Fritz:   About the finger exercise. There are times when I am aware that I’m experiencing some degree of feeling, and at those times, I’ve got no doubt that it is an experience of feeling.

Mr Adie:   It has characteristics, doesn’t it? What are its characteristics?

Fritz:   Well, I can recognise it, but I can’t define it.

Mr Adie:   Well, it has many characteristics. There are seven aspects to it. What are the aspects of feeling? One must be a certain freedom from turmoil, a certain sort of warmth, openness, a lack of clamour. I’m related to what is, a little bit more. I haven’t got at that moment an impulse to rush around and do it. It’s more a sense of being. All these are aspects of feeling. I need those because they are all leads in towards feeling.

Fritz:    That seems to correspond with some of those instances that I’m referring to. But when it comes to making some effort to experience that maybe on a smaller scale, in one specific area, like in my finger.

Mr Adie:   That’s quite different. That’s a special exercise, when you’re relatively balanced, trying to make a conscious connexion between your solar plexus and each member so that you may perhaps get some control of your feeling. I am without feeling. It’s nothing. It’s dangerous even, as we tried to emphasise on the 29th. “I am” requires feeling, otherwise it’s dangerous. If have “I am” without feeling, it’s the old egotism.

Fritz:   Mr Adie, where I am confused is that the instances of feeling seem to be brought about by a certain sensation, a certain experience of something.

Mr Adie:   Can you say what, experience of what?

Fritz:   Yes, well, for instance, I have a certain feeling in relation to my children, and I experience that strongly. But in case of this exercise, I’m trying to see this connexion between that type of feeling and the type of feeling that we have to experience in this exercise. And at the moment, I don’t quite see this.

Mr Adie:   Yes, but it’s a new thing. You try to establish: there is a body, the second body, the body of feeling. And the body of feeling is everywhere. I have my physical body with its, as it were, electrical circuits stretching out about a metre around. And exactly in that same envelope is my emotional body, working at a far higher speed, a far greater fineness. Now, I have this limb, and I wish to be aware of feeling in that finger, that one. Not this one, that one. To do that, I have to exercise my attention. And this is connected directly with what Robert was saying. It’s a connexion between the main functioning and the sympathetic nervous system. I’m trying to make a connection which is not associated as my other feelings are associated. I’m trying to make it as a direct connexion.

But I see the fact that the association with my children affects me there. I feel something. I feel concerned, worry, warmth, tenderness, annoyance; all sorts of things. When it’s fear and annoyance, it’s down here, false. It’s already slipped. When it’s a tenderness, it’s something given; my child, but my child is nearer to feeling, although in a way it is no more than any other child.

But I need to come to formulations, because the formulations can be part of my thinking – not my normal thinking – but in the feeling part of my, let’s say “ordinary brain,” unless it is too perturbed. At the best, there is a feeling part of my thought, and my formulation can contact that. There can be a connexion between that feeling part of the head and the main feeling body, so that head and feeling are harmoniously related. I need that for my being.

When you say “a certain sensation and experience about something,” that’s not enough for you. I need to know of what kind it is. And if my thought can show me that, then the thought plays a better role. You follow? It’s actually the building up of control from what is now a centralised knowledge, a knowledge which includes my body, and where I am.

Fritz:   So, there can be feeling without there being an object to which that feeling is either attracted or directed. But when I do the exercise, there is no such thought.

Mr Adie:   Try and remember what the exercise is for. The exercise is in order that you are consciously aware of this. This is your subjective truth. This is the truth of your three bodies. That’s what I’m trying to come to, my own construction. I’m trying to discriminate between my coarse body, the physical body, which has been, nevertheless, very fine and marvellous, and the body of feeling, the Kesdjan body.

And then finally, the body of thought, higher thought.

That’s what I’m trying to do. In the ordinary way, I don’t live like that because for that I have to be quite still and not troubled. It’s no good to do my exercise in a tram when all sorts of things are happening. There are other exercises which would be good in those circumstances, but perhaps not that one. I need to know that I’ve come to the stop, otherwise I go on past where I want to get off and immediately get into trouble.

We want to recognise that all these exercises are very special, provided as a help to remembering myself, to understanding my general position, and coming to my general aim, which doesn’t concern any of the automatic impulses. They’re all there, desires and aims. If I’m hungry, I want food, and so on.

I begin to find that I have a reality as an organisation, an organisation of three bodies. And then there’s a man of four bodies, five bodies, six bodies. Finally, completed man of seven bodies. This is a transitional thing. The four bodies is the transitional man, man number four. He is not yet man number five, but he has something more than man number one, two, and three. He has a sense of gravity, and this is what we try to come to. And then from that, begin to have experience of the fifth body. I need that exercise in separation, because then when my child is there and I have feeling, I don’t get swamped by it. I’m still able to recognise the time, the situation, the obligation of various things. I’m still able to fulfil my obligations as well as being present to this feeling. Otherwise, my emotion makes me indulgent, or do the wrong thing.