Mutuality, A Cosmic Principle And Law

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my friends. Blessings and love for every one of you. The topic of tonight's lecture is mutuality. I would like to discuss this subject in three sections. The first one deals with this cosmic principle and law. The second one deals with how this manifests in human life. And the third one deals with those factors -- and their origins -- that disturb the law of mutuality.

Mutuality is a cosmic or spiritual law. No creation can take place unless mutuality exists. Mutuality means that two apparently or superficially different or alien entities or aspects move toward one another for the purpose of uniting and making one comprehensive whole. They open up toward one another, they cooperate with and affect one another, so as to create a new divine manifestation, in whatever form this may be. New forms of self-expression can only come into being when the self merges with something beyond itself. Mutuality is the movement that bridges the gap from duality toward unity. Wherever there is separation, mutuality must prevail, or come into being, in order to eliminate this separation.

Nothing can be created unless mutuality exists, whether it be a new galaxy, a work of art, or a good relationship between human beings. This applies even to the creation of the simplest object. To illustrate this principle let us take the example of creating an object. First of all, the idea must be formed in the mind. Without such an idea, without the creative inspiration and imagination by which the mind extends itself beyond its previous awareness of what already exists, not even a plan can be formed. This creative aspect must then melt with the second part of two mutually cooperative attitudes: execution. This implies labor, effort, perseverance, self-discipline. Unless the creative idea and all those activities that are mechanical and ego-determined work together, hand in hand, in harmony, the object cannot be created. The first aspect -- creative thinking and inspiration -- can never complete creation unless the second aspect is brought to bear on the venture. This applies, without exception, to everything. It matters little whether you create an object, compose a symphony, paint a great picture, write a novel, cook a meal, search for new scientific discoveries, heal illness, create a situation of mutual love, develop on the path of self-realization; it applies to all endeavors, to all successful completion, to all meaningful self-expression. This synthesis of creativity, imagination, ideas on the one hand, and execution on the other must take place. These are apparently alien attitudes.

The creative attitude is a free-flowing, spontaneous manifestation. Execution is an act that comes through the determination of the ego-will. It is more mechanical, more laborious, and requires consistency and effort. This has totally different characteristics from the spontaneous, effortless influx of creative ideas. Human beings are uncreative for two reasons: Either they are unwilling to adopt the necessary self-discipline to follow through on their creative ideas, or they are emotionally and spiritually too contracted to open their own, individual creative channels. In the first case, they childishly refuse to be bothered by the difficulties, the trials and errors. In the second, they lack inspiration. Both these lopsided attitudes gradually balance themselves out when the individual grows on the path and begins to resolve his inner conflicts. The healthy, balanced person, who has found himself, always finds his personal creative outlet that yields the deepest satisfaction to his life.

This imbalance is particularly striking in the area of human relationships. The initial creative, spontaneous, effortless act that brings two people together in attraction and love occurs often enough. Yet this connection is rarely maintained; all sorts of explanations are given for this. The labor of working out the inner dissensions is usually neglected, and the childish idea prevails that once the initial act has taken place the self is powerless to determine the course of the relationship. The relationship is usually conceived of as a separate entity that either favorably or unfavorably runs its own course. But we shall discuss this further in the next section of our talk.

The whole universe consists of this harmonious interplay of effortless creative imagination and execution. The latter always requires labor, investment, commitment, self-discipline. This bridge of mutuality is a very important aspect. Mutuality is not the same as the unified principle itself, which is opposed to the dualistic principle. The difference between the unified principle and the principle of mutuality is that the later leads to it, it is the movement toward it. It is not yet unification itself.

For mutuality to take place there must be an expansive movement toward this other attitude, aspect, or person. In other words, there must be two expansive movements flowing out toward one another in a harmonious interplay of giving and receiving, of mutual cooperation, of positive opening. To put it differently, two yes-currents must move toward each other. We know from many of my previous words, and from what you find in your work on the path, that the ability to accept, bear, and sustain pleasure can only be increased gradually in human beings. It is one of the most difficult goals to obtain. This ability depends directly on a person's integration and wholeness. Hence, mutuality depends on the entity's ability to say Yes when a Yes is offered.

This brings us to the second section of this lecture. How does the principle of mutuality apply to humanity's present state of development? Man's development can perhaps be determined by the following three gradations in regard to mutuality: The human being who is least developed, and still enveloped in fear and misconceptions, is able to expand very little. And since expansion and mutuality are interdependent, mutuality is impossible to the degree that expansion is denied. All human beings are afraid of opening up to some degree, as you well know, you who are engaged in this pathwork. At the beginning of this work you may not have suspected that such a fear exists in you. Or, if you suspected it, you may have explained it away because you were too ashamed to admit it. You erroneously thought that there is something especially wrong with you, something that no other valuable human being shares, and must therefore not be allowed to suspect in you. But as you went on, you learned to admit and accept fully and properly understand the universality of this problem in you. Thus many of you, after diligent work, are now able to acknowledge your fear of opening up and expanding. You may at times be quite aware of this fear and how you hold back your energy, your feelings, your vital forces. When you are contracted, you believe that you make yourself safer with the control you exert. To the degree that this holds true, to that degree you must have problems in mutuality. The person who is least developed and most alienated from the truth within himself will deny any kind of expansion, and therefore any mutuality. This does not mean that the longing for it is eliminated. The longing is always there. But it is also true that entities manage to squelch the longing through perhaps entire incarnations without becoming aware of how much they feel is lacking in their lives. They content themselves with the pseudo-security of separateness and aloneness. For this offers less threat, or so it seems.

When development proceeds a little more, the longing becomes stronger and more conscious. There are many degrees and many alternatives, but, roughly speaking and in an oversimplified way for the sake of this explanation, the next stage is the person who is willing to open up but is still afraid of doing so in an actual mutuality. The only way the bliss and pleasure of expansion and union can be experienced is in a fantasy situation. This leads to a very common, frequent fluctuation of the following kind: Such a person is either alone, in which case, contrary to the previous stage, the longing is acute. When awareness is still dim in regard to these processes, the person is convinced that this longing indicates his actual readiness for a real mutuality. After all, he experiences it so beautifully in his fantasies. The lack of it in reality is ascribed to his lack of luck to meet the proper partner with whom he can realize these fantasies. When a partner finally appears in his life, the old fear is still rampant. The soul movements contract and the fantasy cannot be realized. This is usually explained away by all sorts of outer factors, which may even be true as far as this goes. The partner may actually have too many obstructions to realize the dream. Yet does this very fact not indicate that something deeper must be at work in the person's psyche that makes sure to attract the partner with whom the contraction appears justified? For the deeper self always knows where the person stands. And if the willingness is still lacking to face the true deeper issues, such subterfuges and excuses are very necessary for the preservation of the ego. But failure in the relationship always indicates that the self is not yet ready to put true mutuality into practice.

Many people go through these periods alternately, on and off. Aloneness, acute longing, then temporary fulfillment of a sort in which either outer or inner obstructions prevent full mutuality. The resulting disappointments may lend even more justification to the unconscious fear and determination not to open up and be carried by the stream of life. The pain and confusion in people trapped in this stage are often very profound. But the pain and confusion eventually lead to the full commitment to recognize the real inner source of this fluctuation.

The meaning of this state is rarely understood. The pain and confusion are precisely due to a lack of awareness of the fluctuation's true significance. When a growing person comes to the recognition that the periods of aloneness afford him some opportunity to open up in comparative safety and to experience, even though vicariously, some manner of fulfillment without the necessary risks, he has indeed made a substantial step toward self-realization. Concomitantly, when he recognizes the difficulties encountered in the periods of relationships in their true, underlying significance, the same holds true. Both alternating periods have their own, built-in safety valves. Each preserves the self in its separate state and simultaneously ventures out to some extent -- to the extent that the entity is now ready to come out of the separation.

But at some point every individual on the road of his own evolution comes to the full recognition of the significance of this painful fluctuation, and this subsequently leads to a commitment to open up to mutuality and fulfillment, to interplay and expansion, to cooperation and positive pleasure. This always requires relinquishing the negative pleasure and the pseudo-safety. The soul is then ready to learn; to try; to risk mutuality, love, and pleasure; and to function safely in an open state.

The third stage is, of course, the person who is relatively capable of sustaining actual mutuality -- not in fantasy, not in longing only, not in an "as if" situation. Needless to say that not all steady relationships that exist on this earth indicate real mutuality. Very, very few do. Most relationships are formed on the basis of other motivations, or the original motivation of mutuality could not be maintained and was replaced by other reasons.

These basically are the three stages mankind goes through. Of course, in reality they cannot be delineated in exact terms. They often overlap, fluctuate, interchange; many, many degrees exist and hold true on various levels of the personality. What may be true on one level of a specific person may not be true on another.

Now let us come to the third and perhaps most important part of this lecture, and that is, what are the factors that prohibit mutuality between two human beings? Usually this is explained -- and partially quite accurately -- by the problems human beings have. Yet this does not really say too much. I will try to shed more precise light on this subject, which is, as you will understand, a sequence to the last lecture.

Mutuality can exist only to the degree that the individuals involved are aware of and in contact with their previously hidden destructive side, the evil. Conversely, to the degree that there is a rift between the consciousness -- which strives for goodness, love, and decency -- and the unconscious, which is still bent on its destructiveness, hate, and negation, to that degree mutuality cannot take place. You may note that I emphasize here that the cause for it not taking place is not the actual existence of the still-present evil aspects, but the lack of awareness of it. This is an all-important distinction. Usually man's approach is precisely the opposite. He believes that he must first eradicate the existing evil, for otherwise he is undeserving of the bliss that results from mutuality. The existing evil is so frightening that it cannot be acknowledged, so that the rift between the conscious awareness of self and the unconscious denial of self widens as life goes on.

If you are alienated from your own unconscious, you must act out with the other person what you, deep in yourself, know to exist within yourself, and you must affect that level of the other person that is similarly concealed. Unless this key is totally comprehended and applied, relationships must falter or be unrewarding. Mutuality in the true sense cannot take place. It is therefore of such crucial importance that you gain increasing contact with the destructive unconscious aspects of your being. Of course, we have had precisely this aim ever since we started working on this path. And yet how very difficult it seems for the individual to bridge this gap between the conscious good and the unconscious evil. How much struggle everyone puts up -- and how many are tempted to leave this pursuit altogether because it seems too painful and difficult to accept previously unacceptable aspects of the self. Yet life cannot be truly lived unless this happens.

The split between you and yourself must reappear as a split between you and others, unless you are fully conscious of the former. Becoming conscious of the former is the beginning of mending this rift, for consciousness diminishes the rift. Consciousness must eventually lead to acceptance of what had previously been denied. If there is no mutuality between you and yourself because your standards, your demands, and your expectations of yourself are unrealistic, it is absolutely unthinkable that mutuality between you and others can ever exist.

Mutuality between you and yourself is absent when you reject the evil. By rejecting the evil, you ignore and deny the vital, original creative energy that is contained in all evil. This energy must be made available to the person in order to become whole. The energy can only be transformed when you are aware of its distorted form, as I said in the last lecture. Yet, when you reject its present manifestation, how can you convert it back? Hence you remain split within yourself, and when this is not conscious, the split mirrors itself in your relationships, or the lack of them. No matter how evil and unacceptable any specific traits may be in you, no matter how undesirable and destructive, the energy and substance they consist of is vital force without which you cannot fully function. Only as a whole person can you sustain pleasure; only as a fully conscious person can you be whole. Only then can you not block the expansive movement and let yourself flow out into the universe of another entity while remaining open to receive the other's outflowing energy currents and soul movements.

Your disunity with yourself cannot being unity with others. It is utter folly to expect it. However, you do not have to wait to first become unified in the total sense. But if you take your ongoing relationships and use them in the sense I describe here, as yardsticks by which you gauge where you are in your own inner split, within yourself, where you stand in your ability to accept the negative in you, you will grow into greater self-acceptance. Simultaneously, your ability to have mutuality will grow proportionately. Hence the relationships will improve and become much more deeply meaningful. The acceptance of that in you that you have previously rejected, and therefore denied yourself consciousness of, will immediately produce a greater acceptance and understanding of others you deal with. A mutuality will become possible. By the same token, if you cannot accept the evil in you and when you say, in effect, "I must first be perfect before I can accept, love, trust, and esteem myself," then you must have the identical attitude toward another person. When reality dawns upon you that he or she is far from perfect, you do with the other person what you constantly do with yourself -- only you manage most of the time not to know what you are doing with yourself. And that is unfortunate. Even what you then do with the other person you manage not to see for what it is. There are always handy explanations. Those explanations are destined to get you away from seeing how you reject the unpalatable reality of yourself and others and the fact that this causes a rift in you that makes mutuality and bliss impossible.

All of you can use what I say here as a very practical and immediate key in your work on this path. You can look at all your relationships -- with your partners, your associates, your friends, your business acquaintances -- look at all the situations in which you may be involved with others. Really look closely at those relationships and at your disturbances. To what degree are you truly open to the reality of the other person? If you honestly answer this question and you can see that you are not open, you can then use this key for yourself. Of course, you can easily shirk seeing it because you can always busy yourself with your explanations, justifications, rationalizations -- and even with your acute self-blame, which may easily be confused with self-acceptance, but is just as far removed from it as the overt denial.

Of course, you know perfectly well in your mind that you and others are far from being perfect, and you pay lip service to accepting this fact. But do you really? In your heart of hearts? When you attempt to answer this question on the deeper emotional levels, you will see that in many instances the willingness is very small. Your reactions prove contrary to what you know in your mind. And as you slowly discover your intolerance, your criticalness, your refusal to accept others for what they are, you can automatically know that you do exactly the same with yourself.

Now, it is indeed difficult to accept the projected, acted-out, negativity of others, which always uses a defense that is more destructive than that which the person defends against in himself. Your inability to cope with this acted-out destructive behavior of others toward yourself again reflects your lack of awareness of when and how you are doing the same thing -- though perhaps in a different way.

By using your reactions against others (which is easier to see at first) as an indicator, it will be much easier for you to discover what you are doing to yourself. The harm you inflict upon yourself by the negation of the unacceptable part causes you to do precisely what I mentioned before: it makes you use subterfuges destined to cover up the unacceptable, subterfuges that are more acceptable than what you originally negated. Thus you compound your self-hate and widen the rift.

If you are in shallow, unsatisfactory relationships that lack depth, gratification, and intimacy, where you reveal yourself only superficially (perhaps you only reveal an idealized self-image, which you think is the only acceptable part of you), again you have a good gauge of where you are within yourself. You do not even take a chance because you are unable to accept yourself. Hence, you cannot believe that your true, genuine person can ever be accepted, nor can you accept others on the basis of where they stand in their present state of development. All this excludes the possibility for mutuality.

The movement of opening up and taking in, the relaxed bliss of streaming into another energy field and accepting the emanation of the other energy field -- this bliss is unbearable and appears dangerous to him who hates himself. To the degree that you contract each time a temporary opening occurs, to that degree you can know that this happens not because of your evil and your not deserving the bliss, but because you cannot accept the total forces and energies as they are now in you. Therefore you remain locked in them and cannot convert them.

So, the principle of mutuality must first be applied to the person within, to the relationship between you and yourself. And only then can it be extended between yourself and others. But let me say here, my friends, from another vantage point, from a higher degree of consciousness, that all that separateness that appears so real in this realm of being is just as much an illusion as the separateness between you and yourself. It is an artifact that comes into being exclusively because of what is denied. By closing your eyes and your consciousness to the total person you happen to be at this stage, you create apparently two selves: the acceptable and the unacceptable. But in reality there are not two entities. They are both you, whether or not you choose to know this now. But are you really two people? Of course not. The same illusion prevails about all apparently separate entities. Here, too, the separation is an arbitrary, artificial construct of the mind, as it were. In reality such a division does not exist. This may not be easy for you to feel at this stage, but it does not alter the fact that mankind lives in this overall illusion of separateness, which is the cause of pain and struggle. In reality, all is one, every entity is connected with everything else in the universe -- and this is not merely a figure of speech. The one Consciousness permeates the universe and everything therein. But you begin to experience this only when there is no longer any part of the self that is excluded, denied, split off.

Now, are there any questions regarding this topic?

QUESTION: Can you discuss the aspects of mutuality in terms of physical, mental, and spiritual levels in the person from the energetic point of view?

ANSWER: Yes. From the energetic point of view, as you know, the expanding movement is an outgoing and outflowing movement. When two separate human beings open up toward one another in mutuality, in the ability to accept an open flow and not contract, the energy from the one interpenetrates the field of the other, and vice versa. It is a constant interflow and exchange. With the people who remain separate, who contract, who cannot open up toward a mutuality, it is otherwise: two such people remain enclosed, each like an island. Little or no energy is exchanged. And when exchange is blocked, the great evolutionary plan is that much delayed.

In the case of alternation, where opening is only possible when there is no mutuality, when a yes-current must be met with a no-current because mutuality still seems too frightening, one energy flow streams out but reverberates, bounces back, because it is thrown back by the closed field of the other. The latter is like a wall that throws off incoming flow. Thus, two flows can never become one flow. This phenomenon can easily be observed in the everyday life of people. They either always fall in love when it is not reciprocated, or, for apparently unfathomable reasons, they fall out of love when the partner has deep feelings. To a more subtle degree, the same principle exists in ongoing relationships: When one is open, the other is closed, and vice versa. Only steady development and growth changes this, so that both learn to remain open to one another.

On the spiritual and emotional levels, the lowest stage indicates that an acute state of fear exists. The fear of accepting the self in its present stage is essentially the same fear experienced about true mutuality and bliss. Since fear exists, hate must also come into being, with all its derivatives.

The mental levels are affected by this process by seeking ready explanations for what cannot be understood unless the self is accepted for what it is now. Thus, the mental activity becomes so busy that it cannot "hear" or perceive or be attuned to the higher voices within the self, to the deeper truths of the universe. More separation is thus engendered. This mental noise creates more disconnection from the feelings and from the state that first created this condition. Also, such an entity is forced by his own choice, as it were, to live in a constant state of frustration and unfulfillment.

Physically this creates, of course, all the blocks. You know perfectly well what they are.

In the second phase of alternate opening up, the mental activity is confused. The search and the groping cannot yield truthful answers until the self is accepted with its very worst. The mental confusion creates more frustration and anger. The faulty interpretations, supposed to explain the fact of always missing mutuality, increase frustration and therefore anger and hate. Emotionally, there exists an alternation between longing and disappointment: fulfillment in fantasy (hence, some manner of opening and flow, although no real mutuality), and withdrawal and contraction. The latter includes, again, anger and hate, disappointment and blaming.

When self-acceptance makes mutuality possible and energy is exchanged, the universal movements flow constantly. The healthy alternation of the expanding, contracting, and static principles prevails, where the individual finds himself in the eternal rhythm, harmonious with the universe.

In the next question and answer session many, many questions can be asked dealing with the specific aspects you are intending to bring up, namely group work, which is so important in this work. I will, of course, elucidate on this. All of you who are involved in group work may you really voice your questions, your areas of puzzlement, and your confusion as to how to apply what you learn here now to this aspect of self-confrontation. How you can make this most meaningful in group experiences I will be very glad and happy to answer for all of you.

Be blessed, my dearest ones. May this lecture again be a little light going on within yourself, giving you hope and strength, showing the way from yet another side, to lead you more strongly toward accepting yourself as you are now. Not indulging anything nor excusing it, but seeing what is and accepting the imperfection fully and without any embellishment, also without the exaggeration that makes you cringe with shame and fear. All of this must disappear, for these are pitfalls, which are much more disastrous than what you hate yourself for. In this attitude, when you find and apply it, you will find your happiness and the truth that unites you with yourself and the universe.

The Guide
by Eva Pierrakos
October 9, 1970

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