The Cosmic Feeling

By The Pathwork Guide

Blessings, greetings, and help are given. Love and strength are pouring forth. There is the divine kernel in every one of you. The aim of living is to realize this, to know who you really are, not to forget any longer. Once you know your true identity, your real self, which is a direct divine heritage, then there is no longer any fear or any suffering. The pathwork in which I guide you helps you, through its various approaches, to eliminate the obstacles to finding out who you are.

These are mere words for most human beings. Only after you have overcome some of your obstacles do you occasionally experience the reality of your true identity. In this lecture I should like to discuss one of the experiences that happen when these occasional occurrences begin to appear in your life. In that way you will be prepared, you will understand their meaning, and you will not reject the experience in its magnificence by trying to put it into a mold of usual human experience. This would automatically destroy it and would make its re-occurrence more difficult. The purpose of this lecture is also to help you to attain your true identity sooner and to eliminate the purely mental obstacles.

The experience I wish to discuss is a very specific feeling. It is a feeling that is usually not recognized because it goes beyond the usual human experience. I did discuss how your channel opens for receiving ever increasing wisdom and intelligence of such magnitude that all your problems can be resolved. The solutions come forth in a most all-inclusive way. In other words, no loose ends remain. I have discussed how you find a new creative power so that you can supply yourself with any fulfillment, with any self-expression, with any joy you may possibly wish. They are all close at hand, ready to be realized. I have discussed the beauty of the universe that you automatically discover, a universe in which all is well and in which there is nothing to be feared. In it you will find a sense of wholeness, eternal life, the power of healing, and emotional fulfillment on the deepest possible level.

But I have never discussed this particular feeling, although it is implicit in everything else I have said. For in the reality state of your true being all is one. In other words, your experiences are no longer separated and fragmented. In the state of your true being you will no longer be an entity who is separated from God. Your outer, hitherto split off, little intellect will become one with the Greater Intelligence that dwells within. In that state all experiences are one. They will merely have different facets.

Now -- in the state of your present development -- you can think one thing, you can feel another thing, you can will something else, and you can even act in yet another way. This terrible fragmentation is the most painful and the most confusing state imaginable. Its cure lies wholly in the nucleus of your innermost self where you will find the eternal Presence of God.

The particular feeling experience under discussion here might be called, for lack of a better word, the cosmic feeling. This cosmic feeling is not merely a theoretical understanding of, or a feeling about the cosmos, or about a state in creation. It is a true physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual experience. It encompassess the entire person. I shall try to describe this experience as best as this can be done within the limitation of verbal conveying. Then I shall discuss the prerequisites, the four basic keys necessary to attain this cosmic feeling.

The cosmic feeling is an experience that no longer splits off feeling from thinking. It is feeling and thinking in one. This is very hard to imagine when one has never had such an experience. But some of you have occasionally experienced the oneness of feeling and thinking. The experience of this oneness is a total one. It is an experience of bliss, of the comprehension of life and its mysteries, of all-encompassing love, of the knowledge that all is well, and of the knowledge that there is nothing to fear. The total absence of fear is something that is hard to visualize for the average human person, partly because you are unaware of the existing fears and partly because you are so used to life with them that it does not occur to you that life could be otherwise. When you know that there is no death; when you know that there is no real suffering other than a temporary manifestation of your ideas, of your errors, of your illusions, of your misconceptions, and of your intentional negativities which could end at any time you so desired; when you know that there really is no passing of time, that time, too, is a product of illusion, then there cannot be fear. This fearless love and joy, the understanding of and the ability to distinguish between illusion and reality, is such a feeling experience because it transcends your personal little self. It includes everything and you feel the oneness of all in the universe.

Your lack of distinction between what is real and what is false creates apparently endless confusion and pain. You usually reverse it: you often think that what is real is non-existent, while you believe in illusions. The knowledge of what is real and what is illusion is part of the experience of the cosmic feeling. It lends an immense security that comes from the knowledge of being truly safe. This, in turn, releases much energy that is then experienced as bliss in every part of your being. Then you experience relaxation, excitement, peace, and pleasure as interconnected aspects, rather than as mutually exclusive opposites, as is the case in the ordinary state. This oneness transcends every particle of you -- your body, your soul, and your spirit.

In this state no worry or anxiety can possibly exist. Nor does the tight pulling within drive you and torment you and make you restless. This restlessness is an expression of the inner urge to seek the path of truth that brings you toward your self-realization. But before you have done so, the drive can be painful and it can make you seek in the wrong direction temporarily, thus bringing you even further away from what your innermost self seeks. The pushing may be either subtle or strong, and therefore noticeable. It has its function, but it uses energy that will later be available for blissful knowing/feeling, where every fraction of Now is bliss. In the state of the cosmic feeling you experience the immediacy of the presence of God within. The immediacy of this incredibly powerful presence is shocking at first. The good feeling is shocking. It is as if an electric shock literally went through your entire system. Therefore, the ego personality has to grow sufficiently strong and healthy so that it can acclimatize itself to the high vibrations of the inner presence of God manifesting in the outer erson. Then this manifestation is being experienced as your eternal reality and as your true state. In other words, as your true identity. The moment you find yourself in this state, then you will know in a most profound way that you have always known what you now re-discover and that you have always been what you now experience yourself to be. In other words, that none of this is really new. You had only temporarily cut yourself off from this state of feeling and knowing, of perceiving life as it really is. And therefore of experiencing life as it really is.

This real experience becomes possible the moment you can bear the immediacy of your divine kernel. That is, the moment you are able to bear its aliveness, its presence, its consciousness, its energy, its sparkling reality, its all-permeating wisdom, its all-inclusive love, and its creative power that is yours to use as you see fit.

This description is extremely limited, for the words cannot possibly convey the experience. What you would have to do in order to gain an inkling of the reality of these words is to pray to be able to perceive a taste of it in this very moment. Open your inner faculties so as to understand on a deeper level, my friends. If you can observe in yourself how afraid you are of this experience, even while you long for it -- and how, consequently, you close it off -- then you will know that there is something waiting for you. Therefore, you will not fall into the trap of the ego-trick to sit in doubting judgment, flattering yourself that this doubting attitude is intelligent and not gullible. In order to distinguish between the real and the fakery or the escape and the well-meant illusion, you have to be open and to judge not merely with your discriminating mind, but also with your feelings. In other words, with your intuitive faculties. But if fear governs you, then your discriminating mind is being used in a perverted way, and is therefore abused. But if your feelings are open and honest, then your discriminating mind will be the servant it is supposed to be, and not the master. If you can honestly admit that you are still too afraid of this feeling-experience, then it is all right. You can calmly go to work on the obstacles, without self-deluding tactics that remove you further from the real goal that will be reached one day in time and space. This will avoid unnecessary pain.

Now I shall discuss what the four key points or key prerequisites are in order to become strong enough and healthy enough to bear this power that you are, and the wisdom that is imbedded in you, and the love that you hide inside, and which is ready to flow out of you. This applies to every single one of you without exception, and it applies to every living thing in the universe, either organic or inorganic. All is permeated with this identical power and intelligence. What varies is the degree to which this power and this intelligence can manifest.

The four points are aspects of the pathwork on which we are intensely working. But they must be seen in this context also. They are:

(1) The real and true understanding of your personal cause and effect in this present life. The understanding of cause and effect in your life is an essential prerequisite for self-realization, for the realization of your divine identity. It is essential even for a lesser state, for mere good health; it is essential for being centered within; it is essential for being reasonably integrated; it is essential for meaningful functioning; and it is essential for satisfying experiences. This is so because the moment you can see the level in you where you create your life circumstances through your ideas, your concepts, your intentions, and your attitudes, then you have your key with which to create a different and more desirable life. But when you are disconnected from this creating in you -- in other words, when you create unconsciously -- then you are totally powerless. When you are oblivious of your own power, then you get involved in a chain reaction of error and of distortion. Then you are in a state where you constantly make others -- people, circumstances, life as a whole -- responsible for your misery. This disconnection brings further chain reactions. This inner state -- regardless of whether you are conscious of it or not -- makes you blame, makes you accuse, and makes you feel victimized. This, in turn, makes you feel justified to hate, justified to resent, and justified to take revenge.

A byproduct of this disconnection is the growing feeling of helplessness, with its accompanying and inevitable resentments due to expectations which are unfulfilled because they are unfulfillable. Another byproduct of it is fear and, consequently, the defenses that cut you off further from the source of all life in you. And all the while you go on willfully ignoring how you yourself create this miserable state because it suits you better to blame others and to wait for a salvation that will never come. It can come only when you realize your beautiful birthright: to create. When you recognize how you create negatively, then you can can begin to create positively. You can either create willfully -- from your little ego, following the dictates of your vanity, of your greed, of your laziness, and of your dishonesty -- or you can create positively by letting God in you express Himself. Thus, you will create honestly and hence beautifully.

When you are involved in the subtle inner game of disassociating yourself from the causes that you have set in motion by this or that specific attitude and by this or that specific will direction, then it is impossible for you to use your creative powers to produce a life of meaning and of fulfillment. So you wait for some other power to take over. Of course, you wait in vain. This makes your life miserable, hopeless, and futile. You are then busy denying this sense of miserable hopelessness and futility. So you repress it. Thus, you go on ignoring the fact that there is a way out, but in exactly the opposite direction from the one that you have chosen until now.

Many of you are fortunate in that the progress of your pathwork has brought you in contact with the level of your negative creation. You begin to see more clearly which specific attitudes, which specific expressions, and which specific intentionalities have produced manifestations in your life that you deplore and which you have hitherto complained about in a state of passive waiting for some miracle to happen from outside. Or else you have resigned yourself to an unnecessary state of deprivation and frustration. But there is still much to be done in this respect by all of you. There are still many areas which you vaguely gloss over and which do not take under the scrutiny that is essential for this discovery.

Set out to uncover that vague sense of futility in you in which you fear that your life is slipping through your fingers without having realized its essence, its beauty, and its creative joyousness that are there for the taking. Missing out on it must make you very unhappy. Anyone who is already involved in this pathwork will find this state less acute. But there are always some who come with only a minor part of themselves and who have no real intention to open up all the way. In that case, the despair remains. Therefore, it is foolish to indulge in your resistance to the pathwork and to act as if not overcoming your resistance did not really matter. In other words, as if your resistance were based on some valid reasons peculiarly suited to your individuality, or whatever other explanations you may concoct. Do not delude yourself that results can be attained without challenging your resistance. You can never become connected with your creative level and you can never be truly secure unless you are aware of cause and effect.

Take it on a very practical level. Begin by looking at your life: in what respect are you unhappy and unfulfilled? And then proceed, with the aid of your helper, to investigate your hidden attitude in regard to the specific manifestation of your life that leaves something to be desired. I do not mean the conscious intent. I mean the hidden negative intentionality, the hidden lies, the hidden dishonesty, the hidden intent to get more than you are willing to give. All of this must be explored.

At first this is painful. You like to cling to the illusion that you are but an innocent victim. But what unhappiness you buy with this illusion! When you overcome your distaste for exposing your dishonesty, for exposing your negative creation, then you will first see fully and then understand the negative creation which you have produced. First you will see how you have produced it and then you will see what specific attitudes in your mind and in your feeling self have created these conditions. These negative attitudes are all the more powerful when they are hidden, and therefore are unrecognized.

Do not let your overwhelming guilt dissuade you from this course. Recognize it as yet another trick of your ego. In this overly devastating guilt you prevent yourself from lifting yourself up, you prevent yourself from going through the one and only act that can truly remedy the situation, and you prevent yourself from recognizing the beauty in you through the exposure of your ugliness. Neither aggrandize your guilt -- so that it keeps you cowering down in repression and misery -- nor belittle it. Allow yourself to feel the pain of your guilt, so that you fully see its whole impact, its meaning, and its ramifications. See both what you do to others and what you do to yourself, and how you do it. This will be the motivating power to change your negative creation into a positive creation.

When you can connect with your creative level, then you will find such relief and you will find that the world opens up. By understanding cause and effect in your life, it will dawn upon you that if you can create such tangible events and such states of mind unconsciously, inadvertently, and erroneously, then you can also create consciously and deliberately, intentionally and with planning. Therefore, you can experience the life circumstances and the states of mind that you wish to be your own.

For example, if you feel that you cannot bear happiness, good feelings, pleasure -- if the current is too strong and too disquieting -- then you can create this capacity. First you have to state this desire and express this intent. Then you have to be willing to give up your dishonesty and your negative intentionality. Third, you have to honestly want to give the best that is in you. How else can you find the endless wealth that is in you? By holding back your honest inner giving, by holding back your openness, and by holding back your commitment to life you must increase your inner sense of poverty. In other words, the belief that you are empty, and therefore that you have nothing to give. He who feels empty gives nothing. You can feel rich and full only when you wish to give. When you do this, then you begin to create positively. Then you will see your positive creations grow. Sometimes they may take a few years to manifest fully, sometimes less. They are never completed. Positive creations can be endlessly improved upon. By seeing the cause and the effect of your negative creation and its destructive manifestations, you become a creator. In other words, you realize your birthright of divinity.

This is an incredibly important prerequisite. It is a prerequisite in order to be whole, it is a prerequisite in order to be in reality, it is a prerequisite in order to have self-responsibility, it is a prerequisite in order to open a channel to your divinity. But this divinity is nothing supernatural or mystical, my friends. It is nothing that comes miraculously or magically from far away. Your divinity is your power to create with the power of your thinking, by expanding your visualizations, by your ability to impress your intents into yourself, and then by requesting the power of God within you to unite with your total consciousness.

(2) Learning the ability to feel all your feelings and learning the ability to handle this feeling experience. It requires a bit of growing and groping until the personality learns to accept whatever feeling there is, to experience it, and to handle it in a constructive way. I have said a great deal about the technique of how to do this, about various important aspects, that here I will discuss this topic in terms of the particular angle we are now concerned with.

If mankind goes through the depths of unhappy feelings, then it is because it has created them. You can grow beyond them only by going through them. It occurs frequently among you that now you actually begin to experience the truth of what at first were only words: by fully accepting and feeling your pain, you become commensurately capable of enduring pleasure, of sustaining it. By the humility and the honesty to admit your hate and to express it in a constructive way -- that is, to assume responsibility for it -- your capacity to love grows commensurately. By your ability to go into and to fully experience your fear, you grow fearless, and therefore secure. It cannot be different because it is one and the same energy current, appearing in different frequency rates and in a different condensation. As you discover the oneness of the opposites, then their vibration changes. The more you avoid the one, the less you can experience its other side.

The cosmic feeling is of the highest frequency rate of energy. Therefore, if any feeling within the ordinary human spectrum is still unmanageable, then the cosmic feeling is too strong to bear.

As long as you shy away from a feeling, it becomes a wall and thus it becomes your enemy. Then you must become frightened of your own feelings. With that you create the twice-removed alienation process that is so disconcerting and so painful: fear of your fear, pain about your pain, hate for your hate. The split widens, the disconnection extends, until you start groping your way back.

There is no feeling in existence, no matter what it is, that cannot be fully experienced and that cannot be dealt with in a constructive, beautiful way. If you first air out your most negative feelings, such as your hate, your cruelty, your anger, your rage -- and all their byproducts, such as your envy, your jealousy, your greed, and your dishonesty -- then you will find that their clean and honest expression is a beautiful manifestation. It is that because you no longer pretend. You risk and you expose the truth, and thus you become beautiful as you show your ugliness. This can never be harmful, especially if you do not use this stage in order to stay stuck on that level. (You know that anything can be misused and put into the service of the life-negating tricks of the ego.) If you expose part of your momentary state of consciousness without pride because you overcome the shame; and if you have the courage and the trust in the universe to do this in an honest way -- and if you ask your inner guidance to help you in this endeavor -- then you will experience a powerful energy that is contained in the previously hidden feelings. This energy is essential for creating your life, it is essential for expanding your life, it is essential for raising your consciousness, it is essential for your joy, and it is essential for your pleasure. Tiredness, listlessness, and being without energy can be explained by many factors. But in the last analysis they are always a product of running away from feeling. In other words, of running away from dealing with your feelings, thus repressing your vital energy.

If you meet it constructively -- without false ideas and without projection -- then there is no pain that will not prove to be a tunnel through which you will go comparatively quickly, releasing energy, love, and power. There is no hate so ugly, there is no negative intentionality so awful that by honestly expressing it -- rather than acting it out against others -- will not yield a powerful energy and will not add to your loving, to your living, and to the beauty of the environment that you create. No hate, no pain, no fear is ever a permanent condition. The only permanent conditions are love, pleasure, security, peace, and bliss. Hate, pain, and fear are nothing but frozen energy and distorted consciousness. Every time you feel reluctant to go into a pain, into an anger, into your inner-existing rage, it is only dishonesty that makes you reluctant: the wish to appear different from the way you really are. Thus, it is the reluctance, the resistance, as well as the artifically cultivated exaggeration of the fear of pain which makes it really unbearable, because you cringe from it. When you overcome the imagined need to pretend -- in other words, if you can be who you truly are -- then there is no feeling that cannot be a source of creative energy. Being honest includes the willingness to challenge your false idea that going into the pain will make you stay in it permanently, and therefore perish. These conscious or unconscious assumptions must be questioned.

By exposing what you feared to expose, you can learn to deal with it, not otherwise. Many of you already see more and more that releasing the stagnant, sick energy of your hidden distorted feelings turns them into a powerful agent for joy and for creativity.

The whole spectrum of feelings must be gone through in a feeling way. As I said, only when you can allow yourself to feel and are willing to deal with your negative feelings can you accept and sustain your good feelings. By the same token, only when you can accept and sustain good feelings of the ordinary human spectrum can the ability grow to first accept and then sustain the cosmic feeling. It is important to understand this progression of your feeling nature. This will explain to you why you are often incapable of holding on to your good feelings. You see yourself contract again right after you have opened up and you have experienced pleasure, love, warmth, the goodness of life. Although you know that this principle exists, still you do not use it enough as the gauge that it is. It points to still repressed -- hence still unrecognized, and therefore unaccepted and unexpressed -- negative feelings in you. If a glimmer of the cosmic feeling occasionally comes and it slips away only too fast, then it is a sure sign that your love capacity is not yet as developed as it can be, and as it will be one day. The strongest experience of human love is only a lukewarm, mild shadow in comparison with the cosmic feeling, which encompasses everything.

(3) Positive Intentionality. But not just superficially, in order to comply with some rules. But from the core of your real being, where you want truth and love for their own sake, not for the sake of what you wish to gain. Your positive intentionality must exist on that deep level where you now discover -- or are about to discover -- your negative intentions toward life and your dishonesty toward life, which are the true causes of your unhappiness. First you have to see it, to longer negate it or look away from it. In other words, you have to work with it until on the same deep level where until now there was negative intentionality there now is the strong expression of your positive intentionality. The commitment to it comes as you are willing to risk it. Then there will be love in you. There will be love for the universe, there will be love for others, there will be love for the creation. Your love will lack totality to the degree that negative intentionality festers in your psyche. And you cannot have the cosmic feeling unless you have love. The experience of love is on a lesser energy scale than the more comprehensive total experience of the cosmic feeling, which includes love to the highest possible degree, but which also includes many other feeling/knowing experiences and expressions.

The commitment -- made in honesty and in truthfulness -- to make a fair exhange with life, to play it honestly, and to give to life must be made over and over again. It must be made day in and day out, always searching for deeper hidden recesses where negative intentionality may still exist in you, and then reversing it in a conscious and deliberate creative act of expressing your positive intentionality.

How can you gauge where hidden negative intentionality still exists in you? You can gauge it easily by asking yourself: "Where am I still unhappy? Where am I anxious? Where do I have problems with myself? Where do I have problems with life? Where do I have problems with others?" No matter how easy it may be to ascribe the cause to others -- and it may surely also be true -- nevertheless where you create negatively there is something in you that you do not see. That is your gauge and you can use it every day. It is completely accurate, it cannot lie. Nothing could be more reliable. In your daily review, ask yourself every night: "Is my life as fulfilled as it could be and as I long for it to be? Is my life as happy as it could be and as I long for it to be? Is my life as joyful as it could be and as I long for it to be? Is my life as rich as it could be and as I long for it to be? Is my life as meaningful as it could be and as I long for it to be? In other words, do I have to content myself with what I have now?" Then you will have your answer. You can choose to explore yourself further by asking yourself: "What do I contribute to this situation? How do I create it?" Of course, you cannot do this alone, but you have you helper.

Even if your life is fulfilled and happy -- and you will see it become increasingly richer because your continued pathwork will bring about such a change, without fail -- you can still ask yourself: "Where are there areas where I still feel flat, where I do not experience the joy that I know otherwise to exist?" That is your clue to look inside of you, in your heart of hearts. What do you really express and what do you really intend toward a certain aspect of life in this innermost corner of your being? It is really very simple to do this, my friends. Once you focus your attention in this way, then you will see that it is as simple as a diagram that you can draw with a few simple strokes. It is truly no mystery.

(4) The capacity to connect with your innermost divine nucleus. The other three points I discussed are prerequisites to this. The fourth point cannot be realized successfully -- and therefore cannot be practiced -- unless the other three are executed. But this fourth is also another approach for you to cultivate. Listen into yourself, become calm, become receptive and quiet your busy, loud mind. Start from the premise that deep within you there is a nucleus of knowing, of feeling, of intelligence, and of power. In other words, a Divine Presence. Focus on it lightly, without the feeling of "I must experience it now." Wait calmly. Learn the ability to become inwardly relaxed and calm. See your inner rushing, your inner driving, your inner grasping, your inner hurrying. If you observe it, then you can stop it. At first it may be a pain. But this is an opportunity for you to feel it without resistance. Learn the great art of tuning in. Ask your innermost Godself for this specific help. Persevere. Realize the other three points. Give it your attention, give it your good will, give it your best. One day the channel will open, it must open. Contemplate the possibility that there are faculties within you that you have not yet experienced.

There is in you an inner ear with which you will eventually hear. There is in you an inner eye with which you will see. There is in you an inner power of perception with which you will perceive. These inner faculties are not yet in use, but they can be awakened. As you put to rest the thoughts of your mind; as you overcome the doubts which are a trick of your ego; as you increase your capacity to be attentive to your inner movements, because you look through the tricks of the ego not to let you be attentive; as you ask for inner guidance again and again, then one day you will perceive a new faculty in you. This new faculty will increase gradually. With one person, the inner ear will suddenly open and you will hear God in you. You will know that it is not your imagination, for nothing could be more real. With another individual, the inner eye will see symbolic forms or pictures. It may see on an inner level, where seeing is knowing. It may see the light of truth and love. That seeing will communicate itself into understanding, for that must always follow suit in order to integrate the experience with the conscious ego personality. With another person, it may manifest at first in an ability to express the inner knowing with thoughts: it thinks in you, it instructs you, or perhaps it writes through you. There are many different ways in which new knowing, new seeing, new hearing, and new experiencing will come from the divine kernel within. The integration of this into the personality is the expansion that I talked about in the last lecture.

Everyone can be helped by this lecture to understand where he is on his path, regardless of whether or not he can actually put everything to use at this point. That may come later.

I should like to say once again that the power, the strength, the love and the help that are invested in the venture of this group as a whole are so wonderful that it is hard for anyone to overlook the reality of it at this point. For the power grows steadily through your visible progress, and the liberation and the faith that you gain through what you experience and what you see around you. While being at these gatherings, you can gain so much by letting your heart feel the power that is here. Do not cut it off. Do not allow the tricks of your ego to cut you off from your heart, from your feelings. Then you will know that I say the truth. If you recognize your own doubting, negating ego as the trick it produces and you doubt or challenge your doubt, then you can open your hearts, my friends.

As I withdraw from this instrument, try to use the powerful energy that is here. There are many different ways to use it. Perhaps there are people here who do not love each other, who have had friction with each other, or who have misunderstandings about one another. Maybe they can use this powerful energy to come to the middle of this circle and to truly and honestly confront each other. Another way may be for one person who wants help to have the whole group give its energy so as to find the necessary clue in him or her. In the meditation that follows, with which you generate more of this beautiful energy, ask to be inspired. Use this energy to move you where God in you directs you. Surrender to this divine power and to this inner guidance. Allow them to happen. Enrich yourself and do not shy away from the risk and from the momentary resistance. Do not cut yourself off from it. Be blessed, my dear ones.

April 21, 1972