(Zie het originele artikel vanaf pagina 13.)
In Connection
The Newsletter of the International Pathwork® Foundation
Special Conference Issue: Fall, 2007
Chrono-logical
By Saskia Hontelé Gommers
(Editor’s note: Over the past several months the Foundation has been sending out weekly Guide quotes by e-mail. We have also sent reminders of the times when Pathworkers around the world can energetically join together for collective meditation. Both of these ideas came from Saskia Hontelé Gommers of the Dutch Pathwork, who now shares some more inspiration with us about a way of reading the lecture material.)
There are numerous ways of studying the Pathwork lectures. Nevertheless, I want to make a passionate plea to read the lectures in chronological order. This order has clearly been structured in a brilliant way and I have experienced a surplus value, a synergistic effect, in reading them this way. As a baby first learns to crawl before she/he can learn to walk, I believe the development of our purification process has predictable phases. The difference between the consciousness of the Guide and our temporary, primitive, earthly consciousness is huge, and the Guide’s wisdom succeeds in making the purification process understandable for both “beginners” and “advanced” people alike.
The difference between reading on subject and in chronological order is something I have clearly noticed. I began with the three books that were independently compiled by the Dutch Pathwork, which include 50 lectures. Then I bought the Pathwork CD, started reading lecture number one, and I have been continuing to read them in order. This has given me a better understanding and more contact with deeper layers. I experience reading and working with the lectures this way as a training of divine wisdom, and I feel guided with love in my purification work. Every time I get stuck, the next lecture gives me an answer.
It is tailor made, as if my process were predictable for the Guide and fluently corresponds with the order of lectures. It gives me joy and makes me enthusiastic and happy.
Motivated by these experiences I have been searching in the lectures for statements the Guide has made on this topic and I have found a number of quotations.
It begins with Questions and Answers 24, in which the Guide announces the start of a development course: “I also wish to inform you that I plan a new series of lectures after the present questions—or some new ones that may come up—have been taken care of. This series will represent a development course. For many friends here sincerely wish to advance spiritually and yet do not quite know how to begin, or what to do—all those friends who do not come for private sessions. It is important that they have a definite idea how to go about it in actual practice. And so we will be working together in that direction. Thus, the following series will deal with the systematic development of the spirit and the soul. It will help you to solve your psychological problems as well as can be done without a personal teacher. I will show you exactly how to go about it. In-between, I may give a single lecture on a particular subject, as I have done in the past. It may appear to you, at first, as though it had nothing to do with this development course, yet you will eventually find out that it does have a close bearing on it.”
The first lecture of the development course is Pathwork Lecture 25, The Path: Initial Steps, Preparation, and Decisions: “By all my preceding lectures, you will have understood one thing clearly: the necessity of self-development on this earth plane—that self-development is indeed the reason for this earth life, the purpose! And only he who fulfills this purpose can find peace in his soul, no matter how difficult life may be at times. I have promised you, my friends, to start this course of development so that each one of you—also those who cannot attend private treatment or lectures—can find his way how to go about it, where to begin, what to do, what it is all about. And I want to tell you, before I begin, that many of the words I will give you in these particular lectures can be treated as a meditation. You should take these words and not reread them just once — that will not be enough! You should meditate on some of my teachings so that from a superficial and intellectual knowledge, this knowledge may eventually reach deeper regions of your being. For only then will it be really beneficial to you.”
In Pathwork Lecture 154, Pulsation of Consciousness, the Guide says, “However, when a person is very perceptive, very intuitive, and very finely attuned to the inner reality as a result of considerable self-knowledge and development, he clearly senses that these irregular phases are not chaotic or arbitrary. They, too, follow a certain order although its nature may still be obscure.”
A number of times the Guide describes the movement of development as a spiral, for example, in Pathwork Lecture 197, Energy and Consciousness in Distortion—Evil: This lecture is again a continuation and direct sequence of previous ones, particularly of the last two. As you know from the past, lectures come in sequences; there are particular sequences which then apparently stop, switching over to a new pattern, a new emphasis. And yet all these topics and different sequences form one whole as an ongoing chain or spiral, as all universal movements are spiral movements if they are in harmony with creation.”
In Pathwork Lecture 212, Claiming the Total Capacity for Greatness, it is clearly stated: “At each beginning and end of a working season I give an overall view, a map that gives something like a bird’s eye view of the phase you have left behind, which then makes you ready for the phase to come. These maps give you a better understanding of the progression. No new phase could be possible without the preceding one. No step can be skipped.”
About the structure of the development course, the Guide reveals in Pathwork Lecture 246, Tradition, Its Divine and Distorted Aspects: “I have concentrated on different levels and different aspects at different times, only to come back after a certain period of absorption to the previous levels. I have started by giving you an overview of spiritual reality in the most simplified way. I have then gone on to convey new concepts, most of the time aimed to bring the split of duality into a new unity—just as I do now with tradition and change. I have then entered into a new phase of exploring inner, unconscious levels and attitudes. I have taught you how to experience pain, helplessness, rage. I have helped you to see and accept your mask and your lower self. I have opened up to you the vista to your higher self. I have re-entered into the spiritual realms with your thoughts and feelings. You have worked hard along the way. Phase by phase, spiral movement after spiral movement, we have allowed this journey.”
And about the extra value of reading in chronological order, the Guide stated in Pathwork Lecture 248, Three Principles Of The Forces Of Evil; Personification of Evil, that: “When you take some distance from the series of lectures this year, you will perceive much clearer than you do now that in the specific sequence there is a profound meaning. As one lecture follows the other, they could not come to you in a different sequence. To some degree you sense this already. And retrospectively you have recognized this rhythm and meaning about the sequence of lectures in the past. The topics of each lecture and their sequence spell out an articulate message the spirit world is sending you for further necessary steps on your path.”
And in Pathwork Lecture 252, Privacy and Secrecy, about the purpose of this sequence, the Guide says: “The particular sequence of lectures may appear, off hand, arbitrary and not necessarily connected, but upon more profound reflection, you will see that there is a meaningful sequence and connection between the topics. In fact, one could not be properly assimilated without the other. All of them form one comprehensive whole. A study in meditation will reveal how all these topics are intricately connected. Every single one of the topics, and all of them together, will open new channels of consciousness in you which, in turn, will make you capable of living the new life that is preparing to evolve on your earth sphere.”
In QA220 Eva Pierrakos answers the following question: QUESTION: Is the particular topic or subject for each lecture left up to the Guide?
EVA: Yes, I have no idea what is coming. But then it’s very interesting when you read the material and follow the sequence . . . there is a sequence; there is a progression, and there is a . . . . How many years is it now—twenty years almost that the lecture material is coming through. It’s such a vast structure that the human mind couldn’t . . . I mean to answer your question, for example, it would be absolutely impossible for any human mind to give a lecture that happens to fit for I don’t know how many people each time—each one maybe in a different period in their development, their structure, their personality. Their phase on the path is different, and yet, it is just what is needed, and I couldn’t figure that out.
When I have internalized all the lectures, I will start over again with number one to discover deeper layers. It is as the Guide says in Pathwork Lecture 182, The Process of Meditation: “Each day brings forth new tasks, exciting tasks, beautiful tasks. This should not be approached in a spirit of “wanting to get it over with,” as if only then could life begin. On the contrary, doing this is living at its best.”
What are your experiences with the lectures? Have you been noticing a particular sequence of lectures? I look forward to your reactions.