Reaching The Spiritual Center Of The Self -- Struggle Between The Lower Self And The Superimposed Conscience

By The Pathwork Guide

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

In the past year we have been working together, all of my friends who have sincerely and actively worked on this Path, and who have overcome the inherent resistance to face themselves and subsequently change, have made considerable progress. I think that most of you are aware of it. You may not always be fully aware of the significance of the continuous process of growth that you find yourself in. But I dare say that most of you will feel an extension of your awareness, a raising of your consciousness in many respects. For example, where previously life had seemed hopeless because you perceived outside solutions as being beyond your control, and therefore as unattainable, you now begin to glimpse an occasional shaft of light with a more profound comprehension of your inner disturbances. You now are able to understand why a certain unhappiness or a specific unfulfillment is the result of inner errors and of confusion. This, in itself, is bound to bring you hope and security. It eliminates the feeling of being an innocent victim of circumstances that are beyond your control. By understanding cause and effect in your own life, by seeing it in practice, a sense of security is instilled in you and therefore you begin to see that this is not such a bad world to live in after all. Those thoughts may not be conscious yet, but they have an effect on the psyche after sufficient insight has been reached.

Some of you may find yourselves in one of those phases before an important recognition, when it all seems doubly confused. At such times your struggle is often very painful until you have truly come face to face with an area that you were doing your best to avoid. As all of you have discovered, when you do this, then the feeling of liberation, of strength, of hope, and of light is such a profound experience that its effect can never leave you. But while you are engaged in this struggle, then your overall view of your Path may be befogged. At such times, it is difficult to evaluate what you have accomplished, what remains to be done, where you stand, and to what degree you have fully comprehended your inner disturbances and your deviations. Nevertheless, even in such a phase you have by now penetrated sufficiently into the depths of yourself to have reached some degree of awareness of your progress and of what still remains to be accomplished. It is of the utmost importance to know specifically in what respect of your life you still feel unfree, in what respect you still feel obstructed, in what respect you still feel defensive, and in what respect you still feel anxious. At certain periods, you may do well to gauge your progress and to determine what remains to be done by asking yourself in what respect you now understand your problems; in what respect you still feel resistant to change, in spite of the understansing you have gained; in what respect you are still confused and in the dark, and therefore need further insight; and in what respect you have truly resolved certain problems. Such an occasional inventory, if I may call it that, is very helpful.

In this final session of the year, I would like to restate certain facets and certain goals of this Path of self-realization. When man lives from day to day without understanding the relationship between himself and his life, then he must be in despair. Whether or not he knows it, he goes through life searching for the answer. Often he seeks this answer outside. And there it can never be found. Outside search can take on various forms. He may, through a conscious or unconscious insistence, expect that others bend to his will so that he may be happy. When this fails, then he becomes angry, resentful, and often full of self-pity. However, none of these emotions may be conscious. Another form of outside search may be looking for answers in philosophy, in religion, and in science. He may indeed find many valuable and valid answers from such sources. However, they will not truly help him unless he uses such answers as a guiding light in order to start a personal inner search deep withim himself. As long as knowledge remains only theoretical, then it will not do any good. It will fail to give substance and meaning to his life.

At this opportunity let me restate what I have said so many times and what some of my friends have begun to experience -- be it ever so seldom in the early stages -- that man contains withim himself all the knowledge, all the wisdom, and all the powers that he can possibly need in order to live a satisfactory life. I have said this so many times that you may be bored to hear the same words over and over again. But, unfortunately, too few among you truly realize the significance of these words. They often remain a theory that has no real impact on you, in spite of the fact that you actually move in the right direction on this Path, which leads you into the inner world of your being and in which you will find all you need. It is one thing to go about the work of self-finding with a vague concept and a hazy outlook of becoming a happier and more fulfilled person. It is quite another matter if the goal is clear and concise, if you are aware that deep within your soul you harbor a wealth of wisdom, of knowledge, of power, and of love -- the solution to all that puzzles and confuses you. To know this and to move consciously in the right direction will help you to muster the strength to overcome the resistance that always stands in the way of your facing yourself in utter candor, painful as this may appear at times.

The aim of finding, of understanding, and of resolving your hidden conflicts and distortions is to bring you ultimately into contact with this innermost core -- with the treasure of divine love, of divine wisdom, and of divine strength that lies imbedded in all of you. If this aim is clearly defined, then there will no longer be a conflict between spiritual interests and wordly interests.

There are two fundamental attitudes among human beings. One type of personality searches for God. He searches for spiritual development. He wants to become a better person. His unhappiness and his confusion spur him on to a spiritual search. As I have said before, he may often lose the true direction by collecting outside knowledge regarding spiritual theories and doctrines without taking the decisive step within his own soul. But if the mind assimilates such knowledge only as a preliminary step toward transcending the mind; if it is recognized that the obstructions within the personality have to be understood and dissolved so that the spiritual center can be reached, then he will no longer find a life in God as a contradiction to a life of personal fulfillment. Such personal fulfillment will not appear selfish and therefore opposed to a spiritual life. This misconception often prevails among people who search spiritually but who have not yet taken the final step within their hidden conflicts and within their inner confusions. If they recognize these to exist, then it is only a theory, and they hope to dissolve such defects by a comfortable intervention of an outside God and by spiritual grace.

The other attitude is that life is to be lived as happily and as satisfyingly as possible. I do not mean a ruthless outlook adopted by certain spiritually undeveloped people who simply do not care for others. I mean the attitude of those who have standards of decency, who do not wish to harm others, but who are not interested in any spiritual pursuits. There are a number of people who, through their intelligence, have recognized that the problems must lie within themselves, and therefore they take steps -- possibly through the means of mundane psychology -- to find and to correct the distortions. If one truly goes deep enough, if the search is profound enough and subsequently an inner growth is set in motion, if the search does not stop halfway but is followed through, then this inner center is reached, even if one never knew that it existed. In finding it, the reality of God is found. It cannot be otherwise. This inner experience will show you that what is taught by conventional religion contains a great deal of truth; and yet it will be so different. It will show you that finding God within does not mean to forfeit one's personal happiness -- a misconception that is held even by the unreligious person. The splits and the divisions, the contradictions and the either/ors are a product of separation, of error, and of confusion. In truth, all is one. But let this not be a mere theory. Experience it by uncovering the center of your own being, where you truly realize yourself and where you find that the incompatibles become one.

For a long time we have been concerned, and we shall continue to be concerned, with finding that in you which obstructs contact with this innermost center of your being. It takes a long time, but it cannot be reached otherwise. There is no way around it. However, you must not imagine this point of reaching this treasure to be a sudden and dramatic occurrence. It is, as always, a gradual process. Often you may not even be aware that in some respects you have already reached it, while in other respects you are still prevented from doing so because of your remaining barriers. Your contact with it may come and go, it may fluctuate, until you are sufficiently free and sufficiently aware so as to function from this inner center. Do not take this to mean that you are perfect, that you have overcome all your problems and all your lower instincts. The complete awareness and the deep understanding of them will indicate that the inner core of your spiritual self is no longer hidden and therefore out of reach.

The more a person is unhappy and lost, the more does he feel empty and therefore hungry -- maybe hungry for affection and hungry for understanding -- and the less is he in contact with this inner real self, which has the power to nourish him constantly, to sustain him, and to guide him, so that he can truly fulfill his life. The loneliness will be filled because he now understands the real reason for his loneliness.

Each life has something else to fulfill -- and all lives have the same thing to fulfill. Again, this may appear like a contradiction, but it is not, my friends. Keep in mind that the goal of this Path is to find this center of your being, which is Reality, which is God, and through which you find complete fulfillment -- not isolated, but in unity. If you look outside in order to alleviate your isolation, then you must become more isolated. If you look inside in order to alleviate it, then you may appear to isolate yourself from others through this process of apparent self-concern, but you will actually lessen the isolation and the separateness that often cause you so much suffering and so much loneliness. Since your inner spiritual self is the same as everyone else's spiritual self, then your separateness is lifted the moment you are no longer separated from your spiritual center. The real you is the other person's real self. There is no barrier between them. The barrier lies only in the covering layers.

It has been said by some of the friends who follow this Path that certain facets of the work of self-confrontation resemble mundane psychology. This may be true to some extent. However, one of the major differences is the well-defined ultimate goal. In mundane psychology the goal is the resolving of the inner conflicts so as to function better. As I said before, this must inadvertently bring man into contact with his spiritual center. But contact with the spiritual center is not psychology's goal. Our aim is precisely that -- and it must solve all the problems along the way. On this Path you are no more concerned with creeds, with dogmas, and with doctrines than a worldly psychologist is concerned with his patient's religion. Any superimposed opinion, regardless of whether it be true or false, is a hindrance towards self-unfoldment. But on this Path, and with this particular guidance, we are concerned with the reality of this inner spiritual center. When it is liberated, then there can be no question of adhering to theories or to creeds. God becomes a personal experience that stands beyond proof and which therefore does not need to be proven. This reality can be experienced only if all that which stands in its way is removed. It is your personal misconceptions, your confusions, and your erroneous conclusions that blot out this reality. In the last analysis, all unhappiness is the result of ignorance and of misunderstandings. Every inner problem that you uncover is always a distortion of reality. When you are governed by such distortions of your immediate, accessible reality, then you cannot possibly grasp the extention of this reality on a wider scope. This spiritual reality -- always and only to be found by a personal experience within -- never contradicts the accessible reality, if the latter is profoundly penetrated. In order to do so, your personal attitudes, your outlooks, and your concepts must be stated, then they must be questioned, and third they must be restated. Your unconscious automatic reactions must be investigated as to the meaning and the significance of their underlying conceptions so that these conceptions can be lifted to the surface and then evaluated. By this process you will understand your unrealism and thereby you will come closer and closer to reality in its widest possible sense.

Now I would like to discuss one of the major facets of the inner confusions and of the battles going on in man's psyche. We have discussed this topic before in various aspects, but I would like to tackle this all-important problem again in a more direct way, even though some of it is a repetition and some of it I have recently touched upon in our last discussion group, and also in a few private sessions with some of my friends.

One of the most tragic inner battles of man is the fight between what we have called the lower self and the superimposed conscience. Often an expression or a terminology used without truly understanding its deepest meaning finally loses its impact, and therefore one uses it just like a parrot repeating a word. This is harmful and has the opposite effect from what we seek to attain: independent understanding and creative thinking. It is therefore important to occasioanally re-define a term in order to bring a freshness to it. In other words, not only in order to avoid confusion, but also in order to give impact to your approach and to your understanding. So let us briefly determine again what I mean by the lower self. The lower self is not only that part of human nature in which all the faults and all the defects lie. It also includes something a little more subtle, and therefore less definable. The best way it can be described is as being a general climate and an emotional outlook of egocentricity. Regardless of your good intentions, of your unselfish acts, and of your considerate attitudes toward others, this inner world of egocentricity nevertheless exists. The stronger the former, the more difficult does it become to find, to acknowledge, and to accept the existence of the latter. The more this childish, one-sided egocentricity is hidden in guilt and in shame, the less can it grow out of this one-sidedness. You must become acutely aware of its often preposterous self-concern to the exclusion of all else. In this area of your being you wish to rule supreme. You do not want to know another person's interests, which you violate at any cost, so that a small wish or a small gratification of your vanity overrules more important issues or other people. True, you do not often act by it, but in your wishes and your aims, half conscious and half unconscious, you react from this lower self.

The problem is much less the fact of its existence, but rather the nature of your reaction and your attitude towards it. Your shame and your guilt are a result of one of those misunderstandings I mentioned, which prohibit growth and unfoldment. This misunderstanding comes from the idea that you, of all people, should have already completely overcome it and therefore that no such childish, preposterous selfishness and self-concern should have a place in you. Thus you start an elaborate system of self-deception and pretense which brings you into vicious circles and inner conflicts which destroy your happiness and your self-respect. Very few people are reconciled to the existence of the lower self in themselves. They may appear to be so in their utterances and theories and in the knowledge they profess to have. But when it comes to certain facets of this lower self, then they are not really reconciled to it. In other words, they do not really accept its existence. Yet only by doing so can it be gradually outgrown. By denying its existence, you must overlook its manifestations: its expression in vague emotions which are instantly covered up and pushed out of sight. How can you overcome something if you are not fully aware of its manifestation in a most specific way? Certainly not by a merely general theoretical knowledge of its existence.

Due to your shame of it and your guilt for its existence, and to the subsequent hiding of it, you do everything you can to continue its nourishment -- with all its dire effects on your personality. Therefore, you prohibit the very thing that you want most, namely to grow out of it. What is more, this self-deception gives rise to more confusion. Since all this is an unconscious process on which discrimination and reason cannot enter, along with the actual self-importance and the destructive impulses -- out of a misunderstanding -- you also hide some of the most creative and inherently constructive impulses and attitudes which are potentially productive and life-giving, provided they are allowed to grow in the sunlight of awareness. But they remain thwarted, and in their current form they are actually destructive. They could grow into something beautiful, but they are not allowed to grow because of the unconscious ignorance that their present form is not the ultimate and of the equally unconscious ignorance of the fact that denying their existence will not make them disappear.

Now let us recapitulate. There are three distinct facets of repression of the lower self: (1) the repression of the actual lower self aspects in their distinct and extreme manifestations and character trends, as well as the subtle overall climate of egocentricity and self-concern to the exclusion of the interests of all other people; (2) the repression of real, creative, and productive aspects and trends; (3) the repression of instincts which are as yet unproductive and self-centered in their immature state, but which are destined by nature to become creative, productive, constructive aspects if given a chance to grow.

It is important to make the distinction and to realize that all three categories need acceptance and awareness, each for its own reason. Then it will often be found that the most valuable prize that a human being has to offer to life is held in check, is denied, is hidden. Hence a vast confusion exists in you. It is the confusion regarding the actual lower self trends which are supposed to disappear by your denying their existence and by pretending the opposite intentions and wishes. Those two tendencies are intertwined and mixed up. Through this confusion regarding the potentially vibrant life force, the opportunity for it to function in its beautiful, healthy way is denied, and therefore the personality is thown into despair because of this confusion. All this happens in a vague vacuum, in a no-man's land between awareness and unawareness.

It may be a valuable task for my friends to ponder over all this during the summer months in which there are no group activities. This may give you an excellent preparation for the coming year of our work together, when we all hope to make further progress on this Path. Question yourself first, not as to the actual nature of your lower self, or what you consider as such. Rather, begin by looking at your attitude toward its existence. Are you shocked about certain of its manifestations? Are you impatient with yourself because of it? Do you feel that it should already be gone, thus rejecting your state of being a human being? Do you also deny something in yourself that could be very constructive if you were to view it afresh and not be influenced by standards that you have assumed without ever questioning their validity? Begin to observe the subtle manifestations of the lower self in certain reactions and impulses. Observe how you tend to immediately push it away. Now look at the wishes and the attitudes of such fleeting reactions. Pull them out into the open and then calmly look at them. Determine your harsh, intolerant treatment of yourself in this respect: your rigid, uncompromising, self-destructive severity which is way out of proportion. All this is healthy preliminary work for the phases to come. This is one side of the battle.

What is the other side? The concept of the conscience is vastly misunderstood by mankind. A few years ago I discussed the fact that man has two kinds of conscience, the one emanating from his real self and the other being a superimposed conscience. This lecture has been forgotten and is therefore not incorporated into the many recognitions that you have made since then. It is therefore useful at this time to brefly review some aspects of this superimposed conscience.

When religionists speak about the conscience, then they think of the inner conscience, which comes from the divine center of the human spirit. But they usually ignore the vast difference between it and this other kind of conscience. In the eagerness to make him a better creature, man is coerced from the outside to follow and to obey moral standards. Thus the superimposed conscience is strengthened and thereby the inner, real conscience becomes more covered up.

The superimposed conscience is not a necessity in order to prevent man from acting out his primitive destructive instincts. For those whose inner conscience is not sufficiently developed to restrain them from committing destructive acts, then the mere existence of social laws would serve as well, and even better, than the superimposed conscience which only does harm. As explained before, in the first facet of this inner struggle, it hides the lower self, instead of bringing it out into the open -- thereby eliminating the possibility of its growing out of its infantile state. It also hides the most constructive and creative life force and the impulses that would free this life force. It instills an unrealistic and distorted view of oneself and of the way one believes one would have to be. It is self-punishing and it creates an upheaval which prohibits the unfoldment of every divine quality inherent in the soul. It certainly never prevents crime or destructive actions; quite the opposite. By repressing it and hiding it, forces that could easily be dealt with on the surface of the consciousness instead accumulate and germinate, thereby creating such inner tension and such pressure that the person is often driven into acts that he cannot help committing because he has used the superimposed conscience too long, instead of giving himself the chance to finally contact the inner conscience which is part of his spiritual center. When man rebels against all laws and all standards of ethics and morality, he does so because of this harsh superimposed conscience which knows no mercy, which is inflexible in its demands, and which is blind in its evaluation. He never rebels against the real, inner conscience.

Thus it is important to understand that what stands between you and your inner, real self is not only your errors, your misconceptions, your false images, and your distortions -- in other words, your lower self -- but also the superimposed conscience. It is the latter that creates so much confusion and that often prevents you from freedom and from truth. It is this superimposed conscience that induces you to reject yourself as a human being. Between its demands and the demands of this primitive, self-centered child that you still harbor within you, you are torn apart in a raging storm. As long as this storm is not out in the open, you can never master it. You cannot possibly extricate yourself from these two unrealities. You cling to the superimposed conscience in the false belief that it alone can prevent you from acting upon the lower self instincts. Therefore you can never come to a healthy, secure trust in yourself because you do not give yourself the chance. This healthy self-respect and self-trust can come only from your real self, from which you only alienate yourself further by clinging to the superimposed conscience. Thus you find yourself in one of these vicious circles we so often mention. Because man has not found his real self, he clings to the superimposed conscience. And because he does so -- obeying, conforming, appeasing -- he follows blindly, like a sheep. By never developing the independent faculties of thinking, of discriminating, and of distinguisning, man becomes weaker and more dependent, and therefore less able to stand on his own feet.

The outer action may or may not be the same. But there is a tremendous difference between committing an act out of bondage and fear -- in other words, following the superimposed conscience -- and following the voice of your real conscience in a spirit of freedom, derived out of your own inner struggle, out of your own intuition, and out of your own reason, even if the acts are identical. If you rebel against the superimposed conscience and the result of such a decision is not to your liking, then the corroding effects will be rebellion, self-pity, and putting the blame on life and the world. If you obey your real conscience, then you will take all the responsibility upon yourself and even a negative outcome will never throw you into despair. You will soon see that the either the pleasant result or the unpleasant result is not as vital as you may believe it to be because in both alternatives you have an equal possibility for growth if your actions and your decisions are derived from yourself and from your own standards.

The fight between the superimposed conscience and the primitive, self-centered, destructive child is a tragic one. It is tragic only because of your lack of awareness of it. For it is so superfluous.

Of course, education has a great deal to do with it. When mankind becomes aware of these things and guides young people into the right direction, then much harm can be avoided. However, it is important to know that it is not only ignorance and misguidance that are responsible for this struggle within yourself, for you are not enmeshed in this struggle in every aspect of your being. There are areas in which you are quite free, and therefore where you function without clinging to superimposed demands, to superimposed standards, or to superimposed rules -- either as they actually exist or as they are believed to exist. It is noteworthy that you adhere to this superimposed conscience and you do not accept your shortcomings or your lower self aspects -- whether real or imaginary -- only in the realms where your personal inner problems exist. When you consider them in the light of this specific struggle, then you will understand how your inner problems and this particular struggle are connected.

Personality problems and deviations come from childhood hurts and frustrations -- either real or imaginary. When you do not feel secure in the affection and the acceptance of either one or both of your parents, then you elaborately build a defense against this hurt, trying later to correct it. You have found it to be true that this actual childhood hurt need not burden you for life, but your defense against it, which you continue to use, destroys for you the possibility of fulfillment. All of that you know very well by now, not only as a theory but often from personal discovery. The parent that one feels uncertain of and is in awe of or in fear of, because one so desperately tries to win his affection, usually stands for this superimposed conscience. Not only social rules per se are incorporated into it, but particular rules of the parent in question, as he may adhere to his own superimposed conscience. It may often be that you merely believe that these standards and expectations were expected of you by the parent in question. It is the emotional atmosphere, the inner climate which is so important in this investigation and not the actuality.

You cannot possibly recognize the superimposed conscience in its full significance unless you view it in relationship to the attitude that you have now towards your parents and that you had then towards your parents and their attitude towards you. In other words, the specific emotions, the conditions, as well as the resultant images and behavior patterns, and the defense mechanisms which you developed. Only by seeing this whole picture will the struggle betwen your superimposed conscience and your actual and imagined lower self take on a new meaning for you and furnish you with the insight necessary to resolve this struggle. Mere general knowledge of this fight can never alleviate it, even if you have actually come to observe it and then to become aware of it. It is essential that you see it in relationship to your own personal problems. The fight between your lower self and your superimposed conscience may be completely different from the fight of another person -- between his lower self and his superimposed conscience -- even though many aspects and manifestations of the fight may be the same.

In this struggle you treat yourself with merciless harshness. You inflict iron rules upon yourself as exercised by the cruelest ruler, and far beyond the unreasonable standards which may be exerted by society. Your blind excessive standards make it impossible for you to reach this inner center from which you could be nourished with constantly renewed vigor; with realistic hopefulness, as opposed to wishful thinking; with foresight; with the ability to make mature decisions; with self-confidence; with the ability to love and to be loved; with the ability to receive and to give; with the ability to relate; and with the ability to harmoniously create a life which is useful not only in one direction, but in all important areas of living.

Many of you have found a profound sense of fulfillment in certain areas of life. But you are unfulfilled and lonely in other areas of life. This is too often rationalized by saying, "this is just because I have this great fulfillment that I have to pay for it by forfeiting other areas of fulfillment." But this is not true, my friends. Deep down, inside of you, you know it. It need not be that you fulfill yourself in one area of living at the expense of another. There is room for all kinds of fulfillment in the healthy soul for the person who sincerely reaches into the depth of his being, and who opens all the channels which have been clogged up heretofore. No facet of self-expression needs to suffer at the expense of others which have already been freed. But deep inside you feel that you do not deserve all that. You do not even cultivate a concept of yourself in which you see yourself fulfilled in all directions. If you observe this in yourself, then you will see how you shrink from such a visualization, how it seems overdemanding -- and this despite the actual childish overdemandingness that exists on another level. This proves that you have not come to terms with yourself in regard to this struggle. Something in you says No when you visualize yourself as being fulfilled in all areas of living. This attitude is due solely to your harsh, unforgiving, and unaccepting treatment of yourself because you are not yet reconciled with the self-centered child in you which makes unfair demands that you cannot cope with because you push them out of sight.

You need to fully accept this primitive, selfish, destructive child in order to make it grow up. The only climate in which you can do so is in the full knowledge of all its manifestations. As you accept it, without losing a sense of proportion about its so-called badness, then you will be able to perceive, to experience, and to accept the highest faculties within yourself. You can lose your sense of guilt about the destructive child only if and when you learn to look at the impulses coming from it and you realize that although this undesirable side does exist, you need not act accordingly. At least, you do not deceive yourself about your own state of development and you evaluate all its dictates without following them through. Only then will you have a chance to win in this impossible battle. You will liberate yourself from the false conscience and therefore you will become capable of hearing the voice of your real conscience.

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Are there any questions regarding this topic?

QUESTION: I have a question which I prepared, but it seems to fall right into this lecture. Is it true that we try not only to squeeze into our own idealized self images but we actually try to live up to the idealized selves of our parents as well? Is this correct?

ANSWER: Absolutely correct. The child's helplessness and insecurity make him strive desperately for acceptance by his parents. In doing so he believes that he has to adopt the standards of the parents. As I said before, it does not matter to what degree these standards actually are those of the parents, or if the child merely believes them to be so. So he begins a process of false, pretended, superficial adherence to certain standards without inner conviction. Doing this alienates him from his real self, which thereby becomes weaker. He also becomes doubly resentful and he feels cheated when this adopted mode of living and being does not bring the hoped-for results, as it certainly cannot. There is in all of you, to a greater or lesser degree, a desire not to give up being a child, in spite of the equally strong wish to grow up. This insistence on remaining a cared-for child necessitates your holding on to these superimposed standards and to this false conscience. With it you hope to appease, to coerce, and to force your parents -- or the parent substitutes -- to belatedly give you what you missed. Thus you perpetuate the process until and unless you fully recognize it in all its intensity and harmful side-effects.

QUESTION: Would it be possible to give us a specific example, as sometimes you have done in the past, of one of those instincts that is really constructive, but which we treat as though it were not?

ANSWER: One such example is the fact that people often deliberately clog the channel of their own intuition. They are afraid because its message may diverge from the prescribed way. They wish to avoid confrontation and a decision between these two sides. They fear the risk of disapproval by following their intuition. This is a very frequent occurrence.

Another example is the sexual and erotic instinct which, in its nature, is entirely creative and unitive if it is allowed to grow. Only in its immature manifestation is it self-centered. Society's emphasis on its sinfulness as such often causes this creative instinct to remain self-centered, in hiding, and if expressed at all, done in a self-centered way, while the person feels guilty and sinful -- often very much unaware of such emotions. If society's rules were at least directed to the real evil, then it would emphasize all kinds of self-centeredness as being destructive, and it would focus on the need to grow out of this separateness. By thwarting this creative instinct, not only is emotional fulfillment hindered and impaired and the ability to relate hampered, but another result is a paralysis of the general life force, with all its healing and regenerating effects. This holds true not only in extreme cases, such as are surely familiar to all of you. In a subtle way those may hold true as well with the most enlightened ones who would never dream that they harbor similar unconscious attitudes. The destructive influence of this factor often manifests in a disturbance of the relationship between the sexes. Such a disturbance may be as subtle and hidden as the misconception that creates it may be. It may create a pattern of continuous disruption of relationship; of never being able to maintain a relationship; or of never even fully establishing a relationship in its true sense.

Human beings can become truly human -- and therefore eventually divine -- only if man accepts his manhood and woman accepts her womanhood. But inner disturbances always make the man fight against his manhood and the woman against her womanhood. All human beings are endowed with both masculine and feminine tendencies. In the healthy person both these aspects work together in harmony and they make the man more masculine and the woman more feminine. The tendencies of the opposite sex are neither fought against nor artificially bolstered up out of the fear of not being what one is. Therefore, the compatibility of the masculine aspect and the feminine aspect makes the man more of a man and the woman more of a woman.

A great deal can be said on this subject, and it will be said later on. We cannot possibly cover all of it now. Let me merely touch upon the most vital aspects of this question. In thwarting the natural instincts, man so often thwarts his manhood. He is frightened of independence because he thereby seems to give up the privilege of being loved, which he erroneously believes is given only to a woman or only to a child. In fighting against his independence, he fights against his own manhood. But in denying his need for love due to the misconception that thereby he is not manly, he also fights against his masculinity. Moreover, he fights against it out of the mistaken fear that all his masculine healthy aggression is the same as his unhealthy aggression and hostility -- which is the result of an accumulation of hurts which he cannot cope with. So he often finds himself in a double confusion. The real healthy male aggressiveness is confused with hostility, for which he then feels guilty. So he also feels guilty for his healthy male aggression and for his healthy male energy. In other words, he cannot separate the two. Simultaneously, he represses his need for affection and his need for love, for he believes these legitimate needs to be unmanly. At the same time, he is reluctant to give up his clinging to childish dependency, which may never be manifested outwardly but which nonetheless does exist. In all these confusions of unconscious concepts, he thwarts his masculinity in its natural and healthy form by trying to manipulate it according to circumstances. Thus it cannot flow naturally and spontaneously.

A similar struggle exists with woman. When the little girl feels rejected, then she feels passive and helpless. The passivity and the helplessness, as one aspect of femininity, is then experienced as such humiliation that she fights against it by summoning all her masculine traits as a weapon against the femininity that she fears and which she associates with a state of humiliating helplessness. She erroneously feels that being hurt and being helpless against it is femininity, and she thereby fights against it. At the same time, she also feels that all her creative, active trends are considered unfeminine by the world and reflecting perhaps on her intelligence, on her resourcefulness, on her courage. She then fights against these trends as well. This is interdependent with her fear of real femininity. To the extent that she fights it and that she cultivates her masculine trends as a weapon against her femininity, to that degree she may often artificially create a false femininity by repressing her so-called masculine trends. But these trends are no more masculine than the man's need for love is feminine. He intelligence, her courage, her activity in many areas of life, and the independence of her spirit could truly enhance her womanhood if allowed to integrate with it. But just because she fights her passivity and her ability to give of herself completely, she has to artificially suppress her activity in order to falsify the caricature of a woman.

These are good examples which can be used in your self-search and extended in individual cases. Does that answer your question?

QUESTION: Yes, it helps very much. I think it must be difficult to answer this question of mine. It may be a foolish one in a way, but in thinking of the sex angle, when people are unmarried and unattached and they are seeking a happy relationship, how much promiscuitity do you advocate?

ANSWER: I do not advocate promiscuity at all. What do you mean by promiscuity?

QUESTION: You speak of the sex instinct as natural and right. But just how far do you go?

ANSWER: The only answer that I can possibly give you -- and it would apply to this question, as well as to any other, for that matter -- is that if a person does what he feels, within his deep inner self, is right for him, uninfluenced by the superimposed conscience, then it is right. And this does not necessarily have anything to do with the happy or unhappy outcome of the situation. If he could approach it wholehartedly -- that is, without being divided -- taking full responsibility for all consequences upon himself, being fully committed to the relationship on whatever level it exists, and if no false morality blurs the issues and thus hampers the real morality, then there is nothing wrong. There is perhaps no other subject in which so much shifting of self-responsibility on the shoulders of rules occurs merely because one is afraid of risking something.

The world would be a very different place if more people were to do whatever they do wholeheartedly, be it a human relationship, be it reading a book, be it taking a walk, be it going through a conversation. This planet is such an unhappy place because people are torn. They do not do one thing without being divided in attention and divided in motivation. In other words, there is rarely a full commitment in anything that man does. He serves two, three, or ten masters at the same time. But he never serves his own real self. Man always wants to have everything cut out to perfection. He wants a guarantee without mistakes until the end of his days. Since he knows perfectly well that this cannot be, he refuses a total commitment under the guise of being so decent and of obeying all the moral rules of society. Whether these rules actually exist or not is overlooked.

The outlook from the plane I am talking from is such a different one that often the words do not even have the same meaning. When you raise your consciousness, then you will come to a different understanding of concepts, of terms, and of values. From our point of view, promiscuity may be one single act, with all the sanctions of human society, if this act does not stem from a complete commitment. If we use this word at all, then it can certainly never apply to the quantity, but only to the quality invested.

As long as mankind approaches any question -- similar to your question, or political, social, religious, or a question relating to any other human activity or attitude -- from the viewpoint of ready-made rules in which one thing is right and another wrong, then you still live under the yoke of the superimposed conscience, which is supposed to make everything so easy and so simple. You are still beaten down by the fight between the primitive little child in you and the superimposed conscience. If you were not engaged in this fight, then such questions could not even be asked. Such a question is the expression of this very fight I mentioned.

I hope not to be misunderstood. I certainly do not advocate license. Maybe in a different way the real self might have stricter standards than those of the superimposed conscience. They are often more difficult to obey because they might demand that you oppose public opinion. But the strictness may lie in a different direction. The real conscience is very discerning about any kind of self-deception. It is admanant when man tries to cheat life, often using the superimposed conscience and the ready-made rules as a shield against a complete commitment.

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May these summer months prove a fruitful time during which the seeds of this past year can ripen and come to fruition. May this period be utilized so that you consolidate the past year and gain an outlook as to where you stand and what remains to be accomplished. The next working season promises to be as successful as this one and greater liberation is in store for all of you who continue to travel this road of self-realization, unflinchingly overcoming all the resistance to do so. The past year has surely brought you nearer to this center of your being. If you continue in this way, then the next year will bring you a further step towards this inner light which is the source of all life.

Be blessed, all of you. Receive the love and the strength flowing forth to you so as to help you from this side to open all your channels. Be blessed. Be in peace, be in God.

June 1963