The Great Existential Fear and Longing

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my very beloved friends. I am here with you. I have always been with you during this time that was such a difficult test for all of you. I am here, once again, in immediacy so that you can receive my words. This time of interruption was necessary in many ways and for many reasons. Some of you sense some of these reasons, but the full impact will dawn on you only much later. In the meantime, the purpose of this interruption of my direct message takes shape in your souls gradually, and begins to manifest in your life even more slowly.

There was, understandably, fear in all of you, not only in the instrument through which I manifest. Fear that I will no longer manifest to you; fear of untimely death, fear of chaos, fear of disruption, fear of meaningless suffering. Again, not only my instrument had to experience these feelings, but everyone of you was given an opportunity to become cognizant of these reactions by identification with the instrument.

It is important for you to grasp that these reactions exist in you per se. In other words, they are there whether or not an outer event brings them to the fore. Such outer events are simultaneously the results of these existing feelings and inner attitudes, and the means to deal with them and to overcome them. If what caused a negative experience is not elicited into the foreground of consciousness, then it can never be given a chance to transform itself.

In this case it is fear that the world is an arbitrary, chaotic, senseless place, without any rhyme or reason; it is the fear that there is no God; it is the fear that there is no eternal life; it is the fear that there is no eternal soul; the fear that there is no meaning to the experiences that man encounters. As you know from previous discoveries on your path, your attitude on one level of your personality may be totally different from your attitude on another level of your being. This certainly applies to faith in God and His creation and, as part of that, to faith in the meaning and purpose of all that comes to pass in your lives in an endless, ongoing chain of being, of consciousness.

The ultimate aim of self-realization is to establish the truth of God, the truth of eternal life, the truth of the benign meaning of everything in every crevice of consciousness. This process is the reason for incarnation and for purification. What do you think purification is all about? It is not just to become good. Being good in and by itself is almost a meaningless phrase. The deeper you go in your work of fulfilling yourself, the more you become aware of goodness often being a matter of different approaches and different values, of the mores of a particular culture. Sometimes what is considered bad by a certain society may be of the highest value on deeper levels of reality. And vice versa, of course. Absolute good can be found on the most profound levels of truth through the mundane and personal little truths which often are so difficult to face. The greatest truth of God's reality and of God's immediacy brings you to the ultimate good that is beyond all question and all doubt.

The Path I have the privilege to bring to you and to help you on prepares you for this process. Little by little, you first deal with the personal, individual violations of integrity and truth, level by level. The more open you are to this process and, consequently, the more you recognize and the more you loosen up your defenses -- so that a state of open flow is established -- the easier it becomes to lift out the existential fear that grips all of mankind. This is the common denominator that unites all human beings on the deepest level. When this deepest of all doubts and fears -- which exists in all human beings -- is being dealt with individually and personally, then a new phase in the total process can begin.

It is one thing to be clearly aware of this fear and doubt -- and to live with it for a while so as to deal with it again and again -- and another thing to be in the previous state, when these doubts and fears were covered up and, consequently, manifested indirectly. To know of, to feel, to experience, and to suffer these doubts and these fears is the first step on this vital new phase in your evolution. Your longing for eternal life must be totally conscious. This is by no means so as a general rule. Usually this longing is suppressed and repressed. As a result, it becomes transformed into subsidiary longings, such as the longing for happiness, the longing for abundance, the longing for avoiding physical death as long as possible.

Every one of these longings is legitimate. In other words, you should not infer from my words that these longings are wrong and immature, and therefore that you should attempt to eliminate them. The contrary is true. There is an enormous difference between seeing these longings as the original ones and seeing them as natural byproducts of a basic state of the soul that could exist, that is meant to exist, and that the personality at first unconsciously and then consciously longs for.

When this longing is unfulfilled in a part of the total personality, then the separation between the created being and the Christ still exists. This separation exists not only between the individual (to the extent that he or she is still in this darkness) and the Christ, but also within the personality. The personality is split. One part is in the light of knowing -- and there the longing is fulfilled. The other part is still in darkness, therefore in fear, in doubt, and in suffering. For that part the longing is unfulfilled.

But when this latter part is not conscious, then it creates painful experiences. For experience is constantly being created as an ongoing process from the consciousness -- the attitudes, the thoughts, the beliefs, and the feelings -- of the person. How painful it is when the result of these inner creative agents is so separated from what created the experience that the person is under the illusion that the experience comes to him without rhyme or reason. This is the most painful state of consciousness. It leads to the assumption that the universe is one of chaos and of meaningless arbitrariness.

When a human being dies in that state of darkness, then the disruption of the conscious connection will temporarily create the impression of non-existence in the life outside the physical body. That is, the personality aspects that are in the light and in the true knowledge will experience life after death accordingly, while the personality aspects that live in the darkness of unconscious fear and doubt will be unconscious after the separation from the body. This process perpetuates the illusion that physical death is an extinction of the consciousness. Then the aspects that have not yet awakened are incorporated into the reincarnating personality and are carried with it -- to be dealt with when the total personality is ready to do so on its evolutionary journey.

When this separated, fearful, doubting part remains unconscious, then the longing for eternal life is also unconscious. As the fears, the doubts, and the terrors manifest indirectly -- as if the manifestation had nothing to do with the specific fears, the doubts, and the terror of non-existence -- so does the longing for eternal life manifest indirectly. It manifests in various ways. In other words, the longing may manifest in conscious subsidiary but legitimate longings, such as those I mentioned before. Or the longing may manifest in displaced longings. For example, in longings for false, unreal fulfillments. The longing may also manifest in compulsive drives. Whatever it may be, it is important to make conscious the underlying longing for eternal life.

All this will make it clear that there is a direct connection between the dark corner of fear, of doubt, and of terror and the longing. To the degree these fears, these doubts, and these terrors are unconscious, to that degree the longing is unconscious. To the degree they are conscious, to that extent the longing is conscious. And to the degree they are conscious, the first step toward transforming the level of fears, of doubts, and of terrors into faith, into the knowledge of truth, into security, and into peace can be undertaken systematically, meaningfully, and intelligently. This in itself is the process by which the longing is being fulfilled.

Just as it requires courage, integrity, openness, good will, positive intentionality, and utter commitment to the truth to get to know yourself, to face the lower self, and thereby to begin to transform it, so does it require exactly the same courage, integrity, openness, good will, positive intentionality, and utter commitment to the truth to face, to live through, and to transform the deep, universal, existential fears, doubts, and terrors.

Now let us deal with two further points in this connection. The first is a vision or a concept about the state of fulfillment of this longing, which alone eliminates the fears and the terrors and stills all doubt. Without having at least a vague idea that such a state exists, then it is impossible to be conscious of your longing for it. Nor can you visualize it, which brings me to the second point. That is, how you should work on establishing your awareness both of the dark level of doubt and fear, and your awareness of the longing. In addition, how you should work on establishing the state in which this basic longing is fulfilled, and from which all other fulfillments then naturally derive.

Let me first describe the fulfilled state. Let us be quite clear that we are not discussing any outer state of fulfillment. All human beings desire health, abundance, success, a sense of self-worth, emotional fulfillment in love with a mate. But even when they do exist, then they mean nothing without the inner state. This inner state of this fulfilled longing is very difficult to describe in words. Once again, we meet the familiar obstruction of trying to squeeze a cosmic state or concept into the narrow confines of the human language, which is geared to three-dimensional concepts. Nevertheless, I shall attempt to give you a vision or a description of this state so that you can further attempt to grasp it and then sense it in order to eventually make it your own.

This state has been described in mystical and spiritual literature and has been given various names, such as Nirvana, Satori, Cosmic Consciousness. But I am not interested to find a name. Let us rather see what this state -- that is at first an awareness of God and then a deep union with God -- means in your personal experience.

In the first place, in this state there is no fear. A sense of being utterly safe and at home in the world permeates your whole being. There is a sense of security about life, about yourself, and about all things. It is one that might be described as being cozy with life. In this state life fits you like a glove.

It is impossible to attain this state -- with its resulting sense of safety and living in security and without fear -- unless you first ascertain that there is fear in you. For that is not obvious or self-understood, as I explained before. The existing fear is often submerged, or it is covered up, or it is displaced onto substitute levels, and therefore has indirect manifetations. Once the existential fear is conscious, then you can sense the longing for another state in which there is nothing to fear. Not in wishful thinking, not in escaping. It is the experiential knowledge that you are held by God and that you live in a creation in which there is absolutely nothing to fear.

In this state there is a vibrancy and a feeling of safety that bears no resemblance to false faith. In other words, it is not a faith that is superimposed in order to avoid facing the underlying fear. In this vibrancy there is a realistic attitude toward all things in life. Through this sense of belonging in the world true joyousness exists. It is a joyousness that is combined with the peace which surpasses all understanding. It is an excitement and a fascination with life and with its manifold possibilities of meaningful experiences.

Part of the safety and the peace I mentioned is a deep knowledge and a perception of the meaning of life and of the meaning of experience. A deep meaning is being sensed not only in your own existence, but also in all the issues -- from the largest issues to the most mundane and seemingly insignificant ones. The more you become aware of the fear of chaos and of the fear of meaninglessness in you, the more this state of emotion will be replaced by an experience of meaning and of significance. The more this is the case, the greater the sense of security becomes.

Let us simply say that this signifies the experience of the Presence of God in your life. Surely He has always been present, only you did not know it. Your mind could not perceive the immediacy of God and the meaning the He is bringing into the events in your life, into your experiences, into the sequences of your days and into what they contain. The experience of the reality of Christ colors all you see, all you touch, all you hear, all you feel. A glow of joy and peace is attached both to your own being and to your surroundings. The joyous excitement, the peaceful fascination with living and with all that is created in a continuum of creation is the most desirable state imaginable. Whether he knows it or not, man wants nothing more than this state.

I could try to describe this state with more words, but I find it difficult to do so. You need to listen with your innermost potential to understand in order to glean what is meant here. It is usually assumed that these higher states of consciousness -- whatever name may be given to them according to the culture and to the era -- are removed from this world. In other words, that having them means living in another world. But this is far from being so. The state of union with the Christ means being deeply anchored in this state of matter. It is far more correct to state that the higher, spiritual states I am attempting to describe here are brought into the world of matter -- the matter-mind and the matter-body -- so that they are being penetrated by the great light of eternal life, of peace, and of joy. It is not a separation from the matter that you are meant to imbue with the spirit to whatever extent you can.

In this state you sense the unification of all the opposites. So, you no longer need to battle them. Now you know your power to create, your power to resolve your conflicts, your power to recreate, your power to heal in full autonomy. Simultaneously, you know of the necessity to be in a state of divine grace, without which you cannot accomplish anything. You feel the compatibility and the union of these two ways of being -- in fact, the interconnectedness and the interdependence of these two states.

When the great longing is being fulfilled, then connections are discovered that give life a most exciting and safe new face. All the fragmentation that is the result of being split off from God is mended. This new wholeness increasingly permeates your person. Your own possibilities become a new playground for living. Knowing of your infinite ability to bend with life, you can snuggle in with it sweetly, as it were. In this soft, yielding, life-accepting, life-affirming attitude, your strength grows effectively, powerfully, and yet softly. Conversely, your softness can manifest as strong assertion and as determination. But there is a subtle and yet distinct difference between the brittle, stubborn, rebellious strength -- which is nothing but concealed weakness -- and the real strength that comes from being true to God's will.

Knowing that life is unending, that life is ongoing, that life is eternal, and that life is infinite does not necessarily mean that when you leave your present body behind God is going to reveal to you an exact blueprint of how you are going to feel, how you are going to think, how you are going to sense, how you are going to experience, and how you are going to to be. The sense of your eternal existence -- of the impossibility of your ceasing to be -- may come in a deep inner knowing. In other words, without an actual sight or sound experience.

When thinking of your desires and of your surface longings, then the emphasis in your prayers may be on outer things, such as health, emotional fulfillment, vocational fulfillment, and so on. Even the fulfillment of your spiritual task cannot fulfill the longing we are discussing here. All outer fulfillments can be, and often are, a direct byproduct of the great, deep, universal longing for the state of consciousness in which there is no fear, in which there is the realization of God's immediate presence in you, now and always.

This leads to the second point. What should be your activity or your attitude so as to attain this state? First, I wish to repeat that you need to look at your feelings, at your moods, and at your various mental states in a new light. For instance, you will find that many moods or states that you have interpreted to mean one thing have a deeper and more profound meaning in the light of the topic of this lecture. A restlessness, a discontent, a vague feeling of insecurity may all be rooted in psychological problems on levels that you need to explore and resolve. But in addition to these psychological origins and explanations, there is the repressed great existential longing, and the fear of non-existence and of meaninglessness that result directly from the unfulfillment of the longing.

So now it is essential that you uncover a deeper level of your being that lies beyond the mask self and the lower self, beyond the psychological and emotional problems, beyond the images and the mental misconceptioons. All of these are the result of the great existential longing and of the fear that it can never be fulfilled. On your evolutionary path you need to trace your steps back through the outer mazes, level by level, as you have learned to do. Only then can the discovery of the fear and the discovery the longing be a real experience, rather than a theoretical understanding.

Once you experience both the fear and the longing, do not push them away and assuage them busily with substitute problems, pains, and fears. Have the courage to fully experience the pain of the fear and the longing. Do not wait for the deeply hidden fear and longing to manifest in an outer experience that forces you to turn inward in this direction. Unfortunately, most human beings do not heed the signs even then. But the point must come when the soul awakens to the meaning of these manifestations, experiences them, and uses them as pointing arrows, as the red threads leading to the source.

You are in illusion when you shirk the full experience of the pain of this fear and of this longing. When you fully savor the experience of it, then you gradually dissolve it. It is necessary to use these approaches and to go through these experiences many times, again and again, with patience, with perseverance, and with wisdom. It is the wisdom to comprehend that the highest, the most desirable, the most unified state of consciousness, the ultimate of all fulfillments -- that includes, that encompasses, and that transcends all other desirable states and all other attainments -- cannot come quickly, cheaply, or easily. By this I mean that your total focus, your total commitment, and your total devotion must be activated, and thus generated, by your active mind and will. Your total goal in life must be to find the reality of the Living God as an immediate experience. In other words, not as theoretical speculation and the luxury of a belief, but as a living reality in your inner life and in your outer life.

You may have started the pathwork because you were unhappy and because you felt unfulfilled -- either vaguely or specifically. You may even have consciously sought spiritual meaning to your life. But none of you started out being aware of this longing, and of the pain of and the fear of not being able to fulfill it because you were too afraid to consciously deal with it. Perhaps you are not yet ready to deal with it, perhaps you still need more specific purification work on other levels of your outer personality. But you may begin to contemplate this aspect in you and pray for guidance to deal with it further.

There may have been short spans of time in which you temporarily experienced a state of ultimate fulfillment -- both in your mind and in your being -- similar to the one I describe. If this is so, then it will be helpful to connect with it retrospectively and to coordinate it with the meaning that I am giving to it in this lecture. Then these short periods of elation, of vibrant peace, of security, of excitement, of fascination, of profound joyousness, and of intense aliveness can serve as the vision you need in order to motivate yourself with more vigor. But even if you cannot remember having experienced such a state, or if you experienced only lesser aspects of it, some deep inner knowing in you is fully aware of this as yet unrealized potential. And you can tap this knowledge.

With some effort and some focus you can experience both the fear and the longing. At first these feelings may be vague. But as you allow them to rise to the surface, then you will know their exact meaning, as I have described it in this lecture. And as you experience the fear of a fragmented, meaninghless, disconnected world in which you exist without rhyme or reason, in which you can cease to exist at any time, in which you hang isolated over an abyss without an all-loving Creator and Creative Principle that gives sense to all things, you will also discover that you intensely long for this all-loving Creator, that you intensely long for a world in which you and all that exists has both a purpose and a benign meaning. Do not push this fear and this longing away by false reassurances, by the false cynicism of accepting a mean, godless world, or simply by displacing both the fear and the longing into more superficial -- even though in themselves quite legitimate -- fears and longings. Have the courage and the commitment to go through these essential aspects of your being. Repeat it, feel the feelings of pain, of fear, and of longing most specifically. Pray in the simplest and most humble way for Christ's intervention to help you to attain the state that religion often calls salvation. Be wise and humble enough to know that you may attain an inkling of this new state for a short while, only to lose it again, so that your battle and your search have to be repeated again and again, never ceasing the inner effort, never relinquishing this new goal.

Doubt is part and parcel of the state of separation. Meet the doubt, just as you meet the fear and the longing to no longer be in a state of doubt and fear. But make it an honest doubt. In other words, a doubt in which you give the state you long for at least as much of a chance as the state that you fear exists. Question yourself in the following manner: "Could there be a state of doubt, of fear, of pain, and of unfulfilled longing in me if there did not also exist -- on some deeper level of my consciousness -- a state of total certainty, of joy, and of the utter fulfillment of all my longings?"

We are now dealing with the most central question of all the issues of human life that every single religion has taken up in its own way. Salvation is a very real concept, not a religious fanatic's whim. The terminology may possibly offend you because you may unnecessarily associate it with a religion you have outgrown. But this does not alter the fact that your soul cries for salvation in the sense of this lecture. As long as all of your soul, all of your mind, your total thinking, your total knowing, your total feeling, and your total being have not experienced the living, eternal God as an immediate Presence, then your soul is -- at least in part -- in a state of painful separation and darkness. It finds itself in the fear of not knowing the reality of God, of not knowing the continuum of your own life, no matter what you consciously believe.

Ask Jesus Christ to give you a hand. He is here. He is always with you. He is always loving you. But you cannot always sense it, for your state of separation still prevents you. So be patient and surge on with this greatest of all surges of the human soul. In your terms, this particular journey may seem long. Yet everything else that you have done so far was preliminary work. But according to the great clock of eternal time, it is but a minute, a second.

It is your task to surge forward deeply into the world of matter, filling the void with divine life. In this process particles of your consciousness have temporarily separated themselves. As a result, they have lost their knowing, and therefore their eternal and inevitable connectedness with the All-Consciousness. You need to re-establish this connection through the process I am now describing. You need to put all your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind, and all of your will into this undertaking. This alone will make everything else you do -- all of your tasks, all of your duties, all of your fulfillments, and all of your pleasures -- both joyous and deeply meaningful. This will lend to all your deeds a new glow, a glow that you longed for but which you did not know you missed.

My most beloved friends, let us terminate this lecture now. You can surely imagine that this new topic is only the beginning of a new phase that coincides with many outward changes in your lives. This topic is the blueprint for the new phase of our work together. It is a work that never ceased, not even during the time when I could not speak to you directly.

Your growth and your progress, both as individuals and as a group, is most joyous. It spreads a stronger and stronger light into your environment. You generate a new energy that you need to nurture carefully. For the stronger these energy currents are, the more infinite does the inherent creative potential for divine, positive, and joyous experience become. At the same time, these currents can turn destructive when channeled into inappropriate and negative directions. Therefore I suggest that both your meditation and your prayer be concerned with specific guidance so that you may never be blind to your inner direction and so that these energy currents will flow where they are meant to flow.

I have one more suggestion before terminating this first lecture of the new working year. It would be helpful and beneficial for you if you became more familiar with the Bible. I am eager to help you to understand this great document, to disentangle for you what belongs on which level. For this great book is a combination of fragments of historical accounts, of symbolic meanings, of the greatest truths, and of distortions deriving from the limitation of the human consciousness, as well as from the then existing cultural conditions that were right at that time but which are no longer so today. I would like to lift up the jewels of truth contained in this book, separating the hulls from the husks, so that you can appreciate and benefit from the timeless wisdom of these messages. So I suggest that you ply me with questions. You have a whole month to prepare and I promise you that I will give you interpretations and answers that will be most useful and helpful for everyone. This will open a new horizon for you.

The love and the blessings I send you -- and which always surround you in your endeavor and in your beautiful struggle -- will become a more palpable reality for you as your vision grows. Be filled with the love of Christ. Be in God.

October 6, 1977