The outcome seems to matter more than the issue
itself, for when the intensity of emotions is truly tested, it often has
no relationsh ip to the issue at stake. It would rather be
commensurate with a life-or-death issue. Although you may think
this irrational on a consciou s level, on an unconscious level being
wrong truly means being dead, for being wrong means being denied
by the other. On the dualistic plane, your sense of identity is
associated with the other person, not with your real self. As long as
you experience yourself only as the outer ego-self, you will depend on
others . Hence, a slight quarrel truly becomes a matter of life or
death, which explains the intensity of emotions when it comes to
proving your right and the other’s wrong. Only when you have
realized the center of your being, which embodies unication, does
your life cease to depend on others. On the dualistic plane each issue ends with either life or death. Life becomes terribly impo rtant in order to avoid death. Often
people fear death so much that they run into it head on. Such
individuals do not escape fear of death. Quite the contrary. Their
constant strug gle with life, which results from their fear and
struggle agains t death, renders them so unhappy that they believe
they don’t fear death. This is an illusion as long as life is
experienced on the dualistic plane, as long as one side is viewed as
important and is fought for, and the other side is seen as a threat
and is fought against. As long as you feel that you must win because
your side is true, while the other’s is false, you are deepl y involved
in the world of duality, and therefore in illusion, conict, andconfusion. The more you ght in this way, the greater the confusion
becomes. Human beings are habitually trained by upbringing, and
everything they learn from their surroundings agrees that one must
ght for one and against the other of any number of opposites. This
applies not only to material issues but even more to conce pts. Every
truth can thus be divided into two opposites, one being adhered to
as the “right” and the opposite aspect being declared the “wrong”
idea. In reality, however, the two complement one another. On the
unied plane, neither aspect  is thinkable without the other. There
the complements are not “enemies” or negations of each other; only
on the dualisti c plane of consciousness are they so opposed. There
every conict multiplies into intricate subdivisions of the primary
dualistic split. Since all this is a product of illusion, the longer the
conict continues, the less it can be solved and the more hopelessly
enmeshed you become in it. Let us now return to our exam ple and demonstrate how this is so. The more you prove your friend wrong, the more friction exists and
the less you obtain what you thought you would by provin g yourself
right and your friend wrong. You believe that by proving yourself
right and your friend wrong, your friend will nally accep t and love
you again and all will be well. When you do not succeed, you
misinterpret that and try harder, for you think you have not
suciently proven that you are right and the other is wrong. The
rift widens, your anxiety increases, and the more weapons you use
to win the ght, the deeper your diculties, until you actually
damage yourself and the other and act against your own best
interest. You are then faced with a further conict, which  arises out
of the rst dualistic split. In order to avoid a total rift, with all its
real and imagined threats— for real damage has begun to be
wrought—you are now faced  with the alternatives of having to give
in, in order to appease your friend and avoid further damage to
yourself, or to continue ghting. Since you are still convinced that
there is a right versus a wrong, such appeasement robs you of self-
respect and you ght agains t that. Whether you use this “solution”or not, you will be torn between ghting or submitting. Both create
tension, anxiety, and inner and outer disadvantages. Thus, a second  duality develops out of the rst. The rst is: “Who
is right and who is wrong? Only I can be right. Otherwise all is
bad.” The second is either giving in to a wrong that you cannot
admit, for it is a total wrong, or continuing the ght. Admitting a
wrong means death, in a sense. So you are faced  with the
alternatives of either admitting a wrong, which means death in the
deep psyche, in order to avoid dreaded consequence s and the
possibility of a real risk, putting your life at a grave disadvantage,
again death, in the deepest sense, or insisting on your total
rightness. Any way you turn you nd death, loss, annihi lation. The
harder you ght for and against, the less there is to ght for and the
more all alternatives turn against you. The illusion that one side was
good and the other was bad has brought you to the inevitable next
step on this road of illusion, which is that all alternatives are bad. All dualistic struggle is fated to lead you into further traps, which
are all products of illusion. When the road to the unie d principle is chosen, soon what at
rst appeared as one certain good and one obvious bad ceases to be
so, and you inevitably encounter good and bad on both ends. When
this road is pursued still further, no longer is there any bad, but only
good. The road leads deep inside the real self, into truth  that goes
way beyond the fearful little ego’s interests. When this truth is
sought deep inside the self, one approaches the unied state of
consciousness. Our example is a banal one and can be translated
into many everyday issues, big or small. It can take shape as a small
squabble betwe en mates or as a conict between countries at war. It
exists in all diculties humanity encounters, individually and
collectively. As long as you nd yourself in this illusory dualistic
conict, you will experience hopelessness, for there is no way out on
the dualistic plane of thinking. As long as your very existence is
identied with the ego-self and therefore with the dualistic
approach to life, you cannot help but despair, no matter how much
this despair is covered up or momentarily alleviated by occasional
success with the desirable alternative of the two opposites. Thehelplessness and hopelessness, the wasted energy of the dualistic
struggle, rob you of your birthright. You can nd your birthright only
on the plane of unication . Since everything you learn from your education and environment
is geared to dualistic standards, it is not surprising that you are
totally attached  and adapted to this state of consciousness. And even
when you learn about the other possibility, you are fright ened of it. You cannot believe in it and you cling to what you know. This
creates a vicious circle, in that the dualistic rules and precepts,
which condition you to this way of life, are themselves a result of
your fear of giving up the egotistical state that alone  seems to
guarantee life. It appears that giving up this ego state means
annihilation of your individuality, which, of course, is utterly
erroneous. So, you have these dualistic rules becaus e of your
erroneous fears, and you cling to the false fears becau se of your
indoctrination. Before we discuss in greater detail why you cling to the painful
dualistic state, despite the immediate accessibility of the unied
plane of consciousness, I would like to say more about how to realize
unication within yourself . The real self, the divine principle, the
innite intelligence, or what ever you wish to call that deep inner
center existing  in every human being, contains all wisdom and truth
you can possibly envisage. The truth is so far-reaching and so
directly access ible that no further conict exists when this truth is
allowed to take eect. The ifs and buts of the dualistic state cease to
exist. The knowledge of this inborn intelligence far surpasses the
ego intelligence. It is completely objective; it disregards the small,
vain self-intere st—and this is one of the reasons you fear and avoid
contact with it. The truth that ows out of it equalizes the self with
others. Far from being the annihilation that the ego fears, that truth
opens up the storehouse of vibrant life force and energ y that you
usually use to only a minor degree and that you misuse in directing
your attention and hopes to the dualistic plane, with its tightly held
opinions, false ideas, vanity, pride, self-will, and fear. When this live
center activates you, you begin your limitless unfoldment , a process
whose accomp lishments become possible precisely because the littleego no longer wants to misuse them in order to nd life, as it did,
on the dualistic plane. The unied real self can always be contacted . Let us again return to
our example in order to see how. The hardest act to perform, which,
in reality, is the easiest act possible, is to ask, “What is the truth of
the matter?” The moment you are more intent on the truth than on
proving that you are right, you contact the divine principle of
transcendent, unied truth. If the desire to be in truth is genuine,
the inspiration must come forth. No matter how strongly
circumstances seem to point in one direction, you must be willing to
relinquish and to question whether what you see is all there is to the
issue. This generous act of integrity  opens the way to the real self. It will be easier to follow through when you consider that it is not
necessarily a question of either/or, but that there may be aspects of
right in the other person’s view and of wrong in yours, aspects that,
so far, you have not seen because your attention was not even
directed to this eventuality. This approach to a problem
immediately opens the way to rise to the unied plane of existence
and to be moved by the real self. It immediately releases an energy
that is distinctly felt when this act is done with a deep and sincere
commitment. It brings release from tension. What you then nd out is always totally dierent both from what
you hoped for and feared on the dualistic plane. You nd that you
are not as right and innocen t as you thought, nor as wrong as you
feared. Neither is your opponent. You soon discover aspects of the
matter you never saw before, although they were not necessarily
concealed. You understand exactly how the quarrel came into
existence in the rst place, what led to it, what its history was long
before its actual manifestation. With such discoveries you gain
insight into the very nature of the relationship. You learn about
yourself and the other, you increase your understanding of the laws
of communication. The more vision you gain, the freer, stronger,
and more secure you feel. This vision not only eliminates this
particular conict and shows  the right way to straighten it out, but
it also reveals  important aspects of your general diculties and
makes their elimination easier through this understanding. Thevibrant peace that comes from this extended understanding is of
lasting value. It aects your self-realization and your daily life. What I described is a typical example of unied , intuitive
understanding: of knowing the truth. After the initial apparent need
for courage and the momen tary resistance to seeing a wider truth
than the egotistic one, your path becomes so much easier than the
struggle that ensues on the either/or plane of the dualistic life. Before you can bring yoursel f to the unied way of thinking and
being, the tension will mount, for as long as you remain on the
dualistic plane, you struggle against unication because you falsely
believe that the moment you admit and see where you are wrong
and the other is right, you submit and enslave yourself. You become
nothing, worth less, pitiful—and from there it is only a step to
annihilation in your fantasy life. Hence, you feel that leaving your
dualistic plane is the greatest danger. The tension will mount as
your conicts escalate. But the moment you are willin g to be in
truth, the moment you are eager and prepared, not merely to see
your way, your little truth, not to give in to the other’s little truth in
fear of the consequences if you do not, but when you wish to
possess the larger, more encompassing truth, which transcends both of
your little truths, a specic tension will be removed in your psyche. The way toward the manifestation of the real self will have been
prepared. Obstructions to Finding the Real Self
Let me recapit ulate here: The two most signicant obstructions to
the real self are ignorance of its existence and the possibility of
connecting with it; and a tight, cramped psychic state with tight,
cramped soul movements. These two factors make contact
impossible with the real self, and therefore with a unied state of
existence. As long as you are on a dualistic plane, you must be in a
constant soul cramp. When you ght against one dualistic aspect
and press for the other, observe your soul movements . Supercially,
you may lean on the apparent justication of the position  you pressfor. You may say, “Am I not perfectly justied in combating this
wrong in the world?” On the dualistic plane this may indeed be so. But with this limited outlook you ignore that this very wrong exists
only because of your dualistic approach to the problem and your
prevalent ignorance that there is another approach. The resulting
tension blurs the view that other aspects exist which both unify
what you deem right and what you deem wrong, regardle ss of what
the wrong actually is. This simple act of wanting the truth requires several conditions,
the most important being the willingness to relinquish what one
holds on to, whether this be a belief, a fear, or a cherish ed way of
being. When I say relinquish, I merely mean questioning it and
being willing to see that there is something else beyond this outlook. This brings us back to why you are terried to relinquish the ego
state, hence the dualistic, painful way of life. Why do you resist so
much committing yourself to this deep inner center, which unies
all good and is instantly accessible? It is, however, beyond the
personal, little considerations of the ego. Your Ego Versus Your Divine Center
The dualistic plane is the plane of the ego. The unied plane is
the world of the divine center, the larger self. The ego nds its
whole existence on the plane in which it is at home. To relinquish
this plane means to give up the claims of the little ego. This does
not mean annihilation, but to the ego it seems to mean just this. Actually, the ego is a particle, an isolated aspect of the master
intelligence, the real, inner self. It is not dierent from it; there is
simply less of the real self in it. Since it is separate and limited, it is
less reliable than what it stems from. But this does not mean that
the ego has to be annihila ted. In fact, the ego will eventually
integrate with the real self so that there is one self, which will be
fuller, better equipped, wiser. It will have more and better assets
than you can imagine.But the separated ego thinks this development means
annihilation. In its ignorant, limited way, the ego exists only as a
separated being; hence, it pursues further separateness. Since the
limited conscio usness ignore s the existence of the real self—even if
it is accepted as a theory, its living reality will be doubted as long as
personal misconceptions are not eliminated—it fears letting go and
relaxing its tight hold, the very soul movement that leads to the real
self. This is the constant struggle of the ego until it ceases ghting
against an opposite through repeated recognitions of a wider truth
in every small personal issue. The real self cannot manifest  as long as personal problems are not
straightened out. But the process of doing this and the rst inklings
of self-r ealization often overl ap; the one furthers the other. This way
of looki ng at your basic human struggle may help you considerably. As long as you are totally  identied with your ego, you will
continue to cultivate more separation, and self-idealization must be
the consequence. Self-glorication and idealization seem , from this
point of view, the apparent salvation and guarantee to assuage your
existential fears. The ego thinks, “If everyone around me considers
me special, better than others, smart, beautiful, talented, happy,
unhappy, or even bad”—or whatever specialty you have chosen for
your idealized  self-gloricati on—“then I will receive the necessary
approval, love, admiration, agreement that I need in order to live.”
This argument means that somewhere deep down you believe that
you can exist only through being noticed, armed, and conrmed
by others. You feel that if you go by unnoticed, you cease to live. This may sound exaggerated , but it is not. It explains why your
idealized self-image is so destructive. You feel more condent when
you make yourself noticed than when you make positive eorts . So your salvation seems to lie in others who would acknowledge
your existence  only if you are special. At the same time, the
misinterpreted message from the real self wants you to master life,
but you maste r it on the wrong plane and believe that you must
vanquish every resistance that is in your way. Each personal pseudo-
solution  is a way you have to eliminate your obstructions on the way
to specialness. Which pseudo-solution you have chosen depends onindividual character traits, on circumstances and early inuences. Whatever they are—and there are three basic ones: the aggressive ,
the submissive , and the withdrawal solutions —they are destined to
triumph over others and establish your freedom and fulllment. Your existence seems to be guaranteed when you are totally
loved, accepted, and served by others, and you hope to attain this
by trium phing over them. You can now see that you are governed
by a succession of wrong conclusions, which are all completely
dierent in reality. Of course, all your reactions  and beliefs can be ascertain ed only
when you have learned to admit them. You also need to question
the meaning of a particular reaction and look behind the facade,
beyond what it pretends to mean. Once you admit this, it is easy to
verify that all these misconceptions govern you and rob you of the
beauty of reality. You will further come to see—not as a theory, but
as a reality— that your life does not depend on other people’s
armation of your existence; that you do not need to be special and
separate from others; that this very claim traps you in loneliness and
confusion; that others will give you love and acceptance only when
you do not wish to be bette r than they are, or special or dierent
from them. Also this love will come when your very life no longer
depends on it. When you have truly attaine d knowledge, your accomplishment,
in whatever eld this may be, cannot have the eect on others that
it has when accomplishment serves to set you apart. In the one case
your accomplishment will be a bridge to others, because  it is not a
weapon agains t them. In the other instance it will create antagonism
because you wish to be accomplished in order to be better than
others, which always means  that others should be less. When you
need to be better through your accomplishments, what you give to
the world must turn against you because you oer it in a spirit of
war. When you give of your accomplishments in order to enrich life
and others, you and your life will be enhanced by it because what
you oer is given in a spirit of peace . In the latter case, you become a
part of life. In taking from life—and the live center within yourself—and in giving back to life as an integral part of it, you act
according to the unied principle. Whenever you believe that “in order to live I must be better than
others, I must be separate” disappointment is inevitable. This belief
cannot bring the desired result because it is based on illusion. The
dualistic concept is “me versus the other.” The more you ght
others, the less they will comply with your demand to arm your
self and the more you will experience this as a danger equal to
giving up the ght itself. So every way you turn seems to be
blocked. You make yourself utterly dependent on others  with your
illusory concep t that unless they approve of you, you are lost, while,
at the same time, trying to overrun them and triumph . You will
resent the former and feel guilty about the latter. Both create
intense frustrations and anxiety; both yield no salvation whatever. Notice the initial disinclination to question your assumptions
concerning any problematic issue in your life. This is your very
stumbling block, because your shying away from what appears so
painful and frightening make s it impossible to uncover the fallacy of
your hidden belief. When you look at your problems in as objective
and detached a way as you can muster, expressing the wider
outlook of the real self, as you turn your best intent and will to the
matter that disturbs you with a genuine wish for impartiality, you
will rst notice a shrinking back from such a desire and a more or
less overt or subtle way of covering up your desire for ight. Catch
yourself in this act and courageously forge on, questioning yourself
further and deeper. You will then come to see that, nally, the outer
diculty is a symbolic representation of your inner quarrel where
you ght for life against death, for existence against annihilation. You will see what you evidently believe is required from others in
order for you to exist. The Transition from Dualistic Error to Unied Truth
When you have arrived at this level of your being, you will be
able to questio n your precepts that lay the foundation for this. Andthis is the rst step to make possible the transition from dualistic
error to unied truth. You will further notice that relinquishing
ideals and convictions also feels like annihilation, for being wrong
means dying, and being right means living. The moment you go
through this movement of opening up and have the courage to want
the truth, a more complete truth than you can see at the moment in
whatever issue, you will come to a new peace and a new intuitive
knowledge about the way things are. Something in your hardened
psychic substance will have loosened up and will further prepare the
way for total self-realization. Each time you loosen up, the climate in your psyche will be more
auspicious for the nal, total awakening to your inner center, which
contains all life, all truth, all the unied goodness of creation. Every
step in this direction abandons another misconception; and each
misconception represents another burden. The giving up of what
rst seemed like protection from annihilation will now be disclosed
as what it really is: the giving up of a burden, suering,
imprisonment. You then comprehend the preposterous fact that you
are actually opposed to leaving the dualistic life, with all its
hardship and hopelessness. Perhaps you can now under stand some of this, and it will help
you in your personal path. When you apply this to your everyday
life, you will see that the abstract-sounding words I use here are not
something far away, but accessible for every one of you. You will
see that these words are practical and concrete, if only you are
willing to see yourself in relationship to life in a wider truth than
you are as yet willing even to contemplate. The message coming from the real self says, “Your birthright is
perfect happiness, freedom, and mastery over life.” When you ght
for this birthright according to dualistic principles, you remove
yourself further and further from self-realization, in which you
could truly have mastery, freedom, and total fulllment . You seek
all this with false means. They are as varied as each individual’s
character. See how you personally try to set up the false ght leading into more
confusion and pain. In whatever way you try to win, you aredependent on others and on circumstances often way beyond your
actual control and therefore doomed to failure. This futile struggle
hardens your psychic materia l. The more brittle it becom es the less
you are able to contact the center of your inner being where
everything you could possib ly need is found: vital well-being and
productivity and inner peace, which are byproducts of nding the
real self. The only way you can enter the unitive state where you can truly
achieve maste ry is by lettin g go of the false need to win, to be
separate, to be special, to be right, to have it your way. Discover the
good in all situations, whethe r you deem them good or bad, right or
wrong. Needle ss to say, this does not mean resignation, nor does it
mean fearful giving in or weakness. It means going with the stream
of life and coping with what is as yet beyond your immediate
control, whether or not it is according to your liking. It means
accepting where you are and what life is for you at this moment. It
means being in harmony with your own inner rhythm. This
procedure will open the channel to your Godself, so that nally total
self-realization takes place. All your expressions in life will be
motivated and lived through by the divine principle operating in
you and expressing itself through your individuality, integrating
your ego faculties with the universal self. Such integration enhances
your individuality; it does not diminish it. It enhances every one of
your pleasures; it takes nothing away from you whatever. May every one of you comprehend that the truth is in you. Everything you need is in you. May you nd that you actually do
not have to struggle, as you constantly do. All you have to do is
recognize the truth, wherever you stand now. All you have to do, at
this time, is acknowledge that there may be more in you than you
see; call upon this inner center, and allow yourself to be open to its
intuitive messages to you. May you nd this possible exactly where
you need it most at this particular moment. Your gauge is always
what feels most uncomfortable,  what you are most tempted to look away
from. Be blessed, continue on your wonderful path, which will bring
you to the realization that you already have what you need and arewhere you need to be. You merely look away because you are
geared in the opposite direction. Be in peace. Be in God. OceanofPDF.com6 
The Forces of Love, Eros, and Sex
Since the dualistic state expresses itself on the level of our bodies
as the two sexes, we might just as well continue with the lecture on
love, eros, and sex, a particular favorite. No one is exempt from the
touch, or sometimes even the onslaught, of these forces. This lecture
sheds light on the confusion that exists in all of us whenever we love
or desire and helps to sort out the contradictory feelings. How to
keep eros? That is the question! Greetings in the Name of the Lord. I bring you blessings, my
dearest friends. Blessed is this hour. Tonight I would like to discuss three particular force s in the
universe: the love force as it manifests between the sexes , the erotic
force, and the sex force. These are three distinctly dierent
principles or forces that manifest dierently on every plane, from
the highest to the lowest. Humanity has always confused these three
principles. In fact, it is little known that three separate forces exist
and what the dierences between them are. There is so much
confusion about this that it will be quite useful to clear them up. The Spiritual Meaning of the Erotic Force
The erotic force is one of the most potent forces in existence  and has
tremendous momentum and impact. It is supposed to serve as thebridge between sex and love, yet it rarely does. In a spiritually
highly develop ed person, the erotic force carries the entity from the
erotic experience, which in itself is of short duration, into the
permanent state of pure love. However, even the strong momentum
of the erotic force carries the soul just so far and no farther. It is
bound to dissolve if the personality does not learn to love by
cultivating all the qualities and requirements necessary for true
love. Only when love has been learned does the spark of the erotic
force remain alive. By itself, without love, the erotic force burns
itself out. This of course is the trouble with marriage. Since most
people are incapable of pure love, they are also incapable of
attaining ideal marriage. Eros seems in many ways similar to love. It brings forth impulses
a human being would not have otherwise: impulses of unselshness
and aection he or she might have been incapable of before. This is
why eros is so very often confused with love. But eros is just as
often confused with the sex instinct which, like eros, also manifests
as a great urge. Now, my friends, I would like to show you what the spiritual
meaning and purpose of the erotic force is, particularly as far as
humanity is concerned. Without eros, many people would never
experience the great feeling  and beauty that is contained in real
love. They would never get the taste of it and the yearning for love
would remain deeply subme rged in their souls. Their fear of love
would remain stronger than their desire. Eros is the nearest thing to love the undeveloped spirit can experience . It lifts the soul out of sluggishness, out of mere conten tment and
vegetation. It causes the soul to surge, to go out of itself. When this
force comes upon even the most undeveloped people they become
able to surpass themselves. Even a criminal will temporarily feel, at
least toward one person, a goodness he has never known. The
utterly selsh person will, while this feeling lasts, have unselsh
impulses. Lazy people will get out of their inertia. The routine-
bound person will naturally  and without eort get rid of static
habits. The erotic force will lift a person out of separateness, be it
only for a short time. Eros gives the soul a foretaste of unity andteaches the fearful psyche the longing for it. The more strongly one
has experienced eros, the less contentment will the soul nd in the
pseudo-security of separateness. Even an otherwise thoro ughly self-
centered perso n may be able to make a sacrice during the
experience of eros. So you see, my friends, eros enables people to do
things they are disinclined to do otherwise; things that are closely
linked with love. It is easy to see why eros is so often confused with
love. The Dierence Between Eros and Love
How then is eros dierent from love? Love is a permanent state in
the soul; eros is not. Love can only exist if the foundation for it is
prepared through development and purication. Love does not come
and go at random; eros does. Eros hits with sudden force, often
taking a person  unawares and even nding him or her unwilling to
go through the experience. Only if the soul is prepared to love and
has built the foundation for it will eros be the bridge to the love that
is manifest between a man and a woman. Thus you can see how important the erotic force is. Without the
erotic force hitting them and getting them out of their rut, many
human beings would never be ready for a more conscious  search for
the breaking down of their own walls of separation. The erotic
experience puts the seed into the soul and makes it long for unity,
which is the great aim in the plan of salvation. As long as the soul is
separate, loneliness and unhappiness must be its lot. The erotic
experience enables the personality to long for union with at least
one other being. In the heights of the spirit world, union exists
among all beings—and thus with God. In the earth sphere, the erotic
force is a propelling power regardless of whether or not its real
meaning is understood. This is so even though it is often misused
and enjoyed for its own sake, while it lasts. It is not utilized to
cultivate love in the soul, so it peters out. Nevertheless, its eect
will inevitably remain in the soul.The Fear of Eros and the Fear of Love
Eros comes to people suddenly in certain stages of their lives,
even to those who are afraid of the apparent risk of adventuring
away from separateness. People who are afraid of their emotions
and afraid of life as such will often do anything in their power to
avoid—subconsciously and ignorantly—the great experience of
unity. Although this fear exists in many human beings, there are few
indeed who have not experi enced some opening in the soul where
eros could touch them. For the fear-ridden soul that resists the
experience, this is good medicine regardless of the fact that sorrow
and loss may follow due to other psychological factors. However,
there are also those who are overemotional, and although  they may
know other fears of life, they are not afraid of this particular
experience. In fact, the beauty of it is a great temptation to them
and therefore they hunt greedily for it. They look for one subject
after another, emotionally too ignorant to understand the deep
meaning of eros. They are unwilling to learn pure love, and simply
use the erotic force for their pleasure and when it is worn out they
hunt elsewhere. This is an abuse and cannot continue without ill
eects. Such a personality will have to make amends for the abuse—
even if it was done in ignorance. In the same vein, the too-fearful
coward will have to make up for trying to cheat life by hiding from
eros and thus withholding from the soul a medicine, valuable if used
properly. Most people in this category have a vulnerable point
somewhere in their soul through which eros can enter. There are
also a few who have built such a tight wall of fear and pride around
their souls that they avoid this part of life-experience entirely and so
shortchange their own development. This fear might exist because
in a former life they had an unhappy experience with eros, or
perhaps because the soul has greedily abused the beauty of the
erotic force without buildi ng it into love. In either case, the
personality may have chosen to be more careful. If this decision is
too rigid and stringent, the opposite extreme will follow. In the next
incarnation circumstances will be chosen in such a way that abalance is established until the soul reaches a harmon ious state
wherein there  are no more extremes. This balancing in future
incarnations always applies to all aspects of the personality. In order
to approach this harmony to some extent at least, the proper
balance between reason, emotion, and will has to be achieved. The erotic experience often mingles with the sexual urge, but it
does not alway s have to be that way. These three forces— love, eros,
and sex—often appear completely separately, while sometimes two
mingle, such as eros and sex , or eros and love to the extent the soul is
capable of love, or sex and a semblance of love. Only in the ideal case
do all three forces mingle harmoniously. The Sex Force
The sex force is the creative force on any level of existence . In the
highest sphere s, the same sex force creates spiritual life, spiritual
ideas, and spiritual concepts  and principles. On the lower planes,
the pure and unspiritualized sex force creates life as it manifests in
that particular sphere; it creates the outer shell or vehicle of the
entity destined to live in that sphere. The pure sex force is utterly selsh. Sex without eros and without
love is referred to as animalistic. Pure sex as the reproductive force
exists in all living creatures: animals, plants, and minerals. Eros
begins with the stage of development where the soul is incarnated
as a human being. And pure love is to be found in the higher
spiritual realm s. This does not mean that eros and sex no longer
exist in beings of higher development, but rather that all three blend
in harmoniously, are rened, and become less and less selsh. Nor
do I mean that a human being should not try to achieve a
harmonious blend of all three forces. In rare cases, eros alone, without sex and love, exists for a limited
time. This is usually referred  to as platonic love. But sooner or later
with the somewhat healthy person, eros and sex will mingle. The
sex force, instead of being suppressed, is taken up by the erotic forceand both ow in one current. The more the three forces remain
separate, the unhealthier the personality is. Another frequ ent combinati on, particularly in relation ships of
long standing, is the coexistence of genuine love with sex, but without
eros. Althou gh love cannot be perfect unless all three forces blend
together, there is a certain amount of aection, companionship,
fondness, mutual respect, and a sex relationship that is crudely
sexual without the erotic spark, which evaporated some  time ago. When eros is missing, the sexual relationship must eventually suer. Now this is the problem with most marriages, my friends. There is
hardly a huma n being who is not puzzled by the question of what to
do in a relatio nship to maintain the spark that seems to evaporate
the more habit  and familiarity with one another set in. You may not
have posed the question in terms of three distinct force s, yet you
know and sense that somet hing goes out of a marriage that was
present at the beginning; that spark is actually eros. You nd
yourself in a vicious circle and think that marriage is a hopeless
proposition. No, my friends, it is not, even if you cannot as yet
attain the ideal. The Ideal Partnership of Love
In the ideal partnership of love between two people, all three
forces have to be represented. With love you do not seem to have
much diculty, for in most cases one would not marry if there did
not exist at least the willingness to love. I will not discuss at this
point the extreme cases where this is not so. I am focusing on a
relationship where the choice is a mature one and yet the partners
cannot get around the pitfall of becoming bound by time and habit,
because elusive eros has disappeared . With sex it is very much the
same. The sex force is present in most healthy human beings and
may only begin to fade—particularly with women—when eros has
left. Men may then seek eros elsewhere. For the sexual relationship
must eventually suer unless eros is maintained.How can you keep eros? That is the big question, my dear ones. Eros can be maintained only if it is used as a bridge to true
partnership in love in the highest sense. How is this done? The Search for the Other Soul
Let us rst look for the main element in the erotic force. When
you analyze it, you will nd that it is the adventure, the search for
the knowledge of the other soul. This desire lives in every created
spirit. The inherent life-force must nally bring the entity  out of its
separation. Eros strengthens the curiosity to know the other being. As long as there is somethin g new to nd in the other soul and as
long as you reveal yourself, eros will live. The moment you believe
you have found all there is to nd, and have revealed all there is to
reveal, eros will leave. It is as simple as that with eros. But where
your great error comes in is that you believe there is a limit to the
revealing of any soul, yours or another’s . When  a certain point of
usually quite supercial revelation is reached, you are under the
impression that this is all there is, and you settle down to a placid
life without further searching. Eros has carrie d you this far with its strong impact. But after this
point, your will to further search the unlimited depths of the other
person and voluntarily reveal and share your own inward search
determines whether you have used eros as a bridge  to love. This, in
turn, is always  determined by your will to learn how to love. Only
in this way will you maintain  the spark of eros in your love. Only in
this way will you continue to nd the other and let yourself be
found. There is no limit, for the soul is endless and eterna l: A whole
lifetime would  not suce to know it. There can never be a point
when you know the other soul entirely, nor when you are known
entirely. The soul is alive, and nothing that is alive remains static. It
has the capacity to reveal even deeper layers that already exist. The
soul is also in constant change and movement as anything spiritual
is by its very nature. Spirit means life and life means change. Since
soul is spirit, the soul can never be known utterly. If people had thewisdom, they would realize that and make of marriage the
marvelous journey of adven ture it is supposed to be, instead of
simply being carried as far as you are taken by the rst momentum
of eros. You should use this potent momentum of eros as the initial
thrust it is, and then nd through it the urge to go on further under
your own steam. Then you will have brought eros into true love in
marriage. The Pitfalls of Marriage
Marriage is intended by God for human beings , and its divine
purpose is not merely procreation. That is only one aspect. The
spiritual idea of marriage is to enable the soul to reveal itself and to
be constantly on the search for the other to discover forever new
vistas of the other being. The more this happens, the happier the
marriage will be, the more rmly and safely it will be rooted, and
the less it will be in danger of an unhappy ending. Then it will fulll
its spiritual purpose. In practice, however, marria ge hardly ever works that way. You
reach a certain state of familiarity and habit and you think you
know the other. It does not even occur to you that the other does
not know you by any means. He or she may know certain facets of
your being, but that is all. This search for the other being , as well as
for self-revelation, requires inner activity and alertness. But since
people are often tempted into inner inactivity, while outer activity
may be all the stronger as an overcompensation, they are being
lured to sink into a state of restfulness, cherishing the delusion of
already knowing each other fully. This is the pitfall. It is the
beginning of the end at worst, or at best a compromise leaving you
with a gnawing, unfullled longing. At this point the relationship
turns static. It is no longer alive even though it may have some very
pleasant featu res. Habit is a great temptress, pulling one toward
sluggishness and inertia, so that one does not have to try and work
or be alert any more.Two people may arrange an apparently satisfactory relationship,
and as the years go by they face two possibilities. The rst is that
either one or both partners become openly and consciously
dissatised. For the soul needs to surge ahead, to nd and to be
found, so as to dissolve separateness, regardless of how much the
other side of the personality fears union and is tempted by inertia. This dissatisfac tion is either conscious—although in most instances
the real reason for it is ignored—or it is unconscious. In either case,
the dissatisfact ion is stronger than the temptation of the comfort of
inertia and sluggishness. Then the marriage will be disrupted and
one or both partners will delude themselves into thinking that with
a new partner it will be dierent, particularly after eros has perhaps
struck again. As long as this principle is not understood , a person
may go from one partnership to another, sustaining feelin gs only as
long as eros is at work. The second possibility is that the temptation of a semb lance of
peace is stronger. Then the partners may remain togethe r and may
certainly fulll something together, but a great unfullled  need will
always lurk in their souls. Since men by nature embody more of the
active and adventurous principle, they tend to be polygamous and
are therefore more tempted by indelity than women. Thus you can
also understand what the underlying motive for men’s inclination to
be unfaithful is. Women tend much more to be passive because they
carry more of the receptive principle and are therefore better
prepared to compromise. This is why they tend to be monogamous. Of course, there are except ions, in both sexes. Such indelity is
often as puzzli ng to the active partner as to the “victim .” They do
not understand themselves. The unfaithful one may suer just as
much as the one whose trust has been betrayed. In the situation where compromise  is chosen, both people stagnate,
at least in one very import ant aspect of their soul development. They nd refuge in the steady comfort of their relationship. They
may even believe that they are happy in it, and this may be true to
some degree. The advantage s of friendship, companionsh ip, mutual
respect, and a pleasant life together with a well-established routine
outweigh the unrest of the soul, and the partners may have enoughdiscipline to remain faithfu l to one another. Yet an important
element of their relationship is missing: the revealing of soul to soul
as much as possible. True Marriage
Only when two people do this can they be puried together  and
thus help each other. Two developed souls can fulll one another by
revealing them selves, by searching the depths of each other’s soul. Thus what is in each soul will emerge into their consci ous minds,
and puricatio n will take place. Then the life-spark is maintained so
that the relationship can never stagnate and degenerate into a dead
end. For you who are on this path and follow the vario us steps of
these teachings, it will be easier to overcome the pitfalls and
dangers of the marital relati onship and to repair damage that has
occurred unwittingly. In this way, my dear friends, you not only maintain eros, that
vibrating life-force, but you also transform it into true love. Only in
a true partnership of love and eros can you discover in your partner
new levels of being you have not heretofore perceived. And you
yourself will be puried also by putting away your pride and
revealing yourself as you really are. Your relationship will always be
new, regardles s of how well you think you know each other already. All masks must fall, not only those on the surface, but even those
deeper down that you may not even have been aware of. Then your
love will rema in alive. It will never be static; it will never stagnate. You will never  have to search elsewhere. There is so much to see
and discover in this land of the other soul you have chosen, whom
you continue to respect, but in whom you seem to miss the life-
spark that once brought you together. You will never have to be
afraid of losing the love of your beloved; this fear will be justied
only if you refrain from risking the journey of self-revelation
together. This, my friends, is marri age in its true sense, and this is the
only way it can be the glory it is supposed to be.Separateness
Each of you should think deeply about whether you are afraid to
leave the four walls of your own separateness. Some of my friends
are unaware that to stay separate is almost a conscious wish. With
many of you it is this way: You desire marriage because one part of
you yearns for it—and also because you do not want to be alone. Quite superci al and vain reasons may be added to explai n the deep
yearning within your soul. But aside from this yearning and aside
from the supercial and selsh motives of your unfullled desire for
partnership, there must also be an unwillingness to risk the journey
and adventure  of revealing yourself. An integral part of life remains
to be fullled by you—if not in this life, then in future lives. Should you nd yourself alone, you may, with this knowledge and
this truth, repair the damage that you have done to your own soul
by harboring wrong concepts in your unconscious. You may
discover your fear of the great adventurous journey with another,
which will explain why you are alone. This understanding should
prove helpful and may even enable your emotions to change
suciently so that your outer life may change too. This depends on
you. Whoever is unwilling to take the risk of this great adventure
cannot succeed in the greatest venture humanity knows—marriage. Choice of Partner
Only when you meet love, life, and the other being in such
readiness will you be able to bestow the greatest gift on your
beloved, name ly your true self. And then you must inevitably
receive the same gift from your beloved. But to do that, a certain
emotional and spiritual maturity  has to exist. If this matu rity is
present, you will intuitively choose the right partner, one who has,
in essence, the same matur ity and readiness to embark on this
journey. The choice of a partner who is unwilling comes out of the
hidden fear of undertaking the journey yourself. You magneticallydraw people and situations toward you that correspond to your
subconscious desires and fears . You know that. Humanity, on the whole, is very far away from this ideal of the
marriage of true selves, but that does not change the idea or the
ideal. In the meantime you have to learn to make the best of it. And
you who are fortunate enough to be on this path can learn much
wherever you stand, be it only in understanding why you cannot
realize the happiness that a part of your soul yearns for. To discover
that is already a great deal and will enable you in this life or in
future lives to get nearer to the realization of what you yearn for. Whatever your situation is, whether you have a partner or are alone,
search your heart and it will furnish you the answer to your conict. The answer must come from within yourself, and in all probability it
will relate to your own fear, unwillingness, and ignora nce of the
facts. Search and you will know. Understand that God’s purpose in
the partnership of love is the complete  mutual  revelation of one soul
to another—not just a partial revelation. Physical revelation is easy for many. Emotionally you share to a
certain degree— usually as far as eros carries you. But then you lock
the door, and that is the moment when your troubles begin. There are many who are not willing to reveal anything. They
want to remain alone and aloof. They will not touch the experience
of revea ling themselves and of nding the soul of the other person. They avoid this in every way they can. Eros as a Bridge
My dear ones, once again: Understand how important the erotic
principle is in your sphere. It helps many who may be unwilling and
unprepared for the love-exp erience. It is what you call “falling in
love,” or “romance.” Throug h eros the personality gets a taste of
what the ideal love could be. As I said before, many use this feeling
of happiness carelessly and greedily, never passing the threshold
into true love. True love demands much more of people in a
spiritual sense. If they do not meet this demand, they forfeit the goalfor which their soul strives. This extreme of hunting for romance is
as wrong as the other, where  not even the potent force of eros can
enter the tightly locked door. But in most cases, when the door is
not too tightly  bolted, eros does come to you at certain stages of
your life. Whether you can then use eros as a bridge to love depends
on you. It depends on your development, your willingness, your
courage, your humility, and your ability to reveal yourself. Are there any questions in connection with this subject, my dear
friends? QUESTION : When you talk about the revela tion of a soul to another, do
you mean that, on a higher level, this is the way the soul reveals itself to
God? ANSWER : It is the same thing. But before you can truly revea l
yourself to God, you have to learn to reveal yourself to another
beloved human being. And when you do that, you reveal yourself to
God too. Many people want to start with revealing themse lves to the
personal God. But actually, deep in their hearts, such revelation to
God is only a subterfuge because it is abstract and remote. No other
human being can see or hear what they reveal. They are still alone. One does not have to do the one thing that seems so risky, requires
so much humility, and thus threatens to be humiliating. By
revealing yourself to another human being, you accomplish so much
that cannot be accomplished  by revelation to God who knows you
anyway, and who really does not need your revelation. When you nd the other soul and meet it, you fulll your destiny. When you nd another soul, you also nd another partic le of God,
and if you reveal your own soul, you reveal a particle of God and
give something divine to another person. When eros comes to you, it
will lift you up far enough so that you will sense and know what it
is in you that longs for this experience and what is your true self,
which is longing to reveal itself. Without eros, you are merely aware
of the lazy outer layers.Do not avoid  eros when it wants to come to you. If you
understand the spiritual idea behind it, you will use it wisely. God
will then be able to lead you and enable you to make the best of
helping anoth er being and yourself on the way to true love, of
which purication must be an integral part. Although your
purication work through a deeply committed relationship
manifests dierently than it does in the work on this path, it will
help you toward a purication of the same order. QUESTION : Is it possible for a soul to be so rich that it can reveal itself
to more than one soul? ANSWER : My dear friend, do you say that facetiously? QUESTION : No, I do not. I am asking whether polygamy is within the
scheme of spiritual law . ANSWER : No, it certainly is not. And when someone thinks it may
be within the scheme of spiritual development, that is a subterfuge. The personality is looking for the right partner. Either the person is
too immature to have found the right partner, or the right partner is
there and the polygamous person is simply carried away by eros’
momentum, never lifting this force up into the volitional love that
demands overcoming and working in order to pass the threshold I
mentioned before. In cases like this, the one with an adventurous personality is
looking and looking, always nding another part of a being, always
revealing himself or herself only so far and no further, or perhaps
each time revealing another facet of his or her personality. However, when it comes to the inner nucleus, the door is shut. Eros
then departs and a new search is started. Each time it is a
disappointment that can only be understood when you grasp these
truths.Raw sexual instinct also enters into the longing for this great
journey, but sexual satisfacti on begins to suer if the relationship is
not kept on the level I show you here. It is, in fact, inevitably of
short duration. There is no richness in revealing oneself to many. In
such cases, one either reveals the same wares all over again to new
partners, or, as I said before , one displays dierent facets of one’s
personality. The more partn ers you try to share yourself with, the
less you give to each. That is inevitably so. It cannot be dierent. QUESTION : Certain people believe that they can cut out sex and eros
and the desire for a partner and live completely for love of humanity. Do
you think it is possible that a man or woman can swear o this part of
life? ANSWER : It is possible, but it is certainly not healthy or honest. I
might say that there is perha ps one person in ten million  who may
have such a task. That may be possible. It may be in the karma for a
particular soul who is already developed this far, has gone through
the true partnership experie nce, and comes for a specic mission. There may also be certain karmic debts that have to be paid o. In
most cases—and here I can safely generalize—avoidance of
partnership is unhealthy. It is an escape. The real reason  is fear of
love, fear of the life-experience, but the fearful renunciation is
rationalized as a sacrice. To anyone who would come to me with
such a proble m, I would say, “Examine yourself. Go below the
surface layers of your conscio us reasoning and explanatio ns for your
attitude in this respect. Try to nd out whether you fear love and
disappointment. Isn’t it more comfortable to just live for yourself
and have no diculties? Isn’t really this what you feel deep inside
and what you want to cover up with other reasons? The great
humanitarian work you want to do may be for a worthy cause
indeed, but do you really think one excludes the other? Wouldn’t it
be much more likely that the great task you have taken upon
yourself would be better fullled if you learned personal love too?”If all these questions were truthfully answered, the person would
be bound to see that he or she is escaping. Personal love and
fulllment is man’s and woman’s destiny in most cases, for so much
can be learned  in personal love that cannot be attained in any other
way. And to form a durable and solid relationship in a marriage is
the greatest victory a human being can achieve, for it is one of the
most dicult things there is, as you can well see in your world. This
life experience will bring the soul closer to God than lukewarm good
deeds. QUESTION : I was going to ask a question in connection with my
previous one: Celibacy is supposed to be a highly spiritualiz ed form of
development in certain religious sects. On the other hand, polygamy is
also recognized in some religions—the Mormons, for instance. I
understand what you said, but how do you justify these attitudes on the
part of people who are supposed to look for unity with God? ANSWER : There is human error in every religion. In one religion it
may be one kind of error, in other religions another. Here you
simply have two extremes. When such dogmas or rules come into
existence in the various religions, whether at one extreme or
another, it is always a rationalization and subterfuge to which the
individual soul constantly resorts. This is an attempt to explain
away the countercurrents of the fearful or greedy soul with good
motives. There is a common belief that anything pertaining to sexuality is
sinful. The sex instinct arises already in the infant. The more
immature the creature, the more sexuality is separated from love,
and therefore the more selsh it is. Anything without love is
“sinful,” if you want to use this word. Nothing that is coupled with
love is wrong—or sinful. In the growing  child who is naturally immature, the sex drive will
rst manifest selshly. Only if and when the whole personality
grows and matures harmoniously will sex become integrated with
love. Out of ignorance, humanity has long believed that sex as suchis sinful. Therefore it was kept hidden and this part of the
personality could not grow up. Nothing that remains in hiding can
grow; you know that. Therefore, even in many grownups, sex
remains childish and separate from love. And this, in turn, has led
humanity to believe that sexuality is a sin and that the truly
spiritual person must absta in from it. Thus one of those oft-
mentioned vicious circles came into existence. Because of the belief that sex was sinful, the instinct could not
grow and meld with the love force. Consequently, sex in fact often is
selsh and loveless, raw and animalistic. If people would realize—
and they are beginning to do so increasingly—that the sex instinct is
as natural and God-given as any other universal force and in itself
not more sinful than any other existing force, they would break this
vicious circle, and more human beings would let their sex drives
mature and mingle with love—and with eros, for that matter. How many people exist for whom sex is completely separate from
love! They not only suer from bad conscience when the sex urge
manifests, but they also nd themselves in the position of being
unable to handle sexual feelings with the person they really love. Because of the distorted conditions and the vicious circle just
described, humanity came to believe that you cannot nd God when
you respond to your sex urges. This is all wrong; you cannot kill o
something that is alive. You can only hide it so that it will come out
in other ways which may be much more harmful. Only in the very
rarest cases does the sex force really become constructively
sublimated and make this creative force manifest in other realms. Real sublimati on can never occur when it is motivated by fear and
used as an escape. Does that answer your question? QUESTION : Perfectly, thank you. How does friendship between two
people t into this picture? ANSWER : Friendship is brotherly love. Such friendship can also
exist between man and woman. Eros may want to sneak in, but
reason and will can still direct the way in which the feelings taketheir course. Discretion and a healthy balance between reason,
emotion, and will are necessary to prevent the feelings from going
into an improper channel. QUESTION : Is divorce against spiritual law? ANSWER : Not necessarily. We do not have xed rules like that. There are cases when divorce is an easy way out, a mere escape. There are other cases when divorce is reasonable because the choice
to marry was made in immaturity and both partners lack the desire
to fulll the responsibility of marriage in its true sense. If only one
—or neither—is willing, divorce is better than staying together and
making a farce out of marriage. Unless both are willing to take this
journey together, it is better to break clean than to let one prevent
the growth of the other. That, of course, happens. It is better to
terminate a mistake than to remain indenitely in it without nding
an eective remedy. To generalize that divorce is always wrong is just as incorrect as
to say that it is always right. One should not, however, leave a
marriage lightl y. Even though it was a mistake and does not work,
one should try to nd the reasons and do one’s very best to search
out and perhaps get over the hurdles that are in the way, if both are
in any way willing. One should certainly do one’s best, even if the
marriage is not the ideal experience that I discussed tonight. Few
people are ready and mature  enough for it. You can make yourself
ready by trying to make the best of your past mistakes  and learn
from them. My dearest friends, think carefully about what I have said. There
is much food for thought in what I told you for each of you here,
and for all those who will read my words. There is not a single
person who cannot learn something from them. I want to close this lecture with the assurance to all of you that
we in the spirit world are deeply grateful to God for your good
eorts, for your growth. It is our greatest joy and our greatesthappiness. And so, my dear ones, receive the blessings of the Lord
again; may your hearts be lled by this wonderful strength coming
to you from the world of light and truth. Go in peace and in
happiness, my dear ones, each one of you. Be in God! OceanofPDF.com7 
The Spiritual Signicance of Relationship
“Life is relations hip,” says the Guide. Of all relationships, that
between man and woman is the greatest challenge and oppor tunity
for spiritual growth and mutuality. “But how can I relate
harmoniously with another person when I am still split within
myself?” This is the question the Guide wants us to ask of ourselves. He teaches us to establish intimate relationship with our own true
inner being and, through this newly acquired inner honesty, to
handle the various problems that arise in our relationships in a
truthful and constructive way . Greetings, my dearest, dearest friends. Blessings for every one of
you. Blessed be your very life, your every breath, your thoughts and
your feelings. This lecture deals with relationships and their tremendous
signicance from the spiritual point of view—that of individual
growth and unication. First, I would like to point out that on the
human level of manifestation individual units of consciousness do
exist, which sometimes harm onize, but very often conict, with one
another, creating friction and crisis. Yet beyond this level of
manifestation there are no other fragmented units of consciousness. Above the human level there is only one consciousness, through
which every single created entity is expressed dierently. When one
comes into one’s own, one experiences this truth, without, however,
losing a sense of individuality. This can be felt very distinctly whenyou deal with your own inner disharmonies, my friends. For there,
too, exactly the same principle applies. Unequal Development of Parts of Consciousness
In your present state, a part of your innermost being is developed
and governs your thinking, feeling, willing, and acting. There are
other parts, still in a lower state of development, that also govern
and inuence your thinking,  feeling, willing, and acting. Thus you
nd yourself divided, and this always creates tension, pain, anxiety,
as well as inner and outer diculties, Some aspects of your
personality are in truth; others, in error and distortion. The resulting
confusion causes grave disturbances. What you usually do is push
one side out of the way and identify with the other. Yet this denial
of a part of you cannot bring unication. On the contrary, it widens
the split. What must be done is to bring out the deviating,
conicting side and face it—face the entire ambivalence. Only then
do you nd the ultimate reality of your unied self. As you know,
unication and peace emerge to the degree you recogni ze, accept,
and understand the nature of the inner conict. Exactly the same law applie s to the unity or dissension between
outwardly separate and dierent entities. They, too, are one, beyond
the level of appearance.
The_Pathwork_of_Self-Transformatio_by_Eva_Pierrakos.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        The outcome seems to matter more than the issue
itself, for when the intensity of emotions is truly tested, it often has
no relationsh ip to the issue at stake. It would rather be
commensurate with a life-or-death issue. Although you may think
this irrational on a consciou s level, on an unconscious level being
wrong truly means being dead, for being wrong means being denied
by the other. On the dualistic plane, your sense of identity is
associated with the other person, not with your real self. As long as
you experience yourself only as the outer ego-self, you will depend on
others. Hence, a slight quarrel truly becomes a matter of life or
death, which explains the intensity of emotions when it comes to
proving your right and the other’s wrong. Only when you have
realized the center of your being, which embodies unication, does
your life cease to depend on others. On the dualistic plane each issue ends with either life or death. Life becomes terribly impo rtant in order to avoid death. Often
people fear death so much that they run into it head on. Such
individuals do not escape fear of death. Quite the contrary. Their
constant strug gle with life, which results from their fear and
struggle agains t death, renders them so unhappy that they believe
they don’t fear death. This is an illusion as long as life is
experienced on the dualistic plane, as long as one side is viewed as
important and is fought for, and the other side is seen as a threat
and is fought against. As long as you feel that you must win because
your side is true, while the other’s is false, you are deepl y involved
in the world of duality, and therefore in illusion, conict, andconfusion. The more you ght in this way, the greater the confusion
becomes. Human beings are habitually trained by upbringing, and
everything they learn from their surroundings agrees that one must
ght for one and against the other of any number of opposites. This
applies not only to material issues but even more to conce pts. Every
truth can thus be divided into two opposites, one being adhered to
as the “right” and the opposite aspect being declared the “wrong”
idea. In reality, however, the two complement one another. On the
unied plane, neither aspect  is thinkable without the other. There
the complements are not “enemies” or negations of each other; only
on the dualisti c plane of consciousness are they so opposed. There
every conict multiplies into intricate subdivisions of the primary
dualistic split. Since all this is a product of illusion, the longer the
conict continues, the less it can be solved and the more hopelessly
enmeshed you become in it. Let us now return to our exam ple and demonstrate how this is so. The more you prove your friend wrong, the more friction exists and
the less you obtain what you thought you would by provin g yourself
right and your friend wrong. You believe that by proving yourself
right and your friend wrong, your friend will nally accep t and love
you again and all will be well. When you do not succeed, you
misinterpret that and try harder, for you think you have not
suciently proven that you are right and the other is wrong. The
rift widens, your anxiety increases, and the more weapons you use
to win the ght, the deeper your diculties, until you actually
damage yourself and the other and act against your own best
interest. You are then faced with a further conict, which  arises out
of the rst dualistic split. In order to avoid a total rift, with all its
real and imagined threats— for real damage has begun to be
wrought—you are now faced  with the alternatives of having to give
in, in order to appease your friend and avoid further damage to
yourself, or to continue ghting. Since you are still convinced that
there is a right versus a wrong, such appeasement robs you of self-
respect and you ght agains t that. Whether you use this “solution”or not, you will be torn between ghting or submitting. Both create
tension, anxiety, and inner and outer disadvantages. Thus, a second  duality develops out of the rst. The rst is: “Who
is right and who is wrong. Only I can be right. Otherwise all is
bad. ” The second is either giving in to a wrong that you cannot
admit, for it is a total wrong, or continuing the ght. Admitting a
wrong means death, in a sense. So you are faced  with the
alternatives of either admitting a wrong, which means death in the
deep psyche, in order to avoid dreaded consequence s and the
possibility of a real risk, putting your life at a grave disadvantage,
again death, in the deepest sense, or insisting on your total
rightness. Any way you turn you nd death, loss, annihi lation. The
harder you ght for and against, the less there is to ght for and the
more all alternatives turn against you. The illusion that one side was
good and the other was bad has brought you to the inevitable next
step on this road of illusion, which is that all alternatives are bad. All dualistic struggle is fated to lead you into further traps, which
are all products of illusion. When the road to the unie d principle is chosen, soon what at
rst appeared as one certain good and one obvious bad ceases to be
so, and you inevitably encounter good and bad on both ends. When
this road is pursued still further, no longer is there any bad, but only
good. The road leads deep inside the real self, into truth  that goes
way beyond the fearful little ego’s interests. When this truth is
sought deep inside the self, one approaches the unied state of
consciousness. Our example is a banal one and can be translated
into many everyday issues, big or small. It can take shape as a small
squabble betwe en mates or as a conict between countries at war. It
exists in all diculties humanity encounters, individually and
collectively. As long as you nd yourself in this illusory dualistic
conict, you will experience hopelessness, for there is no way out on
the dualistic plane of thinking. As long as your very existence is
identied with the ego-self and therefore with the dualistic
approach to life, you cannot help but despair, no matter how much
this despair is covered up or momentarily alleviated by occasional
success with the desirable alternative of the two opposites. Thehelplessness and hopelessness, the wasted energy of the dualistic
struggle, rob you of your birthright. You can nd your birthright only
on the plane of unication. Since everything you learn from your education and environment
is geared to dualistic standards, it is not surprising that you are
totally attached  and adapted to this state of consciousness. And even
when you learn about the other possibility, you are fright ened of it. You cannot believe in it and you cling to what you know. This
creates a vicious circle, in that the dualistic rules and precepts,
which condition you to this way of life, are themselves a result of
your fear of giving up the egotistical state that alone  seems to
guarantee life. It appears that giving up this ego state means
annihilation of your individuality, which, of course, is utterly
erroneous. So, you have these dualistic rules becaus e of your
erroneous fears, and you cling to the false fears becau se of your
indoctrination. Before we discuss in greater detail why you cling to the painful
dualistic state, despite the immediate accessibility of the unied
plane of consciousness, I would like to say more about how to realize
unication within yourself. The real self, the divine principle, the
innite intelligence, or what ever you wish to call that deep inner
center existing  in every human being, contains all wisdom and truth
you can possibly envisage. The truth is so far-reaching and so
directly access ible that no further conict exists when this truth is
allowed to take eect. The ifs and buts of the dualistic state cease to
exist. The knowledge of this inborn intelligence far surpasses the
ego intelligence. It is completely objective; it disregards the small,
vain self-intere st—and this is one of the reasons you fear and avoid
contact with it. The truth that ows out of it equalizes the self with
others. Far from being the annihilation that the ego fears, that truth
opens up the storehouse of vibrant life force and energ y that you
usually use to only a minor degree and that you misuse in directing
your attention and hopes to the dualistic plane, with its tightly held
opinions, false ideas, vanity, pride, self-will, and fear. When this live
center activates you, you begin your limitless unfoldment, a process
whose accomp lishments become possible precisely because the littleego no longer wants to misuse them in order to nd life, as it did,
on the dualistic plane. The unied real self can always be contacted. Let us again return to
our example in order to see how. The hardest act to perform, which,
in reality, is the easiest act possible, is to ask, “What is the truth of
the matter. ” The moment you are more intent on the truth than on
proving that you are right, you contact the divine principle of
transcendent, unied truth. If the desire to be in truth is genuine,
the inspiration must come forth. No matter how strongly
circumstances seem to point in one direction, you must be willing to
relinquish and to question whether what you see is all there is to the
issue. This generous act of integrity  opens the way to the real self. It will be easier to follow through when you consider that it is not
necessarily a question of either/or, but that there may be aspects of
right in the other person’s view and of wrong in yours, aspects that,
so far, you have not seen because your attention was not even
directed to this eventuality. This approach to a problem
immediately opens the way to rise to the unied plane of existence
and to be moved by the real self. It immediately releases an energy
that is distinctly felt when this act is done with a deep and sincere
commitment. It brings release from tension. What you then nd out is always totally dierent both from what
you hoped for and feared on the dualistic plane. You nd that you
are not as right and innocen t as you thought, nor as wrong as you
feared. Neither is your opponent. You soon discover aspects of the
matter you never saw before, although they were not necessarily
concealed. You understand exactly how the quarrel came into
existence in the rst place, what led to it, what its history was long
before its actual manifestation. With such discoveries you gain
insight into the very nature of the relationship. You learn about
yourself and the other, you increase your understanding of the laws
of communication. The more vision you gain, the freer, stronger,
and more secure you feel. This vision not only eliminates this
particular conict and shows  the right way to straighten it out, but
it also reveals  important aspects of your general diculties and
makes their elimination easier through this understanding. Thevibrant peace that comes from this extended understanding is of
lasting value. It aects your self-realization and your daily life. What I described is a typical example of unied, intuitive
understanding: of knowing the truth. After the initial apparent need
for courage and the momen tary resistance to seeing a wider truth
than the egotistic one, your path becomes so much easier than the
struggle that ensues on the either/or plane of the dualistic life. Before you can bring yoursel f to the unied way of thinking and
being, the tension will mount, for as long as you remain on the
dualistic plane, you struggle against unication because you falsely
believe that the moment you admit and see where you are wrong
and the other is right, you submit and enslave yourself. You become
nothing, worth less, pitiful—and from there it is only a step to
annihilation in your fantasy life. Hence, you feel that leaving your
dualistic plane is the greatest danger. The tension will mount as
your conicts escalate. But the moment you are willin g to be in
truth, the moment you are eager and prepared, not merely to see
your way, your little truth, not to give in to the other’s little truth in
fear of the consequences if you do not, but when you wish to
possess the larger, more encompassing truth, which transcends both of
your little truths, a specic tension will be removed in your psyche. The way toward the manifestation of the real self will have been
prepared. Obstructions to Finding the Real Self
Let me recapit ulate here: The two most signicant obstructions to
the real self are ignorance of its existence and the possibility of
connecting with it; and a tight, cramped psychic state with tight,
cramped soul movements. These two factors make contact
impossible with the real self, and therefore with a unied state of
existence. As long as you are on a dualistic plane, you must be in a
constant soul cramp. When you ght against one dualistic aspect
and press for the other, observe your soul movements. Supercially,
you may lean on the apparent justication of the position  you pressfor. You may say, “Am I not perfectly justied in combating this
wrong in the world. ” On the dualistic plane this may indeed be so. But with this limited outlook you ignore that this very wrong exists
only because of your dualistic approach to the problem and your
prevalent ignorance that there is another approach. The resulting
tension blurs the view that other aspects exist which both unify
what you deem right and what you deem wrong, regardle ss of what
the wrong actually is. This simple act of wanting the truth requires several conditions,
the most important being the willingness to relinquish what one
holds on to, whether this be a belief, a fear, or a cherish ed way of
being. When I say relinquish, I merely mean questioning it and
being willing to see that there is something else beyond this outlook. This brings us back to why you are terried to relinquish the ego
state, hence the dualistic, painful way of life. Why do you resist so
much committing yourself to this deep inner center, which unies
all good and is instantly accessible. It is, however, beyond the
personal, little considerations of the ego. Your Ego Versus Your Divine Center
The dualistic plane is the plane of the ego. The unied plane is
the world of the divine center, the larger self. The ego nds its
whole existence on the plane in which it is at home. To relinquish
this plane means to give up the claims of the little ego. This does
not mean annihilation, but to the ego it seems to mean just this. Actually, the ego is a particle, an isolated aspect of the master
intelligence, the real, inner self. It is not dierent from it; there is
simply less of the real self in it. Since it is separate and limited, it is
less reliable than what it stems from. But this does not mean that
the ego has to be annihila ted. In fact, the ego will eventually
integrate with the real self so that there is one self, which will be
fuller, better equipped, wiser. It will have more and better assets
than you can imagine. But the separated ego thinks this development means
annihilation. In its ignorant, limited way, the ego exists only as a
separated being; hence, it pursues further separateness. Since the
limited conscio usness ignore s the existence of the real self—even if
it is accepted as a theory, its living reality will be doubted as long as
personal misconceptions are not eliminated—it fears letting go and
relaxing its tight hold, the very soul movement that leads to the real
self. This is the constant struggle of the ego until it ceases ghting
against an opposite through repeated recognitions of a wider truth
in every small personal issue. The real self cannot manifest  as long as personal problems are not
straightened out. But the process of doing this and the rst inklings
of self-r ealization often overl ap; the one furthers the other. This way
of looki ng at your basic human struggle may help you considerably. As long as you are totally  identied with your ego, you will
continue to cultivate more separation, and self-idealization must be
the consequence. Self-glorication and idealization seem, from this
point of view, the apparent salvation and guarantee to assuage your
existential fears. The ego thinks, “If everyone around me considers
me special, better than others, smart, beautiful, talented, happy,
unhappy, or even bad”—or whatever specialty you have chosen for
your idealized  self-gloricati on—“then I will receive the necessary
approval, love, admiration, agreement that I need in order to live. ”
This argument means that somewhere deep down you believe that
you can exist only through being noticed, armed, and conrmed
by others. You feel that if you go by unnoticed, you cease to live. This may sound exaggerated, but it is not. It explains why your
idealized self-image is so destructive. You feel more condent when
you make yourself noticed than when you make positive eorts. So your salvation seems to lie in others who would acknowledge
your existence  only if you are special. At the same time, the
misinterpreted message from the real self wants you to master life,
but you maste r it on the wrong plane and believe that you must
vanquish every resistance that is in your way. Each personal pseudo-
solution  is a way you have to eliminate your obstructions on the way
to specialness. Which pseudo-solution you have chosen depends onindividual character traits, on circumstances and early inuences. Whatever they are—and there are three basic ones: the aggressive,
the submissive, and the withdrawal solutions —they are destined to
triumph over others and establish your freedom and fulllment. Your existence seems to be guaranteed when you are totally
loved, accepted, and served by others, and you hope to attain this
by trium phing over them. You can now see that you are governed
by a succession of wrong conclusions, which are all completely
dierent in reality. Of course, all your reactions  and beliefs can be ascertain ed only
when you have learned to admit them. You also need to question
the meaning of a particular reaction and look behind the facade,
beyond what it pretends to mean. Once you admit this, it is easy to
verify that all these misconceptions govern you and rob you of the
beauty of reality. You will further come to see—not as a theory, but
as a reality— that your life does not depend on other people’s
armation of your existence; that you do not need to be special and
separate from others; that this very claim traps you in loneliness and
confusion; that others will give you love and acceptance only when
you do not wish to be bette r than they are, or special or dierent
from them. Also this love will come when your very life no longer
depends on it. When you have truly attaine d knowledge, your accomplishment,
in whatever eld this may be, cannot have the eect on others that
it has when accomplishment serves to set you apart. In the one case
your accomplishment will be a bridge to others, because  it is not a
weapon agains t them. In the other instance it will create antagonism
because you wish to be accomplished in order to be better than
others, which always means  that others should be less. When you
need to be better through your accomplishments, what you give to
the world must turn against you because you oer it in a spirit of
war. When you give of your accomplishments in order to enrich life
and others, you and your life will be enhanced by it because what
you oer is given in a spirit of peace. In the latter case, you become a
part of life. In taking from life—and the live center within yourself—and in giving back to life as an integral part of it, you act
according to the unied principle. Whenever you believe that “in order to live I must be better than
others, I must be separate” disappointment is inevitable. This belief
cannot bring the desired result because it is based on illusion. The
dualistic concept is “me versus the other. ” The more you ght
others, the less they will comply with your demand to arm your
self and the more you will experience this as a danger equal to
giving up the ght itself. So every way you turn seems to be
blocked. You make yourself utterly dependent on others  with your
illusory concep t that unless they approve of you, you are lost, while,
at the same time, trying to overrun them and triumph. You will
resent the former and feel guilty about the latter. Both create
intense frustrations and anxiety; both yield no salvation whatever. Notice the initial disinclination to question your assumptions
concerning any problematic issue in your life. This is your very
stumbling block, because your shying away from what appears so
painful and frightening make s it impossible to uncover the fallacy of
your hidden belief. When you look at your problems in as objective
and detached a way as you can muster, expressing the wider
outlook of the real self, as you turn your best intent and will to the
matter that disturbs you with a genuine wish for impartiality, you
will rst notice a shrinking back from such a desire and a more or
less overt or subtle way of covering up your desire for ight. Catch
yourself in this act and courageously forge on, questioning yourself
further and deeper. You will then come to see that, nally, the outer
diculty is a symbolic representation of your inner quarrel where
you ght for life against death, for existence against annihilation. You will see what you evidently believe is required from others in
order for you to exist. The Transition from Dualistic Error to Unied Truth
When you have arrived at this level of your being, you will be
able to questio n your precepts that lay the foundation for this. Andthis is the rst step to make possible the transition from dualistic
error to unied truth. You will further notice that relinquishing
ideals and convictions also feels like annihilation, for being wrong
means dying, and being right means living. The moment you go
through this movement of opening up and have the courage to want
the truth, a more complete truth than you can see at the moment in
whatever issue, you will come to a new peace and a new intuitive
knowledge about the way things are. Something in your hardened
psychic substance will have loosened up and will further prepare the
way for total self-realization. Each time you loosen up, the climate in your psyche will be more
auspicious for the nal, total awakening to your inner center, which
contains all life, all truth, all the unied goodness of creation. Every
step in this direction abandons another misconception; and each
misconception represents another burden. The giving up of what
rst seemed like protection from annihilation will now be disclosed
as what it really is: the giving up of a burden, suering,
imprisonment. You then comprehend the preposterous fact that you
are actually opposed to leaving the dualistic life, with all its
hardship and hopelessness. Perhaps you can now under stand some of this, and it will help
you in your personal path. When you apply this to your everyday
life, you will see that the abstract-sounding words I use here are not
something far away, but accessible for every one of you. You will
see that these words are practical and concrete, if only you are
willing to see yourself in relationship to life in a wider truth than
you are as yet willing even to contemplate. The message coming from the real self says, “Your birthright is
perfect happiness, freedom, and mastery over life. ” When you ght
for this birthright according to dualistic principles, you remove
yourself further and further from self-realization, in which you
could truly have mastery, freedom, and total fulllment. You seek
all this with false means. They are as varied as each individual’s
character. See how you personally try to set up the false ght leading into more
confusion and pain. In whatever way you try to win, you aredependent on others and on circumstances often way beyond your
actual control and therefore doomed to failure. This futile struggle
hardens your psychic materia l. The more brittle it becom es the less
you are able to contact the center of your inner being where
everything you could possib ly need is found: vital well-being and
productivity and inner peace, which are byproducts of nding the
real self. The only way you can enter the unitive state where you can truly
achieve maste ry is by lettin g go of the false need to win, to be
separate, to be special, to be right, to have it your way. Discover the
good in all situations, whethe r you deem them good or bad, right or
wrong. Needle ss to say, this does not mean resignation, nor does it
mean fearful giving in or weakness. It means going with the stream
of life and coping with what is as yet beyond your immediate
control, whether or not it is according to your liking. It means
accepting where you are and what life is for you at this moment. It
means being in harmony with your own inner rhythm. This
procedure will open the channel to your Godself, so that nally total
self-realization takes place. All your expressions in life will be
motivated and lived through by the divine principle operating in
you and expressing itself through your individuality, integrating
your ego faculties with the universal self. Such integration enhances
your individuality; it does not diminish it. It enhances every one of
your pleasures; it takes nothing away from you whatever. May every one of you comprehend that the truth is in you. Everything you need is in you. May you nd that you actually do
not have to struggle, as you constantly do. All you have to do is
recognize the truth, wherever you stand now. All you have to do, at
this time, is acknowledge that there may be more in you than you
see; call upon this inner center, and allow yourself to be open to its
intuitive messages to you. May you nd this possible exactly where
you need it most at this particular moment. Your gauge is always
what feels most uncomfortable,  what you are most tempted to look away
from. Be blessed, continue on your wonderful path, which will bring
you to the realization that you already have what you need and arewhere you need to be. You merely look away because you are
geared in the opposite direction. Be in peace. Be in God. OceanofPDF. com6 
The Forces of Love, Eros, and Sex
Since the dualistic state expresses itself on the level of our bodies
as the two sexes, we might just as well continue with the lecture on
love, eros, and sex, a particular favorite. No one is exempt from the
touch, or sometimes even the onslaught, of these forces. This lecture
sheds light on the confusion that exists in all of us whenever we love
or desire and helps to sort out the contradictory feelings. How to
keep eros. That is the question. Greetings in the Name of the Lord. I bring you blessings, my
dearest friends. Blessed is this hour. Tonight I would like to discuss three particular force s in the
universe: the love force as it manifests between the sexes, the erotic
force, and the sex force. These are three distinctly dierent
principles or forces that manifest dierently on every plane, from
the highest to the lowest. Humanity has always confused these three
principles. In fact, it is little known that three separate forces exist
and what the dierences between them are. There is so much
confusion about this that it will be quite useful to clear them up. The Spiritual Meaning of the Erotic Force
The erotic force is one of the most potent forces in existence  and has
tremendous momentum and impact. It is supposed to serve as thebridge between sex and love, yet it rarely does. In a spiritually
highly develop ed person, the erotic force carries the entity from the
erotic experience, which in itself is of short duration, into the
permanent state of pure love. However, even the strong momentum
of the erotic force carries the soul just so far and no farther. It is
bound to dissolve if the personality does not learn to love by
cultivating all the qualities and requirements necessary for true
love. Only when love has been learned does the spark of the erotic
force remain alive. By itself, without love, the erotic force burns
itself out. This of course is the trouble with marriage. Since most
people are incapable of pure love, they are also incapable of
attaining ideal marriage. Eros seems in many ways similar to love. It brings forth impulses
a human being would not have otherwise: impulses of unselshness
and aection he or she might have been incapable of before. This is
why eros is so very often confused with love. But eros is just as
often confused with the sex instinct which, like eros, also manifests
as a great urge. Now, my friends, I would like to show you what the spiritual
meaning and purpose of the erotic force is, particularly as far as
humanity is concerned. Without eros, many people would never
experience the great feeling  and beauty that is contained in real
love. They would never get the taste of it and the yearning for love
would remain deeply subme rged in their souls. Their fear of love
would remain stronger than their desire. Eros is the nearest thing to love the undeveloped spirit can experience. It lifts the soul out of sluggishness, out of mere conten tment and
vegetation. It causes the soul to surge, to go out of itself. When this
force comes upon even the most undeveloped people they become
able to surpass themselves. Even a criminal will temporarily feel, at
least toward one person, a goodness he has never known. The
utterly selsh person will, while this feeling lasts, have unselsh
impulses. Lazy people will get out of their inertia. The routine-
bound person will naturally  and without eort get rid of static
habits. The erotic force will lift a person out of separateness, be it
only for a short time. Eros gives the soul a foretaste of unity andteaches the fearful psyche the longing for it. The more strongly one
has experienced eros, the less contentment will the soul nd in the
pseudo-security of separateness. Even an otherwise thoro ughly self-
centered perso n may be able to make a sacrice during the
experience of eros. So you see, my friends, eros enables people to do
things they are disinclined to do otherwise; things that are closely
linked with love. It is easy to see why eros is so often confused with
love. The Dierence Between Eros and Love
How then is eros dierent from love. Love is a permanent state in
the soul; eros is not. Love can only exist if the foundation for it is
prepared through development and purication. Love does not come
and go at random; eros does. Eros hits with sudden force, often
taking a person  unawares and even nding him or her unwilling to
go through the experience. Only if the soul is prepared to love and
has built the foundation for it will eros be the bridge to the love that
is manifest between a man and a woman. Thus you can see how important the erotic force is. Without the
erotic force hitting them and getting them out of their rut, many
human beings would never be ready for a more conscious  search for
the breaking down of their own walls of separation. The erotic
experience puts the seed into the soul and makes it long for unity,
which is the great aim in the plan of salvation. As long as the soul is
separate, loneliness and unhappiness must be its lot. The erotic
experience enables the personality to long for union with at least
one other being. In the heights of the spirit world, union exists
among all beings—and thus with God. In the earth sphere, the erotic
force is a propelling power regardless of whether or not its real
meaning is understood. This is so even though it is often misused
and enjoyed for its own sake, while it lasts. It is not utilized to
cultivate love in the soul, so it peters out. Nevertheless, its eect
will inevitably remain in the soul. The Fear of Eros and the Fear of Love
Eros comes to people suddenly in certain stages of their lives,
even to those who are afraid of the apparent risk of adventuring
away from separateness. People who are afraid of their emotions
and afraid of life as such will often do anything in their power to
avoid—subconsciously and ignorantly—the great experience of
unity. Although this fear exists in many human beings, there are few
indeed who have not experi enced some opening in the soul where
eros could touch them. For the fear-ridden soul that resists the
experience, this is good medicine regardless of the fact that sorrow
and loss may follow due to other psychological factors. However,
there are also those who are overemotional, and although  they may
know other fears of life, they are not afraid of this particular
experience. In fact, the beauty of it is a great temptation to them
and therefore they hunt greedily for it. They look for one subject
after another, emotionally too ignorant to understand the deep
meaning of eros. They are unwilling to learn pure love, and simply
use the erotic force for their pleasure and when it is worn out they
hunt elsewhere. This is an abuse and cannot continue without ill
eects. Such a personality will have to make amends for the abuse—
even if it was done in ignorance. In the same vein, the too-fearful
coward will have to make up for trying to cheat life by hiding from
eros and thus withholding from the soul a medicine, valuable if used
properly. Most people in this category have a vulnerable point
somewhere in their soul through which eros can enter. There are
also a few who have built such a tight wall of fear and pride around
their souls that they avoid this part of life-experience entirely and so
shortchange their own development. This fear might exist because
in a former life they had an unhappy experience with eros, or
perhaps because the soul has greedily abused the beauty of the
erotic force without buildi ng it into love. In either case, the
personality may have chosen to be more careful. If this decision is
too rigid and stringent, the opposite extreme will follow. In the next
incarnation circumstances will be chosen in such a way that abalance is established until the soul reaches a harmon ious state
wherein there  are no more extremes. This balancing in future
incarnations always applies to all aspects of the personality. In order
to approach this harmony to some extent at least, the proper
balance between reason, emotion, and will has to be achieved. The erotic experience often mingles with the sexual urge, but it
does not alway s have to be that way. These three forces— love, eros,
and sex—often appear completely separately, while sometimes two
mingle, such as eros and sex, or eros and love to the extent the soul is
capable of love, or sex and a semblance of love. Only in the ideal case
do all three forces mingle harmoniously. The Sex Force
The sex force is the creative force on any level of existence. In the
highest sphere s, the same sex force creates spiritual life, spiritual
ideas, and spiritual concepts  and principles. On the lower planes,
the pure and unspiritualized sex force creates life as it manifests in
that particular sphere; it creates the outer shell or vehicle of the
entity destined to live in that sphere. The pure sex force is utterly selsh. Sex without eros and without
love is referred to as animalistic. Pure sex as the reproductive force
exists in all living creatures: animals, plants, and minerals. Eros
begins with the stage of development where the soul is incarnated
as a human being. And pure love is to be found in the higher
spiritual realm s. This does not mean that eros and sex no longer
exist in beings of higher development, but rather that all three blend
in harmoniously, are rened, and become less and less selsh. Nor
do I mean that a human being should not try to achieve a
harmonious blend of all three forces. In rare cases, eros alone, without sex and love, exists for a limited
time. This is usually referred  to as platonic love. But sooner or later
with the somewhat healthy person, eros and sex will mingle. The
sex force, instead of being suppressed, is taken up by the erotic forceand both ow in one current. The more the three forces remain
separate, the unhealthier the personality is. Another frequ ent combinati on, particularly in relation ships of
long standing, is the coexistence of genuine love with sex, but without
eros. Althou gh love cannot be perfect unless all three forces blend
together, there is a certain amount of aection, companionship,
fondness, mutual respect, and a sex relationship that is crudely
sexual without the erotic spark, which evaporated some  time ago. When eros is missing, the sexual relationship must eventually suer. Now this is the problem with most marriages, my friends. There is
hardly a huma n being who is not puzzled by the question of what to
do in a relatio nship to maintain the spark that seems to evaporate
the more habit  and familiarity with one another set in. You may not
have posed the question in terms of three distinct force s, yet you
know and sense that somet hing goes out of a marriage that was
present at the beginning; that spark is actually eros. You nd
yourself in a vicious circle and think that marriage is a hopeless
proposition. No, my friends, it is not, even if you cannot as yet
attain the ideal. The Ideal Partnership of Love
In the ideal partnership of love between two people, all three
forces have to be represented. With love you do not seem to have
much diculty, for in most cases one would not marry if there did
not exist at least the willingness to love. I will not discuss at this
point the extreme cases where this is not so. I am focusing on a
relationship where the choice is a mature one and yet the partners
cannot get around the pitfall of becoming bound by time and habit,
because elusive eros has disappeared. With sex it is very much the
same. The sex force is present in most healthy human beings and
may only begin to fade—particularly with women—when eros has
left. Men may then seek eros elsewhere. For the sexual relationship
must eventually suer unless eros is maintained. How can you keep eros. That is the big question, my dear ones. Eros can be maintained only if it is used as a bridge to true
partnership in love in the highest sense. How is this done. The Search for the Other Soul
Let us rst look for the main element in the erotic force. When
you analyze it, you will nd that it is the adventure, the search for
the knowledge of the other soul. This desire lives in every created
spirit. The inherent life-force must nally bring the entity  out of its
separation. Eros strengthens the curiosity to know the other being. As long as there is somethin g new to nd in the other soul and as
long as you reveal yourself, eros will live. The moment you believe
you have found all there is to nd, and have revealed all there is to
reveal, eros will leave. It is as simple as that with eros. But where
your great error comes in is that you believe there is a limit to the
revealing of any soul, yours or another’s. When  a certain point of
usually quite supercial revelation is reached, you are under the
impression that this is all there is, and you settle down to a placid
life without further searching. Eros has carrie d you this far with its strong impact. But after this
point, your will to further search the unlimited depths of the other
person and voluntarily reveal and share your own inward search
determines whether you have used eros as a bridge  to love. This, in
turn, is always  determined by your will to learn how to love. Only
in this way will you maintain  the spark of eros in your love. Only in
this way will you continue to nd the other and let yourself be
found. There is no limit, for the soul is endless and eterna l: A whole
lifetime would  not suce to know it. There can never be a point
when you know the other soul entirely, nor when you are known
entirely. The soul is alive, and nothing that is alive remains static. It
has the capacity to reveal even deeper layers that already exist. The
soul is also in constant change and movement as anything spiritual
is by its very nature. Spirit means life and life means change. Since
soul is spirit, the soul can never be known utterly. If people had thewisdom, they would realize that and make of marriage the
marvelous journey of adven ture it is supposed to be, instead of
simply being carried as far as you are taken by the rst momentum
of eros. You should use this potent momentum of eros as the initial
thrust it is, and then nd through it the urge to go on further under
your own steam. Then you will have brought eros into true love in
marriage. The Pitfalls of Marriage
Marriage is intended by God for human beings, and its divine
purpose is not merely procreation. That is only one aspect. The
spiritual idea of marriage is to enable the soul to reveal itself and to
be constantly on the search for the other to discover forever new
vistas of the other being. The more this happens, the happier the
marriage will be, the more rmly and safely it will be rooted, and
the less it will be in danger of an unhappy ending. Then it will fulll
its spiritual purpose. In practice, however, marria ge hardly ever works that way. You
reach a certain state of familiarity and habit and you think you
know the other. It does not even occur to you that the other does
not know you by any means. He or she may know certain facets of
your being, but that is all. This search for the other being, as well as
for self-revelation, requires inner activity and alertness. But since
people are often tempted into inner inactivity, while outer activity
may be all the stronger as an overcompensation, they are being
lured to sink into a state of restfulness, cherishing the delusion of
already knowing each other fully. This is the pitfall. It is the
beginning of the end at worst, or at best a compromise leaving you
with a gnawing, unfullled longing. At this point the relationship
turns static. It is no longer alive even though it may have some very
pleasant featu res. Habit is a great temptress, pulling one toward
sluggishness and inertia, so that one does not have to try and work
or be alert any more. Two people may arrange an apparently satisfactory relationship,
and as the years go by they face two possibilities. The rst is that
either one or both partners become openly and consciously
dissatised. For the soul needs to surge ahead, to nd and to be
found, so as to dissolve separateness, regardless of how much the
other side of the personality fears union and is tempted by inertia. This dissatisfac tion is either conscious—although in most instances
the real reason for it is ignored—or it is unconscious. In either case,
the dissatisfact ion is stronger than the temptation of the comfort of
inertia and sluggishness. Then the marriage will be disrupted and
one or both partners will delude themselves into thinking that with
a new partner it will be dierent, particularly after eros has perhaps
struck again. As long as this principle is not understood, a person
may go from one partnership to another, sustaining feelin gs only as
long as eros is at work. The second possibility is that the temptation of a semb lance of
peace is stronger. Then the partners may remain togethe r and may
certainly fulll something together, but a great unfullled  need will
always lurk in their souls. Since men by nature embody more of the
active and adventurous principle, they tend to be polygamous and
are therefore more tempted by indelity than women. Thus you can
also understand what the underlying motive for men’s inclination to
be unfaithful is. Women tend much more to be passive because they
carry more of the receptive principle and are therefore better
prepared to compromise. This is why they tend to be monogamous. Of course, there are except ions, in both sexes. Such indelity is
often as puzzli ng to the active partner as to the “victim. ” They do
not understand themselves. The unfaithful one may suer just as
much as the one whose trust has been betrayed. In the situation where compromise  is chosen, both people stagnate,
at least in one very import ant aspect of their soul development. They nd refuge in the steady comfort of their relationship. They
may even believe that they are happy in it, and this may be true to
some degree. The advantage s of friendship, companionsh ip, mutual
respect, and a pleasant life together with a well-established routine
outweigh the unrest of the soul, and the partners may have enoughdiscipline to remain faithfu l to one another. Yet an important
element of their relationship is missing: the revealing of soul to soul
as much as possible. True Marriage
Only when two people do this can they be puried together  and
thus help each other. Two developed souls can fulll one another by
revealing them selves, by searching the depths of each other’s soul. Thus what is in each soul will emerge into their consci ous minds,
and puricatio n will take place. Then the life-spark is maintained so
that the relationship can never stagnate and degenerate into a dead
end. For you who are on this path and follow the vario us steps of
these teachings, it will be easier to overcome the pitfalls and
dangers of the marital relati onship and to repair damage that has
occurred unwittingly. In this way, my dear friends, you not only maintain eros, that
vibrating life-force, but you also transform it into true love. Only in
a true partnership of love and eros can you discover in your partner
new levels of being you have not heretofore perceived. And you
yourself will be puried also by putting away your pride and
revealing yourself as you really are. Your relationship will always be
new, regardles s of how well you think you know each other already. All masks must fall, not only those on the surface, but even those
deeper down that you may not even have been aware of. Then your
love will rema in alive. It will never be static; it will never stagnate. You will never  have to search elsewhere. There is so much to see
and discover in this land of the other soul you have chosen, whom
you continue to respect, but in whom you seem to miss the life-
spark that once brought you together. You will never have to be
afraid of losing the love of your beloved; this fear will be justied
only if you refrain from risking the journey of self-revelation
together. This, my friends, is marri age in its true sense, and this is the
only way it can be the glory it is supposed to be. Separateness
Each of you should think deeply about whether you are afraid to
leave the four walls of your own separateness. Some of my friends
are unaware that to stay separate is almost a conscious wish. With
many of you it is this way: You desire marriage because one part of
you yearns for it—and also because you do not want to be alone. Quite superci al and vain reasons may be added to explai n the deep
yearning within your soul. But aside from this yearning and aside
from the supercial and selsh motives of your unfullled desire for
partnership, there must also be an unwillingness to risk the journey
and adventure  of revealing yourself. An integral part of life remains
to be fullled by you—if not in this life, then in future lives. Should you nd yourself alone, you may, with this knowledge and
this truth, repair the damage that you have done to your own soul
by harboring wrong concepts in your unconscious. You may
discover your fear of the great adventurous journey with another,
which will explain why you are alone. This understanding should
prove helpful and may even enable your emotions to change
suciently so that your outer life may change too. This depends on
you. Whoever is unwilling to take the risk of this great adventure
cannot succeed in the greatest venture humanity knows—marriage. Choice of Partner
Only when you meet love, life, and the other being in such
readiness will you be able to bestow the greatest gift on your
beloved, name ly your true self. And then you must inevitably
receive the same gift from your beloved. But to do that, a certain
emotional and spiritual maturity  has to exist. If this matu rity is
present, you will intuitively choose the right partner, one who has,
in essence, the same matur ity and readiness to embark on this
journey. The choice of a partner who is unwilling comes out of the
hidden fear of undertaking the journey yourself. You magneticallydraw people and situations toward you that correspond to your
subconscious desires and fears. You know that. Humanity, on the whole, is very far away from this ideal of the
marriage of true selves, but that does not change the idea or the
ideal. In the meantime you have to learn to make the best of it. And
you who are fortunate enough to be on this path can learn much
wherever you stand, be it only in understanding why you cannot
realize the happiness that a part of your soul yearns for. To discover
that is already a great deal and will enable you in this life or in
future lives to get nearer to the realization of what you yearn for. Whatever your situation is, whether you have a partner or are alone,
search your heart and it will furnish you the answer to your conict. The answer must come from within yourself, and in all probability it
will relate to your own fear, unwillingness, and ignora nce of the
facts. Search and you will know. Understand that God’s purpose in
the partnership of love is the complete  mutual  revelation of one soul
to another—not just a partial revelation. Physical revelation is easy for many. Emotionally you share to a
certain degree— usually as far as eros carries you. But then you lock
the door, and that is the moment when your troubles begin. There are many who are not willing to reveal anything. They
want to remain alone and aloof. They will not touch the experience
of revea ling themselves and of nding the soul of the other person. They avoid this in every way they can. Eros as a Bridge
My dear ones, once again: Understand how important the erotic
principle is in your sphere. It helps many who may be unwilling and
unprepared for the love-exp erience. It is what you call “falling in
love,” or “romance. ” Throug h eros the personality gets a taste of
what the ideal love could be. As I said before, many use this feeling
of happiness carelessly and greedily, never passing the threshold
into true love. True love demands much more of people in a
spiritual sense. If they do not meet this demand, they forfeit the goalfor which their soul strives. This extreme of hunting for romance is
as wrong as the other, where  not even the potent force of eros can
enter the tightly locked door. But in most cases, when the door is
not too tightly  bolted, eros does come to you at certain stages of
your life. Whether you can then use eros as a bridge to love depends
on you. It depends on your development, your willingness, your
courage, your humility, and your ability to reveal yourself. Are there any questions in connection with this subject, my dear
friends. QUESTION : When you talk about the revela tion of a soul to another, do
you mean that, on a higher level, this is the way the soul reveals itself to
God. ANSWER : It is the same thing. But before you can truly revea l
yourself to God, you have to learn to reveal yourself to another
beloved human being. And when you do that, you reveal yourself to
God too. Many people want to start with revealing themse lves to the
personal God. But actually, deep in their hearts, such revelation to
God is only a subterfuge because it is abstract and remote. No other
human being can see or hear what they reveal. They are still alone. One does not have to do the one thing that seems so risky, requires
so much humility, and thus threatens to be humiliating. By
revealing yourself to another human being, you accomplish so much
that cannot be accomplished  by revelation to God who knows you
anyway, and who really does not need your revelation. When you nd the other soul and meet it, you fulll your destiny. When you nd another soul, you also nd another partic le of God,
and if you reveal your own soul, you reveal a particle of God and
give something divine to another person. When eros comes to you, it
will lift you up far enough so that you will sense and know what it
is in you that longs for this experience and what is your true self,
which is longing to reveal itself. Without eros, you are merely aware
of the lazy outer layers. Do not avoid  eros when it wants to come to you. If you
understand the spiritual idea behind it, you will use it wisely. God
will then be able to lead you and enable you to make the best of
helping anoth er being and yourself on the way to true love, of
which purication must be an integral part. Although your
purication work through a deeply committed relationship
manifests dierently than it does in the work on this path, it will
help you toward a purication of the same order. QUESTION : Is it possible for a soul to be so rich that it can reveal itself
to more than one soul. ANSWER : My dear friend, do you say that facetiously. QUESTION : No, I do not. I am asking whether polygamy is within the
scheme of spiritual law. ANSWER : No, it certainly is not. And when someone thinks it may
be within the scheme of spiritual development, that is a subterfuge. The personality is looking for the right partner. Either the person is
too immature to have found the right partner, or the right partner is
there and the polygamous person is simply carried away by eros’
momentum, never lifting this force up into the volitional love that
demands overcoming and working in order to pass the threshold I
mentioned before. In cases like this, the one with an adventurous personality is
looking and looking, always nding another part of a being, always
revealing himself or herself only so far and no further, or perhaps
each time revealing another facet of his or her personality. However, when it comes to the inner nucleus, the door is shut. Eros
then departs and a new search is started. Each time it is a
disappointment that can only be understood when you grasp these
truths. Raw sexual instinct also enters into the longing for this great
journey, but sexual satisfacti on begins to suer if the relationship is
not kept on the level I show you here. It is, in fact, inevitably of
short duration. There is no richness in revealing oneself to many. In
such cases, one either reveals the same wares all over again to new
partners, or, as I said before, one displays dierent facets of one’s
personality. The more partn ers you try to share yourself with, the
less you give to each. That is inevitably so. It cannot be dierent. QUESTION : Certain people believe that they can cut out sex and eros
and the desire for a partner and live completely for love of humanity. Do
you think it is possible that a man or woman can swear o this part of
life. ANSWER : It is possible, but it is certainly not healthy or honest. I
might say that there is perha ps one person in ten million  who may
have such a task. That may be possible. It may be in the karma for a
particular soul who is already developed this far, has gone through
the true partnership experie nce, and comes for a specic mission. There may also be certain karmic debts that have to be paid o. In
most cases—and here I can safely generalize—avoidance of
partnership is unhealthy. It is an escape. The real reason  is fear of
love, fear of the life-experience, but the fearful renunciation is
rationalized as a sacrice. To anyone who would come to me with
such a proble m, I would say, “Examine yourself. Go below the
surface layers of your conscio us reasoning and explanatio ns for your
attitude in this respect. Try to nd out whether you fear love and
disappointment. Isn’t it more comfortable to just live for yourself
and have no diculties. Isn’t really this what you feel deep inside
and what you want to cover up with other reasons. The great
humanitarian work you want to do may be for a worthy cause
indeed, but do you really think one excludes the other. Wouldn’t it
be much more likely that the great task you have taken upon
yourself would be better fullled if you learned personal love too. ”If all these questions were truthfully answered, the person would
be bound to see that he or she is escaping. Personal love and
fulllment is man’s and woman’s destiny in most cases, for so much
can be learned  in personal love that cannot be attained in any other
way. And to form a durable and solid relationship in a marriage is
the greatest victory a human being can achieve, for it is one of the
most dicult things there is, as you can well see in your world. This
life experience will bring the soul closer to God than lukewarm good
deeds. QUESTION : I was going to ask a question in connection with my
previous one: Celibacy is supposed to be a highly spiritualiz ed form of
development in certain religious sects. On the other hand, polygamy is
also recognized in some religions—the Mormons, for instance. I
understand what you said, but how do you justify these attitudes on the
part of people who are supposed to look for unity with God. ANSWER : There is human error in every religion. In one religion it
may be one kind of error, in other religions another. Here you
simply have two extremes. When such dogmas or rules come into
existence in the various religions, whether at one extreme or
another, it is always a rationalization and subterfuge to which the
individual soul constantly resorts. This is an attempt to explain
away the countercurrents of the fearful or greedy soul with good
motives. There is a common belief that anything pertaining to sexuality is
sinful. The sex instinct arises already in the infant. The more
immature the creature, the more sexuality is separated from love,
and therefore the more selsh it is. Anything without love is
“sinful,” if you want to use this word. Nothing that is coupled with
love is wrong—or sinful. In the growing  child who is naturally immature, the sex drive will
rst manifest selshly. Only if and when the whole personality
grows and matures harmoniously will sex become integrated with
love. Out of ignorance, humanity has long believed that sex as suchis sinful. Therefore it was kept hidden and this part of the
personality could not grow up. Nothing that remains in hiding can
grow; you know that. Therefore, even in many grownups, sex
remains childish and separate from love. And this, in turn, has led
humanity to believe that sexuality is a sin and that the truly
spiritual person must absta in from it. Thus one of those oft-
mentioned vicious circles came into existence. Because of the belief that sex was sinful, the instinct could not
grow and meld with the love force. Consequently, sex in fact often is
selsh and loveless, raw and animalistic. If people would realize—
and they are beginning to do so increasingly—that the sex instinct is
as natural and God-given as any other universal force and in itself
not more sinful than any other existing force, they would break this
vicious circle, and more human beings would let their sex drives
mature and mingle with love—and with eros, for that matter. How many people exist for whom sex is completely separate from
love. They not only suer from bad conscience when the sex urge
manifests, but they also nd themselves in the position of being
unable to handle sexual feelings with the person they really love. Because of the distorted conditions and the vicious circle just
described, humanity came to believe that you cannot nd God when
you respond to your sex urges. This is all wrong; you cannot kill o
something that is alive. You can only hide it so that it will come out
in other ways which may be much more harmful. Only in the very
rarest cases does the sex force really become constructively
sublimated and make this creative force manifest in other realms. Real sublimati on can never occur when it is motivated by fear and
used as an escape. Does that answer your question. QUESTION : Perfectly, thank you. How does friendship between two
people t into this picture. ANSWER : Friendship is brotherly love. Such friendship can also
exist between man and woman. Eros may want to sneak in, but
reason and will can still direct the way in which the feelings taketheir course. Discretion and a healthy balance between reason,
emotion, and will are necessary to prevent the feelings from going
into an improper channel. QUESTION : Is divorce against spiritual law. ANSWER : Not necessarily. We do not have xed rules like that. There are cases when divorce is an easy way out, a mere escape. There are other cases when divorce is reasonable because the choice
to marry was made in immaturity and both partners lack the desire
to fulll the responsibility of marriage in its true sense. If only one
—or neither—is willing, divorce is better than staying together and
making a farce out of marriage. Unless both are willing to take this
journey together, it is better to break clean than to let one prevent
the growth of the other. That, of course, happens. It is better to
terminate a mistake than to remain indenitely in it without nding
an eective remedy. To generalize that divorce is always wrong is just as incorrect as
to say that it is always right. One should not, however, leave a
marriage lightl y. Even though it was a mistake and does not work,
one should try to nd the reasons and do one’s very best to search
out and perhaps get over the hurdles that are in the way, if both are
in any way willing. One should certainly do one’s best, even if the
marriage is not the ideal experience that I discussed tonight. Few
people are ready and mature  enough for it. You can make yourself
ready by trying to make the best of your past mistakes  and learn
from them. My dearest friends, think carefully about what I have said. There
is much food for thought in what I told you for each of you here,
and for all those who will read my words. There is not a single
person who cannot learn something from them. I want to close this lecture with the assurance to all of you that
we in the spirit world are deeply grateful to God for your good
eorts, for your growth. It is our greatest joy and our greatesthappiness. And so, my dear ones, receive the blessings of the Lord
again; may your hearts be lled by this wonderful strength coming
to you from the world of light and truth. Go in peace and in
happiness, my dear ones, each one of you.
The ignorance of its existence and the possibility of connecting with it.
What is the main obstacle to realizing the real self?
It is a bridge to true love and a means to reveal oneself and find the soul of another.
What is the purpose of the erotic force?
No, it is not possible or healthy to cut out sex and eros, as it is a natural and God-given force.
Is it possible to cut out sex and eros and live for humanity?
No, it is not possible to reveal oneself to God without first revealing oneself to another human being.
Can a person reveal themselves to God without first revealing themselves to another human being?
No, polygamy is not within the scheme of spiritual law, and it is an escape.
Is it possible to have multiple relationships or polygamy and still be spiritual?