The Text - Section 66
66. SHAME OF THE HIGHER SELF
Greetings. I bring you blessings, my dearest friends. Blessed is this hour. Blessed is each one
of you and your dear ones.
I have discussed at length with you the guilt and shame all human beings feel about their
lower selves, their faults and weaknesses, their misconceptions and deviations. Tonight I should like
to discuss another aspect of the human personality, the shame about the higher self, the best and
noblest in the human heart. This may sound incredible -- nevertheless it is so. I am certain that you
will all recognize the truth of these words when you listen carefully.
Strangely enough, people are just as ashamed of their faculties of love, humility, generosity --
the very best they have to offer -- as they are of the small, selfish and ungiving part of their nature.
Let us consider what causes this inner tragedy, this senseless struggle. One main factor is
responsible, which varies in extent, detail and manifestation with every individual.
When a child feels rejected -- and you know that every child does -- whether this feeling is
justified or unjustified makes no difference -- in most instances it feels more rejected by one of the
parents than by the other. This need not be so in reality, because the very parent who appears to
reject it may have more real love for the child than the other parent. But the way the child feels is
what counts as the inner impressions accumulate to form the images -- the petrified wrong
conclusions -- and establish the patterns of the person's subsequent emotional life.
The child would like to be loved and approved of to a much greater extent than is possible,
particularly by the parent who seems to reject it. When this exclusive tenderness and affection is not
forthcoming, the child feels it as a rejection, and a confusion arises in the soul. In the child's vaguely
felt emotions, love and acceptance from this particular parent becomes the most desirable aim, all
the more so because love and acceptance to the degree that the child would wish it seems
unattainable. The desired aim -- exclusive love and acceptance -- is confused with the parent
withholding it. In the confused, immature mind of the child, the rejecter now becomes desirable,
taking the place of that which was originally desired: exclusive love, approval, and acceptance. A
further result of this confusion is that the rejecter seems unloving. The mother or father is desirable
also because that which is wanted from him or her is desirable. Therefore, to be unloving is a
desirable state. The child's psyche says: "If I am unloving, I will be desirable, my love will be
sought. Just as I do not reject my rejecter, so will I no longer be rejected. Since the rejecter seems
cold, aloof, and free of emotions, this behavior pattern -- imagined or real -- becomes desirable and
something to be emulated.
When you consider this inner process, you will again find that although the process is not
logical when analyzed and the emotions are translated into clear-cut thoughts, it has its own quite
understandable limited logic in the child's mind. No conflict that arises in the psyche is utterly
meaningless, although the emotions can be very limited and faulty when examined closely. A true
picture can be obtained only after understanding the peculiar logic of confused emotions.
With the confusion about parental rejection in the unconscious, the personality grows into an
otherwise mature being, but retains the particular impression that is bound to color his or her entire
emotional life. Deep in the unconscious, he or she feels that it is undesirable, and therefore
shameful, to demonstrate all that for which the child within still yearns.
An individual's withdrawal from and refusal to love is often much less determined by the fear
of being hurt and disappointed than by the parental circumstances disclosed here. It is important to
recognize this element in you, no matter in how hidden and conflicting a way it may manifest by
contrary drives and compulsions. Heartbreaking problems arise from this conflict. They can be
eliminated only by recognizing the basic wrong conclusion with all its chain reactions and
ramifications.
There is, on the one hand, the guilt of selfishness and self-centeredness which makes loving an
unprofitable, disadvantageous adventure. There is, on the other hand, the shame of loving. This
conflict in itself tears apart the human heart. You try to force yourself to love, while your natural
desire coming from the higher self and truly wanting to love is stopped because you are ashamed of
it. Thus you feel guilty for not loving and ashamed to love.
Consider also that the child feels deeply humiliated when it yearns for love and affection but is
rejected instead. In its unconscious mind the idea forms that to love is humiliating. Since the most
desirable person for the child has withheld the love and the free giving of feelings, love must be
something shameful one has to hide. The realization that your fear of loving is often based less on
your fear of being hurt and disappointed than on the elements I am discussing is a very important
insight.
In your self-search you can find the existence of this conflict by recognizing various
symptoms. Self-observation will reveal how you react in certain situations, or rather how your
emotions react and behave. These reactions are often quite subtle. Such subtleties are at work when
you are ashamed to ask for something, or when you detect an acute feeling of shame about showing
your heart and exposing your innermost need. Or, for instance, you find that you are ashamed to
pray. Does not that which you are ashamed of -- the need of your heart, the demonstration of your
true self with all its loving generosity, as well as prayer -- stand for the best in you?
This is another universal conflict. Sometimes it is very obvious, then again it becomes
compounded with so many other conflicts that it is hard to detect. Nevertheless, some of this basic
conflict exists in every individual.
Certain particular circumstances also play a role and determine the intensity of this conflict.
Observe your relationship to the other parent, the one who seems to give freely what you desire
from the rejecter. If the situation is such that the rejecter is outwardly the "superior" one, always the
winner, while the loving parent is subdued, apparently weaker and under the domination of the
rejecting parent, and perhaps even a little bit despised, the conflict becomes even stronger in the
soul -- whether this is actually so or not makes no difference, as long as the child feels it to be so.
Then, in addition to its own experience of rejection, the child witnesses the apparent or actual
rejection of the loving parent. The child then gains the impression that the loving parent is weak,
while the rejecter is strong. Therefore love becomes weakness, while aloofness is a sign of strength,
at least in the unconscious. The child's desire is to be as strong as the desirable parent, and certainly
not as weak as the undesirable one.
Your wrong conclusions in this respect may be manifold. It may be completely wrong that
the rejecter is strong, while the loving parent is weak. It may be the very opposite. But the situation
between your parents may actually be somewhat as you see it. Then the wrong conclusion is that it
is not love that makes the giving parent weak, but other attributes. It may be a distortion of love
that causes the weakness. Or, the capacity for love is relatively real and other factors cause the
weakness and afflict the love capacity. On the other hand, the "strong" rejecter may really not be
strong. He or she may have many desirable qualities worthy of emulation, but certainly not the
aloofness from love and the inhibition of displaying the best qualities of his or her personality.
The situation is further complicated if, for instance, due to many other contributing factors,
the domineering "strong" parent is the one who gives more love than the weaker parent who is
under the dominion of the "strong" one. Each parent may then have "desirable" qualities, but they
often conflict with one another. You may unconsciously despise in one parent what you try to
emulate in the other, being torn apart by the very fact that you are unaware of what you want and
that your aim is unrealizable because certain factors in it cancel each other out. When the situation
with the parents is not so extreme, it is harder for you to get to the root of the problem. Then it
becomes more complicated by the subtlety and elusiveness of contradictory emotions in the parents
as well as in yourself. To recognize this is so important because it causes you even more hardship.
A further complication is that often the outward appearance does not correspond to the inner
situation. Outwardly one parent may be much more domineering than the other. Inwardly, the
situation may be just the opposite. Or, outwardly neither is domineering and "strong," but inwardly
such an imbalance in the relationship exists very definitely. You must not forget that especially as a
child, you absorb the inner situation, you register it very finely, while you retain the outer situation in
your intellectual memory. The latter has much less effect on you than the former. No matter how
the outer situation appears, you acutely feel the dependent, wanting, needing parent as inferior, while
the one who rejects these wants and needs you regard as strong and superior. Thus, you ally
yourself in an ever so subtle way with the rejecter and, together with him or her, you reject the weak
parent. You would rather be accepted by the desirable rejecter than be identified with the weak,
needy and dependent parent. As far as your innermost self is concerned, whether you actually betray
the weak parent in words or deeds, or if you merely desire to do so, does not matter. The mere
inclination is sufficient for you to feel this as a betrayal and, in a sense, it is that. The betrayal is
aggravated because you abandon the very thing you yearn for.
You betray the best in you because you prohibit the unfoldment of your love capacity. At the
same time, you betray the parent who has actually given you what you desired to receive from the
other parent. You now unconsciously consider his or her very act of giving as a weakness that
deserves contempt.
The betrayal is subtle, but it is at the same time the most dominant conflict in your soul. In
the course of your work it is necessary to find that part in you where you betray not only the best,
the highest and the noblest in you, but also the one parent who was the weaker one to begin with,
and who might have loved and cherished you in a much more satisfying way. To find and stop this
inner betrayal is important not because the parent you have rejected suffers from it, but mostly
because you suffer from it much more than you realize. The betrayal weighs you down with guilt. It
is the deepest of your guilts.
Only the other day we discussed guilt feelings, and I spoke about how often people create
imaginary guilts, or blame themselves for very unimportant shortcomings in order not to face their
main guilt. For most of you, the betrayal of loving is your main guilt which you keep locked away
from consciousness. As long as you do not become aware of and face all the ramifications and
aspects of your betrayal of the one who has loved you most for the one who has given you less -- at
least, according to your feelings -- that betrayal darkens your outlook on life. It eliminates your self-
assurance, your self-confidence, your self-respect. It is responsible for the deepest roots of your
inferiority feelings. You do not trust yourself with this betrayal locked in your soul. Your psyche
says: "How can I trust myself knowing that I am a traitor, knowing that I go on constantly betraying
the best in me? If I cannot trust myself, I cannot trust anyone else." That is the natural result, a
further chain reaction. If you do not trust people, you are bound to attract those who will
constantly confirm to you that you have no reason to trust them. But if you genuinely trust others,
you will have the proper discrimination and judgment and will attract a good many who will warrant
your trust. This can only happen if you first establish the reason for not trusting yourself. And this,
in turn, can happen only if you find and eliminate the basic betrayal I have indicated.
So, my friends, find in yourself the betrayal which you have been carrying. Follow it through,
even if you no longer have the opportunity to observe the interaction with your parents. You may
be transferring the same feelings to other people, who in some remote way replace them
psychologically. That may be a friend, a husband, a wife, a relative, an associate; someone who is
near and dear and important to you in some way. Perhaps you continue the betrayal in the same
subtle way as you betrayed the parent. Whenever you reject a person who is ready to offer you
genuine love and affection or friendship or help in some way, and for one reason or another you feel
or imagine this person to be helpless or weak or dependent, he or she takes on the role of the
"weak" parent. On the other hand, there may be another person not so ready to give you what you
wish. It need not be love, it may be respect, admiration, acceptance. Then this person takes on the
role of the rejecting parent. Examine your most subtle and elusive emotions. Go behind the
sometimes valid aspects which may still be rationalizations for the inner betrayal you commit all over
again against the one parent, as well as against your innermost self.
The act of betrayal is so very subtle, my dear friends, that you cannot put your finger on it by
looking at your outer actions only. No overt deeds can be found to prove the act of betrayal. If you
are not truly desirous of examining your innermost reactions and emotions in this respect, no one
can convince you. You will find excellent arguments to prove that it is not so. But your heart will
never be convinced, and that is what really matters.
The problem, in its simplest terms, is based on the following wrong conclusion: Love is
weakness; withholding love and affection is strength. Since you do not wish to be weak and needy,
you not only emulate the person who corresponds to your wrong concept of strength, but you also
betray the one who seems weak to you. Once you find your emotions, reactions, and attitudes that
correspond to this misconception, you can reconsider the concepts and form new ones according to
truth. You will then see that many confusions and errors exist in you, causing you to commit acts of
betrayal which have many further negative consequences in your inner and outer life. This
realization and a discriminating attitude toward your inner motives will give you strength by enabling
you to approach reality. It is of utmost importance that you begin to search in this direction. Find
the part in your emotions where you ascribe weakness to acts of love and humility that are tendered
in a healthy and real sense. Find in you the part which believes that strength is aloofness or
coldness. When you find that, you will find your self-betrayal.
By finding the wrong concepts and then, little by little, adopting the right concepts, you will
cease to fear that love is humiliating; that humility, generosity, affection, and a demonstration of
your true self are signs of weakness. Your true self is very often hidden behind a wall of stone. This
wall of stone is not wickedness, or even selfishness. Neither is it the fear of being hurt and
disappointed. Yes, all these also contribute, but to a lesser degree. The main component of the wall
behind which you hide the real you is the shame of imagined weakness, of being yourself with all the
tenderness and understanding, with all the sympathy and vulnerability of your loving heart.
There are many people who may say, "This does not apply to me, because I am a very
demonstrative person. I give my love fully and freely." In such a case, it may be partly true that the
real self comes out of hiding. But in the very rarest of instances -- only in an entity very far
advanced in purification -- is this entirely so. Part of the real self manifests, but another part remains
hidden. Yes, you may have the generous heart that wants to give the utmost and whose love may
penetrate the many layers of error and misconception. Yet, you also withdraw behind your shell, or
your wall. A part of what you display as love and as giving yourself may not come out of your real
self, but may be "borrowed," so to speak. Then it is not really your own. Again, this is a subtle
thing. Only in your personal work can you feel whether or not this is so, and to what extent.
Why is it that you hold the best in you encased, while you "borrow" a similar behavior pattern
and use it as a substitute for the real? The loving, giving, outgoing personality you may be at times
might very well be only a part of your true self. Why? As I just explained, the shame of loving and
giving causes you to hide your true self behind a wall. The inevitable effect must be the realization
that you are condemned and left alone. This in no way leads you to reconsider the first impression
that loving is shameful. In the first place, this conclusion is no longer conscious, therefore you
cannot change it. You know very well that nothing can be changed as long as it is hidden from
consciousness. In the second place, the first impression, causing the wrong conclusion, is much
stronger, infinitely more powerful, than all subsequent impressions and experiences. Hence, you
make a compromise by retaining the original wrong conclusion: "I must not love, I must not expose
my real self," and add to it the newer experience that remaining aloof brings censure and loneliness.
The latter causes you to assume a veneer of outgoingness, expressing emotions and love that are not
quite real. You still do not display your real self.
I do not mean that this substitute outgoing personality is an affectation, or what you may term
"phony." No, it is again much more subtle than that. It is a part of your being, but is not the real
self. Some emotions of the real self are components of this superimposed layer, however. Many
other currents, stemming from these conflicts, dilute the purity of the original and real personality.
In a subtle way, you dramatize yourself and your love all the more because you do not dare to show
that which is real. This happens in many facets of life. It is most easily found in the love
relationship between the sexes.
You can see where this particular phase of the work will lead you. By finding and
understanding how the betrayal applies to your own case, you will also find that you keep your real
self hidden most of the time. With this realization you prepare the ground to allow your real self to
evolve, to come out in the open. This work is not as easy as it may seem, nor is it as difficult as it
may appear to some of you.
You may already sense at this point that the goal of purification is to free your true
personality. That is the real meaning of freedom and the only possible way to live happily, to be
strong in a healthy and real sense. The very fact of becoming aware of the universal conflict around
the shame of the higher self, of beginning to feel how it exists in you personally, even long before
you are able to open the prison door and let your real self out, will cause you to experience a
wonderful new inner strength. The awareness that this exists in you and the constant observation of
how it manifests in your daily emotional reactions will bring you nearer to the removal of your
prison bars, so that you can liberate the real you.
The real you will rejoice. You will then see clearly and without a doubt that it was wrong to
have thought that you have to hide the best in you, that it is something shameful. You will see what
an unnecessary burden it was to keep your real self hidden. One person will hide it behind a mask
of aloofness and pseudo-strength. Another will hide it behind a superimposed layer of something
that resembles the real self in all its best aspects, but is not quite it. In both cases you have to
remove the false layer and look where the real self is. Allow it to step out, even if at the beginning it
does so only on rare occasions, ever so cautiously. But then the real you will see that you do not
have to fear, you do not have to be ashamed. The fear comes mostly as a consequence of the shame
of the exposure. By this process you will remove the phantom world you have created out of the
false impressions of your childhood. You have no idea what a tremendous relief it is to exorcise this
phantom world and live in reality. Only the real you can live in it, for the superimposed layers,
created out of unreal concepts, cannot live in a world of reality. You will live in freedom; you will
no longer find it necessary to betray the best in you, or betray another.
Are there any questions on this subject, my friends?
QUESTION: How is all this related to the Oedipus complex?
ANSWER: In the condition called the Oedipus complex the connection between it and the
conflict I have discussed is as follows: The awakening sex instinct mingles with the longing to be
loved by the rejecting parent. Whenever this is the case, the conflict is aggravated. When the
awakening sex instinct turns to the other parent, the one who does not reject, or rejects much less,
the problem under discussion tonight may not be as strong, but the soul-condition may then be
much more complicated and conflicting. It is impossible to generalize. Each case is unique and has
to be investigated. Then one can see how it all connects.
QUESTION: I read a book called Cosmic Consciousness. It says, "The loss of the sense of
sin is one of the most striking characteristics of the state of cosmic consciousness." What does this
mean?
ANSWER: Your world on earth, as you all know from the lectures and teachings you have
received, is a world of unreality. You may term it a temporary reality. The things you experience,
the deductions you make with the surface logic of the intellect which ignores spiritual and absolute
truth, are faulty. They have a limited value and truth, like the wrong conclusions of the soul made
by the child, which apply correctly to a particular situation. They are not without their own peculiar
logic, limited as it may be. Nevertheless, these conclusions are wrong and unrealistic if applied as a
general truth of life. The same relationship exists between the conclusions and deductions the
intellect forms correctly as applied to the temporary circumstances of certain conditions in this life
on the earth plane and the spiritual laws of absolute reality where these same deductions and
conclusions are wrong.
Sin, as you all know, is nothing but ignorance. It is distortion. No one is wicked or bad or
malicious because he enjoys it for its own sake. A person may be all those because he mistakenly
thinks it serves him as a protection. The more you analyze and understand yourself, the more you
will find this to be true in your own case, and therefore it must hold true also for others. So, when
people behave negatively, you will no longer feel frightened or personally involved. It will no longer
cause you hardship. This may sound impossible, but it is true.
When a person has raised his or her consciousness and perceives inklings of absolute truth, he
or she then realizes that there is no such thing as evil, badness, sin, malice. All this prevails only as
long as you live in this earth sphere with the limited outlook caused by your own distortions. Once
you raise yourself above this state of error, you will see that all evil on this plane is nothing but a
defensive weapon, or rather, a pseudo-defensive weapon, for in reality it has the very opposite
effect. Once you understand the motive of evil and sin, you no longer fear it, you no longer feel
personally at stake, and therefore you lose the sense of its reality. You are all on the way toward
experiencing this truth, at least to some degree.
When you find and dissolve your own wrong conclusions, nothing will any longer prevent you
from loving and being free. You then remove the part in you that was in darkness, that was selfish
and unloving because of the wrong conclusions. Where you have found and removed the error, you
have a true concept of reality, you can love without fear, and therefore you live without sin, if you
want to use this expression. Evil and sin are products of an illusory world that exists only while you
live in the illusion, but they have no absolute reality. The moment you raise your consciousness, you
are free of the illusion; it no longer has any reality whatsoever. Even when you see error in others,
with this raised consciousness you will see through it, you will understand its significance, its origin,
and so you will realize its very temporary effect. Actually, error, or sin, has no effect on reality at all;
it only affects those who still live in unreality while they live in it.
QUESTION: I would like to ask a question about Genesis. In the Garden of Eden, the two
trees: I understand why the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was forbidden -- because we have to get
it slowly by ourselves, instead of having it served us on a silver platter. But I don't understand the
other, the Immortality. After all, as spirits we are immortal anyway, so we have already eaten the
fruit. Why is it forbidden?
ANSWER: It refers to your life on earth, of course. It applies, just like the Tree of
Knowledge, to the incarnated spirit. The meaning of both trees could not possibly apply to the
liberated spirit who lives in the absolute reality of the spirit world. If human beings were born with
the inner conviction, the inner certainty, not brought about by the labor of self-development, that
they are immortal in spirit while they are not yet purified, their instinct for survival would be too
weak. They have to have the uncertainty to the extent that they still have to solve their inner
problems and confusions. This is for their own protection. They would not undertake the difficulty
of earth life; they would be lazy. They might prefer to develop in a slower way or be satisfied with a
slightly raised consciousness, affording them better conditions, but they would lack the incentive of
freeing themselves completely so as to enter sooner into a state of unity. The entire Plan of
Salvation would come to fruition so much later if people would not hold on to earth life because
they have no certainty yet. The prohibition of this knowledge speeds development.
On the other hand, if the inner sense and conviction of immortality comes as a result of the
hard labor of development, it will not reduce the will to live on earth. On the contrary, developed
beings will then welcome life on earth in another sense, and even more than before, when they
simply held on because they were uncertain. The joy of life on earth in the knowledge that there
exists a much better state is a byproduct of spiritual development, of a higher state of consciousness.
Those who have succeeded in working themselves through to a higher consciousness know they are
immortal. They know so because in the sweat of their labor they have freed themselves of error.
They will then find beauty in earth life, not because they think this is the only form of life and they
have to hold on to it, but just because they know there is more.
The lack of this raised state of consciousness may make life on earth difficult; the outlook is
rather gloomy because you still live in the illusion of evil and sin, in error and misconception. But
no matter how hard you find it, if self-destructiveness is not abnormally strong, you will hold on to
life -- and this is good and important. However, if without the organic growth of self-development,
the inner conviction of immortality -- I do not speak of belief -- were given to humans "on a silver
platter," as you put it, they would not hold on to life. I do not say that such people would
necessarily commit suicide, but their struggle to keep their joy in life alive, even if it manifested only
rarely, their capacity to see beauty in it would not be awakened.
My dearest friends, I will withdraw into my world and leave you again with divine blessings,
with love and strength, with all the help we can give each one of you who is on this path. May this
will of yours to work yourself through to real freedom bring you the joy you are entitled to have and
which you can have through your self-liberation. Be blessed, my dear ones, be in peace, be in God!