World

Since one of the most important divine aspects is free will or freedom of choice, this had to turn into its opposite too. The spirit who was the first to succumb to the temptation of abusing this power, the one who is sometimes referred to as Lucifer, Satan, or the Devil, who influenced others to follow him, would naturally have been the first one to inhabit the new world that came into existence. This spirit had complete power over all those who followed him, and, contrary to God, he used this power. God gives the freedom of choice and this has deeper significance than most of you realize. With that freedom necessarily comes the possibility to abuse the given power and to use it contrary to the divine laws. If no choice were available, there would be no freedom and no power. There can be no divine happiness, in fact, no divinity at all, if it cannot be attained or maintained by free choice. By the same token, the opposite of God and His laws must be the prohibition of free choice and the domination of the stronger over the weaker ones.

QUESTION: Where is the borderline between compulsion and very strong desire?

QUESTION: In the last lecture you said in connection with raised consciousness that we will no longer be frightened of bad people. But how can I not be frightened of murders, hold-ups, and all such doings? This is still reality. We still feel the effect of all this.

Having to choose between everyday alternatives that confront you often generates confusion. These alternatives are not crassly “good” or “bad”; they both stem from the same basic struggle in the human soul.

On the unified plane of consciousness there are no opposites. There is no good or bad, no right or wrong, no life or death. There is only good, only right, only life. Yet it is not the kind of good, or right, or life that comprises only one pole of the dualistic opposites.

Human evolution travels a curve of development from acting out negativity to the next step, which is holding it back. This leads to repression. The step after repressing is making it conscious but not acting it out. Only after reaching this level of consciousness is it possible to change the energies, feelings, and creative power involved in the negative attitudes into positive attitudes.

The key to happiness and abundance is changing over to a new level of operation on which the old attitude of taking, wanting, demanding and not giving is transformed into an attitude of love, giving, devotion and sincerity.

What is the deepest meaning of the spirit of self-preservation? If the deep mind knows that there is eternal life, why does it hold on to life and instinctively fights leaving the body? This seems to be a contradiction.

The specific pain I wish to discuss, that is so important to be seen in a new light at this state of your development, is the pain of injustice. This type of pain contains more than can be expressed by this word. It is not just actual injustice happening to you here and now. Such injustice could be classified as pain of being wounded and hurt. There is more to it than that. It is a fear that the universe can allow destruction to exist without safety valves.

We have occasionally discussed this inner landscape. I have made mention of the inner space that is the real world. The term “inner space” is used quite frequently in your world these days, as opposed to outer space. Most human beings think of inner space as merely a symbolic description of a person’s state of mind. This is not so.