Serena had asked a rather involved question. After Mr Adie had answered it, she said: “There was something else, too. Whenever I think of the death of someone I felt close to, I just start crying, and feel completely distraught. Yesterday, when I felt like this, I wanted to look at it to see what it was made of. The moment that I saw, I remembered something that you’d said, which is that often when we’re choked up with emotion, there’s something negative there. And I wondered if there was. I saw that a lot of it had to do with insecurity, feeling I was going to lose something that I had relied on and I wasn’t seeing this person’s death.”

Mr Adie: Life and death is a very big thing.

I don’t think wisely enough of the departed; I don’t realise that they’re not dead, they’re alive. And I’m related to them. I’m connected to them, but I don’t realise it.

If I could know that, I would know that this sorrow of mine really is making them suffer, not doing any good. I want to be able to remember them with life and feeling and even in a way, joy. I can’t command joy, but I can understand. And then that can help, because surely, they’re alive. There’s no final death. It’s only a question of condition – they’re in another condition.

But there’s a tremendous attachment when it’s a relative, or a strong friend, or something like that. There’s a big bond. So, it’s very important if you lose someone who dies, to think of that.

Think that they’re quite near. Then the last thing they want you to do is to be sad and sorrowing and crying. That would be the last thing they would wish. So, why not satisfy their wish?

Does it seem to you practical? Yes? To me, it’s very practical.

It isn’t for my self-comfort that I do it. Because if I only do it for that, it’s quite a different thing.

I want to be able to connect my work in the right way. If I want to deal with states and with being, I must acknowledge that life is given, and I wish to pay. So, here is someone that I’m near, who’s given me some life, either by a common experience, or a relative; and I wish to pay for that. And if I do, things change. I’m not so centred in a selfish way. I’m balanced. I’m receiving what’s legitimate. Things are flowing. Emotion is moving.

I don’t allow for the fact that if they can enter my mind, I can enter their mind. So, what happens when I enter their mind? They have a mind, maybe higher. And then they see.

Think about it. Think on those lines, and it’ll become more and more real if you think about it. Without it, life would be unbearable.

Mr Adie then addressed the group as a whole.

I think we’ll stop there. Try and make a plan within your compass and have the guts to make a plan and then look at it at night time or afterwards and see what has happened. If you make it reasonably small, maybe you can carry it out. If you make it very big, you won’t. And when it begins to be a little bit habitual, it can be expanded or changed, or something.

A person living on a desert island with little or no hope of being rescued, let us say, would they not want to have a record? Wouldn’t they be inclined to do something to assure themselves they were alive? They would do something.

Why must I wait until I’m on the desert island? Because that’s where I am most of the time. I’m not related to people. I’m not related to myself, so how can I be related to anybody else? I’m just a thing with dreams. Some of them less bearable and some of them possible, but real life. Young people fall in love and fall out of love. Some seem to be able to fall in love, even when they’re older. But how much of their life is spent that way and in a good proportion with other necessary features of their life? Yet it could be, one could be in love all the time – on condition.

We’re very lucky in a sense: we’re living. Consider the form of our lives: we can’t spend the whole time in introspection and sort of doleful thought. We are bound to get along. Otherwise, we get a lot of notices: you owe this, you owe that, so I’ve got to do something about it. (Laughter). Otherwise, I don’t even eat.

They’re the pricks that keep us alive. So, we might as well live and be merry. Goodnight.