Creative Thinking: and How We Do Things (The Collected Works of J.G. Bennett)

In this volume, we have found it expedient to combine two texts previously published separately. These two earlier publications have several common factors, as both are made up of transcripts of series of six talks given at Coombe Springs in 1964 and 1965, to audiences drawn from the same invited participant pool, and both presenting practical approaches to work. At the time of these meetings, a permanent group of about 50 men, women and children lived at Coombe Springs, a number of families lived close by and attended regularly and still more lived further away and traveled to Coombe Springs for weekly meetings or monthly work weekends. The “Creative Thinking” course consisted of six weekly sessions mostly with students in close contact with Bennett, while the “How We Do Things” course was arranged over a series of weekends and is more general in content. “Creative Thinking” is based on the premise that an act of creation brings into existence something that had not previously existed. By extension, creative thinking is an action which spontaneously brings into existence a thought that has never previously existed. Bennett used the six sessions to demonstrate to his students the techniques he used to attain to the revolutionary notions such as those contained in his “The Dramatic Universe” of which at that time only the first two volumes were in print. “How We Do Things” is a practical exposition of the teaching Bennett presented publicly for the first time 17 years earlier in his first book “The Crisis in Human Affairs”, which is to say that an action can only be called such if it is intentionally formulated and carried out. All other behaviour is described as “reaction”, or a response to external or even internal stimuli. In order to act intentionally, we require a heightened self-awareness, and command and control over our body, minds and emotion beyond what is generally accepted as normal. This is a non-denominational book, which does not draw upon any specialized resources beyond common sense.