The Basic Problem: Power

THE BASIC PROBLEM: POWER

Within a process of therapy we follow up several chains of symptoms with their accompanying karmic guilt. All of these chains ultimately lead back to a nodal point representing the basic problem which so far the patient has failed to overcome. The problem was the same then as it is now, though in the distant past it took a coarser and more clearly defined form. In his or her present life such problems have mostly become refined and sublimated to the point where they are no longer recognizable.

If we analyze the basic problem of any individual we find that it always boils down to the same theme, namely power. Man becomes sick with the disease of power. In earlier lives this was usually lived out in a very obvious way, whereas in the present life it is veiled and refined. But always it is power that is man's downfall. The polar opposite of power is humility. Every time we say “I must” or “I want” we are expressing a claim to power.

In terms of the present life, one of the commonest ways of exerting power is through being ill. Today illness guarantees the individual a space in which he can exercise his unconscious power-urges free of criticism. Herein lies the reason why sick people would really prefer not to give up their illnesses. Any sick person would of course hotly deny this and would point out all the measures that he or she had taken in order to become well again. But this piling up of alibis does not reflect the individual's real state of mind. Naturally the patient himself believes that he wishes to be cured, but only because he is not yet aware of the motive for his being ill. Once he recognizes that he himself must decide either to remain ill or to renounce power, he usually finds the choice a very difficult one.

Power is to be equated with ego-dominance. It is the attempt to impose one's will on others instead of subordinating oneself. This power-urge was what led, in Paradise, to the biting of the apple. The disobedience of Adam and Eve represented a refusal to subordinate themselves to the law and an insistence on arrogating to themselves the knowledge of what was good and what was evil. Man has always been willing to pay a high price for power. To attain it he has even been willing to make a pact with Satan and to sell his soul.

Yet not until the patient has re-experienced, with full clarity, the power-urges of his earlier incarnations will he begin to unmask them in the here and now. Only when he has seen how over many thousands of years, he has heaped suffering upon himself in order to buy power, will he slowly begin to be ready to understand the doctrine of humility. Such understanding does not come about through an intellectual process, but through an experience of reality which brings about a trans-polarization in the individual. The change in consciousness takes place in the present, and thereby the person becomes healed. The symptoms, having become superfluous, literally disappear of their own accord, although we have in fact not treated them at all.

Reincarnation therapy is not a flight into the past but a way of using the past in order to guide the patient into its opposite pole the present. As long as the past is suppressed and continues to work on an unconscious level, the individual will not succeed in living consciously in the here-and-now. He will be continually re-stimulated by past events and will confuse past and present. Only when he has fully integrated the past into his consciousness can he put it aside as over and done with and finally experience the present with a freshness he has hitherto not believed possible. The reason why we look back into the past in our therapy is not because we find the past interesting but to make it clear how unimportant it is.

The goal of any esoteric path is to attain a state of constant awareness in the present moment. But in order to reach that state we must first isolate the present from the past and purify it. Reincarnation therapy follows the homeopathic law of similitude. By exploring the chain of symptoms, the sick person is continually confronted with similar situations, until finally he discovers the poisonous source of guilt. Through his act of recognition, he potentises this poison, turning it into a medicine and solving his basic problem.

Reincarnation therapy is neither a means of satisfying curiosity about previous lives, nor is it an “opium of the people” which gives consolation by promising a new existence. Reincarnation therapy is a hard route to purification. In repeated reincarnations we see no source of comfort but rather a challenge to develop towards completeness and thus become free of the wheel of rebirth. We say “yes” to this earthly existence, as long as it is necessary for our path of development. Our goal, however, lies beyond the material world. It lies in that unity which we once left behind and to which every human being longs finally to return.