The Conflict Between Conscious and Unconscious Desires

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings in the name of the Lord. I bring you blessings, my dearest friends. Blessed be this lecture.

My dear, dear friends, you all know that there is no other reason and no other purpose in life than development and purification. Therefore, whoever is on this path will not have lived in vain. This path is certainly the fastest way to self-knowledge and to self-purification. The latter is not possible without the former. You cannot purify yourself unless you know yourself. Although self-knowledge is not always identical with purification, to a large extent you are already purifying yourself by recognizing yourself fully and thoroughly. In order to develop this ability without resistance or subterfuge, it is essential to have humility, the humility to accept yourself as you are now. Therefore, the struggle to acknowledge a part of your lower self that until now you may have ignored in its full significance is already purifying, even before you are capable of changing your emotions. It is often forgotten -- even by my friends who work so well -- that change is not something that can be commanded. You cannot change your feelings and your emotional reactions by an act of will. You can use your will to do the necessary and often tedious work of searching for a clear-cut meaning to your confused emotions. You can certainly use your will to decide fully for this path. But the emotions can change only after you have had the humility to repeatedly recognize their lower nature. Therefore, I have to repeat: recognize again and again whatever is wrong in your inner reactions, and thus you will cultivate the very change that you wish to accomplish.

To know yourself, to find the real you, the part of you that you have been unaware of so far, is always the aim and the question. Now I will try to help you further in that direction.

It is often forgotten that the human personality has many facets and, therefore, when one speaks of "knowing oneself" one seldom understands what is really meant by this. For certainly you know a bit about yourself: your conscious aims and reactions, your tastes and idiosyncracies, and so on. But there are many other facets that you completely ignore. Just think of yourself and of the many people whom you know right now and whom you have known in the past. Think how different you are, and therefore how differently you act, with certain types of people, with your acquaintances, with your family, with your friends, with almost everyone you know. In each circumstance of your life there is a different "you." You may not have thought of it in that way, but just try to imagine how it would be if you would act in the same manner toward "A" as you act toward "B." You can go through the whole alphabet and you will find that there are at least that many facets of "you." And that is only on a very superficial level, for there are many facets in you that never manifest in your surface personality. Then, how can you go deeper in order to know who you are?

The first and the most important step in that direction is to find out your desires. When I speak of desires, I do not mean the important aims and goals of your life, or the big issues. No, I mean that any small -- and apparently insignificant -- reaction on your part contains a desire of one sort or another. Think of any unimportant incident that happens to you through the day when you feel disharmonious, angry, irritated or, for that matter, joyful and optimistic. In each of these reactions lies a desire. And if you wish to find out who you are, then you first have to ascertain what these desires in each of your daily reactions are. That is neither as difficult nor as easy as you may think. It calls for a certain technique, a certain habit forming on your part. First you must learn to conduct your daily review. In the next step, instead of merely acknowledging to yourself, "I felt angry or I felt hopeful or I felt unhappy or I felt joyous on such and such an occasion," ask yourself why you felt these reactions, no matter how obvious the reason may be as far as other people and outer circumstances are concerned. Ask yourself what might be the desire behind your reaction. Ask yourself: "What do I really want in connection with this or that situation that makes me angry or fearful now? Am I angry because I want something different? What is it that I really want?" Or, "am I joyful because a desire of mine has apparently been fulfilled? What was and is this desire? And if I am hopeful, is it because the chances seem greater now that a certain desire will be fulfilled? What is this desire, in clear-cut, simple words?" Try to make a habit of such self-questioning, my friends. Take all your reactions every day and then examine them from this point of view: "What is the desire?" That will help you a great deal. It will help you to understand yourself much better. It will also help you to understand why you became as you are now and why you have these desires, which will be the next step. But right now this is premature. Let us take one thing at a time. You must first learn to establish a concise consciousness, an articulate awareness, of your desires. Then we will go into the reasons for their existence.

Your conscious desires may often deviate from your unconscious ones. This we have discussed often, and I think you all understand by now that this is one of the main reasons for your conflicts and for your frustrations. But what often creates similar conflicts and unfulfillments is a circumstance that most of you ignore in its full significance. That is the fact that your conscious desires and aims -- according to which you perform your actions -- are in accord with the goals of your higher self. But lower and selfish aims are also present in your motivations. These lower aims find an outlet in the higher aims, which then serve to hide their existence. This is very important to find out, my dear friends. While your deeds and your acts may be worthy and good as such, and while the high and noble motives truly exist in you, all this loses its splendor if you cannot see the lower motives that co-exist with the higher ones -- both striving for the same goal. Before you can purify yourself to such an extent that these selfish, proud, vain, and fearful motives cease to exist in you, the fact that you simply recognize their existence purifies you already to a considerable degree, and therefore also purifies the right action as well as your desire. You are often puzzled because you find out that you want something pure and good and yet it brings you disharmony. The reason for this disharmony is that you ignore the different motives existing within yourself in relation to your noble desires. The conscious noble motive makes you convinced that there is nothing wrong with your aim. And yet there is something wrong. It is the fact that you do not know the other part that co-exists in the same desire current. You are so used to an exclusive attitude -- by which I mean that you think that the truth of one motive excludes the truth of another, which is often quite contrary to nature -- that it will take a great deal of self-realization on your part to understand that this is not so. Purification does not mean merely that you change your desires. It means that you separate the good motives from the wrong ones by first observing them. Do not ever try to force your feelings. It cannot be done. I cannot emphasize this often enough. Try to become capable of saying: "Here my desire is this or that. The conscious desire is good. But I recognize that this or that particular selfish motive also plays a role. I will continue to perform the good act. But I will not deceive myself that I am utterly free of selfishness, of vanity, or of whatever other trend may be involved. I can only pray and hope that these unruly currents will weaken with time. I cannot help feeling that way now, but I hope to become free of it." By observing yourself in that way again and again the lower currents will weaken, until they eventually disappear. In this way you accomplish infinitely more toward your purification than by trying to force away your feelings. You do so with the best intentions. You know that certain reactions are not good or loving, and you do not like to be that way. It would seem possible that you can annul the existence of such trends simply by forcing them away. In reality you only cover them up, giving them in this way much greater power than by simply recognizing their existence. In addition, ignoring their existence leads to self-deception, because then you believe that you are purer than you actually are. In other words, you believe yourself free of lower motives, while they merely ferment in your unconscious.

Humanity makes a definite distinction between feelings and thoughts. You know that in spirit both are concrete forms of subtle matter. In principle -- the way we see it -- feelings are exactly the same as thoughts. The only difference is that an emotion is more potent and more intense than any thought you can harbor. Convictions, opinions, and views which are not fortified by emotion are weak. Therefore, their forms can dissolve much faster than can the forms of opinions and views which are charged with emotion. This applies in the positive as well as in the negative sense. The strongest conscious conviction or conscious thought is nothing when compared with an utterly unconscious current. From the spiritual point of view of absolute truth, the difference between thoughts and feelings is only in their strength and in their intensity, not in their characteristic or their type. You will soon discover this truth on the road you have taken. By making your emotions conscious, you turn them into thoughts, and then, if you wish, you turn these thoughts into actions. Thus you live in a higher degree of consciousness than when you perform your actions without knowing why or without understanding why, thereby merely rationalizing them in the best way you know how, while you are still controlled by your unconscious thoughts and your unconscious emotions.

Try to realize that the difference between thoughts and emotions lies only in the difference in the degree of intensity and of vibration. You know that even thoughts without personal emotional involvement cannot be changed very quickly. How much longer, then, does it take for emotions to alter. For instance, you have harbored certain opinions during your life. Even though you my not be emotionally involved -- in other words, even though it may really be a superficial opinion that has no importance for you personally -- habit and surroundings have influenced you to maintain these views, so that it never occurred to you to revise your opinions in spite of the fact that they have been obsolete for a long time. Then how much more difficult it is to revise and change an opinion or an attitude where personal, psychological factors -- your emotions -- are involved.

With this I want to convey to you how habit-bound the human soul is. How great is the fight to overcome the temptation of sluggishness and pride. For it also requires a certain humility to change one's view. We often see that people stubbornly hold on to an opinion merely because this was their opinion for quite a while, in spite of the fact that deep in their hearts they know or they feel that the new outloook they are presented with makes more sense. So, changing even superficial opinions requires effort and humility on your part. To change thoughts without emotional impact needs certain assets not always easy to muster, at least for a number of people. How much more difficult it is and how much more patience and wisdom is needed to change an outlook, a trend, or an attitude where your most subjective and personal ideas are involved in your deep-rooted emotions. Even changing mere thought-opinions, free of emotional context, cannot be done by force. No one can force you to think differently, not even your higher self. You can change an opinion only if you think about it, if you deliberate on it, if you weigh it, if you discriminate, and if you then select. Pursuant to this process, a new opinion may evolve. Or you may then maintain the old one because this seems right, based on a mature deliberation. With emotions, which are stronger and more potent than thoughts, force is even less successful and is treacherous indeed. It should not dismay you that your unpurified emotions cannot change merely because you have finally recognized their impure nature.

Adjust yourself to the necessity that, at least for a while, you will observe their existence; and from the ability to do so, you will gain further knowledge. Beware of the error that the truth of a good motive excludes the truth of a bad motive coexisting with the good one, although hitherto hidden. This prescribed procedure requires humility. It means living in a healthy state of truth, even though a truth may not be flattering at this moment. So make your soul healthy by this procedure of self-acknowledgment. In that way you will gradually experience a change of consciousness, a change of inner concepts, a shift in your emotions that will begin to be really different. That will be the greatest victory for you, and it will bring you great relief. But it cannot come in one sweep. You can reap these fruits only after the tedious work, as outlined in these lectures, is done. By this work you will not only understand your life, understand your problems, and understand your conflicts, but you will also understand your images and how they were formed.

In order to find these images, you have to work from two sides. First, examine your childhood and your reactions at that time, and then examine your present reactions and your desires in connection with the daily happenings in your life. Eventually both will form one whole picture. When you search for your desires, then you will see that some of your desires are stronger than others, that some are broken by countercurrents, and that others flow rigidly in one direction. You will see that your desires are made up of several layers of your personality. They contain good motives as well as bad motives. You will understand why you felt it necessary to hide the existence of the bad motives from your conscious being.

I would also like to discuss another difficulty that you may encounter in attempting to find yourself by finding your desires. Some of you may not know what you want, at least in some areas of your inner life. This is puzzling and often upsetting. There is so much confusion in your soul due to the suppression of conflicting or unwanted desires that everything is entangled, and it will take a bit of work on your part to undo all these knots. At first it may be frightening to find out that you actually do not know what you want, that consciously and outwardly your life appears so very well directed, and yet within you are in turmoil. Because of that, you try to escape into subterfuge desires. In order to pull the curtain aside and look at these subterfuge desires, you must take all the various strings of the big knot, pull them into separate directions one by one, and then trace their aims. Each of these little strings in the knot represents a little desire. Each has a different motive behind it. Knowing yourself to be an intelligent person, a highly developed person in many respects, you unconsciously thought that you could not afford to become aware of this. How could you admit to yourself that you have several desires that are completely contradictory, one canceling out the other? Yet, what the child in you desires is two impossibilities, and often more. By hiding this state of affairs, you thought that you would rid yourself of this conflict. In reality this hidden nucleus is the nature of your disharmonies, of your disappointments, of your conflicts, and of your unfulfillments.

Therefore, the only way out is for you to have the courage and the patience to take each string and to ask yourself what you desire in each of your daily reactions. To begin with, simply register your findings. Refrain from judgments and evaluations, such as, "But this is silly, this is impossible, this is unworthy of me," and so on. Such an approach would only make it more difficult for you to untie the knot, and would perhaps render this task altogether impossible. Know that these hidden emotions have nothing to do with your outer common sense. Know that the part in you that could not mature -- because you kept it suppressed due to your images -- wants just that: the fulfillment of two or more mutually exclusive desires. The child in you maintains this impossible situation through its persistence in covering up this nucleus of conflicting desires by reasonable surface desires, which thus allows the hidden desires to ferment underneath. And since your desires, your feelings, and your thoughts are concrete, potent magnetic fields, then your life brings toward you circumstances that correspond to these inner conflicts. But you do not suspect that all these conflicting desires within you are responsible for your conflicts, for your miseries, and for your unfulfillments. The latter are a logical result, an inevitable projection, of the former.

Let us say that you desire a certain fulfillment. Yet, at the same time, you still hold on to the advantages that you would reap by the fulfillment of an opposite desire that would cancel out the first. Perhaps the second, conflicting desire may be rather flattering to you due to its motives. Therefore, you keep it under lock and key. The more unconscious an emotion or a desire is, the more of an effect it has on your life. Consequently, you end up with exactly with what you consciously shun, but which has been allowed to ferment in your unconscious. Of course, you want your unconscious desire to be fulfilled without the disadvantages, without cancelling out your conscious desire. But this is an impossibility.

So, in order to find yourself you not only must familiarize yourself with your desires by separating the good motives from the bad ones, but you must also come to terms with the discovery of the fact that you do not know what you really desire. As I said, this is due to your many buried conflicting emotions. Before you can find out what you really want, you first have to examine and analyze all these various desires: find out in what direction they go, why you are afraid to acknowledge them, why you are afraid of their fulfillment on the one hand and desirous of it on the other. Only after you have found the reason for all of these currents -- and you have understood your inner, and heretofore unconscious, confusion -- will you be able to have one clear desire, going steadfastly in one direction. Then you will become mature enough in your soul to deeply understand that a price has to be paid. That is the way. It is not easy, but it is certainly feasible for everyone who undertakes it in good faith and with perseverance.

We have begun to work on the personal images that have been formed during your childhood and that are responsible for the mishaps in your life. Most of you who are working on this have advanced a great deal. Now I would like to give you further food for thought. Not only are there personal and individual images, but mass images, race images, national images, and historical images in each time and in each civilization. This is very important to understand. For a personal image of yours may coincide with and be strengthened by one of those mass images. If you do not have a personal image about a certain aspect of life, then the mass image may not affect you -- at least not half as much as it does if you happen to have an individual image that fits in with the mass image of your time. Every one of you is affected by mass images according to the nature of your personal images. So it is important for you to realize that such mass images do exist and that they indeed affect you. This will help you a step further toward the dissolution of your inner conflicts. Then you will see how the respective mass image strengthens your own personal image. So many such mass images exist that it would be impossible to even begin to enumerate them. But as you go on, you will find out all that is important for you to know.

Let me give you one example now. There is a mass image involving the whole of humanity about the duration of life. For a long time this mass image stipulated that man reaches as an average, let us say, forty five years of age. And the majority did die at that age. Of course, you can say that science, medicine, and living conditions have improved and that these are responsible for extending man's life span. I certainly would not deny this. But the fact is that due to these improvements, the mass image did change, and as a result of the slow dissolution of this particular image, a longer life could be realized. It works both ways. One is not thinkable without the other. If humanity had not improved psychologically and spiritually enough to be ready to let go of the old image or illusion, then no technical improvement would have extended life. Another mass image contends that when one reaches a certain age, then one becomes weak and sick. The whole of humanity is affected by it. And so mass images exist on every conceivable subject. Think about this, my friends. It is very significant, and I expect in the future that you will have many questions regarding this subject. You will increasingly discover how mass images, or mass illusions, deeply affect you in your personal life, even more when you personally hold a similar image.

Before we turn to your questions, just one more word, my dear ones. It is a natural phenomenon when you work on this particular Path that many of your hidden emotions come to the surface. I would like to ask you to remember that the more conscious your heretofore hidden emotions become, the more likely you are to be considerate of your fellow human beings. As long as you are under the grip and the tyranny of your unconscious, then you cannot help acting in ways that may be unpleasant to others. You may not be fully aware of this. But you could see it if you really wanted to, even without this process of self-analysis. But when one likes to avoid this self-knowledge, then one shrinks away from such observations because they might lead one to the very recognition that the psyche wishes to avoid. However, when you have decided for this Path, then you are obligated to give some thought to the effect that you have on others. Recognize this. In other words, analyze your emotions, but do not unleash them on others. The more aware you grow of yourself, the more unselfish you must become, at least with regard to your effect upon your surroundings.

And now, my dear ones, let us turn to your questions.

QUESTION: Would you please tell us more about guardian angels?

ANSWER: I have already spoken about this subject in the past. Let me say this now. There is not one human being to whom God has not given a guardian, none. Many human beings deny this fact. They think that it is childish and superstitious. They are influenced by the present mass image formed to contradict the mass image that humanity held some time ago. Then the existence of guardian angels, and everything connected with them, was distorted into an extreme. Then man put everything, either good or bad, on the shoulders of his guardian angels and their efficacy, and thus tried to get around self-responsibility. Here you have two opposite mass images following each other as a reaction. Now it is the fashion to scorn and smile at such ideas. Yet every human being is given a guardian. Each guardian is strong or powerful according to each person's development, to each person's task, and to each person's responsibility with regard to the divine plan. These guardians adhere absolutely and strictly to divine law. They interfere only where it is according to law and according to the personal plan of their protege. Otherwise they have no right to prevent a mistake in judgment or a wrong decision. They cannot prevent mishaps, for this may be good medicine. They just stand by and observe. It is their task to guide their proteges through life according to their personal life plan, preventing only what is contrary to the law of cause and effect. As you know, human beings can, with their free will, change the plan made before their incarnation. The guardian angel will not prevent such a change, whether it is for the good or for the bad, but will watch over you so that only what you yourself have brought forth can affect you. Guardian angels know how far they can and should go in guidance and inspiration. If and when you make the first step in the right direction -- approaching God either in a direct way or in an indirect way -- then the guardian is free and at liberty to meet you with all that is good for you for that purpose. If that first step is not taken out of your own free will, then your guardian angel will not and cannot force the right decision on you. However, there are also many spirits around each human being. Some are unorganized spirits, spirits who are not necessarily bad or evil ones. But do not ever forget that the spirits around you do not come arbitrarily. They are attracted to you by certain basic similarities between you, even though their degree of good or their degree of evil may vary widely and be different from your present stage of development. So you may have an evil spirit around you although you are not an evil person. But certain currents in you are of the same basic texture as the particular evil spirit who attaches himself to you. The same principle applies to the divine spirits. How much an unorganized spirit can influence you is up to you. The more self-awareness you have, the more control you have over yourself. Therefore, the more independence from the influence of other beings, whether spirit or human. A person whose consciousness is not raised to some degree will easily fall under the influence of other people, although he or she may not be aware of this fact. The same holds true of the influence that spirits can have over such a person. The guardian angel is often obliged to look on. In other cases, the guardian spirit may not prevent such an influence. This depends on so many circumstances that they cannot be enumerated here. But it is all according to the perfection and the wisdom of divine law.

QUESTION: Are all guardians organized spirits?

ANSWER: Of course. But that does not mean that unorganized spirits, too, are not around you who may even want something good for you. They may not be evil at all. But the regular guardian angel has to be an organized spirit.

QUESTION: According to the divine plan, what is the age of a human being?

ANSWER: That cannot be answered by a simple figure, my dear. The divine plan must take into consideration the incarnation of every being in great detail. It also takes into consideration the mass image that exists at any given moment. So it must vary. The mass image is a strong form that has to be reckoned with. The mass image combined with the personal plan determines whether one human being will reach a higher age than another. As the mass image changes, the individual plans will be adjusted to it, so that the more humanity develops as a whole, the more does each individual have the chance for fulfillment in one lifetime. But there will always be cases when an individual life span is much shorter than the average life span set by the mass image of the time. One day the average age may be a hundred years, yet there will be a number of people whose plan it is to die when they are twenty.

QUESTION: My question was: since creation is perfect, what would the average age be in perfection?

ANSWER: But, my dear, this human sphere, the earth plane, will never have perfection. It is a temporary sphere, a temporary stage that exists only as long as imperfection exists. When perfection is reached for any being, then that being will not have to incarnate any more. He or she will be an eternal spirit who will not have to go through the process of birth and death any longer. The being will be in timelessness.

QUESTION: Are any of the guardians in-between incarnations, or are they all out of the cycle of incarnations?

ANSWER: It depends on the human being. There are human beings who are not far enough along in their development to take such a path of self-development, who are not yet capable of fulfilling any spiritual mission. They are people who just want to lead what you would call an average life and learn and develop slowly by this experience, whatever it may be, or else they remain at a standstill. Such people have guardians who are also organized spirits but who are not yet out of the cycle of incarnations. The more a person turns toward God, the closer his or her guardian angel can approach. The more a person turns away from God, the farther away the guardian spirit stands. This cannot be helped, it is just that way. Someone who develops very fast, who is desirous of taking such a path, and who ultimately fulfills a mission is given a higher guardian angel who is more powerful and who is often -- though not always -- out of the cycle of incarnations.

QUESTION: I suppose that racial and religious images also form a part of the mass image?

ANSWER: Of course.

QUESTION: So, if a soul has learned in the cycle of incarnations, then it goes through all kinds of race images, and especially religious images. Then the incarnations are all mixed up. This would help in the purification.

ANSWER: Yes, you are quite right.

QUESTION: About the hidden desires. One sometimes feels joyful, and that also contains a desire. Isn't it possible that one sometimes feels joyous and in a very good mood because he or she has come a little bit closer to God?

ANSWER: Certainly that is possible. You may feel joyous because of a victory over yourself. I do not say that all joy contains low trends. Not at all. In such a case, a good and constructive desire was fulfilled, or partly so. There is no harm in looking at it, in examining it. If that is the entire answer, then fine. There is no point in guessing and saying, "it might only be such and such," and letting it go at that. If it is, then you have nothing to be afraid of. At any rate, when you feel pure joy -- without fear of losing it again and without any disquieting disharmony -- then it is not necessary to examine it. All of you who are on this Path should do so mainly with conflicting feelings that contain elements of disharmony. For example, when one experiences a certain joy, but this joy is not all that fills you. There are other emotions present as well if you but listen into yourself.

QUESTION: Must every mood have a hidden desire?

ANSWER: Every emotion has a desire, hidden or not. But not all desires are bad or wrong. Therefore every mood contains a desire, for you have a mood because of an emotion.

QUESTION: Is it preferable to commit a good act with a bad motive, or should one refrain from perfoming the deed?

ANSWER: Oh no, one should not refrain. One should merely recognize, without self-deception, that the good act contains a bad motive. The mere fact that the bad motive is recognized helps a great deal in the purification that every soul must eventually go through. The beginning is always self-honesty.

QUESTION: Coming back to your answer regarding guardians, that we attract what we call for. Is that the law of affinity?

ANSWER: Yes.

QUESTION: Can you tell us a little bit about it?

ANSWER: The law of affinity has already been discussed considerably in previous lectures. Practically everything I say and teach is based on that, even though I do not always mention it in these words, but that is what spiritual law as a whole amounts to. It is the law of cause and effect, and it embraces all universal and psychological happenings. For instance, in the case of the images: when an image exists and brings a person into certain situations in life, certain people are drawn into this life. This is based on the law of affinity, because the forms of thought, feeling, desire, and so on attract that which corresponds. The whole concept of images can be understood only when one realizes the validity of the law of affinity. The emanation of each living creature, which is often referred to as the odic force, the different vibrations resulting from the various types of odic forces, all this is based on the law of affinity.

QUESTION: Regarding the mass images: we are born into the racial image and into the creed image. What happens, for instance, if someone of a different creed goes on the path, more specifically the path of Christ versus the Judaic one? In a way, friction and hatred of the former creed is then generated. What is the explanation?

ANSWER: The explanation is that some souls are still very much involved with their own race image or with their own creed image because their personal psychological factors work together with the mass image. In other words, their personal image currents work together with the respective mass image. Then they will not feel inclined to break the image for some time to come. Several incarnations are necessary until a rigidity -- an image -- can loosen up. Others, born into the same race or creed, are already at the point of dissolving their race image or their creed image because either they have already, due to past development, dissolved their personal images to some extent; or else they have different personal images that are less interdependent on the respective mass image; or they have none at all. On this particular point there is so much controversy, so much personal feeling involved, that the image-prejudice will work so strongly that all words regarding this subject may not find a listening ear. The same thing applies to nationality. There are some people born into a country where there is perhaps a strong trend of nationalism and exaggerated patriotism. They remain in this country, and it never occurs to them that their outlook is prejudiced. Others, born into the same country, feel an urge to get out, to see other countries and people, and thus to broaden their view. This is the same as the religious image. One person is still more involved in the image, another person is beginning to come out of it. One is already more developed, at least in this respect. In another respect his brother, who is still one-sided and prejudiced, may be farther. But in this one respect he begins to destroy the effect caused on himself by the mass image of his civilization. What you see going on in your time is a gradual but very definite destruction of mass imagery in regard to nationalism. Therefore, even the upheaval and the dreadful sorrows of war have their positive aspects from our point of view. For without these upheavals people would not go from one country to another and thus broaden their views. This destroys the mass images, and therefore eventually affects their personal images. The same will happen in religion. Therefore, it is shortsighted to think that a dreadful occurrence on this earth, even war, does not lead humanity toward development and spiritual fulfillment. This is so inevitable that it must happen in one way or another. Even if humanity still has not found the way to peace, the wrong alternative must also lead toward the goal of unity and freedom from illusion, or from mass images. Violence, hatred, prejudice, and selfishness are responsible for war, and therefore are unspiritual. But many people still find themselves in such a state. Only by continuing to develop will they gradually lose such blindness. Yet, in spite of the existence of such currents, development cannot be checked, for the result of wars and similar upheavals is always the one end: spiritual development, union, freedom from one's inner chains. If you look at history from this angle, then you will think a little differently. As it works in the individual, so does it work for humanity as a whole. And that is that the misery, the tests, and the hardships that one goes through because one has sown the seeds for them are the the very medicine for becoming free from them. That does not mean that you should propagate war.

QUESTION: Would you consider the Pope's proposal for unification under Christ as a peaceful step toward that?

ANSWER: Of course. Regardless of what comes out of it, regardless of whether the ideal solution can be found immediately or what, it is a sign of a slow destruction of religious mass imagery, step by step.

My dear friends, I will retire again into my world. I leave you with the blessings of God and with the love and the light of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Receive the strength and the love that is given unto each one of you. Be in peace, my dear ones, be in God.

January 30, 1959