These questions were the last of those from the Sunday 22 June 1986 which, I think, call for mention. Keven had been working on the cover for the motor. He could not see how it would stay on, as it was not bolted down. He decided it needed some sort of attachments, and the more he looked at it, the more complicated his plan became. After an hour on it, he realised that it didn’t need any attachments, it would just sit over the motor quite nicely and was heavy enough to sit tight.
“That’s right,” said Mr Adie: “It was made to fit.” After the laughter, he continued: “The effort to understand was harder than the effort to fix it where it didn’t fixing. That sort of fussy work is actually more a sign of inner laziness than looking at it without identification, and seeing it as it is. In all that type of work, there is something about it of “I can’t be bothered taking the measurement. It’s about so-and-so, and that’s close enough. Otherwise I have to get the tape and measure it.” But the work of getting the measure and being precise is a good work: it has a follow on for other areas in my life. The work of standing back and objectively assessing is far harder than rushing in without bestirring my mind.”
After a pause, he asked: “Do you realise the importance of the effort we make at the half-hourly stop? The fact that it is possible to withdraw my attention. My attention is my life force. It really is. I AM MY ATTENTION. And it really is flowing out. And now we have every half an hour, the possibility of experiencing the power of withdrawing thoughts. How long will it take us to learn that?”
“I see that there is something very practical to learn. I am on the road now. But I have to create something. I have to create an instrument, it has to be an actual instrument that is heat-sensitive, light-sensitive, smell-sensitive, touch-sensitive, sound-sensitive, mood-sensitive. That is an instrument, and when any of these sensual impressions come, it will start up. Our work is to create that instrument as opposed to the instrument of predisposition, which is a foregone conclusion, a habit, unqueried. A pre-acceptance of any idiot thing.”
Pierre had planned to have some feeling of himself. He saw “something like an expert” appear in himself. “You were carrying your medals? Is that what you mean” asked Mr Adie. “I could feel a tendency to act that way,” agreed Pierre.
“This is important,” said Mr Adie: “because if I carry them for long enough, something in me becomes afraid lest someone else is not convinced by my display. Maybe this should enter into your work more. It is because I feel the thinness of my own disguise. You see, I am an expert, but not a real one. Now are they going to believe it or not? It is very uncomfortable. But if I am with someone who is silly enough to believe it, then I have a lovely time. You have a possibility with this line of work. Here it is: what is necessary for me at that moment? Surely to give away the expert and just be an ordinary idiot. It is very difficult to do at the time, because I am in call at the time. There are ceaseless, infinite impressions. But among all those impressions you now know the direction you need to go in: simple, but truly interesting.”
That comment about how we have a “lovely time” when we are with people who are “silly enough” to believe our posturing is memorable. Mr Adie continued: “It takes a long time before we realise that here is the centre of my work, and that when we come here, if we really share, then I shall get something from him, and I shall get something from her. Mmm? So I must bring something. I need to. If I do not speak, I cannot hear. And I cannot afford to wallow in self-pity: I have not done any work and so I cannot speak.”
Rene then said that his effort in the morning had no effect. “You can’t say that for certain,” replied Mr Adie: “you can’t say how lacking in consciousness you may have been if you weren’t making at least that effort. Maybe the effort wasn’t very clearly connected with the thought, the aim differed somewhat. Maybe it needed to be changed. The work we try and do requires work of the higher centres, and they work at an incredible speed. Ten seconds of higher centres has the content of ten hours of the other: so it is not surprising that I make an effort and have a result, and then it is over. Those moments when it was with me were hours of the work of higher centres.”
This is an consideration which I have neither seen stated in this context, nor has occurred to me.
“I have to be able to adapt my work as needed for the present circumstances. It comes back to this: what do I need at this moment? I may not have enough connection to feel that I am working, but I may equally have enough connection to see that I need something, to understand what I need, and to make a move in that direction. I need to have all of these questions there, available. What to do? These questions provide something to hold onto.”
“I am using the wrong centre: I try to do the intellectual work by running quickly up the stairs. But even that is an effort and I can see that it was a wrong effort. So I have learned that much. We have challenges and opportunities all the way round. This is the second life, with unlimited impressions.”
