Images -- The Damage They Do

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings in the name of the Lord. My dear friends, I bring you blessings as usual. Blessed is this hour.

There is so much fear, shame, and separateness in the human heart. We recognize it again and again. Often this fear and shame is hidden away, so that the personality is not even aware of it any more and just suffers vaguely in a continuous, gnawing pain. How sad it is to observe this, particularly sad because it is unnecessary. It is but a phantom, my friends. This fear and shame you are so busily hiding has no reality, and yet it spoils your life, the life you could enjoy and could use to build up your spiritual strength and development.

My dear friends, I started this series about the human image, and there is no person who does not have such images, as we call them. Such inner impressions are formed in young years, and from those impressions were drawn wrong conclusions. These very images are responsible for your suffering, for the unnecessary phantoms you carry about decade after decade, and often incarnation after incarnation. You all strive for the light of God, for liberation from your chains. But how many, many people seek this liberation by outer means! Let us say, by intellectual knowledge or by outer events, whereby it cannot possibly be done. The only way you can reach this freedom that you strive for is to delve into yourself. In that way you will go through a tunnel of darkness and emerge on the other side to encounter the light of true independence. Only after you have recognized your own responsibility for the darkness while passing through the tunnel -- which is not an easy experience -- will you truly have gained real independence. So do not seek this liberation outwardly. It is of no avail. He who has not yet found and dissolved his images is ensnarled by them. You are constantly re-enacting the drama of your own errors and wrong conclusions. You are caught in them, unaware; and you repeat and repeat and repeat throughout your life, indeed, as I said, often through many lifetimes, what your own conclusions are leading you to and leading towards you, and actually drawing towards you. I cannot emphasize strongly enough for all my friends who have not yet really started on this search: IT IS WORTH WHILE!

It is the only thing in life that matters and the only thing that will bring relief. I would like to advise all those who have not yet had such an experience to have a conversation with other friends of mine whom I want to congratulate (and there are quite a few here tonight) who have already had some success in their endeavors. For nothing can be better proof of what this search is all about than to learn from those who are already on the way. You may be hesitant about starting because you do not know how to go about it. You may even lack the courage to ask for advice and help. Therefore it may be wise to start by discussing this with the very friends you know so well and who have already been quite successful in this endeavor. He who searches for his images cannot help but go through confusion and upheaval for a while, and encounter also reluctance and resistance. But these are the very factors you have built within yourself and you cannot eliminate such points of suffering unless you go through them, unless you understand their real meaning, their wrong defense mechanisms, their hidden significance, no matter in what form you may have consciously rationalized it all. All the doubt and mistrust you have for others is in reality nothing but the distrust that you have for yourself. Remember that!

Find out why you distrust yourself. You will always find that the root is that you do not live up to your own standards and you cannot accept this fact. So the first step must be simply to accept yourself as you happen to be at this time.

I know have said this often, but you will encounter the necessity of applying this truth again and again on new levels of your being. If you search successfully, you will encounter within yourself the trend of wanting to be more than you are. Unconsciously you reason: "Since I am not true to myself by wanting to appear better and greater, I am not trustworthy. Others probably are the same." One always judges others according to oneself, even if this self-knowledge is not conscious. If you can truly find this inner reasoning, if it comes out into the open, if you can experience this entire reasoning process consciously, it will give you a great clarification. It is not enough to think that this is probably what is going on within you because it makes sense. It is absolutely necessary that you discover, feel, and experience this reasoning and how it works personally in your case; what it applies to; in what way you react in exactly that way.

Needless to say that at first you will be reluctant to discover this within yourself. It seems much easier and more pleasant to resist and distrust others and to justify this with rationally, well-founded arguments. But once you have overcome this resistance for the sake of truth, in the spirit of the real truth searcher, asking: "What is actually going on in me?" then you will feel the relief and freedom that only facing one's own truth can bring, no matter how unpleasant it may at first appear; no matter how unflattering in itself it is. The self-respect you must be lacking as long as your self-contempt is hidden within you will automatically vanish, at least to some degree, even before you have changed your inner attitude, by the mere fact that you had the courage to face the truth within yourself.

There are many factors that are important to understand and tonight I should like to discuss a few more concerning images and the search for them. Often you do not understand what made you retain such an impression upon which you formed a wrong conclusion. Your intellect, your mind as a whole, has grown up, has changed by experience, by what you have learned, by your surroundings, and by life as such. Yet, while your image is alive, you have not changed. At one time in your childhood you had an experience, a shock. This shock did not necessarily happen as you imagine a shock. When you think of a shock, you think of a sudden experience with a very strong and unexpected impact, like an accident for instance. But a shock may also happen, particularly to a child, in a more gradual discovery that things are contrary to one's dearest and most cherished expectations. For example, a child lives with the idea that its parents are perfect and omnipotent. When a child finds out that its heretofore accepted concepts about its parents, or the world as such, are not true, it loses security. It is frightened. It does not like it and, therefore, on the one hand, it will push this knowledge into the subconscious because it is unpleasant and because it feels guilty, and, on the other hand, it will build defenses against this "threat."

This threat, whether it happened suddenly or in a slow realization, is the shock that is referred to. You all know that shock causes a numbness. Your body, as well as your nerves and your mind become numb. It may go so far that you lose your memory temporarily, or you may have other symptoms. Thus, the child will experience a shock because the parents, the world, life are not the way it was thought to be. The impression that created the shock may be objectively correct or not, still the deduction the child is capable of making must be wrong. Because children tend to generalize, they project their own experience to all other alternatives. A child's parents are its world, its universe; therefore what it concludes after the shock must be applied to everyone else, to life in general. This is the wrong conclusion that creates the image.

The image was created when the orderly world and concepts of the child were destroyed. The wrong conclusions are: (a) the generalization. Not all people have the same shortcomings as the parents; not all conditions of life are similar to those the child discovered in its own surroundings; and (b) the defense mechanism the child chooses in its still limited understanding of the world is wrong as such; and even more so when applied to other people and other situations than those of its early surroundings. This, my friends, is the way images are created. But, of course, off hand you will not remember your emotions, your reactions, your inner intentions, and your conclusions. You cannot remember them because you felt the need to hide this whole procedure for the reasons already stated, and also because you were ashamed that your parents are not what you think they should be.

In your child's mind you assume that your case is singular, that everyone else has perfect parents, perfect home conditions, and only you alone experience this shocking uniqueness that must be hidden from everyone, even from yourself, as well as, of course, from your parents or others close to you. The shame is built on the mistaken idea of uniqueness of your case, and this causes the whole thought and emotional process to be hidden away. And due to the fact that it remained hidden, this part of your personality could not change and adjust and learn better. For only what is out in the light can grow. If a plant is left hidden in the earth by suppression of its roots, it cannot grow. It is the same with every emotional current, trend, or tendency. Therefore, you should not be surprised when you discover that your image-conclusions do not at all conform to your otherwise grown up intelligence.

The same process exists with animals. Let us take a dog for example: a dog may have the experience that every time before he receives food, he hears the same kind of noise that his master produces. After the dog has experienced that each time the noise sounds food is served to him, he will respond and know instantly that food is now forthcoming. When he hears the noise, he will come to the place automatically. The dog has thus formed an image. In this case not by a shock, but by constant habit the impression is formed and the conclusion made. Or let us take the following example: one dog was burned by a fire and hurt. Whenever he sees fire afterwards, he will be frightened by it. Particularly so if he had this experience not only once, but twice or several times. Yet another dog may experience fire only as something pleasant. When the fire is lit, he is with his master at the fireside. His master caresses him, has time to play with him. So this dog will not have a fire image. So, you see, even with animals the same procedure works. If it would not, you could not train them. With a child it is similar. An infant or a very young child knows only the most primitive emotions. It knows good or bad. It knows love and pleasure when its will is done. It knows hatred, resentment, and pain when its will is not done. It is as simple as that. Only much later in life does one learn to evaluate more objectively and not according to one's own pain or pleasure. But while your image lives, you continue the childish procedure because in that respect your mind remains as it was when you were a child, regardless of how much the rest of your personality has improved, learned, and is otherwise capable of judging maturely, intellectually, and, in some instances, other than with the image-currents, even emotionally. But where this shock-impression has taken place (slow or sudden shock) due to the fact that one does not assimilate the experience consciously, the mind remains childish. It remains in the state it was in when the image conclusions were formed and put into the subconscious. You may remember that in many of my lectures, a long time before we started to discuss the images, I often mentioned the term "emotional maturity." Now you will better understand in what process it happens that a part of an otherwise mature being remains immature. Actually this part continues to make the same deductions, emotionally and unconsciously, as the child did, so long as the image is not lifted into consciousness. Thus you will perhaps understand better how it is possible that you discover conclusions and deductions within yourself that do not at all correspond to the rest of your person. You may find it shocking, at least for a while, to recognize the primitive way in which your inner emotional reasoning functions. Considered in the light of this explanation, you will know that part of you simply could not grow up because certain parts were left submerged in your unconscious; and you will not be surprised to find still living within yourself the child that has not assimilated what you otherwise learned. That is why images cannot be found unless one re-lives emotionally (not merely by intellectual memory) one's childhood and penetrates the irrational layers of consciousness. Without some procedure to make this possible, it is out of the question to find your images. That is why I have suggested to my friends certain techniques and ways to make this possible. So you will find that your image conclusions are logical in their limited way. You may even be surprised about the reasoning faculty, faulty as it may be, that exists in you when you were anything up to perhaps 10 years old. This is the way you reasoned then.

The tragic thing about the images is that they become a power. They will make you see and notice only certain things connected with your image conclusion in such a way that the image will be constantly supported and strengthened in later life. Your image conclusions conflict with the grown-up desires and aims of your life, and thereby cause not only a painful discrepancy, but untold conflicts and problems with your conscious goals, as well as with the reality of life. This must be understandable to all, even if you do not believe that emotions and thoughts are forms and realities creating magnetic fields that draw events, people, and experiences towards you. The more unconscious are the emotions, the complexity of thoughts, the more powerful they must be because, while unconscious, they are out of your control and cannot be adjusted to reality and to conscious conflicting desires. Thus they are inflexible and rigid. Therefore, your images and their conclusions must repeatedly bring you into situations you did not consciously ask for. But your image conclusions necessitate them. It is very important, my friends, to understand all that. I am sure that those of you who have started on this search understand me very well. The others may not. But whoever will begin on this particular Path will then, perhaps at a later date, be able to make use of these words. This rigidity, this ungiving form, causes the following factors: you want life to move according to your desires. And when things do not happen as you wish them, you kick and scream inside, the baby you still are in that part of your being. That is the immaturity wherever your image exists. The mature being knows he can control life only by going with it, by not demanding that life follows him, but that he follows life by adjusting to it. Where you have your image, you do not adjust. You demand, and have temper tantrums (inside) when your demands are not met. And since these demands are made on very faulty premises, you often get what you ask for, but in addition, you also get what is part of your unconscious demand, only you did not know it. You want a certain thing, a way of life -- whatever it may be -- for its advantage, but as the child you were when you thought this desire to be advantageous, you ignored -- and still ignore -- that every advantage has a disadvantage. You then think that life has treated you unjustly. It is extremely important that you consider all this when you search for and discover your images. It will help you considerably, my friends. All this will be just words, my friends, only so long as you do not experience the image finding. But he who gets started will be able to use a lot of this constructively. It will give him a deeper, profounder understanding, and will help a step further, if he thinks about it in these terms.

Everyone who is nearing an image-recognition, as I have said before, feels a profound shame. And often the shame is not because all of a sudden you discover something very wicked or hideous. No. You may be much more ashamed of something that is merely silly. If you understand that when you formed this image the reasoning that now makes you ashamed was then in accord with your capacity to reason and think. Only relatively is it silly. And you, intelligent human being that you are, cannot reconcile the fact that such a "silly" reaction actually lives in you. You are now at the point when you actually recognize that this has been your deduction, your conclusion for years up to the present, and you are now quite embarrassed to see that this was part of your mind, underneath, but still your mind, your reaction. It will make it easier for you to accept this if you really consider that in this respect you remained a child because you left the whole reasoning process in the darkness of your subconscious mind; and also if you realize that there is no one you can name among all those you know who does not have his own images, and therefore similar incongruities. If you conversed with a child of, let us say, 4 to 10, you would not be surprised at such reasoning. Realize that and you will overcome your embarrassment. And realize also that you are not the only one. However, most people do not realize this and keep their images covered. So you certainly have a great advantage through self-awareness by knowing at least what your own "stupidities" were, while others do not know them. Yes, my friends, this sounds strong, but in the infant part of your soul (as compared with your conscious mind, soul, and intellect) these discoveries are stupidities.

First, when you search for your images you will probably be more concerned with your own inner conflicts, with problems, and with the wrongness of the conclusions as such. You will view your reactions. You will re-experience the wrong emotions and compare them, in theory, with the right principle. And that is as it should be. But after you have thoroughly understood all this, the work has to go on, much work. You know that. You have to find out not only in what respect you have re-enacted your images, going from one pattern to another, but also you should begin to evaluate everything that happened in your life: things that are apparently not at all your doing. They just happened from "outside." Common sense and logic will tell you about a number of life experiences you question with, "what could I possibly have to do with that? I did not lift a finger, it came to me." Yet, after you have found your images, you will see that everything, regardless of how out-of-your-control such happening seemed, was called forth by yourself. In the very first moment of discovery this may be shocking, but not necessarily in all cases. Often the first glimmer of recognition will already be a relief. But this relief must follow always, even if at the moment it seemed preposterous and incredible. For, then you can clearly see the connection between your image and a happening that seemed to have come at random or as something quite coincidental. The relief must come because from the moment you understand how you have directed your life; how you have caused events that heretofore you thought you were a victim of, you will gain the certainty that you are not a drifting little boat tossed by the winds on a great stormy ocean. You will realize that there is no injustice and that will make you strong and safe. You will become mature by the mere knowledge and demonstration in yourself regarding the principle and the truth of self-responsibility. You will understand how your hitherto unconscious desires, trends, and attitudes have governed your life. But now that so much has become conscious, you will be able to control, govern, and direct your life in consciousness, and thus be the captain of your ship. In this way you will approach life with joy and strength, my dear ones. You will have a strong feeling of certainty. It will appear to you as though for the first time you have firm ground under your feet.

My dear friends, perhaps there are a few questions now in connection with this subject, before we turn to other questions.

QUESTION: How do images and complexes combine?

ANSWER: A complex is a symptom, a result, or an outcome of an image. A complex in its manifest form is a subterfuge for its real meaning. For instance, someone may have an inferiority complex about his intelligence. This is manifest. This he thinks he knows. In reality he covers up a very different emotion of self-contempt; perhaps what I spoke of at the beginning of this lecture, that he knows he is not true to himself, that he wants to be more than he is, and so on. A complex, of course, exists in connection with an image. It is a part of it. It is like a message that there is an image. A complex is easily recognized, in others as well as in yourself. The image in the soul of man appears to us like a hardened form. The healthy soul, where there is no image, shows itself to us as a glowing form, but, like the universe, continuously in motion. Everything is flexible and flowing. All divine forces, that flow through the whole universe and also penetrate the human soul, constantly flow in multi-colored splendor, in harmony with the qualities, characteristics, and personal trends of the entity. But where an image exists, the forces of the human soul are hardened, constricted, and twisted, and they remain rigid. And all these healthy and beautiful strengths and forces of the universe, that the soul needs for revival, cannot penetrate, cannot enliven it. They have to flow around, and that creates a disharmony. You know that every quality is a healthy strength that mates with a corresponding strength in the universe, whereas every fault is a twisted strength. A complex, too, is a twisted strength, but twisted in a way other than a merely simple fault that is on the surface. It comes out of the image. Can you visualize it in this way? And perhaps one of my dear friends who is an artist will be inspired to draw such an image form and around it, outside the image, flow these many-colored cosmic forces in beautiful, harmonious motion, while the stagnate and congest where the image exists as something hardened. And out of this image come the sharp and twisted forces, and these would be the complexes.

QUESTION: You say that images are a general fact, that everybody has them. Why do we have to have them? Why does one have to have images?

ANSWER: Everybody does have them, but you do not have to have them. You create them.

QUESTION: For development?

ANSWER: No, not for development, but out of ignorance. By selfwill and pride. Everything that the Fall has brought about. You chose it so.

QUESTION: Did I understand that right: any event about which we really can't do anything was caused by our images?

ANSWER: You understood correctly. Except, as I said, (I think it was last time) when it is really a question of the karma of a previous life. But the principle is exactly the same, inasmuch as you reap what you have sown. But you have sown it in a previous life and reap it only now. That may be a one-time event that may not have anything to do strictly with an image, in the exact sense. But, my friends, even in cases like this, you will still find the root in your image. Because a karma that has not been paid off must mean that the root is still within yourself. If you would have paid off the karma, you would not have the root anymore. You may find the same faults and trends that in a former life made you commit a graver action that you are incapable of committing anymore because of your development. Nevertheless, the same root must still be there, for otherwise you would not have that karma. You will be able to find it in the depth of your soul, and certainly enfolded in your image.

QUESTION: This means that karma and images are a vicious cycle?

ANSWER: Of course. If you will now re-read the lecture I gave some time ago on birth, now that you have learned about the images, you will understand how it works. You may remember that I explained that when the entity is prepared for life, certain problems in the fluidal body are left more on the surface. And according to these problems parents, country, and life circumstances are chosen, so that the image can be challenged, and you can become aware of it if you so choose. So, karma and images must work hand in hand. If you have certain experiences in your childhood, it is because you have certain parents, and a certain environment. This was most suitable for you, according to your entire incarnation-history in order to bring out your problems for the purpose of development and purification. You cannot purify, you cannot eliminate a problem, if you do not first become aware of it. In order to become aware of it, something unpleasant must happen, otherwise you would never pay any attention to these inner disharmonies. Karma, as you all know, is nothing else but cause and effect. The same law works within one life span. If in this present life you find your images and wrong conclusions, you will see cause and effect clearly demonstrated: by understanding, seeing, and experiencing in your own person the truth of the law of cause and effect. Thus you will know how karma works on the same principle, only it is more extended in time. Only in the image-finding can you see it work. You can see it demonstrated, and all the better understand how it works likewise over a span of several incarnations.

QUESTION: If somebody, for instance, dies in a concentration camp, which is a karmic effect, how does that combine with the images? What kind of image would there be?

ANSWER: Oh, my dear friend, there are millions of possibilities of images. I cannot possibly enumerate them all. You will gain more understanding about these things by continuing the work you are doing, not only on yourself but also by working with others. If you can translate the "milder cases" into stronger cases of law violations, then you can imagine quite easily that a heavier karma is built on the same principle as in the cause and effect of image-conclusions. Both draw events, built on wrong conclusions, which are always violations of Divine Law and Truth. This is only a question of degree. It does not make any difference if deviations from Law and Truth occur out of ignorance and error or are committed willfully. The principle remains the same. When a person deviates from Divine Law consciously, because his spiritual development is still so low, an image does not result out of that. An image is the result of unconscious reasoning, deduction and conclusion. A conscious, willful law-violation will draw outward effects, that which you call karmic results. The law-violation happened in a lesser degree, and in the unconscious. So the two alternatives we are discussing operate on the same principle, but they are not the same. If a criminal kills someone, this is not an unconscious act, and you cannot speak about an image when he reaps the fruits of his action. But he may in the next incarnation wish to kill, but without doing so, suppressing his desires, having them, let us say, as an imagined defense against the hurts of life, against the fact that his wishes are not fulfilled. This may then create an image. But you cannot say that every crime that happens and every punishment for it is due to an image. The image exists out of subconscious wrong reasonings and factors. It contains desires and conclusions that more primitive people act out in consciousness and in deeds.

QUESTION: For instance in the case of the death of the many children in Chicago who burned in the fire. If those little spirits come into the Spirit World, is a death like this not a tremendous shock?

ANSWER: Well, my dear, you know that children die and I have often discussed this. If it did create a shock in certain areas, then it was good for the entity. It had to go through it. And if it was not good for the entity to experience a shock, then it will not have to go through it. You can be sure about that.

QUESTION: How can a child spirit reason?

ANSWER: Why not? Before it was incarnated, it was not a child spirit. It was a grown up spirit and it voluntarily undertook a short life. Perhaps the spirit preferred to choose a violent, unpleasant death and get it over with quickly, so as to be reborn after a shorter span and then start on a higher level. You know, entities to a large degree have their own free will and choice. Others may prefer to do it more slowly. Even if an occurrence in the state of shock, whether with a child or a grown spirit, makes no sense, the experience will be evaluated and assimilated afterwards, and whatever the entity experiences will be fruitful and not for nothing. Let us again take an example: a person is responsible for many cruel deaths, like in a concentration camp. Since this example was chosen before, we will use it again. This spirit is in the Spirit World and sees that he has debts to pay, that he has much to learn. He may be given the choice to remain in the Spirit World for 200 to 300 years, by your earth measurement. In this period, life cannot be very pleasant for him. The sphere he has created for himself with his thoughtforms, the forms of his emotions, as well as by his deeds, is a dark and dismal one. Afterwards, an incarnation is waiting for him where certain possibilities exist, but they are limited, again due to what he has called forth. None of these possibilities can be too pleasant or easy. And then such an entity may ask: "Is there no other way to get this over with more quickly?" And then he may be told, "Yes, there may be ways. You can be reincarnated very soon, perhaps in 10, 15, 20 years, and while you help fulfill the fate of some parents who have to go through the hardship of losing a child, you yourself can pay off a great deal by enduring a violent and unpleasant death. Would you prefer that to the other alternative you have and then start on a cleaner slate for your further development?" And many a spirit may desire this. This is only one possibility, there are many others. But you ought to know by now that there is no injustice and no coincidence.

QUESTION: Disregarding the question of justice, doesn't it appear a strange coincidence that there should be wholesale slaughter of many individuals, like, for instance, in a concentration camp, and that such a large group is burned in a fire? Isn't there some sort of wrong thinking or action there?

ANSWER: There is no coincidence. You see, when you go back in history, you will see that there were always times when great cruelty existed and mass slaughtering happened. After certain intervals it happened again, the next time caused perhaps by another group, another nation. You can be quite sure that in the following period the former torturers then became the victims. Because that is what they have drawn to themselves. I do not say that this applies to every individual fate. There may be cases when the retribution, or effect of the cause set in motion, may be carried out in a different way in an individual fate. Then, again, some victims may have undertaken a special task, voluntarily enduring more through one incident lie this than they normally would have to go through in the desire to develop faster, to overstep many levels in one sweep. But as a rule you can be sure that one mass killing causes another, changing the roles from torturers to victims, until all have learned their lesson. In some instances the paying off of such a debt does not happen in the succeeding incarnation, but several lives lie between cause and effect. You must not forget that you all went through periods of cruelty, some ten incarnations ago, some less. If great disasters and accidents happen where many people are killed, you can be sure that this is a measurement taken by the Spirit World where everything is executed in full justice and according to the often freely chosen fate of the various entities involved.

QUESTION: Do I understand that images can be either karmic or non-karmic?

ANSWER: They must have a karmic origin, because if they would not have a karmic origin, they would not form an image in the first place. It would be something that is so much on the surface that you could very easily discover it. In the process of this image-search, you will probably discover little reactions where the process of the mind operates on the same principle, only you cannot talk about an image, because it is not something that is so important, or significant, or deep-rooted, or weighty. If it is of deep significance and causes conflicts, then it must have karmic origins, but to think about it, what it may have been in a former life, will be of no avail, it will not lead you anywhere. Because with your own memory you can go back to its origin in this life if you work in the right way. And that will be sufficient. If, in certain instances, the knowledge of previous lives is good and helpful, then it will be given to you, one way or another, but only then.

QUESTION: Is it possible at all, and if so at what age, to lighten, to ease in the formation of images a child makes?

ANSWER: Of course, it is possible. If the parents would be on such a Path, they would have to know what their own problems are, and thus what the child may absorb from them which would be image-material. In that way, they could to a large degree avoid the formation of an image by helping to draw it to the surface while the conclusions are being formed and are still on the surface. The problem could then be treated right away in consciousness and when the child grows up, the conclusion will alter with the growing process. Furthermore, parents who are on such a Path develop a sensitivity by which they can observe the reactions of the child. This would be the ideal case, but as yet it happens very rarely.

QUESTION: Is there a test by which one can know which is one's image?

ANSWER: There is no test necessary because if you have your image, you will know to the core of your being "it is that way." The equation will come out right wherever you look at it. It must come out even. But it may very often be that an image-consciousness is approaching and yet the personality is so reluctant and so full of resistance that he cannot see it yet. Then all you have to do is to go on and on working from all sides, from all aspects, and all of a sudden the knowledge will be there. And then, you will not need any confirmation, because you will just know "this is it!" Your whole life will, all of a sudden, make sense. You will understand your life and your failures. You will understand yourself, and therefore also other people around you. The riddle will be solved. The puzzle will be complete, with every stone falling into its place. So there is no test and no trick and no magic. So no confirmation is really necessary. For if you know your main image, then everything will fall into place. And even before you can dissolve it, the mere knowledge of it will make you free. That feeling of freedom I mentioned may occasionally occur already before the main image has clearly come to the surface by little, but significant, recognitions that are an integral part of the main image. When you have the little images, you may at times already experience this feeling of freedom, but how much more so when the picture has been completed.

QUESTION: One of our group now here for the first time would like to know how to develop her psychic powers.

GUIDE: I would like to ask this friend first, what is the purpose of it?

QUESTIONER: To help children, the aged, and those in need.

ANSWER: The motive is a good one. There is only one really good way for such a development, and that is the following: first give up thinking about it at all and concentrate on your own spiritual, mental, and emotional development, and on your own Path of purification. The more the subconscious has been explored and become conscious, the clearer is the channel. I am speaking generally now and not just to you, for it applies to anyone desirous of helping in such a way. The development of psychic powers should always be secondary. It should be left to the will of God in what manner these powers manifest. And the stronger they manifest, the greater the necessity for a stringent Path of self-development. I cannot stress this enough. So if you can leave psychic powers aside for a while, in the wisdom that this is dangerous material unless self-awareness is present to a marked degree, and if you do so for the same of God, then He may give it back to you a hundredfold when the time is ripe. If you learn to put aside your own selfwill and say, and mean: "Father, Thy will be done. Let me be Thy instrument in any way Thou choosest, not the way I choose. I know that in order to be an instrument for Thy World, I have to go on this Path and I am not shirking its hardships," then you have the proper and healthy attitude that must be pleasing to God. That is the only way, everything else may even prove dangerous. Good will alone is not enough protection. Ignorance of many factors can bring a great deal of trouble and untruth. The fact of the unexplored unconscious plays a great role, particularly in this type of work. Self-awareness must be developed if psychic powers are not to prove dangerous.

* * *

I am sorry that we could not get to the planned questions tonight. Please leave them for next time.

One more word before I retire to those of my dear and beloved friends on this Path: I would like to ask you to help your brothers and sisters in Switzerland in the image-finding. Think about a way in which this could be done. I have already made a few suggestions, perhaps you can think of further ways.

My dear ones, Christmas is approaching and the Light of Christ is spreading all over and also touching this earth sphere. Imbibe of this light, of this wonderful strength, so that you will find forever new stamina for this Path of self-finding that is a joy to all of us. Receive the blessings of the Lord again. Be in peace. Be in God.

The Guide
by Eva Pierrakos
December 5, 1958

Back