For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. I Corinthians 3:11
I am the way, the truth, and the life. John 14:6
These two verses are related. What should we understand by the words, “No foundation can anyone lay”? I will discuss the verse in its broad, common sense. Foundation is a prosaic word. Everyone talks about foundations: when building a house, you say, “I’m laying the foundations”; when weaving a cloth, you say again, “I’m laying the foundation”; when making a chemical compound, again you are talking about the base, i.e. the foundation. In geometry, they call the foundation a supporting point. Therefore, in order for Life itself to exist, a foundation is necessary, a supporting point. What exactly is this foundation? It is said that no other foundation can be laid; in other words, we cannot change the foundation of Life, we cannot change the human thought, the human desires, the human will, we cannot change their essence, that is. You cannot make a thought not be a thought; you can make it a good, bad, or neutral thought, but you cannot change it more than that. Therefore, you can change its external form, but you can never change its essence.
Therefore, I am speaking here about a basic law: no one can change the foundation that was laid by Christ. That foundation is that one law governs us all; we stand on the foundation of Good and Bad. The foundation that we stand on produces Joy and suffering, rise and fall, enrichment and bereavement, health and sickness - all at the same time. The foundation, which Christ has laid, (which was the reason He came down from Heaven to Earth) has two supporting points. This is a principle. When one builds a bridge over a river, one needs two supporting points - the two ends of the bridge, in order to build the bridge. Thus, all of the weight will be supported by either one end or the other. Likewise, Heaven and Earth are the two supporting points on which human Life was laid. The deepest thought to which we can reach will be the first foundation, the first supporting point; the wishes constitute the second foundation, and what we call will represents the process of building. When someone talks about the human will, one means to say that in order for the human will to be manifested, two supporting points are necessary; when one starts building on the two supporting points, one’s will is manifested. Therefore, according to this principle, human will cannot manifest unless there are two supporting points first; human will, can manifest only in the process of building.
We need to have a good understanding of the deeper meaning of Christ’s teaching. We should not fool ourselves in thinking that we understand it, when in fact we do not. A lady once told me the following story about a young woman from Sofia, who before she got married, studied everything in college, except cooking. When she got married, she wanted to cook some beans for her husband, but she did not know how. So, she went to a neighbour and asked her, “How do you cook beans?” She did not tell her neighbour that she doesn’t know how to cook. “Well,” the neighbour says, “I let the beans cook and I cut onion like this and then add butter like that.” “Well,” the young woman says, “I, too, cook beans like this.” A week later, she went to her neighbour again and asked her, “How about meat, how do you cook it?” “I cook it like this and that.” “Well, I cook it like this, too,” the young woman replied. However, the neighbour wanted to test the young woman to see if she really knew how to cook and decided to trick her. One day the husband of the inexperienced young woman brought home some snails. When the young woman went to her neighbour to ask for her cooking method, the neighbour said, “I grind them in the mortar, and then I add some rice and water and boil them.” “This is how I cook them, too,” replied the young woman. She went home and cooked the snails following her neighbour’s recipe. When her husband came home for lunch, he saw how the snails were cooked, and realized that his wife did not really know how to cook.
In contemporary religious beliefs there are snails cooked like the ones in the story. One does not cook snails like that, though; one needs a deep understanding of things. What is human thought, one of the great basic laws of creation, based on? First, we are thinking beings; secondly, we are beings who can feel, and thirdly, we are beings who can act and build. Outside of this, you cannot lay another foundation; you cannot act in a different manner. If you act in a different manner, you may degenerate because one can move only in one of two directions: upwards or downwards. There is no middle way in this world. Since everything moves, you cannot stay at one supporting point only, because even though the two supporting points themselves are always immobile, everything else around them is mobile.
In order to clarify this, I will give you an example from modern science to show you what our illusions about Life are. If we send an electrical current under a pile of scrap metal, a certain metal piece that is closest to the source of the electrical current will become magnetized and will attract all other pieces. This metal piece says to the rest, “See how I attracted you with my power, if I wasn’t here, you wouldn’t have been around me either.” However, if we move the source of the electrical current to a different side of the pile, another metal piece will become magnetized and will become the centre for the rest of the pieces. Likewise, when you say, “I can do this,” or “People are attracted to me because I am powerful,” this means that the electrical source is close to you. The minute the current is changed, you will move towards the periphery. Therefore, you need to know that the foundation is not inside of you, in what you think and feel in a given moment. You can tell that you have a foundation, that you have found it if at the moment when you find your supporting points you feel deep Peace inside yourself. A number of philosophers teach to the world but they, themselves, have not found their own supporting points, for they are not peaceful, yet.
When Christ said, “I am the way and the truth”, he was pointing out the two supporting points, and the Life is a process that follows as a result of this Way and this Truth. When we have this foundation, we cannot build differently. For example, what is aspiration? The aspiration of a spirit in space is to be embodied; the aspiration of a child that has been embodied is to grow. In the process of growing, the child starts from one point, reaches a certain height, and then starts going down, thus forming a curvy line, which ends at the other supporting points. Youth and old age are the two supporting points of your life. Afterwards, when you come back for a second time, you will build onto these two supporting points if you have not forgotten them, but if you have, you will begin anew. There are some people, who keep going back and forth but can never build. A curvy line needs to be stretched between the two supporting points - this is the law of movement. This movement is manifest in the human thought; it is the law of accumulating and layering material over these two foundations; and then again, we need to build according to a certain plan. Let us take a look at the human body. I will use it to give you another example: when a man is getting ready to be born into this world, first he forms the extremities for his body and then all other organs. The lungs are the last of the organs to be formed, when the respiratory system is complete, the child must be born right away. The hands are a product of the human will; the face, the nose, the mouth, the lungs, the stomach - all these are the human desires - it is there that we can experience the things we want to try. The human brain is the organ of human thought - it is there that we can experience the thought. When we talk about thoughts, we mean the brain, but when we come to the brain, we can see that the thickness of the grey matter of the brain determines the productivity of the human thought. The deeper the lines in the grey matter are, the stronger the thought will be. Some say that the brain produces thought all by itself. This is not correct. The human brain is like the Earth, which cannot produce by itself; rather, the creative power comes from space. It is the Sun that affects the surface of the Earth, and because a foundation exists, the Sun can build onto this foundation; it can produce and create on it. The human Spirit is the human sun that shines on the human brain and generates thoughts. Every single creature thinks. You think that the ox does not think; it does think but in a limited bovine way. The snake, the lizard, the fly, and all other creatures, they all think and according to their thought, they create their own house to live in, i.e. they create their body, their organism. Our body, our human organism as we have it now, is the result of the thought we have. Man is built after the kind of thought he carries inside. You can make your lungs very large, a meter in width, let’s say. If the human Spirit makes the effort, it can make your head very big. However, the size of one’s head is not the only important thing. What is important is whether one will be able to work with it or not. The Earth is big, too, but when God sent man to Earth, he told him, “Go and control the earth and the elements.” Because we could not control the Earth, God gave us one smaller earth, which is the brain that is inside our head. If we know how to control our brain, we will find out the laws through which we can control the Earth, as well. If you cannot control your brain centres and your feelings, if you cannot focus your will, how can you control something outside of you? Therefore, we cannot lay another foundation, for there exists a certain law that limits our activity. It is only if we operate and move within this law that we can do anything and be all-powerful. Our happiness or unhappiness, too, will be based on the following great thought: how correct is our direction.
With this lecture, I want to lead you to the thought that you need to start building your Life. Here is a story as an example to clarify this idea. A traveller was doing research in the East when a wild bull came across his tracks. The bull started chasing the traveller. In order to get rid of the bull, the traveller found an empty well, jumped into it and held onto a little tree that was growing inside the well. At the same time that the bull came to the opening of the well and started to peer inside, the traveller noticed that there was snake at the base of the well that was waiting for him to fall. He started thinking about what to do; he could not climb out, nor could he climb down, so he held tightly onto a branch. At one point, he noticed that there was some honey at the top of the tree. Forgetting that the bull was waiting for him at the top, the traveller became excited and started to lick the honey. However, after a while he saw a mouse come out of the walls of the well, and start to gnaw at the tree. The traveller then thought to himself, “This honey will not save me either, for one day the tree will be gnawed in two and I will fall down to the snake.”
This bull represents the fate that pushes man around, and the snake represents the death that awaits man. In fact, the bull is birth and the snake is old age; they are not dangerous things. Why is the bull chasing you? To make you work; you are too lazy and it wants to make you run. What are all the sufferings in the world? They are this bull, who is chasing the world today: kings and generals, officers and judges. All of them run and preach freedom to people; if you meet them you will think that they are all clever philosophers, reasoning that the world is poorly designed. But how can you reason without a foundation; can a man, who is being chased, think? It is not bad that this bull is chasing us, because if we are strong, we can turn around, grab it by the horns and it will stop. In Jewish history, there is a hero named Samson. Once, a lion jumped on Samson, but Samson grabbed him by the mouth and ripped him apart. Our fear of the bull is due to the fact that we have not found the two supporting points.
“For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid by Jesus Christ.” Well, what foundation did Christ lay? How did He live on Earth? If you take the nine beatitudes, you will see that He gave nine rules for man to live by. He also gave two great laws: a Love of God and a Love of one’s neighbour - these are the two supporting points on which you need to build your life; these are the two supporting points on which today’s social life and family need to be built. A woman who does not love God, who does not love her husband, cannot keep a house. A man who does not love his neighbour, i.e. his wife, cannot keep a house. Of course, when I speak of man and woman, I do not mean your bodies, your “houses”, as they are quite humbly built, the way I see them. What I mean is the human soul in its supreme manifestation; this soul that in the future can make for itself a much better house than the one it has now. This soul, which now appears to be ignorant, can have much greater knowledge one day; it can become much more learned. In order for you to find the two supporting points on which to build your Life, you need to form a curved line and start building. You must not grope around as the modern philosophers do. There are some scientific people among those who study the Sun, who say that the Sun is five million degrees Celsius, while others say that it is two million; yet others claim that it is a hundred thousand degrees Celsius. There is a mister, who dares to say that it is only thirty-two degrees, someone else says that it is below zero, and a third one says that the Sun is melted and that is why it radiates heat. However, now other scientists have come forth who disagree with all this and say, “If this was true that the Sun was melted, then the whole universe should have been hot, but it is a fact that the higher up one goes the colder it gets, so much so, that one can freeze.” That is why these scientists say that all the Sun sends is energy, which then gets transformed here, on Earth. It is the Earth itself that produces heat and light, because, truly, when one goes high up in space, one will see that it is dark up there. All these people argue but the facts show that some are right and the others are wrong, but there is a misunderstanding. I say, if you are very sensitive to heat, the Sun is hot, if you are not sensitive, the Sun will bring no heat to you. Heat is a relative thing. Just like some people put five cubes of sugar in their tea and others put only one and it is still too sweet to them. That is why first we need to get rid of the illusion to think we know everything like that young woman from the story who thought that she knew how to cook ground snails; we should not cook the truth the same way. Likewise, Europe now cooks the snails the same way as in the story, the second time around, the European nations will cook in a different way.
Let us go back to the essential idea: we must create. Some of you, who are listening to me this morning, are unhappy, some are discontent with life, and still others have big ambitions and a grand opinion of themselves. A few days ago a friend of mine told me, ”Before I started learning the science of palm reading, I thought very highly of myself. When I started reading the lines on my hand, I found out that all that was written on my hand was a little bit of pride and egoism and I started to feel embarrassed with myself.” You are the same way, you think that you know a lot but when you enter Life, you cannot deal with it. You are like this young girl who, before getting married, would daydream like this, “When I get married, I will arrange my house like this, I will dress like that and I will live with my husband like that.” She would lay out a project for herself, the way projects are laid out for laws. However, a month after she gets married, both spouses start walking around all dishevelled, so the project did not work out according to plan. The same way the laws that are passed in parliament, often do not get applied in practice, because they are not designed according to the real situation. Similarly, when a thought we have is not put into practice, we say, “We are miserable, fate is after us.” It is not fate that is after you, but it is your stupidity that is after you, chasing you every step of the way. We need to learn to think correctly. When someone comes to you, you need to create a correct opinion of him and treat him the way you would want to be treated in his situation; and we need to act well because what we do will come back unto us.
Forty-five years ago, some gentleman earned a degree in music in Europe. He then became a teacher and started teaching the children of the rich men in Varna how to play, dance, etc. However, one day this gentleman had a quarrel with the citizens and they fired him. As he was an extremely touchy and proud man, he went hungry for three days after he ran out of money. He then met this priest, a friend of his, who invited him over for a visit. The gentleman thanked him and told him his story. After hearing the gentleman’s story, the priest took out two white medzhidzhii1, gave them to him, and said, “When you spend this money, come by my place again until you find a job.” After a month or two the gentleman, who could speak Turkish very well, was appointed as secretary to the Turkish Valia2. A year later, it was alleged that the priest was a rebel because he had suspicious letters, and books. Those documents were handed to the Bulgarian secretary to look them over. He looked them over, and then set aside and hid away all suspicious papers. In this way, the priest was declared innocent. However, he was surprised by the behaviour of the secretary who told him, “Remember the two white medzhidzhii that you gave me when I hadn’t eaten for three days? It was those medzhidzhii that saved your head.” If this gentleman knew how to act in the first place, the citizens would not have fired him. On the other hand, if the priest had not invited over this man who had been hungry for three days, and had not fed him and given him the two medzhidzhii, the latter, being the secretary, would have put the rope around his neck. This is the way we should deal with all our thoughts and acts in our life; we should ask ourselves about the reasons for our misfortune if we are unhappy; we should ask ourselves what causes our pride, cruelty, greed for riches and so on.
Therefore, we need to start thinking. If you say to someone, “You are cruel”, you should know that this thought is not yours; it is false capital that was perhaps left to you as an inheritance from someone else. Here is an example to clarify this: two years ago in Sofia an Armenian went to a Jew with some sample diamonds. He had a whole bag of those but since he had imported them duty-free he wanted to sell them very cheaply, for twenty thousand leva. The Jew happily accepted the offer and arranged for the Armenian to bring him the diamonds at a given place where he gave him the twenty thousand leva in cash and took the bag, thinking that he was now the owner of a fortune. When he went home, the Jew opened up the bag and what did he see: only the sample diamonds were real, the rest was simple glass. The same way you, too, may carry around this bag, thinking that you are rich, but when you open it, you will see that it is full of glass beads. According to the heritage law, our ancestors leave a fortune and that is the virtue in us, and the rest is glass beads, which is the evil in us.
So, we have a false understanding of Life; we think that we are good when we are not, that is, we think that we have certain capital when, in fact, we do not have it yet, this is how we have a false foundation for Life. The Apostle Paul says in an address to the Christians back then, “No other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid by Jesus Christ”, and Jesus says, “I did not come to do my will but the will of God” - this is the first supporting point. Then he says, “I did not come to take the life of people but came to give them My life” - this is the second supporting point. Truly, this is why Jesus came - to give us Life. He preached and also practiced the Love of one’s neighbour, because Christianity is Love for the neighbour; it is a science of Love and he who learns this science, can build on it. But this science does not come down to sweet words, kisses, and gifts, because when someone starts giving somebody presents, I suspect that he is not doing that with the best intentions in mind.
Here is an example to explain this: a fly stopped by a spider that started praising her, “You are so beautiful. You have such pretty little eyes and your wings are so colourful; I have never seen a beauty like you in my life.” “Can this be true?” the fly asked. The spider said, “Oh, there is no other creature as beautiful as you. I have a mirror here. Come in and I will give it to you as a gift so you can look at yourself.” The fly flew in to look at herself in the mirror and never flew out. When someone tells you, “You are very beautiful; come and I will do this and that for you,” you will walk in but will never walk out, just like the fly from the story. This is what gifts are all about: they are corruption. With this, I am not saying that you should not give or accept gifts; what I am saying is that the mouth, the thought and the heart should participate in a gift; the human Wisdom, Knowledge, and Love should be a part of the gift. I know of many women who were seduced by men with gifts; such a woman will acquire a watch, a ring, a little hat, but she will have lost her virtue once, and forever, she will have brought shame on herself. I know of many people who have risen to power but have come down from it disgraced, blemished, devoid of their purity. Society may say of them, “This is a great person”; yes, he is great but he was a diamond once, and now he is mud.
Therefore, we cannot lay another foundation. If we can fulfil our tasks in the world according to the laws by which we move and evolve, then that is great. If we cannot do that according to those laws, then we had better not do it at all. Someone may say, “I can’t do it.” I say, how come you can gossip, how come you can hate, but this you cannot do. If you can praise, you should be able to love, as well; if you can do one, you should be able to do the other, as well. He, who cannot hate, cannot love either, but he who can hate, can love as well. It is the same law. You have only one supporting point. Find the other one, and when hatred and Love come together, they will impart that which is necessary in Life, they will give you a direction in Life.
I do not recommend that you should be saints in the common sense of the word. To be a true saint implies that you can use the two principles in Life in a way that can help your evolution. Just like you can tame a lion or a snake, the same way you can tame a devil, too: you cannot make him good, but you can make him harmless. You should start with your thoughts: a thought that bothers you represents a lion or a snake; do not try to chase them away or kill them, but tame them, overcome them. Have the courage of the Africans who have mastered the psychology of the lions. When an African comes across a lion, he does not turn around, because if he does, the lion will jump on him and will tear him apart. Instead, he starts walking towards the lion saying to him, “You are a rascal.” He starts spitting and walking directly towards the lion. When he is within three to four feet from the lion, the lion moves aside and makes way for the African. This is what you should do, too, if you come across a lion in your path, do not turn around, nor go to the right or left, but look him directly in the eye, and say, “Get out of my sight, you rogue,” and the lion will go away. You may question, “Is this really possible?” He who is talented can do this; he who is cowardly, cannot. When a house is collapsing, it may fall down on us even if we try to run. If one day the Earth starts collapsing, then if we are people of Faith, we will rise up to Heaven, to the other supporting point, to the other end of the bridge. If there is danger at one end, we will move towards the other one and will defend our positions. That is why, if you have this bridge, the enemy can never do you any harm, because you will be strong enough to lift this bridge and make a gap between you and your enemy that he will never be able to cross. This enemy will need to know the laws very well to be able to attack you in this situation; this is why good people are invincible, because they have two supporting points, so when they find themselves in danger at one of the points, they move to the other one, and defend their positions from there.
This is the foundation that we need to lay: Jesus and Christ. The two words stand for the two supporting points. Jesus stands for the suffering of man on Earth, for the human soul which suffers and which works on its salvation. Christ stands for the Man who has overcome, who serves God, who is ready to sacrifice himself. Therefore, you should be both Jesus and Christ. Someone may say, “But he is Jesus”- yes, anyone can be Jesus when he suffers and bears his suffering like a true hero. If you put a cross on his back, he will carry it and will never complain. He will be like Socrates who got married to the meanest woman in Greece, and when they asked him why he chose to marry such a woman, he answered, “If I can win against this woman, if I can handle her, then all other difficulties will be easy for me to deal with.” Likewise, if you, men and women, can deal with each other, then you will have solved one of the greatest tasks; but if you cannot deal with each other, then you will not be able to deal with anything else in the world. Someone asks why people get married. They get married so that they can deal with each other. The man and the woman stand for the two supporting points on which Life is built. They say, “Why did Adam need a woman who only got him in trouble?” God did not create trouble for him, but created some work for him. Eve was enterprising and smart. She was a very smart woman, much smarter than you who think of yourselves as being very smart. The culture and knowledge we have today we owe to her. She committed a sin, but then showed up before Adam and corrected her sin by saying to him, “I brought you down, but I will bring you up again; now I will save you so that you can learn to think, because you couldn’t think. If you could, you wouldn’t have wanted me to come to Earth.” If all of you, women, understood this law like your old mother did, you would have been very smart, but you do not understand it, and all you do is be upset. I do not like you for you are bad daughters. Your mother is much smarter than you are; she has been working for eight thousand years and she has been working well, at that. Do not think that Eve does not work - we have this civilization today because of her. All Adam does is follow her instructions; all he knows to do is fight, pull out a knife, and when he goes back to his wife, she asks, “Did you finish it?” “Yes, I finished it.” “You have finished it well.”
We need to lay foundation here. You must leave the illusion to think that when you go to Heaven, they will teach you there. In order for them to teach you in Heaven, you need to bring the raw material with you. Now tell me, what do you bring with you? I would hire a train to take you to Heaven, but for how many days would you stay there? I doubt that some of you would have enough money to stay there even for a day or two; others would spend their money in about ten days and would say, “Let’s go back to Earth to earn some more.” So, we need to lay a foundation by understanding what the essence of the Christian life is.
I will not talk to you about Salvation and all that, like others have talked to you, for those are simple things. What is needed today is a wise way of building onto the current social order. We need to ask ourselves how our generations should be brought up; what our future judges, teachers, fathers, mothers, sisters, friends, merchants, engine drivers, etc. should be like. They say, “Time will make them,” but time does not ask, “What would you like me to do for you?” Just as the snake appeared before Eve back then and asked, “Why don’t you eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?” The same way now Christ appears before her and asks, “Why for thousands of years haven’t you been eating the fruit from the Tree of Life?” Eve says, “Because we are forbidden to do that.” “Why are you forbidden?” Eve wants to lie about it, but at last decides to speak the truth, “Because we’ve sinned.” “So there!” says Christ, "As soon as you correct your sin, as soon as you throw it away from yourself, you will be allowed to eat from this Tree of Life. Just like you felt the contamination from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil after you ate from its forbidden fruit, now, when you try the fruit from the Tree of Life, a different science will follow, a different social order, which will be diametrically opposite to the current one.” These things might be allegorical to you but for me they are a reality, for these trees exist in our brain; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is at the back of the brain and the other, the Tree of Life, is at the front of the brain.
The Russians say, “Русский человек живет задным умом”3. These days the Russians are beginning to live with the front part of their brain - they have forsaken alcoholism. Up until now, no one in Russia thought that people could be sober; now, the czar outlawed alcoholism with a decree. Therefore, the same law that up until this moment has been begetting a great evil is now begetting a great Good.
So now, Christ says, “Are you ready to think now? Not to live with your back mind, not to try, but to think, to build as I say?” And you, like the modern neutral countries, say, “What guarantees will you give us?” Everyone wants guarantees. Italy, Serbia, Greece, Romania, and Bulgaria, they all say, “We cannot abandon our neutrality without a guarantee.” The same way we, too, say to Christ, “We tasted the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and saw the evil that befell us; let’s think a little before we try the Tree of Life, lest the same evil befalls us.” “We are keeping our neutrality,” says grandpa Radoslavov4, but neutrality will not do the job. Neutrality is one of the supporting points; we need to find the next one so that we can start weaving our cloth. Likewise, in the Christian life, one can keep neutrality up to a certain point; after that, one needs to go to war. If one has a bad thought, it is a war; if one is born or dies, it is a war; if one becomes rich or poor, it is a war. Life is war from one end to the other, but this war needs to be based on the principle of winning, not losing. The Triple Entente5 gave guarantees to Italy, but we do not know if they are in a position to carry out their promises fully, how do we know if they will not denounce their promises after a while? Here is a story to exemplify this: a wolf was eating a sheep when a big bone got stuck in his throat and he started to howl with pain. A stork heard him and came to his rescue. The stork dipped his beak into the wolf’s mouth, took out the bone and asked for his payment. The wolf said to the stork, “You should be grateful that I did not bite your head off.”: this is how it is with guarantees, too. We, as we build according to the same law, we also are solving a grand question in Life; not only is Bulgaria deciding whether to go to war or not; we, too, are deciding with Heaven6. Christ is posing the following question to all of us: “With us or against us?” and we have to decide if we are with Christ or against Christ. There is no room for neutrality now. There is a big competition going on in the world today, everybody is at war, and everyone will have to take one side or the other and thus a grand question will be solved. Whatever is happening in the world, is also taking place inside us at the same time.
Now I want to liberate you from the delusion to think that we can win without suffering. No, winning always comes after a great loss; joy always comes after great suffering. If a mother does not lose her prettiness, she can never have children; if a young maid does not let go of her virginity, she can never become a mother. This is the great law in Nature. We need to know how to digest our thoughts, how to think; if a bad thought to commit a crime, to steal, comes to your mind, you need to turn your mind in a different direction in order to get rid of it. You should turn your mind to this man’s soul, feel love for him and say to yourself, “Would I want to be robbed if I were him?” If a thought comes to your mind to do harm to somebody, stop right away, and think like this, “Would I want for somebody to do this to me if I were him?”
You, men and women, how do you solve these questions? Sometimes you get angry with your husbands, and you let bad thoughts cross your mind; bad thoughts like those to get rid of these men and find other ones to live with. Or the man says, “I wish this woman would go away, I would be better off if I could find another woman.” Well, a woman is a woman, made of the same soil. Therefore, we, men, should not be fooled by the external appearance of women. In cases like this, if a man and a woman feel anger for each other, they should look at the situation like this, “If I were in my wife’s shoes, how would I have liked my husband to treat me?” and vice versa, and then they should resolve the situation according to the answer they receive. If the woman says, “My husband is bad, I cannot stand him,” she is not a woman, she does not think right. I know of cases where a son and a daughter want to kill their father because he is evil. How do they know that he is bad? What is evil? The same person who is evil today may become very good tomorrow; a woman hates her husband today and not a day or two goes by before she says, “I love him.” How is that? Can you love somebody who is not good? No, you cannot; therefore, there is a certain illusion. We must think correctly. This foundation needs to be applied in Life. It is not difficult to do this; if the evil thought to do something bad comes to your mind, tell yourself, “I am a servant, a son of God, who has sent me from Heaven to Earth, and at this moment my Master, my Father is watching me.” The moment you tell this to yourself, your thought will change, because you will think that He will not praise you for this. What would a father say if he sees that his daughter is tormenting her husband?
There is a saying that there are three kinds of women, and three kinds of men in this world, but I will speak only of the women, because men are the same as women. There is an anecdote that Noah had only one daughter. Three bachelors came for her, and all three of them loved her so much that not one of them wanted to give her to someone else. Noah found himself in a difficult situation. In order to make all three of them happy, he turned his donkey, and his cat into young women as beautiful as his daughter, and married the three young women to the three bachelors. A year later, he paid them a visit and asked one of his son-in-laws, “Do you like my daughter?” “She is pretty but sometimes she scratches me.” “Well”, said Noah, “It is in her nature.” Then he went to his second son-in-law, “Do you like my daughter?” he asked. “She is pretty, but sometimes she kicks.” “It is in her nature,” said Noah. Finally, he went to his third son-in-law, “Do you like my daughter?” “Oh,” he answered, “She is an angel.” Noah, then, said to himself, “This is my real daughter.” In other words, if you want to be the real daughter, you should not kick nor bite. This is the basic teaching of Christ: do not kick and bite, but think like a human and strive to fulfil your mission on Earth; everywhere you go, bring Joy and Happiness; if you see that someone is sad, comfort him, and enlighten his mind. We need knowledge to do this. To study your head and hands, this is science. When you start studying your head and hands, you will be able to form a correct picture of your evolution; you will see how a number of generations have lived before you and at what stage of your development you are; you will perceive things correctly and will have the right idea. A hand never lies. Touch can give you the most accurate idea of what a man is like; by shaking hands with him, you can tell his heart, his personality, and his mood. They say about someone that he is stupid; he is stupid because he does not have many points of feelings and impressions on his hand, for it has been noted that very few such points can be found on the hands of the stupid and bad people. Why is that so? Because those people don’t need this or that, but all they need is eating and drinking.
Man wants a culture and it is in this culture that Christ has laid the foundation of “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life and I am also Love of God and Love for your neighbour.” If you can apply these two laws, Love of God and Love of one’s neighbour, there will be no force in the world that could stand up to you, there will be no thought that would not yield to you and come to serve as your ideal. One of the laws, the law of Love, stays in the back; if you apply it, you will love people, but if you do not have the other law, the Divine law of thought, the first law will lead you into a lot of trouble. Only the Divine Law can regulate and elevate human love, because, out of great love, one can wear out the object of his love. One can suck out all the feelings, steal the heart, and exhaust the object of his love. This is no Love, this is lack of knowledge, this is parasitism; this is what octopuses do when they catch their prey, they suck out its blood out of love, using their tentacles until it loses its strength and stops moving, much in the same way some men tame their women. It is not taming when you take someone’s strength, and then say, “Now my wife is wiser.” This is no wisdom at all, for today, you will wear out one woman and tomorrow some other woman will wear you out. Christ says, “I came to give Life and not to take other’s lives.” Can you give Life to your husband, that is, can you help him think for himself rather than telling him, “I want to make you think?” You can make your husband be exactly the way you want him to be, but for that you will have to put him not on the anvil, but between these two forces, two laws that will heat him up so that he will change. One’s beauty depends on this kind of heating up. The farther you are from the centre of these two laws, the uglier you will be. Iron is black but when you heat it up, it turns red, which gives rise to the Red Race; after that it turns yellow and then it fades to a paler colour and you say, “The iron has become so beautiful.” Yes, it is beautiful, but if you took the heat away, it would become ugly again. Therefore, you can be beautiful, intelligent, and bright only as long as these two laws are at work within you. This is not only a mere hypothesis; make the front and back parts of your brain work more equally so that you can have one supporting point, and you will be able to acquire what you want right away: you will be able to acquire the best children, and friends, and all there is in the world. However, for this, you need to start working on your inner self by applying Jesus Christ’s law of Love of God and Love of one’s neighbour, and you need to start doing the mental exercises.
When it comes to doing Good, you must erase the word “I can’t” from your mind and replace it with the word “I can”. When it comes to doing wrong, then you must say, “I can’t.” But if it is for Good, then you must say, “I can”. If a good thought comes to your mind, say, “I can”; if a bad thought comes too your mind, say, “I can’t”. Just like a woman weaves her cloth by moving the shuttle of the loom from one hand to the other, and then back to the first one, the same way she should weave her thoughts, wishes, and character, too - that is, by moving to the negative pole when she has a bad thought, and then to the positive pole when she has a good thought. When she weaves her character in this manner, Christ will send a master her way who will tailor a suit for her in which everything will fit in its place, and then everyone will love her. The same principle works for men, as well.
This, that we should know how to work, is the new foundation that Christ wants to lay. Do not doubt God. Some say, “Does God exist?” You should leave this stupid thought aside. The only and most powerful proof of God’s existence is the following: I exist, therefore God exists, too. This is the strongest proof there is. I think, therefore, God thinks, too. My thought implies God’s thought; my act implies God’s act. Everyone who might think differently makes no sense; he does not understand the most basic rules of logic. I love, therefore, God loves: God is a perfect and sublime Being that moves and directs all people and when a person starts doubting God, with that he has already doubted himself and his neighbour. Do not think that God will be perturbed by this behaviour. God is amused when we don’t listen to Him. When the devil sinned, God put him in the fire to burn until he admitted that He is his Lord. In the same way, about that person who philosophizes a lot on earth God says, “Why don’t you bring me this person here and put him in the fire.” Then, when he starts heating up, He will ask, “What forces are working on you?” “I am suffering.” “No,” God will say, “Think what has caused this, where is your brain?” “Well, this is hell.” “Why is it hell and what are the reasons for this?” Hell is a place where God teaches people how to think. Some ask, “Where is hell?” Earth is the thirteenth sphere. God will put us in this fire and if we are good, we will leave this hell without being burnt by the fire, just like the three Jewish prophets were thrown in the fire pit, where they walked, sang, and praised the Lord in the midst of the flames. Yes, if I were to be in the fire, in hell, I would sing there, too. Some are afraid of hell, but if I go there, I will sing the same song that you sing. There is no such thing as a bad place; bad is something relative. If God is with you, there is no struggle, there is only Good everywhere. If God is not with you, and if you do not understand His laws, then every place will be bad.
Therefore, the first foundation, the first supporting point, is you. The second one is Christ. Come together the way a man and a woman come together, the way a brother and a sister come together, because the Force is in unity; the unity lays the foundation for all work, building, thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and civilization.
This is the thought that I am leaving for you, “No one can lay any other foundation.” And the foundation is that this life that you now are living is the best life that God has given us on Earth. God could not possibly give us any better life than this one; this life is excellent and full of such gifts that we can work miracles. You still have no idea what great riches this life contains; you have no idea what powers the future holds for you, what you can be, what you can achieve. The little baby is microscopic in his mother’s womb, but becomes an independent organism by the ninth month when the mother gives birth, and by that she gives it the conditions to grow and evolve. In another twenty years, the little baby becomes a man and starts to think. Following the same law, man is now a microscopic being, compared to God, but one day when he evolves and is born anew, when he rises higher, he will understand the grander things. If we want to evolve, we need to change the shape of our head, of our mind, of our heart, of our character, and feel the sublime harmony of Life in our Spirit. Then we will be promoted to the range of Angels; we will rise closer to heaven. This is it, the new foundation of man.
May 23, 1915
Sofia
1 Medzhidzhii- old Turkish silver coins
2 Valia- a Turkish dignitary during the time of the Turkish occupation of Bulgaria
3 Русский человек живет задным умом- А Russian saying meaning, “The Russian lives through the back part of his brain.“
4 Grandpa Radoslavov - This is the nickname for the Bulgarian politician Vasil Radoslavov (1854-1929) who was a prime minister for the third time during the period of 1913-1918
5 The Triple Entente was the name of the coalition between England, France and Russia who, during World War I, fought against the so-called Triple Alliance (Germany, Italy, Austro-Hungary). Bulgaria was part of the Triple Alliance. Italy, which is the country mentioned in the text, enters the war as part of the Triple Alliance on May 23, 1915- the same day when “The New Foundation” lecture was delivered.
6 Bulgaria enters World War I on October 14, 1915
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