About Christopher
Christopher Nevill (born 1937) was dubbed a “Lifesmith” by a colleague attempting to summarize the broad scope of experiential knowledge held by this native South African. The range of his interests is eclectic; his reading prodigious; he has been heard to say that that the last time he did a days work was back in 1989.
In that year he changed his mind about the concept of work, stepped out of the commercial world and began to follow his passion by creating his first personal development course, known as The Harlequin Experience, which is today is the corner stone of Foundation.
Christopher’s expanded vision for the development of human values, in both private individuals and companies and his no-nonsense, practical and often controversial outlook on issues such as relationships, self, business management, leadership, parenthood and the meaning of life, has been forged in the crucible of South Africa - a country universally recognised as “the world in one nation”. His work has had a profound impact on the lives of thousands of people in many countries and from all walks of life.
This ‘philosopher with attitude’ sees the whole idea of ‘being spiritual’ as a very pragmatic exercise and embraces an outlook on life that is built on the idea that people must understand and adapt their physical behaviour in order to realise their spirituality. His sources of reference encompass the wisdom of writers and philosophers, both ancient and modern and his views on humanity and our need to define a new future are extremely stimulating. He has recently started a PhD where he will examine the spiritual nature of companies. His thesis is titled “Companies on the Couch”.
It is basic to Christopher’s philosophy that the solution to whatever it is we want to either solve or create for ourselves lies within ourselves. Foundation bases its methodology on this concept. Using strategic analysis, lectures, games and processes, systems and structures, which are designed to promote a high level of self-awareness, integrity, impeccability, responsibility, commitment, accountability and team work, the work provides opportunities for profound personal and business development.
Hi Christopher
I am a Psychology student interested in the methods of brainwashing. Could you please let me know how your course is in any way dissimilar to the methods used by Jim Jones, whereby intense workshops break individuals down and indoctrinate them with a style of thinking that makes catharsis seem possible at your fingertips?
Group therapy is a great way to make money without paying any specific attention to the individual. How large are your groups? This is of concern to me as I believe that in the span of three weekends, Freud himself could not begin to correctly access and address the mental and emotional issues that lie beneath your customers outer psyche.
I ask because as a “lifesmith” you seem extremely capable of convincing people to pay you, but I have my doubts that your course holds any intellectual value or weight. If it’s not too much to ask, could you tell me if you have any formal education, at all?
I do not mean to be facetious, but please spare me the sales-pitch and tell me what your course really claims to do. I’ve seen many “muuti’s” that will help impotence, success in the workplace, and indeed many life changing traits all in one herb or bottle. How is your course anything but a quick fix for people who do not know any better?
I do hope to hear from you soon, your response will not go unheeded.
Mark van Dijk
Hi Mark and thank your mail. I got it first as a reply to my blog and so I have approved it posting. This reply too will also go on the blog.
My first impulse when I get letters written in the tone you have adopted is to dismiss them as not worth the trouble. When someone starts off with a number of unjustified and unwarranted assumptions that are presumably intended to show how sharp the writer is why should, I ask myself, why should I even bother with attempting to change their mind set? Rather let them be content in their assumptions. I do not see it as my mission to “save” the world in general or in particular to “save” the individual. However having said that there was something querulous about your letter that made me think that perhaps you were in more trouble than even you realise so I mount my sway backed charger, tilt the rusty and slightly bent lance and here we go.
I will make no attempt to address your sweeping generalisations and assumptions about my work. You apparently have some knowledge about what I teach and how I go about it which warrant you making the statements that you do. So be it. I just love the openness of mind and breadth of vision that has doubts (para 3 of your letter) about something of which they know very little and about which they are apparently attempting to get some information. Remarkable. I will however attempt to answer the factual questions you pose.
First. My groups are small and seldom exceed 15. Second I have a degree and included in that are the psychology courses which you are busy with and which I chose not to see through to conclusion with the obligatory asylum work. I am currently busy with a PhD. Third. My work claims to do nothing at all except this - it provides another perspective on a whole bundle of “truths” that we have been brainwashed into accepting as fact. The results of this acceptance– lust look around you – are not exactly wonderful. It will be up to you to then decide what to do with that perspective. Fourth. My work is also anything but a quick fix. It is the beginning of a lifetime work. Nowhere do I “guarantee” success except to say that results that are better than the ones that people are currently achieving, can be just that, achieved. Anyone who seeks a quick fix from me will be sorely disappointed.
The question that you MUST pose yourself, daily, is this. Is what I accept as the “truth”, producing a result in my life that is acceptable to me? If these beliefs are producing acceptable results, then do not change a thing. In fact my work will be positively dangerous as I will encourage you to challenge every single one of your beliefs. Equally I will actively discourage you from blindly accepting anything and everything I say as some sort of new “truth”.
This will of course make no sense to someone who thinks that what we currently have in our society, in our civilisation is acceptable. It says something for the quality of your reading that you are apparently sufficiently steeped in the theories of You magazine as to render you qualified to make a comparison with other work. Perhaps you are right however. It does, I believe, have a very wide readership and as they say you can fool some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time. Perhaps there is something in what they have to say. I shall make a point of reading one.
What I find an especially interesting question is why did you bother to write what is essentially a rather rude and ill-informed letter in the first place. What response did you expect from me? I wonder what tender spot in your psyche was touched and what reply would have assuaged it? So far as I am aware I have not touched your life.
From: Mark Van Dijk [vandijkmark0@gmail.com]
Sent: 12 February 2009 01:21 PM
To: Christopher
Subject: Re: Foundation and its Work
Christopher, I thank you for your response and will certainly elaborate on my
views in a formal reply. For now though, I would like to explain the nature of
my “rather rude and ill-informed letter”; Someone rather close to me has
recently attended your Harlequin corse and has, as a result decided their path
to wellbeing and enlightenment lies not in any knowledge or past experience,
but rather assesment of current situation.
This, I believe came as a direct result of your course. You are very careful
to avoid any reference to brainwashing. If you would like some literature that
scarily parallels your own, I’ll be happy to oblige. Most doctrines come from
suicide cults however and are thus not geared toward the same result as your
course. I have no doubt that your course helps people embrace their situation
as their own and thus take steps to change patterns. How can this be helpful
though without delving into the reasons for such patterns? How can a course
that costs over two thousand rand a day be more beneficial than therapy? If
your course is used as a supplementary means of coping, I see no problem. The
fact that you claim your course and the metaphors held in Lord of the Rings
are sufficient for people to know themselves, love themselves and be
themselves is what bothers me. People come out of your course with a much
lighter pocket, and not having gained any personal knowledge. The onus is on
your customers to make use of introspection and support groups to cope
socially, in this “civilization” you speak of. This is an alternative to
therapy which is more expensive, and less extensive.
Once again. I do not claim that your course is run with any ill intention. I
just feel that your methods of metal and emotional degradation through intense
workshops lead your customers to believe they have experienced a break-
through, while all they have done is temporarily touched on the real issues
causing undesirable patterns. Then, indoctrination of a single method comes
up. Once in a state similar to Stockholm Syndrome
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome) they embrace a new mind-set
as more effective than their own. This one-size-fits-all approach isn’t even
used in the world of medication any more. It’s antiquated and I feel that you
making approximately R35k on from an eight hour workshop is ridiculous
considering the unlikelihood of you remembering your customers names…
I do apologise for the rude nature of my messages, I do understand you have no
need to justify your course to a non-believer. I do however hope that you’re
capable of doing so.
Mark
Hmmmm and thank you for your letter. I have a clearer idea of where you are coming from.
You continue to make rash and rather ill-informed assumptions about what I do and how I do it. Where on earth do you get the idea of “metaphors held in Lord of the Rings”? Apart from the fact that I would regard that as complimentary if true. Tolkein is one of the greater minds that have walked this earth. Ask Jung. Another “not having gained any personal knowledge”. Really? Another “mental and emotional degradation”. Out of what do say that!? Another” indoctrination of a single method”. What on earth do you mean? Also you are factually wrong. The fee that is paid is for two workshops that stretch over some 70 – not 8 - hours of work. Redo your calculations. And again you are simply rude. As it happens I have an elephantine memory for both names and events that take place. Also the arrogance of youth in dismissing anything that is “antiquated” as of little use is to be expected from one of little life experience - ”callow” is the word. The multiplicities of nostrums that are today current have contributed little to either our physical or mental health. We live longer and it is a fool that will not question the quality of that extra life. It is very doubtful that we are truly healthier. The drug companies are however immensely richer! Brainwashing? I have no fear of that label. To get rid of the shit that has been forced into the space between our ears is a task of Augean dimensions. The onus is most decidedly on my customers and we will support them as hard and as fast as we can as soon as they reach out. I refuse to create them as incompetent.
It is one of the sadder things that we do in our relationships – across the board – when we attempt to negate anything that the other person does that does not fit into the picture we have of what they SHOULD do. Especially if that new doing falls outside the arena of what we are comfortable with. It brings up the spectre that perhaps we will no longer fit into what they want and that of course means we might “lose” them. We forget that we should never have regarded ourselves as owning them in the first place. Perhaps what we could rather be doing is applauding them as they explore something new, and then follow on behind to see if it might have value for us. To simply judge what they have done as of little value does not say much for our opinion of them or their judgment. If we can have confidence in them and respect their own inherent good sense then we can surely rest assured that they will also see right through anything that has no value. It is the kind of abuse that is heaped on our children ( and that includes you and I) almost from birth as we attempt to get them to be what we want them to be rather than who they are. We certainly continue the pattern in our later –so-called- adult (sic) relationships. This abuse has its roots deep in our own fears and neuroses. Can you really answer the question as to why you are studying psychology?
I am very aware of the common wisdom that you must know the reasons for a behaviour? Why? It is the behaviour that needs to be adjusted, so apart from some intellectual satisfaction of what use is knowing the reason for the behaviour? Apart from which a good deal of our knee jerk behaviour has its roots in events that took place in deep childhood and are so buried as to be nowhere the reach of the psychologist’s couch or the psychiatrist’s pills.
Please do not see this letter as any attempt at justification. I see you original letter as more of the traditional “cry for help” as you, I would hazard a guess; find yourself in a situation that you are battling to deal with. What is of much more interest is your motivation for until you get to terms with that, your capacity for real damage out there is great.
The group is meeting at 1800 this evening. Sadly I will not be there. The wine will not be bad. Why not go? Ask whatever questions you wish. Remember rudeness will not be tolerated and beware of assumptions. If you look very carefully you will notice the total absence of Rolls Royces that are commonly associated with gurus!
After reading this blog between Mark and Christopher i felt compelled to mention that I attended Harlequin in 2000, it was life changing for me, It’s 9 years later I’m still reaping the positive benefits from the life changes i experienced then.. Highly recommended and wish more humans would allow themselves the chance to release them selves from their septic tanks..
Christopher you Rock !!
I am compelled to make a comment or two.
Stockholm Syndrome
I feel Mark has a point here about the Stockholm Syndrome, I did get emotionally attached to my captor - funny how this captor turned out to be me. Perhaps this syndrome should be called self-love; I guess they do some of this in Stockholm.
Brainwashing
Definition - Intensive, forcible indoctrination, usually political or religious, aimed at destroying a person’s basic convictions and attitudes and replacing them with an alternative set of fixed beliefs.
Harlequin encouraged me to think for myself and left a void where the “alternative set of fixed beliefs” was supposed to be suggested. Guess I will have to explore for myself… Damn, it is much more convenient to be indoctrinated!
Relatively speaking, and considering the above, academic study falls more firmly under the definition of Brainwashing than a 35 hour experience in self awareness. So does life in the society I have been exposed to.
Mark
I am quite curious to find out if Mark did attend on that evening.
“I do not mean to be facetious, but please spare me the sales-pitch and tell me what your course really claims to do.”
If you did not attend Mark I suggest that your risk the possibility of possibly being wrong and find out for yourself. This experience can’t be “told”.
Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.
Nothings changed. Mark, i love Frustrated Fighters now. They’re essentially cuddly and gentle and willing and kind. Take a risk (or three) Brother, we need you.
I sit here in Kenya reading this with mixed emotions, sadness for Mark and joy at having being part of Harlequin and Chalice. I think about both courses on a daily basis, in my life, relationships and around family.I have certainly changed and continue to change, it becomes part of my life with amazing results.Magic stuff! Thank you, Christopher, once again, where have you been all my life?