The Nature Of Life And The Nature Of Man

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. May this lecture be a help and an inspiration for every one of you. In this lecture I should particularly like to stress the relationship between the nature of life and the nature of man. For there is a very direct link between the two. I have often mentioned this, it is not new to you. However, very few people truly understand the full significance of this connection. Their concept of life as being an entity in itself, as it were, is so confused and so unrelated to their own innermost personality that they feel that two different aspects are being dealt with here: their personality, concepts, and feelings, or the lack or them; and the way that life unfolds for them.

Let us first discuss the nature of life from an absolute point of view as well as from a relative point of view. When one speaks of life, what does that really mean? Is life the stretch of years that one spends on this planet? Or is it the fact that life organisms exist and that one is part of this wonderment? Is there any particular significance to or purpose in life, as postulated by the various philosophies or religions? Does one merely think of life as a chore that one has to put up with as best as one can? Does one think of life as essentially favorable? Or does one experience life as a hostile force that one has to defend himself against? Is life neutral and therefore indifferent to man?

Life is all of these on the relative plane. That is, life will manifest exactly as you believe it will and as you conceive of it -- not one iota differently. If your life experience and your conscious concepts are at variance, then this is proof of the fact that your unconscious concepts must be according to your actual life experience. I cannot stress this emphatically enough, for it is constantly either forgotten or glossed over. Nothing could be a better yardstick of your real concepts, of your real attitudes, and of your real feelings than your outer life manifestation in any given area. The moment the correspondence between the hitherto unconscious concepts and feelings and the manifest life experience is established, then man is much closer to the nucleus of life within himself. He no longer flounders in ignorance and alienation, believing that life and he are two separate actors, never seeing how his life is a direct effect of his feelings and his attitudes, which, in turn, are the result of his concept of life.

The discovery of the discrepancy between what one consciously believes and one's unconscious concepts must always be the first step in the direction toward full selfhood. Life's relative nature is therefore neutral in the sense that life is of such a highly potent creative and impressionable substance that it is exactly as malleable as the soul substance, for they are both one and the same substance. Hence, when an individual is convinced that life is a certain way, then life must turn out to be exactly this certain way. Of course, this is not the absolute reality of life but the relative reality of the individual in question. This does not apply only to the general, overall question of what life is, or is not, as a whole; it also applies to every particular belief or concept within the framework of a life lived in practical everyday matters. The limits that one sees must turn out to be apparently real. The rules that one establishes or that one blindly follows must find their confirmation. Yet the moment a person discovers that these limits or these rules are not unalterable laws -- and therefore can be questioned -- then the limits recede and new laws or new rules are proven true, according to the new beliefs that take the place of the old ones.

What is the absolute nature of life as opposed to this relative, malleable one? The answer will become apparent when it is thought through to its very essence. Since the life stuff is so malleable, then the absolute nature of life must be as limitless as a consciousness is able to reach out with its concepts. Hence, life is limitless in its possibilities for good, for unfoldment, for yet richer and greater experience. It is not limitless in its possibilities for bad, for the limit is set when life ceases -- or seems to cease. The dreaded ultimate is always non-life. There is nothing beyond non-life. This limit of non-life could only exist on the relative plane, it could never exist on the absolute plane. On the absolute plane life is life. Therefore, it cannot be non-life.

So, what man ultimately fears most is always non-life in one form or another. For the moment let us for dwell on the nature of life on the absolute plane. The human consciousness is incapable of conceiving of the possibilities that exist for good, for expansion, for unfoldment, for pleasure. The human scope is just too limited for this. However, even the human scope leaves a lot more room for expansion than most human beings avail themselves of. It is only those forms of consciousness that have evolved beyond the human scope whose experience of life is infinitely greater, wider, fuller, and limitless in creative experience and joy -- because their consciousness is capable of embracing limitless vistas. In other words, their concepts expand and expand.

The concepts of most human beings are expandable way beyond their present state, so that their life experience could be infinitely richer than what it is. When man is in a state of suffering, of discontent, of inner tension, then it is fundamentally because he deeply senses that more expansion is possible than he avails himself of. So he seeks and searches, but only too often his seeking and his searching goes in the wrong direction.

Let us now turn in the direction where it is possible to widen the horizon of one's life experience according to the potentials of each one of you who follows this path, so that your life becomes richer and fuller. In order to make this possible, your feelings must become alive. In this work, and in these lectures, we have often discussed this from various angles and aspects. But how exceedingly difficult it is for man to even find the subtle and hidden area where he discourages the full natural flow of his feelings, where he deliberately numbs them. It is usually easier to become aware of an apparent inability to feel more, although at first this, too, may be covered up by counterfeit feelings. After this superficial layer is removed -- and many people do not even wish to do this -- then a sadness about the "true" lack of feelings is often encountered. The person feels as though he were a cripple who is different from others, "born" with a lesser capacity for rich, warm feelings. But this is never so, and it is always true that a still further hidden level exists in which the process of numbness is instituted very deliberately. When this is uncovered, then the path has indeed proceeded very well.

This deliberate numbing occurs because man believes life to be his enemy so that his outreaching and life-affirming feelings would deeply involve him with the feared enemy -- life. In order to avoid this dreaded involvement, the feelings must be clipped, stilted, hindered. Some individuals do this in certain areas only, while they are free in others, finding a harmony between their unhampered, spontaneous feelings and life. Others stifle their feelings as an overall attitude to life. Whatever the case may be, the following preposterous paradoxical position arises in the human soul.

Man fears life as an enemy that takes his life away from him. Since feelings naturally affirm life, then his feelings also become his enemy. Consequently, he proceeds to deaden them so that he can then deliberately institute non-life out of the fear of life. As with every issue in the human psyche, this misconception is bound to bring about the very thing that one fears and that one tries to avoid by defensive means. The defense against a dreaded misconception must be as erroneous as the misconception itself. In this particular case, the misconception is that life -- as well as the feelings -- is a hostile force that man needs to guard against. The natural feelings are always affirming, always outreaching, always joyous, and so is life's essence, when unhampered by false ideas. Anyone observing a child can observe this natural quality of joyful reaching out and the gusto with which he involves himself in life. Only when pain, misconception, and the misinterpretation of pain arise is this natural flow either diverted or stopped altogether.

As life is essentially buoyant, so are feelings. As life is essentially positive, so are feelings. As life is essentially rich, so are feelings. As life is essentially involving, so are feelings. In other words, so are one's natural feelings when they are untampered with. The immediate correlation is obvious. To the extent that a person -- in any given area of his life -- feels unfearful, trustful, and positive, and to the extent that he consequently involves himself wholeheartedly, with his total being, bringing the most positive and constructive attitudes and aspects of his personality to bear on the situation, to that extent his life experience -- at least in this particular area -- must be of an equal quality.

When man fears life because he suspects it to be against him, then he proceeds to numb his feelings. As I have said, he fears life because he fears non-life. If you analyze the naked fear of life, then it is really a fear of its opposite. I have often mentioned that he who fears life must fear death, and vice versa. But even when we do not think of the physical form of death but rather of any other apprehension, if we truly analyze it, then it always amounts to a personal annihilation, a personal form of non-life. Perhaps a person fears a negation of his dignity, a negation of his essential value. Perhaps this is a particular form of non-life that is feared. Or perhaps the form of non-life that is feared is a denial of his wishes. Those original wishes are always striving for a greater form of being alive. Even though the way these wishes are extended in an immature being may be damaging and unrealizable, their essence always remains intact. Therefore, they are realizable if only one takes the trouble to crystallize the essence out of them. Any fear amounts to the opposite of life, in one form or another.

This goes on in practically every human being on this planet. Only the degree varies. There are rare individuals where this preposterous and tragic situation is much less true than with the average person. But it still must exist to a minor extent. For otherwise this individual would not be alive in this particular form. The consciousness would not seek this particular form of expression.

When you go deep enough in your work of self-search, then sooner or later you will always discover the area where you hold back. In other words, the area where, instead of affirming life and expanding your feelings and expanding into life with your feelings, you negate life and you negate your feelings, and where you therefore retract out of life, you retract out of your feelings, and where, consequently, you lose contact with life. In other words, you do not feel at home in it. You feel anxious, you feel persecuted, you feel ill at ease. The negation of life, the negation of feelings, and the negation of self are all one and the same. And because negation implies non-life, then fear is created. Out of the fear one proceeds to do the very thing that aggravates the condition of non-life and of non-self.

When you find these areas within yourself, then it is a major step that leads you directly back into yourself. The many possibilities existing on this earth for human concern, philosophy, and preoccupation can all be abused so as to avoid facing this area where you, and you alone, deny life. Often such avoidance does not occur in one's concepts and conscious beliefs. But where the human experience requires the most direct, spontaneous freedom of feelings, where the joy and the involvement is most immediate and least conceptualizable, then it is often there that man resists seeing his impoverishment, so that he is unable to find the self-induced stoppage. Blessed are those who are aware of what they miss in life and who then proceed to remedy the situation.

In what area of your life do you deny life? How do you do this? In what way does this denial take place? Strangely enough, it seems painful to admit such denials, until man has reached the total vision of himself. The moment he can really see himself in this negating process, then he is already in a more affirming process, because he no longer deludes himself about himself.

In order to avoid seeing the negation of the self, the negation of the feelings, and the negation of life, man produces a false self, and therefore a false life. In order to create a false life with a false self, then false feelings must be created. This is why people who do not know the theory of the correlation of the self and life and the discrepancy between one's concepts and one's experience often wonder why their experience varies so much from their conscious concepts.

The real is denied and is substituted by the false. This explains the conflicts arising from the false feelings. This is why conflicts seem to be created when one trusts the feelings. It is never the real feelings that produce the conflicts. There must always be a denial of something in the self and in the relationship between the self and life or between the self and others, otherwise such conflicts would not arise.

False feelings are created because nothing is as frightening as the numbness. Even though man created the numbness in order to protect himself from the supposed danger of non-life, he does not know this, and he is compelled to go on numbing his real feelings. He is just as frightened of awakening his feelings as he is of their deadness. He then proceeds to create false feelings. These false feelings parallel other illusions: the illusion about his spiritual development, the illusion about his character, the illusion about his fulfillment, the illusion about his suffering, the illusion about his state of happiness, the illusion about his state of unhappiness, the illusion about the reactions of other people to him -- in other words, he believes these reactions to be either better or worse than they really are.

I mentioned before that being aware of the deliberate intent to numb feelings and being aware of the poverty of the range of one's feelings constitutes a major step in self-realization. This is so because the most difficult thing for man to do is to penetrate these various illusions. Most people would rather do anything than that. They go to great lengths to avoid facing their illusions. Some find certain aspects only, facets of their idealized self-image, for example, and content themselves with this, not wanting to see the rest of the illusions with which they live and unconsciously believe that they cannot live without. Those people who have reached the point of no longer being afraid of facing any illusion they may have sensed in themselves are fortunate indeed. Their path lies before them unobstructed. From then on it can only be a question of building up, for the tearing down is over. What must be torn down are only illusions and falseness, never real affirmation and constructiveness. Therefore, those who are most confused about the real and the false in themselves often believe this pathwork to be destructive or negative. It must appear that way from the point of view of their illusions.

When man suffers an unfulfillment, then he often battles against even the recognition of this fact. For recognizing it would be the admission of non-life, the admission of unhappiness, the admission of some form of deadness. This, in turn, brings him face to face with the fact that he has done it, that he fears life and that he thus runs from life and from himself. Facing this would require him to no longer do this, which he is too fearful to risk. Hence he remains in the status quo and clings to an illusory life full of pain and waste, which he is not sufficiently aware of. He does not permit his deep voice to convey to him the awareness of this pain. He does not dare to risk it, because he assumes the ultimate reality of life to be negative, just as he fears the ultimate reality of himself to be negative. This is so hard to face that he covers it with illusions, to which he then tenaciously clings.

Therefore, when man penetrates this illusion and he at last sees the negativity that is lodged in himself, then he is a step nearer to salvation than he who clings to the false positive theories about life -- false because he does not really believe them in his heart: these false good feelings, nor the negative ones that he produces in order not to be dead, not to be nothing.

It is impossible to eliminate the illusions unless one comes face to face with the discrepancy between what one consciously believes, or what one thinks one believes and therefore pays lip service to, and what one believes deep down in one's psyche, where the emotions, attitudes, and concepts form a specific expectation of life and create a specific emotional climate. Where such negativity exists -- either hidden or overt -- one does not trust in the ultimate good of one's own personality and consequently not in anyone else's either.

There is a great deal of difference between facing this negativity in the understanding that "Oh, here it is, here I am in a negative state. Here I am negating rather than affirming. Here I am expressing this negation in this or that specific way," and a justification of this negation, or else a denial of its existence. The latter manifests in a lack of awareness of its existence and in a continued talking oneself into the oppposite state. The justification manifests by making a life philosophy out of it. For example, by claiming a destructive, negative world view as a justification for one's personal fear. Therefore, this fear is denied in its real form -- which must always lead back to a personal experience and never to a general one. In other words, when people try to expound a nihilistic world view, then it means that they are hiding their private fears, their disappointments, their suffering, and their distrust in their own innermost self and in their feelings by taking it as a general rule that life is bad. This personal experience must be unearthed.

Therefore this pathwork must be concerned with penetrating the illusions: the illusion that says, "I am fulfilled," when one actually feels unfulfilled; the illusion that says that the world is bad, when one imagines that one's feelings are unacceptable or dangerous; the illusion of ignoring a particular unhappiness, when this unhappiness does exist; the illusion that makes one unaware of how one holds back the spontaneous flow of the natural feelings and of what devious means one uses to accomplish this.

Illusion does not refer only to glorifying, to beautifying, to falsely making a fact more positive than one feels it to be. Nor does it refer only to ignoring factors that exist and that would need concise acknowledgment in order to bring the personality into balance and into truth. It not only means denial and negation of an inner state. Even not specifically ascertaining an inner state may be illusory in a subtle way, for it may apparently be only half admitted, but without being fully seen. Illusion also means producing unreal negative emotions. This, too, is subtle.

Both positive false emotions and negative false emotions can be so subtle that it is easy not to admit them. In a more obvious way, the rudiments of a particualr feeling may actually exist, or the person may very much want -- on one level of his consciousness -- to feel this particular emotion but, due to the blockage, is unable to genuinely feel more than a modicum. Hence, the feeling is manipulated. In other words, it is artificially aggrandized, it is exaggerated, or it is dramatized. Again, this may apply both to positive emotions and to negative emotions.

Dramatized negative emotions are just as frequent as phony positive feelings. Usually they go hand in hand and can be found in one and the same psyche. One hangs on to hurts which may be just as illusory as a pretended fulfillment or just as illusory as a denied fulfillment. Anger, hurt, suffering may all be dramatized and clung to. Artificial feelings, both positive and negative, serve the purpose of alleviating the terror of non-feeling, which is a state of non-life.

How can you tell the difference between real feelings and false feelings, the genuine wellspring of spontaneous life and the drummed-up, manufactured emotions instituted as a means of averting a terror? The manufactured feelings are always troublesome and problematic. They do not bring enlightenment and clarification. They do not bring peace of mind. They are a means to avoid an opposite state. Hence they must produce more opposites, more irreconcilable poles. For example, a false feeling of excitement is supposed to ward off numbness, dullness, boredom. The real feeling of aliveness and vibrancy does not avoid anything. It just IS. Therefore, it contains both stimulation and peace. The false feeling cannot combine apparent opposites, such as excitation and peace; one is driven to choose the distortions. Being alive then becomes a chore, a difficult, peace-robbing endeavor. Being peaceful becomes lifeless, and finally ends in fright.

False feelings always create problems, which exist on the dualistic level. Let us take the example of love. The false feeling of love breeds and results in the conflict of submission and slavery, in the loss of one's dignity for the sake of giving in, giving up one's own rights and one's own desires for the sake of the rights and the desires of the loved object. So that then the only way out seems to deny love in order to have one's selfhood intact and one's freedom unhampered. This is the typical conflict of false love, which, in turn, is produced because one fears the state of non-life.

There are many other such conflicts, all of them a result of false feelings. Artificially produced positive and negative feelings are both equally damaging, but each breeds different manifestations on the practical level of consciousness. As I just said, false positive feelings breed irreconcilable conflicts. After a time, false negative feelings appear to be real negative feelings. They begin to envelop the person and involve him so deeply into them that, although the whole construction is invented, man finds himself unable to come out of it. This happens in spite of the fact that at one point he was well aware that, in a sense, he played a game and that he deliberately constructed the false feeling. Let us say that the original feeling was either fear or anger. These feelings seem to keep the psyche alive; this may not be real life, but it seems better than deadness. Although the false feeling is initiated purposely, playfully, and deliberately, this is soon forgotten, and what was a false anger or a false fear appears to be real and therefore becomes much more frightening and peace-robbing than a real negative feeling.

You all know that on this temporary plane of existence real negative feelings do exist -- real anger, real fear, real hurt. But they never rob the person's peace, at least not for any length of time beyond the immediate purpose of the specific real feeling. They never weaken the individual. They never drive the individual into a trap from which there is no way out. Real anger can be expressed, as I have often said. It will clear the air. Real fear is a purposeful warning that serves to make the individual cope with a particular situation successfully and when that situation is over, then the person has become stronger. This is not what happens with a false emotion. A real hurt mellows and wisens a person, it makes him grow and expand his horizon. A false, dramatized hurt can never accomplish this.

Anything that is superfluous and wasteful always causes the greatest pain and suffering. No real, genuine emotion, if it is spontaneous and honestly experienced -- unhampered by the fearful self, by the distrustful self, or by the cunning self -- can ever be a waste. It is only a numbing of the real feelings that is a waste, as well as the creation of false feelings, no matter how subtly this is done in certain areas of the personality. They are the result of a chain reaction that must weaken the self, because it wastes life and it alienates the self from the life center and from the life processes, which are unending and unlimited, both in their depth and in the scope of their expansion.

It is essential that all of you who are working on this path be concerned with and be attentive to the false emotions that you initiate, that you become more aware of how you constantly do this, of how you do not permit yourself to let go and to relax into yourself. Question yourself so: "Do I really feel this way? Or do I not perhaps put it on?" Once it is artificial, then it controls you. You must come face to face with those processes where you deny natural life, where you find yourself actually holding back the natural life process, the natural feelings as they want to stream out of you -- beautifully, alive, whole -- and you, wastefully and ignorantly, think that you protect yourself by denying them. You think that your natural life process is not safe, that it does not have its own inner wisdom. Here is where you must come to in your development, in your growth, in your search. When you come to this area in yourself, then you can truly proceed to unlock the door. Then you can learn to see where you sicken yourself needlessly. Sometimes you do it out of a misunderstanding, and often out of a subtle spitefulness. A spite that is the result of hurts you have misinterpreted; a spite that is directed against your parents. It is a spite that now manifests toward life and toward anything and anyone that you encounter in your individual life. It is a spite that ultimately manifests toward yourself.

Anyone who comes face to face with his negativity, who sees how he stops the life process, how he denies his life stream. Therefore, he is nearer to the solution and to the salvation than he who denies and ignores his unfulfillments and is oblivious of the fact that they exist and that he has created them through his false feelings. And he who lives the false life and the false feelings often believes himself further advanced than he who battles with the actuality of his negation.

QUESTION: Regarding love between a man and a woman when one's love is not returned, I sometimes feel that loving this person myself is enough. I feel content to love the person. But sometimes I don't feel that way and I would like my love returned. I would like to know where there is something wrong in me.

ANSWER: As I have said again and again, when there is something amiss in an outer situation, then it is an indication that there is something that corresponds inwardly exactly. Since there is no mystery about this and all must be in order, there can be only one answer: There must be something in you that does not want the real fulfillment. In other words, you must be divided. There must be a part in you that very much wants the feelings, that wants the experience of feeling yourself alive and vibrant with the beauty of such feelings, as only the most dynamic experience on this plane can bring -- love between a man and a woman. But there is the other part, where you fear it, perhaps for any number of reasons. If you would not fear it, and therefore deny it, then you would not find yourself in such a situation. Your feelings would be directed toward a person who is willing and eager to reciprocate. In fact, it would be unthinkable that your feelings could be elicited -- in other words, could be ignited -- in a situation that is one-sided. That in itself indicates an area where there is fear of and therefore a denial of life. There may be many reasons for that, so that in cases such as this a person may find himself in the predicament of his own feelings cooling off if and when his feelings are unexpectectedly returned. When they are not returned, when the loved one one is unreachable and unattainable, then the feelings increase and reach out. It is as though the psyche tries to find a compromise between wanting to be alive, wanting to feel the sweetness and the fullness of life, and not daring to do so except in a fantasy situation, not yet having the courage to create it in reality. You would have to ascertain that you are frightened of reality and why. You have to ascertain that you feel more reassured when you feel in a lesser state of being alive, that this heightened state of feeling threatens you and makes you feel doubtful of being able to cope with it. This doubt is the result of your reluctance to trust your feelings.

QUESTION; How can a person who has a great problem with manipulated felings differentiate between false and genuine feelings?

ANSWER: The easiest way to do so would be to express every day deep into your psyche the wish to become aware of the false feelings and to face the fact that they exist. Therefore, the attention will focus itself, with the help of the inner guidance that manifests automatically when it is truly wanted and thus activated. When one truly wants to become aware of the false feelings so as to stop deceiving oneself -- and one states this intent simply and firmly -- then something is set in motion that will bring this awareness. The more one states the desire and the intent of wanting to live in reality -- and therefore to feel your real feelings -- the more this will become possible. The more the personality is willing to dispense with deceit and you courageously look at what is, the more the guidance and the inspiration from the innermost life forces, from the inner presence, and from the inner wisdom will manifest. The awareness will grow, the attention will focus itself more clearly and with more understanding, and then the differentiation will become more obvious. You will increasingly perceive how the one is laborious and the other is easy, how the one leaves you flat and the other brings a warmth, an ease and a vibrancy, no matter how small the feeling may be to begin with. This warmth permeates the entire system, the whole person. In other words, the body, the mind, the soul, and the spirit. With the real feeling all is in a state of vibrancy.

This is the way to go about it. Each day state your intent, say it, mean it, look at what is and then call upon the subliminal forces, lodged deep within the real self, for help. This is what I want, this is what I am going to do, this is what I decide for: To live in reality, to see the false, to stop it and therefore to allow the real to come out. I know that this decision must bear its fruits. Once this decision has been made, then something has already begun to change within.

May this lecture give you a new incentive to see what is essential. What is essential is to see your non-life, for only then can you become alive. What is essential is to see your non-feeling, for only then can your real feelings manifest. See this and live it and proceed in this direction, and your life will truly be lived purposefully. It will not be lived in vain. It must have its deep fulfillment, no matter what exists or does not exist outwardly. He who lives this way lives in reality, and reality will eventually adapt itself and mold itself in an entirely new way. Be in peace, my friends, be in God.

November 4, 1966