Real People

At the Pinnacle with Irmis Popoff and the Second Basic Course at Sherborne House with J.G. Bennett: A Memoir

Roberta J. Chromey

Paperback
978-1-954744-70-7
US $22.95 Bookshop Amazon
eBook available
July 2022

In today's world of political and climate instability, Real People tells the story of a unique school designed not only to prepare students for the future but to help them become "real human beings."

John G. Bennett spent fifty years studying the spiritual teachings of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff and others. At seventy, he followed an inner directive to "start a school." Few of Bennett's students have chronicled the esoteric experience of his ten-month Basic Courses at Sherborne House in the bucolic Cotswolds area of England. Roberta J. Chromey has done this through telling the story of her young self, Bobby Jo.

Real People follows Bobby Jo from college in New Jersey to her first teacher in the Gurdjieff Work, then on to J. G. Bennett's school in England in the early 1970s. In the ancient halls and dorms, paneled dining room, Great Hall, basement kitchen, and Horse Parlor of Sherborne House magical events happen. Bennett gives talks and Themes that inspire surprising outcomes, such as an examination of one's relationship to material objects culminating in empathy with a potato and a dance with a mop.

The course is its own journey, from learning to cook and clean for one hundred fellow travelers, to experiencing the discipline and mystery of Gurdjieff's dances, to finding communion with a pony. Meditative exercises and practices of silence and awareness open doors to external and internal realms. Senior staff are fully drawn characters. Visiting teachers play major roles at crucial junctures, fellow students provide background. The course comes alive in a living crucible that melts young Bobby Jo and forms in her a new understanding.

Roberta J. Chromey is a memoirist, a life-long journalist, and a recent blogger who shares her insights based on fifty years of inner work in the Fourth Way of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. At seventy-one, Roberta continues to practice Gurdjieff Movements and lead morning-exercises developed by John G. Bennett. As a young adult, Roberta's teachers were Irmis B. Popoff and John G. Bennett, both of whom worked closely with Gurdjieff. The diary Roberta kept while attending Bennett's esoteric school in England from 1972-73 became the basis for her memoir, Real People. Roberta was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Bethesda, Maryland. She attended University of Maryland and Livingston College, a division of Rutgers University, receiving a BA in English and Education in 1973. In 1976 Roberta moved with her young family to become a member of the Claymont Society in West Virginia. She earned her CRTT credentials as a Respiratory Technician in 1981 and became a Registered Respiratory Therapist in 1991, working in West Virginia and Virginia hospitals for twenty-five years. For eighteen years she helped her husband, Jack Chromey, run a printing and marketing business. Now retired, they have two children and four grandchildren all living in Asheville, North Carolina. Roberta has enjoyed experiencing the cultures of Uruguay in South America, England, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and India. Roberta and Jack divide their time between their homes in West Virginia and North Carolina. They are both active members of the Claymont Society for Continuous Education in Charles Town, West Virginia.