MONTHLY LECTURE(S)

Greetings, my dearest friends. Blessings for every one of you. Blessed be this hour. May this lecture help you again discover more of yourself, to widen and raise your consciousness, to strengthen your grasp on reality.

The most powerful aspect in your life is the unconscious. Everything favorable, pleasurable, advantageous, as well as your hardships, suffering, disappointments, unfulfillments, so-called “bad luck,” the repetition of unfavorable patterns — all are determined by your unconscious thinking and feeling. This comprises a great deal more than is commonly understood. When you speak of your fate, of what happens or does not happen to you as if by fate, the truth is that these events are caused by nothing else but the governing force of unconscious factors.

The unconscious is much stronger than the conscious mind because the absurdity of conscious misconceptions and unrealistic outlooks is more easily detectable and can therefore be corrected. Whatever is hidden from awareness continues to govern you without your being able, through your reason, to change it. Hence it is of utmost importance to detect such hidden erroneous outlooks.

It is often forgotten that the unconscious not only harbors petrified wrong conclusions, destructive behavior patterns resulting from images, and negative emotions due to unresolved problems, but also utter wisdom, divine truth, and the most constructive elements in the universe, constantly building them with unending creativity and love. These wells of positive energy can be tapped to the degree that the obstructions are let out of their hiding place — the unconscious. Then, and then only, will all the productive elements which are still hidden rise to the surface.

Only when you are in a dynamic process of growth and development do these words become real. Until then, they represent a theory and no more. Little by little, as you begin to discover the strange, exciting, at times even slightly frightening and yet exhilarating reality of your unconscious, you will begin to have an inkling of the powerful elements that are buried in it. So we must strive on this path to detect as much as possible not only what is erroneous, but also all the productive elements behind the errors. They all lie deep within yourself. To the degree that you liberate yourself from the rubbish of useless fears and misconceptions that divide you, the constructive, creative, productive elements you never knew existed will be freed.

Why do I repeat this fact, after having discussed it so often and in so many different forms?  My reason for doing so is that none of you, my friends, are really and truly aware of the power of your unconscious and how it still governs you in your daily lives, in spite of considerable progress. I wish to help you to become more aware of this, to give you even more effective tools to discover more of the forces which govern you without your knowing it.

Before we come to more practical hints in this respect, let me discuss the following. Your personality is a repetition, in smaller form, of the whole universe. Both the individual and the universe exist because of a certain distribution of various cosmic energies. The way these energies interact and are arranged determines the harmonious or disharmonious existence of the created being — human,  universe, plant, or leaf. In their ideal creation and state, these energies and forces work together perfectly, complementing one another rather than hindering one another. Hence the created being emanates one unified cosmic current. Again, this applies to a stellar system, an individual planet, as well as every entity inhabiting the individual planets, from mineral to the highest spiritual creature. The regulating universal forces must be the same for all.

When a stellar system disintegrates, it is because contrary forces are at work — the opposite of truthfulness, realism, awareness, and consciousness. The two opposing forces create such tension through the pressure of two opposing energy currents that finally an explosion occurs and the entity annihilates itself. This is again applicable to a stellar system, a planet, or the decay of a leaf on a tree. To put it simply, the universe, up to a certain degree of development or awareness, consists of two primary currents:  a yes-current and a no-current. The yes-current includes every constructive energy because it accords with truthful insight, which cannot help but breed love and unity. The no-current is destructiveness because it inadvertently deviates from truthfulness, thereby breeding hate and disunity. This general explanation applies to your individual daily life as well as to great concepts in the history of creation.

You know, my friends, from past experience that I do not ask you blindly to accept spiritual teachings you cannot verify within yourself right now. For what applies to you personally must, in principle, apply to all creation. It is easy and absolutely feasible to detect the yes-and no-currents within yourself, in your daily lives, if you learn to understand and to interpret the language of your personal unconscious. To do so requires a certain technique, the same as in learning any new language. It means practice, perseverance, and patience in order to learn the new symbols.

Language in any shape or form is a conglomeration of symbols. What else is language?  When you say the word “table,” it is a symbol for the object you use and know.  The same applies to the language of your personal unconscious mind. And it is just as possible to learn its language as to learn any other language. But it also takes as much time, effort, and practice. It no more comes to you by itself than suddenly learning a new language without organized effort. Only it is infinitely more rewarding, more essential for your personal life to know the language of your unconscious than the knowledge of a dozen foreign earth languages.

The work of this path is manifold. We have described it in various analogies and defined it in several ways. Among many other things, this path is also the learning of the language of the unconscious. When you do so, you are bound to detect the yes-and the no-currents.

The yes-current is often, but not always, the more noticeable of the two because it is mostly conscious. Whenever you find yourself disturbed because of a persistent unfulfillment, you can be sure that both currents must be strongly at work, thus inhibiting each other. Consciously the yes-current is stronger and blots out the unconscious no-current. The more the latter is squelched in the erroneous idea that this eliminates it, the more it is driven underground, where it continues to do its work. And the more this happens, the more urgent and frantic the yes-current becomes. The two currents pull the personality in two opposite directions, creating stronger and stronger tension and pressure. The way to eliminate the short circuit is to uncover the no-current, understand its faulty premises, and thereby gradually shed the belief in the necessity for its existence.

It will be helpful for every one of you to approach yourself, your life, in this way. It sounds, and really is, simple, but it is not oversimplified.

In those areas of your life where things go easily, where you appear to be lucky, where most of the time you are fulfilled without any problematic and confusing crises, you can be sure that there is very little no-current and the yes-current predominates without a contradictory hidden undercurrent. To put it differently:  not only is the surface attitude, but the attitude of your entire being undivided and in accord with reality. You are not split in motivation and in desire.

But in areas where you are repeatedly “unlucky,” the no-current must be at work in one form or another. Of course, the reasons may vary with each individual, but the underlying causes have to be clearly defined in order to inactivate them. Most of you have begun to detect them at least in part.

Any goal you consciously desire and nevertheless do not attain is proof that an undetected no-current is at work. It is not sufficient to gain, or have gained, understanding of your images and misconceptions, nor how and why they came into existence in the particular circumstances of your childhood. Important work as that is, it is only one step. In this respect, most of you have made considerable progress. But it is not sufficient, for you are all mistaken when you believe that having found the misconceptions, the erroneous conclusions, will automatically change your innermost, subtle emotional reactions. It does not work that way, because this assumption only leads to the illusion that your finding and your momentary relief has already liberated you, while you continue to react in the old way without being aware of it. Sooner or later, this is bound again to produce negative results, which then come as a double disappointment and discouragement.

The only way change can come about is through detection of how the no-current continues to work, even prohibiting the very change so ardently striven for by the yes-current. For that purpose, you really have to master the language of the unconscious.

Let us assume you wish for a certain fulfillment in your life you have lacked until now. You may have been aware of a strong desire for this fulfillment and in your pathwork you have discovered unconscious misconceptions, false guilts, and destructive attitudes that prohibit it. You may even have discovered a fear of the very fulfillment you wish and consequently a subtle attitude of rejecting it. The fear may be based on an entirely illusory premise and therefore be unnecessary. It may be due to the childish desire of not wanting to pay the necessary price connected with the fulfillment. It may be a feeling of not deserving this happiness. It may be any number of further reasons, or a combination of all of them. Whatever they are, you have in essence discovered what stands in your way. You may experience the discovery as a one-time nucleus, as it were, like a package of disturbance. But it rarely occurs to my friends that this package continues to send forth its expressions in spite of having been detected. And this is the important part of the work, without which real liberation cannot be achieved.

In view of all this, it is necessary to renew your efforts in daily detection of the no-current at work. Its manifestations may be ever so subtle, diffuse, and almost too elusive to catch. But, if you set out to do so, what was once so hazy as to be almost impossible to formulate will become obvious. It will stand out in clear contour. You will discover how you slightly cringe at the thought of the fulfillment whenever it approaches. When it is playful fantasy, all may be well. You may detect a vague feeling of familiar uneasiness which you used to push aside, when you thought about the fulfillment. Is it a feeling of fear or false guilt that you do not deserve it?  Whatever it is, try to take these vague, hazy emotional impressions and question them in the daylight of consciousness. Examine the faraway fantasy when, apparently, only the yes-current is at work. But in this fantasy, do you wish for the impossible in that you do not take into consideration the human imperfections in all concerned?  Do you fantasize in the spirit of having it all your way, which may not be bad or wrong, but, upon closer examination, is rigid, one-sided, unreal?  In this fantasy, do you expect being favored, at the expense of flexibly adjusting to new circumstances?  In these circumstances you could give of yourself as you compromise and renounce your expectations. Or, do you subtly feel that life should furnish you with the ideal fulfillment without necessitating change, adjustment, and relinquishing on your part?  This prevalent attitude may be extremely subtle and require all your discernment to discover it. When you do, you will have found a reason for the existence of the no-current which functions exclusively when it comes to reality, but not in your one-sided fantasy. In such one-sided fantasy, you may even be willing to give of yourself, but only because in the fantasy you direct the play and thus determine how, when, in what way, you are giving. In reality you cannot determine all that. Reality requires you to be ready with your flexibility when necessary. Because you unconsciously know all that, you block the fulfillment, somehow waiting for the impossible.

When you become aware of the constantly working no-current, even before fully understanding its presence, you will find relief from hopelessness and the way out will be in sight. You will understand why your life has not changed in spite of extensive recognitions of images and childhood lessons. You will now detect the destructive feelings in the service of the no-current:  fear, guilt, anger, frustration, hostility, etc. These feelings continue to smolder, but they may be artfully camouflaged, explained away by apparently real provocations, and “successfully” projected onto others. Discovering all these mechanisms is learning the language of the unconscious. This is a successful translation of it.

No matter how many findings you make, nothing will really change in your life until you observe the no-current in action, daily, again and again; until you interpret its messages and decipher its codes.

Before you can discover the no-current behind a strong unfulfilled wish, you may often be puzzled because the yes-current is so desperately urgent. Instead of letting this mislead you into assuming that this proves the absence of a no-current, you may be certain that the urgency proves its presence. The frantic fear that the desperate urgency will not be fulfilled always heralds an underground no to the fulfillment. Absence of such a no produces an easy, relaxed yes-current, without a tinge of desperation. It is a yes-current that wants the fulfillment, is wholly ready for it, but is quite capable of leading a constructive life without it, regardless of how welcome the fulfillment would be. If the fulfillment cannot take place for various outer reasons, if the detection of the no-current happened too late, the person will still know that other ways are open for the experience of a productive life.

Let us now be more specific about the detection of a no-current. You may be sure it exists if frustration remains in your life in spite of having found relevant images. You may also be sure about its existence if you are desperate in your yes-current; if you fear that the fulfillment will never come; if you believe your life is dismal without it. After having thus determined that the no-current must exist, it is now a question of experiencing it — not just once, but whenever it is at work.

To become more acutely aware of its existence, the practice of the daily review, as you have learned, is immensely helpful and has to be applied in this direction. Observation and questioning of your emotional reactions must extend in width and depth on the path, instead of diminishing. If you progress in the right direction, you will now observe more, rather than less — contrary to the mistaken idea that there is less to see because of your improvement. Close scrutiny of your emotions is a number one prerequisite.

It is equally important to stir up the petrified part of the unconscious. If left alone, untouched, and unchallenged, the obstructions of the no-current do not manifest. They slumber quietly, and only when shaken up do they react in a more noticeable fashion. Such stirring occurs through the frustrations and difficulties life brings. It also occurs through constantly questioning the self and trying to get through the outer, rational shell in a spirit of penetrating inner search.

Stirred-up emotions reveal the no-current if they are investigated, questioned, and understood. As I have said, this stirring occurs partly through the unavoidable life circumstances and partly through deliberate processes in the pathwork. To observe productively what the unconscious expresses, it is important to separate the healthy part of yourself from the unhealthy, confused, involved part. Detached observation of something obscure and strange is the most healing procedure on the path of liberation. When your yes-current observes the no-current without frantic self-accusations, it becomes possible to translate the latter into concise human language. The concise formulation of previously vague feelings is invaluable and needs to be learned in the early stages of this path.

You are erroneously convinced that to understand what occurs in your unconscious means merely finding hitherto unknown elements. You expect completely unknown facts. This is true only in the rarest instances. It is not necessary to go through gyrations and distortions to seek after novelties. Nothing unfeasible is required to discover what needs to be discovered for living a meaningful life. You do not have to wait for something faraway and completely hidden. First, observe those layers that are easily accessible when you focus your attention on them. There are the half-conscious thoughts, the vague and diffuse attitudes and expressions that are almost second nature and therefore so easily overlooked because they have become a part of you. But none of the half-conscious feelings, reactions, and concepts are clearly formulated into concise thoughts. If you watch the half-conscious reactions in the problem areas of your life, you will learn all you need to know about yourself. This is a vital part of learning the language of your unconscious.

I will now not discuss dream interpretation, which deals with the translation of deeper layers. For this, more help is needed than the observation of half-conscious material and its translation into your known language. The half-conscious material comprises your immediate emotional reactions as well as your fantasy life. Comparison of both often demonstrates your discrepancies and contradictions, as well as your immature expectations.

The more clearly you see how you push away, or withdraw from, the very fulfillment you crave — as you see it again and again in action — the closer you come to eliminating the no-current. You weaken it merely by observing it.

When the petrified part of the unconscious is sufficiently badgered — partly from the petrification itself which you experience as frustration and pain, and partly from your pathwork — the hardness becomes sufficiently fluid to let go of some of its substance. This causes the no-current to appear strongly on the surface, less and less disguised, making it more and more difficult to rationalize. This can lead to a turning point, provided the ego does not lapse in its vigilance, allowing the no-current to become strong again. Please test yourself as to this possibility, at least in certain areas.

It is essential that you pay more attention to the no-current in its exact form. A certain type of meditation can help. Become very quiet and relaxed and begin by observing your thinking process, and even your initial inability to do so. This eventually leads to keeping thoughts out for a short while and making yourself utterly empty. In the emptiness it is possible for hitherto checked and repressed material to surface, if you express this purpose and desire it strongly enough without shying away from the effort to reach the goal. Though difficult at the beginning, such effort will after a while establish a channel to a part of you that you could not previously tap. At first, you see the destructive elements floating up, and then you will be able to tap the constructive elements, hidden deeply within. Often, however, the process does not follow this sequence. In other words, it is not that “good” follows after all the “bad” has come out; it fluctuates. This may represent an additional test for you because it may lead you to wishful thinking and an  overestimation of yourself. Someone who has experienced some previously unmanifested creative, constructive soul material may not be further advanced than another who has not yet tapped the divine channel. They just have a different rhythm.

In occult literature, the expression “the third eye” is often used. Through establishing contact with the hidden unconscious and understanding the language of your unconscious obstructions, you develop “third” perceptive organs and forms of communication in every respect, not only eyes with which to see more clearly, but ears and other senses of perception as well as a new form of speech.

Metaphysical practices have succeeded in providing adequate training and disciplines in this respect, but only rarely are they used in the right direction. People are always tempted into the ideal state they have not yet reached, so that newly acquired faculties are put into the service of escaping, instead of being used for self-detection and understanding the meaning of destructive elements.

All this does require a certain discipline, as well as unflagging willpower. The difficulty is that behind the lack of willpower needed on your path is the very no-current creating the problem you wish so much to resolve. In other words, the brakes you inadvertently put on your consciously desired fulfillment because of some unknown fear manifest in your pathwork in various ways:  lack of energy and desire, laziness, being blocked, not understanding, projecting anger on those who help, dramatizing and exaggerating actual difficulties until the pathwork is no longer possible, or can continue only in such a way that the real problems remain untouched. Important also is the negative insistence on concentrating on issues that the pathwork does not organically bring to your attention through your life circumstances.

To realize and be on the lookout for such delaying tactics from the no-current is essential to your work of self-realization. Although a substantial part of you is eager to detect, to grow out of, to change the problems with the help of the yes-current, there is also a deep fear of change, showing the no-current at work. It exists in proportion to the difficulty of the problem and the work. The no-current cannot be eliminated unless the deep fear and its concomitant misconceptions, which call it into existence become conscious, and your reason and intelligence can examine their validity. Therefore, it is most advisable not to disregard the no-current and act as though it did not exist. It must be heeded, for it contains the key to the problem itself.

The important no-current is also called “resistance.” But this word has lost its meaning for you, so the mere mention of it may only increase your no-current. If you realize that the no-current is a universal factor, present in your world in many forms, it might be easier for you to go about detecting it in yourself.

Every one of you is constantly involved in a no-current. It is not a question of whose no-current is stronger and whose is weaker. The determining question is whether it is detected, observed, and followed in its machinations, which must be clearly understood. A stronger no-current is constantly weakened by your awareness and is less harmful than a puny but sluggishly obstinate one that clings to the personality in a most damaging fashion because it goes unobserved. The latter is more difficult to find, especially when the yes-current is strong. So please, my friends, set out to discover your no-current, find in what way it manifests, as well as on what misconceptions it is based.

Your unconscious speaks steadily, my friends. It speaks without your hearing it, so you do not communicate with it and therefore miss a very important part of your work. So often you go on searching for an intellectual understanding of one-time misconceptions, thereby overlooking the steady flow of the no-current, and how it works. Instead, focus on it, make it your task, and put the emphasis on self-observation. If every day you devote a little time to this all-important issue, the results will be most wonderful.

(1) Ask yourself:  What goal do I want now?  Where am I dissatisfied?  What would I want to be different?  (2) How much do I want it?  (3) To what extent is there something in me that does not want it or fears it or, for one reason or another, says no to it?  (4) If the no-current exists regarding the very thing I wish, it must also exist in my pathwork itself. How does it manifest there?  (5) How can I detect the various forms and manifestations of the no-current in my daily life?

If you clearly formulate these five questions and begin truthfully to answer them, your work on the path will be most dynamic and your progress will astound and delight you. Again, the truthful answer to these questions, through steady observation, formulation of vague feelings, and meditation exercises, cannot be a permanent one. Do not believe that what you now find suffices and needs no further attention; rather, it has to be observed continuously. Only then will the no-current slowly weaken. Each observation may bring deeper and wider understanding.

To be very quiet and relaxed during the periods of self-confrontation is, as you know, essential. But if you have difficulty in this respect, if you feel too tense, too harassed and impatient, if you believe that you are missing something else that is important without being able to name it, you can be sure that this is a typical manifestation of the no-current. That is what prohibits you from becoming quiet and listening to yourself. If you can acknowledge this, calmly stating to yourself, “I’m too nervous and restless to relax and do this part of the very process I want,” your restlessness will abate because you are in the truth of the now. The next step will be easier. You can then observe in action how you react when you try to work on your problem. If you continue to observe how, perhaps at another time, the no-current manifests in an entirely different way, but observe it calmly, with all the keen one-pointed attention you can muster, your efforts must be crowned with success, and eventually you will eliminate what is most destructive in your life. Instead, you often storm ahead in your flights of fantasy to a faraway goal of perfection, while underneath you actually fear this very goal and thus overlook what stands in your way.

The yes-current must observe the no-current. Let this be your motto!  To the degree that you are successful in communicating with your own unconscious and understanding its language, you will establish a connection with a deeper, wiser part of your unconscious. It will eventually take over and guide you through all phases of your life, also those where you have not yet been successful. The helpful part of your unconscious must constantly furnish you with regenerative strength, creative energy, resourcefulness, harmony. But this help can come only when you have learned to become aware of, observe, and decipher the petrified and destructive part of the unconscious.

When you learn to do this with calm detachment, you will not only learn to communicate consciously with the constructive part of your unconscious, but will also consciously communicate with the unconscious of other people. This means a great deal, my friends. You have begun to discover the truth of what I keep on saying, namely that all human beings constantly affect one another on their unconscious levels. The communications you are unaware of determine the relationship. Being in a state of ignorance about this, and not being able to grasp what is going on, must leave you hanging in the air. You often fail to understand what really happens in relationships. You both fail to understand and to make yourself understood. Therefore, when you learn to consciously perceive the unconscious of others, thus understanding your interactions, you will experience a revolutionary liberation. This is, indeed, a vital threshold in your development.

When this happens, you will see that there is no word to describe the phenomenon. It will be as though a dark curtain fell away from you. Misunderstandings, hurts, fears, must cease to exist. You will see that what threatens you in others, and makes you tense and defensive, can be observed calmly, in the way you have learned to do with your own self. You will learn to interpret it in others as you have done with yourself. You will learn to interpret what this gesture, that emphasis, this expression, that action, this utterance, that tense muscle mean, unbeknown to the person. You will hear, see, and perceive what other people really mean, what they want to express in spite of their disguise, what they are governed by behind their conscious attitudes and facades. You will know what their unconscious says, when they behave in such and such a way. When you arrive at this point, you have nothing further to fear. But this is an organic development that cannot happen before you have done it with yourself.

As long as you are frightened, you lack the necessary calm observation to perceive truthfully, whether this concerns fright of what others might do to you, or fright of your own unconscious. In the last lecture I have discussed your fear of your own unconscious in connection with your fear of letting go into union with a mate and, the third in the triad, the fear of death. It is this fear of one’s own unconscious that makes the no-current so strong. You will see the interconnection of the triad and the liberation I have just described when you no longer fear others, because you can quietly take them in and use all your observing functions and organs to see them in reality. Hence, this lecture can be truly understandable only if you verify the fear of your own unconscious. As you lose this fear you will learn to interpret the language of your unconscious. Thus you perfect yourself more and more in the technique that establishes a fearless relationship with others.

Are there any questions now?

QUESTION:  If people become aware of the fear behind their wishes and the wish then diminishes because they fully realize the fear, what can they do then?

ANSWER:  The question is really not what one can do, but what this means. If the wish for fulfillment recedes because of the fear, it means that the fear is not understood, since the misconceptions and the unreal outlook behind it are not yet seen in all their connections and ramifications. If the fear were fully understood, it would most certainly diminish, not by being covered up, but by really and truly dissolving. This means that the whole territory is not fully explored. There are so many loose ends and much remains to be done. Do you understand?

QUESTION:  Yes, I do, but I still have the feeling…. Can I give an example?  I have always wanted to be an actress. I couldn’t do it because I feared that I wouldn’t be as perfect as I wanted to be and wouldn’t want to take the risks. Now being older, I realize also that I couldn’t do it anyway any longer. Now the wish still exists, but also the fear, and also the knowledge that it is too late.

ANSWER:  You see, you have discovered here a relatively superficial cluster of emotions, reactions, and attitudes. The wish, with all that is attached to it, is a manifestation of something much deeper. We might truly say that it is a displacement. It is a manifestation of a deeper wish and a deeper fear. It is impossible to resolve a problem when one deals with the displacement of it. It must be dealt with, felt, experienced, in its deep original manifestation. In order to make this possible, many restrictions, inhibitions — the no-current — must become fully conscious in most of its aspects. Then only can you relive the frustration and pain you suffered as a child, and therefore still suffer often, only now it is not necessary to do so. It happens because you have instituted very destructive defenses against the original pain and frustration. One of them is an unusually strong no-current. It is the latter which makes it so difficult for you to unroll the whole process and become vibrantly alive.

QUESTION:  I understand that very well, I know that the displacement contains exactly the same thing. I feel the no-current.

ANSWER:  Not fully, no. It is essential that you become more acutely and specifically aware of it, as it manifests in your daily living, in your reactions, contacts, attitudes, in the work on the path itself. Only then will it be possible to penetrate where your consciousness has so far not been able to do so.

QUESTION:  I have a question from a missing friend. She would like to know what the metaphysical mechanics are concerning the hardening of the brain arteries, impairing a patient’s mental capacities?  Why does it happen?  What can be done to help?

ANSWER:  It happens because of a protective mechanism in the human psyche. It enables a person on the border between this manifestation of life and a different dimension of life to make the period of transition less painful physically, as well as mentally. Mental pain exists in individuals who are filled with fear and uncertainty. When inner problems remain unsolved, as you know, the fear of the unknown is very strong. It could almost be likened to a form of anesthesia that nature administers if necessary. This is a blessed thing indeed. This already answers your second question, because when you understand and see it in this light, understanding will eliminate an inner current of anxiety, which in turn would be picked up by the patient’s unconscious. Fears become burdens, but here the absence of apprehension will bring further relief. If you no longer push and press against the natural process, but gratefully see it as what it is, there will be no pressure from you on  the unconscious of the patient. This will make it easier for the patient to give in to relief, instead of fighting against it in shame spurred on by a false conscience. This may happen in an ever so subtle way.

Please preserve the questions that come up spontaneously after these lectures.  A question or a parallel out of your own pathwork may occur to you as you listen or read. Do give all other friends the benefit of sharing, and yourself a further elaboration on a point that might prove very helpful for you, by jotting down what occurs to you.

Let us hope that this lecture, in spite of much repetition in essence, conveyed something new to you, thus giving you a new incentive and motor force to approach yourself in a spirit of detached observation. When you find it difficult to do so, do not override the difficulty, but take it in itself as language, as expression, and interpret it.

Be blessed, all of you, in body, in soul, and spirit. Be in peace, my dearest friends. Be in God!

Greetings, my very beloved friends here.  Blessings and love envelop you and penetrate your very core.  With joy do I resume my communication with you.  I say resume, although this communication has never really been broken.

Most of you can feel clearly that you are deeply involved in a magnificent process—the process of the spirit penetrating that which has alienated itself from the spirit.  As I have explained before, the alienated part is on its own and creates its own momentum.  It becomes involved in this momentum, creating and recreating its own patterns.  Translated into human terms, this means that negative creation seems to be the stronger aspect in people’s lives.  They appear to be caught in it, unable to reverse this pattern.  They seem to be its victim and do not realize how they directly created this movement that carries them.  On this path, with the work you have done, you begin to realize that it is indeed possible to come out of the negative pattern of your creation, and reverse the momentum that takes hold of you as if it had an independent life of its own that has nothing to do with you.

In the creation of the pathwork, of your Center, you experience and witness that this movement is part of a grand scheme transcending the volitional, conscious aspect of your being.  You are now engaged in a positive momentum that is the stronger aspect, notwithstanding the continuing presence of lower-self aspects.  The higher self is becoming constantly predominant.  This is not superimposed in a wishful denial of the lower self.  It is the result of a genuine transformation, well grounded in reality.  You see the fruits of this in your personal life to an ever-growing degree, and you see the fruits in the growth and expansion in depth and width of the community as a whole.

I want you to be very aware of the fact that the higher purpose of this movement goes far beyond your present life.  It is preparation for important changes in evolution and you are instruments, all of you, each in your own way.  Each of you needs to realize the importance of your task from an inner place that is not ego-involved, not steeped in vanity or pride.  And that is possible right now.  If you choose, you can know the happiness of being an instrument fulfilling a task without pride and vanity for a higher cause of the deepest significance.  By doing this right now, you can further contribute to the energy and the consciousness that create this movement.

The movement of consciousness is the opposite of how human beings imagine it.  The truth is that the dualistic, cut-off life is not “raised,” as it is often said, into higher realms of being.  This is a reversed view, reflecting a consciousness still locked into space and time-bound terms.  It would be more accurate to say that higher realms come “down” and penetrate the lower realms, thus causing in them a transformation.

According to the concept that lower realms raise themselves up into higher ones, the earth sphere would remain at its present level of development, while its inhabitants would rise up.  This is only partially true.  In the actual evolutionary movement, the earth is increasingly penetrated by the energies of higher consciousness, transforming and spiritualizing the earlier cruder energies and consciousness.  This is the task in which you are deeply involved, first with your own personality, then in conjunction with higher plans for others.

In the process of your individual path you experience how what is clear and truthful in you and encompasses limitless spans of being, of generosity, of love, infiltrates into the realms of the lower self with its little faithless concerns.  The mass consciousness works similarly in those of its aspects which are not too resistant to embrace the movement of the Christ consciousness which is sweeping through the inner levels of reality from realms that might be designated as “higher,” more evolved and purified.  As this happens, petty feelings of egotism and jealousy make way for a deep knowledge of your own value, of your right to stretch your whole being into rich fulfillment and of your unity with all other life.

Let this awareness fill your soul, your mind, your heart, and your body—your whole being.  Let yourself know that you are divine beauty and so is the next human being, so are all human beings.  You are all one and you need not fight for what is yours.  Simply claim what you were always meant to experience.  However, your inner self will let you do this fully only when you purify yourself, when you become deeply honest, when you have the courage and integrity to expose all your lower-self aspects and consider their effects.  Let this process motivate you for the great task of self-transformation, which is not only possible, but is the natural movement of your soul that your fear and ignorance try to stop.

Let the light of truth and love fill your day, fill your actions, fill your attitudes toward yourself.  Let the involuntary constructive forces of the Christ consciousness take over and carry you to create and again create, making your life the glory that is yours to behold and to experience.  As you expand into it more and more, you can only stand in awe.  The expansion and transformation that you witness is only a beginning.  Much more is yet to come.  Your own development will make you capable of sustaining the highest energies of joy and fulfillment.

What you already experience in your lives and in your community is a result of combined constructive input; honest investment and commitment; thoughts, intentions and actions of the highest nature.  In turn these eliminate the walls between your human consciousness and entities of high development, whose force and sphere of influence merge with your love, truth, goodwill and giving to the universe.  The result is a mutuality of the highest order, that also creates the momentum that carries you.

In tonight’s lecture I will speak very precisely about how such a process can be initiated in an even more conscious way, how you can change from a negative to a positive self-perpetuating motion and creation, how you can create an involuntary movement through the voluntary system.

I promised to speak about the power of the word.  This will be the topic now.

What is the word?  The word is the creative agent.  The word is a psychic nuclear point that creates movement and a systematic chain reaction, one link logically and inexorably following another, until the word has become deed, fact, and finished creation.

The word creates an energy pattern of additional psychic nuclear points, each link, each point being a word too, a secondary creative agent.  Each word is a blueprint essential for building the structure.  The word is both expression and creation.  It is plan, knowledge, opinion, consciousness.  The word is feeling, attitude, and intentionality.  The word carries immense energy powers of its own kind, differing from other energies.  The word is what is behind all creation.  Creation cannot exist without a word spoken, known, held, believed in and committed to, in each area of specific creation.

The word is a conglomerate of all of these, and more.  The word that is spoken reveals the will that motivates this particular utterance.  It can be the divine will or the will of the cut-off, ignorant and destructive particle of consciousness.  Be it conscious or not, the word is the sum total of your beliefs in any given area where you speak the word.  It is the sun that creates the planets.  It is energizing force and it is design.

So much is contained in the word.  It is significant that Scripture starts with the postulate that in the beginning was, or actually is, the Word.  The word is eternal.  It always will be.  God spoke the word and from that word all creation, including your personality, came into being.  It is the blueprint behind all you can see, experience, and feel.  There are many words bringing into manifestation the diverse aspects of creation—in the planetary system, in the mass consciousness, and in the individual consciousness.

How can you apply this truth to yourself in a practical way in your everyday life?  Perhaps you will glean from the work on your path that every situation you experience is the product of a word you have spoken, and are perhaps still speaking constantly within, in one way or another, on one level of awareness or another.  Our goal on the path is to make all these words you speak, day in and day out, every hour and every minute, conscious, so that you can understand your creation.

Most of the time you—all of humanity—are extremely “busy” blocking out the words you speak.  You produce noise in your inner system so that you do not hear your own words.  You can now contemplate and enter into a new phase on your path to make yourselves very conscious of the words you speak, and what and how they create.

The word can also be divided within itself.  When you speak opposite words that on different levels of awareness cancel each other out, you become confused and you create accordingly.  If you create fog so as not to know the words you speak, to overshadow them with other words, it is necessary to crystallize the word most responsible for the negative creation in your life.  Do this with both the positive and negative creations.  In a sense you have already done it, but not in such a clear way.  Now you are more ready to handle the sharp tool that the spoken word can be.

The knowledge of the power of the word has been postulated throughout the ages and is professed in various corners of the earth.  But it is often applied on top of the confusing fog and the negative words, without first sifting out the obstacles and counter-currents.  I spoke of this a long time ago but only fleetingly, because everyone had so much work to do before I could come back to this topic in a meaningful way.  The timing here is crucial.

When you speak words of truth and creative beauty but the underlying material is not made compatible with the levels of consciousness that speak these words, you create at best a short-circuit, at worst a split and a division in consciousness.  This is why it is preferable for a while to honestly admit and expose the word of your negative intentionality and your lower-self motives.  Such an admission implies attitudes of truthfulness, humility, courage, faith—and many other higher-self qualities.  But speaking words that reveal principles of divine nature when the lower self is hidden and denied implies attitudes of wishful thinking, pride, lack of faith, fear of exposing what is not perfect, shirking the process of becoming, growing, developing, of transforming in a realistic way.  So you see, my friends, it is a matter of subtle awareness when the word of divine, limitless abundance can be spoken in truth.

Let us concentrate now on specific words that reach very deep levels of your being.  I mean here the word you speak about your own value.  There is a direct linkage between the power of the word and self-value.  How can you speak the word of faith in your own unfoldment and unfulfillment if you secretly believe that you have no value and therefore no right to experience bliss?  How can you even challenge the assumption of your worthlessness that you all carry inside your hearts to some degree if you are terrified that worthlessness is the ultimate truth of your being?  Then you can only continue to block this “knowledge” and defend against it.  As you know, it is precisely those defensive maneuvers that reinforce your belief in your unacceptability, because all defenses are negative, destructive, and create guilt.  So even when you try to tell yourself—belligerently—that you do deserve fulfillment, peace of mind, pleasure and abundance, underneath you will fear not being able ever to attain all this, not really deserving it.  You fear that if you did acquire these desirable assets, it would only be by “stealing,” and you would be punished.  So as you speak the word for what you long for, what every human being longs for and should indeed experience, you simultaneously speak the word against it on another level.  The same duality applies to everything in life.  While you are in this state of division and self-denial, you must feel pessimistic and fearful about the world and see it only in fragments, out of context, reaffirming your fearful visions.

Thus the process of the pathwork is essential to establish the one-pointed word.  Only through the honesty and courage of self-exposure and purification will you gain sufficient initial self-esteem to expose your devastating belief in your valuelessness.  Only when you pierce through the superficial substitute maneuvers of false self-value, making room for facing your painful belief in being valueless, can you begin to see this assumption and cast doubt on your self-doubt.  In that way you can constantly pronounce words of truth.

Even questions can be words of truth.  “Is this assertion of my value a defense or a real expression?”  “Underneath my superiority and arrogance, do I falter and doubt my intrinsic value?”  And when answers to these questions show that these negative beliefs about the self are indeed there, then the word of truth can be expressed, perhaps again by an initial question:  “Is it true that this or that lower-self aspect makes me undeserving, unlovable, bad, valueless?  Or is there something else in me that would justify my appreciating and loving myself, that deserves esteem and fulfillment?”  Such questions are also often words of truth.

Begin to see the words you speak to yourself about yourself behind the smoke screen.  On those deepest levels you malign yourself by speaking negative words about yourself.  Those words need to be crystallized.  They may exist only in a vague, hazy, unarticulated way.  The power of the word is no less when it is inarticulate.  There always is an immense power in it because it is full of energy.  Humankind at this stage of development is becoming increasingly aware of energy and its importance.  But you are not sufficiently aware yet that the thought and the word itself are energy—energy of a different kind.

Every level of the personality is an expression of a different kind of energy.  The mental level, feelings, will, the physical level and the level of spirit are different energy types.  To feel and recognize the power and energy of the word is immensely important and vastly underestimated.

You believe it does not matter what you think, what you say.  This is not so.  You can say a word with a loud voice or silently, and the silent word is not necessarily less powerful than the uttered word.  Many words are spoken with the vocal cords that have much less energy than the internal words, for they are not rooted in strong beliefs.  They are lightly said, without feeling or conviction, to fill the void within.  The power of these words is an indirect one because they create fog that separates the consciousness from the words spoken within that do have the power, either constructively or destructively.

So the lightly uttered words, without impact, without depth or roots, whether they are spoken or are the pitter-patter of thoughts, have nevertheless a serious effect on the creative process that each human being, wittingly or unwittingly, sets in motion.  Listen to their underground noises, see their meaning, take enough distance from them so that you can hear and evaluate them.  By observing and identifying them, you will gain a better understanding of how you create your life and what your creative process is.  See the powerful words you speak behind that curtain, that fog of separation.

There are many powerful words you speak, with hidden thoughts that are unclear to your observing consciousness, to the awareness that would permit you to utilize the hidden material.  You need to observe and thereby dissolve the fog of the superficial word that is merely meaningless noise and has no substance in your consciousness, either in feeling or in belief.  When you have thus clarified your vision of the power of the word, you can listen to your words and contemplate their meaning and be aware of their consequences.  Then perhaps you can feel the energy current in each word you speak silently or aloud.  You must clearly enunciate and then examine the feelings, convictions, and ideas for their truth and their effect on your life, your behavior, your receptivity, so that you can develop an unhampered perception of reality—your own and others’ and life’s.

When the words are contrary to divine unalterable truth and beauty, their energies will take you into a self-perpetuating, involuntary pattern that seems to make life dangerous, alien, something to be defended against.  In this pattern you feel like a helpless pawn.  But when you discover the power of the word and choose different words, words according to the truth of creation, you create a pattern in which the involuntary process carries you in benign love, in ever-expanding joy and abundance.

When you do not have joy and abundance—outwardly and inwardly—you must be speaking a word that denies this possibility for you.  If you do not believe in the possibility of joy and abundance for yourself because you secretly—often without conscious awareness—feel undeserving, you often deny that this possibility even exists in creation.  That defensive palliative seems perhaps less painful than admitting that you feel too evil and undeserving to have fulfillment.  But the conscious awareness may be at first merely a general sense of pessimism, nihilism and vague fears, along with a total disconnectedness from the inner process of self-creation.  The feeling of helplessness is overwhelming at this stage.  Only when you begin to clearly pursue the chain of cause and effect between your words and your experience will you gain a deep security in which you become part of the creative life process.

People who cling to nihilistic philosophies invariably hide the process I just described.  This kind of world view cushions them against the painful belief that they themselves are unworthy of love and joy and fulfillment.  All of you, my friends, carry such a word in you, some more, some less, some in one way, some in another.  Find that word in you.  Find the word with which you consistently say, “I will not love, love is dangerous, it will hurt me.”  It is another word of untruth that creates its pattern that makes it seem a truth, in which you cannot experience the fulfillment your soul longs for.  You are then caught in an involuntary process that indeed manifests that word.

The manifestation of the process in your life, the involuntary life you create for yourself, while you believe you have no say in it, is the direct and indirect result of those words you speak—sometimes loudly, without knowing what you say and why you are saying it, sometimes silently, without being at all aware that you say such a word—yet not necessarily unconsciously.  For when you begin to observe the ongoing dialogue within, you will often see that your words are there on a quite conscious level, but you do not take notice of them.  At other times the words you speak are really not on a conscious level and need to be dredged up.  But there are always hints and clues you can follow that make their existence quite obvious, if only you choose to make the connections.

In your busyness not to hear and understand your words, you do not take responsibility for the words you speak.  I purposely say “words” rather than “thoughts,” for thoughts are only the outcome of the underlying factors creating the word.  The word is the energy explosion.  The word is that which immediately creates.  The thought is the content, the word is its inception, its expression, its realization in its first stage.  A thought without the word would be impossible, it would be meaningless, it could not exist.  So the thought is the underlying consciousness factor of the energetic process.  The spoken word is the finished product of the thought behind it.  I repeat:  this finished product of the thought—the word—is not necessarily conscious or articulate or vocal.

So my friends, take care with your words.  Make room for clarity in them.  Take responsibility for the words you speak within.  Your words are your life creation.  Question the words you speak, see whether they come from a thought of truth or a thought of untruth.  A thought can be revised, it can be rejected, it can be debated.  The word is already the finished product of the thought and is therefore the beginning of the creation.  It is that which clinches the thought, as it were.

So differentiate between the word and the thought.  For example, if you think you are unworthy of the best life has to offer, you can question that thought.  But if you speak that word within you, it is already a creation that is taken for granted, never challenged, never debated and therefore uncorrected.  And in that way it is given constant power that is not visible or noticeable to you.  It is an undercurrent on which the boat of your life, the vehicle of this incarnation, constantly swings and rocks.  It is as though you are carried by that current, and indeed you are.  But you are no longer consciously connected with the current.  You do not know that you created the current through the thoughts that create the words you speak—the unchallenged, unquestioned thoughts you utter within your own mind.

So realize that where the creation is undesirable and limiting, you must look for and challenge the word responsible for this state.  You must begin to say different words.

My dearest friends, it is also important for you to understand that the word that is superficially spoken, while the opposite word persists underneath, will only create a short circuit.  So if you say on only a superficial level of your mind, “Yes, I am worthy” this will not work.  You constantly pay lip service to many truths in your mind and in your thoughts, saying the words, but you do not challenge the words that are opposite.  The only way you can know, at first, that you speak such opposite words at all is by the results and the manifestations in your life.  This is the absolute proof of what words are spoken within.  There can be no mistake about that.

So look at the life situations that make you feel less than happy; acknowledge the involuntary process that carries you in that continuing pattern.  And then search within you for the word you say that creates the unhappiness.  What is specifically the word in a particular situation?

My friends, it will not be so difficult for you to unearth this now.  At the beginning of your path, before your present awareness, you would have been convinced that the superficial, positive word was all there was and you would have used the fact that the opposite experiences exist nevertheless as proof that life is unfair and untrustworthy and that your own inner processes have no bearing on it.  You would have only convinced yourself further that people are victims of life.  Now, however, you have gone deeply enough to know not only your lower self and its negative intentionality, but also your unfortunate hate for yourself and lack of faith in your higher self to deserve fulfillment and to expand and stretch your consciousness into more alternatives for fulfillment.  Knowing all that, you will be able to find the words you still speak in various areas of your life.

In connection with this I would like to say a few words about receiving and giving.  You do know by now—for we have often discussed this and you are beginning to see it increasingly—that giving and receiving are one.  But, again, this knowledge is often merely mental and superficial and not yet experiential.  Emotionally and experientially there still is quite a division.  But you are becoming increasingly aware of the oneness, even within the division.

Let me be more explicit.  When you speak the word of self-devaluation into your inner being, you must become fearful, you avoid moving out, you prevent your heart from flowing to the next heart.  In this miserable state, you believe that all you need to be helped out of this state is to be loved.  But when love is given to you, no matter how you long for it, you cannot accept it.  You find ways and means to prevent taking it.  Here, even in your divided consciousness, you find the unchangeable unity:  as you do not give, you cannot receive.

Taking in love directly depends on your awareness of having earned the right to do so, of being worthy of it, for if you are not aware of your worthiness, receiving love threatens a worse punishment and exposes you to the pain of your real feeling—which is the sense of worthlessness.  And giving your love is equally dependent on that, for you can give love only when you can feel you deserve the pleasure of doing so.  You can receive love only when you feel you deserve it, which cannot happen if you do not wish to love.

No one else can give you the worth and the love that you first need to extend to yourself.  The fallacy of the thought that if you were loved you could then also love, no longer has any room in your consciousness.  It simply does not work.  It is a false word you speak to yourself on some level.  As you try it out and observe it objectively, you will see there is no truth to it.

You are often given to, but you reject what is given in sincere love from others and God, from life itself.  The word you speak out of this rejection creates the false unity of neither being able to love nor to receive it.  Only when you speak different words, deep inside, with all the feelings and all the conviction, as a result of penetrating those deeper levels and transforming the false words into one clear-cut strong creative movement of the word, will loving and being loved become a oneness, and not an impossible division.

In a similar way, when new people enter this path and come into the purifying and strong energetic environment of the Center, they will not be able to take in the love.  And yet they must first take in what the pathwork and the Center have to offer in order to move on.  As they take in the love, so do they give it out.  Even in only taking love there is the act of giving it out.  Not being willing to accept what is given is a crass form of ungivingness.  Taking is already a giving, if it comes from sincerity rather than from the cheating, grabbing, acquisitive little lower self.  If you have something to give another and it is not wanted, not taken, it hurts.  But when the other takes it, this person gives to you.

You must see constantly that in the taking is the giving and in the giving is the taking, the receiving.  Even when the process alternates, you will find yourself in one stage more receiving and less able to give, or giving through your sincere receiving.  That is all right.  Receive in truth and beauty, and you shall become stronger in the other kind of giving too—where you give actively from your resources.  Speak the appropriate word to yourself, the word that will create the greater power to give and receive, each in truth, wisdom, beauty, and divine will.  It will become an endless flow.  Giving and receiving will no longer be differentiated, for they are indeed undifferentiated.  But in your words deep inside of you they seem opposites, and thus you create conflict.

My friends, pay attention to your words.  Observe the shallow ones.  Observe the words of untruth, and consider in what way they are untruth.  And then have the courage to speak the word of truth.  Visualization cannot exist without a word of truth being spoken.  This must become very clear to you, so that you can challenge and give up more false words.

It seems to take a lot of courage to say the word of truth.  For example, “I can and will give the best.  I will let God give through me in sincerity, in strength, in truth, in wisdom, in beauty.”   Why does it seem to take courage to speak these words, my friends?  For several reasons.  First, your lack of belief that these words are actually a creation, and will create accordingly, requires bridging the gap from not knowing to experiencing.  This gap can be bridged only by faith and that, in turn, is a question of commitment.  It is extending yourself into unknown, unexplored new alternatives and vistas—and that is always a matter of courage, a matter of commitment to believing in this possibility, even if you have not yet experienced its truth.  The courage to strongly pronounce these words is a necessary step and prerequisite.  Faith is always comprised of courage and strength.

For another reason, it is courageous to speak the truth because the false safety measures into which so much false faith was invested, often for a long time, need to be relinquished.  Unless this is done, the true word cannot be spoken, therefore the creation cannot be forthcoming.  The positive, involuntary process that is like a gently rolling sea with an immense and benign energy cannot be set in motion unless you speak the truth.  You are experiencing this now in your beautiful venture, the Center.  You marvel more and more at what is happening as a strength from within takes over and stretches beyond your limited vision and consciousness.  You marvel at it and you are right to do so.

Know that this is the result and the creation of the many words of truth, strength, giving, commitment, faith, goodwill and action—in short, of the initial word that set all this in motion—that many of you have spoken.  Even though words of untruth are still spoken in those same consciousnesses, the words of truth that are also spoken have created a stronger power.  And that power in turn has made it possible for divine spirits and entities and guidance to come forth in ever stronger measure, in conjunction with your own inner divinity.

I am sure you all know that in this first lecture of the year you have received a new tool that can now be used meaningfully and that could not have been used this way in the past.  Use it, try it, experiment with it and see the beauty of life opening up more and more.  The love of all of us in our world constantly flows to you.  Receive it.  You are blessed.  Be in God!