The Twelfth Lecture of The Master before the General Spiritual Class held on 18 May 1922, Thursday, 8.30-9.30 in Sofia
Secret Prayer
The homework on a much-loved word or a much-loved sentence has been read.
Next time you will write down the greatest imperfection that you have. Just one, yet the greatest one. You can write it anyway you like. Now, I say, he who has no courage to admit his imperfection can never know Love. Love is not for the righteous, neither is it for the loving, Love on its own cannot love. If it could love, then who would be able to love? It is marvellous to love because you are loved. Love is Love by itself. If we think in spiritual terms, when you want to love then there is something that you miss, and if you want to be loved then again there is something that you miss. Therefore, whether you love or you are loved, indicates an imperfection. You love because you are not perfect and you say that The Lord also loves. But The Lord has never said He loves anyone. Can you tell me where he said that, where is it written, have you ever seen it said anywhere that God loves? People say – some prophet came and said that God is Love. Have you ever met The Lord in person? You are funny – the prophet said so; yes, but that is on his account. One should not conclude from that that The Lord loves. Now, you have a critical mind, haven’t you? Loving means having an imperfection. Now I am talking about Love in the way it manifests on the physical field. What way does it manifest itself on Earth? How can you talk to me about that great Love – have you seen that Love? Can you tell me how Love appeared? You can philosophically say, "What is the Master talking about, this is not right.” Show me two people on Earth who love each other to the extent that they have always lived in peace in their lifetime; let’s not just talk. There are saints who loved once yet they happened to act rude just as well, only the books do not say anything about that. Many saints thrashed around the same way anyone else did. At that time people did not say they were saints; that came later. Yes, they were saints but only after they died. Of course, what I say is concrete – it is not about what is up, it is rather about what is down, amongst you as that is the way Love manifests. And we should start learning this Love the way it manifests amongst us rather than the love we know.
Now, you say that you love someone, don’t you? But if the one you love ignores your love, what will be brought forth inside you? – First, embitterment will be brought forth, is that right? Then animosity will be brought forth after the embitterment, and after that animosity, you will turn your back and say, "Come what may,” and that will be it. Paul says that Love does not fall away, is that right? So I am asking if your Love falls away, then was it really Love? It is Love only if it can endure all sins in the world, all the endless sins of people – then it is the Love of Angels and God; that is Love. While love that cannot endure people’s sins is slops. This is my definition of Love, do you understand? Because a righteous man needs no Love. I am righteous, what need of Love have I? What need of Love can God have? He does not need Love but it is because of those weak beings, which wanted God to give them Life and are begging Him, forcing Him to love them. He has many important things to deal with but since they keep knocking and knocking at the door, He will finally get up; He will disturb his peace to see what they want. They say, “You have given us Life, now you will guide us.” – “I will guide you.”
So, if you want to cope with your mistakes in the spiritual aspect you will have to bear yourselves sometimes. Sometimes, as you cannot stand yourselves, find someone guiltier than you are so that you can bear yourselves. No, no, when you bring out all your sins you should love yourself anyway. When things are nice it is normal to love yourself, when you are sinning, it requires substantial courage.
Now, many are talking about Love. If I criticise your love, that is not Love. Someone is talking about Love, he expects me to praise him, and he says he loves me. I know why he loves me. He says, “I love The Master.”- I am a pear tree full of pears, what will he feel but love me. If I were an idiot, or a sweeper in the street you would not love me then. So I do not believe in your love, there is nothing more to it. I do not believe in your love; I believe in your love as much as this; while I have this wealth, you will love me, and tomorrow when I lose it, you will discard me. And whoever replaces me that Love will go to him. This is for religious people who only talk about Love, about God they talk; they have seen Heaven and say: “What will we be there?” That is just entertainment.
I have noticed that sometimes some people analyse the way I am watching, thinking how I might see them in the same way as a clairvoyant. While what I see is them building their long-term plans and wanting to be traitors in the future. It makes no difference for a man – be he a traitor, that is courage again1, he does that out of love again.
I am asking you, students of the spiritual, how was evil born in the world? – When Love came down, evil was born alongside it. But is God not perfect; has man not come out of God? Now you will say, “Don’t we have Love?” I refer to Love from a different viewpoint. That root, the bitter one that is emerging inside your soul, where does it come from? I will explain Love in the first degree to you: Love that cannot be understood is hatred. And when does great Love turn into hatred? A mother has half a dozen children but she loves one of them more, hence, this beloved child becomes the reason for hatred to appear at home. The love of one of them will generate the hatred of the others – isn’t that the actual situation in that home? That is fine, but how can we reconcile those energies? I speak of Love as of energy. Now, we are in the world of contrasts – where there is hatred, likewise there is Love.
Love with shadows within it is imperfect, while perfect Love has no shadows. And when you come into perfect Love you will find you are in the boundless Light – you will be all alone there, without any images around nor any Angels whatsoever, you will live in infinite Light and you will have no image of your own, either. I am asking will any hatred then appear in your soul? – No. You will be serene and peaceful, there you will feel the presence of that eternal Freedom, there you will feel Love, and bygone cosmoses will not appear. And if you want to create a cosmos, you will call hatred and Love. Consequently, when a man wants to create an image, evil is born in the world at that very moment – it is a visible image. The root of evil is the aspirations to have images. While an image is a trap – to catch a Divine soul, to limit it, to put a halter on it, to put a goad to that and to torture it as much as we like.
So, love on Earth is nothing but a limitation. That is what people are doing now; they do not love each other, they just torture each other – this is what I know of them. And some people will say that they love each other. You should treat those you love with the utmost care, as your smallest mistake will bring in the greatest misfortune – that is gunpowder, it will have bad consequences. You will love, but you will be extremely careful, while should you want to be loved, you should again be extremely careful about your words and about anything in any aspect. Because forms have evil inherent in them. Therefore, some people speak about others, they comment that someone said something, but you should know when you create such forms they will come to a collision, there will be an explosion and you, who are on the Earth, will be walking in the air.
So, when you come to dealing with the images of Love, you should be careful. You should be extremely delicate with Love that has images. You have, for example, someone whom you love; for you that person is attractive, is that right; while for others your attractive person is ugly. Therefore, the things that we find ugly or disgusting and bad are not an absolute rule. In spiritual terms, we do not know the measure of absolute evil in the world. There is absolute evil in the world, there is also relative evil in the world, but we do not know what measure we use. Let us take, for example, animals: a wolf’s teeth are made to protect it - if you tease it, it will protect itself, so it will bite you, thus saying: “Do not touch me, I have teeth”; an ox, when you touch it, it will butt you, thus saying: “Do not touch me, I have horns”; a horse, if you touch it, will kick you with its hoof, thus saying: “I have legs.” So all creatures have a way to protect themselves – with arms, with legs, with mouth, and not only with teeth, but also with the tongue, with anything. They have learned all the methods of protection.
Now, to be able to understand the depths of this spiritual doctrine you should be able to cope with all contradictions. You should first of all conceive Love as a boundless principle that contains no evil at all – you should conceive it free of any contents and free of any meaning. Because if you recognize that there is any meaning in Love then there is content; if there is any content, there is a form; if there is a form, there is evil. Or, as we say, when the eternal gets limited, evil gets born.
Now, if I leave you with this situation, I will create some evil for you, i.e. the way I am speaking to you now I will create some evil for you and many of you will suffer. Now you are saying, “Let us love each other, let us love God.” For thousands of years, we have been saying that we should love each other and we keep failing to love each other, that we should have mercy and we still don't have it, that we should be careful and we keep being careless. We keep promising and promising and promising every day and there is always something in our way. What is it that is in our way? – It is because we do not want to admit our imperfections. While our imperfection is the following: any time man finds himself limited in a certain form that is an imperfection. For example, you are limited in a body like what we are. We say that we have been created in the image and likeness of God, but if we would look at that human body as it is, we would run three hundred kilometres away from it. It is perfect to say about man that he has been created in the image and likeness of God but that by no means implies the body that you have now; when I speak of that mind, that by no means implies the mind that you have now; when I speak of that heart, I by no means imply the heart that you have now.
Sometimes you have an experience like this: you feel Love as something abstract, but it only lasts five to ten seconds. It is a Divine condition – you feel as if the whole world has become reconciled, but then this condition vanishes and the old, common, gloomy condition replaces it. Then, your mind is somehow enlightened – as if everything is Divine, you can understand everything, and then that common mind comes back. We have to distinguish those conditions. That is precisely the question now: the spiritual science provides methods on the basis of which we have to transform our consciousness; our existing consciousness has to undergo certain changes. The way you are now, with your present consciousness, even if you go to Heaven you will sink anyway, no one can understand what the law is. If you place a stone on the sea surface, it will sink; the moment they place you in the Garden of Eden, you will sink through the floor – you are so heavy that the floors of Heaven will not bear your weight. Well, I am asking you, how are you going to stay in Heaven then?
Now in the Spiritual School, what are you thinking about? One of you feels miserable and is trying to find a way to get healed, another one wants to become a scholar, the third one wants to become rich – everybody is thinking of material things. And you spiritualise those material things and claim that you are thinking about the Lord. But people think very little about God, very little. Do not think now that I want to smear you with my brush. No, I have not yet revealed all your imperfections, I am not smearing you but this Light shall be cast so that things can be perceived the way they are in their2 reality in order that we can see what we are. Do you know how many evolutions the matter which our brains are made of, which we use now, has served, do you know how many evolutions our existing body has served and do you know that namely in this matter all the infirmities and imperfections of those who have departed have been incorporated? It is manure and we have to process this manure the way plants process all impurities. Consequently, we feel some depression within us all the time. Were that matter virgin and pure we would not feel such conditions. Even present doctors say that whenever there are such dregs in your blood they make you feel some malaise within and they have to be purged away. This means that the matter is impure.
Now, I don't want you to have a weak Angel – your Angel shall not be weak. You should, like a merchant, know precisely, mathematically how much money you have; how many golden coins you have in your safe, nothing more, nothing less. You should just as well know how much debt corresponds to that money. You have gold but you also have something that is not pure. You can have one hundred thousand levs3 and make a turnover of five-six million, and then people will say about you: “He is a merchant with millions”; others may think that all you have is capital. And all virtuous people of today figure with little effective money while at the same time everyone is seen as a man of a capital of ten million. Someone is seen as a saint, another one is seen as prominent while some are seen as big fools. The latter are better, since they have courage, they speak the whole Truth the way it is: “I have that much in my safe.”
Therefore, if you want to make progress in spiritual knowledge, to pass this cycle and get into the next one, you should leave your present mind, and if you do not, if you do not leave your present concepts, if you want to be delighted, you will all stay like the frogs inside this slough and will be croaking for at least another ten thousand years. You will say, “Oh, gracious Christ,” but do you know what grace is?
No man who tried to force Love, to force God, has prospered4. There is nothing more disgusting in the world than a man forcing God. Can you understand this? If we say that we are an actual image and likeness of God, if we force ourselves then we can always force our neighbour or God. We force God, even when we force ourselves; it is God that we are forcing. I am asking, what objections will The Lord make to you? And you know, sometimes you keep bending the bowstring, keep bending it, keep bending it and you come to a certain point but you cannot bend it any further as it will not resist and you break it, do you know what that will cause? Now, some of you do not realise how misfortunes come. Imagine you live on the second floor and assume you are moving a treasure to the first floor. You carry ten kilograms of gold every night. What will happen to that floor in a year or two? Do you think it will resist? – It will not resist, those timbers will get cracked, the floor will collapse soon and you and the gold will fall through it. You, modern people, modern disciples have so much gold placed in your minds that the timbers are cracking and the building will soon collapse. And where will you go – to the bottom of the sea. In the same way, the world, before long, will collapse. That is why the Brotherhood of Light prepares the members of the New Culture to leave that floor. You can take it all very literally.
I will give you an example. You say, “We are faithful”; enemies attack a city, you take in the facts, leave your wealth and your records and say, “Hey, brother, let us take in the facts,” and the poor man thinks that you have forgiven him. However, when the enemy withdraws, you bring your records back and say, “You still owe me.” Now you similarly turn to God, you pray, you repent, but when you find your old records …I am asking what is that love, is it perfect? Love that has no power to smooth out sins is not Love. That is the first thing, the first quality of Love. And God says: “I will erase all their sins and will dry their tears, I will wipe them.” – Therefore, that is the primary quality of Love. Where does Strength stay? If your Love is capable of erasing within you our mistakes and the mistakes of your neighbours, that is Love – that is the way I define Love. Peace will only come if Love can erase mistakes; if it cannot erase them, you should know that it is not Love. And when Christ pronounced the great rule - when your brother turns to you, you should forgive him, He must have meant something in that sense. And that is the hardest thing – it is so hard to forgive, and not only to forgive, but to forget; and not only to forget, but not have a trace left on that spot and to replace the most bitter words with the most beautiful words about the one you hated.
Now, I am speaking to you as students of the Spiritual School, I am not talking to strangers. To strangers I will speak about grace, about mercy, about Love, and about why they should love each other. What I am saying to you is: if your Love is incapable of erasing your transgressions within you, do you know how disgusting it is to have a transgression from the past or from the present pestering you? You keep praying, and the Lord does not hear you. Why can’t He hear you? – Because you want to lie to Him: “Cluck-cluck, cluck-cluck.” Like that village woman throwing grains to her hens: “Cluck-cluck.” She gets one: “Oh, my chick, cluck-cluck” – she puts it in the stew pan. “Cluck-cluck”, until she eats it up. Well, what do you think, do you think that I can fit into your stew pan? Never – neither you nor I can. Cluck-cluck does not work. And then an occultist will come, some cluck-cluck occultist. We are all surrounded by cluck-cluck. And I will ask you now – to which kind do you belong, to the cluck-cluck one? I call all old occultists cluck-cluck. While for the new ones I will give you another formula – when I speak to you next time, I will tell you what that rule is.
We should be openhearted, sincere to ourselves. It is time that we said: “My Love can erase my transgressions.” The question is not whether it is capable of doing that or not, no doubts whatsoever! I erase any other rules given by occultism; Love does not work according to rules. When it comes, it erases everything – it is all done. When that Love comes, you are immortal, you are infinite – that is the first thing. And there will no longer be any foes in your home, there will only be friends.
Now, I want you to let this idea remain within you, do not take it out. The idea, which I told you this evening, shall not be taken out of this room and if anyone dares to disclose it outside I will inflict on him one of the greatest punishments anyone has ever seen – yes, one of the greatest punishments, one of the greatest troubles, one of the greatest sufferings. And then I will ask him if he wants to disclose this Truth again. Do not speak of Love before it is inside you, it is a shame. That is the most sacred name! Remember where it says: “We shall not utter the name of God in vain”. The name of Love shall not be uttered in vain – that is what I know. Love is one of the most sacred names with which the world was created. Because if you utter this name and you are not ready, you will create much wretchedness in your karma, many generations will be wretched. It is said: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” In vain for what? – Only when you are ready for Love, you will call it. And then you will create a world of Beauty around you, a world solely of Love, a world solely of Peace, a world solely of Joy, of Rejoicing, of Harmony, a world of Bliss. That is what you will create when you utter its name.
Some of you will say now: “Do you know what our Master said?” You do not know your Master – where is your Master, have you seen him? You will say, “Yes, he is by the table”. At what table, he is not there. You think that there is a Master by the table, by you – you are so wrong. You will say: “But don’t we see you?” – No, you do not. “Aren’t you talking to us, aren’t we talking.” – We are not talking. We are talking in some non-understandable language: you do not understand even a millesimal of what we are talking about neither do I understand a millesimal of what you are prattling. You can understand your Master only when you are related to that great Love and only then does your soul communicate with him. When you find your Master and when He finds you, your Master will be blind to all your mistakes, and you will be blind to all the mistakes of your Master. The Master gets as smeared on the Earth as his disciple. The Masters also get smeared – here, on the Earth, everybody gets smeared. And do you think that those with the softest hands are the most righteous ones? Do you think that the maidens clad with the best clothes are the most pure while those in the kitchen, the poorly dressed ones, are the most sinful? Or that those working in the field are sinful? I think the opposite – the ones who are busy with dancing are the biggest sinners; the ones who are busy with praying in the church are the biggest sinners. The one working in his vineyard or working in the field, what can his sin be – he is more righteous. For example, a man will go to church and will say, “My Lord, my Lord,” his hands pressed one against the other. Who has taught you to pray this way? – “Well, my mother taught me this way, The Lord said it should be this way.” Who has taught your mother, then? The power of your Wisdom and your Love should come into your soul and erase your sins. Instead of clasping your hands, you should take your records into account in order to erase your sins. When a man wants to conceal something, he brings his hands together and raises them for a prayer, but there is something concealed between them. Then, he opens them and says, “Lord, everything is open to You, as You can see,” and then he brings them together again and says, “One day I can put something between my hands again.” A spiritual disciple using such manoeuvres can make no progress because any thought he has will produce such vibrations in the other world that will make anybody keep him thousands of kilometres away. And when the Angel approaches such a man he will take all precautions for that bomb not to explode because if it does, it can cause harm. This applies to the physical life.
We have been following this life for twenty years but with the forms it has, the world cannot be corrected, no religious forms are capable of modifying human nature. And then it is said that there is a thought that is right: “When the Spirit comes.” What Spirit? – The Spirit of that great Love that will erase everything. And we will believe in God, that He has erased our sins, He has forgotten them. Someone will say, “But our sins are so many that God cannot erase them.” Then, if God cannot erase them, His Love is too weak. But if God has erased your sins and you go and commit new sins, then your karma will be multiplied ten times.
So, I am leaving you in the first situation. Do not think that I want to influence you, no. I say, if you want to be followers of this Great Universal Brotherhood, your Love in the future shall be like that. I am telling thou5 all; for us to be able to make progress, by all means the Love not only of one of you, but of all of you shall be like this – the Love of each of you shall erase the mistakes. Each of you shall do that within himself rather than having others do it for him – each of you shall erase them in your mind, in your heart. And when you erase them, then the Lord will come to write. The Lord needs a clean book in which He will write his Word. And the prophet says, "I will take away their hearts of stone and will write my law.” Some people interpret that the Lord will do that – yes, the Lord will do that.
Do not say now that you will do this tomorrow, or say you will do it in one year, or now, but say within yourselves, “It will be this way!” If you say, “I will do it now,” you will not do it – that is the way it has been and the way it will be. Therefore, that is Maya. And this present delusion is a delusion of the Black Lodge – a delusion of the devil, in the religious sense. He is the greatest hypnotiser – he will put you into a hypnotic sleep, then he will hypnotise you and after he commits thousands of crimes, he will say, “These are the crimes that you have committed.” And all those advertisements are devil’s advertisements. No, no, we do not carry anyone else’s advertisements.
So, first of all, Love should erase all your mistakes so that you can start. For example, some of you should get harmonised so that we can apply another test. I will give you a test, a bit bigger than this one yet it will be microscopic again. And do you know what will follow next? I will give you a third test. Because if I give you the hardest test now, there will hardly remain ten of you. I will tell you, I will be open with you; if I tell you, the disciples who are here, “You will give three quarters of your wealth to the Brotherhood tonight, you will give it right now,” you will say, “We will think a little.” And at that instant you will think whether the Lord said so or there is something else concealed here. No, no, are you going to give three quarters of your wealth, or not? Now you will say, “It is easy to go to Vitosha6, but this!” You should know that this will come, too. Now, this test is nothing, it is like a song, there is a harder one, I will not tell you what it is.
You should know that you will be tested – you will be sifted. Tests will come – we will see now who will stand to the end, who will feel no doubt. You are saying that you have Love, and I will try your Love. You say, “The Master says that we have no Love,” how come you have no Love, I have come to test your Love and as soon as I find that you have Love, I will swallow my words. And if you fail, you will swallow your words. We will be sincere in the test, won’t we? So, I will put you to a test and eventually, after I take you through all tests and you pass them, I will say, “Put me as well now to any test that you like.” I will allow you to put me to any test you like in turn, but it will be you first and me afterwards. Then we will finish the Spiritual School and we will enter the New Era, where, the way it is said there, “They neither get married nor will they go for a man but they are like Angels.” And this era will be. This can happen; it is in the transformation of consciousness. I do not mean human flesh; it is in the transformation of man’s consciousness.
Secret prayer
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2 The Master has used the possessive pronoun in the Bulgarian text - translator’s note
3 Lev is the currency of the Republic of Bulgaria – translator’s note
4 The Master has used a verb of Greek origin that means prosper, succeed, flourish – note of the Bulgarian editor
5 the pronoun in the Bulgarian text is obsolete - translator’s note
6 Vitosha is a mountain in Bulgaria – translator’s note
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