The Text - Section 111
111. SOUL-SUBSTANCE -- COPING WITH DEMANDS
Greetings, my dearest friends. Welcome, all of you. Blessings for all of you.
I should like to discuss first the difference between the healthy soul and the sick soul, as seen
from a spiritual viewpoint. My words may give my friends a deepened understanding for their
further development and inner growth.
When a new child enters this earth, its soul-stuff is very malleable, very soft. Within this soul-
stuff lie all the potentials -- the talents, qualities, tendencies, characteristics, and also the unresolved
problems. It is according to these potentials -- positive, as well as negative -- that the entity grows.
The malleable, soft substance of the soul is, by its very nature, very impressionable. Therefore,
when the child collects impressions during its early years, their impact will be greater or smaller
according to the underlying potentials. Where the soul is potentially healthy and strong, even
negative impressions will not make a deep dent. The experience is registered and assimilated
realistically, so that the personality learns and grows from the experience, whether or not it was
happy or unhappy. Where the underlying potential is positive, the corresponding soul-stuff will be
so resilient that even a seemingly detrimental occurrence will bounce off it, in a manner of speaking.
It will not leave a lasting mark other than the benefit of increased understanding.
However, where the underlying potential consists largely of unresolved problems, the soul-
stuff is so lacking in resiliency that the impressions form deep dents and remain imbedded in the
soul-substance. When you recollect my explanations about how images are formed, it will be easier
for you to understand what I am saying.
When you have retained an impression in unresilient soul-stuff, your entire psychic
mechanism functions according to this impression, exaggerating it way beyond its reality-value. As
you remember, when an image forms in the soul the one-time occurrence is generalized and thereby
falsified. A destructive pattern is set in motion, which remains in force as long as the dent in the
soul-stuff is not smoothed out. The healing comes about only through the kind of active self-
finding that you are engaged in.
Let us speak of flexibility versus rigidity. Flexibility is the quality of resilient, elastic, healthy
soul-substance. When it comes to rigidity, however, there are two different kinds, and it will be
quite helpful for you to discern their difference. The first kind of rigidity is based on the following
circumstances: When the soul is constantly exposed to deep impressions that cannot be assimilated
and therefore form dents, so that the imprints remain imbedded in the soul-substance, the effect on
the personality is heavy. Then unfavorable circumstances create suffering that goes way beyond
what is warranted in reality. Therefore the soul suffers more from an impression than it needs to
and even favorable impressions cause exhaustion. You may all have experienced that you become
overly excited when something good happens; it has a disrupting effect. You are unable to
assimilate the experience; it weighs on you and makes you restless. Assimilation and digestion in
such a case is so slow that it engages all your faculties, thus arresting the growth and functioning of
other aspects of the psyche.
To deal with an experience that would normally need only a certain amount of attention and
investment, and would leave part of your faculties free to deal with other aspects of living and being,
becomes a task in which all the inner forces are made to serve a comparatively unimportant event.
That you are joyful and gratified about the event as such does not change the fact that an
unnecessary amount of energy is being wasted. This creates a kind of restlessness, a holding on to
the experience, and that blocks the soul's movement. Needless to say, this may not be conscious,
but when you attend to your inner reactions, you are bound to discover such a preoccupation. It
may manifest in intense thoughts about a relatively unimportant event; you may be unable to let go
of its emotional impact, unable to forgive and forget. But, mainly, a much more subtle procedure is
set in motion, an automatic reaction that is not commensurate with the outer occurrence. A one-
time experience is falsely applied to an event of an entirely different nature. In short, something that
frightened you once will cause you to be frightened again by an outer event that is really quite
dissimilar to the first. Such automatic reactions, which you have begun to observe and begin to
understand in yourself, are evidence of the presence of the too-malleable soul-stuff that did not
grow healthily into resilient elasticity.
Over-tender soul-stuff causes both conscious and unconscious pain. Since the effect is bound
to be detrimental, the psyche seeks a remedy. Such unconsciously sought remedies are often more
destructive than the original evil, as are, for example, the pseudo-solutions. The false remedy, in this
case, is an artificial, protective wall, set up to prevent constant heavy impacts causing hurtful dents
on the soul-substance, which are experienced as "oversensitivity." The wall is hard and brittle; it
prevents feeling and experiencing and causes the first type of rigidity.
The second type of rigidity is caused by a condition of the soul that is incapable of assimilating
the experience and holds on to it instead. When the indentation in the soul is so deep that one
cannot let go of it, the preoccupation with the experience excludes important aspects of reality. One
sees and evaluates only that part of reality which appears to bother or disturb; other aspects
important for understanding the occurrence in its full light are absent. Such a limited, subjective
evaluation is inevitable if the soul suffers too much. The suffering makes a wider and more truthful
view quite impossible. Therefore one-sidedness and an inability to perceive differently constitutes
the second type of rigidity. One can deal only with what one immediately sees and perceives
according to the highly sensitized area of the too vulnerable soul-substance. Every other aspect in
the situation, or in the other person involved, is overshadowed. If those aspects were allowed to
stand in the full light, the understanding would be much more objective. But this is not possible
because one is too preoccupied with the unpleasant effect of the dent upon the soul-stuff.
If you suffer physical pain in a certain area of your body, you are bound to focus all your
attention on the area, disregarding others. It is the same with the soul process. What makes this
more complicated is that here we are dealing with very subtle and unconscious reactions that can be
verified only if and when you become sufficiently attuned to your inner mechanisms.
To briefly summarize the difference between the two kinds of rigidity: one dulls your capacity
of feeling and experiencing; the other colors your views and experience to such a degree that your
perception of reality is narrowly limited. Often, people have both kinds of rigidities, alternately and
simultaneously, one caused by the other and overlapping. Sometimes one is predominant. When
this is so, the rigidity is relatively easy to recognize.
When the second type is predominant, it can manifest in harping on details, seeing only
certain facets of others and of situations which may, in themselves, be correct, but the perception is
incomplete because other aspects are overlooked. This may also apply to your attitude toward
people and situations where you are not personally involved, but you are so conditioned to this way
of reacting, due to the lack of resiliency in the soul-substance, that you cannot function differently
even then. Such over-malleable soul-stuff makes you incapable of adjusting to ever-changing
circumstances. You cannot see and evaluate them for you are conditioned to react only to the direct
imprint made upon your soul-substance. This prevents you from being in the constant flow of life,
from being in truth and reality. In order to flow with life, your soul-stuff has to have the healthy
elasticity to quickly assimilate incidents according to their real significance.
Needless to say, healthy soul-substance cannot be created by an act of will. Only finding and
changing your misconceptions, pseudo-solutions, and distortions can bring this about. To facilitate
this process, it is very important to receive the healthy and unhealthy reactions of the soul-substance
in this light. The recognition of the two kinds of rigidity is also necessary. It will be very helpful to
feel their difference within yourself. They do feel different; they have a different "flavor," as it were.
As indicated earlier, both may exist simultaneously. One may be a counter-reaction to the other.
You may first find the brittle wall of rigidity. Do not expect to find a healthy flexibility beneath it.
Be prepared to find the other kind of rigidity that may, at first glance, appear to be the very opposite
of rigidity, because it is overly soft in substance. But upon closer inspection you will find that this
very softness, devoid of healthy resistance, cannot let go of impressions received. You mull them
over and over and are persistently influenced by what should already be obsolete. The soul-
substance thus becomes rigid. Exaggerations of truth bring untruth in both directions. This holds
true for everything and has often been discussed in many other connections. Here the too great
resistance of the brittle pseudo-protective wall has similar effects to that of the too little resistance in
the over-malleable soul stuff.
How can you cope with your life when you are not in reality? How can you be in reality when
either of these two rigidities exists in you? How can you adapt yourself to the ever-changing flux of
life? How can you evaluate objectively and perceive in truth? None of these is possible if your soul-
substance is so easily indented that an impression of little importance, of minor significance for you,
remains imbedded and dictates your reactions towards future events? You thus distort the
relationship between the event and your reaction to it.
I have shown you a new angle on the inner mechanisms already familiar to you. Such
increased insight can often be very helpful in giving renewed impetus to your work on the path.
Let me finish this topic by briefly describing what a healthy soul looks like compared to an
unhealthy one, as seen from our vantage point. In the healthy soul the form is rounded, very
smooth, and even. The substance is elastic -- a mixture of resilient and healthily resistant softness.
This combination produces the ideal conditions that enable you to go through life with a capacity
for deep experience, which you are able to assimilate quickly, so that you are always ready for new
impressions and new experiences.
In the unhealthy soul the soul form is bumpy, uneven in shape, with the bumps hardened on
it like scabs. The scabless substance is, as I have said, so malleable, sticky and pasty, that it retains all
imprints, unable to regain the original printless, resilient surface.
In the course of your work many of you have glimpsed that all unhealthy reactions are
artificial. They are much more difficult to keep going than the natural reactions. When an insight
comes -- even if it happens only seldom to begin with -- it is a decisive step toward growth and self-
realization. At that moment you understand how strenuous the pseudo-protections and pseudo-
solutions are. How much more easily, more reliably and safely does your natural being guide you
through life! This is not to be confused with the line of least resistance and the giving in to one's
destructive instincts. Before you have reached certain levels of inner recognition, such a statement
might easily be so misinterpreted. But once these insightful levels have been reached through the
steady progress and organic growth that persevering work is bound to bring eventually, you will
understand and experience for evermore the truth that pseudo-solutions are strenuous and energy-
consuming, while experiencing the real self is safe and easy. I mention this again because I see a
tendency to overlook the importance of such vague glimpses. Please ponder over them. Look at
the first rare occurrences of such experiences so as to attain the full value and deep significance they
harbor. Such glimpses of health, as compared with the distorted, artificially strained ways of living,
are the best way to heal your soul-substance.
Once again, it is true that awareness of unhealth leads to health, while unawareness or
covering up lead further away from health.
Now I would like to discuss a different topic, although it is, of course, connected with the
foregoing, as everything in the human soul is interrelated. In the course of this work, we have often
found and discussed your demands. I am now referring mainly to the hidden, unconscious demands
that exist in you without your being aware of them. When you found them you were often surprised
to discover how stringent your demands on others, on yourself, and on life, really were. This often
took considerable time and effort on your part, and you were probably shocked to find out how
incompatible they were with your conscious concept of yourself. If you have not reached full
awareness of your own demands, you may be well advised to investigate your previous findings in
this particular light. You will find that an imbalance does exist: You have excessive demands, on
the one hand, in that you expect more from others than you are willing to give, no matter how much
you may cover up this fact. On the other hand, you may be too modest in your expectation. This is
a logical consequence that occurs automatically. It is based on the balancing quality of inner law.
But let us now consider another aspect of this theme: the demands that are made on you.
How do you react when demands are being made on you? How do you cope with them? Before
going any further, let us be clear that you may be no more conscious of demands on you than you
are conscious of your making demands on others. The fact that you are unaware of demands made
on you does not eliminate their effect on your special, inner way of dealing with them. You certainly
react strongly to such demands, even though you may never know it consciously. It needs the
increased awareness that is cultivated on a path such as this that will finally make you capable of
being aware of how others are making demands on you and, subsequently, of your real reactions to
them.
It is my advice to my friends who work in this intensive study to devote some attention to the
topic of demands. Look at your associations and relationships from this particular viewpoint.
When you have established that here or there you feel a demand that is being made on you, and you
have this or that reaction to it, then you can go a step further. I will outline the way, even though, of
course, these subsequent steps cannot be taken until you have clearly become aware of your
demands on others and others' demands on you, as well as your real reactions to them.
To understand your reactions, it is important to view them also from the point of view
explained in the first part of this lecture. When your soul-substance is too impressionable, when you
unduly retain impressions -- in this case, the currents of others' demands on you -- when you cannot
healthily assimilate, evaluate, and come to terms with the effect that others have on you, then their
demands have an overpowering impact. Either you will interpret something as a demand that is no
such thing, and an inner defense against it will be triggered off, or you may give in to the most
immature, unjustified demands from others to avoid feeling guilty or fearing unwelcome
consequences. In both cases the result is resentment, defiance, and hostility. None of it may be
conscious in you at the moment, or these feelings may not be linked with the recognition that they
are your responses to demands being made on you. You are often unconsciously so fearful of
demands, or of your compulsion to give in to them, and so afraid of what might happen if you did
not give in, that you set up a defense against them.
Yet an inner alarm seems to ring whenever an actual or imaginary demand is being made on
you. Your guilt and fear do not permit you to become aware and investigate what has set off the
alarm. Instead of investigating it with your reasoning faculties, you blindly reject rational inquiry.
The rejection is not so much a reaction against the demands themselves as against the temptation
and compulsion to give in to them. Your inability to discriminate is what makes you insecure.
Keeping your reaction hidden will make discrimination even less possible. Your lack of trust in
yourself makes you unable to determine and differentiate. Insecurity, in turn, is the result of an
impaired integrity.
The inelastic soul-substance with its oversensitivity creates such an aversion to dealing with
anything that impacts it from the outside that outer input is simply cut off. Thus healthy
intercommunication cannot exist.
Your response to the demands of others may frighten you so much that you may withdraw
more or less from all meaningful relationships. It is very important to realize that the fear of
involvement may not only exist due to fear of hurt and disappointment, but also due to the fear of
having to cope with the demands of others.
Now, my friends, it is important to become aware that demands are all around you. The more
you are involved, the more demands multiply. When you calmly consider them, you will see that in
some instances the demands of others are excessive and childish. On other occasions, the demands
are simply a part of human communication, and your fright and refusal to engage are unjustified.
Such reaction indicates an excessive demand on your part: wanting the advantages of close
relationships without giving in the real sense of the word, although perhaps over-giving instead on a
different level. You put the entire relationship out of balance. Since the other people receive what
they really do not ask for, their demands become more urgent, while you become more guilty and
resentful.
Whenever this knowledge is not sufficient to enable you to deal freely with any demands being
made on you, you have to look for the key in your own attitude. Where were you oblivious of your
own excessive demands? They may reside perhaps in another area, hidden from sight or explained
away. Important as it is to establish that you cannot cope with the demands of others, it is not in
itself sufficient. Of equal importance is to find where your own hidden demands exist. When you
find these, and transform the unreasonable greed of your childish expectations, you will become
perfectly capable of coping very satisfactorily with other people's demands on you, thus maintaining
good, deep relationships.
And now my friends, to your questions.
QUESTION: I would like a clear definition of what the soul is. I think it would clarify this
lecture.
ANSWER: As you know, there are many interpretations of the soul, and they may all be quite
accurate. If they seem contradictory, it is because words are too limited to describe a dimension
inaccessible to human language. This is why higher dimensions can never be made accessible by
verbal learning, but only by inner experience which, in turn, becomes possible only if and when
inner errors and distortions are dissolved.
Let me explain the soul as we use it here. The soul is the sum total of the inner personality:
the thinking, the feeling, the concepts, the potentials, the attitudes, the patterns, the characteristics,
the temperament, the emotions, the idiosyncrasies -- everything that is behind the physical being. It
also includes, of course, unresolved problems. But it does not include the cover-up for the
unresolved problems, the pseudo-solutions, or the false defenses. They are not part of the soul
itself. But the particular choice of the pseudo-solution is an expression, or manifestation, or
indication, of the soul.
QUESTION: Karma, then, is the memory of the soul from former unresolved problems?
ANSWER: I would not say memory. It is the result of all previous incarnations. Karma is
the effect the soul has produced.
QUESTION: The sensitivity is carried along?
ANSWER: Of course. The sensitivity, the perception, and the ability to experience. All these
faculties have a progression. One person's sensitivity may be on the lowest note of the keyboard,
another's on the highest. The latter may exist in a healthy or unhealthy way. Karma, as you know, is
the result of everything up to the present point.
QUESTION: You gave attributes to the soul of a physical, material nature. You gave it
roundness and malleability in a physical sort of substance. Is it localized like any other organ in the
body?
ANSWER: No, it is not localized in that sense. It is a body, consisting of matter very similar
to your earth matter, although not perceivable with your physical organs. As you know, and have
often heard, it is a "subtle body." When I spoke of roundness, it does not mean it is a round form,
like a ball. The surface of the subtle body can have all the attributes I discussed. You might best
compare it with the consistency of skin and flesh, but the surface of the subtle body of the soul has
much greater variety than physical skin and flesh. Words are so limited that they may often seem
preposterous, but this is the best way of giving you an idea of what the soul-body may look like.
QUESTION: May I ask about the relationship between the subconscious and the soul?
ANSWER: The soul is the unconscious mind. The unconscious motivations, attitudes,
driving forces, and inclinations are from the soul and the deeper regions of the unconscious self
belong to the real spiritual being and the real spiritual being is at home in the deeper regions of the
unconscious self. However, the unconscious is only a part of the soul, much of it is conscious.
QUESTION: We claim that attitudes determine the happenings in our lives. How is it that
people with bad motives so often derive all the happiness and success in life? I know such cases.
ANSWER: I have answered this question in previous sessions, but will answer it briefly again.
In the first place, the human view is very limited. Whenever effect does not immediately follow
cause, people lose the link and therefore become unable to see their interrelationship. If they
nevertheless attempt to make judgments, such judgment must be faulty. Cause and effect are often
far removed in time. In other words, human beings may experience the effect of a cause from way
back, while the new causes they institute have not yet taken effect, but will do so later. With
increasing spiritual development, inner health, and oneness, cause and effect come closer together.
As long as they are separated in time, an inner division of the soul must exist. The overall
development of the soul, its potential for growth in particular areas of development, is still limited
when cause and effect are removed from one another. Only when the soul's potential is greater than
its actual development, and therefore it can become actualized, are cause and effect closer together.
Moreover, when motives are split, the effect is influenced accordingly. For example -- as I
pointed out in a recent lecture -- if people are still so crude in their spirituality that they have no
conscience, nothing will interfere with the bad motives, which will, therefore, be unified. Because
there is no split, the bad motives will have an apparently favorable effect. Only later, when the
conscience has grown, will the retroactive guilt have an effect and manifest as though it were
punishment from the outside. When someone's motives are already split -- which in this sense is a
positive development compared to the person who can have destructive motives without inner
conflict -- success does not come. One side of the personality has acquired much higher standards
than another side -- and I do not mean superimposed standards, but real, inner standards. When
such is the case, destructive motivations, even though they may be quite conscious, will not bring
the desired result. On the other hand, constructive motives, no matter how conscious, will not bring
the good results either if they are undermined by unconscious, destructive motives. Hence, a
ruthless person may not attain his ruthless aims because an inner voice, that he may be completely
unaware of, hinders the impact of his will. His own inner development, still hidden, and very
contradictory to some facets of his being, prohibits an unsplit will. Therefore, a conscious
determination to be ruthless will have no effect because the soul has already gained a new potential.
Similarly, the person who tries very hard to be good, but is unable to cope with his hidden
selfishness and cruelty due to repression, is unable to attain the desired positive result. It is always
the split motives -- especially that part of them which one is not conscious of -- that hinder the will
and subsequently influence the outcome.
QUESTION: How do you explain the function of drama, myth, and fairy tales in the
personal development of the human being?
ANSWER: If the questioner has in mind the effect that myth, drama, or fairy tales have upon
a human being, the question has already been answered by this lecture. The assimilation of any
input from outside depends on the impressionability of the soul. As to whether fairy tales or myths
have a good influence on a growing person, and also on an adult person, cannot be generalized. It
depends on the material and on the interpretation. A grown up person is no longer dependent on
interpretation by others, but a young child is dependent on the interpretation given by adults. Such
interpretation may not even occur in words, but in the atmosphere that emanates from the telling of
the story. The adult's feelings have a much stronger influence on the child than the words.
Whatever the child's mind really takes in will have its effect. If an apparently cruel fairy tale or myth
is taken literally, a soul-particle that is already afflicted will be negatively influenced and impressed.
The healthy soul-substance will not even have a negative reaction if the story is misinterpreted.
False myths will not have a negative effect either. For not all myth is truthful. Untruthful literature,
or other influences, as well as misunderstood and misinterpreted truthful influxes, will take effect
only where the soul is already afflicted. When an afflicted soul receives a truthful interpretation, or
other truthful messages, it is given a chance to assimilate such helpful influences. Whether or not it
does so, depends on the person.
QUESTION: I should like to hear your differentiation between feelings and emotions.
ANSWER: There is a difference between the two. One way of describing the difference
would be that a feeling is deeper-rooted and more permanent. By this I do not wish to imply that
feelings do not change. I do not mean that feelings are permanent in time, but they are so in quality,
in consistency, in character, in being. A feeling may truly change faster than an emotion, and yet it is
permanent in essence. This is very difficult to explain; in order to understand, you would have to
perceive what I mean with your own inner faculties. An emotion is more superficial, even though it
may be retained longer in the soul substance. An emotion comes from superficial conditions in the
soul. Reactions and responses that are based on superimposed modes of coping with life, not
originating from the real person, are emotions. The real self sends forth feelings. Hence, a feeling is
something much more substantial. This cannot be evaluated by the apparent worth of the feeling or
emotion. You may have an unpleasant feeling, yet it is based on truth, on reality. An emotion is
based on a subjective inner condition.
Here is an example: Let us suppose you sense a detrimental, negative quality in someone else,
or in yourself. If this quality is true, you are dealing with a feeling, even if highly unpleasant. In
another case you may have the same perception; however, you do not sense the negative quality
because, instead of merely observing what is, you become frightened, suspicious, guilty, and
resentful; because some image or pseudo-solution is at work. You have, again, a correct perception,
in this instance though of an emotion. When you do not push the feeling aside, you will come to see
that you have a valid intuition, be it about yourself, or about someone else. When you do not push
the emotion aside -- and you should never push aside an emotion, a feeling, or anything else, for that
matter -- you will come to recognize factors within yourself that cause you to be subjective,
distorted, and out of touch. In short, you will see all the blocks in you that prohibit feelings and
intuition. A feeling always reacts to reality, however temporary this particular reality may be, as it
exists now.
Let us now examine a favorable emotion. Gratified vanity, greed, or pride may produce a
pleasant emotion. Or, to go a step further, a situation, even if truly perceived, but utilized
subjectively, produces an emotion and not a feeling. Feelings are based on objectivity, emotions on
subjectivity. In both instances, they may be pleasant or unpleasant. The language is often confused.
One speaks of emotional maturity or emotional involvement, of expressing one's emotions when
feelings too, are meant. But the words do not matter that much as long as you understand the
essence.
QUESTION: Am I correct in understanding that anything can be either feeling or emotion?
Fear, for instance?
ANSWER: Yes. That is right. But, my friends, my advice is: Do not try to label it. Labeling
is always a dangerous procedure. With it you somehow close a door to further understanding. Try
rather to deal with the feeling, or emotion, as it comes up. Try to understand it, to see whether or
not it is based on objective factors, or on personal, colored, and subjective notions.
May these words help you again toward a deeper and broader understanding. My love, my
help, go to all of you. The blessings and the assistance is accorded to each one of you who has the
great courage and dignity, the human dignity, to want to develop, to grow and to change, and face
the self in utter candor, so as to make growth possible. The dignity of this endeavor becomes
evident when it is pursued regardless of the cost of facing negative aspects, of shattering one's
cherished ideas about oneself. When this is done, the fruits must be yours. If you tend this
beautiful garden now, by weeding out that which does not belong, the spiritual help along the way
will always be yours. Be in peace, my dearest friends, be in God.