A. G. E. Blake

Anthony Blake was born in Bristol, UK, 1939. He studied physics at Bristol University, where he met the physicist David Bohm. Graduating in physics, Anthony went to Cambridge to study the history and philosophy of science. He next became a research fellow of The Institute for the Comparative Study of History, Philosophy, and the Sciences run by the polymath philosopher John Bennett, a leading exponent of the ideas of G. I. Gurdjieff. He was involved in the development of ‘structural communication’, a new educational method, undertook projects involving Westinghouse, IBM, and worked as a management consultant. Anthony helped in the formulation of systematics, the discipline of understanding that Bennett originated. He was Bennett’s main assistant in the writing of the last two volumes of ‘The Dramatic Universe’, Bennett’s magnum opus. He went on to edit and publish many books composed from talks Bennett gave at the end of his life, including ‘Deeper Man’ and ‘Way to be Free’. While acting as publisher for Coombe Springs Press, he brought out major books on world traditions such as Hasan Shushud’s ‘Masters of Wisdom of Central Asia’, Sri Anirvan and Lizelle Reymond’s ‘To Live Within’ and Rene Guenon’s ‘Lord of the World’. He also encountered and worked with Edward Matchett, a self-taught genius working on the realisation of human potential, John Allen, founder of Synergeia an organisation with a global quest to correlate ecology and culture; and studied with G. Spencer Brown, a mathematician who became famous for his work on the laws of form, and Charlotte Bach, who had astonishing insights into time, consciousness, and alchemy, as well as physicist David Bohm. In the 70’s, Bennett established an experimental school for ‘continuous education’ that focused on the development of human potential and invited Anthony to join the staff. Anthony wrote a theoretical and practical study of temporal consciousness under the title ‘A Seminar on Time’. In the 80’s he worked with John Allen on the Biosphere 2 Project in Arizona and collated and edited the book ‘Biosphere 2 – The Human Experiment’. Together with Ted Matchett he developed new methodologies for developing creative ability. He made studies of the relevance of traditional psychological know-how for the contemporary world. In the 90’s, he discovered the principles of N-logue, (intentional dialogue through structural discipline) and was initiated into dialogue through the School of Ignorance. From this work, he published ‘Structures of Meaning’ that later became ‘The Supreme Art of Dialogue’. He then wrote ‘The Intelligent Enneagram’, published by Shambhala, a study of the application of a system of structural thinking; and began a series of video dialogues with representatives of traditions ancient and modern, such as Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow) and Patrick de Mare, pioneer of dialogue in the Median Group. He founded the DuVersity, a networking organisation founded on the principles of diversity in understanding, in which he collaborates with a variety of individuals and groups under the edict ‘integration without rejection’. He conducted a series of experimental seminars specially designed to integrate different modes of thinking and response which were published as ‘The Baltimore Series’. For more than fifteen years he has run a series of gatherings on the nature and implications of Systematics, and written books on the elementary systems as well as extensive reports on the methodology, now available on Academia. Following the research of John Bennett he wrote a study of how we understand higher intelligence: ‘A Gymnasium of Beliefs in Higher Intelligence’. His most recent seminar was on the intelligence of music and forthcoming themes include the phenomenology and cybernetics of work on oneself.