The Supreme Art of Dialogue

The Supreme Art of Dialogue attempts to integrate diverse perspectives on the dialogue process, including the spiritual and the scientific and is itself a kind of dialogue incorporating many points of view. At its core is a reconciliation between numerical or formal and verbal or qualitative ways of thinking. It has four main sources. Each contrasts with each of the others in contrasting ways, and engages with the others reciprocally. Structural Communication [Bennett] method of dealing with both content and structure of meaning independently; two-channel, two-way communication based on writing. Structure is explicit and related to systematics. Developed for educational purposes in the 1960s; further developed eventually into LogoVisual Technology Dialogue [de Mare and Bohm] free-floating conversation not directed to the future but to the present moment; with diffuse structure allowing for emergence, based on speaking. Structure is implicit. De Mare's median group is a special case of the maximum number of participants compatible with the possibility of equality between them. Dialogue requires the suspension of everyday habits and assumptions of discourse. Facilitation of dialogue varies according to theoretical perspective, purpose and context, from virtually nonexistent to very managed. N-logue [Blake] structured conversation based on the number of participants N; usually articulated and observable for small numbers up to 4; can be written or spoken. They require even more stringent suspensions of habit than dialogue in general. Structure is explicit. N-logues are treated as particles of meaning making of various sizes and qualities called logons. Instead of 'adding' their separate minds together, the N persons take on roles of an N-mind. They can be practised as an art in their own right or discerned and cultivated as they arise spontaneously in dialogue. Dialogue is composed of N-logues. N-logue is conscious. Derives from systematics. ILM [Matchett] based on listening to complex sounds, especially music, that are more highly structured than speech in form, allowing content to arise of itself; centred in individuals though conducted in a group, where all listen to the same source but do not talk with each other. Structure is implicit. ILM is taken to symbolise and invoke access to the information field that underlies the very possibility of communication. Whatever an ILM experience means is just what the individual wants it to mean. From the Glossary The dialogue process is of supreme importance in human life yet only now is it beginning to be acknowledged. The late Patrick de Mare always insisted that dialogue was mind and that mind was that between brains rather than in brains. The key figures in the discourse of The Supreme Art include: John Bennett, mathematician and mystic and student of Gurdjieff; David Bohm, physicist; Patrick de Mare, pioneer of the median group concept; Gordon Lawrence, pioneer of the Social Dreaming Matrix, and Edward Matchett, an explorer of how genius might be developed.