The Life Manifestation Is The Expression Of The Dualistic Illusion

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, all my dearest friends. May this coming new year be a blessed and successful one -- successful from the only point of view that really counts, and that is the finding of your true self. This expression "the finding of the real self" has been used so much that it has lost some of its meaning for many of you. This always happens when one uses an expression often, mechanically, and unthinkingly. It is therefore necessary to deeply think about, to contemplate, the real meaning of this word.

When you find your true self, then you inevitably find the true meaning of life. You begin to understand life in an entirely new way. Therefore you also begin to comprehend the outer life and death manifestation. When this is understood, then nothing can frighten you and nothing can faze you. And this can be understood only when the inner life processes and the laws of life are perceived and experienced emotionally. This, in turn, cannot be done in an abstract and general or philosophical way. It can happen only in an ultra personal way, in a most direct approach both to yourself and to your subjective reactions.

One of the great difficulties in man's life is the inevitable downward curve in all growth processes. Life is growth, and growth is a continuum of movement that goes in a fluctuating line. Each down brings a new up and each up must bring a new down, in order to then go up again. There can be no upward movement unless there first was a downward movement. Thus, there can be no life unless it has gone through a form of death. This rhythm prevails until the consciousness is no longer split within itself as a result of illusory dualism. The down movement (death) represents one side of the dualism; the upward movement (life) represents the other side of the duality. Conciliation takes place when these movements are fully followed through, are tasted, are assimilated, and are accepted as being a creation of the self. When the down curve is feared -- and therefore is struggled or fought against -- then it means that one is fighting against one's own creative output. Thus one is at war with oneself. This means a total lack of comprehension of the laws of life and of the facts of creation within one's own consciousness. Fear of the down curve means the fear of change. Thus stagnation is sought as a means of safety, as a means to avoid the apparent danger of moving into the self-produced curve. This curve can lead out of strife only when it is first accepted, then understood, and is thus transcended.

The change of the downward curve and the upward curve manifests in millions of ways. The crassest one is the physical life and death curve. It is the most frightening only because the blind little self cannot see beyond the next curve, so that the whole view is concealed. Thus it appears to be an end that leads to in death and not into life. In reality it is a part of a chain which ends in life without the down curve. The struggle against the perpetual change in movement only worsens the subjective experience. However, the fight and the fright exist also in the less crass manifestations of this law of life. For example, take a journey, a change of domicile or a change of location. In such instances man invariably experiences depression when he terminates one phase of his existence, although he may even look forward to the new beginning. Every new beginning presupposes the termination of the last phase, thus ending it, dying it, as it were. This applies to all the levels of one's being. On the physical level this is obvious. And even though man is able to see the new beginning after the end of the old phase, he nevertheless stems against it. How much more is this the case when the new beginning cannot be seen. The identical law applies to inner growth and to inner movement. The new life -- the beginning of a new phase -- can only follow the dying of the old, which is often painful. It means battling through the waste and the mud of one's misconceptions and destructiveness. You all know that, and you experience it again and again on your path. No new expansion can come unless it follows the downward movement of the spirit. Translated, this means dipping into the depths of one's inner being. If pain resides in those depths, then it must come out, for otherwise it cannot be dissolved. The pain obstructs the light. Therefore, it must be dug out.

The identical movement exists in breathing. This is the breathing of the spirit, the breathing of the universe, as it applies to each individual manifestation of life.

Therefore, when you look at your life and at your moods, then try to see your bad moods as the downward curve that presages the next upward curve. Make the best of both by tuning into the subliminal intelligence that is always perceivable when it is truly desired. Then you will not stem against the downward curve and thus delay the coming through into the upper movement of your spiritual breathing and of your inner growing. You will embrace it by fully accepting it, by fully being in it, by fully being with it. There can be no more constructive and effective way of doing this than to seek to understand the personal meaning of your down curve. The way to do this is to approach it as your own creation and to reach into your own depths and ask yourself: "What did I create and what does it mean?"

What does your life mean in terms of the inner laws of life and the inner processes of life? What does your unfulfilled longing mean in these terms? What do your frustrations mean? All of this can be fully tackled only when you first admit to yourself your unfulfilled longings, only when you admit to yourself your discontent, only when you admit to yourself your hurts, only when you admit to yourself your real desires. Once this is done, squarely and honestly, then you can begin to seek an understanding of why they exist and why the desires are not fulfilled. Their existence in your life is just as much a creation of yours as a masterpiece, an accomplishment, or any other creative act. The only difference is that the one you create consciously -- and therefore deliberately -- while the other you create unconsciously and therefore inadvertently. So you must seek to understand the negative creation as your own product. Unless you do this, then you cannot undo your negative creation, you cannot ever find the glory of life, and you cannot ever find the riches of life, which are constantly at your disposal.

Not seeing that the negative creations are your own product makes you inevitably rebel against them. Thus you find yourself in the peculiar position of quarreling with yourself. What one hand produces the other hand denies and fights against, without knowing that it was your own other hand that did it. Thus you quarrel with fate, with life, and with all the good that could work for you if only you were ready to take your blinders off.

Then, typically, in this state of rebellion either someone else or something else is always being blamed. When you do so, then you are not connected with the causes and with the processes within the self -- and that is the trouble with all your suffering. No matter how many times and in what different words I say so, this is still not fully observed by any of my friends working on this path. Almost all of you still overlook how many times you feel unhappy. As a result, you face this unhappiness only vaguely at best. Therefore you are unable to connect it with yourself. But even when you do know that you are unhappy, and even when you have faced the exact reason for it, you still rebel against it as though it were produced either by something else or by someone other than you. Hence, you are alienated from your own power to create, in spite of having faced up to your feelings. The grandiose creative process -- which is constantly at work within yourself -- often reveals itself in its negative manifestation at first.

Even when man does believe in the creative powers -- in their unlimited possibilities -- he imagines that they will come to him as a sort of special reward after he has overcome his blindness, his disconnectedness, and his difficulties. He believes that he must become a finished product, as it were, before he can partake of the universal creative power. This is the vague concept that most people have. This is a distortion of reality. The unhappiness that you suffer from is just as much a creative output of yours as the creation of good that you dream about. As long as this is not wholly understood, then it is impossible to partake of creating, it is impossible to mold one's fate, it is impossible to feel safe, and it is impossible to feel at peace with the world.

The creative power that is at work within yourself is so immense and it is so constantly operative, as you have no notion of so far. It operates according to your own consciousness. This includes your conscious mind and your unconscious mind. In other words, your total being. Both what you have and what you do not have are a direct creation of all that you think, of all that you feel, and of all that you want. You may not want it wisely, and you certainly may not want it consciously, but unconsciously you do want it. When this is fully perceived, then the law of life will be understood. The law of creation -- which is at work within you -- will be understood. Then the tremendous power at your disposal will begin to be vaguely sensed.

It is a grandiose power. Therefore, do not permit it to work inadvertently, arbitrarily, and hapharzardly by your unwise, destructive, and sloppy thinking processes, by your fears, by your misconceptions, and by your ignorance. In short, by allowing so much material to remain unconscious and thus disconnected from you. For then the destructive processes will determine the creation of yourself and the creation of your life to the exact degree that they exist. Again and again my friends react as though their unconscious did not exist. They are aware of desiring something, but it does not occur to them that their own unconscious must work in the opposite direction from this desire if the desire remains unfulfilled. They do not search within themselves for the reason for the unfulfillment. In other words, they do not ascribe their state as being a product or a creation of themselves.

Therefore, seek the forms within your own powerful soul substance that bring you everything you have and everything you do not have. The separation between your conscious mind and your unconscious mind is your greatest enemy. For, the moment this separation is eliminated, then you will no longer be governed by inner forces which you do not know, and therefore you fear. And yet man's greatest fear and greatest resistance is to eliminate this separating wall. He struggles fiercely against the elimination of this separation. This is such folly, for only in this separation is he helpless. Because of this separation is he forced to ascribe his unhappiness to dark powers that seem to have nothing to do with him. Thus he fears both the world and his own inner being. Because he fears his own inner being, he does not want to go into it. And because he does not want to go into it, he separates himself from it, and therefore it seems as if it needed to be feared. Not wanting to go into it logically results in a lack of awareness -- in other words, in a lack of knowing what is going on -- not only of one's inadvertent destructiveness, but also of the creative power that could work for man instead of against him. This is one of the great and important vicious circles that man stubbornly refuses to change into a benign one.

Therefore, the creative power within you is not only constructive, benign, good, and wise, it is also destructive, vicious, evil, and even stupid. This does not make it any less divine as far as its origin and its essence are concerned. It is just as much error, misconception, and evil wishes as it is truth, reality, and love. When I say this, then this means that it is so in its present manifestation, which is due to man's temporary state of mind. It does not mean that it is inherently so. The power works eternally, neutrally, and unquestioningly according to the entity's consciousness and will direction. The creative power expresses itself through you according to what you are at any given moment. Since it penetrates your entire being, it is molded by all that you are, by what and how you breathe in and out, by all that you think, by all that you feel, by all that you will and desire. It is an expression of all your attitudes, the crassest and the most obvious, as well as the most subtle and concealed. All this is so powerfully creative that dynamite and atomic energy are nothing in comparison. Those physical energies create a one-time impact of tremendous physical effect. But the energy of life is a dynamic force that works constantly, that imprints powerfully, that molds, and that directs. And you use it whether you know it or not. Each thought is using it, each desire is using it, each hidden fear is using it, each shrinking away from experience is using it.

What a path such as this primarily aims at is the realization of this truth -- the understanding of this fact of life -- and the elimination of the separating wall between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind.

You must not imagine that the conscious mind and the unconscious mind are two different minds. They are one and the same mind. They only appear to be different when the unconscious part of it is first discovered. Then it appears to be a creature that is completely disconnected from the conscious aims and desires. When these two parts of the individuality gradually unite, then it become obvious that they have been one all along, but that they were split asunder artificially. Then one part was forgotten. In other words, its existence was denied.

It is the same thing as far as the Universal Mind is concerned. Man's consciousness is not a separate thing from the Universal Consciousness. In fact, there is no distinct borderline to delineate the difference. As with the conscious and the unconscious of the personality, so it is with the individual consciousness and the Universal Consciousness. This applies both to the aware part of it and to the unaware part of it. It is impossible to determine where the individual consciousness ends and where the Universal Consciousness begins. Your own immediate conscious mind -- the mind that is at your disposal right now -- is the fringe of the vast Universal Mind. To express the thought that man is connected with the Universal Mind does not really properly convey the truth, for this might imply that two different things are connected. But this is misleading, for the two are not different in nature, different in essence, different in origin. They are the same. Just as with the conscious mind and the unconscious mind, they are separated by a lack of awareness.

The conscious mind that you express in your daily living is separated from the vast Whole, the Universal Mind, only by an illusory belief that you are separate. So, you do not possess an aspect of this Universal Mind, you are not even a separated part of it. You ARE the Universal Mind.

What is unconscious now was conscious at one time. So when we speak of conscious and unconscious, then it is not something that happened to you. Rather, it is something that you yourself created. In other words, you made it unconscious, just as you continue to make material unconscious daily. This applies even to material that you have known before this life. Even that is but momentarily forgotten because you thought it more expedient to forget it. No matter how unaware one is of what goes on within, you discover that it is actually a re-discovery. It feels as though one had known it all along. This applies just as much to repressed psychological factors of this life as to the so-called great metaphysical truths that you were not aware of in your intellect. All the knowledge in the universe is essentially in you. Your consciousness has separated itself from this universal knowledge and therefore has "forgotten" it. This is just as true for the erroneous, destructive part, as well as for the Universal Mind. You are a manifestation of the latter.

When the separation vanishes, then the illusion that you are a separate being vanishes as well. Your fear of giving up this illusion is tragic because you believe only in this illusory separate state as being real, as having identity. In other words, you believe that you lose your identity -- thus your very life -- when you lose your separation. This is totally false. The separation must vanish. This separation exists due to many errors, which you begin to discover and to uncover in the course of this Path.

The main error in this separated state is duality. In other words, all the either/ors. We have talked about many dualistic aspects, many false alternatives that man suffers from. He gets more and most lost in a trap because he thinks that he must make a choice between dualistic -- and therefore erroneous -- alternatives which are based on completely false premises. I have discussed many of them, and in your individual pathwork you have found many more than we can discuss here.

Now I shall discuss a specific, extremely important, and fundamental dualism which is based, as usual, on erroneous concepts. This is universal, and therefore applies to all human beings in one way or another, at least to some degree. It is the following duality: Pleasure versus goodness. When I say pleasure, then this includes all personal happiness, all fulfillment, gratification on all levels, self-interest, and self-assertion. In the duality, all of this contradicts goodness and unselfishness. Therefore, it must be sacrificed. The opposite facet of this same duality is self-deprivation for the sake of decency, of honesty, and of morality. You must be good or else! Goodness and unselfishness then mean the renunciation of bliss.

The harmfulness of the misconception of this duality is impossible to fully grasp unless one contemplates its ramifications very carefully. Sacrificing pleasure includes everything. Since life is pleasure, then life itself is thus renounced. Since health is not possible without allowing the life force, with all of its pleasurable effects, to surge through the system, then ill health is a result of this duality. Intense physical pleasure is a legitimate need and longing because it is part of the universal law of life. Selfhood, autonomy, self-assertion are aspects of maturity and of self-responsibility. Since they are intensely pleasurable, then they must also be forsaken when pleasure is supposed to be wrong, and is consequently denied. Thus the individual remains in a painful state of dependency, of lack of identity, of weakness, and of helplessness because he feels that this is the more decent and the more unselfish way to be. The other way of life seems to be too aggressive, too vigorous, and thus is forbidden. Hence, the spiritual pleasure of knowing the power within and the spiritual leasure of knowing one's own potential to create one's destiny must also be forsaken in this duality. They, too, seem too pleasurable, and therefore too pretentious. In other words, not meek enough. All these delights are abandoned in the distorted belief that they are wrong. Man believes that if he asserts himself in such a way -- in other words, if he arrogates himself of the powers that are his to begin with -- then he is selfish, and therefore sinful. Yet only because he is really selfish and really sinful -- although not selfish and sinful because of his need for selfhood and his need for ecstasy -- must he believe this falsity. And because of this falsity, he cannot shed his real selfishness, his real greed, and his real cruelty.

The moment you truly understand your own freedom and your own power, then you do not need to be selfish, to be cruel, to be greedy. For then there is no false alternative, no split, no choice to be made between pleasure and goodness. But as long as man believes that in order to be good he must renounce pleasure, then he must fluctuate between these two alternatives. He cannot possibly commit himself wholeheartedly to either course. It is impossible for man to find peace while this choice seems to be imposed on him. Therefore, he is both selfish and pleasure-denying. The more he feels compelled to deny himself pleasure, the more selfish he must become in order to blindly fill the void. And the more selfish he becomes, the more he must punish himself for his selfishness, and the more he must he convince himself that he does not deserve pleasure. This is the vicious circle.

The delight of living -- the delight that life is in its essence -- must remain concealed as long as this duality exists; as long as man chafes under those impossible alternatives; as long as he thinks that he must choose between either giving up his hope for complete fulfillment for the sake of decency and goodness, or having to bear the brunt of badness -- even if only in his secret self-evaluation -- for the sake of tasting some of the delights that life offers and that life intrinsically is.

This is a very deep duality. When you look closely deep within yourself, then you will find that you, too, are influenced by it to a greater extent than you may believe. This duality does not come merely from personal influences in the individual's early surroundings. They also existed, of course, but only because this is such a general, universal distortion. The destructive part of the Universal Consciousness is deeply imprinted with this duality -- just as it is imbued with many other false divisions or dualities.

When an individual comes to the point where he deeply experiences the original unity of life in this respect, then he discovers the truth that it is not necessary to have to make such a choice. In other words, the truth is you can reach for every possible delight, for every pleasure, for every fulfillment, for every gratification, and for every ecstasy conceivable and at the same time be a totally generous person, a totally giving person, and a totally self-surrendering person. In fact, self-surrender and giving not only are not depriving -- as it is feared when one still lives in this dualityYou may already accept this truth in theory, but when the emotional awakening comes, then it is world-shaking. It is as though you would shed burdens of unnecessary shackles and discover the great freedom of the world, the freedom of growing, the freedom of being, the freedom of reaching out, and thereby of growing and growing -- in more strength, in more integrity, in more love, in more wisdom, in more power to create, in more awareness of things as they really are, in a greater ability to experiemce pleasure supreme.

You may be surprised at the expression "the destructive part of the Universal Consciousness," for it is usually assumed that the Universal Consciousness is only constructive. Here, again, arbitrary divisions are made that do not exist. Just as you have a personal constructive unconscious and a personal destructive unconscious, so there exists the consciousness of this earth sphere, the consciousness of every nation, the consciousness of every city, the consciousness of every group. Just as with the individual, this consciousness is partly constructive and partly destructive. What is contained in it is partly aware and partly not aware or unconscious. Just as the individual is an expression of the Divine, and therefore can manifest the unified power and the goodness of the Divine when he reaches into his unified depths, thereby transcending the waking mind, the conscious mind as well as the destructive unconscious, so can the group consciousness -- the larger body of people whose combined creative life substance forms one unit -- also accomplish such a change.

The more the individuals dissolve both their destructive conscious processes and their destructive unconscious processes -- and thereby transcend them by reaching into their unified divine depths -- the more the world consciousness must change. Thus each individual contributes much more to the shape of the world by his own development and growth than he can possibly appreciate. There is no other salvation than the discovery of the ground of one's own being, which is so alive, so powerful, so full of potentials and possibilities -- infinite in good, infinite in abundance. If the ego intelligence can accept this as a possibility and work with it by consciously and deliberately activating this power, then the in-between layer of error, of destruction, and of suffering will give way much faster than otherwise. Little by little you will see that the substance is all the same. It is essentially the identical life stuff. There is a parallel between the discovery of the self -- consisting of an apparently separated destructive, selfwilled part and a still more hidden infinite divine power (both being essentially the same as the conscious mind) -- and between the discovery of the unity in regard to pleasure and personal goodness and decency.

Are there any questions in regard to this topic?

QUESTION: I have a personal question which might pertain to this topic. It includes two things that I would like to have you comment on. First, I have been in a highly energized state lately, which seems to be related to my job. It has prevented me from sleeping and has forced me to resort to taking tranquilizers. Secondly, I will see a person very soon whom I have been close to in the past. I am extremely frightened and ambivalent about this person and I feel that I can't remain in control when in this person's presence. I think the sexual terror I have is very strong in this situation.

ANSWER: Yes, this pertains to the topic of this lecture. But these facets are connected with one another, they are interdependent. Your highly energized state is a direct result of having displaced your natural sexual force. As a result, it has no way of finding expression in pleasure, which is what it is meant to do. This deprivation of pleasure renders you ill to some degree. The fact that you forbid yourself the intense pleasure that you are meant to experience on all levels -- out of your false fears and of your false ideas -- creates an energy that you cannot assimilate properly. There must be a perpetual turnover of energy in a healthily functioning person. This cannot take place when the destiny of the pleasure current is willfully and artificially stopped. This pleasure comes about only when the stream of energy is followed. It leads to loving, to giving and receiving, to uniting, to opening up to the forces of life, to opening up to the innermost self with all of its powers, as well as to opening up to another person with whom one then shares these delights. When this is followed, then the system of man functions well. Every energy unit has its own metabolism, has its own rhythm, has its own turnover. The fright of meeting this person is due to the energy of the pleasure principle in you being strongly activated. Thus your misconception that union with the other sex and the pleasure of this union are bad and dangerous comes to the surface more directly. And this is is good, for it permits you to look at it, to see it in action, to see its power within your consciousness. Then, you have to realize -- and convince yourself of -- how preposterous this fear is. So if you understand what happens to you, then you can make time into a further stepping stone of growth.

Even in your work situation the problem is essentially the same. This is a new experience for you. It is a good experience in that it shows you that you have mastered a handicap. It shows that you are coping successfully with reality to a much greater degree than ever before. It shows that you can take and accept certain aspects of life that you had never been willing to take and to accept before. You not only good work as such, but you have overcome blocks and difficulties within yourself. Only a short time ago they seemed insurmountable. Your personal strength and your good will have led you to this growth, which must be experienced as pleasurable. Finding out one's strength is pleasure. Finding out one's resources is pleasure. Finding out one's abilities is pleasure. Finding out one's resiliency is pleasure. Finding out any asset you can name is pleasure. Yet you deny yourself this pleasure -- the pleasure of your own accomplishments -- just as you deny yourself all pleasure. It is as though there were a film standing between you and experience, a thick, glazed film, like a plastic wall. This wall separates you from the ability to be touched by experience. This does not apply merely to you, of course. Growth means, among other aspects, first the gradual thinning and then the eventual dissolution of this film, so that man can then experience directly. The meaning of this is profound. As long as man shrinks back from this direct, naked experience, then he must be in trouble with himself, he must be weak, he must be dependent, he must be afraid, and, above all, he must be deprived. The more one sheds one's misconceptions -- and therefore wakes up to life -- the thinner this film becomes. Therefore, the more directly does one experience life. The thicker the film is, the more aware you should become of your inner position in which you say: "Here am I and outside. I see experience through this transparent glazed wall, but it does not touch me." When experience touches you because your emotions are there, then you shrink back from it in fright. This fright is a wrong conclusion. Both the experience of pleasure and the experience of unpleasure cannot harm you, unless you believe that it will. The real harm comes from defending yourself against experience by closing yourself up against it. That is the real harm. The anxiety states that you experience are exclusively a result of your fearing both pleasure and unpleasure. In other words, of fearing to be touched by experience, and thereby building a defensive wall against it.

In order to come out of this state, you have to recognize that your unconscious is not yet as willing as your conscious mind. Accept this for the moment, for this is the prerequisite for influencing it. Deal with your resisting unconscious in an intelligent way. Speak to it in a relaxed way. Say to it: "You are wrong in fearing experience. Nothing bad can happen to me if I have pleasure. Nothing bad can happen to me if I am hurt. Nothing bad can happen to me if I am disappointed. All these are illusory fears. I want the resiliency that is essentially mine. I call upon my higher powers, which are deeper within me than my false fears and my false ideas. I no longer wish to reject experience. My fear of so-called good happenings is based on an illusion. My fear of so-called bad happenings is also based on an illusion.I wantt o let go of both these illusory fears." Thus you will gradually learn to let yourself experience whatever comes your way. Let it come to you, do not ward it off.

May you all gain a more truthful understanding of the glory of life. This understanding will make you recognize more and more that there is absolutely nothing to fear, that your fear is an illusion. Fear and illusion are synonymous, just as life and pleasure are. Be blessed, be in God.

January, 1968