PATHWORK LECTURES FOR THIS WINTER
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Greetings, my dearest, dearest friends. Blessings for every one of you. Blessings for your work on this path.
Every living organism experiences visible changes, which represent milestones in its process of growth. When I speak of a living organism, I do not refer only to an individual. A group like this is a living, growing organism, because it stands on a healthy foundation, enabling many more individuals to cultivate their growth. Every one of you who participates in this work contributes to the inner growth of the group. Many of you are doing your very best to grow out of confusion and error, and thereby you contribute. Some of you also help through outer actions, each in your own way.
Such help and contribution is of great value, and the cosmic forces thank such people in their own way. Our thanks — if we may call it that, for lack of a better word — take the form of particular blessings not easily and instantly recognizable. Their reality is perceived only in deep meditation. These particular blessings are coming forth tonight to all friends, both present and absent. Universal, divine gratitude truly exists, my friends. May all of you who are helping with inner and outer assistance feel the reality of these blessings. Everyone has a different possibility of contributing toward the growth of this “body of truth,” but it is the facing of your self in utter candor that represents the principal contribution which ensures the continuance of this group on its present healthy foundation.
The growth of a living organism cannot always be measured by outer signs. This holds true for groups as well as for individuals. Anyone with an open and sensitive mind can perceive growth and inner health, even if, at times, there are no outer changes or obvious manifestations. However, there are times when an outer change is noticeable. This is such a time. The fact that we are now housed in new quarters represents a milestone. Divine blessings go forth to all of you who made this growth possible; the new venture is blessed. Whenever milestones are passed in the growth process of an organism, the inner reality can be sensed by all who have contributed toward it by their actions and by their work of self-confrontation. May this be the case now. May you all be flooded by a wave of hope and security that you live in a benign universe in which you have nothing to fear.
Tonight I should like to discuss a new topic, humanity’s relationship to time. This is, indeed, an important subject. My words will be very helpful, if you take the trouble of pondering them and trying to apply them to yourself. What I will say may at first seem utterly inapplicable to your personal lives because of its abstract, philosophical and metaphysical nature. But if you have patience, and try to follow the deeper meaning of my words, you will soon see that they do have a very practical application.
Human existence on earth, in the dimension of the earth and its atmosphere, is bound by time. I explained on a previous occasion that time is a creation of the mind. Without the mind, time does not exist. In your dimension time, space, and movement are three separate elements of reality. When humanity reaches a higher degree of consciousness and with it an extended dimension, time, space, and movement begin to integrate more and more, until they become one. However, it is an error to believe that the next higher dimension is timelessness. There are many extended “times,” if I may use this expression, in the higher realms of being, long before you reach the state of being that is timeless. As yet it is impossible for humanity to fully grasp this. The best you can do is to sense this truth occasionally.
Time is a very limiting existential modality. It is a fragment, cut from a wider and freer dimension of experience. The limited fragment, called time, is at the disposal of human beings so that they can grow, fulfill themselves, experience, and reach happiness and liberation up to the limit commensurate with this dimension. To the degree they fulfill their potential through inner growth, their life will be a dynamic and full experience within which the limitation of time will not be a hardship.
At this point, because it has so much bearing on this topic, I should like to interject once again that it is possible to be on a path of self-development on the whole and nevertheless miss many an opportunity for growth. How many times does it happen that you find yourself in a negative mood without learning the deep lesson behind it, or seeing its significance for your innermost being? Instead, you simply wait for the mood to pass by itself. You will be exposed more and more often to such periods of depression, anxiety, uncertainty, and disharmony, and if you do not pay attention to them, finding the inner cause will become more difficult. In these instances you do not utilize time well and it becomes a burden and a source of conflict. If you use each such growth opportunity for going to the root of the negative incident or mood, you will experience deep understanding and liberation. Then the exhilaration and trust in life and in yourself that you now experience only occasionally will become a more permanent state. Then you will be at one with the time element of your dimension, thereby organically growing into an extended time dimension.
Listlessness, depression, impatience, nervousness, anxiety, tension, frustration, boredom, apathy, and hostility — all these emotions and many others — are in the last analysis a result of unutilized time. If you don’t do the utmost possible to understand yourself and dissolve inner conflict and confusion, you cannot avoid the negative emotions that are unleashed when time goes by unutilized.
To those of my friends who have experienced liberation from such emotions with an influx of strength and inner joy, feeling that they are at one with life, I say: you can repeat this experience whenever you do not shirk the effort of looking deep into yourselves until you discover the origin of all the negative emotions. As you recall these times of liberation, you know that they were always connected with such efforts on your part. And to those of you who have not, as yet, had this experience, because you may be too new on this path, I say: it can be yours if you do what is necessary.
You may ask what bearing these reflections have on your relationship to time. If you analyze each negative emotion, you will find that it conflicts with the limited fragment of time at your disposal. This may be a very good meditation exercise and well lend itself to deeper exploration. Constructive, realistic, and positive feelings do not conflict with time, because time is utilized as it is supposed to be.
The vague knowledge that the time at your disposal is limited in this earth-dimension creates a special tension. You, therefore, strive to get out of this limitation of “time,” straining as a dog pulls at its leash. Time holds you in its grip and you feel imprisoned in a fragment of reality. The unconscious still has a memory of the great experience of timelessness and tries to find its way back into a limitless freedom. This can be done, but only by accepting and fully utilizing the fragment you call time. Then the transition into freedom will be an organic flow with a minimum of conflict. Or you can, of course, resist by straining against the transition and not utilizing time in the way I describe and all true spiritual teachers point out. Then inevitably conflicts and tensions arise.
All truthful spiritual, metaphysical, or philosophical concepts, ideas, or postulates have their practical application to psychological attitudes. This is how you can realize and corroborate any truth given to you.
Let us now discuss the particular conflict that human beings have with time. Each one of you has the possibility of finding out the truth of what I say, provided you take the necessary steps of self-investigation. As I have already indicated, human beings strive to reach a freer dimension of time. Translated into practical life, this manifests by striving toward tomorrow. If you observe yourself closely from this particular viewpoint, you will find it to be true in so many instances. Sometimes this is quite obvious because your thoughts are on the surface; at other times it permeates you as a vague general climate and is therefore not easily recognizable.
People strive toward the future mainly for two reasons: you do not like the present and hope for something better from the future; or else you fear a certain aspect of life and want to leave it behind in the past. Your vague hopes for the future and the unpleasant, unfulfilled state of the present are your reasons for straining away from the present and into the future. Thereby you avoid living in the now. If, however, you were to explore within yourself the reasons for your unfulfillment and the difficulties which cause you to strain away from them, you would be capable of living in the now fully, meaningfully, and dynamically, deriving all the many joys from each moment that you now overlook. If each moment were truly lived to its fullest, you would already reach an extended dimension of time, while still remaining in this earth-dimension. The truth is that only by fully utilizing the dimension you live in can you outgrow it. Experiencing everything that each moment of time contains will stop you from straining away; you will thereby automatically find yourself flowing into the next time-dimension.
As always, awareness is the first step. So, do become aware of your inner striving away from the now. You will then find that you struggle against the now because you have not really found and resolved the causes that make you strain into the future. Such investigation will give you the best inkling about one side of humanity’s conflict with time.
The picture is entirely the opposite on the other end of the conflict. Human beings fear the future while they strive forward into it, because the future also means death and decay. While they strain into the future, hoping for fulfillment, they simultaneously stem against the tide of time, desiring to stop its movement, or even go backward into youth. People want two impossible things: the fulfillment of the future in the past or, at least, in the present. This wish generates two contradictory soul movements: one strains forward, the other holds back. Needless to say, the soul suffers from tension, a useless and destructive waste of energy.
Some time ago I discussed the fear of death, which is an integral part of the conflict with time. Fear of death causes a backward movement opposed to the natural movement of time which is a steady, harmonious flow. If you can feel into its rhythm, you will be in harmony. You can do so by being in time in the only meaningful way, using each moment and incident for growth. Not straining away from the future, you will not have to fear it. Not pulling away from the present, you will utilize it well, so that it will not seem desirable to strain away from it. This is being, even if it is not yet the highest state of being. It is the state of being commensurate with the dimension of time you live in.
Once in this state, you follow the natural flow. The wave of time will bring you naturally and gracefully into the next extended dimension, which you fear so much because you cannot yet prove its reality. Your very haste, on the one hand, to get into the new dimension, and your fear of the unknown, on the other, are reactions to what seems so uncertain to a part of your personality. With these reactions you restrain the natural movement and create tension, setting your soul forces to work in opposing directions. The result is stagnation of growth, as well as lack of the full experience of each “now.”
After you determine the subtle, but nevertheless very distinct inner double motion, you will find a psychological value in understanding the nature of the emotions and attitudes responsible for the contradictory soul movements.
If you strain forward you do so because in one way or another you do not want to recognize certain functions in your particular life which could be improved. Somehow, you let opportunities slip by. I do not speak of outer opportunities and fulfillments, although they may often be a final result of missed inner opportunities for growth and unfoldment of the soul — for the resolution of inner conflict and dissolution of inner error.
The daily review I advocate is one of the best means toward living each day and each hour fully. I venture to say that all my friends who work so diligently on this path have, at least occasionally, experienced the special peace that is full of the spark of aliveness, as dynamic as it is peaceful, after having recognized in all its depth a distortion or a negative attitude in themselves. If all the benefit contained in the recognition has been derived from it, then this wonderful feeling of aliveness is bound to manifest.
That the recognition itself may be very unflattering and disillusioning about oneself, and at times even painful, will not diminish the great experience once the recognition is complete. On the contrary. This may furnish the best proof of the truth of my words. Also, you may use the peaceful experience as a yardstick. Whenever a self-confrontation does not, in the end, produce an uplifting experience, you have not found all that is to be discovered. This knowledge should not make you impatient or tense, but rather help you to understand that you are hedging the truth in some way. You do not wish to see all there is to see.
The awareness will open you up so that you will eventually derive the maximum experience from each particular incident. You will cultivate the inner will to face and understand in yourself all there is to confront and comprehend. Then you will experience the exhilaration of having fulfilled yourself to the utmost at this moment. Then you will no longer tug at time in diametrically opposite directions.
Have you ever thought, my friends, why it is that, after an unflattering or painful recognition — provided you go to its very depth and do not stop halfway — you experience such a dynamic state of harmony and aliveness? It is so only because, at that moment, you have fully utilized what is given to you, the fragment of time at your disposal. When you are listless and depressed, or in any way unhappy, the material is there, right in front of you; you are right in it, but you are blind to it. You do not focus your attention on it. You merely try to get out of this “now” without utilizing it. That is the forward movement which also causes your fear of growing into death — which is actually a threshold of life. Therefore you hold back while you also push forward.
Fear of death exists in many forms and shapes. I do not wish to go into more detail on what I said on this subject before, only that any spiritual or religious belief, if it is superimposed from the outside and not experienced inwardly, is as much a part of the fear of death as a violent protestation of unbelief. They are but two different sides of the same coin.
The only way to experience the flow of time that knows no interruption, that brings you into extended dimensions, is to utilize each living moment in the manner you learn to do on this path. Then you no longer deal with concepts which you adopt or reject, which you agree or disagree with. An inner experience comes into being that makes you realize that the present matrix of time is only one facet of another matrix of time; it is but a fragment of a bigger piece. This, in itself, brings the knowledge that death is but an illusion. Death is merely a manifestation of transition into a different dimension. However, such words can be meaningful only if you make the experience of their reality possible. For that, this pathwork gives you ample opportunity.
When you reread this lecture, you may come across passages that are not quite clear to you. In your discussion groups you will have the opportunity to clarify them further, provided you take the effort of searching together for what you wish to understand on a deeper level. Participation in the discussions is essential, for otherwise my words will remain only words — and that is not good enough.
Are there any questions now pertaining to this topic?
QUESTION: You say that once one leaves this dimension of time one enters another time which involves unification of space, time, and movement. Will you please clarify that?
ANSWER: Yes, I will try. In your dimension, time and space are two separate factors. I give you a practical example: you find yourself in a certain space, you require time to get there. In order to bridge the distance, movement is necessary. So, movement is the bridge that combines time and space. In the next dimension, where there is a wider fragment of what you may call time — which is still far from timelessness — movement, time, and space are one. In other words: you are in one space. You think of the space you wish to be in. The movement required to bridge the distance is your thought. It is of a shorter span of time and motion. Thought, which is movement, brings you into another area of space, regardless of the distance, as measured in your dimension. Do you understand that?
QUESTION: Yes. But it brings two questions to mind. One is: Can this happen on earth? And two: I saw a TV program recently which explained that in outer space, as we know it today, this adjustment via movement through time and space takes place, so that the time changes according to the rate of speed you are travelling in space. I don’t quite understand it.
ANSWER: To bridge distance with thought is not possible on earth with material means. The spirit, the psyche, is, of course, capable of experiencing this. In fact, it experiences it constantly, only the waking brain is rarely aware of it. The physical body is incapable of the experience because it is made and adjusted to the limited dimension in which a separation between time and space exists, and the bridge between these is movement.
As to your second question: When material and technical means have been invented to leave this dimension, an inkling of this factor becomes accessible to material brain knowledge. But whether or not the discovery is understood in its profounder meaning, depends, of course, on the individual, on the capacity and willingness of people to understand. I might add that the technical knowledge that brought this cosmic truth into your material world — the same truth that I approached here from a different angle — is a consequence of a general, overall readiness of this earth-sphere to grasp higher truth. If, in spite of its possibility for growth that brought such higher truth into its grasp, humanity still does not learn the deeper meaning from it, it will stagnate with all the destructive results of such stagnation. It is exactly the same process with an individual. A person who has potential to grow but does not utilize it will be a more troubled soul than the one who may actually exert less effort in the direction of individual development, but is closer to the given potential. This explains why it is impossible to judge and compare.
To get back to your question: The technical discoveries are one way of helping humanity to acquire a broader awareness. But if a technical discovery does not lead to broader and deeper understanding, such discovery will not only be useless, it will turn destructive. The constructiveness and benefit of every discovery depends on whether or not humanity as a whole understands spiritual and cosmic law on a deeper level than before such a discovery was made. If this happens, it will help humanity to produce greater inner freedom, faster growth and development, and therefore outer peace and justice in increased measure.
If history is observed from this point of view, it will be found that every earth upheaval that humanity has experienced is a result of broader knowledge used without the proper understanding. The links between new knowledge in certain eras and the subsequent upheavals due to ignorance of the real meaning of the knowledge could be established if historians undertaking such a search were, themselves, in a fully growing life-process. New knowledge is not necessarily and exclusively of a technical nature. It can be an influx in art, philosophy, or any realm of experience. The links are not immediately visible, but they are there. It might be an interesting study for a historian who has the inner equipment to see what first seems obscure, but stands out clearly once one’s attention is focused in the right direction.
What you mentioned in your second question is the same in technical terms as what I explained in philosophical and psychological terms.
My dearest friends, be blessed again, every one of you. May these words not merely pass through your brain. May they, indeed, give you the incentive to listen deeply within yourself in order to gain a little distance from yourself. Just by gaining more objectivity, you may become more at home with yourself and feel more at ease with life in this fragment of time, so that you may utilize it fearlessly, neither straining toward the future nor stemming against it. Therefore you will be in harmony with the flow of time. Thus, gradually, through the discoveries about your innermost, hidden attitudes and emotions, you will find yourself flowing with the wave of time, in harmony with it, living each now to the fullest. May all of my good friends — those who are present and those who are absent, those who are new, and those who are hesitant, those who may contemplate to begin a new way of inner life — may you all find your real self and thus eventually overcome the barrier that makes you tend to the visible manifestation, while being blind to what causes it.
Be in peace. May you find the strength and the reality that I try to help you find. Be blessed. Be in God!
Greetings in the name of the Lord. I bring blessings for all of you, my friends. Blessed is this hour.
There are twelve basic active forces and twelve basic passive forces or principles in the universe. According to the scheme of the “Pistis Sophia,” these forces are concentrated in the highest realm of light and conducted by respective entities; each one is a representative or a personification of one active or passive principle. They are all perfect in their own way. The whole universe is penetrated by these forces and an infinite variety and combination of them is possible. In the “Pistis Sophia” the expression “twenty-four invisibles” refers to the principles as well as to the entities. They are invisible in all spheres below the highest realm of light. But in the latter sphere, the principles or forces as well as their personified entities are visible in the form of rays or fine threads running through the atmosphere. They are noticeable not only by various colors and shades, but also by scent and tone and other qualities that are unknown to human sense-perception.
I am telling you about this not merely to give you information about the higher spheres, for that in itself would not be sufficient reason, interesting as this knowledge may be. You should always get some practical benefit out of these lectures for use in your actual life, right here and now. Since every force or principle present in the universe also penetrates each individual human soul, you will see that a benefit can be derived from this seemingly abstract piece of information. In other words, a personal connection can and should be made, for the whole universe is within you.
How human beings exploit and direct these principles or forces determines their lives, their harmony, and their happiness. I have often mentioned that activity and passivity are two basic divine aspects in the universe. Now you can see that there is not just one active and one passive principle in existence, but twelve of each. For humanity the question arises when to assume an active and when a passive attitude? When should you use the free will you have been endowed with, which corresponds to activity, and when should free will not be exercised—which is a state corresponding to passivity—so that God’s will can be fulfilled? It is in these terms that you think about the matter, but herein lies a fundamental error, my friends. For it is not in the least true that you can be passive when you want to fulfill God’s will. In order to truly fulfill the will of God you need a great deal of activity and willpower.
When the active forces are used in the channels destined for the passive currents, a congestion occurs, and the result is frustration for the human being. If the passive forces replace the active ones, entering the channels where the active principle should work and flow freely, there will not be congestion, but rather a standstill or stagnation. The sluggishness brought about by the wrong use of the active forces will occur not only in the general development, but also in particular aspects of the human soul and gradually it will affect the entire inner makeup of the person.
Any person on the path has a great need to find out in what respect the forces should be active or passive. I will try to shed light on this subject. My words will also help you to understand that passivity is not necessary to fulfill the will of God. You should at all times be active and use your willpower—which does not mean self-will, for these are two different things—to adhere to the laws of God, which you know. And that is not so difficult to find out, even for people who do not receive these particular teachings and personal guidance. People who find God in any of the current existing religions or philosophies and people who are not particularly close to God, who may be agnostics or even atheists, but who have high standards of ethics and morals, do know what is right and what is wrong if they simply face the particular issue and ask themselves honest and self-probing questions. Then they will know. In order to do just that, you certainly do need your willpower.
However, where the passive forces should hold sway, and where they are unfortunately often replaced by your active forces, are all the instances in which you cannot change circumstances or other people. People are inclined to revolt inwardly when things do not go according to their will and when other people are wrong. Then an active movement begins to take the place of passivity.
Whenever an emotion is felt and you follow that emotion through to its roots, you will discover that a desire is behind it. Desire means activity. You may have right desires: going on a path of purification, for example, or learning to love are such. Overcoming your weaknesses, or wanting to be honest with yourself, which causes pain at first, are other positive, constructive desires. Therefore the active force must be put in use in order to fulfill them. But there are also negative desires. Whenever resentment, fear, hatred, and the like are in your heart, there is a negative desire and therefore an active force is used instead of a passive one. Since a wrong desire cannot really be fulfilled, and if it appears to be fulfilled the fulfillment is very temporary and illusory, you become frustrated.
Practically speaking, what must your attitude be like in those instances when you are supposed to be passive? You cannot change this world or other people, my friends. In your intellect you may know that very well indeed, but do your emotions always know it? Certainly not! It remains to be seen whether your emotions will or will not begin to follow what you know in your intellect. So the proper attitude would be to accept what you cannot change, namely the actions and attitudes of other people and circumstances outside your control. Accept these really and truly in your emotions as well as in your superficial knowledge, and you will rechannel the wrongly used active and passive currents.
This also means to accept the imperfection of this earth sphere with humility, knowing that since you are not perfect, you cannot and must not resent others’ imperfections, even though they may be different from your own. It even means to accept your own imperfections, which does not mean that you should want to remain that way. You have to recognize your imperfections and accept for now that they actually do exist. Right now you possess many imperfections you have not yet accepted in a conscious way and therefore you revolt against this state of affairs. In the act of revolting you set an active force in motion where a passive one should exist. Only after the passive force has been cultivated can a different kind of active current be brought to bear so you can gradually begin to overcome the imperfection. As long as you revolt against things that cannot be changed, or that could only be changed by a different inner activity, there is a pressure and an inner pushing against a stone wall. As long as you do not relinquish or relax this pushing force going in the wrong direction, you cannot make order in your soul.
Learn to recognize where your desires surge into wrong directions. If the active pressure of the wrong desires is relaxed, you will have much more strength left for the good and proper desires where an active force is badly needed but where you are presently too weak. Why? Not because less strength has been given to you than to other people, but because you have not managed your household well. You have allowed disorder, disorganization, and mismanagement to set in. The exactly right and necessary amount of strength is available for each one of you to fulfill your life as well as possible. It is up to you to use this strength properly and not waste it.
Do not believe for one moment that those who appear weak and without will use less active force than the obviously strong and self-willed ones. Often the contrary is true. The former simply do not display their will on the surface because of other, psychologically conflicting trends. But within their soul everything sizzles under the pressure of their frustrated will that pushes in the wrong direction. They may not be consciously aware of this condition but the symptoms of their misapplied activity must show by their diminished health, strength, and peace of mind. The moment you become passive where you should actually be passive—not in your thoughts alone, deceiving yourself, but in your innermost emotions, you will have a new strength and life force that you have not known before. For this to happen you have to accept that which you cannot change immediately by direct action.
So far, this may still sound confusing to you, my friends, because you do not know how to find your real feelings. Knowing how to begin is not half as difficult as you may think. The fundamental factor is again to get to know yourself, to ask yourself the pertinent questions. This is really very simple, once you decide to accept the unavoidable necessity of doing it. Each time you feel an unpleasant emotion like anger, anxiety, or resentment—and your days are often full of such emotions—stop rationalizing it away by thinking of the wrong attitudes of others. Instead, ask yourself, “What do I really want?” Know that the moment there is emotion in you, there is something you want. Otherwise you would not feel that way. I certainly do not say that all emotions are wrong, but unpleasant emotions must have a faulty premise somewhere, no matter how wrong others may be. The assumption of a faulty premise often manifests in an active pressure to change a condition or circumstance where acceptance should reign.
Find out what this pressing desire is and examine it. It does take training, and forming the habit of observing yourself from this point of view, but how beneficial this way of thinking is! Once you begin and do not let up, you will see that it becomes second nature, a good habit without which you would not and should not want to live anymore. It is part of the daily cleansing of the soul. Before you start looking at yourself in this way, you are often caught up in an emotional confusion about the nature of your soul. You do not realize clearly what is going on in you, and what your desires are. Once you begin to focus your attention on the feelings, noticing what the desire is behind them, recognition becomes very simple, indeed.
And that is the purpose of the daily review I mention so often. But if some of you cannot or do not like to do your discovery work in the form of daily review, there are other ways of doing it. Whenever you have a free moment, think about the past few hours and think what your feelings actually were during them or during any particular experience. Then ask yourself, “What is my desire?” And when you find the answer, you will already have a clue. The answer will often be that another person has done something wrong or what seems wrong to you and you want that person to change. There you can actually observe close at hand that where you should be passive, you are active because you actively desire a change that you cannot bring about. When these overactive desires run in the wrong channel, you completely forget those instants when you have the power to change, if you would only look at yourself. For there is so much power given to each one of you! Yet, you do not realize it. Why? Because you misdirect your power into the wrong channels and it goes to waste. You use it up unproductively.
If you learn to examine yourself in this manner, you will not only find wrong and unfulfillable desires in you but conflicting desires as well. You often wish at one and the same time for two impossible things and create a short circuit within, stemming from these conflicting desires. Become aware of the paradoxical state of affairs within you. The only way you can do so is by practicing any type of daily review. Use self-honesty to examine your feelings and the desires behind them. That is the process to reach maturity, my friends.
Your unconscious and often conflicting desires are always immature. You often desire the impossible, like a child; you find yourself desiring something that cannot be had, or for which you are not prepared to pay the price. The fact that you do not consider the problem from this angle, and are therefore unaware that there is a price to be paid for each desired gratification, does not alter the circumstances in the least. In your unwillingness to pay the necessary price for a desired goal, you leave the issue in the unconscious, thinking childishly to get around it. It is uncomfortable to realize and obey the laws of justice, so by leaving the issue in the unconscious you make yourself ill, not only physically, but on all levels of your existence.
So, my dear friends, try to observe yourselves; identify your real desires. You will be surprised how much relief this knowledge alone will already bring you, provided you have wholeheartedly decided to do so, without any subterfuges. You will be relieved by the mere knowledge, for that will explain the mishaps of your life and will strengthen your trust in God’s justice and the wonderful order of the universe. God does not want you to be a puppet dependent on the wrong concept of divinity that makes you hold on to God’s apron strings, expecting Him to run your life for you. Then of course if your life is not what you want it to be, you can blame Him for it in some hidden way. In reality God wants you to be independent and strong, and you can only be that by following the way I am showing you. You can conduct your life satisfactorily, but He will not do it for you. He will let you run your own life, and if it becomes a mess, then it is you who must change, not others or circumstances. However, you can even control circumstances and other people the moment you start allowing your wrong overactive currents to become passive and the wrong passive currents to become active. For those purified currents will emanate from you and indirectly affect the subconscious of other people. And that effect will come back to you gradually, in the form of more truthful and harmonious interactions.
Now the question of what the will of God is for you still remains open. I have said that it is not only wrong to believe that you have to be passive in order to fulfill God’s will, but it is impossible to be passive and without a will to do that. To fulfill the will of God means overcoming your inner resistances and for that you do need activity, although of a different kind, running on different tracks, so to speak. But you need activity and strength of will nevertheless. The passivity is necessary, though certainly not in order to fulfill God’s will.
First of all, you confuse God’s will with self-will. Let us determine clearly what is self-will in comparison with free will. Self-will is the will of the little ego. Free will comprises everything: you can use free will for good or bad ends. That is up to you. To agree on the terminology so as not to invite any misunderstandings: self-will belongs to the little blind ego and is thus the will of the lower self.
Now, in order to find God’s will, you must certainly be free of self-will, but your active and clean willpower must be used, first, for the desire to meet your resistances without any wishful thinking and self-deception; second, for making sure that you do leave your self-will aside; and third, for preparation to use your willpower even more actively to follow the will of God once you know it.
To determine what the will of God is in individual instances, you very rarely need a transcendent revelation. God’s will is always contained within you, behind your blind spots. From the moment you take off your masks and the rose-colored glasses you use when you view your own self, your motives, and your life, God’s will must evolve clearly and without a doubt. It will evolve as you discover your real desires and put them down in black and white and say to yourself, “This is what I actually want when I am honest with myself.” You may be surprised how this newly-discovered inner wanting deviates from your conscious desires. But do not believe that because of this conflict you are despicable. No, you should know that your soul consists of layers which may be called the higher self and the lower self. Accept that both are in you and all will be well. Then you will not lose your sense of proportion in evaluating yourself, either exaggerating in one direction or in the other.
The moment you do examine a particular desire of your lower self and bring it into your consciousness—being careful not to allow it to slip away again into unconsciousness—you will be able to know quite clearly what is God’s will in nine out of ten cases. I can promise you that. Examine the various chain reactions that led you to the present state, consider the repercussions, the significance, and the consequences of your desire and compare it with the spiritual laws as far as you know them.
If you are in a certain situation now which you want to change, or face a difficult decision, you will of course not know what God’s will is if you merely let it go at that. But the moment you ask more penetrating questions of yourself concerning underlying desires that may be responsible for your present state, the answer must evolve clearly, strongly, and self-evidently. It will evolve all the quicker and better if you enlist God’s help for this purpose, because God never gives any help of this sort if you have not made the first step. The first step, in addition to your sincere goodwill to purify yourself and do God’s will in all instances, is always your endeavor toward self-knowledge, self-honesty. The wise and mature attitude, of course, is not believing that you can change from one day to another or without making an effort on your own behalf.
If your present situation feels unsatisfactory in any way, or if you are not clear about a decision you are called upon to make, do not expect God to decide for you or to alter an unpleasant situation without your active participation in the process. You have to realize that there must be something in you that contributed to the undesirable circumstance to begin with and be willing to find what it is and change it. Do not forget that the wrong is not necessarily a sinful action or thought, but an unrecognized emotion that surges in a wrong channel or violates a spiritual law. God recognizes your goodwill, and if you combine prayer with the work of self-examination and tearing down your masks, His answer will become ever more clear, so that there will be no possible room for doubt in you. But as long as your resistance against this way of working persists, no matter what the pretexts and excuses are, the sluggishness and the immaturity of your lower self has the better of you. You will have wrong reactions and distorted instincts, which you will then want to interpret to fit the resistance of your lower self.
The only way you can positively know whether a right and good instinct or a wrong and false one guides you is by the happiness, relief, freedom, and the sense of utter rightness and peace with the world that you will have as a result of it—or by the experience of the very opposite. If your will is free of self-pampering and is pure and humble, God’s will can clearly manifest, no matter how He chooses to reveal Himself to you. In many instances you will not need a particular revelation, but with your good efforts and God’s help enlisted in prayer, you will find out the answer for yourself. God will help you through His angels so that you can do it better and have more support from the spirit world and receive more guidance and help. You must be the one to decide, “I want to do it wholeheartedly.” Then God will help you. Then there will be no problem knowing what God’s will is for you.
The answer and the key to God’s will are within you. It lies in your imperfections; it lies in every instance where you have deviated from or broken a spiritual law, be it merely in your unconscious desire-currents. And then, as you digest the answers, the active process will start functioning properly as by itself and flow into the right channels; and so will the passive forces. Yes, my friends, this change will and must happen. It cannot be otherwise. And that, of course, will change your entire life for the better.
QUESTION: How can we tell if desires come from the higher or the lower self?
ANSWER: By examining the desires and their real motives. Very clearly and very concisely ask yourself the question, “What is it I want and why do I want such and such? What is my real motive behind it?” You see, it may very often be that you have a right desire coming from a good motive. At the same time there is also an impure motive in it. The moment you recognize this, you already have done something for your purification.
Purifying does not mean that you are already perfect; purification is the process of becoming perfect. An integral part of the process is to say, “In addition to my good motive, there is also a selfish or vain motive hidden under the good cause.” Take the example of a person who is spiritually very active with clean and pure motives to help other people. These good motives exist indubitably. At the same time, the desire-current of the lower self mingles with the good motives, perhaps as the ego’s vain desire to be outstanding, to be admired, to be an authority. The moment the mixture of motives is calmly and freely recognized, even if you are as yet incapable of shedding the impure ones, purification is already taking place. With such an act, you have already raised your consciousness to a pretty high degree. Something in the chemistry of your body and soul begins to change with such clear self-recognition, because you approach truth.
The severest and most frequent violation of spiritual law that is so often overlooked by human beings is not living in truth. You all imagine that I mean you should not lie. I do not mean that at all. It is self-understood that a person should be honest and should not lie. But lying to oneself is often infinitely more dangerous and harmful than lying to others. Why is it more dangerous? Because when you lie to others, at least you are aware of it; you know it. Thus you are a step nearer to truth than when you lie to yourself. When you lie to yourself, you do not realize it, not because you cannot, but because you do not want to! So you have completely turned away from truth. That is a very grave violation, setting you apart from God. It surrounds you with a dark wall behind which you must be unhappy, quite apart from the outer conflicts which the violation creates for you sooner or later. Behind the wall you are lonely and lost. The only way you can find your way into the light is by tearing down the wall and looking at what is behind it, even if what you find is unpleasant. The first time you will struggle, but after you have torn down the first few stones of the wall, the relief will be tremendous. Then you will know what it means to be on this path. You will know that only this manner of working and nothing else counts, my friends.
I am trying to make you understand that you are not unfree creatures if you decide to fulfill the will of God—quite the contrary. For it needs the greatest and freest efforts of willpower to decide to live within spiritual law. In order to do that, as I have explained, it is necessary to recognize your innermost motives and hidden currents. Only a free person can do that. Conversely, if people constantly decide to use their little self-will, they become more and more bound and chained. For the more you live in divine law, the freer you must become, and the more you break divine law, the more enslaved you must become. People who do not recognize their hidden motives cannot conduct their lives freely. They are enslaved to their lower selves, to their unrecognized desires, which push and pull them backward and forward, left and right.
QUESTION: Does that mean that whatever we want to do, we always have to ask God, “Is this Thy will?” Or do you have to see whether it does not deviate from God’s law?
ANSWER: I would suggest this: In the first place, when you are on this path, you begin to make an inventory about your own person, as I have often suggested. Compile a list, not only of your faults, your qualities and virtues, in other words of what you are, but also of what you want. What are your desires really? And when you have done that, begin a constant process of self-analysis of your feelings every day. You will automatically get to know after a while in what respect you have obviously deviated from divine law in your emotional currents. Sometimes, when you discover the nature of a hidden desire, you will know at once that it is contrary to God’s will, even without any metaphysical knowledge. In other cases, you may have to probe a little deeper and separate the clean motive from the impure in the same desire current. As you view what is at stake in an issue, you will seldom find an answer by asking whether the action you contemplate is right or wrong. Since none of you would ever consider committing an antisocial or sinful act, the decisions you are faced with could be right either way in principle. Yet, for each individual there is always only one right way and many, many wrong ways possible. So you have to consider your honest motives behind your apparent good motives; that will determine the right or wrong action for you, not the ethical value of the action itself. As long as you have not found all the motives behind a desire, you will not be able to know the right action for you. The right procedure is not to ask God simply to let you know whether to do such and such, thus avoiding the work of self-knowledge on your part. There may be isolated instances where this can be the right thing to do, but not generally, not when there seems to be a repetitive pattern and a conflict involved. The right procedure is to decide wholeheartedly that you wish to find all the motives behind the conscious motive, and for that you should pray for God’s help. Then He will help you. Is that clear?
QUESTION: Yes.
ANSWER: So find out your underlying motives—which does not mean that the motive on the surface is annulled. But the other part that is mixed in with it has to be found. Then you will have the answer.
There is one more thing I would like to say to you before we turn to your general questions. It is about the outer will and the inner will. By the latter I do not only mean the subconscious will. The inner will I speak of can be made conscious comparatively easily. I have often given you the advice to listen within you where your solar plexus or spiritual field is. You may receive answers from there; you may feel right or wrong from this part of yourself, provided you have once wholeheartedly decided for the right course and that the resistance and fight are over and done with. If you become very quiet and relaxed and listen within, you may find that there is another will coming from there, or you may feel the lack of it, for that matter. This will or its absence often conflicts with your outer or conscious will.
Let us suppose a person sincerely desires to love a fellow-creature and desires to do so because he knows that it is right. This desire is in the person’s outer will. After becoming quiet and consulting the inner will, the person will find out that the inner will does not conform with the outer one. To find out such a discrepancy is extremely important, for how can you control yourself if you do not know what is within you? By controlling yourself, I certainly do not mean suppressing anything, but rather holding life’s reins firmly in one’s hands. How can you cure a wrong current if you do not discover it first?
If the inner will is right, it exists very quietly from deep within and yet is conscious. Now, if people desire to do their best, to fulfill their tasks as well as they are able to or to overcome their faults as well as possible at the present stage, their inner will should be directed toward that end, without pressure, without haste. The outer will does not press but is relaxed. A pressure from the outer will must make a person tense and will only delay the process. The inner will must want the right thing and the ultimate goal. The outer will must be serene and give leeway for life’s hindrances and imperfections that make it impossible to proceed speedily and according to a certain plan. The apparent obstacles should be met voluntarily as a means of growing faster, of learning to accept that which cannot be altered by the self, of learning humility, and other positive attitudes. Then the obstacles will cease to be obstacles and will instead become stepping stones on the way to the goal. The outer will must be flexible; it must be prepared for change. Sometimes it has to become more active, so you can act. At other times it has to become more passive. The inner will has to be active, but quietly, as befits the whole foundation of the person’s life. To understand these words truly, meditate about them deeply and perhaps quite often. And now we turn to your other questions.
QUESTION: In the case of war, is the act of killing by a soldier contrary to divine law?
ANSWER: No, it is not. For as Jesus Christ has said, render unto God what is God’s and render unto Caesar that which is due to him. If human beings on the earth sphere are still so far behind in development that war is necessary, then people have to fight for their country. Even if all people refused to fight, evil would not be eliminated. War may be temporarily eliminated, but certainly not evil. War is only one of many other expressions of evil. War is not the cause: it is only an effect. It would be the same if a father allowed a murderer to come into his house and kill his wife and children without defending them. He must defend those he loves and evil has to be fought against. In your present state of development, unfortunately, war often is still your means of fighting evil. As spiritual development grows, you will learn to go more to the roots of the problems and fight against evil in better ways. As it stands now, humanity is often forced to battle against forces that abuse free will and divine law. If people take the power upon themselves to prevent other people from living as God wants them to live, and if your world has not found other means as yet to eliminate this wrong, then war is the lesser evil.
You know from the spiritual point of view that death is not the worst thing that can happen. Spiritual death is the worst, not physical death. Every person is judged individually, and the judgement comprises also the circumstances and the environment in which he or she lives. In the spirit world, the real motives count more than the act, and judgment is not passed generally or collectively. Everyone is judged separately, and if a man goes to war simply to defend his country, this will not count against him. What counts is a person’s inner attitudes, feelings, reactions, motives, and sense of responsibility.
QUESTION: How does spiritual law correspond with human law in the case of a death sentence for a murderer?
ANSWER: From the spiritual point of view, capital punishment is wrong. That may sound like a contradiction when compared with the last answer, but it is not. In the case of war, it is a question of defending a nation and humanity. For humanity, war is often the last resort. And even the people living in the aggressor nation are often convinced that they are only doing their duty; they do not see the whole picture. They have to abide by the laws of their society. Otherwise they might cause more hardship, not only to themselves, thereby becoming incapable of fulfilling their lives, but also to others around them. Again, we cannot generalize, for there may be instances when it is the duty of a person to violate a human law in order to fulfill a law of God. But these instances are rare and only expected of strong and highly developed beings sent to earth with a special mission. In general, this does not hold true.
Capital punishment is not a necessity. However, war often is in your present state of development. You have not yet found the way to eliminate war. The only way to do so is when resentment, hate, and fear do not live in the individual soul any more. That is the only basis for peace. But capital punishment is not necessary.
QUESTION: You said in my private session to bring up this question: What are the various aspects of love?
ANSWER: There are many and I cannot attempt to enumerate all of them. I will just name a few: compassion, pity, respect, admiration, tenderness, protectiveness, helpfulness, kindness, truth. Yes, my friends, without truth, there can be no love! This will suffice for the moment.
QUESTION: A seeming unproductivity in your life; is that possibly a stage, or an indication that you are going in the wrong direction?
ANSWER: It often is an indication that you are going in the wrong direction. It might also be that in certain circumstances your will is counteracted by unconscious conflicting desires, or by fear. As long as this reality is not brought into consciousness, you cannot handle it properly. So the only course to take is the one I advocate. Of course, I am speaking generally. I have no right to give you the answer. It would weaken you. It will serve your development to find out for yourself. And you can quite easily do that with the guidance of my teachings. Actually, the two possibilities you mentioned form a whole. As long as there is conflict within you about a direction of your life, you cannot be successful in the field you have chosen. You can only be successful in anything when there is no conflict within you. And spontaneously, when you have solved the conflict between your conscious desires and the unconscious ones, you will find out what the right direction is for you. Then your desires may change. Find out the real motives behind your present desires, and find out what holds you back. Is it a fear or a desire to not pay the price wholeheartedly—which is not necessarily bad, and it may be good. For, spiritually speaking, the price is sometimes too high.
At times it is the lower self that prevents success in a certain direction, and sometimes it is the higher self which recognizes that this is not good, so it prevents you from achieving success. You can find the answer by testing your motives without any self-pampering or sensitivity for your ego, with utter and shattering self-honesty. That is the only procedure that I cannot advise strongly enough, even at the risk of boring you, my friends.
QUESTION: When you say an incarnation has taken place in a certain country, does that mean where a person was born even if he or she has only lived there for a very short time, or does it mean where one has spent most of one’s life?
ANSWER: Most of one’s life. It would be where your roots are; it would be the country you consider your home, where you have made your connections, your ties, and your karmic links.
QUESTION: This does not correspond to astrology?
ANSWER: In astrology the situation is different because the astrological chart has to be figured according to the geographical part of the world. That is something different.
QUESTION: A question in connection with war and killing: How are we to regard a conscientious objector who sincerely follows the admonition not to kill and considers the whole of the universe as his fellow-men rather than only the part he is called upon to defend?
ANSWER: In the first place, a man is not defending a part of geography but his immediate fellow-creatures. By refusing to go to war, he may in the long run cause more harm than good. With this I certainly do not wish to give the impression that I advocate war. By no means. But war cannot be eliminated by refusing it. This cancer has to be treated in another way and slowly has to cease in all individuals. A conscientious objector, provided his motives are pure, will be judged accordingly. Then this will certainly not be held against him, the same as killing in a war by a soldier will not be held against him, if his heart is pure and his conviction sincere. But that does not alter the fact that his judgment is wrong. More precisely, his goal or endeavor is a good one, just as the goal of a sincere soldier may be a good one, but he selects the wrong means to oust an evil.
Refusing to go to war could not be the right curative means against war. For as long as there is hatred within the individual soul, and as long as there is blindness caused through lack of self-knowledge, and as long as people do not purify themselves and strive upward to God, and as long as people cannot refine their feelings, there cannot be peace. It is impossible. War is an outpicturing of what goes on in so many individual personalities. It cannot be eliminated by collective means alone, well meant as they may be, unless they are supported by the right spiritual attitudes. The cure has to start from within by each individual. Otherwise you will only succeed in eliminating one effect, and another symptom will come.
It is just the same with disease, my friends. War is nothing else but a disease. Your human history and your human science show you how many ways medicine has found to eliminate disease. Many diseases that existed a relatively very short time ago are not possible anymore. But other diseases have sprung up that you cannot cure, and new diseases will continue to do so until a greater degree of purification exists on this earth, no matter what wonderful progress science and medicine make. As long as the disease is not cured from within, war or other diseases will exist. If it is not war, it will be something else equally terrible.
In the case of an individual, it is possible to make a mistake in judgment and this in itself is not held against you as long as you are sincere and do not delude yourself and color your motives. You all make mistakes in judgment. People have very firm opinions about any subject from religion to politics. The moment these opinions are fanatical and inflexible, people should test their real inner motives and then they may find out that these opinions are not as objective as they may have thought at first. If you dig deeply and honestly, you will be surprised how often you find a personal, emotional, subjective reason behind your convictions.
QUESTION: What is the opposite aspect of vanity?
ANSWER: Love and humility. For if you are vain, you want to place your ego in the first row. You want admiration—I am not speaking personally now—and you want to be more than the other person.
So, my friends, God’s blessing is given to you. God’s love is streaming to you. May the words I have given you bear fruit and help you on your path and strengthen you. Be in peace, be in love, be in God!
Greetings in the name of the Lord. Blessings for all of you, my dear friends. Blessed is this hour.
Every human being desires to strive for perfection, for the ability to love, and for true goodness, for light and truth. The desire lives in the divine spark of every being, but in its pure state it does not always penetrate all the layers of imperfection that surround the spark. We see it as though the sun were shining through dirty glass and the rays coming out on the other side took on hazy shades.
But, dear friends, quite apart from this higher-self desire, the desire for perfection comes also from the lower self. This is so with all people who have realized that selfishness and self-serving aims do not bring many desirable results. If you were to serve only the aims of your essential lower self you would certainly not be loved and admired. Therefore, the desire for goodness is also selfish. Understand this and recognize within yourself that the desire for goodness does not necessarily and exclusively come from your higher self. This is a confusing problem for many human beings. You can gain clarity only if you become aware of your emotions, desires, and motives. Then you can separate the pure motive from the selfish one. This confusion is so strong at times that many people become uncertain whether to follow the desire for goodness, particularly after discovering the selfish motives. You should certainly continue to aim for the right and good within yourself and in your actions, but you should also be clear as to what extent your desire is colored by selfishness. This conflict is often not yet conscious. You are aware that you do want the good, the true, and the beautiful, but there is also a voice within that asks quite clearly, “Is it really pure goodness, pure unselfishness if I do such and such?” You become confused and uncertain about your own good motives.
Only the very blind, those human beings who are still spiritual infants, seek selfish ends and believe that their selfishness will serve their purpose. Whoever has outgrown spiritual infancy knows very well that serving one’s own ends often brings greater disadvantage than resisting such selfish impulses. At this level, the entity has outgrown the most primitive stage, but has not yet reached the stage where the desire for selfishness has been emotionally outgrown. This is the stage most of you find yourselves in, and it is this very struggle that we are concerned with.
The first step is always to recognize the meaning of your various desires, motives, and feelings. From there on, the path becomes easier. Recognize where your desire for goodness comes from your divine spark and where it does not. Once you have gained clarity, you will have not only made a further step in self-knowledge, but the recognition—even though by no means flattering or comfortable—will give you added peace of mind. The moment you fully accept the idea that selfishness still has a larger place in you than you were ready to admit before, and are willing to let go of wanting to be more perfect than you presently are, you have begun to face yourself in the true sense of the word. Coming off your high horse is healthy; and health, emotional or otherwise, must have a very good effect on you. Truth is always healthy and soothing when one has made up one’s inner mind not to fight against it anymore.
As the human being develops spiritually and matures emotionally, self-knowledge continues on ever deeper levels. On the most superficial level of development, “good” is done outwardly but one harbors selfish and evil thoughts quite consciously and knowingly. When confronted with such a situation there are two forms of behavior. On this path one tries in a spirit of true understanding and humility to accept oneself as one is at the moment, and also to accept one’s inability to change as yet. One has the courage to admit to oneself that perfection is still far away, in spite of the outer good deeds one performs mainly in order to conform and to gain admiration. The other alternative is to rationalize, justify, and self-righteously “explain” harboring such evil or unkind desires, while seeking self-justification in the shortcomings of others. This you would call hypocrisy. Many people fall into this category.
This type of behavior is so crass and elementary that we do not have to bother with it. The case becomes infinitely more difficult when the same hypocrisy becomes subtler and more deeply buried. Good desires are superimposed on selfish ones, which are suppressed and relegated to the unconscious. This is partly due to the sincere strivings of the higher self and partly to the selfish ends of the lower self. Here begin the human conflicts that render a soul sick and weak. We are concerned, for there is no human being to whom this does not apply in one way or another.
The more you keep the selfish motives suppressed, the more confusion and disorder are created within you. A basic misunderstanding exists here: you realize that the first category, the most primitive form of hypocrisy, is distasteful, therefore you suppress your true emotions, because of the wrong conclusion that there is no alternative. You make yourself unaware of the existence of wrong desires because you think that otherwise you would have to be like those hypocrites whom you do not admire for their attitude. You ignore the third alternative which is the only healthy one. This approach leads to the perfection you strive for: facing and admitting the wrong desires without giving in to them, and yet without suppressing their existence. The beginning is always the most difficult, and that is the sorting out of your emotions, finding their meaning, facing all that you have looked away from.
The more you learn self-honesty, the deeper can the truth penetrate into the core of the soul. But it takes a lot of doing before the core is reached. Wherever the conscious emotions, opinions, thoughts, conclusions, and desires are separated from those which are unconscious, we can see a wall in the human soul. You all know that thoughts and feelings create forms of subtle matter which are of a substance every bit as real as your material substance. So this wall is a reality and, alas, often a greater reality than your matter. For your matter is much easier to destroy than some of these walls. This side of the wall is what you face and know. Behind the wall you store all that which is unpleasant to face. You store not only your faults and weaknesses, but also all things that confuse and frighten you. Due to an unconscious wrong conclusion, you continue to fear all that is locked behind the wall and prevent yourself from facing it.
Now what is the spiritual substance of this wall, my friends? For spiritual substance is not a material that you use because you choose it as when you build a form in your material world. You make your choice of material according to taste and necessity, but the material has nothing to do with you. Spiritual substance, on the other hand, is the product of your thinking, feeling, and being, and it is formed from them.
You cannot use something you have not got. And you have only that which you are. The substance of your inner wall is partly your goodwill that is ineffective because of wrong conclusions and ignorance. Do not forget that the purpose of the wall is to keep the negative in hiding, and one of the motives of this desire is actually misapplied goodwill. But it consists also of cowardice, pride, self-will, and impatience. Your impatience mounts because in your ignorance you think and wish to attain perfection more expeditiously by simply erecting this wall and locking up what would take much more time and effort to eliminate. You are too impatient and also too lazy to really tackle what lies behind the wall. All these trends are the building materials of the wall in your soul.
As one progresses on the path of self-knowledge and perfection, one slowly begins to take out certain trends and attitudes from behind the wall and transpose them into consciousness. All of you know the process by which this is done. It is the work I advocate and teach. In this process, the wall recedes. The more comes out from behind the wall, the fewer trends remain locked in. This is good work, and it needs to go on and on. But, my friends, this wall must one day disintegrate if you want to be whole and truly healthy. As long as you retain any part of the wall within yourself, no matter how much you have succeeded in making it recede, you are not yet whole. You do not function as God meant you to function. Therefore, your aim has to be to destroy the wall altogether. In most cases, this cannot be done at once and if it is hastily attempted, people can suffer breakdowns and all sorts of other complications. In many cases it is advisable to make the wall recede and to gradually lift out what is behind it. Thus the wall not only recedes, but if properly done, the substance itself weakens. Otherwise, one may succeed in taking out certain things and pushing the wall a little into the background, but there it will remain in full force—perhaps even getting stronger. I will explain in a moment how this could happen and how to ward off the danger.
Let me emphasize again how important it is to be aware of the necessity of one day destroying your wall. This can and should happen without unduly shaking up the personality. Your spiritual rebirth can occur only after the wall has disappeared. Then your soul stands naked in front of your Maker, in front of yourself. For you have to become that naked, that empty so that divine substance can fill you and take root within yourself. As long as your rigid wall remains, however weak, however pushed back it may be, the divine substance is ineffective to the degree of the strength of the wall. In other words, the stronger the wall, the weaker the effect of the divine substance that is waiting to penetrate and fill you.
So, my dear friends, all of you who work on this path so successfully, visualize this wall within yourselves. You can find it in meditation, you will sense it by observing your reactions, and you will then know where the wall stands. After locating it, it will be much easier for you to finally succeed in eliminating it altogether.
And now I shall speak about a danger you must guard against. It is the hazard of getting off to a good start in extricating some hidden trends from behind the wall but strengthening the wall unconsciously by employing halfway measures. When and how does this happen? It happens when a true thought, teaching, philosophy or recognition serves as a camouflage behind which you continue to hide. This happens so frequently, my friends. No truth is exempt from this fate. Many people search for truth; and truth can come to you through many channels. But no matter how sincere the search is, almost everyone wants to resist facing certain things within. The two contradictory desires can coexist; one searches for the truth, and one can use these truths to reinforce the wall. So you can hide your faults, emotional conflicts, fears, and negative trends behind a truth. In its crass and superficial version this misuse of truth is easy to recognize. You recognize it in any fanatic, in anyone who adheres rigidly to dogma, in whatever religion. Such a person may commit all sorts of wrongs, have all sorts of wrong reactions, while he propounds the religious truth of his choosing.
But do not forget that, in principle, the same thing goes on in almost every human being, only in a much more subtle way. And if you become sensitive, if you raise your intuition, you will hear and notice this pattern very well when one of your brothers or sisters falls into it. You will object to it, yet you will ignore that you do the same thing, only you use another truth as a shield. This may be a religious, spiritual, metaphysical truth, a philosophical truth; it may be pure ethics and morals, without any religious implications; it may be psychology, or psychoanalysis. Many theories, terms, and expressions that you use are true and as such are good. But the moment they are used in that way, they are abused and they therefore lose their validity. They become dead, rigid, and meaningless. No truth is exempt from this fate if you are not watchful, if you do not look out for this tendency in yourself. The very teachings I give you can be abused in the same way. It is never done on purpose, of course, but unknowingly.
For instance, when you use certain terms and do not feel their true meaning anymore, then the time has come to check yourself to see whether or not you have fallen unconsciously into this trap. You may even hide behind a true recognition about yourself, let us say an image, a wrong conclusion, or certain faults you have found. You may hide behind that, you may use that as the outer facade of your wall. It is as though something in you said, “I go that far, not further. I am willing to admit such and such now, but not more. The admission of certain faults and inner negativities will pacify those who help me to reach the core of my being. No one can say then that I am unwilling. But what really bothers me, I will not voluntarily expose. I have found a good way to be able to go on hiding.”
Perhaps all this sounds strange to you and you may still not grasp what I mean. Let me try to make it a little clearer. Let us assume you have started on this path with good faith and goodwill and you have progressed well. You have made certain major recognitions. You have passed the stage when your resistance to face yourself manifested in finding excuses and rationalizations for not going on such a path, in spite of your search for it. Thus you have broken the first resistance and pushed the wall considerably into the background, allowing certain information to filter through. At this point you are well launched on the path itself, while previously you were only struggling to get on it. But do not imagine that then all resistance is overcome for good. For as long as you maintain the wall, resistance is inevitable, and only the form and manifestation of the resistance will be different. While before you had all sorts of doubts, misgivings, excuses, and pretexts about entering this path, you now work and discover, but still with some reservations. And in order to justify this reservation, you now take the findings you have made so far and build them up. You may even let them grow to disproportionate significance to prevent yourself from penetrating deeper. You use the same words again and again until they become rigid and no longer carry the living life-force. Any truth must do just that. If it no longer does, if the words have become automatic, then the time has come to examine yourself from this point of view and find your wall again. Once you are aware of it, you can wage a healthy battle with your ignorance and resistance.
Only you yourself can find out when and how you are hiding behind your wall, and what truth you are misusing. Only by examining your feelings, by listening into your emotions can you get the answer. The fact that you have overcome the initial resistance and won your first victory is, in most cases at least, a milestone indicating that you will not leave this path again. But this does not mean that other resistances do not lie in wait, that other victories do not have to be won. Although you may never leave this path, you may get stuck at a certain point and go around in circles without penetrating deeper. This happens when truth and true findings are used as hideouts.
The unconscious is congenitally opposed to giving up its subterfuges. It considers coming out into the open a grave danger. It is ignorant and draws utterly erroneous conclusions in this respect, as in many others. Therefore it is opposed to let the wall crumble and concocts all sorts of ruses to prevent you from working in this direction, no matter how good your intentions may be. This should be a warning for you to show you what the danger point may be at this time, in what direction to look within yourselves, so as to gain further victories and penetrate deeper into your souls. Now you will know from what angle to approach yourselves to avoid stagnation. Is this clear, my friends?
Think well about what I have said. I pointed out a hidden danger, a subtle danger. If you are truly desirous of making the wall crumble, to become empty and naked in your soul, then you will feel quite clearly where and in exactly what way your own wall exists. It is always easier to notice it in the other person, but one is utterly unaware about it in oneself. You may hide behind a different truth, behind a different recognition, yet you also may hide just as much as the other person. Take your intent into your prayers, my friends. Ask God to help you first to see the wall and then give you the courage and the humility to break it down.
And now, before we turn to your questions, I should like to tell you that a plan has materialized for a second smaller group to be formed, similar to the first so-called inner circle. We would recommend this very much. In such common group work you can accomplish much. You can help one another. Everyone of you who is working in image-finding teams should get into additional group work where you can discuss your problems, difficulties, and successes. At the same time, it will help many to form a bond. We encourage and we bless this undertaking.
And now, my dear friends, I am ready for your questions.
QUESTION: Are currents, as you use the expression psychologically, used by the unconscious or conscious mind as an instrument? In other words, is the unconscious or conscious mind an instrument, or are they connected or identical?
ANSWER: We cannot say it is either way. A current is actually a result of your feelings, your thoughts, emotions, attitudes. It is the sum total of your conscious and unconscious trends and traits. It is that which governs you and brings your life and that which happens to you into certain channels.
Let us take the current of self-will. It is there. You use it, whether consciously or unconsciously makes no difference. The using of the self-will generates a current, and the current has an effect. The current of self-will is not the self-will itself. It is the self-will at work. Self-will could be dormant, it could be unused. Then the current would be weak, or so hidden in its effects that the personality would never know what causes the effects. But if it is used, even in the unconscious, even if it does not manifest as such, even if it manifests in a very roundabout and hidden way, the manifestation of it is caused by the current. Imagine it as something like electricity. Certain conditions are necessary to produce electric current. It is exactly the same thing. The electric current is a result of the conditions that can bring it forth. Is that clear?
QUESTION: But the conscious or unconscious mind then would be an instrument or storehouse?
ANSWER: Well, a storehouse is not the same as an instrument. It is the mind that produces it, the unconscious or the conscious mind. You can say that it is the personality, made up of the conscious and the unconscious mind, that produces it. Therefore it is not the instrument. An instrument is something passive. But the mind actively produces currents.
QUESTION: Where does a “must” end and a duty start? How do you distinguish between the two?
ANSWER: The “must” or the compulsion is always a result of untruthful, mixed, and confused motives. Duty is something entirely voluntary. If you fulfill a duty without compulsion, you do so because you decided it. It may be something that life seems to force upon you. But once you recognize that you cannot live life entirely as you would choose, that life brings situations and predicaments which one has to accept, whether one likes them or not, the healthy attitude is to say yes to life as it is. Then you voluntarily accept a duty. If you do not accept it emotionally and do the duty because you have no other choice, you are acting under a compulsion, against your will, and then it is a “must.” I have taught you, for instance, that life’s imperfections have to be accepted in that spirit. This includes also things that become your duty. He who constantly rebels against these imperfect conditions even though the rebellion may be quite unconscious, acts against his will, like a child who is forced to obey. The mature attitude is the free one. This real kind of freedom does not mean that one can always do exactly as one pleases, but that one accepts the necessary with a willing spirit, with an inward “yes.” In other words, the borderline is in the very fine distinction between saying yes to an imposed or inevitable duty, or struggling against it and being forced to accept it against one’s will. The difference lies in your attitude.
QUESTION: What is the connection and the difference between the aura of a person and his present sphere—or the soul picture?
ANSWER: These are entirely different things. One has nothing to do with the other. The sphere is built up by the person’s deeds, thoughts, attitudes and feelings. It does not change quickly, because change in the personality cannot come about quickly. Therefore, the sphere is more static and will remain until the personality changes. It is the product of one’s life and will afterward become the entity’s spiritual home.
The aura is the emanation of the personality and has nothing directly to do with what you build. Perhaps we can best explain it this way: The sphere is the result of your activity. The activity may also be an unconscious one. It is the activity of your soul. The aura is the product of your passive state. It is the product of that in you which is the state of being. It is what you are, not what you do. That is the best way I can explain it. I have no other words. And as far as manifestation is concerned, the difference is strong. A clairvoyant can see a person’s aura, that which emanates from the subtle bodies and penetrates the physical body. It reflects, in fluctuating colors, various moods, diseases of body and soul, the basic character type that you are. The spiritual sphere you build with your activity can be seen by very few clairvoyants, unless they are given such sight with our help for a specific purpose. It is something that not every human being carries about. I cannot express it in any other way. I know it is difficult to understand, but you will have to make the best of my words.
QUESTION: In connection with your lecture on authority, could you give any further advice to a person who finds that with a particular form of authority he is unconsciously a law-upholder, but consciously he is a definite law-breaker to the point of acute resentment, dislike, and intolerance toward this particular authority?
ANSWER: I will gladly answer this question. Once the recognition has been made that unconsciously one is a law-upholder, while one rebels consciously, particularly against a certain form of authority, the foundation for change is laid. Without this recognition, nothing can be changed. The next step is what I say again and again: Observe your reactions in your everyday life from this viewpoint: “What do I feel? How would I want to be? Why do I react this way? What lies behind this reaction? What are the emotions that drive me to react in one instance like this and in exactly the opposite way in the other? Why am I once a law-upholder and once a law-breaker?”
When you finally succeed in answering these questions by learning to make your emotions conscious and articulate, you will understand deeper layers of your being that are responsible for the reactions you have recently discovered. But they are not yet the final answers. They only lead to them.
Make constant and detached observations of your daily reactions. Find your attitude toward them, and learn from them to find what lies behind them. This in itself is already a curing agent to a large degree. Furthermore, by doing all this without haste, without tension, but with steady perseverance, you will see all the wrong conclusions that are connected with such attitudes. The important thing is then to think these conclusions through, to see why and how they are wrong, and what the right conclusion would be. Cultivate this process of questioning and observe how the emotions—which work slower than the brain mechanism—still adhere to their old patterns. Then these emotions will begin to change gradually, at first almost imperceptibly. This is the only way, my friends.
In this connection, I would like to mention something I have recently said in a private session because I deem it important enough for all of you.
Authority is not only that which emotionally represents the enemy, the restricting forces that prohibit your doing what you wish. Authority can also be represented for you personally by the very people you love most, because you are dependent on them. Most of you go through this in childhood. After childhood this situation may repeat itself for the adult in a somewhat different version.
You love your parents, and yet they are your authority. The conflict came into existence because you loved them. You may wonder how to solve the problem which is that you cannot help feeling dependent on the one you love, and therefore this person becomes your authority. The answer to this question is: Examine your love and find the right middle path. One extreme is the inability to give up the self and therefore the inability to love at all; also too strong a fear and self-will, which prevent you from letting go of the self. The other extreme is an overdependency that arises from the tendency to let go too much in the wrong direction. Wherever such lack of balance exists, other unhealthy and harmful currents prevail, and the balance has to be established by becoming aware of the problem and looking at it squarely until you recognize either of these two wrong extremes. The more frequent tendency is to not give up the self at all. Look at it again and again. Merely acknowledge it, and pray for guidance and recognition. Then, gradually, your emotions will find the right middle way.
The person for whom the loved one becomes the authority because of an overdependency will learn that though in a healthy and true love one does give oneself up entirely, but one retains the self in a new way that does not keep the personality unfree and dependent. You must get yourself back renewed and freer than ever by letting go of yourself entirely. The fear of giving up the self is a very common failing, it is a frequent cause of sickness. But there are also cases where the opposite extreme exists. Yet the opposites are now more similar and nearer to one another than you may think. The true giving up will choose the right way and the right circumstances where no abuse is ever possible, where the other’s maturity meets one’s own maturity. The immature person will blindly choose the object that may take advantage of the giving up the self. And the fear of this creates the extreme of prohibiting the self from giving itself up at all. Maturity is conscious understanding, which, in turn, raises the intuitive powers that will make the right choice where no one takes undue advantage.
QUESTION: How does the spirit world judge a person who is searching for truth, yet escapes from himself and chooses the easy way out?
ANSWER: That depends entirely on the development of the person in question. The same is not expected of everyone. There are people who merely try to live right and to not commit crimes, who live an average, decent life. For them this is the most that can be expected. It requires all of their effort to do just that. It is all they are capable of in this incarnation. Such a person finds more fulfillment than one who goes on the path only half-heartedly and stops midway. The latter may not be doing his or her best.
You human beings are always inclined to judge everyone alike. We cannot do so because everyone is of a different spiritual age. Everyone has reached a different stage of development in different respects of his or her personality. There are different basic factors to be considered. The characteristics, the strengths, and the tasks are different, according to former incarnations. If, for instance, someone capable of searching and facing the self gives up because of laziness, pride, or for whatever reasons that follow the line of least resistance, the result must be felt by the entity.
We in the spirit world do not judge in a moralizing way; we do not punish. All that is wrong. There is no such thing. You punish yourself. If you go against your own plan, if you do not do what you set out to do when you came into this life, you draw circumstance toward you that will finally corner you and this is for your own good. You can observe this with some people. Life corners them, not because God punishes them, but because they have set certain forms in motion that oppose their life plan. When the life plan is violated, the life plan itself begins to work so as to bring about fulfillment. If the choice of the personality is directed against it, the life plan must work differently than if the person had adhered to it. But the result must always be the same.
The experiences and the time element will certainly be different. But the end result must be the same. For the life plan works to establish balance and harmony. The more ignorantly the personality works against the balance and harmony, the more disharmonious the process of establishing balance and harmony must be, but come it must in the end. Such is the healing force of nature. The same healing force works in the elements, in the body, as well as in the soul. Whenever something seeks to bring the universal forces out of balance, the healing forces of nature step in to bring back the balance. But this very balancing out may often seem like an upheaval. In the soul, when you go against your plan, exactly the same kind of outbreak takes place as in a thunderstorm or an earthquake. But in the end the balance is reestablished. For nothing else can make you see and reconsider the direction you have taken except the apparent upheavals of your own making that are the medicine of nature.
For a long time you may delude yourself into believing that all the mishaps in your life are due to injustice, to malice, and to the faults of others. But there is a limit as to how long you can go on believing that. Eventually the situation must arise when you are cornered in your own errors, when you are confronted with the undeniable fact that you yourself have produced the misery, and that will wake you up and make you change your course. That is the way we view it. We know this benevolent healing law as it simply exists in the universe. And when we see a human being we know at once by the forms in the soul, by the pictures within, whether he or she is going entirely according to the soul’s plan, or partly so, deviating a little bit but not enough to lose course entirely, or whether entirely away from his or her own road and thus producing and slowly building up the conditions that finally appear like tragedy but that are nothing but the creation of nature’s healing forces.
My dearest friends, I am allowed to bring blessings to all of you and to your dear ones, here on earth as well as in the spirit world: blessings of healing, blessings of love, strength and courage. Go on this path, my dear ones. And those of you who have not yet found the way, pray that God show you His will and His truth which is the only truth. Open yourself to be receptive for this truth only. Go in peace, my dearest ones, receive our love which envelops every one of you. And if you send out your inner feelers, you will all know that you are not alone. Be in God!