The Text - Section 41
41. IMAGES: THE DAMAGE THEY DO
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. The fear and shame are often hidden away, so that the personality is not even aware of them
any more and just suffers vaguely in a continuous, gnawing pain. How sad it is to observe this,
particularly because it is unnecessary. It is but a phantom, my friends. The fear and shame you are
so busily hiding have no reality, and yet spoil the life you could enjoy and could use for building up
your spiritual strength.
I am continuing this series about the images in the human soul, for there is no person who
does not have them. Such inner impressions are formed in young years, and from those impressions
wrong conclusions were drawn. These very images are responsible for your suffering, for the
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 such as intellectual knowledge, or by outer events,
whereby it cannot possibly be achieved. The only way you can reach the 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 have truly gained real independence. So do not seek this liberation outwardly. It is of no
avail. If you have not yet found and dissolved your images you are ensnarled by them. You are
constantly reenacting the drama of your own errors and wrong conclusions. You are caught in them
unawares, and you repeat and repeat and repeat throughout your life, and, as I said, often through
many lifetimes, what your own wrong conclusions are leading you to and actually drawing toward
you.
I cannot emphasize strongly enough for all my friends who have not yet really started on this
search that it is worth while. This self-search is the only thing in life that matters and that will bring
relief. I would like to advise all those who have not yet had such an experience to talk to those
friends of mine who have already had some success in their endeavors, and whom I congratulate.
For nothing can prove better what this search is all about than the experience of 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.
Those who search for their images cannot help but go through confusions and upheavals for a while
and encounter reluctance and resistance. But these are the very causes you have planted within
yourself, and you cannot eliminate such points of suffering unless you go through them and
understand their real meaning. You need to recognize the hidden significance of your erroneous
defense mechanisms, no matter how much you may have consciously rationalized them. 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 find at the root 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 I have said this often, but you will find it necessary to apply 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, and that is why you feel insecure. And that is also why you
doubt others. 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 you let it come out into the open, so that you can experience the 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 yourself because it makes sense. It is absolutely necessary that you
discover 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 rather distrust others, and to justify your distrust with
rationally well-founded arguments. But once you have overcome the resistance for the sake of truth,
in the spirit of the real truth-seeker by 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 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 will discuss a few more
concerning images and the search for them. Often you do not understand what made you retain an
impression upon which you formed a wrong conclusion. Your mind has grown up, has changed by
what you have learned from your surroundings and from life. Yet, while your image is alive, you
have not changed.
At one time in your childhood you had a shock. When you think of a shock, you think of a
sudden experience with a very strong and unexpected impact, like an accident. 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 the realization dawns upon the child that this is not so, it comes as a shock,
although the realization may often come by a series of events until the new discovery makes its
lasting impression. When a child finds out that what it used to believe about its parents, or the
world as such, is not true, it loses its security. It is frightened. The child does not like what it finds
and therefore will push this unpleasant knowledge into the unconscious and, because it feels guilty,
will also build defenses against what it considers a threat.
Whether it happened suddenly or in a slow realization, this threat is the shock referred to.
You all know that shock causes numbness. Your body, as well as your nerves and your mind,
become numb, even to the extent that you lose consciousness temporarily or have other symptoms.
Thus the child will experience a shock because parents, the world, or life, are not the way the child
thought them to be. Although the impression that created the shock may or may not be objectively
correct, still, the deduction the child is capable of making must be wrong. Because children tend to
generalize, they disregard all other alternatives and project their conclusions onto all other situations.
A child's parents are its world, its universe, therefore what the child 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 derive, first, from the generalization. The reality is that 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. Second, the defense mechanism the child chooses with a limited
understanding of the world is wrong as such; it is even more so when applied to people and
situations other than those in the early surroundings. This, my friends, is the way images are created.
But you will not remember offhand 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 its lack of rational logic, and also because you were ashamed that your parents were not what you
thought they should be.
In your child's mind you assumed that your case was singular. Everyone else had perfect
parents, perfect home conditions, and only you alone experienced this shocking uniqueness that had
to be hidden from everyone, even from yourself, as well as, of course, from your parents or others
close to you. The shame arose from the mistaken idea that your case was unique, and the whole
thought and emotional process had to be hidden away because of the shame. When these processes
remain hidden, part of your personality cannot grow up with the rest of your being. It could not
change and adjust and learn. For only what is out in the light can grow. If a plant is left in the earth
with its roots cut off, it cannot grow. It is the same with every emotional current or tendency.
Therefore you should not be surprised when you discover that your image-conclusions conform not
at all to your otherwise grown-up intelligence.
The same process exists with animals. A dog, for example, may hear the same kind of noise
every time before he receives food. After some time he will respond instantly, knowing that food is
now coming. When he hears the noise, he will come to the place automatically. The dog has thus
formed an image, in this case not from a shock but from repeated impressions, and drew a
conclusion. Or, to use a different example: One dog is burned by a fire and gets hurt. Whenever
he sees fire afterward, he will be frightened, particularly if he has been burned not only once, but
several times. The image has formed that fire hurts, the conclusion made that all fire hurts.
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 that the same procedure works even with animals. Otherwise 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 what feels
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. While your image lives,
you continue the childish procedure because in that respect your mind remains childish, regardless
of how much the rest of your personality has improved and learned. Your developed personality is
capable of judging maturely on the intellectual level, and, in some instances where no image-currents
obstruct your perception, even emotionally. But where this slow or sudden shock-impression has
affected the soul, one does not assimilate the experience consciously, and therefore one's mind
remains childish. It remains in the state in which it was when the image-conclusions were formed
and pushed into the unconscious.
In many of my lectures, a long time before we started to discuss the images, I mentioned the
term "emotional maturity." Now you will understand better how 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 had made, so long as the image is not lifted
into consciousness. Thus is it possible that you discover conclusions and faulty reasoning 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 you, the child that has not assimilated what you otherwise learned. That is why
images cannot be found unless one relives emotionally one's childhood and penetrates the irrational
layers of consciousness. Merely remembering is not enough. Without some procedure to make this
possible, it is out of the question to find your images. That is why I have suggested certain
techniques. You will find that your image-conclusions are logical in their own limited way. You
may even be surprised about the reasoning faculty, faulty as it may be, that exists in your
unconscious. It is the reasoning of the child living in you. This is the way you reasoned when you
were perhaps ten years old or less.
The tragic thing about the images is that they assume power. They will make you see and
notice only certain things, connected with your image-conclusion, and 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, creating
emotional magnetic fields that draw events, people, and experiences toward you.
The more unconscious the emotions and the greater 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. 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 this. The rigidity, the unyielding nature of
the images generates the following sequence of events: You want life to move according to your
desires. When things do not happen as you wish, you kick and scream inside, like the baby you still
are in that part of your being. This immaturity takes over wherever your image is affected. Mature
beings know they can control life only by going with it, by not demanding that life follow their
wishes, but following life by adjusting to it. Where you have your image, you do not adjust. You
demand, and you throw a temper-tantrum inside when your demands are not met. These demands
are made on very faulty premises. Therefore, you may get what you ask for, but you also get what is
part of your unconscious demand. Being unconscious, you did not know of it.
You want a certain thing, a way of life -- whatever it may be -- for its advantages, but you
ignore -- as the child ignored -- that every advantage has a disadvantage. So when, with your
insistent inner crying and demanding, you get the supposed advantage, you also get its disadvantage.
You do not like the disadvantage you unconsciously asked for, and 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 only as long as you do
not go through the experience of image-finding. Once you get started, you will be able to use a lot
of what I taught you constructively. It will give you a deeper, profounder understanding and will
help you a step further.
As I have said before, everyone who is getting close to nearing an image-recognition feels a
profound shame. You do not feel shame 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. When
you formed this image, the reasoning that makes you ashamed now was in your childhood in accord
with your capacity to reason and think. Only relatively is it silly. And you, intelligent human being
that you are, find it difficult to reconcile yourself to the fact that such a "silly" reaction actually lives
in you. You are now at the point when you recognize that this has been your faulty deduction, your
wrong conclusion for years and years. Now you are quite embarrassed that this was part of your
mind, below your consciousness, but still part of your mind, your reaction. It will make it easier for
you to accept this if you consider that in this respect you remained a child because you left the entire
reasoning process in the darkness of your unconscious. It will help also to realize that there is no
one among all those you know who does not have his or her own images, and similar incongruities.
If you conversed with a four to ten-year old child, you would not be surprised at such reasoning.
Realize that and you will overcome your embarrassment. Consider that you are not the only one.
However, most people do not realize this and keep their images covered. Therefore you certainly
have a great advantage through self-awareness, knowing your own "stupidities," while others do not
know theirs. Yes, my friends, this sounds strong, but in the infant part of your soul, as compared
with your conscious mind, you will discover childish stupidities.
When you first search for your images, you will probably be more concerned with your inner
conflicts and with the wrongness of the conclusions as such. You will review your reactions. You
will reexperience the wrong emotions and compare them, in theory, with the right principles. And
that is as it should be. But after you have thoroughly understood all this, much more work has to be
done. You have to find out not only in what respect you have reenacted your images, going from
one pattern to another, but you also should begin to evaluate everything that happened in your life;
things that are apparently not at all your doing. They just happened from the "outside." When you
think of some of your life-experiences, asking "What could I possibly have had to do with that? I
did not lift a finger to make it happen, it just came to me," your everyday logic will agree. Yet, after
you have found your images, you will see that every event, regardless of how out of your control it
seemed, was called forth by yourself.
At the first moment of discovery this may be shocking, but not necessarily. The first glimmer
of recognition is often already a relief. Even if at the first moment the discovery seems
preposterous and incredible, relief must always follow, for then you can clearly see the connection
between your image and a happening that appeared to be random or coincidental. The moment you
understand how you have directed your life, how you have caused events of which you seemed the
victim, 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 acknowledgement of the principle and the truth of self-
responsibility as demonstrated in yourself. 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 if you had firm ground under your feet for the
first time in your life.
My dear friends, perhaps you have a few questions in connection with this subject, before we
turn to other questions.
QUESTION: How do images and complexes combine?
ANSWER: A complex is a symptom, or an outcome of an image. A complex in its manifest
form is a camouflage of its real content. 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 mentioned at the beginning of this lecture, that
he knows he is not true to himself, that he wants to be more than he is. A complex, of course, is
connected to an image. It is a part of it. It is a message that there is an image. You can easily
recognize a complex, in others as in yourself.
The image in your soul appears to us like a hardened form. The healthy soul where there is no
image shows itself to us as a glowing form, and, like the universe, is 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 multicolored 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. Therefore 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 it 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 which is on the surface. It comes out of the image. Can you visualize what I am
trying to explain?
Perhaps one of my dear friends here who is an artist will be inspired to draw such an image
form and around it, outside the image, paint the many-colored cosmic forces in beautiful,
harmonious motion, and also show how they stagnate and congest where the hardened image exists.
Out of the image come sharp and twisted forces, and these would be the complexes.
QUESTION: You say images are a general fact, 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. From self-will 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 when it is 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 you reap it now. That may be the explanation of a one-time
event that may not have anything to do with an image, in the exact sense. But, my friends, even in
cases like that you will still find the root in your image. Because if a karma has not been paid off it
must mean that the root is still within the self. If you had paid off the karma, you would not have
the root anymore. You may find in yourself the same faults and trends that in a former life caused
you to commit a graver action, one that you would not longer be capable of committing 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 make a vicious circle?
ANSWER: Of course. If you will reread 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 are left closer to the surface in
the fluidal body. And according to these problems, parents, country, and life-circumstances are
chosen, so that you can become aware of the image and challenge 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,
so as to bring out your problems for the purpose of your development and purification. You cannot
purify, you cannot eliminate a problem or a fault if you do not first become aware of it. To become
aware of it, something unpleasant must happen, otherwise you would never pay any attention to
your inner disharmonies. Karma, as you all know, is nothing else but cause and effect. The same
law works also within one lifespan. If in this present life you find your images and wrong
conclusions, you will understand, see and experience in your own person the truth of the law of
cause and effect clearly demonstrated. Thus you will know how karma works. It is the same
principle, only more extended in time, over a span of several incarnations.
QUESTION: If, for instance, somebody 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. It is only a
question of degree.
It does not make any difference if deviation from law and truth occurs out of ignorance and
error or is committed willfully. The principle remains the same. But when a person deviates from
divine law consciously, because his spiritual development is still so low, an image will not result. 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. An inner violation in the
emotions, remaining hidden in the unconscious, will create an image and will have a different effect.
Here 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 identical.
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 without
doing so, suppressing his desires, keeping them, perhaps, 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 is committed and every punishment for it is due to an image. The image
comes from unconscious wrong reasonings and factors. It contains desires and conclusions that
more primitive people act out in consciousness.
QUESTION: What happens in a case like the death of the many children in Chicago who
burned in a fire. When 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 cases, 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, it would not have gone 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 that entities have their own free will and choice to a large degree.
Others may prefer to do it more slowly. Whether an occurrence in a state of shock, for a child or a
grown spirit, makes sense or not, the experience will be evaluated and assimilated afterward 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 he has debts to pay, he has much to learn. He may be given the choice to
remain in the spirit world for two to three hundred years, by your earth time measurement. In this
period, existence cannot be very pleasant for him. The sphere he has created for himself with his
thought forms, the forms of his emotions, as well as with his deeds is a dark and dismal one.
Afterward, an incarnation is waiting for him where certain possibilities exist, but they are again
limited, 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 ten,
fifteen, twenty 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 alternatives you have and then start on a cleaner slate for
your further development? And many a spirit desires 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 as 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 slaughter 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 case.
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 like this than they normally would have had 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, you all
went through periods of cruelty, some ten incarnations ago, some even less. If great disasters and
accidents happen in which many people are killed, you can be sure that this is a measure 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 so much on the surface that
you could very easily discover it. In the process of the image search, you will probably discover little
reactions where the process of the mind operates on the same principle, only there 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, it must have karmic origins, but to think
about it, what it may have been in a former life, will be to no avail, it will not lead you anywhere.
But with the help of 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 for your development, 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 the formation of
images in a child?
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 accessible. 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 with which they can observe the reactions of the child. That would be the ideal
case, but as yet it happens very rarely.
QUESTION: Is there a test by which one can know what is one's image?
ANSWER: There is no test necessary, because when you have found your image, you will
know to the core of your being that it is that way. The equation will come out right, in whatever
way you look at it. It must come out even. But it may happen that an image-consciousness is
approaching and yet the personality is so reluctant and so full of resistance that he or she cannot see
it. 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! All of a sudden your whole life will 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 piece falling in 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, 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.
ANSWER: 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 unconscious has been explored and become conscious, the clearer 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 will 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 sake of God, then He may give it back to you a
hundredfold when the time is ripe.
If you learn to put aside your self-will and can say, and mean it: "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. Goodwill alone is not enough protection. Ignorance of
many factors can bring a great deal of trouble and untruth. 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 save them for next
time.
One more word, before I retire, to 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 is
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!