Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 193
1996 Edition
September 24, 1971

Greetings, my dearest friends here. Blessings and love, strength and joy are ever-present within and around you, permeating you to the degree you allow it. With great joy do I resume the help and the guidance I am privileged to give you.

I have been asked to give a r?sum?? of the teachings which I have brought to you in all these years. I shall now proceed to do this as best I can. It is not easy to summarize the many steps that are all necessary, the many areas that have to be looked into, and the many angles where confusions might exist which must be straightened out. As you know, human language itself presents difficulties and limitations, so that misunderstandings can easily occur. To really understand the nature of this path, it is important to know to some degree the nature of the human entity you are. What are the various components of the human being? Whatever explanation I can give you here has to be somewhat oversimplified, but is nevertheless valid. Use it as a map that gives an overall idea of the kind of being you have to deal with when you approach yourself and others.

Humanity consists of different levels of consciousness. Each level of consciousness represents a conglomerate of attitudes, beliefs, and feelings. These levels of consciousness are often at total variance with each other, expressing different states of development in the evolution of the person. Your state of consciousness always creates its own world with its own laws, mores, philosophy, and the consequent reality. Each world or state of consciousness — in the spiritual world they are perceived as spheres — has a different degree of awareness of the cosmic ultimate reality and therefore also has different degrees of limitations. These limitations determine the extent to which the abundance of the universe can be experienced in each state. The true world is the ultimate reality of each person’s innermost being which is unified with eternal life and ever-flowing creativity, joy and self-expression. This world does not exist in some faraway place: it permeates everything that exists. In fact, the various levels of consciousness draw you into their corresponding worlds. These worlds do not exist in space and time, but rather in a reality that transcends both. Time, space, and movement are limited conceptions of the human mind with its particular state of consciousness. Thus, in a reality that transcends the human or physical one, two or more worlds can easily coexist in the same space.

An entity who is not yet unified and has not yet realized its ultimate nature expresses these different levels of consciousness and is thus drawn into their corresponding worlds either alternately or simultaneously. While living on earth in a human body, this pull manifests in different moods, perceptions and experiences. How often do you discover that whatever you feel deeply to be the truth of life and yourself today may be totally reversed tomorrow when you experience life and yourself very differently?

When you are drawn simultaneously into two conflicting worlds of your own making, you will experience conflict and confusion. When you are out of the body, this phenomenon manifests as being drawn into the actual world or environment which the respective level of consciousness has created, and then as being drawn into the created world of another level, on and on — as long as these many states of consciousness exist in the still disunited personality. The less self-awareness human beings achieve, the less will they realize that the world they experience at any given phase of their evolution is not the ultimate one nor the only one they can create. Limited awareness of reality necessarily creates suffering, and when this unhappy state of existence is believed to be the only reality, apprehension, fear, and despair are inevitable. These illusory perceptions can only be eliminated by the arduous work of bringing all your inner worlds into awareness.

The variety and range of the different degrees of awareness, and the resulting degrees of experienced joy and peace or their lack, will be truly immense — until the ultimate state of reality begins to be realized.

The human condition can best be expressed in a general way by the following three levels of consciousness: the higher self which is the God consciousness; the lower self which is the demonic self; and the mask self which hides the demonic or lower self. Needless to say, there are many degrees and stages within each of these levels of consciousness. The way they overlap, cancel each other out and create confusion, along with the resulting indirect effects and chain reactions, needs to be explored, understood, and mastered. This work is the pathwork. All these aspects of the personality can be conscious or unconscious to varying degrees. The less awareness you have of any of these states, the more conflict exists in your life and the less you are equipped to deal with life, yourself, and other people. Low awareness will also certainly result in your being farther removed from the realization of your ultimate divine self.

Lack of awareness comes from being split off from the reality of one’s real, higher, divine self. But one is also split off from awareness of the lower self as well as the mask. This fragmentation creates misunderstandings, illusions, and misconceptions. It is one of the tasks of this pathwork to find these misconceptions and correct them.

Now let me shed some light on the aim of this pathwork before I describe the process. The aim is to unify these three levels of consciousness so that the mask and lower selves dissolve and only the true higher self manifests and expresses itself. Only when the lower and mask selves are entirely conscious and their exact manifestations understood can misconceptions be corrected, because lack of awareness creates misconceptions. Misconceptions, in turn, create negative energy and feelings. Negative energy and feelings create suffering. This chain must be reversed and can only be reversed when awareness of the mask self, the lower self, and finally the higher self can be attained through various processes and approaches of the pathwork.

It cannot be denied that to expand the consciousness of a limited mind is a tremendously difficult task, for all human beings have only the limited mind available to them when they start out. This limited mind must transcend itself in order to realize its unlimited power and scope. Therefore this path constantly requires your mind to bridge the gap of its own limitations by considering new possibilities, and by making room for other alternatives for the self, for life, and for expressing the self in life. This demands making an effort to come out of old mindsets, and leave behind models which appear comfortable — but remember, this comfort is the greatest illusion. However, all illusions seem real as long as the possibility of their being illusions is not questioned and as long as no other alternatives are allowed.

The overall state of consciousness of humanity is one of duality or of opposites. I have often discussed the many aspects of the confusion created by a dualistic perception of reality, and here I only want to say that this confusion must be straightened out on all levels and in exact detail: on the levels of conceptualization, perception, and finally transformation.

I want to emphasize once again that unifying the fragmented self cannot happen as long as the world is perceived in dualistic terms. When issues, people, the self, the world, life, ideas and attitudes appear to be either good or bad, right or wrong, there is distortion of reality and consequently suffering. However, the connection between the distortion of reality and the suffering are not obvious to those who are still involved in this illusory view of life. The truth is that every conceivable attitude, feeling, idea, and human expression can be both good and bad. It is one of the most important marks of evolution and growth when this is experienced instead of being a mere theory.

The process of expanding the mind beyond its own momentary limitations can only be a conscious and deliberate effort toward the goal of transcending dualistic thinking. Yet the effort is not a labor of the will, but an opening process that first considers new alternatives which eventually can become real. When you human beings only experience yourselves as cut-off, powerless egos, and when you consequently try to put all your available energy and power into this ego, you must fail. But when you can allow that you may indeed be an expression of an as yet unmanifest, deeper, broader, wiser and more loving divine self, then your divine self will be sufficiently freed to manifest. Hence you can bridge the gap from ignorance and alienation to an open state of mind that questions, waits, considers, and probes for an actual experience of the ultimate truth. Such an experience is called faith.

When the mind remains within the fences of its present limitations, transcendence cannot occur. The attempt to transcend the momentary, limited mind and to experience divine consciousness is called meditation. The process of becoming aware of your mask self and your lower self and dealing with them will greatly speed up if the conscious mind calls the higher self into play and directs it to give specific guidance.

There are two basic approaches to human spirituality. One is to emphasize and concentrate on the divine potential within until this potential becomes a reality. Many movements exist which have practices, teachings, and exercises which actively and effectively help you reach this goal. All the energy and concentration is directed toward cultivating, enhancing, manifesting, and expressing the divine reality within. However, this does not necessarily mean that the other fragmentary levels of consciousness are thereby automatically eliminated and incorporated into the divine center. It is quite possible, indeed a frequent occurrence, that such practices genuinely bring out the real higher self and yet leave the undeveloped aspects of consciousness intact.

Many entities have an intense longing to realize their inherent divine nature, and they forget, while in the body, that they came to earth to fulfill a mission in the universal plan. This mission is the purification and growth of undeveloped cosmic matter. In order to do this, the second approach to human spirituality must be adopted. It means shedding the light of conscious awareness and experience upon one’s inner distortions, ugliness, darkness, evil, and suffering, as well as upon the inner truth, beauty, love, and goodness. This requires one to develop a fine sensitivity so that the organic rhythm of each individual path is perceived. One needs to know the following: when to focus more on one aspect, and when to shift focus to the other; when to concentrate on the higher self so as to strengthen its staying power and enable it to give further guidance; when to pay attention to the lower self with its hidden evil, its dishonesty, cheating, and camouflaged hate and malice; when to focus on the specific devices of the mask self and observe how it masks itself and what defenses it uses in order to keep the lower self hidden. One also has to know when the moment arrives to experience feelings that have been avoided. These fine alternations must be sensed both by those who are working on their transformation and by whoever is helping them, for everyone has a different rhythm.

During certain periods and phases the main concentration should be on facing one’s negative aspects, distortions, and ugliness, for the danger of blindly escaping into the positive aspects, rather than using the positive attitudes for the purpose of purifying the negative ones, is always great. At other times the positive aspects should be concentrated on. Do not overlook the fact that it is possible to genuinely get in touch with your divine self and then use it to camouflage the split-off and distorted aspects of consciousness. The divine power within is neutral and will inevitably follow whatever direction consciousness wills for it.

It must be quite clear for all of you who are drawn to this path that the second way of approaching spirituality and realizing the spiritual self is the approach we use. The greater pain and discomfort that appear to be a byproduct of this path are only an illusion; as long as any blocked-off, dark, and distorted cosmic substance exists, suffering is inevitable, whether or not you choose to know this now. This path is a taxing one, but it is real. It does not lead to illusion and to split-off consciousness. It brings into concrete experience aspects of the self which may still smolder underground unmanifested but which are eventually bound to reach the surface and create an experience. It is always easier and quicker to transcend a state when we have deliberately confronted it, when our self accepts its present inner state and wants to experience and go through it, rather than wait until confrontation occurs inexorably as a lawful, rhythmic, universal movement on our evolutionary journey. Human beings who choose such a path incorporate themselves into the divine plan. The aim of this approach to spiritual reunion is to help toward a reunification of everything that has ever split itself off.

Now we come to the method of this pathwork. I will summarize and discuss the fundamentals without going into all the manifold details and considerations. The levels to be worked with — each one in a different way — are the following aspects of the human personality:

(1) the level of mind and thought

(2) the level of will

(3) the level of feelings

(4) the level of physicality and physical expression.

When all these levels are conscious and when their inevitable divergence from each other is faced and accepted, a unification process can begin. When the lower self is understood, accepted and dissolved, when the mask is dispensed with, then the unification of the being can take place in spiritual reality.

Now let us see what the different approaches to the four different personality levels are.

(1) The Level of Mind and Thought

The level of mind must deal with concepts and misconceptions. Thoughts and thought processes which are directed into erroneous channels affect all other levels. They always create vicious circles which entrap you in hopeless situations. It is indeed true that as long as you move within a vicious circle there is no hope. But the moment the vicious circle is broken, you are liberated from the trap. It is therefore imperative to clearly see, understand, and give up those components of your mental attitudes and behavior which create a vicious circle. This always means to basically change a concept, a thought process, an approach to reality.

The particular misconception must be recognized as such. You need to determine why it is one, how it came to exist, and in what way it leads you into a vicious circle. You need to ask, “How does this vicious circle evolve? What is the corresponding true concept and how would living according to it lead me into a wide open world and into a benign cycle of creative self-expression?” All this must be clearly perceived, understood, and made conscious. Eventually it must be experienced emotionally, for it is not enough to have merely a theoretical understanding of these inner processes. Only through your emotional experience of a misconception can it be replaced by a true concept. Only then will the true concept take root in the psyche and open up new channels of spontaneous behavior no longer based on conditioned reflexes, and of creative expression of feelings.

Misconceptions can be quite conscious without your knowing that they are misconceptions. Therefore your conscious beliefs must also be tested and investigated. Misconceptions can be vaguely conscious. This is the case when your actions and reactions testify to the fact that you are governed by misconceptions, but you have not yet concisely specified what these misconceptions and their consequences are. Then the work of specific identification needs to be done. Misconceptions can also be unconscious. In that case, the pathwork must make them conscious. This can only be done by examining the life manifestation. One’s life does not lie. It expresses exactly what you really inwardly believe. You may consciously claim that you are a loving person and indeed believe in love. But if you suffer from a loveless life, it testifies clearly that somewhere inside of you, you do not believe in love, do not want to love, and have your reasons, or rather misconceptions, for not loving. Hence, unconscious misconceptions can only be unearthed by looking at your life, your suffering, your frustration, and your unfulfilled longings.

All levels must be dealt with by looking at the conscious mind and searching in the unconscious: these two approaches vary for each of the four aspects of the personality. You have to work differently with the level of mind than with the levels of will, of feeling, and of the body.

(2) The Level of Will

To work on the level of will, you have to understand first of all that there is an outer and an inner will. To put it differently, there is a voluntary and an involuntary will action. These two levels of will also have to be scrutinized, understood, and made conscious. Where distortions, misconceptions, and negativities exist in a psyche, the forces of the will are out of balance. Where the will should be active, it is often paralyzed and stagnant. Where it should be receptive and passive, it is tight, forced, and active. Balance is re-established as purification of the self proceeds.

On the level of mind, you will come to distinguish in what areas you need to act and initiate — in short, use your inherent capacity to will. This may apply to actions, or to an attitude expressed toward life because will action also applies to attitudes. Also discern in what areas to momentarily accept your limitations of will and let go the forcing current of your over-active will. Such redirection of will currents cannot be done by the outer will. If you can recognize this and relax the pressure of the outer will, the inner will can come to the fore and begin functioning. So much frustration is incurred when people push with their outer will and thus prohibit the inner, relaxed will from manifesting, or prevent their outer will from reaching out into life.

(3) The Level of Feelings

Again, where there are conscious or unconscious misconceptions of the mind and an imbalance of the inner and outer will, feelings are destructive, stagnant and painful. The energy of the feeling body is paralyzed and blocked. Therefore an important aspect of any process of unification and purification is to experience the feeling level, or the feeling body, if you will. Open the blocks and free the paralyzed feelings — whatever they may be. Feelings must be dealt with on the conscious level before they can be rechannelled constructively. Destructive feelings can certainly be expressed constructively. If negative and painful feelings are not consciously dealt with, they will stagnate on an unconscious level and prevent the personality from functioning in a healthy way, from having good feelings, and from experiencing the vital energy flow which is the nature of universal life. This inevitably leads to an indirect and destructive acting out of negative feelings. Most of the time the personality is entirely unaware of this consequence. People see no other alternatives to their ways of acting, reacting, and being and they overlook such acting out even though it is often crystal clear to others around them.

In dealing with the feeling level, you have to learn how to get in touch with the feelings locked up in you. This, too, may be discernible only indirectly, through the manifestations of your life experience.

Evoking feelings is done by a variety of approaches which we hardly need to enumerate here. It suffices to say that experiencing and expressing feelings once deemed to be unacceptable and unbearable, and learning to sustain and to handle them, is the only way a person can lose fear, anxiety, and tension. As long as you hope against hope that your life should be free from painful feelings, you hope for an illusion. Deep down you know it is so, yet you cling to the illusion. Hence you are afraid and feel shaky and inadequate. But when your own feelings can be experienced, no matter what they are, you automatically become secure, unafraid, and therefore relaxed. Being relaxed in mind, will, feeling and body is the indispensable prerequisite for experiencing pleasure and thus for reaching fulfillment.

The refusal to experience painful feelings results from the misconception that they will annihilate you or that they will prove that you are no good. This misconception must be challenged and replaced. If it is not, you will not allow yourself to experience painful feelings. The refusal to do so also causes you to create a tight will current to ward off what you believe to be annihilation. Hence, the will must be relaxed, so that it becomes possible for you to experience what is already in you. All your best functioning will be paralyzed unless you go through and fully feel whatever is in you, and thus transcend it.

(4) The Level of the Body and Physical Expression

Since it is impossible for an attitude existing on one level not to manifest also on all other levels, every misconception, every distortion and imbalance of the will functioning, and every refusal to feel what is there within you, inevitably creates a physical manifestation, or bodily condition. It therefore hampers not only your spiritual unfoldment but equally your physical life experience. It is utterly false to assume that the physical and the spiritual life stand in opposition. One is merely an expression of the other. By its muscular blocks the physical body expresses conceptual errors, imbalances of the will, and stagnant, denied feelings. Tensions and energy stagnation caused by distortions on any of the other levels can affect the body by distorting it, creating all sorts of symptoms and, when neglected long enough, physical illness.

Needless to say, the physical level, too, must be approached in a different way from the others. The elimination of the blocks must also be helped from the outer level; the energy must be made to flow again; the physical feelings have to be connected with the soul movements, the inner attitudes, and the contents of the mind. Where energy is blocked, consciousness cannot penetrate. Every cell in the human body is a consciousness onto itself. When areas are blocked off in the body, the cell system in these areas is prevented from being permeated with the divine energy stream and the divine consciousness. As I have often said, the whole universe consists of energy and consciousness. Creation is an ongoing process of a happy fusion between energy and consciousness. They interact.

Effective pathwork takes place on all these levels and with all these approaches. As I said, there is no outer rule to determine when to change from one into the other: it is different with everyone. The path must be allowed to express itself from within as a living, organismic reality. The various approaches offered on this path fulfill important functions so you can work on any one of these levels.

It is necessary again and again to attempt getting in touch with the higher self, the divine consciousness that is ever-present, immutable, and immediately available within you. When this is done for the purpose of making conscious the distorted levels of your soul substance, and reorient them so as to unify all split-off soul substance, then meditation takes a different course from the kind of meditation that is used for the sole purpose of realizing the divine self while disregarding the dark aspects of the self.

It is a current illusion and wishful thinking to assume that this latter approach to meditation automatically deals with the dark side of human nature. This cannot be so. You cannot overcome what you have not consciously and fully experienced. The wishful hope with which you are all familiar is nourished by the truthful concept that it is indeed possible to realize the already potentially present part of the godself. It is very important, my friends, to clearly understand this. This is why it is often true that, after having shed the body, some people who have led a difficult and apparently unspiritual life have done more for the universal process of evolution than some others who have led an extremely spiritual life and who may even have been so-called masters, but who have cultivated their beauty and disregarded their ugliness. They have thus failed to unify, and so have unwittingly perpetuated the dualistic state of consciousness in which this earth finds itself.

Our path uses the harder of the two approaches to meditation. It is obvious that our approach has to be different from the one that concentrates solely on the higher self and disregards the dark side of human nature. As you know, meditation can be as varied as the human personality or life experience. Meditation is too vast a subject to include in detail in this summary. I have spoken about it before and will do so again.

Many human beings, no matter how committed to this path, are not always capable of meditating, for the very blocks of the mind, of the will, of the feelings and of the body also create a spiritual block, so that meditation cannot be practiced. Again, you must grope and honestly seek to unblock little by little, through deep insight, summoning of courage, and letting yourself feel what is in you. Through such endeavor the block to meditation will also loosen up. You can then meditate for further guidance to unblock more, to become more conscious of what is still hidden, and to experience more feelings. You have to release blocks in order to meditate, and you must meditate in order to release blocks. At times, a person starts the pathwork without any meditation whatever, for his outer consciousness may block off this approach. When sufficient unblocking has been done and false spirituality has been sufficiently cleared up, then a new influx of spiritual energy and consciousness can take place, and every step becomes easier. A spiritual block can be the result of either adopting a false, escaping, separating spirituality, or negating the greater reality altogether. In both instances, misconceptions must be eliminated in order to free the channel for the real spiritual influx. Often real spirituality is rejected by people meaning to reject the false, escapist spirituality, and confusing the two.

As the blocks to spiritual influx are increasingly eliminated, the whole process of awareness, liberation, healing and unification can be speeded up. For on each step of the way you can avail yourself of this immeasurably powerful tool: your contact with your divine reality.

Just as the mind level can be conscious or unconscious, so can be the will, the feeling, and even the body level. It is therefore imperative that the degree of consciousness be increased on all levels. You should connect, for example, a physical symptom such as pain or tension with the corresponding mental attitude, with the thought, emotion, and will that motivate the specific physical manifestation. For instance, when you begin to sense that a specific bodily tension comes from a feeling of hate and rage, an overactive outer will that is being prevented from hitting out, and also from a specific misconception, then you unify all levels and increase your scope of consciousness on all levels.

It is one of the immutable spiritual laws that lack of awareness of one area prohibits awareness of another. So, for example, if you manage to stave off awareness of your lower self and your mask self, you will not be aware of the already manifest higher self. You may pay lip service to the fact that you must be an expression of a higher, divine consciousness, but you cannot possibly feel it unless you make yourself feel your lower self and the mask that hides it. If you do not, how can you possibly meditate and address an aspect of the divine in you? In the slow progression of such a pathwork, it will come to pass that at certain times you may be conscious of your divine heritage, and at other times you will be totally oblivious and cut off from it.

Just as both the higher and the lower self can be fully conscious or unconscious, or manifest at any degree between these two possibilities, so can the mask self. The mask self is your pretense, your hiding, your facade for the world. It is the idealized self-image you want so much to be that you invest your energies into making it real. All these various expressions indicate the mask self. The mask self is a defense against exposing who you really are now. Of course you are not exclusively the lower self which the mask is designed to hide. However, by masking any part of yourself, you inevitably also mask your higher self from yourself. The more you try to show only your good side — what is genuinely there in the higher self, but not in the mask self — the more your higher self is masked. Again, you can be conscious of this tactic or not. At times, you may be acutely aware of your faking, your falsifying yourself — and this is so much more preferable to the unaware state. At other times, because you have identified so much with your mask, you are oblivious to wearing one. When you are unaware of your mask, you feel ashamed and uncomfortable but you don’t face this fact because you don’t wish to experience and deal with such feelings. Thus a further process of splitting off sets in where you lose track more and more of who you really are. This is the state of being lost which many individuals wish to cure by some magic — drugs, pills, formulas, or even meditation. They also turn to therapies that encourage the helpless state of sickness and overlook the potent factor of their own will which must be used provided it is rightly understood and applied.

This path is first and foremost a process of making things conscious. This self-awareness unifies you and unifies the split in you. It also unifies the conflicts in you and establishes your sense of self and your knowledge that the universe with all its bliss is yours.

A very important aspect of this work is yet another level of the self beyond the physical body. The reason that I failed to include it in our enumeration of levels is that this part is generally not recognized in human thinking as a level of the human personality. This is the level of life experience. Generally, life experience is perceived as separate, as if the human entity were put into a fixed outer form of life. It is generally overlooked that every person’s life experience is as intrinsic an expression of his or her inner being as is the body. Only recently have a few advanced thinkers begun to see the body as a connected expression of the whole person. There are still many who view the human body as being almost as little connected to the inner life of a person as the life experience. In reality, the manifest life experience is totally and conclusively symptomatic of the inner state of the personality. Our path uses this most important and truthful mirror to determine a person’s inner state.

This more comprehensive vision eliminates the fallacy of human helplessness. The truth leads people to assume self-responsibility in every conceivable respect. Most human beings are loath to accept this. They would rather see themselves as helpless, innocent victims and experience all the suffering and hopelessness that go with that, rather than accept the hope, light, and freedom of self-responsibility. This indicates the emotional immaturity of humanity as a whole. It also indicates that a sense of guilt is attached to admitting one’s fallacy and distortion. Paradoxical as it may seem, the more helpless you pretend to be vis-a-vis your life experience, the less your inner, healthy, relaxed will can function. The tight selfwill of the little, ineffective ego is strengthened in order to ward off the imagined “unjust” life experience. What a waste of valuable energy!

It is an intrinsic aspect of this pathwork that you eventually shed the illusion of being an innocent victim and avail yourself of the key to freedom: self-responsibility. This is not a postulate or an unverifiable philosophy. All of you who go into this work honestly and deeply enough must inevitably find out that both the good and the bad life experience is an exact expression of your thinking, willing, feeling, and your physical being.

Try to absorb and use what I gave you tonight. It will help you to know where you are going and that whatever you may be now unwilling to experience is universal, necessary, and not at all unacceptable. It will also make you more aware of the inner rhythm and reality that is the path. Whoever commits to do the work of this path will experience that there is a living, organic reality in it. It instructs and shows to you that whatever you experience has a meaning for you. The difficulty is that at times you do not want to listen to it. You want to tune out, to go with your selfwill, and give in to your own ideas, which often camouflage your fear of meeting yourself head-on. You may then seek out various ways to camouflage the unwanted parts. When you “succeed,” the truth of this can no longer be discerned. That is why the inner voice of truth should at all times be cultivated. It will speak louder and clearer as you continue to consult it. Ask with a truly open attitude, willing to listen to a conscious ness that is you and yet is greater than the conscious you. Then you will see that this greater you is real and your little consciousness is only a separated particle. When this begins to happen, unification begins to happen.

Be blessed, my dear ones, all of you. Know that the love and truth of the universe are your ultimate goal, your ultimate fate. Nothing in the world can alter this, even if the little mind is uselessly and stubbornly afraid of the process. Be blessed, go in peace and joy into your work, for the universe holds rich fulfillment for everyone. These are not empty words. The truth of these words will make itself known when you first fully face the opposite of fulfillment, namely your unhappiness, your suffering, and your distortions. As you do so, the truth of your ultimate fate will become your reality.