Lecture given by Beinsa Douno
September 01, 1924
07:30 p.m. local time
I gathered you tonight for an entertainment – that is what I call it. Life has its serious aspect only when it is sinful. People are serious, when their life is sinful, when they are in someone's debt, when contradictions exist among their beliefs, or when they live in conflict. As long as people are righteous, they enjoy life. Thus, we should turn the serious life into an entertainment. From this point of view, the entire material world is an entertainment for the superior spirits. Sometimes they will watch how people live on Earth, because what they do is just an amusement for the Invisible world; it is not that serious. From our point of view, from the point of view of our sinful life, which is full of misfortunes, we live a serious life; but from the point of view of those sentient beings, Life is an entertainment. Hence, you should not be serious all the time. You are supposed to be serious, when you correct your mistakes, but once you do that, turn your life into an entertainment! To me, serious life is like the time, which one spends at night sitting in the darkness all alone; there is no one to talk to, and one is thinking about what to do. Whereas the life of enjoyment is a gathering of souls coming together in spiritual communion and living in Divine Love, Wisdom, Truth, Justice and Supreme kindness. And everyone is happy that there is some entertainment. When this time comes, God forgives the sins of all people.
Now, I use the word entertainment in its most literal meaning. By entertainment I do not mean the performance of a clown or an actor, but the pleasant, musical presentation, in which a poet, a musician or an artist can present beautiful songs and pictures from Nature. We contemporary people are used to showing only the bad things in life. You have not yet learned to see what is beautiful in people. You cannot imagine what you could see in contemporary people, in all contemporary animal kingdoms, in all plants and stones, if you only knew how to perceive them! Nature has two faces. Her first face is so frightening that people should be blind for it. If you happened to see this face, you would be afraid. A Bulgarian priest told me that once, when he was young, he had had a dream in which he met a big dog which swallowed him, but then put him back out of its mouth. When he woke up in the morning, he was sick. He lay there sick for three months. And now, very often, with the mistakes we make in our lives, we prepare the way for such dogs to swallow us and then, after we come out of their mouths, we are sick for three months, saying that life has no meaning. This only seems so. The lack of meaning does not come from God. We ourselves make our lives unpleasant and pointless.
So, one of Nature's faces is very unpleasant and eerie, while the other is very beautiful. She has concealed it though, because She is still working on it. There are living workers in Nature who shape a vital face for the human soul. They are sculpting it now, so that it will be ready when humanity enters the new phase of its development, the new form, which no one knows.
These are the most beautiful bodies one could ever imagine. You will notice that the hair of animals provides a means of concealment of the artists who have worked on the human face in them. These elevated artists are well disguised as in the case of the contemporary human being, and they are still working on its new face. This is the way every artist works. They work on their painting and then cover it with a cloth. They will not unveil it until it is finished. At one time or another, when the cloth, which covers our face is removed for a while and this intelligent face is revealed, you say, "What a face of an angel!" It is revealed for a short while and then it is quickly hidden again. This is the reason why you see yourselves as so beautiful sometimes. Then you say, "I never knew that I was so beautiful!" This is not an illusion – this is a real picture towards which we are constantly being invited. We are invited to this great entertainment, which God is setting up. Since these great artists are incessantly working on us, we should at least assist them and not ruin their work of art. If there is nothing we can do to help them, we should at least not mess with their paints and brushes, or stain and work on their canvas, but rather feel happy that something great is being prepared for us. And one day, when you lift up the cloth and the painting is revealed you will see that something magnificent, something vital has been worked on, something that gives meaning to life.
Very often I will cheer you up with some symbols, I will point out certain mistakes of yours and you will say, "Mistakes, mistakes all the time, this is all we hear about!" Whose fault is this? When a teacher comes to school to teach Bulgarian and starts correcting the mistakes in your notebooks, is the teacher wrong? There are some rules and patterns in the Bulgarian language, which should be observed: you should follow these rules and put every letter in its place. A student sometimes will not keep these rules and will write one letter instead of another. What does the teacher do then? The teacher takes red ink and marks in the notebook. Then, the student is not happy that the teacher has covered the notebook with so much red ink, which is not good for their personal feelings. When this student is asked to show the notebook to others, the response is like this, "There is nothing to see", and the student closes the notebook quickly.
So, some of you have red-colored notebooks. Do not worry, for the professor is teaching you and you should be thankful. This is an entertainment! The teacher does not say this is bad, but tells the student to write according to the rules. There is a rule in Bulgarian concerning when small and capital letters should be used. If you study English, you should apply completely different rules; if you study Hebrew – you will write from right to left; and if you study Chinese, then you will write neither from left to right, nor from right to left, but vertically. Every language has its own way of writing. This is an entertainment, is it not? The Chinese enjoy the greatest entertainment, as they have over forty thousand hieroglyphs. If a Chinese person learns these forty thousand hieroglyphs in the Chinese alphabet, they are considered to be educated. Similarly, the great beings in Nature have created their own alphabet, which one should study. For instance, take the following example. If you go out in the morning to welcome the sunrise, at first you will see a dim light, which will gradually become brighter and brighter until the Sun is up. Once the Sun has risen, this beautiful sight disappears and the picture is changed. My question is what does Nature want to reveal to us from the break of dawn until the Sun is up? What does She want to say to us from sunrise till sunset? There are two symbols in these moments in Nature. With the first moment, from the break of dawn till the sunrise, Nature teaches us the two great laws of Wisdom and Truth. This lesson lasts for two hours and it is full of sudden changes. After the Sun is up, however, Nature teaches us something else. She teaches us the law of warmth, i.e. the law of Love. At that time not so many sudden changes take place in the sights, but most changes occur in the temperature. At first it is cool, but after some time it becomes warmer and warmer until it gets very hot. This is similar to life. In the mother's womb, i.e. in the womb of Nature, one studies the principles of Wisdom and Truth for two hours, and during the rest of the day one studies the principles of Love. Therefore, most of our lives are spent studying the warmth and the changes, which occur in Love.
So, when your life is at its sunrise, you will use the first symbol. When you go out every morning to meet the Sun, you should keep the picture, the idea of the rising Sun in your mind. And when I look at how the dawn breaks, I will fill myself with inspiration – my soul will be filled with the principles of Wisdom and Truth; but after the Sun is risen, I will say that the moment of Divine Love has come! Then all day long I will study the changes that occur in Love. This is the Beauty of Nature!
Sometimes your love grows stronger; sometimes it grows weaker. And you say that Love is weak or strong. No, you have not yet come to the real meaning of Love. We are only in the process of studying the art of loving. For the time being, only God loves. The Holy Scriptures say: "God is Love." So we have not yet been given the art of loving. Therefore, when we come to God we will know the meaning of Love! When God teaches us humans this art, all the angels observe with curiosity and awe what He is doing with these little beings. They wonder when they see Him going down from His throne to teach humans how to love. Only God Himself knows the art of Love, and only God can pass it on to us, but we should be ready to receive it. What does it mean to be ready? Well, is it a small thing for the great God of Love to turn His eyes towards you and for you to be able to perceive Him? If your heart can tremble at the look of a friend whom you love, should it not tremble at the look of the One Who has given you Life with all its blessings? As for the sufferings that you are going through, these are just changes on your horizon. When the Sun is up, no matter how clear the horizon is, changes always occur: it gets dusty, cloudy; then it starts raining, snowing, and thunderstorms come, but after that the Sun rises again. These changes constantly occur in Nature, but it is the same in life.
Consequently, from this point of view, Life is an entertainment, but for whom? – For righteous people. I am talking about them, not about the sinners. They have no place here. We sent them all on a pilgrimage. We gave each one of them a ticket and told them, "Hit the road! Tonight you cannot bother the disciples, because we are about to have a feast. You are too serious and we cannot get along with you." Then, why do you not thank God for this entertainment, for all the changes occurring in your life? So what is the problem, if your horizon gets a little bit overcast, if dust forms and thunderstorms come, if it is cloudy and rainy? Even the plants understand and appreciate these changes much more than you do! When it gets cloudy they open up, whisper to each other and rejoice. But you – the conscious children – run away from the clouds and hide. Why? – Because you have not yet learned the great, beautiful language of God. We contemporary people have distorted our minds so much that we do not recognize the beautiful. We see beauty only in those things, which actually have no beauty at all. For example, some people come to me and want me to love them. But in order to love them and for my love to be manifested towards them, I have to find the Beauty in them. I cannot love them for their knowledge. We do not love people because they know a lot. No, the principle or the foundation that connects people is neither their mind nor their heart; nor even their good will, but their soul. This is the loveliness, the Beauty in Nature and Life, for every person and every soul is necessary for you in your manifestation. What does the law state? Unless all souls come together in one place, no soul can be manifested. So, if Life is an entertainment, it should be an entertainment for all. If it is joy, it should be joy for all.
Now, from this point of view, when Heaven enjoys, so does Hell. There is music and fun in Hell too. Do not think that it is so terrible there. Hell offers dreadful things, but there are pleasant moments and fun in it as well. When? – Whenever there is an entertainment above, there is also an entertainment in Hell. When they work hard in Heaven, they work hard in Hell, too. But in Heaven they work in one way and in Hell in another. For example, one sister who was an artist once told me this story. One day she painted a picture; she looked at it and was pleased with her work. Then she started doing her housework and at that time her little daughter took the brush and paints and started drawing on the canvas the way she had seen her mother painting. She was simply having fun. I ask, did the daughter do anything wrong? No. She gave her mother a lesson, saying, "Mommy, after you paint a beautiful picture, you should put it up, so that I cannot reach it. Since you have not done that, I will also draw; I will also show my art." God did the same. He put the nice things so high, that when we look up at them, we say, "We wish we were up there now!" When we are not given certain things, it is not because the higher beings do not want to give them to us, but because there are other actors playing on the stage now, others who enjoy performing, and our turn has not come yet. Until it comes, we should sit in the audience and watch.
Sometimes you say, "Why do people suffer so much?" What is pain like? It is one of the most pleasant feelings. When people suffer, the best thoughts come to their minds. We can say that suffering has created the best ideas, the most pleasant impulses and aspirations in the human being. If they ask you whether you want suffering, you say, "Oh, God forbid! We do not want any suffering." And what is God supposed to give you then? Suffering is actually the greatest blessing for humans! Suffering always precedes entertainment. When you make a feast here on Earth, you create an entertainment for yourselves, but your chickens also have their fun. You take them out of the coop and tell them, "We see that your home is not very clean – sorry that you have lived in it for so long, but we will take you out of here, accept you as guests in our houses and show you how we have fun." The chickens start squawking, cackling and clucking. You cook them in a good meal, you sing to them and they are silent. I am asking, when the soul of a hen or a rooster emerges, what do they think about? They merge with the entertainment, i.e. they come into connection with the human souls. These chickens have not lost anything. It is a privilege for a chicken to be eaten by humans. I do not say that one eats it up, but rather that one accepts it as a guest, even though it goes through fire. In the same way you will also go through fire, if you want to enter the spiritual world. When they take you out of your coop, you will be screaming and shouting in the same way.
After he came to know this great principle of life, Paul said, "O, death, where is your sting?"(I Corinthians 15:55) For when Divine Love comes to give life, death, together with all trials and tribulations, will be caught up. One day, all the sufferings you have been through will adorn your garments like pearls and you will say, "We are very happy that we came this way and learned such valuable lessons." Indeed, the entertainment is necessary. There is one thing needed in the entertainment: for you to renounce yourself and your animal instincts. For example, if I sit down somewhere, I should not be thinking about whether or not you are looking at me. Instead, I should be completely silent and peaceful and think of something else. This is how it should be with every one of you: you should think calmly, without observing yourself and considering that all around you is in order. This is one of the attributes of the entertainment. As long as there is observation, do you know what this looks like? It is as if you are in a prison. The guard comes and checks everything. He checks whether the handcuffs are in place; he searches through your pocket, looking for this or that. Then someone else will come and check your clothes, your collar. I say that this is being in a prison, but in the entertainment you need to be natural. At every entertainment people are beautiful. They will put on the attire that will impress others. And then when we look at these people's faces we will see those other faces through which God reveals Himself. And then we have to be like children – absolutely natural and free, and we should forget about our sufferings, troubles and misfortunes. All of us will have a free ticket to the Sun and we will be happy. Some will say, "These children are not sober." I am asking, which condition is the condition of sobriety? (The Master makes stern, serious faces.) I am asking, what is the meaning of this sobriety? What is the idea behind it? (The Master makes a more cheerful face.) What is the idea of this expression now? Which of these two faces is better? If you want to frighten a villain, you will make the first face, but if you want to cheer up your friend, you will make the second one. I say all soldiers and policemen are always rigid; they lift up their guns and march. Why? – Because of the coming danger. However, there is a third kind of face. It is the face of someone whose every movement reveals the greatness and the pleasantness in life. One should be like a wellspring. Imagine a wellspring is thinking as I do. What is most pleasant for the wellspring? – Wherever it gushes out, it needs a place to flow into. This is what is the most pleasant for the wellspring. Therefore, if I am given certain conditions in life, my life should have a place to flow into, to flow through all plants and to leave them its blessings. Wherever I will be passing by, I will meet all flowers, grasses and plants, insects and mosquitoes; I will be jumping and they will receive my joy. Is this not an amusement? I will push one, I will joke with another, I will sprinkle a third one and I will laugh with the fourth one. Is there anything better than this? Does every wellspring not do the same? Now imagine this water flowing quietly and calmly without making noise, but soon you see that it is covered with green scum giving off an acrid smell; now is that nice? I am asking, which one is better – the wellspring with running water or the isolated pond with stagnant water? Now, in the first case our body can be like a flowing wellspring, and in the second case – like a pond with stagnant water and that is how we become sour and dissatisfied.
So, what is the concept of the entertainment? If you get up in the morning and say, "God has come and according to the law of entertainment I will learn that great principle of humility. At an entertainment everyone is lively and energetic according to their capacity and you should know what to do in each moment. Laziness is not admitted there. Just imagine that you are among the people at the entertainment. What would you have looked like? Now, if I tell you to laugh, you will ask me: why should we laugh? I am asking instead: well, why should we be serious? You answer, "Well, life is serious." No, Life is Love and seriousness just happens in life by chance. A conscious life full of Love and poetry is the Life of Beauty. This is what is positive. And when you meet someone whose soul is open, you can never forget him. This is the perfect person. This person is a crystal clear wellspring. What fault can you find in such a person? Is it not nice when one is such a wellspring and when others come to it, they feel calm and forget their sorrow?
Here is another rule for disciples: you are not allowed to wear ragged clothes at a party! You should wash yourselves, put on the most beautiful clothes you have and that is how you should go. While you are approaching this Great spring of Life, you should be wearing new clothes and rejoicing in the great blessing it is giving you. Even the Scriptures foreseeing the Great law of entertainment said, "Time will come when people will not fear each other but everyone shall sit at the feast, each one of them, under their own fig tree."
Thus, many of you need entertainment. Entertainment is the law of rejuvenation. Those who do not have fun cannot become younger. For example, you are watching some children playing and you say that these are childish things! No, the children are having fun. Even God has times when He plays with people and after that He continues with His work. Can we not also do this according to the same principle? – Yes, we can. You are looking at a friend of yours drawing something. You smile and say it is excellent, but then you take the brush and mess up the canvas. "Hold on, you cannot paint like that." And you are correcting him. If you want to correct your friend, you can, but you should not do this on the canvas. Instead, take a crow and tell your friend, "Ok, I will hold it for you and you will draw it." You will turn it to one side, then the other, and when your friend is ready with the picture, you will say to him, "As you saw, you drew and I drew, too. I was holding the crow, while you were painting it."
Now, the word crow might startle you a little bit. In Bulgarian it originates from Turkish. What does it mean in Bulgarian and what is its etymology? It originates from the Turkish word black. So, the crow's fault is that it is black. Why is it black? – Because the sister of this crow died once. It was mourning for its sister and that is why it put on the black clothing. After some time, when its sister will resurrect, the crow will also turn white and will put on some white clothes. Similarly, when one dresses in black, someone close to them must have passed away; and if they wear white clothes, that shows their sister has resurrected. Hence, the soul requires inner changes. Seriousness makes life harder. The forces prevailing in a serious life exhaust the humidity of life. In that way, human nerves, muscles and bones become hardened and lazy in functioning. Young people, who listen to the Divine Voice and have fun, develop an inner expansion and a proper way of communication. That is why, each one of you needs to enjoy an entertainment; but however, this entertainment is given only by Love. There is no entertainment without Love. When we enjoy the same entertainment we all feel free. At the party everyone should be pleased with their manners, and should not feel inner tension. Expansion is one of the everpresent attributes of entertainment. In an entertainment we are not aware of the form of things, as much as we are appreciative of the present moment. We do not criticize God for His descent; rather, we rejoice in the moment He has come. This is Love. The only Being Who can give us happiness and make our life meaningful is God. Indeed, no matter how busy you are with your daily work, a moment will come – it might be in the morning, in the afternoon or in the evening, when you will feel a great joy. But since your mind is occupied with so many big deals, the beautiful things that God gives to us remain unnoticed and we wake up only after all of them are gone. We are so concerned about what is going to happen with Europe, with Bulgaria, with our sons and daughters, that we let these beautiful moments, with which God blesses us, pass by. God has endowed the body we have with the greatest beauty. We can see all the blessings from the past and future in this little body of ours, and as for the distant future, God is going to provide us with a new body, into which this new blessing will be poured. This new body is now being shaped. Now, for everyone a new, beautiful body is being prepared, which they will enjoy later on.
So, it is time for us to abandon that dark philosophy of life. I will give you an example, if you want to benefit from the good side of the Gospel. It is about a man, who had been drinking for twenty years and who lived a pretty immoral life. He abandoned his children, brought his wife to death and lost everything he had, so he ended up all alone in a great depression and decided to kill himself. He had only one lev* left in his pocket and decided to buy a Bible with it. He bought it and read: God is Love. "Well," he said to himself, "I gave away and lost everything for Love. I finally found the One I loved and that is why I can do something good for Him." Then he went to the pub to have some fun. He said to the barman, "Give me a glass of wine!" He looked at the wine and quietly said to his inner friend, "Listen, I have been treating you for twenty years, but now I will teach you a new law." He put the glass aside and did not drink from it. Then he turned to the bartender, "Now give me a glass of the most crystal clear water." He put the glass in front of him. The one inside said, "Wine..." He took the glass of water and drank from it. Then the one inside said, "Wine..." again. "Well, now, my will be done. I found the God Whom I love. He taught me all this." He went to the bar the next day, and again on the third, on the fourth, and on the fifth day, until the tenth day, and every time he ordered a glass of wine and a glass of water, but he drank only the water. Finally he said, "I have willpower!" In the same way you can defeat a bad habit of yours as well. And why would you not, when it is so much fun? If you have this habit of drinking, sit in a pub; order a glass of wine and a glass of water. That is willpower! I say, a good person is the one who can manifest their goodness even in the least favorable conditions of life. It is most natural for people to reveal their goodness when the conditions are favorable. Therefore, even if the conditions are unfavorable, you should say, "Lord, I can do something for You!" And from this point of view, Love will expand and become Love for everyone, flickering everywhere. We should be equally well-disposed to others without showing favoritism to anyone. And when we look at people, we should wish them all the best that God wishes them. We should forget all their faults just as God forgets, because when Love comes It never sees the mistakes. Human weaknesses and sins disappear like dust and smoke before God's Love and that Divine fire leaves only purity, elevation and nobility in the human beings.
Now, a spirit may come to you and suggest to you the thought that nothing will come out of you. "How is this?" you say, "I am already someone." Replace the "no"with "some"in the word nothing and say, "Something will come out of me." Set aside the opposite, because in every negative thought there is a positive side. The one who suggests that nothing will come of you keeps the positive thought that you can turn out to be a bad person. If you can turn out to be a bad person this also means that you can turn out to be a good one. Use your activity to become a good person. Someone who can be serious can also be cheerful and able to laugh. Life on Earth, however, from beginning to end, is just an entertainment. This is what you will be studying in the future. You should look not only at the external but also at the internal side of life. It will be funny, for instance, if I put a scary mask on my face, and you will be scared, but I will laugh behind it. Do not look at the mask, but rather at what is behind it. Or, I can put on a very funny mask and underneath I can be completely serious. It is not the mask that gives meaning to things but what is behind the mask. It is the human soul hiding behind the mask.
Hence, I would like to leave you the following thought tonight: the greatest thing in the world is that God always comes down to teach the rule of Love, i.e. not the rule of Love itself but the rule of its transformations. Just as we measure the temperature with a thermometer, in the same way we measure the temperature of Love. To study the temperature of Love is a great thing! All plants grow under the temperature of Love. I am asking you this: is there a plant in the world that can grow without light and heat? No, there is not. Is there a source of a stream in the world, which will spring and flow into the rivers without light and heat? – No, there is not. Have there been any thunderstorms in the world without light and heat? – No, there have not been. For all these things to occur, light and heat are needed. All beautiful crystals and gemstones, all diamonds were created under the forces of light and heat. All animals came into existence under the forces of light and heat. It is the same with us humans as well. Therefore, our souls have been formed by the same principle under the inspiration of Divine Love, Divine Wisdom and Divine Truth. These are three great Spirits Who work for the creation of humanity. They call the human being a beloved child of God. There is a unique beauty and perfection in these Spirits! You will ask, "What about the angels, how do they look?" When humans acquire this beautiful, exquisite form, the souls of humans and angels will merge and make one whole. When their souls merge, God will come to live in them and they will rejoice in immortality. This is for what we are preparing. The New Teaching carries a great task, not like this petty work, with which you are dealing at the present moment. A great task lies before us, that of immortality: we will inherit Heaven and meet these developed souls for whom we are preparing, but in order to achieve this, everyone should give something and receive something. Sometimes you say that one should work for oneself. Yes, but when one works for one's own sake, while focusing on the self, one should also expand and include that universal self within, and since we live in God, everyone should live in us. When we embrace God, we should also embrace all other beings in us. This is what it means to love people and to wish them well. This is what it means to wish everyone well, to love God. Should you fulfill all this, all hardships and misfortunes which we are talking about, as for example, someone's shoes are torn, another's hat is torn, someone else has eaten nothing but bread, all these things will be solved within a week by Heaven. When Divine Love rises up and its warmth comes, we are ready to share our tiny bit of food with the one we love. When we have no love, we hide the morsel in our pocket. When Love comes, we smile and say, "Come on, brother, let both of us enjoy." God Himself is teaching us the art of Love and only in this sense, children can apply it. In this respect, I want you to be like children, because only they can have fun. Do not think that you are old. Get rid of these beards. When the devil envied people, he put beards on them to disguise them, but even through the beards, people can be seen. I want you to be like children in your souls, young, vivacious and joyful. Forget about your sorrows! When you go to bed, say to yourself, "Tomorrow at sunrise, God will come and I will meet Him." And when you go to bed, be happy again, not only externally, but also feel warmth being radiated from you, and then everyone will say about you, "I would like this person to come again." All of you should be like a spring that flows, like a flower that emits a pleasant fragrance. This is what our life should be like. This is the entertainment to which Christ referred, "I will see you again, you will rejoice and no one will take away your joy." This is entertainment! This is Beauty! This is Greatness!
I am talking about very simple things this evening. Do not add any philosophy to them. "But in what way should we understand them?" One should feel happy, joyful and ready to give everything. You should feel complete and satisfied; I do not wish to see you frowning and serious.
Those who disturbed you before are gone now; we sent them on a trip and when they come back, I will let you know. They will not be here tonight, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, they will be gone for a whole week, so do not worry; this week you can have as much fun as you want. After that, they will return, because it is impossible without them. You should smile at them and welcome them. They cannot do without you either.
A change is taking place in your mind now and the forces of Nature are working in your favor. That is why in our gatherings there should be sudden shifts – from one state to another. We will go through all states: we will have philosophical, serious and joyful meetings. This gathering that we are having now is the first of its kind. At this entertainment we learned the following: God descends every morning to teach us the art of Love. He gently touches everyone and says, "I want you to listen." And then He goes away. He knows that we will be rolling all over the Earth, we will be falling down and standing up until we finally become as smooth as a pearl and say, "We are very beautiful now." You have seen a pebble rolling over and over again until it becomes perfectly smooth, have you not? All unpleasant things will disappear and only the lovely, beautiful things in life will remain.
The day before yesterday I told you that the most important thing for human beings is to love, not to be loved. This is the same for the disciple. Love can come through the opening of the soul.
Now, when you open the Gospel, there are many rules in it, but the human soul should be free, our virtues should be those which will help Love be revealed. As they live in the Invisible world, so we live as well.
Translated by Martina Iovcheva
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