Home English Russian French Bulgarian Polish Deutsch Slovak Spanish Italian Greek Esperanto
search help
search in titles only
  FontSize-- FontSize++  



Shadow and Reality

IX Lecture, held by the Master on 28th August 1944 at 6:00 a.m.

in the field in the forest above “Edelvais” hut in the Vitosha mountain.

Psalm 91.

The Prayer of the Kingdom.

The Good Prayer.

„The Spirit of God“.

The lecture „The living lines of consciousness“ from the volume „Open forms“ was read.

What is real? Real is what the person lives in in the particular case. Unreal is what he thinks about. He thinks about some future life, but what it is like he also does not know – a shadow. Sometimes contemporary creatures cast their shadows from reality. By studying the shadows of contemporary creatures, we call it life. It is a shadow. The shadows of reality are our reality. I say, “We change”. You are young, you get old. You have changed, you do not know why you have changed. You see that you have changed externally, inside you feel young. Old from outside, young inside, how will you reconcile with this contradiction. A man always gets old when he stops to love. Everyone who is getting old has stopped to love. Everyone who loves gets younger. There are old people, who are not old. There are children, who are not young. Sometimes some children are feeble. Love has one distinctive feature: a man, who has love, he is an erudite, he is good, he is strong. These are features. The people of love do not change. There are slight changes that happen in them, but they do not change, they are young forever. What do you understand by the words “young” and “old”? Old and young are two things that are not understood. For a man to be old, this means to have the desire to be young, which means to have warmth. You separate the light from the warmth. When you separate the warmth from the light, you get old. When you separate the light from the warmth, you get younger. When the warmth becomes an internal process, you are young. When the warmth becomes an external process, a man is old. To have light outside and warmth inside at the same time; this is the perfect man. The old man has light outside and has no warmth. The young man has warmth inside, he has no light. Therefore the children want to be old. They have to preserve their warmth. At the same time, the old man wants to become younger, but if he does not let the warmth from inside manifest, he can never get younger. Once I made an attempt. There was one very intelligent child, at the age of six, who had a lot of toys: a bunny, he had a little airplane, he had a car, he had a real doll. He said, “I will lecture you, you do not know these things.” He said, “Do you have things like that?” I said, “No, I don’t have”. He started winding up the car and it started. He said, “If you do not wind it up, it will not start.” One day when you are given such a thing, it will not start if you do not wind it up. You should know that. If someone else was listening to that, he would fly into a rage: How can a child teach me. What do I know about nature? Can I wind up a plant to grow? Someone has winded the plant and it grew up. A man is sorrowful, you cannot make him happy. There is no sorrow that can be wiped off. A child has died, his mother had forgotten to wind him up. She winded up the machine of the child. Every thing that is winded can unwind. He says, “Did you wind it?” When you are winded up, you will unwind. Those in the world, who unwind are heroes. But the hero ends up in a gaiety. The winded up, who considers himself weak, he becomes strong. By starting to unwind, he becomes strong. I say, “You have sins”. What is a sin? A sin is a virtue that is not understood. What is a virtue? One sin understood is a virtue.

Let’s assume one simple clarification. You are given a seed, you see it as nothing. If you sow this seed, after some time it will grow into a tree, it will give fruit. This is the good. Well. But this tree, that can give fruit, you do not give the fruits, you want them to stay on the tree. They fall down, you do not let anybody pick the fruits up. This is the evil. We let the fruits fall down, rot away and we convince people that they are not good to be eaten. This is the evil in the world. You will sow the seeds and you will give the fruit away. You have the right of only one apple from the tree. All the rest are for the people around you. We cannot apply these ideas in the contemporary order of things, since the views are very narrow. In a bottle of one kilogram you cannot hold five kilograms. If you have a one-kilogram bottle of the truth, as much as you put in it, it will enlarge, it is flexible. If you put one kilogram, it will hold a kilogram. You put two kilograms in the same bottle, it will hold them – it enlarges. You can put three kilograms, four kilograms – as much as you want. When you put little, it becomes smaller; when you put a lot, it enlarges. There is no need to carry 20-30 bottles. It becomes bigger and smaller. It is flexible, it does not break. This bottle washes alone. It does not allow you to put something inside to wash it, it cleans up alone. They say about Edison that when he made his trials and dirtied his clothes, in the evening he switched on electricity 70-80 thousand volts on a disk and the entire dirt went out, the clothes became clean again. Every evening the clothes became clean, passing through that high voltage.

Now we are talking about ordinary love. Someone says, “I feel a slight warmth.” The warmth disappears. Love disappears. The warmth comes, I am happy. It is not bad. From that little warmth comes out a little light. The little light comes out from the sunny knot. This sunny knot must grow bigger. A man comes and you are ready to give him food. Two men come, you start hesitating, you say, “I don’t have food for two people”.

Reality can feed one man, it can feed thousands. How was it written, Christ took 5 loaves of bread and fed five thousand people with them. But He understood the law. Someone would say, “How did He feed them?” No matter what I tell you, it cannot be explained. When you do the things yourself, you will understand. Whatever I tell you about sweetness, you will understand just when I give you to taste it. There is one organ, one ability or one sense in you, with which you feel. In this particular case which things are real? The present day is clear, what does this show? This means that the situation of the people has started to get better. There is one project from the invisible world. Soon there will come something better in the world. Why will it come? Because a light is coming that will penetrate in the consciousness of the people and they will see their sins, they will see the crimes they have committed and they will know how to mend them. Because the past crimes must be corrected. Now all of you are expecting the good. We bring crimes, too. We bring both good and evil with us. We must correct the evil. We have to solve the unsolved tasks. The solved tasks we have to fulfil. The unsolved tasks we have to solve. What is solved we have to fulfil. Fulfillment is the good side.

Let’s say there is one person, who loves you, what do you have to do for him? God, who is Love, why do we go to pray to God? Shall we give Him anything? We say, “God is almighty, God is so and so, He is benign.” What shall we give God, tell me. When we pray, we have to go to God, because He is perfect. We send one of our thoughts to perfection. By thinking about God, we become perfect like Him; by thinking about God we become good like Him; By thinking about God, we become benign like him in the given case. When we want to do something we have to think for His sake. If we do not think for His sake, the thing will not happen right, your thought is not right. If you think about God and you are angry, you are not on the right side. If you think about God and you lose heart, you are not on the right side. Doubt will come, it is not a sin, but we always have to keep doubt away, and not accept it in. When we accept doubt, it must become faith.

So, I say, “You consider love as something transient, unreal.” The Bulgarian word for love is not so strong, too. Love in itself I interpret in the following way: A power that comes from the invisible world, pours out from an urn and flows into a trough like water. The people take this water, wash their clothes, make it dirty, and throw it outside like slops. When someone studies love, he studies the slops. When the pure love cleans the people, it becomes unclean. When we study the love that has cleaned the people and has taken all the dirt, we say, “This is love”. We have put our slops on the back of the love. We say, “This is love”. You will always get dirty if you love people, you will clean their grime. The grime is manure for the plants. The sins are necessary. Our sins are manure for the earth. This grime is carried by a cart and the plants are fertilized, which then give sweet fruits. The sweet fruits from this manure are sent to us to taste them. Let’s thank God for our sins. Let’s thank God for all our mistakes. Let’s enjoy the virtues that God has given to us. To be happy about what we accept and to be thankful about what we send. To be thankful that we have been freed from that manure. Often there is manure on our backs. It is very difficult for a man to love another man. To love means to know in each particular case what the other person needs. A child that was born with a talent, with a good ear for music, would not like you to say sweet words to him or to give him money, but give him an instrument to play. Do not praise a singer, but give him conditions to sing. I say, “Love resides in the gifts of all people, to manifest the good things that God has given them.” At the same time, we want them to help us manifest the good in us. If the people do not love us, the good cannot show. If we do not love them, we do not make it possible for the good to show in them. When you love someone, you give him the opportunity to show himself. When he loves you, he gives you the opportunity to show yourself. If in the world we do not love each other, we cannot show ourselves, we do not have the opportunity. We say, “God will make it.” When you love you will make it possible for God to do it. When you love somebody, you will make it possible for Him to show. He will become a musician, a poet, he will become strong, he will become everything.

I say, “The first thing is to love, to be fond of and you must be loved.” When you love you help people. When you are loved, they help you. So, you should enjoy the manifestation of people. Everybody, who loves, is a good example. When you love, too, you are a good example. In this respect there in the world is no difference between the rich and the poor people. Sometimes you do not want to be poor. No one wants to be poor, all of you want to be rich. This is very good. It is a very good thing to be rich.

Why should a man not be rich? A little more wealth has been put on your back than you can carry. Why do you need it? The rich man must search to give out his wealth. If he does not give it in the right way, he has no future; if he gives it out in the right way, he has a future. After you have become poor, you have to look for the people again, to beg. The contemporary people do not know how to beg. If you were a beggar, how would you beg? When a fiddler comes to me, will he beg? He will take out his fiddle, he will play the best piece of music. I will take out not one lev, but a thousand and will put it in his pocket. If this fiddler plays his music at about ten places and everywhere he is given fifty-sixty thousand levs, will he be a poor man? An artist will not be a beggar. He will paint the best pictures for free, he will give them and the people will take out of their pockets. He will not set the price.

I say, what I am talking about, time will reveal that if you live in that way, the weather will be clear, the sun will shine. Now there are some of our brothers who are not dresses, they have no coats, they have no warm clothes. They are our old concepts. Our old love looks like an old piece of clothe. He says, “I loved him once”. After the people got o love me, I got old of that love. When they came to pick up the fruits that I had, they did not pick them up in the right way, but broke off the branches and I look like a stump. I will recover again, but a long time will pass until the new branches grow. Let’s say that you insult a friend of yours. You have broken off a branch. You will be clever not to break the branches of love. The only thing: it is not permitted to break the branches of love. Some people regret for having loved. Why do you regret that you have loved somebody once? This is not right. God has loved you, He has sent you to the world. The sun shines for you, the wind blows for you, the leaves grow for you, the rivers run for you, the flowers bloom for you and you have bowed your head and say “What a miserable man”. You think that you are of the clever people. When the poor man goes among the rich people, he should have the conscience and think: “You are rich because of me”. The poor man must feel like he is credited. He is a king. I am happy that you are a king. The king is outside of you. When the king feels that you have understood, he will call you to be his friend. If the poor man cannot become a friend with the king, he has not understood love. If the king cannot become a friend with the poor man, he has not understood love. This is the wrong understanding. The poor man must become a friend of the king, a good friend, not to consider the king in a high position. The king must be happy that he has a poor friend.

Now God understands us, but we do not understand Him. I don’t know how to explain it. We come into conflict. The idea is the following: Nobody has created God. Because who has created Him, He is God. What creates, this is God. If it is created, it is not God. In us, the people, the malice shows, sometimes we think that nobody has created us. When we become adults we think that it is not possible that someone has been a little child with his mother. When we confess that we have come out of God, we are afraid that he can repent and take back what he has given to us. We strive to be far, in case he would stretch his hand and take all the good that we have. This is the mistake that we have on the earth. In fact God is happy with our mistakes and our virtues. Because if he grieved about our sins, we would have been stronger than him. You grieve about somebody. The one who has made you grieve is stronger. If he cannot make you grieve, you are stronger. If you love him, you are stronger than him. If you do not love him, you are weaker. When you love each other, you are equally strong. If you do not love, you are weak. When you go to beg, you are weak. If you do not want to learn from anybody, again you are weak. If you do not want to beg from the people, you have to give them conditions, to make something for their sake. God has created the world, He has left us and is looking at us. We use all His goods. God watches us, He listens to all our theories about the world and says nothing. He says, “Very well.” Always when you offer God one of your theories, he puts it on your back to try it. Therefore we must have the right concepts. Everything must be done on time. The fiddler must play well, the one who has a tongue must speak well. Who has eyes must see well. Who has ears must listen well. We must manifest all the gifts that God has given us in their perfect form. Things become more perfect, but the opportunities for the manifestation of many goods are vitiated.

This must serve you as a rule, the other is theory. The one who loves is free. The one who loves has knowledge. The one who loves has life. The one who does not love has no freedom. The one who does not love has no knowledge. The one who does not love has no life. I tell you these three things, there is no need to tell it to the world. We have to change the world, nothing more. People are strange when they say, “How to change it?” Someone has put a veil on and he cannot see, he stumbles. I come and take the veil off his head. He can shout and bawl as much as he wants. I say, “Look at the world!” I say, all veils and delusions must be taken away from the people. But first of all they have to be taken away from you. The first delusion is: Nobody loves me, I am lonely. Loneliness is a feature only of God. It is not our feature. We cannot try it. The only lonely person in the world, who exists, is God. From our point of view there is nothing better than loneliness. There is nothing uglier than loneliness. There is no greater beauty than loneliness. You have to believe that. Now I cannot talk about it. We all came in one direction from the hut up to this place, but not all the people walk in the same direction. Everybody walks in his particular way. Two people do now walk on the same way. It is not good to walk in the same way. As the people say, that a man is going in the same way, it is not true. When a man lives well, he walks on his own way. If you understand a man and he understand you, you both walk in the same way. First of all we have to see where the contrasts come from. I meet a man after I have had food. The words “I am hungry” do not have the same meaning as for him. I have to put myself in his place, to go and have some food. I will tell him, “Wait, the time has not come”. Every person, who has a certain small need, you should satisfy this need. It is in your favour. You can satisfy his need, you bring the bread. You know the law, take out the bread, give him a bun, give him an apple, give him a pear. You say, “If I give, there will be nothing left for me.”

The first thing: By doing good we put a base in our life. Make an attempt to free yourselves from the contradictions. Some days ago there was a strong storm, Sofia could be bombed, it showed what they have thought. When the things settled, the Divine gained mastery. The people are still settling. The present day shows this. The next day may be cloudy, the day after may be clear again. The changes that happen in people cast a shadow on the real life. What is your state, how do you feel? Then you expect life to improve. A very good fiddler comes, you go to listen to him play. If you are deaf what will you listen to? The reason is in you. The hall is well heated, you say, “I cannot hear him.” So, for the good fiddler you must have an ear. The hall must be well heated. If the fiddler comes and you cannot understand him, how will you listen to him? On the present day there is one concert. The world is getting better. I see in the world luggage is packed. For a period of eight thousand years the present governors now pack their luggage, put it in cars. Where? They are already leaving. We have become entirely neutral. We will disarm the evil, we are in accord with heaven, and we will not be at war with any of the fighting parties. Those, who come to free us from above, are the White brothers, who are armed and give us an ultimatum to break up with the black brothers. They don’t want us to fight with them, but we will break up. In their mind, according to their philosophy we have been out a great deal. Some of you will cry a bit, saying, “What will happen with our ruined apartments”. Do not listen to them, the apartments that you have, let them go. I don’t want a hair to be left from them. Whatever there is, let them take it. The white brothers that will come will bring everything new: beds, and hats, and plates, and pots, and shoes. Everything old outside. There is no need to cry, what will be in the world. We have come into a world where the black brothers have settled, they have lied to us. It is too much. Now there is one thing left that we can do.

The only thing is love to God, love to the fellow-man, love to all brothers and sisters. Love to your father, love to your mother, to your brother, to your sister. The servant is also your brother. The little beetle, the tree, all things in the world are our brothers in different forms. You say, “This is not for us.” This tree can be your brother. By the word ‘brother’ I mean every creature that can do you a favour in a particular case. The cow that gives you milk, is your sister. The apple tree that gives you fruit, is your sister. We hardly know the brothers and sisters that serve us. The light that comes from above, is your brother. The warmth that comes, is your sister. I see it in that way. We say, “The warmth is not a sister”. Warm is its word. Open the light, it is a brother. In the light I see our brother. In the warmth I see our sister.

Now lift and put this white flag. Love should be met with the white flag. As that German said, “We have a frightful weapon, when we take it out the world will turn into ashes. Peace will come immediately. What is this flag? – The white flag. When we decided to fulfil God’s Will, the flag is raised. If all people decide to serve and fulfil God’s Will, to raise the white flag, peace will come, there will be discipline and order everywhere.

Now we are sitting on these brothers (we sat down on pine trunks), you should know what they are saying: „Because of our lack of understanding, you are sitting on us.“ They say also: „If you too do not understand, someone will sit on you, too.“ They are talking to me from below: „We have already understood and we will revive with you. We will not be like that.“

This is the eternal Life, to know You, the Only one, the Real God and Christ, the one Who you have sent.

This is the eternal Life, to know the real Love that brings life.

This is the eternal life, to know God and all goods that God has sent to the world. This is the eternal life.

1




 

Home English Russian French Bulgarian Polish Deutsch Slovak Spanish Italian Greek Esperanto

About    Search Help