I Teach How to Cook, Not What to Cook, by Ben Bennett
I am very grateful to Ben Bennett, for writing a thorough and balanced overview of his father’s long search for transformation. Beginning with J.G. Bennett’s extraordinary out of body experience during World War I, Ben tells a complete tale of his father’s spiritual path.
Bennett was not a born saint, far from it. Ben does a good job of documenting his father’s human frailties without his book becoming a “Daddy Dearest” saga. While the book brings many details to light through shared documents and public records, Ben shares his own memories in ways that enhance and enliven the story of his father’s exceptional life.
The book itself is a thin volume, but I recommend U.S. readers keep a dictionary handy. Ben’s vocabulary is large and diverse. I coined a saying during my year in England, “Why use one syllable when three will do?”
Highlights of I Teach How to Cook
In I Teach How to Cook, Not What to Cook, what I most appreciate is the picture of Bennett’s Fourth Way Work community, Combe Springs. How it came about and what it looked like to be part of. I was surprised to see the parallels between Combe Springs and Claymont, even though Bennett never lived to see Claymont as a community.
Why the Gurdjieff Foundation had issues with Bennett and how those attitudes developed was finally explained. But what I valued even more, was seeing how Bennett forged ahead with his search after he was cut off from the emerging Gurdjieff Foundation. Despite all obstacles, he pursued what was most dear to him, inner growth.
That search led him to Bapak Subud, which further isolated Bennett from the Foundation. Ben outlines the period with Subud in a way that allowed me to better understand why Bennett became so involved. After Bapak, Bennett continued searching out teachers such as the Shivapuri Baba and Idries Shah. Each teacher added to his growth in some way. That Bennett was able to realize his aim of transformation, is clear from Ben’s accounts and documentations.
As a student at Sherborne House, I knew Bennett at the end of his life. I experienced him as a realized human being. Learning how far he had to travel to become that human being lends hope to all who travel this path.
I recommend “I Teach How to Cook, Not What to Cook” for those curious about Gurdjieff, his pupils, and their work. But especially for those who want to appreciate J.G. Bennett for himself.
Thank you. I have ordered the book.
Thanks for this review, Roberta: very thoughtful and insightful. I also enjoyed Ben’s book quite a bit. For me it brought into relief how some of JGB’s personal perspectives became woven into the teachings presented at Sherborne and probably at Coombe Springs as well. That helped me reconsider some of the more difficult aspects of the Sherborne/Claymont experience that many of us went through.
There is a notion that B had abandoned the Fourth Way to follow other paths of development. For what it’s worth–on his first talk with us on the opening day (1st course), he spoke of these spiritual mentors and their relevance to the course. But then closed with this assurance, that the course itself “will be eighty percent Gurdjieff.”
Thanks for sharing that, Allen. It was always clear to me that Mr. B’s foundation and mainstay was Gurdjieff. My take away, was that it was Because he was clear about this and about his intentions with the course, that he could have teachers from other traditions (Jungian, Sufi, Buddhist, etc.). There never seemed to be a contradiction, at least for me.