The Text - Section 220
220. REAWAKENING FROM PRE-INCARNATORY ANESTHESIA
Greetings. Loving blessings are pouring forth for every one of you here. Welcome, my
dearest friends. Let us continue with this specific series of lectures. And keep in mind, my friends,
that they are a sequence, one leading to the next, on the spiral of your evolutionary process,
commensurate with your increasing awareness.
In this lecture, I will again speak about the phenomenon of consciousness, particularly in
connection with the evolutionary process and the meaning of individual life.
All knowledge is in you. I have often said this, but it is rarely understood. Before you are
born into this life, a process of anesthesia sets in. There is a specific reason for this. You awaken
from it, as you come out of infanthood, with a limited consciousness. The awakening is partial and
gradual. As you grow physically, mentally, and emotionally, you grope to rediscover your inner
knowledge. At first you do this in a limited way, with a focus on material life. You learn to walk,
handle objects, you speak; you learn reading, writing, numbers, certain basic laws of outer life, of
physical matter that surrounds you and that you will need to handle.
Once basic material knowledge is mastered or reawakened, deeper knowledge is reacquired,
provided that the growth process takes place as planned. When a person is in an intensive growing
process, this will happen in ever-increasing depth and scope. If the person has stopped the
movement of the growth process, his "life train," that interruption will prevent the reacquisition of
knowledge he or she possesses in a potential state.
Here you will have to ask inevitably, "Why does anesthesia set in?" Actually, the anesthesia
sets in well before the birth process. In your spiritual reality, where the total entity that you are truly
belongs, you decide upon a reappearance in this dimension. That is when you are deliberately
anesthetized. After all plans for your life on the material plane are thoroughly discussed and
assimilated, you lose consciousness. A person who undergoes an operation goes through a similar
process. In fact the process of anesthetization is copied from the spirit life, remembered and
rediscovered in earthly life. On earth its purpose is to prevent pain during an operation. In the case
of the incarnatory process, the reason is different.
Before the spiritual self takes possession of the human body in the birth process, the entity is
already in a sleeping state, anesthetized and unaware. At birth, there is an awakening to a slight
degree -- slight in relation to its actual state. The limited part of the entity that takes possession of
the infant body finds itself awake to physical sensations and functioning, and certain limited
perception and awareness; none of these can be properly assessed, interpreted, or assimilated. That
comes later. The state of awareness after birth is increased, but is still very limited. Becoming aware
and awake is a gradual process.
The first years -- roughly, the first twenty-two to twenty-five years, although this cannot be
generalized -- are primarily focused on acquiring outer knowledge. Provided the process is
meaningful and organic, the focus should then go to acquiring knowledge that transcends the
physical reality: inner, spiritual knowledge. This can take place first on a psychological level. I
include psychological knowledge when I speak of spiritual knowledge, for it concerns itself with the
laws and processes of the inner self.
Certain highly developed individuals with a capacity for spiritual fulfillment awaken to inner
reality often, though not always, earlier, which can coincide with the outer learning. You have
children on your path who early in life begin to acquire and comprehend inner knowledge. This can
happen because the knowledge is near and deeply anchored into the soul; in previous lifetimes it had
become such an integral part of the entity that it is easier to reawaken than in others without such
previous development, who must still go through processes of growing, searching, and struggling
before the inner knowledge penetrate every particle of the soul. That is, of course, what life is all
about. And all of it is necessary: the groping process, the process of trial and error, searching, often
being confused and not knowing, dealing with the not knowing in a constructive way, finding the
often precarious balance between patience and humility for the grace of knowledge to communicate
itself on the one hand, and serious commitment, endeavor, focused will and healthy aggression on
the other. This process is the key. When the lessons of these endeavors are absorbed by the soul,
the reacquisition of knowledge comes more easily in a future lifetime.
Now I return to the question of why the temporary anesthetizing takes place. Perhaps a part
of the answer has already dawned on you. It is not easy to convey these principles, but I shall do the
best I can.
I recapitulate briefly: The manifest personality does not know what it knows -- whether the
soul has already gone through the process described and thus spiritual knowledge, understanding,
and perception are natural even in the limited state of the human embodiment; whether this has not
yet taken place; or whether a soul continues within this process life after life. Knowledge, to
whatever degree it exists, is blotted out; it is "forgotten." Whatever state of development you may
be in, you start off with a clean slate: you start off knowing nothing, whether you are highly
developed, or whether the process occurs still on a lower scale. So, at first, the knowledge that is in
you is, apparently, not in you. Now, why must that be?
In a recent lecture about the evolutionary process, I discussed how the "mass" of
consciousness spreads, filling the void. As it does so, particles of consciousness lose themselves.
The essential divine consciousness, in its beauty, wisdom, and benign power, functions in a limited
and distorted way. The isolated particles must seek to unite again with the forward-rushing,
spreading movement of the divine state of life that inexorably fills the void. In this process the
separated particles -- which are individual entities -- must find the way back on their own, by dint of
reawakening the divine potentials always present, even in the most separated aspects.
I return to this analogy again and again to help you understand this topic: the part of your
soul that is still separated must forge whatever it has known in a more awake state in order for the
undeveloped part to find its own way.
Let me try to make this clear. Suppose you were consciously to know, now, all that you
deeply know. Then the undeveloped aspects in you would not find, under their own steam, their
innate essence. They would be swept along, as it were, by the already knowing, already developed
aspects. They would therefore always represent an unreliable element. They would essentially,
although not necessarily manifestly, blur the beauty, vitality, creativity, and wisdom of the rest of
your being. They would be carried by the surge of the glory of God-consciousness, but they would
not be totally infused with it. Purification and evolution mean that every smallest aspect of all that is
must be infused with its own essence.
Let us apply this somewhat metaphysical, philosophical, and general explanation to your
present state, your everyday life and struggle on your path. You may then not only understand
better what I am saying, but will personally benefit from it.
On your path you constantly discover aspects of negativity, irrationality, childishness,
selfishness, destructiveness. You know that these aspects flare up, at an early stage of your
development, by themselves, without provocation from outside. These aspects are so strong that
you activate them, initiating negativity, regardless of what the outer situation is. As your
development proceeds, this changes. The negative aspects cease to manifest by themselves. They
need outer provocation. You respond with them to the initiating negativity of others around you.
However, you do live in the world of matter, in which, under even the best of circumstances, life is
not easy. Matter obstructs and frustrates. The very fact of living in this dimension of reality --
which is your production, of course -- is always a challenge. Imagine that you lived under
circumstances so sublime, favorable and bliss-producing, that even the worst in you would not find
occasion to express itself. Then the worst in you would remain dormant, unexposed, and would not
go through its necessary process of purification.
You are often convinced, and partially rightly so, that if others did not do this or that, you
would be fine, you would stay in a state of harmony and bliss. The blurred areas in you would,
however, continue to smolder, because without their manifestation you would not know of their
existence. They need exactly to be triggered off, they need the exposure and provocation. By the
same token, if you were consciously to know all you know, with no provocations from outside, the
undeveloped aspects would not flare up and would not acquire their own ingrained knowing. They
would merely be affected by what the already developed aspects know.
On your path you have experienced that when you successfully work through those blurred
areas, you become absolutely safe, no matter what others do or fail to do, no matter how they react.
You remain essentially whole, essentially unaffected. I do not mean unaffected in the sense of being
remote and without feeling. I mean that the particular negativity in you that you have worked
through no longer exists and therefore cannot flare up when others do wrong by you. You may be
hurt or angry, but in an entirely different way than when your own unresolved faults and flaws are
triggered off by outside circumstances. So you no longer depend on perfection in order not to face
your imperfection. The effect of others' destructiveness will not make you lose your bearing or your
center if your blurred areas have been clarified, purified, cleansed, and eliminated.
The same principle holds in the relationship between your own inner imperfections and your
already purified parts. If you were born knowing all you know, the uncleansed areas would depend
on the cleansed ones and not become whole within themselves; if the wise, knowing, enlightened
aspects of yourself are asleep, that sleep is necessary to allow the blurred areas to struggle through
on their own, with the aid of the knowledge that is essentially in you. Thus out of a lack of
knowledge, knowledge is developed. Out of the darkness light develops. Even in the darkest, most
ignorant part is the essence of knowledge and light. That essence must express from within itself,
not from an aspect outside itself already in possession of wisdom and light. So when the knowledge
and light are brought forth from within your own limitations, purification is thorough, reliable and
real. Then true independence from one's surroundings is being established and thus, true freedom.
Then each particle, each aspect of consciousness has brought forth its own "minuscule Godness," so
to speak. And that is the meaning of the anesthesia with which you enter into life. It is your
struggle for your essential light that gradually and surely diminishes the anesthesia and awakens you
to who you really are.
You also experience on your path that the more courage you muster to face your truth, the
more humility and honesty you bring to bear on your whole inner person, the more alert and awake
you become. This is an inexorable consequence that cannot fail to manifest. Suddenly, or gradually,
you understand and perceive others in a way you never could before. You begin to recognize others'
negativities without being personally affected or disturbed by them. You no longer struggle against
others' negativity in a blind, resentful way, without seeing clearly, only vaguely perceiving as through
a fog. Now you see clearly; you comprehend intuitively the connections that make the transgression
no longer a personal annihilation. You also begin to see and perceive others' beauty in a way that
doesn't make you jealous but that fills you with awe, wonder, and gratitude. You begin to perceive
connections of interactions between yourself and others that eliminate the riddle of life -- and the
riddle of living with others -- and that increases your security because you see and know the
processes in human interaction. As you go on in that way, dealing with your own impurities and
eliminating them, suddenly, or gradually, a new focusing and awareness awaken inside of you. A
knowledge flows into you, apparently from out of nowhere. It is not from the brain. It is not from
the outer knowledge you have acquired in the first two decades of your life, or later. It has nothing
to do with what you have learned. It comes from a different source.
As channels open, a new focusing can set in. You can begin very deliberately to listen into the
inner universe, the place from which all wisdom flows into your outer being. It is a gradual process,
yet it can be sudden in its manifestation. The process sometimes seems to be interrupted, because it
often disappears at the initial stages, so that the experience can appear to have been a dream. The
state in which you hear the inner voice must be fought for in a positive, relaxed sense. It must be
gained and regained, for it is lost over and over again.
The focusing must be done quite deliberately after a certain stage of development and
purification has been reached. The focusing will yield to connections, to listening and "hearing."
Now, the state of consciousness in humanity as a whole, because of mass conditioning, makes such
focusing virtually impossible. Many of those who are developed enough and could succeed don't
even try. Their still unresolved problem may be fear of ridicule and disapproval from the world
around them; they lack courage to establish the inner self as the true center of individual life. The
whole of humanity is conditioned to focus only on certain phenomena, outside and inside, at the
exclusion of other aspects of reality, until only that which is in their focus seems real. A whole
world exists around you which you do not see or experience; it seems like a fantasy when you hear it
discussed. This limitation of perception is the result of a conditioned reflex in focusing, which, in
turn, is the result of anesthesia.
At the beginning of such a path, if you listen into yourself, you probably hear nothing and may
become convinced that there is nothing but emptiness. Or, perhaps, you hear occasionally the voice
of the childish, demanding, negative self. Then, of course, you are convinced that this is your final
reality, which frightens you, and so you avoid facing the negative self even more, until later when,
perhaps, you learn to make room to listen deeper and so can contact levels of unimagined inner
reality.
Question and challenge your negative voice. Confront it. Identify it without being identified
with it. Learn not to allow it to control you, not to act it out -- even as you acknowledge the
existence of this voice of selfishness and meanness. Only as this attitude becomes consistent, as
confrontation between the lower self and the conscious, reasonable, positive ego-self takes place
constantly, will you eventually find your focus on another level of consciousness, which as you will
suddenly discover has always been there.
The voice of God has always spoken to you. It continues to speak to you -- always in a new
way, always adapted exactly to what you need most at any given moment in your life. It is the voice
that you overlooked and kept out of focus so that you were left with the illusion of silence. When I
say "you" I mean, of course, humanity as a whole.
It is impossible to refocus on this beautiful voice by skipping over the confrontation with the
lower self that also always speaks to you. Your ego has to learn to distinguish between them. The
voice of the lower self says, "I want it for me. I do not care about others." That part of you
believes in a mutual exclusivity, in a division of interests between you and others, and that it must
triumph at the expense of others. That part is not connected to the reality that you can have all
without depriving others. That negative voice must be confronted, it must be questioned. Question
the voices of meanness and malice, your stake in seeing others as bad, and not wishing to make
room to even doubt this. Simultaneously see that you -- or a part of you -- doubt the beauty and
trustworthiness of the universe. Question the voice of fear, question its lack of faith, and confront it
sincerely. Then the ongoing voice of God will be heard. And you will recognize it. You will
rediscover that it has always spoken to you, clearly and beautifully. You simply could not hear it
before, because it could not push itself through as long as you deliberately focused away from it.
Focusing is deliberate, both in a positive and in a negative sense. In a positive sense, you had
to be born in anesthesia, having forgotten what you know, to purify totally all aspects of the self.
Had you always heard the divine voice, purification could not have taken place. You would not
have been able to focus on the negative, or deal with it. It would have been quieted down and swept
along. In a sense, focusing away from the divine voice is the anesthesia that your self deliberately
chooses for the incarnatory process. In the negative sense, deliberate focusing away from the divine
voice is due to the power you give to the negative self that rejects any rule but its own. The negative
self does not want to know itself. Yet the divine voice leads the negative self to know itself. That is
the first step for the negative self to purify itself.
Many of my friends on this path can perhaps begin to take deliberate steps toward distinctly
hearing both voices. What is the negative, lower self? It may manifest under a clever disguise. And
what is the divine voice? You can learn to deliberately shift your focus, and you can spend time in
your meditation practicing this differentiation.
For a long time the main goal in our meditation was what I called impressing. In one of the
basic lectures about meditation I spoke about both aspects: impressing, that is, instructing, claiming,
conditioning, re-creating; and expressing: that is, listening, hearing, and receiving. The time has
come when you can safely focus on expressing. You can learn to listen to the whole, wonderful
universe, an ongoing, alive phenomenon. You dwell in this universe and it dwells in you. You can
discover it by focusing on it. You can awaken from your dream state, your anesthesia, my friends.
You can become truly alive and know the aliveness that is in you.
Are there any questions?
QUESTION: Yes. Most of my life I have been listening to my negativity. The negativity has
been conducting me. This negativity is excessive control and contempt. Going from that lower
voice, which has been such a large element in my personality, to trying to listen to the other part,
let's say the sweet part of myself, the child's voice that was squashed, I am afraid that I will then not
deal with the negativity, that I will go overboard and be false.
ANSWER: That is always the danger, the difficulty in the groping. The wishful thinking that
the positive voice is the self's only reality must be taken into consideration, and then self-deception
will no longer present a danger. It is possible to hear the divine voice in many areas, yet the negative
self still exists. The ego's block against recognition of the negative makes it impossible for the divine
to come through. If the ego specifically requests wisdom from the divine part of the self to find the
best way to deal with unpurified aspects, the divine voice will be heard and its wisdom can be
applied to where it is most needed.
On this path you have a number of good tools to prevent you from the danger of overlooking
the undesirable aspects of yourself, even as you begin to awaken the wisdom and splendor of your
divine reality. You learn again and again that one does not eliminate the other; you learn to deal
with apparent contradiction; you learn to keep a record of your disharmonies in your daily review;
you learn the power of repeated impressing in meditation that you do want to be aware of every
aspect your inner path wants you to be aware of at any given phase. By using these tools you can
strengthen your determination to observe the undesirable and get to know the glory of God in you.
Another good tool is to heed your reactions. Assess your feelings. If you are truly in joy and
brightness, free of anxiety, in a happy state, then in that particular moment you truly are in touch
with your divinity. And your inner path does not invite you, at that particular time, to deal with
anything else. Maybe the next day something blurs the picture. Some unhappiness comes to you,
doubts, heaviness, anxiety. It is a sign that you are overlooking something. Your life manifestation
is a reliable gauge, it shows whether you are living in self-deception or truly following your path
according to your plan. Examine your state of fulfillment in your relationships, partnership, work,
pleasures, your inner state of joyousness and peace, and your outer state of fulfillment and
abundance. These are gauges. Where there is unfulfilled longing, there is something you do not
focus on.
The divine voice will not lead you astray. When you lose focus or seem to, notice the ego's
intentionality. The divine voice will not tell you beautiful stories about your already purified state or
speak in generalities. It will point out with love and firmness exactly where you have to go. But
your ego-self must want and ask for this guidance. If you want the truth, open yourself, and humbly
ask: "What do I need to see in myself? Where am I still blind? What can you tell me?" The divine
voice will instruct you in the most marvelous way. Nothing can strengthen your faith in the truth of
God's existence more than this connection with God. Then you create a unification. The teaching
you receive from within will be a strengthening and unifying experience. Listening to the beautiful
voice will not get you away from the unpurified part; it will bring both parts together, the negative
energy transforming itself to become part of the Godself. The manifestation will be exactly a result
of your intention. If you want to use the voice of beauty in order not to deal with the ugliness, you
will hear only beauty. You will hear what your ego-consciousness is ready to receive. The divine
voice cannot manifest in any other way.
QUESTION: I have difficulties in interpreting the messages that I receive and in believing in
them. I receive messages, but only later do I realize that I did.
ANSWER: That is the learning process I spoke about. By experience, by trial and error you
can learn to understand the laws. There are certain rules. Those who have gone through the
process extensively can be helpful, as, for example, the instrument through whom I manifest.
However, even that is limited. For every person is different, has different leanings, different weak
points of wishful thinking. And you will be tested as to the extent to which you have to question
yourself and learn. The most valuable treasure a human being can possess -- the connection with
the divine voice -- cannot be handed out ready-made. It must be earned through the groping
process. You must learn to question yourself about the extent to which wishful thinking may be
coloring the reception. Beware also of the opposite danger: To what extent does fear of wishful
thinking color the reception and obstruct the truth that would only be too welcome? If the voice
says something so desirable that you do not dare believe it, it may still be true. You must test it out
and explore your inner self. Do you sense any desire to cheat, or to avoid? Only deep, inner
experience will teach you and give you security. Try again and again. Listen, give it attention, take it
seriously. Also, do not be gullible. Realize that tests must come for you to learn what you need to
learn.
If you discover the voice only after the fact, that, too, is all right. It is then up to you to
rethink the way that you heard it. You can meditate for enlightenment, slowly you will learn the
process. If there were hard-and-fast rules, that security would not come. It can come only through
the process of groping, learning, making mistakes. Eventually the inner knowing will come. You
will have the feeling deep in your center: it will feel right and good and you will know that this is it;
you will learn to trust it.
Now, my dearest friends, I bless all of you. Divine love and wisdom are here in abundance.
You who work on this path create so much blessing for yourself, so much light. More and more
you will awaken from your sleep, so that you will never have to fall asleep again. Rest will not impair
the awareness of a joyous, peaceful, exciting, blissful universe in which you lie and which lives in
you. You are blessed.