These are two questions Mr Adie took from the one lady on Tuesday 11 July 1989, not very long before he died. She asked the first, then other pupils asked questions, then – weeping – she asked Mr Adie something about her first question.

“I find that I’m concerned by this question …”

“Which question?” Mr Adie asked, for she had paused.

“It comes back to me, partly it’s, a situation, friends of mine have moved away from Sydney, but I’ve heard that their seventeen-year-old son had committed suicide. I just couldn’t find, when I had thought of the parents, I couldn’t find how not to make that negative, you know, if I had been in that position.”

“How would you describe your feeling? I mean “negative” is not descriptive, how would you describe your feeling?”

“Sort of a great loss, and also a lot of blame, I think. Self-blame.”

“That doesn’t really describe you own feeling. Did you have any feeling yourself?”

“I think for my own children …”

“No, no, I don’t mean that. What feeling did you have when your mind was thinking or concerned with their terrible loss? What was your feeling? Not your thought, your thought could have been this or that. Or isn’t that what you want to get at? What do you want to get at in that? When you bring this, what is it you’re trying to understand?”

“A feeling sort of like looking at a blank wall, sort of nothing else.”

“No, I want to get what you want out of it, you brought something very important and very simple and clear, which could be useful. So, what do you want to get from this fact? Here is a fact. A tragic occurrence to somebody with whom you were friends. Now, what is it you want to know, and why?”

“I wanted to understand, how, if that happened to me, what happened, if it’s …”

“How you would be, if it had been your son? Yes. might say that is a legitimate thought.”

“I can’t see if it happened to me how I could have anything else but a negative, to get away from, feeling angry and …”

“Because, it’s a given life, you see, we’re miles away from anything sacred at all. Life is something given, and this seems to us a tragedy, but we don’t understand. I mean, recently your own father-in-law died, there’s another death. Everybody has to die, and how am I in regard to that? But “die,” what does that mean? Does that mean that they’re finished, or does that mean they merely change and go to some other life?

Mr Adie continued: “I have to have some idea about that, I mean if a person went in great agony it would be a blessed relief if they were able to die, and not submit to thousands of operations and stagger along for periods. You need to be very practical about it. Chuang-Tzu was asked, when his wife died, why he got a tin tray and started banging on it, they said it’s disgraceful your doing this and your wife just died; but he said no, why would I be miserable and add to the misery of life just because my wife is gone, no, I do this. It was affirming life in that particular way.”

After a little silence, he added: “And I don’t think you can really imagine how you would feel. I don’t say it’s not a right thing to try, to be able to put yourself in a position of another. There are so many factors that can take place, are the parents blameless, or can they blame themselves for a lack of thought? Or? You can’t know all that. But you want to know your own feeling, your own feeling in relation to it.”

Then, after some more questions from other pupils, she spoke again, although her voice was broken by her crying. “Mr Adie … what would happen … to someone who committed suicide?”

“You couldn’t generalise. What sort of process proceeded it, and entered into that happening? Some people have died quite a noble death by committing suicide. They don’t actually, necessarily have to tie the knot around their own neck, but they have to submit to a certain accusation, and face it, and suffer the execution.”   

“Then what happens to them after?” she was crying a little less.

“I couldn’t say for everyone. According to the different densities of the materials that which they’re composed, they will find different levels. If the person who commits suicide or who dies for whatever reason, they have a body, it disintegrates, and goes back to the earth, while the life principle goes to the moon, and then if work has been done and some kind of presence has been formed, that will naturally go to the level from which it is composed.”

“So, if I can receive enough higher impressions and solidify them, then there is that, in what exact form, we don’t know, it’s a mystery. But nobody in that position can complain, if that person is developed, he takes what comes. What is the result of all the forces which influenced him, dominated him, and which he sometimes has been able to use in his life? These determine his level, you see?”

“Don’t forget this idea of two lives we have to live, two lives. We have to live this life on the earth, including earning our living, marrying and raising children, playing football, making war, and all the rest of it – and there is also another level, a level of life where I receive fine impressions very quickly. Some of us have verified this idea, so we can say that it is a reality, a reality which we’re striving towards.”

“It is only by flashes, short seconds, that we touch the life on that level, but still it is enough to prove the rightness of our efforts in that direction, and if we could have that influence, that contact, with more frequency, there would be more solidity in ourselves and so in our efforts.”

“Each time I make that effort, each time I touch that life, a particle is realised for me, I receive a particle. Perhaps tonight, someone has been touched by what’s been said; then there’s a particle of understanding there, a new light on something, that goes in and is placed at its corresponding level. If I can have enough, there’s a crystallization, it forms a centre, that’s a new organic reality within me, that’s a life of a different level. So, there are two levels, only one level of which is this earthly level, dominated in the ordinary way by personality and egotism, and all the other rubbish.”

“So I don’t have to fear that that is all there is. The great grace is that if I can manage to learn enough, and understand enough, and get enough control, I can die to that lower life before I die physically, in which case I’m more ready to die when the second death occurs.”

“Theoretically, everybody in this room, if they worked, should have two lives and therefore two deaths. One death overcomes the life of imagination of personality, egotism. If that can die, then I’m all ready for the second death, it’s the real death of the body, finished. The carnal body is finished on earth, but then, there’s the finer body of a higher level.”

“It’s very fair, wonderfully equitable, and wonderfully magnificent because all the material we require is given, all the help is given. If anyone makes a real effort even a small one, they get a reward, sometimes incredibly quick, but of course omitted. Isn’t that the basis of your understanding of what is possible for us? Do you nod?”

“Good. So, we’re extraordinarily fortunate, and if we only we would work more, exchange more, we really would have a wonderful chance. People who were suffering from some loss or other, maybe they can receive such ideas which are comforting, maybe they can. What is very wasteful and very unfortunate is to be moaning and negative about it because that doesn’t help the possibility of the spirit that is left at all.”

“If I want to assist somebody who’s died, I have to think with the right kind of thoughts, then it will be to their possible help. If I’m negative, that’s very bad, that won’t help at all. This was what Chuang Tzu was about, he wasn’t going to make it more difficult for his wife, wife’s spirit, by being miserable.”

“If I taught myself gradually, or learn to accept life and the gift of life, and if I thought enough, so that I really begin to think of life as a gift, that I received a gift, that I receive gifts with every breath I take, then life begins to change, of course. I may be an extremely, exceptionally fortunate person because, by chance, I have problems attached to my breathing and therefore my attention is, is drawn very much to breathing, of course, that enriches me, that helps me. It makes me value breath very much. It gives me indications when my level goes down and up.”

“We’re on the earth, under the sun with everything marvellous arounds us. I mean, such things as I’ve mentioned, clear water to a thirsty person, air, fresh air and sights of nature all provided on the earth. In the ordinary way, we’re looking at the TV or wondering if we could do a better deal or thinking someone has a better car, that’s how we spend so much of our time, or being negative. So, if I’m feeling down there’s life, there’s air, trees, earth, soil, growing things, marvellous birds, surf, wind, sun every morning, sun rise, marvellous.  (long pause)”

“See, there should be more work, we ought to be doing more work, and there should be more questions.”    

 Joseph Azize, for 13 January 2020