COMMENSAL ISSUE 91


The Newsletter of the Philosophical Discussion Group
Of British Mensa

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Number 91 : March 1998

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ARTICLES
31st January 1998 : Norman Mackie

GURDIEFF, RELIGION & DE BONO

Dear Theo,

Thank you very much for sending me a copy of C90, with so much to ponder.

My Gurdieff quote in C89, "Your level of Being attracts your life", puzzles me too, it was included for reaction as much anything else. My interpretation goes along the lines of, as we progress along our life path we use our God-given free will in an attempt to determine our future and learn from our life experience. Gurdieff is taking us beyond the normal physical understanding of events, such as 'I will go to the party in the hope of meeting someone', into the realm of synchronicity, which I take to be something like the positive coincidence of apparently disconnected events. Beyond just being in the right place at the right time. More, events influencing each other to happen in the right place at the right time, but not in any ways we as yet consider 'normal'.

(Perhaps the above should be kept for my fellow Astro-siggers, but no harm done).

Nina Burton (C90, p14) : Well done for taking the plunge and sharing your thoughts and beliefs about the human soul or spirit. As a Christian I believe that the main purpose of life is to come to God, and having been blessed through His grace, to share faith in Him and through devotion to gain redemption and eternal life. During my twenties I had for many years stopped attending church, however having observed the miracle of two daughters arriving in this world I found myself drawn back to regular worship.

Some books that I have read over the years, which I would recommend are :-

    • Professor Carter : The Anthropic Principle

    • Leo Tolstoy : The Kingdom of God is Within You

    • Ved Mehta : Mahatma GANDHI and His Apostles

    • John Ruskin : Unto This Last

In some sense would it be fair to say that religion is the mother of both science and philosophy. Edward de Bono, referring to classical philosophers as the gang of three, contrasts the traditional western view of a problem as dichotomous whereas the eastern view is more often one of duality. Perhaps all seekers of the truth down though the centuries would have remained more integrated had there been more of an eastern holistic approach.

Many blessings to you.

Norman Mackie

P.S. Could you please forward the enclosed book to Nina Burton.


Norman : Nina thanks you for the book, is reading it & will respond to you in due course.

On what you’ve said above, in what sense is the birth of a child (one of your daughters, at any rate - we’ll leave out controversial cases) a miracle ?

I know Edward de Bono had it in for Socrates, Plato & Aristotle. I thought he also had it in for Jesus, or at least for Christianity ? The axe he’s always grinding is the importance of creativity. Consequently, he downplays things like logic and certainty as though they are evils that interfere with the creative process. He dislikes the "I’m right you’re wrong" attitude. While there’s a lot of truth in this (he’s certainly made a good living out of it), "babies" & "bathwater" come to mind ! Creativity is fine for generating new ideas. What you need then is the hard-hearted logical / empirical approach to see whether the ideas stand up. That’s where the right / wrong angle comes in, for some of us, anyway !

Theo



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