This concludes the lengthy exchange. was not to be satisfied: “Well, we have the three centres, the body, the mind, and the emotional centre, but effectively, during the day the body is the only one, with its own small intellectually capacity, and its own emotional capacity. For some reason I was more than just that body, but It doesn’t seem the case at all.”
“Don’t forget,” said Mr Adie, “that we live on this level on the earth, but there are other levels, and we still have material in us which if it’s touched can respond. So, every now and again, something of a higher level, an idea, or simple truth, will happen to make relation with some material inside and an idea comes. Simpler, not so solid with this dense way of thinking and that’s a thought of a higher level. If I began to recognise that, if I worked on that and to see the powerful effect it has on the body, and my mind, and my emotion, then I begin to work with these things. I can see other kind of thoughts, dense thoughts when they come, and see the impact that they have. And if they come with powerful negative force, as customary, and my own emotional force rushes off to take part, I see that, and now I have the chance. If I forget about the different levels of energy, and the fact that I must live on more than one level at a time, I must live on at least two levels, I need the third, then the third can function. I can’t do anything I’m just a creature of one level, man level, which is really a machine.
Again, a counter: “But in ordinary life, the emotional and intellectual centre would hardly ever be active would they?”
“Active, but they work from the wrong direction,” Mr Adie replied, “they only work with dense misinformed ideas. If you take the education of children, from the word go, practically everybody is wrongly advised, there’re not taught anything of this nature, so they lack that. Instead, they’re taught to compete, to struggle, to have more than the other man and to win prizes and do all little dirty tricks in order to get them, and be praised. I’ve even heard mother on the touch line, say, “Kill him Charlie!”, to a child about seven with a football. And Charlie learns like that.”
“It’s very real, and that is the education the poor wretched children have. So that is what’s going on all the time, but we have to live on this level and that’s a marvellous level if we start living it. Start to study plants, start to study animals, start studying anything, it’s all full of miracles, the whole lot.”
“Now, if I could only remember simultaneously several of these ideas, not drop one in order to have the other, that would give me a real possibility of more choice, a certain discrimination. It would give me freedom from some fears, because all the 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, so let me be there for a moment or two. Eventually, something else will go wrong and I’ll be identified again, but I can come back again. Increase the amount of time when I’m aware of what I am doing, when I know this level and I know the other level.”
“Why should I be obliged to forget the higher level? Why would I forget the sun which rose this morning, with the gift of the day. It is all still there, all the stars are there, everything is in train. I forget entirely this. I’m down in this piece of oil cloth.”
Again, a return to the contradiction, just reiterating the same stubborn objection: “It seems to me that it’s always the body that takes over with various functions.”
“More than the body is involved. The poor body is a slave to this wrong thinking; it’s the mind which is the culprit. The body is a poor suffering animal. The wheels are all broken, the shaft’s cracked, everything going wrong with it, the body. The horse whipped and dis-ordered and only wanting to go and get its nose in the hay bag or have a drink, and the cabbie, totally drank. That’s the picture.”
He objected again: “But the mind that you’re referring to now, is also completely beyond control, it’s completely automatic and …”
“One level of the mind is, but we are not tied to only automatic thinking, see, 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, and because of our identifications, we can’t. I have to say “stop” to some of the rubbish, but it’s no good if I take it as a justification for cutting out all my ordinary duties, and everybody else suffers with me if I do that.”
“And if I can remember the gift of life, it’s tremendous really, because in order to receive that I have to be there, otherwise no gift. There’s no gift if there’s no recipient, and, if I receive it, that means I must past something back, so there’s a two-way current. Immediately I acknowledge the gift of my life, just that. How many statues that you can remember seeing represent anything of the knowledge of the gift of life? I would like to know, tell me where it is and we will go look at it.”
“We are here under laws. The scheme is extremely marvellously well worked out, completely, how to say, completely equitable. There’s no unfairness in life of any sort, supposing there’s luck, but that is out of our control: the supreme luck is to have a gift of life.”
Joseph Azize, 22 June 2020
