Convocation at Chisholme House, 4-6 September 2015

This weekend was about setting a new intention for the School at Chisholme

Understanding the Past: a talk by the Principal, Peter Young – read or listen here...

Considering the Present: an exercise in intention and imagination; read more...

Looking to the Future: 
               Richard Gault, the 'about-to-be' Principal, 
               Aliya Ryan the Development Office Coordinator, 
               Aaron Cass, Director of Studies for the next Six-month Course
               Tim Roberts, Chairman of the Institute
               Open Session – comments from participants 

Sunday Morning: looking to the future...

Aaron Cass, Director of Studies, talks about the Six-month Retreat Course, which will start on October 1st:

Thank you!  
Yes, for those of you who don’t know me, I have been involved with this place for quite a long time… 

Something occurred to me the other day in the kitchen… that cooking is the loving and skillful management of the destruction of living things – and I think the Six-month Course is very similar! …in so far as thingness is what is to be transformed, and what we really are is what is to emerge out of it, and that’s the real nourishment for the universe.  

It is His nourishment.  
We are His nourishment through ourselves.  
He is our nourishment through Being.  …and the whole Course is about realising this relationship.

That hasn’t changed – I don’t think it could because that is the real matter. 

Education – the education of the human being – is the one thing you can rely on in this universe that’s going to be necessary. The rest could all fall apart.  

I mean, we don’t need religions, we don’t need all scientific paradigms, all religious structures, all communities ­– all of them, without exception, will dissolve. Ibn ‘Arabi apparently spent the last years of his life contemplating the ruins. Well – I think this is an incredibly valuable thing to do, and we might as well start now and then the transformation will be easier for us. 

I really love that – when I read in Claude Addas’s book, that is what he was left with – this walking and following and contemplating the ruins! 

So yes, the destruction of living things is half the story, the other half is the transformation. I think it’s quite good to stay with that, the force of that, in an educational context. Because it is a very serious matter and it is not for everybody. 

In terms of the actual structure of the Course, there have been changes – or at least we are conjecturing changes. There is one thing that will always be there, because it addresses this fundamental relationship of being both an individual, a human being, and no other than Reality Itself.  

This is the great mystery.  

The one text that addresses this in every possible facet is, of course, the Fusus al Hikam, which is what still forms the actual bulk of the study material on this Course;  that has not changed, in spite of some conjecture that it might. 

The way in which it is approached also does not essentially change, which is to do with it not being read simply in an academic manner, of course. However, these new translations do bring a different flavour and an ease of approach I think, for people.  So we are looking at all of that – and it is really, really good to have all this work going on –  revisiting the material all the time! It has been incredibly valuable, and has all come out of the Development Office and the Ibn ‘Arabi  Society. It is in parallel in a way – peoples’ deep personal interest creating really valuable new things.

Even the timetable… I am not sure it’s going to be two days work, two days study anymore. We are still working on this, but I actually think there is a maturity in the contemporary student that doesn’t need to be driven. Like I am sure the people who have done the courses in the 70’s remember an almost public school-like pressure on everything

Also, the whole way  this place has been running, with a much lower staff level – this course structure evolved last winter, through that two-month retreat, because that is how we met every day.  Then it became the structure of the current courses – with study each morning. It means you don’t need a huge number of people in the background – because when we have finished studying, we go and do what is necessary, together. Which is kind of how it was right in the beginning – it is much lighter; much more connected with the life of the place. 

And I feel it is important for the students also – which we all are of course – but it is important for the whole body to move as one as much as possible. There has been a slight evolution over the past few years of a kind of almost two-tiered system – where study is up here and all the rest of it is down there, trying to make sure it can happen. That’s fine but I feel like it is going to be different this time. 

I’m not entirely sure what else to say actually. 

...ok – there was a course recently, as Peter mentioned yesterday, when a student, even after the course, didn’t know how to turn the gas on, as if it is something not relevant.  Whereas actually the total mirroring that this place represents means that everything is relevant. It really is. And that’s the function of the Course.

It’s to introduce you to Life – which is actually everywhere. We know this but we have kind of couched it in ‘constancy of awareness’ in a slightly transcendent manner. As if ‘constancy of awareness’ means remembering something ‘up here’.  Of course we know it’s not really that, but we have to address it more directly I think. And that also explains the place of Mindfulness practice within the Course – because that is precisely what that is supposed to do. 

The moment by moment awareness of what is, as it is. And the relationship of Mindfulness to this Course is not as some sort of ‘add on’. It is actually very much in the developments – the relationship. Because it has got to be in a manner that is proper to this Course – not just something that is brought in and kind of stuck on. 

So we are still in the middle of that – there isn’t a set way of doing it. We are going to find out…so this group of students are guinea pigs – if that’s alright with you...? (addressing one of the prospective students in the room, and he gets a nod in response.) 

Later, as part of an Open Session, Tim Roberts, Chairman of the Institute, addressed the audience to ask for help.