G. was driving several of his intimate pupils to the country. In G.'s car were, in the front seat, D. and P., who was driving. G., K. and M. were sitting in the back seat chatting. G., who had been sitting quietly in the front seat through one breakdown after another, in which first the lights didn't work, then the tire blew out, and then, due to G.'s refusal to stop when we should have, we ran out of petrol, suddenly shouted, "Look, look, look to your left!" Passing along the side of the road was a small red carriage pulled by a Shetland pony and driven by a woman who was dressed in a red suit and wore a black hat, a sight not at all unusual in the southern provinces. G. roared. "Did you see that?" "Yes," K. replied very calmly in a quiet, measured tone, "I have seen it before." "No, never," G. snapped, "Never have you seen such a thing! Wake up and live! This time is different. Everything is different now! The ambient atmosphere, the temperature, the humidity, the lighting, the smells, tastes and sensations! The sounds! The mood! The grenouille! But, no. You were too busy seeing and talking to watch and listen." "Yes, you are right," K. admitted, "Now I can see that I was not actively seeing and listening to what was happening around me... I think I was distracted by the sound of my own voice." "Stop, look, and listen and you may have the chance to really wake up someday," G. grunted. "Be more interested than interesting. "Talk, but also listen while talking. If you cannot direct the attention to listen to the voice of the machine, at the same time remembering that it is all one voice emanating from a single nonphenomenal source, an inner dialogue between phenomenal fragments of the universal, endless animator of all life, the source of all individualized presence, then your attention lacks the will to study the machine and, in addition, shows clearly that your attention is distracted by the sound of the machine's voice away from subjects of real interest." "Like what?" asked P. "This is a typical question, and one which I will not bother to answer. However, Lise can answer it for you. Where is she?" he turned, thinking that she was in the back of the car, but she had gone in the other car with J., M. and O. >From that moment on, he claimed to be unable to rest and insisted on changing seats with P. so that he could drive. "Why not just relax?" P. asked. "I cannot relax," he stated flatly, "where will I sit?" "Where you've been sitting," P. replied. "Impossible." "It wasn't impossible until a moment ago, when you discovered that Lise wasn't in the car," P. answered in a rational tone. "We have had many breakdowns," he replied. "many, and only I know what to do in an emergency." It was true, we had had several breakdowns, although nobody ever went on an excursion with G. on which there weren't at least several more breakdowns and wrong routes taken than any other journey we'd ever heard of. We all knew that G. would have trouble driving at night; his night vision was erratic, and oncoming headlights troubled him, but drive he did, and both cars arrived together at the hotel, where we dined as a group in the deserted dining room at about half-past ten. We left the hotel at about seven the following morning, after much confusion about luggage, who was to sit where Lise was escorted by G. into the car this time, and he refused to allow her to leave the car even to help load the luggage, only to endure G.'s sudden urge to go to a nearby cafe for coffee-orange with chocolate and whipped cream, which he then proceeded to remove with a demitasse spoon. He didn't really drink the coffee either, eventually passing it to W., who gulped it down in one swallow. If G. took note of this, he gave no outward sign. "Where is Lise?" he asked suddenly, looking all round him as if he had just come to from a deep shock. "In the car." "Why? Why in the car?" he demanded. "You told her to stay in the car," P. reminded him. "But not now. She must also have coffee. Cafe-chocolade, he decided, nodding to himself. "She has merit and if anyone here deserves a treat, it is she," he added. The luggage was unloaded, Lise brought to the cafe, and we all went to the baths together, where G. insisted that we all take massage sous l'eau after the mineral baths, sauna and steam baths, taken in rigorous order with ice-cold swims between each. The staff of the baths were hard pressed to take us all, and at first said they couldn't, but finally we had all had our baths, after which G. insisted that we return to our rooms and take an enema, to insure that our personal atmospheres were pure. This required reregistry for several rooms and an additional service fee, but G. said that it had been our fault for not thinking of cleansing our bodies that morning while we still had the rooms. After all, hadn't we 3 known that the mineral baths in this town were known for their curing and cleansing properties? At last, about three that afternoon, we were once again on the road and the discussion of the previous day was resumed. "Yes, all one voice," G. repeated. "This much you should know in any case, that none of us has a voice of our own. We speak, and yet we say nothing. Just as we are breathed, as breath comes into our lungs, expelled by Our Endless Creator, also our words seem to come from ourselves, but really come from a single source. "If we could listen to what we are saying," G. continued, "we could learn great secrets, because the source of our conversation is the Great Source of All – the invisible King who is before us, although we are blind to him. "Blind, yes, we cannot see Him because we do not know how to see," he said, "and deaf to His discourse, because we have not learned how to hear. "We do not listen," W. said. "I have learned this over the years and, I have discovered that quite often, rather than listening, I am thinking about what I am going to say while the other person is speaking, and even during periods when I am not engaged in conversation at all, for instance when I am walking down the street, I find myself, to my utter astonishment, continuing an inner dialogue, rehearsing what I will say if such-and-such a thing happens to occur. Most of the time, of course," she continued, "nothing of the kind happens at all. It's all in my imagination. "And then I find myself reviewing conversations in my past. Things I should have said but didn't. Things I said that I shouldn't have. Things I never said, or that I think I may have said. To tell the truth, I often have no idea what I've just said, even moments after I've spoken." "What else can you tell us about this?" G. prompted. "I don't know..." W. paused momentarily. "Perhaps the most noticeable thing about it is the inner dialogue I mentioned. I don't really want it to continue, and yet there seems to be no way to stop it. "I can decide one moment to stop it... even insist mentally to myself in a very loud and authoritative inner voice that it stop, immediately, this very instant. Then a moment later – if it ever stops at all – the inner dialogue continues on with its nonsensical garbage as if nothing had happened." "You command without real authority," G. commented. "If you spoke from a centrum which had authority and was not sick... if it had force and will and balance... your voice would be heard and obeyed." "But then," P. interjected, "there's nothing outside us to teach us to be silent inside. Everyone chatters all the time, hardly ever – if they ever do – hearing each other. I find that most people cannot wait to talk... they believe that what they have to say is more important than anything else." "I oftentimes find myself acknowledging what someone is saying without really hearing them, just because I want my chance to speak," M. agreed. "Me too," said P., "but the thing is, I can't hear my own voice... I have no idea what I'm saying, because I'm too busy thinking ahead of myself, ahead of my moving centrum, and when I'm talking, everything else, all other impressions other than my inner dialogue, seem to become dim, just background... they fade out and become unimportant." "And when your machine speaks, all other voluntary data gathering awareness functions of the machine switch 'off' and become non- functional," G. commented. "K., you may have noticed a certain phenomenon... and I tell you this because you are of the type who may profitably experiment with this idea... that if a statement really is important, if it must be said in order to satisfy the drama of the moment, it will be said, if not by you, then by somebody... On this you can be certain. "You may think of something to say, but even if this thought is not verbalized through your machine, it will be said by someone else in the chamber. "This can be tested. You can sit in a group and listen. Since it is all one voice from a single source, you will hear what you thought of saying and had decided to say be spoken by someone else if you hold back your voice at the last moment, and remain silent and attentive." M. said that she had noticed this phenomenon and thought it was like listening to a prepared script that had been written for a particular drama in its own unique miniature theatrical chamber for the amusement or entertainment of someone or something, she wasn't quite sure what. "Remember, it is all from the machine," G. said. "of that you can be sure, until something happens to bring the machine out of its conditioned rut, but sometimes from a guest who does not belong in the chamber, an outsider, although just what this may mean I leave for another time, something is interjected that is not of the machine – something similar to stage directions and, in fact, they may even be stage directions, providing instruction on how to play a particular scene. "You can easily see that it is not native to the chamber itself, if only your attention has been invoked, along with your presence, into the present." The small group of pupils who had accompanied G. were returning with him with no changes in the car seating. The other car, a Citroen, was just up ahead, although, had G. been driving at that moment, we would certainly have been in the lead by several miles. L. was driving to give G. a chance to rest. During a lull in the conversation she had turned the radio on. Just after we heard the phrase, "Life goes on...," G. lowered the volume of the music and began to speak. He gave an exercise to work with while we drove home in the car. "Look at the people driving in their cars as they are returning home from work," he said. "Think as they are thinking. For example, imagine spending your time all during the week, while working, looking forward to Friday hoping to leave early in order to get an early start for the weekend. Where is your attention? Why bother to work at all, if it all goes down the drain Friday night? "Examine what people feel they live for, and what pleasures they feel they must have. They are thinking about 'getting time off' to ski the 'white powder' on the slopes, or dreaming about what kind of new car they want to buy. "Perhaps their working hours are spent planning where they will go shopping this evening, or what new look in clothes, makeup, jewelry or some other attention-getting object they will buy. "Look at these people as they pass through your field of vision and realize that they are daydreaming about that wonderful new lover in their life. "These people may be tired and looking forward to going home, eating dinner, relaxing in their favorite comfortable chair, amused by an endless series of entertaining soap operas. "These people are concerned with looking fashionable and appearing impressive for the approbation of all the other hairless monkeys like nthemselves. They spend their time daydreaming about how they will satisfy one craving after another, what important pleasure they will pursue next. "Remember that the next moment after your death, nothing you have accomplished or accumulated has meaning or value. The places you have traveled have no meaning. All the pleasures and comforts you have enjoyed in life are meaningless now. What can you take with you the day after you die? "Now using your imagination but tempered by your own experience with your subjective inner world, contrast those fixations which involve, engross, and hypnotize these passing people, to your own, hopefully impartial, vision of your own life, viewing your whole life from the beginning, to what you see as the end. "Projecting your life on an impartial screen, examine what you can really hope to extract that has any real substance from your life in this world. "Think about the moment after you die in the light of what you have done in life... What value does any of this have after your death? "Measure what you have done and are doing in this perspective... see what you will undoubtedly see, and feel now as you would then, if you were able to review your life event by event, the moment after you die. "Look at what gives your life real meaning, what is of real value from this perspective, then hold this view of your life in relief to the lives of these people you see passing. "Are you also thinking about and wishing for and working to accomplish in your life what they wish for in theirs?" As G. finished speaking, he turned the volume of the radio up just a little more. He said that while doing this exercise that we should relax, listen to the radio, and not take ourselves too seriously. The first phrase of the song playing on the radio was, "She knows what pleases you..." It occurred to us that the radio was "in cahoots" with Nature, who had been listening, patiently waiting to seduce the next one who forgot and allowed the attention to wander.