The Defense

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. God bless each one of you. Blessed is your path. Blessed are your efforts.

We have discussed your defense mechanisms repeatedly. We have worked on and gone into this subject considerably, and you have learned, to a degree, to recognize its presence. However, you do not as yet fully understand what happens to your entire system when you are on the defensive. It will mean a great deal to understand the processes of your physical nature, of your mental, nature, of your emotional nature, and of your spiritual nature. In other words, what happens to all these levels of your personality when you are defensive. You have begun to observe it, to detect this hard knot, this wall within, when you withdraw in fear and you close yourself up in the aim of protecting yourself. However, this reaction of defending yourself is so imbedded in you, it has become so much second nature, that most of the time you are unaware of when you are on the defensive. Hence, you have to understand more about this subject, you have to be on the lookout for it, and you have to become more intensely aware of its existence in order to get over it.

When you are on the defensive, then you are frightened, you feel threatened, you feel endangered. There certainly are realistic dangers, and the human system is equipped to deal with them. If an actual attack is made on you, then all your faculties will withdraw from their usual preoccupations and will be directed to and concentrated on this one danger. In order to deal with an urgent issue at that moment, then you need all your faculties to be focused on that one point.

In order to do that, your entire system goes through a change for the singular purpose of dealing with the emergency situation. Thus, in such a moment your glandular system releases a certain substance that shoots through your entire nervous system, that speeds up your blood pressure, and that accelerates your pulse beat. All this happens for the purpose of focusing your faculties on the danger point, to heighten the speed of your reactions and to quicken your perceptiveness. When you are in real danger, then this is good and important, for otherwise -- in other words, with but your normal faculties and your normal perceptiveness -- you could not accomplish what is necessary in order to protect yourself. Thus, at such moments you develop more strength -- both physical and mental -- than you normally have in order to defend yourself. You quickly judge and then decide whether the better way to deal with the particular situation is either flight or defense by counterattack.

In an average life, such actual dangers do occur every once in a while. The substance released from your glandular system contains a certain poison which will not damage you if your defense mechanism works only in those rare instances when actual dangers occur. After the danger is over and your system goes back to normal functioning, then this poison is absorbed and dissolved. This poison is a necessary stimulant for the moment. But if this stimulant permanently fills your system, then damage is unavoidable. It is the same with certain medicines that are important for a cure, but if you form the habit of taking them, then in the long run you will be damaged.

When you are on the defensive for psychological conflicts, for irrational, unrealistic reasons, then your glandular system does not take this into consideration. It does not question the validity of the reason. The poisonous substance is released the moment you are frightened. When you are on the defensive, then you are frightened. Therefore, it is important that unrealistic fears cease and that being on the defensive for no valid reasons be ruled out of your life. Otherwise the poisonous substance will affect your bloodstream and your nervous system, and therefore physical damage will accrue in one way or another. According to the individual make-up and the physical resistance of the various organs, damage will appear sooner or later, more or less noticeable, in this or that part of the body. This is the physical side.

As to the mental side of your nature, when you are in actual, realistic danger, then all your mental faculties will automatically concentrate -- with the help of the poisonous stimulant -- on the issue at hand. In order to do so, you cannot concentrate on anything else. You will not be capable of harboring thoughts of truth and wisdom other than dealing with the danger of the moment, namely with protecting yourself from this danger. All other considerations, otherwise important in a harmonious and meaningful life, will be excluded. If this happens in isolated moments of actual danger, then it is good and purposeful. When the actual, realistic danger is over, then you go back to normal, and therefore your thought processes can concentrate once again on the many sides of life, on others, and on yourself, all of which have nothing to do with protecting yourself from danger.

However, when you are either constantly or often in a psychological state of warding off danger and attack when there actually is no danger or attack, then the development of your mental faculties is bound to suffer. Your concepts will remain immature and limited, even if you happen to have a good brain. Your outlook will be much too limited to deal with life in an adequate way. All this happens in such a subtle and insidious way that you are utterly unaware of it. You cannot tell the difference because the state of being on the defensive has become second nature. This hinders your vision of truth about others, about life, and about yourself. It prohibits you from seeing both your possibilities and your potentials, and therefore it prohibits you from making the proper choices. All this comes about because your mental system is geared to warding off an unreal or imaginary danger and to defending yourself from it. The same processes are operative as when you are in actual danger. When you are in actual danger, then your heightened perception makes you decide whether to launch a counterattack, or, if this is hopelessly dangerous and futile, to run away and protect yourself by hiding. All your mental faculties are concentrated on this one issue. There is no room for consideration of anything else. A similar procedure occurs with your unrealistic defense mechanism. You have chosen the pseudo solution of aggressiveness, the pseudo solution of withdrawal from life, or the pseudo solution of appeasement that robs you of your integrity. All these alternatives are dictates that stem from your fright of being exposed to danger. You are constantly in a state of war, with the main part of your mental faculties focused on defending yourself, thus not leaving sufficient room to deal with life in an adequate way. You can easily see that this one-sided concentration is necessary in the rare instances of actual danger, but that it is extremely damaging and limiting when there is no such actual danger.

In the emotional side of your nature, faced with actual danger you hardly have time or room for feelings other than fright and anger. In the rare instances of real danger, then it is good that this is so because these two emotions produce the necessary impetus and the necessary strength to defend yourself. All the faculties of the feeling body are withdrawn at that moment and are geared to dealing with the issue now confronting you. Were it not so -- in other words, if you were at such moments capable of having all sorts of other feelings -- then the necessary strength to defend yourself would be absent. However, when the danger is over, then the normal and integrated person can quickly return to a state wherein many other emotions have room in his emotional system.

However, if you are constantly on the defensive, then the predominant feelings are fright and anger. At this point I hardly need to discuss how damaging this is both for yourself and for your surroundings. When you are hurt, then this hurt is erroneously believed to be an attack on you. It erroneously represents a danger to your safety. Thus you immediately repress the hurt -- which is your primary reaction -- and you remain aware of anger and hostility as a substitute for the original reaction. You begin to let your defense mechanism, whatever your private pseudo-solutions are, go to work. Needless to say, you are no longer in truth. Not only because the hurt that you experienced, unpleasant as it may have been, is no danger -- and, therefore, does not call for elaborate defenses, which are infinitely more damaging than the original hurt could be -- but also because you are no longer aware of the original feeling, the hurt, but only of the secondary reaction, the anger. This institutes a process of self-alienation, of psychological self-estrangement.

I think that all of you begin to see how predominant this defensiveness is. It may be subtle, and therefore not easy to detect, but once you are on the right track, then you will become more acutely aware of its permanent existence. You defend not only against hurt as a supposed mortal danger. You also defend against the frustration of your will. In other words, against anything that does not go according to your wishes. All of this unconsciously represents a threat to your safety, while in reality it is not so. It may be undesirable, but something that is undesirable is by no means necessarily dangerous. Yet a defense mechanism is, by its very nature, a process of warding off danger. If these processes are used for actual danger, then it is meaningful. But if they are not, then your entire system is thrown out of balance. Your faculties are limited to a degree that you as yet cannot fully comprehend. Putting it in other words, your instinct of self-preservation is at work when it is not required to be. When faculties are used which were originally destined for other purposeful use, then the human psyche is distorted and therefore put out of balance.

As to the spiritual side of your nature, in the face of actual danger, then it is important and necessary that your capacity of feeling be limited at that moment to the issue at hand. As I said before, the range of your feelings is limited to fright and to anger so as to deal adequately with the matter of your protection. This does not leave room for feelings of love, of warmth, of affection, of understanding, of compassion. In other words, in moments of danger, you withdraw into yourself, gathering all your forces either for counterattack or for flight. You no longer reach out into the world, you no longer try to bridge the gap between yourself and others. You are not concerned with eliminating the separation between yourself and others, with communication, and with union. In moments of actual danger, then such feelings would actually be a detriment. But when the danger is over, then you go back to the state of feeling all these warm, good, outgoing, outreaching feelings. It is the same with your creativity, which is also a side of your spiritual nature. No matter how creative a person may ordinarily be, in moments of acute danger this creativity is temporarily stopped, only to return after the danger is over.

When you are more or less permanently defensive -- due to the erroneous belief that any hurt is a danger, that any frustration is a danger, that any criticism is a danger, that any rejection is a danger -- then you limit the range of your feelings, you limit the potential of your creativity, you limit your ability to reach out into life, you limit your ability to communicate with others, you limit your ability to feel, and you limit your ability to express yourself. You must guard yourself against love and against understanding. In short, your spiritual life is gravely impaired. By this self-imposed limitation you isolate yourself more and more, and therefore you institute the very patterns by which others will surely hurt you and frustrate you all the more -- because you unknowingly reject them. Therefore, you need to defend yourself more, and so a full-fledged vicious circle is at work, both within yourself and between yourself and others, one that mutually affects your defense mechanisms, and thereby serves to have both parties mutually rejecting each other.

All the while -- when defending yourself is superfluous and meaningless because no actual danger exists -- you release poisonous substances into your physical body. You limit the range of your thinking, you limit your ability to feel, and you also limit your creative processes. You do not see the infinite possibilities of life and the possibility of communication with people. You are isolated in your busy defense against an unrealistic danger.

As I said before, actual dangers in which you do need all this defensive equipment happen in relatively rare instances. You do not have to learn to use your defenses. It is an automatic process that any human being comes to. Even a child will have automatic reactions in this regard without having been told about it. There is only one thing to say about the adequate defense mechanism regarding actual danger: The more you use these faculties for unreal danger, thus abusing them, the less they will work adequately and spontaneously when required for your real protection. It is one of those imbalances that you constantly encounter within. That is why a person whose inner system is geared to constantly defending against unreal dangers is often incapable of coping with a real attack and a real threat. He is paralyzed and helpless, and therefore he actually becomes a prey, because he believes himself to be a prey, when he actually is not. This condition can never be remedied by fortifying the defenses in case of real danger. It does not work that way. The ability to defend yourself in real dangers will automatically improve and will begin to work when you learn to stop defending yourself when there is no need to do so.

This is why we have to be concerned with the elimination of the unreal defense, the unreal dangers. Such dangers also apply to hurt, to rejection, to the frustration of your will, to criticism. When you feel accused of something true, half-true, or untrue, then you feel yourself to be in mortal danger. If you translate your emotional reactions to such criticism, then you will see that your feelings say: "I am in danger." Let us examine the truth of the matter. Are you really endangered or threatened because of hurt, because of frustration, or because of criticism? I do not have to answer this. Only you yourself will have to verify that this is not so. Even unjustified criticism cannot endanger you, provided your attitude toward it is mature and realistic. Is it not often the case that the criticism against which you so strenuously defend yourself threatens to expose something that you do not wish to face? You may not wish to face it because you believe that by doing so it does not exist, or because it is inconvenient to change, or because you believe that if the truth comes out, then you will not be loved and accepted as worthy of respect. Whatever the reasons, you run away from the truth. Thus, if it is seen in its true light, then your defense is often against the truth, even though this truth may come from the outside, from people who in their own way are just as imperfect as you are. The supposedly mortal danger that you have to ward off is often truth itself. And you defend against it by pointing out the truth in the other person, which, of course, he does not want to see either. Maybe one is stronger and the other is weaker, but what difference does it make, since everyone has his own rhythm and everyone has his own value system. Therefore, no one can compare himself with another. Evaluation on that basis is never valid. Thus, two sides point out truths about the other -- and each may be correct to a degree -- but neither one wants to see the truth about himself.

You falsely believe that if certain of your weaknesses are exposed, then others would have a right to reject you, to no longer love you. And this you cannot bear. Therefore, you use your defense mechanisms to ward off the tremendous imaginary danger in order to preserve your status as a lovable human being. You falsely believe that if an unlovable trait in you is exposed, then people will have a right to reject you. Hence you use such heavy fighting equipment only to your detriment. This attitude is not only detrimental due to all the reasons I have given in this lecture, but also in a more direct way. For it is never true that people reject a person due to a fault or a weakness per se. If you observe life around you very closely, then you will easily see that it is hiding the truth that causes the rejection. This is why a free admission of the worst fault or distortion will bring forth acceptance, while a defense against exposure brings forth contempt, dislike, rejection, fear, and therefore is bound to make the other person defensive. If a free admission is as yet not possible because perhaps it is not yet fully seen, then the mere willingness to do so -- which can only be there if you are not on the defensive -- will have a similarly favorable effect. Only after this new reaction is tried will you see how much more constructive and advantageous it is.

When you are on the defensive, then your primary aim cannot be truth. When it comes to real dangers, then this real danger is, as it were, the truth of the moment. But when it comes to unreal dangers, then the truth lies somewhere else. You do not ask yourself at such moments: "Is it right? Is there a grain of truth in it?" Your only concern at such moments is: "Am I right, or is the other person right?" It is this limited "I versus the other person" that befogs the issue of what is right or what is true. Your defense -- which is a basic way of life -- may often be not to involve yourself. When you are called upon to react, then you will choose a more direct defense: you may either still try to run away, or you may hedge the issue and put it on another level, where you can prove to be right; or you may counterattack, pointing out the other person's shortcomings. There is a great difference between doing this as a defense of one's undesirable traits, or doing it in truth and for the sake of truth.

It should be easy to understand that defensiveness does not produce the truth. It does not give truth and reality breathing space. Where there is a defensive wall, then concern at that moment must be with warding off an accusation, which you believe might bring you rejection, frustration, and hurt. In this moment, it becomes more important for you to prove that the accusation is unjustified -- even if it contains elements of the truth -- than to find the elements of truth which it contains. Thus you run away from the truth, therefore you run away from yourself, and therefore you run away from life. Pretense and self-deception, self-alienation and isolation must be the result. In your defensiveness you not only damage your physical body, but you limit your thoughts, you limit the range of your emotions, you limit your concepts, you limit your creativity, you limit your spiritual life, you limit your ability to relate to others, you limit your inner freedom, you limit your concern with truth as such, and therefore you also limit your ability to love and to respect yourself and others. All this is due to a completely erroneous concept of perfectionism in which you believe your value and your acceptability to be at stake because of your imperfections.

If people would only learn that and probe deeply within so as to first find and then eliminate this defensive wall, then so much hardship could be avoided on a scale as large as the extent of daily intercomunication between people. People would not dislike each other so much. They would not fear each other. It is the erroneous feeling of attack against which you feel that you have to defend yourself that often makes you fear others, and therefore makes you dislike them. It is the erroneous hurt that you suffer if something is brought out that you feel diminishes your value. It is the erroneous feeling of inadequacy when life and others do not respond to your wishes and frustrate them. Such non-fulfillment in itself is not half as painful as the error of believing that you are inadequate. The criticism in itself would not damage you if you were aware of the fact that others will not like you less just because you have a fault, and if you then choose to face it.

In defensiveness, you do not perceive, you do not experience, and you do not think thoughts of truth and reason. You do not feel feelings of warmth, of affection, of understanding. Therefore, you are not in reality. Hence, you cannot communicate. Your entire system is focused on one small point, namely that of defending yourself against an imaginary danger. In this way a great deal that is part of your life, part of your reality, is left out of commission.

This defensiveness can take many forms. It may be so subtle that it is unnoticeable to others until a direct attack is launched. This defensiveness may be much stronger with calm, reticent people who quietly go their way than with people whose defense mechanism is more obvious. Their fear of attack is so great -- and their confidence in being able to handle it is so small -- that they are constantly in a state of flight from life and of flight from people. But whether the defense is direct outer aggressiveness or withdrawal and flight, it is equally damaging and it has identical negative results. Both alternatives make reaching out toward the other person impossible, reaching out toward truth impossible, reaching out toward involvement impossible, and reaching out toward life itself impossible. Both alternatives force you to stay on your guard, and therefore to be unperceptive of life, of people, of yourself. Thus the harm that you inflict both on yourself and on those around you -- the disharmony and the separation that are created through the defense -- is impossible to describe. With it you cannot fulfill the needs of others, nor can you have your own needs fulfilled. The liberation that you experience when you discover the illusion of the need to defend yourself -- and when you therefore no longer defend yourself -- is impossible to convey. You simply have to live it to know this joy. Let go and receive whatever comes to you. Look at it quietly with the dominant aim not to ward it off, but rather first to seek the truth and then to see the truth. In this attitude your reactions will change. Your emanations will have a different quality. Your whole life will become different.

If you learn first to detect, then to observe, and third to understand -- and therefore eventually to eliminate -- your defensiveness, then you will be freed of an illusion. There is no greater hardship, no greater prison than illusion. There is nothing more destructive on this earth than people unnecessarily defending themselves. There is nothing that creates more disharmony, more untruth, more hostility, and more friction both in personal life and in public life than defensiveness.

QUESTION: You say that the body releases poisons which damage the physical system. On this path, is it possible to heal such damage?

ANSWER: Of course, it is possible. If and when the defensiveness is eliminated, then further poisons will cease to contaminate the system. This in itself will bring relief. However, it is possible that the damage is already so considerable that the results of the past cannot be entirely eliminated in the body. If and when this is or is not the case depends on too many considerations, impossible to enumerate now. But in principle it is possible.

QUESTION: You mean, we should just listen to someone if he criticizes?

ANSWER: Calmly listen and then evaluate it. Could there be some truth in the criticism? Observe your inner reactions of fright. You will soon discover that your fright is unjustified, even if the criticism is wrong. Nothing can happen to you, you are not in danger.

QUESTION: But what if we get annoyed at being unjustly criticized?

ANSWER: The feeling of annoyance is both the expression and the proof of your existing defensiveness. Without the defense, then you would not be annoyed. How could you be? You would evaluate it, and find that in this criticism there may be some truth, a little truth, or no truth at all. But often you are convinced that it is unjustified even before you have a chance to find out if it is. Or, rather, before you give yourself the chance to find the possible grain of truth. And if there is no trace of truth in it, then why would you have to get annoyed? What can this criticism do to you that causes this annoyance? Have you ever analyzed it from this point of view? Either justified or unjustified criticism cannot really harm you, unless you think that you cannot be loved and respected if something is found in you that can be criticized.

QUESTION: What if it is a lie? If it is untrue?

ANSWER: I said that before. It cannot harm you if you look at it calmly. It is your defense against it that is the real harm. The lie itself, or the erroneous judgment, could never harm you. The less defensive you are, the more able you will be to straighten out an outright lie or a misunderstanding. I do not mean to imply that you must never defend yourself against a flagrant lie, against a calumny, or against a harmful rumor. This falls under the category of realistic defense, which can be adequately handled only to the degree that unrealistic defensiveness is absent.

QUESTION: If the accusation covers a betrayal and you have a natural anger against it, then your anger may cover a self-defense, but it is also a natural reaction against someone who has made promises and you have fulfilled your part and then you find that you are betrayed and the thing that you were promised and you had hoped for does not come true. Is this not a natural anger?

ANSWER: Before we deal with the term of what is natural and what is unnatural, I would like to say that I did not imply that people should take any injustice or any betrayal without doing whatever is necessary, constructive, and productive. There are many instances when it would be wrong to sit back and do nothing. This would be sick, it would be playing the martyr, it would be a distortion of holiness. And it is interesting to note that the more defensive a person is, then the less equipped he is to deal with a constructive defense or with a necessary attack, and the more he will victimize himself and become a martyr. There exists a proper and healthy aggressiveness and a proper and healthy assertiveness. When it is healthy and when it is not healthy cannot be determined as a general rule. It is too subtle and it can only be found in a truthful self-examination. Actual dangers are not only physical in nature, they also apply to other levels. I can only emphasize again that the freer you are of your unrealistic defensiveness, then the better you will be able to cope with a healthy defense. Often the two intermingle and the unhealthy one weakens and undermines the healthy one, and therefore diminishes its effect.

Now, as to what is natural. This can be very misleading. It is certainly natural to have immature, unproductive reactions because everyone else has them too. But that does not mean they are really natural, or that it is not possible to grow out of them. But not forcefully, not by superimposition, not by feeling guilty that childish reactions still exist, but in the way that I always advocate. Is that clear?

QUESTION: Yes. First you must clear up your emotional entanglement within the relationship, and then you will deal with it realistically?

ANSWER: Yes, that is right. You see, your unhealthy emotional involvement makes it impossible for you to evaluate the situation in its right light, and therefore you cannot deal with it as you would otherwise.

QUESTION: I think that what our friend said about the lie is also a realistic danger.

ANSWER: Yes, it could be. It all depends upon whether we are dealing with facts, with actions, or with the more subtle matters of trends, of attitudes, and of qualities. But when it comes to this work, when it comes to voicing one's impressions and one's feelings about others, then this is not a matter that can necessarily be refuted at once. It requires probing to see whether or not there is some grain of truth in it, even if brought out in a distorted way, perhaps due to the other person's problems, or merely due to his limitations as a human being. In such cases, it cannot easily be stated that "this is a lie," because these things are so subtle.

QUESTION: You were talking about situations in which our emotions run up. How about human beings with emotions dulled and curbed, and where there is no reaction?

ANSWER: When a human being gets into this state, then it is a result of being overly defensive. Outwardly and consciously the emotions may be dulled to a considerable degree, but inwardly they still exist. They smolder underground and they do their damage. That is why it is so important in this work that the emotions be brought to the surface. Only then can they be dealt with properly and all these considerations can begin to be worked with. For example, as long as someone does not feel hate, then he cannot possibly rid himself of it. It has to come out of repression and it has reach surface awareness in order for its origin and its reason to be understood, so that the personality can then free itself from it. It is the same with the defensive wall. As long as you are unaware of its existence, then you can do nothing. Therefore, the first consideration is to bring into awareness by the method of this work what hitherto had been submerged.

There is no person who is entirely devoid of emotions. They are on the surface, but they were never named and they were never questioned as to their meaning and to their significance. Those few surface emotions will furnish sufficient material with which to work. Even the person who is predominantly intellectual in approach, and who therefore deliberately dulls his feelings, has certain feelings. The more defensive a person is, the more his private solution may be the dulling of his emotions, and therefore the more limited is the scope of the emotions that he can feel. But he can make an effort to pinpoint them. In such cases, the predominant emotions will be fright and anger. He may be unaware that these actually are emotions because he is so used to rationalizing them and to explaining them.

QUESTION: Yes, but the person whose emotions are above board has an easier time observing them.

ANSWER: Yes, certainly. This is why it is of primary importance to become aware of all the emotions that you were not aware of. Only then can you go into such matters as we are dealing with now. For instance, on the subject of defensiveness a year ago the majority of you would not even have been capable of knowing, of being aware, that this defense does indeed exist. Many of you are now capable of recognizing it. This is always a question of self-awareness.

QUESTION: In my private work, my co-worker and I found out that I have an inadequate concept of a human being. What is a human being?

ANSWER: If I were to answer that, then it would probably take me at least a month of continuous talking. And I think that this may be the best answer for you so as to adjust your concept to a more truthful one. Compare this statement with the limited concept you have of "he is this" or "he is that," or "she is thus and thus." Realize the infinite variety, the great complexity, the contradictoriness, the unlimited possibilities, and the infinite potentials of thought, of range of feelings in every human being. Every emotion, every trend, every characteristic that you can name lies within every human being both in a positive form and in a negative form. Why the same quality displays its positive face at one time and its negative at other times, all these are the intricacies of the human psyche. The more you understand the limitless possibilities and the potentials of every human being, the closer do you come to understanding a particular human being. On the other hand, the more you believe, either consciously or unconsciously, that a human being is either this or that -- in other words, the more limited your concept is -- then the less will you understand.

In a strange way, the unconscious aim of man is to limit the human personality because he believes that if there is less to a human being, then it will be easier to know another. But this is not true. The more you realize the infinite possibilities, the difficulty of seeing, of perceiving -- or even of sensing -- all the intricacies and all the facets of a single human being, then the more understanding and the more insight you will have. This is the best answer I can give you. Any description, no matter how detailed, would not do it justice. It would be limited, it would be an over-simplification.

QUESTION: After a person has become greatly aware of his hidden currents -- let's say, hypothetically, that one has become aware of 75 percent of such currents, which have come to the surface and he can see how they work -- what can a person then do to train the subconscious mind? Or is it necessary?

ANSWER: I will repeat what I have said many times. Merely observe the wrong, childish, untrue, distorted reactions and concepts. The more you observe them, the better you will be able to learn why they are erroneous, why they are inadequate, why they are destructive, why they are disadvantageous, and why they are unrealistic. Compare these reactions with your knowledge -- which as yet is only theoretical -- of realistic, truthful, productive reactions, but without trying to force yourself to feel the latter. Merely compare them and then try to understand why one way of reacting is unrealistic, and is therefore unproductive, while the other way of reacting is realistic, and is therefore productive. Fully acknowledge the fact that as yet you are incapable of feeling and reacting in the desired way and -- without guilt and without any forcing current -- fully accept yourself as you are, but know your immaturity. If you do so -- without being angry at yourself and without being impatient with yourself -- then your emotions will eventually begin to receive from your brain the knowledge that heretofore could not penetrate your emotions. It will give you peace to simply see the childish emotions in action while knowing -- and getting to understand better and better -- why and in what respect they are unproductive.

QUESTION: You wanted to talk about the background of the seven deadly sins.

ANSWER: As I said, I would suggest that you prepare a list of them, perhaps for next time. This would be in lieu of a lecture because it would take too long. I said last time that it cannot be added on to a lecture. Put down each of them and ask about each separately, and then I will answer. It will form a lecture in itself.

QUESTION: In the traditional Scriptures of Judaism and Islam the texts are specific regarding the consumption of fish, flesh, and fowl. It is commanded that "of the flesh shall we not eat." Christianity has no ban against pork. In the l5th verse of Matthew, Christ said: "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth the man but that which cometh out of the mouth." However, during Lent dietary restrictions are observed by Christians. My questions are: (1) Are the dietary laws based on that which is unclean or on that which is holy; and (2) what is the meaning of Lent and of the counting of the days?

ANSWER: To your first question. All these laws were given at a time when man's scientific and hygienic knowledge was so insufficient that such information as mankind now possesses was connected with religion. It was merely sanitary or health reasons that dictated these laws. In certain periods of history, under different circumstances, these laws were changed. Nowadays it is superfluous for religion to set up these rules. At no time did these laws have anything to do with man's spiritual life. It was merely a safeguard to protect his health. If humanity at this time still clings to these laws as a spiritual necessity, then it shows a gross misunderstanding of what true spirituality is. It shows the superficial approach of man and his disinclination to think. Your science today may find certain conditions that make it necessary to observe certain laws as long as these specific conditions prevail. When the conditions change, then the laws will be eliminated. To persist in keeping them without any purpose or any reason would be senseless.

As to your second question, the original symbolic meaning of the time of Lent was to give man a period of going into himself, of purifying his system, not only the system of the physical body, but all the levels of his being. The outer is merely a symbol of the inner. Often it is healthy for the body and for the soul if it is combined, provided it is done in an individual way, in a thinking and personalized way, and not merely by adhering to a dogma. Under whatever guise dogma appears, it shows rigidity in thinking and a lack of self-responsibility. Thus it becomes something dead. In other words, the living spirit has gone out of it. The original symbolic meaning was that of purification, of contemplation, of a time of looking within the self and preparing for a new influx, and therefore for a new strength so as to then reach out.

May you all become more and more aware of your defense. May you perceive what it does to your entire system: to your thinking process, to your faculty of feeling, to your physical system, to your spiritual life. And may you thus become capable of letting go, of receiving, of examining, of discriminating, of looking at the issue objectively without defending, of no longer thinking and feeling in terms of "right versus wrong," and thereby being capable of experiencing others and of reaching out to them. While with the defense, you withdraw from others, and hence you no l onger reach out. May the blessing that is extended to you help you particularly in this respect for your further work and may it help you to free yourself of the most damaging obstructions within you. Be blessed, each one of you, receive our warmth and our love. Be in peace. Be in God.

April, 1962