"I am come a Light into the world that whosoever believeth in Me should not abide in darkness."1
The word "I" in this verse stands for the present word "Spirit". When the ideas of the old and the young people differ in form, these ideas do not differ in substance; but when they differ in substance, they do not differ in meaning and finally when they differ in meaning, they do not differ in essence. This difference between the young and the old is natural. The young and the old watching the two phases - the rising and the setting of the sun - have two different perspectives in life. Light increases for the former and decreases for the latter, therefore they cannot have the same view of the world. When people tell me they differ, I make the following comparison: from sunrise till noon people have one kind of ideas, but in the afternoon till sunset, they have another kind of ideas. So when people tell me they differ, I ask them, "What ideas do you have, ideas of the rising or the setting sun, morning or evening conceptions?" There is yet another category of people whose ideas differ: as the night differs from sunset till midnight, and from midnight till the rising of the sun. There are four kinds of people differing in ideas. Two categories belong to the light and two to the darkness.
Speaking of light and darkness I mean the movement of the earth in its relation to conscious life. Since there is movement, there will be light and darkness. It is clear that the earth is moving toward the center - the Sun. It is striving for it. Movement means Love. Love moves all beings. When certain matter has kinetic energy, i.e. such that produces movement, this means manifestation of Love in all its forms. Light is one of the forms of Love. Christ says, "I," i.e. the "Spirit," but not what you see, for you see the shadow of things, simply the reflection of light on the surface of all bodies. You say, "I saw a person in the street." What did you see? Nothing, but their shadow. The reflection of their body enters the optic nerve, causes vibration, makes an impression, projects a shadow outwardly and then you say you have met such and such a person. Actually their shadow has met you. I ask you, "When the sun rises, is it you who meet it, or it meets you? Who meets - the one who attracts or the one who is attracted?" this is a philosophy. When someone says they are moving, I want to know whether they are attracted, or whether they attract. When you move you may be attracted or you may attract at the same time. It is one thing to attract and another thing to be attracted - they are two different things. When you are attracted in your movement, you are limited; but when you attract, you are free. When you say you have come to Earth, it is because the Earth attracts you. You are attracted by it for it has pinned you down and is holding you. Is it you who walk or is it walking? I think the Earth is walking within you. These are only a few philosophic thoughts. The Earth is walking and moving. It is a Fine Lady. I have never seen such an elegant way of walking, so gracefully and nimbly. When it moves in space, it does not make any noise, or raise any dust, as ladies do today. The Earth is so polite that it does not want to awake anyone when it passes, that is why no one is conscious of it. It has turned its gaze to the Sun - its Lover. But ladies today do just the opposite.
All who grumble in this world have not turned their eyes intently anywhere, or in other words - they are people lacking an idea. When I say they have no idea, I do not mean they do not have some ideas; but their gaze, their movement, their aspiration is not fixed in a definite direction as that of the Earth. When Christ says, "I came," He does not mean the coming of a man but of a great idea; and we are deceived by thinking that a person comes or has come. A preacher comes and we say that he will set the world right. Christ came 2,000 years ago and people said at that time that He would set the world right. Many others came after Him but again the world is not set right, in our opinion. Why? Because the world is not set right here but in another place (unclear). I shall ask you when an artist paints a great picture, where is their mind directed? To the canvas, of course, where they make their corrections. The idea in their mind is perfect, but when they project it on the canvas, it is not as perfect as it is in their mind. Therefore, the life which is within us is perfect. They say that the life of some people is worldly and of others, spiritual. Life in itself can be neither worldly nor spiritual; but when the animal principle lives in a person, they become worldly and when the human one is manifested in a person, they become spiritual. If you put some bitter or sweet element in perfectly clear water, it will acquire its taste, but does that mean the water itself is bitter or sweet? It is neither bitter nor sweet, this is a wrong conception; but you make it such. It is the same with people: some put in pure Divine Life some element that corrupts it and makes it worldly; while others apply the good to life and render it spiritual. For this reason some people are very spiritual.
But today people have so defiled their life that I do not see any difference between the spiritual and the worldly people. When it comes to defending their ideas, both kinds hold on to their houses and collect the rents. The one kind pass for sweet, the other for bitter; but the bitter are such for other people, not for themselves. These are conceptions of the people. Therefore, light and darkness are two processes for the explanation and conception of all existing relations. Light is a clear conception, while darkness is a vague, confused conception of things. Now, many of you pass for worldly people. I would like to be a worldly man in certain respects and a spiritual man in other respects. If I want to rest and sit in the shade of a tree by a spring, I shall be spiritual. But if I am with a hoe in hand, I shall be a worldly man, because I shall cut the heads of many worms. That is why the spiritual people do not take a hoe and bear the name of sluggards, while the worldly are considered industrious. The worldly people solve their problems by the blade of their sword, while the people of an idea - by their pen. The worldly people are the manual workers - the proletariat, while the spiritual people are the bourgeoisie. It is not bad to be a bourgeois. After one has worked for a long time in the field as a proletarian, they will start resting and become bourgeoisie setting the world right from their point of view. To have order in the world, one should not rest longer than necessary; but they should not work more than their strength allows them either. Light and darkness are two phases in nature which alternate - we work in light and rest in darkness; when we work, light is outside, darkness inside; but when we rest, light is inside and darkness is outside.
Only if the worldly and spiritual people think and understand life this way will they find the touching points of mutual agreement in clarifying the Law of Labor. Christ says, "I came," i.e. the Spirit has come. When the Spirit comes to you, He will give you a clear idea of life. Christ has come to you so that everyone who believes in Him should not walk in darkness. I do not consider faith in the ordinary sense that many people maintain. Only the pure, sinless person can have faith as they can believe in everything and doubt no one. This is faith, not "beliefs". Faith is a quality of the Angels. Some say, "I have faith." No, you have beliefs. Your faith is like a cobweb changing 100 times a day - you believe one minute and do not believe the next minute. One day I met a young student who had studied some occult sciences and who told me that he believed in God. But later, after studying socialism, he confessed that he trod on his idea of God and now he became a man. By the words "trod on his God" I understand that he has trod on his egoism. When someone says that they believe in God, they mean that they believe in themselves and consider themselves a divinity. All people today are "divinities" so that those who say that they believe show they are valorous to confess that they believe in themselves as divinities; while those who say they do not believe in God hide this fact.
The world is full today of Christs, St Virgins, St Johns, St Nicolases and so on. The world is suffering from them. The real Lord in not here yet! Where is He? See where He is: when you come to love all people in your soul, this Lord has sent you a ray; when all contradictions vanish in your mind, when you realize your duty and are ready to sacrifice yourself, the real Lord has spoken in you and you and He are one and the same thing at the moment. Christ says: "I came with this Lord who lives in me, I came with Him and through Him I should give light to all that may believe". Who? Those small, pure souls. What a great thing that is for a person to be pure in the world! Upon purity rest all ideas, all happiness, all health and blessedness of humanity. If a person is pure, they will not walk in darkness, but will have a clear idea of life and order it as it should be ordered.
I know two brothers in Varna, one of whom graduated from the military academy and became an officer gradually rising to higher positions until he attained the state of colonel. His brother did not attend any higher school and served his time as an ordinary soldier. One day the soldier met his brother in the street and did not salute him. The colonel stopped and asked him why he did not salute him. The soldier answered, "You are my brother and I need not salute you."
"I am an officer in the first place and then your brother - that is why you should have saluted me," answered his colonel brother.
"I arrest you for two days." And today the world is full of colonels outside and ordinary soldiers inside, of bourgeoisie and proletarians - an emblem of light and darkness. When did you become a bourgeoisie or a proletarian? You were not born a bourgeois or a proletarian, but a person who must think and understand the Law of Light and Darkness. Light implies wealth, while darkness - poverty, but there are different degrees of light. For instance, there is light at sunrise, there is a broad day noon light and light at sunset. That bourgeois whose sun has risen will look at things one way; but the person whose sun has set will look at things another way.
Today Christ is solving a great social problem - the problem of the so called class struggle. This is not an ideological struggle. It is the same which has existed for 8,000 years, expressed in the same way: "You come down so that I can go up." So far the minorities have ruled, but in the future the majority will rule. The minorities have worked till now, but the bolsheviks will work in the future. This can happen. You will say, "How is it possible for a gentleman to work for the simple men, for the proletariat?" But I shall ask you: how is it possible for a mother and father who are bourgeois to work for their children - the proletarians of the world - to get up early in the morning to feed them and supply all their needs, to sacrifice so many sleepless nights for them and so on? The parents know that in this way they must fulfill their duties to their children, because some day this proletariat will take revenge themselves on their parents. The mother, who is love, works; so does the father - these bourgeois must put on their aprons and work for the proletarians, because these proletarians will cast them out of the house some day, take their money by force and make them work. This has been so and will be so. How long? Until this class struggle comes to an end for it is solely materialistic. This is a transitory state in the life of humanity. After thousands of years another epoch will come when people will live in a different way and this struggle will be substituted by a life of order and decency.
Today we consider people in their relations to their kind according to the sentence: dog eat dog2. However, I say that a person is a brother to the others. If we consider Darwin’s theory of the origin of species and make a study of the origin and conditions under which the wolf lived, we shall see that originally it did not possess these same qualities in the character which were developed later because of the conditions under which it lived. The wolf is a representative of an ancient culture and today it manifests itself in human society and in life. Why? Because people do not understand the Great Laws, which govern life.
I shall demonstrate to you figuratively the relations of people in contemporary life. Let us admit that the roots of a tree have a deep consciousness in themselves and all of a sudden a small root starts on its own away from the tree and meets great obstacles. This small root cannot find a way out and it returns to its father and crosses him. The father does not know that this is his son and begins to struggle with it. The same way all people are struggling with themselves, with their children, trying to cut them off and get rid of them. It is the same roots which have met obstacle in life, or otherwise there would not be any disharmony.
Christ says, "I came to show the true way to all who believe and have the purity of the Angels." People are still reasoning whether they will live after their death or not and whether life has meaning or not. This is no life, but only sediments of the darkness in which they live. Life is unique and it can neither die or be born. If I pour out the water in my pitcher, does it die? The pitcher has neither been alive, nor can it die. Therefore, in their physical state people are pitchers into which life is poured. The pitcher is only a condition, but life is everything. When the pitcher is filled up, it comes to life, but when it is emptied, it dies. Life in the body is heterogeneous, but in death - homogeneous. Scientists today say that matter is homogeneous. This is 50% true. Diversity cannot be born from homogeneity. If there was no heterogeneity in colors, nothing could be born of their uniformity. What is heterogeneity? It is all the necessary forms through which creation, life, must be manifested. Life cannot be manifested only through a single form, but through a limitless number of forms. When these forms combine and give expression to a greater form, we say that life is uniform, i.e. all the forms have the same aspiration to give expression to a higher form. But this higher form is not alone; there are more similar forms which combine and form other worlds. When we study nature, we observe the existence of this Law of Uniformity and Diversity. This, however, should not hinder us. A person who is in the dark is resting and instructing the young. They may be writers, poets, princes who will sit in the shade; but if they are proletarians, they will work only when there is light. Therefore, God created the world for the proletarians, i.e. for the workers who progress and not for the bourgeoisie.
We shall liken the rich people to wealth collected in the past; the poor - to wealth which is being collected now. Thus, the rich people are of the past and the poor people - of the future. If you are a rich person, you are of the past; if you are poor, you are of the future. In the Jewish language there are only two tenses: past and future. There is no present tense. They say that everything happening now is past and what is going to happen is future. The present is only a transitory moment; it is a point which takes no place whatever (unclear). Be people of the future then! Christ says, "I came to give Light to the people - to the poor, to the people of the future - that they may not walk in darkness, the way of the rich, i.e. of the past." All sins are sins of the past. We bear our sin as a shade and every person who wants to get rid of it must become a person of the future; otherwise they will bear their sin as the snake bears is skin. When someone says they want to live in the future, I understand they want to live without sin. Therefore, the poor are people of the Good and the Light, while the rich are people of sin and darkness. These words may seem bitter to you, but let someone come and prove this is not the truth. I do not consider a rich person only a person of money, but also the person of knowledge and power who does not employ their wealth for the good of their kind, but rather for their stumbling in evil. I call them bourgeois. People who do the will of God, I call proletarians, or people of the future. I also call the proletarians "bees", workers for the new culture. The word "proletarian" is a class word; it is not an exact expression and so we must say ‘Workers of the New Culture, of the New Science’.
What is the New Science? That we all should live in the Light; that we all should be happy and spoil neither our happiness, nor that of others. Only by two words I can spoil your happiness so that for 100 years you will not find it. Imagine that I call you and place before you a bomb with a fuse. If the bomb explodes what will become of you? In the same way, in every thought of yours there is explosive matter which, when exploding, creates all those conditions we call evil. I explain evil as matter we cannot control, because it is not submitted to our will. The matter under our will, which we can control, I call good. The external world is controlled by another will, but the inner world is under our control. If God, Who controls matter outside, loses His contact, all existence would vanish. That is why we must hold the reigns of our horse, for once they get out of control, the horse runs away and overturns everything, so misfortunes come thereby. These are general ideas. Every day your horse - your mind - walks with his tail up, ears pricked, brave, undaunted; but someone passes by and tells him something and he is immediately startled.
A rich Jew walks bravely on his way, but someone meets him and tells him he will live only two more days. The horse is startled - the mind of this Jew - and he immediately closes his shop and says, "From now on you will have a holiday." All people get startled this way. Ever since the war I have been hearing people wonder what will become of Bulgaria. Many are more fearful than necessary. Bulgaria is not the only entity, there are others as well. Tell me, were there Bulgarians, Serbs, French, Germans, Englishmen when God was creating the world? There were not. They came later of themselves. You may object, but I ask you: does a mother bear her children as professors, teachers, priests, judges and so on? She bears children who become learned people, generals, doctors, engineers and so on, later in life. Our positions in life are the different roles we play on the stage. While we are on the stage, we are clothed in different costumes like actors, but as soon as we come off the stage, we are already brothers. When we go to heaven, we shall laugh a little at this struggle when we remember the different events of our life on earth.
I shall explain your position by an example. An Indian God, being satiated with the nice life in heaven, wished to be allowed to come down to earth to live for a while. He was given permission and so he chose the form of a swine and got incarnated in a small pig. He started to live like all pigs - poking his snout in dirt and mud, lying in the shades and growing fat. At one time he married and had about fifteen piglets. He lived peacefully and happily. They waited for him to return to heaven for a year, two, three, ten years, but he did not return. They called him from there, but he did not want to go back. He said, "I feel very well here." They decided to take away his piglets and force him to return, but in spite of this misfortune, he did not want to return. They took his wife away, but he started looking for another wife and they did not succeed in persuading him. Finally, they decided to send him a fatal illness, which caused him to return back to heaven. When he awoke in heaven, he started to laugh at the life he had spent on earth.
Many people today have the experience of this bourgeois, digging and solving different problems on earth. Different misfortunes come to bring people to their senses, but when they leave the form of the swine, they will understand what their state had been. What does the form of a swine mean? It is the extreme materialism existing today. What does it consist of? Namely, that the people get together and start talking about this and that, about the other world, the good in life; but at the same time they keep their geese, hens and wine, living luxuriously. When the poor listen to their talk, they say to themselves: these people talk all the time about the other world and live for God, but they know how to live in this world. And so the life of the rich with their materialism appeals to the poor who make it an ideal they aspire to attain. This ideal becomes the aim in the life of the poor and thereby the teaching of materialism is given rise to. The poor say, "We want to live like you." Since the rich people became the cause of the deviation of the poor from the right course, God will place them in the position of the poor so that they may correct their mistakes. Such is the Law. That is why Christ says, "I came, a Light in the world to explain and make things clear."
There are no contradictions in nature; only those we ourselves create them. How? We cannot control and direct part of the matter God has given us and that is why we create evil. All sins have their origin in matter. Every sin has a form. Show me a sin that has no form. Some person is considered an egoist. What does their egoism consist in? They want to have houses, money, to dominate their wife/husband and so on. People say about some that these are greedy, misanthropic, etc. All sins have their material motives. When we smooth out all bad forms, all sin will vanish away. Therefore, bad forms create evil and that is why people are advised to create beautiful forms.
When two scientists get together, they offer different theories about the sun, its conditions and so on. Other scientists begin to argue whose opinion is more truthful and divide as followers of the one or the other. Today all scientists argue about which of the science authorities have more following. Two priests argue which of them has more parishioners and so on. Christ and Moses cannot agree or come to terms in the world. Christ and Mohammed can come to no agreement on the earth either. There is no such a Moses, such a Mohammed or such a Christ. That Christ, Moses or Mohammed who cause division among the people, are not Servants of God. When a person is sent to bring some great Divine Idea, they have no right to enslave people, or look for their own benefits. Christ says, "I, the Spirit, bring this Light to the people who believe, i.e. who have purity." For instance, do you believe in what I am telling you? You will say that you have not verified it yet. But do you believe in Christ? For two thousand years on end people have been verifying Christ. As much as you believe in me, you believe in Christ. Did the Jews believe in Moses? Up till now I have not yet met a person in the world who believes in their Master completely.
Those who say they believe in Christ, or in whoever it maybe, do not speak the real Truth. To believe in Christ does not mean to stand reverently in a church. It means to have the disposition Christ had in His Soul. I am not talking to you about religion, we have had enough of religions. We must live in a Divine Love, in the Divine Affection, in the Divine Spirit. Let the present religions remain for the bourgeoisie, for the people of the past; the Divine Life is necessary for the people of the future. Some think we are trying to lead people into new kind of delusions. Such a thought is far from me, there is Love in me which is a movement from up high downwards. I understand what affection is - a movement of the human soul from below upwards. I understand what the Divine Spirit - a Power which keeps everything in harmony. So long as you keep your present religious conceptions, we shall never be able to come to an agreement.
Can you say like Christ, "I came, a Light into the world"? Can you be Light to yourself and your brothers? This is required of all of you, because you can all become in this sense saviours of the world. If you expect a single person to save the world, it will never be set right and order restored in it. We must all set about righting and ordering it; which can be achieved only when we maintain the Divine Order of things and strive not to break it. When someone asks me if I believe in Christ, I find this the most banal question for it is the same as if someone should ask me if I believe in the Light, in Love. I walk in the Light; what is the use of believing in it? Everyday I speak with God, how should I not believe in Him? Asking me such questions means that they want to take me down from my position and make me a demon, an antichrist, a bourgeois. I do not want to be a bourgeois or a proletarian as people understand them today. I am not speaking to you about the historic Christ, but about this Living Christ Who is in you and among you. Drive this wedge out of your mind - this thought that Christ is outside you. This Christ is the Spirit; and when you understand Him, you will see Him in every person.
So long as you seek Christ only in a single person, you will never find Him. I have already asked you: if someone wants to make a study of you, will they be able to understand you only by a single hair of yours? If someone loves a person and takes only a hair from his head, can we say that all their love lies in that fact? This would be a whole idyll! I see how the religious people take a hair from Christ and look and look at it; then put it back in its place, not understanding anything. People do not take only hair, but also pieces of His cross and still the world is not set right. Why? Because people are occupied only with the physical aspect of Christ.
Christ has said, "Whoever does the Will of my Father will live in Light." By this I do not have in view the personal life of people, but I want to clean the streams. I have decided to clean up the muddy water not because I hate it, but to give way to the pure water and to water the gardens where pepper, cabbages, carrots and other vegetables are planted. Muddy water is necessary for the gardens, while pure water is needed by the Pilgrims of Life returning to God. What an idea this is! When God created the world - without any nationalities - the world was happy; but today, ever since the old Egyptians, Assyrians, Romans, Greeks, Philistians came, happiness vanished from the earth.
I am interested in modern science and life and in spite of all the contradictions I come across, I can still find many useful things. I stand in greater admiration before a barefoot child than before a rich, well-dressed one. This poor child is excellent, because you can talk with them. They are modest, while the well-dressed children have external forms, and are insincere, by which they want to show that they are not simple. I meet a drunkard who has drunk much and who excuses himself saying, "Excuse me, sir, I am an ass, I have taken a drop too much." I say to him, "You are not an ass, because the ass doesn’t drink; but you are a frank person for which I respect you." At times when a person drinks, they can become a bourgeois, because an industrious person never gets drunk. All drunkards are bourgeois.
Now let us return to God and live without the religion of hatred, envy and avarice. By this, I do not want to say that religion must be cast out. Let the class struggle exist, because it is just as useful as those worms which cultivate the soil. The farmer says, "I plowed the field." No, it is not you who have ploughed it, but those worms that live deep in the earth. Thus, in the class struggle the proletarians and the bourgeoisie are the worms that have been working for a number of years and have oxidized the soil. After that, the Angels will come with their ploughs to sow this soil and say, "You have worked enough; we thank you, because you will have to eat and drink for thousands of years and you will all be brothers."
The Christians say that in those blessed times they will be in Paradise; the Turks say they will have whole mountains of pilaf3 without coupons! However, Christ says, "I came, a Light of the world," and Light is the meaning of life: it is food for the mind, the soul and the heart. That is to be content in yourselves, nourished in life and have energy and desire for work in life.
Now when you go back home, you will begin to philosophize, "Can a person live without religion?"
When God created the world there was no religion. Religion appeared in the world when the devil came. Before that people lived in Love and every teaching which was not directed by Love was not recognized as Divine. In my opinion, religion is a sanatorium - a hospital for sick people. When a maiden is disappointed in life and when a lad looses his loved one, they become religious. Therefore all religious people are bankrupt bourgeois, while those who serve God out of Love are people without religion. Those who are in the hospital should better not leave it prematurely. Yet, if they nevertheless want to leave it, they must consult a doctor whether it is time for that, if their organism is functioning rightly. If the doctor allows them that; let them enter the broad path of Light where one can live without religion. "You are free," he must say, and sign a certificate for their freedom.
The church at present is a hospital and the priests and ministers are the nurses and doctors there. Now the time has come for some of you to leave the hospital and I am at its door. Although I am a minister acknowledged by no one, a prophet without portfolio, I shall ask you, "Was your life in the hospital pleasant and did you learn your lesson there?"
You will say, "Oh, those injections ruined us!"
The doctor says, "A person who does not live in God will test our needles and live in the hospital."
I say, "I do not carry any packing such as needles or knives and do not have any pharmacy or bag on me. You should breathe pure air, look up, not walk in darkness and let the sun shine on you that you may not go back to the hospital again. If you enter it a second time, your condition is dangerous and more complex. The doctor will appear again, use all scientific means, watch how your temperature is rising constantly and soon the sick person will go bankrupt and be carried out of the hospital. There is no life at such a high temperature so they will take the person to the autopsy room, open up their brain, stomach, bowels and find out the reason for their dismissal. Christ says that people can live without thermometers. Do not be troubled by the idea what is useful and what is not useful in life. Everything is useful, but we should stop thinking that life exists only at the hospital. The hospital, the church, the concert hall, the school are transitory things, but life implies something much more serious in itself. In real life there should not be any confusion, but constant work.
In only three words I shall make a definition of what Christ talks about: torment, labor and work. Some student says, "I was tormented much until I entered high-school and labored much until I graduated." After passing through torment and labor one comes to work. This is the Teaching I am preaching to you now. I say to those who have been tormented to stop that and begin to labor; and to those who have been tormented and have labored, I say, "You need not be tormented and labor anymore. Come to me and I shall teach you how to work."
These are the words of Christ in the quoted verse, "I, My Spirit, will come and teach you what to do." Now is the moment for those who have graduated from school to stop and show their certificate or diploma, because they were ignorant before that. Today all over the world people want a diploma, if you do not have one, you cannot become a teacher, a minister, a judge and so on. The future life will not be the life of the past. Christ says, "In the future there will be no need of certificates," and the present life will serve as a basis of the future one. New forms will be worked out and we know what these forms will be: Brotherhood with Love.
Now, those who have not entered school and do not know the Light will be tormented and labor. Few are those who work - they are only some poets, artists and musicians. The main thing in work is not to have any confusion in your mind. Christ says, "I bring you the Divine Love. Enter it; manifest your affection and then the Spirit will come and enter you and you will understand the Inner Meaning of life".
Talk of the Master held on May 4, 1919.
1 John 12:46
2 In Bulgarian the saying is: A person is wolf for the person. (ed. note)
3 23 pi.laf or pi.laff - n (Turk & Pers) a dish made of seasoned rice and often meat (ed. note)
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