The Intellect And The Will As Tools For Or As Hindrances To Self-Realization

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my very dearest friends, God bless each of you. Blessed is this lecture.

Again and again we have discussed that to understand yourself means to find your real self. Often we also discussed what this real self is. We did so from various angles. You may have noticed that I often change substantives to describe a term. I explained why I do in the past. But it bears repeating because I see the danger you run into. I see that you have forgotten this explanation. When you use the same word over and over again -- be it image, real self, or whatever -- then the meaning behind the word gets lost. It becomes dead. The moment it becomes a label, then you repeat the word without really understanding what you are talking about. This is why you attach such particular importance to a word. You argue about the meaning of some words, while you blindly speak words that once had a meaning for you -- when you truly experienced their significance -- but in your blind repetition the living experience has gone out of them. You thereby lose the meaning. Meaning is alive, it is forever fresh, and it is forever a spontaneous experience. This is why you have to guard yourself against blind repetition. You have to be aware of this temptation. It is sometimes advisable to use another word because it makes you experience the meaning behind the word. Therefore, keep trying to be aware of the meaning at all times. However, if you cannot succeed, then it means that in that moment your innermost self does not recapture the inner meaning and the living experience of a particular word. It is very important to be aware of this.

This phenomenon is a good example of the difference between the real self and the superficial layers of your personality. When you experience the living spirit of a term, then it is your real self that does so, whereas the repetition of a word is done by your intellect. Memory is the will to recapture that which once was experienced. When this happens, then the meaning becomes lifeless. The experience has become a repetitive pattern. Your real self no longer functions.

Let us try to get a clearer understanding of how the real self comes into being and what obstructs it. The obstruction is caused by the various layers and levels of personality which are in confusion and error, and by your lack of awareness that this is so. There is only one way to clarity, and that is to know yourself. When you know that there is a confusion, even before you know the solution, then you are more aware of yourself, and you are therefore nearer to your real self.

In your world you are so conditioned to overemphasize the intellect, the mind, or whatever you wish to call it. You also believe that you can really become yourself by a direct act of your will and by directly using your thought process to grow and to develop spiritually. For example, you have learned that to be good and to be loving indicates spiritual development. So, you try to be good and you try to be loving by dictating your thoughts and by directing your willpower to be good and to be loving. It doesn't work this way. This attitude amounts to wanting to be something that you are not.

Your real self cannot be governed by will or by force. It is not a direct manifestation of thought and of the will but a spontaneous creative experience that comes into being unbidden -- usually when it is least expected. This is very important to know, never to lose sight of, and always to realize. Unknowingly, unconsciously, undeliberately, and yet deliberately, you still hope and strive to have your real self manifest by acts of thought, by acts of will, and by indoctrinating yourself with concepts. In other words, by intellectual processes. This cannot be done, my friends.

The question may then arise: Why intellect, why thought, why the will, as well as why your arduous work on this Path at all? The answer is that by using your mind and your will in order to understand the confusion and the error of your mind, your misdirected will, and your motivations, you indirectly bring about the birth of the real self. It is an indirect result.

Here is a brief overall explanation of the stages of spiritual development in connection with the subject under discussion. The most primitive stage of development is the state of being without awareness. I mentioned this before in another context. Animal life, plant life, and mineral life are in a state of being without awareness. In other words, without self-consciousness. Primitive man was was only a little removed from this state. Although he had a brain, he functioned mostly on instinct. Gradually, the intellect began to develop, and threfore the brain began to function. From mineral life to primitive man a slow ascendancy in awareness, in intellect, and in the will can be noticed. The more this particular development proceeded, the less did the state of being exist, and the more did it change into a state of becoming.

The next stage is the state of becoming in awareness. Man is striving, he is using his intellect and his will in order to survive in the material world. He needs these faculties in order to cope with the world of matter. Thought and the outer will are of matter. Therefore, they are supposed to be used in order to overcome matter. But they cannot be used in order to get into a state of being, which is not of matter. They can only be used in order to remove the surplus action through which error and confusion were created. They can be used to deal with that which is of the same kind. If thought and the will overproduced -- and thereby created obstructions to the state of being -- then thought and the will must be used in order to deal with their own production and never with the state of being -- the real you. Expressed differently, this means understanding yourself rather than hoping to bring out the real self by a direct act of thought and of the will.

The highest stage is the state of being in awareness. This does not happen suddenly after you shed your physical body, but it can be experienced occasionally, and increasingly, while you are still in the body. This depends on how you use the faculties which have bred confusion and suffering, and whether you mistakenly use them to achieve what they were not destined to achieve by nature.

Mankind now finds itself in the middle stage, the state of becoming in awareness. But within this category there are many different stages and degrees. Let us make an arbitrary division, for the sake of understanding. In the first half of this cycle it is important to cultivate and to develop the intellect, the memory, the discrimination, and the will power. Without these matter could not be mastered. Man needs to learn, he needs his memory, he needs his intelligence in order to cope with life; he needs his will in order to overcome his raw, animalistic, destructive instincts that have slumbered in unawareness in the state of being. Without the will and the intelligence, then he could not discriminate and he could not refrain from committing acts that are harmful both to others and to himself. In other words, his actions are governed by thought, by the intellect, and by the will.

In the second half of this cycle man has fully mastered this stage. Then he is supposed to approach the threshold towards the state of being in awareness. He often realizes that he wants something more than a satisfying material life, which does not leave him really satisfied. Religious philosophies tell him about a higher state. He wishes for this higher state not only because he is unhappy or because he has heard about it, but also because something deep within urges him towards a new way of life. Yet he erroneously tries to use the same tools that he needed for material life in order to enter into the spiritual life. This does not work. When he attempts to reach this higher form of being by using the tools of the intellect, of the thought process, and of will power, then this is what happens: he constructs what we call images of himself as he should be; and he perceives life according to his limited past experiences. We have discussed this chain reaction again and again: repression, self-deception, and the non-acceptance of what is as against what he wants to be.

This confusion is the result of using the faculties of thought and exercising the will. This only proves that they cannot bring freedom and spiritual growth. So, thought and the will create confusion and suffering. When you consider what an image is, then you will see that you have used a superimposed standard in order to cover up what you really feel, what you really are. In your striving to be something more than you are or someone better than you are, or to attain something more than you have or to attain something better than you have, you no longer accept what you are, you no longer accept what you feel, and you no longer accept what you have. This striving belongs to the category of becoming, but becoming in the wrong sense: In the sense of leading away from yourself, from what you are now and from what you have now. The state of being can come about in a harmonious way only by accepting your state as it happens to be now -- disharmonious. In such acceptance you can go about trying to understand yourself in all your facets, and thereby you grow out of this state. But you never struggle out of it by covering up what you happen to be now. This will illustrate to you that the tools of intellect and the will can be destructive if used in this distorted way, which is the general way in your world.

The mind and the will are temporary tools that direct your outer actions and your outer intent. They should be used for your physical life, for your outer actions, for your deciding to know the truth about yourself. But they cannot be used for your spirituality. Spirituality is, above all, love, with all of its derivatives. You cannot love by forcing yourself. You can believe you do, when in reality you do not. But that does not mean that you truly love. Love can come into being only when you remove your errors, your confusions, your preconceived ideas, your dependency on the opinions of others, and so on and so forth. All the errors can be removed only by being fully understood. Then love comes into being by itself, just as the real self comes into being by itself.

You cannot make up your mind, you cannot decide to be a good person, you cannot decide to love, you cannot decide to have compassion, you cannot decide to have humility. But you can make your mind -- you can go through the act of deciding -- to find out what causes you not to be all of that. In other words, you can decide to find out who you are. Thereby you can remove what prevents you from being that good person or that loving person, what stands between you and a full life, what stands between you and inner freedom, what stands between you and the fulfillment of your potentials. In other words, you can find out what keeps you away from your real self.

Perhaps you can now understand a little better why the thought process, the intellect, the mind, and the will obstruct the birth of the real self, obstruct the birth of love, obstruct rhe birth of all the qualities that are called spiritual. All of this happens as if by itself, as a result of first knowing and then of understanding yourself. In other words, it is not to be expected as a direct result. Thought and the will can only produce thought and will, they cannot produce something that has nothing to do with them. Love, transcendent understanding, and all the other qualities of the real self have nothing to do with thought and the will.

Anyone who has gone through a creative process will readily admit that a genuine creation is not determined by an act of will or by a thought directed into the channel that one may think brings forth such a creative experience. Creation comes unbidden, unexpected. When you least expect it, then it is there. It is the same with the creative manifestation of the real self; it is the same with a genuine feeling of love; and it is the same with profound understanding, as against the superficial, intellectual feeling that merely recites and repeats either other people's teachings or one's own previous genuine experience.

Superimpositions hide the real self. Superimpositions occur because the mind and the will take them on. Without the mind to decide and the will to go through with it, then no superimposition could possibly occur. You superimpose because you strive for happiness and for recognition, even if this means spiritual development. The state of becoming is striving. If one is not in the state of becoming, then there is no striving. Therefore there is no danger of confusion, and hence no suffering. Take the lowest stage of development, mineral life. It has the least amount of awareness, the least amount of will, and the least amount of mind. In the state of being there is no misery. Neither will misery accompany you into the state of becoming in all of its facets by first using the mind, the intellect, the thought, and the will in their organic way. However, when an inorganic, unnatural use of those faculties has occurred, then it is necessary to remove that surplus and to eliminate those obstructions that have been caused by such misuse. One cannot say that the mind, the intellect, and the will of themselves cause suffering and misery, but their misuse does have that effect. Your mind is responsible for all your images, for all your wrong conclusions, for all your petrifications, and for all your generalizations. In other words, for all that in you which is crippling you. This can be done only by understanding yourself fully and deeply, not just superficially.

There are many religious systems which realize the danger of the mind. They try to eliminate the functioning of the mind and of the will. This cannot work. Do not accept my word for it, my dear ones. I always ask you never to do that. But think about it. When you really think about it, then you will see for yourself that this is so. When you artificially cut out the mind by exercise and by discipline, then what happens? You repress what still exists in you. And when confronted with a crisis to which you cannot apply these exercises, then that which was repressed -- and which is therefore out of your awareness -- appears again on the surface. So it is only a question of how successfully you repress from sight and from awareness that which still happens to exist. Therefore, any exercise of cutting out the mind -- cutting out trends, thoughts, emotions, and attitudes that are not to your liking -- is something artificial and never brings genuine liberation. True liberation does not fear negative circumstances. It does not have to use discipline or any exercise. For what is not there does not have to be manipulated. This is simple logic. The only way to dissolve the undesirable is first to know it, then to understand it, and finally to own up to it.

Please do not think that I propose to dissolve the mind altogether. Then you would become an imbecile. As long as you live in this world, then you need your mind. But you can dissolve its negative workings by avoiding its use in all the areas of your being where your mind is a hindrance and a direct cause of your misery and of your confusion, and a direct hindrance to the creative process of your real self. Many of my friends have experienced this manifestation, not only in creative art, but also when a profound thought or a feeling of love, or a new way to approach life has sprung from a deep source within them. Creativity comes from another area. When you observe it, then you will see that it is as though you had another brain, another seat of feeling, and another way of reacting within yourself. At the beginning it does not happen often, but it will increase in frequency and in its duration as you understand yourself more thoroughly. Do not try to reproduce it artificially and voluntarily. It will not work. The moment you do that, then you again use the tools of the mind and of the will where they are not functional, and therefore they cannot be successful.

Let us now examine these two areas of thought, the superficial intellect and the real self. The former can be directed, manipulated at will because it is governed by the will. The latter cannot. But it is much more intelligent, much more certain, much more reliable. It is always constructive. You never even have to make a choice. It is there, it stands as the one and only truth, without any question or doubt. Question and doubt are part of the superficial intellect, of the mind. The real self is a product, a result that is being born in you very slowly, and with interruptions, to the degree that first acept yourself as you happen to be now and then you understand yourself. In other words, as you accept the reality of your actual state now, then the reality of the real self can manifest.

One of the intrinsic qualities of the real self is that it reacts forever anew to each experience and to each aspect of life. In other words, it is never governed by the past. Therefore, its way of experiencing is as poignant as that of a child. But when your impressionable mind has made an image out of an experience -- in other words, when it has petrified this one-time experience into a general rule and law -- then both your present ability to experience and your future ability to experience are limited to the past experience. Therefore, the freshness goes out of it -- and often the truth -- because in reality the present has no resemblance to the past; or it need not, or would not, if you would not mold it into this image. Perhaps now you will understand better what we have discussed, worked on, and looked at all this time. The only way to dissolve these past experiences -- which are deeply imprinted either on your conscious mind or on your unconscious mind -- and to free yourself of their limiting and erroneous effect is first to become aware of their distortions, then to look at them, and third to understand them in their full scope and in their depth, with all of their significance. This can be done only if you are truly willing to face yourself in absolute candor. In other words, if you are willing to dispense with any hankering as to what you should be, as opposed to what you are. Again and again I have to repeat this: You cannot see the truth if you moralize with yourself. This constant self-moralizing -- which often exists in a subtle, devious, hidden ways -- prohibits the understanding of that which causes the misery in your life. This misery is always self-produced. In other words, it never comes from the outside, no matter how much it may appear so when looked at superficially.

It often happens that a person is basically ready to enter the second half of the cycle, to approach the treshold toward the state of being in awareness, and yet he opposes the organic growth in this state by artificially holding on to this overemphasis on the mind, on the intellect, and on the outer will. By curbing the will, by manipulating the thought, and by disciplining the emotions, he believes that he can attain growth and the experience of the real self. When he temporarily seems to have a precarious, conditioned peace, then he is encouraged into believing that he is on the right road. But when his smoldering inner reality manifests so as to disrupt him in this false peace, then he despairs with himself. If only he would let go of his superimposed knowledge and let go of trying to live up to ideals that he is not yet able to inwardly live up to, then he would not misuse the tools of intellect and the will, and thereby he would not create more obstructions. If only the concepts were of lesser importance than what he really feels, then he would not obscure the jewel of the real self. Man holds on to these tools because he feels unsafe without them. He does not trust himself to be without the rules, without the laws, without the concepts, and without the ideals that come from the outside. Without the knowledge of what is right and what is good, he unconsciously thinks that he cannot let go of the superimposed standards. He ignores the fact that if only he would look at himself as he really is, then he would have nothing to fear. In order to do so, he would first have to see that the superimpositions do exist, and then he would have to determine why they do. He will come to see that security plays a role. But this kind of holding on to security cannot bring the real self into being. If you follow this procedure, then you will not obstruct the growth that you are inherently ready for.

Do not try to cut out the overemphasis on your outer intellect and on your will by force. Rather, use it first to see and then to understand what is in you. In other words, use it to accept yourself without moralizing. Do not get away from it, but use it only to indirectly bring about the constant renewal, the regeneration process, the direct experience of creative spontaneity that only the real self can give.

What you may find within yourself may be the same as the superimposed standards that you adopt from the outside. Yet, there is a world of difference between the two. Only what comes genuinely out of yourself is of value. You cannot find that which is genuinely within yourself -- behind all your destructive patterns and your images -- if you are not ready to dispense with the superimposed intellectualized concepts, and thus look at yourself naked. No matter how true a concept that you adopt may have been at one time for the person who has experienced it, it is no longer a truth if it is repeated in action and thought only.

What I am saying here is old wisdom, and I have said much of it before. But very little of it has been truly absorbed. So now I try to say it again in different words. The phase that most of my friends are approaching now requires a full awareness of everything that I said in this lecture. This dependency on outer standards, on superimposed ideals, cannot be whisked away, any more than any immature state you find yourself in can. Just recognize it for what it means, investigate it, acknowledge the fact that you are in this dependency, and then you will see that it makes a world of difference.

And now to your questions.

QUESTION: In my work I found that because I have to justify myself for what I do, I condemn myself as well. I realize that this seems to be a defense mechanism. It forms my wrong conclusions and images in some way, sort of an emotional confusion I have been intellectualizing. Will you please suggest an approach to this problem of self-justification and self-condemnation? I find myself confused as to whether or not I am justifying or condemning myself in this way.

ANSWER: As you first become aware of justifying yourself, then ask yourself why you are doing so. Would anyone justify what he does not feel needs justification? If you feel that it needs justification, then you must condemn, or judge, or moralize yourself. There can really be no justifying without moralizing. Then ask yourself clearly what it is exactly that you condemn. Then ask yourself why you condemn it. It will be easy to see that you do so not because of an innate knowledge, but mainly, and above all, because you have heard this. Your society and your environment condemns, so you do too. Now, it may well be that you wish to be without this trend or tendency, apart from the superimposed standards you are indoctrinated with. You may feel, for many reasons, that you can lead a fuller and more constructive life. But before you can be aware of your own innate desire, you have to separate the latter from the superimposition and the dependency on public opinion. In order to resolve the problem that hinders your full unfoldment, you have to understand the problem. But you cannot do so if you justify yourself and if you condemn yourself for having the problem. I have said this so many times, but it is always forgotten. You cannot find out the truth of yourself, or of your problems, when your approach has an attitude of right vs. wrong, of good vs. bad.

The mere fact that you wish to be without the problem would not cause justification and condemnation. This happens only because you wish to live up to superimposed standards and ideals. And you do so because you cannot accept yourself as you happen to be now. You already want to be different. You run away from what you are, and this prohibits you from growing out of your problem. You can grow out of it only if you accept it as being a part of you. In other words, if you accept the fact that you do have the problem. If you fully accept this, then you no longer need to justify or to condemn. You have given up the ideal, and therefore the outer standards.

If someone wants something and he does not try to live up to outside standards and preconceived ideas, then he will not need justification and condemnation if he does not succeed immediately. Let us suppose someone wants to write but cannot. The mere wish will not make him condemn himself. But if society proclaims that everyone who does not write commits a crime, a sin, or is inferior, then in addition to the simple wish he will begin to condemn himself -- and therefore also to justify himself in order to ward off the brunt of his self-condemnation. He will find excuses, explanations, reasons -- all of which are a cover for his self-condemnation.

Now, separate these two aspects. Become aware of your dependency on public opinion. Find out why you want to resolve your problem. Then be aware that whenever you look at the problem, you are condemning and justifying. The more you are aware of this, the less you will justify and condemn. And that is the beginning of understanding the problem. As you first become aware of and then you understand your self-moralizing and your self-justification, you diminish them by the very act of observing them. In the same way, the problem will be resolved by your act of understanding it and observing yourself with all the reactions that are connected with it. But you cannot start dealing with the problem before you dissolve your moralizing attitude.

So much unhappiness is caused by the compulsive need to live up to what you know exists. If you did not know of it, then this unhappiness would not be. Thus unhappiness is often determined by comparison, and therefore it is not genuine. To take a primitive example. Let us suppose someone is of modest means. He does not starve, but he has less than his neighbors. If everyone else were to live as he does, then he would not be unhappy, but because others have more, then he is. Is that real unhappiness? If it is not real, then it comes from the mind: from superimposed ideas, from outer knowledge -- and therefore it leads away from the real self. It might be well worth your consideration to look at your unhappiness from that point of view. Even though many an unfulfillment would still persist because it springs from a genuine need, a surplus drive would be taken off the edges if you see that the sense of unfulfillment is aggravated by comparing yourself to others and by outer knowledge. Thus the urge and the compulsion will diminish, the genuine wish will be freed, and hence you will be open to understanding the obstructions that are the cause of your real unfulfillment. The state that might make you genuinely unhappy cannot be understood, and therefore dissolved, as long as you are driven by superimposed standards. As long as shame and pride induce moralizing and justifying, then you cannot grow out of the problem because you cannot understand it. So, look at all this in a calm way, without hurry or the haste to go beyond it immediately.

QUESTION: I was under the impression that the mind is the builder, but according to what you say, it seems to me that the emotions are the builder. Am I correct?

ANSWER: Both are builders. Both can be builders either for something constructive or for something destructive. If they are used for something they are not organically destined for, then the result will be destructive. It would be destructive for the mind to want to build a spiritual state by hiding the actual emotions. But it would be constructive for the mind to build on what it finds of its own distortions. Emotions which are aware, even if negative, cannot build anything destructive. But unaware negative emotions are bound to build destructive results. Positive emotions build constructive results. If the mind is used for building material things, then it is constructive, because this is what the mind is for. You need the mind to form the intent to remove what the mind has built negatively. There is no strict borderline between the mind and the emotions. They intermingle. Both thought and emotion can be of the mind. But another region of your being -- the real self -- produces different thoughts and different feelings.

QUESTION: I would like to ask two questions in connection with Yoga. Is what you said the same as what Yoga calls "to become the mirror of reality?" And also that the mind should become "the slayer of the mind" in order to reach reality?

ANSWER: Yes, it is the same, only it is often used in a wrong way. It is used in a way of force, of superimposing, of forcefully cutting out something. Even the word "slayer" suggests this deep and unfortunate misunderstanding. In it is implied a wrong process. If you try to "slay" the mind, then it merely hides. It can be dissolved only by a process of understanding. A confusion is not eliminated by a forceful act of tearing it out. This only makes you repress your awareness of its existence. But if you look at the confusion without compulsion, without haste, without moralizing, and without denial, then you can hope for the understanding that is necessary if you are to grow out of it. Slaying suggests compulsion, haste, moralizing -- so it cannot be the way. Most of you on this Path have experienced this phenomenon already. When you come across an aspect that you do not like, and you encounter it with impatience and with the compulsion to get rid of it, then it always reappears sooner or later in one form or another. But when you look at it calmly, then you reach a deeper level of understanding. Thus this aspect begins to slowly lose its force and its impact. When this undesirable aspect reappears and you do not become impatient with yourself but you try to recognize more about yourself from its existence, then you become calm and peaceful. But you could certainly not become peaceful by slaying it, which is just another word for whisking it away. Whisking it away can only produce repression, and repression is self-deception. You think you do not have a certain aspect merely because you are not aware of it. But that is not getting rid of it. Hence, force leads only to self-deception and to illusion. If you let the undesirable aspect be -- in other words, if you let it float onto the surface -- then you can observe it and you can then learn to understand it. You can get behind it and see what is there. This is the only way. Cutting out or slaying would be a shortcut, and there is no shortcut to growth and to genuine spiritual health and emotional health. When you look at an undesirable aspect in full awareness, and when you deeply understand it, then it ceases to be, as if by its own accord.

The teachers who have made such statements have perceived certain truths. But I doubt that anyone who has perceived and experienced the truth in this respect can advocate "slaying." Those who do have merely adopted someone else's experience. In other words, they repeat what they have heard, and thus they give themselves away to those who know. It is also possible that wrong terms are used by translators and others who try to give to the world what one person has experienced. Such procedures of slaying and others lead further away from the real state of being. They can lead only to an illusory, imaginary state of being.

The great spirits of all time have said, and will say, what I have been trying to tell you for a number of years, from different approaches and different points of view. They may have used different words, but the essence always remains the same. Jesus spoke of not resisting evil. This is what he meant. If you resist the evil -- the confusion and the distortions -- then you only drive it underground. If you do not resist your evil, then you can see it. You automatically have the humility of not trying to be more than you are, and thereby you have the basic prerequisite to growing out of it and to be reborn into your real self. Disciplinary action such as cutting out, forcing, slaying, are all forms of resisting. When you judge, then you resist. When you justify, then you resist.

QUESTION: Then what is the right kind of self-discipline?

ANSWER: I believe that this lecture amply goes into this question. One of the points I make again and again is that disciplinary action is force, and therefore leads away from self-knowledge. The intent to look at yourself as you are, and not as you want to be, is constructive. But discipline connotes compulsion, suppression, repression, forceful action -- all shortcuts, all illusions, all measures to strengthen the idealized self image.

As I have said in this lecture, the intellect, the will -- and therefore also discipline -- are necessary for your outer actions, for your physical life, for preventing your destructive impulses to manifest. But when it comes to the growth of your inner being, then discipline is very harmful. If you discipline your thoughts and your emotions, then you force them into something other than they are. To look at yourself in truth does not involve discipline. It is an intention which you follow through. If you use your will for the purpose of "I want to know myself," then it is good, constructive, and realistic. But if you use your will to be something that you are not, then how can that be real? If you look at yourself calmly -- in other words, without moralizing, without justifying, without complaining, without resenting -- then you do not discipline yourself. If you find such tendencies and you look at them, then you do not discipline yourself. You simply look at what is there. Do you understand?

QUESTION: I don't know how a person can live without self-discipline.

ANSWER: That is something completely different. But I made this so clear in this lecture that I believe that if you calmly re-read it and if you open your mind, then you will see what I mean. The immature soul has many destructive impulses, and these can be prevented from action only by discipline. But I am not speaking about that. I am talking about the inner life, about the growing out of these very destructive impulses. I am talking about the birth of the real self, the birth of love. Can love come into being by discipline, by an act of will? Can any creative process come into being by discipline? Can you be a good person by discipline? Certainly not. Do you understand a little what I mean?

ANSWER: There are many different ways to discipline, this is not what I had in mind. I meant the channeling of emotions.

ANSWER: When you channel your emotions, then you force them to run according to how you decide with your mind they should run. Is that genuine? Can that lead to reality? When you are off guard and you do not tell them how to run -- in other words, when you do not "channel" them -- then they will run as they are. This will disappoint you because you thought that your channeling, your disciplinary action, has made them into what you want them to be, has made you into what you want to be, but you are not. If you were truly that, then you would not have to "channel" anything. Your emotions would flow automatically in a constructive way. The moment you have to channel them, then you distrust them. And rightly so, for they are still immature. How can they mature by channeling? Do you channel any living organism, such as a growing body? If you would, then you would cripple it. And this is what happens to emotions if they are channeled. They may behave outwardly, but that does not mean that they have grown out of their immature state. I have discussed this at such length in the past that I really do not have to repeat it here. I only want to add this. Channeled emotions are negative emotions manipulated. Only by letting them free will you be able to transform them through understanding them. Feelings are innately constructive, but you cannot come to them if you do not first understand their negative distortions. By channeling your emotions, and thus yourself, then how can you be free? Selfhood is freedom. Discipline and channeling lead away from freedom.

QUESTION: If one is in this state of being, which is the real self, and is functioning on a positive level, and then one discovers a neurotic trend on a deep level in the past, the real self seems to disappear. Why can it not open the channels that are there, and why then can you not pursue any creative work? It disappears with the real self.

ANSWER: Creativity is from the real self. To wholly be your real self means a great deal of understanding and of observation. Yet this understanding and this observation are constantly interrupted by your ingrained habit of hiding, of moralizing, of justifying, and of all that goes with it. You may succeed once, but then you forget again. And the next time you come across a disturbed area, you again repress, judge, and strain away from that which is. This is the difficulty that one has to be aware of in order to take on the habit of looking, of seeing, and of trying to understand completely free of all preconceived ideas. Perhaps the past experience of the real self also causes one to take it for granted and to strive to attain it again. Yet striving is the very opposite of what brings out the real self. Past experience cannot be duplicated in a direct experience. But your manner of going about it -- namely, freedom from repression, freedom from straining away, the willingness to calmly see what is and to understand without being in a hurry about it -- can renew the experience.

Moreover, your real self is covered all around by the false layers of superimposition. You may have begun to open up one area, and thus have reached a certain plateau, but other areas that now come to the fore are still covered. Here, the breakthrough has to be accomplished all over again by the same process. If you have that experience but a few times, then it will give you great strength. Do not expect to have it at all times yet. Such expectations will have a very negative effect.

QUESTION: But you are engaged in creative work, and then suddenly you cannot do it anymore?

ANSWER: Because there are still certain obstructions in you which you have not fully understood. When you first attained this experience, then you had not yet expected it. It came unbidden. But, inadvertently, as it were, you had the right attitude which I discuss so often. Then this attitude is lost again. Instead, there is the expectation of the beautiful feeling, and therefore the striving of the mind, the striving away from what is.

QUESTION: You were talking about superimposed standards. How should we educate our children? At this stage, every standard we give to our children is superimposed.

ANSWER: This is a chapter that goes too far for an answer now. All I can say is that human education at this point is wrong. It could be much more constructive. If the child could be educated according to teachings such as this -- in other words, if self-knowledge, if self-understanding, and the honest facing of what is would be cultivated in the child -- then there would be no conflict between two unsatisfactory alternatives: Of either letting all destructive impulses loose, or of incarcerating the living spirit of truth for the sake of right behavior. The child could be encouraged from the beginning to develop inwardly by facing the truth, and not just outwardly. Thus, superimposed standards would only be a structure for those who are as yet incapable of directing their behavior into constructive actions. Because education is so far behind what it could already be at this time, then moral laws become a whip, a prison, a rigid letter, and therefore the living spirit of love cannot grow. I think that it will take some time before humanity will change the educational system, although some tentative beginnings are already made, and this will increase slowly. Perhaps it will start in the individual homes, by individual teachers, and it will gradually become general. But until such time, many more people will have to find themselves in truth and reality, as they are now, not striving to be already different. Many more people will have to live up to what they are within themselves, instead of pretending to be something different. That is the only way that confusion, pain, and suffering can be removed. That is the only way God can come into being. Light, love, joy are all the outcome of truth. Not truth far beyond your state, but truth as it happens to be now within yourself.

*****

Blessings for all of you. May these words sink in, and even if the effect is but small, nevertheless they will prove tremendously helpful. First think of these words and then try to feel them. Pursue these thoughts on your own so that you can accept them as truth. Separate yourself from ideas that you wish to hold on to merely because you have done so for a long time and because you still struggle to recognize yourself as you are now. All this brings nothing but strife. Be blessed, my friends, all of you. Be in peace. Be in God.

May 25, 1962