‘What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.’ Mark: 10:9
Let’s go back to what God has joined together. I take these words in a very broad sense, i.e. the way Christ understood them to mean. They cover the entire human life in all of its manifestations.
‘What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.’ This putting asunder is the source of all suffering in life. There is no need to argue about this statement; anybody can verify it from experience.
When you are put asunder from your husband, from your soul, from your brothers or sisters, friends, from your house, from your fatherland, you feel sad. Why so? The word fatherland has a meaning a bit different from the meaning people usually understand. Fatherland is usually taken to mean home, family, but what family is on the earth, in Heaven it is fatherland, a Divine home.
Contemporary people understand putting asunder to mean parting only between a man and a woman, i.e. what they call separating. Putting asunder is supposed to mean separating of any thought and desire from your mind and heart. When you separate a good thought from your mind or a good desire from your heart, you commit a crime.
‘Do not throw away what God has joined together!’ The exercises1 that I gave you last month are connected with this great law. In the first sentence you say, ‘Let my Sun rise in my soul like this.’ Why? Just like the Sun in the physical world is the cause for the growth in Nature, just like it, rising above the horizon, refreshes Nature, similarly there is a Sun within human beings, which rises and refreshes them. When the rays of the natural Sun shine in the desert, they warm only the sand and if you travel bare-foot in the sand, it will scorch you. If its rays fall upon soil rich in seeds, they bring good, they develop these seeds, and create life, and if you travel through such a place, you feel fine. If your Sun rises under the same law, you will experience it and you will see that everything said here is very true. If you have put asunder what God has joined, your Sun will rise the way it rises in the desert and there will be hot and cold currents. Have you seen how people take their clothes off in summer, they are out of breath, they feel hot; this hotness is due to the fact that that there is insufficient vegetation. Why should your Sun rise? To make everything good within you grow.
Now, you will add the following to the first sentence of the exercise, ‘Let my Sun rise in my soul like this and renovate my heart.’ You will also add some new words to the sentences in the persons,
(in the second person singular), ‘You can! – Let God’s Sun rise in me like this and renovate my soul.
(in the third person singular), ‘He/she can! – Let the Sun of my spirit rise like this and renovate my mind.
(in the first person plural), ‘We can! – Let the Sun of our Angels rise like this and renovate our hearts.
(in the second person plural), ‘You can! – Let the Sun of the Great Lord of Peace rise like this and renovate our souls.
(in the third person plural), ‘They can! – Let the Sun of all Suns rise in our spirits like this and renovate our minds.
The work on the renovation of the heart, soul and mind will take a whole month. This is the meaning of the line, ‘What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.’ This is the law, to which you now return, to put your heart, soul and mind in agreement. Anybody who has put asunder what God has joined has lost this harmony.
There are many women, whose husbands died, but some of them are alive, though people consider them dead and vice versa, there are dead women, who are alive. So, according to my understanding a certain woman may be alive, but she might have been dead for a long time staying at home, just like some abandoned skeleton in the zoos or like a stuffed bird in a museum. The Turks have a saying for similar cases ‘For the show’2. This is my understanding of Apostle Paul’s epistle saying, ‘Do not accept a widow below sixty years of age.’ Number six is the number of Love. Paul shows that such a person is not ready to work yet. Therefore, young widows have to get married, and bring up children. This is a great law. The word marriage means Life. Contemporary people do not understand Life, since they do not understand the spiritual meaning of things. You have a child who does not eat; the mother believes that the child is sick and she worries. But what will you say about a child who has stopped singing? What about a child who has stopped praying? A person, who has stopped eating, singing and praying, is a sick person. Eating refers to the body, singing – to the heart, praying – to the mind. Some philosophers say that a person should not pray. I tell them, ‘Some germs have entered your mind, and therefore you are sick.’
Certainly, you have to try experimenting. You are now in a School. I do not tell you to throw everything out when you go back home. I do not teach you to throw everything out, but to put it to use. When contemporary people have cloths, they collect them and make rugs3 out of them. You have a fertiliser – fertilise your field then.
So, make it your task to go back to the words of, ‘What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.’ What does this joining together imply? The joining of the Sun with human beings is conditioned by five senses. We may be joined together with the Sun through our eyes. If we damage our eyes, we shall be deprived of this good. If we damage our sense of smell, we shall not get in touch with the aroma of fruit, which is created by the Sun. If our taste is damaged, we shall not understand this internal good, which is contained within the fruit. We have to keep our eyes clean. How are the eyes damaged? When a woman loses her husband, she starts crying for him and keeps crying for him, and her eyes fail. Why should she cry? Previously she did not want this very same man, and now she cries for him. According to me, in this respect crying is not natural. Crying should imply certain softening of the heart. Any crying, which does not bring about softening, is no good. I will give you the following example to clarify my point: a thief was sentenced, for stealing twenty-five leva4, to a three-year stay in prison. The barrister who defended the thief said,
- "He did not steal intentionally; if he were a thief, there would have been ten thousand leva at the same place, which he would have taken as well."
On hearing this, the thief started crying.
"Why are you crying?", the judges asked.
"Because I could not take the ten thousand leva."
Many people now cry not because they have stolen twenty-five leva, but because they have not noticed the ten thousand leva, they failed to take it. It is often the case when some people cry and say, ‘I’m sorry for not having this or that.’ I say you are sorry for not taking the ten thousand leva. Knowledge is necessary inasmuch as it could be useful to you. The numerous hypotheses and philosophical theories are necessary inasmuch as they represent exercise for the mind, but Life needs the essential stuff, because it always imparts health, Peace, and a special internal Joy.
So you have to think along analogous lines: just like the Sun generates springs, forests, mountains and all the goods on earth, just like this your Sun, when it rises in your heart, will create all the goods according to the same law. You shall only have to work sensibly. You are the masters of your lives and there is no force that can counteract you, because God, who had joined these things together, takes care to maintain this equilibrium. Any thought, regardless whether it is good or bad, which is generated within you, triggers a big struggle. Two sensible forces struggle simultaneously within you; both of them tell you how you should act. Sensible Life is necessary for you, not to society. Society is a condition for individuals. Christ says that it is not the individual who is made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath is made for the individual. One should not become a slave to society. Society is the medium for the development of individual souls. The collective societies are units put together. You ask why God created the world. He created it for your soul. But you say, ‘Society and the world need to improve!’ If all people are healthy, if they sing and eat, while you are not well, what benefit will this world be to you? What is the use of there being many angels and saints? The world will improve when you improve. When I speak of society, I mean the internal human being. You should never say, ‘What can I do?’ How did the world start deteriorating in the first place? Everything has come from the people, from individuals. Some Parisian woman fancied wearing a wig and in time you see all the others following her example. A certain woman had a whim to make a tight-fitting dress – all the others start wearing tight dresses; or some woman decided to wear a loose gown – all the rest imitate her. A man felt like having trousers with broad turn-ups – this becomes fashionable and everybody starts following his example. One is an example to many. Do not think that whatever you do in this world has no implications. Implications there are – for you and for the others. Therefore Christ says, ‘Fear not, your Father has the good will to give you His Kingdom’.
In order to be strong, you have to restore this togetherness within you. You have to renovate this disharmony, which exists in you, because there are many thoughts in you which trouble you, there are many contradictions. Say for example, you ask me what your future will be like. Sometimes I tell you, ‘I can tell you nothing.’ Why? Because I see that the future is very bad for that person. A monk was very pious and made five hundred bows each time. Another monk, on seeing him, recognised that he was very pious. The first one wondered how the other could know, but did not think that, because due to all the bowing he did, his fingers got corns. Similarly, everybody has one’s own corns and these corns make it obvious what you do.
Christ says, ‘You, women, have to go back to your initial situation!’ To which situation? To the situation when you fed on the fruit of the Tree of Life. There comes a bitter thought, a bitter desire – this is from the Tree of knowledge of the Good and Evil. Whatever thought comes to your mind, reject it immediately and replace it with a good one! You hate somebody. Do not attempt to remove this person or to avoid him or her, but find somebody else whom to love. Secular people understand this law better. For example, when a man does not love his wife, he finds another woman, whom to love. The same law is at work with secular women: she does not love her husband – she loves somebody else. This reaction cannot be avoided in the world. Do not think that you act in a different way. You may say that this is not the case with you. Such is the law. In order to evade it, you will always apply the opposite. You may say this teaching is wrong. If it is wrong, there is no point talking about it. Put the right up in front, and the wrong will remain as its shadow.
Out of all of this, you may learn how to rectify your husband’s mood and how to rectify your own mood. However, what is it that you do? You appeal to God and pray, ‘God, take this man, or take me, so that I can be free from him!’ But you do not know that you will not be free then either, because if he departs, it will be even worse for you. There are many examples from spiritualism confirming this. As an example a man who did not get on well with his wife, freed himself from her and then married another one. But his first wife, although dead, managed to drive the second one away. When someone says, that they cannot live with their husbands or wives, this means that there are some dead men or women who are in the way. The dead men and women have a great influence and that is why Christ says, ‘What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.’ When a human being enters this Divine harmony, all the discontentment with life will fade, because now people are not in their proper places. And now I meet men and women who are suspicious. For example somebody is said not to be sincere. If that person is not sincere, how can this be counteracted? I have collected many pictures, all from characters without any joining together, without any music.
In the second person singular of the verb can, you pronounce ‘You can! – Let God’s Sun rise within me like this and renovate my soul.’ The soul in this particular context shall be understood to mean the boundary of your world, what is shaped internally within you, all the potential hidden in you; because the Sun is inside you and only this Divine Sun is in a position to renovate this big and large soul. You sometimes think that you are very small, or you wonder what you are like. You have never seen how large your soul is. Each one of you has three faces. Let’s take a woman called Mary for example: there is one Mary at the physical level, there is another one among the angels and one more in the Divine world. The three of these Mary's are connected, but when you talk to me about any of them I ask you which one of the three you are talking about. True Love consists in loving the three Mary's. There comes a man and loves only one of the Mary's; you say, ‘You can’t do this. You have to love all three of them!’ The wife, on her turn, loves only one of her husband’s faces – the one at the physical level. Such women or men are said to be heartless. Mary’s heart is among the angels. This implies knowing the soul of the person! And then you will start looking upon people in a bit different way. By knowing the person on the physical level, by getting to know the person among the angels and by getting to know the person who is in the Divine world, you will then understand what a great creature the human being is! When you say, ‘I can, you can, he can, she can’, these are your three persons: you, i.e. I, you and he or she – I, the one who is here; you, the one among angels; and he or she, who is with God. Human beings and the angles make a couple, while God shows the direction where the angels should aim. This is how a triangle is formed – this is the first geometrical figure.
When we get to the plural of the verb can, we say, ‘we can, you can, they can’. When we say ‘we can’ this means that we, all of the people, all the human beings on the Earth, can. ‘You can’, means you, the Angels above. ‘They can’, means all Gods who are up there. If this is the way you understand this profound thought, these supreme feelings will start awaking within you immediately, they will start growing naturally and then everybody around you will be predisposed and will love you. No one can love you, if you, too, do not love.
In order for the flower to blossom, the Sun must rise. When your Sun rises, your soul will inevitably blossom. It is when the Sun of your spirit rises, then your mind will also blossom. This is the contemporary philosophy: to peel away all of these shells! You may say, ‘This is a very difficult philosophy, we have so many shells!’ Take a nut, take the shell off and only then you can see how big it is. Some people are very big, but take away their wrappings and you will see how big they are. You have to stick to a teaching that has contents within. You are tense and you say, ‘What new ideas could he tell us?’ Do not think of what new ideas will be told to you, but rather think how you can apply this Teaching to yourselves. A cart driver, on passing by a tree, thinks to himself, ‘What a nice axis for my wheels this tree will make!’ A wood-chopper, on passing by this tree, thinks to himself, ‘What a nice beam I can make out of this tree!’ A miller on passing by a spring thinks to himself, ‘What nice water for my mill!’ Similarly you also, on passing by a tree or by a spring, think of what you can use it for!
Those of you who experimented last month, have you noticed any results? Do you have an appetite? The harmony between eating, singing and praying is the first thing to be restored in you. Avoid self-judgements. If you believe there is a mistake within you, correct it, do not judge, but correct yourselves! If you believe you made a mistake and if you do not correct it, this is not the right approach.
Watch the colour of the Sun in the morning. When the colour is intensive red and this makes an impression upon you, this means that you are very blasé about life. If, at sunrise, you notice a cloud, this shows that there is a cloud across your Sun and therefore you should try to remove it. Let’s say you are not predisposed, you do not love somebody – you have such a dark cloud upon your Sun. The Lord can see it and He says, ‘There is a dark cloud across Mary’s Sun’. Try to derive pleasant feelings from things around, a sort of childish disposition; do not think that you have lived long enough, that you have suffered long enough. An ox, who has carried many loads and was whipped 50 times everyday, what does such an ox know? He only knows the law of whips. If an ox has worked well for twenty years and his master has stroked the ox on the back, what does he know? He only knows to be stroked and nothing more than this. How many times will you see dark clouds across the Sun, nevertheless each day it will bring you a blessing, new thoughts, and new desires. This Sun is certainly just an object of the Suns rising within you - the Sun of your heart, of your soul, and of your mind. Some may ask you what these Suns are. This you will keep to yourselves. You will make an experiment and when you see the results, only then will you tell others as well. If you do not see for yourselves, at the slightest failure, you will think that none of this is true. Make a small progress, but in your small success, you should be confident!
I shall now give you some additional sentences to the prayer I had given you:
I believe in You Lord, Who spoke to me in the past5.
You have imparted in me all the good seeds for my life.
I believe in You, Lord, Who speaks to me now. You grow the good within me.
I believe in You, Lord, Who will speak to me in the future. I will rejoice in Your Life.
The word Your (Твой6) is meaningful. It implies a union of these three principles. In the letter T the vertical line stands for the man, while the horizontal one stands for the woman. These aim at a union or there is an aspiration between the active and the passive conditions, between the two great Forces at work in the world. And the letter в embodies the unification principle, the working method. We should be glad the way work is done in this world. Keep saying, ‘I will rejoice in what You prepare!’ You may say that you are like that person who believes only when given money. When I give somebody money, there is no need for such a person to believe, as it is already a fait accompli.
Many times you ask, ‘What will my future life be like?’ The way you get up in the morning and say ‘I will do this, I will do that’, the same way your future life will be too. You say, ‘I will smash this person!’ You will also be smashed in the future. When you say that you will do a favour to someone, this means that you will be given favours in the future. You have to be good and cheerful, because the greatest secrets are revealed to you through suffering.
Secular people are cheerful and enjoy life, while spiritual people impart a sort of seriousness and thus it appears that they impose serious rules in their lives. A spiritual person should be understood to mean anybody who is conscious of one’s life. I shall give you an example of a really spiritual person: a master-mason was giving instructions to his apprentices on how to lift a big stone on top of the house, but while he was showing them, the stone fell upon his hand and tore one of his fingers away. He turned to God and said, ‘Thank you, God, for not tearing the whole hand!’ Anyone who has similar views on life is spiritual.
Contemporary women should create a great atmosphere; they should all help one another. All of you should try to be predisposed internally and to be pleased with the little you have. I have heard a woman saying about another one, ‘She did not welcome me properly.’ How could she welcome you properly when her husband had beaten her and she had some problems with her son? This is why spiritual people should have good thoughts about other people. By saying that somebody is good, we will really make that person better.
You will study the law of rejuvenation. This is the resurrection. You should not say, ‘We have grown old’, on the contrary, you should say, ‘We are young, there is a lot of work to do from now on!’ You should not say, ‘I will die’, on the contrary, you should say, ‘I decided to make a new house!’ Say, you have lost your money, you will say, ‘I gave it to the bank’. Interpret things the right way. One day, Christ’s disciples, when passing along a dead dog, said, ‘What a bad smell!’, while Christ said, ‘What nice white teeth it has!’ Beware of this, do not say that something smells bad, but wash your hands. Washing your hands implies being righteous. This is the only way the world will become righteous. But it takes long years before you get to know the manifestations of people.
Master’s lecture,
Delivered on 3 may 1917
1 The exercises are given in the Righteousness and Salvation lecture dated 5 April 1917 (editor’s notes)
2 ‘For the show’ is taken to mean ‘to expose’. It usually has a negative reproachful connotation.
3 In the original shorthand notes there is the word books standing for rugs.
4 Leva – this is the Bulgarian national currency
5 In the shorthand notes there is no ‘me’.
6 The Bulgarian for Your is Твой
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