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THEY USE NO FORM OF WORDS. COME NOW (SOMEONE MIGHT PROTEST), WE KNOW
WHAT THE CHIP DOES, THE FUNCTIONS IT PERFORMS. SO (IT SHOULD BE
REPLIED) DID THE YOGIS OF INDIA, THE LAMAS OF TIBET, ALSO UNDERSTAND
THEIR OWN MANDALAS.
HanS BlOHM,
STAFFORD BEER, AND DAvID SUZUKI,
pebbles tO COMpUters
(1986, 37)
And now for something completely different. Well, not completely. The pre-
vious chapters have looked at some of the connections between cybernetics
and Eastern, nonmodern, forms of spirituality, and we can continue the ex-
amination here. Beer rigorously excluded all references to spiritual concerns
from his writings on management cybernetics, and one can certainly take the
latter seriously without committing oneself to the former—many of Beer's as-
sociates and followers do just that. But of our cyberneticians it was Beer who
lived the fullest and most committed spiritual life, and I want now to explore
the relations between his spirituality and his cybernetics, beginning with an
outline of his spiritual career.
Beer was born into a High Church family and, according to his brother,
before the family moved to Wales to escape the bombing of World War II,
we all attended the Church of St John the Evangelist, Shirley, where our Fa-
ther and Stafford were Servers in the choir—indeed both were members of the
Guild of Servers and wore their medals. . . . Stafford always sat sideways in his
choir stall with one side of his glasses over his ear and the other in his mouth
and frowned. The glasses, I believe, had plain glass in them as he wanted to look
older than he was. At some moments when the vicar said something (I assume
outrageous to Stafford) he took the glasses off and turned to glower at the pul-
pit. I felt very proud of him. . . . To me they were happy times and prepared us
both to take the spiritual dimension of our lives seriously, wherever it took us
from that traditional Anglo-Catholic Church in the thirties.
49
The spiritual dimension of Stafford's life took him in two directions. Some-
time after his military service in India, he converted to Catholicism (1965,
301), but he later “gave up Christianity and discovered Christ,” and toward
the end of his life he described himself as a Buddhist, a tantric yogi. Accord-
ing to Allenna Leonard, he had been fascinated with Eastern philosophy since
he was a small child. In his year at University College London he wanted to
study Eastern philosophy, but the subject was not taught: “My dear boy, go to
