THE HIGHER SELF, THE LOWER SELF AND THE MASK

Key Extracts from Lecture 14

If your human psychologists, psychoanalysts, and psychiatrists would begin to view their patients from this point of view, they could accomplish a lot more! They would have success where they are still unsuccessful. And the time will come when this knowledge will be theirs. When they are mature and courageous enough to include spiritual reality in their thinking, they will discover all this and prove the truth by their success with their patients… This may be an explanation for you why it happens quite frequently that when a person is psychoanalyzed by a doctor who not only very rigidly follows a school of thought that does not admit any spiritual truth and facts, but who is, besides, not very intuitive about such things – although there may also be doctors who have a good intuition and who have a very strong and good guidance, with these the following may not happen quite so often and so strongly – this person may go through such a crisis that this state of mind becomes worse than before treatment was started. This happens when the doctor has succeeded to tear down this mask self and the patient is in front of his lower self. The patient may be so shattered by this experience that he breaks down completely; he may give up the help; and it may even have more serious consequences. On the other hand, if this person would be told what I am telling you here and thus be prepared what to expect, so much hardship and often even tragedy could be avoided. If a patient knew that he has to face the lower self that exists in each human being but that this lower self, unpleasant as it may be, is not the ultimate I or true self, but that the higher self, which is perfection, is waiting to grow out of these layers of imperfection, then this shock would never occur. And therefore this knowledge is important for your psychologists and doctors of all kinds, as well as for all teachers, parents, etc. It would help a great deal.