The Pulse of Life on all Levels of Manifestation

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 238 | June 11, 1976

Greetings, divine blessings for every one of you here, my very beloved friends.  And special greetings and blessings for our friends here from across the sea [Peter and Eileen Caddy from Findhorn].  As I said before, there is a very deep, significant meaning to the meeting of these two light centers.  The reality of this meaning already exists on the inner level of being.  On the outer level of manifestation, it takes some time before the inner meaning can fully materialize.  More steps, effort and groping may be necessary before outer consciousness follows suit and brings into fruition what the plan is.  A mutual nourishment can come about that is of utmost importance.  It has much greater meaning than many other linkages, for there are specific contributions to be made by each community to the other that will not only enhance the two light centers, but will eventually benefit all other light centers.

The outer mind is sluggish at times and does not immediately comprehend and follow through.  But the greater meaning can indeed become a reality if you use all your feelers, your inner sensitivity, to attune to the meaning of this meeting, or linking.  A mutual giving and exchanging and learning can become an ongoing process that will yield much more than you can now imagine.

The new age that has begun to manifest is, among other things, an age of connecting and linking in many ways, in many areas, and on many levels.  The connecting must take place primarily on the inner levels, within the personality, but also on the outer levels, so that eventually nations, religions, and all such differences will disappear.  This does not mean that individuality and very individual self-expression will disappear.  By no means.  Quite the contrary is true.

In the age of duality, from which you are practically moving out now, diversity existed on outer levels, while uniformity and conformity often existed within the personality, wiping out true individual expression.  The age of unity and unification brings a much different picture.  Outer diversity or differences will disappear, for they lose their importance.  Outer belief systems will no longer be confused with inner independence of spirit.  Personal identity will no longer be attached to nationality, or religious affiliation.  Thus a defiant rigidity will no longer prevent people from finding their soul’s oneness with the all.

Diversity and the individual divine expression of each human being will gain a much greater importance in the new age.  Out of group unification and group consciousness a much more clearly defined individual will evolve.  These clearly defined individuals will contribute a greater unity to the group process.

In the lecture I am about to deliver, my very beloved friends, I will speak about a specific phenomenon that will clarify what I meant when I mentioned the very special mutual contribution of these particular two light centers.  The topic of this lecture deals with the pulsation of life and consciousness.  Everything is pulsation:  divine pulsation.  The universal spirit pulsates into matter.  Matter is enlivened by the pulse of the divine.  The divine movement pushes its way forth into the void, expanding and contracting.  Each expansion moves the eternal life forward and enlivens the void with spirit.  As I said before, the “momentary” meeting of divine substance and the void creates matter.

The pulse is a phenomenon of life that you are well aware of on the physical plane.  The physical body is alive through the pulsations of the organism.  The heart pulsates, the lungs pulsate, the bloodstream pulsates.  These are known phenomena.  But you are not familiar with the more finely calibrated pulsations of life in the body, in the mind, in the feeling self, and in the spiritual push that expands into the void and thus makes the void no longer a void.  It becomes life.

Each individual life manifestation—be it a human entity or another organism—is a pulse beat.  Life penetrates all organisms.  As long as manifest life lasts, the pulse of universal life expands into this particular organism.  It is one single pulse.  Yet each life manifestation contains many different pulse beats, different laws, according to which different rhythms create their own pulsatory rates.  As the body has different pulse systems—and there are pulse systems in the physical body that are not yet known to you, for each organ, each cell, each pore, each molecule has its own pulse system—so do the layers of consciousness different pulse beats, pulse systems, pulsatory laws.

The existence of your earth plane is one pulse beat of the universal clock.  Every planet has its own regulatory system of pulse beats.  The star appears, the star disappears, perhaps one beat has billions of years of duration.  But time is an illusion, and you perceive this illusion of time as different time spans.  So the pulse beat of a planet seems of a very different nature to you than one single pulse, pumping spirit life into your organism through your heart.

As I have explained before, every pulse beat consists of three universal movements, which bring life into manifestation:  the expanding, the contracting, and the static.  In terms of a single human life manifestation, for instance, during the expanding movement of a single pulse, life penetrates the body of matter.  During the contracting movement life withdraws into the inner eternal realm that is its source.  During the static movement it refuels, regenerating itself with the life principle and the potent energies of the nucleus, until it is ready to thrust itself forward anew, billowing further into the void, fulfilling its innate plan until divinity has filled all there is.

Each single pulse of a total life manifestation consists of any sub-systems of pulse beats.  Just as the body has its main pulsatory system—the heart—so does it have subdivisions in every single organ, making up the totality of the life manifestation.  If one of these pulse systems does not function properly, life must be impaired.  It is similar on all other levels of being.  Each level has its main pulsatory appearance.  Consciousness, the feeling body, the system of the will—every aspect of life and self-awareness—consists of its main pulse, causing its very appearance in matter, but it also contains sub-pulse systems that are necessary for total functioning.

The perfection of the life manifestation depends on the strength and fullness of the pulse of divine life.  If the pulse is strong and full, life will manifest this in various ways.  Health, beauty, intelligence, goodness, talent—all these divine aspects are “pumped” into the life manifestation, just as the heart pumps the blood into the organism.  Any imperfection—ill health, unattractiveness, lack of intelligence, negativities, problems, poverty, lack of talent, and so on—reveals that the main pulse of divine penetration is weak.

What governs the strength of a pulse beat?  It is, of course, consciousness, inner will.  In a human life, the underlying consciousness, appearing in matter in order to fulfill a specific task, may be strongly motivated to do so.  Then the pulse is strong and full.  If consciousness is only half willing to fulfill its own destiny, the momentary pulse of specific life manifestations will be weak.  The rhythms of each pulse system are therefore dependent on intentionality, determination, will, on all levels of being.  The weakness of the pulse  brings about a quicker—first perhaps partial, but then total—withdrawal, that is, contracting movement.  A short life span is a typical demonstration of this principle.

So you see, my friends, a human life pulse beat can be influenced by the consciousness that is truly the prime regulator.  And as you, my friends on this path, delve deeper into the intricate levels of your inner consciousness, you become more aware of the intentionality that is usually hidden behind the manifestation.  In other words, the pulse beat that is represented your life manifestation is a direct expression of your intentionality.  The degree of trust, well-being, vitality, perfection, creativity, fulfillment, and all the other aspects I mentioned before, as well as many others, is entirely dependent on the impetus, the strength, the power of the pulse of your spirit that enlivens the shell of matter.  Too often, when the thrust of spirit should be strong and cause a strong, billowing pulse beat, unconscious levels of the personality interfere.  These levels need to be made conscious.  Then the personality has a choice.  It is in its power to strengthen the pulse beat and thus extend and perfect the life manifestation.

Each pulse is a billowing force.  When you observe a life where there is illness, lack of energy, lack of vitality and creativity, or lack of any other divine attribute, you can be sure that the main life pulse is weak.  As the movement withdraws back into the inner reality of the spirit, the matter that was enlivened dissolves into its particles.  Yet these particles will never be the same they as were before life inhabited and pulsated through them.  The life that has gone back into itself is waiting to billow forth again on its next cosmic pulse beat, creating new form, enlivening more matter, filling the void forevermore.  That is the evolutionary plan until divine life, permeating all existence, has totally pulsated through.  It is a process of constant billowing, thrusting, expanding and withdrawing, pulsating forward and pulsating back.  Pulling back is part of the pulse, but it can be regulated and the pulse strengthened by inner intent and attitude.  Each level of consciousness, each self-expression, each emotion, each expression of will, everything that exists, even the tiniest, invisible particle, is consciousness, and therefore a pulsating expression.

The subdivisions in the life pulse of your current manifestation are manifold.  Every level of your consciousness has its own pulsatory reality.  Your thought processes, the life of your feelings, the expressions of your will—how do they all combine?  How do they interact?  When you manifest in matter, you bring into your manifestation many aspects of consciousness.  Consciousness permeates all being.  Your divine self chooses certain aspects to manifest, and others not to manifest.  You choose “finished,” purified aspects of your eternal being.  But you also choose unfinished aspects, and you incorporate them into the unit that becomes your personality.  Therefore many divergent aspects coexist.

In your pathwork you find these divergent aspects, often to your surprise.  On the conscious level you are convinced that you think in only one way about specific aspects of yourself, others, and life.  Yet when you go inward, you find that totally opposite thoughts, feelings, will expressions and attitudes exist on deeper levels of your being.  It is therefore of utmost importance to allow into your consciousness aspects that you are not yet familiar with, and incorporate them into the process of your purification and transformation work.  Otherwise the work remains half done.

In former times it was not only sufficient, but it was the task of humanity to focus on the outer awareness and the will level, to strengthen and purify that aspect of the human personality, as the prerequisite for what was to come later.  The outer levels of personality had to first attain strength.  In former times all that could be expected was for the conscious will and mind to be pure and good.  Now humanity is becoming ready for the next step.

Development on the conscious plane can open certain channels that reach, at least in part, to the inner reality of the divine self.  Those who have the discipline to do the work on the conscious level could, and can, establish channels to the divine.  However, when unconscious material remains unattended, the pulsation lowers and weakens.  The pulsation can be strong only to the degree the total consciousness is in harmony with divine reality.  This influences the reliability of the channel, as well as its scope, width and depth.  A channel may be reliable in a specific area only, and quite limited in others.

It is therefore quite correct to predict that in the age of unification, in which self-purification on inner levels must occur, the average age of human beings will be much longer.   Through inner purification, the life pulse will be strengthened.  The life span will extend way beyond your present conception.  Very simply, when the whole personality is in harmony with itself, when there are no divergent levels, when it is totally conscious of all of itself, then the pulsation can come through strongly.  The spirit can fully enliven matter, energize it, vitalize it.

In the present stage of humanity’s development, when even in the best of circumstances only some levels are conscious, the unconscious levels prevent the strong pulse beat of divine life to expand further and deeper.  You have brought certain negative aspects into your present incarnation for the purpose of making them known to yourself.  If you do not become aware of these negative aspects, they will eventually weaken the organism and create either illness, or, perhaps—on an unconscious level—the will to die.  Thus the life span becomes more limited than it need be.

In the new age it is of utter necessity that unconscious levels of the personality be discovered and included to accomplish the process that is developing, that is organically waiting to materialize.  The time has passed when it was enough to give attention to the conscious level of being only.  Much more intricate and subtle approaches are necessary for an individual, or a group, or a community to grow in harmony and completely fulfill its task.

To the degree aspects of personality remain unconscious, limitations exist not only in the life expression, but also in one’s connectedness with divine reality, and even with the needs of one’s own organism.  The conscious self may be very pure and manifest a beautiful channel.  But to the degree unconscious levels are ignored, the channel must have its limitations;  the personality will be limited in his or her perception of the real needs of the spirit, of the higher self, or even of the body.  False needs will predominate and the personality will be confused.  Thus the mind will no longer be able to assess what need is real and what need is false.  The fine attunement to the needs of your organism—both physical and spiritual—can be relied on only to the degree you have the courage to go all the way to see, familiarize yourself with, and accept all aspects of yourself that you have carried into this life as your task.

To build a bridge to these aspects you need faith, courage, and inner wisdom, all of which can be activated by your commitment to this path.  What prevents you from making the connections with the inner layers of your consciousness is fear.  Fear of self is the greatest, the most dominant factor when you attempt to spiritualize your being in ways which avoid taking cognizance of what in you seems less palatable.  Such approaches cannot be whole or complete.  For if you have fear of some parts of yourself you divide yourself.

As most of you know, at first you may not even know that you have this fear of self.  You are very quick to rationalize these fears away.  Thus you lose contact with the real need of your spirit and create false needs—needs to escape, needs to avoid parts of yourself.  Just as the body can create false needs to the point of compulsion, as for drugs, harmful stimulants, or unwholesome food, so can the mental and emotional organism become polluted by its false need to escape from some levels of the inner being.  The consciousness then becomes involved in these false needs.

As you become more thoughtful and more open to other possibilities, you can learn perhaps, as a first substantial step, that there are indeed areas that you fear in yourself.  When you can acknowledge these fears and do not push them aside, you begin to build the bridge to the part of your inner being that has remained estranged from you.  What then follows suit is no longer quite so difficult.  Once you know your fear and you question and challenge the fear, you create a strong new pulse beat on a new level of your being.  You let in the spirit, the life of eternal reality, where it could not have penetrated before, because your fears—or, more exactly, the denial of your fears—prevented the full beat of the pulse of your incarnation to enliven all of you, every particle of your mental, emotional and physical organism.  When you learn to overcome this inner fear and thereby to dissolve the inner defenses that can be so intricate and so subtle and so sophisticated, then you make room for an entirely new expression of divine life that wants to penetrate all of your being.

So you see, my friends, if you work deeply, and the fear begins to disappear as a result of your courage to challenge it, you liberate new energies in your inner world.  You will begin to feel these energies as you meet new levels of personality that you may first dislike or disdain, and learn to challenge them and deal with them.  As this happens, an entirely new pulse beat expands into your total organism, filling you with new life and new consciousness.

These inner linkings are very much in the world today.  The spiritual movement needs this approach particularly to complete the total spiritualization of the inner personality.  Then the power of the Christ consciousness, the power of the word of Christ, can manifest unhampered on all personality levels.  This is what we in our world work for, seek to inspire you for, and seek openings for in many different ways, even if these ways, at times, seem disconnected from the spiritual reality that you know.  For example, at the beginning of the century you experienced a new influx from psychology.  Granted that this knowledge has its limitations, it nevertheless pointed to the reality of divergent levels of the personality, without which total spiritual unification and purification cannot take place genuinely and realistically.  Thus it was divinely inspired and necessary for the great task ahead.

We in our world can no longer be content with the purification of the conscious level.  More is needed in this age.  And as you experience in your outer world, in symbolic reflections, how the lower self of nations becomes exposed, so it happens with each individual.  It may make you sad at first, but how can true purification take place unless the sadness that has existed all along about the impure, limited aspects reaches the foreground of consciousness?  You must take the existence of your lower self seriously—not in the wrong way by fearing it, but meeting it in trust, knowing that its energies are divine and can be altered, transformed, and are essential.  You must make sure that no part of you remains disconnected, rejected and denied.  For to any part of you that you deny you give much more power.  The denied part will manifest indirectly and will somehow deprive you of something you need: of vitality, health, happiness, joy, or perhaps of some inspiration that you would need but that cannot come through.

So, my dearest friends, perhaps I can answer a question, at this opportunity, from my beloved friends from across the sea.

QUESTION:  You spoke about Findhorn across the sea, and spoke then also about the work and cooperation between our two centers.  There has been an exchange between our members, we discussed holding a full-scale European conference next year.  Have you any other suggestions as to how we may work together and cooperate in the days ahead?

ANSWER:  Yes.  I have actually already given some such suggestions to you, but I will say it again.  It would be of the greatest significance and importance if some of these methods of dealing with the purification process of the inner levels of the personality could be learned and used at your Center.  This would give an entirely new dynamic and approach to the work you are doing.  The exchange that has already taken place has been quite effective in what this Center has learned from yours.  It has been very beneficial.  But now perhaps the other way can also be instituted, and then more fusion and exchange could take place that would become a true mutuality.  You would of course both retain your individual “centership,” if I may use this word.  However, you will increasingly mutually benefit from each other in dynamic ways that will find ever new expressions.  Your Center holds a great influence over many other light centers and could thereby become very instrumental in extending this so essential aspect of the inner work.  In the long run, without this inner work, the outer work will dry up.  Many difficulties cannot be resolved unless this inner work is done.  You know that every human being is a divine channel.  Each has its own “specialty,” each has its own preponderance of the infinite divine manifestation.  The specialty of this channel is precisely the purification work, the method of it, the approach to it, the timing of it, the laws governing it.  I say that this would be of great, great benefit.

QUESTION: I accept what you say in gratitude.  Have you any suggestions of people who could come over now, soon, to Findhorn?

ANSWER:  This can be arranged, I am sure, among you human beings.  And also, perhaps, you can send some of your key people here for periods of study at this Center.  It can happen both ways.  If you think and feel in this direction, and open yourself up, many wonderful and joyful inspirations will come that will enliven both these most beloved centers.

QUESTIONER:  Thank you, we look forward to that emerging.

My beloved friends, angels of God are filling this space.  It is truly an inner space, which is reflected, from your point of view, on the outside.  These angels cooperate and are deeply concerned with the task that every one of you has to fulfill, that is waiting for you in a time of great meaning and inner expansion and purpose.  Each of you can be, and many of you will be, carriers, in one form or another, of new truths and new ways.  Every one of your tasks is of the greatest importance, and the happiness of each of you is of the greatest importance.  Your happiness will be a natural expression of your devotion to the truth of your transformation and of your devotion to the task that is waiting.  So happiness will be a result, and at the same time also a prerequisite.  For only the joyous can give joy; only those in truth can bring truth; only the loving and loved ones can give love.  Let yourself experience this every day and every hour of your life.  The love of the universe permeates all that is, all that ever was, and all that ever will be, all that you are, every level of your blessed being.