Esmay:   I found my line of work was not very easy to follow because I was trying to work on false pride, and there was not many manifestations. It was more ideas. I found several times that it was enough to come to myself and that day and that the inertia would go. But it did manifest itself.

Mr Adie:   Yes, it’s bound to. It’s bound to manifest. As long as the whole thing hasn’t been digested, it will, because I’ve got a construction of that now. I have a definite puppet, which is always available in different sizes to satisfy this egotism. My pride. In a way, the different I’s are garments for my pride, if you like. Different roles. The things in which I’ve been clever, in which I’ve been honest, in which I’ve been kind, all the good properties, all worthy properties, properties that I pat myself on the back about, or that I take to myself. They all manifest with different I’s at different times. Some I’s dent the image, but then I managed to part them and say, “Well,” and so on. But really, I’m not trying to deal with something that’s just then. I have to understand it’s much more general. So I have to be prepared. Really, I need to go deeper. I can choose a particular one, but that’s not happening all the time. And limit it to one or two incidents or hours or times or opportunities.

It’s enough. If I see it. If I really see it, at that moment, it has no power at all. I see it. Well, I can’t insist on going on like that all day, because in order for so lengthy a confrontation, it would have to go on, too, but it doesn’t. It can’t bear being seen, just for the time it sees it. So that’s a fact. And now I have the influence of that. For instance, supposing I’m trying to be patient, well, if everything’s going all right and I’m on time, the question of patience doesn’t arise. But if the train is late, then I can be impatient. But if I’m in plenty of time and the train is not late, and everything is going smoothly, where’s my impatience? It’s all going beautifully. I can easily start worrying about watching impatience when there’s no call for it.

Esmay:   Yes, I have to wait till it happens.

Mr Adie:   I have to be prepared, yes. But of course, there is also dreaming and all sorts of things there. If you observe a person, innerly talking – you can sometimes see it in a tram or a bus or walking along the pavement – I see a person fast asleep and they’re muttering to themselves or furious or talking to the ground. They’re expressing themselves in a dream. Nobody’s really resisting them at all. It’s all in their dream.

It’s not so easy to make a plan. It’s pretty difficult. So, what I have to be careful of is to try and be balanced when I’m making the plan; not to be identified at that point, not to be lacking in feeling at that point. If I have feeling, then I can understand the object, the bigness of the direction. And so somehow it doesn’t lose proportion. I know the aim is there. Does it touch it?

Esmay:   Yes, I had.

Mr Adie:   Yes. You’ve got something else?

:   I’m not sure, but I thought one of its manifestations was in identification in social events.

Mr Adie:   I don’t know if it is muddled up there. Identification is one thing. Egotism and false pride is another. So, I say I’ve built up all sorts of pride in my life. I fancy myself for many things.

:   Isn’t that what causes the identification?

Mr Adie:   It could start it, but I’m all the time more or less identified. It’s what calls me. I walk along the street, something’s going on in my head, so I’m identified with that to a certain extent. Then I catch sight of something in the shop, and I’m identified with this. And this ceases for the moment. One identification will get knocked out by another, by external impression. I have no choice. Depends on impressions entering. I’m identified with the fact that I’m late there, but I turn this, and I certainly want this hat. No, I forget this, and I go and buy the hat.

But I can only understand such terms as identification and pride with my feeling of myself. How could I really justifiably use the word pride without having some savouring of my present state? How can I consider the pride if I’m already being proud about it? I need to be very poised, very… I have to free myself, be relatively free from pride in order to consider it. And then suddenly it’s there, and I’m there, too. I see it. I mustn’t let my head work on its own, that’s the whole thing. Otherwise, I do very naive things.

It’s one of the big traps of the whole effort of becoming is that because I am not present, really rubbish takes place. And so, I begin to see the actual literal truth that man lives upside down. What is big, he calls small. What is important, he calls unimportant and so on. Because everything is being dragged out instead of being received. That’s the work, that’s the inner work. To be present to my wish to work. Now, you see, that can be very theoretical. “To be present to my own wish to work.” Don’t listen to it like that. No, but it goes on with these words in the head. I have to listen to the intonation in the head, in a way. And there’s my body, there’s my feeling. At last, I see this as a work for adults, not for children.