BOOKS BY ANTHONY BLAKE

Tony Blake's "hologram" of Intelligence Now in the new 1999 edition can best be read with, as he says, "the organizing idea of hypertext". I like to think of it as fifty-six clues and provocations to sleuth the tracks of intelligence. Marvellous lines abound such as "evolution is intelligent and must diversify the diverse as much as it unifies the singular." And "the designer is within the design and has to invent himself in order to do anything." And "Intelligence abandons anything that is not useful; it is as if the useless element ceases to exist." Look at the book as a bowl of pecans, each of which has to be cracked to extract the meat, and the cracking of each nut is itself an act of intelligence. Gerald Wilde's cover painting is a fifty-seventh bonus!

John Allen, Poet and Designer of Biosphere 2

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This is the key text for understanding how to use the structural form of the Enneagram as it was introduced by Gurdjieff at the beginning of the twentieth century. It gives a historical background to Gurdjieff's work and explains the basic principles of his so-called 'cosmic laws' of Three and Seven that underlie the dynamic form of the Enneagram. It also demonstrates its use in a variety of fields that include science, sex, prayer and even movies. The book is based on the work of J. G. Bennett, with whom Anthony Blake studied for fifteen years, collaborating on several projects. The emphasis of the 'school' developed by Bennett from Gurdjieff's work is on practical method and creativity. The study of systems and structures originating with Bennett and Gurdjieff continues to evolve and this book indicates how the Enneagram is but one of an almost endless series of forms of understanding.

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This is more than an Index, providing a guide to the key ideas, chronology and geography woven together in Ouspensky's exposition of Gurdjieff's ideas. It also includes an Introduction to the historical context of Gurdjieff's teaching in Russia.

In Search of the Miraculous was originally known as 'Fragments of an Unknown Teaching' and it was a great pity that marketing forces took over and dictated the trivialising title. Ouspensky's search for a complete 'system' and his rejection of Gurdjieff's radical experimentation is an essential part of the whole story of the fate of G's work.

The form of the Index enables the reader to trace through how any idea was developed over time and appreciate the complex and subtle way in which Gurdjieff taught.

This is a ground-breaking book dealing with the phenomenological and cognitive aspects of the dialogue process that is now slowly making its way into contemporary culture. It begins with J. G. Bennett's 'technological' exploration of systems to enable the communication of understanding that he called structural communication. It includes an account of the workings of dialogue groups as advocated by David Bohm, as well as that of the 'large groups' that have emerged in recent years in organisational development. It also describes the innovation of N-logue, the first attempt to provide ways of structuring conversation based on the number of people involved. Structures of Meaning is approved by Patrick de Mare, the pioneer of the median group, who encouraged Bohm to undertake dialogue as a way of developing creative coherence in a group. The book contains material and reports on actual events.

Structures of Meaning is being updated and a new edition is hoped for in 2004. This will include Towards a Science of Dialogue (presently separately published by the DuVersity at $15 USA £10 UK) which is a phenomenology of dialogue based on the first six 'categories' of J. G. Bennett's 'systems of understanding'. It will also include new chapters on recent work developing out of Bennett's structural communication on the method known as logovisual technology and the Working Group methodology. There will be an important foreword by Patrick de Mare.

Over a period of two years David Bohm, the renowned quantum physicist and John Bennett met several times and engaged in considerable correspondence. This compilation represents all that is left of this extraordinary exchnage of letters in which the two men struggled to understand understanding itself. It was a meeting of ancient and modern esotericism. One of the fascinations of the book is that it shows them coming extremely close to a mutual enhancement and joint creativity, only for it to fade away as each persisted in their own frame of reference. Students of systematics and quantum physics can find much of considerable value here.

Copies available through the Duversity $15 USA £10 UK

The book is based on twelve hypotheses, which are woven together to show how we can participate without belief in an intelligent universe.