The Conquest Of Duality Symbolized In The Life And Death Of Jesus

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. God bless each one of you. Blessed is this lecture. Since this lecture is a continuation, as well as an amplification, of the last lecture, then it would be advisable to read the last lecture very carefully in order to understand it fully.

My friends, you who study these teachings have studied and thought about the last lecture, and some of you have found new insight and understanding about yourselves by considering your personal problems from the point of view it presents. For some, this new topic is still difficult to grasp, but this new understanding will come as you proceed in your work of self-search and succeed in applying your innermost problems to the question of duality.

This day commemorates in your human history a very special day. It is very appropriate to the topic of my last lecture. On this day Jesus Christ brought His life to a culmination. His life symbolized the greatest suffering and the greatest joy. This is not only meant in an abstract, faraway, spiritual sense, but also in a very human and concrete sense. Suffering and joy, pleasure and pain, these dualities, in the last analysis, are nothing but subdivions of the great duality: life and death -- never life or death.

There is a spiritual teaching, often misunderstood, that man must rise above pleasure and pain. This is true in the ultimate sense. But it cannot come about by flight from the duality: life and death. Those who misunderstand the truth of rising above pleasure and pain do so because they wish to avoid rather than go through. If you accept death in its naked, stripped form, without running from it, then, and then only, can you fully live; and only then will you find out that there is no death: there is no duality. You will not accept this as a consoling faith to cling to out of weakness and fear. Rather, you will experience this to be true. And you can experience this in the great and ultimate issues only when you learn to experience it in your everyday little dyings. Whenever your will is not done, whenever you cringe from suffering in the wrong, unhealthy way, you increase the tragic duality. You reject death and, therefore, in the ultimate sense, you reject life.

The flight from death and suffering must, often inadvertently, causes flight from life and pleasure. No matter how the person may strive for successful participation in life and pleasure, when he consciously or unconsciously avoids facing and meeting death and suffering, he also escapes from life and pleasure. This must go hand in hand, and it cannot help but have a very damaging effect on the soul.

Jesus said, "become ye as little children." This saying has many meanings on many levels. One meaning is that children live and experience very acutely. All their senses and faculties are new and fresh, and every life experience, on any level of their being, is much more acute than the impressions, reactions, and experiences of the adult. And this is good. For the soul who goes through life rejecting the experience of life, with all its meanings, deadens the faculties for living. It is much better for the development and growth of an entity to go through many heights and depths than to falsely construct a serenity which is rarely a true detachment. Detachment is arrived at only after acceptance of all that life has to offer, including death. Some people believe that they have risen to this real and genuine height, while in reality they simply reject pain and suffering, and therefore also pleasure and joy. Such persons at one time in their evolution -- be it in this life or some time later -- find that they come back to that point at which they fled from their soul experience so that this part can be learned and fully gone through.

He who has gone through that will arrive at real serenity. If serenity is not real, if it is artificially cultivated, then such a soul is much less in growth and development than another person who is courageous enough not to flee from the life experience. But it often happens that the former believes himself above the latter, whom he despises for his ups and downs. Such ups and downs truly indicate that the person is still deeply involved in the illusion of opposites and duality, nevertheless he meets it and this is honest and growth producing.

Courage and honesty are perhaps the most important assets in one's development. If you face your suffering and your joy, you must grow. When a person cringes away from suffering, denying it, never even facing it, fearing it beyond reason and its true proportions, he is inevitably equally afraid of happiness and fulfillment. A few times in the past I mentioned this fear of happiness. Many of my friends have found this to be true, but not off hand. When happiness is far away and seemingly unattainable, you can safely long for it. But if you observe yourself closely, whenever you get near it, you will find yourself cringing from it in a similar way as you cringe from suffering. Since suffering and pain, or death and life, are connected and, in reality, one and the same, your happiness and pleasure must depend on your attitude to death and suffering. As you accept the one, so will you also accept the other. As you rise and grow through the one, so do you rise and grow through the other.

Your attitude to suffering determines whether or not your soul benefits from it during the process of suffering or only much later. Even the blind and rebellious attitude toward suffering will eventually benefit the soul. It is still much better than flight from it and the paralyzing, immunizing, or deadening of one's capacity to feel and experience. But a blind and ignorant attitude to suffering will make you suffer more and longer than necessary, and the process of growth can take effect only when your consciousness has learned the lesson. Conversely, an awareness and a healthy attitude will obtain for you immediate growth and liberation. As a result, that which made you suffer formerly will cease to be an element of pain the instant you recognize the lesson.

By no means does this imply that you should deliberately choose suffering and reject happiness in the false belief that pleasure and joy are against the will of God. Many religions proclaim this error. The healthy way to meet suffering is perhaps the most important key in man's life. If you succeed in meeting it openly, wholeheartedly, willing to learn from it, willing to keep your reason and faculties intact, although emotionally you may be plunged into darkness, cowardice, and self-pity, then the outcome of suffering will be happiness, to the degree that you have met and grown from the suffering you have gone through. But if suffering deadens your soul, then more suffering, although perhaps in a different form, must be the result, until you no longer allow your soul to be deadened by it. As a result, your entire personality will be revided by increased self-awareness.

One of the difficulties is a particular confusion that confronts a growing spirit in the approach to suffering. Many of the more enlightened people know that suffering is self-created. Your realizing this, whether vaguely or fully, whenever suffering comes your way causes you to become frantic, because of the frustration of not knowing instantly by what particular attitude or action you have created it. This lack of knowledge makes you fear that more suffering may come out of this hidden cause. Since you are impatient to find out, you sabotage -- consciously or unconsciously -- any of your attempts to get at the cause. Whatever is done in impatience and haste, in frustration and fear must slow down the process of activity. That is why those who believe that God "sent" them suffering which they have to accept without understanding the reason often fare better in a different sense. They may not learn their own underlying causes -- and this is a pity since this, too, has to be done at some time -- but their attitude is much more relaxed and open. However, if you really examine this precept, you will see that such people are conditioned by a lazy fatalism and are conducive to a belief in a cruel and sadistic God.

Hence, the ideal attitude is to combine the active spirit of searching for one's own hidden causes with the relaxed attitude of accepting for the moment the unwanted in the full understanding that the self-produced misery is of therapeutic value. Here, again, it is a question of the right combination of healthy activity and healthy passivity, as opposed to the distortion of unhealthy activity and unhealthy passivity.

You cannot truly solve life if you do not solve your own problems brought on by a faulty attitude towards life and death, towards pleasure and pain. You cannot meet life's requirements if you do not meet yourself face to face in your innermost hidden conflicts, attitudes, and concepts and comprehend the real meaning of your reactions. Find out what you want and what you fear at any moment in your life when you are disturbed. Go beyond and beneath the surface reasoning, the surface desires and fears which are, in reality, but a symptom of your particular way of fleeing from death and suffering, therefore from life and happiness. You cannot begin by tackling the big general issues. This will never get you anywhere. You can truly grow only when you tackle this question by finding the seemingly insignificant daily reactions of desire and fear, and then learning the right attitude towards life and death by those little everyday occurrences and happenings. You will thus find how you run from death in little things; how you cringe from suffering in your attitude towards the details of life that in themselves seem unimportant.

Begin by questioning yourself concerning the most mundane, insignicant issues, provided they cause you any disharmony whatsoever. When you pursue this self-questioning to the point of asking: "Why do I want this? Why do I fear not getting it?" you will arrive at the question of the love you desire and your fear of obtaining it. When you flee from love in the fear that you may not get it anyway or that you may lose it again, it shows the same attitude you have toward death as outlined in the last lecture. Many a wrong attitude manifest in courting death in the fear of it. By the same token, you reject love in the fear of being hurt either by not getting it or by losing it again. Thus you try to convince yourself that you do not want it. In the same way, you inwardly try to convince yourself that you do not want life because you know that one day life in the body will cease. All the little issues will ultimately lead to the question of love versus being loved, and therefore of life versus death. By deliberately choosing that which you do not want in the fear of not getting it, you create a condition within your soul that is unhealthy and which, for many reasons, is deadening. It is unhealthy because you do not honestly acknowledge to yourself what you really want -- love and life -- and what you really fear -- not getting love and life eternal. It is unhealthy because you deny yourself that which you could have because you fear that it will not be to the degree that you wish it. You may not get the kind of love you desire: exclusive, limitless, and with the absolute certainty of never losing it again. But because of these limitations, you forfeit the kind of love you may obtain by rejecting love altogether in the exaggerated belief that the non-fulfillment of your wish is unbearable. So you make it worse. By the same token, your desire to never die makes you reject life. All of your everyday reactions and problems can be traced through to these basic issues. As a consequence, these basic issues will have a personal meaning for you, as they apply to yourself. This is the most important step you have to take in your development.

Most important in this connection is that often you are unaware of exactly what you fear: death and suffering. Rejection of love means both. You do not only run away from death and suffering but, to start with, from your fear of both. And this is what you have to uncover first. Then, and only then, can you adopt a healthy attitude to it. Outwardly, you may not be aware of this fear, but deep down it may still be there, if only to some small extent. Face that element in you where you still fear. Become aware of it and then you can learn to die -- and live. As you learn to become aware of your real fear of death in any form -- be it physical death, be it any negative occurrence -- you free the life force in you which will then invigorate you, as you meet that which you fear.

The life of Jesus Christ has symbolized this age-old truth in a wonderful way. This truth has been known by all the sages and great knowers of all times. It is symbolized in many philosophies, religions, and myths. Through Jesus Christ it has been symbolized in His actual life and death. His death was met in the spirit I have stated here.

Many of His sayings and utterances were not recorded and passed on to posterity. Especially those that were not understood by man and seemed to contradict His teachings in the limited understanding man had. Therefore it is no coincidence that His last utterance was recorded and transmitted to mankind, in spite of the fact that it seemed to crassly contradict what man believed and wanted to see in Jesus Christ. This last utterance on the cross expressed His doubt and fear that He was forsaken by God. This has puzzled many people. How could the Great Spirit doubt and fear? Human illusion and idealization would have preferred Jesus to have died in a glory of faith, without the human doubt and fear He expressed in the hour of culmination of His suffering. It was very important that this utterance be transmitted to mankind. Since every single facet of Jesus' life and death has deep symbolic meaning for man and his personal problems, then this utterance must also have significance. It can be fully understood only if you understand the meaning of the last lecture and this one.

In His last hour Jesus had forgotten all He had known: all the revelations, all the insights He had gained. To some degree, has it not happened to each one of you that in hours of depression and anxiety your intellectual memory retains what you have learned and what you know, but you are not in command of this knowledge? Your soul is in a dark night of unbelief and doubt. deceiving yourself about this state of mind and not acknowledging how you really feel is not the right medicine. To feel guilty and proud and to say, "I should not feel and be this way" only leads to self-deception, and this delays your coming out of your darkness. Jesus, too, has shown this. He has illustrated it most clearly. He, the greatest of all created spirits, He, too, was in doubt. He, too, had lost faith for a moment. But He acknowledged it, He did not hide it from Himself, or from others. What does that mean? It means the stark naked fear of the unknown -- of death. It means the acute suffering of physical pain, of mental pain, and of spiritual pain. Jesus met it full face, without pretense, without self-deception, and without deceiving those who had faith in Him. He was truthful to Himself, and therefore to all those who believed in Him. He was truthful to the last moment. Many a spiritual teacher or authority would hesitate to admit his own moments of fear and doubt. He would be ashamed of it. He would be afraid of losing face with his disciples. This basic fear would often be rationalized by acceptable explanations. To himself he may excuse this untruthfulness by the seemingly commendable attitude that he does not want to let down and weaken his disciples. But it is untruthfulness that lets others down. Jesus' truthfulness had not let anyone down, in spite of the fact that many could not understand how it was possible that the Master felt doubt at the time of His death. Most did not know that in this doubt and this fear was an important directive and lesson for all men. But even though they did not consciously understand, inwardly they felt more strengthened than ever because truth goes directly to the heart and soul, even if at times it bypasses the brain.

If intellectual explanation does not blur out what the heart and soul receive and perceive, if the personality allows the intuition to function in spite of seemingly contradictory intellectual considerations, it implies a purity and innocence that has nothing to do with the terms of innocence and purity as used by bigoted religionists. Again, it implies the child-like attitude that Jesus recommended. This is another facet of Jesus' reference to being as little children. It refers to the willingness to experience. Jesus' disciples had this quality. They, too, experienced fully. And Jesus Christ Himself showed this amply, in His life as well as in His death. He went through His suffering to the full extent, without restriction, without any shame in admitting His doubt, His fear, His pain, and His vulnerability. Only out of this child-like faculty can true joy be experienced. This He demonstrated not only during His life, but also by His reappearance in spirit -- but of this very little is recorded. Again, as occurs so often, this factor is misunderstood, or at least not understood fully. Even those who understand that Jesus' resurrection and appearance meant the continuation of the spirit life do not go far enough in understanding this phenomenon from a worldly point of view. They simply think that Jesus showed only that life goes on and that this is all there is to it. There is more to it, my friends. This phenomenon wants to prove to you more than the fact that life continues in the spirit. It wants to do something for you right here and now, while you are still in this incarnation. If even Jesus Christ in His hour of despair forgot what He had known, then it is more than likely that all other people would do so when going through hardship. Intellectual conviction can only do so much and no more. Jesus knew that better than anyone. The proof of His reappearance could not be more than theory for those who were not present and for the succeeding generations. Hence His reappearance must bear a deeper meaning, a symbolic analogy to man's inner life. Jesus' reappearance to His disciples clearly says: "After my ordeal, and after having met my ordeal in the full sense, without pretense and self-deception, having gone through it to the ultimate, I now live in the true sense of the word, in the full sense of the word. You, too, can do it. You do not have to wait for physical death, for you die many deaths every day, in all your little ordeals and struggles. In the manner in which you meet these is determined the subsequent life and fullness of joy that can be yours. If you meet these ordeals in a similar spirit of truthfulness, you will, to that degree, experience life and joy while still in the body." This is the message, this is the ultimate meaning, apart from other meanings. Here is the greatest lived symbolism ever demonstrated.

Life on earth is a symbol of reality, and not vice versa. And so it is with Jesus' life and death. He meant much more than to merely convey to each individual the history of evolution, of life after death, of promise after death. You do not have to wait for the time when you leave your earthly body to find out: you have opportunities every day. Whether you can now believe in a life after death or not does not even matter; every day offers an opportunity for everybody, whatever he may believe or not believe, to make the best of life by realizing what his everyday "little dying" is and meeting it, and learning to discriminate in the process of development between that which is inevitable and that which is not. If you meet that which is inevitable -- such as physical death, as well as the product and result of your own past wrong attitudes -- in a spirit of relaxed passivity, while at the same time wanting to grow and learn from it, you will recognize all the more where and in what way you unnecessarily choose difficulties that are not inevitable. You do this in the spirit of running away from that which is inevitable. The more you do that, the more do you invite and court extremes that should be avoided.

Only by a very personal self-search can you determine in what way you react to both these factors: that which is inevitable and that which is not inevitable. The question of what is inevitable and what is not inevitable presents a problem similar to the question of independence and interdependence of two people. Only personal self-analysis can furnish the right answer to each individual. There is no other way, for there are no general rules one can rigidly adhere to.

I recapitulate: isolation and loneliness are a result of an inner, unrecognized dependency, opposed to healthy interdependence, which is a result of inner independence. So it is with the question of inevitability: by running away from that which is inevitable, you bring upon yourself hardships that are avoidable. You are so afraid of the inevitable hardship that you take upon yourself more hardship. Find this and you are bound to discover that "inevitable" hardship ceases to exist after you have acknowledged it and gone through it.

Now, are there any questions?

QUESTION: How can a hardship not be a hardship? For instance, torture. I am not afraid of death, but of dying, of the agony. Or if one sees a helpless creature being tortured and dying in that way.

ANSWER: As I said, as long as one has not gone through it, it is a hardship. You are not expected to tell yourself the opposite. Quite the contrary. To deny your fear of it would be one form of running away from it, one form of negating death -- and therefore life. Only for him who has gone through death has it become a certainty that there is no death. To find this out, he has to go through it. The lesser degrees of death, such as all forms of suffering, must be gone through in order to discover that they were not "death" or suffering to the degree that was feared -- and often not at all. You may find many instances of this validated when you look back on your life, at your past. If you review and consider certain experiences of your life, you will often see that what you feared and were apprehensive about, and what seemed disproportionately horrible while you stood before it, ceased to be dreadful once you went through it. Ultimately, you were untouched by it. In fact, you were only touched by it in the positive sense that it made you grow: it gave an additional life experience to your whole personality (not only to your thinking process, but to your whole nature and your emotional life). If you question yourself very truthfully in looking back at a painful experience, you will have to admit that now that it is gone, it is no longer a horror. Therefore it must have been an unreality, for a reality is permanent and unchangeable. Only an unreality loses in intensity as time goes by. But as long as you experience this unreality as "reality," the remedy is not in talking yourself out of it, nor in trying to avoid the inevitable, but in acknowledging your fear and suffering, and relaxing into it, if I may put it this way. You cannot avoid the illusion of your suffering by telling yourself that it is an illusion. For you it really is. Therefore you have to go through it. But all the while you may keep your intellectual knowledge in mind, but without forcing it on your emotions. Allow both to exist freely side by side in your observation of your thoughts and your feelings. This may make it easier for you to go through it and experience it. For, only this experience will show you the illusion. Only going wholeheartedly into life, and all its facets, will help you to rise above the dualities.

QUESTION: You said that one could only let people down by untruthfulness and not by any other way. Could you explain that a little more, please?

ANSWER: When I say "truth," I do not mean the little truths that people often express in an unthinking and cruel way. This has nothing to do with truth. The great truth may at times be contradictory to a little untruth. And a little truth may be contradictory to the great truth. Here, again, there is no rule or regulation that you can lean on. As with all truth, each case stands for itself and needs evaluation, discrimination, and an active thought process all the way through. Only then can you realize when at times a little truth corresponds with truth, or where it may not. One's own motivations always furnish the real answer to this question. If one is as honest with oneself as one knows how, one can often detect that a little hurtful truth may come out of a personal fault or weakness: be it pride, vanity, selfwill, rebellion, insecurity, frustration, or whatever. If these inner motivations are covered up by more valid reasons, this does not eliminate the existence of these underlying currents which determine the effect. But he who is truthful to himself in the ultimate sense cannot let another down. To gain this truthfulness with the self is, after all, the goal of your self-search on this path.

QUESTION: I would like to ask you about the emphasis the Church places on the bodily resurrection of jesus Christ. What is your comment on that?

ANSWER: There are two aspects involved, one of which I have commented on in the past. The other one I could not comment upon because it touches the subject of these last two lectures for which my friends were not ready then.

The first aspect I repeat briefly. It is an absolute error and a gross misconception. It comes from man's inherent fear of physical death, due to which he wants to believe in a physical continuation of life. Therefore Jesus Christ's reappearance had to be interpreted as such.

The other aspect has a much deeper and wider significance. It contains the deepest wisdom and truth, but in symbolic form. This symbolism I explained amply in the foregoing lecture. It means: "If you do not flee from your fear of death, from your fear of suffering, and from your fear of the unknown but go through it, then you could truly have life in its deepest sense, even while still in the body. Pure life can be had only if death is met squarely." By pure I do not mean what is generally understood by this word: in an insipid and bodily-rejecting way. For the body is part of the spirit and the spirit is part of the body. All are one whole. That is why Jesus Christ appeared as a human body: to show that the body is not to be rejected or denied. If you accept death, you will be resurrected in life, in the body, by the flowing life force, which will make you experience pleasure and joy on all levels of your being -- also on the physical level. Is that clear?

QUESTION: Yes, but your statement of the error of it would then lead us to conclude that some parts of the Gospel which describe the arrival at the tomb as a story of promise, insofar as factual account is concerned, are entirely false.

ANSWER: No, not at all. When Jesus appeared to His disciples, to His dear ones, a phenomenon took place that is well known, has always been known, and will continue to be known if certain circumstances prevail. I believe you call it, in your time and age, a materialization of spirit matter. It is a condensation of spirit, as all physical life is. But the fact that this happened has a deep philosophical and psychological meaning, which is generally ignored. This meaning, as I explained, is: "Meet life and death, and you cannot die. You will "live" in the true sense of the word." So what the disciples saw was true, only the majority of them did not understand the meaning and the purpose of it, although Jesus Christ tried to convey it to them. There were a few who did understand, but not all of them. They just took it as a phenomenon, which it was, and in itself it was not unique. Does that make it clearer? (Yes, thank you.)

QUESTION: I had a question prepared and it fits in exactly with this topic. It has to do with art, with the product of the artist. Given a personality, assuming what you say, the pleasure principle versus the reality principle, Freud and some other psychologists assume that art arrives in human experience as an outcome of the personality, a creation of the personality striving back towards reality. For when he finds out that the pleasure principle cannot reign supreme, he is disappointed, he often goes into a world of his own making and from that, given sufficient talent, he is able to produce art, eventually reuniting himself with reality. Is that correct?

ANSWER: You mean sublimation?

QUESTION Yes. Now, for those of us who consciously do not believe in existence after death and consciously do not desire existence past death, who very much like to enjoy and take pleasure in this present life, the physical, the body, the pleasures of the body, the sensations of the body, I would like to ask: given a talent, a certain personality complex in this department, the need to sublimate something is that desire to produce art and by art to become immortal, the same thing that you people who believe in life after death have? I am not asking about whether there is life after death.

ANSWER: I know you are not and I am not going to attempt to answer that, for whatever I say, or anyone else would say, would not make any difference. You can only arrive at it through your own experience. If you superimpose a belief that is not genuinely yours, it is much more unhealthy than admitting an unbelief. That is one of the points I stressed in the last lecture. But I will answer the other aspects of your question.

In the first place, let me make it quite clear that the real knowledge and experience of the continuation of life after physical death, if it is genuinely arrived at through development and the right and healthy attitude as described in this lecture, does not and cannot and will not "sacrifice" the bodily pleasures for the sake of a spiritual life to come after the physical one. It is quite the contrary. Only those who cling to religious faith out of fear and weakness will come to the conclusion that one opposes the other. In fact, if these two lectures are really understood, this will become quite apparent. The freed life force cannot bypass the body. Hence, it will make the whole personality more receptive and more capable capable of pleasure on all levels, also the physical one.

But this complete pleasure -- on all the levels of a being -- can be experienced only if the soul is healthy. An unhealthy soul is incapable of experiencing pleasure to the extent that health is lacking.

At the same time, if a person heals the unhealthy aspects and attitudes of his personality, he not only becomes capable of experiencing greater pleasure, he leads a fuller life, but, I might say almost as a byproduct, he also becomes more creative. And he also begins to experience the reality of the spiritual laws and truth. It is no coincidence that people who go through a successful analysis, although this may not be as frequent or as desirable at the present time, come to believe in the reality of the spiritual laws and truth. This rarely means denominational religion, but more their own private realization, experience, inner proof, and knowledge. These factors are all byproducts of healing the soul of its misconceptions, of its distortions, and of its deviations. The true experience of pleasure on all levels, the unfoldment of creative abilities, and the inner knowledge of spiritual truth are all the outcome of inner health.

At the same time, the sicker or the more distorted a soul, the less is it capable of real pleasure, and the more the inherent creative abilities will be paralyzed. The fact that some people are very creative in spite of tremendous inner conflicts does not contradict this statement. It only means that the creative talent is so great that it comes out "in spite" of the soul problems, and the more such people are cut off from reality on all levels. This does not only mean the reality of the cosmic laws and spiritual truth, but also from reality as it manifests on this earth plane.

The desire for immortality through art is just another variation of man's longing for eternal life and his struggle against death. One person will be a religious fanatic who has accepted his belief out of fear and weakness, but who has not arrived at it through inner knowledge. The other person believes himself stronger than the former by not "needing" such faith. But his form of expression, emerging out of the same root, is the desire for immortality through the work he has produced. Both do not want to let go. Both types want to hold on to life. Both cannot give up. This holding on, this inability to give up, whether manifest in this big question or in little everyday issues, holds the soul imprisoned; it prevents it from growth; it produces some form of stagnation, manifesting on all levels of the personality. Only the generous freedom of giving oneself up, of going into the unknown, perhaps without any insurance of retaining what one cherishes, can produce true growth. So this wish for immortality through art -- or science or any other expression -- is, in essence, not something that differs from the way of the religionist who clings to faith out of fear. As I explained in the last lecture, the atheist too goes off the path and meets death in the wrong way, just as the ungenuine religious person does. The latter says: "I want to believe because I am afraid of death. I do not want to let go, to give up." And the atheist says: "The person who believes is just weak. I am much stronger, I do not need all that." But he, too, wants immortality and he thinks it is a show of strength if he seeks immortality through his creations. It is his way of clinging to life and fighting against death. He fears so much that he may cease to exist that he does not chance the disappointment that the religionist may be wrong. Both types are incapable of saying, and meaning, be it only in isolated moments: "I do not know. I have to accept the unknown." Now, my friends, the many people who outwardly say so do not necessarily mean it, feel it, and live it. They, too, may manifest their flight from death in ther innermost attitude. It is not what one professes and thinks and believes that determines the healthy attitude in this respect. This can be merely a symptom and an indication, no more. So you must beware of evaluation based only on a person's professed belief and attitude. The desire to die, for instance, does not necessarily, and only in the rarest cases, indicate a true belief in the life after death, or in one's reconciliation with a non-existence. It may merely be an expression of being tired of coping with life. And that is the result of not knowing how to cope with death.

Now we come to the question of sublimation. Sublimation can be, and very often is, entirely misunderstood and is a very unhealthy phenomenon. It can be a distorted and harmful process in the religionist, as well as in the psychoanalytical concept. The religionist sublimates when he says: "Life of the flesh is sinful. It opposes the spirit. It represents the devil and therefore I must sublimate my fleshly impulses and spiritualize them." This leads to repression. If you view repression with a fresh outlook, then you will have to conclude that it is nothing but dishonesty, self-deception, and the lack of awareness. In other words, an ostrich policy. On the other hand, the psychological concept of it says: "Reality is so dismal, is so hopeless, is so despairing, it stands in such contradiction to my pleasure drives, that I have no choice other than to sublimate. I choose it out of compromise and as a lesser evil. On the one hand, I would have to live according to the most unchanneled and primitive instincts if I want to realize my pleasure drive. But on the other hand, this would bring me into conflict with my environment and therefore I would be stopped from pleasure a priori. So the situation is hopeless." These unchanneled primitive instincts are no more conducive to the pleasure principle that the spiritualized rejection of bodily pleasure is. In a mature and healthy soul the pleasure drive can never interfere with one's environment. And this is not due to sublimation, to resignation, or to repression. It happens because the instincts grow with the rest of the personality and therefore become all the more receptive to pleasure in a much higher form than the primitive, unchanneled instincts. The heightened pleasure also includes the body. And this, in turn, is in consequence of one's facing death and suffering. It happens through "non-negation" and, therefore, by gradually eliminating the duality. By doing so, reality as you know it on earth begins to change. First subtly, in your own inner world, then spreading slowly around you.

It is entirely wrong to say that creative ability is the product of sublimation or, to put it in a different way, by shifting the pleasure drive to another area of the personality. The original healthy personality, as it is meant to be, is rich enough to contain both, as well as many other areas of expression in life. Only the limited and distorted soul has to make such choices. It is quite true that if you repress your pleasure drive, it must come out somehwre, and it often does in the area of your creativity. But that does not mean it would not come out clearer, better, and stronger if your personality would be whole and integrated, functioning healthily on all levels. It would even manifest in a more constructive and fuller way, not as a substitute but as a completion of life.

My dearest friends, on this very special day I tried to show you how the present phase of our work, of your inner development, fits in with the great events of the history of evolution, cosmic and human. Be blessed, all of you. Receive our strength. Receive our love and our blessings. May you take this strength and utilize it, each as is best for you. Be in peace. Be in God.

March 31, 1961 (Good Friday)