“Mr Adie,” said Bob, “there were two separate incidents that I wanted to bring. The first one, I was speaking to someone and I was relatively present during the first part of the conversation and although it was a short conversation, I soon began looking for words to put the last sentence together and became lost looking for the words. I became nervous and I couldn’t meet this person’s gaze anymore and I made an awkward gesture with my left arm and that was the end of that conversation. And I tried to see what it was which had become very nervous and it just seemed to be a sort of fear that this other person would criticise me.”

“Yes,” said Mr Adie, “you see this is a customary habit of considering, inner considering. And I disappear. Now I can’t finish the sentence, now I’m just turning over and over. Yes.”

“And in the second incident I’d been working with somebody for at least half an hour and there seemed, there was a lot of very rich feeling available and a sense of relationship. And at one time it had struck me how it even though we were something like ten yards away none the less I felt very related. And then the person asked me a question and I started replying and I had already answered the question but something in me just kept talking putting together more words. And when I saw that, I just stopped mid-sentence because I couldn’t trust myself to go any further. And I could sense fairly surely, I think, that it didn’t matter, but I had stopped mid-sentence.”

“Didn’t matter, not important. Important to the ancient Bob, but not important at least to this momentary Bob, which is more authoritative, and more real. How could it matter? No importance.”

“Once we begin to understand about the possibility of “I” being present to a certain extent, or not, and how it affects everything, my thinking, my feeling, my possibility, how the question of consciousness arises, my life expands there’s a bigger expanse now, just because of that – those concepts. But I have to have the concepts near me, I can’t talk, you see. People go out to tea and they have tea and they twitter, twitter, twitter. This is nothing. This means deeper, deeper thought see. Once I begin to have that concern genuine, manners don’t count in a way. Then I start to begin to be able to think and everything changes.”

Bob added: “It seemed to me that over the course of the day I was approaching a mystery of relationship with my partners and the extent to which that depended upon my feeling of myself in relation to them, rather than being dependent upon having secured their approval of me.”

“Well that’s good,” replied Mr Adie.” I want my own genuine self-approval, that’s what I need. I want to be able to see and to know whether it’s worthy or not worthy. Whether it should be on the platform or should not. It’s a wonderful work, isn’t it?”

“But you see it’s so contrary what we’ve been talking about. To all ordinary rearing and concepts and so on so it takes a long time. A long time. And a day like today when we’re together under different circumstances is sort of gold because out of that comes certain facts, a relatively true atmosphere in which we can give it its full value as far as we can and we really find out something. Everybody should try and communicate if they don’t, they don’t get very much. I must return as well as receive.”

“I found the exchanges with my partners were very rich today,” said Sam. “I tried just to have an idea, some idea that would help me and found that most of the exchanges that something did come for example at one exchange I had the idea that there were three of us here and when exchanged I wasn’t just exchanging with one person it was the other person as well and the force of the three of us being there was, felt very strong. And there were quite a few occasions when there were different ideas that came that I needed to have some real presence to …” He petered out.

“Yes, be able to savour the reality,” said Mr Adie.” Be able to savour it so that I can recognize it, that I can understand it. You see if there is something like that which you speak of which obviously was objective how can I find my way to it again? Not to that incident, but to that level? Only according to the degree to which I am present now, is my thought objective. So, I need to be poised now as much as possible not to sully my impression, but to remain present to it, to try and taste everything lawfully connected with it so I don’t waste it.”

“Yes, on quite a few occasions there was definitely some sort of personality that wanted to enter it.”

“But this I mustn’t get bowled over by it,” said Mr Adie.” And then outside there are a lot of idiots going “Yap, yap, yap.” But to be present to all this: that is life. Life on two levels simultaneously.”

That ends the reporting of this Sunday work.