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Complete Lectures of the Pathwork: Unedited Lectures Vol.3
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937 pages16 hours
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This volume contains The Unedited Lectures 101 - 150 given by Eva Pierrakos between 1957 and 1979 to Pathwork Communities worldwide. The teachings, profoundly concerned with self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and self-responsibility, are full of wisdom and love.
Publisher: Pathwork PressReleased: Sep 29, 2013ISBN: 9781931589482Format: book
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Complete Lectures of the Pathwork - Eva Pierrakos
Bliss
Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 101
An Unedited Lecture
April 13, 1962
THE DEFENSE
Greetings, my dearest friends. God bless each one of you. Blessed is your path. Blessed are your efforts.
We have discussed your defense mechanisms repeatedly. We have worked on and gone into this subject considerably, and you have learned, to a degree, to recognize its presence. However, you do not as yet fully understand what happens to your entire system when you are on the defensive. Knowledge of this will be very useful for your further work and self-observation. It will mean a great deal to understand the processes of your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual nature, what happens to all these levels of your personality when you are defensive. You have begun to observe it, to detect this hard knot, or wall within, when you withdraw in fear and close yourself up in the aim of protecting yourself. However, this reaction of defending yourself is so imbedded in you, it has become so much second nature, that most of the time you are unaware when you are on the defensive. Hence, you have to understand more about this subject to be on the lookout and to become more intensely aware of its existence in order to get over it.
When you are on the defensive, you are frightened, you feel threatened, endangered. There certainly are realistic dangers, and the human system is equipped to deal with them. If an actual attack is made on you, all your faculties will withdraw from their usual preoccupations and will be directed to and concentrated on this one danger. In order to deal with an urgent issue at the moment, you need all your faculties focused on that one point.
In order to do that, your entire system goes through a change for the singular purpose of dealing with the emergency situation. Thus in such a moment, your glandular system releases a certain substance that shoots through your entire nervous system, speeds up your blood pressure, accelerates your pulse beat. All this happens for the purpose of focusing your faculties on the danger point, to heighten the speed of adequate reaction, to quicken your perceptiveness. When you are in real danger, this is good and important, for otherwise, with but your normal faculties and perceptiveness, you could not accomplish what is necessary to protect yourself. Thus you will develop more strength — physical or mental — than you normally have in order to defend yourself. Or you will quickly judge and decide whether defense by counterattack or flight is the better way to deal with the particular situation.
In an average life, such actual dangers occur every once in a while. The substance released from your glandular system contains a certain poison which will not damage you if your defense mechanism works only in these rare instances when actual danger occurs. After the danger is over and your system goes back to normal functioning, this poison is absorbed and dissolved. This poison is a necessary stimulant for the moment, but if this stimulation permanently fills your system,form the habit of taking them, in the long run you will be damaged.
When, for psychological conflicts, for irrational, unrealistic reasons, you are on the defensive, your glandular system does not take this into consideration. It does not question the validity of the reason. The poisonous substance is released the moment you are frightened. When you are on the defensive, you are frightened. Therefore it is important that unrealistic fears cease, that being on the defensive for no valid reason is ruled out of your life. Otherwise the poisonous substance will affect your blood stream and nervous system, and physical damage will accrue in one way or another. According to the individual make-up and physical resistance of the various organs, damage will appear sooner or later, more or less noticeably, in this or that part of the body. This is the physical side.
As to the mental side of your nature, when you are in actual realistic danger, your entire mental faculties will automatically concentrate — with the help of the poisonous stimulant — on the issue at hand. In order to do so, you cannot concentrate on anything else. You will not be capable of harboring thoughts of truth and wisdom other than dealing with the danger of the moment, with protecting yourself from this danger. All other considerations otherwise important for a harmonious and meaningful life will be excluded. If this happens in isolated moments of actual danger, it is good and purposeful. When the actual, realistic danger is over, you go back to normal, and your thought processes can again concentrate on the many sides of life, on others, and on yourself, all of which have nothing to do with protecting yourself from danger.
However, when you are constantly, or often, in a psychological state of warding off danger and attack when there actually is no danger of attack, the development of your mental faculties is bound to suffer. Your concepts will remain immature and limited even if you happen to have a good brain. Your outlook will be much too limited to deal with life in an adequate way. All this happens in such a subtle and insidious way that you are utterly unaware of it. You cannot tell the difference because the state of being on the defensive has become second nature. This hinders your vision of truth about others, about life, about yourself. It prohibits you from seeing your possibilities and potentials, from the making of proper choices. All this comes about because your entire mental system is geared to ward off imaginary danger and to defend yourself from it. The same processes are operative as when you are in actual danger. In actual danger, your heightened perception makes you decide whether to launch a counterattack or, if this is hopelessly dangerous and futile, to run away and protect yourself by hiding. All your mental faculties are concentrated on this one issue. There is no room for consideration of anything else. A very similar procedure occurs with your unrealistic defense mechanism. You have either chosen the pseudosolution of aggressiveness, and/or withdrawal from life, and/or appeasement that robs you of your integrity. All are dictates that stem from your fright of being exposed to danger. You are constantly in a state of war with the main part of your mental faculties focused on defending yourself, thus not leaving sufficient room to deal with life in an adequate way. You can easily see that this one-sided concentration is necessary in the rare instances of actual danger but extremely damaging and limiting when there is no such actual danger.
In the emotional side of your nature, faced with actual danger, you hardly have time or room for feelings other than fright and anger. In the rare instances of real danger, it is good that this is so because these two emotions produce the necessary impetus and strength to defend oneself. All thefaculties of the feeling-body are withdrawn at that moment and geared to the one confronting issue. Were it not so, if you were at such moments capable of having all sorts of other feelings, the necessary strength to defend yourself would be absent. However, when the danger is over, the normal and integrated person can quickly return to a state wherein many other emotions have room in his emotional system.
However, if you are constantly on the defensive, the predominant feelings are fright and anger. At this point, I need hardly discuss how damaging this is for yourself and for your surroundings. Whenever you are hurt, this hurt is erroneously believed to be an attack on you. Erroneously, it represents a danger to your safety. Thus you immediately repress the hurt — your primary reaction — and remain aware of anger and hostility as a substitute for the original reaction. You begin to let your defense mechanisms, whatever your private pseudosolutions are, go to work. Needless to say, you are no longer in truth, not only because the hurt you experienced, unpleasant as it may have been, is no danger and does not call for elaborate defenses which are infinitely more damaging than the original hurt could ever be, but also because you, yourself, are no longer aware of the original feeling — the hurt — but only of the secondary reaction — the anger. This institutes a process of self-alienation, of psychological self-estrangement.
I think you all begin to see how predominant this defensiveness is. It may be subtle and not easy to detect, but once you are on the right track, you become more acutely aware of its permanent existence. You defend not only against hurt as a supposed mortal danger. You defend also against frustration of your will, against anything that does not go according to your wishes. All this represents, unconsciously, a threat to your safety, while in reality it is not so. It may be undesirable, but something undesirable is by no means necessarily dangerous. Yet, a defense mechanism, by its very nature, is a process of warding off danger. If these processes are used for actual danger, it is meaningful. If they are not, your entire system is put out of balance. Your faculties are limited to a degree you, as yet, cannot fully comprehend. Putting it in other words, your instinct of self-preservation is at work when not required. Whenever faculties are used which were originally destined for other purposeful use, the human psyche is distorted and put out of balance.
As to the spiritual side of your nature, in the face of actual danger, it is again important and necessary at the moment that your capacity of feeling be limited to the issue at hand. As I said before, the range of your feelings is limited to fright and anger so as to deal adequately with the matter of your protection. This does not leave room for warm feelings of love, warmth, affection, understanding, compassion. In other words, in moments of danger, you withdraw into yourself, gathering your forces for counterattack or flight. You no longer reach out into the world; you no longer try to bridge the gap between yourself and others. You are not concerned with eliminating the separation between yourself and others, with communication and union. In moments of actual danger, such feelings would actually be a detriment. But when the danger is over, you go back to the state of feeling all these warm, good, outgoing, and outreaching feelings. It is the same with your creativity, which also is a side of your spiritual nature. No matter how creative a person may ordinarily be, in moments of acute danger, this creativity is temporarily stopped, only to return after the danger is over.
When you are more or less permanently defensive due to the erroneous belief that any hurt or frustration, any criticism, any rejection is a danger you must guard against, you limit the range of your feelings, the potentials of your creativity, the ability to reach out into life and communicate withothers, to love and to understand, to feel and to express yourself. In short, your spiritual life is gravely impaired. By this self-imposed limitation, you isolate yourself more and more and institute the very patterns by which others will hurt and frustrate you the more because you unknowingly reject them. You need, therefore, to defend yourself more, and a full-fledged vicious circle is at work — a vicious circle within yourself and a vicious circle between yourself and others that mutually affects your defense mechanism and serves thereby to have both parties mutually rejecting each other.
All the while, when defending yourself is superfluous and meaningless because no actual danger exists, you release poisonous substances into your physical body. You limit your range of thought and feeling and also your creative processes. You do not see the manifold possibilities of life, of communication with people. You are isolated in your busy defense against an unrealistic danger.
As I said before, actual dangers in which you need all this defensive equipment happen in relatively very rare instance. You do not have to learn to use it. It is an automatic process that any human being comes to. Even a child will have automatic reactions in this regard without having been told about it. There is only one thing to say about the adequate defense mechanism regarding actual danger. The more you use these faculties for unreal danger, thus abusing them, the less will they work adequately and spontaneously when required for real protection. It is one of those imbalances you constantly encounter within. That is why a person whose inner system is constantly geared for defense against unreal dangers is often incapable of coping with real attack and threat. He is then paralyzed and helpless and actually becomes a prey just because he believes himself to be a prey when he actually is not. This condition can never be remedied by fortifying the defenses for real danger. It will not work. But it will automatically begin to work if and when one learns to stop defending when there is no need.
This is why we have to be concerned with the elimination of the unreal defense, the unreal danger. Such dangers apply also to hurt, rejection, frustration of your will, criticism. When you feel accused of something true, half true, or untrue, you feel in mortal danger. If you translate your emotional reactions to such criticism, you will readily see that your feelings say, I am in danger.
Now let us examine the truth of the matter. Are you really endangered or threatened because of hurt, frustration, or criticism? I do not have to answer this. Only you, yourself, will have to verify that this is not so. Even unjustified criticism cannot endanger you, provided your attitude toward it is mature and realistic. Is it not often the case that the criticism against which you strenuously defend yourself threatens to expose something that you do not wish to face? You may not wish to face it because it is uncomfortable to change, or because you believe that if the truth comes out, you will not be loved and accepted as worthy of respect. Whatever the reasons, you run away from the truth. Thus if it is seen in its true light, your defense is often against truth even though this truth may come from outside, from people who are, in their own way, as imperfect as you are. The supposed mortal danger you have to ward off is often truth itself, my friends. And you defend against it by pointing out the truth in the other person which he does not want to see. Maybe one is stronger and the other weaker, but what difference does it make since everyone has his own rhythm and value system. No one can compare with another. Evaluation on that basis is never valid. Thus two sides point out truths about the other — and each may be correct to a degree — while not wanting to see the truth in himself.You erroneously believe that if your weaknesses, or at least certain weaknesses, are exposed, others would have a right to reject you, not to love you. And this you cannot bear. Therefore you use all your defense mechanisms, with all these processes, to ward off the tremendous, imaginary danger in order to preserve your status as a lovable human being. You believe if an unlovable trait is exposed, people will have a right to reject you. Hence, you use such heavy fighting equipment only to your detriment. The detriment is not only due to all the reasons I have given in this lecture, but also in a more direct way. For it is never true that people reject a person due to a fault or weakness per se. If you closely observe life around you, you will find without a doubt that rejection occurs because, in a subtle way, hiding of the truth causes the rejection. This is why a free admission of the worst fault or distortion will bring forth acceptance, while a defense against exposure brings forth contempt, dislike, rejection, fear, and is bound to make the other person defensive. If free admission is as yet not possible because it is perhaps not yet fully seen, then the willingness to do so, which can only happen without going on the defensive, will have a similarly favorable effect. Only after this new reaction is tried, will you see how much more constructive and advantageous it is!
Whenever you are on the defensive, your primary aim cannot be truth. When it comes to real dangers, this real danger is, as it were, the truth of the moment. But when it comes to unreal dangers, the truth lies somewhere else. You do not ask yourself at such moments, Is it right? Is there a grain of truth in it?
Your concern at the moment is Am I right, or is the other person right?
It is this limited I versus the other person
that befogs the issue of what is right or true. Your defense may often be a basic way of life by not involving yourself, and only when you are called upon, you will then choose a more direct defense either by still trying to run away; by hedging the issue and putting it on another level where you can prove to be right
; or by counterattack, pointing out the other person's shortcomings. There is a great difference when this is done as a defense of one's own undesirable traits or in truth and for the sake of truth.
It should easily be understood that defensiveness is not truth-producing. It does not give truth and reality breathing space. Wherever there is this defensive wall, concern at that moment must be with warding off an accusation which you believe might bring rejection, frustration, hurt. In this moment, it subtly becomes more important for you to prove that the accusation is unjustified, even if it contains elements of truth, rather than to find the elements of truth it contains. Thus you run away from truth, therefore from yourself, and therefore from life. Pretense and self-deception, self-alienation and isolation must be the result. In defensiveness, you not only damage your physical body, but you limit your thoughts, your range of emotions, your concepts, your creativity, your spiritual life, your ability to relate to others, your inner freedom, your concern with truth as such, and therefore your ability to love and respect yourself and others. All this is due to a completely erroneous concept of perfectionism in which you believe your value and acceptability to be at stake because of your imperfections.
If people would but learn that and deeply probe within to find and eliminate this defensive wall, so much hardship could be avoided on a scale as large as the extent of daily intercommunication between people. People would not dislike each other so often. They would not fear each other. It is the erroneous feeling of attack against which you have to defend that often makes you fear and therefore dislike others. It is the erroneous hurt you suffer if something is brought out that you feel diminishes your value. It is the erroneous feeling of inadequacy when life and others do not respond to your wishes and frustrate them. Such nonfulfillment in itself is not half as painful as the error of believing you are inadequate. The criticism in itself would not damageyou at all if you were aware that others will not like you less because you have this fault, and you face it.
In defensiveness, you do not perceive, experience, and think thoughts of truth and reason. You do not feel feelings of warmth, affection, and understanding. Therefore you are not in reality, and you cannot communicate. Your system is focused on one small point, namely that of defending yourself against imaginary danger. In this way, so much else that is part of life, part of your reality, is left out of consideration.
This defensiveness can take place in many ways, as you know, in ways that are so subtle as to make them unnoticeable to others until a direct attack
is launched. This defensiveness may be much stronger with calm, reticent people who quietly go their way than with people whose defense mechanism is more obvious. Their fear of attack is so great, while their confidence in themselves to handle it so small, that they constantly are in flight from life and people. But whether the defense is direct outer aggressiveness or withdrawal and flight, it is the same and equally damaging with identical negative results. Both alternatives make a reaching out toward the other person, toward truth, toward involvement, toward life itself impossible. Both alternatives force you to stay on your guard and be unperceptive of life, of people, of yourself. Thus the harm you inflict on yourself or those around you, the disharmony, the separation that is created through it is impossible to describe as to its full effect. With it, you cannot fulfill the needs of others, nor can you have your own needs fulfilled. The liberation you experience when you discover the illusion of the need to defend yourself, and therefore no longer do so, is impossible to convey. You simply have to live it to know this joy. Let go, and receive whatever comes to you. Look at it quietly with the dominant aim not to ward off, but to seek and see truth. In this attitude, your reactions will change. Your emanations will have a different quality. Your whole life will become different.
If only you learn to observe, detect, and understand — and therefore eventually eliminate — your defensiveness, you will be freed of an illusion. There is no greater hardship, no greater prison than illusion. There is nothing more destructive on this earth than people unnecessarily defending themselves. There is nothing that creates more disharmony, more untruth, more hostility, more friction, in personal as well as in public life, than defensiveness.
And now, my dear ones, I am ready for your questions.
QUESTION: You say that the body releases poisons which damage the physical system. On this path, is it possible to heal such damage?
ANSWER: Of course, it is possible. If and when the defensiveness is eliminated, further poisons will cease to contaminate the system. This in itself will bring relief. However, it is possible that the damage is already so considerable that the results of the past cannot be entirely eliminated in the body. If and when this is or is not the case depends on so many considerations impossible to enumerate now. But in principle it is possible.
QUESTION: You mean, we should just listen to someone if he criticizes?
your inner reactions of fright. You will soon discover that your fright is unjustified even if the criticism be wrong. Nothing can happen to you, you are not in danger.
QUESTION: But what if we get annoyed at being unjustly criticized?
ANSWER: The very feeling of annoyance is the proof and expression of your defensiveness. Without defense, you would not be annoyed. How could you be? You would evaluate and either find that in it there may be some truth, little truth, or none at all. All too often, you are convinced it is unjustified before you even have a chance to find out, or rather before you give yourself the chance to find the possible grain of truth. And if there is no trace of truth in it, why would you have to get annoyed? What can this criticism do to you that causes annoyance? Have you ever analyzed it from this point of view? Justified or unjustified criticism cannot really harm you unless you think you cannot be loved and respected if something to be criticized is found.
QUESTION: What if it is a lie, if it is untrue?
ANSWER: I said that before. It cannot harm you by looking at it calmly. Your defense against it is the harm. The lie itself, or the erroneous judgment, could never harm you. And the less defensive you are, the more adequate will you be to straighten out an outright lie or misunderstanding. I do not mean to imply that you must never defend yourself against a flagrant lie, calumny, harmful rumor, etc. This falls under the category of realistic defense which can be adequately handled only to the degree that unrealistic defensiveness is absent.
QUESTION: If the accusation covers a betrayal, and you have a natural anger against it, your anger may cover self-defense. But it also is a natural reaction against someone who has made promises, and you have fulfilled your part, and then you find that you are betrayed, and the thing that you were promised and you have hoped for does not come true. Is not this a natural anger?
ANSWER: Before we deal with the term of what is natural
and unnatural,
I would like to say again that I did not imply that people should take any injustice or betrayal without doing whatever is necessary, constructive, and productive. There are many instances when it would be wrong to sit back and do nothing. This would be sick, it would be playing the martyr, it would be a distortion of holiness. And it is interesting to note that the more defensive a person is, the less equipped he is to deal with constructive defense or attack, the more will he victimize himself and become a martyr. There exists a proper and healthy aggressiveness and assertiveness. When it is healthy and when not, cannot be determined in a general rule. It is too subtle and can only be found in truthful self-examination. Actual dangers are not only physical in nature, they also apply to other levels. I can only emphasize again that the freer you are of unrealistic defensiveness, the better will you cope with healthy defense. Often the two intermingle, and the unhealthy weakens and undermines the healthy one and diminishes the effect.
Now as to what is natural,
this can be so misleading. It is certainly natural
to have immature, unproductive reactions because everyone else has them too. But that does not mean they are really natural or that it is not possible to grow out of them — not forcefully, not by superimposition, not by feeling guilty that childish reactions still exist, but in the way that I always advocate. Is that clear?
QUESTION: Yes. First you must clear up your emotional entanglement within the relationship, and then you will deal with it realistically?
ANSWER: Yes, that is right. You see, your emotional involvement in an unhealthy way makes it impossible for you to evaluate the situation in its right light, and therefore you cannot deal with it as you would otherwise.
QUESTION: I think what our friend said about the lie is also a realistic danger?
ANSWER: Yes, it could be. I said that. It all depends upon whether we deal with facts, actions, deeds, or with the more subtle matters of trends, attitudes, qualities. But when it comes to this work, when it comes to voicing one's impressions and feelings about others, this then is not a matter that can necessarily be refuted at once. It requires probing to see whether or not there is some grain of truth in it, even if brought out in a distorted way perhaps due to the other person's problems or merely due to his limitations as a human being. In such cases, it cannot easily be stated, This is a lie,
because these things are so subtle.
QUESTION: You were talking about situations in which our emotions run up. How about human beings with emotions dulled and curbed and where there is no reaction?
ANSWER: When a human being gets into this state, it is a result of being overdefensive. Outwardly and consciously, emotions may be dulled to a considerable degree, but inwardly they still exist. They smolder underground and do their damage. That is why it is so important in this work that the emotions be brought to the surface. Only then can they be dealt with properly and all these other considerations begun to be worked with. As long as someone does not feel hate, for example, he cannot rid himself of it. It has to come out of repression and reach surface awareness in order to understand its origin, its reason, so as to free oneself from it. It is the same with the defensive wall. As long as you are unaware of its existence, you can do nothing. Therefore the first consideration, by the method of this work, is to bring into awareness what was hitherto submerged.
However, there is no person entirely devoid of emotions. They are on the surface but were never named, never questioned as to their meaning and significance. These few surface emotions will furnish sufficient material with which to work. Even the person who is predominantly intellectual in approach and deliberately dulls feelings has certain feelings. As stated before, the more defensive a person is, the more limited is the scope of emotions that he can feel. But he can make an effort to pinpoint them. In such cases, the predominant emotions will be fright and anger. He may be unaware that these are emotions because he is so used to rationalizing and explaining them.
QUESTION: Yes, but the person whose emotions are aboveboard has an easier time to observe them.
ANSWER: Yes, certainly. This is why it is of primary importance to become aware of all the emotions you were not aware of. Only then can we go into such matters as we are dealing with now. For instance, on the subject of defensiveness, the majority of you would not even have been
capable of recognizing it. This is always a question of self-awareness.
QUESTION: In my private work, my coworker and I found out that I have an inadequate concept of a human being. What is a human being?
ANSWER: If I were to answer that, it would probably take me at least a month of continuous talking. And this, I think, may be the best answer for you so as to adjust your concept to a more truthful one. Compare this statement with the limited concept you have of He is this or that,
or She is thus and thus.
Realize the infinite variety, the manifoldedness, the contradictoriness, the unlimited possibilities and potentials of thought, of range of feelings in every human being. Every emotion, every trend, every characteristic that you can name, every human being has in both positive and negative aspects. Why the same quality displays in a positive facet at one time and in negative at other times, all these are the intricacies of the human psyche. The more you understand the limitless possibilities and potentials of a human being, the further do you come in understanding a particular human being. On the other hand, the more you believe, either consciously or unconsciously, that a human being is this or that — in other words, the more limited your concept is — the less will you understand.
In a strange way, this is the unconscious aim of man, to limit the human personality, because he believes if there is less to a human being, it is easier to know another. But this is not true. The more you realize the infinite possibilities, the difficulty of seeing, perceiving, or even sensing all the possibilities and facets, the more understanding and insight will you have. This is the best answer I can give you. Any description, no matter how detailed, would not do justice. It would be limited, it would be an oversimplification.
QUESTION: After a person has become greatly aware of his hidden currents — let's say, hypothetically, has become aware of 75 percent of such currents which have come to the surface — and he can see how they work, now what can a person then do to train the subconscious mind? Or is it necessary?
ANSWER: I will repeat what I have said many times. Merely observe the wrong, childish, untrue, distorted reactions and concepts. The more you observe them, the better will you be able to learn why they are not according to reality and truth. Get a clear understanding in what way they are erroneous, inadequate, destructive, disadvantageous, unrealistic. Compare these reactions with the knowledge, as yet only theoretical, of realistic, truthful, productive reactions without trying to force yourself to feel the latter. Merely compare and understand why one way of reaction is unproductive and unrealistic, while the other is productive and realistic. Fully acknowledge that you are as yet incapable of feeling and reacting in the desired way; and without guilt, without any forcing current, fully accept yourself as you are, but know the immaturity. If you do this, without being angry and impatient with yourself, eventually your emotions will begin to take on the knowledge of your brain that heretofore could not penetrate your emotions. It will give you peace simply to see the childish emotions in action while knowing, getting to understand better and better why and in what respect is it unproductive.
QUESTION: You wanted to talk about the background of the seven deadly sins.
ANSWER: As I said, I would suggest, perhaps next time, that you prepare a list of them. This is in lieu of a lecture because it would take too long. I said last time, it cannot be added on to a lecture. Put down each of them, and ask each separately, and then I will answer. It will form a lecture in itself.
QUESTION: In the traditional Scriptures of Judaism and Islam, the texts are specific, regarding the consumption of fish, flesh, and fowl. It is commanded that of their flesh shall we not eat.
Christianity has no ban against pork. In the fifteenth verse of Matthew, Christ said, not that which goeth into the mouth defileth the man but that which cometh out of the mouth.
However, during Lent, dietary restrictions are observed by Christians. My questions are, (1) are the dietary laws based on that which is unclean or on that which is holy, and (2) what is the meaning of Lent and of the counting of the days?
ANSWER: As to your first question, all these laws were given at a time when man's scientific and hygienic knowledge was so insufficient that such information as mankind now possesses was connected with religion. It was merely sanitary or health reasons that dictated those laws. In certain periods of history, under different circumstances, these laws were changed. Nowadays, it is superfluous for religion to set up these rules. At no time did these laws have anything to do with man's spiritual life. It was merely a safeguard to protect his health. If humanity, at this time, still clings to these laws as a spiritual necessity, it shows a gross misunderstanding of what true spirituality is. It shows the superficial approach of man, his disinclination to think. Your science today may find certain conditions that make it necessary to observe certain laws as long as these specific conditions prevail. When the conditions change, the laws will be eliminated. To then persist in keeping them without any purpose or reason would be senseless.
As to your second question, the original symbolic meaning of the time of Lent was to give man a period of going into himself, of purifying his system, not only the physical, but on all levels of his being. Again, the outer is merely a symbol of the inner. Often it is healthy for body and soul if it is combined, provided it is done in an individual way, in a thinking and personalized way, and not merely by adhering to a dogma. Under whatever guise dogma appears, it shows rigidity and lack of self-responsibility in thinking. Thus it becomes something dead. The living spirit has gone out. The original symbolic meaning was that of purification, contemplation, of a time of looking within the self and preparing for a new influx and therefore a new strength to reach out.
May you all become more and more aware of your defenses. May you perceive what it does to your entire system, to your thinking process, to your faculty of feeling, to your physical system, to your spiritual life. And may you thus become capable of letting go, of receiving, of examining, of discriminating, of objectively looking at the issue without defending, of no longer thinking and feeling in terms of right versus wrong,
and thereby being capable of experiencing others and reaching out to them — while, with the defense, you withdraw from others and no longer reach. May the blessing that is extended to you again this evening help you particularly in this respect for your further work and help you to free yourself of the most damaging obstructions within. Be blessed, each one of you. Receive our warmth and our love, each one of you. Be in peace. Be in God.
Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 102
An Unedited Lecture
April 27, 1962
THE SEVEN CARDINAL SINS
Greetings, God bless you, my dearest friends. Blessed is this hour. I promised to give a psychological explanation of the meaning of the seven cardinal sins. Much of what I shall say will not be new. I shall try to keep repetition to a minimum and to do so only when it is necessary to show a connection and to show the deeper meaning of spiritual truth in a psychological sense.
What is called sin is the outer manifestation, either in deed or even in thought, of psychological deviation and immaturity. In other words, the result of inner distortions produces so-called sin. The psychological background of any sin will always show the many conditions that we discussed in the past. It can always be brought down to the common denominator of sin amounting to the immaturity of the soul and thus being incapable of relating, communicating, loving. In the broadest terms sin is lack of love. Immaturity is never able to love. It is selfish, egocentric, blind. It cannot understand others. It means separateness. In separateness, one does not love and is therefore in sin. In psychological terms, one has a neurosis. The only difference between the spiritual and psychological approach is that the latter puts emphasis on the result, while the former shows the underlying causes, the different currents and components leading to separateness, neurosis, or sin.
The first cardinal sin is pride. This I have discussed so much in the past that I do not have to repeat it now. You all know its origin, reason, its effects, and side effects. Let me only state once again briefly that pride is always a compensation for inferiority, for feelings of inadequacy. That the effect must lead to separateness is self-explanatory.
The second is covetousness. Again, from past lectures, you know its deeper meaning. If you covet something you do not possess, you do so in blindness — blindness in the belief that having it would give you happiness, when happiness is an inner state, never to be brought by outer means. And blindness is ignoring your own causes as to why you do not have what you wish to have. In your search for self-understanding, you have come to the point of realization that whatever you lack in your life, provided your wish is a healthy one, is caused by conflict within yourself — by being, perhaps unconsciously, afraid of the very thing that you want most or by having conflicting desires, by being unaware of many factors that obstruct the fulfillment. Last but not least, you may be unaware of what you really wish. Under these circumstances, you may envy others, covet what they have because you cannot resolve your very own problems that keep you from fulfilling yourself. What you covet may be a substitute desire for your real needs of which you may not be aware. Pride, as well as covetousness, separates you from the other person, as well as from your real self. Hence, it leads to and comes from self-alienation. It is the opposite of love, of communication, of relating to your fellow man. It does not unite, but sets you apart and above. It puts you in a special, isolated place, or you would wish to have the special place that you think someone else holds. All this is the inner blindness that leads to outer selfishness and to separateness.
The third is lust. This is so often misunderstood. It is believed to refer to sexuality. This is not so, or not necessarily so. Now, what does lust mean? It means any kind of passionate desire — whether or not it has to do with sexuality — in a spirit of egocentricity, of isolation. It is the childish attitude of I want to have, to receive
without a true spirit of mutuality. The person may be willing to give, provided he receives what he wants, and yet the basic emphasis is subtly on the self rather than on mutuality. True mutuality is not possible without the capacity to relinquish, to withstand not always having one's will on one's own terms. The maturity of withstanding frustration of one's will, of relinquishing one's will, is a prerequisite for true mutuality. When the need to receive is a greedy force that is intrinsically one-sided, then one can speak of lust.
As I have often said, it is easy to be deceived because the stronger this one-sided need exists, the more may the person sacrifice, submit, be a martyr. All this is an unconscious expediency so as to get one's will. Since this tendency is subtle and hidden and often has nothing to do with sexual passions, it may not be realized that it is lust. Yet all human beings have some of it. Where there is a forcing current, a driving need that cannot relinquish, there is lust. And you all have that, the stronger when it is not yet consciously experienced. Also you may be deceived about it because what you strenuously desire is in itself something constructive. Yet, you are the craving needful child who wants, who is somehow in the center of his universe. The raging need, which you may or may not be conscious of, is disconnected from recognizing the factors that brought about the original unfulfillment. In this ignorance, the need, or lust, swells to unbearable proportions and becomes more frustrated because you do not see the remedy — a change of inner direction. In other words, an unfulfilled need that is unrecognized in its primary form produces lust. To the degree that you grow aware of your needs do you automatically increase your maturity. An unconscious need indicates immaturity. A displacement takes place, and an urgency for substitute needs is established, no matter how legitimate, constructive, or rational they may be in themselves. The stronger the urgency, the more one can speak of lust. Lust indicates the urgency of frustration of an unaware need. Whether this refers to sexuality or the lust for power, money, for being liked, for a particular thing, does not matter. When these emotions are investigated as to origin, their original need, and what prevents their fulfillment in a healthy organic manner, you can begin to dissolve the lust. You can come to terms with the original need, but never with the substitute need. If this original need is still childish and destructive, you can mature it only by bringing it out into the open. A need that you are aware of can mature into a mutuality, into the state when two people recognize and express their own respective need in such a way as to help the other find fulfillment. An unconscious need must always be one-sided.
To assume that the sexual urge per se is sinful lust, is utter distortion. As I have often said, it is a natural healthy instinct. If it properly matures, it combines with mutuality. It leads to love and union. If it remains separate, it is lust, but no more so than the lust for power, for money, for fame, for always being right, or for anything else.
The fourth is anger. What is anger, my friends? Anger is always, in a sense, a lie. The original feeling is often one of hurt. If you would own up to the original feeling, you would not need to be angry. In pride, due to inferiority, you feel humiliated when you are hurt, in that you give the power to hurt you to someone else. Therefore you substitute the original pain with anger. This seems less shameful. It sets you above the other person rather than, as it seems to you, below. It lifts you above the true position you find yourself in — that of being hurt. In pride, you lie about your realfeeling. Thus anger and pride are connected. The lie is one of self-deception, therefore of self-alienation. It is displacement. Thus it causes negative effects, while the admission, the living up to the genuine feeling, does not. Hurt, if it is free from anger, cannot negatively effect others, and therefore it will not come back to the person. If the primary emotion — pain or hurt — is no longer conscious or if it is intermingled with the secondary emotion of anger, it turns destructive. Whether the anger manifests in deeds or words or whether it is merely an emanation, makes no difference. In owning up to hurt, you do not cut off the bridge to the other person. In anger, you do. Thus the genuine, primary emotion is not contrary to love and communication, while the substitute emotion is.
You know that I usually shy away from the expression sin
because it encourages self-destructive and unproductive guilt. I concentrate rather on the underlying conditions. But in this context, I have to use this word. Thus anger leading away from communication and bridging of the gap between human beings, is sin.
Of course, there is such a thing as a healthy anger, but we do not talk about that. There really should be another word for it.
And now, my friends, I'm ready for your questions.
QUESTION: Why is it that in the Bhagavad Gita anger is considered worst of all, producing complete confusion?
ANSWER: Because in anger, being a secondary reaction, you no longer know what you really feel. You are in error about yourself, and therefore you cannot possibly perceive and understand the other person. In many of the other so-called sins, you may be utterly aware of the original feeling. Due to certain missing links, you may be unable to feel differently about it, yet you know what you feel. But when you are in anger, you are not in the primary reaction. And that is why it creates more and more confusion. It is even worse, of course, if your perfectionism makes you repress even the secondary emotion of anger so that you are not even aware of it. Then you have to penetrate all these levels and first become aware of the anger, whereupon you can then penetrate deeper and become aware of the underlying hurt or pain.
I might also add that many of the other destructive emotions, whether it be jealousy, envy, lust, etc., also contain anger. Anger may be a permeating state of the soul that is too subtle, too insidious, too hidden to be recognized. Thus when I admonish you on this path to become aware of what you really feel, you will now understand this all-important reason. Whether you call it resentment, or hostility, or anger, or hate makes no difference. These are all the same. The majority of human beings are not even aware that they feel, that they are in anger. When they are aware of it, it is already so much better. It is then easier to get to the underlying original emotion.
QUESTION: What is healthy anger?
ANSWER: It is the anger that is objective, when justice is at stake in an objective way. It makes you assert yourself. It makes you fight for what is good and true — whether the issue is your own or another's or for a principle. You may even feel objective anger about a very personal issue, while projecting a subjective emotion upon a general issue. How to determine whether or not it ishealthy anger is impossible by judging the issue itself. You feel very differently in healthy anger than you do in the unhealthy kind. The latter poisons your system; the latter calls for your defense mechanism and is at the same time a product of it. Healthy anger will never make you tense and guilty and ill at ease. It does not compel you to justify yourself. Healthy anger will never weaken you. Any healthy feeling will give you strength and freedom even if the feeling outwardly appears to be negative. While an apparently positive feeling may weaken you if it is not honest, if displacement and subterfuge are at work. If you have the kind of anger that will leave you freer and stronger and will leave you less confused, then there is a healthy anger. The unhealthy anger is always a displacement of an original emotion. Healthy anger is a direct emotion.
QUESTION: Is that the wrath of God in the Old Testament?
ANSWER: Yes, that is right.
QUESTION: Does that have anything to do with righteous indignation?
ANSWER: Yes, that is also healthy anger. But, my friends, be very careful in your self-examination. When you have an outer issue in which you may be utterly justified in feeling angry, that may still not mean that what you feel is healthy anger. The only way to determine it is by the effect it has on you and also on others. No one but yourself can determine what is the truth. Only utter candor with yourself will enable you to distinguish.
The fifth is gluttony. The deeper meaning of it has to do with need. A need that is unfulfilled and frustrated for a long period of time, and again and again thwarted, as it were, will seek outlets. Such an outlet, among many other possibilities, may be gluttony. Why would ancient wisdom refer to this as sinful? Not merely because it is destructive of your physical health — that would certainly not be sufficient reason to call it a sin. There are many activities in a person's life which are undesirable and damaging to his health, yet they are not considered as sin. Something much more important and vital is at stake here. That is, if you are unaware of your original needs and therefore cannot go about fulfilling them through the removal of your inner obstructions, you cannot fulfill yourself. You cannot fulfill your potentials. You cannot become happy and give happiness. You cannot unfold your creative abilities. You cannot contribute, be it in ever so small a way, to human society and its development. Every human being, no matter how much you may look down on him or may think his existence insignificant for others and that he cannot possibly contribute anything, does have the possibility to contribute in some way to the evolutionary plan. But only if he fulfills himself can he do so. He cannot fulfill himself when he is unaware of his real needs, and then without the understanding of why these needs remain unfulfilled. As he understands it, bringing fulfillment closer and closer, by this understanding, he contributes something to the vast reservoir of cosmic forces, thus influencing evolution and general spiritual development. The fulfillment of every human being, his happiness, is a necessity for the entire evolution.
When people are unfulfilled and therefore unhappy, it would be one-sided to say that this is selfishness. It may be that too. It may be a childish self-concern too. Yet there is another part of the psyche that realizes the necessity of happiness, that knows that only in happiness can one contribute, and therefore by not contributing, one misses something. This gnawing feeling of missing something makes you strive. He who strives in the right direction will eventually find a way to turn inward and seek the reason for this unfulfillment. But there are many wrong ways of strivingthat lead outward, that bring temporary relief of the inner pressure. One of them is gluttony. As I
indicated previously, there are many other forms of addiction, such as alcoholism to name but one.
QUESTION: Some psychologists say that masturbation is a primary addiction. Is this connected with gluttony?
ANSWER: I should say this very much depends on the degree and on the age. If this is a constant practice in an advanced age, it certainly has a lot to do with it although the displacement of the real need is not quite as remote as with gluttony. It is easier to see that the real need is a yearning for a rewarding mutuality on a mature basis. With gluttony, the displacement is so far removed that it is more difficult to recognize the underlying real need. However, masturbation is also a substitute. It may be an easy way out to obtain relief and release without risking the involvement of a personal relationship, the responsibility, the exposure. To a degree, masturbation is normal. But above a certain degree, depending on the frequency and the age of a person, as well as certain temporary circumstances in life, it may indicate a similar escape from facing and living up to one's real need. If it is a constant practice in adult life, it is certainly indicative of the same trends and aspects discussed in connection with gluttony.
The sixth is envy. Again I do not have to go deeper into this because I have covered it before. What I said about covetousness very much applies to envy. I also discussed envy on many previous occasions.
QUESTION: Is there something like healthy envy?
ANSWER: No, there is not. It might, under certain circumstances, lead to a healthy activity. Let us say, someone is without ambition — and there is such a thing as a healthy ambition. He is lethargic, withdrawn, apathetic indifferent, and he comes into contact with someone whom he feels compelled to envy. This may pull him out of his lethargic state and perhaps even put him in the right direction. It may be that a destructive feeling may have a constructive result, just as it may be that a feeling, in itself constructive, may have an unhealthy effect. This may or may not be the case. It depends on the many intricacies of the human personality in relation to his life circumstances. But the fact that a destructive feeling may produce positive results in certain cases does not make the feeling itself positive, healthy, or productive per se.
QUESTION: That is a problem of the twist into the pairs of opposites?
ANSWER: Yes, that is right.
The seventh is sloth. It is the very indifference and apathy that I just mentioned. It represents the pseudosolution of withdrawal from living and loving. Where there is apathy, there is a rejection of life. Where there is indifference, there is the laziness of the heart that cannot feel and understand others — and cannot, therefore, relate with them. Nothing produces more waste than sloth or apathy or withdrawal, whatever name you give it. A person would not be in sloth who has a positive, constructive attitude towards life. Someone who is not overly preoccupied with his own safety, will not withdraw, and therefore will not become apathetic. Sloth always indicates selfishness. He who is too afraid for himself will not risk going forward and reaching out towards others. The one who reaches out takes the risk of being hurt. He considers it worthwhile. In sloth, you do notgive to life, to yourself, and to others, a chance. You cannot ever bestow happiness upon others in this self-preoccupation that seeks the pseudosolution of withdrawal or apathy or sloth. This is life-negating. Such life-negation cannot ever be resolved unless the person comes to see this basic selfishness and self-concern is unhealthy. Sloth is one of the defense mechanisms I have discussed. In your fear of being hurt, you defend against it by becoming lazy of heart, indifferent towards everything that is life-producing. Therefore it is rightly called a sin.
QUESTION: What happens with a life, from a spiritual point of view, that has been wasted in sloth?
ANSWER: The same has to be repeated again and again until the person finally pulls himself out of it. You see, the same law applies here that you can so often observe around you. The more you are caught in a vicious circle, the more difficult is it to break. The deeper you are involved in your own conflicts and problems — which, in the last analysis, arise only because you do not want to come out of them and change — the more difficult it finally becomes. The more you have run away from facing up and have continued to resist change, the greater the difficulty. This continues until your outer life becomes so unbearable, as a result of your getting deeper and deeper into the vicious circle, that this very unhappiness finally makes you want to face and change. If the will can be mustered before life becomes so unbearable, much unhappiness could be avoided. This is why you often see that people persist in remaining caught in their inner problems as long as they somehow get by.
They seriously settle down to changing only when it is no longer bearable for them. The same holds true on a larger scale. If a life is wasted in sloth time after time, finally the circumstances of an incarnation may become so unpleasant that the individual pulls himself together and struggles out of it. Unfortunately, only too often though, sloth produces the attitude of the life of least resistance so long as circumstances are not too bad. This creates for the following life the psychological conditions that make it harder to live in sloth because then the instinct of self-preservation takes over when it becomes bad enough. When that pulling out occurs depends on the person. It may be before life becomes really unbearable. Such are the psychological conditions that you yourself have created. The turning point may come in a new and more difficult incarnation, or it may occur in the course of the present incarnation.
QUESTION: I was wondering why some of these deadly sins are effects instead of causes. And, for instance, hatred and fear are not mentioned. They too are cause and effect at the same time.
ANSWER: It is so often with religious teachings that the effect is spoken about, and not the cause. At one time, humanity was not ready to go deep enough to see the cause. The best that could be hoped for was to prevent people from destructive actions even if the underlying causes were not eliminated in the individual. At least, the contagiousness of actions and direct outer effect of destructive actions were decreased, if not entirely eliminated. You know how contagious is human behavior. Thoughts and emotions are also contagious, but on the same level. In other words, outer behavior will influence outer behavior, while thought influences thought, or unconscious feelings influence unconscious feelings. At least, the contagious actions in the crassest form were kept in check. That is why, at one time, the effect was more concentrated on than the
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