What is wisdom? I cannot yet define it satisfactorily, but here it is.

Gracie:    On Sunday, I was lying on the table downstairs in the large studio placing the cutlery, I was doing it with my left hand instead of my right. [The large studio were premises at the group site at Newport]

Mr Adie:   By design? By Intention?

Gracie:   Yes. I suddenly had an impression of the symmetry of how things were on the table, and I found that I were looking at them as they were a work of art almost. Then I made a rather unusual connection which is why I bring it now in case you could clarify it for me. I had the thought of the possibility of understanding external considering by studying works of art.

Mr Adie:   In the sphere of our teaching anything can be a work of art. How could it be otherwise? Light, space, all dimensions, tables, significance, everything is a work of art. We come out of anaesthetic, and it can reveal a work of art. We can come out of an illness, it’s a work of art. Of course, it has a special meaning, it does not mean a work of art in the same sense of people you see in an art gallery. Although, they may indeed see that as art.

The whole creation is a supreme work of art. The art is the receiving of some impression and the recalling of it, the ability to record an impression. Creation is the record of an impression. The act of the creation is the recording of the impression of all and everything. Any moment of real self-remembering is a moment of presentation of art.

Thomas:   Mr Adie, I just realised my strongest instant judgements. Where I live is close to a homosexual part of the city. Whenever I pass one of these people on the street there’s this instant intolerant, disapproval, just instantaneous. And the attitude I take is that, these people I relegate them to a second class to humanity. And yet, the few homosexuals that I know are quite gentle people, often charming and, my question is, is there any way that I could specifically make use of this?

Mr Adie:   Of course, of course. You’re passing some harmful things to them.

Thomas:   I’m sure that I must project …

Mr Adie:   Yes, but you don’t wish to do that do you?

Thomas:   Ah, well …

Mr Adie:   You don’t. It’s not your wish. Do you understand that? Out of you is coming rather harmful, in fact very harmful vibrations as far as they’re concerned. It’s not your wish. It’s coming out of you, a so-called well-formed normal man. Out of that comes this, whereas they may be gentle, kindly. Obviously it’s wrong, obviously. Use it. Use it. Try and be impartial. You can’t understand how they arrive, or anything about it. It’s a great mystery of which all people are ignorant, so there’s no basis for judgment.  

Thomas:   In my kinder moments I see it as a quirk of nature.  

Mr Adie:   Yes. But the issue is this judgment. It is something which takes place definitely, and I know that such things take place, I confirm my own experience: they take place, and yet, they’re not suitable. I don’t want that. Obviously, my chance doesn’t lie along the road of condemning things that I don’t even understand.

There are those people and there have to be those people. Why, is another matter. The law of accident operates, we don’t know by what accident they arrive or even by what accident we arrive.

We don’t really realise the seriousness of our own possibility, the rarity of it compared with the countless millions who haven’t been touched by it or met it. Here’s a small little self, struggling to be at a School of the Fourth Way, struggling to be in the brotherhood sometimes, and this is just a speck.

Yet, according to our best and impartial moments it is of extreme value and it offers a life totally superior. And we have the chance of living two lives simultaneously, we cannot opt out of the life on earth.

To look at anything impartially is, to receive an enormous energy from life. Up, down, anything, to be able to look impartially and to understand. I can’t understand anything when there’s criticism going on. I wasn’t using “criticism” in its fullest aspect, I was using it in its negative aspect of course. Impartiality brings the freedom to move.

Thomas:   Yes, it struck me, when I raised the question, I also remember the friends that I have, or acquaintances that I know, who are homosexual, there’s often a feeling of remorse for my earlier attitudes.

Mr Adie:   Well, you have a chance now. Repair the past in yourself. It only wants one tiny little chromosome minutely changed and you could be a homosexual or I could or anything.

Thomas:   Mr Adie, you gave me an exercise which I really not sure how to start. You just said, the word brotherhood, but …   

Mr Adie:    It’s to realise what a brotherhood thing is, I don’t recognise what it is unless I become to some extent moved towards a brother, a brotherhood. All people are brothers in the widest sense. All men are my brothers, I don’t look at them like that, of course, but they are. There are no divisions, they’re not separate. There are different ways of thinking. You were full of criticism of people, were you not?

Thomas:    I tend to make instant judgments about them.

Mr Adie:   Yes, that’s right, judgement, that’s why I suggested you should contemplate or try and realise what a brotherhood is. Because everybody has got part of your mistakes, you’ve got part of theirs, I mean mistakes in construction and instruction and in history and so on. No one’s perfect, except you and me of course. Other than we two, none of us are perfect, and everybody has the same faults in different degrees. And you’re being put off, let us say, because you see this in that man, and that in the other.

It’s so pitiful really, that this sort of thing should disturb you. The Work is a noble thing, it’s for the realisation of the ideal man, creation, man serving creation being born the microcosm with a possibility. See, if he is a miniature of God, he also has the power of creation, at the moment all he has is his self and wilfulness, but by his work and by receiving his teaching he can, or by any of the great religions, he can acquire this power of will, which is the power of creation. When it reaches sufficient intensity it must meld with the divine will. So if you’re subject to fierce criticism, there’s something you really need to understand.