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Patricia's Story |
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| The text was copied from the book "16 Steps by Harris Smart" which was published in 1988 and is out of print. Harris is currently researching material for another book which is due to be published shortly. Information on this will be posted from these pages and listed on the literature page as soon as it becomes available. | ||
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I was born and educated in England. I was a nurse during the war and then I did various jobs. I was a governess to a diplomatic family. I went and taught in South America. Then I went to the States and taught in a nursery school in San Francisco. I came back to England and met my husband who was from South Africa. He'd left there because he hated racism. I had a good life, an interesting life, but I knew there was something missing. Then my husband gave me a book by Ouspensky about Gurdjieff. That was the missing link. We started to study Gurdjieff together at Coombe Springs, a centre to the west of London which had been created by a scientist called John Bennett. When Subud came in 1957, we didn't know what it was, but we were told we could put our names down to be opened. We waited from five in the afternoon and, if you were lucky, you got opened or had a latihan at twelve that night. There were so many, 400 or 500 people. People used to come down from Manchester and Edinburgh, 400 miles away to do the latihan, catching the one a.m. train home. My husband was opened first and he told me that all that happened to him was that he dropped to the floor. We were told to go into a room and take off our shoes. Ibu, Bapak's wife, was there and she said: "There are many religions, but only one God." My antennae pricked up at this. God? What's this all about? What's He got to do with it? I don't believe in God. I'm getting out of here quick smart. But suddenly my arms shot into the air and I screamed and I thought, "Oh I'm being hypnotized." I opened my eyes and saw that everyone was doing something different. I thought that two people can't possibly hypnotize sixty people to do something different. Then something else started to happen. My legs started moving and I thought, this is a queer lot, I think I'll stay just to experience it. I stayed simply because I was inquisitive. It was not until twelve years after that I could use the word "God".
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