Wednesday, 5.30 a.m.
(The sky is clear. The weather is calm, warm and pleasant. There was a beautiful sunrise)
"The Good Prayer"
I am going to read you from the Bible, 1 Corinthians 6:6: "But brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers" /The Holy Bible, ABS/
Science is a necessity in life. All people stumble over what they know. A child stumbles over what it knows, because what it knows has to be changed as it is appropriate for this age only. Each age has its knowledge, its potentialities. I shall give you a simple example: You are invited to have lunch. You are most of all interested in the meal – not whether it will satisfy you, but whether the meal will be tasty or not! You are interested in the outer appearance of the meal, in its taste, in its fat in order to receive an external satisfaction. It is an external understanding of the feast. Even when you know something, again you are interested in its external side. You say: "He is a good man; but that man is better." May one be better? If he is good, he is good. How shall you understand the word 'good' and the words 'better' and 'best'? A good man has little of the Good in himself. The better one has more. What is the difference between the good, the better and the best man? It is analogous to the comparison: This man is beautiful, that one is more beautiful, but the third one is the most beautiful. A garment may be qualified as good, better or best. What is the difference between them? Everyone here would like to wear the best garment. But once you have the best garment, how will you benefit of it? It will by all means add something to your mind.
These are now only comparisons, leading us to more essential issues. Let us assume that you are coming into class to learn something. What will you acquire after leaving the class? What will you acquire today, for example? You by all means will acquire something – never mind if you mind or not. You by all means will be filled with something. No one can stay empty. Empty things do not exist. You say that a bottle is empty. It is empty of water, but there is air inside. What is the difference between the air and the water? The water is heavier and the air is lighter. The bottle is empty in respect to the water, but full in respect to the air. Even if you empty the bottle of the air there will be again something in the bottle, some other substance.
What is the most essential thing for you today? What is that essential thing which is able to transform your state? Some of you are indisposed, but later on their mood is improved. Someone is gloomy. Why? The Sun is shining so lovely! Why are you gloomy? You were told something unpleasant, someone has uttered a thought. But this thought is neither a stone, nor an iron or something sharp to stab you or to hurt your head. Even so you are indisposed. Or you saw something in the distance and you got scared. I am asking: "What are the reasons, what is this, which is modifying your disposal?
We are claiming: "The Spirit of God is acting in me". All that is true. It is right: the Spirit has been always acting; but nevertheless, when a small thought comes to us, we forget about God and our disposal is modified. When the darkness comes, you say to yourself: "Who knows if the way I am going along is right?" And you start doubting and hesitating. Sometimes we would like to show that we have knowledge just as somebody likes to show his strength, by carrying a certain weight. We have to abandon the delusions. Let us assume that somebody is carrying a sack full of sacred books on his back. You say: "I am carrying so many books, what have you seen!" Someone else may carry only one book under his arm, but he has already opened it, read it and learned something from it. The first one is just carrying the holy books, but he is not reading them. Which case is better then? What is tormenting you now? What can you rely on? There is always something you can rely on.
There is one process, which is mechanical and one process, which is organic in man. Slaughter a lamb, take his hide and make a Bulgarian bagpipe of it. How will this bagpipe differ from the lamb? The lamb had walked and breathed; but the pipe would tell you: "Put something in me, inflate me a little, so that I may show the people, that I can play." The bagpipe would always mumble, but the lamb would say: "Give me freedom, I shall graze grass and breathe."
Which state is better: to be a lamb or to be a bagpipe? Someone is saying: "I cannot think in my way, but in the way the Spirit teaches me!" It means that he is a bagpipe. Which state is better? A bagpipe is useful only to play at weddings, feasts, but when it comes to work – to write, to plough, it can do nothing. The bagpipe – it is like a human world. Man has taken the hide of a lamb and he has made a bagpipe. He has put also a drone. Sometimes we play like a bagpipe- we have some morality, some understanding. But it is a human understanding. It is a mechanical process – coming to a specific point, you say about it: "I do not know it!" You shall hold the other process – the Divine one. It does not already resemble a bagpipe.
So, first of all you have to study these two powers acting in the world and changing the state of man. The collective consciousness of all beings is mighty enough to change your consciousness. And the consciousness of God, the Spirit of God is also ruling. In the same way as your consciousness affects all beings, their collective consciousness acts upon you. And if you do not realize that law, problems will appear for you. The collective consciousness of all beings may change your consciousness and your way, pushing you in an unwanted direction.
When you are seeking your way in a period of suffering, the higher beings and God stop you and start asking you: "Where are you going?" You say: "To grow up and to become a great and a rich man." When you grow up, becoming rich, does it matter? What is the difference, if a creature was a little donkey and becomes a big donkey? The master will load the little donkey less, but he will load the big donkey more heavily. If you have knowledge, knowing also why you need it, what is your position? You have morality, you have love, but you say: "Let me receive the great love, the great inspiration. I have a little inspiration now. When the great inspiration comes to me, then I shall start working." I am asking you: Is it practical to wait for the great inspiration? What is the difference between that one who loves you very much and that one who loves you a little bit. If you cannot appreciate the Love of God, what have you realized then? The Love of God is the greatest Love.
You all are expecting some great inspiration, some great Love, etc. But some of you have started to lose what they have. You, the dearly loved children of God, have been bent with the great Love of God. And all people get older with Love. Love actually makes people older. It brings anxiety and troubles. Who of you had happy days being fallen in love? Giving birth to a child, you will have troubles – you will care his eyes not to get hurt, his stomach not to ache, his school activities to be successful and so on. What philosophy exists in that? Then you will become a religious man. You will start worrying: "What is the attitude of God towards me? Am I a good man or not? What, if I cannot go to heaven? What, if I meet a devil? What, if I meet a woman? What, if I meet somebody to grasp my neck?"
Is there something improper, if a woman meets you? You say: "Women are bad." You meet a man – you say: "Men are bad." You meet a merchant – you say: "Merchants are bad." You say of somebody: "Stay away from him, he is a devil." There is a misunderstanding in the world. What is in fact evil? Somebody will say: "I do not understand evil now, but I shall understand it in the future." You will not understand it in the future either. In the future you will understand that you have not understood many things. Nothing could be understood following this very way. You will get an understanding for some time, but then the opposite process will start. From the morning at sunrise till noon – that is the apogee of your understanding. And then at sunset, you will understand as much as you do at sunrise. It has come in as much as it has flown out. At sunrise something of the Love of God has entered in you, but at sunset it has gone out of you again.
You cannot hold Love. The whole error in you is that you want to hold Love. You cannot do this. You cannot hold Light either. Love could not be held. It is the point, where people are breaking their heads. You want to hold Love. You want to tempt it somehow. You cannot tempt Love with anything. It is said in the Scriptures that the only thing you can attract the attention of Love with – it is the Truth. It is said of God that He has loved the Truth, which is in man. The Truth presents the human soul, or what has come out of God. God has loved in us that Divine part, in which we are unchangeable. God considers the other things, which we gathered around – our clothes, our houses and knowledge – as entertainment, as our toys. They are not important to Him. He leaves these toys onto our account; but He is interested just in our soul. The only precious thing in man is his soul. And if you do not pay attention to your soul, then what will you pay attention to? If you do not know your soul, how will you know the souls of others? If you cannot love your soul, then how can you love the others? What can you love in the others? Their souls. Everything else you love in man – you love his clothes. If you consider the modern world, the whole contemporary system – it is violence from one end to the other. There is silent violence everywhere. Can you tell me something else? The violence is not only among people. Somebody is saying to me: "How beautiful Nature is, how beautiful the green grass is, how great the world of God is!" I have observed the grass too. I watched with a magnifying glass, with a magnifier, two little creatures gripping at their necks. The one was gnawing the other and vice versa. Sufferings exist there as well. These two creatures tortured each other; they were quarrelling to divide something. One of them was at the one hole, the other – at the other. The distance between them was small, that was the reason of their quarrel. We say: "How great God has made the world!" We also say: "How great God has made man himself!" Where is the grandeur of the human face, for example? I see: the human face has darkened being with pale lips and dull eyes. Where is the grandeur of man? It is revealed only in that moment, when you come to an ordeal, but you do not hesitate – for something constant has remained in you through all the hardships. That is man himself, but not what you think. When you come to a big hardship and you do not tremble – that is precious in man. All the blossoms that bloom and all the fruits that grow are valuable, but the long-staying fruit is the most valuable. There may be thousands of fruits but only a few of them are remaining. They are of the greatest significance. Every one of you is saying that something evil exists in man. Well, I agree with you, I am on the same opinion. Since we are bad, what shall we do? What shall we understand by 'a bad person'? Define for me now what you understand under these words. Define explicitly to avoid the need of a second definition. Whoever does not behave in the way we expect, is a bad person. I am going my way. A man there hits me, so I say that he is a bad person. If he has swerved right or left, I would consider him a good man. You also can be bad for him as well as he can be bad for you. Who is good? Everyone who thinks like us and who acts according to our desire is a good man. At least, that is the practical wisdom of the world. That is the present morality. People speak about one kind of morality, but behave according to another.
In the contemporary legislation you are asked: "Why didn't you observe the law?" You may believe in God, you may love Him, but the judge is telling you: "Your love to God does not matter. You did not keep the law here." So the judge convicts you. Even though you love God, the judge sentences you to one-week imprisonment. Because you did not behave the way the judge wants you to, you are convicted. A policeman will abuse you if you do not behave the way he wants you to, if you do not think the way he thinks. If a son does not behave the way his father expects and wants him to, he will be reproached right away.
But this knowledge cannot help you too. What is helpful then? I shall take an anecdote for example. Once upon a time there was a ruler, a rich man. He was a man of variety. Everyone wrote to him and he received requests all the time. "My most dear Sir, there is nobody like you, you are the most good-hearted, the most beneficent of all. You are the only one who can help me, kindly grant me a little sum." They always wrote to him like that. Reading such letters, the rich man did not give anything to anybody and finally he wrote an announcement – always, when people wanted to get something from him, they should write letters to him not in the standard way, but in a way to please him. "If I like some letter, I shall do something, but I am not going to answer dull letters." The people wondered how to write to him, everybody wrote and wrote, but nobody received an answer. But one man wrote to him like this: "Sir, I do not know how to write you. But I have two boils that appeared on my body. I need money – I need two bandages. Don't you have some little cloth – please, send me two little cloths with your servant to put them on my boils." The rich man immediately took two banknotes, put them in an envelope, sent them to the man and wrote: "Dear brother, I am sending you two cloths. If you can use them, it will be good. If necessary I can send you some more cloths." That man wrote a second letter: " My things do not go well. Besides these two boils, one bigger boil came on my other leg. So I need a bigger cloth." The rich man put a bigger banknote and sent it to him. That man wrote to him again: "I do not know what to do, I wonder that scabies break out now in a big area. I need a much bigger cloth." And so after the rich man had sent those cloths, at last the man wrote: "Thank you very much, but because I am dressed now only in cloths, I do not know how to take them off, as I think of going to the baths. Won't you give me a towel?" The rich man wrote to him: "I am glad that you need a towel, but after you get out of the bath, you will come to me with the towel."
All that needs a translation. It is symbolical. Things have to be translated. We are living an artificial life with imaginatively big sorrows. You say: "I am very grieved!" But it is not true: you have not a big grief, but a small one. We have not yet learned to tell the Truth. I made some psychological findings; usually the cause of the biggest sorrows is very small. But as it gets polarized, it seems to be very big, when in fact it is very small. Throw it out of your soul. And the cure is very simple. If a big suffering comes to you, say: "God has made the world, He will take care of me, then I shall take care too."
The essential thing is not in observing things. The only thing that can help you, the needed power will be given to you. Light and everything else will act in unity for you.
I say, we shall use the small God granted gift every day. If you expect full barns, knowledge and power as the angels live, you will waste your whole life in vain. Somebody wants to become a great man, he thinks about the future, what a saint he will be, how famous he will be, and whether he could become a teacher, etc. First use life as it is revealed in you, use even the smallest possibilities in life and sustain your sacred thoughts. Every one of you has at least one sacred thought, which to sustain.
When you injure your leg, you say: "When my leg gets better, I will believe in God." How many times did your leg ache and then got better, but you did not believe. The same will be happen this time too. And how will you prove that your leg is aching? You have not examined the origin of the pain. Some illness you have might be not yours. Its cause might be very remote; it might be found in America, for example. Probably someone in America is ill and you by sympathy are connected with him. And since he is painful, you are painful too.
We are placed in the following position: a man lived in a village near the city of Varna who liked to pull out teeth and was very skilled in this. Once a bey /*title of a vassal in the former Ottoman Empire/ came to that village with his wife, who had a bad tooth. The bey visited that Bulgarian to pull out the tooth of his wife. The bey waited downstairs, his wife went upstairs. The man took the pliers and the woman started to cry upstairs. The bey who loved her very much was also crying downstairs. Though the bey did not have his tooth pulled, he cried together with his wife. The same is with you now. Somebody is having his tooth pulled, but you are crying and groaning. There are sorrows out of sympathy. Something pricks you in the breasts, but it is not real. It is just the feeling of a thought coming by reflection.
So first of all, we shall abandon the delusions of life. A thought may come to you: "If I break my leg, that and that will happen to me." Thousands of similar thoughts may come to you in one day. All that may happen, if you assume it, but if you do not assume it, it will not happen.
I say, stop assuming things. All of you imagine such things and all of you sit pondering over how the New Teaching will advance in the world; whether the way you are going is right or not; when, in how many years the kingdom of God will be established – here on Earth. You are like children. The Kingdom of God cannot come to Earth in the present conditions. But it is not far away and we benefit from it. One day we shall go there. Some of you – by a carriage and others – on foot. But if somebody mentions the world beyond, you start bothering. You say: "A sister passed away, a brother passed away." Where did the passed away brothers and sisters from the Brotherhood go, where are they? They are here, amongst you, sitting around. What will you say? They are sitting and laughing and saying: "We are here again!" Once they had their own houses and now they are coming like tenants. They had sold everything and everyone rented now a small room; he is coming for the lectures and then going back.
Let us suppose that you think about somebody. He has passed away. You can often notice that when a brother from the other world has come, if he enters in the body of another brother, the last starts to resemble him a little bit. His ears bent, his eyes change. When the passed away brother leaves him, the face of that brother acquires its former appearance. So, first of all, you shall distinguish between your states, to know whether it is really you or not. Every day you should give an account to yourself when you are alone and when you are not. Do not consider it as something bad. If a small window is a token only of little light, much more light will pass through a bigger window. Where is the transgression then?
The law is: the knowledge that comes from God, the Divine light, to become a fortune of our souls. It is better, if the light is greater. But we are afraid that if too much light comes in, we shall lose our ground. You should have as much light as needed in the given case. The same law applies to Love too. Sometimes you want more love than you need. Love also can be unbearable in some cases. You should have as much love as to make you joyful. For in every given moment Love will come and leave in front of you more and more of the visible world. It is not necessary for you to see all the blossomed flowers. You may see just one flower and you will fill with joy, then you will see another one and so on. You will see one river, then a second one, a third one and so on. Gradually, going from one subject to another, you will experience the manifestations of the world.
You think of a brother or a sister and you expect to meet some saint. In fact you go among saints here. The saints, first of all, do not have time to invite you to pay a visit to them. How will you benefit, if you see a saint? How do the saints look in your vision, how do you imagine them? Are they painted as in the church? The saints are always merry and well disposed. They have not troubles. When a saint meets you, you say to yourself: "Now I am stuck!" But he says: "You are not stuck at all. You go the very right way." You say to him: "The devil took hold of me." The saint will tell you: "The devil had entangled himself alone."
The following law exists in the world: The devil tries to push you in all the snares he is making, but he wants to stay out of them. As you eat the morsel in the snare, you will be sentenced, you will be imprisoned, but he will escape. If you have trust in God, being prone to some temptation, God will catch both you and the devil in the snare – and then you will get released from evil and you will get free from the devil. Once the devil was caught, all your affairs will go better. If your affairs do not go well, it means, that the devil has not been caught in your snare. You say: "I am a bad man." The devil has not been caught in the snare together with you. You say : "I am out of luck." The devil has not been caught in the snare. As soon as he will be caught, you will be lucky. Then you should have a childlike faith: God is the one who reigns. Whatever may happen in the world, turn your mind towards God. If you have some pain, pause and say to yourself: "That is for good. I do not know it, but it is for good." Somebody will say: "But how is it for good! You do not know it, but it is for good." Even if it is not for good, you say: "It is for good." While the devil is cheating you, cheat him too. He wants to push you in the snare. Take his arm, let him in the snare and say: "We are both here." I do not know how to say it, but we love the devil very much. After he has fallen into the snare, out of love we open the door with the words: "Come on, you may go, I shall stay here for you." We are very generous. The devil says: "Thank you very much." And he goes away. The rule is: when a devil has been caught in the trap, do not let him go! Tell him: "I love you very much. Since I caught you we will have a much more pleasant conversation here in the trap." The people are always caught. Do not open the trap and do not let the devil out! I see now your devils laughing, but I have a devil who is always crying. Yours are laughing, mine is crying. My devil often says to me: "Look at those devils, they are always joyful and I am all the time crying." I reply: "They are joyful, but you will cry." Let your devil cry a little. If your devil is happy, you will cry. And when he starts crying, you will rejoice. It would be much better to change your roles: he to cry, you to rejoice. Now I wish you that your devils cry and you rejoice!
The LORD's Prayer
30th lecture from the Common Occult Class
April 18th 1934
Sofia, Izgrev
Translated by Martina Yovcheva, Bulgaria
Edited by Maria Braikova, Bulgaria, and Phyllis Thorpe, USA
Copyright (c) 1997 Publishing House "Byalo Bratstvo" All Rights Reserved
|
