Pierrakos, Eva (1915-1979)

Eva Pierrakos, a psychic channel who developed a system of spiritual development called Pathwork, was born in Vienna, Austria. Her father, Jakob Wasserman (1873-1934), was a famous Jewish novelist. As a young woman, she began to do automatic writing and developed her relationship to an entity known only as The Guide. The Guide never identified itself, and pushed away inquiries of its identity. Out of the material she received, however, she came to feel that she was called to help people with their spiritual development. As World War II (1939-45) approached, she moved to the United States and continued to work as a trance channel and produced a series of lectures that were transcribed and circulated among those who came to hear her.

In 1971 she met and married psychiatrist John C. Pier-rakos, a Greek expatriate who, like her, had moved to the United States as World War II approached. He had been one of the founders of bioenergetics, a system of bodywork partially inspired by the teachings of Wilhelm Reich and based upon an understanding of the way that psychological energy is reflected in body states. She added some of the energy teachings to her own work and developed the Pathwork. In 1972 she opened the first Pathwork Center in the Catskill Mountains near Phonecia, New York.

Pierrakos' teachings are contained in the 258 Guide Lectures, and an additional 100 transcripts of question-and-answer sessions. Through her, the Guide taught that humans have problems from a distorted picture of reality that separates us from the flow of life energy and our true feelings and prevent insights into the nature of the world. The Pathwork offers techniques for dissolving misconceptions about the world.

Pierrakos died in 1979. Since that time her work has been carried on by her students and expanded from the two centers opened in 1979 to include work across North America and Europe, with newer centers now functioning in Africa, South America, and Australia. The Pathwork Foundation is headquartered at 13013 Collingwood Ter., Silver Spring, MD 20904-1414. It has an Internet site at http://www.pathwork.org/. Pierrakos' husband went on to develop the Institute of Core Energetics.

Sources:

Hanegraaff, Wouter J. New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996.

Pathwork Foundation.http://www.pathwork.org/. June 10, 2000.

Pierrakos, Eva. Guide Lectures for Self-Transformation. New York: Pathwork Press, 1985.

——. The Pathwork of Self-Transformation. New York: Bantam Doubleday, 1990.