“But you, do not be called ‘Rabbi’; for One is your Teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren.”
Mathew 23:8
Christ understands these words a little bit differently than society does. From a purely organic standpoint, the world has a few institutes that are Divine: the father, the mother and the home, for example. These are the first institutes on Earth; there is no establishment that is nobler or brighter than the home and also there is no higher title than that of a father or a mother. True, there are many fathers and mothers on Earth, but, in fact, they are stepfathers and stepmothers. The father and the mother play an important role when it comes to the organic world, for they transmit through their blood the qualities of their own souls to their children. The upbringing of children is determined by the qualities that the mother instills in the child from a very early age. By the word blood I mean not the ordinary blood, but that kind of blood which remains unchanged, the kind of blood that remains the same throughout all of life’s events. At this time I will not dwell on the difference between this twofold blood. All I can say now is that it is not that transient, changeable blood, but the other blood, which is like the rose essential oil that floats above the rose water and which has a real value in itself. The noble seed that the mother introduces into the child’s blood is like a valuable essential oil from which thereon spreads and wafts fragrantly among those who later surround this grown-up child. Nothing can be introduced and sown in man afterwards; what contemporary people call upbringing is nothing but training. When the mother raises her child the process takes place in the roots: it is there, in the roots, where this process changes the form of the mind and the heart. With training, on the other hand, there is nothing but an external polishing. One can train a monkey or a dove but as soon as they are placed in their natural environment, they are sure to revert to their original life. They have done experiments in the United States where the government allots great amounts of money to the education of American Indians; some of these Indians graduate from various colleges and universities but as soon as they go back to their people they forget what they have learned and become wild again. A real change can only take place in one of those Indians if he is converted and embraces Christianity completely.
Such is the situation of a Teacher when it comes to the spiritual life: to be a Teacher or a Master means to give birth to someone. Christ does not say, “Do not teach”, but says, “Do not assume the title of a teacher”, or the title of a sick mother, because such a mother is bound to give birth to a scrawny child. If the mother has certain physical, mental or spiritual weaknesses, her child will be the same way, too. Can the contemporary teacher teach his students how oxygen and carbon bond, for example, provided that he, himself, does not understand the properties of these elements? He can conduct experiments, but these elements would not yield to him, because he has not yet become a master of these elements. Another teacher might teach the rotation of celestial bodies up in space, but if you were to ask him to mathematically define the rotation of these bodies around the Sun by using one meter, and not hundreds of thousands of meters or kilometers he would not be able to define it precisely. I, too, can do such calculations but they will not be accurate; I understand if the difference is a matter of a few centimeters or millimeters, but when the difference is a matter of a few kilometers or hundreds of thousands of kilometers, then this I do not understand, for these are all just hypotheses and assumptions. Often times you pause and say, “Why did not certain things happen this way or that way?” Who is to blame if you were the ones doing the wrong calculations? Everybody makes mistakes in life, after all. When you want to build a house, you call an architect to draw the house plan and make an estimate for how much wood, stones, iron, nails, sand, whitewash, etc. you may need and you buy these materials. However, if you do not put these materials together correctly, your building will collapse and you will be injured under its ruins.
I am going to use an anecdote taken from Bulgarian life to explain my thought. This story took place some time in the forties or the fifties. A Bulgarian from the Southern part of the Balkan Peninsula, somewhere around Soloun,1 worked as a gardener with his father. As he was twenty years old and was not profiting much from the gardening, he grew tired of hoeing and decided to look for another trade that would suit him better. He took a job with a dressmaker thinking to himself, “Now this is an easy trade; all I have to do is sit here and take my time.” A week later a Turkish bey2 walked into the dress-maker’s shop and asked the owner to bring the yard-stick and the scissors to his home and to tailor him birbuchuklija3 pants from cloth. However, the shop owner was not feeling good and, instead, sent his apprentice of a week and told him, “You go now and I will come later.” The apprentice followed the bey to his house and waited there an hour or two, but as his master did not arrive, the bey turned to the apprentice and told him, “Well, you look old enough to me to know this trade. Can you tailor the pants for me?” The apprentice answered, “Yes, I can.” The bey produced a big roll of cloth and said, “I want you to cut out birbuchuklija pants for me.” The apprentice took to cutting here and there, but the bey noticed that what the apprentice was cutting out did not look like birbuchuklija pants and told him, “This did not turn out to be pants, but can you, at least make me a saltamarka4.” The apprentice took to measuring and cutting here and there, again, but the Turk noticed that this was not shaping up to be a vest either. Finally, he said to the apprentice, “Now, you will make me a tobacco pouch, at least, and if you can’t do that either, I am going to beat you up.”
Just like the Bulgarian from the story, many of you have barely been with a master for a week, yet you take the yardstick and the scissors and are ready to tailor and to be teachers. Christ says, “Do not be such teachers.” If one is to be a teacher, he needs to have positive knowledge, i.e. he needs to have only one way of understanding, without exceptions. If you use one means to heal and, at the same time, you use the same means to kill, this does not mean that you have positive knowledge. If you use a knife to perform surgery and cut out the diseased flesh from a man’s body, but then you use the same instrument to cut this man’s throat, you cannot claim that you have used your knife correctly, for this is committing a crime. Some may say, “We haven’t done such a thing.” Oh, I know of many such teachers who have cut their disciples’ throats; they have also cut the legs, arms and ears of a few others- all this is morally speaking. It was not God who appointed these people as Teachers. They are all imposters. In every church there are teachers like these who, like the Bulgarian from the story, have only spent a week at the school but are already preaching.
Now, what is it that you should understand by the word Teacher or Master? This word is related to the purely Spiritual world. It is not teaching when you instruct people how to build churches or how to seed flowers and cabbage; no, this is not teaching. Good teaching implies an act of higher self-awareness when a purely spiritual process takes place. With good teaching the Master and the disciple need to focus their entire consciousness fully on the task that they have to accomplish; there needs to exist an exchange similar to the one between a mother and the child she raises, for the Teacher needs to convey certain truths and the student needs to use them correctly.
I will use another example to explain this. The story has it that there was an Englishman who went on a hunting trip to India. One day, as he was coming around a turn on the path, he felt a strong blow on his left arm. The blow came from a tigress. All she wanted to do was just break his left arm so that he could not fire his gun that was hanging from his right arm. The tigress then dragged him to her den where her three or four small cubs were waiting. She put him on the ground, pressed down his head and told him, “Now you will be quiet because I am going to teach my little ones.” Then she urged her cubs to try and throttle him. They circled around him but were afraid to approach him. After a while the hunter attempted to lift his head to see what was going on, but the tigress pressed down his head again and repeated, “I told you to be quiet, for I am teaching my little ones.” As you can see, the tigress, too, was a teacher. Somehow the hunter escaped, but later when he would relate the story he would say that the hardest part for him was when the tigress would press down his head so that the cubs could throttle him.
Anyone knows how to destroy; however, teaching implies a person who can teach one how to build in one’s mind and heart; a person who understands the deep meaning of the elements that can rejuvenate and build a new spiritual abode: a Spiritual body with which you can come back from the dead, as the Scripture says. God is waiting for this body to be built.
How are children born? In order for them to survive, they need to be born in the ninth month or, in some cases, in the seventh month, but this is not random and it is not about what month the parent wants his child to be born. The law is this: the nine-month period needed for the body to be formed should be completed. How does the body begin to form? First the extremities are formed: legs and arms, and then the brain and stomach are formed and, finally, the lungs are formed. As soon as the latter are formed breathing commences and then, if the child is not born right away, it may die. Therefore, what Nature creates first is not the lungs but the extremities: the legs and the arms. The sublime in you is formed the same way: the human Spirit keeps learning in the mother’s womb, as well; it does not hibernate, but works together with the mother’s Spirit to create the body. According to the same law, the student and the Teacher need to work simultaneously together with the help of the Spirit.
That is why Christ says, “One is your Teacher.” And why is it that people love Christ? Because He gave something to the world: “I gave Life to those who do not have it so that they can have abundant Life.” You want to become Teachers. Let me ask you this then: what are you willing to give to the one whom you want to teach? If you taught someone and he became a worse person after that, then I say that you have not taught him anything. There is one great weakness that prevails in Christians today as well as in the modern churches and that is the weakness to preach, to instruct. This is not a bad aspiration in itself, but one needs to know the laws of teaching. The common laws require that a person who wants to be a teacher should have certain qualifications. That person then needs to take a test before a committee and only after that can they issue that person an employment paper and an appointment order with which he is officially appointed to the teaching position. Much the same way in the Spiritual world, too, one needs to wait for the Divine Spirit to enlighten and direct him. One who has not been enlightened by God’s Spirit does not have the right to teach and instruct because he will be breaking the Divine law. We will understand the meaning of teaching only when we grasp the deep meaning of these words of Christ’s; these words have an internal as well as external meaning. (I am talking here of internal Christianity, about that Christianity which can connect us to all areas of the Invisible World.) You say you want to be a Teacher, so I then ask you where you have studied and what school you have graduated from. “But I have read the Bible and I know the Gospel”, you say. No, this is not enough. “But I know the Christian faith.” No, this is not enough. “But I belong to this and that church.” All I want to know is this: have you studied in Heaven, in that Institution for Higher Education where the Angels study? Do you understand the internal laws of Nature: how man is built, what his mind and heart are like, and how his soul is related to his Spirit? “I have read about these things.” What have you read? “Now, the soul is this far-fetched concept, this idea of a certain combination.” What is it a combination of? The human mind is supposedly a combination of abilities, but how do these things become combined? So you think that you know something, but I am not talking of a combination of individual parts, my friend, but of a real combination.
And it is because of this confusion in us that we speak so obscurely about the mind and the heart, without knowing where the heart is located. The heart resides in three places: one, the physical, is the one that you know of, but where is the heart of your feelings and that of your mind? You meet a person and you say of him that he is bad, but why is he bad? Years ago there was a bull in America who went crazy in appearance and scared all people around him. They decided to kill him but then a boy stepped forward who was able to read the minds of animals. This boy put his hand on the bull’s head and asked him, “What is wrong with you?” “There is a thorn in the back side of my leg and it is bothering me”, the bull told the boy. After they took the thorn out of the bull’s leg the bull calmed down. Likewise, one day you become crazy and people start pouring water over you. But then I say that there is no need for hoses, for there is a thorn in the back side of your leg; you need to pull out this thorn and that will take care of it. But now you have all kinds of learned people- professors and doctors- and they are all so ridiculous when they start talking about what went wrong with a man’s brain and they give a diagnosis. “There is such and such infection”, they say, “Surgery is necessary.” I see nothing but a little overheating of the brain.
Some four or five months ago some people came to tell me that a doctor’s son fell ill with a cold and later had complications until, finally, the doctor found that there was an infection in the brain and that the boy needed surgery. I said, “No surgery is necessary, for there is a ninety-nine percent chance that the child will die if you operate on him. He will get better without the operation.” But, what they do is go ahead with the surgery and the child dies. Of course, to the doctors the surgery was “successful”. What I am saying here is that people also perform spiritual surgery in spiritual matters, and what they do is cut out certain parts in order to get better, but this is not healing.
Modern people say that in order for someone to right his ways, he needs not to be beaten up like before, but he needs to be scalded like this, “You are a rascal, a thief; you are this and that.” Do you think that when all these sounds of yours enter his ears you will help change him? Not in the least, for the law is different and it goes like this: if you want to discipline someone else properly, first you need to discipline yourself. If you are bad, everyone around you will be bad. If I see a mother, who has conceived, and who takes to being angry and speaking ill of others, I can predict the consequences for her and I can describe fully the character and the fate of her baby; I can tell what will happen to him in the future. If a mother loses her temper easily, she should not think that the baby she gives birth to will be a saint and will take care of her in her old age, for one day this baby will take revenge on her and will say, “I wish I’ve never been born.” The same way, the student will say to his Teacher, “I wish you’ve never taught me.” A Teacher needs to be as pure as crystal water, in the full meaning of the word; he needs to be exemplary and there should be not the slightest trace of hesitation, faltering and disbelief. When Christ gives this instruction, he wants to point out the great danger to which we expose ourselves as well as the great responsibility that we take before Him for the maiming of some souls. Every mother and every teacher who does not know how to discipline and educate will be punished.
Now, the views that modern people hold of the Divine laws, of Heaven and of the Angels, are obscure and wrong, for modern people have no idea about these laws and about Heaven. First of all, Heaven is organized in a very smart way and knows its work; and then, between the Angels and people there exist certain relations just like between us and the plants and the animals exist certain relations. And then, since we do not know how to teach an animal, we bestow forty or fifty blows with our pole and our staff onto the animal, which we use to plow the field with and we think that, by doing this, we are fulfilling our role. God says, “I will teach you some day how to manage oxen and how to plow your field.” Some think that God cannot bring them down to a lower level, that God cannot take people back in their development. If God has turned some Angels into snakes and into animals with horns, he can surely make so you grow hooves. He can turn you into Angels as well as into devils; He can change your form as well. And because forms are important in the world- for they regulate our lives- we need to pay them special attention. If I were to build an unhygienic house for you with no windows on the Southern side, but only leave a few on the Northern side, and if I were to build this house deeply into the ground, at that, then do you know how you would feel after you have lived in this house for six or seven years? You will have a number of doctors coming and going into and out of your house much the same way that all those teachers who tell you that you do not need to have windows into the Spiritual world are first-rate liars. That is where the Sun of Life is. I would even say that your roofs should be made of glass so that the Sun can shine on you from above. If you have bright houses that were built like this, your forms will change and you will become very beautiful. I can do an experiment and you, too, can do an experiment on what I am teaching you and you will see what results you will have in four or five years. I am not teaching you that you should escape life, for this world, as I see it, is very good and people are very good; what I see, however, is that people have a thorn in their leg. Apostle Paul says that this is so and begs God to pull out this thorn. The thorn can be stuck in a different spot, too, but most often it is in the heel of the foot because it is with the feet that we are being held down onto this world. We need to learn to pull out this thorn scientifically, because Christianity, in my opinion, is a profound science.
When a young woman wants to marry a certain young man, she takes a look at him and observes that he is a good-looking, decent man and she inquires, “Will he be able to feed me?” “He makes four-five hundred leva5 a month.” “Good, he will be able to. What education does he have?” “Such and such.” “Good.” However, all these things are not essential, because this man could be fired tomorrow and his income of four-five hundred leva may disappear. Therefore, if this woman knows better, she should inquire about and observe his heart and his mind; she should be like a clairvoyant who can enter the young man’s house to look around his rooms and his library and see how his books are arranged, to see his kitchen, his garden and visit the garden of his love, his mercy and his justice and see what flowers he has planted there. After she has looked around and seen how everything is arranged and if everything is in good order, then she can say, “See, now I would get married to this man.” Now this is a true marriage. The man should do the same. Many want to change their situation around and so they discuss the question of who should be a man and who should be a woman and why God has made the man one way and the woman, another way. What is wrong with this? There was a time when both women and men used to give birth but since then man has lost his ability to give birth and it was left to the woman to do this. The Bible says, “Abraham gave birth to Isaac” and does not say that Sarah has given birth. Back then, when man used to give birth, the world was in a great state, and when man stopped giving birth, the world went wrong. Man should give birth and be a good Teacher. The mother may birth a child and may instill in its soul all the noble qualities but if the Teacher is not able to cultivate these noble qualities, nothing good will come out of it. Therefore, it is required that the Teacher should give birth, too.
The Teacher should not be like that one priest who, not being himself during baptizing, dipped a child in the baptismal font and held it there for a little longer so it died and he said, “Give me another one. This one cannot be baptized.” When you baptize as Teachers, your mind should be in its place; baptizing like this implies that you should introduce the Divine Spirit into the child that you are teaching. The priest should know the Divine Laws like a Teacher. “But this is what the church has prescribed.” Bathing a child in water is not baptizing it. The modern priests, teachers and judges are professionals who work for money; they are paid three or five hundred or a thousand leva. They are paid more in America: three thousand dollars, which is equal to fifteen thousand leva. According to the understanding of the true Christian teaching, these are not servants of God, but common workers. The first thing that a Spiritual teacher needs to do is reveal the Invisible world to his disciple, just like the mother who, upon conceiving, tells her child, “Wait for nine months and I will introduce you to a new world and I will show you its wonders. As for now, you should not fidget and jump around.” After the nine months have elapsed and the baby has been born, the mother becomes its first teacher, and from then on there come other teachers to further his education from where his mother has left off. She leaves her work, because the child enters into a new area where it needs a new teacher, for as the Gospel says, “A man must be born again.”
My lecture is meant to urge you to take a better look at yourselves and make sure that there is no desire in you to be Teachers because man suffers from great ignorance. Instead, you should sit down like merchants and take a look at what you have in your inner safe; look to see if you know someone in Heaven and if you have sent a letter to someone there. “We believe in Christ.” Yes, but do you know Him? Do you know Paul or Peter? “But the church says that supposedly we are not able to communicate with the other world and that this is wrong.” This is huge ignorance, for how come you can communicate with the spirits from hell, but it is wrong to be communicating with Heaven? How come it is alright to set up communication with the devil, but when it comes to communicating with the saints and talking with them, then you are not supposed to bother them! Then why do you bother the devil; where is the logic in that? This kind of teaching is not based on any laws. What I know is that the Christians of the old used to have direct communication with Heaven; they used to speak with God and the saints and this is why they would die so readily and with such selflessness. They were not like the Christians of today who say, “Let me die first and then I will see.” You will not see anything; what are you going to see when your house collapses on top of you: you will not see anything, instead, you will have to wait until someone pulls you out of the debris.
Christ describes the false teachers to his disciples. Those false teachers, dressed in wide-skirted cloaks, would preach while, in fact, they would be deceiving the proselytes. And so, Christ reproaches them for doing that. The same happens today, too. If Christ were to come now, he would say the same thing; he would not have changed his mind. Christ is quiet, but when he starts speaking and tells the Truth, we will flinch from it, but he will lift off all delusions and we will see them clearly.
I would like to draw upon two examples from Greek history. There were two artists, two sculptors, who had a competition to prove which one understands art better and each of them decided to prove that he was a better sculptor than the other one. The first sculptor made a grape cluster with such artistry, so life-like, that he managed to fool even the birds that started pecking at it. The other sculptor, in turn, chiseled out a beautiful woman and covered her with a veil made of stone but he made it so artfully that when the other sculptor came to see his creation, he told him, “Lift up the veil so that I can see the statue underneath.” In other words, the first artist deceived the birds and the second one deceived the master of birds. Now I’m asking you this. Who do you want to be like: the birds or the master? I would prefer to be like the second one. You want to possess the whole world but how could you possess it without the necessary knowledge: all this knowledge needs to have a spiritual basis. Knowledge in the Spiritual world is like a steam engine, full of power. The different kinds of knowledge in the Spiritual world are related to each other much like the physical forces are related. You travel around the streets of Sofia and there are trams moving back and forth, but up on top of their roofs there is a pole, which, as soon as it glides along the electricity-conducting wire, brings the tram to a stop. Therefore, certain contact is necessary which would conduct electricity so as to bring the car to a stop. Have your Teachers put the pole to the wire; have they connected you to electricity? The mechanism of a human car might be working and in an excellent state, but if the pole is off and does not connect the car to the electricity, there will be no moving forward. When movement stops people usually look elsewhere for the reason when all there is to do is pull the rope and fit the pole into its place; then the tram-driver will pull his lever, electricity will run through the wire and the tram-car will start moving again.
In order for your thoughts to be active- as thoughts are a moving force- you need to come in contact with the Spiritual world. When I use the word ability I mean the form, which contains a certain force that works in the Spiritual world. When the form is taken apart or is out of order, the force cannot be manifested. In the central part of our brain there are areas that house certain abilities; these abilities are connected to the powers in the Spiritual world that help them work. If your pole is not in its place, then these powers will not work; besides, there exist other conditions: there needs to be tracks and the driver needs to know his job well. There are many things that come into play. You, too, like a master need to walk around your country and check in on your workers to see if they are in their place and how they perform their work.
Often you judge your rulers and say that they do not rule well. How well do you rule? You say that this one or that one is not so intelligent; what are you like inside? Your judgments are as true as long as you are righteous in yourself. We say about someone that he is a good man, but where does his goodness lie? “He is good because he treats us politely.” Good manners do not mean goodness at all; if he were to treat us rudely tomorrow, we would call him “bad”. A good man is always good, and a bad one is always bad. Man cannot be a saint one day and a downright rascal the next: this is impossible. You say that it is possible for a bad man to repent. Do you know how many years it takes to do this? When a child is born, he does not become a professor right away, right? He will have to study for at least twelve years and his consciousness will develop gradually during that time.
After one has thoroughly studied the inner Spiritual world one will understand the laws of Christianity. Its goal is to bring order into families, to bring harmony between men and women, brothers and sisters, masters and servants. The world today suffers not because it is bad for people to be servants, but because people cannot be good masters. Doctor Mirkovich6 used to say this, “I do not want to be rich again; I’d rather be a servant to some master.” You want to be masters and to have millions of leva. Oh, you would be the unhappiest people then, for you would be prisoners locked behind your money. One million leva on your back make a heavy burden. You wish you were those people and you want to partake in their burden and put it on your back. This is a misunderstood teaching. Do you really want to be like that donkey that was loaded with icons and when everybody would bow to the icons the donkey would start kicking, thinking that everybody was bowing to him? If people respect you and wish they were you, it is because of the crosses and the icons that you carry on your back. What kinds of crosses are these? They are virtues. You should thank God for putting them on your back.
Christ addresses His disciples, saying, “Do not be called Rabbi.” Someone might say, “I turned him to God.” Good for you for teaching him, God will bless you for that. But what would God say if you have given birth to a crippled man or if you have broken his mind and heart? You will be judged in Heaven, you will be held responsible. There are so many people in this world who have been maimed by all of you here! When those people go to the other world some will have a crippled leg, others a twisted arm; all of your pupils will get together and will testify to God as to what kind of a teacher you were to them. This is how it will happen in actuality and then God will say, “I fine this teacher ten thousand talents7”. He should be thrown in jail until he can pay off his fine.” God never jokes around with that. He is kind, good, and just, but also strict and stern: he will take such imposter-teachers and will give them a ten-thousand-talent fine and then he will add, “Throw him in jail until he learns the art of teaching.” And when you have paid off your debt, that is, when you have put up with all your sufferings, then you will become very good and learned Teachers in time. And do you know how many thousands of years this will take? This is how fallen Angels and people learn nowadays.
We say today that the church, allegedly, does not work well. Let us show a good example, then. I wish for you to have the power that is necessary to change the form of things. Look at Moses: he grabbed the staff and it turned into a snake. He became scared and God told him, “Hold it by the tail” and so, when he grabbed the snake by the tail, it transformed back into a staff. “But”, you may argue, ”This is Moses that we are talking about.” Nevertheless, he too, studied. However, he studied with the greatest Teachers of Egypt. He was not a fool, because God never chooses fools to be the leaders of humankind or of a people. Moses studied for a long time and graduated from a certain school and you see how many miracles he performed before the Pharaoh. Moses had two wishes: he wanted to become a Teacher and a rescuer of the Jews, at the same time. At first he told himself, “This is not for me” and retreated in solitude (he herded sheep for forty years in atonement for the murder). And do you know what he did during that time? He devoted himself to deep contemplation because he was initiated into all of Egypt’s secrets. He had to study for forty years to make up for one murder and during that time he had his second initiation. I am asking you now how many years have you herded sheep? Being shepherds is something great; it is like being Teachers.
Have you come to know your Teacher yet? Your father, your mother, and your grandfather have been Christians for two thousand years but have they come to know Christ? If you have, then you should say the password that he gave you, just like soldiers need a password to let you through. What is your password, your secret prayer? Learned people need to have a motto; what should our motto be? To serve Christ. How can we serve Christ? By learning. How can we learn? Are you friends of school? It is one thing to circle around the school and it is a different story to be inside the school. Where are your report cards and certificates? You have no certificate, yet you want to become Teachers. Some priests and bishops are like this, too; they, too, have no certificates. And so, we live with such lies and we want for the Kingdom of Heaven to come. The Kingdom of Heaven is coming now and is revealing all the dirty things of humankind. And now all peoples have taken to defending their cause through wars. You should defend the Divine Kingdom of justice! Every people should have as much as each deserves and so should every person, as well.
Now ask yourselves seriously if you know Christ. I do not require an immediate answer, but if you can provide an answer within a year’s time, this will be a blessing for you. You might say, “We have seen Christ.” Paul saw Him, and He asked, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me”, and Paul said, “Who are You, Lord?” So, he heard the Lord. Have you heard your Teacher? When you pick a fight in some religious society or in God’s temple, do you not persecute Christ like Saul did? Then He will tell you what he told him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” Paul realized his mistake and God said to him, “Because you have realized what you did and because you did it out of ignorance, I will send you among the heathens so that you can learn your lesson.” And then they beat him three times by thirty-nine blows; it is only adults that God beats up this way; He never beats up children. When you receive thirty-nine blows in the course of thirty-three years- for this was Christ’s age- then you will progress. However, one has to suffer these blows. When a blacksmith wants to make a knife or some other instrument out of iron, he also bestows blows on it. You are on the anvil and God is shaping you with blows. Actually, he does not beat you, but he says, “I want to turn this material into a knife, a plow or a writing pen.” If you are one of the bad people, he will make you into a knife so that you can butcher people; if you are one of the good people, he will turn you into a quill for some writer to hold you in his hand.
The quill which the writer uses when he writes has a greater intelligence than the plow that is used for soil cultivation. You might argue that there is no intelligence whatsoever in iron. But iron, too, becomes weary. Look at a razor blade: it is sharp at first but after it has worked for a while, it becomes weary and dull. Everything becomes weary. There was an Englishmen who did an experiment once and proved that everything- even machines- becomes weary. When the machine is tired, it starts making a certain new sound and the engine driver says, “This machine needs a break.” Following the same law, a man undergoes the same reaction: he becomes tired and wants to rest. The Great Teacher says, “In a case like this, let your brain rest for a week and after that it will start working again.” Every thing needs its own time of work and of rest.
Look closely at how plants grow and develop and how caterpillars hatch and you will be able to understand the law. Your thought may be in the form of a caterpillar or a butterfly. If one is to succeed in the world, one needs to harbor only one idea. This is both true and not true; one needs to have more ideas than one but all of them should be noble. They put blinders over horses’ eyes so that they can look only ahead and so that they are not scared by their surroundings; it is good for one to have blinders like these, that is, to be focused only on one idea, on a noble idea. If you cannot have many noble ideas, you should have at least one and it is this one that you should hold as an aiming mark, which can uplift you and save you. We say, “Christ will save us”. He did more than that: He atoned for our sins. But atonement has its negative side, too, because a bad person can always make a wrong conclusion about things if he wants to use all the goods that he was given. Knowledge should not be trusted into ignorant hands. I am talking about reincarnation here: what is the danger for those who give it a wrong interpretation? For example, a caterpillar with hundreds of legs which crawls up on trees might say, “I need no philosophy. All I need is a leaf; as soon as I find a leaf I will eat it and this will be it.” However, one day it is wrapped in a cocoon and then it hatches as a butterfly and then it says, “Now one leaf is not enough for me. Now I need flowers so I can stick my tongue in them and I can suck out their nectar and their aroma.” In order for you to enter the Spiritual world, you, like the caterpillar, need to strip this skin in which you are wrapped. Should you not take it off, you will occupy the space of a leaf in the Spiritual world and you will understand the Spiritual world as much as a caterpillar does.
I would like for you to enter the Spiritual world, but my question is this: are you hatched yet? When you enter the Spiritual world, you will understand the meaning of an ox, a donkey, a wolf, a dove, a fox and so on. Every form that exists in the physical world contains a great idea and he who correctly interprets this idea will understand the meaning of everything in the world. “But wolves have teeth.” This means nothing, for if the hedgehog has spines they were made for no other reason, but a strategic one: so that it can protect itself from snakes or some other creature which might want to hurt it. The hedgehog catches the snake by the tail and starts eating it little by little until it swallows it all, while protecting itself with the spines in the meantime. In time this hedgehog will change its form. You might ask: how can it change its form? Do you know what your form is in the Spiritual world? There is a verse in the Bible in which God calls Jacob a worm. You might say that He meant that metaphorically. Christ, too, calls his followers sheep, but do you know what that means? Sheep are all those souls in which spirits abide; just like sheep give us milk and wool in this world, according to this same law the souls, too, give man the necessary milk and wool.
Put this teaching to the test. Why are you in this world? Put your mind to work. The first thing you must learn is to get rid of all doubt and connect with the Spiritual world and if you can project your thought, your friends will come to your aid right away. What is your fireplace like? If you make it too hot, that is, if you have the same power as a furnace, then you can bake whatever thought you like. If your heart does not have the necessary heat, it will fall, for it depends on the heart how far your request will be sent. “But I prayed.” Yes, you did, but I see that your prayer hovers only two feet above your head. You may need to pray five, ten or a hundred times from the bottom of your heart before you are able to send your request to God. And when your request reaches His ears, He will respond. What would His response be to a request that has not reached Him? When you pray, you must concentrate and forget about everything else around you; you must transport yourself to a state where there is nothing else in your mind but the prayer. I ask you this now: is the fireplace of your heart and mind so warm as to send your prayers up high? So what if there are children running around you; it is God who sent them to Earth so that they can learn to behave because in Heaven, too, they did not live quietly and so he turned them back in their evolution. God does not want people who make a lot of noise in Heaven; they need to learn how to plow, how to dig, how to make shoes and so on and after a while, when they learn their lesson, they may become princes even. Before entering Heaven you will need to pass a test before a committee which will ask you questions like what your feelings and ideas are, what your compassion and Love for your neighbor and for God is; these and many other questions will they ask. It is because Christ is coming now and the books of Life will open, like it is said, and people will be judged to see if they deserve to pass into a higher grade or not and if they can enter Heaven. Everyone will receive according to his merit.
This is why Christ addresses you and says, “One is your Teacher: Christ.” I want you all to remember this Teacher who came two thousand years ago to pay off your sins and you are still looking for him to this day! Has Christ signed His name in your soul or your heart at least once? If He has signed it there, lucky you! If he has not, make an effort to meet Him and ask Him to write it there. And when He writes His name, do not go around bragging and telling everybody, “Christ signed His name in our report card.” No, you do not need this for here, but for Heaven, for when you go there, the Angels will stop you and will ask you, “Take out your report card” and if God has signed it, they will tell you, “You are free to enter.” Then Christ and the saints and your big and small brothers will welcome you with twigs and there will be great joy that you have arrived.
Once there was the following rule in the Pythagorean school: when they accepted a new student they would subject him to the worst taunts throughout his first year there and if he could bear the taunts, they would accept him. The same way now Christ has sent some people down to Earth to taunt you, saying, “He wants to become a saint, but he is out of his mind, he is a lunatic, a little bit crazy”: all this is but the Pythagorean system of accepting new students. If you can bear these taunts you should know that you have passed the test and then you will be accepted. If, on the other hand, you lose your temper from all the taunts and say, “What! Me? Just you wait”, then you are finished. “My husband is bad”, you complain. How do you know that he was not placed there by the committee on purpose, to test you? Bear this for a year, pass the test and then God will say to your husband, “You are not to taunt and hurt your wife anymore”, and you will see how docile he will become, like a lamb. But this will only happen after you have suffered through everything and when Christ says so. Remember this teaching. I speak of the external side of this teaching; all of this is but thoughts brought to your attention so that you can tell between what is false and what is noble.
When the teaching of Christ enters you, it will uplift you and then you will be able to read people and to see their souls. Sometimes two people meet and ask each other, “I am a Christian. Do you believe in Christ?” If you are Christians, there is no need to ask each other this question, for the very asking shows that there is no Christianity in the one who’s asking. I will never ask about a flower what kind it is, for as soon as I smell it I will know if it is a rose or a carnation as my nose serves its purpose. If I have a bad sense of smell and my nose does not work or if I am blind and cannot see, then I might ask, but if all my senses work then I will be able to tell the kind of flower just by looking at it or by smelling it. It is the flower’s external form or smell that will tell me what kind it is. Likewise, every soul expresses itself through its external features, that is through its acts. I see that you are carnations inside, but some of you have not bloomed. However, there are buds on you and some of them promise to develop in the future. I don’t only want you to bloom, but I want you to bear fruit and to ripen as well. Angels come down like bees to fertilize the soul’s blossoms. As soon as you bloom you already are in communion with them.
This is such a profound science, and there are so many other things for you to hear that I will have to give ten lectures before you. But if I were to tell you about all these things, some of which can be very tiring, then you will say that it is not interesting and will fall asleep. And you are right, for you are not ready for this as yet. The time will come when you will be ready. For example, when you start eating honey and eat too much, you will be sick of it. Why? Because you have had too much. Or say you are friends with some good person and you draw from him constantly, but at some point you say, “I want him to get away from me. I cannot stand him.” You should have been given only so much honey so as not to get sick of it, that is, you should have been around your friend only so much so as not to get sick of him. The same way you should not give too much of your honey. All your guest needs is a teaspoon, not a whole bowl, because then he will be sick of it. This is why there is a Bulgarian proverb that says that even God does not like too much of a saint.
You read and read until you eventually grow old when all you need to do is read only one verse, then take that verse and dwell on it. “God is Love”: think about the ways in which God is Love and feel that Love inside you. It should not be the kind that we feel when we eat an apple or when a cat eats a mouse. When I love you this means that I can be in you and when you love me it means that you are in me. When you have a friend’s image you put it at a special place where it can be seen easily. Our heart represents the Astral world and the mind represents purely the Spiritual world. If your mind can be lifted to a certain height then you have the Spiritual world before you. What happens in the brain is a reflection of the Spiritual world. Every thought, or every noble thought, that is, is a form in the Spiritual world; thoughts differ in form and content. When a noble thought comes to you it produces Joy and Mirth. And when you lift your mind and heart towards Christ, He will take you by the hand and will lead you into the Divine garden; he will take you to the spring of Love so that you can try this Love. You will try things through experience and there will not be a happier moment for you than this. And when you enter you will not say, “Let my husband enter, too.” No, everyone should enter alone; you should not try to put in a good word for someone else. Everyone should have a deep desire to enter himself. If he is talented, you will help him enter, too. However, the incapable ones and cripple ones should remain outside until they are cured. This world is for the crippled people. Those who enter in the school should be pure, for purity of thoughts and desires is a must. Also, utter selflessness is a must; what comes next is self-denial: this is a high degree and this means that you have passed the test.
Now the first thing that is required of you is purity of thoughts and desires, as well as unflinching faith that whatever God has said is what will come to be. When you put God first when you take on a new task there will be no need to wonder if you will succeed. You may be a teacher, a judge, a priest or a farmer but if you fulfill your duty there will be no force in the world that can stand in your way. You will have many obstacles, hardships and trials, but these are all necessary for your development; the sufferings that were sent to us are a blessing.
Now I am leaving you with this thought: may you come to know your Teacher, Christ. When you come to know your True Father then both the Angels and the world will be your brethren; and not one or two of them, but thousands of them will be your brethren. They will show you around their home in Heaven for thousands of years; there are many pleasant things there, as well as long walks, exemplary schools, new suns, new beings and much more! And then you will say, “Now we understand the deep meaning of Life; why one should live.” This will happen when you have only one Teacher. If you have many of them, you will not learn a thing. Just like a child cannot have two mothers, so a man cannot have more than one true Teacher; if you say that you have two, then I will say to you, “You are lying to both me and God.” There is one mother on the physical plane, one Teacher in the Spiritual world, and there is one Father in the Divine world, and this Father is God. There are three of them in all: one on Earth, the Teacher is among the Angels, and God is among the gods. When you go through these three then each one of you will understand the deep meaning and the internal side of the present life and you will be able to bear all suffering with songs of joy; there will be no difficulty for you in life and the relations between men and women, between parents and children and between all peoples will be mended.
Then there will be no question about the fate of the Bulgarian people. I can guarantee that should all Bulgarians turn to God everything will be set right. But should they carry their present heads on their shoulders, they will suffer thirty-nine blows with the staff, for this is what is written in the Divine book. “But Russia is such and such.” Should it follow God’s ways Russia, too, will be blessed; if not, it will suffer the thirty-nine blows with the staff. The same goes for Germany, France, England and all the rest: God beats up everyone one in turn and all for the same reason. All of us who are here on Earth must fulfill our Teacher’s Will, our Father’s Will; I believe that you all have the desire to fulfill this Will. I can see now that you have turned a new leaf and, like the prodigal son, you say, “Forgive us, Father, for we have sinned and we have squandered away what you have given us; we will not do this from now on, so accept us as servants in Your home.” You can be sure that your Father will erase everything, will give you clothes and will butcher the fattest calf to feed you. And then there will be mirth in His home because His prodigal child has returned. He will put a new ring on his son’s finger and then He will give him His blessing, and will say, “Go to school, son. Go and learn anew.”
December 20, 1914, Sofia
1 Soloun was the Bulgarian name for Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece
2 Bey is the Turkish word for the governor of a province or region in the Ottoman Empire.
3 Birbuchuklija is an old style of pants that was popular during the late 19th century in the Ottoman Empire.
4 Saltamarka is an old woolen upper garment with long sleeves that extends to the waist; it usually has a lining and is hemmed with leather.
5 Lev, pl. Leva is the basic monetary unit in Bulgaria.
6 Dr. Georgi Mirkovich (1875-1950) was one of the first disciples of Master Beinsa Douno.
7 Talent comes from the Greek word talanton: an old Greek monetary unit.
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