This is from the meeting of Thursday 19 March 1986. I was struck by how Katrina’s observations tallied with what I had been saying in my post “Why do we Stop?”
Katrina said that she had been trying to observe her levels of consciousness. When she looks back on the day she sees that: “I accept a certain level of awareness, but that level is not enough.”
Mr Adie asked her: “During the day there are certain intervals, when you feel related to your plan. What is taking place then? You can speak with relative authority about that. But the rest is a sort of conclusion, a generality. If you’re in a sort of doubting mood, then you’re doubtful about what you see, but if you’re in a confident mood, you’re confident about what you see. But let’s have it when you were there.”
To her credit, Katrina then did exactly what Mr Adie had asked, she spoke about a precise observation she had had while cutting vegetables for dinner. She had experienced, she said: “a couple of moments of being related to it,” meaning to her plan.
“Yes, just for moments,” replied Adie. “You can’t extend that, and perhaps you mean that you accept that. But then, the more you accept just that moment, the more it affects you in some way you might not understand at once, yet it leaves a trace in you.”
“The question then, for pondering later, is how it leaves a trace. Is it in a thought, in a feeling, or what? How does it trace itself in you? It can be different for different people at different times. But there is something there … if only I can sense it.”
I will pause to note how Mr Adie said not only that a conscious moment leaves a trace, but that it traces itself within us – that is, a higher intelligence operates and even seeks to operate inside.
“Your experience was, for a moment at least, free of the head taking over,” he pointed out. “It brings a sort of peacefulness, no perturbation, just for that moment.”
Katrina said that she had come close to falling into a trap of being complacent about it. Then, in a different tone of voice she added, rather quickly: “I can accept that I have it.”
Mr Adie stopped her: “Don’t use silly words. It is not that you are silly, but you are back in your head again, and the formulation is silly. It is not that you can accept that you have it: it happened or it didn’t. To recall it is not what is important. It is to accept the experience at the moment. To remain.”
“But how you talk is how you think. And your thought can rob you of the value of what you have seen. The old mechanism will start up again.”
“I want to be free of the form of this thought, almost a body in thought, which misinterprets what I want to say. I did not intend to say that. But I said it. So, what position can I adopt? Physically, mentally, emotionally? How can I, for one moment talk sense, or even say what I wish to say?”
“What is it that I wish to say?”
Katrina started again: “I feel confused – “
“But surely just at this second less confused. There is nothing to be confused about really. Here you are. You are alive. The chair won’t give way. Why do I cling to my confusion?”
“The better part of the mind can grasp it in a second. To put into definite words will take longer, but how long does it take to have my sensation, and to add my feeling, and if I find that I can come to them more quickly, then that’s the thing …”
“But it can’t last forever. There is this second, and there is the next second, but I have to do something in-between. I have to live on the earth, under the sun. A moment of awakeness can come to you. If you work.”
This web site, from one perspective, is designed to assist Mr Adie’s efforts to have us live sane lives, “on the earth, under the sun”.
Joseph Azize, 7 May 2017
