„God’s Spirit”
A Secret Prayer
I will read chapter three of the Epistle to the Corinthians where Apostle Paul addresses the young Christians having entered the Path recently.
All of you need a new understanding and I call your existing understanding the understanding of caterpillars. According to it you are specialists: wherever one may put you, you peck at the leaves all the same; on whichever tree you may be placed, you do your work according to all the rules. It is true that in order for one to live, one has to peck, but this is the old life, the life of the flesh. When you take a look around, having lived such a life, you find out that the leaves are gone. But I ask what happens to caterpillars after eating. There are people more intelligent who give caterpillars something to eat and after the caterpillars transform into chrysalises, people take them, steam them, take out the fibres and make fine silk clothes for themselves. Caterpillars and trees suffer for these people, but they say, ‘Let caterpillars suffer, we have made silk clothes!’ You will say, ‘Silk outside, but nettles inside.’ The external aspect is nice but it needs an internal life. The external has meaning when there is an internal content. If a philosopher lives in a small house, this house acquires meaning. A house may be a shack, but if a saint lives inside it, the shack becomes a saint’s shack. Well, the house may be a church, but if vagabonds live inside it, the church also becomes a vagabond’s church.
So now you have similarly opened a dining place and want to profit, so that you will be greeted like rich people when you go to Heaven. Do not say, ‘We pray to God!’ I do not mean to reproach you, but there is a prayer, which is not for praise, there is one prayer, which has no effect. Somebody says, ‘I have prayed to God for twenty years, “God, my wife is sick, I need money!” If your son goes abroad and keeps asking his mother for money, he resembles the saint who prayed to God three times a day for twenty years. The saint says, ‘I live for God, I believe in God’ and he only prays. While somebody else, who has not prayed but has ploughed the field, brings in whatever he has profited and places it in the Divine granary. Both receive diplomas. The saint says, ‘I have prayed three times a day for twenty years’, while the son writes to his father, ‘Father I need money.’ And the father keeps sending a loving letter each time: he places a thousand leva, two thousand, three, four, five thousand leva, he sends shoes. The son asks for something every morning and the father keeps sending something each time. I ask which son, who loves one’s father, wants so much.
Now you say that you pray a lot. I praise you for praying, but every time you ask God to send you something. And some say, ‘I am already fed up with praying!’ And indeed you should not pray like this. Now you have to learn what to do when you do not pray. Because the one who prays in this way, will also live, but cannot be happy. Imagine that you go to a banker and he lends money to you; you go today, you go tomorrow and he lends money to you all the time – one thousand, two, three thousand leva. If you go to the banker everyday for twenty years and if he keeps lending you a thousand leva each time, which you deposit in the bank during the whole time, how much will you have in twenty years? You have been begging so far, ‘God is good!’ When you prayed you wanted something, but you already have to transfer something. Now you yourself will go to sow in the field, and after harvesting you shall give everything to the world and shall keep only the seeds for yourselves. All your profit you shall give!
You need a new understanding. Everybody says, ‘Now God gave to us, and in our old age after having taken care of our children we shall work for God from the bottom of our heart.’ This is an excellent programme, but I haven’t met a single old person who has completed his programme. When one becomes old, one says, ‘My legs are feeble, God, I promised, but I can’t fulfil my promise, can’t I postpone it for some other life?’ He also prayed when he was young and he prays as well in old age, he borrows constantly and as soon as he goes to the other world, he is told, ‘This is one of the borrowers.’ But he won’t be told anything in the other world, he will be returned.
Transform the rule now and apply it on yourselves when getting up in the morning in order to understand it. If you have a son or a daughter who prays three times a day every year and you have to pay three thousand leva daily per each of their prayers, you will have to give three hundred and sixty-five thousand leva for the whole year1. If it keeps going on like this, you will have to pay – for twenty years, three hundred and sixty-five thousand leva – millions and even more till the end of your life. Taking this into consideration, will you be pleased with your son or daughter that they pray three times every day? But you do not think so and you say, ‘God is rich, He can receive prayers.’ He can receive prayers, but not in the way you want. And this is why God gave suffering. Suffering in the world results from wrong prayers. When we pray we always want God to give us something. God gives us, but afterwards prayers have another effect, because when we go to Him, we stay longer than we are supposed to and we take up part of somebody else’s time waiting outside. In such a case when you get out with what you received from God, the person whose turn you took robs you and says, ‘Go to God again to get what you need!’ This results from a wrong understanding of God’s Love. There is one law in Love: if you pray to God on the first day and you take three thousand leva, you have to pay back three thousand leva on the second day. You will take again on the third day, but you will have to pay back money on the fourth day. This is what is right, but Love does not allow taking ten times and paying back once. You will borrow once and you will repay, you will then borrow again and you will repay again.
And Christ says, ‘Collect treasures in Heaven.’ If you do not pay back what will you do when you go to Heaven? Nobody will lend to you there and this is what will happen to you: since you can be a guest for only one day there, on the following day you will take your passport and you will descend again. You are not even allowed to stay like guests there. Moreover, in Heaven you can’t say that you are hungry; there is no such thing there. If you go to Heaven, you must be rich - you must have collected treasures. The entire Heaven must lend to you, you have to have deposited something. Only then will you be glad, because you have one co-worker both above and below. The Scripture reads, ‘Let’s be co-workers of God.’ Not only to spend but to take and to pay too.
Now I ask what your profit should be in the world. You have to gain souls! He, who has gained one soul, has gained something good. What is it like to gain a soul? Let’s say that a soul is captured by an evil spirit, its wealth is robbed and if you succeed in returning this soul to God, you already have wealth. When you meet this evil spirit – the devil, no matter how strong he may be, stop and try to free the soul. Now you are required first of all to free yourselves. Learn to free yourselves! Make your best to put to bed the devil, which in many respects is still awake within you. He is not put to bed due to one single reason - that you doubt. When you envy this also indicates that the devil is not put to bed. Not that the devil is bad, but he sniffs and when he sniffs that you go to God, he conveys envy to you. Then when he sees that your faith is getting stronger, he becomes scared and conveys his fear to you. No matter whether you fear or you lose faith, he nonetheless conveys these to you as legacy. When he leaves you, then other devils come looking for this one where he lodged and you pay all the expenses of the devil. But where can one find him, everything has been eaten up, everything has been drunk up, and you are the only one that is left.
This is an allegory from which you can understand the internal meaning: one may free oneself and become strong not in a mechanical way. You want to be happy, to be helped from the outside, you want to make mistakes while you want God to work for you. If the others work, only they will get stronger and become righteous, while nothing will come out of those of you who do not work. He who ploughs becomes rich, and he who becomes good, lives, because Life is a great work. Somebody sits idle and asks what to do, while somebody else says, ‘Pray!’ What do you have to pray for? You will first pray in the morning and you will ask, ‘Shall I work here?’ Ask one station, ask another, ask a third one, when you find work go and get it. Or go to a department and ask, ‘Is there any work here?’ For example, you go to a banker and want him to give you something, but God made the work so that if you can make the banker turn to God, he will pay whatever it is you want. Well, if you can’t make him turn to God, he says, ‘I give only to the one who can free me from the hands of the devil. To the one who can’t, I do not give a halfpenny!’ The man says, ‘My wife, my children do not love me. If you can help me, if you can show me a way out, I am ready to give you half of my wealth.’ You reply, ‘God is good!’ I know that God is good, but I am a trader and I need something in black and white.
So, the people walking along the present path will come to a place and they will say, ‘It was different when we were young, but now our faith weakened.’ The young one is more industrious, the old one is lazier. Now, how will you explain to yourselves why older people become lazier? A young person does not rely on anybody, and because an older person has sons, daughters, friends, this one and that one, an old person relies on them and says, ‘They will help me’. Thus an old person becomes lazy and gets older, while a young person works on one’s own and says, ‘I have no acquaintances. I have to pull my act together!’ It’s sometimes nice for one to be young to rely on others. I consider other people’s help false promises. What does a man going to marry a maid say to her? Those of you who are gathered here are married and now I will quote for you to see whether what I say is true: the young man talks the young woman into, ‘I am capable to take care of you, my father is well off, I have a nice house, I also have nice land, my sisters and brothers are very smart [intelligent], you will live very well with me, you will wear nice clothes, you will be like a princess, nice hats you will wear, patent leather shoes, nice gloves and you won’t walk on foot, you will have at least one cart etc.’ And the maid on coming to the young man’s place thinks that it will be so. However, her husband’s business becomes sort of messy and he says, ‘I intended so, but it turned out a little messy this year, but next year everything will improve. I have a friend who told me that next year we would start an enterprise and you will have a new costume then.’ The next year is out and he says again, ‘I had no luck with the business.’ And the same goes on for twenty years: this reason, that reason and the woman keeps living in deceit.
This is the comparison I can make. In Yambol2 I was told about a horse before which a sack of hay was placed in a certain area. The area was moving, but the horse, while going for the sack of hay, sets a carding machine in motion. The horse kept going for the sack of hay and at last when the wool was carded the horse was given the sack of hay and the horse says, ‘I reached the sack of hay!’ Then the horse starts going for the hay again, carding the wool and in the evening the horse says again, ‘Good Gracious, I reached the sack of hay!’ In the same way people chase such bundles for twenty years running, keep setting the carding machine in motion and fail to reach it anyway. Nothing is gained from such promises. Wool is carded but a horse remains a horse.
This is the old teaching; you should not beguile yourselves like this. Somebody says, ‘I will improve things’, but things do not improve. You, by working for God, have to make deposits in God’s bank. Only then will your work improve. You say we should pray to God. You will pray, you will excuse yourself and you will say, ‘God, I am late, I did not pay, but now I make deposits in God’s safe. You will pardon me, I am a little late, but next year will be better!’ In this way the man finally gets to see that this work makes no progress. Why doesn’t it make any progress? What is important is what you can accomplish today. The small job done during the day, the small addition to your thoughts and feelings – this is what counts. Not what people see in your work is essential for your work. In the work we do for God there should always be something recommending us before those who have completed this Path; our work should be visible to them. And when we come to their level, then we have to be an ideal for those coming behind us, we have to raise our light and encourage them. And thus walking along the Path everybody should be able to see this light. There is no point looking for your torch. We sometimes resemble those people who like Diogenes light their torches in the day and walk along the Path. Diogenes was asked what he was looking for and he replied, ‘I’m looking for people.’
The new, which all of you aspire to now, is to become like those good workers in the world. Rich people do favours to themselves. They find a precious stone; make a necklace out of it or place it on one of their fingers. The people of the New Teaching have to be like these jewellers: they have to find out where there is a sinful, fallen soul and they have to buy not only it but all the rest that are around it. Afterwards they have to place them on a necklace or on a ring. Jewellers you have to be!
Now everybody says, ‘May God forgive our sins!’ We pray only for ordinary things. It will be ridiculous if I, being a student in a school, after the teacher had taught the lesson, go on the following day and make an excuse that I have not learnt it. I make an excuse on the following day too, and again on the third day. If I keep making excuses for not learning my lesson for a whole year, what will the teacher think of me? You should not make a single excuse throughout the whole year and you have to go to school having learnt your lesson. If, by chance you have made a mistake, this is a matter of course. You will correct yourself when you have a second chance and on the third chance you will have corrected your mistake. This is how one is elevated. And the difficulties that you now have are certain tasks.
Somebody says, ‘It’s not possible without suffering!’ These are also certain mistakes. If you had no difficulties in your life, you could not learn anything. If students at school were given only solved problems, what would they have learnt? If they are not assigned a topic to develop or a picture to draw, what can they learn? Sometimes they will work, sometimes they will sing, but if left doing nothing, what will their life be? Such a life is meaningless; it is a life of secular people. Secular people only make eyes at this and at that and say, ‘This one is religious; the other one is rich, has a big house’ etc. Now you will also say, ‘I know this person, he is a good one.’ You can attain nothing by making eyes at others. Whichever bank went bankrupt. So what? If you have money there you will cry together with the bank. Deposit your money in the state bank, why do you need a private bank! Neither do you need your son’s bank, which is also a private bank. Deposit your money in the Divine bank, where nobody can eat it up. The saved money of many of America’s bankers was eaten up. People keep saving money for rainy days, but the rainy days washed away the money. Had they deposited their money in the angel’s bank, their money would have been secure, but they deposited it in private banks and the money was washed away. This will happen to any of you who deposit one’s money in one of these doubtful banks. Bear in mind the following rule: deposit your money in the Divine bank! You may deposit a hundred leva in every bank. A hundred leva in each one of a hundred banks – this makes ten thousand leva which is enough. That capital that you have should be deposited where money is secure.
Now you will say, ‘We have heard this, Master!’ A mother was teaching her child lessons by saying to the child, ‘Do not disturb me but make yourself a kite.’ The child goes to the mother’s loom, takes the scissors and starts cutting threads to make the kite from. The child cut off the upper threads and made the kite. The mother, on entering, is surprised: she sees the threads of the cloth cut off and her son sitting by the yarn-beam holding a kite in hand. Never again did this mother leave her son near the yarn-beam, so that he won’t cut off the cloth again with the scissors. Similarly you too often cut off the threads of the Divine yarn-beam. I say: when you have to weave something on the loom, keep the door locked so that no one can get in and spoil all of your work. How many times have your children cut off the threads of your yarn-beam!
So, it is good to have a desire born within you to be disciples. Disciples should acquire knowledge from childhood to old age. Disciples should always work for God, then – for their neighbours and for themselves. Disciples should work for three people: first for God; what is left should be deposited in the bank of the neighbours, and what still remains, should be deposited in one’s own bank. This is the secure way of life which requires that a disciple’s mind should be calm, a disciple’s heart and soul should also be calm. This is the Divine Path. And if all the people lived in this way there would not be any contradictions in the world. Somebody will say, ‘Don’t you believe me?’ I certainly believe you! I believe that you are capable of not fulfilling your promise, as all the other people. What will you do when you have no money? I believe you, my eye! Take statistics for example, how many people who have made promises have not fulfilled their promises. How can they excuse themselves then? …
Now, it’s not important what one was previously; it is in the past. What one will be in the future is another matter. But it is important what one can be now. You say, ‘How shall we live?’ This is the new way! Through the law of suffering God wants to teach us to be grateful for our present life. Having done something you have deposited it in the Divine bank and you should not worry about tomorrow. Do not think about your husband, but when you get up in the morning thank God that you are healthy, thank God that your children are healthy. And when they fall ill, you should thank God again. The disease is from you, while health is from God. Your son or daughter may have lost something; thank God that they have not lost everything. This is their business. We say, ‘Why did God allow this?’ Some come to me and complain that they have no luck. A maid comes to me and tells me, ‘I am not lucky, it’s been ten times that I got engaged and disengaged.’ And she starts telling me the name of the first man. And I reply to her, ‘If you had married him, he would have victimized you. The second one would have sold you in slavery; you would have been a servant with the third one and you yourself would have wanted to escape; the fourth one would have taken you to pubs to eat and drink, while you would have had to pay his bills. The fifth one would have made you a vagabond, an accomplice in his crimes; the sixth one would have stuck a list on your back of all the chores you have to do and in the evening he would have scolded you for not doing as much work as you had to. Providence wants to rescue you; you are not destined to marry. You may marry, but I will tell you that if you do so your husband will beat you black and blue three times a day.
There is something which God does not allow, but if we insist a lot, He says, ‘Let him have it!’ But this is not destined for you. You will say, ‘Is it possible for one not to marry?’ There is nobody who is left unmarried. The moment you come to the world, you are already married. And when you love, you connect with the one whom you love. What is marriage? Marriage without love does not work. Whenever there is love between two persons, this is a relationship and it is from God. Wherever there is no such relationship, why should you be cheating each other? Two oxen are brought together, are harnessed and they get married. I have seen also that two cows get married. Some other times I have seen an ox being married to a buffalo-cow or an ox to a cow. I say: this is more natural. But there are combinations which are not quite according to God.
Now people follow a natural way. There are already tractors and no cattle will be harnessed, cattle are released because they have other work. Oxen have served long enough, oxen have to be released. Our mind, heart and soul have already to be released from strenuous labour. We sometimes spend all our life tormenting ourselves and after twenty, thirty, forty years we say, ‘There is no way out any longer.’ There is a Way out in life! You come to a dead-end street and you cannot proceed ahead; you have to go back.
Now, the easy path is the path of the Divine Love. When you work for God, you will get up in the morning and you will say, ‘Today I will do a piece of work for God!’ The smallest piece of work – it will be for God! Someone may say, ‘How is this possible?’ It is possible! This is what I will do if I were in your shoes: when I get up in the morning, I will write a love letter to a widow. I will address her as ‘Sister’, and she will be wondering who this letter is from. I will write the address and afterwards I will prepare a parcel with two small loaves of bread. This is something too – I will send a small loaf of bread to each of her three children. This is God’s Will! If I were in your shoes, I will send to her a packet where I will place stockings or gloves. Altogether there are various ways of implementing God’s Will. Or I will send her a nice book – non-expensive, not big. This I would do every day, if I were you. But you start hesitating, ‘It’s not OK with books, not OK with small loaves of bread, and not OK with love letters…’ No, you will say that it’s OK for you to send small things! It’s nice for people to write love letters like this to each other. What an encouragement these letters are! Would you lose heart receiving such letters!
Now, somebody is not satisfied with little, he or she wants to be promised a thousand and five hundred leva for this or that. This person has twenty leva for himself and says, ‘I will be very grateful to you, I will pray to God for you!’ Are you going to pray for one thousand and five hundred? Well, if you give ten leva to a priest the priest will pray twice as much. This is the way of exception: if somebody asks me for one thousand and five hundred, I will send fifteen leva to such a person and I will say, ‘You will dip ten leva into the water and it will become as much as you want. If it does not, you write to me; you may not know what the method is.’ And I will also tell him to do this experiment in the morning, when the Sun rises. Some other time he will do the experiment at midnight, a third time he will dip the money in cloudy weather and a fourth time – at a starry sky. If he does not succeed, I will tell him, ‘You are rather ignorant!’ Now, you are in dismay and you say, ‘How can this be possible?’ I will clarify my thought a little bit for you: imagine that you ask me for one thousand and five hundred leva and I send fifteen wheat grains to you and I say, ‘Now it is autumn. Plant them in line with the latest system existing in America, and I assure you that after five years you will have a profit not of one thousand and five hundred leva but of more than twenty thousand leva.’ You have to know how to utilise things. If somebody believes when dipping this money ten times in water, it will become more, it will multiply. If someone needs money it will multiply. When the son of that poor widow was going to be sold in slavery, she went to Elisha and he told her:
Do you have empty vessels?
I do.
Do you have anything else?
I have a glass bowl for oil.
Get as many vessels as you can from your neighbours, close yourself and start pouring the glass of oil into the empty vessels!
When she started pouring, she filled the vessels and said:
Give me vessels!
There are no more.
The prophet says:
Go now, sell the oil and buy back your son!
If you have a substantial need the oil will start flowing. This law is true. Each thought and each single feeling in a human being can deliver its fruit.
So I am saying: you have to come to the positive side. Sometimes the work may come out unsuccessful; the mistake is with you. Make a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth experiment until your method changes and you acquire substantial knowledge and understand the mystic, spiritual aspect of things where one’s power lies. And when you acquire this Power, you won’t use it for yourself, but it will be good for the others. Because when a person makes a water fountain, this person is the only one who does not drink from it. When the fountain becomes famous, everybody will drink from it. When you have done one good [deed], everybody becomes aware of it, everybody will drink from this good. You cannot fit taps to the fountain to close it; when the fountain is completed, both animals and people – everybody will drink from it and will be grateful that there is one intelligent person who resolved one of the important issues.
Now many of you suffer, are sick, live in poverty and misery, but these are tasks which you have to resolve. If you resolve them correctly on your own, this is one good for you, well, if others resolve them, you will only learn. But there are things specially given for you; and be grateful to God that these were meant for you. If you carry a pain for a day, two or three days you will leave it in the end. If you have disharmony in your back, it is an unresolved task. When rheumatism besets you and stays in you for three days, you send it away on the fourth day. If it stays for a long time in you, this shows that you are not of the very able disciples. This is how I see things: if I were in your shoes I will look upon it in this way, while you look upon it in a slightly different way. Rheumatism when made work can plough the field like an ox. Some lad, when he falls in love with a maid, will first take her hand and won’t let go of it, but she has to pull back and go home. So you also have to pull back at last and go home. These are altogether souls who do not have work to do, they engage you and say, ‘You do not understand, have sympathy with me.’ They get hold of you and they establish private property, they fence themselves with wire, they want to build something. You will tell them that this place is narrow. Take them a little bit away, give each a hoe and tell them, ‘I have a more spacious place, while here there is no space even for me.’ By talking to them so, they will come out and they will leave you. These are outcomes that result from certain thoughts.
Now the danger is elsewhere. If you understand the internal law, you will come across something else. Therefore, the main objective of Life is to live for God. Since the whole Life is of God, we shall live for Him. It is not what other people describe it to be. We have to think that all the goods, everything intelligent is taken from God. For the One who gave us Life, for Him we shall work. We shall say, ‘We know the Truth, the way we know water, the way we know that the wind blows. Truth and Life we know. This Life has come from God!’ You all have to arm yourselves with a mighty Power and send something every day, if you want your life to be meaningful.
I sometimes watch the present people and make my conclusions. At other times I am busy with a nice thought, but suddenly something takes my thought back into my past. I understand that this thought is not mine - somebody has decided to visit me. And indeed, before an hour or two are out somebody comes offering his past life to my attention. This thought is not mine; this person is occupying my attention with affairs that are not mine. I will tell him, ‘You have not done this, you have not done that and subsequently you are having these implications. You have to change your life, because otherwise you won’t make progress in your work!...’
There was a rich merchant in Varna, Yanev was his name, living in Balak3-market. One day he became an Evangelist, started reading the Gospel and his affairs started making progress. He says, ‘Now I will be a good grocer!’ At some time his affairs took a course backwards. He says, ‘I used to put in action any lies before these Turks who came from the Deliorman4 region. They wanted ten kilograms of sugar but I gave them eight. Everything that I have gained ever since, I have now lost. Now I will have to make profit anew – according to God, by honest means. Everything gained through injustice will go its way, and everything gained though honest means will stay. The life I have lived in injustice, will pass, there is no blessing in such a life!
Now, you will begin the pure, sacred Life, now you will begin the life of Love. Living according to Love, I have to sell in such a way that we all should live according to Love. This world is not only for me, but it is Life for all people. All people should live well. Sacred Life is a good Life. When you live it, there is nothing in your mind troubling you and you are cheerful all the time.
Now, I want all of you to live in the new way! Once you enter this Life, when you sell, you will always measure by ten grams more from you. No undermining! When you talk about somebody, stop yourselves, because sometimes you exaggerate, interpret, and criticise his or her mistakes. If you buy, you increase them in order to pay less money. When you assess them without any exaggeration, you will affix a higher price; you will see that this sister is not so bad, that she is better than you thought she is. You are the intelligent woman, while the bad one is for sale; if you say that she is very bad, you devaluate her. When someone is being reproached, this person is being sold at the market. Such was the yoke years ago: when a slave was sold, his or her evil was sold – something was feeble, something was worn out. They would do everything to pay less money. Likewise the devil takes you away to some place to sell you. The devil comes and on hearing that someone is being reproached, the devil sells such a person. And when somebody is being praised, this person is also being sold. A person is devaluated when being reproached, and a person is appreciated when being praised; but in both cases such a person is sold in slavery. And afterwards such a person is told, ‘Do you know how well I spoke of you? You will also do something for me!’ He will say, ‘Do you know how much evil you have inflicted upon me? I will respond with evil to you!’ Therefore, when this brother comes, you should say, ‘This one is not as yet for sale, he is not worth it, do not buy him!’ So when I say that people should not be gossiped about, I want to thwart the sale. You get to know this person a little bit and you do not take him or her for a second time to the market. This is what you do for several months or for a year. Sometimes one is in slavery, something torments him or her and he or she wonders, suffers; they, from the Invisible world, come to free him or her and he or she says, ‘Thanks God!’ After this he or she is praised again and sold again; and this is tormenting again.
A Prince married his beloved and they had to go to a ball. He told her, ‘You will dress according to the fashion!’ She did not feel like, but he insisted that she should dress according to the dress code of the ball, and he gave her a nudge to this effect. And she dressed up. But when they came back he gave her a nudge again, because she had violated a certain rule at the ball. I say: You will be given a nudge both when dressing up and when being praised. Nudging there is both at the beginning and at the end of the ball. In other cases there is another kind of nudging, which is of a completely different nature. This concerns the internal aspect of life. So, when these nudges appear you have to elevate spiritually. Do not succumb to the weakness saying, ‘God has forgotten me’ or ‘We have to take some rest.’ Rest is a fact, rest lies in good thoughts. If we think about good things we relax; this is physiologically true. In order to relax you have to completely replace your thoughts by pleasant thoughts. For five minutes you can replace a thought that burdens you and get some rest by opening one’s thought. When you come to a negative thought, replace it and say, ‘There can be no change in God and there can be no betrayal!’ God, who has given you all the goods, who has given you your life and body - you have to work for Him. The remaining years of your life you will dedicate to Him, because when you go to Heaven, the big Life will testify for the work you have done. The others who have been watching will also testify for your method of work. The whole school knows a student, who is capable, who is gifted, doesn’t it? When I visited various teachers they pointed at certain students and said, ‘These are very capable, very talented.’ While when pointing at some poor students they said, ‘These are no good; they are dull.’ If you are a duffer, everybody knows that you are a duffer; if you are gifted everybody knows that you are gifted. The law is true also in a spiritual respect: if you live well in the Invisible world, you will also be pointed at; if you do not implement God’s Will, you will be pointed at too. The rule does not change.
So now, all of you have to acquire the first teaching. You started all right, but you stopped at a certain place. One Saturday night one of the best Bulgarian priests had a vision of his guide and he touched him upon the eye and said to him, ‘One of your eyes started looking at the ground.’ When he got up in the morning there was a black spot where the guide touched him. ‘I do not like you; you have hurt yourself today. It seems your eye is bruised. Where did you hurt yourself last night?’ ‘I burnt incense to God’ the priest did not say the reason, did not admit that he was warned to look upwards, not at the ground.
Eyes should look upwards. If you look downwards at the ground, your work will progress with difficulty. You all will be workers; you shall not look downwards, but you shall look upwards. This is the law of Love. Whatever happens to you, you shall look upwards! God’s Love should permeate your hearts. No discouragement! Discouragement will come, weeping will come. Discouragement depends on whether you all follow the law of Love. You have to follow this law and to be co-workers of Love, because very good workers are needed now. The present time is difficult and it shows that it’s time for school-leaving exams, the academic year is just about finishing and you will pass from one grade to another. You have to sit for an exam; the final deadline is already close. It will be good if you improve your marks. You will either improve your marks or you will have to re-sit the exam. Those who have to re-sit the exam know who they are.
Now, let the thought ‘We are co-workers to God, we work for God!’ stay with you. This is the good thought, ‘Let’s work for God!’ This is a good thing. As long as we work well for God, we shall work well for our neighbours as well; we shall work well for ourselves too. And then our work from morning till night will be blessed and happy.
A secret prayer
A good prayer
Master’s lecture
Delivered on 17 March 1932
Sofia, Izgreva
1 Of course the number 365.000 (leva) is only for one prayer daily, i.e. 1.000 leva daily, not as assumed on the beginning of the sentence: three prayers each day. Perhaps the original shorthand record of the lecture doesn’t contain all the words of the original sentence. [Translator’s notes – there is something wrong in this sentence – copied also is the Bulgarian sentence – for reference for a Bulgarian proof-reader – математиката нещо не излиза - Ако имате син или дъщеря, които всяка година ви се молят по три пъти на ден и за всяка тяхна молитва вие трябва да плащате дневно по три хиляди лева, за цялата година триста шестдесет и пет хиляди лева трябва да дадете.]
2 Yambol is a county town in Bulgaria
3 Balak – means simpleton in Bulgarian
4 Deliorman is the North-East part of Bulgaria, not far from the town of Varna.
---------------
------------------------------------------------------------
---------------
------------------------------------------------------------
1
|
