This was a Saturday. Mr Adie opened with the sort of theme which was tremendously powerful: everyone who spoke mentioned how it had made a huge effect upon on them. However, for those who were not there, and who did not know the Adies, I am not so sure. I had given this sort of material to people who did not know them, and they feel as if they are looking over a fence. But the questions which came and what Mr Adie said to some of those has quite hit me between the eyes.

Mr Adie:   If I have these thoughts as I work today, that would give meaning.  Sometimes we call this a brotherhood, but there’s a question, who today, that is now, at this moment, is my brother, or my sister? Who is my sister? Who is my brother? My question is immediate. What is the nature of forces that I can sense? Not imagine, but that I cannot sense, actually sense within myself. What is the nature? They will be emanations. But do I have any emanations which correspond to someone who is participating in a brotherhood, to a sisterhood? Do such emanations arise within me? Can I know this? Am I sure? How are these impressions being received? How do I now receive them? Or am I alone, disconnected, without brother, without sister?

What is my state within? Do I, in truth, have a brother? Have I a sister? In the work? Then who is not my sister, or my brother? Do I in truth know that I have a brother, or sister? What is my state? Are beneficent forces flowing through me? Emanations, circulating round me, within and around me? What do I know for certain of myself? Is this sensing coming to me, or flowing from me? To her, to him, to everyone.

What do I know that is his and not mine, or that is mine and not his, or hers? What do I know? Is there any such thing? Is it possible, is it possible to be totally disconnected? Am I really cut off? Can I differentiate in my feelings what is mine and what is my sister’s? What is mine and what is my brother’s? Can I? How do I experience, that is receive and understand the spirit of life moving within and around me? The spirit of life moving within and around me. How do I understand that now that the thought has arisen? Again, I put the question, do I in truth, have here a brother, a sister?

What is love? What is love? Let me recall the words: “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.” Surely, I cannot bear the great lie, the thought that I have no friend, that I am the friend of no one. So, what is going on within me? What is my responsibility? And what is going on without, outside? Is this within me a brotherhood-experience? A sisterhood-experience?

After lunch someone said: “when you gave to us what you gave this morning, along with my own aim, I felt a great deal of trust in our work and in our way of working, in that sisterhood and brotherhood. With my effort, I knew that there would be effort on the part of those working with me. And it gave something, the recognition of this in contrast to any other part of life where I’ve never seen this. I could see so clearly what is available if I can just be near enough to catch myself.”

Mr Adie replied, in part: “I only learn through my own failures and seeing them, I’m gradually understanding. That helps me enormously after a time to cease from blaming others because they are in the same position. They also only learn through their own failure. This is a man upside down. Everything is reversed. All ordinary concepts are totally reversed. When I spoke of the misfortune of good luck, it sounds absolute rubbish, but that’s just what it is. And yet, by good fortune something happens. It was good fortune because I see it as such. If I don’t see it, then I bank on it and I’m cursed because when it ceases. Of course, it’s upside down. All our thought is upside down.”

“Take the wonderful allegory of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Marvellous poem. And there at a certain hour the pots all start chattering together. And they begin to see they were fashioned this way. One was a bit pulled up because the potter had pressed too hard with his thumb; another one was cracked because of hard usage. It’s a marvellous allegory of these dumb things beginning to philosophise and see their lives were due to these forces. They become philosophers.”

He is speaking about the inner work. Something in me has never been able to accept that “I only learn through my own failures, and seeing them.” I did not oppose it very much, I would think about looking up the meaning of a word, learning it in one hit and not forgetting it, and so I just dismissed this idea that we only learn through our mistakes. I thought, yes I can learn through them, but not only. But now, it has hit me. In this work, I need to grow in being. There is no inner work otherwise. There must be three forces for it to occur. And now when I ask, what could the passive/denying force be but my own failure, I have no answer. Even my “triumphs” (if I may be so absurd) are the result of something else. They have to be triumphs over something in me.

I am not quite able to put it into words, but I sense the truth of this. One thing is clear: our complacency and tendency to find excuses and ameliorations is so ingrained in us that if we do not see that we have failed, we seem to always lack the desire and the energy to move ahead.

As Mr Adie said, on this occasion, if I realise that I can only learn this work through my failures, I can extend the same understanding to others. I might even have some compassion: on them and on myself. I think self- and other-hatred go together. They produce a near perpetual negative emotional attitude in me. To be even a little free of that … well …