The meeting of 1983 continued: “The sooner I am able to recognise and admit my failure the better, because so long as there’s that unseen weakness it may manifest at any time. So, in that sense, I’m just a machine, I’m nothing, an automat. If I have in fact that potentiality, that inclination, that nature, the sooner it manifests the better. And if it manifests, I need to learn it. It’s no good getting negative about it and trying to hide it which I tend to do in the beginning. Later, I begin to a have a certain impartiality: I don’t excuse myself, but I realise that I need to see, this, say, this dirty impulse. I need to see it, because until I do, I can’t take measures. Mr Gurdjieff spoke of the centres as different villages, which all in the their animals, and these animals have to brought under control. But how can I do that if I don’t see them? They have to manifest. So we find all the laws here and all the animals.”
I will pause to say that this relates to Gurdjieff’s phrase “the animal is law-conformable.” Whatever our inner demons, they can be tamed: they were formed according to certain laws, and there are laws which provide for their taming.
Mr Adie continued: “Again about stops: I have to try and awake. And for this I begin to need to become more and more sensitive, more and more … quicker to receive impressions. When I wake up, I come from dreams, I wake, I wake from my sleep. At that moment there’s a possibility, it only lasts a fraction of a second. Because I open my eyes, and there’s the room and there’s everything and all my things there, and my attention is immediately drawn, and recollections begin to work, and automatic processes take place. It’s just there that there is a possibility. I wish to do a preparation, I have it in mind to prepare myself, but somehow, I’m not collected, my mind is occupied with its old thoughts. Either the dreams I’ve just had, or what I think lies in front, or what I remember I didn’t do yesterday. And in order to collect my attention, or as Mr Gurdjieff use to say, in order to mobilise himself, I take an exercise and learn how to get this inner integration, a simultaneous feeling, sensation and mental balance as quickly as possible.”
“For this I have many, many exercises; and the exercise is always in order that I shall be able to come in to my inner … inner self. You can call it a shrine if you like, the inner shrine of my conscious presence. That inner shrine is the only place in which I can do anything, outwardly, I’m just an automat. So, here’s about the counting exercise, which is a very difficult exercise, which people have been trying now, and you’ve been trying for four, five weeks and also been given something similar years ago.” This is the Soil-Preparing Exercise from the Third Series.
“And it isn’t enough yet, people have not yet found what is in it to give. You might found a few glimpses but you need more. Here’s a thought on the matter. I perform the counting exercise with a certain determination, but it has to be said, that there is more attention placed on the difficult counting than upon the sensing and feeling, which was occasionally, but only intermittedly definite. It was separated, but all didn’t come together. As a result, it was clearly very necessary to see that, I was not there, and that of all the accumulated force derived from this effort of directing and dividing my attention were not rapidly to flow back in the wasted dreams, and to serve the flow of automatic words and images, I must at once seek the inner chamber of my being, that shrine we just mentioned: try the opening, and pass in so that I could make my preparation.”
“So, realising this I start immediately, my preparation, and then I find confirmation of my experience and the truth of my above reasoning. I begin to experience the assembly of my representative conscious possibilities.”
“I have to assemble, I have to collect my forces and know what I have experienced and so a revealed sense of my own presence comes to me is experienced, silently and accompanied by a certainty of understanding of what I am about, what my Partkdolg-duty is, the duty of my being, and for my being. Then it can become so simple and clear to me to understand that only in the inner chamber of the temple of my reality can I find and verify my experiencing, and begin to work for the growth of the birth-given sacred seed of consciousness.”
“I have it, it is given me at my birth, my obligation is to develop it. I understand that also in the innermost sanctuary, only there can I experience my own reality to the present possible fullness, that is, the possible fullness according to my level and to my knowledge, and understand that the motion and the process of doing for being, this doing, this inner doing for being, that only in the innermost sanctuary can I really act and do – do for being. Then I can manifest, I am myself, for a moment, in this inner realm.”
“Now as I move away and leave the sanctuary, and close the book of records, my re-collection of it. I see and know that as I return to the external world, to the outside life, the life outside the temple, yet in me I can remember, I can remember the inner reality and refer to it more often. So that outside I can be still connected to this place. To this extent, to the extent that I’m consciously connected to what took place, I’m free from the law of accident.”
“The law of accident is that every impression that comes in, catches my attention and goes off with it. I’m subject to endless law of accident. Any questions at all? If something isn’t clear don’t be constrained, ask.”
