What is Pathwork?

A spiritual path of self-discovery

Eva Pierrakos speaking the Pathwork Guide's words

Eva Pierrakos was born in 1915 in Vienna, the daughter of the well-known Austrian novelist Jakob Wasserman. Driven by a private curiosity and a desire for deeper understanding of her world, Eva began to develop the gift of accessing an inner voice, at first through automatic writing and later by speaking in a trance state. In time, the inner voice took shape as the authoritative, insightful and loving persona of the Pathwork® Guide.

Eva came to the United States in 1939 and continued her work in New York, giving Guide sessions and an ongoing series of trance lectures. She was a beautiful, vibrantly alive woman with a keen intelligence who enjoyed life in all its aspects. She loved people and animals, and enjoyed food, skiing, swimming and dancing.

Eva died in 1979, leaving behind the rich legacy of more than two hundred Guide lectures, thousands of Questions & Answers, and many worldwide students who are still followers of these teachings.

What is Pathwork?

This remarkable body of spiritual material is collectively known as the Pathwork teachings. But what is Pathwork?

Pathwork is a lifelong spiritual path of self-discovery. By following this path, we heal our emotional wounds, clear our minds of wrong thinking, and transform our negativity. By doing this, we will come into a different relationship with ourselves, with others and with life. We will learn to create more harmony and balance within our own being and in our lives, and we will find more freedom and peace. These are the gift of truly knowing ourselves. And they are available to everyone who is willing to make a serious effort to walk this spiritual path.

Who is the Pathwork Guide?

Each month, for 22 years, a small group of people would gather with Eva Pierrakos, who would go into a trance and begin to speak. The Pathwork Guide is the entity who is actually offering these teachings to humanity, using Eva as the medium, or channel, through which he spoke. Through Eva’s dedication to her task as well as her willingness to do her own work, the material continually evolved and deepened over time.

Regarding who exactly the Guide is, the Guide intentionally chose to remain anonymous. He did this to avoid the tendency for people to credit “So-and-so” with being the one who has the truth. For in the depths of our soul—which the Guide calls our Higher Self—we all have access to the truth. Our work of healing is about clearing away our inner obstacles that are blocking our own inner truth. Once we do this, the truth that the Pathwork Guide is showing us becomes our own truth.

It’s extremely important that we learn to develop our own discernment, rather than relying on the reputation of any particular source for being our reason for listening, trusting or believing. For it is only by developing our own deep inner knowing—by learning to listen to and follow our own guidance and intuition—that we step into the fullness of who we are. Which is exactly what the Pathwork Guide is teaching us to do.

The Pathwork Guide Questions & Answers (Q&As)

The lectures themselves were composed by a council of spirit beings, with the Pathwork Guide appointed to deliver them. After each prepared lecture, participants were encouraged to ask questions and the Guide would provide the answers. In addition to the questions asked following the lectures, once a month Eva and the Guide would hold Q&A sessions. Jill Loree has sorted the thousands of Pathwork Q&As into topics to make them easier to access. They are available for free on The Guide Speaks.

The Q&As are generally shorter in length than the lectures. This style of teaching makes the Q&As an enjoyable way to access the Pathwork Guide’s wisdom. Also, they are often a back-and-forth conversation that covers several topics. So as you read them, you will find some gems that couldn’t be highlighted when organizing each exchange under a single topic.

In general, the questions asked were either related to the lecture just given, to a person’s personal issues or to life in general. They cover a tremendously broad number of topics, offering a wisdom and perspective that has the potential to change a person’s worldview.

The original Pathwork lectures, including the questions asked immediately following them, are available online in the form of printed transcripts, free audio recordings read by Gary Vollbracht, or for a fee, the original recordings by Eva: www.pathwork.org.

Jill Loree has rewritten and organized roughly 150 lectures into over a dozen spiritual books. In addition, she has created an overview about spirituality that summarizes the teachings. And she also makes 132 of the Pathwork Guide’s teachings from nine spiritual books available as spiritual podcasts.

About doing the work

Pathwork is a trademark owned by the Pathwork Foundation, a non-profit organization. It was coined by Eva and other followers of the Pathwork Guide based on the fact that he so often spoke of “being on a path,” and the reality that it is hard work to follow such a path. Many people today are realizing it’s hard work either way, whether we face into our challenges and grow from them, or just let life teach us our lessons as we go along. But consciously facing into our challenges is by far the more effective way to make progress on this path we call life.

For hard as it may be to look directly at our own faults and negativity, at some point we realize we can’t keep looking away from ourselves and hope to find solutions. And that, in a way, is the heart of what the Pathwork Guide teaches. That the way to get to the other side of our conflicts in life—the way to transcend the illusion of duality—is to step through the gateway of self-responsibility and begin the journey of finding our true selves.

That’s really the key to everything.

Pathwork lectures

Pathwork Q&As