Mervyn:   For several days, I’ve had the aim of watching what happens to my energy throughout the day, and does it go? There seems to be a direct relationship between feeling and energy.

Mr Adie:   Feeling is an energy.

Mervyn:   That was the question, is feeling a sensation of energy in the body?

Mr Adie:   Feeling is one energy, sensation is another. Feeling is a higher form of energy. Feeling is a finer energy than sensation. It’s quicker, it’s more powerful. Feeling is related to conscience. Thought to consciousness, feeling to conscience. So, feeling and thought are very close together. Feeling follows thought. How I think, so I’m inclined to feel.

Mervyn:   It seems that when I am able to keep a reasonable constancy of feeling, the amount of energy that I have also maintains a reasonable equilibrium. 

Mr Adie:   Feeling is a life-force. How is your feeling at the moment? Well, it’s already long ago. You could have had fifty feelings between now and when I asked you.

Mervyn:   Yes. Perhaps nervousness.

Mr Adie:   Not very much nervousness. 

Mervyn:   I’m not exactly sure what the feeling is to interpret it.

 Mr Adie:   Then you must be more careful how you use the word. You talk about the energy, and retaining the energy, and so forth; but that is the point you really don’t know yet. You have to experience more, to know more, to read more, and discover more connexions. Feeling is related to the solar plexus, thought to the spine, the cerebellum and the head. Sensation is related to the spine also. The basic life force is in the tan-den here. That’s the base for a man that’s alive, that is to say, a man who still has the life principle in him. His base is somewhere here, but if his thought is going all over the place, his feeling is all unknown, it’s all taking some of this force, and wasting it.

I mustn’t allow myself to think too easily. I must try and be very practical about it; allow myself to think as long as I can remember myself. When I stop remembering myself, then I don’t allow myself to think anymore. It’s impossible, but still, it’s worth trying. If you’re thinking, you can follow the thought a bit. When you cease to follow the thought, then stop. That doesn’t mean all occasions, but sometimes. Then you’ll come up against your feeling. How is my feeling? And then I find I’m not quite sure. You could ask, how is my state? Well, the state includes feeling, sensation, and thought, and presence, if any. Well, there’s quite a bit of information. Is something left of your question?

Mervyn:   No.

Mr Adie:   Make sure that you’re present in body as well as trying to think most of the time. You are inclined to get a bit lost in your thought effort. Don’t you feel that? You don’t so often come out of your thinking brilliantly clear. So, a little thought, and then when you think, try to be present to it, not tense. Your concept of thought and feeling will change. A man can walk from one end of his garden to the other, and he can have sensation. In fact, he will have some, otherwise he won’t get there. Even if he doesn’t know it, he has to have sensation, else he can’t even put his foot right.  And he can have feeling, and he can have thought as he goes. Or, he can be in a dream. There’s many degrees and many ways of being practical. Try and be practical and see what’s doing. There are different departments in the head. A department for buying boots and selling cars and things like that, which is very sort of low-level. And then other higher parts. Try and not to be involved in the lower part of thought.

Queenie:   Since I was last at a meeting, I wanted to observe my pride.

Mr Adie:   What is the kind of pride you’re speaking about?

Queenie:   Well, I think it’s related to a vanity, as well as a pride in doing a good job and doing the right thing.

Mr Adie:   Do you limit the vanity to a physical form, or is it also capacity and skill?

Queenie:   I think it’s more the physical; looking the way I should look.

Mr Adie:   Where does the pride come in? Pride because you made yourself so beautiful, or because you didn’t? You came out as you are for the lucky dip (Laughter) with all the genes and the heredity and the father, grandfather, great-grandfather and mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, going back, all these things which have produced you, and also, this initial unique spark that everybody is presented with at the inception, the conception, that part of the Theomertmalogos, which touches everything.

So, where’s the pride?

The pride is to understand. The pride is to be able to say yes, or say no, to understand when it should be yes, and no, and to be able to fulfil that. This is real pride, and all the other is just baloney; pride that is a product of an imaginary “I” that has been gradually invented by all the absurd formulation, the upside-down thinking of the world. Everybody thinks upside-down.

All the ordinary life is based on an imagined individual capacity, as if they were responsible and one and could do this and the other and so forth. But it’s all a lot of rubbish. The one reality they’ve almost never heard about: their state of “I”, their presence.

But you intended to try and see your pride, and to try and what?

Queenie:   I felt that the pride is rooted in some sort of feeling of right and wrong.

Mr Adie:   That you are right and the rest are wrong? It’s got to be that way, hasn’t it? The other way around, there’s no room for pride. A person that is free from sin and knows a thing or two and so on, morally and physically would be free of that pride.

Use it. We are receiving a lot of different concepts, and I think you’ll agree, very preferable ones. But of course, they’re only just concepts. I have to make them my own. Therefore, I’ve got to be willing to apply them because they won’t give the same answers. I’ve got to be prepared to accept the answers that they give. Then, of course, I shall begin to work and shall begin to change into something that there might be some real pride. Moses was painted as a person that had all kinds of bad, evil deeds etched in his face. The artist painted faithfully, and the sooth sayers said, what a wicked man he was, and the king couldn’t believe it. But Moses said, no, as a matter of fact, it’s right. In fact, it’s probably a bit worse. My pride is that I’ve overcome it. So, I have some pride.

Queenie:   My plan for the day was to leave something out of my work.

Mr Adie:   In order to make it not so good so she shan’t be so proud?

Queenie: Yes.

Mr Adie:   Well, of course, that’s not a good way to work. There’s no need for me to go and do a job a little bit badly in order to remember myself. It’s quite unnecessary.

All my work is private, really. I must work, preferably the other people don’t see that I’m doing inner work. They won’t understand it. They’ll try and stop me anyway. But, in the job, I must try and be sincere. This is where sincerity comes in. So, don’t try and omit something that’s worthwhile. It’s not a good line. Find something else.  Don’t you see it’s a bit distorted? You must try and make it better, do it even better, and do not take the prize for it. I mean, for instance, if you had very long legs, you’d win all the running races, wouldn’t you? But you didn’t make your legs long. You were born with them long, and all capacities are like that. But if I can run those races, better even, and not take it to myself, then that’s it.

I’m very glad you brought that because the questions you ask are generally practical and important, but this was a little bit off. It’s not characteristic of your work. It’s got to be, you know, fair and square, sensible.

That is quite different from the experiment of going out presentable and clean but not dressing for beauty. That’s an interesting experiment. It frees me a little. But be presentable, not shabby and attention-attracting.

Reminds me of the man who went to a party one night, he was smoking, and sat on his own ash. He got a hole in the side of the seat of his trousers, a little hole. He considered the whole of the night; he went round with his finger on his bottom. (Laughter). He had a horrible time. He thought he might be seen to have a hole. Instead of leaving the hole, which nobody would have noticed, he sort of had his hand there all the time. Yes. There’s a lot to be found out. You’ll find out an enormous lot. Sometimes you worry about people, what they think, and they’ve never even noticed you were there.