Gary’s Foreword to The Order of Natural Necessity: A Kind of Introduction to Critical Realism
For 10 years I have, as a dramatherapist, run workshops and retreats that one could call spiritual, or transpersonal. The aim of my work is to assist the experience of non-duality. However, my greatest frustration was when the west took the eastern spiritual tradition concept of non-duality and spoke of it as being an awakening experience or an experience of enlightenment that you either experienced spontaneously or worked hard to experience.
This idea of spontaneously vs. hard work made little sense to me; if, I argued, at an ontological level, there is freedom, all we need to do is take away the blocks to the experience of that freedom. However, in 2011 I was fortunate to hear Roy Bhaskar the originator of Critical Realism speaking on what it means to be an activist of the real. Although I could see that Roy was offering some very complex philosophical ideas, he was also offering them in a way that was clear, understandable, and for me inspiring.
I was profoundly struck by his simple idea that non-duality is not a mystical metaphysical concept that we work hard to achieve, or just awaken to, it is the very causal power what allows society to interact, it is the meta-level, or cosmic envelope, without which you and I would not be able to understand each other as embodied personalities.
I was, and I still am, overwhelmed by Roy’s simple explanation of the non-dual. It has changed my work, my ideas, and my view of what true or alethic freedom is.
This book’s beginning comes from an ending. In 2014, after much persuasion, I managed to get Roy in
front of a computer in the University College London – Institute of Education’s library ready to start a series of live streamed talks of what was to become six hours of Roy talking about critical realism.
After my original introduction to Roy’s philosophy of metaReality (see chapter three) I contacted Roy, as I wanted to explore the unpublished volume four of the philosophy of metaReality: The Work-ins. MetaReality states that if we want emancipation from occlusions we need to work on the blocks, just as we work out in the gym, we should work in, to explore our own embodied personality and look to how one creates a deeper finer connection to the non-dual, which is at the heart of the metaReal.
I also wanted to know more of the other stages in the development of critical realism, and so I began what was to become an uphill struggle to penetrate Roy’s, at times, dense academic texts. I managed to gain enough understanding of critical realism to be able to introduce some of Roy’s idea on human emancipation and wellbeing into my dramatherapy and therapeutic coaching work, enough to be able to present my work at the 2013 International Conference for Critical Realism, a presentation that Roy attended and from which he invited me to join his critical realism reading group at the Institute for Education based in London.
It was listening to Roy speaking at the reading group that I began to think about the possibility of recording Roy. I felt that if I could get Roy just to speak about his work it would open up his philosophy to more people. Therefore, along with my friend Donald Clark we planned to get Roy online.
There are pages I can write about the difficulty Donald and I encountered, from not being able to use certain online tools, to having to move streaming times around because of the 2014 Football World Cup. However, in the end we managed to stream Roy live, record Roy, and upload the videos to YouTube. This was the first part of our plan. The second part was the creation of live, streamed, and recorded seminars with Roy, both to help promote his work and to develop an income for Roy. Then, in late 2014 we heard the sad news that Roy had died.
Donald and I then began to consider the possibility of creating a book based on the videos we had of Roy speaking. The aim of the book would be to keep it simple or as simple as possible, changing very little of Roy’s spoken words, adding footnotes that aimed to expand the text and understanding, along with introducing the reader to the wider literature on critical realism.
Roy set out to show that we must not ignore what is real, and what is real or alethic real is freedom, we all have within ourselves a connection to freedom, we have just lost that connection.
I did not want Roy’s ideas on freedom to become a footnote; to be seen as an academic that had much to say, but said it in a way that was too difficult or too time consuming to understand. With his passing, I did not want him to become a dead academic. I wanted his words to live, to inspire, and to support change in the world.
This book concludes, and realises a promise I made to Roy, that I would ensure that as many people as possible would hear Roy speaking. In keeping to that promise, I have spent 18 months editing this book.
It is the order of my natural necessity to make this book available, not just as a kind of introduction to critical realism but also as the voice of a man who put others before himself. Roy asked deep and challenging questions about the world, seeking to provide a way out of enslavement and in his ideas reached for liberation, but then he stops short and asks:
How are you going to take up the universal project of emancipation that is at the heart of your own order of natural necessity?
Your free flourishing is a condition of the free flourishing of all; this is The Order of Natural Necessity.
The Order of Natural Necessity: A Kind of Introduction to Critical Realism By Roy Bhaskar Edited by Gary Hawke – can be purchased through Amazon.