Movement, Consciousness, Pleasure Principle As Essence Of Life

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. God bless all of you. Blessed be this path of self-realization and self-unfoldment. All my friends who really make serious efforts toward overcoming the inborn resistance to face and change that which is unrealistic, and therefore destructive, begin to reap the fruits of this endeavor. They notice this through an increasing awareness of themselves, an increasing liberation of vital forces and energies.

Tonight's lecture will bring out several points we have discussed in the past, but once again I shall attempt to link up aspects which we had previously looked into separately because the inner understanding of this group now enables one to go deeper. As you know, on the deepest level all cosmic and all human aspects unify.

A long time I gave a lecture about the life force. Let us look into this again with a new insight. The life force is a free-flowing energy current manifest in the entire universe. Wherever an organization fulfills certain essential conditions, it tunes into the life force, which enables it to be permeated and revitalized by it. It lives. A living organism has come into existence.

We discussed definitions of life from various points of view. Let us now be very simple about it. There are three essential elements that determine life. They are: movement, consciousness, and experience. As you may have noticed from a number of topics in the past, as well as from other observations, there are many triads in the spiritual facets of life. Each triad forms a whole. One aspect of the triad harmoniously combines the other two. If harmony prevails in the living organism, the third factor blends, balances, and harmonizes. If the life organism is in disharmony with the universal laws, the three factors will become a contradiction to one another and, instead of harmonizing as a whole, they will be in opposition to one another. So it is with this triad.

Let us look closer at the significance of each of these three aspects. Without movement, life does not exist. What lives must move; when movement goes out, it is because life goes out. The entire universe is in motion because it is alive. This applies not only to the universe itself, but to every particle of the human entity. On the physical level it is obvious. When the muscles do not move, they atrophy. Part of the physical body is losing its life. On the mental or intellectual level, it is also easy to observe. He who does not train his brain to think, to move, loses the capacity for thinking. The intellect stagnates, it becomes lifeless. It atrophies, just as the muscles of a body atrophy when the body does not move. Thinking is movement.

On the emotional level, it is generally more difficult to observe, unless one is on a path of self-exploration. My friends are becoming aware of inner conditions of their emotional life which show that repression creates rigidity. Rigidity is the opposite of life, which is always flexible, always in motion. Feelings are movement. When feelings are prohibited or manipulated, so that they cannot function according to their own harmonious law, they deaden.

Hence, in order to be fully alive, all levels of the personality must keep on moving in a natural, organic way. In order for the live organism to function harmoniously, growing is moving. As I have said so many times, without growth there is no life. One may also put it axiomatically that since growth is movement, without movement there is no life.

Movement contains the outreaching quality. It contains the element of relationship, communication, love, understanding. It reaches out to the other being. Union is unthinkable without movement because it must always reach out of the confines of the self.

The second factor is consciousness. This has been discussed so extensively that not much has to be said about it here. It is self-evident that to the degree that an entity is conscious, so it is alive. There are many degrees of consciousness. The human being is the first creature in the upward scale that possesses self-consciousness, awareness of itself, in all the varying degrees. People such as you, my friends, who pursue a path of increasing self-awareness raise their level of consciousness in the fastest possible way. Increased awareness of self must, perforce, increase awareness of others, of the universe, of life as a whole. Awareness determines the measure and direction of movement and regulates it according to reality concepts. Movement without consciousness is bound to lose itself in wrong channels. It may be too extreme, too one-sided, or it may give in to apathy and stagnation.

On this path you often detect how your emotional life either stagnates or is uncontrolled. Your awareness gradually regulates this and brings harmony into the organism. Physical and mental movement is frequently neglected. But it is the emotional movement which suffers most. Often physical and mental inactivity is due to emotional stagnation.

Expanding consciousness entails movement; the activity and the effort necessary for such an endeavor is movement. On the other hand, movement without consciousness, to the degree of the individual personality's capability, hinders harmonious movement of all personality levels. If, for example, movement and consciousness are directed into channels that deal exclusively with outer matters, or if self-understanding is neglected, integration of all personality levels cannot take place. The body and mind may develop, but the spiritual entity suffers when the emotional level is not infiltrated with movement and consciousness. Blind emotions one is not aware of are a consequence of the lack of consciousness on the emotional level. When the movement of search, thinking, discriminating, and evaluating is not directed to those hidden areas, the movement of the emotions is off balance -- in part blindly wild (uncontrollable hostility, for instance), and partly paralyzing the best faculties of the feeling body.

Experience is the third factor. The fuller the experience, the more harmonious must be the interplay between movement and consciousness. Shallowness is lack of experience. When the feeling body is paralyzed, the ability to experience must suffer. Or when feelings are distorted, one-sided, negative, it is so because of misconception, misinterpretation of reality. In short, it indicates faulty awareness, lack of comprehension, insufficient consciousness. The ability to evaluate an experience determines the maximum of pleasure and the minimum of pain. For the maximum of pleasure, feelings have to be in motion, for the minimum of pain, consciousness has to function. Thus it can be seen that consciousness is the third factor in this triad.

The higher the overall development of an entity, the greater the bliss, the fuller the experience of pleasure, and the lesser the experience of pain and suffering. This is due to correct evaluation, realistic perception, and to free flowing movement -- unhampered by fears, inhibitions, and paralysis. In short, this maximum experience of bliss is the result of harmonious blending between movement, consciousness, and experience.

Experience contains the pleasure principle. The possibility for utter bliss is contained in the life force. It is man's inborn longing to partake of this experience, which becomes possible when his entire organism is in harmony with reality, when he no longer fights against it out of his misunderstandings and false ideas.

When the deepest layers of the psyche are reached, it becomes apparent that the raw, primitive instincts are concerned only with the experience of pleasure. Behind the superstructure of moral standards, laws, and rules lies the craving for pleasure supreme at all costs, regardless of the consequences. In the immature creature, the pleasure principle would like to function, but insufficient consciousness creates a discrepancy between the ability for pleasure and the environment. Hence, the frequent situation arises where intellectual maturity hinders the pleasure principle, which is repressed because consciousness does not penetrate these levels. Therefore the ability to experience pleasure is unable to grow. It remains childish and self-concerned. If it does manifest, it is patently destructive. If it is prohibited from manifestation, the inherent destructiveness is not eliminated because it festers underground, while kept in check so that no real fulfillment can be experienced. This is because consciousness does not reach these hidden layers. Movement is checked, so that the pleasure principle cannot unfold in the life of the individual. Thus, the faculties which are equipped to experience a maximum of pleasure are thwarted.

Man is meant to experience the maximum of pleasure, but as long as this occurs at the cost of harming either others or oneself, a harmonious balance has not been established between these three factors of life, and therefore within the personality. Harming oneself occurs out of unjustified guilt feelings and this eventually is also bound to harm others.

One of the most damaging factors in the general development of the entire human personality is the influence of deeply ingrained prejudice, preconceived ideas, misconceptions. This world is so filled with generally accepted "facts" that even the most enlightened and independent spirits blindly accept certain postulates without a fresh new approach as to why matters are what they are supposed to be, why certain things are supposed to be right and good and others wrong and bad. The sense of wrongness about the free development of man's faculties to experience universal bliss combines with his personal fears and negative experiences so that the personality may remain crippled for many an incarnation, until it has the courage to free itself. Fearing disapproved instinctual drives, being ashamed of them, cannot possibly allow them to mature so that they reach out and integrate. As a consequence, many people develop in a lopsided way. The further this one-sided development is encouraged and increased, leaving other parts of the personality untouched, the greater will be the crisis and the conflict that the personality will experience.

Society's taboos regarding the erotic and sexual forces contained in the life force have resulted in mankind's intellectual and technical over-development, as compared with his ability to love. For the love force cannot grow if it is arbitrarily separated from the erotic and sexual forces. They are all one stream. If man's consciousness fearfully watches over every stream of feeling, anxiously cutting out of this life stream what he believes to be wrong, the entire capacity to love must suffer. This does not only apply to love between the sexes, but to love in every human facet. The great spiritual love force knows no such divisions and its cultivation is impossible if a continuously watchful eye tries to pull out what is supposed to be wrong. It is as though man attempted to play a symphony without certain essential notes that he decided to eliminate. During early practice some notes may ring false, but eventually, after sufficient practice, these notes will harmonize and form one integral whole.

A misconception of long standing, which has only been eliminated in the last fifty years or so, was the idea that infants do not experience erotic or sexual pleasure. The truth is that infants experience physical pleasure more strongly than the average human being does. The infant is not burdened with guilts, shames, and misconceptions. Therefore, the instinctual drives manifest much more intensely. However, experience of the pleasure principle is naturally self-centered and undeveloped (which does not make it wrong or sinful) because consciousness and movement are as yet hindered. Thus, in the child's early years pleasure is primarily self-centered or directed to its immediate environment -- to the parents. This is completely natural, and only man's traditional misconceptions put the stamp of utter wrong on this natural phenomenon. Generation upon generation of inherited prejudice causes a halting of the growing individual's natural development. Fears of perversion, homosexuality, and incest play a role. But the baby knows no such boundaries. Its sexual instincts thrive without consideration of these concepts and ideas. However, if guilt and a sense of sin do not drive these instincts underground, if mental and spiritual awareness is cultivated and the entire human personality grows harmoniously, then the sexual drive changes. It undergoes the same process as man's general development does. The more man grows, the more he reaches out: first from the self to his immediate environment, and later to the world outside his family circle. In early years, the adolescent is most preoccupied with companions of the same sex, intellectually, mentally, emotionally -- and also sexually. The companions of the same sex are an extension of himself and of the parent of the same sex. But as growth proceeds further, he reaches out to the other sex.

Overt perversion is not prohibited by decrees of sin, with their inhibiting fears, but by the entire human organism which grows up and readies out of itself. Fear of the sin of perversion tends to drive underdeveloped instincts inward, as is true of any other aspect of human reactions. When man is ashamed of hate and hostility, of envy and vindictiveness, these trends fester in the unconscious too. Man can only grow out of these emotions if he learns to face these feelings, to understand their origin, and reason. If this does not happen, he may not appear as harboring such feelings, but he will harbor them nevertheless. Their existence comes out indirectly and manifests through a general paralysis of creative functions, of the ability to have rewarding and meaningful relationships, and of fulfillment. It is exactly the same with the "forbidden" immature feelings. They, too, have to be faced, re-experienced, come to terms with if the personality is to grow harmoniously and fulfill itself.

These "forbidden" feelings are frequently on a layer below hate and resentment. Hostility and other negative emotions may have been difficult to face because they contradict one's idealized self image; because they bring disapproval and rejection. But they are often more acceptable than pleasurable feelings in connection with one's own family. Therefore they are kept even more securely locked than hate. It is often that hate is artificially fostered as an antidote against forbidden pleasure-feelings, and repression of hate and anger occurs only subsequently. This points to the necessity of unrolling this entire process, layer by layer, until this most primitive area is reached. Then, and then only, can the organic growth take place and the personality unfold in its full splendor. Whenever one life-activity, no matter how useful, productive or creative in itself, seems to hinder the unfoldment of one's emotional depth in experiencing the pleasure principle, the inner being is off balance. For, in a balanced, integrated, full personality, one activity will enhance the other. Creative endeavor never suffers by the full experience of the Life Force in all its aspects. Quite the contrary is true.

Before prejudice, fear, and misconception prohibit the natural flow of an infant's participation in the Life Force, its experience of the pleasure drive is acute. Every experience in infanthood is influenced by the pleasure principle. This enters into all of the child's activity, regardless of what comes to pass. The type of experience and the child's psychic condition, with which it is born, subsequently influence its attitude toward the pleasure principle. Hence, when the baby is caressed, fed, and loved, it experiences acute physical pleasure in connection with its surroundings. If development proceeds naturally, as indicated before, the out-reaching movement will induce the entity to direct the pleasure drive from the self to the immediate family environment, to the outer world, and then to the opposite sex. This necessitates the integration of love, eros, and sex (as discussed in a previous lecture) which, in turn, is a consequence of equal development of movement, consciousness, and the ability to experience. However, this integration does not take place if there are existing taboos, fears, and an artificial separation of instinctual drives. Their existence will prohibit this natural development.

With growing maturity in this direction, perfect union between two individuals of the opposite sex becomes possible. Apart from the immeasurable bliss of this experience, it also enables the personalities in question to function incomparably better in every respect in life. Such healthy union does not exclude productive activities, rewarding relationships with others. On the contrary. The more the personality is integrated, and therefore capable of experiencing what it is destined for -- the utter bliss of the Life Force -- the more it must include others. The realm of experience widens, with each experience perfect in its own uniqueness. Needless to say that this does not mean physical experience and promiscuity.

The more the individual reaches out, integrating all his faculties into a harmonious whole, the more does the entity fulfill his spiritual destiny. Beyond the human sphere this reaching out occurs to a degree that is infinitely extended, but this is not beyond human comprehension. The concept of spiritual union is mostly a theoretical one for man, although at this stage it can be said regarding it that the great Life Force, reaching further out and embracing, rather than withholding and excluding, knows no arbitrary separation between the various facets of the great Life Stream that contains the pleasure principle. Life on earth is a preparation for this and therefore it is of the utmost importance to remove the trouble spots within the psyche. These trouble spots mean that the pleasure drive was fixed, in connection with negative, unpleasurable experience, by guilt and fear, by misconception and the faulty assimilation of experience.

This may take two extreme forms, with many varying degrees between them. There are either superimposed rules, taboos, and false guilts which cause anger and rebellion. These feelings are the result of fighting against what one partly accepts. Therefore it does not indicate real freedom, which derives only from awareness and comprehension. Outwardly this may manifest in the living out of raw, undeveloped, primitive instincts in a spirit of defiance. Such defiance and rebellion harbor fear and guilt, and, as a result, organic growth does not occur. The instincts remain in the primitive childhood state and what was once natural and organic is, in a later period of life, destructive. The other extreme is that guilt and fear thwart the unfoldment of the pleasure principle and the soul is prohibited this aspect of its development. It is frustrated and feels a void, for the deep longing for happiness is not wrong, but is in reality a spiritual factor. Overcompensation and mischanneling are further results, until the soul ultimately follows its destiny and brings all its faculties into a growing process. Usually, there are stages between these extremes, either overtly or unconsciously, so that the personality battles in a blind way against both extremes, fluctuating but never being enlightened and freed.

Consequently, it is essential that everyone on the Path investigate his most primitive, heretofore untouched areas of feelings in this regard. They have to be lifted out of hiding and seen in connection with the personal experiences and conditions in the early environment.

Humanity often claims that pleasure for its own sake is wrong. The truth is exactly the opposite. When the personality is harmoniously developed, the pleasure drive includes others, it gives and receives, and this is as it should be. In a mature individual it is not self-centered and excluding. Hence it cannot be antisocial. It is only antisocial and excluding if the adult person manifests his sexual drive as it is appropriate with a child. Children are antisocial, self-centered, and therefore excluding. When emotions remain more or less fixed in the childish state, it is less "sinful" than indicative of a lag in overall development. It is in these very instances that frequently an individual will use the pleasure drive for other needs -- for example, in order to enhance the ego, to diminish feelings of inadequacy, to feel wanted and desired because one feels insecure and helpless. Often aggression and hostility are taken up by the pleasure drive and manifest, without the person's awareness, in the sexual drives. It is then that one may truly speak of perversion because the pleasure principle is used for something other than it is destined for. It does not fulfill the function it is destined for, but is supposed to fulfill that which only self-awareness and the growing out of one's problematic emotions are supposed to fulfill. The pleasure principle becomes a substitute, or at least partly so.

These entanglements between guilt, suppression and repression, fear, early childhood fixations of the pleasure principle, its lack of organic development, the effects of this stagnation on the person's life and his inter-relationships, can only be uncovered by looking deeply inside, into the recesses of hidden primitive feelings in connection with one's early environment. This is not easy, it cannot be done at once. It is necessary that the psyche be loosened up gradually, by previous stages of this Path work, so that the re-experiencing of these early emotions becomes possible. This can be done only if one does not resist this endeavor. The rewards for the ensuing liberation is beyond any words.

As long as the personality is unconsciously fixed on early experience, regardless of whether this manifests in a direct or covert way, the soul is incapable of truly growing and experiencing. These fixations cannot be given up unless awareness enters into areas which were heretofore closed up. Then, and then only, can one come to terms with the inadequately assimilated early experience and the psyche is only then ready to truly reach out. Fixation implies lack of movement -- therefore lack of growth. It implies lack of consciousness; because consciousness means proper understanding through which the movement of the life force could dissolve the fixation. Hence, experience could take place on the level which the individual is potentially ready for. Where movement, consciousness, and experience function harmoniously, the individual must be fulfilled and essentially happy, regardless of occasional outer difficulties. In such a case, love, eros, and sex will be one force, and there is no conflict between the intellect, the emotions, and man's spiritual center.

Let us now look at certain basic conditions in childhood, from which it will be easier for all of you to look at your own childhood in the light of this subject. As mentioned before, the child experiences intense pleasure in contact with his parents; whether or not of the same sex, each parent stands in the foreground at certain periods of the child's development. This is normal and healthy for these limited periods. But labels stamp such feelings as sinful and perverse. The child soon absorbs these ideas, even if they are never mentioned in these terms, because the entire atmosphere and the adult environment's conscious and unconscious thinking is permeated by them. So the child, instead of growing naturally out of these stages, fixates the feelings in its unconscious psychic life to guilt, shame, and fear, thereby making it impossible to relate to others without the influence of these early feelings. As a result, layer upon layer of destructive, artificial emotions cover up this basic condition. Love, being combined with the pleasure drive, is turned into hate. Hate has to be covered with a sterile, false, pretended love. Hence, hate is not only due to rejection and hurt, but equally to what seems forbidden love.

In the work on this Path it becomes increasingly obvious that man relates to his parents through his other relationships, particularly with his mate. The topic now under discussion has to be included in this vital factor. The more the emotions are fixed, the more is it an indication of powerful emotions being involved. The most powerful feelings are those in connection with the pleasure principle. If you now consider a number of previous lectures, particularly those dealing with the influence of parents and one's behavior patterns deriving from the parental relationship, you will gain considerably deeper insight, and this will enable you to re-experience, in one form or another, what keeps you rigid, what prevents your complete organic growth. Do not be afraid of facing these feelings, encourage it. You have nothing to fear in doing so -- on the contrary. Be alert, my friends, and you will truly liberate yourselves. Be particularly watchful when feelings seem problematic because there is too much blind adoration, or too much resentment -- more than the occasion may warrant. If such over-reaction exists, it is a good indication that you have not come to terms with natural phases of your past development.

When erotic longing in childhood was fulfilled to a degree, due to a demonstrative and affectionate parent, this does not necessarily guarantee healthy further development. Whenever the sense of guilt is too strong, the entity is incapable of coming to terms with the experience, and will therefore battle against it. This will later manifest in battling against love and erotic or sexual fulfillment. On the other hand, if the child did not receive the fulfillment it longed for, it is later convinced that its longing was wrong and, as an adult, continues to battle against his feelings. This may occasionally be counteracted by the healthy longing of the soul, but it is always diluted by the original experience one has not properly assimilated.

It may be believed that only the experience of pleasure during childhood activates the erotic and sexual force in the growing individual. But often it is just as much the painful experience, which melts into the pleasure drive, that fixes erotic and sexual pleasure to the painful experience. It is important to recognize that this is possible and that often it is a fact. Fear and pain are the essence of all negative experience. It is often the case that a human being functions erotically and/or sexually only in connection with fear and pain. When these emotions are absent, the pleasure principle cannot manifest. I cannot stress sufficiently how important it is to look into these areas and establish a connection between such a factor and the particular circumstances in childhood which produced pain and fear. Then the fixation can be found very directly and without detour. It is obvious that as long as the person is fixed in such a way, it is impossible to maintain a fruitful, dynamic relationship. It must always end, and therefore such a person cannot experience what his soul longs for.

Nevertheless, this is not as negative a factor as might be believed, because the entity alleviates the pain by the process of allowing the pleasure principle to influence the painful experience, which might otherwise have been unbearable for the undeveloped ego of the child. If painful experience is eroticized or sexualized, it permits the entity, to a limited degree of course, the experience of the vital, revitalizing Life Force, and thus it is a better solution than the other alternative, which would be thwarting the pleasure drive altogether. In the majority of instances, it is a combination of these two alternatives that one unconsciously grasps for in order to deal with painful experience. In either case, as well as in the case of being fixated on the pleasurable experience of childhood, it is of the utmost necessity to dissolve all these fixations and thus set the Life Force free. Frustration, unfulfillment in every respect, even in those areas which seem to have nothing to do with this topic -- self-dislike, guilt, disease, lack of energy, lack of creativity, in short any negative aspect in creation -- must ultimately be connected with this facet of human development. Every human being contains within his psyche the infant he once was. And this infant responds and reacts as it once did. All it is concerned about is the simple wish to experience pleasure. Either this pleasure was given or it was not. The parents had the power to give or to withhold. The basic struggle of the infant is to attain pleasure and eliminate that which stands in the way. This simple, primitive struggle still exists within each individual. In itself it is not sinful, shameful, or wrong. In growing out of this primitive state, the flavor, the emphasis, and the ramification of the search all undergo change.

One parent may have given more pleasure, the other more pain. Both parents may have given both. In any case, the divisions of pleasure and pain go on battling within until they are brought out into the daylight of consciousness. Then the struggle continues in an entirely different way, in a healthy an constructive way, tending toward spiritual maturity.

When all images, pseudo-solutions, misconceptions, and inner conflicts are brought down to the simplest common denominator, it will be found that the infant struggles between attaining pleasure and avoiding pain. When pain and pleasure are unified as a "way out," this must not be confused with the unity between pleasure and pain when overcoming the duality of life on earth. It is an erroneous, blind attempt to overcome the duality and, as such, not real and productive.

On your further steps on the Path, my friends, it is again necessary to consider this lecture together with the last one. Working them through as one unit will facilitate matters greatly. Try to detect the hidden fear of your feelings, because mankind has made a strong separation between general human affection and the erotic sexual flow. In reality it cannot be so completely separated. This fearfulness cramps you, it makes you manipulate your feelings in the most subtle but nevertheless distinct way. Man erroneously fears that his as yet undeveloped, primitive instincts will lead him astray in action, while in reality becoming aware of these instinctual drives will merely make them attuned to the development that is otherwise achieved. My words must not be misunderstood, my friends. I do not advocate a living out of childish instincts. All I mean to say is: as a child you all have these instincts. And they still exist to some degree in all of you before you truly come face to face with them, so that you can free yourself of a self-imposed prison. When you do face and come to terms with these heretofore hidden primitive feelings, when you overcome the unreasonable fear and shame to do so, you will outgrow them and reach out further. Then you will truly relate. The new person will no longer be a substitute for the original parent you still seek. You will not only experience new heights in fulfillment, in fullness of living and bliss, but your productive activities will also know a new height, being executed in peace and harmony. Tension, frustration, irritation will leave your psychic system, for these constant companions of so many of my friends are the result of instincts one cannot accept in oneself and therefore one fears and runs away from.

I venture to say that every one of you, at least to some degree, will find that your erotic response occurs only when there is at least a slight element of either rejection, fearfulness, uncertainty, insecurity, or pain. When these negative emotions are completely absent, so may also be the erotic response. For such people it is often quite impossible to establish the proper climate in which they can function erotically; complete rejection is not possible either, because as it is anticipated, it only serves to perpetuate the vicious circle. Even if either one or both the partners feel beyond the need or the wish for partnership fulfillment due to advanced earthly age, dissolving this fixation and meeting the original childhood conditions is of equal importance so that the Life Force can flow and revitalize you in other areas of your life. By keeping fixed areas unresolved, the Life Force is prohibited, and this must take its toll on your general well-being and overall development. Do not fear the consequences, for the freer you become of blind, unrealistic fears, guilts, and misconceptions, the more you are capable of choosing freely, of not being forced into patterns that you do not select out of penetrating, realistic awareness. Going with the Life Stream can only be right in every possible respect. Stemming against it, out of blindness, ignorance, stubbornness, and fear, is bound to cramp and hinder you where you least desire it.

When dealing with the area just described before, in which pain and pleasure live together because your painful experience could not be assimilated otherwise, it is important to note that on the one hand as long as this condition prevails within yourself, you shortchange yourself in the most tragic and unnecessary way. For, by facing it, it can be changed in a way that will give you and others immeasurable happiness. On the other hand, it is also important to see it with a wider view. If pleasure and pain can only live together in the conflicted psyche, although it may often be called perversion or labeled as masochism, it is still a blessing. If the Life Force could not enter into the distorted areas, even though compelled to manifest in an erroneous, inverted way until growing out of the conflict, then the organism would become more and more incapacitated, weak, and empty in all areas of living. This would mean that the entity could not grow at all, nor could it experience or enjoy any kind of pleasure. Think of the individuals who do not derive any joy out of living. They are always those who have inadvertently managed to stop the enlivening stream, which often is accused of being evil merely because it is arbitrarily divided into acceptable and unacceptable sections and because its primitive manifestation is evaluated as an unchangeable aspect, and not as a temporary stage.

These childhood phases have to be gone through, re-experienced, and seen in their proper light, my friends. Many of you are approaching the stage in which you are capable of doing so, some of you have already begun and have made considerable headway. Others are still too blocked and fearful. But even they will eventually muster the courage to discover that it is natural. It is not shameful. It is in the scheme of universal development. I cannot tell you how grateful you will be to yourself for not shirking this vital part of your development. You all have seen in the past how exhilarating and liberating it was when you overcame the resistance to go deeper. The greater the struggle and resistance, the more meaningful was the insight and the more liberating the effect.

This lecture may be interpreted as psychological material. But nothing could be further from the truth, even though great insight has been made in this particular respect in the last fifty years or so from a purely psychological point of view. That is, in terms of present fulfillment, of personal happiness in this life. But here I say something much more than that. This opens the spiritual vistas of Union. It reaches further than Freudian psychology. It includes the evolution of the created entity in all its facets. It is important that you understand this message from this point of view. The aim of spiritual unfoldment discussed in this lecture reaches beyond the personal pleasure that man could experience. Although the latter is a result of overall harmonious development and certainly does not oppose it, the development of the soul has an infinitely more far-reaching significance in the entire evolutionary plan.

The universal Life Force embodies greatness, beauty, and purity. It is man's impurity that would make one facet of the Life Force seem impure.

Some of my friends may yet have difficulty in understanding all this. Some of them may believe that this is repetition. But those of you who are really deeply exploring yourselves and are about to reach these areas will not find these words repetitious, nor will you find them beyond the possibility of being understood.

This lecture should give you a great deal of material to work on. If you truly pursue your inner development, and you are not merely interested in "outer patches," it must have a listening effect on your psyche and in its direction of search and unfoldment. It must be food for thought, otherwise you will continue to fear that part in you which paralyzes your best potential, until you summon up the courage and effort to do what your spirit is waiting for you to do.

Since there is no more time for questions tonight, I will give you all the time you wish when we come to the discussion reserved for this particular lecture. I will then answer all questions and discuss all examples or problems brought to me.

I want to close this lecture with the statement that those of you who do not shy away from this deep and ultimate growing process in this life are blessed indeed. You can indeed rejoice! Do not be put off by the possible crisis, which is always present when one unreasonably fears to face something that one feels is hard to accept. The ignorant child, believing it has to hide, reacts very strongly before it is brought out of hiding. After this crucial liberation, you will no longer be satisfied with small insights, little relief, and subsequent relapses, until you find the same process all over again. You will achieve a substantial and significant growth of lasting value, of lasting impact.

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Be blessed, all of you! Receive the vibrant Life Force, containing all that cannot be evaluated in terms of right or wrong, of good or bad. It is all one. Be in peace. Be in God.

The Guide
by Eva Pierrakos
November 15, 1963

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