Evolution's Four Stages: Automatic Reflexes, Awareness, Understanding, Knowing

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. Blessings for everyone of you. Blessed be this hour. This first lecture of the year will indicate the phase into which the Path is going to enter during the coming working season, the general work and the part to be emphasized.

The best way to begin is by discussing certain general phases of evolution in the human consciousness. There are four distinct phases. They interact and overlap, with each, of course, having many subdivisions, degrees of intensity, and variations. At this point, we need not go into those details, for they have been amply treated as we were concerned with each respective phase on which we had previously concentrated. And we shall do so again when we enter into the next phase of development. At the moment, we seek to gain a certain overall view.

The lowest phase of human consciousness is automatism. Man responds according to automatic reflexes -- emotional reactions which are based on deeply imprinted wrong conclusions and generalizations. In other words, everything we have discussed and worked on concerning the images shows how man responds in blind, automatic fashion.

The more he is liberated in some areas of his personality, the more does he try to rationalize and explain such blind reactions, in order to make himself believe that they are based on freedom of choice, rather than on compulsion, on reason, rather than emotionalism. When the overall development is more primitive, such self-deception is less necessary.

Blind automatism is always the result of material that man is unwilling to face. This applies to all people. Some have it to a much stronger degree than others and need much more time to evolve to a state in which they become inherently capable of facing such hidden material, and thereby change into a higher state of consciousness. However, even comparatively evolved people, and even those who are actively concerned with their development, have areas in which they are blurred; where they are unfree, where they respond so unawarely, never knowing why they act, react, think, feel, and hold opinions the way they do. This has the various ramifications we have discussed in the course of these lectures and in the work we are doing on this Path. It creates self-alienation. It cripples creativity. It prohibits love. It prohibits the ability to give and receive pleasure and joy. It limits the marvelous potentials of the human spirit and life. It does all that to the degree that there is a lack of awareness as to why one reacts the way one does. And to that degree do blind reflexes and automatism take the place of awareness.

On any real Path of development, regardless of what approach is pursued, the areas wherein man is unfree and automatic must be uncovered. This automatism is the most primitive stage, existing to some degree in everyone.

The next phase on this scale of evolution is awareness. The curve of development proceeds from automatism to awareness. But awareness is by no means the highest stage. There are two that are farther advanced. But let us first look into the meaning and significance of awareness. Awareness must be, in this context, concerned with uncovering the areas of blind automatism, of blind reflexes. All subterfuges, rationalizations, explanations, justifications, self-deceptions, serving to deny the blind automatism, must be ruthlessly exposed, investigated, and given up, until man is face to face with the blind reflex mechanism. When this takes place he is aware of the automatism -- hence the automatism no longer exists. Needless to say that man succeeds first in specific areas to pass from automatism to awareness, while he retains blind automatism in others until much later phases of his personal development. It can never be said that an individual passes from one state into the next in every respect of his being.

The transition from automatism to awareness is one of the most difficult that man passes through. It is so difficult to admit that he is driven by unreasonable fears, superstitions, generalizations, and obsolete situations that have no bearing on the present. It goes against his vanity, for he likes to see himself more evolved and freed than he is. The longer he denies what is, the more does he suffer. Often it is this needless suffering that finally brings him to self-honesty. It could have been avoided if his vanity were not so strong.

Awareness means acknowledgment of one's limitations, facing wrong conclusions, destructive emotions, self-defeating devices, and lack of integrity in the widest possible sense. This is only difficult because man coddles his resistances and fears, and because he is so disinclined to give up appearing as more than he thinks he is.

The stage of awareness essentially means becoming conscious of error, of deviation from truth. The moment he knows that he is driven by false ideas, man is no longer in blind automatism. This requires courage and the cultivation of the inner will.

After a certain degree of awareness has been gained and, proportionately, blind reflexes have ceased, the next stage is understanding. Offhand, you may wonder what the difference may be. But there is a great deal of difference. Let us take the example of hostility. First, in the stage of blind automatism, it rages in the person's soul. According to character formation, the types of his images, and various other factors, he will either impulsively express such hostility and let it out onto others -- often without even knowing that he does so, or finding "good reasons" to do so -- or he will suppress and repress it, turn it onto himself, with its various results. In both alternatives he is unaware of the hostility, because he does not wish to admit it. Therefore, he is driven by it into blind automatism that he chooses to explain away. The moment he faces the hostility fully, he is aware of it. Hence automatism must stop. But this stage does not yet mean that he understands it. He now knows that he has it. He even sees what it makes him do, how he reacts on account of it.

Understanding the hostility means understanding why it exists, what first brought it on in a person's life; what conditions existed that created it and what conditions exist now whenever a new flare up of hostility is generated. What is the apparent and real similarity between the original and the present situation? How are they related in the person's psyche? How, if at all, are they related in reality? Why is the hostility based on a false assumption? In what respect? Understanding what one has become aware of previously means deeply experiencing the answer to all these questions. However, the answers must not be given in an intellectual way, like learning a lesson by heart. It must be a deeply felt reality. Then the stage of understanding has been reached and the individual is ready to approach the next phase.

Many of my friends on the Path will recognize that our work in the past has brought us to the phase of understanding. According to each phase, and within each case, the work must vary, for in certain areas you may have reached understanding -- or even inklings of the following stage -- while in others we are still battling against the resistance to face what lies behind blind reflexes. Awareness is lacking that blind reflexes are still governing you in certain respects. It cannot ever be said that a person has, on the whole, reached one of the four stages mentioned here, or is still entirely in the lowest stage. It is always a mixture, a combination, for my friends here on this Path.

It is of great importance that all of you gain a view in what respect you are in which of the phases discussed here. Are you aware of where you are still governed by automatism despite having discovered the image that causes it? For, it is indeed possible to do so and go on reacting blindly, without knowing it. The momentary insight at the time the image was found has faded away and lingers only as a memory of the image found. In other words, it has become theoretical knowledge. It is no longer alive. It will become alive again only when it is observed, acknowledged, and admitted that automatism still exists.

When awareness has been gained, it must not remain at that point. Is understanding of what one has become aware of cultivated? The more this is the case, the less does compulsion exist to blindly react; the less likely are there relapses.

The highest phase on this particular scale is knowing. There is a great difference between understanding and knowing. Understanding means ascertaining cause and effect of negative patterns, the destructive emotions, the false ideas. It means understanding that these elements are damaging and that this is so because one is somehow immersed in illusion and misconception. For, knowledge is something much more vague, general, and dry. It is not knowledge I am talking about. I am talking about knowing the truth. When you know the truth, you more than understand cause and effect of images and misconceptions. You know what the right conclusions are behind the wrong ones. And it is always, and exclusively, the misconceptions which create havoc, disharmony, and unhappiness. Nothing else can ever do that.

When you deeply know the truthful concept, the particular truth behind the particular error you begin to understand, something begins to happen within and around the sphere of your being. Knowing is not theoretical understanding. It is experiencing the truth. Knowing the truth behind the untruth must connect the knower with a great spiritual principle, or several such laws and principles.

The only way that knowing Divine Principles can come about is through a highly personal experience of the untruth that blurred the way, so far, to that particular truth. By studying theories, by reading even the greatest literature on earth -- even spiritual literature -- you cannot possibly know the truth. Knowing the truth means following through these stages of evolution I have discussed.

It means becoming aware of blind reflexes, understanding why they exist, and what they cause; knowing the truth behind the automatism caused by specific misconceptions. When the personal Path is taken in such a way, leading deeply inside, the inner, personal universe reveals the principles and spiritual laws of Creation -- the Universe as a whole.

Knowing the truth in such a way has a healing effect on yourself and on your entire environment. When you truly know the truth, you are in possession of the Universe. If you know one truth, you know all truth.

At the beginning of this phase man knows the truth only in isolated instances, only to lose it again, until he regains it for longer, and loses it less often. The same spiral movement experienced in other phases of the Path happens here. Understanding brings a relief from tension, anxiety, and infuses hope. Not wishful thinking, not escape or daydreaming, but realistic, justified hope because a way presents itself clearly which makes salvation not a vaguely hoped for miracle, but a concrete possibility to be taken if one desires to grow into a state of liberation. But knowing the truth means already being in possession of the key. It means mastery. In the evolution a point comes where one simple, single point of knowing is all knowing. For, all Creation converges into one point. Wherever you begin, it makes no difference. The manifoldedness ends in one unity, comprising all the many parts, equating them. Hence, really and fully knowing one truth is knowing all truth, be it only for one single instant.

The coming phase will be concerned with knowing. At least some of my friends who have made steps toward this threshold, so that they can cross it. Others will follow later. It does not matter. It must not be measured by who is ahead. It cannot be measured in comparing with another. You must find your own inner measurements, forgetting comparison.

Knowing the truth means mastery over the universe. It is healing and it brings order. When you know the truth, something begins to happen in the Cosmic Forces surrounding and transcending you. When you know untruth, when you cling to and believe in false ideas, a disorder in your personal world results. This is familiar to you from all our common efforts to uncover the untruth that caused the disorder and destruction. Balance is upset, conflict and confusion are further links in the chain reaction. The untruth or illusion or misconception creates a duality -- that is, an arbitrary split of concepts -- with further result of confusion, conflict, and destructive emotions, thoughts, and actions. All this is familiar territory -- at least in theory, if not always as yet as an inner experience. The moment you know the truth behind the illusion, split concepts begin to mend, upset balance in psychic forces begins to straighten out; confusion, disorder, and conflict make way to order and unity. This creates productive, realistic, benign, constructive feelings, ideas, concepts, thoughts, opinions, and corresponding actions. Change has taken place, is no longer resisted, is welcome instead of frightening.

Understanding the truth means a great deal, but it does not yet mean a change into more constructive ways. Knowing the truth makes the change organic, inevitable, and so natural that it just could not be any other way. Really knowing the truth clears the fog; unifies where apparent contradictions prevailed, proves that there is nothing to fear; makes whole where dissension was; heals where sickness existed; goes forth where stagnation prevented growth; calms where frantic unrest created excessive movement.

I should now like to give a simple everyday example of the healing element of knowing the truth, which will make my words more practical and attainable, rather than appear as something so metaphysical and remote that they could be envisioned only as faraway goals. When you deal with a fellow human being and are confused about his actions and motives, disharmony is created. Even if you refrain from quarreling, your not knowing what motivates him creates a cloud of unrest, darkness, and disharmony which even the most insensitive can distinctly feel. However, when you truly know what motivates him, you can emanate a calm knowingness which must affect him, whether or not you speak about it; whether or not you bring what you know to his attention. Your knowing the truth behind his confusing actions will enable you, intuitively and spontaneously, to judge when to speak and when to be quiet, and how to speak and how to be quiet. Merely understanding his motives -- his truth -- will not give you this faculty at all. Your merely understanding it certainly is better than not understanding it, but it does not prevent you from blundering in certain ways; from not using the fine, sensitive directives one has to take in order to contribute with one's knowing at the right time and in the right way.

I have often pointed out that he who does not understand himself cannot possibly understand others. He who does not love and respect himself cannot possibly love and respect others. The same applies to knowing. He who does not know the truth behind his untruth cannot ever know the truth behind another person 's confusions. True relating removes all havoc because of the existence of such knowing.

I am sure that most of my friends have experienced moments such as described in the example, although surely not often. Maybe you occasionally encountered or observed another person in such knowingness. Perhaps you only vaguely sensed the significance, but you may now be more keenly aware of the phenomenon when you meet it. If you remember having encountered it in another person toward you, you will see that such knowingness did not frighten you. Quite the contrary. You felt warm and comfortable in it. Perhaps, at the time, you could not put your finger on it, analyze it in so many words, but when you reconstruct the experience and your reaction to such situations, you will find this to be so.

Such knowingness cannot come in any other way than through first attaining it for yourself, from yourself, through yourself, and within yourself. This is the battle that leads from blind reflexes, that every single human being is governed by -- even those of my friends who are already on this Path -- to awareness, in degrees; to understanding, in degrees; to knowingness -- at the beginning in isolated instances. Knowingness is healing, knowingness is harmony, and knowingness is full mastery over the Universe.

Here, my friends, we come to one of the greatest confusions or contradictions, which can be resolved only when you come to knowingness in this particular respect. And this is the confusion between control and letting go. Some of my friends have made their first struggling attempts on this Path to comprehend the principle or the soul movement which combines control and letting go of control. Where truth is known there is no conflict or contradiction here. But where illusion and false concepts create split ideas, an imbalance results and control exists where it should be released, and vice versa.

Misunderstood and misapplied controls are: a forcing current; childish greed, the inability to stand frustration; fearful, tense withdrawal; the compulsive need to manipulate; selfwill; the inability to lose. All of this is, of course, not the control I mean when I speak of true selfhood, which masters the Universe. When the latter exists, the wrong kind of control, of the little self, must be entirely relinquished. It must be let go of before true control, in a higher and wider sense, can come. True control comes through letting go of control, through the apparent risk of floating without manipulating anyone or anything. Of course, this sounds like a contradiction, my friends. But all spiritual principles, when clothed in the limitation of the human language, appear as contradiction. For every Divine Law contains two complementing principles, the masculine and the feminine principles -- in the widest possible sense. They do not exclude one another but exist together in every movement of life.

But it is not only the limitation of the human language that makes the unitive principles appear as contradictions. It is much more man's fearful withdrawal from life that causes a lack of understanding and knowing. As long as he withdraws in fear, not wanting to take the risk of letting go of control, such words could easily be misunderstood. When I speak about the mastery over the Universe, giving up control in order to gain it in a higher sense, it is one of the most essential steps toward the destiny of all created beings.

Only on a Path leading from blind reflexes to knowingness can it truly be understood that control must first be given up in order to gain a relaxed inner control, that happens from deep inside -- again, from the solar plexus, rather than from the upper mind. And control must be exerted where man is lost now, where he gropes and clutches blindly because he is driven by blind needs and by uncomprehended compulsions -- driven to thoughts, assumptions, reactions, and actions that he must learn to bring under control by knowing truth.

A similar confusion and imbalance exists with regard to self-centeredness versus other-centeredness. Here, too, confusion and imbalance exist. Self-centeredness can be childish self-importance in which the individual expects the whole world to comply and revolve around him. It may be a form of selfishness. He experiences himself in an essentially different, higher or lower, way than others, singling himself out in both unrealistic evaluations of self versus others.

This form of distortion automatically brings about a distorted form of other-centeredness. Man hinges all his views, opinions, goals, ideas, ideals, and even his feelings on what others proclaim -- or what he thinks the world expects of him. This other-centeredness is losing the self. It is self-alienation.

The right kind of self-centeredness is the opposite of self-alienation. It finds the gravity centered deep within the self, deriving values, goals, ideas, and actions from within, assuming responsibility for them -- thereby increasing integrity and self-respect. But this requires the labor of taking control in the choice of one's views and of taking the risk of giving up control in that by seemingly standing alone others may disapprove. When one ceases to manipulate one's feelings in order to control and manipulate others, one will be self-centered in the sense of living out of the real self. This organically results in the proper balance between self and other- centeredness. Others deserve the same consideration as the self. Others can be liked, loved, and esteemed as oneself -- but never at the expense of being untrue to the self.

Healthy self-centeredness is one side of the scale, healthy other-centeredness the other side of it. Reverse one to the unhealthy, childish distortion and the other must follow suit. It is the identical process as with control and letting go.

When man crosses the threshold, generally speaking, from understanding to knowing, he finds the deep experience and perception of right, healthy self-centeredness and other-centeredness; and right and healthy being in control and letting go of control. When these two aspects are perceived, experienced, and inwardly lived, there is no limit to your expansion, your freedom, your experience in the glory of being. When you enter through this threshold, all contradictions become a complementing whole, which you not only understand, but you know and live. For example, you must become capable of living in a less than perfect way, until perfect happiness becomes possible. When you desire the utmost of self-expression for the greater happiness of yourself and others, it must occur in an entirely free spirit. Not out of a must, in order to avoid what you fear, in order to coddle a weakness. When you no longer desire happiness in order to avoid unhappiness, you have reached the fine point of a proper balance of control, thus gaining forever greater powers over your life as an integral part of Creation.

Are there any questions now?

QUESTION: It may be that, perhaps, in some respects I have caught a glimpse of what it is to come near the threshold between understanding and knowing. Perhaps you could say something about the fear and withdrawal and reluctance one has, although one knows there is a knowing beyond it and one knows it is a great thing, yet one shrinks from it.

ANSWER: Quite apart from the many psychological factors we find again and again in this work -- and I do not have to enumerate them at this point -- there is a much more fundamental and all-encompassing fear and reluctance behind it which, again, applies to every single individual. I have mentioned this factor in the past, but perhaps it will now be understood in a different and more profound way. And that is the fear of being. The fear of being means the fear of life, the fear of death, the fear of love, the fear of pleasure, the fear of risks, the fear of change, the fear of loss, the fear of the unknown, the fear of pain, the fear of trust, the fear of letting go of control, and the fear of self, with all its conflicting, and apparently conflicting, right and wrong, and apparently right and wrong, emotions, feelings, reactions, drives, needs, and expressions. It comprises all of that. And as long as man does not understand the significance of this fear, he cannot know what is behind it. Therefore, he cannot overcome it. For, in overcoming this fear lies the greatest threshold of evolution that this or any other truthful Path brings the individual to, and that is: floating with the Universal Forces, not stemming against them, and thereby mastering them. Man's misconception sees a duality here, an either/or. He feels that either he is in control, that he must manipulate life, the world around him, his own most vital creative forces, or he feels himself lost and endangered. Thus, he cannot come into being. He will not come to the understanding that being and mastery -- or, to put it into different words, activity and passivity -- are not only not mutually exclusive, but they are inter-connected and inter-dependent. Man's fear of himself becomes all the more difficult to overcome because he so often does not fear his real darker side, but what he believes it is. Only too often, the best he has to give is considered unacceptable, while the most destructive rules him, unbeknownst to himself. He holds on tight to himself. He refuses to let go, to take any chance. And as long a man fears himself, he must fear life, death, love -- and all the rest of it. He must fear being, because he fears his own being.

Save all your questions now for the specific discussion reserved for this lecture. It is a very important one. The more you participate and bring out your own confusion, the smoother will be your path in going through these four stages. In the meantime, try to discover where and in what respect you are still immersed in automatism, in what respects you are aware, and in what respect you understand, and to what degree you approach the threshold to the fourth state -- knowing. The way to determine this is by the way you feel about it. Automatism makes you feel bleak, hopeless, depressed, anxious, afraid, unalive, bored, disgusted with yourself or others, compelled to do, say, and feel things you disapprove of. Awareness removes these symptoms and, while awareness remains, it induces relief, thereby liberating certain energies. But there is as yet no question about change. It cannot even be seen yet wherein and how change is possible. Understanding gives this outlook. Knowing has accomplished it, and is constantly accomplishing it, for true living is never an end-result. It is a constant growing into more experience and more self-expression. Therefore, constant knowing effects constant growth.

May this working year bring you nearer to knowing. May some of you make the first steps in crossing this threshold. You have all the help and guidance you need. The spiritual forces involved are infinitely more real and powerful than any of you realize. But these helping forces can and must do no more than sustain your own efforts. The initiative toward growth must always come from you, at each stage of your upward road. There are many facets of working toward this goal -- and they should all be utilized. One of the most constructive tools on this path, that must not be neglected by any of you, is in using the other person as a mirror and involving yourself with others, so as to duplicate life and inner situations in such involvements. It cannot be emphasized enough how effective are such means of working with others. This road has not yet been fully explored by any of you. So much valuable material remains to be derived from this tool. Use the other person as a mirror. For no matter how much others are involved with their own blind reflexes, often they are a good mirror for you. Do not shy away from such interaction.

This coming year is bound to be a crucial one for any of you who perseveres in the task of self-finding. Be blessed. Receive the warm strength flowing toward you, enveloping and enfolding you. Be in peace. Be in God.

The Guide
by Eva Pierrakos
October 2, 1964

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