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Complete Lectures of the Pathwork: Questions and Answers Vol. 2
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Start ReadingLength: 781 pages7 hours
- Publisher:
- Pathwork Press
- Released:
- Oct 2, 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781931589529
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This volume contains the Questions and Answers No. 146 -185 of the Pathwork Lectures 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.
Book Actions
Start ReadingBook Information
Complete Lectures of the Pathwork: Questions and Answers Vol. 2
Length: 781 pages7 hours
Description
This volume contains the Questions and Answers No. 146 -185 of the Pathwork Lectures 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 Press
- Released:
- Oct 2, 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781931589529
- Format:
- Book
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Complete Lectures of the Pathwork - Eva Pierrakos
1970
Pathwork Questions and Answers
3rd Edition
No. 146
October 21, 1966
Greetings, my dearest, dearest friends. Blessed be every one of you. Blessed be this evening. I will be glad to answer your questions and help each one of you where at the moment light and enlightenment is most needed. In order to really accomplish this enlightenment, your innermost attitude and openness and willingness right at this moment, as in every other moment of life, is so important. And if you but look at your inner attitude, try to determine what is it at this moment, and so many of you will find that if it is not negative, that there may be an indifference, an apathy, a feeling of not extending yourself in any particular way, neither positively nor negatively. And in a way this is almost worse than an outright conscious negativity. For if this conscious negativity exists, it is indeed possible to understand it and to see what is responsible for your present situation. But if you are just not extending yourself at all, if you're indifferent and asleep and oblivious of the fact that an inner commitment at every moment of your life is necessary to make your life what you want it to be, you will see that in this lack of commitment, you commit yourself too. Now, let us turn to your questions.
Food And Our Body
QUESTION: I have a question about the food that we put into our bodies. How important is it to be selective, and what should we select? Is there a relationship between how we feed our body and how we function in the human person?
ANSWER: Of course. Since the body is an expression of the total personality, it is a tremendous mistake of people to believe, to separate the spirit from the body or the mind from the body, for what you feel is always in the body. The body is the carrier; the body is the immediate receptacle in which you receive the outer world and from which your inner world transmits itself to the outer world. The food, just as any other facet of living, bodily living, is, therefore, important. It is food; it is fresh air; it is exercise; it is sleep; and it is a healthy balance between work and leisure; and it is the sexual activity of man—all these are bodily functions apparently. And yet they're immediate expressions of the mind, of the spirit, of the total personality; and therefore there must be an interaction. The healthier your outer life, the more you will further the growth of your inner life. The more you grow inwardly, the more naturally you will be guided to and flock toward a healthy outer life. This is an inevitable interaction.
Now, what is healthy to eat? There are, of course, as in every other facet, certain general principles which a little study and common sense will give you an answer to and where I do not have to go into detail. But primarily I want to say that when the mind and the psyche are healthy, no exaggeration or fanaticism will exist. There will be a natural intuition for the human being. What is generally good will often be also good for him. And then there are individual distinctions or predilections . . . I mean each person has perhaps a different way of expressing himself in this as in any other area. But I do not have to go into detail. I would also beware of this, because it is so easy for my friends to make rules and then be fanatical about the rules.
There are several rules I do want to establish, if we want to call it that. And the first is, if there is true joy in what you eat, it will not harm you. On the other hand, it is equally true to say that the healthier the total organism is, the more healthy food will be truly enjoyed and the unhealthy food will be less enjoyed. It is exactly the same with other expressions: The healthier the organism is, the more the individual will enjoy physical movement. And the less healthy the organism, the more difficult it will appear to bring oneself to move the body. The more healthy the organism is, the more joyful sexual activity is going to be. The less healthy, the more of a difficulty it will appear, the more it will appear to be a chore in one way or another. The healthier the organism, the better sleep is going to be. And automatically the right balance will be found between rest, leisure, and entertainment and work. The more healthy the organism is, the more the work will be enjoyed as pleasure and not as a chore. All these things are interactive. It is the unhealthy organism that constantly craves for unhealthy food, that constantly craves for physical inactivity, that constantly craves for sexual releases that do not involve the total personality, that constantly craves for exaggerated pleasures in a distorted way or for too much or too little rest. So here the interaction of the total personality is of tremendous importance—that is, it is important to understand this factor.
And I say, and it can constantly be observed, that many people who start the pathwork find, at a certain juncture, almost as a natural by-product, a new way of life in their food habits, in their habits of sleep and exercise, in their habits of sexuality, while, on the other hand, it is also true and can also be observed that with some people, for one reason or another, a healthy habit in food or in exercise is adopted first, which then leads to an inner opening of the psyche. It cannot be emphasized enough that the healthy balance must come as a self-regulating principle and cannot be determined by the intellect. But if it is determined by the intellect—I mean you can determine by the intellect what foods to choose, according to your common sense and to the available knowledge combined with intuitive faculties, which you extend into listening into your body, for your body has a wisdom, the very wisdom of your real self—once this is established, it self-regulates itself. And this is the way it should be, for if the ego is overactive, it becomes fanaticism and it becomes strain. So as in all these factors, where the real self is called into action, it begins. The first steps are activated by the outer ego in a desirable direction, in the direction one recognizes as healthy and as leading to a greater expansion of the personality. The ego activates this with the full knowledge that the real self will take over and integrate with the ego so it is then becoming an effortless process by itself. This applies in exactly the same way to the efforts of self-recognition, where first an effort with the outer ego is absolutely essential. For without this, it would not happen. The sluggishness and the resistance of the area of the mind and the psyche which are afflicted would always be the winner if the ego would not battle into that direction. But after a certain amount of effort in this way, it becomes a self-regulating process and without even forcing yourself, you do recognize, you do see, you do perceive. And it is the same with food habits or with exercise habits or any other physical expressions of the total personality. They become effortless and self-regulating and the most natural, organic process.
And then it is not necessary to be fanatic in any way, whether it concerns food, whether it concerns exercise, whether it concerns sleep or sexuality or work or play or one's efforts of self-recognition and meditation. It is all an effortless process that takes place because it is desired, because it makes one feel good. And if once in a while there is an interruption—there is an exception—there is no sense of anxiety or guilt about it, because life is then spontaneous. And the deep understanding exists that where there is joy, real joy, there cannot possibly be harm. And the awareness exists, the distinction exists between real joy and compulsion, the need to gratify a compulsive need, which may, at times, be confused with real joy but of course has nothing to do with it. One can eat compulsively, for example. One can become compulsively driven into sexual activities; one can believe one needs compulsively sleep or one needs compulsively pleasures—any entertainment or whatever. Or one compulsively works or exercises. Any of this may be rationalized as this is healthy.
But whenever there's a compulsion, there is no real joy. There is a momentary alleviation of tension; and that has nothing to do with joyfulness, with real pleasure. And there is never an imbalance that one is as an overweight or one is at the expense of another way of self-expression.
QUESTION: May I ask a question in connection with this? In what sense did Jesus mean then when he said it doesn't matter what you put into your mouth but what comes out of it?
ANSWER: He meant what I also often said: that when there is a fanatical overadherence to rules as it existed especially at that time in the then-dominant religion in the Jewish faith, where a tremendous amount of rules inhibited the person, and not only the rules and the fanaticism, but also there was the tendency of confusing that these rules mean being religious, being spiritual, being pleasing to God, which, of course, is a tremendous error—the whole concept of there sits an authority up there who watches whether you eat this or whether you eat that,
which is a total self-alienation and self-deception. Now, you see, a great mistake is often being made whereby interpreting something that has been said, not only by Jesus but by many other great spirits, at a certain time for a certain opportunity because a certain overweight or overexaggeration existed, [the mistake being] to then use that as a generality and take it away from the other extreme. It would be if at this time the tendency would have been an extreme in the other direction, then what Jesus would have said would have been apparently the opposite. But the predominant rule then was to confuse the adherence of rules and regulations—that were at best sanitary—with spirituality, and this is why Jesus said this.
The WorlD As Benign
QUESTION: In your last lecture you said, A truthful concept of life means the knowledge, the experience, of life as being utterly benign.
I've asked the question so many times that maybe [I'll ask it] again. The experience of life as expressed in nature is not benign. [inaud.] fights against diseases of trees, of animals [inaud.].
ANSWER: You are taking here the manifestation of certain natural phenomena that still take place within the world of duality. But when you transcend this world of duality—and this can only be done in each individual case within the personality's personal problems—it must be found that where there was conflict and where life seemed hostile, that it is not that; that life is benign. Because storms exist or because floods exist or because sickness exists, that does not mean life is not essentially in its very nature benign. The difficulties and the illnesses and the tragedies and the suffering are a very expression of man's errors, of man's erroneous concepts. And the moment it is realized that these concepts are a result of being bound to error, being in a bind of misconceptions, in that moment a new opening takes place, as anyone who pursues an inner path of understanding and transcending his inner problems. And this is the only way this can truly be understood, because it cannot be understood on the level of theory, of theorizing, of philosophizing. It will be words that may or may not be accepted as a theory. But even if they are accepted and understood as a theory, it is, at best, only a superficial understanding.
QUESTION: Well, I can understand it with people but not with nature. The trees and animals, they have no concept.
ANSWER: But life and you are one. Life is consciousness as your innermost self is consciousness. You see, objectively speaking, a storm is not a tragedy. The tragedy is only in the eyes of the beholder. Objectively speaking, even illness of an individual is not a tragedy.
QUESTION: But I see suffering of little creatures that cannot help themselves, wounded and frightened. It does hurt.
ANSWER: Yes, it hurts you, but it hurts you only because your view or your perception is a limited one within this immediate framework of that suffering. Has it not happened to you that when you look back at your past in this very light, that something that—while you were going through it—seemed like a great hardship and seemed like a great suffering, and now, retrospectively, you recognize that this appeared that way while you were going through it, but now when you have a more detached overall view, you recognize that it was the best thing that could have happened to you.
QUESTION: Yes, that is right, but I am strong; I'm a human being; I can take it. But a little pigeon cannot take it.
ANSWER: It can take it just exactly the same, because it too is a particle of consciousness as you are a particle of consciousness. And, in fact, I might say that the greater the consciousness is—the higher the consciousness is raised, the more complete the consciousness is—the greater the sensitivity, vulnerability, and therefore range of experience for suffering as well as for pleasure. This is an absolute truth that can be verified again by each individual, even. Of course, on a lesser scale. The greater awareness has been attained through the evolutionary process, experience—feeling-experience—is equally greater. You see, the suffering is always a result of not being where one is potentially capable of being. Suffering cannot exist in any other way, my friends. If an individual is exactly where he can be at this moment, he cannot possibly suffer, no matter how imperfect he may still be, no matter what the circumstances of the world around him may be, no matter even what his personal state of life may be. But he must be in harmony. Suffering and disharmony enter in that moment when the personality on the one hand is capable of a greater range of experience, while another part of the personality holds back and restricts. And therefore the potential of consciousness is not being realized. And that creates a tension, and it is this tension that, in turn, creates suffering. But even, let us say, a physical pain will be very minor in the experience of suffering if the person is where he should be, because then there will be a relaxed state and not a tense state.
Now, an infant's suffering, no matter how much he may scream, is much less than an adult's suffering by the very fact that memory does not play a role. The infant suffers in this instant, and the next instant, provided the suffering is alleviated, it is gone. An adult will hang on for the very reason of his extended range of experience due to an extended range of consciousness. So it is not true that there is any creature in the universe who takes more than he is capable of, where there is not a very well-balanced law of cause and effect so that the effect of a cause can become a favorable cause of a next effect, no matter what the temporary experience may seem or be. Is that clear?
QUESTION: I still cannot [inaud.] pain and the shock [inaud.].
ANSWER: Yes, it brings on the shock if it is not properly understood and assimilated, but the moment it is understood and assimilated, that very pain becomes the seed for pleasure and joy and growth.
QUESTION: That is true, but so the animal [inaud.] that reaches the stage . . .
ANSWER: Yes, but the animal is not just only this animal; it is part of a group consciousness. It is a part of the whole consciousness, and so its suffering—although man should do everything in his power to alleviate it—but in the total scheme, it can only lead to expansion of joy and pleasure. And time is the great hindrance in the consciousness of man here, because he believes this now is a finality beyond which he cannot see. The constant difficulty you experience in this problem is a manifestation of a personal problem. You will not be capable to understand the general factors involved here, as a general philosophical point of view, until you can meet and come to terms with your own suffered pain, which you cannot rise above, because you have not managed to completely recognize its effect on you and what emotional byroads it makes you take—that there is unconscious, very great anger about it in you. And this anger makes you unconsciously unwilling to let go of it. No matter how much philosophical truth of the positive nature of life you absorb in your mind, it will not reach these layers where your anger and your inability to come to terms with the past pain exist. When this happens, whenever you decide to really face it and work it through, then the truth of the benign nature of the universe will totally flood through your system. But this cannot happen unless you face and become aware of what I just said.
Why Hurt Exists
QUESTION: But you know, there is something which I've always found even the very highest developed people, and this is always the last [inaud.] here, but why is that in the world?
ANSWER: Well, it is not true it applies to everyone in the same way. Whenever this question is raised, the way this question is raised, it always really means, Why does hurt exist at all?
And this question is such an urgent one within the psyche, because a very personal subjective hurt has not been totally experienced inside and has not been totally faced and come to terms with. And its effect has not been observed by the personality, the subtle effect of how the individual conducts his life and is influenced in his entire attitude following this very personal hurt that cannot ever really be understood and seen in realistic terms as long as one does not give oneself explicit permission to experience it, even right now. For where a past hurt has not been come to terms with, it is really constantly there in the present, constantly. It exists in some factor in your present life right now. And man's resourcefulness very often to run away and not look at it and gloss over it and deceive himself about these conditions is often astounding to his own detriment, because he splits himself in that way—by what he believes, he believes, and by what he inwardly and emotionally and he truthfully believes deep in his innermost self.
Objective Anger
QUESTION: If one is, for instance, not even emotionally but still somewhat, the holding off [inaud.] and thinks about it—what Hitler did or what happens now in Vietnam and sees all those lives destroyed, and one has that feeling, why does that have to be, that is always an objective feeling.
ANSWER: When there is an objective anger about conditions, it has an entirely different quality in the psyche, which, of course, is very difficult to explain, because the human language is so limited that the words are the same. There ought to be different words. I often explain that healthy anger has a very different quality from the personal, subjective, alienated anger that covers one thing with another and is not really where one ought to be and in oneself. The healthy anger leaves one free; it does not have a gnawing, debilitating, and paralyzing effect on the individual.
QUESTION: Yes, but it's still the question: Why does that have to happen?
ANSWER: But, you see, where a person is truly enlightened, he either understands it on universal terms or even if he—this or that issue—does not understand on universal terms, he knows he does not understand and he regrets the difficulties of this world, but he will not be partial. He will never feel this is right
versus this is wrong,
because he knows this whole world is involved in a deep suffering of error that splits off, of duality that creates these conditions and that he will accept that this is the state of the world. And he will stop quarreling with it, which does not mean indifference nor does it mean laziness of the mind. It means the understanding of where you are—this whole world—and the acceptance of it while doing that which is best where each person stands.
QUESTION: Could that be known as reality for us?
Stretching Consciousness From Duality To Unity
ANSWER: Well, yes it amounts to an acceptance of reality. Now you see, before the unitive state is reached, the reality, the temporary reality, of the dualistic world has to be accepted, whether you like it or not. As long as you say, Why does that have to be?
there is a lack of acceptance, and wherever the world cannot be accepted—and, I repeat, this does not mean indifference; it does not mean egoism; it does not mean laziness; acceptance does not mean that—but where the world is not accepted, the self is always equally rejected. One always quarrels with the self on the deeper-most level to exactly that extent one quarrels with life, no matter how much suffering and cruelty and things that are undesirable exist on this dualistic plane of consciousness. And he who is half way enlightened will make the following step and that is a very simple step, and that step would be, If I feel so tortured and in such disharmony about the conditions of the world—be it the animals, nature, or other people, whatever it may be—and if I cannot accept this world which is a mixture of pleasure and pain, of good and bad, of happiness and unhappiness, if I can only dwell in the unhappy facet of it, if I cannot come to terms with the existence of both on this plane of existence in which I live and move now, then there must inevitably be something in myself—a dark side in myself—that I cannot accept. Therefore, I want to primarily see and find what in myself do I really not accept.
Whether it is the question with animals in your case where you're constantly dwelling on that plane no matter how compassionate it actually also is, the constant pain you suffer in this respect is really the expression of the suffering that there is something within yourself you cannot accept and that pains you equally—something about your self. And whether it is cruelty or wars or injustices in this world or whatever, wherever one is deeply disturbed, inverted, and put out of harmony with any outer condition, where the outer reality of this present phase of existence cannot be accepted for what it is, then there is a [lack of] self-acceptance somewhere. And the enlightened person is not necessarily the person who has already found these answers within himself, who already totally accepts himself, but the enlightened person is the one who takes this attitude and who has this slant on the problem and who goes from the alienated level of displacement into himself, and who makes the deduction that because he feels that way about the generality, he must feel that way about the particular aspect in himself, and that he's willing to look at it. That is true enlightenment. And that will immediately, after the first few successful steps in this direction, bring a release and a relief of tension, the tension that arises out of being away from where the problem really lies. Does that answer the question?
QUESTION: Very much so.
Remembering Earlier Life
QUESTION: May I ask a question? It's a personal problem. In the course of work with my coworker, I've found that I can't remember the first seven years of my life at all. And at this point it is very important on this point of our work that I get a glimpse of what happened in the first seven years of my life. We both feel that there was some very terrible experience and shock [inaud.] meditate with it. I tried it, but I still cannot find it, and I was wondering whether you could give me some guidance as to how to go about . . .
ANSWER: It was not one shock; it was not one traumatic experience; it was a consistent climate that was the trauma. It was the everyday climate you breathed in, that was one of insecurity, of fear, of feeling rejected, of your personal feelings being rejected; and that since that was a constant diet, as it were, trauma was the constant effect. Now, of course, this is also a bit exaggerated, because with this I do not mean to imply that you only had this. There were also happy feelings and happy events and happy moods, but the times that you felt insecure and rejected were of deep enough an impact in you that they called a trauma that made you repress it. Therefore, I cannot say a particular event. It is not a particular event. But the mood . . . you see, whatever is being said will perhaps stir up that memory, that mood of a memory. And that will enable you to reexperience it, not in the past so much but in the now, for it can still be experienced in the now. And when you experience certain facets about your present life in greater awareness, you will see that they are as they always must be: an exact duplication of what you have experienced. And then you can do what I've suggested, again and again, in this work—the synchronization of the past with the present, which is the healing. When this can be done, the healing takes place. Therefore, I also say, it is not really necessary that one actually remembers intellectual memory of certain visual recollections of the past. The emotional memory can be reconstructed by really looking at certain emotions as they exist in the present. And these present emotions become immediately less painful when they are being recognized as reproductions of the past . . .
QUESTION: [Inaud.] has a good awareness, but I have a bad memory of some terrible sex experiences, and this is where I've clammed up and never wanted to look at this again. And I talked with my coworker [inaud.] to get it out, and I personally would, if I could get it out. It would be very helpful.
ANSWER: I would say the general guilt about these feelings you had . . . if there was such an experience, it is secondary. And it is of primary importance only because of your guilt regarding this topic. The guilt, of course, is a result or was a result of not an abuse that existed in your environment but much rather because of your personal feelings being rejected. And therefore, having certain sexual feelings made you feel guilty. And it is this guilt that is more important than any dark experience as such.
Trust With Helper
QUESTION: [Inaud]. I have the impression that the second worker in my group work [inaud.] and just yesterday I asked that person [inaud.] the pathwork itself. Perhaps this is a rejection. Also [inaud.]. Can you comment on this?
ANSWER: Yes. Now, I think the crucial point is now beginning to be overcome since the very last few days, in that you are working through and courageously expressing and facing your lack of trust. And this is, of course, a major facet in you anyhow; and it had to, sooner or later, come out toward your helper. And the fact that you can openly discuss it together is the healing that is what is needed in order to overcome this phase. The thing I must recommend is the more honestly you reveal and express these feelings and overcome the hesitancy, the fear, and the guilt, the more your trust will grow and the more secure you will feel, and the more you will be able to proceed from there on and have a healthy base established—perhaps the first and only one in your life, where you will be able to trust. And from this your trust into other areas will slowly extend and expand—for up till now there has not been one single individual facet, belief, group, or anything that you could really trust. And that is the very crux of your problem. And therefore, it is to be welcome that this has come now, because it had to come at some time. And even though outwardly it appears as though it was brought about by another person's influence, it had to come anyhow. It is important that it is now taken up in you and that you fearlessly express your most secret suspicions and discuss them openly. And then look at them and merely ask yourself the question, without any pressure, "Am I right in this suspicion, or am I wrong? All I want to do is see. I do not have to decide today or tomorrow. I keep it shelved, I keep it open, and I have all the time to look at this question—this or that or the other distrust I have. Is it the way I believe or is it different?
With this attitude you will come to a sound feeling, if not always conviction, a feeling, that will be more valuable than a false conviction you compulsively put over the doubt because you feel that this is expected of you, because you feel it is necessary, and because you feel you cannot expose the doubt because that would be dangerous to you and to all sorts of other things. In that way you can never attain the soundness of your self, and the feeling of trust that you have a right to be yourself. And the right to be yourself you will find in the realistic way, not out of blind rebellion but out of the sincere questions you have, that you are permitted to ask, and that you will give yourself permission to ask if and when you can defer an answer. For many times man makes such issues more difficult in the belief that he has to furnish an immediate answer, either a positive or a negative one, that he cannot accept a temporary I don't know.
The moment man has the liberty and finds he has the liberty to say I do not yet know; I may know tomorrow; I may know next month. I will know eventually, since I keep this question open, but at the moment, I do not know.
This is the strength of maturity. This is the mature way of building a sound, honest foundation, where there is neither blind obedience nor blind rebellion, and where a real trust replaces a false trust that is superimposed over guilt-producing doubt. Do you understand that?
QUESTION: Yes, I just now [inaud.] this basic problem [inaud.] distrust.
Basic Mistrust
ANSWER: You have that basic distrust because the hurts that you have experienced as an infant and child you have interpreted as a malicious act toward you, and you have interpreted [these] to mean that life is out to get you. And this basic misconception sits in you, gnawing away at your psychic inners, as it were. This, of course, is you know in your intellect that it is a wrong conclusion, but only in your outermost intellect. For even on the mind levels when you go a little bit deeper, you are not so convinced that this is not so. And this is where your distrust comes from. And this is where, ultimately and eventually, the question must be asked by you, after you ascertain that this is actually what you do feel, but after you ascertain that this is what you do feel—and this will not be difficult for you to see, to feel, to experience, for it is in you all the time; it is in your very way you express life—once you ascertain this, you will eventually ask the question, Is it right? Am I correct in assuming this or may I be mistaken, might I be mistaken?
In the past, whenever vaguely such a question has arisen in your inner being, you have immediately covered it up by a compulsive shoving it away, by compulsively stating, of course life is not that way,
but without the inner conviction, because you did not realize that you have a right to really ask that question. And the moment you find you have the right to ask this question—and you will also know that you cannot find a conclusive answer immediately after you ask the question and that it is possible to defer the answer and wait for an answer and keep the unanswered question in abeyance—in that moment you will be launched on the way to eventually receiving answers—first here, first there, little inclinations.
As you go on, suddenly a new vista will present itself. This vista will not be that life on this dualistic planet is totally good. When I say that, I say this total benign nature of life exists when the duality has been transcended, and as long as that is not the case, life exists, of course, good and bad, of pleasure and pain, of white and black, of desirable and undesirable experience. But the moment you go into this new direction where you raise the question and wait for the answer, you will see life as both, because this is the way life is, not because it is out to get you. And [you will see] that you are one of many, many others in a very similar situation. And the moment you perceive this, there will be peace, and you will then be able to choose the attitudes that will reduce the areas of pain and increase the range of pleasurable experience. This is the way.
Duality Around The Medium
QUESTION: I have a question which I find difficult to express. It has to do with the duality versus a unified way of looking at the way the medium is working.
ANSWER: How?
QUESTION: Well, for some people who, some friends of mine, seem to separate the medium from a spirit world, up yonder, and the physical world here. I wonder if you could clarify this?
ANSWER: Yes. You see, here again, man's dualism distorts all aspects of time, space, and movement. In this respect space would be the primary factor of distortion. And this problem of space then applies in this problem that a spirit world is in outer space. It's somewhere away, away from the body, away from the physical manifestations. And this is the basic error that is the basic split in which the body and spirit are seen as two incompatible aspects, even if the personality does not think this sentence in exactly or precisely this way and pays lip service to the unity of body and spirit. He does, though, in a still-distorted way, by believing two opposites have made peace, which even that is a distortion, for the spirit permeates all matter. And a spiritual outlook is the outlook that sees the totality, while an unspiritual outlook is the one that separates. Now, therefore, it is a total error to assume that something from out there is more valuable than what is here. For there is no out there; there is only here. Now, I know, again, the words are limited due to the limitation, not only of language, but the limitation of language is a result of the limitation of consciousness that separates space, time, and movement into particles—and therefore separates the spirit from the body, or the mind from the body, as we started out this evening. Therefore, any truth that comes to man is truth, regardless of how, where, in what way. And this inner truth can be perceived by anyone. If one person has opened the channel, then this channel must serve to help others to open their own inner channel to truth. And that is the only valid and valuable approach to life in the spirit and life in the body, which are one and the same.
QUESTION: Thank you. I wonder if you could explain, again, the phenomenon of sleep.
Phenomenon Of Sleep And Energy Supply
ANSWER: The phenomenon of sleep, of course, has several times been discussed and as so many other phenomena, it can be explained in various ways. I would say that sleep affords the body functions to recuperate, to refuel, by the fact that the spirit, the inner psyche, the innermost self, is temporarily withdrawing from the body self and withdrawing in such a way that a certain amount of energy of a specific type is pumped, as it were, into the physical organism. This type of energy can only be pumped into it through the state of rest. There are other energies, there are many kinds of energies that man needs, which is another topic that man has not yet explored. Man speaks of energy, and he thinks only of one kind of energy. But there are many energies, many types of energies, necessary for a life. The energy you take in through food, through air, through sleep, through the expression of truth and love, through the bodily expression of love, through creative fulfillment in anything, through the pathwork of recognizing a truth—and anyone who has experienced this knows that this immediately relieves a tiredness and apathy and brings energy into the organism—all these are different kinds of energy. That's why, to come back full circle to the question that I discussed—that I was asked first and that I answered—that all these different areas of life, they are energy suppliers, each in its own way. And sleep supplies this certain type of energy through giving the body the rest through the fact that the spirit is withdrawn. By exercise, for instance, another type of energy, in a very opposite way through the very activity, comes into the body. By making every particle of the body alive, energy flows into the system, which is equally important. Truth is equally important. The more the personality is in truth, this very truth is a source of energy supply—again, a different kind of energy supply. By being expanding and meeting others in intimacy and love, again another type of energy flows into the total system. All these are different energies. And when the personality shortchanges itself of one or two, nonlife, the process of nonlife of the downward curve is initiated and expanded. And the more a personality expands himself into getting all these sources of energy, the more life is maintained and regenerated, regardless of the chronological age. Now, most human beings, a majority of human beings, fall short at least on some of these areas where certain types of energy supplies cannot come. As long as youth prevails, up to a certain degree it runs by itself, but when it is then not perpetuated by the attitude and the life the personality flows, the energy supply dwindles down in these areas. And that is really also the process of death—physical death sets in.
Following Inspiration
QUESTION: I notice that now I changed something. Before I used to do everything with emotion. When you answered some question, I have the idea that now I do some things by inspiration of my last Eva session. And so now, I like it and I don't like it. But I think some part of me says that it's right to do so. I don't know now what to do.
ANSWER: About what?
QUESTION: About to follow my intuition to do the thing that I do without any emotion, just following my inspiration of my last Eva session.
ANSWER: Well, these inspirations . . . what you should do, you see, is always . . . there cannot be a hard and fast rule. I would say that whatever inspiration comes, look at it. Use all your faculties; use your critical faculties; train your mind to select, to distinguish, to think, to think things through, to think in realism and reason. And also use your intuition. And then be prepared that some things will be right and some things will be wrong; and this is the only way a human being can grow. There is no other. There is no surefire panacea of how you can avoid experience. This is the experience the growing personality has to go through.
QUESTION: Thank you. No more questions, please. There's no more tape.
ANSWER: All right, my friends, anyone who has something very important to ask. If anybody has something important, I will give one more answer.
QUESTION: What is the word . . . ?
ANSWER: I cannot hear you.
QUESTION: What is the word [inaud.].
ANSWER: No, this is the way you feel so it is perfectly all right you express it this way. I think this is a very good and important question and I will be glad to answer it because it may help you too. I will put it in this way: The real self of every entity . . . [tape runs out]
Pathwork Questions and Answers
3rd Edition
No. 147
November 18, 1966
Greetings, my dearest, dearest friends. May the blessings, the strength, and the truth of what takes place here again help you, each and every one of you. It is indeed possible that you find what you need at this particular moment on your road of evolution in what will be said tonight, in connection with the answers given to the questions. Everyone of you can, if you are deeply attentive, hear that which you need most at the moment. Now, what are your questions?
Why Is It Hard To Be Average?
QUESTION: This first question is from a friend in our group. She asks, Why is it so difficult to accept to be average?
She insists to be her idealized self.
ANSWER: In the first place, the word average
can and often is misunderstood, and since there is a confusion about it, that in itself leads to conflict. The confusion is that average
seems to mean not good, inferior, inadequate, mediocre. On the other hand, if the word average
is properly understood, it means to have in common with all humanity
—not only the limitations, but also the assets already realized or the assets that are potentially realizable. Now, in that sense being average
is not a threat or implies inferiority. But even if it is properly understood, it still is difficult to accept for many human beings, because it seems to them that one has to be better than others in order to be acceptable, loveable, worthy, valuable, deserving of respect. This is a very deep-rooted confusion, existing to some extent, in almost all human psyches, and because of this overall confusion, societies are being built on an entirely wrong concept. [They are being built] on the concept of comparing and measuring oneself with the other person, which you know, we often discussed this, is a distortion. But, it is not sufficiently clear in the minds and even in the superficial intellects of most of my friends, that this comparing misses the point of what is a human being.
It also implies trying to be better, getting the better over, winning out over, belittling the other, and setting oneself up. It may not be thought of in these words, but it must amount to this in the final analysis. Now, whenever my friends, any one of you, is fearful of others, afraid of competition, for example, it means exactly the same as he who wildly competes and even seems to succeed in triumphing over others. It is merely the other side of the coin—he who withdraws from the competition. For him competition is a winning out over and being better than others and is so important that he is fearful of not succeeding. And he who seems to succeed or at least occasionally succeeds in winning out over others may not withdraw from competition, but he is burdened by anxiety, by guilt, and by uncertainty, because he constantly measures himself on something that cannot be measured. And he constantly has a whip behind him. This is why the pursuit of being better than others, which is the same as not wanting to be average, this is why it is so damaging. It implies a separateness that if it is really analyzed says, I must be the best. I must be better than others, and I do not care whether others are humiliated by my being better. I want to prove my being better, and if this costs the self-respect of others, I do not care.
Now this attitude is bound to produce guilt, and it is bound to weaken the personality, weaken the personality because of the guilt, and weaken the personality because of the threat that one has absolutely no way to know whether or not one can really succeed in this aim. It robs the peace and the self-respect that can only come when you accept yourself as being one out of a large human family. Now this attitude of knowing the common faculties of human aspects and qualities and limitations not only brings peace, but paradoxically, as it seems, it [also] makes it possible for the individual to surpass himself and to truly become his very best. He can only be or become his very best if he is free from guilt, if he is free from anxiety, if he is totally convinced that his strivings fulfill a worthy goal.
Now, it can never be a worthy goal if one has to belittle someone else. And, therefore, the best potentials can only be realized and put into actuality when the attention is directly concerned with the activity one undertakes. In other words, it makes a great deal of difference when the activity is undertaken with the vague idea, I have to prove my superiority over others.
Or when it is undertaken in the pure spirit, unpolluted by this other motivation. I want to do this for the sake of itself.
Now, this I often said. Now, whether this be the sake of itself is an activity that benefits others or even oneself, it is perfectly all right. If the activity is honest, it cannot harm others. For only in being happy can you add to other people's happiness. Only in being happy and fulfilled can you contribute to the fulfillment of others. So, it is not selfish if an aim is destined to expand your own pleasure, if it is destined to widen the horizon and perception of the greatness and the variety of, and the possibility of pleasure and fulfillment and joy.
It cannot do that when even a small percentage of your motivation is geared to putting someone down in order to aggrandize yourself. Then, even the apparently selfish pleasure becomes unrealizable and the apparently selfish pleasure cannot produce guilt if it is pure in its aim and therefore will ultimately not be selfish.
Now, this is an extremely important point to realize, my friends, because it is a whole upset of inner balance when you are motivated by self-aggrandizement, which must always be at the expense of others. You must shortchange others and, therefore, ultimately yourself. You must hinder the process of full self-realization, where you truly become the best that you ever can be. If you want to call this average or not does not matter. One might say, it is average that each human being contains greatness, and the possibility for greatness. This is an average, all over human trait. It may not be realized, or activated, but it nevertheless exists. And by the same token, it is average that you have limitations. When you accept all of them and do not try to be better than others, love is fostered. Union is fostered. When you try to deny the sameness that unites you with all other creatures, when you set yourself above others, you must wind up way below your standards and also apparently or really or both, below the standards of the so-called, average person.
Now, anyone who pursues this pathwork and finds sooner or later these aspects within himself, inevitably finds that these words are true. He or she may shy away from seeing this and admitting this because it seems so humiliating to accept one's limitations, to come down from the height and be like others. But he who has the honesty and courage to want to do this, and therefore to ultimately succeed in doing this, finds himself in the apparently paradoxical situation that by that very process he rises up, not above others, because comparison no longer matters or exists, but he rises up in himself and becomes more and more of himself. So, on the road to self-activation, the pride and the arrogance and the cruelty that always is implied in the aim of triumphing over others, must be abandoned. And it must be understood that the refusal to accept the common bonds with other humans even contains elements of cruelty to some extent. They may not be actively executed, but in the emotions, in the emotional aim, cruelty exists, anxiety, guilt, and such an insecurity that nothing can be measured with any certainty. Therefore, the price for something unrealizable anyway is much too high, and he who realizes this and abandons the claim to be special finds relief and peace from a burden he had never fully appreciated, that he has carried around. Does that answer the question?
QUESTION: I guess so.
ANSWER: Is there any other question connected with this? Then we shall proceed to the next one.
Higher Developed And Feeing Pain
QUESTION: At the last question and answer evening, you told me that the higher developed the person is, the more pain he feels. I feel this is a discrepancy. The way I see it, the higher developed the person, the more of the pain of the other one he feels, but their own pain, through our path, is diminished.
ANSWER: That is both true, you are right, and what I said is also right. But [they are] both right. I will try to explain in what way. You see, when we transcend the standards of duality, what seemed like an opposite no longer is an opposite. It is even also true to state that the higher developed the person is, the less pain he feels, and this is not a contradiction to saying the more capable of feeling pain he also is. These are stages in between.
In the first place, it is known to you already by many, many things I've said in the course of these years that what one feels towards oneself is always one and the same that one is able to feel for others. When I said the higher developed [a] living organism [is], the more pain he can feel, this was applied specifically to the transition from the mineral to the plant state, from the plant state to the animal state, from the animal to the human being state. For the higher organized the consciousness, the more sensitive the nerve centers are.
So, on the transitory state of evolution, there comes a point when the consciousness is extremely sensitive to pain and only when he transcends this stage does he reach a further stage where pain no longer exists, but not because he is numb due to a lesser degree of consciousness, but [also] because he discovers the illusory nature of pain. It is the same cycle, for instance, as when I explained the evolutionary process from the God consciousness. A very undeveloped creature has no consciousness and therefore no God consciousness. Then the next stage, roughly speaking, would be a very primitive kind of God consciousness, where God is externalized, where God represents all his wishes and fears. Then comes the next stage which seems so painful, when this illusory God consciousness is abandoned and one finds oneself alone, face to face with a need for self-responsibility with a self-governing principle that you and you alone inflict punishment or reward upon yourself, which would parallel to the state of exposed painfulness. And the next stage will be the discovery of the divine nature of each being, which would parallel the stage where pain is no longer acute, not out of numbness, but out of realization and the activation of the divine center within that knows no pain in an absolute reality.
And in the interim transitory state from one to the next, the awareness of others, of course, becomes very strong. The lesser state is merely concerned with oneself and the other has no reality, just as in connection with the last question and answer before, where the individual is not concerned with the humiliation of the other, when he tries to triumph, which is an emotional pain for the other. This pain has no reality, but as the consciousness grows and expands, one perceives this pain of the other and is in empathy with it and no longer is compelled to triumph. This is the evolutionary road one travels through.
Now, these are therefore, not contradictions, but different stages. The least stage would be numbness, unaliveness, no sense of consciousness either of self or of others. The next stage would be the rising consciousness begins to feel and come out of a numbness, but this feeling is limited and has very narrow boundaries, and the consciousness does not expand or extend over a feeling of self, where the concern with the self is primary and others seem like totally unreal creatures that one cannot feel any sense of reality for. That is the stage when one suffers pain of the self, but not of the other. And then comes the next stage, where the sense of the other enters into the field of vision and the difference between self and others seems to be wiped out to some extent, so that the concern for the other grows—as one becomes more constructive with oneself, one must be more constructive for the other. And this expands awareness, consciousness and heightens the ability to experience, to feel. And the more that progresses, the more the realization dawns upon the consciousness, that beyond the opposites of pleasure and pain is a conciliation of pleasure supreme that has nothing to do with the opposite of the pain one fears so much. It is not the little pleasure that opposes the pain. It is a much wider pleasure that knows no fear of an opposite. This would be the next stage in the evolution of consciousness. And in that sense, what I said is by no means a contradiction. Do you understand?
QUESTION: Yes, thank you.
Seeking Affection And Security From Others
QUESTION: It came out very strongly in my personal work yesterday that I seek still for the affection and security that I had when I was a child—that I have not progressed, that I have an infantile view of affection and that I sometimes demand of friends now the affections I had from my parents when I was young. And I find great difficulty even grasping this condition, and I would like advice.
ANSWER: You mean grasping that you have that condition?
QUESTION: Yes.
ANSWER: Being aware that you have that condition?
QUESTION: Yes and ultimately, of course, trying to cure it.
ANSWER: Yes. Now, to cultivate the awareness of this condition is the first question we have to answer here, and here I can, and will, give you advice of how you may best go about it.
By observing your contacts with your involvements, with the people you are involved with, you will come to see quite clearly, although at first it might be hazy, that what you expect of them differs from what you really would want to give them. Now, you may be willing to give it to them, but in the spirit that you have to do this as a price for gaining what you are after. Now, when you clearly see this difference, you will come to the point when it will be very concise, where you will be very sharply aware of this difference, where you will see and experience the unevenness of the expectation. And where the expectations seems to be even, where you seem to, perhaps, even give a lot more, it is not in the free spirit, but it is in the spirit of the needy child who has to do this in order to get what he thinks he must obtain in order to live.
Now, you will, if you take your time and very calmly and objectively view your own reactions, see this discrepancy. And you will come then to see that actually you do not even really, really, deeply, care for the feelings of the others, as the child only cares for feelings of the parents in a very subjective way, in the way that if the parent is unhappy, then he will punish me or reject me and then I'm lost.
But the parents as human beings with problems of their own have no reality for the child. Now this is the way you feel for others, not only you, but everyone where he has his problems. You know perhaps intellectually the other person has problems, but emotionally this has no reality. Emotionally, the other person always has it made, as it seems, and the consideration and affection you give them is always something you extend in order to receive. Are you in any way aware of this?
QUESTION: Yes, I am.
ANSWER: Well then, if you can see that, the realization—and the same applies to everyone, not only you who are gathered here tonight, but to everyone—when you are aware of this, then it should not be too difficult to appreciate and become more concisely aware of this child/parent relationship in which the child, the self-centered child, is needy and demands something and needs something from an adult—and from therefore an apparently very strong and powerful person—what he cannot supply for himself.
Now when you are acutely aware of this, the next step should not be too difficult, and we can now, perhaps, consider for a moment the implications of this attitude. The implication is that, although in a child this is true, in a adult it is not true, and if you feel you absolutely are dependent for survival on the other person, you are in error.
And you can only gain the kind of affection and love and appreciation that is important for an adult person when you no longer put yourself in the one-sided position of the child. And the one-sided position of the child assumes the attitude, I can not live without it. I must have what I want.
It is the must
that makes the adult-equal position impossible. For the first thing that the adult must learn for his own self-respect, which is the most important thing in the universe,
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