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Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 204 (1996 Edition)
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Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 204
1996 Edition
October 20, 1972

WHAT IS THE PATH?

Greetings and welcome, my friends.  Blessings for every one of you.  In this lecture I would like to discuss what this path is and what it is not. 

First, I should like to say that this path is not new:  it has existed in many different forms for as long as human beings have lived on this earth.  The forms and the ways must change as humanity evolves, but the fundamental path remains the same.

Before I begin to explain what this path is, I want to ask you, my friends, do not be concerned with the phenomenon of this communication as such.  The only thing important to understand at the beginning of such a venture is that there are levels of reality which you have not yet explored and experienced and about which you can only theorize at best.  Theory is not the same as experience, and letting it go at that for the moment will be so much better than trying to force a definitive conclusion. Do remember that this voice does not express the conscious mind of the human instrument through whom I speak.  Furthermore, take into consideration that every human personality has a depth of which he or she may as yet be unaware.  At this depth, everybody possesses the means to transcend the narrow confines of his or her own personality, and receive access to other realms and to entities endowed with a wider and deeper knowing.

This brings us to the whole question of what this path is.  Let us first state what it is not. 

This pathwork is not psychotherapy, although aspects of it must necessarily deal with areas psychotherapy also deals with.  In the framework of the pathwork, the psychological approach is only a side issue, a way of getting through obstructions. It is essential to deal with confusions, inner misconceptions, misunderstandings, destructive attitudes, alienating defenses, negative emotions, and 

paralyzed feelings, all of which psychotherapy also attempts to do and even posits as its ultimate goal.  In contrast, the pathwork enters its most important phase only after this first stage is over.  The second and most important phase consists of learning how to activate the greater consciousness dwelling within every human soul.

Often the second phase overlaps with the first phase that is concerned with overcoming the obstructions because the second phase of the pathwork is helpful and even essential for truly executing the first.  The first part of the work cannot truly be successful unless contact with the spiritual self is regularly cultivated and used.  However, when and how this may be done varies greatly and is dependent on the personality and on the predisposition, prejudices, and blocks of the individual entering this path.  The sooner you can use, explore, and activate the inexhaustible fountain of strength and inspiration within, the easier and faster will you deal with the obstructions.  It is thus quite clear in what way this path differs from psychotherapy, although some of the emphases and, at times, even the methods may be similar.

Nor is this path a spiritual practice that aims a priori at reaching higher spiritual consciousness.  There are many methods and practices which attempt realization of the spiritual self.  Though using valid methods to force-fully reach this goal, many spiritual disciplines do not pay sufficient attention to those areas of the ego self which are steeped in negativity and destructiveness.  Any success thus achieved is always short-lived and really an illusion, even though some of the experiences may be genuine enough.  But a spiritual state reached in such a one-sided way is not solid and cannot be maintained unless the total personality is included.  Since human beings shy away from accepting and dealing with certain parts of themselves, they often seek refuge in paths which promise that one can avoid facing these problematic inner areas.  If you think of a spiritual path as the practice of meditation for its own sake, or for the sake of reaching blissful cosmic experiences and consciousness, then this path is not your way.  

The temptation to use spiritual practices to grab happiness and fulfillment, and to avoid already existing negativities, confusions and pain, is great.  But this attitude defeats the purpose; it comes from and leads to further illusions.  One illusion is that anything that exists in you can be avoided.  Another illusion is the belief that what is in you needs to be feared and denied.  No matter how destructive it is, any inner aspect of you can be transformed.  Only when you avoid what is in you does 

your illusion truly become detrimental to you and others.

Let me recapitulate what I have said so far.  This path is neither psychotherapy, nor a spiritual path in the usual sense of the word:  and, at the same time, it is both.  It will be helpful if you remember the following three points as you consider the possibility of entering into this particular pathwork.

    First, the phenomenon of this transmission, whether you are interested in it, believe in it or not, should be considered of secondary importance.  Keep your mind open for many possibilities which you do not yet understand.  Understanding and deep enlightenment will come as you go deeper into your own depths and experience your inner wealth and connectedness with the universe.

Second, by entering this pathwork, you do not enter therapy. You embark on a voyage leading you into the new territory of your inner universe.  Whether you have had therapy -- satisfactory and successful or not -- or whether you are deeply troubled and need help in order to live your life in a fulfilling way, you will still need for quite a while to pay attention mainly to those areas within yourself which are negative, destructive, and in error.  You may not like to do so, but if you truly wish to find your real self, that core of your being from which all good stems, this focus is necessary. 

"How long will it take?" you may ask.  The time is indicated by your own state of mind or feeling and by your outer life manifestation.  When your inner negativities are overcome, this state will be expressed in your life:  there will be no doubt.  Your path will organically bring you into other emphases and concerns.  The aim of this path is not to cure you of an emotional or mental illness, although it does this very well and it is bound to do so if you do the work.  But you should not enter this path for that purpose.

Third, do not enter this path if you expect that it will make you forget your sadness and pain or let you gloss over those aspects of your personality you like least or even dislike outright.  Your dislike may not be "neurotic."  You may be quite right to dislike these aspects, but you are not right in believing yourself hopelessly bad because of them.  So this path must teach you to face whatever is in you, for only when you do this can you truly love yourself.  Only then can you find your essence and true Godself.  But if you wish to attempt to find your essence but under the 

guise of following your spiritual inclinations refuse to face whatever is in you, this is not the path for you.

Now, let us go into a fuller description of what this path entails.  Every human being senses an inner longing that goes deeper than the longings for emotional and creative fulfillment, although these are, of course, part of the deeper and more essential desire.  Perhaps the most accurate "translation" of this longing would be a feeling or sensing that another, more fulfilling state of consciousness and a larger capacity to experience life must exist.   

As you translate this longing into conscious terms, you may become involved in some confusion and contradiction.  Confusions and apparent contradictions come from the dualistic consciousness permeating the state the human mind is in at this time.  The dualism is always present.  For humans perceive reality in terms of either/or, good or bad, right or wrong, black or white.  This way of perceiving life is at best only half true.  In this way one can only perceive fragments of reality; the full truth can never be found in the dualistic way.  Truth always comprises more than what the dualistic way of seeing reality can grasp.

One confusion might be: "Am I longing for something unreal?  Would it be perhaps more realistic and more mature to give up this longing and accept that life is just this flat, dismal, gray place?  Do we not hear over and over that acceptance is necessary in order to be at peace with oneself and life?  Therefore I should really abandon this longing."

The way out of your confusion can only be found when you take a step beyond the dualism implicit in this dilemma.  It is true that you must accept your present state.  It is true that life, as it manifests, cannot be perfect.  Yet this fact is not what truly makes you unhappy, rather it is your demand that life should be perfect and be handed to you in its perfection.  If you go deeply enough, you will inevitably discover that there is a part of you which denies pain and frustration; a place where you are angry and spiteful because there is no loving authority present who will eliminate these undesirable experiences for you.  Thus it is true that your longing for this utopian kind of happier state is unrealistic and should be abandoned.

But does this truly mean that the longing per se stems from immature, greedy, or neurotic attitudes?  No, my friends, it does not.  There is an inner voice telling you there is much, much more to your life and yourself than you are capable of experiencing at this time.  How then can 

we find clarity about what is real and what is false about your deepest longing?

The desire is false when your personality wishes love and fulfillment, perfection and happiness, or pleasure and creative expansion without paying the price of strictest self-confrontation.  It is false when you do not assume the responsibility for your present state, or the state you long for.  For example, if you feel sorry for yourself because of your unfulfilled life, and if you in any way blame others for your present state, no matter how wrong those others may be, whether your parents, your peers, your associates, or life as a whole, then you do not assume responsibility.  If this is the case, then in some way you also wish to receive the new and better state as a reward.  You may try to be a good little obedient follower of a powerful authority figure in order to be rewarded.  Since the reward in reality can never come from the outside, no matter what you do, you must feel disappointed, resentful, cheated, and angry and you will resort again and again to your old, destructive patterns that are in fact responsible for the state that creates your unfulfilled longing.

The longing is realistic when you start from the premise that the clue to fulfillment must lie in you; when you wish to find the attitudes in you that prevent you from experiencing life in a fulfilled and meaningful way; when you interpret the longing as a message from the core of your inner being, sending you on a path that helps you to find your real self.

However, when the inner message of longing is misinterpreted by the negative, greedy, ungiving and demanding personality, confusion sets in.  The longing is then put into channels of unrealizable fantasies of magic.  You believe fulfillment is supposed to be given to you, rather than attained by you through the courage and honesty of looking at yourself as you now are, even at areas you would rather avoid.  If a life situation is painful and you defend with rage, complaints, and other defenses against cleanly experiencing this pain, you are not in truth about your present state.  But if you just let the pain be and feel it without playing games like, "it will annihilate me," or "it will last forever," the experience will release powerful creative energies to increasingly work for you in your life and open the channels to your spiritual self.  Feeling the pain will also yield a deeper, fuller, and wiser understanding of the connections between cause and effect.  For instance, you will see how you attracted this particular pain.  Such insight may not come immediately, for the more you force it, the more it will elude you.  But it will come if you stop the 

inner fighting and resisting.

Do not abandon the longing per se.  Take it seriously.  In fact, cultivate it and learn to understand it, so that you will follow its message and take the inner path to your core; go through  that part which you want to avoid, but which is the real culprit, solely responsible for your less than fulfilled and joyful state.

Do not abandon the longing that comes from the sense that your life could be much more, that you could live without painful tortured confusions and function on a level of inner resilience, contentment, and security.  It is a state of experiencing and expressing deep feelings and blissful pleasure, where you are capable of meeting life without fear because you no longer fear yourself.  You will, therefore, find life, even its problems, a joyful challenge.  If your inner problems can become a challenge that gives spice to your life, the ensuing peace will be all the more sweet.  The tackling of these problems will give you a sense of your own strength, resourcefulness, and creative ability.  You will feel the spiritual self flowing through your veins, in your thoughts, in your vision and your perceptions, so that decisions will be made from the center of your being.  When you live this way, occasional outer problems are the salt of your life and become almost pleasurable.  But the times of outer problems will become less frequent, and peaceful, joyous, creative living will become the norm.

Right now, the saddest part of your longing is that deep inside you know how your own body and soul are not even capable of accepting and sustaining intense pleasure at this time.  Pleasure exists on all levels:  spiritual, physical, emotional, and mental.  However, spiritual pleasure, separated from the levels of everyday functioning, is an illusion, because true spiritual bliss encompasses the total personality.  The personality must therefore learn to endure a state of bliss.  This it cannot do unless it learns to endure whatever is locked inside the psyche now:  pain, meanness, malice, hate, suffering, guilt, fear, terror.  All these must be transcended.  Then, and then only, can the human personality function in a blissful state.  Your longing to experience more pleasure is a message for you to embark on a road that affords you the possibility of being in bliss.

The state of existence I described need not be given up as unrealistic or wishful thinking.  It need not be given up because you will earn it and make it your own by going through whatever in you prevents you from experiencing it.  This state already exists as a dormant potential within you.  It is not something that can be given to you by others, nor 

is it something that you can acquire through learning or effort.  It unfolds organically as a byproduct of your going through the dark spots within you.

Make no mistake:  this is not an easy path.  But the difficulty is not a fixed reality, a given fact, an immutable condition.  The difficulty exists only to the degree the personality has a stake in avoiding aspects of the self.  To the degree the commitment is made to be in truth with the self,  to face every particle of the self, the difficulty vanishes.  And what first seemed a difficulty now begins to become a challenge, an exciting journey, and a process that makes life so intensely real and wholesome, so secure and fulfilling, that you would not want to give it up for anything.  In other words, the difficulty exists exclusively by dint of a false belief:  the belief that facing one area of the self may imply a verdict about the whole self that cannot be tolerated and accepted.  For example, you might conclude that if a certain negative attitude is true, then all of the self is bad.  Such a belief makes facing the self  difficult or even impossible.  Hence it is necessary to ferret out the underlying beliefs behind any strong resistance or revulsion to go into the dark areas of the self.

This path demands from an individual that which most people are least willing to give:  truthfulness with the self, exposure of what exists now, elimination of masks and pretenses, and the experience of one's naked vulnerability.  It is a tall order, and yet it is the only real way that leads to genuine peace and wholeness.  Once the investment in pretense and hiding is given up, it is no longer a tall order but rather an organic and natural process. 

So this path is simultaneously the most difficult and the easiest.  It merely depends from what point of view you look at it and choose to experience it.  The difficulty can be measured in terms of your truthfulness with yourself.  To the degree you want to be in truth, the path will appear neither too difficult, nor will it appear as if it dealt, in the words of some of its critics, "too much with the negative side of life and self."  For the negative is the positive, in essence.  Negative and positive are not two aspects of energy and consciousness:  they are one and the same.  Whatever particles of energy and consciousness in your self have turned negative must be reconverted into their original positive way of being.  This cannot be accomplished without fully taking responsibility for the negativity in you.

The reluctance to be truthful with oneself applies to even the most honest people.  A person may be noted for his or her honesty, truthfulness, and integrity on one level, 

yet there can be deeper levels where this is not so at all.  This path leads into the as yet concealed more subtle levels which are difficult to pinpoint but certainly ascertainable.

How can you gauge whether or not this untruthfulness on a deeper level exists in you?  It is really extremely simple. There is an infallible key which, if you choose to use it, will give you faultless answers.  This key is:  how do you feel about yourself and about your life?  How meaningful, fulfilled, and rich is your life?  Do you feel secure with others?  Do you feel comfortable about your most intimate self in the presence of others, or at least with certain people with whom you have a goal in common?  How much joy are you capable of feeling, giving, and receiving?  Are you plagued with resentments, anxiety, and tension, or with loneliness and a sense of isolation?  Do you need a lot of overactivity in order to alleviate anxiety?  Actually, the fact that you do not consciously feel anxious by no means proves that you are without anxiety.  Many start out on the path without awareness of their anxiety, but they feel dead, numb, listless, and paralyzed.  This may be a sign that the anxiety was overcome through an artificial deadening process.  This path cannot skip the step of making you first feel your anxiety and then feel whatever the anxiety hides.  Only then can real aliveness come.

Exhilaration, enthusiasm, joyousness, and the unique blend of excitement and peace which connotes spiritual wholeness are a result of inner truthfulness.  When these states are absent, then truthfulness must be absent.  It is as simple as that, my friends.

If you demand of your life, and therefore of any path you contemplate entering, to bypass feeling your anxiety and your pain, to avoid owning up to your dishonesties, your cheating, your spitefulness, your games, and your more or less subtle pretenses, then it might be better for you not to start on this path.  But if you expect a real effort and are prepared to embark on the journey into yourself to find, acknowledge, and bring out whatever is in you, if you summon all your inner truthfulness and commitment for the journey, if you find the courage and humility not to appear other than you are even in your own eyes, then you have indeed every right to expect that this path will help you realize your full life, and fulfill your longing in every conceivable way.  This is a realistic hope.  You will increasingly know it to be so.

Little by little you will begin to function from your innermost center, which is a very different experience from 

functioning from your periphery.  You are now so accustomed to the latter that you cannot even imagine how else it could be.  Now you are constantly dependent on what happens around you.  You depend on appreciation and approval from others, on being loved, and on being successful in terms of the outside world.  Whether you are aware of it or not, you inwardly strive to make sure you will obtain all this so as to have peace and fulfillment.

When you function from your center, security and joy spring from a deep well within you.  This does not by any means imply that when this happens you are condemned to live without approval, appreciation, love or success.  This is another dualistic misunderstanding where you think, "Either I experience my center and then must forfeit all love and appreciation from others and be alone, or I must forfeit my inner self because I cannot contemplate such a lonely life."  In reality, when you function from the liberated center of your innermost self, you attract all the abundance of life to you, but you do not depend on it.  It enriches you and is a fulfillment of a legitimate need, but it is not the substance of life.  The substance is within.

In the healthy life of every human being there must be exchange, intimacy, communication, sharing, mutual love, mutual pleasure, and the giving as well as the receiving of warmth and openness.  Also, every human being needs in healthy proportion recognition of what he or she does.  But there is an enormous difference between wanting this recognition in a healthy way and depending on outside recognition to such an extent that you are unable to do without it at all times.  In the latter case, the self begins to sacrifice its integrity in tragic ways that cost much too much.  Then the real self is betrayed and the seeking of recognition defeats itself.  This path is geared to finding this center, this deep inner spiritual reality, and not some illusory religious escape.  Quite the contrary, this path is immensely pragmatic, for the true spiritual life is never in contradiction to practical life on earth.  There must be a harmony between these two aspects of the whole.  Forsaking everyday living is not true spirituality.  In most cases, it is merely another kind of escape.  For many it is easier to sacrifice something and chastise themselves than to face and deal with their dark aspects.  The guilt for the latter is constantly atoned for by self-deprivations which are supposedly doorways to heaven.  Yet this guilt cannot be wiped out unless the personality deals directly with the darkness within.  Then sacrifice and deprivation become not only unnecessary but even contradictory to true spiritual unfoldment.  The universe is abundant in its joys, 

pleasures and bliss:  human beings are supposed to experience them, not forsake them.  No amount of forsaking will wipe out the guilt for avoiding purification of the soul.

I would like to mention another specific feature of the inner obstructions that must be met so they can be transcended.  It is necessary to first understand that all thoughts and feelings are powerful agents of creative energy, regardless of whether the thoughts are true and wise or false and limited. Likewise, whether the feelings are loving or hateful, angry or benign, fearful or peaceful, their energy must create according to their nature.  Thoughts and opinions create feelings, and both of them together create attitudes, behaviors, and emanations which in turn create the life circumstances.  These sequences must be connected, understood, and fully recognized.  This is an essential aspect of the pathwork.

Your fear of your negative feelings is unjustified.  The feelings in themselves are not terrible or unbearable.  However, your beliefs and attitudes can make them so.  This process is constantly being verified by those who follow this path, because they find that the deepest pain is a revivifying experience.  It releases contracted energy and paralyzed creativity.  It enables people to feel pleasure to the degree they are willing to feel pain.

The same applies to fear.  To experience fear in itself is not devastating:  once experienced, the fear instantly becomes a tunnel through which you travel, not letting go of the feeling of fear until it carries you to a deeper level of reality.  The fear is a denial of other feelings. When the original feeling is being accepted and experienced, the knot dissolves.  Thus, it is never the feeling itself that is unbearable.  However, your attitude to it may make it so.

Fear of your feelings makes you cut them off.  Thus you cut yourself off from life.  Your spiritual center cannot evolve and manifest and unify with your ego self unless you learn to fully embrace all your feelings, allow yourself to be carried by them, and learn to take responsibility for them.  If you make others responsible for your feelings, you will be in a bind because you will either deny them or act them out destructively against others.  Neither one of these two alternatives is desirable or can bring any solution.

Your spiritual self cannot be freed unless you learn to feel all your feelings, unless you learn to accept every part of your being no matter how destructive it may be right now.  No matter how negative, mean, vain, or egotistical 

you may find a corner of yourself to be -- contrary to other more developed aspects of your personality -- it is absolutely necessary for every aspect of your being to be accepted and dealt with.  No aspect should be left out or covered over in the wishful hope that it would no longer matter and would somehow just go away.  It does matter, my friends.  Nothing that exists in you is powerless.  No matter how hidden a dark aspect might be, it creates life conditions that you must deplore.  This is one reason why you must learn to accept the negatively creating aspects in you.  Another reason is that no matter how destructive, cruel, and bad it may be, every aspect of energy and consciousness is in its original essence both beautiful and positive.  The distortions must be reconverted into their original essence.  Energy and consciousness can become creative again in a positive way only when the light of cognizance and positive intentionality are brought to bear on them.  Unless you do this, you cannot come into your creative core.

This is basically the pathwork.  This path is therefore difficult only because people with their vanity have false ideas of how they should already be.  The only difficulty is your illusion about how you are and how you should be, and your illusion that you could not and must not have certain problems and attitudes.  Unless you give up these illusions and take stock of whatever is in you, you must remain alienated from your own spiritual essence.  That essence is constantly self-renewing; it is constantly conciliating apparently insoluble conflicts.  Your spiritual essence furnishes you with all that you could ever need for living your life and for completing the task you came to fulfill through your birth.  It is your divine center.  You are thus an expression of all that exists -- the all-consciousness.  You remain disconnected from it because you are too afraid of giving up your little vanity.  Therefore your longing can never be fulfilled, for no matter what is being promised you, there is no panacea that can give you what you need and rightfully wish for without taking the path into and through your own darkness.  Spiritual practices alone can not fulfill your longing, no matter how much you sit in meditation and concentration.

Such practices can only be helpful tools when used in addition to or in conjunction with the self-confrontation which you want to avoid at all costs.  Unless you accept that self now in its nakedness with all its possible ugliness, together with your already existing beauty, you cannot discover how you already are the beauty you are not yet conscious of but which you long to connect with, to realize and to express.

This, then, is the pathwork, my friends.  Very, very few people on this earth are willing to undertake this path.  Even fewer follow it through all the way.  Most people wishfully think that they may find another way to reach fulfillment, one that will lead them around their dark spots.  They do not want to know that it is those dark spots that render them unhappy and lonely.  Some make beginnings, but when they approach those dark spots they pull back in self-revulsion and turn all their destructive energy outward against those who help them find their way.  They do not wish to take a chance on themselves or on finding the way through their own darkness.

But for those who have the courage to go all the way, relentlessly and patiently, what glory awaits them in their innermost center!

Those who refrain from going all the way are usually obstructed by the fallacy that if they are not their illusory perfection, they are hopelessly bad.  This error should be challenged, examined, and worked with.  If you do this, you will eliminate an important stumbling block.  Make room for the possibility that these are not the only two alternatives.  Be open to find the way from within that enables you to be totally honest and see the worst in yourself without losing faith in yourself.  Though this seems like a miracle, it really is quite logical.  It will come to pass that precisely because you have faced and admitted the worst, you will find your true value.

Anyone entering this path should be prepared for this miracle to happen.  You are not as perfect as you want to be.  No matter how much lip service you may pay to the theory of your human limitations, you have a great stake in seeing yourself in a certain perfectionistic way.  This tendency has to be questioned.  Then you need to face the fear of experiencing certain feelings:  it is perhaps your implicit belief that you will perish if you experience some of your deeper feelings which are, in effect, your life-blood.  This fear must be challenged.  If you are willing and prepared to discover all of yourself, you are indeed embarking on a journey of immense beauty, though not beauty in the sense that all is easy.  The temporary pain and struggle will turn out to be your most valuable gateway to light and fullness of living.

The path is glorious when you have progressed beyond the initial stages where you battle with your own false ideas that always create two unacceptable alternatives.  When the path opens up from within you, you begin to 

experience, maybe for the first time in your life, your own potential of being, your own divinity.  You will feel your potential for pleasure and security, awareness of yourself and others, and therefore your infinitely greater power to relate to others, comprehend and be with them without fear.

The initial decision to enter a path such as this must be made realistically if it is to work.  Are you willing to give up your illusions about yourself and your expectations -- which come from your resistance to giving up self-delusions -- of what others should do for you.  Are you willing to shed your false fears about what feelings you should or should not, could or could not experience?  If you make your commitment to yourself to fully accept everything you now are and to proceed to get to know yourself where you do not yet know yourself, you will find it is the most exciting, significant, and meaningful journey into your own depth.  You will have all the help you can possibly need, for no one can undertake this journey alone.

When your spiritual center begins to manifest, your ego-consciousness integrates with it and you begin to be "lived through," as it were, by the spirit.  Your living becomes a spontaneous, effortless flow.

QUESTION:  In what way was this path different in former eras and cultures?

ANSWER:  Humanity's development in former times necessitated a different approach.  For example, people in the Middle Ages were apt to act out their cruel impulses.  They were not capable of separating themselves sufficiently from their impulses in order to identify them, own up to them, and assume responsibility for them.  They felt compelled to give vent to them and became wholly enveloped by them.  Therefore people required strict authority from the outside to keep their lower natures in check.  Only when the human personality became capable of using self-control could the next evolutionary step be taken.  The over-control must now be loosened up.

In former times the average person was too far removed from his or her core to seek spiritual life from inside; it had to be projected outside.  This inability to assume responsibility for the self then led to the creation of an outer devil who would possess an individual and an outside God who would help.

Now all this has changed.  For example, today humankind's greatest hindrance is egotistical pride.  People 

have accomplished much with the powers of the ego.  They needed to develop these powers so as to no longer be irresponsible, helpless children.  But these powers must now be exercised from within by one's spiritual center and not be ascribed to the ego.  The pride of the ego makes this difficult.  Questions arise such as:  "What will others say?  Will they think me naive, stupid, or unscientific?"  It is everyone's task today to overcome this pride and this dependency on the opinions of others.  How often do individuals betray their spiritual truth by mouthing what is supposed to be intelligent without ever even daring to let their divine selves inspire them!  These are the criteria for the path today.

Every stage in the evolution of spiritual consciousness necessitates a different approach, but the aim is always the same.  However, there is one exception.  In every era there always was a small minority of people who were developed way beyond the scope of the average person.  For them the path was always the same.  These few formed secret societies which  were unknown and not in the least popular.  A group such as yours can therefore not be a popular movement either, for even today there are very few people either capable or willing to follow such a path.  But there are certainly many more today who could do so than in former times; many could, but few will.

I will withdraw now from this instrument through which I am allowed to manifest.  A great spiritual power protects this group.  This may seem incomprehensible or a primitive belief for some of you, yet it is a reality, my friends.  There is a whole world beyond the world you know and touch and see.  Only as you explore yourself and go into your core will you meet this world, and then it will reveal itself in its stark reality and utter glory.  This world exists within and around you and it will inspire you from its own complete wisdom as you reach for it.

Be blessed, every one of you.  Those of you who want to make the commitment to your inner being, and want to avail yourselves of the help this particular path can give are blessed and guided in all your moves; and those of you who do not yet wish to take this step or who are drawn elsewhere, they, too, are being blessed.  Be in peace.

Edited by Judith and John Saly

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