MONTHLY LECTURE(S)

 Greetings, my dearest friends. Blessings for every one of you. Blessed be this hour!  May all of you again derive benefit from these words, even though the real understanding often comes only later, when you reach within yourself those levels to which the contents of a particular lecture apply.

When you find your corresponding inner conflicts, then these lectures really make sense. Sometimes this happens only years after you have heard or read a lecture. But when it does happen, you reach an entirely new understanding. You then grasp the difference between intellectual and emotional understanding.

For my new friends, this lecture will not be easy to follow, for the very reason just mentioned. Even those who already pursue this path are not always able to really understand the material. How much more difficult then is it for someone who is not involved in self-exploration. Even intellectual understanding is not possible if you are unfamiliar with the talks leading up to this one. Still, you might feel a deep inner echo from some thought advanced here, which might sooner or later help bring you to this path of liberation. A seed may be sown that will come to fruition later on.

And now, my friends, I wish to discuss a topic I have not gone into before, identification with oneself, as opposed to identification with others. Last time I talked about humanity’s relationship to time. I said, in essence, that very rarely do people live in the now. They push into the future. They pull back into the past. Often these two contradictory movements happen simultaneously. In both alternatives, you strain away from the now.

Only when you live in the now do you live in reality. You cannot live in reality when you strain into the future, because such a future may never come to pass in exactly the way you hope, imagine, or fear it. But let us suppose, theoretically, that it were possible to imagine the future exactly as it will be — which, of course, can never be the case. Even then, you would still be living in illusion, because the outcome does not happen at the moment you think of it. Therefore you do not experience the future in reality, but only in fantasy.

Likewise, if you pull backward, into the past, even if you try to relive it exactly the way it was — if this were possible, which again it is not — you would still be living an illusion, because that moment of your recollection is a new segment of time. You react in fantasy, live in fantasy, and not in the reality of the now. One of the characteristics of reality is its constant state of flux; it is not static.

Needless to say, you cannot exactly duplicate the past, any more than you can imagine a future and live it. Your own subjective colorings, stemming from your desires and fears, distort reality, blind you to factors that existed or will exist, including changes in your own state of mind and feelings, even though you deliberately try to deny them and thus stunt growth — in order to live your fantasy. You are afraid to allow the natural flux of time to become part of your soul because of your misconceptions.

If you could trust the flux of time, the benign quality of its movement and the growth it can foster, you could allow yourself to bring your inner faculties in harmony with it. You would then not need to manipulate time by holding it back or pushing it forward. You would not need to fear, or wish for fulfillment in the future. Nor would you have to reach back into the past for fulfillment. This, after all, happens only because you do not trust the future; you do not trust yourself to live the now when the future comes.

This distrust is often partly justified, because your destructive, unrealistic concepts and attitudes prevent fulfillment in the now. But by either pulling back into the past or pushing forward into the future you seek the wrong remedy for these obstructions. You seek an easy way out rather than tackling whatever prevents you from living as fully as you are meant to.

In order to live in the now, in reality, you have to have a keen sense of your own reality. All too often you lack this. In fact, most people do not experience themselves in reality. This happens mostly through a subtle process. It can rarely be pinpointed or proven, except in very advanced states. Most of you are probably convinced that you do have a sense of your own reality; however, upon closer examination of certain symptoms, you will eventually find that you do not. Discovery is always the first step toward eliminating a destructive condition.

All my friends have gone through similar experiences before. Outwardly and consciously nothing seemed to indicate that anything was amiss. You were convinced all was well with you in a given respect. Only after closer inspection did you find, deeply hidden, the very opposite to be true. You then understood how this hidden distortion destroyed so many possibilities for fully living, for happiness and meaning.

Finding what is can never harm you. It is not seeing what actually is that harms you!  You will eventually discover this.

Before I talk further about self-identification, I would like to describe a few symptoms by which you may begin to detect the lack of living in the now and therefore feeling real. The crassest symptom is not feeling that your own death is a reality. To experience oneself as mortal is not negative or morbid, as is commonly believed. A realistic sense of one’s own mortality is never a burden. It is never depressing or fear-producing. It never diminishes the now, nor the reality of living, regardless of what beliefs one holds about the afterlife. Quite the opposite. Those who never experience the reality of their mortality are morbidly afraid of death. For if you do not feel your mortality as real, you cannot possibly feel your aliveness as real.

There are, of course, many other less extreme symptoms that indicate your lack of self-identification. For instance, in a fleeting moment you may discover that how your thoughts, feelings, or words in a conversation appear is more important than what they actually are. The distinction is not easily drawn because it is subtle, but once you discover it, it stands out and is bound to show you the vital difference between identification with self and with others; between experiencing yourself as real and not. Even the most vital feelings, thoughts, and inner experiences are often shifted this way, to obtain an effect, an impression on others.

Or you may discover, in a fleeting and vague way, that your attitude about your actions, thoughts, and feelings is governed by the idea of, “If only others could see me act, think, and feel this way.”  In such a moment of discovery, you will detect that you shift your sense of identity from yourself to others. Therefore your sense of your own reality becomes dependent on others. You live through others.

Now, please, my friends, I do not want to be misunderstood. I do not want you to believe that when I mention these symptoms, I reprimand you, that you are invited to change quickly. As with any other inner distortion we have been concerned with on this path, trying forcefully and deliberately to eliminate it will only make the condition worse because you would then identify with me, instead of with yourself. You merely obey another authority. You have merely shifted your identification.

Rather than immediately trying to correct what you observe, greet it as a symptom that will lead you, like a well-marked road, into deeper understanding and awareness of yourself.

And now we will approach the topic of identification more directly. To a degree, your present-day psychology has, of course, addressed this subject, but I wish to go into it a little deeper.

When the infant is born and grows into a child, its ego is still so weak that it cannot sustain itself. As we have discussed in other contexts, the child is dependent on the more powerful adult world. Everyone understands this dependency. Children are dependent for nourishment, for protection against danger, for shelter.

But the subtle bodies have their own life, which functions according to laws similar to the physical laws. The child is dependent not only for its physical existence, but also for its emotional, intellectual, and spiritual existence. Children need love as much as they need food. They cannot obtain either solely from the fruits of their own resources.

Mature adults do not wait helplessly to be loved, however. Love comes to them by their own capacity for loving and relating. They never feel insecure and helpless because they do not have love. Whenever you find such insecurity in yourself, you now know that it indicates emotional immaturity. Love is an essential ingredient in life. But the weak ego of the child is in reality dependent. The mature adult is no more dependent on others for love than for physical subsistence.

Similarly, children are not capable of forming their own ideas. They cannot discriminate between reason, common sense, logic, and their opposites. They depend on being supplied with the ideas and principles that serve as guideposts to growing up. To deny children such guideposts would not promote independence. On the contrary, if you let children starve, they do not become better equipped to cope with the struggle for existence. If you do not give children love, they do not become better able to love. Just the opposite is true. Only when children grow, provided this growth occurs organically, will they gradually cut the ties to the parents by standing on their own feet financially; by developing their capacity to love so they do not depend on love being given to them; by discriminating among the ideas they have learned and discarding what they cannot accept, or perhaps returning to the same ideas after discovering them by themselves.

This process establishes soul and spirit. The bond of dependency on parental authority is cut. The healthy spirit will cut this bond, even if the parents do not encourage such severance, but possessively try to hold it intact.

Yet the spirit, or soul, that is burdened with unresolved problems will not desire to cut this bond, but instead will do its best to maintain it, often in precarious, hidden, and distorted ways. Unfortunately, emotional independence is often misunderstood as isolation, whereas withdrawal from involvement while frantically holding onto dependency is interpreted as the ability to love. If you ponder the above, you cannot fail to see that the very opposite is true. Mature people stand, outwardly and inwardly, on their own two feet, and this stance allows for the mutual exchange in relationships.

Beneath the inner and unconscious refusal to cut ties with protective authority lies identification with such authority. Children need a good example from which to mold their ego, which later affords the possibility to stand free. But if the good example serves only to perpetuate the identification, and thereby prevent self-identification, the original purpose has been misconstrued. In this case, children want to become the parent with whom they favorably identify and later try to be that parent, rather than find and be themselves.

It is important to understand that such identification may not be at all obvious on the surface. It is also necessary to look for negative identities. In other words, a parent whom one hates and certainly does not want to emulate, can, on an unconscious level, also be identified with. In one’s very fear of ever being like this parent, coupled with suspicion that one might be, is an embedded identification with perhaps a vague sense that this parent may be better off despite unlovable traits. In short, this entire preoccupation, though very often unconscious, may be a negative identification. The tie to the undesirable parent may be even more difficult to sever than the tie to a cherished parent. It is very important to understand this, my friends.

For the child, positive identification is desirable. For an adult, a positive identification is often as undesirable as a negative one because both prevent the evolution of the self.

I would warn you against trying to adjudge or evaluate how you identify with others merely with your intellect. This may be very misleading. Only extensive work on this subject will reveal the truth. You may consciously admire and wish to emulate one parent and despise the other. Yet, in the course of this work, many of you have found that you have attitudes and behavior patterns similar to those of the despised parent. This often came as a shock. But such insights indicate that you identify with the very parent you least wish to be like. So beware of quick judgments.

You unconsciously substitute others for your parents, who were the original objects of identification. Often such substitution not only occurs among individuals, but also among national, religious, and political groups. In this psychological distortion, even minority groups, rebelling against the majority, can serve individuals as means to identify with. Conformity is a consequence of the need to identify with someone more powerful. Conforming can occur under the guise of nonconformity, especially if such individualism is very strained and too great a point is made of it. So often, a rebellious minority believes they are free, and, according to all appearances, they defy conformity. But whenever the stringent need to prove something exists, one can certainly find a flaw underneath.

Truly independent, free individuals do not have to make a show of it. They do not have to be militant about it. So, a rebellious nonconforming minority may very well serve as a substitute authority to identify oneself with.

People may also identify with causes. No matter how good the cause itself may be, if it serves as a substitute for self-identification, there is harm. The harm is not in your embracing this worthy cause, believing in it and working for it — all this could very well be done with inner freedom — but in your need to substitute something other than yourself to lean on because you have not found where within yourself you are still as weak as a child. As long as you have not understood your hidden motivation for embracing the cause you are still compelled to identify with an outer authority.

I do not advocate a life in which you separate yourself from all ideas, groups, loyalties, and causes. This would be isolation, and even irresponsible toward society. But there is a great difference, my friends, between embracing a cause out of a healthy conviction and inner freedom, gaining sustenance from your inner resources, and using worthy causes to replace the well that exists within you, waiting to be tapped.

The extreme form of identification with others because of a weak ego is conformity to public opinion, parroting the views of others. This condition exists in almost every human being, in one form or another, only in a subtle way that is difficult to detect. That certainly does not mean that it is not important to find it and grow out of it.

Some time ago I lectured on self-alienation. Needless to say, there is a connection between that topic and the one we are discussing, although they are not the same. Self-alienation comes from the failure of identification with the self. In other words, self-alienation is an effect, while self-identification is a cause. Whenever you find an emotional dependency on others, you can be sure that you have, in some respect, failed to establish your selfhood. Whenever you feel a vague fear that others do not supply you with what you need and expect of them — be it financial help, approval, love, or acceptance — whenever anxiety indicates that you are dealing with more than the natural need for human interdependence, which never causes anxiety or other negative emotions, you might very well visualize a need for receiving your inner lifeblood from sources outside yourself. That such a state of affairs is not natural or necessary hardly needs to be emphasized, once you see it clearly. From this insight it follows that you can change; that you do not have to live in such useless dependency, which weakens rather than strengthens you.

Do not overlook your rebellion against the need of being accepted or agreed with. You know from past experience that behind such rebellion you very often find a stringent need for the very thing you rebel against.

When the emotional and spiritual umbilical cord has not been cut, the self cannot possibly grow. It can grow to only a very limited degree, as the baby in the mother’s womb can grow to only a certain point. In order to effect further growth, the baby has to evolve; the umbilical cord has to be cut. Only then is further physical growth possible.

The process is no different for the inner personality. When the inner umbilical cord is not cut, you are, in the truest sense, dependent on others for your right to exist. All the psychological aspects of appeasing, betraying, and self-alienation simply indicate that you have not yet been able — at least in certain areas — to identify with yourself. Therefore you have no sense of your own reality, and cannot experience each living moment in its fullness.

Wherever such lack of selfhood, such dependency on others exists, you are bound to find that you try to use others. Since you condemn yourself to living a parasitic life, you cannot help using those on whom you depend. In this hidden using, the distortion of your imagined “love” can be found. You pretend love when you merely need and have to use because without such manipulations you feel yourself sinking. You feel you have no reality other than the reality accorded to you by others.

The more you use those whom you need, the weaker you become; and, therefore, the more do you believe that you need others to strengthen you.

Living in the now is living in the wave of time. In your dimension, time flows in a certain rhythm. This movement can be determined by the seasons, by day and night, by the positions of the planets constantly orbiting through space. Their movements create rhythmic waves. Over the centuries, humanity has sensed to a tiny degree certain laws of the rhythmic movement of time, for example in astrology. Yet only very limited understanding has been gained here. But everyone knows and often even expresses this sense in terms of having good or bad times. Whatever one undertakes during good times has good results. One feels freer than usual, in spite of problematic conditions. One has a hopeful outlook, and fulfillment comes at least to a degree. And then there are times on the downward curve of the wave when everything seems to go wrong. Those who persevere with a wholehearted desire to look at themselves in truth will, sooner or later, come to these so-called bad times. They are actually manifestations of the disharmony people have created in their relationship to time. When these times yield victory and understanding, you will no longer experience the rhythmic downward curve as depressing, upsetting, or disadvantageous. For each living moment, fully experienced in the reality of the now, will then yield adventure, peaceful, harmonious excitement, worthwhile vital living.

But this cannot happen unless you first learn to understand and evaluate your negativity and thus your bad times. Then you will be in harmony with your time dimension. Then you will experience yourself in reality. This peace, this inner anchor, cannot be described in words. It cannot possibly be replaced with any other goal.

There are riches contained in each individual soul. They are yours for the asking. It is often sad for us to notice how people turn in the wrong direction to seek the fulfillment they vaguely sense to exist. For only when you have tapped your inner wealth will you stop straining away from the now and cease to be estranged from yourself. You will not derive this sustenance from other sources. As long as you remain dependent on a foreign life source, you have to resort to all sorts of tactics that weaken your real self even more.

It is so important to understand inwardly what I explained to you about using others. Do not apply my words only to the extreme outer manifestation of using others; try to see it in its more subtle version in which you have to use others since your life seems to depend on them. You conclude therefore that you need to be in control. So many of my friends have begun to see in themselves this strong tendency to need control. Each individual resorts to different means to exert control. Now each one of you has to find how this applies to you; what your particular means are; how you fear losing control; how you destroy relationships through a mutual battle for control, each one acting as though it were a fight for survival; how you distort issues in this unrealistic fight for survival; how you spoil the growth of mutuality and fulfillment. The need for control causes you to manipulate others, yourself, and your vital natural feelings. By this very process the self cannot evolve strongly, freely, and independently.

Wherever you find a stringent need to be in control — of others, of a situation, of a relationship — you have a direct clue to your nonidentification with yourself. If you look at this tendency from the point of view discussed here, if you use these little clues as points of departure, understanding the harm of inner stunting, you will certainly come to the nucleus of your deliberate self-denial, which causes so much unnecessary hardship. You will then be able to go about bringing your real self out. This will be easier than finding the negative conditions has been. But first, you have to be fully aware of your parasitic clinging to others, of identifying with others and depending on them in one way or another. You will see the ties you have so far refused to cut and consequently could not establish what their roots are within yourself. Once you find these roots, it will be comparatively easy to cut the ties and become yourself.

And now, my friends, you have a few weeks to ponder this lecture. Since you will have an opportunity to ask questions pertaining to each lecture at the discussions, we will now deal with questions that have no bearing on this lecture.

QUESTION:  Will you kindly explain the phenomenon of sleep?

ANSWER:  Your subtle bodies need to shed the burden of the physical body, of gross physical matter. You could not sustain a lifetime without this rest. Physical matter is a burden to the real personality. I mean that literally. You need a respite from this burden in a different dimension where you can move and be free. In this other, wider, freer dimension there is relaxation and a gathering of strength. This is essentially the main reason for sleep. To free oneself of gross matter and to move into a wider dimension actually restores the physical organs through the psychic bloodstream, which is regenerated during sleep. The psychic, or subtle bodies are always the cause; the physical body is the effect.

With great love I now leave you, blessing each one of you. This blessing contains a great strength; a substance that can bring truth and regeneration to your soul, so as to find the necessary stamina and will to establish yourself in yourself.

Be in peace. Be in God!

Greetings, my dearest friends. Blessings, again, for each and every one of you, for every step, for every effort you undertake on your road to liberation.

In this lecture I will bring together much that we discussed recently. You will easily see the connections. But first, as a preface, let us take a look at the meaning of pain and its real cause. Pain is the result of conflict. It occurs when two opposite directions exist in a personality. The direction of the universal creative forces is toward light, life, growth, unfoldment, affirmation, beauty, love, inclusion, union, pleasure supreme. Whenever this direction is counteracted by another, a disturbance is created. It is not the disturbance itself that creates the pain, but the imbalance and a special sort of tension caused by the opposite direction. This is what causes the suffering. It is very important to understand this, my friends, in order to follow the rest of this lecture.

The principle I explain here holds true on all levels. It is indeed ascertainable on the physical level. The physical system, like all other systems or planes, also strives toward wholeness and health. When a disturbing force pulls in an opposite direction, the pull of the two directions creates the pain. You can tell that this is what actually causes the pain because when the struggle is given up and the individual lets go and gives in to the pain, the pain stops. Many people have verified the truth of this principle. The moment that the struggle between two opposite pulls is relinquished and the existence of the negative direction is accepted, pain must cease.

When the disturbance is fought against ineffectively, and the personality wants health, it negates that it also wants non-health. Since the striving for non-health is repressed and ignored, the struggle toward health becomes all the more tense. That is the origin of pain. If the personality were conscious of wanting non-health as well as health, the struggle would cease instantly, for the former wish cannot be maintained; only the latter can. It is the unconsciousness that creates a gap between cause and effect. The cause is the negative wish; the effect, the disturbance in the system. The two pulls continue and pain comes into being.

But when this process is fully understood, and the temporary, still unavoidable consequences of the negative wish are accepted, one can let oneself go into this now existing pain, and the pain must cease. This is not necessarily a destructive way of embracing pain, or a masochistic, self-punishing element that in itself harbors and perpetuates a negative wish. It is a full acceptance of what is — with that, pain ceases. It is the principle, for instance, of painless birth. It is the principle of non-struggle. It is the principle that Jesus Christ explained when he said, “resist not evil.”

When the struggle is too fierce on all levels, death sets in. Death may also be a result of having given up the struggle. This applies to the physical plane, of course. Therefore, physical pain ceases when tension ceases — and this happens in death.

On the mental and emotional planes, something similar exists. When the struggle is fully understood and accepted as a temporary manifestation, as an effect — accepted as such without finality, and yet with awareness of the rightness of these consequences — the mental or emotional pain ceases. This does not happen when the negative is wanted, for as we have seen, this wanting merely creates the new direction, contrary to the original, positive one. Nor does this happen by forfeiting the affirmative principle, but by understanding the now. Then mental and emotional pain cease, just as physical pain ceases when the opposite pull is abandoned. All this is verifiable and has been verified the world over. All of you who are on a path of self-realization have, at least occasionally, experienced this.

On the spiritual plane, my friends, it is different. For the spiritual plane is the cause, while all other planes or spheres of consciousness are effects. The spiritual plane is the origin of the positive direction. It does not, and cannot, contain a negative direction. The negative direction creates, and is created by, various attitudes incompatible with the origin of all life. The spiritual plane is unity itself, therefore conflict, opposing directions and, consequently, pain are unthinkable and illogical there.

People who are free from conflict and pain must be in unity. They can be in total unity only when they follow the unbroken line of the positive direction of their life forces. If it were possible for an individual to fully want the negative, pain too would cease. But this is not possible, for the real self is attuned to the real world of absolute constructiveness. This is the final reality, so it is nonsensical to even imagine that anyone could be in unity about any negative aim. Life, in its essential and profound character, cannot ever be negatively oriented. Negative orientation cannot be anything but a distortion. Since underneath the distortion the real continues to exist, it sends forth its effects, regardless of the overlays of distortion and the strength of the momentarily existing negative orientation. Since the human being and life are one, nobody can ever be fully negative. Whenever there is some negation in one’s makeup, tension and conflict must exist, and so must pain. The negative direction is opposed to life, and nonlife cannot ever be totally desired or even envisaged as being free of conflict, for it makes no sense.

It is very important to understand, my friends, that the negative can be desired only by one part of the personality, never by the whole of it. There will always be another part of the psyche that violently objects to the negative desire, so that pain must result. On the physical as well as the emotional and mental levels, it is possible temporarily to accept the negative as a passing stage, in the understanding that it is the effect of an inadvertent cause and a mere momentary disturbance. In this understanding and acceptance one ceases the struggle. One accepts the negative without finality and with an objective, non-indulgent attitude. But on the spiritual plane, which comprises the total being, total life, the origin of all, this is impossible. The total being cannot ever totally want the negative.

Pain and suffering are always the result of the pull on the personality by two tendencies which are the life and the anti-life directions. They can also be called the direction of love and the direction of hate, isolation and fear, or the positive and negative directions. The outer layers of personality must suffer as long as unity is not achieved. Unity exists exclusively in the full reality of the cosmic creative principle. It is exceedingly important, my friends, to understand what I am saying here, for this understanding must open new doors.

A number of my friends have crossed a major threshold on their path in the discovery and awareness of where they themselves desire the negative. Now this is an exceedingly important new phase. It makes all the difference for an individual to be or not to be aware of his negative desires. There are, of course, degrees of awareness. It is possible to be aware of them casually and fleetingly. It is possible to have gained one important insight into their existence but to dilute this awareness. The more the awareness of a deliberate desire for the negative exists, the more you will be in control of yourself, of life, and the less you will feel victimized, helpless, and weak.

When an entity is not aware of its deliberate desire for the negative, the suffering must be infinitely greater than any suffering or pain that can ensue when one is aware of having wanted it oneself. Lack of such awareness must create a psychic climate in which the individual feels singled out as a victim. It is inevitable to feel helpless when one lacks the awareness that the effect was self-created. Separation between cause and effect in one’s consciousness must create confusion, doubt, and hopelessness. The moment awareness of the negative desire has been attained through the painstaking struggle of this work, you at least know, my friends, what causes your outer difficulties and unwelcome situations. Even before you are capable of giving up the negative desires, because you do not yet understand the reason for their existence, merely knowing that you have created the undesirable manifestations in your life will render you a freer person.

Those of you who have made these initial inroads to awareness of the negative desires must be careful to extend this awareness and to link it with the unwelcome manifestations in your life. This essential step must not be overlooked. For it is indeed possible to be aware, to some extent at least, of a negative desire and nevertheless ignore that this negative desire is the immediate cause of any number of manifestations in your life that you strenuously struggle against. And that is exactly your pain. You struggle against something that you have yourself induced, and continue to induce, while, at the same time, there must always be the pull toward the light, toward wholeness, toward loving, inclusion and constructiveness, toward beauty and unfoldment. Your denial of the direction toward wholeness and your oblivion of this denial — not knowing that you want two opposing things at the same time — confuses and pains you. What is required for an entity to reach this awareness can easily be understood.

Those of you who have caught the first glimpses of your negative desires have gained a new strength and a new hope. For whenever this awareness is alive, you see, at first as a principle and as a possibility, how your life can be when you no longer have the negative desires, even though you do not yet know why and how you insist on the negative desires and why you harbor them in the first place. But merely knowing that you have them and, subsequently, connecting them with the unwelcome results must give you new hope and a new outlook.

Those friends who have not yet gained this awareness should try their very best to find their negative desires. On the surface the majority of people cannot imagine how they might harbor destructive desires. Even some friends who have been on this path for a long time may as yet be unable to feel their destructive direction. Meditate and truly want to find what is in you. This is even more difficult when a person busily denies those aspects in life that leave something to be desired, and does not want to face missing  something, suffering from something. This kind of denial of what you really feel and miss makes it impossible ever to bring real fulfillment into your life. This denial still exists in a few of my friends who have been doing this work for a considerable time.

So ask yourself, “Do I have, do I experience, everything to the maximum of my potential?  What disturbs me possibly more than I admit?”  That would be the first question, a pertinent question for those whose tendency is to escape from their unfulfillments, to deny them, to gloss over them and falsify their situation. And then, of course, there are those people who are only too keenly aware of their suffering and of what they miss, but they are disconnected in themselves from the mechanism that wishes the negative result.

The work on this path continues with becoming aware of deliberate negative desires, or of the avoidance of positive results, which amounts to the same thing. It is, as you can see, an essential milestone on your whole road of evolution. It constitutes the difference between feeling like a helpless straw in the wind, a little forgotten tool in a vast universe, and feeling one’s self to be self-governing, autonomous. The principle of cycles or circles — whether benign or vicious — is always the principle of self-perpetuation. Autonomy is positively self-perpetuating, set in motion by reality consciousness.

Again, this can be ascertained on your path. When you come to a certain degree of insight into your psyche, you see how the positive and negative attitudes are self-perpetuating. Take, for example, any healthy, positive attitude. When you are outgoing, constructive, open, inclusive, all things go easily. You do not have to work hard at them. They perpetuate themselves. You do not even have to spend energy on any deliberate kind of meditation. By themselves, your positive thoghts, attitudes, and feelings create more positive thoughts, attitudes, and feelings. These, in turn, create fulfillment, productiveness, peace, and dynamism. The principle is exactly the same in negative situations. The self-perpetuating forces, in this instance, can be changed only by this deliberate process which sets something new in motion. Such pathwork process accomplishes just this.

It is further important for you to understand and visualize that the spheres of consciousness operate exactly according to the directions that we have discussed. In other words, to simplify a bit for the sake of discussion, there is the positive principle and direction. This is the sphere of reality, the sphere in which there is unlimited self-perpetuation in whatever respect consciousness is aware of the existence of such wholeness and inexhaustible abundance. Incidentally, I want to interject here that the principle of self-perpetuation which I have explained on a spiritual level exists in identical form on a scientific plane. This principle can be found in chemistry, in physics, in practically every field of science. It should therefore be easier to accept than if it were a phenomenon that had not already been found in human material realms.

The personality level that wants the negative and pursues that direction creates a new world, or psychic sphere, covering the original positive one. Images and forms — the product of attitudes, thoughts and feelings — create this negative world. There are many variations, degrees, and possibilities, according to the strength of the negative desires, the awareness of both positive and negative desires, and the balance between the two. You may gain an inkling of this by comparing your own change in awareness with your previous unconscious denial of positive experience, or even your direct desire for the negative. You will see that this difference constitutes another sphere of consciousness, a different world, with its own distinct flavor and atmosphere.

The physical, material world you live in manifests the positive, the negative, and presents a combination of the two. All these exist in and outside of you — in timelessness and spacelessness. You can and must reach these worlds within your psyche by becoming acutely aware of them. They are a product of your own self-expressions, of your various spheres of consciousness. You must go through them, layer by layer, within yourself. Where you are relatively free from negative desires, it will be fairly simple and easy to grasp, to feel, to experience the world of truth, where all good exists and is self-perpetuating. Therefore there is no need for struggle, for doubt, for fear, or for deprivation. In these areas you will find that you fearlessly open your heart to the positive, dynamic experience, which moves eternally toward further unfoldment, greater happiness, more inclusion. You do not stop this movement with your fearful mind, holding it in check and bringing it to a standstill. These spheres are there; they not only exist deep in your psyche where you can sense the eternal life of all existence, but they manifest in your outer life. To become aware of them is also useful, so you can compare them properly.

And then, of course, there is always the main problem, the area in your psyche where the fear of the positive, hence its negation, exists. Consequently, deprivation and suffering manifest in your outer life. You must fully experience this sphere within your consciousness so you can transcend it by transforming yourself. You must live it through, not by denying it or struggling away from it, but by seeing and accepting it, learning to understand its nature. This is what is meant by going through it. When it is affirmed and ascertained as a temporary reality, only then can the underlying world of self-perpetuating good be reached, where you no longer have to reach and grasp and want, but know that it is already yours, even before you have attained it.

Whenever you are separated from others, from your fellow creatures, you must be in the negative world, in a self-perpetuating negativity that you sow through your destructive wishes. You must therefore suffer because you deny and ignore the full significance of the thus evolving struggle. The struggle varies from individual to individual, and with a given individual from phase to phase, and even at times from hour to hour, because at different times different directions come up. They alternate in predominance at any given moment. At one time one direction is more on the surface and the other more submerged; at other times they change.

So there must always be in you an unceasing struggle in which one side strives toward wholeness and union with your fellow creatures in many different ways, toward love and understanding, toward consideration, toward giving and receiving. But always there is still this other side that negates and denies the former direction, that fears and resists it. Therefore a particular pain exists, and the greater the denial, the greater the pain. Do not forget that it is impossible to completely want isolation, withdrawal, and separation. If it were possible to fully want this and be wholly reconciled to its results, there would be no pain. But it is not possible totally to ever want this. One can only want it to a large degree. And therefore, the larger the percentage, the stronger the pull in the opposite direction from health and union — hence the fiercer the pain.

The pain is aggravated by the struggle that sets in with the other person. For do not forget, my friends, that it is painful enough that you want and do not want, alternately, to relate and love on the one hand, and to hate, reject, and withdraw on the other. It becomes infinitely more complicated when this conflict is multiplied by a second individual into whose parameters you enter, and who wages a similar fight within.

Both the positive and negative directions are attached to the pleasure principle. It is this attachment that makes it so difficult to give up the negative direction and change. The positively and negatively oriented pleasure principle tears you apart. It inflicts pain on you by itself, but it does not exist in you alone. It also exists in those with whom you are involved in this conflict, and about whom you cannot decide whether or not to love or to reject them. If they were perfectly in balance and free from such an inner division, they would surely be unaffected by your struggle. Their harmony with the universal forces and the high degree of awareness would protect them from negativity and the resulting tension between the positive and negative pulls. If it were possible, for the sake of argument, that such an evolved being could enter into a relationship with an ordinary person who is racked by this fight, the latter would still be in pain because of his or her own division. But how much more complicated it becomes when the other person is in a similar position, for then the struggle is not twofold, but a compounded fourfold one. Imagine the many mathematical possibilities that arise from such a situation, with all their psychological consequences of misunderstanding,  misjudgment, and hurt, which, in turn, create further negativity.

Let us imagine two people, A and B. A momentarily expresses the positive direction toward union. B is frightened of it and therefore withdraws and rejects A. Consequently, A again becomes convinced that the healthy soul movement toward union was risky and painful and so reverts to the negative and the denial. Since this is so painful, the negative pleasure principle attaches itself to it, making the pain more bearable. A will then revel in the negative situation. In the meantime, the pain of isolation in B becomes unbearable, and B ventures out while A is in a dark hole. Now, this goes on and on, sometimes in crass opposition, although sometimes there is a fleeting meeting. At times A’s positive direction meets B’s negative one; at other times they are reversed; at still other times, both negative currents are out, both withdraw or antagonize one another. At still other times, both temporarily venture into the positive, but since the negative principle still exists in them, the positive position is only tentative, so uncertain, so fearful, so divided, so defensive and apprehensive that these negative emotions about the positive direction produce negative results sooner or later. These are then attributed to the positive venture, rather than to the problematic emotions about it. It is inevitable that the negative direction must again take over after such periods of mutual positiveness, until the negative, destructive, and denying side is fully understood and eliminated.

The negative, the denying and destructive direction would not be as fierce and as difficult to overcome if the pleasure principle were not attached to it. You then come into the position of not wanting to part from the precarious pleasure you derive from indulging in destructive feelings and attitudes. This may evolve subtly, insidiously, and inadvertently when an individual starts out with the healthy and constructive direction.

Let us take the following example, which might prove useful for all of you. Suppose, on your road toward self-realization, you gain strength and self-confidence. Where you felt uncertainty and guilt as you experienced friction with another person, you now experience a new inner calm, certainty in yourself, and a strength and resilience you never knew existed. In the old way, you might have responded submissively to assuage your guilt, or with hostile aggression to assuage your self-contempt for your uncertainty. Whatever you did, however you responded with your negativity and self-doubt, you were attached to the negatively oriented pleasure principle. You enjoyed your woes. Now, you have progressed. You experience yourself in a new way. Instead of choosing the nagging self-doubt, you gain insight into why the other person behaves that way. For the moment this objective understanding sets you free, makes you strong, gives you more objective insight into yourself and into the other person. In other words, the self-perpetuating principle of insight and understanding has been set in motion.

But then the still existing, because not yet fully recognized, negative pleasure principle attaches itself to your understanding of the other person’s negativity. You begin to talk yourself into dwelling more and more on that person’s faults and blindnesses, and you inadvertently begin to enjoy this. You do not immediately distinguish between the two different kinds of joy. The first comes when you see with detachment what exists in the other, and this sets you free; the second appears when you pleasurably indulge in the other’s wrongness, and this blinds you. What you first noticed in the other you build up until the old negative pleasure principle has reappeared in a new guise. This is where you lose your harmony and freedom because you again indulge in the negative pleasure principle. This is an example of how insidiously this can happen whenever the old roots still exist unobserved.

Here, my friends, the continuation of the path becomes clearer and more concisely defined. You have the immediate tools to set out and discover what I explained here. Now, are there any questions?

QUESTION:  It seems this whole lecture was for me. Whenever I come to see the pain and hurt in another person, I immediately bring out the negative, the hostility and rage, and I am blinded by these negative feelings. I cannot see anything positive or understand the struggle in the other person. Although I pray and want to let go, I am still “sitting in the hole.”

ANSWER:  Are you aware that while you indulge in the negativity you enjoy doing it?

QUESTION:  Yes, I am.

ANSWER:  The next step would have to be a very simple one, my dearest friend. Issue and express the thought, “I want to give up the negative. I want my pleasure to be attached to a positive situation. I want to be constructive. I want to give my attention to this situation and be governed by the most constructive forces.”  Do this in a relaxed and light way, enlisting the subliminal force within yourself to help you do it. Do not try to do it by sheer outer power, for with that outer power you cannot succeed. Your outer mind can only issue such a constructive intent, and with that it sets up a positive movement, which then begets a positive self-perpetuating cycle. If you are not yet willing to do this, the work must proceed very simply and easily. Where and why do you believe that wanting the negative is safer for you than wanting the positive?  You hinder yourself from wanting the positive. If you cannot stop this process, there must still be reasons you have not understood, and they must be unearthed.

QUESTION:  Irrationally, I fear that I may be taken advantage of and lose my integrity. I have a slight feeling that this is not true, but I can’t see exactly how.

ANSWER:  In the first place, you must truly want to see that this is possibly a wrong conclusion. The feeling of helplessness or powerlessness is again the self-perpetuating principle at work in that you have given up self-government when you allowed yourself to be taken over by the negative force. Therefore it does not occur to you that you have the possibility of governing yourself.

For instance, the moment you say, “I decide that I do not want to be in negativity or hang on to misconceptions, such as these,” in that moment you take command. Then, further, if you say and mean, “I do not have to be a slave to decisions that do not come from me because I am constructive. What I want is up to me.”  You will then experience that the more constructive your desires are, the freer you become and the easier it will be to determine independently what you will or will not do. Others will not be able to impose their will on you, hence your integrity will be preserved and increased in exact proportion to your active desire to be constructive and to give up the pleasure that is attached to a negative situation.

What has weakened you was that you lost awareness of your negative desires. You had repressed, denied, and hidden them, having superimposed false positive ones. Hence you lost touch with yourself. Had you been aware of the negative desires, you would not have been able to let them grow so strong. But even if you had done that, you would not have become helpless and powerless. In reality, your weakness and helplessness is never due to the stronger will of the others. It exists because you are swept away by the self-perpetuating force of your negative desires, which you have consciously ignored until now. This lack of control makes you unable to imagine how to take command.

Now, you, with your conscience and your spirit, cannot take command consciously to fulfill your negative desires. This can happen only with positive desires. When you issue such positive desires, you will become stronger, more self-governing and less helpless — and therefore no one could take advantage of you, because your free decisions to take action will be made in absolute consciousness of what you are doing, and why.

It is because of the gnawing guilt — inevitable when negative desires exist whether or not one is aware of them — that you allow yourself to be taken advantage of. The guilt makes you go overboard in complying with the demands of others. It is exactly because of the negative direction of your desires that you do allow yourself to be taken advantage of; that you are uncertain, uneasy, and weak about any of your rights — only because of that!  Were you free from the destructive desires, you would not feel guilty, hence you would not need to atone. And you could very easily, kindly, and without any defensiveness — when it is the right thing and when you really want it — say no, and not give in to demands being made upon you.

So, the reality is exactly the opposite of what you think:  positivity will set you free to have integrity, to defend and assert your rights, while negation and destructiveness must weaken you and make you defenseless. When it is as yet impossible to issue the desire to be constructive and positive, assert that this is where you are. See yourself being in the negation and destructiveness and set out to find what further undetected cause slumbers behind this resistance. Arrayed behind it there may be more fears of a deeper nature still needing to be unearthed.

QUESTION:  I usually concentrate too much on studying the negative aspects, centered on the father image. I have asked myself lately if by doing so I have been hiding something that is deeper in me and that I don’t want to look at. I concentrate on this mixture of a father image and a concept of maleness. I think I miss the main point by analyzing too much of this.

ANSWER:  There is in you a feeling that you do not want to assume the male role. Have you become aware of this feeling?

QUESTION:  No.

ANSWER:  Well, this is it. Awareness of it will come, first, maybe indirectly, by deducing certain manifestations, and subsequently by bringing out the emotions. Consciously, there is the great desire in you to be a strong man. You even go overboard and exaggerate this image of masculinity. This overcompensation would not exist if you were deeply ready to assume the male role, if you would not refuse it. There is this fear that you may be inadequate to fulfill this role; there is the fear that demands will be made upon you when you assume it. Also, there is in you a spitefulness toward life, toward society, with which you say no. There is an envy in you of the feminine sex, for on that level, they seem to have it easier. You resent the effort required of you to fill in this conscious male image. You believe that this is what you should do, and you resent that it seems to be expected of you. Maybe you expect it of yourself. Nevertheless, this is what you think you ought to do and be — and you resent it. It is important that you find the exact opposite of the conscious striving, meaning the passive resistance against your male role. You fear it, deny it, do not want it, and spitefully refuse it. When you become aware of that, you will have found the point I have just discussed. Then you will be aware of your main negative desires concerning your identity as a man.

QUESTIONER:  Yes, I went over this point last year, but I have completely overlooked it lately.

ANSWER:  This is what happens so often:  a finding is made and it is then shelved, as though this would suffice. It is not by any means changed or eliminated. In fact, you have only scratched the bare surface. It is often necessary that one work on other aspects for a while before one can return to the fundamental problem.

Be blessed, every one of you. Receive this warm stream of love that is all around you and transcends every one of you. Open yourself. For this love is truth, and this truth is life. And this life is yours for the asking. The courageous steps all of you undertake here have a meaning. They are not senseless, they are not useless, my dearest ones. May you always know this. Every admission of something negative that exists in you contributes more toward the universal process of wholeness than any other thing imaginable. So proceed this way. Be blessed. Be in peace. Be in God!

Greetings, my dearest, dearest friends. Blessings for all of you, present and absent. Blessed are your further efforts on this path, now and in the times to come.

This past working year was one of the most crucial on your path, for most of my friends individually, and for this group as a whole. Many of you are keenly aware of this fact. So, may the coming weeks be for all of you a time of consolidation of past work and preparation for future work on your inner path of liberation.

In tonight’s lecture I should like to discuss, once again, the life force. As you know, each time I discuss a topic we have treated previously, it is done on a deeper level, and it is possible to give you more material because you are better able to absorb and utilize it. It has a more immediate meaning for you. What I said about this topic before was then only a beautiful theory to you, but many of you today are able to see that this is not merely a theory or an abstract philosophical principle:  it is a key to how life can be truly lived.

Let us recapitulate certain aspects of the life force. The life force is profoundly intelligent. Its intelligence is always available, always present and ready to be applied not only to great, important issues; this super-intelligence “deigns” to express itself on supposedly unimportant issues if it is called upon. It does not differentiate between important or unimportant, big and small issues. It pervades everything when it is allowed to do so. One of its most striking aspects is that there is no conflict contained in it. The limited human mind is often confronted with alternatives in which something is good on the one hand but bad on the other; favorable for one person but unfavorable for another. When this is the case, you are not in truth; you are separated from that aspect of the life force which can give you access to the vast intelligence which knows of no disadvantage in any way or for anyone concerned:  it is deeply right from any point of view. Its advice leaves in you no trace of doubt or uneasy feelings; rather, it gives you the peaceful knowledge that all is well, increasing your feeling of security about yourself and life.

This vast intelligence is available for every one of your smallest cares and concerns. It is forever ready to respond if you choose to request its service. It never pushes itself on you, but it is there, ready, at your disposal. It is up to you to be in contact with it. All it needs is your awareness of its existence and your desire to make use of it, concisely formulating your questions and aims. When these aims are hazy and vague, when you are lost in a fog of confusion, the life force cannot penetrate to you. Your effort to arrive at clear formulation and exact awareness of your problems, confusions, split motivations, and limitations is necessary, as well as your reaching out for the life force, requesting its help. The pathwork is specifically preparing you for that.

Even when you believe in this principle, you are often under the wrong impression that you have first to reach a certain stage in your development, resolve your conflicts and attain a great deal of spiritual knowledge before you can be in contact with the life force. You think that the day after tomorrow or next year, it will descend upon you, like a gift from heaven you have finally earned. This concept is completely wrong. You do not have to be perfect to be tuned into the life force. It can happen right now, provided you clear the confusion of your present feelings, thoughts, and moods. You do not even have to clear up confused concepts:  all you need is to realize that you are confused and to reach out to the vaster intelligence to help you.

If you live in the now, you are in tune with the life force. If your now is confusion, depression, and stagnation, and you face these feelings fully, formulating their existence without the slightest evasion — while you also acknowledge that the very presence of such feelings indicates error — and you simultaneously wish the truth to manifest within, the negative feelings dissolve and truth begins to enter.

Being in tune with the life force is the same as being in contact with God, the same as living in the now. This can happen only when you are in contact with yourself. For you and the immediate now are one — you at this moment, which may be different from you in the next moment. For you are no flat, one-dimensional creature, but dynamic and many-dimensional. You consist of infinite possibilities and changes of outlook, attitudes, feelings, and thoughts. Your tendency to petrify a pleasant outcome because this seems an easy solution, an insurance against an apparently insecure future, makes you falsify truth. It makes you hold back.

The more you become aware of all the hidden levels of your being, the more you are in contact with and possession of yourself, that is, the more you are capable of living in the now, for you no longer need to run away from what is; consequently, the more you are in contact with the life force. Being in contact with yourself, you gain a greater understanding of the inner causes and outer effects in your personal life, and you can understand this principle as applying to all of life. The better this is understood, the more security is gained, and the more you are in real control of your fate. You then know that you are safe and not ever dependent on something beyond your capacity. The vibrant feeling of being wholly alive, in stimulating peacefulness, fills you even while you still experience the negative mood — anxiety, depression, lifelessness, or whatever it may be.

It is as though two levels of your being would begin to meet through your seeking the truth of the now and requesting the greater truth of the life force. Little by little, you become more aware of the reasons for your negative moods. You forget less and less that the answer and explanation exist in you. You assert this fact, requesting understanding and help to correct false concepts — not waiting for tomorrow when this will be done for you, but doing it now yourself by letting the infinite intelligence manifest in yourself. The slightest trace of guilt about still not being further developed, the self judgement that you should no longer have negative feelings, cause you to struggle away from the now, which makes contact with the self, and therefore with God, impossible.

The attitude of acknowledging that you are in illusion at this moment incorporates many qualities and soul movements necessary for being in tune with the life force. It indicates humility and proper self-evaluation. It means that you can stop struggling, because you are engaged in fighting illusion — the appropriate kind of fighting — rather than fighting illusion with illusion, which cannot be successful. You must fight illusion with reality, even if your present reality is illusion. The clear acknowledgement of this fact is then reality; denial of your illusion is further illusion.

The work of self-confrontation gradually leads to this attitude. If you take the additional step and assert your desire for the eternal presence of the life force, with its much greater wisdom to take over, you can never again be helpless and lost. The vibrant life force will flow through you — not in rare moments, but more and more as a steady companion. It will be your way of living and being. You and the life force will be one and inseparable.

The beauty of creation is that reality is happiness. This happiness is easy; there is no struggle about it. The tragedy of human beings is that they so arduously struggle against happiness by fearing truth and holding onto misconceptions. Liberation as a result of this path, the shedding of shackles which keep you enchained — what could these words possibly mean?  If facing truth and reality were more difficult — which obviously you are unconsciously convinced of — if it were true, for instance, that self-responsibility and adulthood are more painful than the position of the child you so ferociously defend, then a breakthrough on this path, a coming into your own, would never be felt as a joyful liberation. Instead, it would seem like entering prison.

If one’s resistance, one’s no-currents, existed in order to prevent something disagreeable, they would be understandable and justified. But the tragedy is that one often struggles with all one’s might against that which makes life easier and happier, more agreeable and safe. Yet people believe the opposite, acting as though the pathwork expected them to undertake a venture in which they might perish, and can be pried loose of their resistances only with the greatest of difficulties. This is the sad irony. They are so blind that what is their advantage seems like a disaster, and what is their disaster seems like safety.

Once more:  If divine truth and reality were not all good, happy, and advantageous, many of my friends would not have experienced liberation and ease following a breakthrough, following the overcoming of resistance. This fact is important to contemplate, because it is the proof that there is nothing to fear in God’s world, in letting one’s own organic development proceed, in not halting it artificially. Most of you have made enough progress to know that what you leave behind is unnecessary hardship, and the growth you move toward, the new way of life you adopt, is much easier than what you so tightly hold on to.

Whenever you are aware of resistance and can pinpoint your exact misconceptions and confusions, you have already won, because then you have the tools, and you can safely trust them to work — you know that from past experience. Once you know you are confused, you can meet the confusion. This is living in the now. But when the confusion is not conscious, when it can be denied and unpleasant feelings ascribed to other factors having nothing to do with you, you do not even know this is illusion and can do nothing to eliminate it. It is then that you fight against the happier, easier, fuller life and hold onto unnecessary hardship. People’s unconscious conclusions claim that it is to their disadvantage to grow and to their advantage to remain static. This fundamental misunderstanding about life causes untold pain. Without this senseless falsity so much suffering would be avoided. Men and women would be vibrantly alive in the immediate now. Whenever this is so, there is peace and, at the same time, vibrancy; there is stimulation and serenity.

As I have mentioned in the past, the struggle against truth results in split concepts. Human beings often conceive of life as being stimulating, but they feel they must pay for this stimulation by giving up their peace of mind. If they want peace and serenity, they feel they must sacrifice their dynamic, stimulating life, they must stagnate and be secluded. These false alternatives lead to a false choice, for whatever is chosen is based on wrong assumptions. The conviction of having to make do without an aspect of life that every individual is meant to enjoy — either peace or vibrancy and interest — will bring an unnecessary deprivation of either the one or the other aspect of the life force. In this conviction, people condition themselves so that whenever they are stimulated they will register anxiety, and whenever they are in peace they will be bored. The moment you are aware of being in error, that it does not have to be that way and is that way only because of your wrong convictions, you fully face the now, your own now. And then you may find further aspects responsible for the wrong conclusion that cut  you off from the life force. As you realize that the life force combines two apparent incompatibilities and begin to reach out for the possibility of enjoying both favorable aspects, you will experience the truth that everything good is possible if you allow yourself to experience it and remove your false limitations.

So many similar misunderstandings exist which prevent human beings from the blissful, enlivening, peaceful experience of the life force, apart from one’s personal images and misconceptions. So often the great spiritual truths, in particular, seem contradictory. If you formulate such confusions, you have already overcome them because you have brought forth your desire to find clarity by acknowledging your present confusion. Clarification is on the way and will soon fill your being. But only too often one is unaware of such dormant, smoldering, festering confusions and apparent contradictions.

Let us now discuss some of these apparent contradictions which prevent you from being in contact with the life force and, therefore, from happiness. A deep misunderstanding for many comes from the fact that all truth teachings postulate that free will is responsible for one’s fate. Divers religions and philosophies may word this fact differently, but it all amounts to the same thing. Psychology also talks about the necessity of self-government and self-responsibility. At the same time, spiritual teachings postulate that human beings, with their small selves, with their little minds, cannot succeed without calling on the vaster intelligence for guidance and enlightenment. This seems like a contradiction, but only as long as underlying problem areas remain unrecognized and therefore unchanged.

As long as you struggle against standing on your own feet, you will cling to an authority outside yourself and rely on an externalized God to take the place of a benign parent, rejecting the need for self-responsibility. Concomitantly, as long as you need such an authority, you must be disappointed and rebel against it. In this rebellion, you often reject the idea that a vaster intelligence than your own can guide you. You fear giving up the small self will and its selfishness, not entrusting yourself to the vast power at your disposal. These inner deviations, ignorances and misconceptions, the insistence on a childish way of life create the contradictions.

The moment you give up resisting, two apparent contradictions unify into one whole truth:  By shouldering self-responsibility, by realizing that you alone are the creator of your fate, by understanding the causes and effects of your life, you actively seek enlightenment through the greater intelligence that exists within yourself. You put the little mind aside — not blindly, but in order to let the bigger mind manifest. This does not mean absolving yourself from self-responsibility, rather, you are responsible for opening the door, not to an outer deity — for another person, as it were — who is supposed to take the burden of adulthood away from you, but to the vaster self, which forms an integral part of your psychic personality. This self is kept from manifesting as long as confusion exists, but when awareness dawns, the vaster self begins to fill the consciousness with its truth and its power until the integration is complete and there are no longer different levels of functioning. Then mature self-responsibility and entrusting oneself to God, asking for His help, become one and the same.

Without awareness it seems as though one should not want to govern oneself in order to let God govern one’s life. In awareness, however, self-government and accountability for one’s actions, thoughts, and feelings are seen as prerequisites for the greater intelligence to manifest. The little self will stands in the way of mature self-responsibility, and often must be given up so that the person can assume proper self-government. It is the same way with God’s will and self-government. Self-government does not mean self will. When the greedy, childish self will is given up, self-government and entrusting oneself to cosmic intelligence become interdependent instead of mutually exclusive. Self-responsibility and self-government do not mean arrogant overestimation of the little self. In fact, gradually the larger self takes over altogether. This is the integration we speak of on this path.

If God is looked for as a substitute for mature self-responsibility and accountability, true contact with the life force cannot possibly exist. When you want an outer authority to substitute for you, then all your faculties are paralyzed. It is the smaller mind with its immediate outer will that must take the first step in order to open the inner will and contact the larger mind. It is the outer will that provides the initial momentum to open the door to, and then become part of, the vast limitless power that gradually enables you to truly master life, as these split concepts begin to mend through your widened understanding.

Spiritual teachings postulate that you are supposed to be happy, and that it is God’s will for human beings to live in joy. At the same time, on a path such as this one is taught that God must not be sought in order to strengthen one’s childish desire for magic, to encourage the equally childish greed for everything one wants when one wants it, or to indulge in the wishful thinking of the child incapable of giving up the desire for utopia. Why do we then take such pains to grow out of this childish state when, in the same breath, you are told that God wants your happiness?  Is this not another contradiction?  The greedy child wants happiness, too. The great power of the life force is supposed to make all things possible. Is this unlimited power not in contradiction to the aim of this path which reiterates the necessity to give up the desire for magic?  Whether or not you have made such confusions conscious, they often exist, and it is important to draw them to the surface.

So let us consider why one must be free of the childish desire for magic and be able to accept the self-produced misery instead of cringing from it. And let us examine why it is equally true that a human being has every right and possibility for happiness. You see, my friends, the desire for magic represents the wish to avoid the consequences of one’s actions; such desire denies self-responsibility, liberation, and true mastery over one’s fate, and therefore precludes the bliss of being in the life force. You greedily demand happiness in order to have your way and avoid the imagined annihilation of your cherished images and misconceptions. Now, these fears are founded on false ideas, and one must find out for oneself that these ideas are false. One must learn finally that one does not perish even if the most feared event happens. Misery is never caused by the feared event itself, only by one’s attitude. As long as one is tied to the wrong idea that an outer event — be it rejection, criticism, or loss — can cause suffering, one is in illusion. This seeming contradiction will split a concept. When one realizes that the fears are unfounded, and the threat is not the event itself but the attitude to the event, one learns to let go of tight currents and give up one’s self will and the compulsion to obtain gratification, while being fully aware of the right to be happy and calmly striving toward fulfillment on all levels of life.

Before we go on, are there any questions at this point?

QUESTION:  If something terrible happens, let’s say the death of a dear person, how can unhappiness not be there?

ANSWER:  Here lies such an important misunderstanding. Just because you feel you ought not to be unhappy, you struggle away from the now, therefore from yourself, and therefore from contact with the life force. Your attitude is either that of a greedy, self-willed child who demands the fulfillment of all its desires, while fearing the opposite, or you harbor the false idea that a spiritually evolved person should be so developed that he or she is never unhappy, never puzzled or upset. Often, you carry in yourself a combination of these two aspects, for the misunderstood spirituality is a product of the greedy, fearful, weak, dependent child. The less the person is willing to lose, or give up if need be, the weaker he or she becomes, and more dependent on circumstances outside one’s control. This kind of person becomes more insistent on some outer event to prevent the catastrophe which, as he mistakenly believes, will overtake him. Therefore, the struggle against what is now produces greater misery than the event itself.

If none of these unhealthy aspects existed, one would live through the pain and grow out of it. The more one learns to do this at the moment, the sooner the apparent opposites coalesce and the full experience of the painful moment will become bliss. One then reaches beyond the illusion of opposites. If you quietly acknowledge, “I am now unhappy, but at the same time I know that in this unhappiness I am somehow not quite in truth,” you enter into peace. Yes, you are unhappy at the moment because of a loss or disturbance. Nevertheless, peace comes into you when you fully acknowledge your feelings and assert the fact that some of these feelings are an outcome of illusion, although you are not yet able to change the illusion.

Your desire to change from illusion to truth, while acknowledging all your negative feelings — the outcome of your illusion — will make you stop running and struggling against what is. Gradually, a new understanding will arise from the deepest recesses of your soul that becomes accessible through your desire to tap divine truth, the life force in you. As more peace and vital new insight fill you, unhappiness and happiness become one. Because you cease struggling against the now, you are in the now. You gradually experience that it is your attitude to an event that causes happiness or unhappiness, never the event itself. This discovery liberates and induces strength and security. It puts you into contact with the life force.

A fundamental and very frequent misconception in the human psyche says that unhappiness is a virtue. To correct this, I advise this meditation:  “My happiness cannot possibly detract from another person’s. However, my unhappiness adds to theirs.”  This meditation will help you to develop a strong, full yes-current for your happiness. It is often so difficult for humans to understand that when they believe themselves to be confronted with alternatives where one thing seems good and another bad, or where they see one person benefiting and another being damaged, that is not so. Whenever you are caught in such a predicament, you may be sure that you are entangled in a wrong concept.

Whenever you are in truth, my friends, there is no such thing as a decision that is good on the one hand and bad on the other. It must be good all around, for everyone concerned. That is the rightness of divine truth, that is the wonder and beauty of it. When you truly comprehend this and are confronted with decisions but cannot see how to arrive at this rightness, you may then request this truth, putting your small mind aside and allowing the larger intelligence to enter. Open yourself to it. Admit clearly: “As long as I believe that any decision must result in disadvantage or harm to any of the parties, I know I am in distortion. I wish to be in possession of the divine truth, where decisions are right and harmonious for all, and be able to feel this deeply. I cannot see it yet, therefore I am in untruth.”  In this way, you know and fully face the now, you do not run from it while at the same time you are calmly wishing to be enlightened. The combination of facing the now without struggling against yourself and desiring the greater truth will make it possible for the life force to fill you with vision, wisdom, and strength.

Does anyone here have an idea why it is really no contradiction that it is your birthright to be happy, while you must be able to accept an unhappy now, relinquishing self will and greed?

COMMENT:  Often we don’t know what is good for us. What one wants with one’s little mind may not be what one would really want if one were more developed.

ANSWER:  Yes, that is true. Any other ideas?

COMMENT:  I think we often can’t get the fulfillment right now. We are impatient and want it immediately.

ANSWER:  I think the now has nothing to do with it.

The desires of the smaller and the larger self may be different, but often they both are the same and what the smaller self desires is not necessarily wrong. The question is the how. The little self is under the illusion that it must perish if its will is not fulfilled. This creates fear, as well as additional negative emotions. It is these negative emotion and attitudes that make the expression of the little self wrong, not the nature of the wish itself. If the real self issues a wish, it expresses itself without fear because non-fulfillment will not seem to annihilate it. Consequently, further negative emotions will not be created.

In addition, I would like to say this:  the apparent contradiction is that man has to be able to give up what he wants to gain. In this giving up lies the necessary soul movement for being in contact with the life force. The soul movement is of crucial importance. In it lies the truth that neither an event nor the fulfillment of a particular wish can bring happiness. In the relaxed giving up lie all the emotions which are a byproduct of truth. In a disharmonious soul movement contact with the life force is impossible. Soul movements are always a result of attitudes. Sometimes one needs merely to concentrate on one’s attitudes, and harmonious soul movements automatically follow. At other times, it is useful to observe the soul movements themselves and approach them simultaneously from two directions. All false ideas create disharmonious emotions, which create tense, harsh, rigid soul movements. Truthful concepts create relaxed, warm, positive feelings and flexible, harmonious, rhythmic, organic soul movements. For example, the fear that non-fulfillment of a wish is annihilation, creates a must. Whenever there is a must, it is contrary to the slow, harmonious waves of the life stream, or life force.

My dearest friends, when you now look back on the work of this path, on the lectures and on your development, you will see that it was all painstakingly built up to lead to this point:  the mending of split concepts through the proper soul movements. This, in turn, enables you to be in possession of the immeasurable wisdom, energy, and peace of the life force.

To be in harmony when outside circumstances work according to your wishes is not really harmony because you are dependent on these circumstances beyond your control. Even if life works well for you now, you must be in deep, possibly unrecognized, fear that it may not always be that way. But when you realize that you have the resources to live in dignity and self-respect and are not wholly dependent on any event outside yourself, then you are truly in harmony. Then you have come into your own. Then you make use of your birthright and begin to control your fate. Then the available abundance will be open to you, will give you all the many fulfillments you cannot even dream of, surpassing even the greediest self will of the childish self.

This is why pride, fear, self will, greed, childish dependency, and refusal to stand on one’s own feet produce soul movements which must run counter to one’s self-interest. The conditions produced by these soul movements increase the fear of unfulfillment because you then believe it is the outer event and not your attitude that produces the misery.

Being in contact with the life force is possible even while you are still in illusion, provided you are aware of it, and provided you assert this fact and express your desire for contact with the life force. Then you will be helped to eliminate obstructions and taste the vibrant, dynamic life force. Every cell of your physical and emotional organism will be filled with this stimulating and peaceful experience. You will taste real security, looking forward to every moment, knowing joy through fearlessness. You don’t have to wait for perfection in order to experience this, if you can approach the imperfect, limited self in the truth of the moment. In this way you eliminate your imperfections much more effectively than by struggling against them.

Working this out in a more personal, specific way, is the program to follow on the path now. Once again, merely hearing the words will not be enough. With the help of your personal sessions you will all learn, step by step, to come into full possession of the meaning of these words, feeling the vibrant truth of the contact with the life force, with your real self, with God.

Most of you are now ready to learn the technique of fully living in the now. In order to do so, it is necessary to be aware of the many levels of emotional reactions. As long as so many unconscious or half-conscious reactions remain hidden, you are oblivious to the depths and the realities of your being. All you experience as real are the most shallow, superficial, material outer levels, because you are so unaware of what you really feel and think that you cannot live in the now. But sufficient progress has been made in the group, and sufficient awareness gained, so that the now can be looked for and seen, the soul movements can be adjusted, and contact with the life force becomes possible.

Now, are there any questions?

QUESTION:  If you want something very badly, but there is fear, pride, and self will, then is that a counter-current and you can’t get it?

ANSWER:  I would put it this way:   Whenever a no-current exists, there must be a false concept, otherwise there could not be a no-current. Simultaneously, the false concept creates fear, pride, self will, etc. Instead of pushing against a no-current, assert its presence, assert the fact that it is based on false ideas, assert your wish to be helped in understanding the aspects that led to this state, without frantically pushing against it. This is living in the now; it is the only effective approach to inner disturbance and disharmony, putting you immediately in touch with your real self, with the life force.

QUESTION:  How should we think of God?

ANSWER:   Do not think of God as a person in human form. Think of a tremendous power, continuously creating life in a purposeful way. Look around and open your eyes. In all branches of science you find aspects of the universal intelligence and power. In all manifestations of nature you find it. In the very complex physical, mental, emotional organism of the human creature lies the proof of this intelligence and power. God is not a disciplinarian; God is beyond good or evil. People often cannot conceive of God, because they can think of God only in human terms. Human beings, before they can come to a wider understanding, have first to give up their concept of God as a small disciplinarian whom they want and fear and who should act as a substitute for a parent. They want such a God because they are too afraid of tackling life by themselves.

As I have pointed out again and again, before the true God-experience can occur, you all must learn to stand on your own feet, and perhaps shelve your search for a while. Do not declare “there is a God” due to false guilt and the misunderstanding of human relations, if you are not certain. Neither declare “there is not,” because your outlook is blurred by your hopelessness and confusion about life and about yourself. At such a time, it is healthy to say, “I do not yet know,” without guilt and without defiance. And as you find yourself — and this is always how the path must start — as you find your real, true self, the rest is given to you. It comes by itself. It is a natural understanding that comes when you learn what you need to know about yourself in order to live successfully. Finding God cannot be done by discussing theories on an intellectual level. Keep the problem shelved, my friends, keep yourselves open, but find yourselves first. This is all that matters. For then you will come into the truth from inside, from your personal experience, rather than accepting postulates or enigmas out of fear, obedience, wishful thinking, or the desire for dependency and reward, through rejection of self-responsibility. In fact, the wishful thinking has to go, the childish greed be given up. All attitudes which make you cling to a false God-image need to be changed before a true God-experience is possible. Every desire for escape must disappear first. Then the experience is built on a rock.

And so, my dearest friends, I bless each and every one of you. Rejoice in the knowledge that the reality of yourself brings you into a harmonious relationship with life. This becomes more and more a proven fact in your everyday lives, not merely a hope in some vague future. Go on in the search of facing yourself in utter truthfulness. For, when you do that, everything else is given to you. Be blessed, all of you, be in peace, be in God!