This continues the third question asked of Mr Adie on the evening of Wednesday 22 February 1989. The question was so long that I had to break it into two parts. Part one of this exchange was posted on 6 June 2020. I titled that extract “The Possibility of Directing Thought.” Edward had been asking Mr Adie about his insight that practically everything in his psychic world came from the body, and Mr Adie was replying that the mind, feeling, and body can be brought into harmonious operation because if I awaken my thought, my feeling will be guided by it, and the body then will respond to those impulses. Mr Adie continues:
“There can be medicines and so forth, which affect the body, but one can work on the body through the mind and through the feeling; it is possible to breath more slowly by design. That affects the beat of the heart, it affects the rate of the blood flow, and affects the possibility of better thought. But now out of all this, what is your point?”
Edward replied: “Well, we have the three centres, the body, the mind, and the emotional centre, but effectively during the day are only as the one. The body with its own small intellectually capacity, and its own emotional capacity, and I’m not aware that I use the other two centres other than in relation to the body. For some reason I thought I was more than just that body, but it doesn’t seem the case at all.”
“Don’t forget,” replied Mr Adie, “that we live on this level on the earth, but there are other levels and we have the material of that level in us. If it is touched, it can respond. So, every now and again, something of a higher level, an idea, a simple truth, will make relation with some material inside and there appears a thought of a higher level. If I began to recognise that, and the powerful effect it has on the body, and my mind, and my emotion, then I contrast that with other kinds of thoughts, dense thoughts. If these lower thoughts come with powerful negative force, as customary, my emotional force rushes off to take part. When I see that, I have a chance. I must live on more than one level at a time, at least two, but I need the third, otherwise I’m just a creature of one level, a machine.”
“But in ordinary life, the emotional and intellectual centre would hardly ever be active would they?” Edward asked. Again, I interject: Mr Adie is trying to bring the conversation to something practical: given our mechanicalness, what can we do? Edward keeps holding onto his insight that he has been a machine. Mr Adie was gentle, but firm: “They work from the wrong direction, with dense misinformed ideas. If you take the education of children, from the word go, we are all wrongly advised, we’re not taught anything of this nature. Children are taught to compete, to have more than the other, win prizes and pull dirty little tricks to get them and be praised. I once heard a mother on the sideline yell: “Kill him Charlie!”, to a child about seven chasing the one with a football. So Charlie learns that.”
“That is the education the poor wretched children have. So we have to live on this level, but it’s a marvellous level if we study it. Start studying plants, animals, anything, it’s all full of miracles.”
“Now, if I could only remember several of these ideas simultaneously, not drop one in order to have the other, that would give me a real possibility of more choice, a certain discrimination, freedom from some fears, because most fears are rubbish. I fear things that never practically happen. So, from what you say, the thing is to remember the possibility of being aware of more than one level at a time. I don’t have to be a zombie in order to do so, or to sit under a Bo tree. I can talk, I can do my work, I can if I’m there. Then something will go wrong and I’ll be identified again, but I can come back again. Increase the amount of time I’m aware of what I am doing and I know this level and I know the other level. Why should I be obliged to forget the higher level? Why would I forget which the sun rose this morning, with the gift of the day, is still there, all the stars are there, everything is in train. I forget entirely this. I’m down in this piece of oil cloth which is – ..”
Edward interrupted to say, at a little length, that it seems to him that it’s always the body that takes over with various functions.
“The poor body is a slave to this wrong thinking,” said Mr Adie. “The body is a poor suffering animal. The wheels are all broken, the shaft’s cracked, everything going wrong with it. It’s horse whipped and only wants to go and get its nose in the hay bag or have a drink, while the cabbie is totally drunk.”
Edward countered: “But the mind that you’re referring to is also completely beyond control, it’s completely automatic and …”
“Yes, we are not tied to automatic thinking; we do have moments of better-quality thought, and it’s this that we want to attend to. But to do that we have to give up something else. I have to say “stop” to some of the rubbish. If you work, you will find some freedom from the slavery to the body you complain of. If you do not, you will not. It’s extremely marvellously well worked out, completely equitable. There’s no unfairness in life of any sort. There is luck: the supreme luck is to have a gift of life, and the rest is out of our control.”
“And if I can remember the gift of life, it’s tremendous. To receive that gift I have to be there, otherwise nothing. There’s no gift if there’s no recipient. And if I receive it, I must pass something back, so there’s a two-way current. Immediately I acknowledge the gift of my life, just that. How many statues or paintings can you remember seeing that represent knowledge of the gift of life? I would like to know, tell me.”
Joseph Azize, 5 June 2020
