lopsided drawer of the filing cabinet became a focus for my discontent. Thus her gift, springing from love, had turned sour because my own love was lacking. No wonder I was ambivalent about the room: it condemned me.
I thanked Simon and went to find Alex, who was working in the vegetable garden. I told her I had been unjust to her, and was sorry. She gave me a delighted smile. We had a long talk as we hoed the onions, and went into lunch holding hands like new lovers.
After Alex and I had had two or three talks apiece with Simon, Pete and Coral asked if they could have talks with Simon too. Simon smiled wryly, and arranged a timetable, which he wrote in the desk diary we kept in the parlour. We found the talks so beneficial that they became a daily feature. This took a considerable bite out of Simonâs time, but he did not place any value on his own time. He only wished it to be well spent.
The daily talks had been continuing for about a week when their nature changed. This happened as the result of an experiment initiated by Simon, which was itself the outcome of a conversation we had before the group was formed.
We were sitting in Pete and Coralâs flat. We had been talking for several hours when reference was made to a quasi-religious organisation which had a centre in the city, members of which were periodically to be seen touting on street corners for people to come and take one of their free âpersonality testsâ. I had once done so as a reporting assignment for the newspaper, without of course revealing my identity. The experience had been exactly what I expected: a questionnaire which asked ill-disguised leading questions; a bookshop in which one was pressed to buy as one waited for the results of the âtestâ; a âdiagnosisâ from the questionnaire which indicated that one should take a course at the centre in order to improve the quality of oneâs life. I went home and wrote a smug article on this money-oriented, fake-psychology-peddling cult. It was the same article the British press had been serving up for years. In a corner of my mind I was a little ashamed. It was too easy. There must be more to them than that.
And yet when the organisation was mentioned that evening two years later I dropped instantly into the same position of ridicule and dismissed them as charlatans. Simon looked at me with faint surprise.
âIâve been to their centre and talked to them,â he said. âThey struck me as very energetic young people who would like to make the world a better place. Their eyes are bright, as if they have come through a difficult experience.â
I looked at the floor and blushed. It was true, but I had chosen not to see it. Their eyes had been bright. Not as bright as Simonâs, but bright enough. Whether it was the glitter of delusion or the light of truth how could I tell, when I had not troubled to find out the first thing about them?
Simon then proceeded to talk about them, or rather about the idea on which their theory of psychology was based. Theirfounder had discovered, he said, that in all human beings there existed a time-track on which was recorded everything that had ever happened to that person. It was analogous to the databanks of a computer. All past experience was stored on the track, and all of it was accessible to consciousness, though sometimes only with difficulty. To regain an incident from the past all one had to do was command the mind to âgo backâ to the incident and let it replay itself, which it would do with absolute fidelity. It was a process quite different from remembering; it was something everybody could do, and few knew about.
On most peopleâs time-track there were gaps, said Simon. These occurred where the person had been unconscious, or when the incident was so painful, mentally or physically, that the mind had apparently obliterated it. Nevertheless these incidents were recorded, but they were stored in
I thanked Simon and went to find Alex, who was working in the vegetable garden. I told her I had been unjust to her, and was sorry. She gave me a delighted smile. We had a long talk as we hoed the onions, and went into lunch holding hands like new lovers.
After Alex and I had had two or three talks apiece with Simon, Pete and Coral asked if they could have talks with Simon too. Simon smiled wryly, and arranged a timetable, which he wrote in the desk diary we kept in the parlour. We found the talks so beneficial that they became a daily feature. This took a considerable bite out of Simonâs time, but he did not place any value on his own time. He only wished it to be well spent.
The daily talks had been continuing for about a week when their nature changed. This happened as the result of an experiment initiated by Simon, which was itself the outcome of a conversation we had before the group was formed.
We were sitting in Pete and Coralâs flat. We had been talking for several hours when reference was made to a quasi-religious organisation which had a centre in the city, members of which were periodically to be seen touting on street corners for people to come and take one of their free âpersonality testsâ. I had once done so as a reporting assignment for the newspaper, without of course revealing my identity. The experience had been exactly what I expected: a questionnaire which asked ill-disguised leading questions; a bookshop in which one was pressed to buy as one waited for the results of the âtestâ; a âdiagnosisâ from the questionnaire which indicated that one should take a course at the centre in order to improve the quality of oneâs life. I went home and wrote a smug article on this money-oriented, fake-psychology-peddling cult. It was the same article the British press had been serving up for years. In a corner of my mind I was a little ashamed. It was too easy. There must be more to them than that.
And yet when the organisation was mentioned that evening two years later I dropped instantly into the same position of ridicule and dismissed them as charlatans. Simon looked at me with faint surprise.
âIâve been to their centre and talked to them,â he said. âThey struck me as very energetic young people who would like to make the world a better place. Their eyes are bright, as if they have come through a difficult experience.â
I looked at the floor and blushed. It was true, but I had chosen not to see it. Their eyes had been bright. Not as bright as Simonâs, but bright enough. Whether it was the glitter of delusion or the light of truth how could I tell, when I had not troubled to find out the first thing about them?
Simon then proceeded to talk about them, or rather about the idea on which their theory of psychology was based. Theirfounder had discovered, he said, that in all human beings there existed a time-track on which was recorded everything that had ever happened to that person. It was analogous to the databanks of a computer. All past experience was stored on the track, and all of it was accessible to consciousness, though sometimes only with difficulty. To regain an incident from the past all one had to do was command the mind to âgo backâ to the incident and let it replay itself, which it would do with absolute fidelity. It was a process quite different from remembering; it was something everybody could do, and few knew about.
On most peopleâs time-track there were gaps, said Simon. These occurred where the person had been unconscious, or when the incident was so painful, mentally or physically, that the mind had apparently obliterated it. Nevertheless these incidents were recorded, but they were stored in
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