There two questions are from the meeting of Tuesday 21 June 1988, at Newport.

The first question is the second part of the exchange with Larry. After asking a general question about the resistance, he said to Mr Adie that the hardest time for him was in the morning.

“It is the best time,” said Mr Adie. “Sunrise is the best time.”

“Can I give an example of something?” asked Larry.

“I hope so.”

Larry then said that before he goes fishing, he decides what time he will get up, because he has to get up early. That helps him jump straight out of bed when he wakes up, but on those days he never does a preparation, and that disturbed him.

“And you prepare your bait before you go to bed?” Mr Adie asked.

“Yes.”

“All you have to do, then, is to set your alarm for twelve minutes earlier: one little mark on the clock face. And when you prepare your bait the night before, you also prepare not to feel negative emotion at rising that much earlier. And it would be quite a different day. When you catch a good fish, do you curse because it isn’t bigger? I am sure you’re happy because it’s a good fish.”

After a short pause, Mr Adie added: “If I don’t catch anything, there is still the morning. I catch the sunrise.”

The next question came from Catherine. She said that she had not been working very well for a long time. But last night she went on the stage, which she was supposed to have done earlier, but the show had been cancelled a couple of times. There was a fear, but her inner work was vague.

“Certainly there is material there,” said Mr Adie, “but you have mixed up the inner and the outer work, even in your report. You see, you switch from one to the other. But did you have the idea that if you remember yourself you’ll be able to perform better?”

“It’s just vague recollections,” answered Catherine.

“What is the question? There could be several.”

“It was too vague.”

“Alright, it was vague. But still, please try and say what your experience was. What happened when you went onto the stage?”

“I didn’t remember myself.”

“You didn’t? Was it a satisfactory performance? You had tried to prepare for this, relating it to your work, and when you got onto the stage, you forgot yourself, but the thing went well. Is that right?”

There is no answer on the tape, but I suppose she nodded yes.

“You’ve had a big accident,” said Mr Adie, referring to a recent event in her life. “You could have lost your life, it just happened that you didn’t. So to go on stage at all is something. And you prepared for it. No preparation is ever wasted. It is like Larry’s fish, it could have been bigger, but it was still a fine fish.”

“You are giving a performance in order to entertain. It is on this sort of level, not too low, but neither is it very high. The purpose of such entertainment is to provide pleasant dreams for people who are happily sleeping away. That is your job, so you can’t expect that the job itself will call you or raise you.”

“But you have the possibility of using it as material. What helps you is your preparation and your plan, your attitude, but not the job. Now is there any further question?”

“I prepared today with the objective if getting to a higher level, not being asleep all the time.”

“That can be a very good aim, but you need a plan to make it practical. You need some particular arrangement. I am trying to do something, but the doing is inner. I have to live my life and to use the material I have. I find it hard to remember myself on the stage, so I need to make a plan to prepare and also to review, after the performance, as soon as possible, after it. I bring an immediacy to my work.”

“But there are animals,” continued Mr Adie, “which get their food by going onto the stage. They are going to be sacrificed by the work. They don’t know about the work, but they can displace it because they are blinkered. But the higher part of the head can be there, watching, at the same time.”

“You have been performing for ten years or more. If you made progress even in ten months, that would be quite something, wouldn’t it? It would indeed be worth persevering for that.”

Joseph Azize, 18 September 2017