The next question came from Puck, who certainly had at one time been a serious student, but had got into an awful habit of listening to his own thoughts while Mr or Mrs Adie were speaking. This had the result that when they said something, anything, he would reply, maybe even retort. He was capable of diverting anything they said, even if it meant declaring that what he had just said was not quite what he had meant. I had an inkling of that then, and listening to these transcripts thirty years on only confirms me in my view. In this transcript, as in every transcript of Puck I can remember, I have omitted more than one half of his interruptions, comments and asides. But although I have said that, let me add this, with equal emphasis: Puck’s jumble of questions and comments had a real value – it brought out this remarkable, even soaring material from Mr Adie.
Puck started by saying: “Mr Adie, I sought of struggled through the week, I muddled through the week is a better description. There is a thread through it, from last meeting to this meeting, there is some continuity.”
“A thread?”
“Yeah, this is rare enough in itself. It is also very clear this week how very trivial I think those efforts are that I make. Naïve is the best word here, very childish type of work. There is a combination of factors.”
“One mustn’t denigrate all one’s past efforts,” said Mr Adie. “Because there have been efforts in the past, one has been touched, one has been simulated, one has received; but now one finds a different quality is necessary, this is the thing.”
“The moment is always new and now, it’s a creation. Each minute, that new minute, all the other new minutes, have not been sort of washed out so that they are no good; they are contributing to the possibility now. It’s the newness of now that one needs as well. There’s a week where there has been some sort thread. I’m always before a mystery, I’m sure the mystery is going to deepen, not vanish. Of course, if I do mount up instead of allowing my efforts to run down, I begin to see that what previously was very mysterious is now open to me. I can see the relation of this to this and to that. The higher I mount, the more I’m open to the universe and the fine influences available in the galaxy; and this is a much vaster mystery. I am going towards mystery, and there are degrees of mystery.”
But Puck was going to disagree. “Yes, but I feel in this particular instance …”
“That it is too theoretical?”
“No, not too theoretical, but it’s too lofty, the description.”
“No, not for the work of conscious development it isn’t” said Mr Adie. “If I aim to develop my own being-reality, then I need to have a sense of this loftiness. I don’t want to pretend that I am up there, on a higher level, when I am down here. I’m down here, but the finer levels are available in me, and I have been given indications as to how to find it, you see.”
“I am speaking about mystery, and these words have a meaning now. The more I work, the more what was mysterious and I didn’t understand has become clearer. The work has become more mysterious, more wonderful, more infinite, surely. So, I mustn’t be daunted by that, otherwise I slip backwards. I see that a little exercise has given me that result.”
I am summarising now, but Puck had a bit of a to and fro to, which boiled down his view that he is: “not committed to the work, and yet I can’t get away from it either.”
“You can commit yourself perhaps for a second,” said Mr Adie: “for a breath perhaps you could. And then, immediately you step into a realm of mystery. And from that mystery, from that position, what was troubling you before, is different. And there is a another moment of possible commitment or possible sleep.”
“There was appreciation,” said Puck, “brought about by specifically, because my daughter asked if she could read All and Everything. It’s difficult for me, so I said if you read it out aloud to me. So, for a few consecutive nights she read about half a chapter or something, and she read it remarkably well.”
“Yes, it’s amazing the kind of understanding that will come out of a child’s voice,” Mr Adie agreed.
Puck took up the story again: “I understood much more because of it, in fact, it amazed me, and of course this whole picture gave me a much wider appreciation of the value of the work, and my ordinary endeavouring towards all sorts of external matters. That is why I feel very much still on the edge, yes I know, in relation to the work.”
“But I think the edge gets finer and finer,” said Mr Adie. “I honestly think that it has to be so. The work becomes finer, the division is more acute, the mystery is greater. We are surrounded by all these different densities of which we aren’t aware.”
Mr Adie continued: “I want that fine edge. I want to be present to the sense of imbalance and to the perfection of balance, simultaneously. Surely, I only get that by an increased sense of the delicacy of it, which is the fineness of the edge. The octaves come in at that point, and they go by ascending or descending octaves. An ascending octave goes by a fineness, getting finer and finer and finer up to the note MI. Then some fine matter corresponding to that state has to enter in so that it can ascend again. An octave mounting in fineness is something that can take place in a second, and yet it unfolds over an eternity.”
“In music one can hear it, DO RE MI. But how rarely do I pay attention to what I hear! How often do I try and consciously listen to the development of music, the movement of melody, the shades of harmonies? Helen can hear it at once, but the experience is always alive for her, always new. What distinguishes me from the businessman who thinks he knows what he’s about, and can’t be bothered with mysticism?”
“You could judge also by colour: is it morning or is it night time? You could approach ascending octaves by the impression received of light. Children will sit down and remain still before a sunrise or a sunset, full of wonder, and without self-appreciation. But us?”
“Many, many other things of course are avenues. But in my present position, what am I related to? How am I related to process? What must I take count of? I have to relate to everything that is going on the earth level, the animals, the condition of the air and everything. I don’t do it, in fact, I should, so what is taking place there, just for a second? But I think I can be in some realm that doesn’t take account of that. But I can have the benefit of this flash of fine possibility which allows me then to take note of that. Does that touch on what you wanted to speak of?”
“Yes.”
‘Good.”
Let me copy and paste here this deep comment which I fear may have been buried in the transcript. Mr Adie said: “… all the (past moments) have not been sort of washed out so that they are no good; they are contributing to the possibility now.”
Joseph Azize, for 6 August 2019, The Feast of the Transfiguration
