Complete Lectures of the Pathwork - 1996 Edition by Eva Pierrakos

Author:Eva Pierrakos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1995-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Lecture No. 127 - EVOLUTION'S FOUR STAGES: AUTOMATIC REFLEXES, AWARENESS, UNDERSTANDING, KNOWING

October 2, 1964

Greetings, my dearest friends. Blessings for everyone of you. Blessed be this hour. This first lecture of the year, as always, will indicate the phase into which the path is going to enter during the coming working season, the general work, and the part to be emphasized.

The best way to begin this lecture is by discussing certain general phases of evolution in the human consciousness. There are four distinct phases. They interact and overlap, with each having many subdivisions, degrees of intensity, and variations. At this point, we need not go into the details; rather, we seek to gain an overview.

The lowest phase of human consciousness is automatism. In this phase people respond according to automatic reflexes -- emotional reactions based on deeply imprinted wrong conclusions and generalizations. Everything we have discussed in the lectures on images shows how people respond blindly and automatically.

The more you are liberated in some areas of your personality, the more you try to rationalize and explain such blind reactions, to make yourself believe that they are based on freedom of choice, rather than on compulsion; on reason, rather than emotionalism. When the overall development is more primitive, such self-deception is less necessary.

Blind automatism is always the result of unwillingness to face certain material. This applies to everyone, to some much more than to others. Even comparatively evolved people, who are actively concerned with their development, have areas in which their consciousness is blurred. There they are unfree and respond unconsciously, never knowing why they act, react, think, feel, and hold opinions the way they do. Such lack of consciousness creates self-alienation, cripples creativity, and prohibits love. It stifles the ability to give and receive pleasure and joy. It limits the

marvelous potentials of the human spirit and life. It does all this to the degree that one lacks self-awareness.

On any real path of development, regardless of the approach, the areas in which you are unfree and automatic must be revealed.

The next phase on this scale of evolution is awareness, but awareness is by no means the highest stage. There are two that are farther advanced. But let us first look into the meaning of awareness. Awareness must be, in this context, concerned with uncovering blind reflexes. All subterfuges, rationalizations, explanations, justifications, self-deceptions, serving to deny automatism, must be ruthlessly exposed, investigated and given up, until you are face to face with the blind reflex itself. When this takes place you are aware of the automatism -- hence the automatism no longer exists. Needless to say, you succeed first in specific areas, retaining blind automatism in others until much later phases of your personal development. It never happens that an individual passes with one step from one state into the next in every respect.

The transition from automatism to awareness is one of the most difficult passages you must make. It is so difficult to admit that you are driven by unreasonable fears, superstitions, generalizations, obsolete situations that have no bearing on the present.

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