At a group meeting on Tuesday 14 June 1983, there was what I count as a most remarkable comment by Mr Adie in response to what seemed to me to have been a naive question about the Collected State Exercise, only the person who asked it referred to “meditation.” Mr Adie said: “Meditation? I can’t meditate not knowing what one-third of the basic forces necessary are. I have to have all three forces there more or less, balanced to meditate. Otherwise, I go off and dream. One I meditates; that’s not good. All my body slumps, and not enough blood flows where it is needed for such an effort. My breathing is defective. The carbon dioxide is not getting filled within. My thoughts get darker and darker. I raise myself. The light can come at once. … There’s a tension which we haven’t recognised as a stop, a complete stop to our possibility. It’s a feeling of force, driving force, which you’re accustomed to. … You know very well that if you are tense, you cannot think properly.”

I think that the reference to carbon dioxide was that if I am slumped over, the breath cannot fill my lungs. But what really struck me was his saying: “One I meditates: that’s not good.” It had never occurred to me quite like that before. As I have often noted, we need new formulations, because as Mr Gurdjieff said, everything becomes mechanical with time; and experience shows that this is true of exercises and formulations, too. There are many ways to work against this involution (because that is what it is), and one way is to find new formulations. Perhaps the most important method is to work on my state so that I bring a freshness of being to my efforts, and that keeps the exercises and the words vital.

But now, to ponder this: “One I meditates; that’s not good.” Of course, when that happens it is not good at all. I want that I or a representative of I should be present. Perhaps this is what motivated Mr Adie to bring the exercise which I call “The Deputy Steward Exercise,” to give us a taste of a true representative of I by the end of that particular exercise, so that when we commence the next exercise, the next day or whenever, we have a sense, a being-feeling of the direction I wish to go in. But it is more than just one exercise: the way we were taught by the Adies to work with the exercises was to first have my intention, have my aim, and to sense my wish.

So, when I am in the exercise, and see distracting thoughts arise, which sometimes submerge me, I may recall that this is only one I, and that a small and unstable one, which is working at the exercise. I need more parts of me, more I’s – the responsible I’s of my three centres to be united in the effort. Even as I sit here typing, the question of which I is present has been a help. Is it just one small I, in the head, perhaps? Where are the other I’s, the good I’s of feeling and of body to provide the attitude and energy I need for this task?

Later in that same response, he mentions how important relaxation is in helping us remain balanced. Once more, when I heard that, I realised that this was an aspect of relaxation which I had overlooked. Just as a tent which is supported by ties with different degrees of tenseness, will not be balanced, so too, if parts of me are subject to varying degrees of tension, it must be impossible to retain balance. That is one function of “relaxing” in the contemplative exercises, although there are issues with that word – it often conjures up the wrong associations: massages, alcohol, slippers and late mornings.

Another function of making tensions passive is to free more energy, and to make it possible for energy to move more smoothly and evenly throughout the body. If there is a strong tension between my eyebrows, for example, this attracts my energy there and means that there is less consciousness of the other parts of my forehead and face. In other words, tension makes it harder to have a sense of the whole of myself.

There is an interesting matter here: the Adies did not always begin with relaxing each part of the body, and then, when that was completed, sensing each part of the body. Sometimes they would just go through body once. sensing and relaxing at the same time. Now, sometimes the notes of Mr Gurdjieff exercises show him doing the same thing, and sometimes he makes no reference to relaxing the body all. Why?

I cannot speak for either Mr Gurdjieff or the Adies, but I suspect that different approaches are necessary at different times. But as a general rule, in order to relax a part of your body I do need to sense it. So by relaxing it, I am in fact sensing it and relaxing it together. But the role of sensation in relaxing the body may even be highlighted by the practice of sensing and relaxing at the same time, and going through the body just once. Then, on another occasion, I begin with the emphasis on relaxing (perhaps commencing with face and head) and then return to the body with the emphasis on sensing (beginning the with the feet, because of the help from sensing the feet on the ground).

The sort of relaxing we want has different levels. One of these, Mr Gurdjieff sometimes referred to as “decontraction.” On 16 Ocrtober 1943, he carefully distinguished the words “relax” and “decontract.” He said: “Relaxation is endless. While there is a limit to decontraction, you can go very far with relaxation. … do not forget that to decontract, even a donkey can do it, but to relax, only the intellect can do it.” May God help you with your intellect.” (Transcripts of Gurdjieff’s Wartime Meetings 1941-1946, 130 – the Dolmen edition wrongly translates “loosen” instead of “decontract.”)

With relaxation, internal channels are open. It brings not just a feeling of softness, although it has that. There is also a feeling quality of gentleness. And there is a sense of light, as Mr Adie said in the passage quoted above. I mean by this that one senses certain lightness and life in that part of the body; and it is a quality of energy which unites the various parts of the body when it is brought into them. This “relaxing” serves as a linking, a relationship-making. It also – as the full body is relaxed – alters the tempo of the breathing and the blood circulation (invariably making them slower and more even), so that through the more deliberate tempo of those functions, my being-state changes for the better. Smaller and sillier I’s are not possible with such a deep and measured tempo prevailing in my body. One only has to remember the connection between hurry and forgetfulness, error and lack of consideration.

Also, as Mr Adie said, a better quality of thought is available when I am not tense. In fact, he said, one cannot think when one is tense; and there is a great truth in that – although one can have access to the results of past thought, I might add.