I want to know why you insist on this meeting.
(Somebody from the audience): We would like to be once again with you, Master!
Do you have any questions to put?...
Do you know the origin of the Bulgarian word for guess? It is derived from an old root meaning to live a conscientious life. This is the only way that knowledge can be meaningful. Living a conscientious life is living Life Eternal. So, these two - Life and Conscientious Life – are synonymous. Hence not only that one has to live, but one has to live a Conscientious Life. Knowing presupposes living in the absolute sense of the word.
People live nowadays too; they get wealthier, but live in uncertainty. You have watched certain students who start taking lessons in music, but can’t understand anything, i.e. they can’t play. I ask you: does the teacher invest anything in them? If such students do not possess that great urge and love for music, would the teacher be in a position to develop anything in them? No. Likewise, if you do not have that great, intensive desire for Life, what can God do for you? So, what you are looking for is deep within you. However, there are things that are not within you.
Music teachers always make their students practice exercises and etudes, rather than having the students distracting their attention with various musical pieces or giving concerts, because this will corrupt them. Students should first learn the art of playing. Life here goes on in a proper manner. Students achieve their goal within the time they study. Similarly, a person who wants to acquire the Divine Life has to have the methods for the achievement of this Life. Every student has to have specific methods.
Now I notice that those of you, in whom the Spirit starts talking, say, “The Spirit already talks to me”. However, do you know what great differences there are when the Spirit talks? To Elijah and to Jesse did the Spirit talk, but the point is how the Spirit talked. This is to say that the Spirit does not talk in the same way to all people. Some music teachers can teach fifty to a hundred students, but one of them has hardly learnt the notes, the second one has barely taken two or three lessons, while a third one has covered fifty lessons etc. You cannot understand that there is a gradation among you in the manifestation of the Divine Spirit. The point is not that the Spirit talks to us, but that we have to understand the living laws of God. Contemporary inventors provide the best examples: they experiment once, twice, three times unsuccessfully; they keep experimenting for fifteen-twenty years still unsuccessful, until finally some of them achieve the goal, while others do not. It takes perseverance. Those who walk along the Divine Path should also have perseverance. It’s not a teaching if it can be achieved overnight. Not that it is difficult, but it takes time. When you start studying this Teaching, you will encounter many impediments. Imagine that a teacher had twenty to thirty students in music, but imagine them under different conditions: one has a rich father, who has bought a good instrument. The other one has a poor father; this student has no shoes, and has to make up for the external conditions where he lags behind, and at that he has to keep up with learning his lessons. However, it is often the case that poor people develop better characters than rich people. Poor people have stronger wills. Many of you resemble these rich students and you want to acquire the skills without encountering many obstacles. This is what you want.
There are two categories in contemporary Christianity. In one of the categories there are certain layers, similar to well-fed pigs, with lard that is getting thicker and thicker, fat is gathering, however, there is no muscle strength. Likewise various layers settle upon the earth or similarly layers of dust settle in a house that has not been cleaned recently. This is external acquisition and wealth. In the other category of Christianity the acquisition is an external growth, each particle is linked to the others and Life participates in this particle. Sometimes these particles are not linked, each one having a life of its own and saying, “Nobody should interfere with my job!” While in other cases each particle is linked to another and all of them are living particles.
Hence your experience should be in the second category. For instance – you finish reading a book – this represents another layer. An author wrote something, which might as well be true, but having read it you think that you understand it. You cannot understand due to the simple reason that you are not in the same conditions, you do not understand the author’s conditions, and you do not know what made the author write. Read the Gospel, read what Christ said, what Isaiah said, but you do not know what made Christ say so. Until you reach the same conditions in Life you cannot understand this Teaching. When the Spirit comes, it will create this understanding in you. Therefore, sometimes when your life settles and when you start trying it, only dust comes out of you, and you believe you know life. All those particles fly away but this is not something organic. It exists in you and you say, “This is not so, we must have beguiled ourselves.” Yes, as long as you have settled, I am telling you, you must have beguiled yourselves. This is not a living thing. If water runs through your dust for some time and if the dust still stays, without flying away, then this is something organic, but if it flies away from you, this is insignificant. Now, I reveal to you the law that governs Life.
You cannot escape doubts. These are natural, inevitable. I am not saying that these are laws of some kind, but under the present circumstances these are unavoidable. With all people of poor faith, anger, hatred, envy, lies, and many others are unavoidable.
(Somebody from the audience): If this candle is lit in our mind, as you say, are these also inevitable?
No, when this little candle is lit in the Divine mind, i.e. when God lights this little candle of yours, He will place it in the candlestick and will say, “Let this Light shed light upon the Path of people”. This is its significance. Thus people will glorify God.
(Somebody from the audience): Does the lighting of the candle depend on us or on God?
The lighting is a result of a contact with God. These fiery flames that appeared to the Apostles, were they not such candles? Everything depends on the Holy Spirit. It is different from all other spirits. There are many spirits.
Things are said and sown, but each one in its own specific time. I am telling you not to fool yourselves that the time has not come yet. These things do not get done by worrying. Do not think that if you start weeping and pitying yourselves, this would be of any help to you. This will be of no use to you. Weeping has a completely different meaning: when you go to a cruel person, you cry to soften his heart; dry soil needs watering, doesn’t it? Do you need to cry when you go to a good person? When he sees that you are naked and barefoot, won’t he dress you? Do you think that after telling him that you will commit suicide he won’t defend you? God is an intelligent Being and when you go to God with positive faith, you won’t find Him in two minds.
Now we go to God with our human understanding. Sometimes we are very anxious and impede the Divine Spirit within us. Imagine that a mother is making a cake while the child is walking after her and making hassle. Imagine her spreading the dough while the child is asking, “Is the cake ready yet?” Let the child wait for a while, until the mother kneads and bakes the cake. Will the cake be ready sooner if the child keeps breathing down her neck, fretting and asking time and time again when it will be ready? No, let the child fetch some water, some chopped wood, let the child turn on the oven, let the child participate enthusiastically and assist the mother and the cake will be ready sooner.
It is easy to live a Christian life, but there are certain distorted understandings. You may say, “Haven’t we been Christians for so many years?” You are Christians but there are differences among various understandings. You may have two or three sons, three or four daughters, but only one of the children understands you. I am now asking you how you get along with your other sons and daughters. You get along with them too. They are like guests coming to visit you and saying, “I want this, mummy, I want that one too, mummy” and they go out, while the other child stays home to help you. Similarly you say, “God, grant me this, God, grant me that one as well!” or you declare, “I have told my father to get me this thing and that thing also, and he will do this for me”. This is one of the obstacles that prevent many from making progress. Now, in this true Life, there is one other internal understanding that cannot be understood verbally. You will get to that depth, to that internal equilibrium, to that Peace and understanding of Divine Life. These are abstract matters, but you will get to the practical aspect of the Teaching, in order for you to make your homes like oases in the desert, with fruit-trees, so that any traveller with loaded camels can pull over to have a rest at the oasis.
(Somebody from the audience): You said in one of your previous lectures that when we want to change our attitude to the people close to us we need to change our attitude to God.
(Somebody else from the audience): How can we apply this Teaching in practical life?
There are three aspects to this: the first one is when we serve people; we are in the situation of servants then; the second one is when we serve ourselves; it then strengthens our individual life; the third one is when we serve God. You should distribute your service proportionally every day and find out where each of the things you do belongs. One serving God can serve people as well, but the situation of such a person will be different. This is exactly how you can alter your original situation – you will serve God. You will find this desire deep down your soul; it is an inclination of the soul. This is a situation, which you are familiar with in the first place; it is not a situation that you will have to get to know from now on. You are all aware of this, you know it, but you say that now it’s not the right time. This is a difficult service; it takes going to School. You stumble down when you want to serve God. You have to liberate yourselves from your situation and stop saying, “We are women”. Men want to serve God, but say, “We are men”. Children want to serve God, but say, “We are children”. Teachers want to serve God, but say, “We are teachers”. This is a temporary situation where you are supposed to stay to learn certain lessons. For example you play the part of a servant in a theatre. This role is granted to you to learn, since in every part there are particular features and characteristics that you have to learn. But you are neither the one nor the other part that you perform on stage. Being women you have come here only to learn this part. You haven’t mastered as yet the essence of the art of being a woman, i.e. not that you do not know it, but that you are learning it right now. Somebody looking at you from an external point of view may say, “Is this a woman?” and shortly afterwards such people will offer their opinion. Now, when I talk to you like this, I do not mean that you have to release yourselves from this situation, because life goes on, and the part assigned to you is just a role to play. Apart from this you will have to study the things that belong to the essence of your soul.
Imagine that there are four of you sisters at home; that your father is sort of more predisposed to one of his daughters; your mother – to the other; your brother – to your third sister, while nobody fancies the fourth sister; everybody jostles her and whatever she does is wrong. It is only natural that she would feel despondent, aggrieved, and sad until she grasps the meaning of Life. Let’s assume that everybody around you tortures you, calls you ignorant and stupid, clumsy and when guests come to pay a visit you are constantly being talked about. You will be at your wits end and wouldn’t know which way to turn. Let’s assume that you feel a desire to pray to God to let you free and let’s assume that God does not touch the heart of any of you. At last you find a friend from outside the family ready to sympathise with you; you immediately feel refreshed, you are prepared to gladly endure everything. A change is in progress within you: you still carry your burden but you feel light as a feather. So, your situation in the world won’t change but you will find a friend and it will be pleasant for you to bear your burden. The world will wonder at you and everybody will be saying, “This woman has some extra qualities!” Afterwards a doubt will start gnawing at you whether this friend is not just for the time being; you will then be in a negative phase. Thus the world won’t change, your father, mother, and sisters will be still the same, they will carry on with their plans and ideals, but a new element is bound to come to them. I shall explain to you how things are arranged in Nature: you water those flowers that are closer to the window the way you water the rest of the flowers, but they look fresher, because they get more light. While those that are placed in isolated places, more to the north, they will be frowning all the time. They are the fourth daughter – nobody takes care of her, she is always wrong and everybody says, “What shall we do with her?” I find a small window, place her there and she starts growing. Light is what she needs.
Hence you should first make sure that Divine Light flows constantly into your souls, because the world may go down the drain, but the Divine Light will be there forever. God is Light!
The second situation in the world is that everybody expects from the others more than they can offer. Please note that there is one other law that says that souls do not vibrate at the same frequency. There are certain believers the contact with whom not only does not elevate you, but it drags you lower to their level. Just like in physics the temperature of the mixture of two liquids of different temperatures is the mean temperature of the two components. This is why, according to this law, you have to progress in consistence with your soul vibrations. Souls that have equal vibrations can assist one another, but if the souls do not vibrate at equal frequency, they lag behind. Ducks flying in the same way fly ahead, while those not flying identically lag behind. Can you have an ox and a horse harnessed to the same cart? This will be a combination not making any sense.
Now, try to find out what bothers you, try to get free from the dregs you have inside you. Freeing from dregs supposes that there should always be an influx of New Life, since old water, no matter how much you try to cover it, is old water all the same; old clothes, no matter how often you may wash or sow them, are old clothes all the same. You need a new garment. Now, you may say sometimes, “A long time ago, when I was a child, I believed that!” The faith of children and the faith of adults are two different things. Faith also discloses itself. Apostle Paul says, “When I was a child, I was as wise as a child, but when grew up, I gave up all these childish stuff.”
Those of you, who can’t understand, will get interested and they will continue from the point they had previously reached. Everybody will continue from the point they have reached! Just like plants shoot off springs, you should similarly shoot one everyday. If you do not shoot one a day, there will be no growth, there will be no understanding. You have to reach that state when the moment you feel a desire to do something, you feel the presence of God so vividly, that you can stop before you have done it. While now you argue that you feel God’s presence, but when you are put to a test you fail and then you repent. You can find your way when the cart is upset, but it is important to find it before it gets upset. The Power of Life lies in it.
At the present course of development of Life you will encounter difficulties and you will be told, “You are not on the Right side of Life, this is what the Scripture says!” I say that a lot has been written there but you do not understand. Sometimes people, who say that the Scripture reads whatever, act like those who write instructions on the Easter egg paints packs. They contain information on what paints there are inside, what eggs can be painted, how to dissolve the paint, how much water one needs etc. They read, “This paint should be dissolved in that much water, then you put the eggs like this and then the colours will be all right.” Everything will be done according to the instructions in this pack, but you have to follow the entire process. There is other knowledge, much deeper than the one about paints.
Under the present circumstances people keep stumbling. The atmosphere is thick with non-advanced souls, who drag themselves up to you and you often feel a sort of unpleasantness, a sort of a discontent. They are the reason for you feeling like this. Theosophy calls such souls elementary souls. You all have to shake them off; you need a rake to do it. These souls should be educated, should learn to respect the Divine Law, to work.
(Somebody from the audience): Do such souls represent obstacles for us?
Yes, they do.
(Somebody from the audience): They are probably benefiting from this?
Yes, they come to rob you.
(Somebody from the audience): Don’t we need a method on how to protect ourselves from them?
When they come, make them work, teach them to weave, to spin, give them kitchen work. They affect only the mind and you will say, “This thought is not mine, this desire is not mine!” You will repel them in this way. If one is to succumb to all of one’s desires and thoughts that cross one’s mind and one’s heart, what would happen? These thoughts and desires should go away like the water and wind, while we shall take only what we need from them. Not everything is meant for us.
I leave you free and I want you to study on your own accord all the rules that I have given you and to apply them in such a way that you can control yourselves on your free will whenever you feel like doing it. I do not impose any discipline upon you; I leave you to do whatever you decide on your free will. You sometimes want to cheat on me, but I benefit from this while you lose. You undermine each other in this way. I see that you often spoil things that I have mended. It is often the case that you, led by your good desire to do a thing or two, you exhibit the ardour of Apostle Paul and you say, “I had the ardour, but not the right understanding.” Where will you go if you enter a garden? You will go to the pear-tree or the apple-tree with the best, the juiciest of fruit, won’t you? You are in the habit of doing so, aren’t you? There is no stupid person in the world that will go to the sour fruit tree. Anybody will go for the best of fruit. If there are no apples at all, only then will you go to the sour fruit tree, but if there are good apples you will find your way to the good apples, won’t you? The same law governs the world too. This is the practical aspect of things. If you have good fruit in you, people will visit you without needing any invitation. This is the practical aspect of things and it is very true: your relations with the people around you will be determined according to the wealth of your mind and the richness of your heart.
I do not call what changes Love. This is a funny thing. One loved somebody but in ten years time one turned one’s back to the person one loved. Paul says, “Love never ends”.
(Somebody from the audience): I have often thought that whoever makes the effort will enter Heaven!
(Somebody else from the audience): Which is the most powerful virtue with regard to achievement of results?
The words getting into God’s Kingdom takes effort mean that only those who keep moving will enter God’s Kingdom. Imagine that you are climbing a mountain peak in the morning to see the sunrise; if all of you scatter in different places, rather than staying at the same spot, the Sun will give each of you its strength. If all of you line one behind another and wait in a queue to receive its benevolence, a certain disharmony will inevitably occur. All of you should bask simultaneously in it and wait for its benevolence. This is the Divine Teaching: there is time or order in it; you will all present yourselves at the same time.
(Somebody from the audience): We all know our shells; can’t we get to know and love each other so that we become a huge power in Sofia?
What prevents you from doing so? The obstacle resides in your minds.
(Somebody from the audience): Will you take us a little bit higher up in the mountains?
Nowadays even little children climb the mountains. It is not difficult for a person to climb the mountains.
You asking questions remind me of being closed in a room with a large window and a mirror opposite the window, where the Sun is reflected in the morning. You are all now standing in expectation to see the Sun in the mirror – this is the situation you are in. I want you to go out of the room and not to look at the Sun in the mirror. You will never find the Truth in this way. The mirror will show you that the Sun rises from somewhere deep, i.e. it will show that the Truth is behind your back.
Each one of you should take a deeper look into your soul. You do not know your soul yet. You need experience, which should be gained individually by each one of you.
So, you have to turn to God and say, “God, pray Thee, light my candle in whatever manner you like, I want my candle lit!” You will leave everything to the discretion of the Divine Spirit and it will light the candle. This candle will be lit in the manner God chooses. The Spirit that distributes all gifts to people is not what you understand it to be. We have a special understanding for the word Spirit.
Isn’t this candle lit within you yet? The candle has to be lit, to be placed in the candlestick; you have to take [quarter of a] bushel2 and say, “Let it be Light!”
(The Master takes a look through the window: it is drizzling outside)
The drizzle outside shows that you need more Life. The weather tells me that the upper fog hampers you, and this is an emblem for Life. The obstacles you have are not as big by themselves as you imagine them to be. You place a small obstacle under a microscope, you observe it and you say, “There is no bigger obstacle than mine!” This is true – your obstacles are meant for you to tackle. You will get closer, will walk along the Path of Love and you will see what God can do for you. Get up quietly in the morning; try to concentrate your thoughts, to hush yourself down, to penetrate into the Divine thought, because certain experiences you have are karmic and inevitable.
(Somebody from the audience): You said yesterday that when the candle is lit, things disappear karmically.
Yes. You can decide and do away with them. Do you, for example, have this positive faith? I look upon the positive faith as an expansion of consciousness. Whatever, I will help you the way the wind does: I shall remove the dust so it won't disturb you. Things in the Divine World resemble getting into a train. You will have to observe the rules of the train; if you are late the train will not wait for you. You will get on the train, you will travel in the train for some time and you will get off at a certain place. You won’t have to bother what the engine driver is like or to be scared that any of the wagons can break loose from the locomotive along the way. These are all speculations. You may say, “Let’s pray to God to watch for us along the way!” You will go to God, but it is your soul, not your body that will do it. You will invest all of your faith in God. Make sure you do not disturb Him - a live faith is needed!
Let’s say that you are in bad circumstances, you are in distress. This situation is sometimes the result of some poorly digestible food that you have eaten that leaves certain residues behind. At times it is your contradictory feelings that give rise to pains: for example, you love and hate at the same time and then you will feel stabs in the region of the heart. You say, “It hurts!” No wonder it hurts! Abolish the contradicting feelings and the pains will disappear! At other times somebody may attack you with their thoughts, which will produce certain pains. Therefore, you have to learn to fence yourselves, to lead such a life that all life arrows bounce back from your body. You have to free yourselves at times from the devil. Do you know what it does? It is especially clever: you owe money to the devil, the devil comes over, you repay the policy, but you forget to take it back. On the following year it will again visit you and say, “You think you repaid? Oh, no! Pay now!” Hence you have to take your policy back from the devil. Twenty years ago you forgot about some sins, you prayed to God to redeem you, but after twenty years the devil will come again and will say, “Pay!” You will tell the devil, “I paid; there is nothing more to pay for! Take me to court!” This fills you with remorse. One should know what is right and what is wrong. There are things moral and things immoral, there are deeds righteous and deeds sinful, and there are actions right and actions wrong. Your soul should throw away all wrong and sinful actions, it should free itself from the old remorse, and you should only keep the experience.
(Somebody from the audience): We shall break free, but if they do not let go of us?
They will leave you. One has to work a lot in this school, and sometimes people get in trouble because of lack of knowledge, therefore, everybody suffers. Make sure you are rich in faith, in knowledge. One should be getting richer! In old times people went to monasteries and spent in solitude ten, fifteen, twenty years, in order to become stronger.
This is one task that you can accomplish: every school has its difficulties, therefore, try to liquidate your old karma now, do not postpone. Try to sow new thoughts, new ways of understanding, which can grow and expand your soul, so that you can become stronger. Now all of you have a certain debt, a certain policy that is already mature. The maturity day will come and you will all start looking for money to repay your debts. These are all new debts.
Do your best to perform what you can, to have one job accomplished, to study one exercise. Some of you are more experienced, while others – are less experienced, some of you have experience in some aspects; others – in other aspects. The Spirit talks to everyone of you in a different way. All of you need to pray passionately.
When we talk about a lit candle, we imply another meaning. A candle is lit in a person but no two candles are lit in the same way. For instance, there are ordinary lamps that burn gas and produce an odour; then there are other lamps where gas is transformed into a gas state and is thus lit; burning in such lamps is stronger; and finally there are gases where air is injected additionally; they burn even stronger and produce a more powerful light. This is to say that the mind should be transformed into this Divine status without leaving any waste; it has to contain pure Light, it has to be a pure burning.
Try to find your soul and turn your eyes inward. When you find your soul you will feel an internal completeness, while now you feel emptiness and are falling behind by the day. Both when you take something and when you do not take anything, you should feel full! Christ says that you are not that live spring that takes water from within, but a spring, which takes water from outside and it runs a little drier by the day. The Scripture also says, “Pray for one another so that you can be healed.”
So, what has the Spirit told you so far, what is the most elevated thing it told you? Sometimes people talk to themselves, sometimes somebody else talks to them. There are new elements in the word of God; there is something special. When God starts talking to people, the latter feel this talk in their mind, heart, and will. It penetrates everywhere; it is a living Word. Those who hear the voice of God - they are alive; they are not dead. Deep down in your soul you will feel a special Joy, and only people who have experienced it know what it feels like. It is like those quiet waters that never run dry, but can be lost. The moment you make one mistake – it is gone and you are back to your usual state. And later on you hear again this quiet voice and again you feel elevated. Most difficult of all it is to keep hold of this state of affairs. It is experienced everyday, but you can’t keep it going. You will have to learn to sustain it.
(Somebody from the audience): How can we make it sustainable?
To do this you need willpower. You have to be ready to work in the name of Divine Love, in the name of the living God. When we work in the name of Love, we do not mention its name. When I save a person and cure this person, do I have to tell this person that I do this in the name of Love? I do this for myself – whether the person will understand it or not, is all the same to me. I am not going to read prayers or to talk about Love, instead I will do all the favours and I will leave! When the Sun gives you its light, does it say to you, “I am Light”? Does Love tell you, “I am Love”? If it says so, it limits itself. Love will not tell you that it is Love. You will be very surprised if I asked any of you, “Do you live?” Those who live feel they perform good deeds; they, certainly, live.
There are many things that hinder people. These hindrances are something very bad. Get together according to the law of freedom, share thoughts and do not interrupt one another. You still haven’t mastered the art of giving way to others to talk. People who have not mastered the skill of listening should do their best and try to listen! Some say, “Why should I be listening to nonsense?” Well, does the blowing wind say only wise things? When you join a society, do you think you are going to say only wise things? Well, how about you, who have listened to somebody and have condemned this person, do you always say the right things? Learn to turn a deaf ear! When it comes to understanding, discard the thought that some are more intelligent than others. You fool yourselves that there are intelligent people and silly people in the world. You are intelligent at a point in time, while in another moment – you are silly. You shall have to make an effort within the Spiritual world, before God, not to consider things silly. If you find something silly, just leave it. People who do silly things have to learn something; they have to gain experience. This is what is silly: let’s assume that you are dressed in a nice white silk dress; somebody with hands covered in grime comes over and tries the dress, somebody else comes and does the same. You may say, “Oh, how silly this is!” I now ask you, “Why did you stain yourself?” – “Well, somebody came, after that somebody else came and they stained me.” Yes, but each one of you has a desire to try while your fingers are not clean. In this particular case, your dress should be kept clean. The danger when you enter Christianity is in the point that you get into the situation of these traders who offer their goods for sale; they start competing and cannot stand one another. Likewise you offer your experience. Give it up, make room for others to sell their goods, and when your turn comes you will sell as much as you can. If nothing is sold you will have to take it back. But you say, “But I paid so much money for it!” and thereby starts the competition.
(Somebody from the audience): It’s all down to the fact that we have no patience for one another.
Patience is generated by Love. Once you get to love somebody, you will be able to be patient with this person. However, there is another law and you also have to take into consideration the following: let’s assume that you have gone hungry for three days and I tell you, “Let me tell you one of my experiences.” You are irritated. Then I tell you, “Come on go home!” and afterwards I complain that you do not want to listen to me. I do not put myself in your situation that you are hungry that you haven’t eaten for three days. One should first say that one is hungry, and only after this one can listen to what is being said. This requires ingenuity.
You can work outside. You are full of knowledge; you have to give [share] some of your knowledge externally. You suffer from having too much, not of having too little. You may ask, “Shall I say this?” There are many workers in the world too. Believe that everything in the world develops along a specific way. There is no way that the Divine Plan can be distorted; it follows its own accurate mathematical calculations. If you stray aside, you will suffer, while what God has determined for you will happen. For example, somebody wants to take you for a walk, but you do not feel like having a walk; they tie your hands, you put out a fierce fight, but anyway you get to the place, however, this time you feel very tired. Therefore, you can go there without putting up any opposition. So, you will do your job regardless whether you offer resistance or not.
You have to pray for one another. The good thoughts you will send have a good effect, while the bad thoughts have a bad effect. If you play music I want to come too and dash a little bit of hot pepper into your noses, and I would like to see how you could play. There will be a lot of sneezing. These rules are true, the Scripture reads, “Pray for one another so that you can be healed.”
The whole world lies in the hands of the Sly one [the devil]. What do you expect from a world, which has come out of the devil? And since it rules today, nothing can happen. Everything is debris, everything falls to the bottom and one day when lots of residue gathers there, God will lift it, will remove the water and will make gardens, fields, and mountains out of it. This is what will happen to the sea bottom.
Believe that you are all good at soul. There is no reason to say that you are bad. Yes, when you act, according your will, you are bad.
(Somebody from the audience): Do we need evolution if we want to find our soul or it all depends on the individual willpower of the person?
The obstacles should be removed. Imagine that you place a thorn upon a flower; do you think it will be able to grow? No, it won’t. The same happens with you: if you can’t grow there must be a reason for this - that somebody else must have stuck a thorn into you. You should watch out for thorns stuck onto you.
If you are given scales to measure solid and liquid matter, and if you observe the rules while measuring, everything will be making progress. But imagine that somebody comes and tells you, “These scales are not sensitive enough! We shall give you other scales”; then the ratios will change. You should place everything on the Divine scales and should take your measurements according to them. There can be no disharmony then. If you experience disharmony, it will bring about trouble. When God wants to make somebody listen to Him, he gives them problems, diseases, famine. And when they understand Him, He talks to them intelligently. There are two ways in which God speaks: the one is by the physical mind, the other one – by the intelligent Word.
If you achieve agreement and harmony among yourselves, we are ready to help you. Even if somebody is not present here, if a person is ready, I do help this person. I help everybody who has reached the conditions. Some have a desire to study; I stop by them and help them. Some have filled their heads with rules, knowledge, and experiences, while they do not live within them. Such people say, “Let’s love each other, let’s be kind to each other, let’s be compassionate!” Well, all right, but all of these are qualities not rules. How can we love each other? You come to me, you request twenty leva, I do not have the money, I do not do you a favour. I walk along the path, somebody passes by me, wants me to pick up his/her bag; I say, “I can’t, I’m in a hurry!” Somebody has fallen on the road; you will stop to help him! In every single moment you will stop and apply the law of Love. Say you go to a house, your sister is aggrieved; she asks you, “Can’t you help me a little?” – “Well, may God help you!” No, you should stop, you should help your sister, you should tell her, “God will help you and He will help me as well!” You tell her, “Let it be!” I can do favours [good] to you but I often refrain from doing so because of the following considerations: is it wise to pray to God to send you rain when your fields are neither ploughed nor sown? Ask if your fields are sown; I am ready to send everything to you. I will send as much rain as you want. Knowledge, knowledge, and a lot of knowledge you have [at your disposal] today! You haven’t spared the time to stop for a while and think over what I told you, to understand at least one hundredth of all the formulae provided. You say, “We understand this.” Well, but you do not apply it.
Remember that there are more living beings in the world than you suspect. You are not alone. Do not think that when you are alone in the room, nobody watches you or monitors your actions.
Start working on something for this Christ, for this God, whom you love! Do something for Him! When I say “do”, I mean doing something conscientiously, so that you can feel satisfaction when you have done something good for God.
Christians have power. If four-five or ten thousand people gather together and concentrate upon one thought, they can help anybody but it has to be reciprocated. They can help you today, tomorrow they can help somebody else, after tomorrow – they can help a third person and gradually all fields will be ploughed, sown, and reaped. While at present you will have individual internal troubles in your homes, obstacles in your minds and hearts. You will have hindrances of public nature and difficulties in earning your living. These difficulties are real and you have to remove them. Your husband is discontented, he prays and you cannot help him. You anoint him with ointments, but there is a thorn. You say, “I anointed it, but nothing can relieve him.” Yes, ointment alleviates places where there are no thorns, but in places where there are thorns ointments are no relief. You will take out the thorn! People, whose thorns cannot be taken out, experience difficulties that cannot be eliminated. You, for example, have such difficulties and you say, “I am not loved.” This is one of the greatest problems. You can’t force people to love you. Why are you not loved? Any esoteric person says about somebody who is not loved that this person has become demagnetised. Such a person starts looking at the bad side of other people, everybody avoids such a person because he has become demagnetised. Therefore watch out! When you stop seeing the good aspects in people you have demagnetised and few people will love you.
At present God has given you entertainment. Looking at you in your troubles [plight] He says, “These people do their job very well.” Sometimes I find mistakes in the very teachers. If you sit at my table and if I give you to eat according to the rule, you will remain hungry; if I give you more, some will eat more, others will eat less and I will scold you in the end. It is not right to treat everybody to three nuts and a slice of bread when you come to visit me. This is what you should try to learn!
(Somebody from the audience): What does great Joy stem from?
From a profusion of energy. Sometimes when there has been refraining and abstaining, great Joy follows. This state is to be observed in all people. Joy often comes down to the physical life. Joy, expressed on the physical level, is the Joy of soul.
I shall give you an example, to see where evil is to be found: let’s say that your spring is clean, but the glass you hand water in, is not clean and the person is displeased. The evil rests not in the water, nor in the desire, but in the glass. The glass has to be clean. The bread you give to people is not bad, but your hands have to be so very clean that this person can be grateful to you. These rules have been preached for the last eight thousand years.
You will now move a stage further up. If you want to kiss somebody, you have to be aware of what you will express by the kiss. Or similarly what does contemporary hand-shaking mean? Do not think that kissing is a human invention; it is a sort of a energy-saving mechanism in Nature. These are two currents: the upper lip is the positive pole, and the lower lip is the negative pole; when a person gets his lips closer together, the current from one of the lips flows into the other one. When the mother kisses her child, both of them, the mother and the child, are renovated. Have you noticed that she does not kiss the child on the same place? However, how many times has this law been applied properly? Hand shaking follows the same law: it also facilitates the internal exchange of energies. Hand shaking stands for familiarizing, congratulating.
Expand your heart, look the world in the eye, be grateful for everything, aim for Purity! The first thing that you need is internal Purity – Purity of the soul! To sustain Purity is most difficult of all. This is why in order for a person to become pure, one must befriend God and good people. You need new experiences to change your mood. When you graduate this School there will be a lot to learn ahead of you. If you become very sensitive you will notice what a grave aura people have. You will feel the vibrations of their thoughts and desires; you will detect discontent and ingratitude in them. Meanwhile you have to allow all this to settle down and you have to say, “For God’s sake I have to allow everything to settle down!”
Make sure you develop yourselves. Spend ten to fifteen minutes in silence everyday, in order to learn the art of being silent. Each of you should be deeply absorbed in themselves and should be thinking in simple terms, without expecting to be told something. Just like in Nature everybody looks in various directions or just like everybody chooses what to have at a table, just in the same way you should be engrossed in your thoughts and you should try to acquire this energy. If you watch others – the way people sit, the way people pray, this is nothing close to meditation. A large room is required for meditation, where nobody can disturb you, and you should be at half a meter distance from one another. It is good to examine the features of a flower, of a carnation, for instance, of strawberries etc., during your meetings, to examine the psychological performance. All flowers should be studied on the spot; they should be examined under a microscope. You are bound to notice how sensitive flowers are to love, but for this purpose you need to take more excursions.
Aspire to more freedom - aspire to no restrictions! Many rules lead to the other extreme, but make an effort to give up self-condemnation, to avoid blaming yourself. We shall start discussing more abstract topics. You have to be impartial in the discussions; you should not be personal when you speak on some issue. You may at times imagine somebody as a model figure and depict this person, but this person should not be your target. This model will be in front of you as long as the model likes. When you sit for your portrait to be drawn, you stay as long as you like, don’t you? This is how you should behave in life too. Because you have not learnt the law of concentrating yet, the Invisible world uses negative methods to develop your concentration: when you start hating somebody you carry this person in you and thus you concentrate. At other times you experience a pain, a blister comes up and you concentrate. You have a stomach-ache or you have a headache – these are natural methods to concentrate your thought. When it comes to loving somebody, you lose your concentration - you are distracted. In concentration the mind should be in its place and all the good desires should be separated from the bad ones.
When you train yourself, you should keep developing something in your soul every day. Do not fear whatever you do! Do not think that it is a deficiency; it may only appear to be a deficiency. Religious forms, judgement, moralizing – these are great obstacles. This is how I understand the issue: I do not have to preach sermons to you; you are flowers that have to water and tend themselves on their own. They will grow on their own accord. Some say, “I want to become better.” If you walk along the path you will develop properly. Since you are at different stages some of you say, “I am in low spirits.” We do not understand this philosophy and we befriend each other, we do not get on well, we stumble. People cannot be equally situated in the physical field. Sometimes a person is in the situation of a tree having all its leaves and blossoms fallen, and you say, “We changed our opinion about this person.” No, this person has only shed the clothes; the flesh will put on clothes again.
Work with Love! Work with the Love Tolstoy speaks about: to be prepared to leave everything, to be prepared to serve everybody without expecting to be paid for this. This is Love – to put on everything and to be a servant everywhere. If you can do this, you have Love; if you can’t do this, you still have love, but your love cannot elevate people. If you can do this, the problem is immediately solved in an intelligent way. When you are a servant in Love, you won’t bargain, you will be free, you will work for free, you should not feel obliged, and you should not be accountable. You will do what Love demands voluntarily. This Love demands both the king and the servant to give up what is theirs, to become servants. This Love says, “I recognize no masters!” And having worked for a long time for Love’s sake, it says, “You deserve to be a master of your rest, but the moment you have had enough rest, you should immediately get to work!” So, while you are having a rest, you are a big shot, while you are working, you are a small man. Do you know how difficult it is to work like this? People are so selfish and they think that you are made of steel. They won’t ask you to stop for a while even if you work for twenty-five hours. Nobody should be influencing others. You will leave each other to behave and to work the way they feel like, because they will develop in this Love. Somebody comes to you and tells you, “This is what should be done!” Well does this person know what should be done? Contemporary society [is said to have] recommended so! Well, is contemporary society ideal – it also has its deficiencies!
Most important it is to start with Love, to become heroes, so that you find it a pleasure to work for it!
Maiden’s tears show that one has to clean oneself. Crying is always a method of cleaning oneself. When one has sinned, one has to cry to clean oneself. When you come to the earth you cry – because you are sorry for your sins in the Invisible world. Do not think in any other way – all souls have come here to the earth to have their sins redeemed. When a soul recalls a mistake, the soul has to cry a little bit, to free itself from the mistake. These sins can be yours or somebody else’s, but this is a general principle. Tears show a softened heart and an elevated consciousness; this is what happens to people along the path of renovation.
You are abandoned in order to develop yourself. You sometimes feel that your mind is getting feeble, which at times can last for a short while, and at other times it can take days and afterwards you feel refreshed. These are illusions; these are not real things, these are temporary states, which you have to undergo. When somebody feels forsaken, in some cases, they can become bitter, full of venom, they become worse, while in other cases they go to God. The latter is good; therefore, we should remain on our own more often. When one is full of Life within, it is easy to clean these states and even if one’s hand gets dirty, it is also easy to wash. But when there is no water, impurities stay with people for a long time. The moment Divine Life comes, it is easy for people to wash, but if this water is not available, people carry on the impurities on their three fingers.
Learn the law of satisfaction; not the external, but the internal satisfaction, to feel satisfied deep in your heart! Whatever happens to you, when you are satisfied, you will forebear it in full awareness. You may be groaning, suffering, but you will endure everything voluntarily, gladly. One has to forebear one’s sufferings in dignity. Show your Love to everybody – to the weak, to the feeble, to children! As soon as you feel aggrieved, go among people who are more aggrieved than you, do some good for them and you will feel better; or get down to reading the biography of a great person who suffered a lot. There are many methods to heal a person.
I call this world – from the beginning to the end – “a world of disenchantment”. Some call it “a world of enchantment”, but I call it “a world of disenchantment”. When a baby is born everybody rejoices. During the first year everybody tries to please the baby as if the baby is a king, everybody listens to whatever the baby commands, everything is given to the baby. But afterwards, little by little the baby is being taken down from the throne: in the third year the baby is already a prince, in the fifth – a minister, then a manager; until in the end, the grown up person becomes a servant, the servant is sent downstairs and is told, “It’s not like the old times when you were a baby!” The grown up person is given a hoe and off he goes to the vineyard. In the Spiritual world God starts in the opposite way: you are first placed as a servant and in end you are made king. This is why you are beaten here on the earth. You marry a man; he is your teacher and he tells you, “This is not your father’s house, do you know who I am?” and in several years he will have bent your neck. You say you do not love your husband – there must be reasons for this. Some other time you love someone, because he did you good; in a couple of days your state changes and you love that person no more. Why so? Because he had wronged you. Then you say, “I’m fed up with this man!” The husband, in his turn, says, “I’m fed up with this karma! I hate you, I feel like in prison for twenty years with you, I have wasted twenty of my years!” Then things change: you come into another life, mistakes are corrected and you say, “I will rectify my mistake, I shall not place you in prison!” This is a law, which turns like a wheel. When you become clairvoyants, you will transport yourself into the epoch of your previous life in Egypt or elsewhere, you will see scenes from that time, you will get to know what role you had and you will say, “Thank God, I finally understood what I used to be!” Therefore, when you become clairvoyants, when you are elevated, this situation of yours will become clear and pleasant to you. This is how everybody can find that life is pleasant. We shall try to rectify our life according to God’s orders, and to understand it the way it was made. If you are clairvoyants you will see magnificent pictures.
Master’s Lecture,
Delivered on 10 May 1920 (Monday).
1 The lecture was delivered at the request of the sisters before the Master left for the country (notes of the original editor)
2 The word is used figuratively, as antithesis of the Gospel image of the candlestick under the bushel.
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