Mobility In Relaxation--Negative Pleasure

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. Blessings for everyone of you. May these blessings aid you in assimilating this lecture, not only with your outer understanding but also with your inner understanding. All of you have progressed, each your own way, most of you considerably. It is often hard to evaluate outwardly what constitutes real progress. Often the greatest progress is least noticeable in the eyes of others. New inner insight has been gained by all of you, enabling you to meet your own life in a different way. Even those of you who have not begun actual work on this path must have grown inwardly, for otherwise they would not even be here or read these lectures.

This lecture is an attempt to recapitulate the material we covered in the past and, at the same time to open to up new areas for future work. It is meant to help you to understand past material as experienced fact in your personal work -- as opposed to merely theoretical teachings -- and simultaneously to give you an overall view of the work to come. This lecture can be followed as a road map for your inner journey.

The entire universe is permeated with a vibrant life substance. This substance consists of forces of tremendous power. Mankind has only vaguely begun to discover it, and then only to a very limited degree. Whether this power is physical -- such as electrical energy or atomic energy -- or mind power makes no difference, for it is all the same power, or different facets of the same power. This power is a very impressionable mass, a substance that can be governed only by consciousness. The result of this molding is matter in its various degrees of density. However, it is also something more subtle than specific matter. It is life itself, as it unfolds for the individual. It is experience, it is conditions, it is circumstances, it is fate or destiny. Whatever man experiences, whatever the conditions in which he finds himself, this is the matter or the form which is the outcome of a combination between consciousness and the way in which this consciousness impresses the life substance. This is a very brief recapitulation of everything I have spoken about in the course of these years. I repeat it here in order to make what is to follow more understandable.

This tremendous life substance is in continuous motion. Let us go a little deeper into the meaning of this, into the particular way and rhythm of this cosmic movement. If you truly understand this, then you have another key to your life.

This cosmic movement, permeating everything that is, is a mixture of mobility AND of relaxation. The key of mobility combined with relaxation -- in other words, a relaxed mobility -- opens up the world. This is the state of being. It is is the unitive principle of being. Only through misconceptions does duality or conflict come about. The particular duality or distortion of this unitive principle -- mobility in relaxation and relaxation in mobility -- results in the following misconception. On the one hand relaxation is perceived as non-movement, as stagnation. On the other hand mobility is seen as tense effort. This is particularly significant and important to understand for mankind's problems.

All misconceptions are derivatives of this duality. This image says that relaxation can exist only in non-movement -- in other words, in stagnating passivity -- versus movement in anxious, grabbing, striving effort. Man has to seemingly decide between these two alternatives. Whenever such alternatives exist, then strife must follow. For strife is a result of conflict. It is necessary to transcend this duality into the unitive principle of being. This applies to all the levels of the personality. I cannot emphasize sufficiently that my talks are not in the least abstract, philosophical discourses. They are very practical keys to your immediate life, my friends. Do not ever overlook this fact.

Let us begin to see how this holds true. When you examine the images -- as they unfold through your pathwork -- and you look at these misconceptions deeply enough, then you are bound to find that they fall directly into this split. Even from a merely intellectual approach, it is easy to see that the distortion of mobility versus relaxation is the primary duality. It underlies all the misconceptions and it results in a situation in which you see only two equally unsatisfactory alternatives. This primary misconception distorts the harmonious rhythm of the cosmic movement.

You will experience this truth even more dynamically and personally when you listen to your soul movements. In other words, to your inner expressions and emanations. Calmly observe what emanates from your psychic forces and you will find this distortion of movement -- in which you stagnate because non-movement seems so tempting. It appears to be the effortless state that the soul longs for. Or else movement is necessary in order not to stagnate and because guilt whips you into a striving, overly-tense movement. You may not be able to put your finger on exactly what it is that you strive for. When observing the state of your psychic emanation, then you will be able to pinpoint this particular dichotomy.

This is very important. For the moment you can acknowledge this confusion -- and therefore this distortion of your personal cosmic forces -- by this admission, by this acceptance, by this observation or awareness you will, slowly but surely, come nearer to straightening out this imbalance of motion. To the degree that you proceed in reorienting your heretofore unconscious -- but now becoming increasingly conscious -- concepts, values, understanding of life, understanding of yourself, your relationship to life, and your relationship to yourself, to that extent, as a natural result, your movement begins to harmonize with the great cosmic flow. Mobility in relaxation comes into being more and more.

The same applies to the physical level of existence. As you observe the emanation of your thinking, the emanation of your feeling, and the emanation of your reacting, and then as you specifically observe this particular emanation, you will see that the same imbalance also affects your physical body. Since the principle of life is the harmony between mobility and relaxation, then the phenomenon of dying must be the misunderstanding of this principle, so that a duality arises. When this misunderstanding has proceeded to a sufficiently far-reaching extent -- thus affecting more and more levels and aspects of the entity -- then the phenomenon of dying on the outer level takes place. But where this balance has been established life continues. Therefore, in that area or in those areas death is an impossibility.

As the psychological imbalance is straightened out, the outer or physical level follows suit automatically. This does not mean that man cannot also help from the outside, by cultivating and then learning the art of mobility IN relaxation. In other words, rather than continuing to cultivate either immobility and stagnation or mobility and tension. By working at it from the inside out and from the outside in, the process will be accelerated and therefore the harmony will be established faster. This is very important for you to follow through, my friends.

The dynamic life force is an extremely vibrant principle. This vibrant, dynamic relaxation is particularly available to man's consciousness in the love relationship between the sexes. When man's longing for this experience -- and therefore his striving to have it -- is attached to a negative situation, then difficulty and frustration must follow. Although we have discussed this before, it was not sufficiently understood. Therefore it is important to shed more light on this topic. Now that I have explained the foregoing, I will attempt to go into this topic a little deeper.

This question is often asked: "Why does destructiveness exist? Why does illness exist? Why does war exist? Wht does cruelty exist?" The answers that have been given are often not sufficiently understood. But even when they are somewhat understood, something is still missing. I think that most of you are now ready to understand this on a deeper level. I have often said that misconceptions create strife. And this is perfectly true. But there exists an additional element without which no misconception could have any power. If man would merely be in a negativity, in a destructive attitude, then the destructive effect would be much less. The negative manifestations on this earth plane are particularly serious or severe when the destructiveness is attached to -- and therefore is combined with -- the positive life principle as such. In other words, when a force that is in itself positive combines with a negativity or a destructive attitude, then it is this combination that makes evil what it is -- if you want to use this word. Real destructiveness, therefore, is not only a distortion of truth and of the constructive universal powers, but this distortion must be permeated with the powerful life principle and the constructive power in its pure form. If the positive life principle were not involved, and inadvertently used, then evil or destructiveness would be of very short duration.

The best way you can apply what I say here and derive from this lecture more than a vague, abstract principle is by looking at yourself from the following point of view. All of you who are on this path have found certain hurts and pains that you endured as a child. Some of you have begun to grasp, at least to a degree, that in the moment when you were hurt as a child a specific process took place. The erotic or pleasure principle was put into the service of your hurt, of your suffering, of your pain. All the emotions arising from this original hurt -- according to character and to temperament -- also combined with, and therefore attached themselves to, the pleasure principle. This fact creates all the personal difficulties, all the unwelcome circumstances.

All the many souls inhabiting this earth added up together create the general strife of mankind. When you realize, after having become aware of this process, how many people, regardless of their outer action, can experience the pleasure principle only in fantasies of cruelty, then you will understand that this is the actual nucleus of war. In other words, of cruelty as a whole. This should not make you feel guilty. On the contrary, it should enlighten you and it should free you so as to allow your inner processes to grow. For it is a misunderstood and misapplied hurt that has created this condition. Cruelty without the pleasure principle could not have any real power. The lack of awareness that exists regarding this combination by no means alleviates the effect which this has on the overall climate of mankind's emanation and its influence on the life substance.

If you have experienced cruelty -- regardless of whether this cruelty is an actual fact or whether you only believe that it existed -- then your pleasure principle is attached to cruelty. As a result, your pleasure functions only in connection with cruelty. Often the guilt and the shame of this are so strong that the entire fantasy life is not admitted. However, sometimes it is conscious. The awareness of the presence of pleasure in cruelty must be established and it must be understood from this overall point of view. For if it is understood, then both the guilt and the shame will be removed. As understanding grows, the pleasure principle will gradually respond to positive events.

The connection between the pleasure principle and cruelty can manifest either actively or passively. That is, pleasure is experienced either with inflicting cruelty or with enduring it -- or both. Often, the fact that the pleasure principle is attached to such a negative condition -- and therefore is strongest and functions primarily in conjunction with cruelty -- creates either a holding back from actual experience or it limits it and it makes the actual experience of love impossible. Or else it exists only as a vague yearning that cannot be maintained or followed through. For then love is not the tempting, pleasurable experience which it is on another level of the personality. The conflict that arises from yearning for love and not knowing why one rejects its actuality -- which is due to the fear of the negative attachment of the pleasure principle -- often creates a deep hopelessness that can be understood, and instantly relieved, when this particular fact is profoundly comprehended.

In less crass cases -- for example, when the child experiences not so much outright cruelty but perhaps either a vague rejection or a non-acceptance -- then the mechanism of the pleasure principle of the soul forces will attach itself to a similar situation. As a result, it can function only in conjunction with rejection, in spite of the conscious desire for acceptance. There are many degrees and many variations of this. For example, there are situations where a child experiences partial acceptance and partial rejection. Then the pleasure principle is attached to a situation that is exactly similar. This then creates a conflict in the actual relationship.

The first instance of cruelty being attached to the pleasure principle or the life principle -- they are both the same -- will make a relationship so hazardous that it is often avoided altogether. Or it is experienced as a fear about which one is puzzled. One feels incapable of following through with it. Or one is inhibited because the shame that results from the desire either to inflict cruelty or to endure cruelty -- hence pain -- may prohibit all spontaneity, and therefore make the person withdraw and thus numb his feelings.

This is a tremendously important principle for you to understand. It applies to mankind as a whole, as well as to the individual. Generally, it has not been sufficiently understood due to the fact that psychology and the spiritual sciences have not yet merged sufficiently. Vague attempts have been made by psychology to grasp this factor, and it has been understood in some measure. But its vast significance in terms of civilization and its fate, or its evolution, has not yet been understood. The world is now ready to understand this facet of life.

Evolution means that each individual -- through the process of personal self-confrontation and self-realization -- gradually changes the inner orientation of his pleasure principle. In a spontaneous reaction more and more individuals will respond to positive events, to positive situations, and to positive conditions.

Such inner change cannot be willed directly. The expression of your outer will must go in the direction of maintaining and sustaining your pathwork; it must be directed in the direction of increasing your ability to understand; it must be geared in the direction of cultivating your will to have the courage to look at the self; it must be set in the direction of first finding and then overcoming your resistance. As you do this -- in other words, as you use your will and your ego faculties in this productive manner -- the real change happens spontaneously. In other words, almost as though it had nothing to do with these efforts, as if it were a byproduct, an unconnected unfoldment. But that is the real thing. This is the way progress and growth must happen. Through this process of growth one individual after another gradually reorients his soul movements, his soul forces. Then the expression of the cosmic movement within the psyche will attach itself to purely positive conditions and to purely positive circumstances. Then positive or pleasurable feelings will no longer be derived from negative circumstances.

Man is now used to the latter. Hence he represses awareness of the combination of pleasurable feelings and negative events. Instead of repressing it, of denying it, of looking away from this fact, he must face it. As he first faces this fact and then as he understands it -- without guilt or shame -- he must learn, in the course of growing, that all imperfections must first be accepted and then understood before they can be changed. So it will be in this respect. To the extent that he succeeds in first facing and then understanding this conflict, to that extent the pleasure principle will run in different channels. When this happens, then mobility will exist without tension and without anxiety, and relaxation will exist without stagnation.

All of you must try to find your specific inner marriage between the pleasure current and a negative condition. As you find, in specific terms, this marriage within your soul forces, then you will understand certain outer manifestations of your inner problems. The relief that always comes from such a thorough understanding will be experienced only when you have the courage to face this marriage. When you are capable of clearly and concisely formulating this marriage between your positive forces and your negative forces, then you will see why you kept yourself hidden both from yourself and from life; why you withdrew from your feelings; why you repress; and why you stand guard over the most spontaneous and creative force within yourself. You will see why you block it out, sometimes with a great amount of pain, and why you then you try to rationalize it and explain it away, even using currently fashionable psychological truths to camouflage this simple fact.

Perhaps the summer months, which are a temporary interruption of your active pathwork, will lead you to prepare for the coming working season. I suggest that you attempt to find the two factors I have discussed here:

1) Discover the subtle but nevertheless distinct distortion of the unitive principle of mobility in relaxation. Where do you have mobility AND tension? Where do you have relaxation AND stagnation. In other words, immobility? Observe it in your mental makeup, in your emotions, and in your body.

2) Discover in what respect your life or pleasure principle is attached to a negative condition. To what extent does this manifest -- perhaps in your fantasies -- and how does this hold you back from self-expression, from union, from experience, and from a fearless state of self-realization with a kindred spirit?

Are there any questions in connection with this topic?

QUESTION: I would like to understand a little more concretely about this marriage between the forces of love and cruelty. For instance, in a case of a child who feels rejected by his mother. In this case, does the marriage then mean that the person cannot experience pleasure unless he also experiences revenge -- some kind of sadistic wish toward the mother? Perhaps only in fantasy, never in reality, and then the person is usually unaware of the fact that the partner represents the mother.

ANSWER: Yes, it might be exactly that. Or it might be that pleasure can be experienced only in connection with being rejected again, or a little rejected, or in being fearful that rejection may occur.

QUESTION: But he didn't experience pleasure when he was rejected.

ANSWER: Of course not. But the child uses the pleasure principle in order to make the negative event -- namely, the suffering -- more bearable. This happens unconsciously, unintentionally, and almost automatically. The pleasure principle inadvertently mingles with -- and thus combines with -- the negative condition. The only way this can be determined is by investigating one's fantasy life. In that way the marriage can be established. The automatic reflexes are then geared to a situation that combines the inherent pleasure with the painful event.

QUESTION: And he wishes to reproduce this rejection?

ANSWER: He does not consciously wish this, of course. No one wants to be rejected. The trouble is that he consciously wishes to be accepted and loved, but unconsciously he cannot respond to a completely accepting and favorable situation. The pleasure principle has already been led into the negative channel. It can be re-channeled only through awareness and through understanding. The nature of his conflict is that his pleasure principle functions in a way that he consciously wants to avoid. It cannot be said that he unconsciously desires rejection, but the reflex had already been established at a time when this way of functioning made life more bearable for the child. Do you understand that?

QUESTION: I don't quite understand how pleasure can be experienced at all when someone is rejected, except in the form of revenge. That I can understand.

ANSWER: Perhaps you can imagine also -- one sees this over and over again -- that when someone feels too secure in being accepted and loved, then he loses the spark of interest. This, too, is rationalized by claiming it to be an inevitable law, happening through habit. But it does not have to be that way, if it were not for the factors discussed in this lecture. The spark, the interest, the dynamic flow exists only when there is either an unsure situation or an unhappy situation. You see this frequently. Sometimes the negative condition exists only in fantasies. When examined closely -- in other words, when analyzed -- then these fantasies are, in one way or another, always attached to suffering, to humiliation, or to hostility. Then this is called either masochism or sadism. Do you understand now?

QUESTION: Yes, I think I do. Since every child experiences rejection, and since every child is insatiable in his demands, when will there be an end to this situation? Because it always starts again with each incarnation.

ANSWER: You can see that there is a differentiation among human beings. There are those who function in a much healthier way, where their pleasure principle responds more strongly to a positive situation. This is the result of their evolution. When a completely positive situation exists in the psyche, then reincarnation is no longer necessary. Evolution then proceeds on other levels. Every human being has at least a degree of negativity. This negativity is somehow activated, enforced, and nourished by the life principle. But degrees exist. These degrees are a clear indication of the evolutionary process. At one extreme you have those human beings who cannot even have a direct relationship with another person. These people live merely in their fantasies -- which are totally attached to negative experiences. On the other hand there are those human beings who in the course of their growing up -- in other words, in the process of maturing -- have brought together their fantasy life and their reality life in the best -- the most positive and favorable -- sense of the word. I discussed this in another context. In this connection, this bringing together of fantasy and reality does not mean the repression of fantasy life but a true overcoming of it because reality is then more pleasurable and therefore more desirable -- just as positive circumstances are. Many degrees exist between these two poles. By that you can see the evolutionary progress.

QUESTION: Does mobility and tension, and relaxation and stagnation lessen as you remove the pleasure principle from the negative?

ANSWER: Of course, they interact. You can see how this interaction -- to the extent to which there is a combination or a marriage or a melting between the positive life or pleasure principle and a negative situation -- brings tension and anxiety. To the extent that anxiety and tension exist, to that extent immobility appears a welcome relief from the strain of moving away from the self. When such a short-circuit hinders the real experience of the pleasure principle, then the result is stagnation. In other words, it is non-movement -- whereas the whole cosmos is in perpetual beautiful motion. When man establishes the same cosmic movement within his own psyche, then he is in harmony with the cosmic forces.

QUESTION: This is the clearest understanding I have ever had of what has happened to me in this marriage of negativity and the pleasure principle, of having set up a rejection. Seeing it as clearly as I do now, recognizing exactly how it operates, what do I do about it further?

ANSWER: It is extremely important that you become aware of the specific negative condition to which the pleasure principle in you reacts. But this awareness must not be merely intellectual. You must actually feel and experience this mechanism within yourself. You must allow yourself this awareness. Therefore, reach deep into your innermost self and remove the restriction or the block to allowing this awareness into your consciousness. Realize that allowing it into your consciousness is not a devastating judgment against you. It is not the end of you. It does not stamp you as lost, as you unconsciously believe, but rather as the opposite. This is the beginning of the way out of an erroneous devastating judgment which you thought applied only to you. When you allow the clear-cut, concise formulation of this particular melting point into your emotional experience -- in other words, how the automatic reflexes of your pleasure principle are geared to the negative -- and when you experience this with courage, knowing that this need not be so and that it will not remain so because you quietly and calmly desire to grow, then you cannot help but come forward, but progress.

In this connection I would like to add one more factor -- not just for you, but generally. It is also useful for all you to know that two prevalent reactions exist as far as this conflict is concerned. Both of them are either unconscious or semi-conscious. One reaction -- applicable to you here and to many others as well -- is the strict denial of this combination mentioned here, so that you have no awareness of it, even in your fantasies. This is so because of fear, of guilt, of shame, and of the belief that one is terrible because of it. The other reaction -- applicable to those who are perfectly aware of their fantasies but who are unable to experience the principle in any other way than in fantasy, whether or not they actually have relationships with others -- is the case where sex and love are separated, or eros and love, or eros and sex. Here there is a semi-conscious resistance to giving up this fantasy life because it is believed that then the pleasure will be lost altogether. It cannot be conceived that the pure, healthy pleasure principle manifests more beautifully and more satisfyingly when positive melts with positive. It is imagined that this would be dull and boring. This is concluded because the actual, real life relationship in such instances is never as satisfying as the fantasy. Hence, one assumes that giving up the fantasy means giving up all the pleasure. And, of course, one does not wish to part with one's pleasure.

These are the two basic kinds of resistance. First it is important to distinguish which resistance applies to you. Is it the one of never acknowledging the automatic reflex of your pleasure being geared to a negative situation? Or is it the resistance to giving up the entire complex in the fear of having to do without any pleasure? Both resistances are the result of misconceptions. These resistances create a confusion of motion. It is either the mobility of striving away from that which is now -- hence effort, tension, fear, or stagnation -- or the immobility of not wanting to change, in the fear of losing out in the process.

As I said at the beginning of this lecture, all dichotomy, all duality can be brought to the common denominator of this basic split movement. When you see this, then it will be quite helpful.

You have sufficient material to work with, to meditate about, and to apply to your personal work during the coming summer months. I want to bless all of you as this term comes to an end. The short interruption symbolizes a new threshold in which you prepare for new growth and you consolidate what was accomplished. The past year was a particularly fruitful one for most of my friends and for the group as a whole. It promises to continue that way. There is no doubt that every one of you who truly wishes it will find the beauty, the peace, the dynamic life, and the inner security that exist in the self-realization that you have begun to cultivate. Hence you will experience moments of living in the eternal Now of yourself, instead of striving away from it. Transcending each Now must bring you all the answers. If you recall this simple fact in your meditations -- in your approach to yourself -- then your meditations will become more fruitful as you go on. What you have to look forward to in the time to come will be even more liberating than you have already begun to experience. Be blessed, be in peace, be in God.

June 25, 1965