The final question this evening came from Terri. It was difficult to understand what she meant by her first statement. Mr Adie said: “I haven’t followed you well enough, you repeated something I said, but not in its context. I’m not quite sure, I’ve been trying to connect it for you, but I haven’t succeeded. You said that I said, there was no escape, yes, but in what regard?”
“You said, one always feels one can,” she said.
“Yes, one feels as if one could escape from the thing. One looks for loopholes to avoid effort somehow. But you see, I’m trying to make a context, and it’s your question. Say how you want to apply it or how you do apply it.”
“Well, tonight, this feeling, it’s in me, these things that I see dimly and other times more clearly how I relate to other people and don’t relate to other people, and make a mess, there’s always a little complacency, even when speaking about it tonight even while we’re, you’ve said something about it, it’s all right. There’s always that sort of … I’ve learnt a little bit more about it, so that’s alright. There’s always that sort of thing and not that sort of …”
“Yes. Your impressions of your own complacency before this upsetting behaviour are going to the wrong part. But the realisation has to be received in three-centres, for example, it also has to go to my feeling. I don’t have to see the logic only, I have to see the living effect, the suffering of it. Yes, it has to become an actual experience and not just an interesting word or the connection of just an idea, it has to be an experience.”
I would relate this to what Mr Adie said in Pt VI, to Kitty, about seeing the reality of my manifestations and not be blinded by my philosophy about them. Terri continued: “I’ve gotten in such chaos and it didn’t seem to me that it would be profitable really in the past, in the recent past. So, I think it was just an imbalance in looking at it, had an impression of, this is a journey into health, that sort of thing.”
“Yes, there is a profit if you look at it. Obviously, there is no profit in negative things. There is profit in looking at it, seeing that they happen and have happened, and will continue unless I do see them, because, objectively they exist. They don’t exist outside as I think, that is subjective, but nevertheless, they have an objective existence in my subjectivity. It’s this that I’m trying to work on.”
“We need some better sense of “I,” because it always tries to escape. These elements of my false personality can’t want to work, they are passive they don’t want to make effort; it’s their nature to not want to.”
“But in fact, for me, if I want to evolve there is no escape. This has always been my way, how to save myself from suffering, to save myself from anything, to save myself from anything unpleasant.”
“So, to return to your original statement, you have to say: “in work”, and then the statement is true. In work there is no escape. Either work or not. But if I work, I am.”
“So, it isn’t so easy to say: ‘Oh yes, now alright, I will work. But do I? It’s not so easy as that, one has to stop thinking about it, and actualise something.”
“We have got to include in our thinking all different levels. It’s not that everyone has to stop thinking. Of course we need better thinking. But it is formatory thinking that we need to stop at certain times. We need higher level thinking at all times, we need feeling at all times, we need our live sensation at all times. If they can become more and more, then I contain more, and I am more connected, I can receive impressions that previously I was not receiving, they were just passing through me or being reflected.”
“Our work is available to us. Our work is there, the books are there, and the possibility of study is there. It is not easy, but I think everybody really should try and measure how much work of preparation, contemplation, confrontation, thought, effort to understand, and how much time they should devote to this.”
“Obviously if we’re to be in the world at all, we’ve got to get up wash and dress, and provide food for ourselves or others. That has to be done. And in that, life offers everything really. But I need to understand more, and to understand at higher levels; for that I need an oratory, I need to contemplate, but how much?”
(An oratory is a place of prayer and study. It is associated above all with the name of Bl. John Henry Newman. Mr Adie often referred to an inner oratory.)
“One talks about preparation and one feels alright if one has succeeded in fifteen minutes of a good preparation, but depressed if it’s only five minutes or have dreamed the whole time. The thing is that one must find an inner serious realisation. Without that, I can’t increase my own understanding. In this way, my understanding depends upon me.”
“And then I can see how events take me away. I lose my interest in these small actions for a moment, or for a day. But this is what I need. If I go and try and prepare before breakfast, dinner, tea, supper and all that, but I become bored, the preparation will be poor. It won’t be the genuine thing. I need to find the balance, what is possible for me, so that I can feel that I’m not slipping back in my own development. It’s my responsibility to try.”
Turning to Terri he asked: “That is a touch on what you were talking about?”
“There’s always a light and a dark side, the promise is amazing, but it costs this much.”
(Pause)
“How much thirst do I need to suffer in order to have the joy of a wonderful drink of clear crystal water? If I haven’t suffered thirst and sweated, then I don’t get that. That’s fair isn’t it? In a way, it’s sober too. There’s still the joy, there’s still the thirst. There are dreams and promises and all those. Do you agree?”
With that the meeting ended.
Joseph Azize, 9 August 2019
