Let me first stress this fact. They have a complete knowledge of our past, and of our planned future. But it is not in order for any advantage to be taken of this. They gave us the reason something after this wise: "If a student is learning to paint, his master will stand behind him and watch his efforts with interest and sympathy. He will probably go so far as to offer advice which the student is at liberty to accept or ignore. One thing the master may not do, is to take the brush from the painter's hand, for then no lesson is learnt, and the picture is not the work of the student."

     That is reasonable and most of us accepted it without question. The Doctor was slightly rebellious, or adopted a half­humorous half­serious attitude of rebellion. I think he really did have some difficulty in accepting the fact that, when he had some important and difficult decision to make, he could not put it to them and say: "That's my present problem. I am very concerned to do the right thing. What do I do?" He was never very serious about this attitude. He came of an argumentative family, and was not averse to making a case of either side of an argument, whatever his own opinions were, to provoke discussion and thought.

     However that may be, we neither sought nor received direct guidance on our personal affairs.

     I made one exception to this, which was permitted. It was in the early days of the Circle. I had recently joined it, and was impressed with the importance, or the possible importance, of the work into which we had apparently blundered. I was in doubt whether to put my trade or this work first. It was clear that my trade was unlikely to permit me either the leisure, or the geographical opportunity, to assist the work to any extent.

     I was unwilling to put the question to Kath, because I felt she might have difficulty in preventing her own feelings from obtruding and influencing the answer one way or the other. So I wrote her and told her that I had asked an important question of them and would be very grateful if she would attempt to find the answer. I gave her no further clue, nor had I given any hint to her, or any other person at any time, as to what was on my mind. She made the attempt. After very considerable difficulty she achieved an answer, and she wrote back to me to say that the words she had found were: "Do not alter course." Did that answer my question? It did.

     My first point is, then, that although we were in close and constant touch with beings who had a very wide knowledge of the past and future, that was not at our disposal.

     I think it is true to say that overall our Circle had little apparent external effect upon the lives of those who belonged to it, except perhaps in the case of Kath. We went on much as before. Undoubtedly there was a marked inward effect, but it is difficult to describe this, the effect of a reasoned certainty that this is a universe in which all is ordered and planned, and nothing is accidental and nothing unforeseen, together with the certainty of a continuous personal existence.

     I have never been religious. At most I have been thoughtful about religion. I have not the ability to take anything on trust. Any concept must either appeal to my reason or satisfy my intuitive sense before I will accept it. I don't think I have the gift of faith, certainly not if faith is the ability to believe the demonstrably untrue.

     The Teaching is not a religion. It is broadly in accord with Christian principles and teaching, though it does not deal with ethics except by inference. It is certainly possible to be a Christian and believe the tenets of the Teaching; in fact one cannot accept the Teaching unless one is a Christian. The Teaching does however slough off the hard shell of dogma and ceremony with which the many churches of the various sects of Christianity have surrounded the Life and Teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. I am sure that one cannot be a Roman Catholic and accept the tenets of the Teaching; I doubt if one can as a good Anglican. But if being a Christian can be defined as believing in the Divinity of Christ and attempting to follow His Teaching contained in the Gospels, without the added trappings of the past two thousand years, then those of us who also believe that our Teaching is an aspect of Truth, are Christians by that definition.

     The Teaching is not fatalistic. It does not encourage us to sit back and fold our hands and say "God's Will be done!" The fact that everything is planned does not mean that everything will happen as planned. By no means. This is a very important difference between our Teaching and the doctrine of predetermination, or fatalism. We believe that our lives are planned by intelligent beings in accordance with the Will. We believe that those whose work is this planning, have knowledge of the probable future, but not the certain future. There is no such thing as a certain future for the events of the material world which are dependent upon the free­willingness of the actors in the drama. It may be that a catastrophic earthquake can be foretold with certainty because it is entirely independent of the will or actions of any living person. Also trends or events which depend upon the decisions of a great number of people can probably be foretold with a high degree of certainty on account of the mathematical laws of probability. But whether I shall leave this room by the back stairs or the front staircase when I go down to have tea is not yet decided, and the decision is entirely my own. There may be a very strong probability of choice in one direction or the other, and there may be a possibility of external influence being exerted of which I am not conscious, but the choice is and remains mine.

     We are masters of our fate and we are encouraged to be up and doing. We are told that the sins of omission, the lost opportunities, are far more frequent, and may be much worse and more difficult to set right, than the sins of commission. A sin of commission is something positive, which may be tackled, but the inaction of a lost opportunity is a negative quantity, and something which cannot be grasped and rectified. Inaction leads to apathy, the greatest danger that imperils our continued progress.

     Everything is planned and the planning is not final. With each human failure to follow the plan made for us, there must be readjustment and a new plan. The new may not be as good as the original, but it will attempt to salvage something, and to give further opportunity to achieve the essentials of the original plan. And as all our actions have their wide reactions upon the lives of others, a failure on the part of one may have wide repercussions on the plans for others, all of which will have to be readjusted to meet the new conditions.

     We are assured that even death by accident is not accidental. The circumstances leading up to the event which causes the death can be foreseen and are permitted, or even arranged, if it is time for the victim to go Home.

     A certainty of a planned existence, directed by benevolent intelligences with an infinitely wider horizon than our own and with knowledge of all the past and the intended future, should engender a serene outlook on life.

     The knowledge that we have seen and accepted the Pattern of life to be lived, before we are born on earth to lead it, should give us strength to put up with the hard knocks which we may receive in this life.

     The knowledge that all lives, and all deaths, are planned and the knowledge that life is continuous, and that death is merely a change in the conditions of living which we have undergone many times before, all these should beget a sensible, mature and well­balanced outlook on life and death, and a desire to press on cheerfully whatsoever may happen.

     The certainty that this is not the only life we shall lead on earth but only one of many lives, each planned to allow us to make some necessary progress, should make us glad to lead this life for its own sake. We should not feel the desire to get as much pleasure out of it as we can possibly achieve, nor should we feel envy of others who are more successful or better equipped with talents, or worldly possessions. We may have had our turn, or perhaps our turn will come. We should try to lead our life as fully as possible, taking advantage of every opportunity, and using every talent we possess and we should not feel hardly used and complain at the injustice of life when things do not turn out as we had hoped.

     The knowledge that death when it comes to us is planned, and is merely a transition to a continuing and familiar, though forgotten, state of existence, should give us complete courage to face it. Moreover we should be better able to face bereavement which should only contain the sadness of the temporary separation from the one who has gone Home first.

     These are some of the effects which an acceptance of the Teaching should have upon its adherents, and will have to a greater or lesser degree. But the old Adam is strong in all of us. There is a very active and forward part of each one of us which belongs to this material earth, and which remains under the marble headstone when the living part of us moves along elsewhere. That part does not regard its dissolution with equanimity in most of us, and makes itself felt when we try to think and behave as if it did not exist.