The Book of Yourself Newsletter
Issue 31: June 2024
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My apologies for not having managed to keep up my monthly writing of these newsletters. These past couple of months have been very busy and, somehow, I could not find the leisure and right mood to sit down to compose them. So I am a bit behind. Since I would still like to keep the series going in its proper order, I propose to label them in the natural sequel, even though they will obviously be posted with considerable delay. Since this delay had to do with the goings-on in my life, I hope you won’t mind if I dedicate this newsletter to giving you a more personal account of these past two months.
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This has been and continues to be a very busy and fascinating summer. I usually lead a rather retiring, even reclusive life, taking care of my daily chores, pursuing my inquiries and preparing and conducting in-person and online dialogues and seminars. All this takes place mostly within a very small radius, usually within the confines of my rundown rental place – except for doing some shopping or going for an evening walk. Apart from my sedentary tendencies, I suspect that this reduced habitat was one of the inertial legacies of the pandemic. But then I took to the road and travelled to Switzerland. First, I spent a week visiting Friedrich Grohe at his home in Rougemont. Most of you know him, of course. He will be turning 94 soon but, though physically quite weak, he is as lucid and cheerful as ever. As there was no room at the chalet, I stayed in Saanen, where there is almost no trace of K and the gatherings. The personage they remember and honour with a public bust and a yearly music festival is Yehudi Menuhin. They also quote him on the signposts of the philosopher’s path, though he was no philosopher. Once I complained that they should quote K, the real philosopher of Saanen. My then girlfriend, though, reminded me that this omission might be quite appropriate because K’s was a pathless philosophy. Besides, did he not say that the way of wisdom, unlike the way of science, is like the flight of the eagle that leaves no mark in the sky?
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After that I went up to Mürren for the two weeks of the annual summer gatherings, which this year took place from June 22nd to July 6th. The first week bore the title ‘Truth comes when there is total order’ and the selection of videos and audios was superb. Following K’s negative approach, however, the talks and excerpts dealt principally with the question of disorder. The implication being that when we understand and are free from disorder, there is total order and that very order is the ground of truth. The second week was conducted around the question ‘Why don’t we change?’. Unfortunately, a virus began to circulate among the participants, and I came under its influence, for I assumed it was the flu, although it could have been Covid. Whatever it was, it knocked me out for a few days, so I missed a great deal of this second week and did not benefit from the wonderful state of inner freedom and aloofness that I had felt during the first week. Fortunately, thanks to a lot of rest and the natural remedies that were being passed around in the group, I recovered and was able to join the activities for the last few days until we all had to head for our separate destinations.
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I must say that the general feeling of these gatherings was rather special. There was a sense of ease, friendship and affection in the communication among us that made for a deeper sense of communion. Although it rained quite a bit, there was always a sunny day in the week for the long walks in the mountains, which were also special because of the great variety of flowers, which turned the slopes into blooming meadows. For me there was a newfound maturity in the whole atmosphere and proceedings, maturity that was not due to the fact that most of us attending these gathering were old friends and acquaintances but rather to a new quality of depth in our communication and probing. The dialogue groups I participated in seemed to work like a charm, both the programmed ones and those that we formed spontaneously outside the schedule. Some of the latter were very intense, as we deliberately set out to explore much more openly and personally, which is always a challenge on account of the greater vulnerability involved. One of these smaller groups focused on the question of trauma and we have met a couple of times via Zoom to pursue this investigation.
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It seemed clear to me that these gatherings were and are, as such, eminently worthwhile. Fortunately for some and unfortunately for others, Switzerland is becoming prohibitively expensive. While the mountains might be getting shorter with the passage of time, the costs of vacationing there keep going up and up. This year, to make them more affordable, the gatherings took place earlier than usual to avoid the tourist high season. Besides, the new management of the Sports Chalet, where we have been holding these meetings, appears to be less sympathetic to our group than the previous lot because they would like to make better use of the rooms so they can earn more money. The organizers, most notably Claire Dufour, had spent the past year looking for alternative places and they presented the participants with two alternatives, one in France and one in Ibiza, Spain. The overwhelming collective choice fell on the latter. So next year the gatherings will be taking place at an austere but lovely Carmelite monastery on the southern and less touristic tip of the island. These meetings, in spite of having taken place in four different venues (Saanen, Schöneried, Villars, Mürren), were nonetheless known either as the Saanen or the Swiss gatherings. Since they will now be migrating abroad without an immediate prospect of a settled or stable base, it was suggested that they be known as the Nomad or Itinerant Gatherings. Everyone present was therefore encouraged to join in the search for a more permanent venue. So if any of you know or can think of something, please do not hesitate to let us know.
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This new situation naturally revived the old dream of having our own place. There is Brockwood Park, of course, where since a year ago they started holding summer gatherings. They have the facilities and can accommodate up to a hundred guests. They also have the Study Centre, where smaller groups can also go for a retreat or hold their own seminars. Groups from a number of countries already do so. No such physical structure was built around the Saanen gatherings. They did buy a piece of land on the banks of the river, but the only structure set up on it was the large tent where the meetings took place. I remember helping to set it up in 1976 and 1978. Back then they recruited us Brockwood students for this purpose and gave us 100 CHF each, with which we bought muesli, yoghurt and chocolate at the Co-op. For the main meal, we walked to a barn some distance down the airstrip, where a group of generous hippies charged us only 2CHF for a hearty and wholesome vegetarian dinner. Once the gatherings were over, the tent was taken down and the field, after recovering from the trampling multitude, went back to being a lovely Alpine meadow. After the mountains bid K goodbye in 1985, the field was sold and the municipality turned it into a sandy football field for the local kids. The eagle flew away, and the tent after it, and the people scattered to the four winds, leaving a football field behind. It is tempting to think that this sequence of events might be saying something about the values of our civilisation. Nothing against football per se, by the way. I enjoyed playing it in my sporty younger days and now I enjoy watching a good game, as I did this summer during the European Cup which, showing their former quality as a team, was beautifully and deservedly won by Spain.
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The story, however, did not end there. According to what I heard, in the summer of 1986 members of the Swiss K Committee found themselves in Saanen trying to wind things down only to discover that a bunch of people, not having heard that K had passed away that February in Ojai, had turned up to listen to him. Feeling for them, the Swiss Committee people, principally Gisèle Balley, decided on the spot to organise something. They managed, on the spare of the moment, to procure the use of the Saanen school buildings and proceeded to show K videos followed by discussions or dialogues, which has been the basic format ever since. Gisèle was the key organiser and motor behind the Swiss gatherings until about three years ago, when her health took a sudden turn for the worse. Subsequently, and luckily for everybody, Claudia Herr, Doris Stucky and Claire Dufour assumed the responsibility for organising these gatherings, which have been and hopefully will continue to be, a contemplative and liberating journey into our shared human predicament in the light of the teachings.
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This reminds me of K’s notion of his schools and centres as oases of light in an age of darkness. We might not be inclined to agree that ours is an age of darkness since, compared to other historical periods, we have never had it so good. But to judge by all the ongoing violence and the constant threat of a global escalation, it is abundantly clear that humanity continues to live under the apocalyptic shadow of its own self-ignorance. This endemic ignorance, with its untold brutality and sorrow, was very likely the reason why K saw our time as a new Dark Ages. And just as then the monks had sought refuge and created religious communities in the remotest places away from the barbarous ways of the people, so should his places be centres of light far from the irreligious ways of our time. Once the world should come to its senses, this light could spread and give rise to a new culture worthy of the name for, as he always maintained, only the truly religious spirit can produce a new culture, not merely the elaboration of political ideologies, philosophic theories and other passing cultural fads. We’ve had cultural movements galore and mankind, in spite of its tremendous technical and organisational advances, has not undergone the profound transformation that would allow the full flowering of the seed of goodness that for a million years has been lying dormant in us.
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Even though it was K’s own simile, this association of his places with medieval monasticism might not sound quite appropriate in view of K’s rejection of organised religion with its creeds, dogmas and ecclesiastical authorities. But there is no denying that the teachings are essentially religious and so were meant to be the places founded on them. One only has to read a book like Don’t Make a Problem of Anything, which consists of a series of discussions he held in India around the question of creating groups of people committed to the teachings in each of his places, to realise the core importance of such a religious outlook in his approach. Perhaps due to the entrenched anticlerical sentiment in our secular age, the very word ‘religion’ would seem to be antithetical to the teachings, whereas it is at their core, though evidently with quite a different meaning. This is a challenge that, in my view, we have not broached fully, but which would be central to the creation of any such oases of light in an age of darkness. And after such happy and inspiring reunions, viruses and rampant capitalism notwithstanding, as these past summer gatherings in Mürren, one dares to dream that we have reached the point at which we may be ready to embrace such a religious outlook and even take the step of creating the needful spaces in which it might flower in goodness and freedom.
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I came down carrying no stone tablets but full of the majestic beauty and height of the mountains, the warmth of friendship and a subtle perfume of freedom emanating from deep listening and the inner emptiness of self-concern. Goodness is, indeed, when the self is not.
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Take good care, amigos, and enjoy a healthy, selfless and creative summer,
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Photos by J. Gómez Rodríguez: 1 & 2 - Mountain views, Mürren, Switzerland.
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