George Mountford Adie (1901 - 1989)
George Adie and his wife Helen, after first meeting the work through P.D. Ouspensky in the late 1930's, became direct students of Gurdjieff in France in 1948, and in 1965, they emigrated to Australia where they formed and led a large Gurdjieff group. Significant essays by George Adie and transcripts of meetings he lead, togetherwith biographical essays on George and Helen Adie can be found in George Adie, A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia.[1] The following is an excerpt from this book.
The State of Receiving Ideas
Now try and make yourself available to receive ideas and formulations of a higher level. What exactly does this mean, “to make myself available”? How do I do this? It means that I am able to centralise my attention. As a result, I experience a sense of the concentration of this force of my attention within me, and while retaining or maintaining this sense of centralization of the force of my attention, I direct a definite part of this attention to the ideas and formulations being placed before me.
This is an inner act. I do it. This is my responsibility. In dividing my attention this way and fort his purpose, I need to be able to measure the correct point of division. That is to say, I need to know and to judge the exact amount of attention to be turned to as to receive these ideas. I judge this by directing only that amount of my centralised attention which I am able without causing an imbalance in my state.
That is, my effort is to retain a sense of the centralised aggregation of this force of my attention. I experience this attention as a balanced whole, and awareness of the whole of myself. So by dividing my attention in this way and by becoming available to the formulations and ideas now being prepared, I am able to receive this fine material of a higher level as if I has never heard them before, as if they were entirely new and fresh. And truly, I have never heard them before, because I have never understood clearly and simply, as if they were a symbol, a sacred key to life, cut in crystal of a unique clarity, significance, power.
Received thus, the crystal of this momentary understanding will, at once on entering within me, touch, animate and connect all the corresponding particles already present within me. Thus crystallization takes place, my understanding grows, and becomes a fact of my Reality.
Now relax, collect, balance and centralise your attention. Divide and direct it so that you become open to what is now available.
What Am I?
I am the connection between that influence and these manifestations.
I am between that passive and this active.
In this posture I receive the force of that higher influence.
In this posture I acknowledge this gift.
In this posture I AM.[2]
For more about George Adie see:
https://www.gurdjieff.org/adie.htm
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[2] Joseph Azize, George Adie, A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia (Richmond: By the Way Books, 2019 [2nd ed. 2015, 1st ed. 2007]) pp. 265-266.
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