Motive

By Robert St. John

When someone comes to see you about their troubles, their motive is these troubles: and your motive is to do whatever is necessary to help the subject to be able to get rid of these troubles. In the practice of Metamorphosis we are supposed to be free of motives. We are supposed to have a freedom from the limiting factors of a motive. To have a motive, such as a reputation for healing or of removing pain, or a motive or reputation for charging very high fees, or, for that matter, not charging at all because true healing is said to be the work of God, and that is supposed to be above monetary rewards: to have such a motive is a limiting factor in the principle of Metamorphosis.

A motive of some sort is inevitable: to try to get rid of it by meditation, prayer or any form of ‘up-liftment’ produces a motive for motiveless-ness, a type of double negative: but there are two types of practitioners and they both approach this matter from opposite sides. These two types are the afferently orientated person and the efferently orientated person. 

The Afferent person approaches life from the most abstract and unconnected point of view; and the Efferent person approaches life from the very factual and dogmatic point of view. They are both very genuine in their approaches but they have diametrically opposite ideas about their motivation in Metamorphosis, in their way of handling the situation. This is due to their Afferent or Efferent orientation and not to a perversity of opinion. Afference is the spirit of life and Efference is the action of life – two completely different themes – but two halves of the whole, the two united in balance become the perfect ‘Being’.

Afference, being totally abstract, has a totally abstract motivation concerning the subject’s troubles: and Efference, being totally ‘concrete’, has a totally ‘concrete’ motivation. The degree of the abstraction or concreteness will vary from one extreme to the other, but it is the relationship that we are concerned with. The abstractness of the motive of Afference provides a non-personal, non-identified attitude, and the concreteness of Efference provides a fully personal and identified attitude.

As the principle of Metamorphosis requires a freedom from the limitations of motiveness, the Afferent person will be well set in the matter, but the Efferent person is the opposite and needs some form of release from motivation. In the ideal situation of a good balance of Afference and Efference there is no questions about either having to do anything about it. In the practice of Metamorphosis there is a directing of the attention of thought on the part of the practitioner towards the subject, or to the respective reflex area. The process of thought being thought occurs at the point of balance between Afference and Efference and there tends to be a freedom from identification in the practice: but, if the practitioner is Afferent there will be a leaning in this direction, and if Efferent it will be in the other direction. A balance between Afference and Efference avoids the necessity of thinking of motivation.