Love and Sexuality Part 2
Love and Sexuality Part 2
Love and Sexuality Part 2
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Readers are asked to note that Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov's teaching was
exclusively oral. This volume includes passages from several different
lectures all dealing with the same theme.
Among the thousands of things human beings have to learn about in life,
one of the most important – and one which is almost totally neglected – is the
question of attitude: the attitude men and women should have toward nature
and other beings, toward God. This question is vital, for our attitude
determines the whole course of our lives, both inwardly and outwardly. The
attitude of most people is truly deplorable: instead of turning their faces to the
Lord, as the needle of a compass turns towards the North Pole, they turn their
back on him. This is why they encounter such difficulties and tribulations in
life. No one has ever taught them to adopt the right attitude.
Years ago, in Bulgaria, when I was still very young, I did not have the
money to buy myself a radio, so I built a crystal set. When I wanted to listen
to a programme, I had to move a tiny needle across the surface of the crystal,
until it was on exactly the right spot, and I could hear music or voices. If the
needle was not on the right spot I could not hear anything at all. When I
reflected on this phenomenon, I understood that if we are incapable of
picking up the countless messages and currents that criss-cross the universe,
it is because we have not yet tuned our crystal sets to the right wavelength.
So, this is what we must try to do every day: tune in to the transmitter, that is
to say, adopt the proper attitude, turn toward that pole-star we call God. Only
if we do this will we obtain his blessings: light, love, joy and health.
As long as men and women persist in their usual crass, disrespectful
attitude, they will never make any progress. Oh, of course, their work in
intellectual, industrial and mechanical fields does result in progress, but every
other area of their lives is empty, mediocre and aimless. This question of
attitude is absolutely vital, and I am not referring only to our attitude toward
the Lord, but our attitude toward all the creatures of the universe and toward
nature itself.
Human beings never think of putting into practice in their spiritual life the
laws that apply to the physical plane. Time and again, I have spoken to you
about the law of resonance, for example. If you have two pianos perfectly
attuned to each other in the same room, and you strike a note on one of them,
the other will respond: the same note will vibrate without your having
touched it. Our whole evolution depends on our correct understanding of this
law. If I keep telling you that you must turn your face to the greatest, most
beautiful, most powerful of all beings, it is because by doing so you will
begin to vibrate in unison with him. And when you vibrate in unison with this
supreme Being, with this Principle that contains all that is, you begin to
receive his qualities and powers. As long as you do not make a deliberate,
conscious effort to adopt this attitude, you will be constantly thrown around
by the virulent currents you have, quite unconsciously, tuned into.
Your attitude should be one of respect, of awe, admiration and rapture in
the face of this sublime Being, who rules and orders the universe. You will
object that you have never seen him, and to that I reply, ‘Yes, you have! You
have seen the beauty of nature; you have seen your fellow men and women;
but you never think of the author of all these marvels. For you, he just doesn’t
exist!’ Today there is nowhere where people value a sense of the sacred. On
the contrary, they try to eradicate it as something useless; they defile and
desecrate everything.
This won’t do, my dear brothers and sisters! You must adopt the right
attitude toward the Lord and get into the habit of thinking of him with
respect, awe and love. This is the only way to learn to vibrate in unison with
him and with all the wealth that is his, the only way to become capable of
receiving the flood of beauty, light and love that is waiting to flow into you,
the only way to participate in his own joy, happiness and freedom.1 Those
who love each other experience the same sensations because they vibrate on
the same wavelength: this is a law of physics.
Just as you have feelings of wonder and delight at the sound of music or
the song of birds, or at the sight of flowers or a beautiful woman, similarly
you must cultivate a sense of sacredness in respect to this Being, who has
created all that exists with such awe-inspiring intelligence. You are full of
admiration for a pretty pebble, a butterfly... How can you possibly not be full
of admiration for him who created them? He, and he alone, deserves your
admiration, and yet you ignore him and banish him from your scheme of
things. This is why you are always unhappy, weak and vulnerable. You will
say, ‘I’ll read a lot of books; I’ll go and learn from so-and-so. I’ll be all
right!’ Never! What you can get from books and human beings is nothing
compared to what the quintessence of Cosmic Intelligence can give you.
Human beings try to show how capable and intelligent they are by
displaying their diplomas, trophies and medals. But these things are no proof
of intelligence: the criteria by which I judge whether someone is intelligent or
not are very different. I have just received a letter from someone who has a
university degree and is very well-read. Among other things, she says, ‘I
often think of something you told us, years ago, after your trip to Turkey.
You said you had been looking out of your bedroom window in the hotel, in
Istanbul, when you saw a little old man, who looked like a beggar, go into a
garden nearby. As you watched him, he unrolled the carpet he was carrying
and knelt down and said his prayers. You said you were so struck by his
attitude of respect and adoration that you hurried downstairs with the
intention of giving him some money. But by the time you reached the garden,
you were very disappointed to find that he had already gone.’ Isn’t it
extraordinary how people remember little details? Then my correspondent
goes on to say that she was writing this to me because she was incapable of
praying, and that had made her think of the Turk who unrolled his carpet and
prayed. But I shall tell her, ‘Don’t worry! You will begin to pray, one day. If
you love that little old man who prayed, you will certainly learn to pray, too.’
Yes, even if you have the impression that you are not receiving anything, you
must keep on praying, because prayer activates our spiritual centres; and
when the chakras, the lotuses, are activated and begin to vibrate, they trigger
extraordinary changes.
May those who accept what I am saying and start immediately to cultivate
the right attitude be blessed. It is not easy: I know that. Sometimes you have
to search for a long time – just as I used to keep twiddling the knobs of my
crystal set – with no success, and then, all of a sudden, you hear something:
you are on the right wavelength! You have to persevere; you have to insist;
you have to threaten, even! Yes, threaten heaven with love, and one day you
will find yourself on the right wavelength. Words cannot describe the
sensations you will experience when this happens. And just as I watched that
Turk praying on his prayer rug, when we pray there is always someone who
is watching and ready to help us. You have no idea how many beings watch
you and take pity on you when you pray! The Almighty is very busy and very
far away! But hosts of other entities hurry to help you and bring you
consolation, peace and happiness. I was not quick enough when I went down
to give that beggar the money that would have helped him, but the entities of
the invisible world are never too slow and never make a mistake! You receive
their gifts instantly.
And do you know that there is a little creature in the Amazonian forests
that lifts its front paws heavenwards and makes several little bows before
going to sleep at night? Those who have filmed it say it looks just as if it
were saying its prayers! It is a small, furry animal with a bushy tail ‒ a kind
of ant-eater. Most of the time it is on all fours, but in the evening, before
going to sleep, it stands up on its hind legs, lifts its front paws towards the
sky and bows down to the ground several times with its eyes closed. When
this little ceremony is over, it stretches out and, with an expression of
innocent candour, rests its muzzle on its front paws and goes to sleep! Isn’t
that extraordinary? There are so many things on this earth that we still don’t
know about, but we are sure to discover them all in the long run!
So... there you have a few words about this question of the right attitude. I
beg you: take them to heart and get into the habit of practising this attitude of
respect for the sacred, if only for a few minutes every day, so as to restore
your links with the Lord.
The Bonfin,2 4 August 1974
II
affinity: peace’ and chap. 6: ‘The law of affinity: the true religion’.
2 ‘The Bonfin’ is the name of a property near Fréjus on the French Riviera.
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
Melchizedek brings the bread and wine to Abraham – Gen. 14:18-20
‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood’ – John 6:53
1 See Angels and other Mysteries of The Tree of Life, Izvor Coll. n°
236, chap. 10: ‘The cosmic family and the mystery of the trinity’.
2 See The Second Birth – Love, Wisdom, Truth, Complete Works, vol.
vol. 8, chap. 10: ‘Comment les deux principes sont contenus dans la bouche’.
4 See The Philosopher’s Stone – in the Gospels and in Alchemy,
Izvor Coll. n° 241, chap. 9: ‘The work of the alchemist: 3 over 4’.
Chapter Three
The sun is the source of love
The Master reads the Meditation for the day:
‘The source of universal love is the sun. The sun floods the whole of
nature with its particles of light and love, and man and woman receive these
particles through contact with the earth, with stones, plants, animals and with
their fellow human beings, for men and women also possess particles from
the sun, although very few. And it is because the few that they do possess are
never sufficient that they have to look elsewhere: what they have is not
complete, what they give and receive from each other leaves an unpleasant
taste in the mouth; this is why there are so many separations, divorces and
crimes.
‘True love can be found in abundance in the sun; that is where you must
go and look for it. If you don’t drink from the fountainhead, you will have to
make do with a few drops of dew that have condensed on a leaf here or a
petal there... and that is never enough. Certainly, there are certain areas of the
body in which a little love has been hidden, but if you are content with that
and never look anywhere else, you will continually be hungry and thirsty. All
lovers experience this: they have a constant sensation of inner hunger; they
are never completely satisfied. The only answer is to go to the source and
drink from that immense love which calms the pangs of hunger and thirst of
all creation. Then, if you want to love a man or woman, do so; but if you
want to be totally fulfilled, you must first go and look for love at its source.’
I am sure that, listening to this passage, you did not really understand
much. Go and look for universal love in the sun? What an odd idea: who
would want to do that? Whereas a man or a woman... Ah, that, at least, means
something to you. But not the sun! And why, may I ask, is it so rare to find
anyone, man or woman, who is truly happy? Oh, to be sure, people can be
happy for a few days or weeks, but it never lasts. In fact, if they were
completely sincere and honest, they would admit that they often have to
pretend to be satisfied and fulfilled for their partner’s sake. They rub along,
trying to make their few brief moments of pleasure last as long as possible,
but, in time, the emptiness, the pit, grows to such proportions that they are
forced to acknowledge that they have made a mistake, that they cannot go on
any longer as they are, that they are going to have to separate. And everybody
finds this quite normal: ‘What can you expect? It’s no good hoping that love
will last for ever!’ And yet, in spite of their conviction that their love will not
last, they still feel they have to swear that it will! In other words, you have to
lie and the whole of life is simply a comedy – or perhaps I should say a
tragedy, a tragi-comedy! And what amazes me most in all this is that people
continue to nurse the unlikely but persistent hope that they will find true love,
if not the first time then perhaps the second, and if not the second then the
third. I find this hope truly astonishing!
What human beings mistakenly think of as love is often no more than a
taste for sensations, powerful emotions, volcanic eruptions. No, all these
things are physiological, anatomical, biological or phantasmagorical
manifestations, but they are not love! You will ask, ‘But then, what is love?’
Ah, if I only knew, I would tell you, but I still don’t know! My whole life has
been spent trying to find out what love is, and every day I say to myself, ‘Ah,
at last I understand what love is.’ And then, the very next day, I understand a
little more than the day before, and once again I think, ‘That’s it! This time I
really have understood.’ The one thing I know for certain is that love is
infinite and, therefore, that I can never claim to know it. The most I can say is
that I am getting to know it; that’s all! Whereas you know what love is, don’t
you? Well, I congratulate you! Be kind and tell me what it is, because I am
still not sure. It is so immense, so rich and varied, so beautiful and powerful,
that it is going to take me hundreds and hundreds more years to know it
properly. But, there is just one question in my mind: why, if you know love,
are you still unhappy, ill and in darkness? This shows that the love you know
is not the real thing.
Love brings with it the gifts of eternal life, splendour and light; if you do
not possess these things, it means that you know nothing about love. Love
comes from very high up, for true love is God himself. This is what human
beings don’t know: what they call love is simply some very limited,
deformed, brutish manifestations of the energy of love in certain parts of their
body: that is not really love. If you want to know love you have to go and
find it at its source, and its source is God, and God’s representative in our
universe is the sun. This is why we must go to the sun to find the love that is
life, the love that nourishes the whole of creation.1
The lower kind of love only asks for pleasure, satisfaction, excitement and
titillation. In fact it is not love at all; it is an appetite, a way of possessing
others and, sometimes, a form of violence. And yet this is the so-called love
that everyone clings to; so much so, in fact, that they recruit the assistance of
medicines, pills, hormones, glandular extracts and so on, in order to prolong
their sexual activity and enable them to go on behaving like animals until
they are ninety-nine years old! Whereas, for my part, I want to lead you to
regions in which you will really and truly know what love is. The source, the
only fountainhead of love, is God himself. But the sun is also an immense,
generous source, for it is the image of the divine Source. Look around you!
See how the whole of creation benefits from the sun; it is the love pouring
from the sun that instils life into the grasses, plants and trees that are
continually exposed to its rays, and from which we, in turn, receive life. This
is why a disciple who wants to know true life, true, divine love, turns to the
source, the sun. By meditating on the sun, by looking at it and loving it, they
receive it more and more deeply within themselves. Like a fruit exposed to
the light of the sun, they soak up particles of the sun’s vitality so as to be able
to distribute them to others in order to enliven and enlighten them. This is
true love. True love is not when men and women embrace and sleep together.
That is what everybody talks and writes about; that is the sexual, sensual love
glorified and immortalized in song. But that kind of love crushes and
annihilates, for it is an enormously powerful disintegrating force. Yes, you
can see this in the fact that once you begin to burn with this fire, it melts
certain materials, the most precious materials of all, those of the brain. You
have certainly never thought about it in this way, but sexual love is a foundry.
A purely sensual love is a disintegrating force that melts our quintessence; it
is the fire of hell. Whereas the other kind of fire, the fire of the sun, will not
destroy you; on the contrary, it will give you life and light.2
As a matter of fact, the rays flowing ceaselessly from the sun to fertilize
the earth and all creatures in the solar system are of the same quintessence as
the fluid with which a man fertilizes a woman, the difference being that the
sun’s rays are etheric and luminous, whereas a man’s quintessence is
condensed. But initiates, who have pierced the secret of sublimation and
continually work to send their energies heavenwards, reach the point where
they are able to project and radiate emanations as subtle as those of the sun.
This is why it is so important to live a pure, luminous, virginal life. There is
no danger that this will make the spring of love dry up. No, there is no
cessation of life or activity. On the contrary, everything continues to function,
but differently: one’s emanations become so subtle, so pure, that they can do
good to all creatures. You still have no notion of the power of absolute purity,
of how it changes the nature of these emanations and makes them subtler.
This explains how they can be ceaselessly disseminated (just as the sun’s
radiations never cease) but, of course, not on the physical level. What I am
telling you here deserves your fullest attention and your most sincere respect.
Obviously, the sun doesn’t mean anything to you at the moment, but you
will see for yourself: when you have shed too many tears and been burnt too
often, you will turn to the sun for a love that never hurts or despoils you but,
on the contrary, only gives. Why do people never turn to the sun? Because
the sun never makes anyone suffer, and they need to suffer! And where do
they find suffering? With men and women. Yes, you can be sure of meeting
suffering and all kinds of other problems and misfortunes with other human
beings, but not with the sun... unless, of course, you forget to wear a hat: then
you will get sunstroke!
That reminds me of an incident that happened a long time ago, about
thirty-five years ago, in fact. I used to be invited to gatherings of writers,
astrologers, artists and so on, and of course I used to have very varied
discussions with the other guests. One day a young girl came up to me and
asked me something and we got into conversation. Well, one thing led to
another until we got on to the subject of love. I don’t remember exactly what
arguments I gave her, but I remember that she was very pleased with my
explanations, although at the time I did not really understand why. Some time
later, however, at another of these meetings, a writer came up and started to
shout abuse at me, in front of everybody. I had no idea what made him do
this until, at the end, he told me that, after the conversation we had had
together, that young girl, with whom he had been practising sex magic, had
walked out on him, because she had understood how dangerous it was. So
then, for all to hear, I said to him, ‘Listen, Sir. I had no idea that that girl
belonged to you or that you had so many rights over her. Can you convict me
of a crime if, without knowing it, I saved her from your clutches? The sun has
the right to shine, and anyone who is not wearing a hat will get sunstroke.
You should have worn a hat!’ The man was flabbergasted by what I said, but
everyone else had a good laugh.
So, there you have a few words about true love. As long as you have not
established a bond with the source, the sun, your love will always be inferior,
an animal love, but once you have this relationship with the sun it will begin
to be more elevated and become more and more impersonal. (This use of the
word ‘impersonal’ may be misunderstood if it is not placed in the context of
Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov’s teaching concerning the two natures in man
and woman: the human and divine, the lower self and the higher Self or, as he
terms them, the personality and the individuality. For a fuller treatment of the
subject, see The Key to the Problems of Existence, Complete Works, vol. 11,
and Man’s Two Natures, Human and Divine, Izvor Collection, No. 213.)
Besides, look at the last sentence of the meditation we read at the beginning
of this lecture. It says, ‘Then, if you want to love a man or woman, do so; but
if you want to be totally fulfilled, you must first go and look for love at its
source.’ It is the cosmic, universal, impersonal love of the sun, therefore,
which acts on and improves and ennobles the other kind of love. One day you
will love your partner differently: you will think of them and love them in a
way that does them good and gives them happiness, beauty, elevation and
success, and not only in the hope of satisfying your own needs at their
expense. Once you have found the source, you will never be able to love in
the same way again; when you are with your husband or wife, blessings,
currents and rays so beneficial and luminous will flow from you that you
yourself will be astonished.
Never forget that true love is also light, eternal life and limitless power.
Love, true love, is a power and, at the same time, a light. The simple fact that,
if you detest someone, you only see what is bad in them, their faults and
failings and vices, but that, if you love them, you see all that is marvellous
and divine in them, shows that what I am saying is true. Yes, because love is
clear-sighted; it sees only the best in people. When you stop loving, you are
blinded and can no longer see someone’s good points. If I tell you that love
enlightens you and makes you clear-sighted it is because that is the solemn
truth! And if you love the whole world, if you love the whole of nature and
the whole universe, you will begin to see and understand things that you have
never understood before. Yes, love helps us to understand.
The Bonfin, 20 September 1975
1 See The Splendour of Tiphareth – The Yoga of the Sun, Complete
Works, vol. 10, chap. 4: ‘The sun reflects the blessed trinity’ and chap. 15:
‘The sun is in the image and likeness of God’.
2 See above, chap. 21: ‘Three kinds of fire’.
Chapter Four
The goal of love is light
The subject of love is immense and extraordinarily rich. It can be looked
at – indeed, it has already been looked at – from many different points of
view: organic, physiological, psychological, social, moral and religious. But
the one point of view that is still virtually unknown, because it has never
really been revealed to men and women, is the initiatic point of view.
I have heard about the very daring experiments that some American
doctors and researchers have been doing recently. In order to study the
physiological phenomena that occur when humans make love, they wire up
different parts of the bodies of two volunteers, a man and woman, to various
recording machines, on which they record graphs and curves, which vary as
these two people continue to make love... entangled in a mass of wires! It
seems that there are plenty of ‘emancipated’ people in the United States who
have liberated themselves from all the old moral taboos in this area, so that
there is never any lack of volunteers: hundreds of people are ready to offer
their services! As for the researchers, we would probably do better not to ask
if their eyes remain glued to the signals on their screens! And, of course,
nobody knows what goes on in them: all kinds of interesting reactions, no
doubt. What a pity that they themselves are not wired up to the same kind of
instruments! But, however much they find out, they will still be a long way
from discovering all that Initiatic Science can teach us about love.
Even though scientists know all about the biological structure of men and
women, they will never really know the whole truth unless and until they also
study the question of radiations and emanations, of man and woman’s subtle,
etheric, fluidic projections. And, so far, of course, they have no inkling that
such things even exist. But it is precisely these dimensions of humans that are
the most important, and that is why they interest me more than all the rest.
What really matters is to know where all the energies released in the act of
love go and what results they produce, what damage and destruction they
wreak or what good, constructive effects they have. Who will get hold of all
these energies? Will they be like volcanic eruptions raining ash and lava on
people’s heads and burying whole cities alive (symbolically speaking!)? Ah,
this is what men and women should know: if all they are interested in is
pleasure, entities of a lower order, certain elementals, certain natural
subterranean forces, will take the energies they project and feast on them, to
their cost.
The initiates learned all this a very long time ago. You must know that
when men and women are only interested in experiencing pleasure, when the
goal of their love-making is a base one, they are inviting entities from lower
worlds to enter them. And what havoc and devastation they can cause in a
very short space of time! The energies of love are divine and they must return
to the divine world. When lovers are conscious of this, then all kinds of
forces in nature contribute to channelling their energies and using them for
the good of humanity and of the whole cosmos, for they are extraordinarily
vital, living forces! So what matters above all else is the goal, and if a man
and woman are fully conscious of the exalted nature of their union, the
energies they release can accomplish great things. Angels and higher entities
benefit from them and are drawn to help the lovers to grow constantly in
beauty and strength. A whole science exists in this connection and was
known in ancient Egypt and India and, particularly, in Tibet. Those who put
these exalted truths into practice were even able to prolong their own lives
and obtain certain powers, for the power of love is the strongest power in the
world. No other power can surpass or even equal it. Love is almighty.
When I glance through certain recently published books or articles on the
subject of love, I often wonder why their authors never put their questions to
initiates; they confine their surveys to the common herd, to those who make
love like animals. The conclusions drawn from their inquiries are perfectly
truthful, of course, since they are based on the experience of a great many
people, but, at the same time, they are false because they do not include the
experience of those who are the most highly evolved. They should be asked
for their opinion too. I am sure that, if they gave it, it would be a revelation to
many! In the meantime, doctors tell young people to make love, in the belief,
apparently, that it will help them to overcome certain nervous disorders! I
have often had occasion to talk to people who had been told this, and many of
those who had followed the advice were in a worse state than before. Why do
people give advice like that when they know so little about the structure of a
human being? It may well be a solution for some, but not for everybody.
When God created man and woman, he equipped them with an
extraordinary system of pipes and ducts and ramifications through which
their sexual energy can find its way to the higher levels, if they know how to
guide it. All this equipment is still there, every man and woman possesses it;
the only trouble is that it is rusted or disconnected or blocked up. When God
first created humans he provided them with a structure of such complexity
and perfection that, when scientists finally begin to discover it, they will be
thunderstruck. But, for the time being, since the channels I am talking about
are of a fluidic nature and, consequently, even subtler and more fragile than
those of the nervous system, clairvoyants are the only ones who can actually
see them. They can see the path that these energies follow as they move up
from the lowest level, taking nourishment all the way to the brain.1
If you do not succeed in sublimating these energies immediately, there is
no reason to be discouraged. You must never give up on the pretext that it is
difficult. You must keep trying and trying, tirelessly repeating your efforts,
like a spider weaving its web: the wind keeps blowing it away, but the spider
keeps on trying, and eventually the wind dies down, and it manages to create
a perfect web. Whereas, if disciples fail in their first attempt, they
immediately give up their ideal and fall back into a life of mediocrity... all
because they have failed once! But a failure is of no consequence: you must
get up and carry on!
Most human beings are content to satisfy their bodily appetites in their
love-making. They don’t give a fig for their souls and spirits. They lavish all
their care and attention on the body, admiring and caressing it, talking to it,
embracing it... doing the most extravagant things with it, simply in order to
experience the greatest possible amount of pleasure. It is all the same to them
if, as a result, their soul and spirit suffer torment and darkness. I have never
told you that you should not love each other a great deal. On the contrary,
you must give your partner a great deal of loving, but on a higher level, not
only on the physical level, not only by indulging in excitement and
satisfaction and then sleeping it off! But nobody has any desire to rise to a
higher level; instead of preparing themselves for the sexual act in the full
awareness of its importance, they are always in a hurry, in a hurry to get
sucked down into a swamp, and in too much of a hurry to stop and think.
Look at the way most people ‘make love’: the hasty, feverish gestures, the
eyes burning with lust. Men think only of satisfying their appetite, of tearing
and devouring their prey... and women are stupid enough to be pleased when
the look in a man’s eyes betrays his desire to devour them! If they were really
evolved they would be horrified by the fate in store for them, because that
look shows that he is prepared to plunder and lay waste to them. But no, that
is what they want; they revel in it. In fact, most women are not too pleased if
a man looks at them with respect and wonder, with light and purity in his
gaze. They think, ‘Hmm, I can’t expect to get much out of him!’, and they
leave him. A woman instinctively wants to feel like dough in the hands of a
baker: she wants to be handled roughly, ill-treated and tormented. That is
what she enjoys; to be looked at with respect and heavenly purity is not much
to her liking. There are exceptions, of course, but generally speaking this is
all too true!
If you determine to remain clear-headed and to use your love to
accomplish a truly spiritual work, if you decide to drink from higher waters
instead of from the stagnant, tadpole-infested pools below (symbolically
speaking), when you look at each other after making love, your eyes will be
so filled with light and splendour that, for days on end, you will be unable to
forget it.
So, you must not make pleasure your goal. Of course, you are going to ask
me what is left if you do not look for pleasure. The truth is that you will have
pleasure. In fact, your pleasure will be ten times greater than any you would
have otherwise, but it will be of a purer kind, and the all-important thing is
that you will not have burned up all your energies. The result will be quite
different. The result will be light, light and still more light! And heaven itself
will rejoice at the beauty of your love.2
I can already hear some of you saying, ‘But, Master, it is utterly
impossible to do what you are asking. Everybody knows that being
clearheaded stifles pleasure, that the more the conscious mind is awake the
less pleasure you get!’ No, the truth is that our mental powers have been
given to us so that we can live true love more perfectly; without thought, the
primitive, animal part of us would hold sway over our whole being. It is
thought, the intelligence in us acting through our powers of thought, that
should control, guide and sublimate our energies. Yes, I know: most human
beings find their pleasure in the volcanic eruptions of love, and they don’t
realize that these are its most costly and destructive manifestations, that, in
giving free rein to them, they burn up all their most precious inner materials.
All their ideas and plans for the future, all their poetic inspiration, is
consumed in the flames, and it is only later that they realize that they have no
more impetus or enthusiasm. Whereas if, on the contrary, your mental
faculties remain awake and lucid in the midst of your loving, if your mind is
alert and in control to guide the forces you have released, you will not, of
course, know the coarse, crude, brutish pleasure experienced by the majority
of human beings – a pleasure that is totally beyond their control, in any case,
and devoid of all nobility or spirituality – but, thanks to the presence and
control of thought, your love-making will become a spiritual work, and
pleasure will be transformed into joy, wonder, rapture and ecstasy. Yes, all
because there is light! It is such a pity that human beings are not willing to
make the effort to reach the point where they would find out for themselves
how they could transform their love. Even if their present manner of loving
gives them consolation and relief and frees them from unbearable tensions, in
a matter of months or of a few years they lose all their light and lustre and
inspiration. Whereas those who make up their mind to use this extraordinarily
powerful, primitive force that God has given them, for a momentous,
heavenly purpose, experience other joys and pleasures. They gaze with awe
and wonder on the discoveries unfolding ceaselessly before them.
My dear brothers and sisters, what I am saying is that you must not stop
half-way. You must go beyond pleasure; you must not stagnate on too low a
level; you must climb up through the clouds and contemplate the light of the
sun. Whatever you do, in all your actions, never forget to act with a luminous
goal in mind, for you must no longer be content to remain in the shadow of
the clouds. Whatever you do, whether you are eating, walking or kissing
someone, keep in mind your goal of light. Never do anything just for your
own satisfaction. Humankind is rushing towards destruction, precisely
because men and women seek only their own satisfaction. You will object,
‘But if we never get any pleasure or satisfaction out of what we do, it all
becomes pointless!’ Ah, but that is where you are wrong! For everything is
connected: when light and warmth, that is to say, intelligence and love, are
present, pleasure and enjoyment necessarily follow. It is just that the quality
of the pleasure, the nature and intensity of the pleasure, changes. So, meditate
and reflect on all this, and never forget that you must work your way through
to light. If your loving produces no light, it is a sign that it is not worth going
on with it. You will say, ‘Well, it hasn’t worked the first ten times, but
perhaps the eleventh time...’ No, you will only wear yourselves out and get
nowhere!
If you listen to me and put what I say into practice, you will find that your
whole life changes and becomes wonderful. In fact, I know that some already
feel that; they have told me so. You would be amazed if you saw some of the
letters I get! They are so profound and full of poetry, so full of intelligence
and beauty, that I sometimes feel like reading them to you so that you can see
for yourselves what goes on in the hearts and souls of our brothers and
sisters. I am not going to do so for the moment, for you might think that I was
doing so from personal vanity. But, one day, I shall read you all that, and you
will see what gems they contain! Nobody could write such letters if the new
life had not begun to thrust a tiny shoot out of the ground, like a snowdrop!
Look at a snowdrop: what strength of mind, what power it must have to be
able to command the snow, and even the earth, to open up and let it out! And
yet it is such a tiny, fragile plant, with petals so delicate that the slightest little
thing bruises them. But the snow and soil obey it and let it out to grow and
blossom. It is quite amazing! What is this power that obliges the earth to
open, this extraordinary power hidden in that tiny, fragile plant that
overcomes all obstacles? Yes, the power of love overcomes all obstacles.
And what about you? Aren’t you far stronger and more powerful than a
snowdrop? You are, indeed, but you don’t know how to use your power! You
have to command the difficult circumstances, obstacles and barriers that
threaten your progress, to open up and let you through: ‘Clear the way! Open
up and let me out. I mean to rise, to climb upwards, to pray and sing songs of
praise to my Creator!’ Be obstinate, insist, persevere, keep struggling like a
snowdrop! In the long run you will emerge, you will float high above the
earth, you will overcome all obstacles.
I know that the conditions you have to live in are difficult, but you must
never forget that when the hardships of the world weigh you down and rob
you of your magnetism and light until you feel as though you were being
buried alive, you can come back here, to the Brotherhood, and renew and
strengthen your contact with the divine life that we are all working for. Here,
you can restore the vital link and replenish your supplies of vigour and
endurance before going back into the world to face your difficulties. Only
those whose consciousness is wakeful and who remain constantly in touch,
constantly in communication with the exalted beings who have gone before
us on the path of evolution, will continue to cling to the divine world and
draw strength and the help they need from it. If you sever this bond, you may,
for a time, feel free and liberated and, as you will still have a few crumbs of
food left over, you will have something to nibble on. Yes, but once those few
crumbs have gone there will be nothing to replace them, for they are fluidic
particles received from a higher level of existence; when your supply is
exhausted you will inevitably start to disintegrate. Don’t count too much on
your own resources; they are not unlimited. Or rather, I should say: count on
your own resources, but only to the extent to which you continue to draw
sustenance from the one, inexhaustible Source.
When we are all here together, life becomes truly beautiful, because
together we can achieve something fantastic. You know that engineers
construct huge batteries and accumulators to store up electricity, which can
then be used in many different ways. Well, we too, when we are all together,
form a battery capable of producing enough power to provoke repercussions
throughout the whole world. It is men and women’s ideas that are the real
batteries, and we must connect them all together, plug them in to the mains
and put them into service. But before we can do that we must be sure that our
batteries are sturdy enough to take the extremely powerful currents that are
waiting to pass through them. This is what I have in mind, and every now and
then without your realizing it I make a trial run and connect up some cells to
the mains on high. At the moment, you come here to pray and meditate and
sing together, and you cannot see the results of your work. But look at all the
changes taking place in the world: a new light is dawning, new ideas are
beginning to spread, and nobody knows where they are coming from.
The Brotherhood is a unique power, and once you are conscious of the
work you are doing you will see what it is accomplishing. This is the work
you are being prepared for. Physicists build all sorts of batteries and
accumulators, but they have not yet learned that the best of all batteries is the
human brain and that, when it is connected to the mains and given the right
orientation, it is capable of producing a prodigious amount of energy. You
are destined to accomplish a work of stupendous proportions, my dear
brothers and sisters, not just to come here to sing for a little while and then to
yawn and go away again. We must build up a battery of exceptional,
powerful brains. Stop wasting your energies, take care of them and use them
only for this unique, gigantic task. An opportunity like this presents itself
only very rarely in the course of history.
Sèvres, 13 April 1968
1 See Man’s Subtle Bodies and Centres – the Aura, the Solar
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
‘Everyone who looks at a woman with lust…’ – Matt. 5:28
1 See La pédagogie initiatique, Complete Works, vol. 28, chap. 3:
‘L’imagination formatrice’.
2 See Cosmic Balance – The Secret of Polarity, Izvor Coll. n° 237,
If religious people, mystics and puritans think that they have to let their
springs dry up and become eunuchs and infertile, barren wildernesses, that is
their business, but true initiates have quite a different philosophy. What can
you hope for from a eunuch, after all? Initiates, on the contrary, do
everything they can to ensure that their spring never dries up. This is why
they are always creative: their thoughts are constantly at work in the invisible
world, sustaining and disseminating life and light.
Today I am ready to explain to you how to keep that vitality, how to
preserve this divine, inner source that is their most precious possession, and
which some misguided people have attempted to stifle, thinking that, in doing
so, they would become saintly and pure. When I was very young, I thought so
too, but as time goes on, I see the truth more clearly: it is precisely our sexual
energy that can help us to attain saintliness. In the absence of life and love, in
the absence of that constant flow of energy, there is no such thing as purity.
Many men have deluded themselves into thinking that they were pure and
chaste because they spurned women. The truth is that they had become like
dried-up springs, and when a spring ceases to give fresh flowing water, rot
and putrefaction set in. If you want to wash away your impurities, you need
running water, not stagnant water. For my part, I believe that this water is
capable of purifying, vivifying, inspiring and resuscitating human beings, but
only if the flow is channelled and given direction by a high ideal; otherwise it
will produce nothing but floods and disaster. Young people and adults alike
need to be instructed in this new philosophy, a new philosophy that has
always existed, to be sure, but only for those exceptional beings who
understood the true nature of purity, love and saintliness. One day, the light
will shine on the whole of humanity, and when that day comes men and
women will love each other without negative effects of any kind; they will
overflow with happiness and their lives will be full of music and poetry.
Now, I want to talk to you about the vestal virgins of the past. I have
already told you that their task – or rather, what was believed to be their task
– was pointless and illogical. Was it really necessary to have so many young
maidens just to keep the flame burning day and night? The truth is that all
that was symbolic. The fire that they had to protect and sustain was not a
physical flame. It was something quite different: the sacred fire of the
initiates. The vestal virgins were carefully selected and instructed in the rules
of absolute purity, for there are certain subtle particles, a perfume, that
emanates only from an absolutely pure, chaste woman, and it is these
emanations that the initiates needed to breathe. The initiates needed these
feminine emanations, just as we all need sound, colours and perfumes. They
provide us with a stimulus. God created heaven and earth, and if he created
the earth it is because it is necessary. Yes, the earth is necessary on condition
that we take it in homoeopathic doses. All would-be spiritual people, idealists
and mystics who have rejected absolutely everything that comes from the
earth are in error. The earth is a living being that thinks and acts, a being with
which we can communicate and which can heal us. The initiates, therefore,
who knew that a woman could emanate these very precious particles, were
able to use them for their work.
I can hear you exclaiming, ‘Do you mean to say that even saints, even
initiates, are susceptible to women?’ Of course; why not? What do you know
about initiates? People seem to have the ridiculous notion that they don’t
have stomachs or sexual organs like other people, that they never eat or
sleep! What nonsense! Initiates are just like everyone else, with the same
stomachs, the same genitals and the same susceptibilities. Perhaps you will
say, ‘I’m sure they would be furious to hear you talking about them like that!’
On the contrary, true initiates don’t put on an act; it is other people who
invent ridiculous stories about them. Initiates are like everybody else; they
too have to eat and drink, they too feel fatigue, and they too are aware of the
charm of certain women. The difference lies in the fact that they do not
succumb to those charms, for they are only interested in what is constructive,
eternal and divine.
Initiates understand that a woman is a laboratory, a flower whose secret
essences perfume the air, and that when certain women such as the vestals
learn to emanate this pure perfume, they become conductors through which
the divine Mother manifests herself. An initiate who breathes this fragrance,
therefore, is exalted by it and becomes capable of releasing the powers
slumbering within him and of using them to do good. Other men, of course,
who know nothing of this science, are content to be aroused, but they do
nothing good with it. No, initiates do not despise woman; on the contrary,
they educate her to become a true instrument of inspiration.
There have been women in the past – their cases are a matter of historical
record – who gave off the scent of flowers: violets, jasmine or roses, for
instance. In fact, one day, years ago, I was on an excursion with some
brothers and sisters in Lyons, and one of them was a very young girl who
smelled of a flower whose name I have forgotten, but which grows high up in
the mountains. It was the purest and most exquisite, most captivating scent
imaginable. To begin with, I thought it must be an illusion; but no, the scent
really came from that girl. I asked her if she used perfume and she assured
me that she did not, and I know that she was incapable of lying to me! Her
case was a real enigma: how could she give off a scent like that? To be sure,
she was pure, she had never been touched by a man, but that was not enough
to explain the scent. I have met lots of young girls who were just as fresh and
innocent, but none of them emanated any perfume; this girl must really have
had an exceptional structure. I said to myself, ‘Heavens, if only all girls could
emanate such perfume, the whole world would be bowled over!’ If there is
one girl in the world who is capable of distilling this scent, it means that
others could do so as well. But, of course, this implies changing radically a
whole way of life.
And while we are on the subject: why do you think that most women are
so fond of wearing perfume? It is something that comes from a very long way
back, from the time when God entrusted the care of the plants in the garden
of Eden to Eve. Eve was the first botanist ‒ her task was to look after the
trees and flowers ‒ and Adam was the first zoologist ‒ he looked after the
animals. Eve took such good care of the flowers that she herself emanated the
same scents; she became a flower. And then, after the fall, when Adam and
Eve had been driven from paradise, Eve lost her capacity to produce scent
and, as she missed it so much, she looked for it elsewhere and began to use
the perfumes she could gather from flowers. Before the fall she emanated
beautiful scents herself, because she possessed the qualities and virtues that
manifest on the physical plane in the form of perfumes. On the higher plane,
each perfume is a virtue; it becomes a perfume only when it manifests on the
physical plane, just as a vice on the higher plane becomes a sickening stench
on the physical plane.
When women wear perfume it is because they yearn to recapture the
natural perfume they have lost. But this is not the best way to do so. I have no
objection to their putting on perfume and make-up and spending time at the
beautician’s, but if they could be taught to cultivate certain qualities and
virtues, they would recapture their own perfume, their own original beauty.
Don’t count on beauty salons, my dear sisters! There is another kind of
beauty salon here, and nobody is going to ask you to spend a fortune on
treatments that last only twenty-four hours and take all the bloom off your
cheeks! Yes, this is the only authentic beauty salon – no need to look any
further – just as long as you believe what I am telling you and cultivate these
qualities and virtues and forces, and allow them to develop and flower within
you.
Woman is a pure marvel; nothing in the world will persuade me to change
my opinion about her. The day I lose my good opinion of woman, that will be
the end of me! You will say, ‘But you would be purer, then!’ No, on the
contrary: I would be dirtier. It is thanks to my present attitude that I can
purify myself by remembering that women are daughters of God and that
they have the possibility of being channels of heavenly inspiration. In this
way I evolve and advance. As for the others, let them stay asleep if they want
to! Spiritual people who spurn women do not have the matter they need to
accomplish anything. It is woman who contributes matter, but we have to go
and look for it on the highest levels where it is subtlest. Of course, I realize
that the subtle dimension has no appeal for a lot of men. It is more
pleasurable, apparently, to get one’s hands onto something solid! Well, I am
not going to argue with them about that, but it would certainly be better if
they did a little work on the subtler aspects as well.
It is women who are going to transform the whole world. If it has not
already happened, it is because they are not yet aware of their mission: they
spend their time and energies on clothes and jewellery and other trivia of the
kind, instead of thinking about improving the whole of humankind. But the
world needs women who make up their minds to use the power they have
over men, not to seduce them but to make them nobler beings. For instance,
why shouldn’t a girl refuse to be kissed by a young man until he gives up
smoking, or until he cures himself of his rude ways and lack of respect. What
wouldn’t he be ready to do, poor wretch, for just one kiss! But women are so
‘easy’ nowadays that they offer themselves, and men have no reason to
change or improve. Women should join forces, like the women in
Aristophane’s play, Lysistrata, who refused to let their husbands make love
to them as long as they continued to make war. Lysistrata is a comedy, of
course, but the idea behind it is very profound. Women have tremendous
power over men, but they have never made up their minds to use it for good,
because this would involve some little sacrifices. They are weak and give
way to their lords and masters because they want them to be like that. In fact,
because of this, I know that what I say is not likely to have much effect, but
perhaps a few women will begin to think about it and to understand that they
must get this high ideal firmly anchored in their heart and mind.
It is said that it was Eve’s fault that the human race was driven from
paradise. A new Eve must come forward now, to repair the original fault and
lead man back to paradise.1 This new Eve is the new type of woman that is
being created in the Universal White Brotherhood. There is a cabaret in Paris,
apparently, called ‘The New Eve’, but that is not the one I am talking about!
No, I am talking about a new class of women, who will decide to dedicate
themselves to contributing to a divine ideal.
Initiatic Science teaches that man is linked to the spirit, whereas woman is
linked to matter. Obviously, this does not mean that man is wholly spirit and
woman wholly matter: both are a combination of matter and spirit, but
symbolically woman is more orientated to matter and man to the spirit. We
see proof of this in the fact that, in order to create a child together, the man
contributes the spirit, that is, life, the germ, whereas the woman contributes
the matter. Woman does not create, she forms; man does not form, he creates.
This is why I said that all those spiritual people who despised women and
behaved as though there were only men in the world and everything should
be done by men were in error.
I can hear some of you saying, ‘But women are such liars! And they’re so
inquisitive, flighty, flirtatious and treacherous! You can’t trust them an inch!’
Well, let me ask you a question: ‘If women have so many faults, how is it
that the divine Mother continues to give them the gifts of charm, beauty and
seductiveness?’ Yes, think about that. If you ask the divine Mother, she will
tell you that these feminine failings are only superficial and that they have
been given to women to teach men a lesson but that, one day, women will
change. When men change, women will change too. In the meantime, their
faults help them to defend themselves; without them, they could not have
survived. It is the divine Mother, therefore, who chose these means to prevent
these sweet creatures from disappearing altogether. She told them, ‘Go on,
tell a few lies, deceive people a little, be a bit flirtatious...’ and, thanks to
these methods, women have managed to survive! In the eyes of the divine
Mother, these faults are negligible compared to all the positive things that
women do, compared to all their love and the sacrifices they make for their
children, and she is willing to overlook them. Yes, this is the absolute truth:
women’s failings are the only arms they have. If they had not had them they
would have lost everything and been wiped out, because men took everything
for themselves, even the right to speak! Men sat at table and women stood
respectfully in the background, waiting on them. They were obliged
constantly to devise ways to survive, not so much for themselves as for their
children! Men were always out hunting or at war; they never looked after
their children. If women had not done so, there would be no human race
today! In comparison with all that, you see, their inquisitiveness, lies and
flirtatiousness are really negligible!
But some people always think themselves wiser and more intelligent than
God. They think that God made a great mistake when he created woman:
they would have known better! The truth is that none of the thinkers and
mystics who did away with woman and refused to include her in their
philosophical scheme of things ever succeeded in giving physical form to
their ideas. They themselves did not have the capacity to do so, and they
would have nothing to do with those who had. It is woman who holds the
keys to matter, not man, and this is why only women are capable of
establishing the kingdom of God and his righteousness on earth. The idea, the
spiritual seed, must come from a great initiate, and all the women of the
world must envelop this seed, this child-to-be, in their subtle emanations and
quintessence. At the moment, women are useless because, instead of uniting
in order to accomplish this ideal, each one is busy seducing one individual for
her own pleasure, for her own little domestic bliss; in fact they are at war
with each other, rivalling with each other for the attentions of the man they
want. As long as women are disunited and straying in all directions, as long
as they are more interested in their own pleasure than in establishing the
kingdom of God on earth, the task will never be done.2
Of course, they are not always to blame. The only prospect that has ever
been offered to them is marriage and children, and they do their duty as best
they can. But it is time, now, to move every woman in the world. And, I
promise you, every one of them will be affected! They will be made to see
what they are capable of achieving, and once they are conscious of their own
powers, you will soon see the results! Men can have ideas, but if the women
are not there to give them form, those ideas will achieve nothing. This is how
it has always been throughout history: it was always women who achieved
things. Men contributed the ideas, but without women to put them into effect,
nothing could have been achieved. An idea can be truly wonderful, but it has
to be materialized, otherwise it remains in its own sphere and never comes
down to earth. Only women have the power to bring an idea down to earth
and make it a visible, tangible reality.
As you very well know, even a woman who has never been to school – not
even to kindergarten – is perfectly capable of producing a child with two eyes
and ears, a nose, a mouth and so on, all perfectly formed and in working
order. She may know nothing about chemistry, physics, politics or
economics, and yet she can produce a child whose limbs and organs display a
beautiful economical organization. Can you see all that and still tell me you
understand what a woman is? Where does she keep the knowledge that
enables her to combine all the chemical elements in such perfect proportions?
She may be quite incapable of doing a mathematical operation, but she is
capable of something that no mathematician could ever hope to achieve!
Sèvres, 1 January 1970
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden – Gen. 2:25 and 3
II
I would like to add a few words to what I was saying this morning, for I
know that you are thinking to yourselves, ‘How can you talk about vestal
virgins in the 20th century? They don’t exist anymore!’ Ah, but they do; even
now, in the 20th century, they still exist. Of course, there is no sacred flame
to be tended any longer; they are not subject to the same rules as in the past,
but in their minds they treasure the same ideal of emanating all that is most
heavenly.
I leave all women free to do what they want, I never force or oblige
anyone. I simply tell you what things were like in the past and what they
could be like today, but I am perfectly aware that very few will be willing to
dedicate themselves exclusively to light, purity and freedom. Even the sisters
in the Brotherhood: if they want to live like everybody else, they are free to
do so. Nobody is going to stop them, but they will suffer like everybody else;
they will have the same worries and the same disappointments as everybody
else!
It is true that, in the past, many girls, who chose not to marry because they
wanted to lead chaste, virginal lives, became soured and embittered and
spiteful. But that was because this question of chastity was not properly
understood. If a woman lives in true chastity she does not have to be
unhappy, she does not have to shrivel up and be completely unproductive.
Even if she never marries or has physical relations with a man, she can still
be extraordinarily beautiful, vital and expressive: it all depends on how she
understands things. Naturally, if she destroys the living force of love within
her, she will destroy herself. Those who reject this most divine treasure in
order to become, as they think, pure and holy only succeed in starting up an
inner process of dry rot. Just as a free-flowing spring washes away dirt, so
love washes away all our impurities. But that is the whole problem: human
beings do not know how to love, they try to stifle their love, with the result
that they shrivel up, become inhibited and end up on the analyst’s couch!
Even in religious orders, this question has always been very badly
explained: chastity and continence were held up as the ideal, and the poor,
trusting women who blindly believed what they were told experienced hell on
earth. Anyone who wants to advise others in the area of love must be a very
skilful psychologist, for it is a tremendous responsibility. You will say, ‘Yes,
but you are doing the very thing that you say is so dangerous, and you don’t
really explain anything either!’ Ah, but I do: I have explained all that needs to
be explained. It is up to you to find the rest for yourselves. If you are really
sincere and honest with yourselves, if you are really seeking perfection, you
will understand exactly how to love. If not, of course, you will always be
unbalanced and... yes, I know, I shall be blamed for it! But I cannot give you
detailed explanations of exactly what to do or how to do it. In fact, I would
not do so even if I could. My role is to give you the essentials, to explain
what is important. If you do not study what I tell you as you should, if you do
not meditate on the advice I give you, you will never understand what I say;
even if I explained it to you in detail you would not understand.
When I speak of vestals, therefore, I am not saying that women in the 20th
century should be shut up in a temple to tend a sacred flame. I am saying that
they must reflect and meditate every day and implore heaven to use them as
vessels and conductors of divine beauty and purity, so that they become
capable of helping humankind. And, as thoughts and hopes and the things we
wish for cannot remain hidden, the light from the secret thoughts and feelings
of such women will be visible in their eyes and gestures, and even in the
glow of their skin. And when they see that people come to them for
nourishment and inspiration, they will rejoice to know that, at last, true love
is penetrating the hearts of all men and women.
Of course, there are many women who consider that it is a waste of time to
think about inspiring the whole of humanity. In spite of the fact that it will
inevitably mean the loss of their beauty and charm, they would much rather
have one man to torment and batter them. But those who decide to devote
time, year after year, to becoming divinities, will see the results of their work:
something that inspires wonder in all who see it will be visible in their gaze
and in their words and gestures. But, to achieve this, they must try, if only for
a few minutes every single day, to attract and capture true beauty.3
Men are much less interested in acquiring charm or beauty; what they
want is strength and power, whereas women desire beauty. In fact, they are
sometimes reproached for wanting to be beautiful, but it is no crime: on the
contrary! If women were not concerned with beauty, future generations
would be revoltingly ugly. It is mothers who have the task of transmitting
beauty to their children, for they form them; this is why it is perfectly right
for them to desire beauty. The church has often condemned women’s natural
desire to be beautiful. It has never understood that it is women’s task, the task
of mothers, to cultivate the beauty of the human race. Men don’t think about
beauty, so if women did not think about it we would be in a sorry state! There
is no reason to criticize women for wanting to be beautiful, therefore. They
only need to learn where to look for true beauty so that, if they marry and
have children, their children will be truly divine.4
Sèvres, 1 January 1970
1 See ‘Et il me montra un fleuve d’eau de la vie’, Synopsis Coll., Part
‘Beauty’.
4 See Le vrai travail de la mère pendant la gestation, Brochure n° 318.
Chapter Eight
Materialism, idealism and sexuality
‘on earth as it is in heaven’
Looking back over the hundreds and thousands of years of human history,
we see that a great many different religions, schools of thought and
philosophical trends have come and gone, and that they can all be put into
one of two categories: those that encourage people to escape from the world
and those that, on the contrary, urge them to cling to it.
The philosophical system that teaches people to abandon the world, on the
pretext that it is a vale of suffering and tears, is Buddhism, and Buddhism has
influenced a great many other spiritual movements, including certain Gnostic
sects such as the Cathars, for instance. As for the philosophy that encourages
people to cling to the earth to such a point that they never want to leave it:
that is materialism.
‘And what about Christianity?’ you will ask; ‘Where does that fit in?’ Ah,
Christianity is something quite different again. In fact, Christianity itself does
not know what category it should be in because it does not really know itself.
Yes, because Christianity and the philosophy of Christ are two quite different
things. If I had been content with what the church and theologians tell us
about the Gospels, I would not have gone directly to Jesus to find out what he
thought. I have already explained to you, in previous lectures, how I worked
for years to enter into Jesus’ mind in order to understand what he really
meant, and I have given you ample proof that I succeeded. Of course, I
realize that my explanations do not constitute an irrefutable proof in your
eyes, but if you reflect a little, if you observe life and compare things, you
will be ready to accept what I say because it corresponds to reality; you will
see that my explanations are more valid and more applicable than others.1
Now, to help you to understand more clearly what I just said about the two
philosophical tendencies, let’s look at human beings. When a child is born, its
only concern is to cling to earth, so much so, in fact, that it crawls on all
fours, touches everything it can lay its little hands on and puts anything and
everything into its mouth! Little by little the baby grows into a youth, his
heart stirs into wakefulness and he begins to be interested in girls; he falls in
love and becomes a family man! At this stage he is still firmly attached to the
earth and contributes to its population and wealth through his children and his
work. It is only at a much later stage, when the poor creature is no longer
young, has exhausted his reserves and is beginning to see that he will never
achieve all his ambitions, that he begins to change: the earth holds fewer
attractions for him and he begins to distribute his belongings and think about
the next world. The man who, just a little while before, was only interested in
eating and drinking, creating children and accumulating wealth, as if he was
destined to stay on this earth for ever, this same man now becomes so
impersonal (See Footnote, chap. 3.) and disinterested, so cold and tired and
disillusioned, that he gets ready to give up all his possessions and leave for
the next world. What has happened to cause such a change? This
transformation is simply the result of a weakening of the sexual instinct.
And now I am going to show you how a human being’s sexual energy
determines their philosophy. As long as they possess this force, they are
ready and willing to live on earth, but when it abandons them, they want to
die. This is why certain initiates of the past, who knew all this, taught their
disciples that if they aspired to leave the earth, with all its sufferings and
limitations, and attain a world of beatitude and light, they would have to
suppress all manifestations of sexual energy, avoid loving relationships with
others, flee from desire and lust, avoid the sight of naked bodies and all
commerce with the opposite sex, etc., otherwise they would immediately be
caught up in the toils of the earth and never want to leave it.
There you have the origin of the various religious and philosophical
tendencies we were talking about. At the root of it all is the sexual drive, the
love between the sexes, and the attitude that human beings choose to adopt in
respect to this force. This is what determines the two different schools of
thought: one that allows this force to express itself, and the other that tries to
stifle it. Of course, there are many other philosophies, but all of them can be
fitted, more or less comfortably, into one of these two categories. If you do
not want to stay in this world of suffering, if you want to attain eternity and
immortality, you must forget about propagating the human race, because that
only creates ties that bind you to the earth: you will be tied to the father (or
mother) of your children, you will be tied physically to your children, flesh of
your own flesh, and you will even be bound psychically to their character and
their soul and spirit. This is why Buddhism teaches that when someone leaves
this world for the next, although they may think they are free from all
attachments, the ties that bound them to their children and all the other
members of their family are still intact. They cannot leave the lower astral
regions immediately; they are forced to remain close to human beings for a
time, especially to their family, and to watch them, give them advice and take
part in their lives and, even, to nourish themselves through them. According
to this philosophy, if you want to be free, you must not marry or have
children, because those who are willing to perpetuate their name by having a
family and children are held captive by the name, and when their family
thinks of them and calls them, they have to return to earth. These bonds that
men and women create with the earth prevent them from staying in the
heavenly regions.
The initiates, who knew these realities, taught a philosophy of asceticism,
idealism and chastity, suitable for those who were seriously determined to
have no roots in the world. The question is not whether this was a genuine
philosophy (it was certainly genuine, for it was based on occult knowledge),
but whether it could be useful today, whether it is adapted to our times, and it
is more than likely that it is totally unsuited. This is one of the problems to
which we must find an answer.
And now, let’s look at the philosophy of materialists and hedonists and all
those who are only interested in this world and who think that the discoveries
of modern science should be used to prolong their life on earth. Perhaps their
philosophy is just as true as the other! So, let’s study and compare the two
positions and then see if there is not a third way, better than either of them.
If someone only thinks of their earthly life, of eating and drinking and
bringing children into the world, of acquiring wealth, opening branch offices
and controlling the market throughout the world, are they not doing
something good? Indeed they are. This person is like an earthworm.
Earthworms are very useful creatures: they take in soil at one end and process
it by passing it through their digestive tract and out the other end, making It
more vital and much more beneficial for plant life. Yes, materialists are like
worms: they spend their lives eating, that is, processing raw, inert matter, and
in doing so they communicate something of their own vitality to it and
prepare it for a higher work. You must not speak ill of materialists; they are
very useful; they transform the earth as it goes through them. The Creator has
prepared a wide range of jobs for human beings to do, and those who choose
this one render service to the whole planet. Look at the earth: what a lot of
matter there is to be transformed! And once it has been transformed, spiritual
people can use it and work with it on a higher level. Yes, those with a
spiritual philosophy work with matter, too, but with subtler forms of it, the
matter of thoughts and feelings, and they in turn prepare this matter for a
higher order of beings. There is an unbroken chain of beings, therefore, all
working to transform matter: plants transform mineral matter, animals
transform vegetable matter, human beings transform animal matter, and so
on, all the way to God himself. I have already explained to you how God
feeds on the fruits of the cherubim and seraphim. Of course, this is simply an
image to help you to understand.
Now, what is that third solution, the true philosophy that I mentioned
earlier? The answer might be Christianity. It might be, that is, if Christians
could be brought to understand that they are right to be religious and
spiritual, but that they must, at the same time, be concerned with the world,
that they must use all their thoughts, feelings and actions to transform the
world into a garden of delights where the Lord would be pleased to walk.
Neither those who are only interested in fixing their abode on earth, nor those
who are only interested in escaping from this earth, will ever achieve
anything. The third solution, the true philosophy of Christ, which is our
philosophy, tells us not to flee from or abandon the earth but to fill ourselves
with all the wealth of heaven, and then to bring it all down to the physical
level, so that the earth becomes a paradise, the kingdom of God.2 So,
although we work with matter we are not materialists, but nor are we
Buddhists or ascetics, because we do not want to abandon the earth. This is
the philosophy that Jesus wanted to give to humanity.
There is a tradition that, when he was very young, Jesus went to India
where he had many discussions with the brahmins. He is said to have told
them, ‘Your philosophy is very fine, but why did you come into the world?
Simply in order to leave it? No, you are here to work: heaven has sent you
here as labourers. Once you have completed your task, of course, you can go
back home to rest or renew your inspiration before coming back and
continuing with your work in the world. But, first and foremost, you are here
to work.’ And he reproached them, saying, ‘You are afraid; you are
weaklings; your only thought is to run away. If you were meant to dwell in
nirvana, why did you come to earth?’ Yes, Jesus had some fearful arguments
with the brahmins; in fact, they even pursued him and wanted to kill him, but
he left and joined a caravan that was leaving for Palestine. And there he
began to argue, all over again, with the Doctors of Law of Israel and the
Pharisees and Sadducees. And, this time, he did not try to escape when they
wanted to kill him. Jesus was a great revolutionary, but Christians do not
know the details of his life; they do not know that he went to India where he
met and talked to the brahmins. Wherever he went he stirred up revolution.
Of course, I cannot prove this to you; in fact it will probably always be a
subject of controversy, but that does not matter. I tell you this, and whether
you believe it or not is your business.
Actually, Jesus did not really criticize the Buddha’s philosophy: after all,
Buddha was no child, and he taught an extraordinarily luminous philosophy,
but it was a philosophy that was valid for his own era. Each Master that
incarnates brings a new aspect of the one truth, and when Jesus came, instead
of turning people’s attention to the causal world, which is so remote from
their daily lives, he pointed to the work that is waiting to be done here on
earth. This is why, as I have already said, Jesus’ whole philosophy is summed
up in the prayer that we call ‘the Lord’s Prayer’. It contains a complete
programme: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom
come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…’ The Buddhists have
never declared that the earth should become like heaven. On the contrary,
they have always been intent on abandoning the earth and going to heaven; it
has never occurred to them that it was possible to transform the earth. But
Jesus had faith in men and women’s capacity to unite and organize
themselves in order to transform the earth and make of it a dwelling fit for the
spirits of light. He believed in this and laid down the programme to be carried
out.
But the earth will never become like heaven if all we do is pray and repeat,
‘Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven!’ More is required of us than
that. We have to do the work and carry out the programme that Jesus has laid
down for us. It is no use thinking that if you stand by with arms folded, and
meditate about leaving the earth, you will persuade the Lord to come and do
all the work. Don’t you believe it! This prayer will only be answered by the
work of each one of us. And as order, harmony, love and happiness reign in
heaven, our work is to establish the same order, harmony, love and happiness
on earth.
There may well be Christians who have been influenced by Buddhism and
yearn to leave this earth; that is another matter. But you must understand that
that is not the philosophy taught by Jesus: it is an idea that was introduced at
a later date. A religion never keeps its initial purity; it is always subject to the
influence of other philosophies and religions. The Jewish religion, for
instance, was influenced by the neighbouring religions of the Assyrians and
Babylonians. This was largely the fault of Solomon for, as you know,
Solomon had many wives, most of whom came from other countries and
other religions, and, as each of his wives was attached to her own gods,
Solomon tried to please them by allowing his people to worship them all:
Baal, Ashtoreth, Bel and others.
The religion of Jesus is the very highest form of spirituality orientated
toward a task needing to be accomplished here on earth. And all those who
have taken refuge in convents and monasteries and hermitages... Well, of
course, that is all right, I am not blaming them, but they were only thinking of
their own souls, and that is not love; that is not what Jesus taught. They were
influenced by oriental religions, which have always been individualistic.
Oriental people who are spiritualist are always individualists; even when they
gather to eat or pray together, each one is intent on developing their own
powers, their chakras, their own gifts of clairvoyance. Since the Eastern
religions have been in contact with western countries, especially with
England, they have begun to talk about the collectivity and brotherliness
among all people, but they are still highly individualistic.
In any event, in the past, when no religion had this ideal of brotherhood,
Jesus stood out as a complete exception. When he said, ‘Jerusalem,
Jerusalem… How often have I desired to gather your children together as a
hen gathers her brood under her wings…’, it was already an intimation of a
life of brotherhood and love among all people. And when he prayed that all
things on earth should be as they are in heaven, it was because, in heaven, all
creatures are as one: they all love and understand each other, whereas here on
earth everything is dislocated and disunited, fragmented and hostile. The
order that exists on high can never be established on earth as long as these
conditions prevail.
Jesus brought a doctrine of love, while others brought doctrines of
wisdom, knowledge, separatism or power. Of course, you will tell me that
Buddha taught compassion. That is true, but none has ever taught it with the
same clarity and breadth of vision as Jesus; in this respect Jesus is truly
exceptional. In fact, this is why he was crucified: because he wanted to
change the existing order of things, the status quo! He upset all the rules by
frequenting simple, ordinary folk and even criminals and prostitutes. No one
had ever seen anything like it: these were people who should have been
publicly stoned, and what did he do? He ate with them and exchanged
hospitality with them! This is why those whose task it was to see that the gulf
between the different classes of society was preserved could not accept such
behaviour. And when, in addition, they found that he was revealing the most
sacred truths to the common people, they decided that he had to die. Jesus
was crucified because his religion of love tore down the barriers that had
existed for centuries. This is why he was a truly gigantic figure, a
Prometheus: he brought the gift of fire to humankind, the fire of love, and
inevitably he had to be crucified, for that is the fate of every Prometheus!3
I mentioned a few moments ago that sexual energy was what kept people
attached to the earth. But sexual energy cannot enlighten them or provide a
link with the sublime regions above, and for this reason it is not enough. On
the other hand, while the light of wisdom possessed by some initiates does
ensure this link with the sublime regions, it also robs them of any desire to
continue their life on earth, so it is not to be recommended either. Inevitably,
those who kill the sexual energy that God has given them end by longing for
death and wanting to abandon everything, for that energy is the only thing
that has the power to make them love life and hold on to it. If you allow this
force to flow within you – without letting it burst its banks and devastate
everything, of course – if you use it to water the divine flowers in your
garden on high, life becomes so marvellous that you never want to let go of
it. But if you cut yourself off from that force, life loses all meaning and your
only desire is to die. Sexual energy and love are intimately linked to life. In
order to enjoy the full beauty of life, therefore, your sexual energies must
flow harmoniously. You must never destroy that force; the mystics and
religious who reject it completely are making a very grave mistake. Of
course, they must be excused on the grounds that they hope to reach nirvana,
but their hope is so limp and weak, you cannot help but wonder how long it
will take them to get there! After all, if you aspire to reach nirvana, love must
have a word to say in the matter. This is why those who are truly enlightened
create a link with heaven, with their Creator and, at the same time, treasure
the energy of love and dedicate it to the kingdom of God. In this way they
will have both: the more intense their life, the more united they will be with
their Creator, with heaven; the more united they are with heaven, the more
ardently they will work on earth. This, therefore, is the only perfect solution:
to live for heaven while working for the world. There is no other way to
make sense of life.
Unfortunately, human beings have never been able to understand this; they
have always felt they had to choose one or the other. Either they are
completely materialistic or completely... What word can I use? Not
‘spiritual’, because the desire for death has nothing to do with spirituality. I
cannot find just the right word. No matter! The fact is that those who
suppress their sexual energy in the hope that they will not have to reincarnate
again will most certainly reincarnate over and over again! Yes, they will have
to come back and learn not to waste that force. Heaven will rebuke them and
send them back to earth to learn their lesson: ‘Ignorant creatures! Whoever
taught you to destroy so thoughtlessly the force that God, in his great
wisdom, created millions of years ago?’ ‘But we read a book which
explained...’ No, you would do better to leave books alone! How much truth
you will find in books, the Lord alone knows! You never verify what they say
to see if it is true; you believe them blindly, and then the damage is done!
And as, in the meantime, the authors of the books you read have left for the
next world, you cannot go and reproach them for misleading you. They are
probably in hell already, simmering in a cauldron for all their crimes against
love! Yes, the scriptures say that the only sin that will not be forgiven is the
sin against the Holy Spirit, and this is exactly what it is: the sin against the
Holy Spirit, the sin against love. For the Holy Spirit is love, and the sin
against love cannot be forgiven.4
You must understand that you must never, ever mutilate, destroy or
eliminate this most potent, most divine force. You must channel it, use it and
sanctify it, otherwise you will be incapable of life on earth; you will want to
die. And, in this case, it is no good believing that you will be any happier in
the next world, for if you have been so stupid here, you will continue to be
stupid there! We don’t learn things on the other side; we only verify what we
have learned here, and you may be sure that you will verify either the depths
of your own stupidity or the heights of your own intelligence and artistic
aspirations! Yes, it is here, on earth, that you must learn; if you have not
begun to learn here, you will not be allowed to make up for it when you get
to the other side. Up there, you will only be able to observe what you have
done in this life; you will not be able to correct it. You will see, for instance,
that you have been envious, proud, full of anger and fear, but you will not be
able to change any of that. In order to change, you are going to have to come
back again, take another body and try to make up for your past mistakes. This
is just one more thing that you did not know. You thought that even the most
foolish people would suddenly become monuments of wisdom once they left
this earth! Not a bit of it! That is why, when a medium calls up some
imbecile who has been dead for centuries, they still talk rubbish! How do you
explain that they are no more intelligent now than they were hundreds of
years ago, that they have not even learned to express themselves more
clearly? But let’s leave all that... It would take too long to explain it all.
Why was a philosophy that taught men to sever their ties with women,
refrain from bringing children into the world and live in a state of solitary
chastity – to become hardened bachelors, in other words – why was such a
philosophy so widely adopted? Because, in its day, it corresponded to the
aspirations of so many to leave the world and live in the infinite beatitude of
nirvana. And those who were not attracted to this idea continued to marry and
have children and become entangled in matter. But neither tendency gives the
whole picture, and for my own part I have no wish to follow either of them.
One thing is absolutely clear, and that is that I have no desire to desert my
brothers and sisters and flee to nirvana. No, because that is where I came
from. I was tired of so much happiness up there, so when I saw how people
on earth suffered and wept and mourned, I decided to come down again. But
I cannot prove that to you, either... Besides, I don’t have to, so let’s drop the
subject.
Now, try to adopt my philosophy. Stop reading so many books; stop
listening to what others tell you, for you will never learn more than fifty
percent of the truth from them. Anyone who has not acquired a clear, broad
vision of reality will continue to use narrow conceptions incapable of
expressing truth. The philosophy I bring you is the third solution, the solution
that enables you to be permanently in touch with the Source, with your own
soul and spirit and, at the same time, to keep your feet squarely on this earth
and do the work that is waiting to be done here. Yes, this is the third solution
I promised you, and one day you will recognize that it is the most perfect.
Until now, those who aspired to the things of heaven forgot about the earth.
But that is no solution. The solution is to have both, heaven and earth, that is,
to have your feet on earth and your head in heaven, to be both realist and
mystic. The trouble is that there are no examples of this; we only see one or
the other. For instance, who has ever seen a mystic or a religious really
enjoying their food and exclaiming, ‘Oh, but this is delicious...
extraordinary!’? On the contrary, they eat as though they had to force
themselves, as though their food were utterly tasteless. Apparently, it is not
fitting for a mystic or a truly religious person to enjoy their food! Well, if
some of those people saw me eating they would condemn me out of hand! I
can just hear them saying, ‘He’s not spiritual! Look at him; he exclaims with
delight at his food; it’s positively indecent! A spiritual person shouldn’t have
such a healthy appetite!’ But I couldn’t care less for their opinion. For my
part, I believe that you can unite heaven and earth... even by eating.
I do not know whether you are going to be convinced by my arguments or
not, but before long you will be obliged to recognize the truth of them, for
you will see that they solve a great many problems that nobody else has ever
solved. And why has nobody else ever solved them? Because they have never
dared to combine the two: either they allowed their sexual impulses to run
wild and ended in debauchery, or they stifled their sexuality completely and
became eunuchs. But anyone who kills this force kills themselves; they
deprive themselves of their taste for life, lose all sense of what it means to be
alive and become cruel, cold and embittered. What can you expect from
eunuchs? Can they compose symphonies or write poetry? No, eunuchs lose
their power to create: they are finished, dead.
Of course, I know that disciples are not going to find this third solution
easy. For one thing, it is completely new, and it is never easy to do something
new. Usually, when human beings find themselves unable to solve a problem,
their reaction is to get rid of it. But to get rid of someone or something is
never the answer. To wipe out a troublesome enemy is no solution; you must
let them go on troubling you while you find ways of developing your own
strength and power, until you are stronger than they are and can do what you
like with them. But you must never assassinate them, because in doing so you
will assassinate something in yourself at the same time. Human beings do not
know these laws, and that is why they try to rid themselves of their
troublesome sexuality by assassinating it. Yes, but look at the example of a
river: there is always the danger that it might overflow its banks when it is in
spate, but does that mean we should avoid all danger by getting rid of the
river? I ask you: would that be an intelligent solution? No, instead of
destroying it, why not make it work for you? Why not use it to water the
fields and produce electricity? If you destroy it, you will suffer from drought
and die of hunger. Similarly, if you destroy your sexual energy, you will be
destroying many other things within you.
You will say, ‘But it is so difficult to work with this force!’ Yes, but it is
precisely because it is difficult that it holds so much promise for the future
and that you stand to gain so much by using it.
Heavens! How often I have told you all this! But nobody is ready to take
the bull by the horns. Yes, sexual energy is the bull! Taurus, the bull, is the
sign that corresponds to Venus, but sexual energy is also greatly influenced
by the Moon, that is to say, by the imagination. In fact, there is a symbolic
parallel between the horns of the bull and the horns of the crescent moon. To
take the bull by the horns is to gain control of our imagination and our sexual
energy,5 and if you fail to work at this you will continue to be trampled
underfoot by the bull. It is not a question of killing the bull, but of controlling
and taming it. I have never said that you had to kill the bull for, as I have just
explained, if you destroy that life-giving force you will want nothing more
than to die! In fact, when I see people who are so unhappy that they have no
desire to live, I know that something has gone wrong in this area: it is not
normal to be so unhappy that you want to die. Love cheers the heart and
makes us enjoy life, so if someone has lost their joy in life, it means that the
flow of water has been deflected and that someone else is watering their
garden with it, or that there is some obstruction to the current. This is a very
profound psychological question.
For centuries, religion has been leading human beings into error in respect
to sexuality, with the result that today many people have such deep-seated
complexes that they can never hope to be cured: whatever they do, they will
continue to be tormented and devoured by remorse. And the education that is
needed to save today’s youth from the same fate will certainly take years to
achieve. Sexual energy must never be destroyed or suppressed, only
channelled and directed to a higher goal and, for this, men and women need a
great deal of knowledge and will-power and great strength of character. They
also need to know many different methods. Nothing is more useful and
beneficial, nothing more marvellous, than this divine force, which has been
given to human beings to use, but whose source is on a much higher level, in
God himself. Those in whom we see this energy at work are simply
receptacles; they are not the source, and we confuse the two. Sexual energy is
like the rain: we collect it in tubs and tanks, but its source is on a much higher
level.
People are so alienated from the truth nowadays that when they meet a
young man or girl who has a great deal of this energy, they reproach them for
it. As though young people should be as wooden and unfeeling as corpses!
That is how adults envisage things! But only the ignorant have that attitude,
because they do not know that this energy is the only thing that can keep the
garden watered and make the flowers bloom! What a sorry mentality!
Everybody criticizes a young man who is richly endowed in this respect; they
either blame him or pity him, whereas, if they only knew it, he is highly
privileged to possess such a ‘coal mine’, such a rich ‘oil well’! Instead of
helping him to learn how to manage it, they all jump on him, deform his mind
and prevent him from developing. No one would ever think of congratulating
him: ‘Good for you, young man! You’re very fortunate to have such wealth.
Only you must realize that it will cause you a great deal of misery if you do
not learn to use it intelligently.’ This is what others should say, but all they do
is pity him. And when they see a young man who is cold and unfeeling they
think he is to be admired. But what can he ever hope to accomplish with his
coldness? Nothing at all! Oh yes, I was brought up with that mentality, too; in
fact it was far worse in Bulgaria, sixty years ago, than anything you have ever
known or imagined! As long as the well-spring is still flowing, you must take
advantage of it and work with it; otherwise, when it runs dry, there will be
nothing left for you but to pick up your bits and pieces and leave this world,
for you will be a corpse, and nobody here needs a corpse. This is the only
force that can purify and cleanse you; it is the only fountain that can quench
your thirst.
You will say, ‘But I know some very old men who have no sexual energy
left, and yet they are so kind and radiant and pure!’ That may well be true;
they may have none of this force left, but they have lived so intelligently and
reasonably that, even after their well-spring has run dry, they can still benefit
from the work they did with it. They took care to fill all their tanks and
reservoirs while the flow of water was abundant, and now, in their old age,
they are as full of life as young men, because they have lived intelligently.
Whereas, someone who has been stupid enough to squander their life in
mindless sexual excesses is a sorry spectacle when they reach old age... if
they ever get that far!
Everything is clearly laid out in the book of life; it is just that you cannot
understand it. Everything I tell you comes from this great book of nature;
none of it is my own invention. I hope that it is all quite clear to you, now;
without going into detail or considering the few exceptions, we can say that
there are two philosophies in the world: materialism and idealism (which
includes Buddhism, Manichaeism, Catharism and certain trends in
Christianity, for Christianity is still not properly understood). And these two
philosophies correspond to the two currents of life: youth and old age, the
young who are interested in life, in the world, in children, and the old who
are already looking forward to departing for the next world. Here, too, of
course, there are exceptions, but I am not interested in the exceptions: the
important thing is to understand that there are these two trends, these two
philosophies, but that the truth is to be found in the third solution which
includes the best of each of the others. Do you want more explanations?
Don’t worry, they will come.
For the time being, though, I know that however much I explain, you will
not be able to remember more than a few elements, those that correspond to
your own particular situation. You will leave all the others to one side. In a
few days or weeks you will begin to understand other elements and, in this
way, gradually gain a better grasp of these things. There is not one of you
who is capable of assimilating all that I have said today; a few little bits here
and there, yes, but you cannot swallow or digest or assimilate the rest. The
brain is a special kind of stomach; it has an affinity for certain types of food
which it can digest easily, and all others are discarded. Ask any woman, for
instance, what she remembers most clearly in her life: it will certainly not be
a problem in mathematics, physics or philosophy. But when it comes to her
first date with her beloved, a birthday, or the kisses, promises and presents
she has received, her memory is prodigious!
The Bonfin, 17 August 1966
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
‘Our Father in heaven,…’ – Matt. 6:10-13
‘Your kingdom come on earth…’ – Matt. 6:10
Solomon accepts divinities of other countries – I Kings 11:1-6
‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem…’ – Matt. 23:27
Jesus, his love and compassion – Matt. 12:9-14, 18:10-14 and 18:21-22 ;
John 8:1-11
The sin against the Holy Spirit – Matt. 12:31
1 See The Philosopher’s Stone – in the Gospels and in Alchemy,
There is no need for me to tell you what males and females are; you will
find them even among the most cultured and highly educated people! They
are human beings who are still primitive deep down, who still give priority to
their instincts and their sensuality. Their desires and appetites are so
demanding that they are incapable of denying them anything; male and
female alike have only one desire: a certain type of relationship with a person
of the opposite sex.
One degree above males and females comes the category of men and
women. They are still nothing very remarkable, for although their
preoccupations are slightly superior to those of males and females, they are
still principally physical. Higher still on the scale, we have the category of
brothers and sisters. These are human beings who represent a higher level of
consciousness, the level on which they no longer see themselves as separate
and isolated from others. Someone who loves like a man considers himself
different from others of his kind; he needs a wife who is a distinct object,
apart from himself, and his behaviour towards her is not that of a brother
towards his sister. A brother has reached a higher, broader consciousness,
which embraces all human beings as members of the same family. Between a
brother and sister there is no longer this sense of separate existence that
makes it possible for a man to abuse and violate his wife. On the contrary, his
wife becomes his sister, a member of his own family, and this necessarily
entails a different attitude towards her. To become a brother or sister,
therefore, represents a step forward in one’s evolution, an expanded
consciousness and, consequently, a higher type of behaviour. Basically,
though, the change is in their attitude toward each other. Although they are
not brother and sister from the same physical family, once they are conscious
of belonging to the same spiritual family, to the family of humankind, their
desires become purer and more disinterested; instead of devouring each other,
they try to help each other.
But a disciple who, to begin with, was a man or woman, and who has
learned to manifest his or her love as a brother or sister, must now go a step
further. If he remains a brother he will not be able to solve all his problems;
there are still too many shadowy, troublesome elements within him, and
similarly a sister is still subject to certain temptations. This is why a brother
must become a spirit, and a sister must become a soul. When they achieve
this, the scope of their love expands to such a degree that it embraces the
whole of humanity and all living creatures, and they feel themselves to be so
vast, so exalted and noble that nothing evil can ever touch them again, for the
soul and spirit are above all contingencies. And, finally, when their ideal
reaches out to embrace the whole universe, this soul and spirit will know no
bounds and become all-powerful and omniscient: they will be divinities.
The simple fact that the brothers and sisters of the Brotherhood adopt a
nobler, more divine attitude toward each other is already a gigantic step
forward. Yes, instead of looking on each other simply as men and women,
with all the obscene, nauseating consequences that this often entails, the
disciples look on each other as brothers and sisters of the same family. In this
way, their sexual energy, instead of being a torment to them by feeding their
lower appetites and lusts, is transformed into a spiritual impetus to give of
themselves and to help, console and enlighten others. In this way the brothers
and sisters become true servants and handmaidens of heaven, and the
transformations that take place in their psychic dimension are reflected in
their physical bodies, leading to tremendous changes that science has never
yet had the opportunity to study.
Initiates of every age have always worked with the energies of love. To
begin with, they abstained from all physical relations with their partner until
they had learned to adopt the right attitude toward her and had succeeded in
looking on her as a divinity. Both the initiate and his partner worked for years
to raise themselves and each other to the level of a divinity, and once they
had attained full mastery of their sexual force and reached the point of
looking on each other as a particle of the Godhead – she as a particle of the
divine Mother and he of the heavenly Father – only then did they express
their love in their physical union and experience transports of heavenly bliss.
They would spend whole days in that love without fatigue and, especially,
without the slightest misunderstanding between them, without a shadow of
jealousy or disappointment. The joy they experienced was indescribable;
through their communion with the beloved being in their embrace, they were
in a sublime, unending communion with God: she with the heavenly Father
and he with the divine Mother. And, in these conditions, all the physiological
processes became so completely divine that light radiated from them in a
sublime emanation.1
The initiates understood that when they experienced love on such a subtle
level, the joy and happiness they drew from it was changeless. Initiates did
not renounce love, but nor were they content with the purely physiological
aspects of love, with that animal instinct which is so quickly aroused and as
quickly satisfied, and which leads to so many anomalies and disorders, so
much hatred. As long as human beings remain on the level of their instincts,
they will never know lasting love, they will never attain knowledge or liberty,
they will never live in beatitude and immortality.
For the moment, love between men and women resembles butchery: they
throw themselves on each other like brutes, with no preparation; there is
nothing aesthetic or poetic about it. They are hungry, so they eat and gorge
themselves until they are bloated and satiated; then, when their appetite
revives, they eat again! A great many people, even those who belong to the
so-called ‘educated classes’, make love like savages. There is no beauty,
poetry or harmony to their actions; they are only interested in gorging
themselves. To be sure, most human beings do make an effort to surround
their love-making with colour and music and a certain beauty, at least
outwardly. They try to show their partner a little consideration and not
behave like savages; but this is still not love, it is just external trimmings.
Philosophy is divided into three main branches: ethics, logic and
aesthetics. Ethics includes everything that concerns religion and morals,
everything that touches on the feelings and the heart. Logic is the study of all
that comes under the heading of science, intelligence and reason. And you
will perhaps be surprised to learn that aesthetics concerns the domain of the
will. Yes, for humanity’s creations in the fields of sculpture, painting,
architecture and poetry all come under the heading of art, and art is simply a
materialization, a manifestation on the external, physical plane, of our
thoughts and feelings. Art, therefore, is a function of the will.
And now, let’s look at how these three domains manifest in life. Suppose
you have decided to build a house. The first thing to do is to collect the
materials you need: concrete, iron, stones and bricks, planks, etc., in other
words, the rough, heavy elements which have no claim to beauty. The second
phase consists of laying the foundations, raising the walls, putting on the roof
and fitting the doors and windows, and so on. Only when this is done can you
think about the aesthetic dimension and start painting, laying carpets and
hanging curtains in the windows and pictures on the walls. This is the final
phase, the phase of beauty.
Suppose you are about to prepare a meal: you have the different
ingredients you need, but they still have to be washed and organized, and
your kitchen is still in disorder; later, when you take the dishes out of the
oven, not only do they smell appetizing, but before putting them in front of
your guests you add a little garnish here and there to make them agreeable to
the eye as well.
Look, too, at how nature goes about its work. First of all it was concerned
to create, and it created in profusion, without any great concern for beauty.
Neither the first animals nor the first humans were beautiful: they were crude
and huge and often terrifying to look at... and now look at them! What a
difference, what an evolution! And the same pattern can be seen in the
creation of a baby: when it is born it is a lovely little thing, perfectly formed
and beautifully proportioned, but it began life as nothing more than a little
blob of gelatine! Nature does not begin its creations with a concern for the
aesthetic dimension; it ends with it. It begins with logic: it organizes, draws
up plans, designs geometrical structures and makes projections and
calculations. After this comes the phase of ethics, when nature infuses love
and goodness into everything it creates. And finally, after everything else, it
puts the final touches to its creation, which then becomes a gem, a thing of
wonder.
And now it is time for the aesthetic dimension to manifest itself in human
love, for it is still in the primitive, animal phase. Of course, some people will
continue to think that their way of loving is impeccable and never want to
change it; they will continue to get a great deal of pleasure from it. Yes, you
can get a lot of pleasure from eating and drinking and generally amusing
yourself, there is no denying it. But the other aspects, the divine aspects, are
simply not there. If people were truly capable of loving, of loving divinely,
they would gain far greater happiness from it. And this is what disciples are
working towards; this is the direction in which they are evolving, by
continually asking themselves, ‘What is the true nature of my love? Am I
expressing it as I should? What is it I really want? What am I looking for?’
They must remind themselves that if they hope, one day, to attain eternal life,
they must raise their love to its subtlest and most luminous expressions and
manifestations; that if they content themselves with a purely instinctive love,
they will never be at peace, they will be continually tossed to and fro between
joy and sorrow, and that they must, therefore, continually cultivate and refine
and ennoble their love so that it may evolve to a higher level.2
You must change your way of looking at human beings and learn to look
at them from a much higher standpoint. When you, the brothers, are in the
company of a woman, instead of seeing yourself as a male in front of a
female – an attitude which automatically arouses certain desires which can
very quickly get out of control – you must look on her as a manifestation of
the divine Mother. If you do that you will see her in quite a different light and
discover some of the wondrous beauties of womankind. When a painter, a
poet or a sculptor contemplates a woman, they have difficulty in tearing their
eyes away, for they see a beauty in her that others never see. And if you
follow my advice, this is what will happen to you, too; the more you evolve,
the more you will see in women ravishing expressions of beauty that were
invisible to you when you looked on them simply as females. When you look
on a woman as a manifestation of the divine Mother, you have no alternative
but to rejoice in her beauty, to be in a state of delight and inspiration... and
this will save you from doing anything stupid! This is why everything is
permissible for an initiate; a beautiful painting of a naked man or woman, for
instance, will catapult an initiate heavenwards, whereas it will simply arouse
the appetites of a male or a female. It is important, therefore, to cultivate a
sense of beauty, for thanks to that sense, we gain a much broader, richer and
more profound vision of reality. Without a sense of beauty we see virtually
nothing; nature remains a closed book to us.
Take the case of a man who is suffering from a severe attack of what I
might call ‘maleness’! He goes out to hunt for a female and never realizes
that his attitude renders him incapable of recognizing the charm and
splendour of all the women he sees. They will provoke neither admiration nor
inspiration in him, no impulse to create beauty, no desire to become a poet or
a musician. On the contrary, he will go home depressed and in a rage of
disappointment, because he has not found the female he was looking for...
Not to mention the state he would be in if he did find her, which might well
be far worse! Nine tenths of humanity is like that, always hunting, always
sighing and suffering, always with this sensation of emptiness and, in the
meantime, seeing nothing of all the beauty and splendour that surrounds
them. They are miserable to the point of suicide, full of hatred for everybody,
simply because they lack a sense of true beauty. Whereas, a disciple or
initiate who goes for a walk in the street or in a park may suffer too, but for
the opposite reason: they see so much beauty all around them, so many
divinities coming and going, and they cannot stop and contemplate them all!
They want to admire each one, but it is not possible. All that beauty before
their eyes dazzles them and fills their heart with wonder and joy, and they go
home in raptures! How can you explain this reaction? It is simply that
someone like that lives in another world; they have other methods and other
ways of looking at their fellow human beings; they belong to the category we
mentioned earlier: the category of souls and spirits. But I realize, of course,
that this is too far-fetched and unrealistic for those who still live as males and
females, for they judge everything according to their own point of view.
Yes, my dear brothers and sisters, it is when you begin to grow and to live
on a higher level that you begin to recognize the splendours of life and all the
treasures that have been prepared for the children of God. Those who are
unwilling to rise to a higher level and look at things from a different point of
view will have to go on suffering eternally. Do they consider that life is a
jungle? If so they will continue to attack and be attacked, to devour and be
devoured, like animals in the jungle, whereas here, in the new philosophy that
I am offering you, there is no jungle. Nobody attacks or devours anyone else;
on the contrary, each one admires and marvels at others. If you can
understand what I am saying, you will learn to manifest yourselves, here, as
creatures of such splendour that a brother would never think of taking
advantage of a divine glance from a sister, nor would a sister ever take
advantage of the spark that a brother might kindle in her heart. Then, you will
all walk in the light and be happy; no one will harm anyone else. It is a
school, here ‒ a temple. It is here that you can learn to transcend yourselves
and become creatures of extraordinary beauty.
Take the case of a young man and girl who meet and fall in love: their
love is marvellously pure and idealistic. They write to each other, meet and
talk to each other, and the little gifts and souvenirs they exchange, a lock of
hair, the least little flower or rose petal, are treasured talismans filled with an
ocean of fragrance. They are continually happy, stimulated and inspired! He
is a valiant knight and she is the ‘sleeping beauty’; their lives are steeped in
poetry, and they only have to walk together and look into each other’s eyes,
to see that the whole world is beautiful. But as soon as they start to go a bit
further, the aesthetic dimension disappears and the prosaic, biological,
instinctive dimension takes over. Everybody knows this, to be sure, and you
will say, ‘Yes, but what are you saying? You can’t expect them to be content
with the aesthetic aspect; you can’t expect them to restrict themselves to
exchanges on the subtle levels for long.’ That is what you think: for my part,
I think that those who prefer to remain on the aesthetic, poetic level are
preparing themselves to be artists, geniuses, poets or musicians. If you really
want to descend to a lower level, do so! But in doing so you will be leaving
the domain of true beauty and even your joy will be diminished. You cannot
imagine how true this is!
You have all been through this experience, haven’t you? Well, why don’t
you study it and analyse what happened to you? To begin with, it was enough
for you to catch a glimpse of the face you loved, and it was as though a whole
new world and a host of hopes and plans for the future opened up before you.
But as soon as you left the domain of beauty, everything began to lose its
sheen, to be less beautiful, less pure. This is why I say, ‘Keep a little distance
between you when you love, because it is that distance that will inspire and
fulfil you. Because of it, your love will last for ever, without pause and
without damage of any kind. As soon as you eliminate that distance, you can
start getting your handkerchiefs out!’
Nature never ceases to instruct us. Cosmic Intelligence has always been
there to teach us the lessons of our own experience, but we fail to understand.
People excuse themselves, saying, ‘What can you expect? I’m built like that!’
Yes, but that is a purely biological argument: we are all built ‘like that’. What
have you done with your intelligence, the only means you have of improving
and changing the biological order of things? It is thanks to their intelligence
that human beings have made so many discoveries which have contributed to
making their lot more comfortable. If you remove that intelligence,
humankind will simply fall back into bestiality. Intelligence is the spiritual
principle which cultivates, improves and perfects all things. If you abandon
intelligence and say, ‘That’s my nature; I’m built like that’, you will never
make any progress. You must change that kind of reasoning: is the fact that
you are built like this or that any reason to give in, to surrender? No! You
must seek out the divine factor, the spirit, the divine principle, which we all
possess and which is capable of transforming and improving everything, and
having found it you must follow its guidance, rely on it, work in collaboration
with it. You must never again say, ‘I can’t do anything about it; it’s just my
instinct!’ I am not saying you must repress your instincts, not at all, but you
must educate and refine them.
The Bonfin, 17 August 1970
II
Certain puritans and ascetics in the past used to counsel men to flee from
women, on the pretext that they were an incarnation of evil, daughters of the
devil. How can you expect divine love to stir in the heart of a man who holds
such ideas about women? He will be permanently discouraged, demoralized
and disgusted with life! Isn’t it much better to think that, hidden behind the
physical appearance of the individual woman, is the Deity, who has taken this
form, that a woman is a princess in disguise! Human beings do not know how
to live in a climate of beauty. But that is what our Teaching can offer you: a
way of life that, if you adopt it, will ensure that beauty is always with you.
Men and women are always so deeply mired in ugliness, how can they
possibly be happy? They look on each other as a collection of organs, guts,
flesh and bones, nothing more: they are blind to the hidden splendour! And
that attitude leads to some disastrous consequences. Let us see where true
beauty lies, for only beauty can save us and give us happiness. We have an
absolute need for beauty.
If you begin to look on men and women as souls and spirits, you will see
for yourselves the transformations this change of attitude will produce in you,
for you will necessarily have to behave differently toward them. Behind their
clothes and behind the physical form of their bodies and faces, you will
discover their spirits and souls, the hidden sons and daughters of God. If you
learn how to see people as souls and spirits, you will find that all those whom
you once despised, neglected, abandoned and misunderstood will suddenly
seem very precious to you. Heaven, who disguised them and put them in your
path, sees them as exceptional beings, for in them dwells the Deity.
As far as I am concerned, for instance, it makes very little difference
whether you are well educated, good looking and rich, or poor, ignorant and
unprepossessing; the only thing that matters, in my eyes, is your soul. Why
don’t I seek the company of all the richest, most learned and most beautiful
people? Because it is their souls that interest me. In fact, I have often been
criticized for it. My critics say, ‘Why on earth does he surround himself with
people who cannot do anything for him, who have no money, no learning and
no influence on society? What can he see in such people?’ And what about
Jesus: what did he do? He looked for the souls and spirits of men and
women.3 When your appreciation of people is based entirely on their wealth,
their position in society, their book-learning or their physical beauty, it means
that you have missed the essential core of the matter. For me, only the souls
and spirits of men are important, for I know that, on the other side, these
souls and spirits are princes and princesses.
Once you begin to appreciate people for their souls and spirits, it is a sign
that you have really begun to evolve, for you will have understood the only
thing that really matters. And heavenly entities, seeing this, will decide to
come to your assistance, for they will know that you are worth helping.
Whereas, if you cling to your worldly way of judging things, they will leave
you to get along by yourself, saying, ‘Make do as best you can with those
people; you’ll soon see that they can’t do you any good!’ To consider others
as souls and spirits is already a link with the spiritual world, and the spiritual
world will not leave you without the help you need.
To change the way you look at things is to change your destiny. For my
part, I have decided to look on women as souls or, even better, as divinities.
And I am the first to benefit from that attitude, for I am constantly in a state
of inspiration, delight and enthusiasm. Even the most unsightly or most
vulgar woman is, in my view, a soul and a daughter of God, and I can work
with that. By doing something for her soul, I reach God himself, and God will
never abandon me.
You must continually cultivate and increase your appreciation and love of
this Science and have an attitude of sacred reverence for the truths revealed to
you. People are losing their sense of the sacred more and more these days;
they are always talking about demystifying everything. There are too many
myths, apparently, so they lay waste to everything, without in the least
realizing what they are losing. Yes, because, when they have that attitude,
nature closes its doors and makes no revelations to them. Nature only reveals
itself to those who have a sense of the sacred. This is why I can guarantee
that, if you cultivate this attitude of sacred respect, you will have
extraordinary revelations, not only the revelations that I make, for what I
reveal to you is not really significant if it does not also come from within
yourselves. Yes, if you adopt the right attitude, the revelations will also come
from you, and you will understand truths that you had never understood
before.
Sèvres, 29 December 1970
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
Jesus, the people around him – Matt. 9:9-13; Mark 1:16-20; John 8:1-11
1 See Creation: Artistic and Spiritual, Izvor Coll. n° 223, chap. 10:
‘Idealization as a means of creation’.
2 See The Philosopher’s Stone – in the Gospels and in Alchemy,
Izvor Coll. n° 241, chap. 10: ‘The philosopher’s stone, fruit of a mystic
union’.
3 See ‘Et il me montra un fleuve d’eau de la vie’, Synopsis Coll., Part
When a man loves a woman he never asks himself how he loves her. He
simply repeats, ‘I love her, I love her!’ Well, all right, you love her. Nobody
doubts that, but nobody questions the nature of that love either, for every
form of lust, desire, need or appetite goes by the name of ‘love’. When you
love something or someone, that is the end of it, you are no longer a free
agent; love excuses everything, it forces you to your knees and deprives you
of your powers of reasoning. When love holds sway, the intellect is silenced;
when the heart loves, the mind has no more say in the matter. The heart says,
‘Hold your tongue! I am talking; this is the voice of love; I’m not interested
in what you might have to say!’ The truth is that if the heart and mind worked
in collaboration instead of being rivals, love would be expressed in better
forms and colours!
The lower the rung a person is on on the ladder of evolution, the more
likely they will be to give way before the insistence of love, without
analysing it to determine whether it is disinterested, pure and useful or not.
As long as they love, they do not feel the need to reflect. This is why there
are always so many novels, plays and films about the adventures of people in
love. In fact, what would novelists, poets and dramatists have to write about
if they did not have such a thrilling topic? The subject is always rich,
interesting and entertaining; it provides abundant raw material and endless
opportunities to explore the drama of human despair, revenge and murder! It
even provides a plentiful supply of jobs, including jobs for firemen and coffin
makers. Yes, because a man who has been disappointed in love sometimes
takes revenge by setting fire to a building. The fire brigade comes rushing to
the scene, bells clanging and sirens wailing, while onlookers stand back and
watch them putting out the blaze started by a lovesick oaf!
You must never let your heart be in exclusive control; you must always
summon some of your other inner faculties to scrutinize, counterbalance and
correct what your heart tells you. Love is a magnificent stimulus, but it is
always tainted by impure elements rooted in the passions, and it must be
purged of these before its essential nature can come to full flower. Every love
contains something divine, but it needs to be cleansed and purified, because
at birth it is wrapped in unclean elements like a new-born calf or kid. When
these little animals are born, they are not especially clean and their mothers
have to wash them: a human baby, too, for that matter. And it is the same
thing with love: love is a child that contains everything that is most divine,
for God is hidden in every form of love, but the child has to be washed and
purified, educated, strengthened and liberated, before the Deity in it can come
to light. Even the basest, most selfish, most sensual love contains a divine
quintessence. God is always there, but he is obscured by too many other
elements. Before it reaches a human heart, love has to travel through many
different regions, not all of them very clean; it has known many sooty
chimneys, many muddy footpaths, and today it is caked in elements that have
stuck to it over the centuries. Even the best and purest things that come from
heaven have to pass through layers of impurity and untruth, through the base
thoughts and desires that cling to us. This is why, by the time these gems
reach us, they are covered with dirt, and it is up to us to wash off that dirt and
uncover their full beauty.
As long as men and women fail to purify themselves, however pure the
heavenly impulses, currents or forces are that enter them from above, they
have to travel through the impure regions of their being and, in doing so, are
deformed and distorted. You have all seen how a ray of sunlight striking the
surface of a pool of water is deflected: the water constitutes an obstacle in the
path of the ray of light, and the deeper the water the greater the angle of
distortion. Or take the example of the old-fashioned oil lamp: if the glass
chimney is coated in soot, the light from the flame will be weaker, less bright
and beautiful; the glass needs to be cleaned. We are a bit like that oil lamp:
the light within us, the light that is love and wisdom, is striving to shine from
us, but the layers of soot we have accumulated are in the way, and the
thicker, the blacker and the more impure these layers, the more difficult it is
for the light to pierce them and become visible.
This is all so simple, so clear; even a child can see it: we have to work to
cleanse and purify ourselves until all our different layers, the layers
constituted by our physical, etheric, astral and mental bodies, become so
transparent and pure that the divine spark, the divine light, hidden deep inside
us, may finally succeed in its struggle to work through the layers of darkness
and break out and shine for all to see.1 If this does not happen very often, it is
because of our ingrained habit of accumulating so much dense, opaque
matter: jealousy, hatred, spite, revenge, crude sensuality and a greedy
acquisitiveness, which makes us ready to ride roughshod over everyone else.
All these impurities build up into a thick shell and enclose us in such dense,
coarse vehicles that only a rare glimmer, an occasional spark or fragile ray of
light can get through. But initiates who understand this, who have worked to
purify themselves in previous incarnations and continue to walk the same
path of perfection, manage to make the matter of their bodies so pure and
subtle that God, who dwells in them, is able to manifest himself more and
more perfectly through them.
I beg you: work at becoming pure; desire purity with all your heart,
meditate frequently on purity, for only purity will enable you to advance to
great heights without danger to yourselves. Seek purity in all its forms, for
where there is purity, all the mysteries can be revealed. The mysteries that
human beings have always yearned to discover, the mysteries that are sealed
with seven seals, will one day be revealed, but only to the pure.
And never tell your heart to stop loving. You must love continually,
without ceasing; love all creatures, love the whole of creation and, above all,
love the Creator. Be careful to see that the form of your love and the direction
it takes are what they should be. Love is the only thing that has the power to
inspire and vivify you, the only thing! Love is the great benefactor; love is
God himself. Now, of course, it is always possible that others may try to take
advantage of your love, but this is where wisdom comes in. When you find
yourself confronted with people who are liable to take advantage of your love
and abuse it, you should conceal it. Don’t kill it, just keep it hidden inside
you and let it do its work unseen. Never kill your love: if you do, it is you
who will die!
Everybody in the world needs only two things: to love and be loved, to
give and to receive love. This is why it is imperative that you discard all
those traditions that prevent the soul from blossoming. You will say, ‘So this
means that you approve of young people breaking all the moral laws and
codes of behaviour in order to express themselves and practise free love?’
No, that is not what I am saying; when they do that they are not guided by
science, wisdom or initiatic rules. The original impulse is admirable, their
tremendous desire to love and be loved is magnificent; it is life itself, but
only if it is accompanied by light and if they behave according to the
understanding of the initiates.2
The Bonfin, 10 August 1963
II
Most human beings consider that there is nothing impure in kissing and
petting, and even in ‘going all the way’. To be sure, it can be perfectly pure:
it all depends on what people have in mind. If they are only interested in their
own pleasure and enjoyment, in taking advantage of what is available, they
are nourishing selfish desires which create impurities on the astral level, and
they dirty themselves and their partner. But if their desire is to help, heal,
sanctify and save their beloved, it will purify both of them.
It is not our actions and gestures that make us pure or impure but our
intention, the idea we have in mind, the feeling or desire behind our actions.
Even the greatest initiates had mothers and fathers who had to perform the
acts required for a child to be born. If they managed to produce a divine
child, a saviour of humanity, it is because they had the desire to do so. When
people let themselves descend into the lower regions of the astral world, they
can no longer be pure; if they were clairvoyant they would see that they were
feeding on offal! If you want to be pure, you must rise to a higher level so as
to capture the subtlest, most luminous elements.3 Without this high ideal,
even if you limit yourself to a little petting and kissing, on the grounds that
you want to stay pure, you will still be impure: the effects will be the same as
if you had slept with someone. Yes, because you are simply satisfying a need,
and every contact, every form of exchange that is not inspired by a spiritual,
divine purpose, produces the same effect.
It is well known that, in some cases, a sorcerer has only to touch a
woman’s hand, and the touch is enough to throw her shrieking and writhing
onto the ground, as all hell breaks loose in her. In fact, in some cases, the
sorcerer need not even touch his victim; he only has to breathe on her for
demons to take possession of her. So, the physical gesture is not what is
important or, at least, is not all-important; what is important is what a human
being harbours inside. A Master will not kiss you; he will not even touch you,
but his mere presence will be sufficient to fill you with heavenly love and
light.4
Purity acts as a magnet to divinities and angels. But nobody knows what
purity is; they eat and drink without discrimination, they entertain any and
every thought or feeling, and then they talk of purity! No, you can only speak
of purity and sanctity if you eat pure, healthy food, entertain disinterested
feelings and luminous ideas, and dedicate your soul and spirit to a divine
idea, not otherwise. Someone who is ignorant can never be really pure. You
will say, ‘What do you mean? Aren’t young girls pure precisely because they
are ignorant?’ Well, they may seem to be pure for a time, but you had better
not look too closely at what goes on in their heads! And even if their purity is
genuine, it will not last long if they are ignorant: they will soon be gobbled
up by a swine! True purity is something very strong, and to acquire it you
must be both wise and intelligent.
Sèvres, 3 January 1976
1 See The Mysteries of Yesod – Foundations of the Spiritual Life,
Complete Works, vol. 7, Part II, chap. 4: ‘Purity in the Three Worlds’.
2 See Youth: Creators of the Future, Izvor Coll. n° 233, chap. 18:
‘Sexual Freedom’.
3 See The Mysteries of Yesod – Foundations of the Spiritual Life,
Complete Works, vol. 7, Part II, chap. 9: ‘To find purity’, and The
Splendour of Tiphareth – The Yoga of the Sun, Complete Works, vol.
10, chap. 10: ‘Rise above the clouds – the sephirah Tiphareth’.
4 See What is a Spiritual Master?, Izvor Coll. n° 207, chap. 10: ‘The
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
‘God’s love was revealed among us…’ – John 3:16
1 See ‘Cherchez le Royaume de Dieu et sa Justice’, Synopsis Coll.,
Works, vol. 10, chap. 5: ‘The seven beads of the rosary’ and chap. 6: ‘The
Master and the seven-bead rosary’.
Chapter Fourteen
The task of a disciple
I want to tell you, today, what the inhabitants of Agartha are taught about
love.1 As I have already explained, the people of Agartha are strangers to
illness and live to a great age because they understand the depth and meaning
of love: they are nourished by love, they heal with love, they understand
everything, thanks to love. But if this is so, it is because their conception of
love is completely different to yours. Their initiates teach them, first and
foremost, to love the Lord, because, when they do this, he becomes a kind of
inner transformer, a power that harmonizes and integrates everything. But, as
God is always an abstraction for human beings, their instructors explain to
them that the sun is the visible representative of the Lord and teach them how
to establish rapport with the sun, how to love and become like the sun. In this
way, the task of establishing a link with the Lord becomes much less arduous,
for the sun is so much more accessible; it can be seen and felt physically,
thanks to its rays and the light and heat that flow from it.2
The next stage is to understand that, on the human level, it is their Master
who represents both the sun and God, and to learn to love him and look on
him, too, as a transformer, capable of transforming all their thoughts, feelings
and desires. In this way, thanks to their disinterested love for their Master and
the fact that they look on him as an ideal and an example, they make rapid
progress toward perfection for, not only does their Master give them nothing
impure, he cleanses them from their impurities. And when the time comes for
them to take a partner, their choice is an enlightened one, thanks to these
three transformers: the Lord, the sun and their Master. This is how things are
in Agartha. When disciples of Agartha give all their love to the Lord, the sun
and their Master, they acquire a great inner stability, capable of guiding and
enlightening them. But here, on earth, even though the great Master, the sun
and the Lord are all there, human beings continue to be mired in suffering
and sorrow, because they refuse to accept the means to happiness that are
available to them. They are bent on finding some little whipper-snapper or a
good looking wench to love; that is the only thing that interests them. And
this is why they never succeed in transforming their instincts and passions;
they have cut themselves off from the three powers which, alone, are capable
of helping them: God, the sun and their Master.
They are all engrossed in the love that ravages and destroys, and they have
no one to advise and instruct them. People say, ‘You’ve got to look out for
yourself. Just follow your nature!’ Yes, but there are so many different
degrees of nature. I have already spoken to you at length about the two
natures in human beings.3 Actually, they have more than two different
natures, but to simplify things we can say they have two: their lower nature,
which is constantly dragging them down to the level of the animals, and their
celestial, divine nature, which pulls in the opposite direction. In their higher
dimension, therefore, nature can prevent the lower aspects of humans from
manifesting their destructiveness. And this is why it is so important to
cultivate one’s higher dimension. You have to reason with yourselves:
remember that, although it is Cosmic Intelligence that has given you your
lower nature, and that it is only normal if that nature urges you to satisfy its
appetites by doing this or that, your other, higher nature was also given to
you by Cosmic Intelligence, and one day it is this that must rule and impose
its will on your lower nature.
For most people, the mere fact that an impulse is natural makes them feel
fully justified in giving it free rein. They say, ‘What’s wrong in that? It’s only
natural; I’m only obeying my nature!’ Yes, of course, they are obeying their
nature, but their lower nature. When a tiger springs on its prey and devours it,
it has no guilt feelings because it is governed by the lower order of nature.
And you can say the same of many human beings: they commit murder or
rape without any feeling of guilt, because they are still governed by their
lower nature. Only when their higher nature stirs to wakefulness will they be
capable of feeling guilt for deeds inspired by their lower nature, not before.
Cosmic Intelligence has given humans these two natures, therefore, so that
the higher nature may eventually take control and bring all things to
perfection, to the splendour and triumph of the Deity. Of course, everyone is
free to adhere to their lower nature, to let it have its way with them, on the
pretext that it is ‘natural’, but, in that case, they will never be any better than
animals.
The task of a disciple consists in giving priority to their higher nature. In
this way, little by little, they will become a Master, for a Master is a human
being who has achieved total mastery over their lower nature and harnessed it
for the service of their higher nature. They have not stifled or destroyed it;
they have simply put it to work for them.
The Bonfin, 1 August 1975
1 See A New Dawn – Society and Politics in the Light of Initiatic
Science, Complete Works, vol. 25, chap. 8: ‘Politics in the light of Initiatic
Science’, part I.
2 See The Splendour of Tiphareth – The Yoga of the Sun, Complete
Works, vol. 10, chap. 4: ‘The sun reflects the blessed trinity’ and chap. 15:
‘The sun is in the image and likeness of God’.
3 See Man’s Two Natures, Human and Divine, Izvor Coll. n° 213.
Chapter Fifteen
Open yourself to others
and they will love you
I have known a great many people who were always complaining about
one thing or another, and I have always found that the reason for their
unhappiness was their own attitude. They were incapable of opening
themselves, of loving others or of giving an occasional word of
encouragement or consolation. They did not know how to give, in other
words; they were always waiting for a gesture from others. And when other
people had their own problems and were too busy or worried to think about
them or to go and see them, they complained bitterly: ‘Nobody ever comes to
see me; nobody loves me; nobody is the least bit interested in me!’ But why
should it always be up to others to love them or be concerned about them?
People like this will always be unhappy until they realize that there is no law
that says they must always be spoiled and made much of by others. Take the
example of what happens with children: when they are little, their parents do
everything for them, they wash and feed them, clothe them and carry them in
their arms. But later, when children are older, they have to walk on their own
two feet and feed and dress themselves. Symbolically speaking, disciples
start by being in the position of children: their Master cares for them, carries
them in his arms and puts food into their mouth. But a Master cannot carry
his disciples in his arms – or on his back – for ever! Disciples must follow
their Master and, if they do not want to do so, they have no cause to complain
that their Master does not go and look for them.
I don’t know how often I have told you this, but I am going to insist again:
you must free yourselves from your personality; stop being so egocentric and
learn to do something for others. Of course, I realize that it is often the way
you have been brought up that is to blame. Parents tell their children, ‘Don’t
be naive; it is not up to you to take the first step; let others take the trouble to
come and fetch you!’ Well, others may come and fetch you, but only if you
are useful to them. If you are a baker, for instance, they will come and fetch
you because they want your bread. Yes, if you want people to come and seek
you out, you are going to have to give. If you are incapable of giving, if you
are cold and uncommunicative, how can you expect anyone to seek you out?
Human beings only love what is warm and alive and radiant. If there is no
light or life in you they will avoid you.
Only love can make you happy. If you neither give nor receive any love
you cannot expect to be happy. Even if you are very rich and influential, if
you love no one and no one loves you, it is no good expecting anything but
desolation and death. All this is so elementary, in fact, that I should not even
have to talk about it; human beings should know all this before they are out
of their cradles! But they don’t: that is what is so sad.
If you do not want to fade away and die, begin to love! Choose whatever
you like, a cat or a canary, and take it home and love it; it just might trigger a
universal love in you! It does not matter what you decide to love, a cat or a
tortoise or any other pet, just as long as you start to love! People don’t love
others, they love only themselves, and the circle of self is so cramped that
there is no room in it for anyone else. It is vital that you forget yourself a
little and begin to love flowers, mountains, the stars... anything. When you
manage to do this, the circle of self will expand and you will find yourself
richer, more expressive and more profound. What does a young man in love
tell his sweetheart? He looks at her and exclaims, ‘When I look at you I can
feel my soul expanding; my heart feels as if it contains the whole universe;
my whole being sings!’ Perhaps you will say he is exaggerating? Yes and no.
But you can take a lesson from lovers, and you will see that they will teach
you how to be happy.
To be sure, there are a great many reasons why people are reserved,
fearful and distant with others. For some, it is a flaw in their own structure,
for others it is a question of upbringing; some suffer from a psychological
problem or need to overcome excessive shyness. But the most common
reason is their self-centredness, and this, in turn, is the result of ignorance:
they simply do not know that this attitude is contrary to their own interests.
Of course, if they were perfectly happy in this, that would be different. It is
not advisable to isolate oneself from others; in fact it is a bad sign to want to
do so, but there are people who are happy to live in isolation, and I am not
talking about them for the moment. I am talking about those who are
unhappy in this situation. Since they are unhappy they need to change.
If you are unhappy, it means you have broken certain laws, that you are
butting your head against certain forces and entities, and it is a sign that you
must do something to change the situation. Begin by spending time with
other human beings. It is up to you to take the first step. Don’t wait for the
mountain to come to you; get up and go to it! Each attempt you make to
overcome your own weaknesses in this respect will make you stronger and
help to develop your humility. But if you do nothing to change, you will end
by being completely annihilated and buried under a mass of rubble, because
the nervous system cannot survive under such a burden for very long. If you
want to change, therefore, the first thing to do is to take one tiny step, make
one small gesture towards someone. As a matter of fact, people often do this
instinctively. If a man is upset because he has had an argument with his wife,
he will go out for a breath of air and a change of scene. After a few minutes,
his inner turmoil changes and he goes back home, kisses his wife and forgets
all about their differences. Yes, simply because he went out. If people do the
right thing instinctively, surely they should be able to understand that there
are other circumstances in which they can apply the same methods
consciously, and instead of eating their heart out and waiting for someone to
come to their rescue they can take the first step towards others.1
Even in the Brotherhood, when I see some brothers and sisters who are too
wrapped up in themselves, I tell them, ‘For heaven’s sake, be a little more
outgoing! You are too fenced in. Nobody is attracted by someone who is so
gloomy and disagreeable. Stop blaming others for not coming to you. Make
yourself agreeable and you will see that they will come flocking! Take an
example from the rose: when it opens its petals, the air is filled with its
fragrance and everyone delights in it, even the bees and butterflies; yes,
simply because it opened its petals. Why not open your petals and let your
fragrance perfume the atmosphere?’
Of course, I know that some of you will say, ‘You just don’t realize the
danger of behaving like that. There are always so many people ready to take
advantage...’ Well, if you are such great philosophers, do as you please; I’m
not going to force you to do anything. But at least, try to understand what I
am really saying instead of always being so ready to object, ‘Yes, but this...
Yes, but that...’ If you really want to, you will always find something to
criticize, even in what I have been saying. But the fact is that what I have just
explained to you is in perfect harmony with the philosophy handed down to
me and with our goal of teaching people how to develop and fulfil themselves
and live the new life. Obviously, if your goal and your conceptions of life are
quite different, you can replace the ideas I explain to you with ideas that are
diametrically opposed. But those of us who aspire to universal Brotherhood,
who long for the kingdom of God, must make everything converge towards
this one goal of light, splendour, fulfilment, beauty, joy and love. Believe me,
if I had a different goal I would change my philosophy.
Our ends and the means we use to achieve them must not contradict or
conflict with each other. All the means and methods I explain to you
correspond perfectly with the goals we are pursuing, and it is my joy to lead
human beings along this path. This does not mean that there are not other
paths: there are, hundreds of them, but they lead elsewhere and give different
results. Each person has to make choices in life. If you do not want to choose
what I have chosen, choose something else, but you will see the results for
yourself. When you are ill and abandoned by everyone, perhaps you will
begin to understand how mistaken you were to shut others out of your life. In
every country in the world, parents warn their sons and daughters not to trust
others for fear of what might happen to them. Perhaps this is good advice in
the world, where there are so many thieves and liars, rogues and swindlers.
But I don’t believe that, if you decide to be more open, to talk to other
brothers and sister or to smile a little, you are in any danger of being deceived
or robbed here. If there were the least sign of anything like that, I would
know about it and put a stop to it at once. So, you see, you are not in any
great danger!
You must spend time with other human beings and live with them without
sharing their failings and their darkness. You must be capable of being with
them and helping them without losing your own qualities and virtues. On the
contrary, you must be capable of giving them some tiny particles of yourself,
some rays of warmth from your heart and soul, and when you do this you will
feel happier and strengthened, because you will have made some small
contribution to the betterment of humankind. If the disciples worked
according to these rules of Initiatic Science, they would be able to help their
family and friends and human society at large without weakening or
depriving themselves. But you need Initiatic Science; if you tell me that,
without it, you are capable of frequenting the world without being
contaminated or injuring yourself in any way, I shall have to contradict you.
Anyone who believes this is not a good psychologist; they do not know what
they will lose. It is sheer folly to say, ‘I am strong and powerful; I can resist
temptation; I’m in no danger of becoming dirty!’ No one in the whole of
history has ever succeeded unless they have already acquired great
knowledge and worked to develop tremendous will-power. If you are
presumptuous about your strength, you will succumb like everyone else,
because the world is so rich and seductive that, after a while, you inevitably
fall under its spell. And, as soon as you open the door just a tiny chink, every
kind of filth comes rushing in and there is no way of getting rid of it; once it
gets a foot in the door, it does its work and that is the end of you! As I say,
therefore, you need Initiatic Science in order to live among human beings.
The Bonfin, 1 September 1967
1 See The Seeds of Happiness, Izvor Coll. n° 231, chap. 11: ‘The land of
Canaan’.
Chapter Sixteen
Tantra yoga
I
I have the impression that the more one talks to human beings about love,
the less they understand it or have a clear notion of what it really is. This is
because they are accustomed to living on the level of the subconscious, and
the only kind of love expressed on that level is the ordinary love that
everybody understands and practises. In reality, though, love has its source in
the regions of the superconsciousness, and if human beings only begin to be
aware of it when it is expressed on a much lower level, in the form of heat
and motion, it is because they have not yet developed the internal instruments
which would enable them to detect it on a higher level, at its source. Human
beings experience love on the level of the subconscious and, to a slight
extent, on the level of consciousness and self-consciousness, but this is not
really love.
Take the example of electricity. Electricity is an energy that manifests as
heat in a radiator, as light in a lamp, as movement in a fan, etc. And it is the
same thing with love: there is only one energy, the cosmic energy of life that
flows from God, but it takes different forms according to the different kinds
of equipment, the different organs, through which it manifests.1 Initiates
understand this and endeavour to tune in to and fill their hearts and souls with
the purest form of love, as it exists on the highest levels. They leave its lower
manifestations alone. They say, ‘It is perfectly normal and natural. You
cannot expect anything else’, but, for their part, they have already tasted it
and grasped it before it reaches the lower levels.
Love is an energy which is diffused like dew throughout the whole of
nature. It comes from the sun; it is the sun that distributes it to the air, to
trees, to mountains and oceans, to the fruits of the earth, to every creature.
And men and women have also received a few tiny drops of this dew in
certain parts of their bodies, and unfortunately that is the only place they look
for it. All life’s complications come from the extreme poverty of this
restricted view of love. Human beings spend their lives suffering and
weeping and tearing their hair; they commit countless blunders and crimes in
the pursuit of a tender passion, a love that can only rend their hearts and
make them miserable and ready to commit any crime. For, when they find it,
they inevitably find tragedy too. There is no need to give you examples from
history. The love that human beings look for is a fire that consumes them and
leaves only ashes; they don’t know that there is another kind of fire, one that
not only would not destroy them but is capable of resuscitating them. When
the Creator built us in his workshops, he gave us the organs and instruments
we need to find and live that love, but we have to go and look for it on a
higher level, in the sun, from where it flows out to the rest of creation.
Of course, the sun is not actually the source of love, it is only a station in
which it pauses for a moment on its way to the world of humans. Love comes
from a region far above the sun, but it stops in the sun and puts on certain
forms, certain garments, before resuming its journey to earth. Love is the
‘strength of all strengths’ of which Hermes Trismegistus speaks. Yes, the
strength of all strengths is divine love, divine life, divine light. It makes no
difference what we call it, it is always the same force, the same strength,
manifesting in the form of heat, light or movement, and we should think
about it constantly and drink great draughts of it every morning at sunrise.
But, instead of drawing on this strength of all strengths diffused throughout
nature by the sun, human beings give all their attention to a man or woman;
they never even notice the sun. Why? Because they still need to suffer, to
have all kinds of complications in their lives, to tear their hair out. Instead of
filling themselves with the wealth contained in the sun and then distributing
some of it to others, they plunder their fellow men and women and rob them
of the few crumbs they possess, and this is a great pity, for their victims are
left with nothing. True, it is love of a kind, an animal love, and human beings
are only interested in that kind of love; they enjoy the lusty sensations it gives
them, but the price they have to pay is high.
You have to be very highly evolved to be capable of launching into
physical love without danger to yourself or another. There are Tibetan yogis
who have reached such a degree of mastery through long practice with the
techniques known in India as tantra yoga, which enable them to sublimate
their sexual energy, that they dare to delve into their own subconscious and
explore the domain of instinct, passion, sensuality and the deep waters of
pleasure. Yes, they are so strong and pure that they can dive into the deepest
recesses of their nature and, thanks to their fearlessness, bring back pearls of
great price. They are like pearl fishers who dive into the ocean for pearl
oysters and surface again, without getting tangled in seaweed or eaten by
sharks. But experiments of this nature are not for everyone. You have to have
complete mastery of that formidable force before going to meet it face to
face, and I do not advise you to try it. I am simply explaining it to you.
It is only if you have already reached the heights of superconsciousness
and tasted the love diffused throughout the universe, the love which is the
very quintessence of God, that you are free to do whatever you like, for then
nothing can harm or soil you; you can no longer sin. But if you have not
reached this level, don’t try to do any deep-sea diving! There are very, very
few human beings on earth who are capable of diving into the depths of their
own nature in order to transform and sublimate, illuminate and embellish
what they find there. This is what we call ‘making both ends meet’, the
higher and the lower ends.2 But if you have not already attained the higher
world before trying to go underground, the lower world will wipe you out,
because you will have no weapons, no armour and no tools with which to
transform the matter of hell into pearls, gold or gems.
This is the mystery of evil and of hell. It is only when we reaches the
highest peak that we become capable of understanding the meaning of evil.
Until such time, the problem of evil remains inexplicable, incomprehensible,
insoluble. The problem of evil cannot be solved by reasoning, studying or
reading; it is far beyond human comprehension. In actual fact, evil does not
exist. Evil is evil only for the weak. For those who are not prepared and do
not know how to use it, evil exists; in fact it is a very powerful reality. But for
sons and daughters of God, for great Masters, evil – about which religion has
said so much without understanding it – is a rich, precious matter to be
exploited and used for their work.
When I was in India I learned of the existence of a class of yogis called
siddhas. For them, nothing is impure: they eat whatever comes to hand ‒
offal, animal viscera, excrement, absolutely anything ‒ because they have the
will to transform everything in order to obtain extraordinary powers of
magic. And they do obtain these powers; I have seen them for myself. But it
is not really necessary to go to such lengths!
The things I have revealed to you today are very profound and very
sacred; I don’t know how well you will understand me. Blessed are those
who want to study the true love that is to be found on high, at its source. This
love is diffused throughout the whole universe, but we have to awaken the
instruments, the centres, that God has placed in us, so that we may capture it
and be nourished by it.
The Bonfin, 8 August 1970
Supplementary note
Purity cannot be found at the bottom; at the bottom you will find only the
dregs. It is quite another matter that there are beings who have reached such
heights in their spiritual life that they are able to transform and sanctify
everything to the degree that, for them, nothing is impure. For those who
have begun to see things as the universal Spirit sees them, impurity, ugliness
and evil no longer exist; the cosmic Spirit sees the universe as a great
harmonious whole in which there is no room for dissonance or disharmony.
When you look at the world from a lower level, of course, all is not perfectly
good and beautiful, but when you look at it from a great height and see the
immensity of it, everything looks different: you even see disasters and wars
differently.
When you prepare a meal, you cut up and grind the different ingredients,
and if these ingredients were conscious they would say you were being
mercilessly cruel and unjust to treat them so badly. But you don’t feel guilty
about what you are doing, because you see things from a different point of
view. You will simply say, ‘I’m making some bread which everyone is going
to enjoy.’ If you asked a grape whether it liked being crushed in the
winepress, what do you think it would say? But it has to be done if you want
to make wine!
The universe is governed by an Intelligence that is completely beyond our
grasp, and we should not criticize it. You will object, ‘But this means you
think all crimes and wars are justified!’ No, I am not trying to justify them; I
believe that they shouldn’t exist and I am working to do away with them. But
I am simply telling you about the point of view of Cosmic Intelligence. For it,
everything looks different, everything is lustrous and intelligent, everything
sings, everything is in harmony.
Sèvres, 15 January 1967
II
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
God creates man and woman – Gen. 2:7 and 2:21-23
1 See Looking into the Invisible – Intuition, Clairvoyance, Dreams,
chap. 4-I: ‘Adam and Eve: spirit and matter’, chap. 4-II: ‘Adam and Eve:
wisdom and love’.
Chapter Eighteen
Love is everywhere
II
(Part I of this lecture was published in Love and Sexuality,
Part I, Complete Works, vol. 14.)
In spite of the fact that most marriages turn out badly, men and women
instinctively and subconsciously continue to hope that their own marriage
will be a marvellous, divine exception, that they will find their soul-mate and
be fulfilled. Where does this hope come from? From a memory of the far-
distant past, from a very deep-seated inner knowledge, from the fact that, on
high, in the divine world, the union of the masculine and feminine principles
is accomplished in absolute splendour and purity. It is because men and
women unite on too low a level that they fail to find fulfilment. Sometimes,
for a fleeting instant, they enjoy a sensation of ecstatic union, but
unfortunately it happens very rarely, and they always end by realizing that
they are two separate and distinct beings, that their hope was an illusion.1
And yet, the truth is that their belief and their hopes were not false. If they are
disappointed, it is because they have not understood what true marriage is.
True marriage exists only when a man and woman are united in soul and
spirit. When they unite on the higher level, happiness becomes a possibility
and all their hopes can be fulfilled.
These truths are buried deep down inside every human being; it is not in
their hopes and aspirations that they are mistaken, but in the way in which
they seek to fulfil them. Their error lies in thinking that happiness is to be
found on too low a level. But on the lower levels they only find what is
coarse and impure; happiness is not there; happiness is on high, in the realm
of purity and light.
All initiations have only one purpose: to teach adepts how to marry. At the
moment, marriage consists in hiring a comrade or playmate with whom to
experiment while waiting to be ready, one day, for true marriage. Your
present wife is certainly not your true wife; she has another husband
somewhere, and if ever they meet, you will be powerless to prevent her from
abandoning you. And the same is true for you: you marry one woman and
then, after a while, you meet another and think that, at last, you have found
your true mate. But no, it is not her, either! Human beings have to suffer, they
need this succession of illusions in order to learn, in order to suffer and
understand, at last, what true marriage is.
Marriage is not a human invention; it existed throughout nature long
before humans came on the scene: it is a cosmic reality. Even religious and
spiritual people have not grasped the profound meaning of marriage (of true
marriage,2 that is). So don’t think, just because you are married, that you
know what it is. Married people will be the last to understand true marriage!
The marriages we see around us are a pretence, crude, clumsy imitations of
true marriage, for nobody knows what true marriage consists of. People
‘make love’, but they never find true love because, to do so, it is necessary to
possess the absolute expression of all knowledge, perfect purity and complete
power of the will.
It makes one wonder what can have happened to humans to bring them to
such a degree of blindness. There exists a sublime Intelligence, a reality
which is so vast, so rich, beautiful and luminous, which transcends every
other reality in the universe, which is unequalled in kindness, generosity and
love. This reality has given us all we have: life, our bodies, health, food,
water, air, sunshine, flowers, fruit and untold wealth. But people forget the
very existence of this First Cause, this divine Being who sustains them and is
ready to give them eternal life, knowledge, power and ultimate victory. They
forget all about It and imagine they will find happiness, strength, health and
total fulfilment in a limited, ignorant, weak and sickly human being of flesh
and blood! What happens in people’s heads to make them go and love a
feeble human being with all their might, all their heart and all their minds,
when this person can only burden them with suffering and regrets? How is it
possible to lose sight of the essential so completely?
Oh, I know, of course, that you will have all kinds of objections. You will
say, ‘That Being you are always talking about is so far away! He might as
well not exist; I can’t see or hear or touch him. Whereas I can see and touch
and caress this human being who is so prettily dressed, so well made up and
perfumed, who is so real!’ Yes, you don’t need to say it; I already know how
you would explain why you prefer your life to be filled by such a poor,
limited, ignorant human being rather than by the Creator of worlds. But even
your soul and spirit will be contaminated by this being to whom you have
given first place in your heart.
I know you are not going to accept what I say, that you will maintain I am
wrong. But don’t misunderstand me: I am not telling you not to love a man or
a woman; all I am saying is that you must not give them priority. Once you
have enthroned the Lord in your heart, if there is still an empty space on the
physical plane, if there is still room in your bed, you can find another creature
to relieve your solitude. But the first and most important thing is to recognize,
love and appreciate the Being of all Beings, the Great Provider. Give the first
place in your soul to the Splendour of all Splendours, the Light of Lights, and
then, if you wish, you can still love another being, you can still marry. But
never give first place to your husband or wife, or you will see what that will
lead to: everything will be turned upside down; your head will be in the dust
and your legs waving in the air!
True disciples give first place in their heart and soul, intelligence and
spirit, to the Lord and, having done this, will try to find the human creature
who is most likely to help them to keep their Creator in mind. They will take
this person to their side as their collaborator on the physical level because
there is something in him or her that links them to the Source, that speaks to
them as a messenger of the divine world. In these conditions, everything is
transformed. But to go and fall head over heels in love with someone who is
incapable of putting you in mind of the Lord, of giving you light or purity, of
helping you to become nobler, someone who may even bring disorder into
your life and infect you with jealousy, cruelty and destruction... this is sheer
madness! I have seen a great many people whose marriage partner came
between them and heaven, and prevented them from maintaining any sort of
contact with the sublime world, who prevented them from praying,
meditating or studying and even from showing kindness to others. They had
been stupid enough to let themselves be entirely absorbed by their partner,
without seeing the pit yawning at their feet. They had no discernment, no
criteria to judge by! I am not opposed to marriage, friendship, exchanges, but
before you tie yourself down in this way, you must have a certain amount of
knowledge. What madness to forget that inexhaustible Source of love in
which you could slake your thirst and find fulfilment night and day. What
madness to make not the slightest gesture in order to remain in contact with
this infinite Ocean, and to be content to look for satisfaction and delight in a
puddle of stagnant water!
When you have already studied under the guidance of an initiate, when
you have already accomplished something and understood the essentials,
when you have learned to quench your own thirst at the one inexhaustible
Source of light, love, kindness and generosity, then, and only then, can you
turn to others to help them and give them light and life. But to know nothing
of that sublime reality, to choose to cut yourself off from it and wallow in
muddy waters full of tadpoles and every kind of filth is incomprehensible.
And yet, this is what most human beings do: their one idea is to plunge
headlong into the quagmire, and before long they begin moaning and tearing
their hair out trying to find a way out, and they end up fighting and killing
each other.
Human beings should begin by learning from those who know, after which
they can decide to build their own life. But they don’t bother to learn: in their
ignorance and unawareness, they rush at life like animals, throwing
themselves into senseless, passionate involvements simply because that is
what everybody else does. Why do you have to imitate the rest of the world?
If you behave like everybody else, you will be unhappy like everybody else,
you will have the same problems as everybody else, and you will be wretched
and ill like everybody else. Is that the magnificent life you wanted? No, don’t
imitate everybody else; follow the example of the minority, imitate the
handful of initiates who have found the meaning of life, light, truth, liberty
and peace. They can help you, because they know the methods and have the
means.
Well, you may feel that what I say is too improbable, that it is monstrous
even, but I have said it and it is too late to go back on it now. Of course, I
could erase the recording on tape, but I cannot erase the recording in your
brains; it is too late for that. So, remember: as long as you fail to look for love
in the right place, at its Source, as long as you are content to chance on a few
drops that have condensed here and there (and which will not be very pure or
transparent), you will always be unhappy; you will never find love. But if you
look for it where it is, in the divine world, in God himself, it will accompany
you wherever you go; you will never be thirsty again. You will feel its
constant presence; you will eat and drink it and be constantly fulfilled. In
fact, you will be astonished to see the state you are in. You will say, ‘How
can this be? I have no wife or children and yet I’m overflowing with love!’
Yes, look for love, first and foremost, at its Source, and only then, if you
wish, can you look for it wherever a few drops have condensed. But those
few drops will seem so meagre, so inadequate, compared to the abundance at
the Source. What can you do with a few dewdrops? You will say, ‘I can drink
them and enjoy them!’ Yes, you can do that once, and the next day there will
be nothing left. You think you have found true love because a girl has smiled
at you and kissed you and sworn eternal love, but the very next day she will
send you packing because she will have found someone else! Human love is
so unstable! Initiates are not content with a few little drops of dew; they go
directly to the inexhaustible Fountainhead. Initiates quench their thirst at the
Fountainhead of love every day, so much so, in fact, that they can also
quench the thirst of others. Why neglect that reservoir of love? Why ignore
all that wealth, and think that your whole being will be satisfied with a few
crumbs of love gleaned here and there, a few kind words, a few smiles and
kisses? Yes, you may eat your fill today, but tomorrow you will be hungry all
over again!
And don’t tell me, ‘I need love!’ Do you think you are the only one? Do
you think I don’t need love, too? In fact, my need may be even greater than
yours. The only thing is that there is a slight difference between us, and that
is that I have learned where to look for it, so I find it, whereas you look
elsewhere. It is a tiny, insignificant difference... but it makes all the
difference! You want to convince me that you have a burning desire, an
absolute need for love? Well, I have had that need for thousands of years, it is
nothing new, but I have learned to look for it where it is, where it flows in
unending immensity and splendour. Why should I abandon this philosophy?
Several times in my life women have sworn that they would make me happy.
It is always the same old story: someone who is unhappy promises to make
another happy! A man says to his sweetheart, ‘I swear I’ll make you happy,
darling!’, but he himself does not know happiness; how can he make anyone
else happy? How can he give something that he does not have? There may be
no other being on earth whose need for love is greater than mine, but when I
realized that no human being was capable of giving me what I wanted, I
began to look elsewhere. Can’t you do the same?
Everybody is in a hurry to tie themselves to a being who has no
knowledge of God, no faith or hope or love of God. It is amazing! They are
eager to marry people who have nothing, people who are like stones! And the
result is that they, too, become stones. And what can two stones do together?
Not build a house, anyway. The best they can do is to produce a few sparks
when the wind and rain tumble them against each other. Before marrying
someone you must find out what is in their head and in their soul. And if
there is not much there, don’t get married unless you yourself are enormously
rich in faith, hope, love, warmth, kindness, patience and good will. If this is
the case, then you may marry, not because you can expect to gain anything
from such a lifeless, lack-lustre being, but in order to restore them to life, to
help and enlighten them. Such a gesture would be divine. But, as a rule,
people don’t marry for this reason. Even if the other person is inwardly
beggared, they still try to get something from them, some slight reassurance
and protection, and the result is that they both end up doubly impoverished.
But if you have a sincere desire to make the sacrifice, and if you are
sufficiently well-armed to go through with such a marriage, your sacrifice
will be taken into consideration and written in the book of life. The invisible
world will be in admiration of your desire to give without expecting anything
in return, and it will be a blessing for your partner, because you will be able
to give them new life, to enlighten and purify them and help them to live
better. That is worthwhile; that is something great and noble.
Such cases of generosity and sacrifice do occur, especially among women.
Unfortunately, however, the desire to save someone is not enough; their
knowledge is often insufficient and they do not possess the methods or the
necessary physical stamina. If you want to save a drunkard or a ne’er-do-well
from himself, you need knowledge and adequate means and methods,
otherwise, not only will he not be changed, but he will destroy you. How
often this has happened: many a well-intentioned woman, who has tried to
save her husband from drink, has finished up dying of a broken heart! The
husband would spend all night in a bar and, coming home in the early hours
of the morning, would beat her savagely. It is not so easy to save someone;
you have to be very, very strong to take the strain for a long time and win
through to victory. You must be sure not to over-estimate your capacities;
weigh up your possibilities and tell yourself, ‘I want to save that being, but I
haven’t got the strength to do so.’ Then you can turn to more powerful
beings, call on an angel or an initiate, call on heaven to help the weak being
whom you love. You must be very strong before you can envisage taking on
the task yourself; when you do not have the necessary strength, you must find
it elsewhere.
There, my dear brothers and sisters, I have told you these things about
love and marriage, because it is essential that your ideas on such an important
question should be as clear as possible. This is often the area where people
stumble and fall and lose their heavenly heritage. It is important, therefore, to
have the right ideas. First and foremost you must seek the love that is God
himself, and if, with this love firmly anchored within you, you feel capable of
helping another human being, then you can seek love on the physical level,
but you must never depend on that love.
If you have a true notion of love, you will be in a position to work and
collaborate with the powers of light. A proper understanding of love is
absolutely indispensable for your future. You may not see any relation
between the two, but I see it very clearly: your future depends on your
concept of love.
Some time ago, a brother and sister came to see me and we had a long
conversation about their situation. I said to the brother, ‘You love this sister
and want to marry her. Is that it?’ ‘I can’t live without her’, he replied. ‘But
aren’t you already married? Haven’t you already got children?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’ So then I explained, ‘The choice you are faced with is very clear; there
are two paths open to you: the first is the path of pleasure and personal
satisfaction that excludes any consideration for others. If you take this path,
thinking that you will find happiness in it, you will have to break a certain
number of laws. You will be taking the path most commonly followed by
those who are weak, egotistical and sensual. You will be running deeply into
debt, and sooner or later you will be devoured by remorse for attempting to
build your future on the pain of others. In the final analysis you will fail to
find happiness and fulfilment. Once you have got what you were lusting
after, it will not be long before you feel satiated and start regretting what you
have done. So I don’t advise you to take that path. True, it will give you a
certain satisfaction for a while, but that won’t last: it will be followed by
misunderstandings and recriminations and you will have to start paying your
debts. But there is another path, the path of greatness of soul, the path of
sacrifice and renunciation, the divine path that many have followed and,
thanks to which, they have become exceptional beings. On this path you will
have to study, reflect and struggle, and understand that you must overcome
all these desires, all these seething passions and conflicts; in this way you
will gain control of the situation. On this luminous path of duty and the
fulfilment of the will of God, you will never know regret, only peace and
final victory.’
And to the sister that the brother wanted to marry, I said, ‘With two billion
men in the world to choose from, couldn’t you have picked one who wasn’t
already married? Why are you determined to break up and destroy a whole
family just because you want someone who is not free? Do you think you are
going to be proud of what you have done, later on?’ ‘But we love each
other!’ she replied. ‘Yes, I know that kind of love; you must do away with
that kind of love!’
And, to the married brother, I explained further, ‘If you obey this urge,
you will have to come back in another incarnation and pay what you owe
your wife. Suppose that you make your wife suffer undeservedly, do you
think that destiny will let you go unpunished? No, you will be made to pay
your debts; it is simply not worth laying such a burden on yourself. Here, you
have received a Teaching and all the knowledge and light you need to remedy
your situation, and yet you are ready to jettison all that. If you had never
come to this School, I would understand it if you committed the same follies
as everyone else; it would be excusable. But it is not excusable, because you
have received the exceptional privilege of knowing how you should behave.’
Finally, I spoke to both of them together: ‘Now, it is up to you to choose.
If you follow the path that tempts you, I can tell you in detail exactly what is
in store for you!’ When they left me they had decided to follow my advice. It
was magnificent, because I must admit I had not expected it. I told the
brother to bring his wife to see me, for I have methods for arranging such
situations, but, in order to reveal to him how it could all be put right, the
presence of his wife was necessary.
The whole world is embroiled in conflicts of this kind. The world is full of
adulterers and victims of adultery, and it never occurs to anyone that when
they inflict suffering on someone else they are incurring a heavy karmic debt
and that, one day, they will have to come back and pay it.
Yes, indeed, my dear brothers and sisters; what I said to that brother and
sister applies to you too. You just don’t realize how privileged you are to
have this Teaching. If you did not have this good fortune, heaven knows what
a state you would be in, the inner deprivation, limitations and unhappiness
you would have to put up with! But, thanks to this Teaching, you are in a
position constantly to nourish and strengthen your better qualities until, one
day, you fulfil your whole potential. Always reflect and study the situation,
therefore, before giving in to the solicitations of your lower nature.
I invite you all to reflect on this. The question of love is of supreme
importance, for everything else depends on it: everything is determined by
how you envisage and manifest love. Nobody has given this question much
thought so far, but love is at the root of everything. Although it does not
originate in the organs through which it manifests, although it comes from a
far higher plane, yet even on the purely anatomical or physiological level this
is still true. If you study the genital organs from this point of view, you will
see that if they are in any way defective, their owner will be handicapped and
unable to function adequately in any domain. Everything depends on them;
our whole life depends on the cells of these organs. Their structure and the
state of their health is reflected in every other area of our life. These cells that
we call the organs of love determine whether the person will be a capable
human being or an idiot.
The Bonfin, 23 September 1967
II
Even if one has an immense love for all men and women and a burning
desire to be useful to them, one is forced to recognize that they are not yet
ready to accept and understand all the truths that could save them. This is
why there are certain questions – in particular the question of love – which I
am obliged to leave in partial obscurity until such time as they are capable of
understanding them.
It is extremely difficult to explain truths which belong to an entirely new
order. If it is a question of the ordinary kind of love which is known and
recognized and accepted by all, even idiots, half-wits and invalids can
understand. They may do it very badly, they may do it like animals, but they
do it. Men and women are born knowing how to do it. Even the very young
know what position to adopt, what to do and how to do it. It is the same when
you give a child a sweet: it immediately puts it in its mouth. How does it
know that that is what it is for? But it takes years to know and understand the
love that initiates speak of. In fact the question is so new, so unheard-of that
it may seem even more obscure as the years go by.
One day, I told you that every function of a human being reflects a cosmic
function: I explained what the light of the sun represented, its nature and role,
how it fertilized the earth and how the masculine and feminine principles
worked together to produce life. But when I explained the function in humans
that corresponds to the light of the sun, some of you were very shocked. That
showed me that you were not all ready to hear the great initiatic truths. I am
forced to reveal things to you in small doses, because there is always a
possibility that I shall find myself talking to people without knowing how
they will understand what I say, or what harm they can do to me later if they
misunderstand me. So don’t blame me for not revealing everything to you. I
give you all you need to stimulate you to think and reflect, and to feel,
understand and grasp a certain number of true and very profound elements. In
this way, as you become inwardly freer, you will gradually feel encouraged
to delve deeper. Without explaining absolutely everything, therefore, I reveal
enough of the truth to you to enable you to begin working.
Obviously, as far as love is concerned, you can find a great many details
explained in medical texts and books about sexual hygiene and education. I
know that there is a substantial body of literature in this field, but I have
never read it because, in the first place, I don’t have the time, but chiefly
because I am not interested in hearing about love from the purely anatomical,
physiological or, if you prefer, ‘technical’ point of view. You will find
everything in those books except what I give you, that is to say, the divine
aspect of love. For love is not a pastime, but a splendid, tremendously serious
work of reconstruction, re-edification, resurrection and divinization.
More and more, nowadays, love is considered simply as a pleasurable
pastime, a relaxation, and it is the dark shadow of this conception of love that
is ravaging and destroying both men and women. For the sake of a few
moments of joy and pleasure, of effervescence of the senses, they are forced
to pay very dearly, too dearly. But they do not realize this; they think they
can enjoy these pleasures indefinitely without ever having to pay or surrender
anything in exchange. And, while they find themselves satisfied and
contented in one aspect of their lives, they are faced with a terrible sense of
emptiness in another. Yes, because they have thrown into the furnace all the
quintessences they most need for life and health. When you enjoy certain
sensations and indulge in certain pleasures, it means you are burning certain
materials; in other words you are paying the price. If lovers calculated these
things, they would see that what they have squandered so light-heartedly is
far more precious than what they have gained, that they have spent almost all
their substance and obtained almost nothing in return.
Young girls, in particular, do not know the value of the freshness, the
radiance and the purity that emanates from them. They are ready to surrender
it to the first comer in exchange for an invitation to a party, a walk-on part in
a film or a photo in a magazine. They do not realize that, in exchange for
something completely worthless, they are bartering their most precious
possession, thanks to which they could obtain the whole world. When you
see them again, some years later, they have lost all their charm: they are
flabby, crumpled and sombre, and they attempt to hide their lack of beauty
under layers of make-up.3 They spend hours in beauty salons whereas,
before, they had no need of artificial beauty, for a marvellous quintessence
emanated from them quite naturally.
Girls like that, who are ready to go to any lengths to be appreciated by
idiots, by swine, have never been taught to prefer the esteem of initiates and
sages or of the luminous spirits on high who sent them here, to earth, to
accomplish a specific mission. They do not know the value of what they
possess and are in a hurry to get rid of it. Or, as sometimes happens, if a girl
does want to keep it intact, everybody criticizes and laughs at her: ‘How on
earth can you still cling to those old taboos?’ And the poor girl, not knowing
what she will be losing, ends up doing what everybody else does. When a girl
is pretty and radiant, she is like a queen, she can obtain anything, but once
she has lost her radiance, she gets pushed to one side. This happens all the
time with singers and actresses; their popularity never lasts very long because
others, who are younger and fresher, steal the limelight and the applause of
the public. Beauty has not been given to women in order to satisfy men’s
sensual appetites, but in order to inspire and uplift them. Beauty, like all the
other qualities human beings have been given, was created to serve God’s
design. This is why disciples are expected to have a high ideal and, if they are
beautiful, to consecrate that beauty and, if they are intelligent or rich, to
consecrate that intelligence or that wealth to the service of the Lord, instead
of always trying to use it for personal advantage.
Those who come here may not agree with our philosophy, but whether
they agree or not, they are obliged to recognize that it is unlike all the other
philosophies abroad in the world today. If only the whole of humankind
could embrace or, at least, try to embrace it! It cannot be done all at once, of
course, but it is already a glorious thing merely to make the effort to arrive at
a correct notion of love.
What do lovers look for in the man or woman they love? Is it their face,
their breasts or legs, their arms or eyes, that they love? No, for all those
things are simply means by which love can be expressed; what they look for
in their beloved is love itself. In fact, it often happens that a man ceases to
love a girl in spite of the fact that her arms and legs and breasts are as perfect
as they ever were! Yes, but it is love he is looking for and, if she cannot give
it to him, he will try to find it in someone else. This shows that it is not the
physical body itself that people want; through the medium of the physical
body they are looking for love, that is to say, the fulfilment, happiness, joy,
delight and heightened awareness that love brings in its train. But suppose
that you find love without being in love with anyone in particular; you sense
it as a presence all around you, a presence diffused throughout the universe,
that you can drink and breathe in until it fills you to overflowing. Once you
have found love you no longer need a lover’s arms or legs or breasts. You
experience it as a quintessence, a life that fills all things; it is always with
you; you never tire of it. Yes, this is the level of understanding you must aim
for. You don’t believe me, I know. You say, ‘That’s impossible; quite
impossible!’ No, it is not impossible; it is a question of degree: you have to
keep climbing up, step by step, until you are convinced that the only true love
is the universal love which exists in profusion throughout the universe and
which you can drink in without ceasing, for this extremely subtle
quintessence is none other than God himself. Yes, God himself!
What we really love in someone is this quintessence, this emanation, this
subtle form of life, and it can be found in far greater abundance in the sun, for
instance, or in the oceans and forests of the world and in the air we breathe.
All the initiates who have worked and experimented have discovered the true
love they needed. For everyone needs it; there is not a single creature in the
whole world who can live without love. If anyone were to tell me they had
solved the problem, that they no longer needed love, I would not believe
them. There is not one single being that does not need love. For love is life.
Without it we are dead, spiritually dead and barren.
When I was in Greece I went to visit the monasteries of Mount Athos and
talked to the monks, and although I greatly admired all their works of art I
brought away with me a strong impression of tedium and sadness. Yes,
because they live according to completely false conceptions, chief amongst
them being the notion that they have to banish the feminine principle from
their lives, for everything feminine is considered to be evil and diabolical.
They go to such lengths in their rejection of the feminine principle that not
only is no woman ever allowed to set foot in their monasteries, but they are
not even allowed to keep a nanny-goat! Tell me, is it possible that such a
philosophy was invented by the Lord? And if so, why did he create women?
Really! Christianity is going to have to correct some of its conceptions one
day, for a great many people suffer from them. Christians either suffer from
inhibitions and need the help of psychoanalysts, or they exaggerate in the
opposite direction and live lives of debauchery; obviously, neither is the right
answer.
I counsel neither of these extremes: I do not approve of ascetics who
utterly condemn love, but nor do I approve of profligates who think of
nothing but wallowing in pleasure. I have other solutions, the best and most
balanced, and I intend to explain them to you.
Try, now, to see love as a divine energy, an energy which is poured out on
us from above and which, as it works its way down, triggers different effects
according to the different conductors through which it manifests itself. Love
is like water flowing from the mountain heights: at the highest levels it is
transparent and crystal-clear, but as it passes through different types of soil, it
gradually becomes tainted with the yellows and reds of the earth. Love, too,
is a pure, crystalline force which manifests itself divinely. But if you let it
descend to too low a level, it will take on other properties and be expressed
differently. As a matter of fact, if you knew how to observe yourselves, you
would see this phenomenon in yourselves, in your own feelings and
manifestations. What is this force that teaches you how to look at someone
you love with great tenderness, caress and be kind to them and know what
gifts to give them? And when you are angry, what force is it that teaches you
to scratch and bite and hit out? Isn’t it strange that no one ever teaches a boy
how to kiss a girl, and yet he knows how to do it? Everybody does it and
everybody knows it; it is nothing new; but what conclusion do people draw
from this knowledge? None!
As a matter of fact, whether it shows itself as love or anger, it is the same
force (the colour that corresponds to both love and anger is red), manifesting
itself either in its Venusian form, with delicacy, poetry and gentleness, or in
its terrifying Martian form. This is evident when love is expressed at too low
a level, in someone who imposes themselves with harshness and cruelty, and
turns into violence. A lover who shows no consideration for their partner,
whose only idea is to satisfy their own appetites and desires, displays a love
that is neither aesthetic nor salutary, generous nor divine. But if they express
a love of a higher kind, they will necessarily behave with greater gentleness,
delicacy and consideration and be much more concerned about the happiness
and future of their beloved. This is what distinguishes the two. Anyone
whose love is of the lowest kind is not thinking about their partner. They tear
them to pieces, devour them, regale themselves and then discard them. This is
the love of a wild beast, whereas, on the highest level, love inspires a person
to do great deeds and achieve marvels for their beloved. So, why not try to
develop and express this higher degree of love.
Anyone who has studied the different expressions of love has observed
that sensual love, which is simply the egotistical satisfaction of a physical
appetite, brings with it no illumination. A more spiritual love, on the other
hand, awakens knowledge that is slumbering in the subconscious: you begin
to discover certain truths and to feel the stirring of certain memories, as they
rise to the surface of your consciousness. It is important to recognize the
effects of these two kinds of love. A primitive, animal love deforms, defiles
and erodes something in humans, whereas the love that is manifested by
initiates restores, enhances, heals and purifies and, at the same time, opens
their eyes to fantastic discoveries. These are subtle, but very real, irrefutable
facts. Everything depends on your conception of love.
I don’t believe that any of those who have studied the question of love
have ever looked at it from this point of view. They seem to be mainly
interested in deviations and anomalies. But my task is to tell the truths that
are indispensable for your evolution and which no one else ever talks about:
how to love in such a way that it helps you to make spiritual progress and
improve yourselves. I am not interested in all the rest, all the filth and
gangrene which others seem to dwell on with such relish.
The criterion that most people judge by is a crude, violent sensation;
anything that does not give them such a sensation is worthless. They do not
know that, on the contrary, it is through a subtle, refined love that a human
being grows and discovers hidden truths and becomes luminous, intelligent
and strong.
You all know that primitive peoples produced fire by rubbing two pieces
of wood together; the friction produced heat and then light. And now, let me
show you what you can learn from this phenomenon. Two pieces of wood are
rubbed together: this friction is a movement, the movement produces heat
and the heat is transformed into light. As far as love is concerned,
symbolically, human beings go no further than the stage of movement. To be
sure, movement produces heat, but they should go beyond this stage, beyond
the stage of sensation, and begin to understand, to penetrate, the mysteries of
the universe and increase their inner light. Love can lead to light, but only if
they stop thinking of it as nothing more than a pleasurable effervescence. If
you want to be truly rich, turn to the love that is present throughout the
universe, to the love that is God himself, the only kind of love capable of
filling your whole being to overflowing. The other kind of love can never
satisfy you completely; it can only satisfy a few of your cells and appease
some small hungers, but your being as a whole will continue to be hungry
and thirsty, and you will continue to suffer from the same void; even lovers
will tell you this. Those who wish to quench the thirst of their whole being
must drink the waters of divine love, of the love that is immensity, infinity. A
human being will never be wholly satisfied by a few little pleasures.
Don’t think that what I am saying is purely theoretical; it is all too easy to
preach one thing and practise another. For my part, the love I am talking
about is the love in which I live. Day and night I am immersed in this infinite
love which keeps me in a constant state of lucidity and awareness. It is a state
which is impossible to describe... The only thing I can say is: try, at least, to
desire it for yourselves. Once you have tasted love in all its purity, you will
no longer need physical love. The sensation of drinking from the source of
life itself will be so strong that, in contrast, a physical body will seem no
more attractive than a corpse. Everybody tries to solve their problems
according to the ancient conceptions: they change partners, experiment with
different positions, conditions or methods, but, as they say in France, ‘The
more things change, the more they stay the same!’ Variety is necessary, I
agree, but not in respect to quantity. It is not a question of multiplying the
number of experiments or of partners, but of introducing variety by
improving the quality of your love, by broadening your conceptions, by rising
to the highest planes of love. Why not ask those who are always
experimenting with new methods if they have found fulfilment? They will
tell you that it is a continual disappointment. With each new attempt, their
hopes run high and they get a few crumbs of joy, so they go on hoping. Of
course, you can always make their happiness last a little longer by giving
them some hope, but since what is waiting for them in the long run is despair,
that solves nothing.
Let me show you yet another advantage of my conception of love. When
you look only for sexual, primitive, instinctive love, you are dependent on the
person who gives it to you. You are not free. And this often leads to conflict,
anger and grief, for, as you are not the only one concerned, you have to make
certain concessions and sacrifices to your partner which are often better not
made. The essential advantage of living in true love and drinking it in night
and day is that you love everybody and, at the same time, are dependent on
nobody: you remain completely free. This is a fantastic advantage. Initiates,
who refuse to be at anyone’s mercy, have discovered this form of love and,
thanks to it, are totally free and totally fulfilled; they lack nothing.
You see, here again, it is love that reveals these things to me, not books. I
don’t have time to read books. This is so true: love can teach you so much!
And so, for that matter, can hatred! Try to have a little more faith in what I
tell you, and you will see that your lives will change completely. Try to
immerse yourself in this love instead of being eternally miserable.
Look at the way a woman behaves when her husband leaves her: instead
of seeing the advantages of her situation and singing, ‘Free at last!’ she
weeps and moans and lights a candle to the Blessed Virgin – if she believes
in her – and begs her to bring her husband back. Why can’t she be happy and
think of all the things she can do now that her husband is no longer there to
prevent her? Instead of making the most of it, she makes herself ill and ends
up in hospital, all because she needs love. But what kind of love could her
wretched husband give her anyway? Isn’t it obvious from the fact that he has
gone off to look for it from someone else that he had no love to give? You
have to use your reason. How can someone who is poor make you rich?
‘Darling, I swear I’ll make you happy!’ But anyone who says this is unhappy;
they do not even know what happiness is! How can they think they are going
to make the other person happy! As though it were as easy as all that! No
doubt they think they can give happiness simply by sharing a bed. No, they
are more likely to give their diseases, vices and bad habits... but happiness?
The idea is laughable!
Don’t hold it against me if I talk to you like this. I assure you: my only
desire is to make your lives happier, not, of course, like the whippersnapper
promising his sweetheart happiness, but with a stable, durable, eternal
happiness. For I know how many difficulties, sorrows and disappointments
you all have; life is difficult, I know, I can see it in your faces. I can see that
many of you have to live in conditions which are far from conducive to your
evolution. How can I help you? I cannot give you millions. I cannot give you
a sweetheart. But I can give you a truth which is worth far more: I can tell
you how to be permanently linked to the source, how to drink of that love
that exists throughout the universe, that love in which we are immersed. But
you are like someone up to their neck in water shouting, ‘Water, water! Give
me water!’ They only need to open their mouth and drink, but they keep it
closed and die of thirst! This love surrounds and envelops us, and yet, there
you all are, weeping and moaning, still looking for it. In the words of St Paul,
‘In him we live and move and have our being.’ You are immersed in love,
just as fish are immersed in the ocean; you do not know it, but it is the
environment in which you already live. If you could only open a window, just
a crack, you would be flooded, submerged in that tremendous torrent of love.
Unfortunately, you are enclosed in such a thick shell, the shell of stupid
opinions accepted at face value from the ignorant masses, that nothing can
get through to you. You are so isolated, cut off and shut in on yourselves that
nothing luminous or divine can enter you. And this is precisely where I can
help: by opening a tiny breach through which love can enter. It’s simple! It’s
easy!
It takes thousands of years to obtain wisdom; it takes thousands more
years to obtain power, but it takes no time at all to obtain love. Love is there
for the asking, instantly. All you have to do is decide that you really want it.
To accept or refuse it, to open or close yourself to it, to love or not to love, it
all depends on you, and you can do it at once. Personally, this is how I
proceed: at this very instant I agree to love. For the rest, for wisdom and
power, I know I am going to have to wait a long time, but I don’t have to wait
for love. I can love today, now, at this very instant, so I throw myself into it,
and there it is! And you can do the same: don’t wait, throw yourself into this
ocean of love, and you will feel all your grief and distress, all your
difficulties, fading and disappearing. ‘And what about the dreadful conditions
in which we have to live?’ you will ask. They will change, you will not be
given the same conditions for ever, everything varies, everything changes.
Cling to hope and you will find that everything improves: you will have the
prettiest wife in the world, the most perfect children, palaces and millions!
Obviously, this is symbolic, and people are not particularly fond of symbols;
they prefer something solid to hold on to and fondle. Yes, and that is
unfortunate, because it is when you remain on the level of symbols that
everything is magnificent.
My dear brothers and sisters, this is a school, a school in which you are
learning sublime truths, and you do not have the right to judge what you hear
until you have verified it for yourselves. But everybody judges on the basis of
their old conceptions, on the basis of the ancient traditions handed on by
families and society and which conceal the real truth from them. It is no
wonder that, in these conditions, initiatic truths seem too far-fetched and
unrealistic, too utopian, even stupid. But those who are wise and intelligent
never make a judgment about something they have not studied and examined
in detail or experimented with for themselves. They say, ‘What you say may
be true, but as I am not in a position to pass judgment on it at the moment, I’ll
study the question and try it out, and I’ll give you my opinion later.’ Whereas
an idiot will tell you, without hesitation, ‘In my opinion that’s impossible; in
my opinion that’s grotesque; in my opinion...’ If you study history, you will
see that a great many scientists scoffed at certain discoveries made by others
but that, not very long afterwards, they were forced to eat their words and
admit that it was the others who had been right. In fact, this kind of thing has
happened so often that scientists are now much wiser and more circumspect;
they refuse to compromise themselves by pronouncing judgment too hastily.
So why don’t you take a leaf out of their book and wait before forming an
opinion on this subject and all the unknown aspects which I reveal to you.
There are hundreds upon thousands of steps on the stairway of perfection, but
human beings are forever marking time on the lowest steps, and, what is
more, they are convinced that things are meant to remain as they are for
eternity. No, humankind has not finished advancing; it must continue to
climb to higher levels; there are still great changes to come.
Of course, I am not talking about the ‘sexual revolution’ that is going on
today among young people, particularly in the United States and Scandinavia.
I am not saying it is perfect or that they have found the right solutions:
promiscuity, exchanging partners, the pill, abortion and so on. No, but these
are experiments, trial runs, which are going to continue for a number of
years. Young people have the will to change things, to find other ways of
doing things, but this does not mean that they have found the solution yet.
I know Initiatic Science, in which are contained all the changes that
Cosmic Intelligence has had in mind for humanity for millions of years.
When the right conditions are there and it becomes possible for these changes
to take place, the splendour and bliss that will be enjoyed by humankind is
beyond anything you can imagine: it will be the new Golden Age! Personally,
I believe that the Golden Age will come, but it will not be brought by cranks,
oddballs or madmen, no! It will come thanks to those who have developed
the qualities of true knowledge, disinterested love and self-dominance.
Beings who have these three qualities will come. There are already some
exceptional beings in the world who are perpetually neglected, ridiculed or
thrown into prison, but when the time is right they will make themselves
known, and the face of the earth will be transformed. As for those who spend
their time pursuing their own personal ambitions, who think of nothing but
their own success, fame or money, they will disappear... all of them without
exception!
Even if you have not understood very much of what I have said today,
when you listen to this lecture again for the second time you will understand
more, and the third and fourth times, more still. I know very well that you are
not capable of understanding truths such as these in the space of one hour.
You listen and take notes, but what do you really understand or digest? Very
little. You have to read my lectures or listen to them again. In fact, many of
you know this and have said so to me. It is no use believing or hoping that
such tremendous, unheard-of truths can be instantly understood and put into
effect. Well, in any case, I don’t believe that it is possible, for I know the
reality, I know human beings and human nature, I know how slow they are
and how deeply embedded they are in their material preoccupations and
commitments. Even when they understand that something I tell them is
sublime, divine, they say, ‘It’s impossible, Master, I can’t do it. I’m already
committed...’ What reason do I have to believe that one of my talks has the
power to turn a life upside down?
Oh, to be sure, it can happen; there are exceptions. But they are rare:
someone hears a lecture and that’s it; their whole life is transformed. Yes, but
that is because they have greatly evolved in previous incarnations, and they
only need to hear one truth for everything to fall into place. But for most
people, clubs and hammers are needed to pound and beat and hammer at
them until, twenty or thirty or forty years later, they say, ‘Ah, yes. I’m
beginning to understand that there are laws that must be respected’! But why
wait years? Believe me, there is not very much time left. Hurry up! There are
great upheavals on the way. How will you endure the strain and the
privations? Your nervous system is already so fragile.
As you see, my dear brothers and sisters, I speak about a different subject
every day, but always with the same purpose, the same orientation. My
lectures are like a river: the water is never the same, it is constantly changing,
but it is the same river, flowing always in the same direction ‒ to the sea.
Sèvres, 1 February 1975
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
‘In him we live and move…’ – Acts 17:28
1 See Cosmic Balance – The Secret of Polarity, Izvor Coll. n° 237,
Izvor Coll. n° 241, chap. 5: ‘Tasting the flavour of the salt: divine love’.
Chapter Twenty
Know how to use your powers of love
I
People have always told so many stories about initiates, but the fact is that
they know nothing about them! Time and time again I have told you that
initiates are no different from other people insofar as their sexuality is
concerned. In fact, very often, this aspect is even more potent and more alive
than in other people. But the real difference between initiates and others is
that they know how and to what end to use their energies. For them,
everything is useful, everything has meaning. Initiates would never mutilate
themselves or become eunuchs, as so many religious did when they fled from
women and ended up completely hardened and totally insensitive to beauty
and poetry! This is not the way of an initiate! You must never mutilate, reject
or cut anything off; you must simply acquire the knowledge needed in order
to channel and use your sexual energy.
If you put a dam across a river, the water can overflow and destroy
everything in its path. Your dam will not prevent the water from flowing.
And the same is true of the forces in human beings: if they dam up the
energies that are trying to rise, the tension will build up in their subconscious,
and one fine day everything will be swept away by the flood. If you do not
know human nature you will never succeed. Never try to dam up your
energies, therefore; give them a channel through which they can flow to
irrigate your land, just as the ancient Egyptians dug ditches so that the waters
of the Nile could fertilize their land. Actually, nature has already installed the
necessary channels and ducts through which our sexual energies can flow
upwards towards the brain. But, for the moment, human beings are so
unaccustomed to working in this direction, that these channels are blocked up
and all their energies take the downward path and are wasted.1
Even initiates can be troubled when they feel certain desires, but the
difference between ordinary people and initiates is that initiates are attentive
to what is going on in them. They keep an eye on everything and know how
to remedy the situation, whereas other people let everything just take its
course, and then, obviously, they can only take stock of the damage that has
been done! But people have not remained inactive in the face of the natural
forces of water, air and fire. For thousands of years they have tried to find
ways of protecting themselves from their ravages and even of making use of
them. The sad thing is that the spiritual life has not benefited from all the
discoveries humans have made; on the contrary, they have been used for
egotistical, personal goals: to get rich, to have power over others, sometimes
even to exterminate them.
The one essential problem is how to love, and it is precisely this that no
one knows. People are taught that love is an instinct and that they must let it
have its way. Ah, no! Nobody knows what love is; nobody knows that God
has put everything into love. We must love, there is no doubt about that, but
we must learn how to use love. When two beings fall in love, why do they
have to be in such a hurry to spoil everything? Why can’t they understand
that what they are experiencing is a promise of the greatest happiness, the
most perfect fulfilment, so long as they learn to use their glances, their words,
the fragrance of their love, in order to understand, ennoble and purify
themselves? Immediately, when a man and a woman discover their love, they
rush headlong over the edge of the precipice, and then, in no time at all, they
cannot bear the sight of each other anymore. Yes, because they were in too
much of a hurry. Why not keep a little distance and use all that fragrance to
rise higher and higher, to be inspired and dazzle the whole world? At the
sight of them, people should be moved to exclaim, ‘Who are those two?
There is such light, something so divine emanating from them...’ This is the
goal of love, but in order to reach it you have to know all the different aspects
of this formidable force.
Don’t let yourselves be influenced by novels and films, for they will only
encourage you to do something silly. You must seek initiatic knowledge
instead and learn how to use the force of love to obtain light, not to defile it
by sleeping together at once, as is the custom today. Once you have had a
dozen or more lovers or mistresses, what can you hope to do that will still be
beautiful and clean? Nothing; you are shop-soiled and unusable! You must
love, yes; but you must learn how to love so that your soul and spirit, your
whole being, benefits from your love. ‘Yes, but I feel driven. It burns!’ So
much the better! Haven’t I already told you that the greater the pressure, the
higher the water can go in the skyscraper of each person. Without that
pressure, the inhabitants on the top floor, in the brain, would be permanently
without water. But people are so ignorant that, for the sake of tranquillity,
they are ready to do away with the pressure, with the result that they do away
with everything: the inhabitants of the brain have no water to drink because
there is not enough pressure. There is nothing more beautiful, more powerful
or more divine than love, but human beings are doing their best to ruin this
most precious of all the gifts the Creator has given them.
Only true initiates have had the full revelation of love, and thanks to this
they are able to heal and prophesy and work miracles. For my part, this is the
only thing I believe in: the power of love, for I have received astounding
revelations about it. I know that love is the only thing that has the power to
give men and women everything they need and could ever ask for, for it is
the source of all forces. Yes, all the forces known to and used by the physical
sciences are simply the various transformations of heat, that is to say, of love.
At the origin of all things is fire: fire, heat, love. If you know how to work
with that force you can obtain whatever you wish. Unfortunately, instead of
working with it, human beings are constantly trying to get rid of it. You must
not do that; you must not waste it. Believe me, this force is brain power; if
you waste it you are wasting your grey matter, throwing away your brain.
I think it is now quite clear to you that you must love, but you must direct
your energies towards the branches of life instead of letting them all sink
down to the roots. Send the energy boiling up inside you to the brain (that is
what I mean by the branches); let it water and nourish the brain and produce
flowers and fruit. In order to do this you must be permanently linked to the
inexhaustible Fountainhead and not be content to drink only from a little
bottle (that is to say, your husband or wife) that you will be obliged to throw
away once it is empty! Slake your thirst at the living waters of the eternal
Source.
While you are here, take advantage of the good conditions you find here,
and try to steer this energy of love into other channels. Let it mount until it
awakens your spiritual centres on high, instead of always letting it follow the
same old downward path that it has followed from prehistoric times. To be
sure, you will not succeed the very first time you try. The first days, the first
years, will be difficult, but if you keep trying, the invisible world will give
you more and more help, and one day you will succeed!
The Bonfin, 20 July 1967
II
I invite you to take a look at the way a lover usually behaves in order to
win a partner. They coax and cajole them, pay them a thousand compliments
and flatter their vanity. In other words, they play on their personality, for they
know that if they don’t they can expect nothing from them. And whether the
partner in question is a man or a woman, the technique is basically the same.
Both men and women, therefore, know what has to be done: by their words,
gestures and gifts, they always speak to the personality. They do not even
know that the being they are addressing has a higher nature, the individuality,
which needs to be aroused, nourished and strengthened, so they do all they
can to satisfy the person’s instinctive nature. When it comes to awakening the
sublime, ideal, luminous, perfect faculties dormant in their beloved, and
nourishing them, if only with a word, a glance, a smile, they have no idea
how to go about it. But when it comes to awakening and exciting the aspects
of the personality that will enable them to satisfy their own lower instincts,
they know exactly what to do! This is why human love still expresses itself
instinctively and with passion, in the manner of animals. It is very rare to find
any poetic, wondrous, divine element in it.
Initiatic Science is needed if human beings are to learn how to nourish the
higher nature of those they love. Picture two beings who love each other and
are deeply committed to this Teaching, who are steeped, night and day, in the
light of the Teaching: they are living their love on the higher level. Each of
them thinks of the good of the other and tries to find ways to encourage,
enlighten and strengthen the other and prepare the other’s future. This is a
picture of a higher degree of love, whereas in general, people think only of
themselves, of how they can satisfy their own needs; they are completely
indifferent to what might become of their partner. They are ready to tear them
to pieces, turn their lives upside down, destroy their future and their beauty,
their reputation and their position in society, for no other reason than to
satisfy their own lust. What a world!
Have human beings ever studied any of this? Have they ever been
instructed in Initiatic Science and learned to analyse the true nature of the
urges and impulses that move them by reading their rate of vibrations and
seeing what category they belong to: whether they are divine, human or
diabolical, egotistical or disinterested, beautiful or ugly? No, they have a
need, and the only thing that interests them is to satisfy that need. Whether
their need comes from heaven or hell, they don’t know, and they don’t want
to know. In other words, they are animals. They are worse than animals, in
fact, because animals follow their natural instinct only at certain periods of
the year, whereas human beings are obsessed by their sensuality day and
night, to such a point that they indulge in vicious, perverted forms that nature
herself never planned.
What attitude should disciples adopt in this respect? If they want to do the
right thing they are going to have to reflect, to ask themselves some
questions, to analyse the situation. A young man will say, ‘I love her, that I
know. But what will my love do for her? Will my love help her to advance
and become freer, or will it simply complicate her existence?’ But a young
man doesn’t think about these things, and when a baby comes on the scene,
he leaves her to get along as best she can and bring it up by herself. This is
what happens when a man asks himself no questions; he says, ‘I’m hungry’,
and that’s that. And does a girl often think about a young man’s future? No,
she leads him on and incites him to give free rein to his lowest instincts – for
women have a magical power capable of arousing even the coldest of men –
so that the poor wretch will never again know a moment’s peace. But that is
all the same to her: she is proud of her conquest; it proves the power of her
charms!
Women often take pleasure in testing their power over men, and as they
are stronger in this respect than men, they have an easy victory. When they
see that men find their charms irresistible, instead of using the power this
gives them to inspire them, keep them on the right path and encourage them
to be nobler and more honest, they use it to lead them astray! Not from any
evil intention, no, but because they need to feel the full extent of their power.
When they are in the street or at the theatre, they are proud to feel that all
eyes are on them. But they do all this with such an air of innocence and
candour; they are past masters at keeping up appearances! To tell the truth,
they have exactly the same need of pleasure and sensual satisfaction as men,
but they don’t show it. Men are more naive: they can hardly feel the slightest
arousal without letting everyone see it!
So, disciples must learn to think of their partners. In any case, as they are
taught about the laws of karma and reincarnation, they know that if they
behave badly in this life, they will have to come back to earth to make
reparation for their faults and sometimes suffer terribly. If only to avoid even
greater misfortune, therefore, they try to love their husband or wife in a
nobler and more unselfish way. But, of course, both partners must be
enlightened and know the laws, otherwise my advice cannot really be put into
practice.
Let me give you an example: I have already told you that, when a man
holds the woman he loves in his arms and looks at her and talks to her,
instead of using the name of his beloved, he can speak through her to the
divine Mother. In this way, he creates a bond between himself and the divine
Mother and sublimates his love. And, above all, his wife must not take
offence, as sometimes happens. You know how it is: they are in bed, and the
husband is already half asleep when he murmurs the name of another woman.
Well, naturally, she is furious; she guesses that he has fallen in love with
another pretty face, and makes a great scene about it! At least this won’t
happen to a disciple. If you murmur, ‘Oh, divine Mother!’ in your sleep, your
wife will think, ‘Oh, if it’s the divine Mother he’s in love with, that’s all
right!’ And she will be all the more understanding knowing that the divine
Mother is a long way away! As for wives, instead of murmuring the name of
their husband, why shouldn’t they call on the heavenly Father. In this way,
instead of limiting themselves to the lower aspects of their exchange – you
never know what staleness and rottenness you can absorb on that level – a
couple can be ‘plugged in’ to the central powerhouse that is God. In this way
they will be lamps, continually alight and shining.2 You must link yourself to
that eternal Source of all perfection, not to the poor simpleton who says,
‘Darling, I swear I can make you happy!’ You only have to look at them to
see that they are spineless, ignorant and miserable: how can they hope to
make anyone happy?
Instead of simply enjoying and drawing sustenance for themselves from
all those riches that God has given them ‒ all that life and warmth, their
mutual, loving presence, all those fragrant emanations ‒ men and women can
use them to advance and reach greater heights. When they link each other
with the heavenly Father and the divine Mother, they draw strength and
happiness from that inexhaustible reservoir of pure, incorruptible love and
feel themselves enlightened, strengthened, rejuvenated and fulfilled.
You find all this rather bizarre, don’t you? Well, think what you like... But
I am speaking for the few, for those who are ready to understand these ideas
and put them into practice. The others can go on doing what they have always
done, and they will see for themselves if their love lasts a long time! Things
are not always what they seem, even with couples that have never been
separated for thirty or forty years. If they revealed their secret thoughts, you
would find that they had both dreamed of changing from time to time, but
instead of separating they had both secretly enthroned someone else in their
hearts: he, a Hollywood star and she, a crooner!
It is a mistake to think that human love can last for ever. It is made of
matter that can crumble away from rust and decay. Never trust someone who
says, ‘I’ll love you eternally’; a month later they will have found someone
else! As a matter of fact, you should never rely on promises: when a human
being has had a few drinks they are ready to promise whatever you want, but
in the cold light of day, they will say, ‘Whatever got into me to make me
promise such a thing?’ Yes, people say the wildest things when they are in
the grip of emotion. When they are in bed together, lovers make all kinds of
extravagant declarations and promises, and the next minute they are at each
other’s throats. How can you believe in the eternity of human love? Only
divine love is eternal. Draw on divine love and you will see that your love
will go on and on, for millions and billions of years, and you will never tire
of it or be bored or get sick of it, because it is the only kind of love that is
always new, appetizing and delicious. It is beyond the power of words to
express!
It is really worthwhile taking the trouble to prepare yourselves to become
conductors of divine energies, so that heaven can pour out its treasures
through men and women. Great Masters are simply conductors who manifest
not themselves but the heavenly entities who pass through them. This is why
human beings never tire of following them, contemplating them, loving and
believing in them. If it were they themselves who spoke to you and taught
you, you would soon have enough of them and would leave them, because
what is human will always be human. As St Paul says, ‘What is sown in
corruption bears fruits of corruption; what is sown in incorruption bears
fruits of incorruption.’ Incorruption is what is eternal, our divine nature. And
yet, people forget about it; they never have recourse to it or seek to be in
touch with it. They don’t know how to find it, so they cling instead to the
perishable, fleeting, destructible things of life. They do not have a high ideal;
they prefer something solid and tangible; they need something that they can
touch and caress and embrace.
I fully understand that the tangible, material side of reality is important
and necessary and that without it, in fact, it would be difficult to find the
spiritual side, but it must be seen as a means and a starting point, not as an
end in itself. If, for instance, you feel a strong physical attraction for a man or
woman, instead of diving in and drowning yourself in it, why not use it as a
golden opportunity, an occasion to make great strides forward and to reach
greater spiritual heights? Similarly, if you read something or see a show or
leaf through a magazine that triggers a physical reaction in you, instead of
letting yourself be swept away and drowned in it, use it as a springboard and
let it catapult you to such heights of divine contemplation that, when you
come down again, you will be astonished to see what riches you have just
amassed, and how something that started by troubling you could become a
stimulus, a help and encouragement to advance spiritually.
You can see how necessary this philosophy is. Why be so blind as to obey
the suggestion of every sensation that troubles you, without knowing what it
will lead to? Remember that Initiatic Science teaches you to use everything,
so be glad and thank heaven for these opportunities: ‘Ah, what a blessing!
Here’s a situation that makes everybody tear their hair out, and I’m privileged
to know how to come out on top! Thank you, Lord. I understand what I have
to do, so let’s get on with it!’ And you roll up your sleeves and apply the
methods that I have given you. In this way you will learn to triumph over
every difficulty; nothing can disturb or vanquish you; you become strong and
powerful ‒ a divinity!
I have explained these things to you time and time again, and yet I have
the feeling that you have still not understood and that, instead of using this
energy to work at your own evolution, you abandon yourselves to it blindly,
simply because it is pushing you. Yes, but everybody gets pushed, and some
see to it that they are pushed in a different direction; they use this force to
reach great heights, to climb towards heaven and become very rich. Why be
content with slavery, weakness and dependency and say, ‘It’s stronger than I
am’? It is time you started to move in a different direction. Of course, when
you are used to letting yourself go without a second thought, to giving
priority to your feelings and desires and your thirst for pleasure, it is difficult
to become master of oneself from one day to the next. But when you are a
pupil in the divine school of this Teaching, you begin to reflect and
understand, and gradually you will begin to acquire more control, achieve
self-dominance and re-orientate yourself. And in the end you will win. You
will not be deprived of love; on the contrary, you will love, but without
having to find a partner with whom to wallow in the mire!
But, nowadays, people have only one idea, and that is to tear down all the
moral barriers that initiates of the past set up to prevent human beings from
living in slavery to passion and disorder. They were well aware of how many
brilliant civilizations had disappeared, destroyed from within by the moral
and physical degradation caused by debauchery and orgiastic cults. It is the
turn, now, of the present generation to want to free itself from all taboos and
rules; the impetus has reached such proportions, in fact, that nothing can now
stop it. Only the light of Initiatic Teaching can hold human beings back from
the cliff’s edge. The light of this Teaching shows them that all their divine
energies are being swallowed up and absorbed by their depraved passions and
pleasures; that they are obliged to surrender all their resources, all their
materials, all the furniture they possess, even the tables and chairs, in order to
fuel the fire that possesses them. For this fire consumes the very substance of
a person’s being. You can never persuade it to burn your neighbour’s house
or the trees in the forest: it can only feed on your own reserves, your own
fuel. In order to go on indulging in the ferment and violent volcanic eruptions
they enjoy so much, human beings are obliged to burn up all their most
precious energies and quintessences. Each time, without their realizing it,
they lose something of their purity and intelligence, something of their beauty
and power, and in the end, when they have spent all they had, they find
themselves weak and ill, with all their beauty and intelligence tarnished and
destroyed.
I wonder, of course, how many are willing to believe and understand these
truths. Nobody respects moral prescriptions anymore, because they do not
realize they are founded on a prodigious Initiatic Science.3 Blindly,
mindlessly, people hurry to give in to all their whims and fancies without
knowing that this is leading to the destruction of humankind. For, once you
destroy the dams and dykes, the flood waters sweep all before them,
devastating and destroying the whole land; it is inevitable!
My dear brothers and sisters, you must understand this once and for all:
you must know exactly what each of your desires will lead to. If you feel
impoverished, weak and unhappy, it is because you are on the wrong road.
All you have to do is choose a different one! But no, you don’t do that. You
embark on something without reflection, simply because it tastes sweet and
you enjoy it: this is the absolute criterion by which you judge everything. But
here, the only criterion is work: to work, build and create. Yes, and in this
work, without having to look for it, we find an immense, indescribable
pleasure! We are constantly happy and brimming over with wonder and
delight. Isn’t it at least worth trying?
Videlinata (Switzerland), 21 March 1975
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
‘What is sown in corruption…’ – I Cor. 15:42
1 See True Alchemy or the Quest for Perfection, Izvor Coll. n° 221,
When you form a bond with a particular man or woman, you experience
certain joys, to be sure, but you also experience certain tribulations and
sorrows. If human beings were sufficiently highly evolved, they would love
all men and women without attaching themselves to any one in particular.
And the reason is not, as you might think, in order to amuse themselves with
more than one person, but in order to do more and better work for the whole
world. When a man marries, his wife is so demanding that she absorbs all his
attention; she is too jealous even to allow him to love the Lord; she wants
him all for herself. And that is the end of his freedom! And men have exactly
the same attitude with their wives: they claim every scrap of their love and
attention for themselves.
Oh, don’t talk to me about husbands and wives! They all have the same
failing: they all want to possess their partners, to keep them for themselves, to
make them their servants. This is why, in certain cases, it is better not to
marry and, instead of trying to make one woman happy (which, in any case,
is an impossible task!), to work for the happiness of the whole world. You
will say, ‘What do you mean? Can’t I make one woman happy?’ No. You can
make thousands of women happy, but never just one. Why? Because,
however much a man does for his wife, she is never satisfied. Once he is
dead, perhaps... but as long as the poor man is still alive, he is an imbecile
and an incompetent. The man next door is always a better husband; he buys
his wife everything she wants: a refrigerator, a washing machine, furs! You
can do everything in your power, but you will never succeed in satisfying one
woman, but you can satisfy thousands of women.
Now, don’t get the idea that I am telling you to leave your husband or
wife. ‘Well, after all the things you have been saying, that is what it looks
like!’ No, not at all. It is a good thing to marry and have children; the only
thing is that you should change your point of view and say, ‘My husband is
an aspect of the heavenly Father; what a blessing!’ You have all seen
cartoons where you see a big, fat woman with a rolling pin in her hand,
hiding behind the door, waiting for her husband to come home. And when the
poor wretch opens the door: whack! A blow on the head knocks him out.
Never mind, she is there to revive him. Yes, well, that makes you laugh; but
don’t laugh at the idea that you must change your point of view. That is
something you must take very seriously. If you do this, everything will be
different. The wife will be patient with her husband’s imperfections, because
she will say to herself, ‘Just wait; you’ll see what he’ll be like before long...’
and she will live in the hope of seeing him become a divinity. In the
meantime, of course, she is going to have to put up with a few little
inconveniences, but she must tell herself, ‘That husband of mine! If I married
him it must be because I did something to earn it in another incarnation, for
there is justice in everything! So, I’m just going to accept him this time and
learn and try to do better.’ In this way, instead of running up more debts by
trying to free herself, she will wipe out all her old debts. Whereas, if she
behaves badly and leaves her husband, her debts mount up and she will be
forced to pay them in one way or another, when she finds herself with him
again, in another incarnation.
So, it is worth your while to accept this philosophy, if only to free
yourselves from debt. Because the husband, too, can ask himself, ‘Out of two
billion women in the world, why on earth did I have to stumble on this one?’
If he thinks about it, though, he will realize that it is not a question of chance.
There were so many to choose from! But he had to choose this one, because
it is thanks to her that he will work at his own perfection and develop certain
qualities and virtues. You see, people don’t reason things out like this
because they have never learned about reincarnation and the laws of karma
and of cause and effect.
I should also add that, when a woman looks on her husband as a
manifestation of the heavenly Father, she is linking him magically to the
Lord. And if you imagine that this has no effect you are mistaken; when she
does this the qualities of the eternal Father begin to seep down into her
husband and, lo and behold, the good man begins to change, without even
knowing why! Because his wife loves him and tells him, ‘How handsome and
intelligent and wise you are!’ and, in this way, links him to his heavenly
Father. He may not have any of the virtues she sees in him, but her words do
their work in his mind, and he makes an effort to live up to them and not to
disappoint her. When a woman is enlightened enough to do this, she herself
makes progress thanks to her own efforts, and at the same time she
transforms her husband.
In the past, people divorced much less readily; nowadays they can hardly
bear to stay together for a month, especially in the United States. They are too
personal, too selfish; everyone wants the whole pie for themselves! If things
go on like this there will soon be no stability for families. Psychologists and
philosophers will be obliged to find solutions to this problem and they will
eventually find the answers that we revealed a long time ago; there is no other
answer. Married people, therefore, must not separate without first examining
the whole question very carefully, for there are other solutions. The Lord has
given men solutions to every possible situation, but they have to find them.
As for those of you who are not already married, you must not be in too much
of a hurry. Study the question very carefully beforehand, because, once you
are married, it is better not to get divorced. You must learn how to live a
model family life in harmony and love.
Human beings can be happy in marriage; it is possible, but only if they
know what attitude to have towards each other and how to look at each
other’s divine aspect, not only at what they can see on the outside. If you do
not look for the divine aspect of your partner, that aspect for which you
should be ready to make every sacrifice, you will certainly never be content
with the outer aspect. Look what happens when a man’s soul leaves him,
when there is no more life in him; he is nothing more than a corpse, and his
wife says, ‘Take it away. Bury it.’ And yet she loved him! Yes, but she loved
a living being, she loved the life that was in him, not his body. And the life
that is in a human being is just that ‒ the divine, spiritual dimension. This is
what people always forget. And this is why you must not marry for the sake
of the physical body, but for an exchange on the level of ideas and feelings.
The physical body is always the same, and after a time one tires of it.
Whereas the inner life of a person is always new and different; it is like a
stream of running water. If the physical body did not contain the soul, with
all its good feelings and intentions and all its kind thoughts, what would it be
worth? How long can anyone live with even the most beautiful woman if she
is stupid and vicious?
Those who are married must fulfil their duty and do whatever work has to
be done to improve their situation, and if one day they want to free
themselves they may do so, but only on condition that they have no more
debts to pay. There are a great many men and women who do not know the
laws of karma and who say, ‘I’m never going to get married.’ And then, not
so long after, someone is put in their path and they succumb, they get
married! So, it is not always easy. Do you think that all those who would
prefer to remain single manage to do so? No. Their destiny has other things in
store for them: very few manage to stay free. There are also people for whom
it is a punishment to remain single; celibacy is a burden, not a liberation.
Whereas, for others, it is a blessing. It all depends...
You do not yet realize what marriage is. Marriage is a great mystery. Long
before marriage was instituted among human beings, it already existed in
nature, in the cosmos. True marriage is the marriage of spirit and matter; it is
from this marriage that the whole of creation is born. It exists, therefore, in
every atom, and when the husband is separated from his wife (in nuclear
fission), the separation causes everything to disintegrate. The husband, in a
fury, destroys his wife. When they were married, they lived and created
together in peace; when they are forced apart, they produce explosions and
disaster.
Marriage is a cosmic phenomenon. First and foremost it is celebrated on
high, between the heavenly Father and his spouse, Mother Nature. Human
beings, who have been created in the image of God, unconsciously reproduce
what happens on high. Christians are very far from understanding this; for
them, the heavenly Father is a bachelor! But if this is so, why do human
beings marry? If we do something that the heavenly Father never does, it
means that we are not created in his image. Christians refuse to accept the
existence of the supreme Mother; in fact Christianity is alone in refusing to
accept this truth: all other religions accept it. But then Christianity is not the
authentic doctrine taught by Christ. According to the Cabbalah God has a
spouse, Shekinah, and Shekinah is the quintessence that emanates from him
and with which he creates the worlds. Christians seem to think that it
diminishes the Lord in some way to say that he too is married. But then why
does he allow human beings to marry? Where did they get the idea of
marriage?
The truth is that everything that happens here, below, is a reflection of
what happens above. ‘What is below is like what is above’, said Hermes
Trismegistus; in other words, what exists below among human beings is like
what exists on high in heaven among the archangels. For archangels marry
also, but their weddings are not exactly like ours, with champagne and
wedding cake! The sun, too, is married; it is married to the earth, and it is
thanks to this marriage that children are born: the trees, fruit and flowers of
the earth... all creatures.
If force, the force of the spirit, were not united to matter, matter would
disappear or remain formless. It is force, the spirit, that fashions matter and
gives it form. And, as all that is above has its exact reflection below, the same
phenomenon can be seen between man and woman: man fashions woman.
And, from the structure of an atom to the work of a baker kneading the
dough, this same process can be seen throughout creation: disguised in
millions of different forms, it is always the marriage of spirit and matter.
Instead of marrying a woman, whom they would try in vain to satisfy, and
who would deprive them of their freedom and prevent them from dedicating
themselves to helping the whole of humanity, initiates seek the solution to the
problem of love by deciphering the great Book of Nature in which God has
revealed it. They take the lesson offered by bees and butterflies, for instance:
the majority of human beings understand marriage as though they were
caterpillars, which kill bushes and trees by devouring their leaves. A
butterfly, on the other hand, is an initiate: it does not devour the leaves of a
tree but visits its flowers and, without harming them in any way, feeds on
their nectar.1 A bee also visits flowers and takes from them their pollen and
nectar with which it produces honey, the best of all foods. Bees, therefore, are
initiates of a very high order who loves all flowers, that is to say, all women,
but without robbing or spoiling them in any way; they take nothing but a tiny
atom from them, and with this they manufacture the honey that they use for
the benefit of all humankind. As you can see, the solutions to all problems are
there, in nature; that is where you must go and look for them.
Marriage, this institution that men and women have always practised
blindly and unconsciously, is a reflection of the greatest of all mysteries
celebrated on high between God and his spouse, nature, Isis. And now,
human beings must learn to practise it with a full understanding of its
profound meaning. Husbands must learn how to communicate to their wives
the qualities of the heavenly Father; wives must be deeply aware that they
must bring to their husbands the qualities of the divine Mother. This is the
only thing that matters. In this way, when both consciously desire to give of
themselves, to give to the other all that they lack, they will love each other for
ever. In fact, when they are very, very old they will love each other even
more than on their wedding day. For it is not the flesh they love but the soul
and the spirit. What does it matter if the body is old and wrinkled? Behind
those wrinkles shines a glorious soul, and a soul is something priceless!
It is a most glorious thing to be married, but, if you want to avoid a great
deal of pain, there is still one thing you must know: never consider that your
husband or wife belongs to you. If you do that you will be storing up terrible
conflict for yourself, for the day will inevitably come when you will find that
he or she does not belong to you, and when this happens, you will suffer or
you will make your partner suffer. You must never believe that your wife
belongs to you; she existed before she knew you, and she will continue to
exist afterwards. It was not you who created her, but someone else. For the
time being, she is simply your associate. Get rid of all those ancient ideas that
are at the root of so many tragedies.2 Understand that your wife is your
associate for this lifetime and that she is free; if she wants to do something
for you, so much the better, be glad of it, but there is no law that obliges her
to do so. She is bound to you only by her own free consent. She has had other
husbands before you came along; you are not her husband for eternity.
If a man and woman had always been together, from all eternity, they
would live in perfect harmony but, as we see, they are always in conflict,
which means that they do not know each other. Perhaps they are meeting for
the first time. The woman has already had so many husbands; if the poor
thing had to account for every one, she would never be able to sort them all
out! And he too: how many wives has he already had? And there is no
guarantee that you will have the same wife in your next incarnation either, so
it is not worth tormenting yourself and clinging to an illusion. Men and
women should say, ‘In this life we are associates; we are going to work as
well as we can and be as honest as possible with each other. We can’t do
more than that!’ And if they manage to form a very good relationship, they
will be together again in the future. You can see how clear it all is.
Try to understand that nobody belongs to you: neither husband nor wife
nor children. You are simply the guardians of your children, nothing more.
You have been given the responsibility of bringing them up, and you must do
so properly, otherwise you will be punished. It is not enough to bring children
into the world and then neglect them. You make them when you want some
pleasure, and then you expect other people to look after them! No, this is how
you contract a karmic debt towards your children.
As you see, my dear brothers and sisters, this Science is as vast as life
itself. I have the feeling that I have still not said enough about this subject or,
for that matter, about any subject. But I hope that with the grace of God and
all the good will that you bring to it, we shall gradually elucidate these
problems, so that you may become sons and daughters of God and be free
and happy. Yes, free, happy and in peace, even with your wives and husbands
and children!
Sèvres, 1 November 1965
1 See La pédagogie initiatique, Complete Works, vol. 28, chap. 7: ‘La
chenille et le papillon’.
2 See Love and Sexuality, Complete Works, vol. 14, chap. 7: ‘Jealousy’.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘It ascends from earth to heaven
and descends again to earth’
The alchemists searched for the philosopher’s stone in order to transmute
metals into gold, but this was only the outward aspect of the question.1 In
point of fact, it was not so much gold they were looking for; they used the
complicated processes involved in the transformation of metals to conceal the
phenomena of the inner life and its psychic and spiritual processes. The true
philosopher’s stone is love, divine love, and when humans find that love and
manifest it correctly, they are capable of transforming all the impure, raw
materials within them into a noble, luminous matter.
So it is not a question of doing away with love or repressing or inhibiting
it but of finding the means and methods by which to manifest it properly.
Love is an energy that comes from a very high level; it is of the same essence
as the sun, and our task is to receive that energy and allow it to circulate
within us before sending it back to heaven from which it came. We read in
the Emerald Tablet, ‘It ascends from earth to heaven and descends again to
earth, uniting in itself the force of above and below… This is the strength of
all strengths.’ So this is the normal route followed by this force: from heaven
to earth and from earth to heaven. But as, in most human beings, the route is
closed, blocked up by impurities, this force is turned aside and goes
underground where it nourishes demons.
Try to understand this: initiates make no effort to prevent that energy from
pouring into them; they are not so stupid as to try to oppose God himself. It is
only a few foolish puritans who struggle in this way, and they are perpetually
defeated and ground to dust, because they are struggling against the divine
principle, the solar force, the torrent flowing from on high. This torrent is
Christ himself, who said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’2 When layers
and layers of impurities have accumulated in humans because of their
passions and excesses, this energy cannot return to its source, so it soaks
down into the earth and is lost. But if a person is pure and totally in control of
themselves, if they are firmly anchored in God, the force that flows into them
ceaselessly from above is not lost; it is free to complete the circuit and follow
the path that takes it back to the heights from which it came.
When people finally understand the works of God and see how the world
was built, when they see that heaven is both the starting point and the
terminus, the point of arrival, the earth will no longer be an obstacle for them.
Love comes from heaven and is destined to return to heaven. There are not
two, three or four different loves; it is always one and the same love, but seen
or experienced on different levels. It is said that God is love; no one has ever
said that the devil is love, too. Love comes from God, and if it meets with no
resistance, it flows smoothly and provokes no fires or fevers. When love
burns it is because there are obstacles in its path. Look... when you are in bed
with a raging temperature, it is because physical impurities are obstructing
the circulation and free flow of energy. The fever is caused by the struggle
that your organism puts up in its effort to eliminate those obstacles.
You must realize that you cannot change the order of things created by
God himself for a specific purpose, a purpose so glorious that it is far beyond
anything you can conceive of. When the day comes for you to understand it,
you will be lost in awe and wonder at God’s plans. I had nothing to do with
it; I am only here to explain things to you, and if you don’t like what I tell
you, you can always go and complain to God. Tell him that you are
scandalized by the way he designed the human sexual organs, that you think
the whole thing is ugly and stupid, and that you have all kinds of ideas for the
creation of a better kind of world. Go on, pick a fight with him about it, and
you will see the answer he gives you!
Since things are as they are and you can do nothing to change them, don’t
waste your life arguing and struggling against them. Accept this design, this
construction, this divine wisdom. Accept it, bow to it and stop criticizing it.
Try to learn how to behave so that you can be conductors of that
extraordinary force which is destined to transform the world, to transmute
lead and ashes into gold and precious stones, into diamonds. It is the force of
love that will work this transformation; nothing else. So, go to it; find the
right attitude and the thoughts, feelings and concrete plans that you must have
in order to guide and control this energy properly. There is no other solution.
If you try to stifle it, not only will it explode and destroy everything, but you
yourself will be dead: spiritually dead, sterile and mummified.
This energy comes from on high, and the only question is to ensure that it
returns to its source. This becomes possible when, instead of using it only for
your pleasure, you decide to work with it. The misfortune of human beings is
that they have never understood that the energy of love was not made simply
to give them pleasure, but that it can be used to awaken certain dormant
faculties within them, which were designed for a psychic and spiritual work
of supreme importance. And this work consists, precisely, in turning these
energies back to heaven. In doing this you will be applying the precept of
Hermes Trismegistus: ‘You will separate the fine from the coarse, gently and
with great skill.’ When you eat, you do not swallow everything wholesale;
you leave the bones, stones, peel or other inedible parts on the side of your
plate. We cannot eat without having to sort and sift things, and yet men have
never understood that, when it comes to ‘eating’ thoughts, feelings and
sensations, they must also separate the pure from the impure, in other words,
sort out what is purely for pleasure and keep only the spiritual, luminous,
divine work.
The secret of self-dominance, of sublimation, is to seek not pleasure but
work. You will say, ‘Yes, but how boring to embrace your beloved and not
look for pleasure!’ Not at all; you just don’t understand! Pleasure is not the
only thing that counts: there is also joy, delight, inspiration, enchantment,
ecstasy... Aren’t these more worthwhile than pleasure? When a man and
woman come together to communicate a divine feeling to each other without
letting themselves be swept away, without sinking into the subterranean
depths, the communion and tenderness between them becomes
extraordinarily expressive and beautiful! It is pleasure, to be sure, but
pleasure of a higher, divine nature, a pleasure which gives them immortality.
Poets speak of being ‘a prisoner of love’. Yes, well, those who look only for
pleasure become prisoners of their passions; passion seizes them and never
lets go; they become its slaves. Unfortunately, this is how people understand
love, the love that rends them, that burns and consumes them and leaves them
spent and empty. They exult, ‘At last I’ve found the love I was longing for!’
They would be nearer the truth if they said, ‘Alas! I’ve found a great
misfortune!’
The time has come, my dear brothers and sisters, to prepare yourselves to
understand the mysteries of love as God created it, in light, peace, harmony,
joy and wonder, and not in volcanic eruptions. Prepare yourselves for this
divine work for the benefit of the whole world. This is what heaven is asking
of you: to do this work. You don’t use your love for anything worthwhile;
you keep it all for yourselves, for your own pleasure, and the result is that
these energies turn to poison. From now on, you must turn it back to its
source and consecrate it to the Lord, saying ‘Lord God, I consecrate these
energies to you for your glory and the establishment of your kingdom on
earth.’ But lovers never think of consecrating their love to heaven; they think
that their exchanges concern only themselves. When they eat, it is for
themselves: it has nothing to do with heaven. Yes, but if that is their attitude,
it will have something to do with hell for, where love is concerned, when
they say ‘me’, it is already a part of hell. People exclude heaven from their
loving on the grounds that it is something shameful (you wonder what on
earth they do!) and heaven must not see it. But they don’t think it necessary
to hide from hell; they are not ashamed to let the devil see what they do, and
this is why hell comes and eats it all up. That is human beings for you:
everything for hell and nothing for heaven! Even the church has never
explained anything in this respect. It has been content to say, ‘Be fruitful and
multiply’,3 and its children mate in the dark, to the great delight of hell.
Christians talk about the sacrament of marriage, but the truth is that, even
when they marry according to all the rules, all hell is with them when they
indulge in their legalized debauchery. There they are, in bed together,
experimenting with different positions in the hope of getting bigger and better
thrills, wallowing in their pleasure like animals, and that is what they call the
sanctity of marriage! Poor humanity!
Where did human love come from if not from God? We say that God is
love, but nobody knows what love is, and they separate physical, sensual love
from divine love. But there is no separation, there are simply different
degrees: love is always one and the same force, the same energy which
comes to us from above. You still need a great deal more light on the subject
of the number one, the indivisible, the indissoluble. And this is what love is:
the number one, and it is the number one that produces all the other numbers.
Two, three and four are simply manifestations, different degrees, of one. God
is one, love is one and God is love. Whatever is not one is nothing but a
variation, an aspect of one; this is why we have to turn back to unity.4 We
live in multiplicity, on the fringes of reality. When I say that we must turn
back to unity, I mean that we must return to God, to the love that is one; and
when I say that we must turn our love back to heaven, it is because love must
complete the circuit and return to its source. No one understands what it
means to say that God is love, just as no one understands what the word
‘unity’ means or what it means when we say we must return to unity. But for
me it is so clear! Unity is God, God is love and we must return to that love.
The Bonfin, 9 August 1962
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
‘I am the way, the truth and the life’ – John 14:6
‘Be fruitful and multiply’ – Gen. 1:28
1 See The Philosopher’s Stone – in the Gospels and in Alchemy,
Izvor Coll. n° 241, chap. 10: ‘The philosopher’s stone, fruit of a mystic
union’.
2 See ‘Et il me montra un fleuve d’eau de la vie’, Synopsis Coll., Part
multipliez’.
4 See ‘In Spirit and in Truth’, Izvor Coll. n° 235, chap. 5: ‘From
multiplicity to unity’.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The secret of happiness
is in an expanded consciousness
Have you ever observed children at their games? Why do they like playing
with dolls? Because they need some form of presence. For children, a toy is
something living which helps and encourages them; they fall asleep more
easily if they have their toy rabbit or teddy-bear with them. And adults are
not really so different! Some of them cannot go to sleep without a ‘doll’, a
girl, beside them to reassure them. Human beings are still like children, they
are not adult yet: they need a constant presence, and it need not even be
another human being; it can be a canary or a cat. They are no longer afraid of
their solitude if a cat is purring beside them! This is particularly true of
women; the need for companionship is much stronger in women than in men.
Solitude is much harder to bear for a woman than for a man. That is why
even a love-bird, yes, a little budgerigar, is enough to keep them company!
Human beings are unhappy when they are alone. One of the few things
they all agree on is that solitude is the hardest thing to bear. And this is why
they always try to find someone to live with, thinking that they will be
happier. But it often works just the other way, and they find that they would
have done better to stick to their solitude. This need to find comfort in the
presence of another human being was given to humans in order to oblige
them to take an interest in something other than themselves. Look at how
Cosmic Intelligence forces humans to work and exert themselves by giving
them stomachs, for instance. If men and women did not have stomachs they
would never do a hand’s turn, but they are ready to do anything to satisfy the
hunger and thirst of their stomachs! They spend their days running in all
directions; they go without sleep; they make war; they are ready to turn the
whole world and the stars themselves upside down... and all because they
need to eat!
Yes, Cosmic Intelligence foresaw that if it did not find some way of
making humans work they would come to a bad end, because they would do
nothing, so it gave them stomachs! But that was not enough; Cosmic
Intelligence also wanted to be sure that the race would perpetuate itself, so it
gave men and women the need to love, the need to escape from their solitude.
At the same time, this need to go and look for someone else to share their
lives makes them broaden the scope of their concerns. When someone wants
to find a companion with whom to start a family, they have to make an effort
to think of others and be more generous and more indulgent and sympathetic.
The only trouble is that human beings have not yet realized that they must go
beyond the family circle also, that their love must reach out to all creatures, to
the infinite universe. No, they have never gone any further than the family,
and this is why, in spite of their wife and children, in spite of their love of
country, they are still unhappy. Because they have never managed to extend
their circle infinitely.
In order to find happiness, human beings need to exchange with each
other, but the happiness they are looking for still eludes them because the
scope of their embrace is still too narrow. I know very well that the human
race has been accustomed for hundreds and thousands of years to look at
things from such a narrow point of view, that you will be astonished by what
I am saying. I can hear you exclaiming, ‘What on earth is he talking about?
Where is he trying to push us?’ I am trying to push you towards happiness,
and happiness consists in loving infinitely, in not being content to love just
one or two human beings... or even twenty or a hundred, for that matter. You
can go on loving all those you already love, but you must also love the angels
and archangels, the heavenly hierarchies and the Lord himself. When you do
this, your family and friends will be strengthened and enriched, embellished
and purified by the sublime impetus of your soul. Enlarge the scope of your
love and establish an exchange with creatures of a higher order, and then you
will receive the inspiration, support and protection they offer.
Yes, my dear brothers and sisters, you will find happiness when you
expand the scope of your consciousness, when you enlarge, sublimate and
divinize your love.1 As I have already told you, wisdom cannot give you
happiness. You will never be happy if all you have is wisdom; in fact wisdom
can make you dismal and despondent, because it never fails to point out the
faults and crimes of others. It is not in the nature of wisdom to make anyone
happy. To be sure, the thought that you are wise may give you a sense of
pride and some crumbs of consolation, but that is not true happiness. It is
love that brings happiness; it does not matter how poor, weak and ignorant
you are, or that you don’t understand how or why, but if you love you will
know happiness. In order to be truly happy, therefore, you must learn to love,
and if you want your happiness to be vast and complete, your love must also
be immense, all-embracing, infinite. Little by little, as your love grows and
improves, your happiness will also grow and improve. Happiness is not to be
found in riches or in knowledge, powers or fame. People are mistaken to
think that if they possessed such and such a thing they would be happy. As I
have already said, possessions can give you a few little scraps, a few crumbs
of happiness, nothing more.
As long as human beings are not enlightened by Initiatic Science, they will
continue to put their faith in lies: they will continue to be unhappy and
disillusioned, always asking themselves, ‘What’s the matter with me? What
more do I need to fill the void?’ And they will continue to change their wives
or their mistresses, their houses, their jobs or their cars; they will continue to
travel and see new countries, but they will always be faced with this
emptiness.
As soon as you are convinced of the real worth of these great truths and
see that nothing is more important, from that very moment you will be saved.
When I was young I may have had no intelligence, no wisdom, no talents, but
I had one very rare quality: the great initiatic truths had more value in my
eyes than anything else. For me, everything was worthless compared to these
truths. And now I can see the fruits of that attitude, and I see that I was not
mistaken. Whereas those for whom almost anything is more precious than
these great truths will always be poor, weak and unhappy. So I advise you to
begin to have a deeper appreciation of the truths I reveal to you, for it is they
that are capable of transforming you and giving you true happiness.
Videlinata (Switzerland), 29 February 1976
1 See The Key to the Problems of Existence, Complete Works, vol 11,
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
‘Whatever you bind on earth…’ – Matt. 18:18
1 See The Book of Revelations: A Commentary, Izvor Coll. n° 230,
not sever the link between the world below and the world above’.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Love God
so as to love your neighbour better
If we tried to think of others instead of always thinking only of ourselves,
what revelations we would be given about all the problems of life! There are
so many things that human beings cannot understand, simply because they
refuse to change their point of view. They judge and evaluate everything
from their own point of view, according to their own tastes and tendencies
and their own preconceptions, and never take other people into account.
And this is true even in families: husbands and wives are continually
trying to destroy each other; it is always a question of which one can get the
most out of the other, which one will dominate the other. Neither one tries to
understand the other; neither is ready to make concessions; they are both
incredibly selfish! The wife refuses to understand or put herself in the place
of her husband: she is always nagging and criticizing, always belligerent and
unfaithful. And the husband is only interested in getting what he wants from
her, in plundering her, destroying her beauty and ill-treating her. There is no
need for me to give you examples, you all know what goes on. So our work
must begin with families; we must teach men and women to understand,
appreciate, value and love each other so that they can accomplish a task
together. Husbands should say to themselves, ‘I must see if my wife is happy,
if she has all she needs; have I made any promises that I haven’t kept?’ And
wives must ask themselves the same questions. The greatest difficulties and
disasters, the greatest misfortunes come from the fact that human beings are
unwilling to expand their field of consciousness and learn how others think
and feel. Once they begin to venture beyond their own point of view and
forget their built-in prejudices, they will make all kinds of discoveries as their
horizons expand and an extraordinarily vast field of activity opens up before
them.
And now, let me give you a method. If you want to reach beyond the
boundaries of your own consciousness, you must start by projecting your
imagination upwards, to the Being who encompasses all being, who contains
and nourishes all creatures within himself.1 Ask yourself how he envisages
the future of humankind, what his plans are for our future, how he wishes us
to evolve. When you make an effort to draw closer to that immense and
luminous Being, something begins to work within your subconscious, your
consciousness and your superconsciousness, and the sensations you
experience are beyond the power of words to describe. You should practise
this exercise until you have the sensation that you have disappeared, that you
no longer exist as a separate personality, as a little mote of dust in space, that
you have melted and become one with the ocean of light that is God. Once
this exercise has become a habit and you are capable of experiencing
moments of delight in communion with the most exalted beings, then you can
begin to descend, once again, into the minds of others and experience their
suffering and anguish for yourself and get to know their needs, their strengths
and weaknesses and their illnesses. You can even descend into the
consciousness of animals!
If you make this practice the basis of your existence, if you have sufficient
patience and love continually to expand your consciousness, if, three, four,
ten, a hundred times a day, you make an effort to transcend the limits of your
own being and melt into the immensity, all things will be yours; it is only a
question of time. Otherwise it is as though you had broken contact with the
central power supply: there will be no more light to guide you and you will
collide with the objects and people around you, fall and hurt, even kill,
yourself. You will object, ‘But look at so-and-so; she doesn’t love God or
even believe in him, and yet she’s perfectly healthy, happy and successful.’
Yes, to all appearances that is true, but you have to be able to see beyond
appearances. When the beams of your house begin to be attacked by
woodworm, they do not crumble away at once, but one day when they have
been eaten away from the inside, the whole house collapses.
Those who don’t love God may be successful for a time, because they are
intelligent, strong-minded and energetic; they know how to look after
themselves and get what they want. Those who sever their ties to God do not
lose all their qualities and capacities at once. Their reserves diminish
gradually and, after a time, something inside them begins to rot, undesirable
entities infiltrate and, like woodworm, begin their work of destruction within.
They may be sufficiently aggressive and calculating to succeed, but their
success will not last long, for there is no light in them, and they are no longer
nourished by currents of new energies. Rot, germs and maggots enter the
hearts and minds of such people and end up destroying them completely.
Ignorant people see a temporary success and draw their false conclusions:
‘Look at so-and-so; you don’t have to believe in God to succeed in life...’
Yes, but you must look beyond appearances and know how the laws operate:
it is more than likely that, only a few years from now, your friend so-and-so
will be bankrupt.
You must not let yourselves be deceived by appearances. If you lived long
enough you would see for yourself how the wealthiest families degenerate
and disintegrate; you cannot base your conclusions on a single human life. It
is only to be expected that a strong-minded, talented man or woman should
be successful, but if they were also linked to the divine world, if they
nourished their soul and heart and mind on the pure waters flowing from the
Source of life, they would help their family and descendants and be a unique
example in the history of humanity. The new generation of men and women
must be capable of succeeding without cutting themselves off from heaven.
They must do their work in the world, but they must do it with the purpose of
leaving an imprint of the divine, a trace of the new life, in everything they do.
‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’, said Jesus.2
Nowadays, people think it is grotesque to think you can model yourself on
God; he is too immense, too far above us! They prefer to imitate people who
are mad; that, at least, is easy! It only takes a few weeks to be as mad as they
are... or more so!
If you love God you will obtain everything you want because you will
become like him. Yes, such is the power of love. I am looking forward to the
day when science at last begins to study the manifestations of love and see
how it affects our health, blood or brain and even things that are external to
us: trees, plants, crystals, stars, the angels and even God himself. Nothing is
more worthy of study. If the question of love is neglected, ultimate disaster is
the inevitable result. To be sure, misfortunes will not begin to rain down on
you immediately, but if you deviate, if only by one millionth of a degree,
from certain truths and principles, years hence you will find yourself billions
of miles off course.
Love is nothing more than an osmosis between those who love each other.
If you love God, your love works to put you on a level with him; a
relationship of exchange exists between you and God. Suppose, on the other
hand, that you love someone who is weak, sickly and rather stupid, whereas
you are in excellent health, very pure and highly evolved, very luminous and
intelligent. You have a relationship of exchange with them and, one fine day,
they will have become stronger and more luminous, will have benefited from
your love and become richer and nobler, whereas you will have lost
something in the exchange: their weaknesses filter into you and your strength
flows into them until you reach a common denominator. In the long run you
will be exactly like each other; you will even look like each other. If you love
someone, you end by resembling them. Chemistry tells us that all life
undergoes a process of osmosis, of exchange; it is not only human beings that
are affected, but the whole universe. The stars exchange with each other and
end by resembling each other, and this is what makes it possible to predict
that, one day, the earth will become a sun, for there is a constant process of
exchange between the earth and the sun. Earth gains in the exchange and the
sun loses, but it does so deliberately because of its great love. True love is,
first and foremost, sacrifice.
If you centre yourself on the Lord, if you love him and think of him not as
the severe, implacable God, the consuming fire of the Old Testament, but as
immensity, as a boundless ocean of light and life, then a process of exchange,
of synchronization, will be set in motion between you and him; you will
begin to vibrate with greater intensity, and tremendous transformations will
take place in your thoughts and feelings. Even your health will improve! In
fact, instead of swallowing all kinds of medicines, you would do much better
to think about the Source of life. You will object, ‘Yes, but I want to get
better at once!’ I know, drugs will cure you much faster, but only for a time,
and your powers of resistance will be diminished to such an extent that your
organism will soon be incapable of defending itself.3
I listened to a programme on the television recently in which some
biologists discussed the dangers of an excessive use of antibiotics. They said
that the genetic heritage of the human race was threatened and that there was
a likelihood of more and more human monsters being born. They also
discussed the danger of atomic radiations. May the Lord protect his children,
for humans have gone mad and are leading the world to destruction! Many
scientists realize that the world is rushing towards disaster and yet, although
it is in their power to call a halt before it is too late, they do not dare to raise
their voices and call on the scientists of the world to unite and save
humankind. They could be all-powerful, but they are content to talk
ineffectually.
My dear brothers and sisters, the best way for men and women to protect
themselves is to return to the divine Source. When they do this, even atomic
bombs cannot harm them, for the vibrations of the soul and spirit are more
powerful and of a higher frequency than the vibrations of the atomic dust that
pollutes the air. If you really want a lifebuoy you can rely on, forge a bond
with the sun and love God. The sun is more powerful than an atom bomb. In
fact, nuclear explosions billions of times more powerful than anything that
we can produce with our little atom bombs are continually taking place in the
sun! If you establish a relationship with the sun you can immunize yourself
against atomic radiation; human beings should know this. At the moment,
nobody is willing to believe us; they will believe when disaster strikes, but
then it will be too late. The only effective remedies are the sun on the
physical plane and, on the mental and spiritual plane, the love of God.
Through their hatred and jealousy, their cruelty and their viciousness,
human beings are unwittingly spreading vibrations which form a dark,
dangerous zone, like a heavy layer of cloud, over the whole surface of the
earth, in which multitudes are suffocating. If you want to rise above these
layers of poison you must increase the intensity of your vibrations, and the
only way to do this is to love God. As long as you continue to love creatures
who are less advanced than you, the intensity of your vibrations will continue
to sink until they reach the same level as theirs, and you will be trapped
beneath the layer of cloud covering the earth. Learn whom to love, therefore!
To be sure, you are free to love people; in fact you must love them, but your
first love must be the Lord, otherwise you will be brought down to their level.
As long as you love God, you can love whoever you like without danger; you
will always remain above the clouds of darkness, there will be no danger of
your being swallowed up, because you will be strong.
When a lifeguard dives into the water to save someone who is drowning,
they tell them to hang on to their feet, and if the person panics and tries to
grip their arms, the lifeguard has to knock them out, otherwise they would
both be drowned. And you, too, keep your arms free for God, and let human
beings hold on to your feet! Don’t give them all your love; otherwise, you
will go under with them. You must learn how to love. But human beings
cannot be bothered to study the science of love; they love whoever they
please, in any way they please, whenever it pleases them, and then they
complain that love is the cause of all their misfortunes. Not a bit of it! It is
their ignorance about love that is the cause of their misfortunes, not love
itself. Love is God; God is love: how could he be the cause of evil? It is
impossible. Evil is the result of ignorance. This is why we must begin by
loving God and soaking up his vibrations; once we have done this, we can
love and help others without danger to ourselves. Since we are connected to
the source, we can expend our energies for others without weakening
ourselves, for our supply of water is constantly being renewed. But if we cut
ourselves off, other people will soon drain us dry, for our reserves will not
last for ever.
But let’s go back to what I was saying at the beginning. If you want to
learn to reach beyond yourself, from time to time, and see further than your
own limited viewpoint, you must seek God. Try to melt into him, learn to
look at the world and all its creatures through his eyes, and you will begin to
see things in a very different light. This is the best of all exercises, for it
develops the will, the intelligence and the heart all at the same time.
To be sure, to begin with, it may seem dreadfully tedious. You decide to
love the Lord but you cannot feel anything, so you get bored and let your
imagination wander. But you must persevere; tell yourself that your very life
depends on it, that you will end by finding joy, intelligence, power and
beauty, and in the long run you will find such delight in this exercise that
everything else will pale in comparison. Then, at last, you will truly be
capable of loving and helping others. If you are rich, well balanced and at
peace, you can help billions of people without even setting foot outside your
own room. Waves know no frontiers. The harmonious waves emanating from
you go out into the atmosphere and influence all the creatures they meet. This
is how, without anyone being the wiser, you become a benefactor of the
whole of humanity, you contribute something positive to the whole of
creation, even to animals, plants and rocks. Blessed are those who understand
and live according to this philosophy, for they will be freed from all their
misery and limitations! No words can describe the splendour of a human
being who has succeeded in becoming free.
Sèvres, 21 January 1962
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
‘Be perfect, therefore,…’ – Matt. 5:48
1 See You Are Gods, Synopsis Coll., Part III, chap. 5: ‘You shall love the
I know that you think that I talk about the same things too often. You are
not used to this method, and you would rather hear me talk about something
new. The truth is, though, that we must always be occupied with the same
thing but each time look at it differently. In the morning or the evening,
before or after a meal, during the night... each time, you will discover a
different aspect, you will find that the subject breathes and changes. Look at a
garden in the spring and again in the summer, the autumn and the winter. It is
still the same garden, but how different it looks! And where spirituality is
concerned we have to keep coming back to the same subject and turning it
round in all directions to see all its different aspects.
How many times have I told you to eat with love, to smile and think and
live with love! But you have neglected and forgotten that; the whole thing
bores you because you have not yet begun to do what I tell you. Once you
begin, you will realize how glorious it is to eat with love, to look at others
with love, to breathe and study, to give thanks with love!
Yesterday I met a man who was, apparently, very unhappy. I asked him,
‘Have you said thank you today?’ ‘Thank you? Who should I say thank you
to, and what for?’ ‘Can you still walk and breathe?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Have you had
breakfast today?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And can you open your mouth and talk?’ ‘Yes,
again.’ ‘Then you should certainly thank the Lord for all that, for there are
people who can neither walk nor eat nor open their mouths. You are unhappy
because it has never occurred to you to be grateful. If you want to change that
state of affairs, you must begin by recognizing that there is nothing more
wonderful than to be alive and able to walk and see and speak.’ Yes, but
human beings, especially those who are supposedly intelligent and learned,
neglect these things; that is why they have to experience tribulations and
misfortunes: to teach them to be grateful at last!
The greatest crime of human beings is their ingratitude. When heaven sees
this it closes its doors to them and gives them neither happiness nor joy. Do
you know how many billions and billions of entities, elements and particles
are involved in keeping just one human being alive? You have no idea of
such things and you are perpetually disgruntled and discontented. Be
grateful! Start tomorrow morning: the first thing you do when you get up
must be to thank heaven. Think of all those who will never wake up again or
who wake up paralysed! Say, ‘Thank you, Lord. You have given me life and
health again today. I promise to do your will.’ Nobody does this. Human
beings only know how to grumble and clamour for things, to nag and demand
and curse the whole world. They are incapable of gratitude. But what good
have they ever done humanity or the Lord that would entitle them to demand
so much for themselves? When the entities of the invisible world look down
at humanity, they are astounded and delighted to see someone who is grateful
and constantly saying ‘Thank you, Lord; thank you, thank you!’ How stingy
not to be ready to give them this pleasant surprise!
Make a statistical analysis and you will see how few human beings are
grateful. But they are all ready to rebel and to whine or demand or clamour
for what they want. There are factories in every part of the world where the
virus of revolt is being manufactured. Yes, it is a virus, the virus of the
malcontents. It has never been studied in a laboratory, but it abounds in the
world! It sneaks in everywhere; the whole world will soon be contaminated.
Here, in the Universal White Brotherhood, is the only place where men and
women learn to manufacture the antidote to this virus in order to soothe,
pacify and heal others. The thing that is most lacking in the world today is the
spirit of peace. People talk about peace a great deal, but they continue to
prepare for war.1
I began by saying that we must live lovingly, that we must eat and breathe
with love, and you are under the impression that you know all that already,
but you are mistaken. When you really begin to understand, with your whole
being, what it means to live with love, you will be dumbfounded: love will
flow forth ceaselessly, from morning till night, even when you are asleep. It
is even possible to reprimand people with love; I have practised this for a
long time, and now I am capable of being very severe outwardly, even though
I am full of love inwardly. It is difficult, but it can be done. In fact, I have
always maintained that this is what mothers should do when they punish their
children: they can smack them if they have to, but they must always be full of
love inwardly. Usually, they do just the opposite: they raise their voice, frown
and clench their teeth, and then they begin to be genuinely angry and cruel
and beat their children with real hatred. A child recognizes this; once it has
seen hatred in its mother’s eyes it will never forget it;2 not only will she never
persuade her child to change but, one day, it will try to take revenge on her.
My dear brothers and sisters, you must live lovingly. To live lovingly is to
live in a very exalted state of consciousness which is reflected in every action
and brings everything into harmony, maintains a state of perfect equilibrium
and is a constant source of joy, strength and health. Give thanks all day long.
Gratitude is the most powerful antidote I have ever found in the laboratory
that God has given me; it is capable of neutralizing all poisons. Give thanks;
give thanks ceaselessly, for hours on end, and you will find that all the evil in
you just disintegrates. I have ascertained the truth of this for myself, and as
you know, I am never idle. Day and night I am busy with extraordinary
experiments of such subtlety that you could never even imagine them. But I
never tell you anything if I have not already verified it and found that it has
stood the test of time.
Sèvres, 23 January 1966
II
If teachers are always exhausted at the end of the school year, it is simply
because they don’t love the children, they don’t think about doing something
divine for them. If they did, the guardian angels that have been given the care
of these children would reward them abundantly, and they would not have to
be so tired. Most teachers do their work for the sole purpose of earning
money. They are like mercenaries; they are not really conscious that these
beings have been entrusted to them by heaven and that they have the
tremendous mission of working on their souls. The spiritual elements that a
teacher consciously endeavours to instil into the hearts and souls of the
children continue to affect them for the rest of their lives, and they remember
the men and women who worked to shape their souls. As things are today,
children don’t even remember their teachers or, if they do, it is only to laugh
at them or detest them still, years later. Their work has no meaning, because
it contains no light, no consciousness and no love.
Personally, I have a very different conception of education. In fact, even
though I am not a schoolteacher and you are not children, I apply it with you.
I am constantly aware that other beings have sent you to earth in order to
evolve, and I know that if I do my work well, with love, the spirits on high,
who see everything, will reward and help me. They will say, ‘There’s a rare
being; we don’t see many like him on earth: he doesn’t work for money!’
And I will be the one to gain.
Yes, if teachers are tired out at the end of the year, it is because they have
never understood how important their work is. There is no task more essential
than that of education. Actually though, if anyone is to be educated, we
should not really begin with the children, but with parents and educators
themselves... If you only knew the terrible notions they so often put into
children’s heads! Teachers who are aware of their responsibility and who
really want to instil a divine element into their pupils are very few and far
between.
The only reason why people are always tired is because they work without
love. It is love that gives strength, that vivifies and resuscitates: love! When
you don’t have that love and only work for money in order to earn your
living, the results cannot be good. Of course, you do get some money for it,
but your health deteriorates and you become tense and overwrought. When
someone who has such a magnificent profession still manages to end up with
a nervous breakdown, it proves they haven’t understood what it’s all about.
Educators must understand that their pupils have been entrusted to them by
heaven, and this means they must do a divine work with them. When I
explained this to some educators, one day, it made them change their attitude:
they tried to kindle in themselves that love, that sense of duty and that inner
light, and they were able to feel the difference: they did not become so tired.
You can work for hours without feeling tired if you work with love. But if
you work for only a few minutes without love, in an attitude of anger or
revolt, everything inside you will seize up and you will be exhausted. Today,
there are ideologies abroad in the world that are spreading a spirit of revolt
and discontent amongst workers in every corner of the globe, and the results
they get are fantastic: these ideas spread like wildfire and set light to
everything. Introduce the notion of revolt and you will succeed. But try to tell
people that discontent is destructive and that they should work with love, and
you will get nowhere. People are not mature enough to understand where
their true interest lies.
It is important to understand the efficacy, the power of love. Whatever you
do, do it with love or don’t do it at all! For whatever you do without love is
tiring, and you need not be surprised to find yourself exhausted. Whatever
you do without love turns to poison: so be sure to do everything with love!
Try it; it all depends on you. A sister once asked me how to become tireless,
and I said to her, ‘I can tell you the secret, but you will not be capable of
actually doing it. The secret is to love what you do; when you do that,
strength flows into you; otherwise, you are soon worn out, drained and
paralysed.’3
Yes, you are here, in this divine school, where you are being taught how to
rebuild yourselves, how to give yourselves new forms. But you have not yet
realized the importance of this task. You should rejoice at the prospect of
reconstructing your lives.
When you win the hearts of children, you win youth and eternal life. This
is why the worst thing that can happen to you is to fail to love the children
you have been asked to educate. Some teachers, and some mothers too,
become irritated with their children and give them looks full of hatred. Dear
Lord, what ignorance! Children remember such looks for the rest of their
lives. They know very well what a look means. You may sometimes have to
spank them but, if so, you must do it without a trace of hatred in your eyes,
for they will forget the spanking but they will never forget the way you
looked at them. In fact, let me repeat the advice I have already given: when
you have to punish a child who has been naughty, go and find them and talk
to them with kindness. Explain that they have got to be smacked because
there are certain laws, certain rules that you cannot go against; kiss them (and
even shed a few tears with them, if need be), and then: on with the spanking!
If you do this, if you cry with them and kiss them with real affection, they
will understand that their punishment was just and necessary. In this way you
give them some divine notions of absolute justice. Otherwise, they will
accuse you of being unjust and detest you and, one day, try to take revenge
on you because of the hatred they saw in your eyes when you punished them.
Children have a very keen sense of justice. Later, as they get older, they
become conditioned, but when they are very young they have a passion for
fairness. Look at what happens, for instance, when a mother of a family or a
teacher shows a preference for one child: she may have every reason to prefer
this child, who may have far greater qualities than the others, but she must
avoid showing a preference. She has a perfect right to prefer whoever she
chooses, but she must take care not to show it, otherwise the other children
will feel that she has been unfair and will not love her anymore.
As you see, it is educators who need to be educated rather than children...
and not only about this!
The Bonfin, 29 August 1967
1 See The Egregor of the Dove or the Reign of Peace, Izvor Coll. n°
208.
2 See The Book of Divine Magic, Izvor Coll. n° 226, chap. 13: ‘The
power of a glance’.
3 See Harmony and Health, Izvor Coll. n° 225, chap. 8: ‘How to become
tireless’.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Our only weapons: love and light
The Master reads the Meditation for the day:
‘People think that they will beat an enemy by grappling with them. No, on
the contrary, if you want to get the better of your enemy, you must get away
from them and rise to a higher level, so as to create a different picture of them
that can overcome the damaging one in your mind. You cannot defeat your
enemies by continually nursing a hateful image of them. Sooner or later it is
they who will defeat you. You cannot overcome evil people with evil, nor
slanderers with slander, the envious with envy nor the angry with anger,
because that would put you into the same category; you would be identifying
with them.’
Of course, the passage I have just read you will seem quite stupid. Human
beings are accustomed to repaying evil with evil. Somebody slaps you in the
face and you slap them back, twice, probably! They kick you on the shin and
you kick them back... on both shins! The human instinct for revenge comes
from the distant past when humans were still animals. And, in fact, there is
not much to distinguish them from animals today! Outwardly they look like
respectable human beings... but inwardly? They are convinced that they will
defeat their enemies by using the means they use, but if you study the
question from the point of view of Initiatic Science, if you take the trouble to
find out what it has to say on the subject, the answer you receive will be quite
unlike what human beings believe and practise.1
In the first place, it is very bad to carry the image of an enemy about with
you in your head. This is the best way to reinforce and feed it until it becomes
so strong that it utterly destroys you. In fact, even in relation to others, this
can be very damaging to you: if you go on and on talking about your enemy,
others will see that you are weak and vindictive. But people have never
stopped to analyse this attitude; they keep trying to console themselves and
get rid of the poison that is in them by looking for a friend and injecting it
into them! They don’t realize that they are injuring their friend, and they go
on their way, feeling consoled for the moment, or bent on repeating the
performance with someone else!
From the initiatic point of view, from the point of view of wisdom, this is
a very bad attitude, and it is important for human beings to know this. I have
never said you should not try to get the better of your enemies, but you must
find other ways of doing so.
The passage I read at the beginning says that if you respond to your
enemies by using the same means as they do, you put yourself on a level with
them. Yes, because the energy you give off is of the same nature as theirs,
and in this way you are open to attack from them: they can reach you and
harm you at a distance. Have you never had a feeling of uneasiness, all of a
sudden, that you have been unable to explain? There can, of course, be all
kinds of explanations, but it could be that someone has been sending you
negative thoughts and, as you don’t know how to defend yourself, they have
reached their target and upset you. If you want to be protected from such
attacks and become invulnerable, you must not stay on the same level as your
enemy, otherwise, if they are stronger than you, they can injure you. You
have to climb up higher; fly up like a bird, an aeroplane or a helicopter!
Obviously, I am not talking about climbing physically; I am not telling you to
climb a ladder or a tree or to clamber onto the roof. When I say you must
climb to a higher level, I mean you must reach a nobler, purer, more
luminous, divine level. Once you have reached that level through an act of
will, through prayer and meditation, you will be out of reach of your enemy,
because your vibrations will no longer be the same; you will be safe from
them.
When people slander you and speak evil of you, go up into those heavenly
regions where light abounds. There, you will be protected behind a barrier of
light and love and heavenly might, and not only will evil thoughts be unable
to wound you, but they will rebound and wound and crush those who sent
them. This is how initiates, sages and all the great Masters manage to
overcome their enemies: by living pure, noble, honest, radiant lives. For,
don’t forget, there is always a rebound. Yes, but the rebound will not function
if you are just as weak, vicious, sensual and impure as your enemy. In that
case you will be vulnerable to whatever filth others fling at you. But if you
rise to a higher level, not only will your way of life shield you, but all the
vicious, negative things that are sent your way will bounce off it onto those
who sent them. If black magicians and sorcerers are successful, it is because
the human beings they attack are so weak and ignorant that they are
vulnerable to their evil spells. As long as people have not learned to protect
themselves with light, they will always be vulnerable. But if a sorcerer
attacks an initiate, someone who lives a divine life, their thunderbolts fall
back on their own heads, and quite often they disappear. It is not as easy as
all that to wound or defeat someone who is strongly linked to heaven, who
has a high ideal, who is consecrated and works for the light! If you want to be
protected and safely out of reach of anything others may say or do against
you, therefore, you must change your life, get onto a higher register, rise to a
region where you will always be protected.
In fact, your triumph will be all the more rapid and spectacular if you
increase your love, generosity and kindness. There are beings who have
managed to put themselves above every trace of vindictiveness: it is all the
same to them if people speak evil of them, detest them or work for their
downfall, because they believe in the power of light. Every day, through their
spiritual work, they send out rays of light to every creature, and in the long
run even their enemies feel obliged to bow before their superiority and
become their friends. Instead of exterminating their enemies, therefore, these
beings overcome them by means of their own greatness, their own nobility
and the power of light, and in this way they win their friendship. For there is
one thing you must not forget, and that is that if you overcome your enemies
in the usual way, by means of force and violence or through the power of
money, it does not mean that you have defeated them once and for all. Your
enemies will never be defeated by such means; they will continue to bear you
a grudge. They will never forgive you for winning the battle, and in this
incarnation or the next you will have the same problem all over again. For the
war is never-ending.
Suppose that you have exterminated your enemy; it is only their physical
body that you have killed. The fact is that one can never really exterminate a
human being, because they have an immortal soul, and in the next world they
will continue to hate you. So war goes on and on; it will never end. This is
the point of view that has been handed down from generation to generation,
but it is utterly prehistoric and it will never solve the world’s problems. It is
the wrong answer; everyone has the wrong answer; whole countries have the
wrong answer when they think they can conquer another country by means of
arms and subversion. True, one country can conquer another for a time, but it
will not last; the tables will be turned in the future. Look at the lessons of
history: look what happened between France and Germany, Bulgaria and
Greece, the Armenians and the Turks! What can we do to break out of the
vicious circle? We must do what France did: she held out the hand of
friendship to Germany and now the conflict is a thing of the past. If France
had not done this, Germany would be preparing for revenge all over again.
It is instinct that urges people to take revenge, not wisdom. Someone hits
you and, instinctively, you hit back. Let me tell you a story of three yogis
who had retired into the forest to pray and meditate in order to be perfect.
Someone came to where they were sitting and slapped the first one in the
face. Instantly, he jumped up and slapped the man twice! Truly, that yogi was
well on the way to perfection! The second yogi also received a slap in the
face and he, too, jumped to his feet, but he thought better of it and sat down
again. He, at least, had learned to control himself. As for the third, he never
even noticed the slap in the face; he just went on meditating! As you see,
there are degrees. The first yogi represents ordinary human beings who
respond according to justice... or injustice! The second represents the
category of those who reflect and control their reactions; he said to himself,
‘It’s not worth hitting back. It would only complicate things.’ As for the
third, he was already so highly evolved that he did not even notice his enemy.
And now I am going to go even further and tell you that your enemies are
a blessing. You are thinking, ‘He’s lost his mind. Enemies a blessing, indeed!
Whatever next?’ But that only shows that you have not understood a thing.
Yes, your enemies are a blessing, because they are the ones who can help you
to become strong and mighty and luminous. But, as you are not enlightened,
you do not see this and give in. If you were intelligent, you could become
divinities. Yes, your enemies are secret friends, because they oblige you to
exert yourselves and evolve.2
And now let me tell you another story. Once upon a time there was a
young schoolmaster who was very intelligent but a bit weedy, not very
strong. One day he was in the village square, talking to a group of friends,
and one of them argued with him and disagreed with what he was saying. He
was a big, stupid brute of a fellow (you know how it is: people who are
physically strong are rarely very strong intellectually!), and when he saw that
everybody agreed with the schoolmaster he became so furious that he
punched him on the jaw and knocked him out. Well, when his friends had
brought him round, the young schoolmaster went off feeling very miserable
and humiliated. But when he got home he found that his cow had given birth
to a calf. He was so delighted that he stroked and patted it and picked it up in
his arms (it was not very heavy) and began to forget about his troubles. The
next day, he went to pat his calf and pick it up again. Every day after that, for
several months, he would pick up the calf until, one day, it was a full-grown
ox! When he realized this, he said to himself, ‘Aha, now that I am so strong,
I’ll go and talk to that fellow and give him what he deserves!’ So he went
down to the village square, and sure enough, there was the young tough,
bragging and throwing his weight about as usual. Going up to him, our hero
said, ‘Hello, do you remember me?’ ‘Do I?’ replied the other. ‘You’re the
weedy little man I knocked out with one blow a few months ago!’ ‘That’s
right’, said the schoolmaster, and grabbing him by the leg he swung the giant
up into the air, saying, ‘Make your act of contrition, because I’m going to
throw you down and smash you to bits!’ ‘Oh, mercy, mercy!’ sobbed the big
man. ‘I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry!’ ‘Well, all right; if you’re really sorry...’,
said the schoolmaster, and placed him gently on his feet again. But the bully
had had enough; he dashed away as fast as his legs would carry him, while
his friends roared with laughter and the young schoolmaster went jauntily
home, as pleased as punch at his victory. You see!
Why try to get the better of your enemies with the same despicable,
ignoble means that they use against you? Instead of descending to their level
and dirtying your own hands, why not let them see you are better than they
are? For my own part, for instance, I know very well that I am in a situation
where it would be impossible not to have enemies. Take the case of a couple:
the husband feels the need to develop his spiritual life, so he comes to the
Brotherhood. But his wife is furious and, of course, reviles me and even
thinks of going to the police about it! And this is how, without wronging
anyone, I still have lots of enemies I don’t even know. It’s inevitable! As
soon as you begin to work for the light, some will be dazzled and delighted
and others will be enraged. Sometimes it is the wife who comes to the
Brotherhood and the husband who is furious. But what fault have I
committed in all that? Of course, nobody ever asks me if I am to blame; they
just detest me, that’s all. They don’t even know why they detest me! What
should I do? Speak ill of them? Exterminate them? No, all I need to do is
send them a lot of light.
We must realize that the two principles of light and darkness constantly
manifest themselves in the world and that they are always at odds. If you
belong to the realm of darkness, therefore, you will be attacked by the forces
of light, and if you are on the side of light, you will be attacked by darkness.
You have to expect this. Yes, but that is no reason to give up and do nothing;
you must persevere in spite of misunderstandings and jealousy, and have
recourse only to the weapons of light. Because, I repeat, if you respond with
the same hatred and cruelty, it means you have chosen to descend to the
region where these hostile forces tear and devour each other, and you will
inevitably become weak and ugly and lose all your light. In your desire to
defeat the enemy, you will have sacrificed your strength, beauty and light.
You will even lose your friends as well, for they will see that you are not
nearly as agreeable and charming as you used to be, and they will begin to
avoid you. So you see where that attitude can lead you; it is a very costly one.
But what is the good of trying to explain this to people? They are so ignorant
that they prefer to use the old methods, even though they destroy themselves
in the process! The method I offer you is so much to your advantage that, if
you have understood me, you will always be on top, you will always win.
Yes, because you will be handling higher forces and energies which are still
unknown. Enemies are a temptation which the invisible world puts in our
way; they are a temptation because we are tempted to pay them back in their
own coin and try to show them that we are stronger. But they can also be a
blessing, for their existence forces you to exert yourself. Instead of spending
your time in idleness or resting on your laurels, you have to practise and exert
yourself, night and day. Yes, it is the story of the calf all over again!
Of course, before you can reach this level of consciousness, you must be
filled with kindness and love. It is because they have not managed to
cultivate these virtues sufficiently that human beings perpetually seek
revenge; they think that that is the right attitude, that it is a question of
justice. Look about you and you will see how it is in the world: an eye for an
eye and a tooth for a tooth! Do you really believe it is the law of Jesus that
prevails? Oh no; it is still the law of Moses; everywhere, the law of Moses!
Obviously, each person is free to do as they think best and try to get the better
of their enemies as they please. But with those old methods you will always
end up finding that you have not really conquered them. Even if you kill
them, the problem is not solved; you will have to contend with them again;
that is the law; that is karma. You kill your enemy, then it is their turn to kill
you, and the process goes on and on until one of you finally becomes capable
of more magnanimity and generosity and forgives the other. Only then will
the chain of revenge be broken. But do you imagine that if I revealed this to
the world at large, one day, anyone would understand me? No, they would
exclaim, ‘Poor fellow! What on earth is he talking about?’ They are all so
caught up in their passions and instincts – which they call patriotism – that
they are incapable of reasoning. They are only capable of giving expression
to their instinctive side, and that is no solution.
Naturally, it is much harder to try to perfect yourself than to take revenge.
It takes a great deal of effort and a great deal of time, whereas it is very quick
and easy to pick up a gun and shoot someone! And the majority of human
beings always choose the quick and easy way. Initiates prefer the things that
are difficult and take a long time. That is where the difference lies.
The time has come to give humanity new notions that will help them to
escape from the hell they have got themselves into. Of course, anyone who
prefers to stay there is free to do so, but those who want to free themselves
can learn these new methods. Believe me, you will never get the better of an
enemy by using humiliation, blows or violence of any kind. They will
continue to be recalcitrant, always ready to turn on you, always waiting for
the moment to take their revenge. Whereas, if you use the weapons of love
and light, you will conquer them completely and for ever; they will even be
ready to serve you. This requires a great deal of work and effort, but you
must learn to love effort and not look for things to be easy, for that achieves
nothing; in the long run it only makes everything more difficult.
The Bonfin, 2 April 1975
1 See ‘Au commencement était le Verbe’, Complete Works, vol. 9, chap.
9: ‘Père, pardonne-leur car ils ne savent ce qu’ils font’, and Cosmic Moral
Law, Complete Works, vol. 12, chap. 20: ‘If anyone strikes you on the right
cheek…’
2 See The Seeds of Happiness, Izvor Coll. n° 231, chap. 18: ‘Our enemies
chap. 2: ‘The wheel of life’ and chap. 3: ‘Beyond good and evil’.
3 See Love Greater Than Faith, Izvor Coll. n° 239, chap. 10: ‘Base your
trust on vigilance’.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Towards a broader concept of the family
I
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
Jesus expresses his opinion about his mother and his brothers – Matt. 12:46-
50
‘Our Father in heaven’ – Matt. 6:10-13,
Jesus can only help and heal those who have faith – Matt. 8:5-13 and 13:58;
Mark 10:52, etc.
II
of the universe’, chap. 3: ‘The link with the centre’ and chap. 4: ‘Reaching
for the top’.
6 See A New Dawn – Society and Politics in the Light of Initiatic
loved you’, and Sons and Daughters of God, Izvor Coll. n° 240, chap.
13: ‘Sons and daughters of God are brothers and sisters to all people’.
8 See ‘Cherchez le Royaume de Dieu et sa Justice’, Synopsis Coll.,
Part II, chap. 4: ‘Du soleil à la terre: comment la pensée se réalise dans la
matière’.
9 See The Faith That Moves Mountains, Izvor Coll. n° 238 and Love