There are three more questions from the meeting of Tuesday 11 July 1989. I shall report two of them here, but save the third, which was by far the longest for the 13th of January: it is of that quality.
Vlad said to Mr Adie: “Today I’m working on trying to have better impressions, to see more better quality of impressions.”
“Just a moment,” Mr Adie asked, “how do you do that? What was your approach?”
“The impulse came from study, well, really ultimately from the last group meeting it was emotional.”
“I was asking about your approach. What efforts did you make to have ‘better impressions’.” This was a fair question, after all, Mr Adie had asked him just that question, and Vlad had spoken in continuation of a thought in his own mind. There was no immediate response, so Mr Adie asked: “What would you call better impressions?”
“More feeling, more life.”
“More life? Yes, you mean something vivid, something you are aware of?”
“Yes.”
“If I have some consciousness of myself, then the impressions can touch me. An impression reaches me through the fog, as it were, and it is experienced as something with a quickening in it. Yes. It is very clear when the room is stuffy, you open the window, and some fresh air enters. ‘Ah, crisp cool air!’ Suddenly like that. Better air is marvellous. Or if you’re thirsty, a drink, clear water, good. Sensation, feeling.”
“So what stands in the way of my receiving better impressions more often? Dreaming, imagination.”
“We really should know the eight forms of sleep and know that all those will be inimical to receiving better impressions. Now, what are they? Lying is one, unnecessary talk is another, expression of negative emotion, dreaming and imagination, considering, identification, formatory thinking. Any of those will prevent your search for, your ability to receive finer impressions. Dreaming and imagination are often taken together, giving seven forms of sleep.”
“But now, if I’m in this company, I have to be very careful about what?”
“I have to be careful about considering, because this is where I tend to disappear. There is a particular kind of considering which is a danger here. I am entitled to come into this company and still wish for better impressions. So I need to be on my guard against considering. So what will help me? It is, after all, a big task.”
“Perhaps I need several different approaches, together, and at different times. Sensation, certainly. But if I say ‘sensation’, it can be too general, too vague. So perhaps I make a plan beforehand, sensation of my left hand. And how do I prepare for that? Maybe I need to sit down for a moment, sense the hand, really come to that clear undeniable sensation. Maybe visualise for a moment the situation I shall be in. It makes a link between my intention now and the moment of challenge.”
The next question was from Sadie: “Mr Adie, I was struck by something recently, and what you’ve been saying has reminded me of it, you often say that we’re given exactly what we need. You said that what we have is our material. Did I understand that correctly?”
“It’s exactly what we need, we are each surrounded with just what we need. But the fact that this is what I need does not mean the same for you: I have what I need, and you have what you need. But my material is not yours, and vice versa.”
“That may explain it,” Sadie said. “I was with one of my sisters recently, and with this particular sister, all my life I’ve had probably feelings of jealousy or something, there has always been friction with this particular sister. And, I was in the middle of feeling jealous of her because she’s got children and I haven’t, and because she doesn’t have to go out to work and I do. That came to me, what you have often said, that we’re given what we need, but I was in such an upside down way of thinking at that time.”
“This is material for your understanding,” said Mr Adie. “There is much here. But there is one thing which could shed a new light on it: you are not ready to have a child yet. You see, it’s a good thing that you hadn’t had a child yet, because you can now see what sort of condition would that egg be in. That crazy, crazy inner condition, surrounded by envy and jealousy. While you are lost in such negative emotions, you are not ready. So you need to start your work now, before you do find that you’re pregnant. Don’t wait, start to work now. Then, when the time comes, you might be in a more reasonable state.”
“This resentment is your material. Do not deny it. Do not sweep it under a carpet, or explain it away. Keep that before when you do your good thinking, your pondering, and understand it, return to it, but not in order to be miserable all the time. I return to it to see the cost of it, how unnecessary it is, and to realise the possibility of feeling different, seeing the illogical nature of it, how it robs you from seeing and valuing what you have. What you have is of tremendous value, but this resentment steals it from you. Use it, use it to think, to establish a good structure of thought. Good.”
After a long pause, Mr Adie added: “Try and make a pattern for your work. Try and have some plan. Allocate priorities. There should be some questions. If you ask yourself questions, you’ll find that you can’t answer them so easily, and then you could bring those. Everybody should bring a question next time, everybody. You’ll find so much more, the meetings will be so much more practical.”
Joseph Azize, 30 December 2019
