Malcolm:   During the holidays I had a dinner with my parents and some months ago a topic came up in a meeting here which was about, a type of need, emotion, which I’d noticed in relation to, in that instance my father. My aim during the day was to help to bring myself towards that evening, I would every hour imagine that I was with each of my parents in turn. Think about how I come about and, at the dinner my aim was to …

Mr Adie:   Could you say that your aim was to have good harmonious relation? You were aiming for a harmonious contact?

Malcolm:   Yes. Generally, it’s a good relationship but there are these negative emotions.  

Mr Adie:   But, in your preparation and your thought for this particular dinner, … what?

Malcolm: I would imagine that I’m with each of my parents in turn. I would repeat the epitaph in Meetings with Remarkable Men, regarding Gurdjieff’s father. “I am thou.” At the dinner, I noticed two occasions, watching what my feelings were. I was talking to my sister, and she had a very busy week and was tired. She was late getting to the dinner, and I was a bit too intense in quizzing her about what she’s been up to. I think she just wanted to sit there and not have to answer a hundred questions. She said, can we talk about something else? I began to say sorry. But as I spoke, my feeling changed. It came out in a slightly nasty way shrouded in this sort of …

Mr Adie:   Sarcasm?

Malcolm:   Yes.  And which she noticed. The other situation was when I was talking to my father. You could hear from the way that he was talking it was familiar sort of conversation which was the sort I often get very frustrated with. I was trying to listen to what he was saying and hear what he said to keep my attention on something and not …  

Mr Adie:   No, no, you can’t keep it on something.

Malcolm:   Well, I was trying to watch my feeling and listen to what he had to say, rather than the usual situation which was, that I’d lost what he was saying and just got frustrated.

Mr Adie:   You were criticising what you thought he was saying?

Malcolm:   Yes. But I wasn’t able to stop these strong feelings of frustration at the conversation. In both of those situations there was nothing at all which, on reflection, I could say. I could have got angry at that or this. So, I think that negative emotion is dormant and comes up.

Mr Adie:   It’s not very dormant perhaps?

Malcolm: But I don’t really know what to do now.

Mr Adie:  What you tried was right, and what did you see? That each time you were down, in one case sarcastic and the other case frustrated. But perhaps you noticed that you entirely excluded the benefit to either to those two people and you again were completely immersed in your own reactions and purposes. I mean you weren’t there to see what would be needed. It has to be instant. You haven’t got hours to enunciate it, but having prepared you should have had a certain amount of feeling for your aim there. So, if she’s a bit fluttery and tired, obviously she doesn’t want to be engaged in fierce conversation. You could let her off for a bit, because otherwise you would be just using her as a sort of experimental board, really.

It was not deeply intended that way, of course. You may had the initial intention of their general welfare, the sort of thing that people could share. But that was lost in the passage of time and all you had was your own requirement, because if you had something like a feeling which would emanate, you would not have felt this frustration.

So, you have to think: in such a situation you owe; and if you’re going to succeed, you’ll have to transmit something that is beneficial to them. It is not to interfere with them, not to make the wrong kind of demand. That is to say, something from you has to flow towards them. But how can it, if you’re sort of picking the wrinkles out and fussing all the time, “Oh dear, how stupid it is,” this sort of thing. Or, “How can he say that?” instead of just seeing him as your father, who is talking. This is the way he talks, and he will probably go on talking like that now, because I take it, he’s not too young, so, there he is: your father talking like that.

That’s his talking machine, there are other aspects he has, but that’s your father at the dinner table. Then, when you’re leaving and need something, he probably gets his cheque book and writes some cheques, and there might be an emotional cheque too. But do you see what I mean? Because fathers do, if there’re reasonable, have a habit of shelling out towards their children.

In this effort to correspond to another, something has to pass; and if I’m criticising and suffering, obviously nothing can pass. Now if you have that element in your mind too, it will help you to be relaxed.

In families, the history is very strong. It’s from your very babyhood and all that pattern of encounters is quite a powerful thing; apart from the fact the similarity of the blood in the veins and all that, that organic similarity. So, it’s very powerful; and it is much more difficult to separate and be impartial to your own family than it is with other people. There’s so much history attaching to it.

That’s why it is said, that, until we’ve worked quite a bit, we cannot, are unable to externally consider people. In order to do that, we have to be able to put ourselves in their place. So, if you want to help your father, you have to be able to put yourself in his place. He’s an elderly man, he hasn’t seen his son for some time, if he could see that you’re present and well, it’s probably enough.

Be aware of his presence. When I try and do this, I discover that I’m almost a bit of a monster, you know. I only go for myself it seems – but this is just a trap, I have to get past that.

I would say, take every opportunity to repeat it, but then think about it.

At what point did you really drop the brick, or at what point you really manage to say something that he liked, or was there something else? Don’t waste any opportunity.

It’s very strange you can have conversations with you father, and you can say those things that you wish to say and he can receive them; but, when it comes to the point there’s nothing corresponding to that in one’s being at all. We dream, we have a fancy, “That’s good, that’s right.” Before you get halfway to what you wanted, he has smelt the thing, he’s off on a different tack, because you’re trying to operate and manipulate, without your knowing. It’s not free.

Now, you are free to reject as much of what I’m saying which it doesn’t apply to you. I’m just painting a picture with principles and different kinds of failures, and so forth. But these things do take place, so I want to be more mobile, some internal movement of feeling. Otherwise, it all gets so sort of dead.

I remember there was a time when my father came and stayed with us. I was trying to remember myself very hard, and I was interested in reading the papers and that sort of garbage. I wanted to take the opportunity to go up to town and not waste the journey, and remember myself or something like this. We were in the railway carriage. I was reading the paper, I would get halfway through a column, and he would want to talk so I had to put it away there. I would look at it, and think, “Poor old man.” Then pick the paper back up. Instead of having a pleasant time with his son, he never got any fun out of it, no. What an opportunity I missed. Many opportunities. I would have had to be a different person, I would have had to play a suitable role. I wasn’t enough advanced for that.