Man's Relationship To God In The Various Stages of His Development Cycle

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. God bless all of you. Blessed is this lecture. Blessed are your efforts. Blessed is your work.

Before I turn to the lecture, I wish to extend our thanks from the world of spirit to all of my friends who have worked on this Path of self-recognition. For this is indeed something to be thankful for. Nothing in the entire world helps so much as every little step towards the further self-awareness of each individual. Nothing can help to eliminate suffering and confusion so much as your own efforts in this direction. The sincere desire to face the truth in yourself, to face the reality that is in you right now, is the only way not only to help yourself, but to improve conditions all over. Nothing else will eliminate strife. All of you have made progress in this respect in the last year. Each one of you has gained a little more insight into himself. It has been a fruitful year, more than you can possibly realize. After this short interruption, the year to come will bring still further progress in developing the ability to face yourself as you are now. When I say progress, I mean the removal of barriers to seeing that which is, rather than striving away from it in the false belief that spiritual progress is to try to be what you cannot as yet be.

In your daily life many possibilities are offered to you to see yourself as you are, to verify what you really feel, rather than to look for what you try to feel. Remind yourself constantly to be alert to this reality in you; cultivate the awareness. After this very fruitful year, most of my friends, after perhaps overcoming a defense here and a resistance there, will penetrate deeper into the emotional levels. At first they will become aware of the existence of these levels and then of their significance. Understanding will liberate you more and more, after the initial fear of it has proven unreasonable. Continue and do not let this fear stop you. Instead of repressing it, face it, examine it, grasp it, and then come to terms with it.

Now I wish to discuss man's relationship to God in the various stages of the development that man goes through. In the last lecture I discussed the state of being without awareness as the first stage in the great cycle. During his first few incarnations primitive man is still near to this state of being without awareness. He lives from day to day, tending to his immediate needs. His mind is not yet developed, and therefore it is not equipped to ask questions, to doubt, to think, to discriminate. He lives in the Now, but without awareness. In order to be able to live in the Now in awareness, he has to go through various stages.

As man continues to develop his mind, he first uses it for his immediate needs, that become more pressing in a growing civilization. In other words, he first uses his mind concretely. But later he begins to use it abstractly. In other words, he begins to ask the important questions that have preoccupied mankind ever since the beginning of time. These questions are: "Where do I come from? Where do I go when I die? What is the meaning of life? What is the significance of the universe?" Man begins to perceive nature and her laws. He observes the magnificence of nature's laws. And then he begins to wonder. This first wonderment represents the first conscious step towards relating to the Creator. "Who created these laws? Who made all this? Is any superior mind responsible for this creation?" With such questions the first ideas about God come into existence. When he concludes that there must be someone of infinite superiority, wisdom, and intelligence he feels that he must relate to this Supreme Being.

At the same time, man's spiritual and emotional immaturity produces fears and other problematic emotions. On the one hand, he wants an authority who thinks for him, who decides for him, and thus who is responsible for him. He clings to this authority in the hope of being relieved of self-responsibility. On the other hand, he projects onto this God his fears of life and his inadequacy to cope with it. He senses the power of this immensely wise and resourceful Creator of all the natural laws that he can see. Since he cannot as yet separate power from cruelty, he begins to fear this God of his own projection. Thus he begins to apppease, to cajole, to submit to, and to become subdued by this imaginary God image.

To recapitulate, the first state of awakening causes man to wonder. In this spontaneous experience of wonder and perception, he often has a genuine God experience and a genuine relationship with God. But as he grows more full of conflict and full of fear -- after his desires become more urgent -- then all these emotions and attitudes color his first God experience. Therefore, he no longer relates to God as a genuine, spontaneous, creative experience, but he relates to a projection of himself.

The more his mind grows in one direction only -- in other words, without being used to resolve his inner problems and his conflicts, which thereby remain hidden from awareness -- the more does man's relationship to God become false. It is false because it is based on personal needs, on wishful thinking, and on fear. The more such a one-sided use of the mind continues, the falser the concept of God becomes -- either consciously or unconsciously. In the end, it will become a superstition, with less truth and more dogma.

After his original God experience and perception turns to superstition, man comes to a point where he makes a farce out of God. But there comes a time when he can no longer continue in this trend because his intelligence, which has grown in the meantime, will prevent him. His intelligence will then say: "It cannot possibly be that there is a Father who makes this life for us. It is up to us. It is our responsibility. We have free will." A reaction sets in, and man often turns to the other extreme and he becomes an atheist.

The state of atheism exists in two ways: 1) as an absolute lack of awareness of and perception of life and nature, of her laws and of the significance of creation; 2) as a reaction to the superstitious God image and the self-projection of man who denies self-responsibility. This latter state of atheism, erroneous in itself, still indicates a state of development beyond the superstitious belief in God. Such a belief comes predominantly from fear, from evasion, from escapism, from wishful thinking, and from a denial of self-responsibility. The second state of atheism is often a necessary transitional period on the way to a more realistic and genuine experience of God and of a relationship to God. During this stage of atheism faculties are cultivated in man that are of the utmost importance for his individual growth. I do not advocate atheism any more than I advocate a childish, clinging belief in God. Both are stages. In each stage there is something important that the soul learns. Something is imprinted in the soul that is productive and lasting, long after the superficial layers of the mind have dispensed with the falsity of both extremes.

In this second stage of atheism man learns to assume self-responsibility. He lets go of the wished-for hand that leads his life for him and that absolves him from the consequences of his own mistakes. He gives up the expectation of being rewarded for being obedient to rules. Simultaneously, such atheism frees him from the fear of being punished. Somehow it brings man back to himself.

But when a certain point is passed in this stage, then man can no longer maintain the concept of atheism. The more any thought, any concept, any scientific fact, any philosophy is carried to its logical conclusion, the less is it possible to maintain either an untruth or a half-truth. It is the same with a temporary state that had its healthy function at a certain period. When man passes through the stages briefly discussed here, then he is bound to arrive at the point when he uses his mind to question his own motives and to look both at himself and into himself. Thus he cultivates his awareness by facing the reality within. As he proceeds to do this, forever deeper levels of his psyche become liberated. A genuine God experience is the inevitable outcome of this liberation. Such a genuine God experience is different from the childish belief in a self-projected God which the mind has created out of fear, out of weakness, and out of wishful thinking. He no longer acts because he feels that God either demands it or expects it of him. He lives in the Now. He does not fear his imperfection and he does not fear that God will punish him for it. He can see his imperfection without becoming frantic. Understanding its harm, but not fearing it, he will see that it is not the imperfection itself that is harmful, but rather his lack of awareness of it, the fear of being punished for it, and the pride of wanting to be above it. Since he is no longer frantic to get over his imperfection, he will have the necessary calm to observe it, thereby understanding both its context and its reason for being. In this process, he grows out of it. As man cultivates this accepting attitude towards his imperfection, he makes a genuine experience of God possible. On the other hand, the occasional glimpse and the sense of such experience facilitate the proper attitude toward one's self.

A genuine God experience is being. God is not perceived as acting -- either punishing or rewarding, or guiding along certain ways in order to take away the effort of man. Man realizes that God IS. This is very difficult to explain in words, my friends. But it is the only way I can say it. You cannot come to this feeling that God IS if you do not first face what is in you right now -- imperfect, childish, and faulty as it may be.

It would be misleading to assume that these stages follow neatly one after the other. They overlap. They do not always follow in this order, because the human personality is not made up of one level. Different layers of the personality express different attitudes at any given time, even in this particular respect. Hence, it is possible that at one period of a person's life he may consciously be in one stage and unconsciously in another. Only after he proceeds on a path of self-knowledge does the hidden unconscious come to the fore. Then it often happens that at a later period something comes out that seems to belong to a former stage. This means that a certain necessary stage was not lived through fully. It was repressed due to outer influences and pressure. So my description is only a vague general outline. Beware of judging either yourself or another according to what you can see. Generally speaking, however, this is the cycle that humanity goes through.

Self-awareness must eventually lead to the state of being in awareness. At the same time, a new relationship to God comes into existence. God is experienced as being. I repeat, you cannot come to it if you do not first experience in a negative way that which is in you now. Nor can you come to it by concepts you learn, by philosophies and practices you observe, by doctrines you follow. If you are unwilling first to be in and then to live through your present confusion, your present errors, and your present pains -- first facing them and then understanding them -- then you cannot ever be IN God. Or, to put it in other words, you cannot be in a state of happiness, in a state of peace, in a state of creativity, in a state of reality. Only then can the Great Reality be experienced. At first the latter will come occasionally and in vague glimpses, but nevertheless it will give you a new approach to God and a new relationship with God. It will not only transform your attitudes and your concept of God, but it will also change your concept of yourself and your concept of your place in life.

Man's prayer -- in other words, his speaking to God -- also goes through these phases. The prayers are the expression of the various phases. It is often the case -- as it is with all things on earth -- that inwardly man is actually in a new stage, while outwardly he still clings to old habit patterns, patterns which he had adopted in a former stage. This may apply not only to the way man prays, but also to certain concepts he clings to in his conscious mind, while inwardly he is already beyond them. Habit is an intrinsic quality of the mind. Yet the experience that comes out of the state of being never forms habits. It is only the mind that does it. The memory, combined with the tendency to form habits, is the danger of the mind in regard to true spiritual experience. The more flexible you are, the less you will fall into the trap of set habit patterns, and into the trap of clinging to old concepts and to obsolete ideas that at one time gave you an experience, and which you then wish to recreate by holding on to it.

If you train your mind to face what is in you now -- in other words, to think abstractly -- then you will free yourself of the habit patterns that hold you back from productive living and from true experience. This can be the experience of God, the experience of life, or the experience of yourself. It is all the same. It is BEING. Is it not habit that made such a deep groove into your mind of a certain experience that this experience turned into a rigid image? Isn't it habit that causes you to stick to misconceptions, to wrong conclusions, and to generalizations that are always half-truths at best? This applies to many things, my friends.

When you discover such erroneous ways in yourself, then beware of feeling guilty, of being frantic. In other words, of feeling: "I should not have these in me." For this attitude is the greatest barrier of all.

And now, my friends, let us turn to your questions.

QUESTION: I tried to explain what you told us about the spirit and free will to two people: one very religious and the other a scientist. Then they asked if God was omniscient and loving, and whether He also knew the future. If He knew the future while He gave us free will, then He must have known what we would do with it. And this I could not answer.

ANSWER: In the first place, the future is a product of time, and time is a product of the mind. Therefore, in reality the future does not exist, just as the past does not exist. I realize that this is impossible for most people to understand. Outside the mind, there is being. That is, no past, no present, no future, only Now. This can at best be sensed by feeling, rather than by the intellect.

Furthermore, this question arises from the same misconception I outlined in this lecture. It shows the concept of a God who acts, who does. Creation is, in the true sense of the word, not an action -- and it is certainly not a time-bound action. God created the spirits out of time, out of the mind. He created them in the state of being. In this sense, each created spirit is God-like and creates his own life. God neither takes away nor adds on.

However, I have this to add. It is an illusion to believe that pain and suffering are terrible. Please, try to understand what I am saying. Man's inordinate fear of suffering is utterly unrealistic and is a product of the mind. In other words, it is an error. The reason man fears pain and suffering is because he believes that he has nothing to do with it. In other words, that it can come to him without his being responsible for it. Therefore, it is either unjust or a chaotic coincidence. But once he realizes the truth, namely that every pain that he experiences is due to his own evasion of truth and reality -- in other words, once he not only understands this as a principle but he actually connects the links -- then he will no longer fear it. The important thing is to see the key even before you can begin to use it. He will no longer guard against the supposed arbitrariness of life, against which he feels so helpless. Thus, his suffering will acquire an entirely new meaning, and thus will become productive.

Then this will make man see that the actual suffering is not half as frightening as his fear of it and his attitude towards it. To a slight degree, many of you have experienced this. You have experienced that when you fear something before it happens -- in other words, when you have a negative expectation -- then it is much worse than when you actually go through it. And you have also experienced how your pains take on a new face once you thoroughly understand how you yourself have created them. If you observe this chain of events within -- abstaining from perfectionism, from moralizing, and from justifying -- then the pain instantly recedes, although the outer situation may remain the same. When you come to terms with your reality, then you can also accept the imperfection of life as such. Without rebellion -- that is, without anger against your imperfection -- many destructive patterns can be transformed. Thus you can cause less suffering to yourself. But your expectation -- either conscious or unconscious -- that life should be perfect causes you to rebel, to resist, to erect barriers which cause more imperfection and more suffering than life would contain otherwise. In other words, without it. So it is your attitude to suffering, your attitude to life, your attitude to your position in life, and your attitude to your position towards yourself that determine how you experience your suffering. If man's attitude towards suffering were not as distorted as it usually is, then he would find that the problems that he has to solve by conquering both mind and matter are beautiful. They are the most beautiful things in your earth life. Only by conquering your resistance and your blindness -- your lack of awareness of yourself -- will you experience the beauty of life, whether you go through difficult periods at one time or you experience happiness and fulfillment at another.

When man comes closer to this understanding, then he can never ask a question such as you mentioned. It is so confused, it contains so much blindness -- so much lack of awareness of reality -- and it shows such spiritual immaturity that it cannot be answered in a way that will make sense even to the questioner. You cannot understand with the mind what is beyond the realm of the mind. For that, another faculty is necessary. But as long as the existence of such a faculty is denied, then it is impossible to lead the person to an eventual understanding.

The question also reflects an eternal conflict in mankind, a conflict in religious concepts. On the one hand man postulates that God is an omnipotent Father who acts at will, who rewards you if you obey His laws, who guides you without your active participation in your own inner life, provided you humbly ask for it. On the other hand, it is postulated that man has free will. In other words, that he molds his own fate, that he is responsible for his own life. While religion teaches man the latter, it simultaneously cripples both his free decision and his self-responsibility by forcing people to obey certain prescribed rules. Between these two apparently mutually exclusive concepts, man is confused. The question you asked is a typical example of such confusion.

An omnipotent Creator and man's self-responsibility are mutually exclusive only when viewed in time and from the mind. Then this omnipotent Creator is perceived as acting like man. In other words, in time and from the mind. You do not have to be in the state of being in awareness before you can sense that in reality -- in the state of being -- there is no conflict between the two. All you have to do is to face yourself without resistance, without the pretense of being more than you are, and without striving to be more perfect than you happen to be at the moment. Each individual aspect in yourself that you view with such freedom puts you -- at that very moment -- into a state of being. Then you will inwardly perceive the truth of God as being without contradictions of the sort that you mentioned in your question. You will know that complete self-responsibility is not exclusive of a Supreme Being. But a person who is not inwardly ready cannot possibly understand what I am saying here.

In this connection I would like to say that it may occur to some of you why it is that some great spirits, either in the body or without the body -- through human mediums -- have passed on great wisdom, yet their teachings actually seem to encourage one of these temporary stages I mentioned as a phase in the great cycle. In such cases their teachings were adapted to this immature stage, rather than used to draw people out of it. You may wonder why this was so. The answer is that each stage has to be gone through thoroughly. If one were forced to skip a stage, then something in the soul would remain unassimilated. Therefore, it would have to manifest at a later period. Let us suppose we had a group of people here who had not gone through the development that you have gone through in the last few years. To them what I say now -- for instance about the relationship to God -- would make no sense. A person who has not, at least to some degree, experienced the peace of true self-awareness -- without either self-condemnation or self-justification, rarely as this may happen to you -- cannot possibly sense the meaning of the state of being. If a group of people finds itself between the second stage and the third stage in this great cycle, then a spirit will have to talk to them in a way that they can understand. Yet he does not lie. But for such a group it is humanly impossible to understand more. Only by gradually bringing a group out of this stage into the stage of self-facing can the soul of these people begin to absorb more truth, even if the mind cannot follow it. This is why it may often occur that spiritual helpers, either from this world or from the other world, seem to encourage a phase from which you have already emerged.

QUESTION: I know that if I had listened to this lecture a year ago I would not have felt it as I do now.

ANSWER: Of course not. Now, at least, there is a chance of understanding, of grasping, of sensing, be it only in rare moments.

In a smaller way, man repeats these cycles over and over on various levels. In other words, he does not go through each one of these stages just once. You may observe that even the lectures I have given you in all these years go through these stages. Each of the phases we passed through prepared you for that which is the key: self-awareness. The ability, the willingness, the courage, the incentive, and the motivation do not come easily. Therefore, they have to be cultivated. This is why these phases exist. But they do not exist as ready-made laws. They exist because of man's inherent rhythm of growth that cannot be hurried. Yet growth needs both encouragement and preparation. Man needs help so as to direct his attention to his resistances.

QUESTION: Will you please elaborate on the meaning of prayer in the different stages?

ANSWER: I believe it is evident from the lecture itself. Prayer will be adapted to the conscious attitude and to the concept of any given phase. In the first stage, when man is still almost in the state of being without awareness, then there is no prayer, because there is no concept of God. In the second stage, when man begins to ask questions and begins to wonder, then this spontaneous experience of wondering and of allowing new considerations to fill him is, in itself, prayer or meditation. The third stage may be the realization of a Supreme Intelligence. In this stage prayer takes the form of admiration of the marvel of the universe and of nature. It is worship. In the fourth stage -- when the confusion of the mind, the immaturity, and the feeling of inadequacy cause fear, clinging helplessness, and dependence, and when wishful thinking, greed, and the non-acceptance of reality cause supplication -- then prayer will be expressed accordingly. When prayers seem to be answered in this state, then it is not because God acts, but because man is sincere -- in spite of his self-deception and of his evasion -- and thus has opened a channel within through which the laws of being can penetrate through to him. This is an important distinction that will be perceived only at a later stage. When man realizes his own participation in whether or not a prayer is answered, then he will lose the sense of helplessness and of the arbitrariness of a willful God that he has to appease by man-made and superimposed rules. I might add that what often appears like an answered prayer is actually the strength of an unconflicted mind -- at least at that time -- in the particular area where the prayer is answered.

When man comes into the state of independence -- in other words, when he lets go of this imaginary God who punishes him, who rewards him, and who makes his life for him, when he finds himself in the state of atheism, of the denial of any Higher Being -- then he does not have to pray. At least, he does not have to pray in the conventional sense. He may meditate on himself, he may look at himself in sincerity, and this is actually the best prayer in the true sense of the word. But it may also be that in this atheistic state man is completely irresponsible, and therefore he fails to think of himself and to look at himself. He may escape from himself, just as much as the person who uses God as an escape from himself.

When man reaches the stage of the active pursuit of self-awareness -- of facing himself as he really is -- then at the beginning he may still be accustomed to the old prayer of begging for help. In other words, of asking God to do for him what he he is used to shy away from doing for himself. Yet, in spite of this habit in prayer, he begins to face himself. Only after reaching deeper levels of such self-facing will he gradually avoid the kind of prayer he was used to. He may even go through a stage of not actively praying at all in the usual sense. But he meditates. And that is often the best prayer. He meditates by looking at his real motivations; by allowing his actual feelings to come to the surface and by questioning them as to their reason for being. In this kind of activity, prayer in the old sense becomes more and more meaningless and contradictory. His prayer is his sincere intent to face what may be most unpleasant. It is prayer because it contains the attitude that truth for the sake of truth is the threshold to love. Without truth and without love, then there can be no God experience. Love cannot grow out of trying to pretend a truth that is not felt. But love can grow out of facing a truth, no matter how imperfect one is. This attitude IS prayer. Alertness to one's resistance IS prayer. Owning up to something that one has hidden from in shame IS prayer. When this proceeds, then the state of being comes into existence gradually -- little by little and always with interruptions. In the state of being, prayer is no longer an action of spoken words or of uttered thoughts. It is a feeling of being in the eternal now; of flowing in a current of love with all beings; of understanding; of perception; of being alive. It is impossible to convey how these few aspects I mentioned here, in addition to many more indescribable feelings, comprise prayer in the highest sense. Real prayer is the awareness of God in His reality. But this kind of prayer cannot be either imitated or learned through any teachings, through prescribed practices, or through disciplines. It is the natural outcome of the courage and the humility to face oneself completely and without reservations. Before you have reached this highest state of relating to God -- of being, where prayer and being are one -- then all you can do is to constantly renew your intent to face yourself without any reservation; to constantly renew your intent to remove all the pretenses between your conscious mind and that which is in you; to constantly renew your intent to remove the pretense between what is in you and others. This is the best prayer in the world. This is the Pathway, my friends.

QUESTION: I have recently learned of a young cousin who has a malignancy, and I would like to ask that I have the prayers of this group for his recovery, and I would like to know if there is anything I can do, or that can be done to help him.

ANSWER; My dearest friend, this question is contradictory to everything I have said, both here and previously. It is certainly understandable that you feel that way, and the whole group can certainly pray. The validity of such a prayer depends on your sincere will that you wish the best to another person; on your sincere will that you do not want him to suffer; on your sincere will that you would do what you can to help alleviate such suffering. If you are so well-intended, then open yourself for inspiration. If there is a way for you to give strength and consolation, then it may come with such openness. But from our point of view, we view these things differently. In reality temporary suffering, parting, and death are not what they mean to you. I know that this is painful at this moment in time. There is no doubt that your pure thoughts, your pure feelings, and your pure intent must have an effect. No necessarily in the exact manner you wish, but nevertheless they do have a very good effect.

QUESTION: It is not his death that is so painful, but the leaving behind of small children and so many things left undone, brilliance and talent.

ANSWER: What you think is inevitably lost, because it is not concluded in this life, actually is not lost. No one goes from this earth sphere if it is not right and good, unless he takes his own life. Nothing happens in the entire universe that is meaningless and that cannot be productive. In other words, there is no waste. The waste exists only temporarily. It exists only when you do not make the best of your life while you have it. But leaving earth life as such is never wasteful, regardless of how young a person is when he leaves his body. If you first think of and then meditate about these words, then they will be of greater help -- and therefore will be more consoling -- than if I were to tell you that any means exist that can interrupt the laws of cause and effect, or that God can protect you from certain stages that man has to go through and which can be fruitful for all concerned. I am not indicating that he cannot be helped. This is not within my realm. The outcome may not necessarily be as you fear it. But whether or not it is, the fact is that no waste exists. There is meaningfulness even for those who stay behind.

QUESTION: Would you please comment on the progress of our group work and show us a way to make it an even more dynamic experience for us, one that is truly group work?

ANSWER: Yes, my friend. I believe that most of you can begin to first sense and then experience that this group work is of immeasurable importance. How else can you safely allow your negative emotions to come to the fore? It is important to allow an outlet to emotions that would be destructive for an environment that does not understand. Letting them out in a group will be fruitful for everyone else's insight. How else can you rid yourself of the pressure of your repression? How else can you, in the best and fastest way, learn to communicate on a deeper level of your being, rather than on the superficial ones? All this has begun and it can be furthered in the years to come if you keep this in mind. Provided you continue to grow in the future as you have this last year, then the group work will prove more and more fruitful, in addition to the private work that you will not want to miss under any circumstances. The progress of the various groups depends primarily on the individual's participation. It depends on his willingness to penetrate his surface defenses; it depends on his willingness to let go of his various resistances; it depends on his willingness to see the truth within; it depends on his willingness to dispense with his justification; it depends on his willingness to dispense with his moralizing; it depends on his willingness to dispense with his rationalizing; it depends on his willingness to dispense with his intellectualizing. You have made some tentative beginnings in this respect, and in some instances very good progress in this particular area. But there are still many guards and much pride that prevent a true opening of your channel. Often you do not see yourself. Often you do not want to expose yourself. This will improve as your sincere will does not falter. In other words, as you face these emotions within you in the candor I advocate. So I wish to remind you as far as the group work is concerned. Learn to bring out your feelings more. Learn to observe your reactions. Observe your tendency of always explaining away your reactions. Observe your subjectivity. You will then gradually come to the point when you will be capable of expressing your unreasonable, childish, imperfect emotions without any explanations. Only then can you begin to examine them and to understand them in their true light. As long as you are ready with an explanation before you even express them clearly, then you cannot gain the self-awareness that you wish, and which is essential for your liberation. As you become aware of your defenses, then you will learn not to strive away from them. Instead, you will experience yourself in your defensiveness in full awareness. This is the right approach. This is more progress. In the real sense, it is more enlightenment, it is more constructive than trying to force yourself away from something that you cannot feel. I know that I am being repetitious, but it cannot be emphasized enough, for it is always forgotten, and therefore it needs constant reminding. This emotional experience -- first being in what you feel and then seeing it for what it means -- is also the way of the group work. Then this will make it a more fruitful interrelationship. It will contribute more to your individual progress than anything you are capable of imagining at this time.

You have made a very good beginning in this direction. The first year of this particular group work has gone better than expected. But that does not mean that you cannot do much more. In the following years much more benefit will come to each of you who is sincere in this endeavor. More interaction will be established from one soul to another soul, rather than from one intellect to another intellect.

QUESTION: Could I ask you a question about man's development, as you talked about it the last time and this time, too? It seems to me that our Western culture suffers from holding on to the intellect and to the will, instead of approaching the state of being. And, if that is so, then what can we do to counteract this tendency, say in education, or in our cultural life?

ANSWER: It is true that this is a general tendency. What can you do? There is only one answer. At the risk of being repetitious, I have to say once more that there is no other way than cultivating self-awareness. The more awareness you gain, the more this awareness will emanate from you. Then it will somehow find expression -- spontaneously and creatively -- in all your activities, whatever they are. Whether you are a doctor, a teacher, or a shoemaker makes no difference. You will influence your surroundings not so much by what you say or by what you preach, but by your mere being. In other words, by your emanation. Each individual who is going through such a Path of self-finding is bound to contribute to this great change. The world cannot be changed unless a sufficient number of people are doing just what you are doing. Every single human being helps towards that end. In other words, one's efforts at self-honesty are not only beneficial for himself. Incidentally, this change has already begun to take place here and there. A group like yours contributes more than vast masses of people who preach doctrines, who force away their emotions, and who feel that they must be good -- while their true state of being is still far removed from such goodness. A group of only five people who face reality as it happens to be now contributes more to the entire world -- not only to your earth sphere but to all the spheres -- than the best intended teachings and ideals that reach merely the surface intellect.

QUESTION: When we are either angered or disturbed by the perversity, the selfishness, or the cynicism of others, or disturbed by corruption in high places, is this a fault? Does the light on the Path make us blind to the wrongs in the social organism of which we are all members? What should be our attitude towards social problems?

ANSWER: If you consider your question, then you will discover the emotional dependency and the moralizing underlying it. Moralizing with yourself -- "what should be our attitude? Is it a fault?" -- and moralizing with others. You cannot find the true answer as long as the underlying attitude is thus colored. No, you certainly need not be blind just because you are on a path of self-finding. You cannot be. The condoning of and the blindness to what exists is not the answer. The answer is not a lazy acceptance of evil. But neither is the answer a rebellion against evil. When you rebel, then you cannot transform it. At best, you can make certain superficial reforms that have no solid ground and which, therefore, are bound to end in an equally wrong opposite -- and so become evil all over again.

The productive approach would be -- after first discovering and then removing your self-moralizing attitude -- to ask yourself: "Is my anger truly an objective one or am I emotionally involved?" Then you will perceive the difference between objective anger and subjective anger. The former does not have an urgency. It is detached. It does not make you restless. It does not make you frustrated. When you feel frustrated and your anger hurts you personally, then it means that you are hiding something in yourself that you have not faced. This lack of peace -- in other words, this disturbance -- is always a sign of subjective anger. This This is a sign that you are not aware of what is really going on in you.

No collective means can change the world unless they are sustained by the inner growth and by the transformation which are the direct products of self-awareness. As long as man does not face his own injustice, does not face his own greed, does not face his own selfishness, does not face his own one-sidedness, does not face his own pride, and does not face his own fears -- all of which exist on a deeply hidden psychological level -- then these same attitudes are bound to continue in the world, regardless of what social reforms are instituted. Social reforms are the product of man, and therefore they are maintained by man. If man continues to hide within himself that which he wants to disappear outwardly, then he creates a discrepancy that can have no resolution. But this does not mean that one should not do what one can to eliminate wrong and evil. However, you should understand what is necessary in order to really change the world. As long as you are inwardly greedy and inwardly selfish and you do not know it, then the outer greed and the outer selfishness in the world cannot be successfully eliminated. If you truly want to contribute to the good of general conditions -- in other words, if you want to change the world -- apart from whatever you may be able to do, then try to find the similar conditions within yourself that you so strenuously object to outside yourself. They may exist either in a more subtle form or in a modified form, but they must essentially be there. When you become aware of them, then you will know that you -- and millions of others like you -- are responsible for all the ills of the world. But there should be no guilt, no self-flagellation about this, only the recognition of a fact. The outer forms -- regardless of how efficient they are -- will work lastingly only when more people do what I advise you to do, my friends. When you look at human history, then you will see that this is so. Reforms and general improvements exist in a genuine and lasting way to the degree that man has become more self-responsible, more aware of himself, and more mature. But where social reforms were way ahead of man's inner growth, then they may have had a temporary effect, only to either evaporare or to end up in an equally evil extreme on the other side of the scale. The world is nothing more than the outcropping of all the individuals: Of their inner state and of their present inner truth. I said this already years ago. Perhaps now you will be better able to verify it. Such an imbalance of going from one extreme to the other in the attempt to eliminate an evil is exactly what happens in the individual soul. When man attempts to change superficially, then he swings from one extreme to another. When he adopts one rule, good as it may be, in exchange for another he does not like, then he is not profound. He has not attempted to investigate what he really feels. This -- which you encounter so often in this work -- is what you experience in the world at large.

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My dearest friends, I leave you for a short time. That does not mean that the continued process of inner growth needs to be halted. It depends on how you approach yourself: your daily experiences, your daily reactions, and your daily feelings. Keep up this self-observation, no matter what. Do not stop it. Do not run away from yourself. Bring peace into your heart by looking at yourself as you are now. There is no other way of gaining peace, although there are many false, illusory ways. Most of you have experienced the truth of this, at least occasionally. Your lack of peace is always due to somewhere not wanting to face yourself. Remember this. As you face yourself in utter truthfulness -- in other words, as you dissolve your pride, your pretenses, and your resistance -- then you will perceive what it means to be in reality. In other words, to be in the state of being in awareness. Even your unpleasant reality of the moment -- which is the product of your conflicts and of your confusions -- is peaceful, provided you truly face it and live it through instead of running from it. It is God. And that can be the door that eventually leads to a greater Reality.

With this, I bless each and every one of you and each and every one of your dear ones. Try to feel the love, the warmth, and the truth that come from the world of being, and that can be yours for the asking. You have a key now. Use it. Be in peace, be in God.

June 8, 1962