Application

Good Prayer

I will read several lines from John, Chapter 4 – from line one to line twenty-nine.

‘God is Love’

What I have told all of you so far is that you need to apply things. I now challenge another word instead of can. Application excludes the negative sense of the word can, but you take it in its negative sense. The word can is positive. Otherwise you weaken the word can halfway. I say that we have to study and you ask, ‘Can I?’ Thus the word can is weakened. I see that this word has started losing its strength. Of course, if you encounter any obstacle, you won’t be able. What impedes the word can is always a certain internal obstacle. Obstacles in life can be in the mind – in one’s ideas, or in the heart – in one’s feelings or in the will – in one’s acts. Thoughts can be obstacles to ideas, that what one will do will be the best and there will be no other work second to one’s work. This is an inborn feeling in artists, in poets, in writers, in priests or in preachers. And anybody, who is alone, thinks that such thoughts and ideas that crossed his or her mind have never ever occurred to anybody else. But when one’s thought is realised, such a person begins to see its flaws.

A renowned English preacher, while still at the university, read the Bible and said, ‘What an inexhaustible book the Bible is, one can preach on it for thousands of years and it won’t be exhausted!’ And later on he himself confessed that having preached on something for four times based on the Bible, he was at a loss with what else could be said. This is a mistake. A person that can be so easily exhausted shows that there are certain internal defects in his or her life. You have to know the origin of the cause you are defending now or of the ideas you want to get through – whether it is Divine or not. You certainly have to know it, beyond any doubt. You should not be as weak as that wolf who called his son and told him, ‘Listen, my son, I do not want you to distance yourself from the ideas of your grandfathers and ancestors. You have to observe the beliefs and attitudes they had, you have to observe them and you should not accept any other new teaching. The sacred religion we have had is the only religion existing in the world.’ This is what the wolf said to his son. So, what is the religion of wolves? Wolves say that each sin needs propitiating and offering, nothing more. When a wolf sins, he strangles sheep and they forgive his sins. This is how wolves think.

Now you will be asked in society whether you are Bulgarians, whether you are Orthodox or heretics etc. Such a question seems to me a little far fetched, i.e. you as students of the Universal School of the White Brotherhood have to understand the question in a slightly different way. You won’t be asked whether you are Bulgarian even at a contemporary German university, you will be admitted freely. It does not matter whether you are Bulgarian or not when it comes to science. You may even be Orthodox, but Orthodox Christianity is of no importance to science either. You may be Orthodox; you may be Bulgarian and be one of the underachievers at the School. When you come to the School, neither your beliefs, nor your origin count. Above all you are required to study - this is sacred! A person who wants to study – this is a Divine impulse. And one’s desire to study, to implement God’s Will at a certain moment – this is what is sacred. This is the live human being manifested. What you think about are the traditions, while what you manifest – this is what is sacred.

You want to serve humankind, to be useful to humankind. How will you be useful? Have you been useful to yourselves through what you wanted to serve others? I am asking you, which one of you has been useful to oneself in the true sense? If any evening, after having eaten too much, you feel a weight in your stomach, have you been of use to your stomach? If one day you are disconcerted and if your head gets agitated, have you been fair to your mind? If you become despondent, have you been fair to your heart? If you promise and do not stand by your word, have you been fair to your Will? And a person who is not useful to one’s heart, to one’s mind and to one’s will, cannot serve God. This is the law. If you do not respect your mind, if you do not respect your heart, if you do not respect your will, which is used for your elevation, how can you serve God?

Now you watch only who has done what. We have to watch what God has done in the world or what people have done? The first sacred thing that I want from you is to settle your relations with God. What about the church? What about everything else? The first relation of the Universal White Brotherhood is the relation between God and you. I will prove to you why all the other relations you have in the world are unnatural relations. Take one of the noblest things: you have a child; you breast-feed the child, but the child cries constantly and wants to suck all the time. But the mother lives with the idea that this child will feed her and love her some day – it’s another matter whether this will be so. And I would ask how many happy mothers are there in the world, whose children have justified this love? So, what a mother does is not righteous, not noble, i.e. the relations between a mother and a child are unnatural. Why? This mother has conceived the child without knowing God. So according to the same law the child was born not knowing God. All misfortunes in the world spring from the fact that every job, that we start not knowing God, will be in the same relations with us. Therefore each thing in the world falls apart. Whatever we start very well will be destroyed in the end. Why? Because people do not have righteous relations with God.

The attitude of God is righteous because there is only one answer to the Love you will manifest to Him, because God is one of the most elevated, noblest Beings. So, our attitude to God, who knows us very well, will be righteous and we will receive in return what we have given. And if we establish this righteous bond between God and us, then the third relation will be with the people close to us. When we descend, we shall know how to work, we shall set forth from the world of human beings to God. But on the Earth we do not know how to address God; we do not observe the conditions. As a result of all of this you all experience a desire to work, but you want to find somebody like you. No, one has to connect to somebody who knows God in the same way. You know God according to the philosophic and theoretic traditions, but you still do not know Him by essence, by nature, by experience, the way He talked to Moses on the mountain or to Christ. Some of you do experiments, but if you are asked a question you can easily fall in doubt. For those who have once spoken to God, this moment remains unforgettable in their consciousness. Everything may fade; everything may disappear, but this moment of talking to God remains absolutely unforgettable. The whole world may turn upside down, but no power can efface this Divine image. And consequently as the Scripture reads that God made man in His image after His likeness, what is meant is that during the creation God impacted Himself in the consciousness of the first man, that he could not be forgotten. The first people who saw God are coming now. They are the White Brothers; this is the culture that follows an absolutely different path of development. While the present people on the Earth are made of mud into whom a little of live soul was breathed in. They are a mixture of mud and Divine breath, which has resulted in a mess. This mess shall have to assume the image and likeness to God from now on.

Now, you will have to eradicate your convictions. You will first have to invest humility in your soul. It is one of the qualities in each student who will be admitted at this School. Do you know what humility means? An absolute humility! Whatever position one may have – a tsar, a philosopher – everybody who enters the School, will forget about the top ranking one had. You will enter the School with no claims whatsoever. You will first learn your obligations, you will study everything, and you will not mention a word about your rights, you will have no demands. Others will take care of your rights. All the White Brothers will take care of your rights. You take care of your obligations, and they will take care of your rights. When you enter the School, you will study your obligations. If you do not observe this rule, you will stay out of the School. And do you know what you will resemble then – you will walk; you will go around the University of the White Brotherhood, you will see what there is outside, but you won’t know what there is inside. When you come back, you will talk about the external grandeur, you will know not what there is inside. Now, some of you will say that they have heard about these things. Fine, they have heard of them, but you have to understand these things now, and in order to understand them you have to get inside.

So, the first thing in order to learn is humility, but humility as it is supposed to be. When one feels that one is humble one starts growing. Take for example those sons in the world who wait for their fathers to leave their fortune to them and think only of those rights that they have and tell themselves, ‘What shall we inherit from our father? There are six of us, our father has twelve million leva, so each will inherit two million leva.’ Every son regardless where he goes, keep saying this, ‘I have the right to, I have two million leva, I need no education, I need no work, I am provided for!’ And the present day Christians preach like this, ‘You are saved, Christ died for you, you have two million.’ Well, fine if you are saved! You stay here, you sing and you tell yourselves, ‘When we die we shall go to Heaven.’ This is a faulty understanding. What will you do when you go to the Spiritual world, now that you are not students of the Great School?

So, a profound and grand desire has to start growing within you, a desire that you have never had so far. I sometimes see that you cry and I tell myself that great changes would be triggered if only you would shed these tears, which you have shed so far, for becoming students! And what do you cry about? You cry that somebody has insulted you, you cry that you have no money, you cry that you are no longer young, that you have grown old, that you do not have knowledge, that you do not have this or that, that you do not have any social position, that you have no strengths. Men and women alike keep crying. Crying is meant for the others. For you, however, it is supposed to be crying for going to school. To shed tears in order to become students is the greatest, the most desirable thing.

Now that I am talking to you, you will say, ‘We have been looking for Christ for so long, we have been listening to Him, we love Him, we sacrifice for Him, we preach for Him!’ You have a faulty understanding. Imagine that you want to study music with a contemporary professor; you meet him along the road, you talk to him, you praise him, you tell him that there is no other second to him, you give him a bunch of flowers every morning for ten-twenty years, but you do not go to study music. I am asking you what you will gain. You will gain nothing. You will remain profanes in music and the professor will say, ‘This is a very kind student, brings me bunches of flowers, but I am very sorry, this student does not study.’ Now, imagine the opposite – you are in the school, you bring no bunches of flowers, but you study. He is pleased, he is glad that he has a capable student and he says, ‘This is a good student!’ What benefit is there if you meet God, give Him a bunch of flowers and tell Him, ‘God, you are good, you are such and such, there is nobody like you. You are Love! You are very good!’ You then say a prayer and afterwards you say, ‘I met my professor today, I gave him a bouquet and he is happy!’ This is good, not that I say that you should not do it, but having brought a bouquet to your professor, you should take the instrument, say a couple of nice words and start studying. Bouquets complement learning, and you will be able to transfer only what you have learnt.

You want to influence certain people now and you say, ‘Let’s make this person one of us!’ How can you make this person become one of you? This is not a stone that can be taken by the one side and turned onto its other side. This is not a purse, which can be turned inside out and which can be emptied of its contents. A human being may take one direction in one’s development and the same human being may take another direction later on in one’s conversion. So I want us to have a correct understanding too.

Now you all have one prejudice and you think that you know. You present yourselves as humble, but there is no humility in you. I am talking to you very frankly – the way I see things, you are seemingly humble, but you are proud in your heart. We can make an experiment: let’s assume that you are a highly placed lady and you are invited to a banquet at the top. Let’s say that you are religious, a believer and on your way to the banquet you meet an old woman in simple clothes carrying a basket of flowers who tells you, ‘Sister, can you take this basket and deliver this bouquet to a certain place?’ If this is a test and you are asked to take the basket somewhere, will you take it? You will say, ‘I am at a loss at this question, I am invited to a banquet, this is where I am going!’ Well, you actually have two invitations – on the one hand you are invited to a banquet, you are dressed up, you have spent some time in front of the mirror, on the other hand, Christ is inviting you to another banquet and is telling you, ‘You will take the basket!’ If you give up, this will be the end of it! And then you will join those who go around the university, watch what it looks like, what windows there are, the way they are arranged, but they do not know what there is inside the university.

You are Christians, aren’t you? You have been studying with me for so many years. I have talked to you about Heaven and I want you now to describe to me what Paradise is like. Describe to me what there is in Paradise. Let one of you tell me that she has been to Paradise and let her describe to me the things that are there. Are there any volunteers willing to tell me what there is? You have been to Heaven, but the White Brothers know what you are like; they have a wide lake and after you come out of there, they dip you in this lake and they wash you. And then you say, ‘I was somewhere last night, but I forgot everything.’ None of this should seem strange to you. Sometimes you have a very clear dream and then you tell yourselves, ‘I will put it down!’ You get up in the morning, but the dream has disappeared and you tell yourselves, ‘I dreamt about something last night, but it’s gone!’ This is what happens with dreams – you have a dream, but you do not put it down and you forget it. When you dream about something, you will take a notebook and you will write everything in there, and I can tell you that those who do not write their dreams belong to those students who only go around the university.

Now, being students you need humility and a complete Peace in your souls first of all – tranquillity and Peace. The Scripture reads, ‘God’s Peace!’ This Peace has to be acquired now. Peace can only be acquired when you establish a direct bond between God and you. This direct bond will give you such an impulse, as no other power in the world is not in a position to give you. It will not deprive you of anything. With such a bond you might be at the lowest position, you might be in the worst conditions, but apart from the fact that it won’t hinder you, this thing, the Divine thing, will transform all those elements, will extract the juices out of them and you will find yourself in more favourable conditions of life and you will be stronger. This is the Divine stuff.

I see now that the same question is coming up in your minds ‘How can this be done?’ Christ says, ‘If you are not born again, you won’t enter the Kingdom of God.’ Nicodemus asked Him, ‘How is it possible for the old man, the manifested man, to be born again?’ Christ does not call ‘old man’ a person who is old in age, but a person who has knowledge, who has wisdom. I will interpret for you this conversation in another way. Nicodemus says, ‘Should one who has acquired knowledge, who has completed his studies, return, should such a person start again with the A, B, C. Christ says, ‘He has to return, to start with the A, B, C, to start from water and Spirit.’ Water – this is the New Life, the true Life, the Divine Life. Spirit – this is the intelligent, the Divine Life, which should dress the human soul again. This is one transitional phase in the journey from one life to another, which according to the Scripture means transition from the life that brings death to the life that brings eternal Life; it means a transition from the insane that brings insanity, through the sane that brings in sanity. Because where there is sanity, there is no sin. Only insane people can make mistakes. Sane people cannot make mistakes and each one of you, who makes mistakes at times, has been in a state of mental derangement. Each one of you, who commits the smallest sin, is all the same in a state of mental derangement. For instance, you get angry and you say, ‘Hang on I will take my revenge!’ Mental derangement is fast to come and you start thinking immediately how to avenge yourself.

In the chapter that I read Christ showed this Samaritan the true path, which is studying and serving God, because we have to be workers. Workers you have to be!

You want to be students and to apply the New Teaching. How can you define it? You may be asked, ‘Where is this White Brotherhood where you are students?’ Well, how will you defend your cause? We shall ask the contemporary scientists, ‘What do you believe in?’ ‘We believe in Christ.’ Where is this Christ? ‘Christ lived two thousand years ago, the apostles wrote about it.’ But have you been with Christ? You will be asked the same question. But you may have this experience. When you become students, when you acquire these qualities of humility and Peace, each one of you shall be introduced into the White Brotherhood by us and each one of you will see what it is like.

Now a desire is surfacing in you to enter the Kingdom of God before you clean yourselves. Everything is possible in the world, but it is impossible for an unclean person to enter the Kingdom of God. Clean, absolutely clean you have to be! Do you know what clean means? Now, someone may ask me why I am not interested at times in this world. When asking me this question people think that they are intelligent. No, they are stupid and I will prove to them that this thing is sane, logical and plausible from our point of view. You want me to be more interested in this world than in that one. If you think it has to be so, you are stupid. You, who recommend this philosophy to us, do you act in accordance with it? You place a diamond on the table, as big as an egg and another smaller one. Well, I am asking you where your eyes will be set. You glance at the smaller diamond, but having afterwards looked at the big one, you won’t take your eyes off it any more. Which diamond do you want? You will say, ‘The diamond that is as big as a duck’s egg!’ If you are as intelligent as to take the diamond, which is as big as a duck’s egg, are we so stupid as to take the smaller egg? We are not so stupid. We see both this world and the other world. The other world is this big diamond and we act righteously not taking interest in it. So, we compare two truths, out of which first comes the beauty of your life. You will be told, ‘But we have culture!’ The culture that you have was taken from above, from us, from the White Brotherhood. The whole science – geometry, mathematics, natural history, astronomy, music, poetry, the fine arts – everything, everything was taken from above. This is not yours. They say, ‘We discovered something!’ You haven’t discovered anything. The people here on the Earth who say that they have discovered something, have not discovered anything. Everything was taken from the Invisible world and was transferred through the forms. Hence, this culture of the visible world was taken from the Invisible world and therefore it is a culture not understood, therefore the principles that they apply are not understood.

Not only this, but sometimes you do not understand yourselves either and you ask yourselves, ‘What am I outside my body?’ Imagine that you take your clothes off some day and that you get out of your body and enter another world. How will you recognise each other? You feel your head, your hair and you say, ‘This is me, this is me Helen.’ Every evening an English philosopher asked himself whether it was he himself, to make sure whether it was not an illusion of some kind and after making sure that it was him he calmed down. Well, I am asking you – does one have a clear idea, outside of one’s thought, of who one is, or does one have a clear idea, outside one’s brain, of one’s thought. And if under the present situation you sometimes start thinking about yourselves as being something separate, you might get deranged and you will be scared. While now we can make an experiment or two at the School: we shall take you out of your body, we shall lift you up to the white lamp of the hall and you will be watching yourselves from there. Two things must be in your mind in order for you to contemplate. You will be watching yourselves outside your bodies and you will be wondering how this is happening. Only that the matter of that being, up there at the lamp, will be moving by virtue of the strength of the will, while the being down will need other conditions.

Similarly some of your ideas stumble due to this simple reason. For example, you want to do something, you want to talk to somebody about God, but a thought immediately enters and paralyzes you ‘May I talk; will he or she accept what I will say; what if he or she ridicules me?’ Thus you find yourself in contradiction with you yourself and you think that you do not know. Do you think that I, who am a virtuoso, will be afraid to play in front of people? You will first play for yourselves and shall not think about anybody else. When speaking the truth, I say it to myself first of all, and as long as I say it the way I understand it, you will also understand it. Imagine that I am playing some beautiful piece and you are listening to it; I am glad and you are glad too. I am playing to myself; you are listening to me, and you say, ‘Very nice, thank you!’ I say, ‘There is nothing to thank about, I am playing for myself, while you, who have received the music, should be thankful for this.’ Our relations should be relations with God. When we reach this great Truth to serve God, then my words to you will be in fact a conversation with God, with whom solely I have a relation, and you will only be listening to this conversation. You have to have a direct relation with God and when you are in such a relation, your soul will be filled with internal Peace and all of your suffering, all of your present anguish will be so pleasant, that when you return home you will pardon your suffering. It will be so pleasant for you and you will be so sincere with it that you will tell it, ‘Up to now I have been wanting to get rid of you and to leave only a few children here and I intended to give you to others to be their servants, shoe-makers, tailors and seamstresses, cooks, basket-makers, but now since I visited God, I became so rich that now I would invite back all of you my children according to the law of Love!’ And the grief that has so far been tormenting you, will start leaping, playing and will say, ‘Mummy has become rich!’ But do you know why grief grieves? Imagine that you have one child, who is delicate and needs good food, but you do not have suitable food for the child and you give the child hard food. Will this child be merry? Do you know what grief is? I define grief as elevated spirits who are connected with us. So when we grieve, they also grieve and weep with us. While when we return to God, we will rejoice then, grieve will transform and this angel of grief will not weep. This angel goes around you and keeps telling you constantly, ‘You have talked very, very much. What you did today is not good!’ Then you turn and tell grief, ‘Listen, I need no advice from my children, you will obey, you shall not mess with my affairs, it is me giving the orders!’ ‘You may give the orders but do not commit evil deeds!’ You take your stick and you say, ‘Out, everybody out!’ ‘You may beat us, but you are not right, there is nothing more to it!’

Some day you will see that these children of yours, whom you now call grief, are your teachers. I call the whole of humanity recalcitrant students, nothing else. Not that you have an evil will, but all of you believe that these sufferings, all of this should disappear, and you, like gods, like some royal sons and daughters have to ring the bell only and everything should turn out according to your will. Even the poorest children in tattered clothes say, ‘Well, If only I were a prince or a princess, watch me what I will do!’ So, they also have an idea of princes and princesses. You say that poor children are unpretentious. Dress a poor child in new clothes and you will see how the child will meet you. The child will say, ‘I am not disposed.’ And this phrase ‘I am not disposed’ is merely a theatrical performance…

I want to see how many of you will raise their hands if I tell them to and how many will say, ‘We decide!’ All of you will raise your hands, but I want you to raise your minds, to raise your hearts, to raise your wills.

You will make an experiment: in the evening when going to bed you will say, ‘I want to go to the White Brotherhood, I will go to God!’ Some may ask themselves in advance, ‘Am I clean!’ Are similar thoughts righteous? When a sick man has been suffering from a disease for decades and he goes, in tattered shabby clothes, to a good noble and clean doctor, does he tell him that he is sick, does he ask him whether he needs to go to him? No, he goes to this doctor and says, ‘I will go to him, he will receive me!’ You have to have the faith of the sick in doctors. Students should have faith in their Master too. When they go to Him, the Master will receive them the way they are.

If you take to heart the thought that he won’t receive you, this is the end of the story for you. Not a single doubt, not a trace of doubt about your nonsense, about your sins, about your weaknesses, about this or that! You will put aside everything at a given moment and will go full of faith to this Master in Life, whom you are looking for, and to these White Brothers of yours and they will receive you. This is a rule with no exceptions, not a single exception per hundred cases.

If you adopt this rule in your soul, you can do your first experiment. The first experiment you will do in silence: you want to know whether God is with you and whether He listens to your soul. You are walking along a street and you hear a young motherless girl weeping or a sick person groaning. You will pass without saying a word, you will only approach the person, you will touch him or her unnoticed and you will pass away. You will then see the result of you touching the person. The result of your touch is that a current will pass from you and the person will run after you, he or she will recognise you; your hand will immediately have an effect. You shall not tell him or her that you will cure him or her. You will do experiments with one, two, three persons – you will bring Peace and Joy everywhere and you will see that you do it within a great art that you have never had. Now some of you will say, ‘Now that I have this art, I will pass by a millionaire, I will touch him and he will give away his or her wealth.’ This will also happen, but for the time being do the experiment with the sick. You will later on do it with the rich as well: a poor widow will beg a millionaire, and his heart will be cold as stone; you will pass quietly by him, you will touch him with your finger and he will immediately take out his wallet and give money. The strength lies in our hands, do you understand! We give orders to the world, not somebody else! Me, who is a disciple of the White Brotherhood, whose Head is Christ, it’s me who gives orders! I have said this so many times. You say that this will happen or that will happen. Nothing will happen. We know that things happen the way they are determined from above.

Now I see that some of you have a weakness and say, ‘Let’s enter the church, so that we can be useful to our people!’ Which church? Does this church know Christ? I do not know a church that knows the Love for Christ. I still do not know a single church knowing Christ. All those who know Him must serve for free, without taking any money in return. It will be outrageous on my part if I go to a friend of mine to work for him and if I tell him in the evening, ‘Pay me now!’ No, I will work for free! It will be ridiculous when I love Christ to tell Him, ‘Pay me now!’ No, this has to be anticipation, a Joy for us! We consider this our duty and knowing this, He will also work for us. We for Him and He for us; God for us and we for Him; Masters for students and students for Masters! You have to be permeated by these principles. You say that this is similar to the old. No, these are two absolutely true positions. You may go to the other world, but if you do not work the way I tell you, you won’t achieve any substantial results. But if you work in this way and if you are a teacher for instance, this is what you will accomplish: the students that you have been teaching for four years won’t ever forget you and an absolute brotherly bond will be formed between you. While in the situation they are in now, they will meet their teacher with whom they have no relation whatsoever and they will say, ‘She was our teacher time ago, but now she has become poor.’ No, there are no such relations in the White Brotherhood. No power can belittle teachers there. Teachers can belittle themselves, but society can never belittle them. Society can belittle a teacher, students can belittle a teacher, but in the White Brotherhood this is impossible. There is no power greater than the power of the teacher there.

Now the statements that I make are positive and they should not bother you; they should be an impulse to your strivings. You have not as yet experienced great trials. For example, you haven’t had the trials of Christ. Have any of you experienced the trials of Apostle Paul? He was beaten five times by thirty-nine following which he says, ‘Brothers, we shall enter the Kingdom of God with great grief’ We have to be through these sufferings by chapter seven.’ He was in your situation, he thought like you, he deemed like you, but having been beaten five times by thirty-nine, he entered chapter eight and then he understood what a relation suffering has, he changed his tone and said, ‘There is one way out of life and your present suffering is not in a position to alter us in our Love for God.’ And then Paul started telling a story, ‘I do not know whether I was in my body or outside my body, but I was taken to a place, I shall not tell you where, but I saw and heard things that I cannot tell you about.’ Where has he been? – To the White Brotherhood. He calls it the third sky, the future culture and he says, ‘The image of the external world passes and you are renovated, but until this future culture arrives, until John comes, these sufferings will last.’ John describes the present in the Revelation, he writes about the new town of Jerusalem. This is not a fantasy, but a real thing, which does not change. And under these conditions, you as students will continue to study. Do not think that in the White Brotherhood you will complete your studies within five-ten-fifteen years; it takes one, two, three, five and more lives. This is good because there is what to learn and the more time you have to study, the better. If you enter the White Brotherhood with your convictions, the way you study now, the way you are in a hurry now, you will have a miserable life. And when you see this material that you have to study from now on, you will be glad to find that you have the conditions for all this and that you will be useful.

Whatever I tell you from now on I shall no longer dwell on what I have said so many times – to love each other, to have love for one another. But I will tell you that you have to have relations with God, that you have to love God, nothing more! I shall talk about nothing else – Love for God! Once we resolve this issue, all other issues will find their resolution so naturally, in a mystic way. All other social issues are resolved in a very natural way. If we can’t resolve this issue, we can resolve no other issue. All philosophers have been dealing with the resolution of this issue for eight thousand years. There is no other way out, apart from this one, ‘God loves me and I love Him!’ You may ask, ‘Well, does He love me?’ He loves you, there is nothing more to it! Whatever else may come to your mind, it is not true. The thing in you that may tell you that God does not love you, is satanic, it is from the devil. These are those spirits described in the Indian philosophy. Read about it some day and you will see how they are called. There is an Indian word for them, find it! This word designates the evil fallen spirits. Find the name the Indians call these fallen spirits. If you cannot find their name by the next time, I will tell you. I do not want to tell you their name now.

So, when you say that you love God, you will hear something persuading you, ‘No, you do not love Him!’ Down there, below the belly button something tells you, ‘‘No, you do not love Him!’ And an argument begins: I love Him – I do not love Him - I love Him – I do not love Him… You have to say then, ‘God loves, and since He is infinite, since He neither changes nor alters, I do not have the slightest doubt in His love. Even if the world turns upside down, even if it falls to ashes, God loves, that’s it!’ There is no doubt in the first formula. You may step back, you may doubt the second one, but when you come to the first formula – everybody is silent.

Now these are formulas, which will help you learn. Sometimes I have done experiments to find out whether you will lose heart. For example, I can tell you that nothing will come out of you. What does this mean? You tell me your intention to go to Varna. I reply to you that you cannot go to Varna and you lose heart. I wanted to say that you cannot go on foot to Varna within a day and you need seven days. You say, ‘I cannot go to Varna.’ You can. This is playing with words. Can – Cannot – this is abstract stuff. When you tell esoteric students that nothing will come out of them, you talk to them in a positive language and this is the best favour you do to them. They know that according to the law of negation everything can come out of them. ‘Nothing will come out of you’ means that everything can come out of you. While the expression ‘something may come out of you’ means that nothing can come out of you. For instance, a child is born and dies – such is the law on the Earth. I say, ‘This child will inevitably die.’ When? This is the question. Maybe after a month, after two months, after a year, after two years, after fifty, a hundred, two hundred years, but this is an event that will inevitably take place. Hence ‘may’ and ‘may not’, birth and death – these are opposite processes. Birth triggers death and death triggers birth. A student of the White School will never take offence. I say that your child will die, as the child is an underdeveloped soul that has smuggled into your home and it will be called from the other world. Another, much better child will be sent to you. What is there for you to be sorry about, then? Whether you are clothes to a rascal, to a criminal. Let it go with the clothes – what’s given is given. This is what language usage means, nothing more than this.

I now want you to understand things in a positive way, in order not to allow a depraved thought to be born in your mind. All depraved thoughts are born outside Love. As soon as we come to this great Love of knowing God, no depraved thoughts can have any place either in the human mind or in the human heart or in the human will. The Scripture reads about all suffering, about all of your sins, whatever they may be, ‘I will obliterate all of your sins.’ When you return this evening, read line six from chapter six of Isaiah. You have to acquire the positive aspect of this Teaching, which should be a positive faith in your mind! You will endeavour to be free! If we are in a relation with God, we shall determine our relations on the Earth properly too; we shall fulfil our relations with people also. We shall not deal with any other questions. All of you will know that you have to resolve an important issue, which is so pressing and you already have the best of chances. I shall not call it a renovation, but I call this first step a conscious bond between you and the living God who is now active in the world. Once you establish this bond, then all of your relations, whatever they may be, will be settled in the best and perfect way. You will experience this. If you do not establish this bond, you will retain the same relations that you have now. And if sufferings start surfacing within you, nobody will be to blame, because everyone is responsible for oneself.

Now, you live in Sofia and sometimes you ask yourselves what the church will say, what the priests will say. The Church – this is the White Brotherhood, nothing more! These are living Beings of the most elevated culture, this is what churches are; this is what the Kingdom of God is. This church we also know. And if someone says that we do not respect the church, this means that we do not want to beguile ourselves with what is not a church. We cannot be deceived by what is not a church.

Now you will think! These are thoughts, which will take you a long time if you are to reflect on them seriously. You have to be like the small children in order to perceive these thoughts every evening without assuming that God won’t forgive you for your sins. No, there is no Being kinder than God, there is no Being more considerate than Him. He is so considerate! He is busy with so many issues, but He can hear the faintest sigh of all creatures no matter to what hierarchy they belong; He immediately pays attention to it in order to correct the mistake. There is nothing that can evade His sight and hearing. But as soon as you enter the School, where development is conscious, relations change. Since you are free at the School, you have to demonstrate your will there. God won’t force you to study, but He will leave you free to choose. We can’t make anybody righteous against one’s will. We cannot preach, we cannot help; we cannot influence such a person. A preacher, who wants to convert somebody, must take his or her place. God says, ‘Alter your role now!’ We do not want to exchange our role with anybody.

Now, being students you have to adhere to these things. I want you to form a favourable atmosphere among you in the future. When gathering here, in the building, I want favourable influences among you to be formed, and when getting out, I want you to feel free. Silence and Joy should be manifested. I want you to be free. If you want your will to act freely, Love should come to you, which will bring breadth and freedom to you. The internal needs of all of you should also be satisfied. You have to be careful. When you stay in the evenings you won’t think of yourselves only, but you will think also of whom God thinks about, so that you think about them too. I shall ask you the following question: if you study in a class and if there are about thirty of you in class, is it possible, after having been together for several years, to be rude to each other?

Hence, being students of the Universal White Brotherhood you have to stand out above all with your integrity. Do you know what integrity is? It refers to the personal dignity of a human being. It is not a supplementary means, but something moral, when you think intelligently. It does not become you to be dishonest. Once you make a promise, you have to be true to your word. Once you say a word, you have to stand by it. Moreover, students of the White Brotherhood have to be good, which is already a moral feature. Students of the White Brotherhood have to be so resourceful that they can give answers as to what one believes in to anybody. We also have to be valiant, noble and to have an elevated, inexorable and firm will, just like the firm Will of God. This is my desire. This should distinguish you from the others and when you pass they should be saying, ‘the students of the White Brotherhood are honourable people; they are people who complete whatever they start doing.’ What other recommendation do you need? Well, every kingdom, every society, every single state rest on this recommendation. The entire social order rests on this; the church rests on this. Can a church survive if there is no integrity? Can a church survive if there is no intelligence? Can it survive if there is no good will? We should establish these qualities at our homes as features distinguishing us from the external world. They say that they are like us, too. If they say that they are like us too, we shall not be like them, that’s it! Subsequently, for the external world, these should be the distinctive features of students.

Now, I shall assign lesson one to the students before me, I shall assign an exam in integrity. Each of you who come in class, young or old, will earn an amount of three hundred leva by the end of the year and will transfer it into the safe. We shall collect a certain amount and afterwards we shall see what we can use this money on. The whole amount may be transferred, but money should be earned working, in an honest way. Let’s say that you have a husband; you will polish his shoes and you will ask him to give you five leva. Or you go to town and you may take the tram three or four times every day; you will give up travelling by tram, you will walk on foot and you will save the desired amount. Altogether whatever the work, it should be done honestly. You will write something, or you will learn something, but everything should be done in an honest way. This amount may be little for some, but it is a big amount for others. I want you to resolve the problem in an honest way, to make your money honestly. And afterwards we shall see what we will spend this amount on. We can solve this problem very easily in another way: some of you may take the money out of their father’s wallet. No way! If you cannot resolve the problem, I will tell how to do this. This is a nice exercise.

Now, I do not want you to talk to anybody outside about this assignment. You will accomplish it according to a schedule, and everyone can spare fifteen minutes of one’s free time, but you should not come into any collisions. If you work along the way I am telling you, I believe we have understood each other. As long as the conditions facilitate you, we have understood each other. If you encounter great difficulties along the way, you have not understood me. If the conditions make it easier for you, you have understood me. If you say, ‘I came across many difficulties’ you have not understood me. If you have understood me you will overcome easily whatever difficulty you come across. If you do not overcome it, there is something, which is not all right and it has to be removed. There are no two opinions on this. This is one of the easiest tasks. We start with material tasks – three hundred leva. I am telling you that this is one of the easiest tasks for students, one of the easiest, which can be found in the tasks course book. If you think this task difficult, there is no simpler task than it.

This should certainly be in the background, because it is not so substantial. I do not want you to start worrying how to find the three hundred leva. This is a minor issue.

A substantial issue is the bond that has to be established between God and you. I will assist you in this respect. I will tell you about the relations between the bonds you have had so far, and this new bond, which is being formed now, so that you can see the difference. It can be difficult for you to imagine what the substantial difference between things is. At the present stage that you have reached, this bond can be formed because you have experience. This bond is a new element that will solve your problem, it will give meaning to your life and will regulate your future state. So you won’t be like the five silly virgins, but you will be like those five virgins who will come in with the bridegroom.

I want you to be silent. Thus you will go home feeling free, inspired, and hopeful that you have to resolve a problem on which your entire future will rest. You won’t stumble. We know the professor, his life; we have enrolled in the school. I do not mean the external relations in the world, but the internal relations, which are Divine stuff.

Now, I shall have to ask, in the old habit, whether you understand me. I shall not ask you. I put forward a new situation called by people wondering. When one is sitting up there and is watching downwards, one is wondering. When one has not been up there, but has only been marvelling at it, one sees the difficulties and wonders. And you all of a sudden find yourself in front of the mountain that you have to climb. Therefore the can and cannot are ruled out. You will say, ‘I will be a hero!’ since this is a process of movement. The phrase ‘I will be a hero!’, that’s it! Some say, ‘I will be a hero if God has so decided!’ ‘I will be’ implies that God has decided and I do not go over His will. Because God has decided, we shall enter the School; Because God has decided, we shall study; it will be the way He has decided!

Now some will say, ‘Why aren’t we younger, why now when we are old?’ I want those of you who think that they are very old to tell me how old they are. We call a middle-aged person the one who is twenty million years of age. How old are we? We belong to the Solar system, and it takes the Sun twenty million years to complete one round. Then you are a young baby. How old are you in solar days? For instance, you are forty; calculate what part of the Solar system year your forty years represent. People cannot understand what person that will be who will be ten Solar system years old. A person from the Sun, who is ten years old there, will be two hundred million years of age by our standards. She will be a young girl there, will be hopping around and when asked how old she is, she will reply, ‘I’m ten’. The words young and old are only relations, various measures. Hence students cannot be old. Those who study are always young. You have to know that art of renovation in the White Brotherhood. One can renovate so easily using it as one renovates one’s house or one’s tree garden. What we consider difficult is very natural for the White Brothers – they constantly renovate, they are constantly young. You won’t meet such old people there. They can assume every form that human beings have. This is science; this is art, which we cannot perform.

Now, you have to resolve the substantial issue. This is the issue of the future; this is a profound science. What is important is the bond that you have to establish. You have been told about this bond many times, you have made up your mind and you have reached this stage when you can already do it. So, you are absolutely prepared and you can do it!

Lecture delivered by the Master

On 21 June 1923, Friday.

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