This seed of light, of perfect life, this seed of truth and unique happiness and joy, must be sown, cultivated and harvested during our pilgrimage in this world, and that is why we have come here.
By Roberto Assagioli, date unknown, from the Assagioli Archives in Florence. Original Title: Schema della Vita Umana . Translated and edited with notes by Jan Kuniholm
We come from realms of high, perfect life; we are born crying into this world of lower life, which is still in a state of formation. We take the newly blossomed body of a tender child, which then goes on to develop in physical powers and senses, and comes more and more into contact with earthly life. The life of this world takes hold of us more and more in all its expressions and draws us further and further away from the world from which we came, whose seed of perfection and radiant Light remains settled in the depths of our hearts, and which speaks within us and guides us on our path as we are accomplishing and solving all the problems of our lives.
This seed of light, of perfect life, this seed of truth and unique happiness and joy, must be sown, cultivated and harvested during our pilgrimage in this world, and that is why we have come here.
The human child [1] has to prepare his or her strengths and faculties, the instruments of action; as a teenager, when living the life of study, he or she is preparing the ground for the cultivation of future activity. The young adult, who has finished studies and has begun to apply what has been learned, is doing the sowing, and when he or she comes of mature age, must begin the harvest — to settle it in the chambers of the heart, clean it of all earthly admixtures and take possession of the fruit. And then when the time comes, when the person will have finished the more or less long term of earthly existence, he or she will return with the gathered riches — the Light that will have more or less illuminated one’s heart — into those realms from which he or she had come.
Now each of these stages of human life has its characteristics, its difficulties, its sorrows, its sweetnesses and satisfactions; that is, it should have had them, because not everyone lives life the way it was meant to be lived.
The child, who is gradually gaining possession of his or her faculties and strength, and who has not yet begun earthly life with its problems, still has the feeling of innocent instinctive joy and spontaneously indulges in various tendencies and inclinations. The child is taking hold of life, intoxicated by the ever-increasing exercise of the senses and faculties.
The maturing of the senses and faculties marks the beginning of one’s youth, when one is master of life, having full conscious exercise of one’s faculties. The fresh and vigorous body of a young human being is a radiant spectacle and generally delightful in its outward appearance. The entry into earthly life, the beginning of its challenges with fresh, not yet worn-out strength, gives a feeling of intoxication, of self-confidence, still increasing with the life one yet has ahead, without having yet experienced its difficulties and disappointments: an attitude of many hopes and expectations. For a young being this world is similar to a banquet, in which he or she seeks to partake and from which he or she expects many pleasures and intoxications. The young person must try to take part in this banquet and enjoy its satisfactions. However, that seed of perfection and ideal, which a person carries within, must not become withered: it must illuminate one’s path with its light and sustain the person in times of difficulty and discouragement. It must save him or her from the ways of error and misdirection and must direct and guide one towards ever higher and more dignified forms of life.
The unfolding of fresh and buoyant youth, self-confident because it is still lacking in experience, emanating the fragrance of freshness and savored pleasures, contains within itself a frantic life and the often strenuous pursuit of passing pleasures. It is often a life of very painful experiences, a life still lacking in wisdom and certainty, which have yet to be acquired. It is a life that is often uncertain, prone to discouragement and despair; a journey fraught with obstacles and painful experiences in as-yet unexplored regions, driven on by a sense of curiosity towards ever new experiences and truths. The frantic quest is to give expression to the ideal that is maturing and taking root in a young human being, tending towards perfection and finally becoming the center of his or her inner life and, to a greater or lesser degree, the outer life.
This marks the close of the first half of human life on earth and the beginning of the second. The experiences that one has, and the aspirations one follows towards a life that increasingly corresponds to the felt ideal, [together] come to form a precious stock or store that must be taken possession of. This store, which is similar to reaped grain, is found mixed with many foreign, earthly elements, from which it must be purified, in order to become an authentic wealth that is good for its intended use.
In the second half of life a person has to remove from one’s soul these elements of earthly life, the attachments to passing pleasures that one has formed during one’s pilgrimage on earth. One no longer needs to immerse oneself in earthly life, as one had to do in the first half of one’s life. A person can emerge from it with a gradual liberation. One can shift, in a certain sense of the word, the center of one’s life, and bring it closer and closer to the radiant world from which one came, and increasingly enjoy its joys and sublime harmonies (poetry and art in all their expressions) with ever-increasing serenity and peace. The more the center of life looks like this, the clearer the True and Only Reality from which everything comes and by which everything is pervaded will appear to a person, and the return to one’s true homeland will appear in all its ineffable glory.
Near this moment of return a person’s body is no longer the source of one’s satisfactions and pleasures; it is only one’s dwelling in a world in which he or she lives and with which one needs to be in contact. Life has other sources of joys and happiness — the true, the only one. One thinks of the youthful years with tender recollection, of this collection of so many experiences, so many ardent aspirations, so many cherished desires; but one does not wish to go back. The life one enjoys lends a person greater joys and satisfactions. One has arrived where he or she has been trying to arrive. From the world of Light the person had descended into the world of darkness, with a continuous desire and hope of reaching the Light. One already enjoys its reflections, and anticipates the delights of the return. One’s heart is full of love and sympathy for all his or her companions on this earthly pilgrimage, and one would like to give to all of them the fruits of one’s hard searches and experiences that were made in the past, and that joy and serenity which only the sublime Light can give and which is the fruit of experiences and sacrifices that were made.
This is the ideal pattern of human life on earth, which, however, is not followed by the majority of people, who remain focused on earthly pleasures, and who see the sole purpose of their existence as the attainment of these pleasures; in the enjoyments of the body and mind, in the satisfactions of personal self-love. The second half of life is unfortunately lived in the same way as the first; and thus old age, in which the wornout body no longer offers the desired pleasures, is regarded as a cause of desolation and dejection, and the end of earthly life as a prospect of horror and despair.
[1] Roberto Assagioli followed the custom of his time and used the masculine nouns and pronouns in place of those for all people, male or female. I have attempted to make this essay gender-inclusive in the use of generic nouns and pronouns. — Tr.
