On 20 May 1971, J.G. Bennett spoke at Harvard, promoting his International Academy for Continuous Education (IACE). The material is not generally available, but it is of considerable interest. First, it goes for over an hour. There are several questions, although few of these are at all audible. Bennett’s answers to live questions are invariably excellent, bringing out new perspectives. However, I have never heard Bennett so disjointed, endlessly repeating words and even phrases, and even, at points, rambling, as if he were under the influence of some chemical or drug (I do not know if he used narcotics, but perhaps he had had surgery of some kind). This is to be considered with the fact that he speaks significantly faster than I have ever heard him before. I find it hard to resist the conclusion that Bennett was under some sort of influence. He does not sound drunk, but he does sound as if his formatory apparatus is speeding along, too fast for conscious control.

Yet, despite all this, and all the silliness (he was still in his Idries Shah phase), something remarkable emerges. Perhaps because he was not the “full Bennett,” so to speak, he speaks more frankly than usual of how a Sufi in northern Iran had telepathically contacted him and transmitted to him baraka, a certain power. It is quite equivocal as to whether the transmission was in person or also at a distance. I doubt that Bennett would lie about something like that, but as I have written before, and I reiterate now, the fact-if fact it be- that Bennett or anyone else receives such powers means that we must be especially careful when listening to or reading them. Bennett himself, in this talk, said: “The development of powers in itself can be as harmful as it is useful. What is necessary for men is to have inner freedom.” However, he did not expand upon this.

I repeat: if a person has powers, meaning preternatural or even possibly supernatural powers, that person is especially dangerous to we who do not possess such powers, because they are no guarantee of wisdom, being, balance, or even of being right. It is much easier to unthinkingly submit to such a one. That is, the dangers of suggestibility are greater. I think I have indicated that Mr Adie had powers, but with one exception, I found out only after his death. To be more precise, I knew that he could muster a remarkable spiritual energy when he needed. He did so in front of me once. We were alone in his room. But he never exhibited his telepathic powers to me – I later learnt that he had done so, once when there was no telephone available, and he needed something, he spoke to someone by distance. There is another instance, but I do not know why Mr Adie chose to use his power then. The point is, that he kept it quiet. I do not know, but I would surmise that he did not want to overpower people’s independence of judgment (fragile as it is).

My personal view is that Bennett was excessively suggestible and impressionable. The power to use higher centres does not guarantee that a man is balanced, let alone good. But Bennett seems to have taken it as a marker of infallibility. I am sure that is an error. If I am correct in my reading of what happened in 1971, then a man in whom a certain power to use higher hydrogens had been localised, retained that power even when his faculties were in a state of disarrangement.

In this talk, which I hope Bennett’s heirs will make freely available, he says many remarkably intelligent and prescient things, for example, that we are living in an age when the world changes enormously within the term of one life. For tens of thousands of years, the world we were born in was the world we died in. But this is no longer so.

This is very true, and although it seems obvious, yet I for one had not really appreciated the significance of this for education and self-education – matters which Bennett alludes to, even if he does not develop them at length.

Perhaps the most significant point he makes is that we have been hypnotised by what we might call “quantitative philosophy.” That is, more is better is the default value of our time; and yet, we prove in our experience that it is not (at least not for all purposes). This, he does develop well.

But then, he slips into his “everything-is-Sufi” spiel, just as others have their “everything-is-Tibet” or whatever it may be. It is especially disappointing to hear his brief but laudatory comments on Idries Shah. Well, Bennett was stubborn, I only wish he had been more loyal.