The twentieth lecture of the Master, delivered at the General Esoteric Class on 13 July 1922, Thursday, Chamkoria1
Papers were read on ‘Why God Created Man’.
I shall speak about the simple and complex movements in Nature. Primary movements you will substitute for simple movements, and the last movements, the faintest movements you will substitute for complex movements. One explanation: complex movements imply a great deal of opposition, while simple movements imply little opposition. Now in all of you, in your mind there are two movements: there are simple movements, there are also complex movements. For example, in order for you to come here, to Chamkoria, what movement was there in you - simple or complex one, in which category would you place it? – “Complex.”
Simple primary movements are only movements to God – movements, which are pure, where the consciousness is not split. Primary movements are crystal clear, while with complex movements, human consciousness is always split. You go to a resort, but you have several motivating reasons – it is not one reason, you have many reasons. I will then ask you, when one gets married, is marriage a simple or a complex movement? Complex, because it seems that the woman can say that she loves the man or the man can say that he loves the woman. This is one of the reasons; secondly, they want to have children, thirdly, the man wants somebody to cook for him. There are a number of motives; hence marriage is a complex movement. And you have to be aware that in all complex movements in the world there are obstacles, which you should be prepared to expect. And consequently as students of the Esoteric School I give you this distinctive difference in terms of methodology, so that you can psychically recognize the forces that are active in you at any moment – whether these are of the primary or of the secondary, the latter type, so that you can know in which category each movement falls. Once you know the difference, it is easy to find your way around. You are now confused between these two – there is a complex movement in progress - you expect the results of the simple movement, there is a simple movement in progress - you expect the results of the complex movement. While each movement has its own definite results.
Now it is ridiculous that some people, when they want to become religious, they expect to become rich. One who wants to become religious in the full sense of the word, particularly such a person will lose all one’s wealth, because wealth itself is a complex movement. If you have Knowledge, this is a complex movement. Therefore you have to be aware of the categories in which the movements, taking place in your mind, fall – they fall either to the one or to the other category. This is a practical means to orient oneself – just to know which one is prevalent at the moment. These movements do not belong to you. If you are in a crowd, can you walk in a straight line through the crowd of people? – You will be faced with a very complex movement and when you get out you will say, “Thank God, we are safely out of it, we overcame the obstacles.” Often in life you unwillingly pass by a celebration and therefore you have to fight; what method will you apply – a complex movement, you will make thousands of by-passes in every possible direction and you will then think. These are what I call, human movements, while simple movements are short.
What kind of movement is friendship, true friendship? – “Simple.” – All these motives, which take the least expense, are Divine, while those which consume huge energy, pertain to complex movements. Let’s define movement – what does it spring from? – It springs from Life – Life is the primary cause of movement. Each movement in the world shows that the consciousness of any being wants to gain access to certain food – certain forces necessary for this being, are laid for it. Thus Life generates the first movement, and the energies, stored in Life, have ensued from the World of Thought. So we are faced with one movement, representing the purely physical world; there is Life, representing the World of Spirit, the Mental World (The World of Thought). This world is expressed in the thought dominating Life, hence thought is expressed in Life – it is Life in progress, while any movement is an implementation of these three together. This is why we can determine: if your thought is simple it will generate a simple life with primary, pure, simple movements; if your thought is complex, your Life will inevitably be complex and the movements will correspond to it.
Let’s say that a being, living in the Mental World, conceives the idea to become great, to create a Solar system – a complex movement is conceived within it. If this Being wants to acquire a primary, conscious movement, to try Divine Love in its pure forms, we shall then have simple movement in the consciousness. Often, you extend yourselves, wanting to reconcile simple and complex movements – these are irreconcilable. A simple movement cannot be combined with a complex one – these are incompatible. A saint and a sinner cannot live in the same place – they can live, but not in the same place; sick people and doctors may be at the same place, but it would be the doctor attending to the sick, while the sick are cured; so shall the saint stay with the sinner, until the one cures the other; the child under the same law will live with the mother until the child takes what it needs and having taken it, the child no longer looks for the mother.
Now you say that God created Man in order to manifest Himself. Manifest in what; manifest to whom? I would like to correct you a little bit now: to manifest to Himself. If God wants to manifest Himself in the world then there must be another Deity. This is how it turns out to be, and this is dualism. I want to manifest myself to whom? – Not to myself, what is there to manifest to myself – I want to manifest myself to another entity and the other beings if they want to manifest themselves, they also need someone else to manifest himself or herself to. While God can manifest Himself to… whom? This is a question, one of the difficult questions. And I shall give you the following answer: God created Man in order for Man to be created. Now I will put the following question to you: when can something be created? – As man cannot be created, and I do not mean the creation of Man by God. To create implies constructiveness; there are esoteric students who cannot comprehend this. To build, to construct – there is always the implication of material life. When a place is being constructed why is it constructed; for whom is it being constructed; could it be for its own sake? Something could be constructed for Man to manifest oneself. If we say that it could be created in order for Man to manifest oneself, is this idea right? People construct a bridge for example, in order to communicate – there is an obstacle, so a bridge is constructed, the bridge is a means of communication. Similarly Man is a bridge serving as a communication link between worlds – nothing more than that. You will have an even more righteous idea because you as a whole, you still do not know the meaning of the physical world, i.e. the physical world is not only little known, but some say that it is an illusion. These are only words whose profound meaning is yet to be grasped. As to the Divine world with these Beings inhabiting it, as well as the beings who live in the physical world – what are their direct relations in this aspect? Now, under this situation we shall dwell on the following two issues: we say about the Spirit, who is pure, “Spirit is in constant struggle with matter”. And again there is the philosophical question: what needs, can the Spirit have, being pure, being in such a serene state, why should the Spirit need to incarnate itself in matter and why does it have to incarnate? Some will argue that it had to descend in matter to acquire certain experiences – if so, then this Spirit is not complete. And then there comes the question: if matter is something unreasonable by itself, how is it possible for something unreasonable to confine Reason? If matter is to confine Spirit, then there must be certain Reason in this matter and, at that, such a Reason, which is equal to the Reason of Spirit. If matter can capture Spirit, then such matter has its own intelligence – at least this is what comes out, if Spirit is confined by matter.
We shall not resolve the issue now, and shall leave it like this – unresolved, as everyone has left it. And you know why? We shall climb up on top of mount Moussala2, shall enjoy the panorama, shall climb down and shall be thinking of Moussala only – about its natural history, we shall study it, while it shall be immovable. I am asking you to investigate a huge mountain peak – what is its natural history. This is a long story, but so that you could be thinking along more appropriate lines, I shall once again give you a hint and shall ask you why a person should be woken up from a sleep. If you are a servant why should your master wake you up? – To work. Why should you sleep? – To have a rest. When this servant is woken up, is the master creating the servant? Similarly, Man in the current circumstances has just awoken from a sleep, nothing more than this – you have been sleeping until now. People call such waking up creation. After having worked, who manifests oneself – you or your master? Both you and your master manifest yourselves – you manifest yourself in the work done, while your master can manifest himself in the plans he granted to you. We shall substitute this question and rather than asking why God created man, I shall ask you why Man came to Earth, or why Man was sent here to Earth – this is a more appropriate question. Man has come from somewhere, but why has man come? This is an easier question to answer than trying to answer why God created man.
Look, the issue why God created man has no practical aspect under the current circumstances here, where you are. In order to know why man came to the Earth, why God created man – you should read the archives of Nature – there must be someone who loves you, to open this book for you, to go over the annals – there it is put on record why and to what purpose. I raised the question why God created man, so that you could find your own attitude to God and be assured that without God, if you are not related with Him, you can have no growth, no Life, no mental activity, because Reason springs from Reason, Life springs from Life, and activity springs from activity. Because God is right in everything and because man belongs to complex movements, this complex movement has to find its impetus in the primary aspect. We need to be connected to God not by form, nor by content, as these are yet external aspects. Not by meaning, but on principle, internally, in the very essence of things – to be linked with God by necessity of the very Existence itself, because only in this way can His thought give an impulse to our Life and His movements can give an impulse to the movements of our life. And then everything is possible. Such must be your innermost goal, your innermost desire, so that there is no chance for you to stumble.
On entering this School, you may intend to conquer certain natural elements – but you may have no conquering whatsoever. I do not call it a conquest if I tend a pear tree for ten years and when it bears fruit, someone else comes and picks the pears – I do not consider this a conquest. I have worked and someone else eats the fruit – there is no sense. We can work only to obtain knowledge, but when we want to take advantage of it, we have not explored this.
Now you often say, “It’s in the Scripture, it is said that we should love each other”. To love each other – the implication, according to me is to make a bridge. Do you think that if we make a bridge, everything in the world will become better? If the two parties are enemies, then it is better not to have a bridge, because they will then start quarrelling; if they are friends, then let there be a bridge. If people are ready to serve God, let there be a bridge, if they have not learned how to serve God, let them be without any bridge – this is better.
So you should not mix things in esoteric science. I often keep observing you – this is how you are arguing, “You may want anything in the name of God – wolves, bears, tigers.” You may say, “I now live according to God’s law, to Christ’s law.” And the wolf also says, “God is Love”, but the wolf is alone, the wolf attacks the sheep and says, “Because I love God, and I love His children, because of this you have to fall victim for me” Well, can you reconcile this? The wolf is allowed to eat the sheep; if a man eats a sheep, it’s tolerable - neither here nor there - but if a sheep eats a wolf, the sheep will undergo the greatest suffering; and when a man is eaten by a bear, the man will experience the same. We are not sent to Earth to organize a menagerie – sheep will be kept separate, wolves will be kept separate, so will bears, all will be kept separated. There will be a fence separating them, a wire – to speak brotherly to each other but with strictly determined borders. And not like this: I see someone has the brains of a bear, someone else has the brains of a sheep, and both of them say, “Let’s break this fence, let’s unite our brains.” But what can a sheep and a wolf do together? Imagine someone with a bear’s heart, someone else with a sheep’s heart, how can you unite them? Some act like bears, others like sheep – how can you reconcile them? They cannot be reconciled. You will say, “Esoteric science can do everything.” Esoteric science can do everything, but you cannot do what esoteric science can. God can, I know that God can do everything, but we cannot. We should not be trying to do what God does – we cannot. Hence we should do only what we can, what is within the scope of our knowledge. Now I want you to do things, which you can, not things, which you cannot. We are getting mixed up together, therefore I shall tell the person: “Listen, do not demolish your wall; by saying what I said, I did not mean to make you demolish it - you keep the fence, and you shall find a new place for the new stuff where you will not place old stuff.”
For example, you often want to reconcile the idea of Divine Love with your present love – these are irreconcilable. My Love, the Love I have is incompatible with your love, do you understand what I mean? If I transfer these ideas, do you know what will happen? I will tell you: there are many cases described in the book of Caprices of Electricity, where electricity appears in big round shining balls – such a ball suddenly falls upon a person, all the clothes are burnt, but the person is intact. The Love that I speak of is such a ball – if it falls upon you, you will find yourself naked; and after you find yourself naked, you will be doubtful and you will say, “This is no Love.” This is exactly where Love is. You want a new understanding of Love – bearing a new signature, while containing the old concepts.
There is no sacrifice in the purely Divine Love. Sacrifice is just a result of the complex movements of Love in the physical World – this is a temporary period of transition. When people say that a person must make a sacrifice, this does not concern Divine Love – there is no sacrifice whatsoever in true Divine Love. Hence in order to understand Divine Love, you have to inevitably descend to the physical world, to learn the law of sacrifice. This is precisely why people descended to the Earth - to learn the law of sacrifice too. People will learn what Divine Love is when they experience the law of sacrifice – this is a law of the Divine energies proper transformation. Someone says, “I want to know what you think about me”; I say, “You may know, but I have to eat you up.” And therefore Christ says, “If you do not eat of My flesh and if you do not drink of My blood, you will have no eternal Life.” So, if you want to understand me, I shall have to eat you, so when you enter me, I will understand you and having understood you, I shall know how to help you. This is to say that you will sacrifice yourself in order for God to enter you, you will make this sacrifice. If you want to understand someone, then either you are eaten or you eat someone else – this is a symbol. If you want to understand someone, that someone has to eat you; if you want someone to understand you, you have to eat that someone. To this you will say, “This is scary!” But look, doesn’t the present life consist of eating and drinking only? If you take eating away, what else is left in life? Perhaps, having eaten a good pear, a bright idea will come to mind and you may write a poem – this pear is also a flower and therefore Christ said, “I am the water of Life and I am the bread of Life.”
You have to make a difference between the simple and complex movements and to understand for what purpose Man has descended on Earth. You have to learn the law of sacrifice – this is one of the significant issues, which you have to investigate. But what sacrifice – sacrifice the way one understands it? You have to ask yourselves the question what you are supposed to sacrifice. The little concessions you make do not count for sacrifice – the law of sacrifice is a law, which reconciles all contradictions in the world. Let’s say you are in a very sad and difficult situation; apply the law of sacrifice and you can immediately remove this sadness of yours. Let’s say you have to receive twenty thousand leva, you do not have this money in your pocket – what will you do? Open your books and make a decision to sacrifice this money for your tranquillity’s sake – you will immediately feel your soul relieved and Peace will come to you.
Now don’t you move to the other extreme! Sometimes you regret that you are not a highly educated person, and you say, “If had a good education, I would have become a Minister, a doctor” – you torment yourself. Tell yourself, “Even if I am not a Minister, I can still live like Man” – and you will feel relieved. Sometimes you go to the other extreme and some say, “We need no knowledge.” This is not the question – in this particular case we are suffering due to the lack of such goods, which stem from knowledge. Say, “We can do without the good of knowledge.” Such knowledge does not imply that you have to become a minister, doctor or priest – the absolute, pure knowledge is a simple movement. You for example often say, “We have to increase in number in the new movement” – our strength does not lie in our numerousness. – “We have to build a home” – strength lies not in building a home; “We must possess knowledge” – strength does not reside in such knowledge. What we bring to the world is a kind of a need, which Life cannot do without; what we bring is a necessity, just like water and bread are needed for Life. These people, anyway, shall come, but when they come we shall not say, “Hang on, this is unbearable, it’s expensive, you have to pay for your bread, and then you have to pay for your water, you have to pay because I am the first one who has brought it.” No, once this thought enters your mind, the issue is over. You have to act absolutely selflessly – bread you will give in order to be used, water you will give too, and whomever you give to, you will tell this person so, “You also have to give under the same law, in the same way.” Give everything – this bread and this water you have to give, but only to those to whom they are meant to be given.
Now some of you think that once they enter the New Teaching they will become better. How do you know you will become better? A person’s goodness always depends on the sacrifice – the better one understands and applies the law of sacrifice, the better one will become. Time is nothing but a manifestation of sacrifice. I am now hinting at this idea so that you will not be at odds with yourself. For example sometimes when I am talking some people say, “The Master should not have said so.” I can place a stone on the eastern wall, on the western, to the north or south, but I can also place it on top – but where should I place this stone? Let’s say its place is determined, where shall I place it? – Where it is determined to be – according to the measure of the place, this is where I should place it. Well, in this life you have entered, you are determined, measured. Sometimes I place you somewhere and you say, “I do not belong here, I am not fit for a prince”, and I see – this is the place determined for you; which is to say you are spoiling it. There you will stay, where you belong, nothing more than this. Afterwards you summon someone (this is how false masters appear); and you say, “I do not belong here, can you not relocate me?” Everybody gets drawn to this place and says, “What work can this stone do?” - They start building something new and distort the whole edifice. And then the committee comes over and says, “It’s not built well” – then they take the stones down and say, “This and that society has disintegrated, this and that religion has fallen to pieces.”
I am warning you: there is a weakness within you – you want to fall back into old building practices. You will deny the old ways; you cannot go ahead without sacrifice. You must be clear with this issue in yourselves, so that each of your deeds, each of your thoughts, has to be absolutely clear, selfless. You must be certain about it for your own sake; do not declare this publicly. You have to preserve and develop this feeling, and never say to people that you are good. Now you say, “Let’s live like brothers!” Sheep live with sheep; wolves live with wolves, bears with bears, hares with hares, flies with flies, while the way you are carrying on is no good. But one of the Hebrew prophets says that lambs and lions shall live together. Remember this line, but when will they live? – When God comes, so that there will be ample space, won’t there? We shall leave this line; it belongs to another category.
Do not reconcile your good thoughts with your bad thoughts; do not place them in the same place. Someone says, “I have one bad thought.” If your thought is bad, place it where it belongs; if you have one Divine thought, place it right where it belongs; if you have a desire – either good or bad - put it onto its proper place – everything has to be placed where it belongs. Many of you (I see you) when you find a wolf with nice teeth, you bring him here and you say, “Master, we found a good man – he is very clever and educated person, and what a disposition he has, what language, what words, let’s take him with us.” I can see him - he is an old wolf, but I say nothing to the man. You say, “Let’s give him a good reception; let’s open the door to the sheep, so that he can visit them.” And I tell you, visit them he will! There are not only male wolves, there are female wolves as well; there are not only bears, but there are also she-bears – these are all symbols. All of Nature around is symbol-ridden – all of these bears and wolves are a whole branch of science, which we have to study and understand. It is easiest of all to learn about ourselves while studying the animal, mineral and plant kingdoms. Bear in mind that trying to understand this story one may find it difficult to understand the changes that are under way.
Sometimes you get up from sleep, you pray, but say, “God does not listen to me”; how can you explain this situation? When you know the reasons, the attitude within you should be as pure as possible. Many of you are caught in a complex movement, you have to resolve one of the most difficult tasks and to this end you need resourcefulness, tact, skills, knowledge, will and stamina in the world. And those of you who have a better understanding, shall perhaps understand tonight what I did not say, and shall say tomorrow, “Did not the Master say so?” You will find yourself in the position of that priest, who preached like this, “Let those who have two shirts, give one to the poor”; his beloved comes back home, the preacher had two shirts and she had given one of them away following Christ’s law. In the evening the priest asked her, “Where is one of my shirts?” – “I gave it away.” – “How come you gave it away without asking me?”- “You said so in church, didn’t you?” – “I said this to the others; I did not mean it for us”. Well, the priest’s wife had given the shirt away; where did she go wrong, do you think she acted right, why didn't she give one of her shirts away, but one of her husband’s? She is not right, because she did not give away one of hers, but one of the priest’s – the priest should give the shirt away himself. She says, “I followed Christ’s law”, the priest is discontent that she had given his shirt away without asking for his permission. Well it is often the case that you give away my shirts – I do not mind, but you should give away your shirts also, nothing more than this.
Some interpret it like this, “You were given for free, for free you should give!” When you take a Divine idea or whatsoever, the rule is that you keep this idea to yourself. You have the right to give the fruit to the others, but the idea you should keep to yourself – to all you should give of the fruit it bears, but it should stay with you. You, however, take this idea and say; “We were given for free, for free we shall give”. This is not right, Christ also says, “Each sprig coming from Me shall bear fruit.” These Divine ideas should pass through us and should bear fruit – and of the fruit you will give away. You all have to be rich of the fruit of the Divine thoughts.
Secret prayer
So, the main points are: simple and complex movements, the law of self-sacrifice, the law of sacrifice; the Divine idea has to stay within you in order to be sown in you and bear fruit, and of this fruit we have to give away – these are the main ideas in the lecture. You get together sometimes - for this purpose I shall assign a certain task to the students so that you can seriously start working to resolve it. Discuss the three aspects – to the physical world, to the Spiritual World and to the Divine World. Each idea should be discussed in three aspects. Direct your thought to be clarified, in order not to be held back.
If you were ready I would give you a task now, but you are not. I would give you a complex task to perform. Do you know what it means when a person is not ready? This is what I imply: imagine it is winter-time and I send you to an excursion, but you have no shoes; can I send you barefoot? Imagine I send you to a place in the mountains with glaciers, while you do not have the required equipment – you need to prepare. You will say, “Everything can be done with God”; God can do everything, but we cannot. So now you will think it over. I want you to gather energy at least from Chamkoria, more Light for your mind, to strengthen your heart. Perhaps I would assign this task to you under more favourable conditions, but everyone should be ready, because I will give to you a more complex task – as is required. Now that I say so, you may wonder what this task might be. You will get to know, certain things are kept back.
Now when you start, first you will act, and then you will think – do not be scared. For example I tell you: “In an hour’s walk from here, at about 10 kilometres there is a place, you will walk on one of the sides, you will stop there and shall not move.” You won’t ask me why – go there and you will get to know why. You will walk ten kilometres from here; you will find a sack with weight of 10 kilograms, you will not untie it, you will take it and will bring it back to me. I will then tell you, “You will take this sack and you will open it, there is a measure of wheat, you will put oxen to the yoke and you will sow it.” You won’t ask why – next year you will get to know whether the task was right. Let me explain the idea: you will go a ten kilometre distance from here, there are ten kilograms of wheat in a sack there; you won’t untie the sack, because you will waste time, you will not be curious and I will not tell you anything, so as not to waste time; you will harness oxen – next year, when the wheat grows, you will reap it and you will then reason. This is what the esoteric student should be like. Well you may now ask, “I must know what there is in the sack.” – You may know – I can tell you this, “You will go to a place ten kilometres away, there is one sack of wheat there, you will bring it here, will harness oxen and will go to the fields etc.” – I can tell you all this but do you know what the results will be? You will not get there on time; you will be late. We are already late; we have missed the most favourable circumstances, because I was explaining all this to you, an hour had passed. This one hour wasted the best circumstances under which this seed can live. Therefore in the Divine world there is no waste at all – no sooner said than done!
You will then acquire punctuality; all of you have to learn this punctuality. And you will try my thought whether it is right or wrong. The day before yesterday, at Moussala peak3 I tested your hesitation: we reached a place where we stopped – not possible to go ahead, as it was dangerous; if you had decided to go across the ice, then everybody would have fallen into the lake. You now say, “There are a lot of obstacles along this road (as the road was covered in frozen snow), what shall we do?” We could have cut a road through, we should have taken hoes with us, but it would have taken us a whole day until we cut a road through – this, however, we did not foresee. You thought there were no obstacles on the way to Moussala. There is no way back – then you say, “Upwards!” – You manifested courage. – “No one shall pass through the snow!” Then you started crawling up the hill, not even thinking of stones falling on you. You have to be very careful, as there are many obstacles in our development. While I was climbing a big stone passed me by – four fingers thick – such a stone can break bones. So while climbing up the hill, you have to be careful not to touch a single stone, you should not aim only at climbing up. What is the law concerning this? – Do not be in a hurry, I do not demand of you to hurry. If you reach a certain place, sit down – try it, place your foot on this place and find out whether it is strong. By touching the stone with your foot you will receive certain energies, will concentrate within yourself. This is a task: to climb up to the top and to try the whole road, to get to know what dangers there are – such should be the tasks, this is the only way to carry you up there. In a certain respect all of you were very brave, not cowards. Courage is a good feature – indication that you can do the job. But it takes someone else behind your backs – I should have been the last one in the line and had I remained last everybody would have climbed up. Then, you did not follow my instructions – I said, “Absolutely no one should pass through the snow”, while some of you did and this might have cost them their lives. Had I told you, “Go through the snow”, it’s my responsibility. Some other time I shall take you to Moussala and shall tell you, “Up you go through the snow” – then it is my responsibility; then everybody has to carry a hoe – will dig a step and will pass. But if I say, “You may not pass though the snow”, then you may not. Someone says, “We may.” No, now is not the right time – we shall walk along the path that is predetermined; this is a rule.
In Esoteric science a task that is not accomplished properly has risks – this is absolutely so. While the results are always correct, i.e. everything will be going well; will be supportive. I want you to see what laws operate during these excursions, to see that this Divine mind; these elevated Beings take part in all of our deeds and acts. And these two, the brother and the sister, who slipped down, were saved along a direct line, not along a curved line. Had they not stopped slipping, they would have fallen into the lake.
We shall now walk in a living faith – I am not preaching to you an ordinary faith. This faith is extraordinary and our deeds shall also be extraordinary. And so shall Love – everything within us will be extraordinary, this we have to be sure of.
Translation: Maia Mitcheva
1 Chamkoria translates Pine-Woods – a famous resort in the Rila mountains
2 Note: 2925 m altitude, summit on the Balkans
3 Moussala – the summit of Rila Mountains – 2 925 m
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