinnacle with Irmis Popoff, to the Second Basic Course at Sherborne House with J. G. Bennett, A Memoir by Roberta J. Chromey

“I would like to speak to you all today about the world situation. Particularly about what is to come in the next thirty to forty years,” Mr. B began.[1]

For Mr. B to tell us about the future was nothing surprising. This was a topic he had studied, thought, talked about for years. He had often proposed the need for an Ark, like Noah’s. A community that would be able to weather the coming breakdown of civilization and provide a model for a new society based on self-sufficiency and cooperation.

When he would close his eyes and seem to go somewhere and then reappear to answer a question, it was easy for me to believe he had travelled in time, either to the past or the future. Now he was saying, “It is highly improbable that the world will get through the next thirty years without pretty dramatic events.”

There was a pause between pretty and dramatic events, like he was seeing it. “Particularly events connected with the workings of our society. Society will come under strains that it's not prepared to withstand because it's so very slow adapting.”

“Like dinosaurs,” Larry threw out, looking up at Mr. B through his wire-rimmed glasses.

“What?” Mr. B stopped and turned his attention from the place within himself to the room. “What? What did you say?”

Larry spoke a little louder. “Like dinosaurs. Our institutions are like dinosaurs. Big and slow, with little brains.”

“Yes, just so,” Mr. B nodded once and bent his head again, returning within as he resumed his thought. “Society has built great institutions with extremely complex systems of production and distribution both of the necessities of life and the non-necessities. “Because we see that human individuals behave with a certain amount of intelligence, we overlook that human institutions of any size do not work with intelligence. They work according to habitual patterns of behavior and response, with little ability to adapt. And this, this will put them at a great disadvantage as the general climate of the world changes...”

I could almost see Mr. B floating into that future world, looking around, and coming back to report to us, “...as it will, leading to shortages of various necessities. Strangely enough, the shortages will mainly be in the necessities while there will be a super-abundance of non-necessities.”

Mr. B raised his great head and looked at us, while still seeing the future, “There will be a super-abundance of things we can't eat, drink or clothe ourselves with.”

Several seconds of silence ensued and no one filled the gap with a cough or a shift of position. The depth of the silence held our attention.

Then, picking up the thread of current history, he continued in his measured, soft but articulate voice, “We had political activism in the 1960s where people tried to stop the development of destructive weapons and to stop wars, to promote social justice and combat racism. This ended in widespread disillusion. People saw, without understanding it, the working of the cosmic law of things becoming their own opposite.”

I thought about the Enneagram, and how without a shock at the correct intervals, things shift and get off course. Which was why going from point A to point B had to take into account the unseen push and pull of energies. Just like Mr. B was saying.

“How the people who try to liberalize institutions play into the hands of those who want to impose a hard line. Those who want to decentralize power play into the hands of those who want to concentrate power, whether its government or industry or military. Now we're in the 1970s and people are looking for a way of life without institutions.

“The two trends I see are one, the tendency to group together in small independent communities or two, to look for quick ways of transformation to arrive at an independence from outer world forces through mass-scale spiritual movements.”

Yes, I thought, people are flocking to Transcendental Meditation and the Maharishi, all kinds of gurus and movements.

“My own belief is that there will be general disillusion with all of this by the end of the 1970s,” Mr. B stated. “I think that in the 1980s we will see the visible loss of trust in institutions. Governments will try to adapt, but it will become evident to great numbers of people that a new social system will have to come.

“However, this is going to involve one thing that very, very few are ready to accept. A change from the tendency to regard expansion as a good in itself, to a life attitude which will regard concentration as a good in itself.”

Mr. B's voice suddenly grew stronger. “This is so much against the trend of the present time, that it is like a revolution. Every one of us is geared to expansion. How many of us are prepared for a way of life where we live with less rather than more? This lesson can't be learned by common sense. People close their minds to it.  It will only be learned by bitter experience. And that bitter experience will come.”

I thought about my first experience of preparing breakfast for the course and cutting the bread so thick we ran out of slices of toast because people in the front of the line took two pieces. I remembered how mad Mr. B had been when I'd offered more bread and if I hadn't, someone might have noticed the lesson that by taking more than you need, others go without. Now he was saying that could happen on a much larger scale in years to come.

“That period, in my mind, will come somewhere in the later part of the 1980s and last into the beginning of the next century. By then either we should have got through or we will collapse.”

I did a quick calculation. The tough times were going to come somewhere between my thirties and my old age, hmmm. I couldn't imagine myself being sixty or seventy, but I could see myself living in an intentional community somewhere with Jack, raising a family.

“All of you who are young will likely see the great transition. Everyone must understand that this is the greatest opportunity that has existed for many thousands of years in the Work. Because not for thousands of years has there been such a need for people who could work.” Mr. B paused to let that sink in.

“Why is that? Because it cannot come from polarity—from the passive majority who are governed, nor the active minority who possess power. “The transition from one system to another system can only come through the third force, from holding the negative and the positive together.”

Sounds like the struggle between yes and no. Holding the negative consequences of institutions and the positive attitude of “less is more" in front of me. The key is holding those opposites without trying “to do” something, because if I do, it'll just turn into its opposite. But where does that leave me?

“The thing is, following our dinosaur analogy,” Mr. B gave a nod to Larry and worked the curled ends of his chair as if polishing them with his palms, “during the reptilian age of great monsters dominating the earth, there were little creatures—the first mammals, running unnoticed underfoot. It took two and a half billion years, but they had the extraordinary ability to maintain their inner medium by changing their internal temperature. That power enabled them to survive the change of climate and gain domination over the earth. This seems to me a remarkable analogy of what is likely to happen.”

Will I be one of these new “mammals” who is able to make the effort to hold the positive (First Force) and the negative (Second Force) within me without reacting? Is that what will create an opening for the neutralizing Third Force (or Grace), to enter? Is it the effort of not reacting that leads to the Unconditioned World, where there are fewer laws and miracles can happen? 

“Whereas it took ten million years for reptiles to lose their position and for mammals to come to the front, now this will happen in a much shorter time—the Law of Acceleration is in full operation, the curve is very much steeper.”

Mr. B had just said he thought these things would happen in my lifetime, not his. This was the first time I'd heard of the Law of Acceleration. A sense of urgency, verging on desperation, invaded me. Am I up to this task? Me? I wasn't so sure.

“We should talk about what we could be doing in front of this. When you leave here, some of you will be going back to school, some to work. I want you to know it is possible to maintain a balance between providing for the needs of life and an intensive inner work activity.

“There are already the beginnings of small communities that are trying to experiment with new ways of life but most of them are failing. This conversion of reptilian to mammal, to use our analogy from cold-blooded to warm-blooded communities, is as much beyond human power as the last conversion was.

“But I have no doubt it is being directed by a higher power. Our part in it is one of cooperation rather than innovation.

“The societies of the last few thousand years have been based on egoism, the satisfaction of personal desires rather than the desire for service. For the first time in a very long time, mankind requires a new structure, a new way of life.

“According to the Shivapuri Baba, 'This civilization has failed mankind and two-thirds of the human race will perish. It will be swept away because it cannot give what mankind needs.'”

Mr. B looked up and brightened, “But I don't say this, I don't even think it probable.”

Then his face clouded up in thought as he added, “I can believe that the majority of the human race will cease to be significant because they will belong to a perished world and be unable to adapt themselves to the new.”

Someone coughed, I straightened the small of my back, which was beginning to sag. Refocusing my attention, I recognized my discomfort was with the future being laid out at my feet.

“So! Coming back to our immediate problem in front to us. Some of you will be able to join a group effort to form a community along the lines we are talking about. Others of you may be able to offer what you have learned here to the many around the world looking for a new way of life. In either case, in the course of time something begins to grow.

“Unless this course has failed you completely, you will have by now learnt that you can't do it.”

A titter of laughs ran around the room. Yes, like how I can't do a movement, but if I put myself in the right alignment with myself, the movement “does me.”

“At least you will not go away with the idea that you can set yourselves up as first-class gurus. Or even second-class gurus,” he said with a grin.

“But what you will have learnt, is that we cannot work alone. The nature of this work is that it cannot live without being shared.”

 

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[1]   Most of this chapter is taken from JGB's talk entitled “Future Plans: The World Situation,” given in the spring of 1973 at Sherborne House to students on the second Basic Course.