The Great Transition In Human Development

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. Blessings for all of you. Blessed be this lecture.

At the beginning of this path, you learned to recognize your weaknesses, your shortcomings on the most superficial, the most obvious level. This was not so easy. For you were untrained and unused to any kind of self-observation and self-honesty.

From that stage onward, you learned to go into deeper levels and to find the greater subtleties of your nature. Much ground has been covered since these early stages of finding your faults. When we discussed the human shortcomings I told you that all the faults stem from three basic ones: selfwill, pride, and fear. No matter what fault you take, if examined profoundly, then you will always find that, in the last analysis, it comes from one of these three basic faults.

When we went into the second major phase of this path -- the one dealing with your complexes, with your images, with your unconscious confusions, with your conflicts, and with your misconceptions -- I stressed the necessity of doing this work of self-search without judging yourself, without moralizing, without evaluating right and wrong, good and bad from an ethical standpoint, but rather to evaluate these findings as to correctness in thinking. There are good reasons for such a recommendation. It is because human guilt -- destructive guilt -- is a burden strong enough to generate an excess of resistance to your finding yourself. So if you were to approach your inner discoveries in a spirit of moralizing with yourself, before they are sufficiently profound and transcendent, then it would make your work harder than it already is.

Now comes a third major phase on this path. For those who have already gained the necessary overall understanding about their inner problems it will become necessary to evaluate once again their hidden images and complexes so that they can find which of their faults are imbedded in them. You may find the same faults you have discovered at the beginning of your work and which you think you have overcome. And you might well have done so on a surface level. But you will undoubtedly find the same misconceptions, or variations of them, deeply hidden within your innermost conflicts. This stage is very important. But it can be undertaken only after you are capable of first acknowledging and then understanding -- to the fullest possible extent -- what these inner conflicts and images are. You need to recognize the misconceptions -- the wrong conclusions embedded in these images -- and you need to compare them with reality and fact. You need to understand where they come from and why. Then you need to see what damage this unconscious wrong thinking causes to you and to others around you. If you can see and thoroughly understand all that, without guilt and oppression, but rather in a spirit of joy, of release, and of victory -- because you know that the understanding of your own life and of life in general gives you strength -- then the time has come for a new evaluation of your findings from an ethical and spiritual viewpoint. Look inward to determine where you are selfish, where you are proud, where you are fearful, and where you are withtrawn. Search deep within your inner conflicts, regardless of what may appear otherwise on other levels of your personality.

This is a very important step forward. There are two basic currents in the universe. One is the love force. It moves you to give out, to communicate, to rise above the little self which considers itself the center of all things, but which is actually part of a stupendous whole. Your real self never considers you as the ultimate end. When you reach the height of that which you are capable of being, then you no longer see and experience life within the confines of your restricting, separating barriers. You find union with all people. You feel, you experience, and you think in an entirely different way than before. You have become a different person, while yet remaining essentially the same individual.

However, most human beings still live according to the egocentric principle, which is the opposite of the love force. In this state, you suffer alone and you enjoy life alone. No matter how many dear ones may be around you, love you, and share with you, life's experience remains essentially unique and peculiarly your own. It is unshareable, it is untrasmittable. In other words, you are the only one who experiences this particular pain or this particular joy in quite that way. You may not think so consciously; your outer knowledge may even contradict this inner way of experiencing life. But when it comes to your real feelings, then this is how you experience life as long as you are still in the state of self-centered separateness.

The transition from the one state to the other is the most essential step on the path of evolution of an individual spirit entity. At one time, in one life or another, it has to come. When this transition is to occur one can never determine. It varies with each individual. But on this Path, sooner or later, a time has to come -- and let us hope that it will come while you are still embodied in this life, in this particular incarnation -- when you will swing over from the one state into the other state.

The mere words of self-centeredness versus love cannot convey to you what I really mean. You have heard these words many times from many philosophies and from many teachings. You may be capable of speaking about this subject quite intelligently and with conviction. In isolated moments you may even have experienced what I am talking about. For a fleeting second you may have experienced this other state of being. But then the vision is gone and you return to the old state of illusory isolation. It takes a great deal to make the transition permanent. The most essential prerequisite is first to find and then to solve one's hidden conflicts.

It is of vital importance that you think about all this and that you realize what the ultimate aim is: the transition from the one state into the other state. In order to do so, you have to first become fully aware that you still live in the old, undesirable state. As long as you have illusions about that, or as long as you are confused and you do not even know that these distinctly different basic states really exist, then you will have a much harder time making this transition.

When you reach the first glimpses of the new state of being, then you will experience a breaking free from the confining wall of self-centeredess in which you find yourself an isolated being. You will feel a deep purpose in life. Not only in your life, but in all life. You will understand the purpose of all your experiences, both the good and the bad, and you will evaluate them from a completely new point of view. You will deeply experience union with all beings and you will know the importance of their purpose, as well as your own. A new joy will penetrate you and you will feel a security such as you have never known to exist. In this new kind of security you will not be deluded into believing that no more suffering can come to you, but now you will not fear or cringe from such suffering. Now you will know that it cannot really harm you.

A first experience of the transition, a small inkling so to speak, may be the inherent feeling that whatever you experience at the moment is also being felt by millions of others now. It has been felt by others in the past and it will be felt by others in the future. Ever since the world of matter began, all these feelings -- good or bad, positive or negative, joyful or painful -- were there, and people partook of what was there to begin with. The fact that you seem to produce a feeling does not mean that you have actually done so. What you do produce is the condition to tune into that particular force or principle of an already existing emotion. This may appear like hair splitting, but it is not. Life perceived in that new outlook is essentially different. As long as you harbor the illusion that you produce the respective emotion or life experience, then you are still unique, alone, and separate. When you begin to feel in the new way, then you automatically become part of the Whole. Therefore, you can no longer be the separate individual you felt yourself to be before.

Do not expect that these words will immediately transport you into this new state. But if your work on the Path progresses steadily and if, in addition, you focus your inner outlook in this direction by meditating and by trying to feel these words, then you may accelerate the transition. It will widen your horizon considerably. It will give you a new outlook on your passing sorrows. It will help you to make constructive use of any negative discoveries within yourself. It will heighten your creative abilities.

Man's fundamental longing is to reach the new state of being and to remain in this new state following the transition. He may fear it and obstruct it in his ignorance, but the longing always remains. For, in the state that is really natural for all of God's creatures -- the state of union -- there is no aloneness anymore. In your present state, you are essentially alone. The best you can occasionally achieve is the realization that others go through similar experiences and feel the same way. But that is not what the new state really is. In the state of union you will deeply know that all things already exist, that all feelings already exist, that all emotions already exist, that all thoughts already exist, and that all experiences already exist, and that you -- in common with many others -- tune into and share the existing forces through self-produced conditions. These forces and currents are there, both within you and around you. It is up to you to bring forward the ones that will affect you, just as it is up to every other being in your world -- and in other worlds.

Visualize any kind of emotional experience, from the lowest to the highest, as a stream or as a current. According to your personal frame of mind, to your state of emotion, to your general development, to your character tendencies, as well as to your passing moods or to outer happenings, you tune into one of these currents while, often simultaneously, you are partly tuned into another conflicting one. With that approach a drastic change is bound to occur in your entire outlook -- both inner and outer. From a separate, self-centered being you are bound to become, little by little, the being that you actually are. And that is very difficult to describe in words.

In your limited thinking capacity you unconsciously feel that only as a unique individual you have dignity and the chance for happiness. You also unconsciously feel that if you are but a cog in a wheel, then you do not count. You are under the illusion that you are but one grain in a sea of sand, and therefore that your happiness is not important. Another illusion is that you have the right to individuality. As such, you are a separate being, and therefore essentially alone and unique. At best, others may be in a similar plight. All these assumptions are wrong. But they all exist in you in some measure. As long as these misunderstandings exist within you, they generate an unnecessary battle in your unconscious. This is unfortunate. Of course you are opposed to giving up your individual right to be happy and to be important. But if this inner error were cleared up, then it would make the fight much easier. You would still have to fight, but it would be easier.

The truth is -- and you will experience it one day -- that in the new state of being you will see yourself as part of a whole, no more and no less. Then you will know that you can share with many others something that already exists. And you will be a happier person. You have the right to happiness. You have more, rather than less, dignity and individuality because of this fact. Your dignity will increase as the pride of your separateness decreases. The fullness and the richness of life will increase in the measure that you leave your state of separateness, which until now you have expoused out of the unconscious wrong assumption that separateness and uniqueness will afford you more. But you think that in order to have more, you have to take it away from others, that you have to steal it. That is the error and the conflict. In the old separated state this conclusion seems self-evident. In the new state, following the transition, it is not true. The importance of your welfare is infinitely greater just because you are part of a whole. The moment you gain but a momentary glimpse of that truth, then you will never again be torn by the old conflict that your happiness is selfish and that if you refrain from this supposedly "selfish" happiness, then your happiness is unimportant. However, your concept of what happiness is may change drastically, at least in some respects.

This inherent misunderstanding in the human soul -- namely that it is selfish to want to be happy -- causes a deep guilt about your desire to be happy. This conflict must vanish the instant you train yourself to adopt this new approach. The instant you have experienced that initially weak and short glimmer of understanding, then you will recognize how steeped in separateness you have been. You will see that the old state of separateness has been your world. Then your conscious and deliberate desire to leave this world behind will increase. When I say self-centeredness, I do not mean it in a moralizing, blaming, admonishing way. I mean it in a philosophical way. It indicates one essential state of being as opposed to an entirely different state of being; one world as against another; one soul principle as against another.

As you gradually go through this transition, your values are bound to change. Your purpose, your aim, and your concept of life are also bound to change. This change will not be the result of new superimposed opinions that you have superficially assumed. It will come as a natural, gradual, organic inner growth. In other words, the change is an inner one rather than an outer one. Often, your opinions do not even have to undergo a drastic revision. They may remain essentially the same, but you will experience them and feel them differently. The inner motivation for having these same opinions will be different.

Man is afraid of change. But he has nothing to fear from changing. When I say change, I mean that much of your life, just as many of your opinions, may remain the same while you change. This sounds like a paradox, but it is not. Unfortunately, the human language is too limited to express it more adequately. He who has experienced all this, even if only fleetingly, knows exactly what I mean. The others will have to wait until they have their first experience in this respect. You change and yet you remain the same. This is possible in a constructive and natural way because the call of your life is for you to grow to the maximum. However, it is also possible to change and to remain the same in a wrong and destructive way. Truly, you have nothing to fear in approaching this great transition. For that in you which is valuable and valid -- in other words, that which is essentially you -- will remain the same, only it will be enriched. Only that which is not essentially you will gradually fall off, like an old cloak that is totally worn out. More creative forces will flow out of you than you are now aware of within yourself.

When you attain the new state, then the direction of your innermost currents will be utterly reversed. In your present state many of your creative forces -- love, a talent, any asset -- try to stream out of you but, due to your basic inner state of self-centered separateness, they turn back. After the initial effort of streaming out and reaching the cosmos, of reaching others, they are withdrawn, they are held back, and therefore they are made inactive. Your innermost nature rebels against this great frustration. It has to rebel because such frustration is against nature, it is against creation, it is against harmony. This basic rebellion causes many problems, which can never be solved entirely by merely recognizing your images and your conflicts created through childhood conditions. While the dissolution of these childhood conflicts is essential in order to bring about this new state of being, it is important to recognize that the former objective is not an end in itself. It cannot be the ultimate result. If you stop with the aim of solving your childhood conflicts and your psychological deviations, then you are bound to be stopped short in fulfilling yourself. In many instances, you will not even succeed in solving these conflicts if this is an end in itself and not a means toward the greater aim: the transition from the self-centered, isolated state into the state of union with all and the recognition of yourself as an integral part of a whole in a creation that strives endlessly towards this greater fulfillment.

Only when you take this greater aim into consideration for your personal goal will you be capable of fulfilling yourself utterly. You will develop all your capacities and then the great stream of life, of health, and of strength will flow through you. When this ultimate outlook on life is either distorted or not clearly formulated within yourself, then your creative and health giving forces cannot be regenerated by the great cosmic forces. These cosmic forces are constantly blocked and halted by your ignorance, by your confusion, by your lack of awareness, or by your wrong conclusions about the real meaning of life. But with the proper outlook, then you are bound to approach the transition and to finally make it.

In the new state your creative forces will flow out of you naturally. Thereby the cosmic forces will constantly flow into you and they will renew you and regenerate your entire being on all levels. Your outgoing forces will touch other beings where they are open, regardless of who they are. In other words, they will touch those who are attuned to them.

All the great teachers and the sages of all times have spoken in various ways about this great transition. You who are on this Path -- even before you are able to execute it -- should know about it, you should think about it, you should envision it, and you should know that its time is bound to come.

How much does the human soul struggle against this ultimate fate of every being! How afraid it is to leave a state of unhappiness and of insecurity for a state of happiness and of security. How foolish of you to feel, deep within your heart, that in leaving the old world and attaining the new state you have to leave something precious behind. How pathetic this struggle is. Try to find that unreasonable, irrational fear and resistance within you. It is in full view. All you have to do is to look at it. There will be many opportunities to recognize it in your daily life. You do not have to reach very far or very deep in order to find this fear. This basic, ultimate resistance and this fear of the great transition is expressed in your everyday life in innumerable little ways. Find it and you will have found a valuable key.

The first step is that you become aware that you are struggling to maintain the isolated life in which, at best, you want to share your life with a few chosen individuals. If you can give some manner of love to those chosen ones, then you are already a step beyond many who cannot do even this. I hope that my words will not be misunderstood to mean that you should strive for a drastic change in your outer life. It is much more subtle than that. Once you begin to recognize the symptoms of your old self-centered, isolated way of life, then you are bound to see how every impulse related to this outlook creates fear, insecurity, futility, and senselessness. The new state is one of continuous joy and of a deep inner security. When I say "continuous joy," then I do not mean that difficulties cannot come your way anymore. I have said that many times before and I do not want to be misunderstood on that point. No one should contemplate this Path and the development that take place on it with the expectation that if he proceeds properly, then all his difficulties will cease.

That is utterly unrealistic as long as you are incarnated as a human being. But that which has to be gone through will no longer frighten you You will see a meaning in each difficulty and you will go through it courageously, growing with it and from it. You will accept it as a part of life, instead of shrinking away from it.

So you see, my dear friends, what humanity is actually doing is struggling to maintain a state of isolated darkness. This is a senseless struggle and man reaps unhappiness out of it. The very fact of unhappiness proves that the direction is wrong and therefore that it must be changed. The results of changing the inner direction are freedom, joy, purpose, and security. It appears to you that you are actually giving up something when you hold on so frantically. But once you decide to give it up, then you will see that you have given up nothing.

The first tentative steps towards the transition from one state or world into another are self-knowledge and the understanding of your unconscious problems, of your unconscious concepts, and of your unconscious attitudes. Self-knowledge and self-acceptance are the prerequisites. Everything else arises from that. But you also have to realize that there is a further goal beyond the mere dissolution of your inner problems. To put it differently, you cannot truly solve these problems unless you envisage this great basic transition.

If you occasionally try to feel what I am talking about here, then it may help you to open a little window from which you can glean a new perception .

Now, are there any questions?

QUESTION: You were speaking about tuning in. How does one tune in from one state into another? I mean the technicalities.

ANSWER: It becomes an automatic process when you pursue this work of self-search while also envisaging the ultimate aim. Just by thoroughly understanding your innermost problems and your deviations, you begin to solve them to some extent, and therefore your concepts begin to change. Your outlook and your values begin to change, subtly, slowly but surely. In that different outlook and different concept, characterized by a higher degree of awareness, the tuning in takes place automatically. You cannot tune in simply by forcing yourself to feel or think something. You can help it along by trying to feel it and perceive it, but in a natural and relaxed way, without expecting immediate results. Do this for the sake of perceiving reality to a better degree, rather than in the expectation of a drastic change. There is no magic formula. It is a question of the increasing awareness that follows the work of self-development and self-knowledge as a byproduct. You can accelerate this automatic growth process a little by cultivating certain thoughts; by obtaining spiritual nourishment; by using this lecture as additional material. All this together is bound to bring a different vibration into your whole being. And with this different vibration, then you will tune into a different force or current. The vibrations emanating from you now, with all their disturbances and their contradictory feelings, tune into negative currents. These are just as much part of your world as the positive ones. You automatically tune into that which corresponds to your own vibration. Your vibration is the sum total of your personality: your character, your general outlook on life, your inner health or the lack of it; your healthy, constructive, and creative abilities or the lack of them; your awareness; the feeling of being alive; the awareness of fulfilling a purpose and knowing or sensing this purpose, or the lack of it. That aggregate causes your vibration. That vibration, in turn, determines the forces or the currents that you tune into.

Perhaps you expected a particular formula. That I cannot give you.

QUESTION: In other words, it is a state of mind and emotion. According to that emotional state, I will attract certain currents. Now, suppose the state of mind is such that one attracts the negative forces. Then the question is: how do I go about gradually changing these currents? Because if I start to think and visualize that there are positive and negative currents, then it makes me think that I have to be careful not to tune into these negative forces. If I find myself in that state of mind, then how do I switch in order to contact the positive?

ANSWER: What I spoke about here does not change your approach to your work in the slightest. You seem to feel that you are in greater danger and more exposed to forces beyond your control because you now consider the fact that these forces exist already. Before, the idea that you simply experienced negative emotions of your own gave you a feeling of greater protection. This is all wrong. The fact that you produce the condition that makes you tune into already existing forces does not make you more helpless. The contrary is true. If rightly understood, then the knowledge that you produce the condition will give you greater strength and insight so as to become one with the positive currents. In fact your reaction is proof of the basic human struggle and of the unfounded fear of leaving the state of separateness. You illustrate what I was trying to convey: you erroneously feel that you are safer in your isolation and that you become more exposed as part of one whole. Such an attitude makes you feel that you are the victim either of other people's influence upon you or of factors beyond your control. You will have this wrong impression as long as your inner self-responsibility is not fully established. When it comes about, then you will automatically see that the truth is not the way you see it now.

Your immediate approach to the problem is always the same. First, understand the basis of your fears. When you go deeply enough, not shying away from following through, then you are bound to see that you are in error. All psychological fears -- with the exception of the healthy fear of self-preservation -- are based on illusion, on misconceptions. When you understand the basis of your fears, then you will be able to give them up naturally. You will then have the transcendent insight that the fear is unnecessary, illusory, and therefore completely senseless. Through that realization you will -- again, not abruptly but gradually -- cease being afraid. Thus you will tune into a different current. The awareness and the understanding of the negative is the essential part. All the fears -- and all the negative emotions -- are the result of confused and untrue thinking, whether conscious or unconscious. By going deeply enough in analyzing such negative emotions, you are finally bound to re-evaluate your thinking and your concepts, and thereby straighten out your confusion.

Often the greatest difficulty is that people are not even aware of the fact that they are afraid. When you know that are afraid, then you are much better off. So the first step is to gain awareness that you have fears. The second step would be to pin down exactly what it is that you are afraid of, why you are afraid, and where this specific fear comes from. This is hard work, I admit it. It needs patience, perseverance, and the absolute will to find this out. The moment you find the origin and the underlying misconception, then the fear begins to vanish. Many of my friends have experienced that, at least to some degree. That is the only way. Harboring the fear that you might tune into the wrong current would be the most unproductive approach imaginable. Thinking that you must guard yourself against it by forceful measures would avail you nothing. You cannot protect yourself by isolating yourself even more. The only way to master that which you fear is by the willingness to go through it if it cannot be avoided. Therein lies the acceptance of one's present imperfection. It means the acceptance of life as a whole. And that also includes the acceptance of the negative manifestations which are due to one's remaining imperfections. This is the only healthy approach.

QUESTION: I was talking about the transition time. One is afraid that there is fear. It takes a long time to find out where that fear is. In the transition time one automatically attracts these negative currents. I'm looking for help during the particular time of transition. Because, as you said, it does not come overnight. So how do I go about it?

ANSWER: Do you mean that the inner fear of leaving the old state will attract you to new negative currents? But you are mistaken in believing that the transition state produces new fears. The same old fears have existed all along. You may merely have become more conscious of them now. This battle in man has been going on since time began. As long as he has not made the transition, then he fights against it because he is unconsciously afraid of it. This fear may manifest in many outer symptoms. Yet deep down it is the basic fear of leaving the old state.

Man thinks that because he is more conscious of a negative condition, then he is more endangered by it. This belief is false. The truth is just the opposite. The more conscious you are of this fear or of any other fear -- or of any negative condition for that matter -- the less of a negative effect it will actually have on you. At any rate, you cannot impress yourself enough with the fact that you are never a helpless prey to the influence of others, nor are the others helpless preys of you.

QUESTION: If I understand correctly, I would like to attempt an additional answer to both these questions which ask for specific instruction about how to tune in. I don't feel that this lecture was giving instructions other than to proceed with the general psychological work, to study, and think upon it. It is rather a projection of what is bound to happen by itself and as a result of this work. It is not a matter of tuning into a fearful mood or a joyful mood. There is no such thing. It is a gradual work and if one has fear for a while, then there is just no help for the time being, other than the work we are doing anyway. If we do the work right over a period of time, then slowly the fear will begin to change by itself.

ANSWER: That is exactly right. Thinking about it may help create a new perspective. It may help to gain a new understanding from a different angle so as to better assimilate the findings that you make on this Path. That is all it can do. That is all any of these lectures can do.

QUESTION: I would like to ask a question about the fear of success.

ANSWER: Any such question can only be answered generally. Anyone with a problem like that would have to work it out in his personal work because there are many variations and many factors at play. And even if this general explanation should happen to hold true for one individual, then it would still not suffice. It would have to be felt through in the personal work.

Broadly speaking, the fear of success would indicate a fear of not being adequate to the success. You all know that the child in you wants something handed to him on a silver platter. That is, without the necessary responsibility, work, decision, and cost. When you are mature, then you accept all these factors. But if the child in you does not, then the fear of success may be the result of this non-acceptance of maturity. Therefore, an additional fear is being created: It is the fear of losing any possible success that may be gained. The deeper knowledge of your soul transmits to you the truth that you can only rightfully keep what you rightfully earn by a mature attitude towards it. If this mature attitude is lacking in any way, then deep down you know that your success will be fleeting. Therefore, you try to avoid the shame, the exposure, the failure, and the grief by sabotaging the success at the outset by fearing it.

So the fear of success would be mostly due to: 1) the feeling of inadequacy; 2) the lack of self-responsibility, however subtly expressed within (not necessarily outwardly); 3) guilt, or the feeling of "I do not deserve it." This, too, is connected with what I discussed here. Because one is unwilling to assume mature responsibility, then one feels guilty in desiring the goal nevertheless. If a person accepts full adult self-responsibility and is willing to pay the price for anything, thus making a mature decision, then there will be no such guilt.

When such a problem exists, if one goes deep enough, then one is bound to find the elements discussed here. You may find them in particular personal variations, but basically the aspects covered here are bound to be present in some form.

However, on a deeper, spiritual level another element enters as well. This is closely connected 1) with the psychological factors I just discussed, and 2) with the subject I talked about here -- and which I also mentioned in previous lectures, in different connections.

You may remember that in a previous talk I discussed the fear of happiness that exists to some degree in every human being. That fear of happiness is closely connected with the new state I discussed here. It is the state in which you are part of a whole, instead of an end unto yourself. The blind and ignorant part in the human soul is struggling against the unknown new state, which is pure happiness. Any real kind of happiness must in some way be connected with that new state of being, which will be yours after the transition. Any kind of real success, not just a superficial one, that is not looked for and experienced in that spirit of your being a part of the Whole -- with the common aim of bringing the entire universe towards that fulfillment -- will be shallow, unsatisfactory, and temporary. It will not be rewarding and it is bound to be frightening in some way. True satisfaction and real safety -- which should be the byproducts of real success -- are incompatible with the separate state, even though this separate state may not show clearly. It is a subtle, unpronounced, and unconscious factor. That incompatibility creates a fear of success.

I shall now retire with special blessings for this season. Of course we, in our world, do not have or know seasons. But you, in your world, have chosen this particular time of the year to celebrate the birth of one Who has come to demonstrate in the best possible way the transition I have talked about. He has demonstrated it in symbols. For life itself is a symbol, much more so than your dreams. So with this special blessing of Christ Who was love, Who is love, and Who always will be love I leave you with our strength, with our love, and with our wishes that you may continue your struggle on this Path of first finding yourselves and then developing yourself so as to become the person that you are meant to be. For there is nothing more worthwhile and more purposeful that you could possibly do, as long as you are truly honest with yourself. For self-honesty is the first step towards love. So be blessed, my dearest ones, be in peace, be in God.

December 9, 1960