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The Art of Living
Our programme starts with a review of Benjamin Creme’s 12th book “The Art of Living: Living within the Laws of Life”.
This review by Marc Gregory features in the July / August 2013 double issue of Share International magazine and begins:
Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life,” wrote Oscar Wilde. Well, maybe. But the relationship between the two is perhaps more symbiotic and reciprocal than we have imagined up until now.
In his 12th book, The Art of Living, Benjamin Creme points out that living correctly is indeed an art, and that life, like the arts, is subject to certain immutable laws.
This volume is in three sections and, like Mr Creme’s other books, offers a great wealth and depth of information presented in a lucid, highly readable manner. It thus forms an apt counterpart to its two companion volumes, The Great Approach and The Art of Co-operation.
Readers of Benjamin Creme’s other books and those familiar with his lectures will know that his central theme is the reappearance in our time of the World Teacher, the Lord Maitreya, and a group of similarly perfected men, the Masters of Wisdom. As the Enlightened One expected by all major religions and a Teacher for all of humanity,
His teachings show the way forward, a way in which men can begin to break the bonds of the conditioning which enthralls us.
Three elements central to these teachings are honesty of mind, sincerity of spirit and detachment. Honesty of mind means that there is no discrepancy between what we think, what we say and what we do, that our thoughts, words and actions are consistent and do not conflict.
Sincerity of spirit simply means being one’s self. How many of our words and actions are coloured by the fact that we wish to give a good impression, or because we are seeking to curry favour in one way or another? “That is the insincerity in which many people live,” Creme writes. “How many people are really, utterly and entirely themselves?”
Then, finally, detachment. How concerned are we, or not, with how others see us, with what others think or say about us, whether they like us or not, and so forth. If one is truly detached, then one is likely not conditioned, and will not be subject to, or affected by, the effects of the conditioning of others or the conditioning of the world in general.
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