QA179 QUESTION: [1970] So often in these lectures, you make reference to the unlimited bounty of life, the unlimited possibility and potentiality of the richness of life – spiritually and physically and materially. This must also have a counterpart in the condition of the world itself, and yet the world is in a state where there is a terrible depletion of resources going on, where there is the development of overpopulation, where species are becoming extinct, and it’s a very worrisome thing. It sounds like a contradiction as though there is a developing limitation.
ANSWER: It sounds like a contradiction, but actually it is not a total contradiction. For your Earth sphere, which represents a certain state of consciousness, multiplies. The average human being – let us say, if there is such a thing, but more or less the average consciousness or entity or his state of consciousness – feels exactly the same way: he feels that life is limited, that there is depletion rather than expansion of strength. There are many more difficulties than joy, etcetera.
And I said that life in its actual possibility and potential is unlimited. But whether or not it will manifest in its unlimited potential depends on the individual, on his consciousness, on his grasp of this, on his awareness of this, on his making room for this possibility, and consequently, on his actions and reactions and attitudes and thoughts and feelings.
Now, this applies to the individual and therefore to the sum total of all individuals in this life. To the degree there are human beings who have to some extent an inkling of this unlimited nature of life, to that extent life will reveal itself in this way. Where there were first apparently unsolvable problems, new resources and new solutions are discovered to the problems.
And as this applies to the majority of human beings who believe in doom and in negativity and in limits and in a lack of abundance, and who perceive life as an enemy against whom they must defend and fight by their own negativities, then that will be the experience.
To the degree individuals pursue a path where they unfold their potentials and they realize the unlimited resources within the human potential, to that degree life will present new possibilities, new avenues. Let me give you a very simple example. Let us take the mere political scene. As mankind stands today, it sees only a very limited amount of possibilities of governing a country, or the world for that matter.
You have a very limited amount of possibilities available, as it seems. There are various degrees of radical or conservative or in-between forms of government – that is all mankind sees at this point. Since it does not see more, it does not venture with the mind first and then with actual exploration into different forms of governing life, resources, mankind as a whole, and individuals.
But the moment new vistas are perceived – and they exist in literally unlimited form with what is already available here, merely the ideas of governing life – only when these ideas will be contemplated and given serious attention to, will suddenly a new richness of life open up.
This applies, of course, not only to the political scene, but also to every other conceivable human experience that governs life. It does not need to be as limited as it is. It is only because the majority of mankind does not take other possibilities into consideration. There is nothing even very mystical in what I say here. It is practical reality, what I say.
QUESTION: Then you’re also saying that if man can be open to these new ideas, that this destructive trend, this depletion, can be reversed?
ANSWER: Absolutely. One hundred percent. And every single individual who is on this Path has experienced this to be so. He has perhaps started out with feeling so squeezed, so trapped in his life, so unable to expand – and perhaps totally ignorant of his own resources in energy, in richness of feelings, in creativity, in physical, mental, emotional and spiritual strength, and in ideas. In that limited frame of mind that he has about himself, he perceives life in the same way of course. For you cannot perceive life as anything different than as you perceive of yourself.
Then the next step will be that he renders life responsible for his own limited experience of himself. So he separates himself further from life, and the chasm between nature or life or the universe or the cosmos and himself becomes wider. But this chasm isn’t real. It is imaginary. It is only the chasm that is experienced by the limited view.
Only when he begins to ask himself the question, “Is this really all there is to it? Do I have no other possibility than to make this or that choice in a specific situation that I am in, with my emotions, with my concepts of life?” And, of course, before you can come to such an ability to decide, you have to explore first what are your unconscious concepts. That is work, as you know.
But once you have accomplished this awareness of your innermost being, and you see the limited concept, you can then begin to question it. As you begin to question it seriously and honestly, new possibilities will appear on the horizon. Where you saw yourself trapped in at first – only very undesirable alternatives that limit your life totally – you suddenly begin to see there are other ways. And then life begins also to take on a new shape. This is what I’m saying.
