The Programme

CHAPTER FIVE-1

CHAPTER FIVE“I feel humble,” Matthew beamed. “No, truly,” he joined in the wave of friendly laughter as it ran around the packed Meditation Hall. “I look around and see so very many friends; my family, my very own family. And, like other families, there comes a time when some of the children grow up and want to leave home, to follow education, career, a relationship, or an inner drive to travel and to grow that has no greater identity.”

This was the last, grand, public convocation. Almost everyone who had any connection with The Programme - whether formally admitted as an Acolyte or not, all the way to The Teacher and The Seer - was present, excepting only those in the States and the handful who remained on Coffee Lounge and reception duty.

It was billed as a Midnight Meditation, the public version of their private Midnight Masses. Anyone could attend a Meditation; it was one of their income-generating activities - a charge of two pounds was made but many people paid more voluntarily - and one of the events from which recruits could be culled. Normally, there would be from five to fifteen who could be identified as outsiders - casual visitors to the Coffee Lounge or friends of regulars - or who were still on the fringe, the Hall otherwise filled with resident Initiates and Junior Messengers.

The Hall occupied the massive front-room of the house. It was where parties would once have been held, or dinners: these had been the town-houses of the very rich; they could not replicate their country homes with separate dining rooms and living rooms each large enough to hold a weekend party of twenty guests and more, but they all had one grand room which could be turned to either use. Later, occupied by diplomatic missions or international corporations, they would be used for formal receptions.

This one was fifteen feet high, thirty-five feet across the whole frontage of the house, twenty feet deep; the walls were interspersed with alcoves which once had housed statues and which The Programme members had decorated with murals. The original chandeliers had been swathed in translucent, ballooning silk which cast two orbs of gentle, glowing red like moons in the sky against the dancing multi-colours of the ceiling. The floor was parquéd; the windows had been double-glazed and were hung with thick drapes to ensure that neither sound nor light filtered onto the street.

For some weeks, the date had been announced: on posters and in the Coffee Lounge, on display advertisements in the most recent magazine, and on flyers stuffed into the booklets they sold in the street, left on Coffee Lounge tables and ostentatiously piled alongside the reading material for sale in the basement foyer.

The materials all bore both the symbol of The Programme and the familiar, Christ-like portrait of Matthew, together with a shadowy black-and-white photograph of Cassandra, deliberately out of focus, in profile, gazing into the distance, above the proud announcement that both The Teacher and The Seer would be in attendance and would conduct portions of the Midnight Meditation. This was to be the ultimate Meditation in Growth: The Programme was expanding, opening a Chapter in America; it was the last opportunity to share with all of its members the experience that had assembled into a movement.

The presence of The Teacher would have been enough to guarantee an audience larger than usual; with the added attraction of The Seer and the knowledge that this was some kind of last chance, the resident membership had rightly anticipated the largest gathering of all time. There were nearly a hundred and fifty people crammed into the Hall. By the time Matthew and Cassandra arrived in their flowing robes, heralded by Superiors, followed by Senior Messengers, there was barely room for a corridor through which they could reach their stage. The room was a sea of white: even the unadmitted had sought to wear white for the occasion; even The Seer.

Pressed against a wall, straining to contain her panic - near claustrophobia - at the crowd, Carey, personally invited by Matthew to attend The Programme at its most complete, had also chosen clothing that was predominantly white.

As she just managed to watch Matthew make his way to the other end of the Hall, she struggled not to be overtaken by her confusion. She was not a member of The Programme. On the other hand, she had started to spend a lot of her evenings at Chesterfield Gardens, some of them in the Coffee Lounge, some of them in one of the private rooms talking with Matthew. She would no longer describe herself as a sceptic; whatever The Programme was, it brought comfort and peace to what seemed like - as this gathering proved - a large number of people, none of whom had yet struck her as reluctant members, oppressed, trapped or tricked into membership.

She had gone back to the Coffee Lounge after the first time on impulse. She did not ask for Matthew and if he was in the building, either no one told him she was around or else he did not want to see her. Despite this, she enjoyed herself, found it easy to strike up conversations with other visitors, junior members. There was little small talk; complete strangers slipped into inner feelings and fears, emotional experiences, tales of parental and like traumæ. Occasionally, a member would draw the discussion intoProgramme-speak: this person was acting out an authoritarian impulse, believed he was a chieftain in the Cabal, a guardian of nations; that one was in a phase they called cherubic, personification of goodness; Sister Rebecca was a nun and Sister Meredith - Merry - a social worker; Father Caleb was only ever mentioned in a whisper, Satan himself.

At times, she felt patronised: some people assumed an aura of seniority, even amongst those who were not members, offering explanations and acting with excessive familiarity. They were students or artists or straightforward drop-outs. She admitted her own occupation only reluctantly, with a nervous laugh: it felt totally out of place in the casual, formless atmosphere of the Coffee Lounge where people came to explore and to find themselves, not to boast of what they had already become.

When she told him, on one of her visits, Matthew told her:

“It’s their embarrassment, not yours. They don’t like the idea there are people around The Programme who have already achieved so much more than they have; it’s straightforward competitiveness.”

“I would have thought,” she said lamely, meaning she would have thought they were beyond such petty resentment.

“It goes; in time, it goes. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that what everyone does in The Programme is the same. We try to value it equally; but for most people it’s a struggle.”

“Isn’t it a cause of, well, dissension, tension?”

“Sure, but it’s what is. We work with it; use it; treat it creatively. Anyway, it’s not for you.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, flustered.

“I don’t see you serving customers in the Coffee Lounge.”

Nor did she.

She continued to visit in the evenings or at the weekend, and drink coffee or tea or one of their marvellous concoctions. Sometimes, instead of the legal journals she used to read in bed last thing at night, she would read one of The Programme publications, torn between cynicism and a gnawing sense that Matthew had it just about right, that his descriptions of how people functioned and what they represented fit too many she could recognise - herself included - to be brushed aside as coincidental.

From Programme and Progression:

All thought-systems - religious or rationalist - are trying to provide us with the complete understanding of life and of ourselves, not “a” complete understanding, but “the”: yet all of them complete the comprehension by reliance on mystery, the inexplicable or that which simply has not yet been resolved. indeed, some can be said to base comprehension itself on the inexplicability of life, called anything from soul to human spirit.

Nothing and no one exists in a precise fit to a pre-existing model - whether it is of a religious persona, a philosophical approach or a psychological type: no approach claims otherwise. None the less, each model purports to provide and to prescribe a method for comprehending life - on earth alone, or on earth and beyond. Ultimately, each is unsatisfactory because there will always be experiences which do not and cannot be made to fit in anywhere.

This is the best way to imagine The Programme’s view of life. Think of a globe, made up of billions of tiny strands, each a complete circle in itself, each constantly revolving so fast it is barely discernible to the eye. When a religious analysis is inappropriate, a strand of philosophy or psychology comes around. Types only exist in transience, as strands in common for a moment in time. That which defines a person - or an experience - is the peculiar complex of strands of the moment. Beneath the surface, though, there are hidden strands, and hidden combinations, and - always - a new combination about to emerge.

The essence of The Programme as a thought-system is awareness of the constant change in ourselves and in one another, of the way we are comprised of numerous, contradictory, apparently irreconcilable aspects; not different parts performing different functions, but all with an equal claim to our names even if, at different times, some are ascendant and others in abeyance. Where we believe we differ from others is in this: we do not seek to pin each other - and events - down for once and all in order to complete the jigsaw; our comprehension is based on movement, dynamism, change.

We do not believe that there is a single theory within which we can understand and analyse life and so we do not believe we should try. Comprehension comes from within; comprehension changes as we change; we set our minds to follow and flow with the changes; we accept that there is a comprehensive whole - but we reject that it is something that can be reduced to words or thoughts or ideas; they are themselves a part of the whole therefore they cannot (wholly) comprehend it. (The room from within). We can only be it.

The Programme as an organisation seeks to do just this: to be a cradle in which people can gather together, microcosmically, to be - to be in order to comprehend, macrocosmically. We believe that one day, perhaps for just one moment, all of the aspects of life will come into perfect harmony, the perfect expression of the energy with which it all begins and ends; one moment it will be as far away as now; then a tiny - perhaps barely discernible - step, and it will be back in perfect order. When it happens, it will be done.

Hence: I am one; we are many; together we shall be whole.

Matthew said:

“I am one.”

“We are many,” the congregation replied, Carey amongst them.

Matthew said, beaming, almost laughing, rumbling from within:

“I feel humble.”

Carey joined in the amused reaction. Humble was not a word one applied to The Teacher: both humility and arrogance were superfluous, he had told her; just be what you are, and do what you do; don’t explain, don’t excuse; how others respond is their own choice, for which you are not responsible.

“Ten or so years ago, when what we call The Programme began, I don’t think any of us who were privileged to be a part of it would have suspected that we could find ourselves in an assembly such as this; nor would we have expected to be on the verge of such a giant adventure as opening a new Chapter across the Atlantic, expanding our range a thousand times over, opening the way to undreamed of dimensions, unheard ideas.

“People sometimes ask me why I’m always a bit vague about when The Programme started. Perhaps they think I have something to hide. It’s much easier than that. I do not say because I do not know. I am not even sure that it is correct to refer to The Programme as starting, because that implies there was something separate before it or that something separate may come after it. That is why I prefer to talk about what we call The Programme - meaning our group, our organisation, our space, our home, our way - as distinct from The Programme itself, which is all space, in every way, all that there is and that there can be, the ocean into which the river flows, and yet from which it sprang.