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DIRECTION Freemail
August, 1998
Volume 1, Number 1
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Dear FreeMail,
As many of you have been following my search for a quote linking FM directly to the idea that he saw his work as a secular means divorced from morality, I thought it would interest you to preview the article in question. It is quite short and included within the body of this email.
Is it still valid to publish? If you have an opinion, you can email it to <closedlist> and everyone else will also receive your reply. I request that you email this address ONLY ON THIS MATTER. FreeMail is intended to be a very selective and only a DIRECTION-related list. If you wish to raise any other DIRECTION related topic, please email me first via <editor@directionjournal.com)
Here's the article. It is quite short.
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"The Secular Technique"
by Mark Webster
My first Alexander lessons were at a time when the fire of Kundalini was raging in my body, torturing it and my mind. These early lessons brought immediate pacification of that turmoil-and with it that peculiar condition of presence and absence of thought which many have noticed as a by-product of the work. Then suddenly, just before setting off on a six month trip to India in 1961, I experienced about ten minutes of blissful peace-the 'timeless present' so eloquently described by J. Krishnamurti.
When I started having regular lessons some years later with Peter Scott, I certainly thought the work was going to produce some SATORI experience. After the big moment, I had already decided to take Peter to an oysters and champagne celebration at Overtons around the corner from Ashley Place. It took some time for me to realise that nothing spectacular was going to happen. Nevertheless, the experience of heightened consciousness, presence and pacification of my thinking mind did happen. And still does.
The principle benefit derives from the practise of inhibition. All religions are replete with rules, but there is a great help in putting the weak decisions of our 'better nature' into practice by refraining. In Mahayana Buddhism the 'ten virtues' are simply the process of refraining from the ten non-virtuous activities of body, speech and mind. This process is well described in the Katha Upanishad:
The better and the more pleasant both approach man. Having examined them from all sides, the wise man discriminates between them. He chooses the better rather than the more pleasant, while the foolish, through desire to have and hold [objects of desire], chooses the more pleasant.2
Through inhibition of 'lower' pulls, an 'upward' or 'virtuous' direction can arise. As it says in another Upanishad:
From darkness lead me to light, from the unreal to the real, from death to immortality.
Although we can find evidence in Taoist writings and in the Bhagavad Gita that the evils of an endgaining attitude were also clear in ancient times, a real science has been made out of this by Mr. Alexander. Actually a lot of endgaining goes on among followers of spiritual paths and the attitudes of harmonious development of the whole person which are to be found in Ayurveda and Taoism are certainly more sympathetic to an 'Alexandrian'.
While many similarities do exist between Alexander work and spiritual paths, all the ingredients of the technique are usually not present within other paths. As my spiritual quest for 37 years has been simultaneous to my Alexander pursuit, it is difficult to make boundaries between the two-nevertheless they exist. The absolutely neutral quality of the Technique is one. IT IS RUMOURED THAT FM SAID HIS WORK WOULD ONLY MAKE A THIEF A BETTER THIEF.
Did FM really believe this? No reputable teacher of any of the spiritual disciplines I have come in contact with would have said this. Here we see how Alexander in some way fulfils a need of modern secular man in his development. But cut off from the warmth of the heart and concern for others' well-being, the Alexander work on its own can actually lead to further expansion of the ego's needs, the very antithesis of the spiritual path. So it remains a tool-just as it is a tool for singers, actors or sportsmen.
That said, there is still a quality of positive wondering about man's potential evolution in Alexander's books, which Margaret Goldie once formulated to me when I asked her about FM and religion:
"If you mean orthodox religion-no! He used to watch the people going in and out of the Roman Catholic Cathedral with amusement. However, if you mean religion in the sense of wondering what all this complex creation is and where it is going to, then very definitely yes!"
Footnotes:
1 Dream Yoga and the Practice of Natural Light by Namkhai Norbhu - Snow Lion,
ISBN 1 55939 007 7, see Footnote 10, p.34
2 The Yoga of the Kathaupanishad by Sri Krishna Prem - John M. Watkins, London 1955,
see chapter 2, verse 2, p.48
Mark Webster
Morgartenstrasse 37
8004 Zurich
Switzerland
Tel. +41 1 242 4815
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That's all
Jeremy Chance
Editor, DIRECTION
August, 1998
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