Two main elements determine the direction of human’s life: thoughts and desires. Therefore, in order to understand the direction in which one’s life is moving; we should know our thoughts and desires. If we do not know our thoughts and desires, we will never understand the direction that our life is taking.
Imagine that you have two points outside of a circle, points 1 and 2. In order to be connected these two points would need to pass through a third point situated in the circle – for example through point A; its centre. For an idea to be fulfilled, to make it a fact in one’s life, there should necessarily be a desire behind this idea. If there is no desire behind the idea, the idea is like an empty bottle. And why would one need an empty bottle? No matter how beautiful the form of the bottle is, if it is empty, a person does not care about it. To us, what is inside the bottle is more important than its form. The same goes for a house. A house is important as long as there is life in it. No matter how beautiful the building is, if it is empty, it is of no particular worth. What type of house would that be, how would the people live in it – depends on how intelligent they are. If the owner of the house decides to build it with small windows facing the north, after some time he, his wife, and his children would feel physical discomfort and serious diseases might appear. What is the reason for this? It is the small amount of light that enters the house. There should be big and wide windows facing the east and the south.
Now, when you look at the drawing1, you might ask yourself, why the numbers 3, 6, and 9 are missing. Those numbers are results. The numbers 1 and 2 are creative; there is a relation between them. The number 3 is a result, achieved by combining 1 and 2. The number 6 is achieved by adding 2 and 4; 9 - by adding 4 and 5. The numbers 2 and 4, 4 and 5 are creative ones too.
Writing down the ratio - 1:2 - shows that you have a ratio of a thought to a given desire. This ratio could be written in reverse order – 2:1. In the first case the thought is stronger than the desire, therefore the action, which is the number 3, the result of 1+2, depends on the characteristics of the thought. In the second case we have the ratio 2:1, the ratio of a strong desire to a thought. In this case the desire has supremacy over the thought and the result 3 has the characteristics of the desire. With the help of ratios between the real numbers it can be explained why in a family there are sometimes more girls and other times more boys among the children. When the mother is the stronger one, more girls are born, and if the father is the stronger of the two - there are more boys among the children.
Contemporary people strive to change the direction of their life; they want to bring in certain improvements. People are not able to change the direction of their life, if they do not understand the laws of their own thoughts and desires. A person cannot transform a thought into a lofty desire or a desire into a glorious thought, if there is no centre or holy idea after which this person aspires. Faith in God is a centre, which transforms human’s thoughts and desires. So, people should believe in God in order to change the direction of their life, to put it on the right path, corresponding to ambition to bring in a better life. If one does not aim to be the centre this person would never be able to live a good life. If one does not have good thoughts and desires, this person cannot be happy. Good thoughts and desires do not exist somewhere out of the human like something abstract, something unattainable. They are inside the human and they bring joy, first for the individual, and then for the people surrounding that person.
The first aim of humans is to coordinate the direction of their own thoughts, desires, and acts. By determining their direction the people would be able to determine the direction of their own life. Only by achieving those things, a person can work on the question of human’s soul. Before going into the abstract questions, people should take care of their own relatives. What is a human being? It is that one who understands the direction of the one’s own thoughts, desires and acts. A human being is someone who understands the direction of one’s own life.
They say that a human being is a One. Why is a person like a One? A person is a creature full of feelings. That a person is full of feelings does not imply that this person is full of Love. Feelings do not stand for Love. Love is a powerful force, which combines all together in one. Love is outside human’s thoughts, desires, and acts. It moves in a direction different from human life. It would be possible for the people to understand Love only if they have understood the direction of their personal thoughts, desires, and acts, and understood the direction of their own life. Being separate, people are the result of the direction of their own life, thoughts and desires, which are like the ratio 1:2. When someone feels discomfort of the soul, it means that this person is only left with the ratio 1:2 or 2:1, but without a centre through which one could pass in order to transform the thoughts and desires.
What does the centre look like? In a wide concept, the centre is the point in which, a person finds the realization of the thoughts and desires they have. For example the person A has a thought and a desire – 1 and 2, for instance to buy new cloths. The person has the desire and thinks about its realization, but the one’s pocket is empty. The person is looking for the centre. In this case the banker is the centre, who will give the one the chance to realize the one’s own dream. Therefore, if there is a centre at which a person aims, this person can find anything there. So, as number 1 you felt the desire to buy new cloths. Then you go through the centre which helps you realize your wish, and then you continue to the point number 2, where the fulfilled idea takes place. The same can be said about the points 4 and 5. At point 4 the idea, the desire takes place, which should go through a centre and to take the way to point 5 where the desire is already a fact. The same goes for points 7 and 8. By moving from 1 to 8, the person’s path forms a circle, in which this person’s thoughts and desires alternate from each other.
If people’s thoughts and desires are not fulfilled, they become fruitless. By living, people should seek the realization of their own thoughts and desires. If a person does not aim at their realisation, if one does not have any accomplishments, then one’s thoughts and desires seem like fallen but unpollinated flowers. In order to have accomplishments, the person’s thought, ideas, and desires should be worthy, so that they give the person the impulse to work out their realization. Who can be the centre of a human’s desires and thoughts? – Jesus Christ. If the thoughts and the desires of a person do not travel the path through Christ as an internal centre of the human life, they would never end up being realized. You should strive to Christ as a centre, to which you guide your thoughts, so that they transform into glorious desires. In the next moment you will direct your desires to the same centre – Christ and that way you would be able to transform your life. So no matter what a person does, one should go through the centre of Christ’s Life. This is the only way by which the person’s thoughts, desires, and acts would take the right path. Moving around point A, a person creates a circle, which expands constantly. Going through the centre of Christ’s Life a person starts feeling Jesus’ own thoughts and desires, starts looking into peoples’ sufferings and difficulties. Though a person does not have the power, there is a desire in one to save the World. These are the thoughts and desires of Christ. This task is easy for Christ, but for the human it is impossible.
As spiritual students you should find out which of the thoughts and desires that you have are yours and which are not. Your thoughts and desires are those, which you can use at any given moment. Do you think that basket full of bread that you are carrying on your back is yours? Only one kilogram of this bread is yours, the rest does not belong to you. On your way you will meet a lot of poor, hungry people, who will take the bread from you and will leave you with an empty basket. What is not yours cannot secure you. What makes you happy today, and is gone tomorrow, can you call that joy? Joy that comes and goes is not yours. Therefore Christ’s life can be the centre for only those, in whom this Life is revealed. If Christ has not been revealed to a person, the Life of Christ cannot be the centre of this person’s life as well.
The people today have an attitude to Christ, since He has once appeared on Earth. If He had not appeared among the people at all, they would not have an attitude to Him. Can you pray to a being who you do not know, and a being who does not know you? The child calls out to its mother and she turns her back to her child, because the two know each other. A lot of people turn to Christ, pray to Him, ask Him for things, but without first knowing Him. Their prayers stay unanswered. Why is that? - Neither they know Him, nor does He know them. Others do not pray, however they work hard on their land, plough, and sow, and the land produces abundant food. They work and they labour. Their work is their prayer. They know God through the corn, God made, and by working on it, they connect with Him. So they know Christ, and He knows them. If two friends want to keep their relationship intact, regardless of the direction of their thoughts, they should in any case meet in the centre A - in the reality of Life.
When people talk about Christ, a lot of them think of Him as a great philosopher, like the ones who lived in the past. There is an enormous difference between Christ and the philosophers. Christ has given Himself the task to save humanity, whereas the philosophers just wanted to help people live easier. When saving the people Christ takes them away from their world and shows them an entirely different one - His world. When the philosophers want to help the hungry people, they bring them bread, but they leave those people living in their old houses. The bread the philosophers have left would suffice the people only for one day, on the next day they would find themselves in the same old condition – they would be hungry and unhappy. Christ brings the people to the reality of Life, to the essence of life, to the place where the water springs. Christ brings people to the source where the people could drink by themselves, whenever they want, and the amount they want. He secures people for their whole life. If one chooses to live only with the help that people offer him, he would receive a glass of water, but tomorrow the person would be thirsty again. Use the philosophy of Christ to meet the great achievements. You can have achievements without this philosophy too, but those would be the achievements of the sick, the unenlightened, and the weak. In those accomplishments one has always fulfilled others ideas and desires, which never lead to a good end. Someone decides to build houses. The person builds two - three houses and gives them for rental and then goes once a month to collect the money. One made those houses under someone else’s influence, not according to one’s own desire, and then regrets it realizing how much trouble those houses bring the owner. The critics are the same; they go from person to person and criticize, they collect rent. One house is enough for a person. This house is the body in which the person lives. If the one can become the master of this body, then the person has accomplished the idea of Life.
So, if the people want to master themselves, they should accept the new ideas and apply them. By accepting the new ideas people should refuse the old ones. The new ideas and the old ideas cannot live together. If they meet somewhere there is always a collision. As long as you inhabit the old houses you would never enter the new one. Leave the old, unhygienic houses and enter the new ones, which are bright, spacious and hygienic. In order to be able to do this one should apply. Without practice there is no accomplishment. A person is not satisfied, because there is no practice. Unhappiness also shows that you missed the centre. “I cannot pray.” – You do not have a centre. – “I cannot think.” – You do not have a centre. – “I don’t feel good” – You do not have a centre. – “What should I do?” – Draw a circle, and then draw the three lines. Start thinking about them, and about the centre until the idea becomes real. – “Why don’t I receive an answer to my prayer?” – Because you are not ready to sacrifice yourself for Christ. When the person sacrifices everything for Christ the prayer will be accepted. When a person renounces oneself and sacrifices everything for God, then everything that has been lost comes back. That is what happened to the righteous Iov. He suffered, lost all his wealth, sons and daughters, but when he renounced himself and lived his life for Christ, he received everything back, but this time prettier and more plentiful.
An American preacher, a good and devout person, preached Christ’s teaching for 20 years among the heathens on Ceylon Island. One day, giving himself an account of the work he had done, he fell into a great contradiction. He thought: “I worked for a period of twenty years, but I didn’t achieve anything, I couldn’t turn any of the heathens to Christ.” He searched for the reason of the lack of success both in himself and outside of himself. Unsatisfied with his work, one day he burnt his diploma, and gathered all the heathens. He told them: “I preached to you for a long time, but there is something that I didn’t do, I didn’t apply Christ’s teaching appropriately. Well, He said that if someone has two skirts, he must give one of them to the person next to him, who has nothing. So now I invite you to take whatever you wish from my house. I leave everything to you.” The heathens went into his house immediately and everyone took the things they needed – a chair, a table, and cloths. When the preacher came back he found his house empty. However, he felt great relief that he fulfilled something from the teaching he preached. In that moment two of the pagans turned to Christ and became true followers of Christ’s. The rest of the pagans started thinking about what they had done, and one by one they started returning everything that they had taken from the preacher’s house. They realized that what they had done was not right. They came to love their preacher and began attending his sermons regularly doing everything that the man preached about. What does this show? – That a person must test himself.
Some might say: “Ok, if everything one loses will come back. But what if it doesn’t come back?” – Whether it comes back or not, the acquisition comes from the fact that two of the pagans turned to God. Their souls are worth a lot more than any material goods. Therefore when a person comes to a contradiction, he should first pass the centre and then look for the reason of the contradiction. When a person takes the road of the advanced creatures, the aware creatures, only then would this person receive the true knowledge of the world. In other words, things become clear, when God’s commencement is awake in the person. This means: what is impossible for a human is possible for God. The impossible things on the periphery become possible in the centre.
Now, when you are here on Earth, you must adjust your thoughts, desires and actions. All that could be accomplish in one moment, but only when the person lives in the centre. And once achieving that, if the person does not settle down and put all this wealth, knowledge, thoughts, feelings, and capabilities in some great work, then it is in vain that this person lives in good conditions. If someone’s cattle-shed is full of horses which one feeds, but does not put to work, then they are worthless. When someone feeds horses, then one should use them. If a person cannot use them, then it would be better to leave those horses free in the forest. It is worthless, if a person has horses and talks about their breed, shows them to other people, but does not use them. To give a meaning to life, a person must have a centre. Without a centre he would fall down, and then get up, without understanding anything. All the talented, genial people, all the saintly people have a centre in their life, and as a consequence they create science, music, poetry, art and help humankind. Their life is meaningful from outside and inside.
Today all the people are situated in front of this centre and they are afraid to pass it. Why? – The centre is hot. If people pass through it, they would melt. What is bad about melting? If you are ice, you would melt down and become water. When you were ice you were inert, you had thought only about yourself, and as water you would water everything that comes into your way – flowers, trees, animals and people. Everyone greets you and wishes you a good journey to the sea. Which is better for a person – to stay at one place or to move constantly? The rational life is the movement to the great centre. If the movement of the conscience stops, a person turns into ice and says that there is no meaning in life. If life becomes meaningless to a person, then the salvation is in the centre. There the person would be able to test if one’s thoughts and desires were stable, what is their direction and so on.
A lot of people talk about their past. The past is already outlived. The present must be fulfilled. If it were not fulfilled, it would become meaningless exactly like the lake which dries up or vaporises when there is no new water to refill it. If there is no flow of new water into the lake, the lake would by all means vaporize. Therefore, as long as a person lives with the old understandings and talks about Christ’s sufferings, about His life, without applying His Teaching, soon the person would vaporize, would become like an old lake. In order not to come to this condition, a person should everyday realize one beautiful idea and one elevated wish. This is worth more than the whole philosophy around the world.
As pupils you should work on yourself, trying not to be narrow-minded. As a good method to work, you should aim at the centre of Christ’s life, to relate to Him. Once related with Him, you would regulate your thoughts and wishes, you would achieve self-control. All this would bring the meaning into your life. Every night you should think about the great idea of your life, and every day you should work for the fulfilment of this idea.
23 October, 1929. Sofia
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