{The School of Economic Science [continued]}[4th October 1981]

[Redbook2:205-206][19811004:1415b]{The School of Economic Science [continued]}[4^th October 1981]

19811004.1415

[continued]

The method was acceptable – the teacher asks the questions and guides the answers. It is always difficult to prevent one's own education (valid or not) standing in the way of others' teaching. One can, perhaps, rely on direct experience (What, if not that?). On that yardstick some things were said which I feel to be completely wrong. For example, that the imagination cannot encompass creation; that sleep (apparently) and sleep-dreaming have no place in the expansion of the mind's range; that day-dreaming cannot lead to art, only to fantasy; that the more you practise anything, the better you become at it. Of course, I may have misunderstood these; or there may be some sophisticated technique involved. Anything is possible; but my attempt to put these points to the lecturer at the end were met after a few minutes by the suggestion that I go away and practice the technique. This is a relaxation-and-awareness-heightening exercise so basic that the school must have come across people who have done it before, not least those of a creative/artistic bent who may well have arrived at it 'unconsciously'.

One's own ego, as always, is a problem; but I am not impressed. The bookstall minder told me (when politely pressed) that the literary core of the school was the Upanishads and the (Bhagavad) Gita; this fits in with the children learning Sanskrit, I suppose (– if they had been Sufis I suppose it would have been Persian). At this stage, my intention is to stay for argument's sake, if some usefulness seems possible.

[So dreams are responsible (see last previous entry) for the final decision to attend a course one of whose first lessons is not to rely on dreams.... Quite right too, the course was useless. (cf. [Redbook1:84][19690426:2000]{Stichomancer}[26th April 1969])]

[continues]

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