Know Thyself - Jnana Yoga - Par - Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov
Know Thyself - Jnana Yoga - Par - Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov
Know Thyself - Jnana Yoga - Par - Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov
‘KNOW THYSELF’
Jnana Yoga
Part 1
Complete Works – Volume 17 AN
Original edition:
© 1977, Éditions Prosveta S.A. (France), ISBN ISBN 2-
85566-080-7
ISBN 978-2-85566-446-0
www.prosveta.com
[email protected]
‘Know yourself.’ Very few men have ever understood the true
meaning of this formula that was once inscribed over the entrance
to the temple of Delphi. Who or what is this ‘self’ that we must
know? ‘Why, that’s easy’, you will say, ‘We have to know our
own character, our own strengths and weaknesses.’ But that is not
what this maxim is about. True, a knowledge of our own strengths
and weaknesses is necessary but it is not enough. To know oneself
is to know the different bodies of which one is constituted
(physical, etheric, astral, mental, causal, buddhic and atmic)1 and
the needs of each of these bodies. But human beings know nothing
about all this. They all realize that they have certain virtues and
vices. They say, ‘I know myself only too well!’ But they are
deluding themselves: they know nothing of the being that lives
deep within them. They know nothing of its desires, its needs or
its aspirations or of what makes it suffer. They don’t know who
their ‘self’ is; they think that it is their physical body and spend
their time giving that body food, clothes, jewellery, comfort and
pleasures without realizing that their true self is asking for
something quite different. The satisfaction of their purely physical,
material needs has never made human beings any happier or more
contented. It is only when they begin to know themselves as they
are on a higher plane that they become capable of living in true
splendour.
But how can you expect people who don’t even believe in the
existence of their other, subtler bodies to do anything about
nourishing or strengthening them? It is amazing to see the situation
of so many people – even those who are highly cultivated: they
take great pride in their university degrees and all their culture and
erudition, and yet they are constantly in a state of inner torment
and anxiety. Isn’t this proof enough that something has gone very
wrong with their lives? When someone is as ignorant as that they
would do better not to be so pleased with themselves.
The table that you see here (Figure 1) sums up the whole of
Initiatic Science and all the sacred scriptures of humankind. To be
sure, it is not the only valid way of illustrating a human being’s
psychic life; in fact I have already spoken to you of others. When
you want to describe the human anatomy, for instance, you don’t
try to include everything on a single chart. It is much easier to
understand if you use different diagrams for the different systems:
the skeleton, the muscles, the circulatory and nervous systems, etc.
And we do the same when we study geography with the help of
physical, political, economic and geological maps. Similarly there
can be different ways of illustrating the psychic structure of human
beings, and although this table is different from the sephirotic tree,
for instance, it represents the same reality and every aspect of the
human being is represented. I have already given you other
diagrams before this and they have all been different, but that
doesn’t mean that they contradict each other.
You will not find the table that I am showing you today in any
book. In fact this is the first time that it has ever been presented,
and it is a summary and a synthesis of all the truths of life. When
you first look at it all you see is a certain number of isolated words
with no apparent connection between them, but once I have
explained each word, its position in the table and its connection
with all the others, you will be astonished by their meaning and the
correspondences between them.
We call this table ‘synoptic’ because it gives an overall view of
the structure of a human being and the activities that correspond to
each element of that structure. As you see, it is divided into five
vertical columns.
The last two columns concern the ‘Price’ we have to pay for
this nourishment, and the ‘Activity’, that is to say, the work we
have to do in order to earn the currency with which to pay.
As you see, all these different notions are very clearly and
logically related to each other.
As you know, the physical body is the vessel that contains all
the other, subtler principles. The soul and the spirit, for example,
are not wholly contained within the physical body but they are
manifesting themselves through it – through the brain, the solar
plexus, the eyes, etc. When you look at someone with a great deal
of love, light and purity, for instance, who is it that is manifesting
himself through your eyes? The eyes belong to the physical body,
but who is the being who uses them as a medium through which to
manifest themselves? Perhaps it is the soul or perhaps it is the
spirit – perhaps it is God himself. And if, on the other hand, you
say something so terrible or give someone such a black look that
they fall ill and have to take to their bed, it is because you have
been the tool of evil powers that sought to attack them. The
physical body, therefore, is often no more than the instrument of
forces that may be either beneficial or malignant and that may exist
either within it or outside it.
The goal or ideal of the will is power and movement. You will
say, ‘But the will can also seek wisdom, intelligence and beauty, for
instance.’ No, these things are not what the will desires for itself;
they are the goal of other principles. The powers of the will can be
used in the pursuit of intelligence or in the creation of a work of
art, but its own objectives, the only things it really wants for itself,
are power and motion. It cannot bear to be immobile; it needs to be
busy, to move about, to touch and displace things. But, like the
physical body, the will cannot achieve its ideal without
nourishment, and the nourishment of the will is strength. When it
is nourished by strength, the will becomes energetic, and if it is not
nourished it wilts and fades away. Then there is the element that
corresponds to the money, the currency with which the will can
buy the food it needs, and this currency is movement, gestures.
Yes, one has continually to drag oneself out of the rut of
immobility and inertia in order to trigger, stimulate and activate the
energies of the will. It is by cultivating habits of activity and
movement that the will ‘buys’ strength and becomes powerful.
So now the question is: what is the ideal, the goal, of the
heart? Does it yearn for knowledge, learning or powers? No. The
heart’s only aspiration is for happiness, joy and warmth, for
warmth brings the heart to life whereas cold kills it. Wherever it
goes, the heart seeks only warmth from others.
The money that serves to pay for happiness and joy is love.
When you love your heart is immediately nourished. How often I
have told you this: neither wealth nor psychic powers nor beauty
can give you happiness; only love! Love is the only thing that can
make you happy. Whatever else you offer your heart it will always
be dissatisfied; it will continue to clamour for love because with
love it can buy all that it needs. When you love, your love is a
currency that enables you to ‘buy’ all sorts of sensations, emotions
and feelings; it gives birth to thousands of sensations every day.
But when you have no more love you have no more money and
consequently no more emotions or sensations. All that is finished.
If you no longer love your wife you may still embrace her but you
will get no joy or happiness from doing so. Whereas if you love
her... Ah! Then, even if you never even kiss her you will be filled
with thousands of feelings and sensations that defy analysis. Yes,
simply because love is present.6
In order to attain its ideal the intellect also needs food, and the
food of the intellect is thought. Here again, just as the heart can
feed on both good and bad feelings, the thoughts on which the
intellect feeds can be good or bad. But here in our teaching it is
implicit that we only want to talk about the best and most
luminous thoughts. Thought nourishes the intellect, therefore; if
you never think you will never know or understand things
correctly. Some people say, ‘Why rack your brains? It’s better not
to think too much, it can be dangerous; you can go mad that way!’
True, one can go mad if one doesn’t think correctly, but thought is
still the best food for the mind. If you don’t feed your mind it will
lose all light and strength and die of starvation.
Wisdom is gold, the gold that comes from the sun. Yes,
wisdom, spiritual gold, comes from the sun. As a matter of fact if
the saints are always portrayed with a circlet of gold over their
heads it is simply because wisdom emanates from them in the form
of light. Just as material gold can be used to buy things in the
visible world, the gold of wisdom can be used to buy whatever we
want in the invisible world. When you go to a shop in the world
above you will be asked if you have any gold, and if you can say
‘Yes’, they will fill your basket to the brim. But if you have to say
‘No’, they will give you nothing.
And now let’s look at the soul. In this area too there is so
much ignorance and confusion in the minds of human beings. If you
talk to them about the heart, the mind or the will you can
sometimes reach an understanding, but the chances of doing so are
very remote when it comes to discussing the soul. I have read a
great many books about the soul but I have never been satisfied
with any of their definitions or explanations. As for the opinion of
orthodox science... it hardly bears mentioning! The soul has quite
simply been eliminated and reduced to a set of physiological
processes. This is why I amused myself one day by giving a
lecture about the soul.9 Oh, yes; I have my own ways of amusing
myself! Do you remember that lecture? M any of you told me
afterwards that they had found it extraordinarily clear. As a matter
of fact I did not really say very much that day; I did little more
than try to get the question into perspective so that you might
begin to glimpse the truth, but I am far from imagining that I
explained everything.
You will perhaps be surprised when I tell you that the ideal of
the soul, the thing it asks for, is neither knowledge nor light nor
happiness. The ideal of the soul is space, immensity; the one thing
it needs is to be free to expand and reach out to embrace the
infinite. Yes, the ideal of the soul is infinity. It is miserable when it
is circumscribed and restricted. The human soul is a tiny fragment
of the universal soul and to be confined to the physical body
makes it feel so hemmed in, so stifled, that its one desire is to
expand in space. People usually think that the whole of their soul
dwells in their body but this is not so. The truth is that only a tiny
proportion of a person’s soul dwells within them; all the rest leads
an independent life outside them, in the cosmic ocean. But, as the
universal soul has its own plans for us and wants to animate and
vivify us and make us more beautiful, it is constantly working on
us in order to penetrate and progressively permeate our whole
being. Our soul, then, is not bounded by the narrowness of our
own little person; it is something much vaster, just as our true self,
our higher self, is not the puny little self that we know: it is a much
more powerful entity. The soul, too, is infinitely more than we
could ever imagine. It exists above and beyond our physical body;
it can leave our body and travel to far-away regions and visit
distant entities.
The soul must also have money with which to buy the food it
needs, and the only money, the only means that can buy the
infinite expansion that the soul seeks is fusion, dilatation and
ecstasy. But ecstasy must be earned by an activity, a certain kind
of work, and this work is prayer, adoration and contemplation.
This is the activity that really belongs to the soul: contemplation,
the contemplation of the Lord, of the angels and archangels, of the
beauty of heaven. Prayer is a quest for divine splendour, and when
that splendour is attained it brings with it such an intense
experience of dilatation that it is as though one were torn out of
one’s body. This is ecstasy. All those who have experienced
ecstasy tell us that they were no longer on earth, no longer bound
to their limited physical body; they felt themselves to be immersed
in the universal soul with which they had become one. Afterwards,
of course they came down to earth again, but for at least a few
minutes or a few hours, they had lived in perfect fusion with the
infinite.
There you are, my dear brothers and sisters, it is all quite clear
to you now. To be sure, those who have never had even an inkling
of such an experience will think that what I have said is exaggerated
and bizarre. Well, let them think what they like but, for my part, I
put this table before you in utter simplicity and sincerity and all
the initiates would agree with what I say.
And now we come to the spirit. The spirit also yearns for an
ideal, but the ideal of the spirit is not that of the soul. It does not
yearn to melt into space, into the infinite, because its nature is
different. The soul is the feminine principle par excellence, the
feminine principle in its most perfect, most divine expression. The
spirit, on the other hand, is the divine expression of the masculine
principle. The intellect and the heart also represent the masculine
and feminine principles but on a lower plane and, therefore, less
perfectly. The alternation of these two principles – positive and
negative, emissive and receptive – is repeated on every plane and in
every region of the universe, but in different forms. Wherever you
look you will find only the masculine and feminine principles. But
I have already said enough on this subject,11 so I shall say no more
today.
What does the spirit ask for? Not space nor knowledge, not
happiness nor power nor health. The spirit does not need any of
these things because it has them all; it is never ill, never weak nor
unhappy, never cold nor in darkness. The spirit asks for only one
thing: eternity. The spirit is an immortal essence, and as such has
no liking for that which is bound by the constraints of time; it
seeks eternity. Just as the domain of the soul is space, so the
domain of the spirit is time. Physicists and philosophers will never
understand the nature of time and space until they understand the
nature of the soul and the spirit. Yes, because time and space are
notions of a fourth dimension which pertains to the soul and the
spirit. Here too there is so much I could say, but I am waiting for
the right time to say it. Today I shall simply say that even the
greatest physicists, mathematicians and philosophers who study
time and space will never pierce these mysteries if they have never
consciously worked with their soul and spirit to reach some
understanding of infinity and eternity.
But you cannot buy truth just anywhere in the first shop you
come to. Before you can possess truth there is something you
must do, some work that you must accomplish: the work of
identification with the Creator. To identify with God is to draw
closer to him, to fuse into one with him, to possess the truth and
become free. In a few words Jesus expressed and summed up this
process of identification when he said, ‘The Father and I are one.’
M editation will give you some light, but it will not set you free.
Contemplation will plunge you into ecstasy, but it will not set you
free either. Only this work of identification will give you the gold
called truth. And what is this truth? The truth is that the human
being is nothing but an illusion, a maya; that they come from God
and will return to God. As soon as you know and understand this
truth, as soon as you see and feel it, you feel free – free from all
passions and ambitions, free from suffering – and free to enter into
eternity.
Jesus also said, ‘This is eternal life, that they may know you,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.’12 What
kind of knowledge is implied here? Jesus was certainly not thinking
of a purely intellectual knowledge – the knowledge of those who
say that they know all about something because they have read
books about it – but of true knowledge. ‘To know the only true
God’ means to identify with God; to know God is to be fused with
him. And it is this union, this fusion, that is eternal life. To fuse
with and become one with the Creator is the only way to enter into
eternal life; without this union no human being can be eternal for
they will still be living in time.
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
‘You will know the truth and the truth will make you free.’– John
8:32
‘This is eternal life, that they may know you’ – John 17:3
II
Question: Freedom is usually thought of in connection with the
notion of space: one is free to move about, to go somewhere else.
Will you explain why the synoptic table indicates that it is the spirit
rather than the soul that seeks freedom?
Unlike the soul which expands in space, the spirit does not
occupy space. To be free in the spirit, therefore, has nothing to do
with space; to be free is a state of consciousness. The spirit is not
bound by space because it is not material, whereas the soul is. Of
course the matter of the soul is not the dense, opaque substance
that we can see and feel; it is the primeval matter which is pure
light. The soul provides the marvellously subtle matter with which
the spirit creates – and without which the spirit can do nothing.
The spirit is enclosed in matter, and when physicists split the atom
they are simply freeing the spirit, the forces imprisoned in matter.
It is not matter that produces an explosion but the energy
contained in it.
1 See Hrani Yoga – The alchemical and magical meaning of nutrition, Complete
Works, vol. 16.
3 See A New Earth – Methods, exercises, formulas, prayers, Complete Works, vol.
13; ‘Know Thyself ’: Jnana Yoga, Complete Works, vol. 18, chap. 11: ‘ P hysical
gestures’ .
5 See Les deux arbres du Paradis, Complete Works, vol. 3, chap. 7: ‘ La parabole des
cinq vierges sages et des cinq vierges folles, and Harmony, Complete Works, vol. 6,
chap. 9: ’ The solar plexus and the brain’ , chap. 11: ‘ The initiatic heart’ .
12 See ‘Know Thyself ’: Jnana Yoga, Complete Works, vol 18, chap. 6:
‘ Concentration, meditation, contemplation and identification’ , and The True
Meaning of Christ’s Teaching, Izvor Coll. n° 215, chap. 2: ‘ My Father and I are one’ .
13 See Le grain de sénevé, Complete Works, vol. 4, chap. 1: ‘ La vie éternelle, c’ est
qu’ ils Te connaissent, Toi, le seul vrai Dieu…’ .
14 See Creation: Artistic and Spiritual, Izvor Coll. n° 223, chap. 5: ‘ The human
voice’ and chap. 6: ‘ Choral singing’ .
15 See The Mysteries of Yesod – Foundations of the Spiritual Life, Complete Works,
vol. 7, P art II, chap. 5: ‘ The river of life’ .
17 See Cosmic Balance – The Secret of Polarity, Izvor Coll. n° 237, chap. 4: ‘ The
role of the masculine and the feminine’ .
Chapter Three
Spirit and matter
True reality is that of the soul and spirit, and in order to have
access to this reality human beings need to develop other senses
and, above all, they need a M aster.3 Otherwise, of course, it is
dangerous and one can make a great many mistakes and do oneself
a lot of harm by arousing hostile forces. If one has the proper
guidance and is ready to work hard, however, there is nothing more
marvellous than the spiritual world. The physical world is
beautiful: flowers, crystals, trees, birds, mountains, human beings
and stars are all extraordinarily beautiful. But in comparison with
the world of the spirit they pale into insignificance. It is no good
blaming the spiritual world if you don’t know how to find your
way in it, the fault is yours. You started out with unbounded
confidence in yourself, you would have nothing to do with a
M aster, you refused the help of a guide, so who is to blame when
you fall over the edge of a cliff?
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’– Gen. 1:1
II
The Master reads the meditation for the day:
The capacities of the spirit are infinite but you have to give it
the conditions it needs in order to manifest itself. There are certain
cases, also, in which people, artists and thinkers especially, reach
extraordinary heights of inspiration and enthusiasm that bring them
into contact with sublime realities, and then, when they revert to
their normal state, they understand practically nothing of what
happened to them. All of this proves that if men and women
became both more receptive and more perceptive, and if they were
given conditions that would enable the spirit to manifest itself
more fully, they would realize that it has the most extraordinary
possibilities.
We are here, within the four walls of this room, but our spirits
are everywhere; this is why we must give them more and more
opportunity to manifest themselves through us.
The Bonfin, July 19, 1975
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
‘For you are the temple of the living God’ – II Cor. 6:16
III
This is why those who have studied life, the initiates, make
every effort to stay in contact with the pole of subtlety, intensity
and light, whereas most human beings make so little effort that
they drift towards the pole of inertia and become completely
fossilized and amorphous; when you deal with them it is as though
you were dealing with a pile of stones. Stone is useful,
indispensable in fact, I agree; it has its contribution to make, but
disciples must understand that they must also know and draw
closer to that other pole, the pole of the spirit, of God. Between
the stones of the earth, on the one hand, and God, who is totally
unknowable, totally inaccessible, infinite and unique on the other,
lies the whole range of created beings from plants to the seraphim.
Take only these few words to heart and you will need nothing
more; you will have material enough to work on for the rest of
your life. What more can you ask for? But I know what you will
do: you will file this image away, and tomorrow you will ask for
another. Very well, tomorrow you shall have another, but it will
point in the same direction. And, after that, you will want another
and yet another. I have already given you hundreds of images but
you keep asking for more.
Of course, you will tell me that in real life weeds are hardier
and more tenacious than other plants and so are the wicked. Yes,
coarse, primitive, materialistic people are much more at home on
earth and often survive longer and live to triumph over others,
whereas those who are subtler, purer and more virtuous disappear
sooner. Do you want my explanation? Present conditions on earth
are not such as to make things easy for the children of God. Look
at a jungle inhabited by snakes and wild beasts, or a swamp
infested with mosquitoes and other insects: the creatures that live
in those conditions are perfectly at home. They have been there a
long time and are adapted to the environment; they have all they
need for their survival. The territory belongs to them and if anyone
tries to take it away from them they defend themselves: ‘What
right have you to hunt us and drive us out? This is our land!’ And
they sting and bite and claw the intruders.
For the time being, therefore, the earth belongs to those who
are violent, greedy and materialistic, and this is the cause of war.
The children of God are coming to take over the earth but the
others, those who feel at home here, are quick to defend themselves
and it is still they who are stronger, for they have barricaded
themselves in and are physically and materially well armed. You
will ask, ‘How long is the battle going to last?’ Well, look at how
many areas of the world used to be infested by man-eating beasts
and other dangerous animals: they are far fewer nowadays. The
same thing will happen with those who dominate the world today:
the survivors will be kept in zoos for the entertainment of children
– and also to ensure that their image is not completely lost. Yes,
the population of wild beasts, of wild human beings, will gradually
decrease because fewer and fewer of them will reincarnate and their
place will be taken by children of God. But so far, it is spiritual
people who are always vanquished and massacred, whereas the
weeds survive much longer.
M ake the most of the opportunity while you are here, at the
Bonfin, to reflect and meditate and tidy up your inner life.7
Everything you see around you can be used in your spiritual life:
the sky, the sun, the trees, the rocks, the air and the food. For
years I have been giving you methods and exercises: use them, and
by the time you leave you will be so full of treasures and riches
that you will even be able to distribute some to others. Your stay
here should make it possible for you to achieve something that you
have never yet achieved. To begin with you will, of course, come
up against a certain number of obstacles and an inner resistance,
but at least you will have tried, and this means that you will be
able to try again and keep on trying until you succeed in living
continuously according to the laws of harmony, peace and light.
One day you will do it effortlessly; it will become second nature to
you.
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth’ – Matt. 5:5
IV
When you see things from the earth it seems as though the sun
rises and sets, but if you were on the sun you would see things
differently. Everything depends, therefore, on your point of view.
If you have an earthly point of view, all that is spiritual and divine
will seem secondary or of no importance at all – you may even
think that it does not exist. But if your point of view is that of the
spirit, all earthly, physical, material phenomena will be seen as
peripheral whereas the spirit will be central. This is better. For my
part I have adopted the point of view of the sun, the point of view
of the spirit, of Cosmic Intelligence, of the Creator. And it is this
point of view that enables me to see the solution to a great many
problems.
When M oses says in Genesis that God formed Eve out of one
of Adam’s ribs, it simply means that matter came from the spirit.
On the higher level, woman is born of man but on earth it is woman
that gives birth to man. Also, it is interesting to notice that spirit
and matter have opposite tendencies. Spirit tends to scatter and be
dispersed in order to nourish matter, whereas matter tends to
coalesce. Take the example of our organs: they have to cohere, to
form a unit in order to stay alive. If our body ceases to be an
integral whole it falls apart; when life leaves the body all its
physical particles are dispersed and return to the four elements
from which they came. Yes, but if we remain on the physical plane
we cannot discover these truths. If we want to see the links, the
correspondences between things, we have to rise to a higher plane,
to the world of laws in which correspondences become apparent,
and higher still, to the world of principles, that is to say, the world
of meaning.
In the past, especially in rural areas, children did not get much
schooling. They had to tend the livestock and help in the fields. In
fact, when governments wanted to make school obligatory, there
were endless arguments and disputes. Parents thought that their
children would be wasting their time at school; they were much
more useful at home or in the fields. But the centuries have passed
and, today, even in primitive societies, everybody goes to school if
only to learn to read and write.
When I tell people that they don’t know how to read and
write, they look at me indignantly. ‘Why do you say that? I have
been to school!’ ‘Ah yes, but I’m not talking about that kind of
reading and writing. Have you learned to read the book of living
nature? Have you learned to read the writing of birds, plants,
crystals, mountains, lakes, the stars or human faces?’ ‘Is that what
we have to read?’ ‘Exactly; that is the book that you must learn to
read.’ And that is why I say that human beings have not yet
learned to read. And to write? To write on human souls, to trace
sublime lines that can never be erased? No, human beings have
never learned to write like that either. You write every day and you
cannot even see that your writings are freaks, monstrosities. When
you spend so much time every day arguing, back-biting and
exchanging slanderous gossip, do you think that you are writing
good things in the minds and souls of others or in nature?10 Human
beings are constantly busy desecrating, defiling, despoiling,
destroying and tearing things apart... and this is their writing.
And men, those who have a pencil, do they know how to use
it? No, they have no notion of its value or power, no notion of the
immensity, the essence of what they possess. This is why it is
perfectly true to say that you do not know how to read or write.
And it is not in bars, night-clubs or on the beach that men and
women will learn to read and write.12
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
VI
‘Humans are only what they are; they cannot give what they
have not got. In order to give, you must first possess. And in order
to create, you must possess the elements of that creation within
you and be able to express what is in your soul and spirit. If there
is nothing in you, you will never create anything.
You will remember what I told you in the recorded lecture that
we listened to again yesterday.15 The spirit possesses all virtues
and all knowledge, but the physical body is not in perfect
condition and it is this that makes it impossible for the qualities of
the spirit to manifest themselves. If the physical body were
perfectly tuned and adjusted, the spirit would be able to manifest
itself fully. But I have already explained this to you so I shall not
repeat it today.
The unity that we are talking about, the unity that all humans
seek instinctively, resides in the spirit, nowhere else. Apart from
the spirit, all is diversity, multiplicity. To speak of unity, therefore,
implies the presence of the divine Spirit. Hostility and all the
arbitrary manifestations that stem from it – the acquisitive instinct,
the tendency to think oneself different and apart from others, even
patriotism – find their origin in the fact that human beings have
drifted away from the state of perfection in which all spirits are
united and know themselves to be one. No negative, discordant
elements can manifest themselves in the presence of unity. Certain
initiates have reached such heights in this experience of unity that
they have the sensation of vibrating in unison with all creatures;
they are so keenly aware that there is no longer any separation,
that all souls and all spirits are one, that they feel all that happens
to others as though it were happening to them. And this is
precisely the purpose of Initiatic Science: to bring all creatures
back to the consciousness of their fundamental oneness. On the
higher plane we are all united; it is on the lower planes that we are
separate. On the higher plane we all experience the same joys, the
same sense of wonder, the same perception of all that is truly
perfect.
When the spirit leaves the physical body it moves onto the
etheric plane. After a little while, just as it left its physical
envelope, it leaves its etheric envelope and rises to the astral plane.
It remains on the astral plane until it has accomplished certain
tasks and then moves on again to the mental plane, and so on.
Heaven begins with the higher mental plane, the causal plane; it is
on the causal plane that the spirit begins to come closer and closer
to God until it becomes one with him and possesses the absolute
knowledge and absolute power of the Lord himself. In the birth of
a child the process is reversed: the entity that incarnates dies to the
spiritual world and descends into planes that are progressively
more material. If we only knew where a newborn baby comes from
and how many bodies it has put on! What a journey! And what an
adventure!
The truth is that everything is within us. And this means that,
although I say that humans cannot give what they have not got, if
they work hard they can give it, because it is all there, stored up
within them. When human beings strayed from the Lord their spirit
contained everything in potentiality. It must be understood, of
course, that the concrete materialization and manifestation of the
powers lying dormant in the spirit take time, but that does not
mean that they are not there: they are. If you thought about this
truth more often it would be a tremendous help for your evolution.
VII
This means that, in all their reasoning, all the decisions they
make and the work they do, a disciple must always give priority to
the spirit, to the kingship of the spirit. On everything they do and
wherever they go, disciples seek to leave the seal of the spirit and,
in this way, everything ends by being transformed. If you
understand what I am saying, the clouds will gradually thin and
disappear and your whole life will be like today. What
transparency in the sky this morning at sunrise! What
extraordinary light!
1 See The Key to the Problems of Existence, Complete Works, vol. 11, chap. 14:
‘ Render therefore unto Caesar’ .
2 See The Key to the Problems of Existence, Complete Works, vol. 11, chap. 14:
‘ Render therefore unto Caesar’ .
3 See Harmony, Complete Works, vol. 6, chap. 4: ‘ A disciple must develop his
spiritual senses’ .
4 See The True Meaning of Christ’s Teaching, Izvor Coll. n° 215, chap. 5: ‘ On earth
as it is in heaven’ .
5 See Cosmic Balance – The Secret of Polarity, Izvor Coll. n° 237, chap. 4: ‘ The role
of the masculine and the feminine’ .
6 See Cosmic Balance – The Secret of Polarity, Izvor Coll. n° 237, chap. 11: ‘ The
triad Kether-Chesed-Geburah: 3. A straight line and a curved line’ .
7 See Life and Work in an Initiatic School – Training for the Divine, Complete
Works, vol. 30, chap. 2: ‘ The Bonfin’ .
8 See The Symbolic Language of Geometrical Figures, Izvor Coll. n° 218, chap. 5:
‘ The pyramid’ .
9 See Cosmic Balance – The Secret of Polarity, Izvor Coll. n° 237, chap. 1: ‘ Cosmic
balance and the number two’ , P art II.
10 See Le rire du sage, Izvor Coll. n° 243, chap. 8: ‘ Langue de fer et langue d’ or’ .
12 See La pédagogie initiatique, Complete Works, vol. 28, chap. 4: ‘ Lire et écrire’ .
14 See ‘In Spirit and in Truth’, Izvor Coll. n° 235, chap. 3: ‘ The link with the centre’
and chap. 4: ‘ Reaching for the top’ .
16 See Cosmic Balance – The Secret of Polarity, Izvor Coll. n° 237, chap. 15:
‘ Union of the ego with the physical body’ .
17 See W hat is a Spiritual Master?, Izvor Coll. n° 207, chap. 10: ‘ The magical
presence of a Master’ .
18 See The Seeds of Happiness, Izvor Coll. n° 231, chap. 16: ‘ Give without
expecting anything in return’ and chap. 17: ‘ Love without asking to be loved in
return’ .
19 See Love Greater Than Faith, Izvor Coll. n° 239, chap. 4: ‘ Your faith has made
you well’ .
20 See The Philosopher’s Stone – in the Gospels and in Alchemy, Izvor Coll. n° 241,
chap. 3: ‘ You are the salt of the earth’ - I. Marking matter with the seal of the spirit –
II. The source of energy’ .
Chapter Four
The soul
There are three worlds: the physical world, the spiritual world
and the divine world. Or, if you prefer: the world of facts, the
world of laws and the world of principles. Or again: form, content
and meaning. However you express it, it is always the same trinity
of body, soul and spirit. The spirit is the expression of the divine
world; the soul corresponds to the spiritual world, and the body
corresponds to the physical world. The soul, therefore, lies
between matter and the spirit; it is an intermediary, a vehicle which
conveys elements from heaven to earth and from earth to heaven.
All that descends from above and all that rises from below passes
through the soul. The spirit only knows how to descend and the
body only knows how to rise, but the soul rises and descends
between the two. This is why the spirit can have power over
matter only by using the soul as its intermediary. The soul’s
potential for action is tremendous; it is the soul not the spirit that
acts directly on matter.
Look at what happens in nature. The sun cannot have much
direct influence on the earth except to warm it; for anything else it
needs air and water to act as intermediaries. In the same way, our
spirit cannot touch our physical body directly, it needs our
thoughts and feelings to act as its intermediaries. Intermediaries are
always extremely important.1
II
M any people believe that when a child comes into this world,
its soul and all its moral and intellectual faculties have to grow with
its physical body, and that, as its body gradually gets older and
loses its strength and vitality, the soul does the same. Not at all.
Before incarnating, the soul is already fully in possession of all its
faculties; it has reached a very advanced stage of evolution, but it
cannot manifest itself as it is through a physical human body. This
is why it remains largely outside the child’s body while it works to
prepare it and make it fit to house it completely. In reality, it will
never quite achieve that goal, but that is what it works towards
throughout the child’s life. As the years go by and the child grows
up, they gradually manifest new talents and new faculties as their
soul enters more deeply into their body, dwells in them more fully
and succeeds in manifesting itself through them.3 And then there
are days when the soul leaves the body and travels far from it. At
these times, the body can only lie there, paralysed and motionless,
and it takes a great deal of time and effort to reanimate it and bring
the person back to their senses.
You are all aware that drugs have become a scourge in society
and that young people are particularly threatened. The young feel a
growing need to escape, to get away from all the ugliness of life
that makes them unhappy. I cannot approve of all the things they
do, but we have to admit that adolescents have become so sensitive
that they are less and less capable of putting up with certain
conditions. There is nothing wrong with wanting to escape; on the
contrary, but the Teaching of the Universal White Brotherhood can
offer them means of escape that are far, far better than drugs. The
synoptic table that I showed you4 can help young people to
understand what kinds of nourishment will give them joy, rapture
and the expanded consciousness they seek. The external solutions
are always very costly: drugs and physical pleasure can never bring
fulfilment and one day human beings will be obliged to recognize
that Cosmic Intelligence intends us to find happiness only in the
elements that can satisfy the needs of the soul, spirit, heart and
mind; that is to say, in very subtle elements, subtler even than
those of the etheric plane; in thoughts, feelings, forces, prayer,
contemplation and ecstasy; in other words: in spiritual work.
Human beings must be free; yes, but with the freedom that is
divine. When that kind of freedom is yours, everything is yours
and whatever you do you will always manifest yourself divinely.
Of course, adults have never given young people this light because
they don’t possess it themselves and so today they see themselves
mirrored in their children: like father like son. ‘M y son is nothing
but a hooligan, a gangster!’ ‘Yes, but it was you who made him
what he is; you and none other. You have only yourself to blame. If
you had learned certain laws you would have known that it was in
your power to give him what he needed to become a divinity.’
Children are what they are, but it is often their parents’ fault. It is
the parents rather than the children who need to be educated,
therefore. You will see that one day the whole world will be
enlightened, guided and helped by the sublime philosophy of this
Teaching. Of course, anyone who chooses to seek personal
independence, profit and pleasure rather than a sound philosophy
is free to do so but, sooner or later, it will only lead to disaster.
2 See Love and Sexuality, Complete Works, vol. 15, chap. 22: ‘ It rises from earth and
descends from heaven’ .
4 See Chapter 2.
5 See Youth: Creators of the Future, Izvor Coll. n° 233, chap. 5: ‘ Choosing the right
direction’ , chap. 12: ‘ Benefit from the experience of older people’ , chap. 13:
‘ Compare yourself to those who are greater’ , chap. 18: ‘ Sexual freedom’ .
Chapter Five
Sacrifice
So, be sure that the sacrifices you decide to make are sensible.
There are women who are so eager to sacrifice themselves that they
are ready to marry a drunkard – or men who are ready to marry a
woman who is neurasthenic – in the belief that in this way they
can save them. But only the Lord knows if they really will save
them. It is not kindness or generosity that is lacking. No, what is
lacking is light. People are blind; they don’t foresee what will
happen and it is such a pity that all their qualities and virtues
should be just thrown away. It would be so much better if they
were dedicated to a divine work that would help not one but
thousands of human beings. Besides, you cannot be sure that that
person will be helped. What you can be sure of is that the one who
wants to help them will become a victim.
A lot of people behave like the little acorn whose heart was
bursting with so much love that it decided to go out into the world
to do good. The old oak told it, ‘Listen, little one, you’re still very
young; you would do better to learn to be patient. You must start
by burying yourself in the ground and later, when your roots,
trunk, branches and leaves have grown, you can begin to be useful.
Then you will help to purify the air; birds will come and take
shelter in your branches; you will be an inspiration for painters;
your acorns will feed the livestock; you will provide a shady swing
for lovers, and the poor will collect your dead branches for their
fires.’ ‘Oh, you’re too old!’ said the little acorn. ‘That’s all
nonsense; you don’t understand what I’m talking about. I’m
overflowing with love and the desire to sacrifice myself,’ and it
went and sat down in the middle of the path. But a hog that
happened to be passing that way spied it and gobbled it up and
that was the end of all the acorn’s noble intentions. Well, for my
part, I have followed the advice of the old oak. For years I buried
myself in the ground so that my roots, trunk and branches should
grow, and now, perhaps, I can give a little shade to those who need
it and the birds can come and shelter in my branches. But I see
many who have been disciples for only a year and they know
nothing, nothing at all, and yet they believe that they are capable of
doing good to the whole world! This is why they will be snapped
up and devoured by the first swine that comes along. Even before
trying to sacrifice yourself, therefore, you have to prepare
yourself; you have to study and become strong, otherwise you will
be incapable of helping others.
II
The one thing that you should desire most is to burn with the
sacred fire of divine love, for it is in this fire that you will find the
secret of life. M ost human beings are not yet alight, their
personality is intact. They are not ready to be consumed; they are
like candles that have not yet been lit. But they are going to have to
make up their minds: sooner or later, if they want to possess that
light and warmth, they are going to have to burn everything. We all
enjoyed collecting these twigs and branches for the fire, didn’t we?
They might have lain where they were for years and been no good
to anyone, and now look at them. Just to see them burning so
brightly gives us a feeling of happiness and joy. And all the
energies locked up in them are flying back to the sun from which
they came. The cheerful, crackling sounds you hear are an
expression of joy and jubilation, the sounds of these energies being
set free: the prisoners’ chains are snapping and they are being
released and set free.
Those who feel that their flame has gone out can come to me
for a match. I have all kinds of matches. In fact, that is all I have. I
have spent my whole life collecting matches and now I have tons
of them. So, if there are any customers for my matches they only
have to come and ask and I’ll give them some. The only danger is
that, instead of setting fire to themselves, they might set fire to
other people’s haystacks and barns, and that would never do. No,
absolutely not... but you don’t understand what I am saying.
Did you notice how quickly and vigorously the fire took hold
today, as though it were full of joy? Sometimes it hesitates, but
this evening the blaze was tremendous. And look at it now: it is
pleased that I am talking about it! The question now is how to
preserve the sacred flame. Well, you can preserve it by feeding it
every day with bits of your personality. That is what the
personality is predestined to be: food for the spirit. You have still
not understood how useful the personality is; you are always
wondering how you can get rid of it. But you must not get rid of it;
without it you could not survive on earth, whereas with it you will
always have plenty of elements with which to feed the spirit. It is
important that you understand the law of magic which says that if
you want to obtain results on a higher level, you have to sacrifice
something of your personality.
1 See Life Force, Complete Works, vol. 5, chap. 9: ‘ Sacrifice’ , and Le rire du sage,
Izvor Coll. n° 243, chap. 10: ‘ Chaque sacrifice imprime en nous la marque du soleil’ .
2 See True Alchemy or the Quest for Perfection, Izvor Coll. n° 221, chap. 10:
‘ Vainglory and divine glory’ .
3 See The Mysteries of Fire and Water, Izvor Coll. n° 232, chap. 2: ‘ The secret of
combustion’ .
4 See Sons and Daughters of God, Izvor Coll. n° 240, chap. 2: ‘ Blood, vehicle of the
Soul’ and chap. 11: ‘ Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross: the powers of blood’ .
5 See The Key to the Problems of Existence, Complete Works, vol. 11, chap. 12: ‘ The
true meaning of sacrifice’ .
Chapter Six
Food for the soul and the spirit
Oh yes, I know that you are all living in the world and that in
this world there are all kinds of things that you have to understand
and all kinds of problems that have to be solved, and none of it is
easy. From the day you are born you are obliged to struggle and
face up to difficulties in order to survive, in order to eat, earn your
living, marry, build a house, etc. You never have a moment’s peace,
I can see that. From time to time you feel happy and quite
satisfied; you think that you have found what you are looking for
and you say, ‘At last I’m happy!’ But that happiness never lasts
long, and this fact brings us to something that you must
understand: all of you, all human beings, have only one basic need
and that is to find something stable that they can rely on.
The Bible says that God created the heavens and the earth and
this means that the earth has a role to play. But it is not the earth
that can give humans true satisfaction or fulfilment. All the realities
of heaven are matched by a corresponding reality on earth, because
the earth is the mirror image of heaven, but it is not the
quintessence, the truth, the heart of reality. If you really want to
obtain fulfilment, which is a state of the soul and spirit, you must
look for it elsewhere. Truth is to be found in the combination of the
two: the world of outer, objective reality and the world of inner,
subjective reality. Human beings come from heaven, they are
spirits, but they are obliged to put on a physical body in order to
dwell in the physical world. A person’s physical body stands in
the same relation to their spirit as the universe stands in relation to
God. Yes, the universe, nature, is God’s physical body. God has a
body and he has distributed thousands of things throughout his
body, the cosmos, as well as in our own bodies. But he has not
entrusted everything to the physical body; he has placed his most
precious treasures – life, strength, consciousness – in the spirit,
and when the spirit leaves the body, it takes all these treasures
with it. The dead body is left with nothing but the physical
elements which end by disintegrating.
Never forget that your soul and spirit have needs of their own.
A person’s physical body needs to eat and sleep. Their astral body
wants pleasure, it needs love and emotions. Their mental body
wants to learn, to know. That is all well and good, but you would
be justified in saying to the majority of people in this world: ‘You
always give your physical body everything it asks for. You
obviously give your astral and mental bodies what they ask for,
too, since you have had several mistresses and have earned degrees
from several universities. Why are you still not satisfied? Because
you have neglected your other bodies; they are still hungry and
thirsty.’ It is not enough to see to the needs of the physical body,
the heart and the mind. The increasing popularity of drugs,
particularly amongst the young, is a warning sign. It warns us that
the soul is stifled because it cannot make itself heard or
understood; it longs to escape to heavenly regions and, as human
beings don’t know how to satisfy the soul’s need to escape, they
take drugs. But drugs are not the answer; they are still something
that we give to the physical body. It is the soul that feels the need
to escape, not the physical body. The craze for drugs is simply an
indication that the soul yearns to escape into the vastness of space,
but drugs can never satisfy the soul or answer that need. And not
only can they never satisfy the soul, they destroy the body.
The only thing that can save mankind is the Teaching of the
Universal White Brotherhood. At the moment, nobody cares two
hoots about this Teaching, but when there are so many anomalies
in the world that life has become impossible, then people will try
the Teaching. Today, however, they turn up their noses at it! They
prefer drugs because it is so much easier to take drugs than to make
an effort to nourish one’s soul and spirit.
If you want to find joy and happiness you must turn your
mind away from the world of matter and raise it to heaven. And
when you reach heaven you will instantly find yourself flooded
with joy, for heaven is a region of joy. Every creature in heaven is
brimming over with joy and happiness. Hurry up and find this out
for yourselves; try to rise to a higher level. Sometimes the
experience can be so intense that one is almost afraid. Yes, and an
experience of this kind is recorded within you and can never be
erased. It is as though you had a magnetic tape recorder inside you;
at any time, you can put on a tape that was recorded while you
were in a state of light and love and live that state all over again.
Once again, you will experience the same love and the same light;
the experience may not be as intense, of course, but even so, it is
important to be able to relive these sublime moments. There is not
a creature on earth to whom heaven has never given a few moments
of hope and joy.3 All men and women, even the poorest and most
destitute, have known such moments in their lives and it is good to
live those moments over again in one’s thoughts.
Do you see how simple it is? How clear it all is? You will say,
‘Yes, we know all that already. You have explained it before.’ But it
needs to be explained again, over and over again, if you are to
understand it properly. I have so often seen this: I may have
explained something to you ninety-nine times but it is when I
explain it for the hundredth time that you understand. I know that
I make myself ridiculous by constantly talking about the needs of
the soul and spirit, but it is only because I am so anxious for you
to understand how useful this can be in practice. Besides, you
should be glad when I repeat something, because there is always a
difference, I always use different words, a different tone of voice
and, above all, the psychic conditions are always different. One can
sometimes put life into words in a way that one has never done
before. The subjects and even the phrases may be the same but the
life, the force, the love and the light that I put into those phrases
are never the same. I have already used the example of a river: the
Seine, the Thames and the M ississippi have been the same rivers
for centuries, but the water that flows in them is never the same.
‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ – Gen. 1:1
II
You ate your meals as usual yesterday and yet you are hungry
again today. And you expect me to tell you something again today,
too. The nourishment I gave you yesterday was for yesterday, and
today you are hungry again. Good; that’s very good! The Gospels
tell us, ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst...’ So, you see,
you are blessed! The only trouble is that you don’t know it. Why
do you always need me to tell you that you are very privileged,
very blessed? Why can’t you feel it for yourselves? As a matter of
fact I can see from your expressions that you don’t really believe
me when I say this. I assure you, it is true. Do you want me to
prove it to you? All right; I will do so with pleasure! I always get
great pleasure from proving something to you and it seems to me
that I shall never be deprived of this pleasure.
Light is the garment in which fire is clothed and for this reason
light is always related to matter.4 In the sublime regions of the
world above, light is related to matter and fire to the spirit. This is
why light was created first by God, the primordial Fire, and it was
light that created the world; nothing was created without light. This
evening, God willing, we shall have the ceremony of fire and you
will see the re-enactment of the creation of the world unfolding
before your eyes.
The soul feeds on fire. It yearns for and feeds on the fire of
the spirit. And the spirit, which is fire, feeds on the light of the
soul. And this idea must be constantly present within you: the
cosmic Spirit that is fire and the universal Soul that is light. When
you meditate, concentrate exclusively on the highest aspects of the
two principles, masculine and feminine, for it is here that the most
extraordinary illumination awaits you. Raise yourself every day to
this region and stay there; nothing is more beautiful. Some of you
may want to say, ‘Yes, but I don’t like the idea of fire. Nor of light
either for that matter!’ Very well, you can use other words instead:
you can speak of love and wisdom, for instance. Wisdom is light
and love is fire. If you hate the idea of fire because it burns and of
light because it dazzles you, treat yourself to a feast of love and
wisdom!
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
3 See The Wellsprings of Eternal Joy, Izvor Coll. n° 242, chap. 17: ‘ The long road to
joy’ .
4 See Life and Work in an Initiatic School – Training for the Divine, Complete
Works, vol. 30, chap. 6: ‘ Matter and light’ .
5 See The Mysteries of Fire and Water, Izvor Coll. n° 232, chap. 1: ‘ The two
principles of creation, water and fire’ .
Chapter Seven
Consciousness
II
The line between the lower and the higher bodies represents
consciousness; it is like a screen between the personality and the
individuality on which both natures are reflected and if it is too
limited it means that we ourselves will be limited in our activity.
All human beings possess the germ of their higher bodies and one
day they will be fully matured. In fact, I am sure that you have all
felt their presence at one time or another. You hear a snatch of
music or glimpse a face that causes something to stir within you
and gives you the desire to accomplish deeds of extraordinary
generosity for the good of the whole world: this is a manifestation
of your buddhic body which is beginning to vibrate within you. Or
perhaps you feel an inner force rising within you that is capable of
moving the whole earth: your atmic body is beginning to stir. Or,
again, you experience such illumination that you begin to perceive
the structure of the universe and to understand how it functions:
this is your causal body which is beginning to filter into your brain.
If these manifestations occur frequently, it means that your three
higher bodies – causal, buddhic and atmic – are already beginning to
take possession of your whole being.
In the front of the human brain are cells that are the conscious
representatives of the whole body. The other cells of the brain are
representatives also, but unconsciously or subconsciously. Our
self-consciousness resides in a few cells here, in the front of the
brain: all the rest corresponds to the subconscious. In the rear of
the brain, for instance, is the cerebellum which is the seat of
sexuality, and the cells of the cerebellum also have representatives
who come to the front of the brain to clamour for what they want:
‘We need this, we want that...’ As a matter of fact, we often
experience certain needs without really being aware of them
consciously and this is why people are astonished at the dreams
they have at night. Their desires had not reached their waking
consciousness but they were there, all the same. As I have said
then, consciousness is a screen on which all kinds of demands are
written and obviously our divine nature also sends its
representatives to write on that screen.
III
People sometimes come and tell me that they have been
tormented for years by mental images, nightmares and obsessions
and don’t know how to get rid of them. I tell them, ‘It is you who
created all these images that haunt you today. Over the course of
many incarnations you have been storing them up inside you and
now the film has been handed to an operator and is being projected
onto the screen of your consciousness.’ Yes, all the images that
torment human beings come from a long way back; it is not their
present consciousness that is creating them. All their
consciousness does is serve as a screen. The film has been in the
making for a long time, and now that it is running you have no
choice but to watch it. You will see that some sequences are very
bright and beautiful and others are very dark, but as there is
practically nothing you can do to change the film that already
exists, the best solution is to work at creating a new one. We must
not put the blame on our wretched consciousness; it is not
responsible either for the good things or the bad things it reflects.
The most we can expect is that if a person is intelligent their
consciousness will let them see that they need to ask for another
kind of film. Heaven is always willing to give us other films, but it
will not change your screen for you. The one you already have is
quite big enough and perfectly suitable for its purpose. It is the
pictures that are projected onto it that are not good; the screen
itself is what it is meant to be.
Take the case of a thief or a murderer: their consciousness is
perpetually haunted by the spectre of the police and prison. Yes,
simply because they have set certain processes in motion which
are now reflected in their consciousness and are destroying their
peace of mind. The consciousness of someone who has done
nothing wrong, on the other hand, has no reason to be disturbed by
such fears. This is clear: as soon as someone does something
dishonest their consciousness can no longer be at peace, for it
receives worrying images from all sides. They may try to calm its
fears but they will not succeed4 because it does not depend on
their consciousness; their consciousness cannot know peace as long
as the other aspects of their life are not in order. You can see now
how ignorant human beings are: they never know what to do to
improve their situation. Try to appease your conscience and sleep
peacefully in your bed after committing a crime! You cannot do it.
You will always have to worry that perhaps someone saw you...
somebody suspects... they are going to come and get you! This is
how people make themselves ill.
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
IV
Since our physical body – and even our astral and mental
bodies – represent only a very small part of ourselves, we must try
to get to know the other, far greater, part which is so far away, so
far above us. This higher part of ourselves has its own life, which
is quite different and often in direct contradiction to the life we live
on earth. Suppose you do something really wrong: why does that
other pole of your being let you do it? It may be far away but it is
still attached to you; it knew that you would regret your actions
and have to suffer for them, and yet it did nothing to intervene or
prevent you from making a fool of yourself. Why not? Sometimes
in fact it seems that it is that other pole of your being that drives
you to do wrong. What a mystery this is! It has allowed you to
stray and make mis- takes – for nothing ever happens without its
knowledge and consent – and now that you are suffering the
consequences and up to your neck in boiling oil, it is away
somewhere, on a cloud of beatitude, without a thought for your
distress!
It would take too long to explain the reason for this. Let’s just
say that there are ways for disciples to reach and get to know their
higher self and become one with it. And once they have achieved
this, all weakness, darkness and suffering disappear from their life
and other forces are set in motion. The phenomenon is very similar
to the phenomenon of metamorphosis of a caterpillar. A caterpillar
wraps itself up in a cocoon and shortly after a different being
appears: a beautiful, dainty, brilliantly coloured butterfly.6
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
A disciple has to bring into the present all that existed in the
past and all that will exist in the future in order to make use of it.
You must understand, of course, that when I speak of the past I
imply only that which belongs to the veritable, divine tradition
which has been handed down to us in its entirety from time
immemorial. Similarly, the future implies all that is divine and
universal that is still to come. Yes, for the future, the real future,
necessarily tends in the direction of greatness, infinity, immortality,
the expansion of the soul and the power of the spirit. That is what
the future is. And this is why I say that a disciple must live in the
present with all that they have acquired in the past (all the riches
they have amassed in the course of their evolution) and with all
that will be theirs in the future. Only by living in this way can they
possess the fullness of life.
Some people are always living in the past, their own past:
they remember the parties they enjoyed, the day they got engaged
or what happened to them during the war. If their past was
unhappy, they spend their time regretting it; the present is
unimportant, they are incapable of enjoying anything. Others live
perpetually in the future, but in a future of their own fantasy that
will never exist anywhere but in their imagination. It is good to
recall the past, but not if one does so in order to live its tragedies
all over again and make oneself miserable. No, we should only
recall the past in order to learn from it and understand where we
were wrong and where we were right. We must use all that
accumulated wealth of experience in order to learn to act with
greater intelligence. But, at the same time, we must project
ourselves into the distant future and try to understand what God
has in store for mankind, try to perceive something of the
splendour and light in which human beings are destined to live. You
can even picture yourself in that distant future and see that you
will no longer be puny, mediocre and pitiful: you will be a divinity;
you will emanate the most exquisite music, perfume and colour;
you will be one of the elect in the assembly of God’s children. And
you will be so entranced by what you see that you will not want
to come back into the present; you will live in the eternal future.9
I know that people think a lot about the future – but what
kind of future do they think about? They think, ‘In a few years I’ll
be married and have lots of children. We’ll live in a little house and
keep chickens. In the evenings we’ll sit in front of the house and
I’ll smoke my pipe and enjoy the peace, watching the cows – or
the trains – go by and smelling the dust. Then we’ll go in and have
supper, have a little drink... and so to bed!’ What a beautiful future!
You will say, ‘But people don’t really look forward to that kind of
life.’ No, I know; they look forward to earning a lot of money and
making a name for themselves in business, or to being a brilliant
general at the head of an army. Some will plan to be a university
professor, a cabinet minister or president. Others will dream of
having a pretty girl to make love to night and day. But all that is
less than nothing – it’s pitiful!
Unfortunately, there are very few who are ready to look any
further than their own dubious future and try to perceive the future
that God has in mind for humanity. It is time for human beings to
begin looking to new horizons, to open a window on to infinity
and begin to see the future of the whole of creation. But, above all,
you must never be put off by the time factor. You must never say,
‘Yes, but by the time all that happens I shall not be here any more,’
because in saying that you will be cutting yourself off from true
beauty. It is amazing to see how ingenious human beings are at
finding ways to limit themselves! Yes, because it is they who limit
themselves. They are afraid to reach out and touch the magnificent,
limitless treasures of their soul and spirit. They are so narrow, so
small-minded. Where are those who are brave enough to break
through their self-imposed barriers and venture out into the vast
world? They are not very numerous. But initiates and spiritual
M asters constantly break through barriers; in fact, they go much
further back into the past than historians.
But we will talk about all that some other time. As I was
saying, a disciple must not limit themselves. They have to live in
the present, to be sure, but their present must reflect the wisdom
learned from the past and the promises of the future. The present
must be a time of conscious, enlightened action which draws on the
lessons of wisdom stored up in the past and is stimulated by the
boundless hope of all that the future holds. This is the perfect
balance: the lessons of the past (and the Lord knows what great
lessons humankind’s past holds for us!) and the infinite promises
of the future. A disciple who is capable of living in the present and
expressing both the experience of the past and the splendours of
the future begins to resemble the Deity. What is it that the
seraphim sing as they stand before the throne of God? ‘Holy, holy,
holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.’ Yes, this
is how the consciousness of a disciple expands to the dimensions
of divine consciousness. But it is very difficult for you to
understand this, for you have no notion of what past, present and
future really are.
Humanity’s true past is not their historical past but the period
in which, in their primeval splendour, they dwelt in the bosom of
the Eternal One. They lived in God, they were with God, they
were God himself. Humanity’s true past is not the few thousand
years that have led up to today; it is the period that preceded their
descent into matter, that preceded original sin. When I was very
young, nearly fifty years ago, I spent whole days trying to
rediscover that past; sometimes I would go so far back that I felt
my head spinning. It was as though I were plunging straight into a
bottomless pit. It was a frightening experience! I was very young
at the time and I was fascinated by such bold experiments but it
was a dangerous thing to do and I certainly don’t advise you to try
it, for it can lead to serious trouble.
Disciples who know how to use both past and future expand
their consciousness. The matter of the past is congealed and frozen
stiff; it cannot be changed, whereas the matter of the future is so
subtle that it cannot be seen; it seems unreal. But it exists at a
distance and it is gradually getting closer and becoming real. As for
the present, it partakes both of the past and of the future. In
reality, the present does not exist; there is no such thing. Or, rather,
neither the past nor the future exists: there is only the eternal
present. But for us it is the present that does not exist, because as
soon as we become aware of it, it is already the past. Whatever
you say and whatever you think is already in the past. As soon as
a thought finds form in your mind, as soon as you express it, it is
already in the past. We cannot grasp and hold on to the present.
For us, limited as we are, there is no present; there is only the past
and the future. But for God there is neither past nor future, there is
only the present. You will say, ‘But I am living in the present!’ No,
you are wrong; it is already the past. You can live to a very small
extent in the future, but the future is always something that is not
yet there; the future is always beyond the scope of our
consciousness. ‘But you said a moment ago that we could have a
foretaste of the future, that we could live in the anticipation, the
expectation, of the future.’ That is true, but it is only a foretaste; if
it were already present it would no longer be the future. The future
is always still to come.
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
1 See The Key to the Problems of Existence, Complete Works, vol. 11, chap. 13: ‘ The
balance restored’ , chap. 17: ‘ Call on your allies’ , chap. 19: ‘ Your inner animals’ .
3 See The Wellsprings of Eternal Joy, Izvor Coll. n° 242, chap. 10: ‘ Our place on the
cosmic Tree’ .
4 See Life Force, Complete Works, vol. 5, chap. 11: ‘ P eace’ .
7 See Sons and Daughters of God, Izvor Coll. n° 240, chap. 10: ‘ Jesus, dead and
resurrected? ’ .
8 See above, chap. 3: ‘ Whoever would save his life will lose it’ .
9 See The Seeds of Happiness, Izvor Coll. n° 231, chap. 21: ‘ We are the artisans of
our own future’ .
10 See Cosmic Moral Law, Complete Works, vol. 12, chap. 4: ‘ Justice’ and chap. 8:
‘ Reincarnation’ .
Chapter Eight
The higher self
The sun is always new; the water in a river is always new, and
human beings renew themselves also: the cells of their bodies are
constantly renewed. This being so, we might well ask: ‘Why are
human beings always the same? Why do they always have the
same attitudes, the same reflexes, the same weaknesses?’
You must know that by the way you live and work you put
yourself on the same wavelength as certain entities; this is why
they are attracted to you. An Egyptian initiate, for instance, would
concentrate and repeat certain formulas and sometimes wear masks
or special robes in order to identify with the god Osiris or Horus;
for a brief moment, because they managed to vibrate on exactly the
right wavelength, they truly became the incarnation of this sublime
entity who could then speak and manifest himself through them. In
order to create this bond, one has to vibrate on the same
wavelength. This is a law of physics, the law that makes radio
possible. Long before the physicists, however, initiates were
familiar with this law and knew that it applied not only on the
physical but also on the psychic and spiritual planes, so they
instructed their disciples in the rules and methods they should use
in order to vibrate in unison with a specific entity and be a channel
for its messages. Later, after being brought back to their normal
state, some of the disciples could not even remember what they
had said. Another being had spoken through their mouths. In a
way, you could say that this is what happens with people who are
mad and who, without knowing it, have formed a bond with
noxious currents or creatures of darkness.
II
There are actually two methods that disciples can use in order
to find and make contact with their true self. The first consists in
focusing on their ego, their human self. This self is illusory and
very limited, to be sure, but it is, nonetheless, a reality. Even if you
say that it doesn’t exist, at least it exists as non-existence. So the
first method consists in making use of this feeble means, this
screen on which your self, your consciousness, is reflected, this
screen which is not you and yet which is you, which is part of
you, a distant manifestation of your higher self. You grasp and hold
on to that consciousness, doing nothing else, simply clinging to this
consciousness for several minutes, keeping it alive within you. In
this way, as your consciousness is already linked to the infinity of
your superconsciousness on the higher plane, little by little, your
concentration will put you in touch with your higher self.
But, if you want the qualities of your higher self to flow down
into your lower self, you are going to have to bring your
imagination into play. With your imagination, you can do the
exercise that I described before when talking about the sun.6 You
are down here on earth and you focus on your higher self in the
world above and picture it looking down at you; in other words,
from that higher level you look down and see yourself and the
imperfect conditions in which you live. Keeping this thought
before you, you set in motion a current that flows between the self
that is above and the self that is below. In this way you are
restoring the vital link between you for, from down here you are
thinking that you are up there and, up there, you are conscious that
you are down here, thinking of your self up above.
So you have to imagine not only that your higher self watches
you but that it is conscious of seeing itself in you, through your
mind; that it recognizes the close bond between you. In this way,
thanks to the extraordinary closeness of communication, your
superconsciousness will begin to stir and awaken.
III
You will probably think that I have been given a very strange
mentality because I always think about things that no one else
bothers about. But that is how it is. As it says in the Gospels,
‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.’
But the thing that you have never thought about is that there is
another train whose driver must never sleep, and that train is
ourselves. Our body, our cells, must be allowed to sleep, but our
higher self never sleeps. It is always awake and vigilant, always
there to guide us towards our destination. At least, this is so with
initiates and enlightened disciples, but ordinary human beings are
so out of touch with their higher self that they are like a train in
which everyone is asleep, the engine driver as well as the
passengers.
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.’–
Matt. 21:42, Ps. 118:22
1 See The Faith That Moves Mountains, Izvor Coll. n° 238, chap. 10: ‘ Identifying
with God’ .
2 See Looking into the Invisible – Intuition, Clairvoyance, Dreams, Izvor Coll. n°
228, chap. 3: ‘ The entrance to the invisible world: from Yesod to Tiphareth’ .
3 See The Key to the Problems of Existence, Complete Works, vol. 11.
4 See Angels and other Mysteries of The Tree of Life, Izvor Coll. n° 236, chap. 6:
‘ Ain Soph Aur, unlimited light’ .
6 See The Splendour of Tiphareth, Complete Works, vol. 10, chap. 4: ‘ The sun
reflects the blessed Trinity’ .
7 See The True Meaning of Christ’s Teaching, Izvor, Coll. n° 215, chap. 9: ‘ Watch
and pray’
Chapter Nine
Truth
I
Simplicity
There, you see: all of a sudden you no longer feel tired because
while I have been speaking to you I have been leading you, without
your realizing it, towards unity, the unity that is always there,
vibrant and generous, overflowing with life. Whereas, in the midst
of multiplicity and complication, our energies are scattered, our
vibrations become weaker and concentration becomes impossible.
When your head is filled with too many different things, when you
have several different goals in view, you are torn in different
directions and your strength ebbs away. Whereas, when you
succeed in concentrating on one idea, one desire, all your forces
converge towards this one goal and you become fantastically
powerful. If a country at war is obliged to defend itself on several
different fronts, its fighting forces are scattered and their efforts are
much less effective than if they were concentrated in one direction.
This is so obvious and so easy to understand!
Take a magnifying glass and use it to focus the sun’s rays onto
one point and you can set fire to the whole world; but if the rays
remain scattered over a wide area, you can stand there with a
magnifying glass in your hand for years and you will never set
anything on fire. It is the concentration of fire, the concentration of
light or thought or activity, that produces such incalculable power.
The laser is a fantastic example of the power of concentrated light,
and human beings themselves are built like a laser: their spinal
column is the ruby rod and the spiral flash lamp is kundalini, the
serpent that rises the length of the spinal column.2 Initiates who
succeed in bringing the serpent all the way to the summit develop a
fantastic power with which they can work wonders when it is
projected from the top of their head.
II
Unity and multiplicity
I am telling you the truth and it is clear and simple; don’t look
elsewhere. Give up everything else if you want to, but never give
up your pursuit of unity, never deviate from the path that leads to
the centre of the universe, to the Lord, to that dazzling light. Don’t
worry about how long it is going to take you, the ups and downs
you will encounter, all the sacrifices you will have to make and the
tribulations you will have to endure – none of that is important; it
has all been planned and foreseen. There are debts to be paid and it
is all part of your karma. But throughout everything you must
pursue the same course, the course that leads to simplicity, unity,
truth. As long as you seek solutions in other directions you will
never be free of suffering and complications.
Light a fire and the flames rise, reaching for unity. Water, on
the other hand, tends towards multiplicity. This is why fire (and
air) were chosen as the symbol of the spirit, whereas water (and
earth) were chosen to symbolize matter. Air feeds fire; without air,
fire would go out. Air and fire understand each other because they
always tend to rise. Fire and air are brothers, whereas water and
earth are very loving sisters. Water is absorbed by earth.
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
The return to the Source, the ultimate union, the fusing into
one with our heavenly Father is the goal of all religions. This is
what is known as the re-integration of beings. The essential
concern of all religions is to help human beings to return to their
primordial state, to the state of equilibrium, peace, joy, ecstasy and
light that they enjoyed in the bosom of the eternal Lord. Religion
has never been very concerned about the process of creation.
M oses, for instance, wrote no more than one page to describe how
God created the world. To be sure, many philosophers, theologians
and high initiates have studied the question but, generally speaking,
it has never been considered very important to instruct human
beings about questions of this kind. It has always seemed far more
important to give them advice, methods and exercises to help them
return to the centre.
Now, if you ask why and how the Lord created the world no
one can answer you; it is the greatest of all mysteries. Did space
exist? Did God fill that space? What is God in reality? No one
knows. The Vedas even say that the gods appeared after the world
was created.
But if you want my opinion, I think that the Lord created the
world because he was bored. He was all alone, you see, and it is
very difficult to live alone. So he created human beings for his own
entertainment – and they certainly give the Lord a great deal of
amusement. He looks down at them from above and laughs at what
he sees; yes, he laughs until his sides ache! Don’t you think that
this is the best explanation? Well, all right, but I have heard so
many preposterous theories about the origin of creation that I
thought I might as well invent my own. And perhaps this is the
most plausible explanation: the Lord was bored.
In the beginning nothing existed apart from God. God was all
there was. He was One. Division and polarization only made their
appearance with the creation of the world, for every manifestation
is a polarization involving positive and negative, light and darkness,
good and evil, the subtle and the gross. To begin with there was
neither good nor evil, nothing but some vague forms, the seeds of
the good and evil which were to manifest themselves only
gradually as matter became more and more condensed. But these
manifestations were already potentially in existence. The Cabbalah
explains the creation in terms of emanations. God emanated a
substance, a quint- essence – it would be too much to say a form of
matter but one might say a suggestion, a first notion of matter –
and this substance was the sephirah Kether, light, the light that
M oses was referring to when he said that it was the first thing that
God created. ‘Let there be light!’ and this light is the sephirah
Kether. But this emanation from God, this first subtle light, is not
the physical light that is visible to us and which, by comparison, is
very dense and crude, grossly material. You have only one word for
light but in Bulgarian we have two different words: svetlina, which
is physical light, and videlina, which is the inner, mystic, spiritual
light, the light that initiates possess. The word videlina
corresponds to the Hebrew word Zohar, and Zohar is the title of
the book that contains the traditional teaching of the Cabbalah.
Why did we leave all that splendour and reach such a degree of
materialization? Why did God have to go to such lengths? He could
have created the universe differently or not created it at all. Why
did God knowingly make man and woman such that they would
inevitably lose their way and then decree that they must find their
own way back to his Source? These questions are all mysteries. It
is possible to understand them, but only on a very high level. Here
on earth no one can understand them. Suppose someone asks you
why evil exists. You can tell them that evil does not exist of itself,
that the existence of evil depends on the Source, the Creator. But at
the same time you know that the Creator cannot create anything
evil since he is perfect. What a conundrum! In the same way, hell
and the devil have no existence on their own. Since all life comes
from God, even the life of the devil must necessarily come from
God. It is God who sustains and nourishes the devil and if he
withdrew his support the devil would disappear. And yet the devil
is always represented as God’s enemy: what is the explanation? I
have studied these questions for a long time and I have already
explained a good many things to you,7 but today there are not
going to be any explanations. We are up to our necks in
complication and we are going to stay there!
When human beings leave the centre and move out to the
periphery they can no longer understand God’s manifestations.
There is no light at the periphery. The further one goes from the
centre the darker it becomes and it is this darkness that makes it
impossible to understand anything. This is why human beings are
continually arguing and quarrelling; everyone defends their own pet
theory but no one is any nearer to the truth than anyone else. Yes,
simply because they are all at the periphery. In order to
understand, it is necessary to turn back to the centre, to God. This
is why all religions teach humans to seek God, to think of him and
love him. In this way light is gradually restored, because when you
take the ascending path that leads back to the Source, you receive
the particular quality of each sephirah. Yesod gives you purity;
Hod gives you intelligence; Netzach, beauty; Tiphareth, light;
Geburah, strength; Chesed, generosity; Binah, stability; Chokmah,
wisdom; and Kether, omnipotence.
The higher one goes the simpler one becomes... but this is a
figure of speech. Simplicity is not the equivalent of mental
deficiency, indigence, poverty or a lack of resources. No; the
simpler you are the more closely you resemble the Deity because,
being free of so many complications, you are better able to
manifest yourself truly in light, love and power. When you are
immersed in complications these possibilities diminish. But they
are replaced, of course, by others: you acquire a greater ability to
suffer and weep and make a commotion and become wicked and
destroy everything. Yes, there too, you have great possibilities!
There, that was just a few words about creation, the descent
into matter. One day, when God has finished his work, he will
cause creation to disappear. He will absorb the universe into
himself. This is the period of cosmic repose known to Hindus as
pralaya and which lasts for millions and millions of years. Then,
once again, he will bring a new universe into being. God breathes:
when he breathes out the universe appears and when he breathes in
the universe disappears. And, as we are made in his image, we too
breathe in and out. But the final expiration is something quite
different.
Blessed are those who have simplified their lives in the light of
purity because, although they are still at work on earth, they are
already living in heaven.
The Bonfin, July 19, 1967
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
‘And there was evening and there was morning, the first day’ –
Gen. 1:5, 8, 13, etc..
And now you will want to say, ‘But then your Teaching is a
lie, too!’ Yes, it’s a lie. But it’s the best lie there is: the most
adequate, the most useful and the most practical. Since everything
is a lie, I have simply chosen the one that is best and most easily
digestible. Actually, it is the truth, the greatest of all truths; why
should I mislead you? But there are many different degrees of truth
and the ultimate degree of truth is perhaps emptiness, nothingness,
the void. In any case, it is not necessary to go so far and I don’t
advise you to try it. Stick to your normal occupations and
enjoyments. We are on earth and we must fulfil our role. Although
we must not forget that we are actors in a play, at the same time
we must not try to avoid playing our part. Look at what happens
in a play about two enemies who hate each other: one of them ends
by assassinating the other. But after the play what do you see?
Why, victim and murderer go off together and drink each other’s
health! And during a war between two countries in which there are
millions of casualties on both sides, when the dead meet in the next
world they laugh and congratulate each other for the part they
played in the comedy on earth. They were busy slaughtering each
other in this world, but in the world above they embrace and drink
to each other’s health. The truth is that they did not really hate
each other; it was just that they had a role to play. How the French
and Germans must have hugged and slapped each other on the back
when they met in the next world during the war! I can just imagine
them sitting round a table, drinking wine or beer and laughing about
it! What a lot of things we still don’t know!
But let’s stop there for the moment. Some people want to
know everything and that is very bad. They are like children. Only
children ask endless, impossible questions; they want to know
everything but they are not capable of understanding. What is the
use of trying to understand why God created the universe? You
should not even ask such a question, for the truth is that no one
will ever be able to answer you. God has kept the answer to
himself. One day, someone who wanted to know everything
infuriated a pastor by asking him what God did all alone in heaven.
And the pastor – who had no idea, of course – replied, ‘He spends
his time cutting some good stout sticks with which to thrash those
who have the impertinence to ask such questions!’
What matters is the goal, the purpose, the reason for which
we do things. If everything you do is motivated by your will to
return to unity then, whatever you do – eat or breathe or walk,
work or make love – is always good. But if you say, ‘No, no; I
refuse to use any material means; neither my legs nor my lungs nor
my stomach. I’m not going to walk or eat or breathe any more. I’m
a spirit and I want to get back to the Source...’ you will get back, to
be sure, but in a way that you had not intended. In a way that is
not highly recommendable!
Since we are beginning a new year, this is the work that heaven
is asking of you: to take a good hard look at all that you have
learned, all that you have inherited, and see whether it is
compatible with the fundamental ideas of the Teaching of the
Universal White Brotherhood. If it is, emphasize and reinforce it
and try to get a deeper understanding of it. But if you find some
little things that contradict the Teaching and put obstacles in your
way, discard them. You will be amazed at the sense of freedom and
lightness this gives you, at the ease with which you begin to rise,
to soar. At the moment you are burdened by so many things that
keep you down; your balloon cannot rise. You must throw all that
excess weight overboard. So, there you are: that is the work you
have to do this year. Yes, I mean this seriously, very seriously. If
you don’t know what work is asked of you, the years will go by
and you will never make any progress.10
Although I say all these things, I know very well that human
beings prefer complications. If you tell them, for instance, that by
leading a simple, normal, natural life, it is possible to live in a world
in which illness, poverty, prisons and war no longer exist, in the
first place they would not believe that it was possible and, in the
second place, they would do nothing to make it possible. And yet
look at the alternative: every day, hundreds are arrested and tried
and punished by law; so many people are sick that more and more
hospitals have to be built, more and more expensive equipment
bought, more and drugs and remedies developed and produced.
And what about all the wars that sow death and destruction over
the face of the earth? You will say, ‘But it has always been like
that!’ No, that is not true: it has not always been like that.
And here again we find the symbol that I have always given
you: the symbol of the sun. As you get farther away from the sun,
warmth and light decline and as warmth and light decline so does
life – for life is simply the warmth and light of the sun – and
everything becomes more complicated: you have to find other
sources of light and warmth, other ways of protecting yourself. So,
as human beings have drifted far from the sun in their thoughts and
feelings and in every other aspect of their lives, their existence,
obviously, has become very complicated.
Every day, every morning and evening, you must try to draw
closer to light, warmth and life, closer to God, the spiritual sun. Of
course, you have to go on living, eating and breathing, but all these
things must be aimed at bringing you closer to the Source. As soon
as you sense that you are drifting away, you must pause and
readjust your course; if you are sufficiently vigilant and have the
wisdom and discernment to do this you will be rewarded with
renewed abundance of inner light and joy. Whereas the situation of
those who ignore the warning signs and persist in wasting their
energies in a disorderly, frivolous way of life continues to worsen
until it ends in ruin. The thing that prevents human beings from
understanding this is that it is often a long time before they feel the
consequences of their actions: they see no immediate worsening or
improvement of their situation so they say, ‘No, I don’t believe a
word of it! I am perfectly fit and well; I eat well; I drink well, and
my business is flourishing.’ Yes, in spite of a life of disorder, folly
and passion, they enjoy success. The trouble is though that this
success will not last long. Human beings make the great mistake of
basing their conclusions on the immediate present, on something
that is only temporary; they don’t know that the laws are
inexorable and that, sooner or later, they will have to suffer the
consequences.
So, there you are, my dear brothers and sisters: is the question
a little clearer now? The whole of life offers us elements that help
us to understand; the whole of life, the whole of nature, the whole
universe, gives us the elements, the arguments we need to see
everything more clearly.
III
Truth, objective and subjective
They will also give you the means to develop other faculties.
They will lead you through and beyond that zone of illusory
perceptions into spiritual regions in which you will perceive things
as clearly, precisely and accurately as on the physical plane. In this
way you will learn to see life as it really is; your vision of things
will begin to embrace every aspect and dimension. In this way,
when you are called on to explain or describe something, you will
be in a position to do so accurately and fully, for you will not
allow your own personal reactions to predominate, nor will you
confine yourself merely to the husk, the external aspects. There is
so much going on above and beyond all that we can see and hear, so
much that is never perceptible to us, for we do not possess the
more highly perfected eyes or ears or brain needed to perceive any
of it.14 And so we go on – in a tangle of lies and inaccuracies!
Why did God create the world? And what is the world? Let
me try to make this a little clearer for you by taking an example.
Every artist (a painter or sculptor, for instance) needs something
material to work on, whether it be a block of marble or some
canvas and paint. If they do not have this material they cannot
exteriorize what is in them. Creation can be explained in the same
way: God created matter in order to mould and fashion it and, in
order to create that matter, he took something of himself, of his
own quintessence, and condensed it. We are told that God created
the world out of nothing. The truth is that he drew it from himself
and projected it outside himself. And there you have the objective
world! The subjective world is God himself and the objective
world is the screen on which he projected his own image. And
human beings, men and women who have been created in the image
of God, simply reproduce God’s work on matter, and the results of
their work are their children. Everything that happens here, below,
is simply a reflection of what happens above.
Human beings must not stop being involved with matter; they
must simply understand that there are several different kinds of
matter, that beyond the dense, crude matter of the physical world
there is another matter that is subtler, more tenuous, crystalline,
pure and luminous and that this subtle matter can take on every
form and every divine shade of colour that the spirit may wish to
lend it. This is the matter of a human being’s inner world and it is
on this matter that they must work in order to give it form and
colour. In this way, in the future, all men and women will be artists,
and the world and the whole universe will be peopled with their
winged creations. Humans will never reach a point where they
cease to be involved with matter, but their consciousness will
expand and be enriched to such an extent that their activity, the
object of their work, will change: they will continue to work on
matter but on celestial, virgin matter of a higher plane.
You will say, ‘But this means that you are not opposed to
scientists who are wholly concerned with matter! We thought that
you were always very angry with them and thought that they
should be concerned only with the spirit.’ Well, perhaps conditions
made it difficult for me to explain my point of view clearly. If
someone tried to prevent people from being concerned with matter,
from being artists and creators, it would show that he had not
understood the first thing about it. If I criticize scholars and
scientists it is because most of them are so exclusively concerned
with matter that they deny the existence of anything else. There
are so many other things they could study, even in the objective
world, in the world of matter. For matter exists after all in the
etheric and astral worlds too. Do you think that initiates have
always confined their work to the spiritual dimension? If that were
so how could they have discovered alchemy, astrology and magic?
How could they have left us such a vast body of knowledge about
animals, crystals and plants? If all they were interested in was the
spirit, how could they have explored matter? It is simply that for
the initiates the word ‘matter’ had a much broader, much vaster
meaning than for contemporary scientists, who still do not know
what it is. As a matter of fact, modern scientists have already had a
few surprises; all their notions about the nature of matter have
been turned upside down and they see it now as a form of energy.
But just wait: it will not be long before they make other discoveries
that will lead them closer and closer to the notions of the initiates.
So, there you are, my dear brothers and sisters, these are
questions of eternal, vital importance. There is no getting away
from that. The truths I have given you today are treasures indeed.
‘And God saw that it was good’ – Gen. 1:4, 12, 18, 22, 31
IV
The whole and the parts
I know that you lack a great many things but I also know that
there is a great deal more in your heart and in your soul. It is as
though the whole earth, the whole sky, the whole universe
belonged to you. You have this sensation and it is this sensation
that is reality. It is useless to possess every material advantage if
your consciousness is continually tormented. The important thing
is to love, for if you love you will be happy whatever your
circumstances. But as love counts for nothing in the minds of
human beings, they are always worried about satisfying all their
material needs and even when they do so they are still unhappy.
Whereas look at you: you have no gas, no electricity, no cars, no
money, no jewellery, no house nor wife nor husband, and you feel
this lack – that is only to be expected – but then why are you all so
happy here when you have been listening to some music and
singing together? You will say, ‘Oh yes, but it’s only for a few
minutes. That doesn’t count!’ But what is there to prevent you
from stretching those few minutes out and making them last an
eternity? Who is stopping you? No one, only your own ignorance,
your own lack of light. So the only thing that is really lacking is
light; you have everything else you need.
Can you explain why you are happy now? I can see that from
one minute to the next you have become happy. It is when you go
back home that you feel unhappy because you no longer remember
the power of love; you find yourself back in so-called ‘reality’.
Does reality always have to be ugly and sad? No; believe me, it
depends to a great extent on the way in which you are in the habit
of looking at things. Why are some people happy irrespective of
their physical and material circumstances? True wealth and glory
belong to the inner realm, but human beings are less and less in
touch with their own inner realm and it is this that is the cause of
all their misery. I know that you don’t want to understand me; you
say, ‘No, no; I really need this or that!’ Well, I know that you need
things – we all need things – but why not attach greater importance
to the power of thought, the power of love and of life? This is
what you are doing today; I can see that you are really happy
today, as though nothing were lacking to you. Even those who
were feeling unwell or tense earlier have lost that feeling. It is only
later, when their present state fades, that they will remember that
they were ill or worried. Until then the only things that count are
life, happiness and light.
So, there you are: now you can see the difference between the
work of scientists and the work of initiates. Initiates, because they
want to achieve a view of the whole, to arrive at a synthesis,
distance themselves from matter. This is why their understanding
of reality is quite different from that of scientists, who have lost
sight of the whole and restrict themselves to the parts. As a matter
of fact, the degree of specialization that exists today is a good
indication of the extent to which humans have had to limit
themselves in order to study matter. In medicine, for instance, there
are specialists who only treat ears; others who treat the eyes or the
heart, etc. There is nothing wrong with studying the parts, but it is
preferable to study the whole. Actually, it all depends on your
goal: if you want to specialize, of course, you will know
everything about one little detail, but you will lose sight of the
whole. Whereas if you study the whole, your knowledge of the
parts will be limited. Personally I think that, all things considered,
it is better to study the whole, for it gives you greater scope: when
you see things from above you have a better chance of being in
control of the situation and can intervene to put things right. When
you have a knowledge of the whole, you are closer to truth.17
V
The two faces of truth:
Never forget, therefore, that truth always has two sides: the
pure and the impure, the light and the dark, and that true
knowledge must embrace both. Obviously, if you are weak and
ignorant, it would be unwise to go and explore hell; I certainly
don’t advise you to attempt it. I am simply saying that the great
initiates are those who have been capable of confronting hell,
because in this way all knowledge was theirs.
So this is what truth is: love and wisdom. Never forget that
you cannot find truth as something distinct and apart. Just think:
how could you conceive of truth if you had neither a heart nor a
mind? To the extent to which you possess love and understanding,
to that extent will the world show you truth, for truth is limitless.
M any books have been written about truth, but no one has ever
understood it in this way before. It is always treated as though it
were a world apart, whereas in reality one cannot conceive of the
world of truth without reference to the heart and the intellect. To
the extent to which you have a heart and an intellect, truth exists
for you. And if your heart and intellect are not in order, you will
never know the higher levels of truth. As a matter of fact, if human
beings profess so many different and contradictory truths today, it
is because these different truths reflect the distortion of their hearts
and minds. Someone will say, ‘For me, the truth is this or that...’ In
fact, what they see to be ‘the’ truth is only ‘their’ truth and it
speaks of their heart and mind, which may be inadequate or
deformed or, on the contrary, very exalted. This explains how
although there is only one truth each person can have ‘their’ own
truth.
And now, just in case you are wondering, let me tell you that
it was not I who invented these criteria; it is Cosmic Intelligence
that shows me how it sees and understands things. It would not be
enough for me to suppose that I had found the truth for myself.
Anyone who is mad can do as much; in fact, they will be even
more convinced than others that they are right. We always have to
test the accuracy of our opinions and I know how to do this and
just where to go in nature to do it. Only when nature tells me that
it approves do I accept something as true. If nature says that
something is not true, then I reject it; I never accept anything as
true without verification.
One day I was invited to the home of someone who was an
engineer and a very intelligent man. He took me into several rooms
and showed me a lot of his own paintings which covered the walls.
They were very interesting geometrical designs and, according to
him, they all had some esoteric meaning. I asked him what this or
that one represented and his answers astounded me: one of them
was supposed to represent such and such an event, another such
and such a force of nature, the next such and such a cosmic swirling
and so on. I was astounded, as I say, because the paintings simply
did not correspond to what he said. I asked him, ‘But have you
ever checked with nature to see if this is true?’ ‘What do you mean,
“if it’s true”? Isn’t it enough that I see it that way?’ ‘No,’ I told
him, ‘That is not enough. We can see many things that are not
necessarily true. You have to check with nature and find out
whether the reality of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms,
the reality of human nature and even of the stars, confirms your
theories. If nature endorses your view of things then, sooner or
later, everyone will be obliged to accept it, because what you say
will be backed up by nature. But if nature does not agree with your
theories, even if for the time being the whole world accepts them,
sooner or later they will lose all credibility because they are not
backed up by nature.’ M ost human beings consider that whatever
enters their head is true. But a great many things enter my head
too, and I am not so easily persuaded that they are true. I put them
to the test, and if I find that nature has a different opinion, then out
they go! If I thought that everything that entered my head was the
absolute truth, I ask you: where would I be today? And you must
do as I do: learn to check all your opinions against the reality of
nature.
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
1 See ‘In Spirit and in Truth’, Izvor Coll. n° 235, chap. 3: ‘ The link with the centre’
and chap. 4: ‘ Reaching for the top’ .
2 See Man’s Subtle Bodies and Centres – the Aura, the Solar Plexus, the Chakras…,
Izvor Coll. n° 219, chap. 5: ‘ Kundalini force’ .
4 See Life Force, Complete Works, vol. 5, chap. 11: ‘ P eace’ , and Cosmic Moral Law,
Complete Works, vol. 12, chap. 5: ‘ The law of affinity: peace’ .
5 See The True Meaning of Christ’s Teaching, Izvor Coll. n° 215, chap. 2: ‘ My
Father and I are one’ .
6 See Les deux arbres du Paradis, Complete Works, vol 3, chap. 9: ‘ Les deux arbres
du P aradis: 3. Le retour de l’ enfant prodigue’ .
7 See Life Force, Complete Works, vol. 5, chap. 3: ‘ Good and evil’ .
9 See Love and Sexuality, Complete Works, vol. 15, chap. 8: ‘ Materialism, idealism
and sexuality’ .
11 See The Mysteries of Yesod – Foundations of the Spiritual Life, Complete Works,
vol. 7, P art II, chap. 2: ‘ Sorting and selecting’ .
12 See The Splendour of Tiphareth – The Yoga of the Sun, Complete Works, vol. 10.
13 See Sons and Daughters of God, Izvor Coll. n° 240, chap. 1: ‘ I came that they
should have life’ .
14 See ‘In Spirit and in Truth’, Izvor Coll. n° 235, chap. 7: ‘ Contemplating the
truth: Isis unveiled’ .
15 See ‘Know Thyself ’ – Jnana Yoga, Complete Works, vol. 18, chap. 5: ‘ The causal
plane’ .
16 See The Wellsprings of Eternal Joy, Izvor Coll. n° 242, chap. 15: ‘ So that love
will never leave us’ .
17 See ‘In Spirit and in Truth’, Izvor Coll. n° 235, chap. 1: ‘ The framework of the
universe’ .
18 See The Path of Silence, Izvor Coll. n° 229, chap. 13: ‘ The revelations of a starry
sky’ .
19 See Cosmic Balance – The Secret of Polarity, Izvor Coll. n° 237, chap. 5: ‘ God
transcends good and evil’ and chap. 6: ‘ The white head and the black head’ .
20 See The Fruits of The Tree of Life – The Cabbalistic Tradition, Complete Works,
vol. 32, chap. 15: ‘ Death and the life beyond’ .
21 See ‘In Spirit and in Truth’, Izvor Coll. n° 235, chap. 2: ‘ The divine office of
weights and measures’ .
Chapter Ten
Freedom
I
The laws of destiny
I can see that what I have just said about initiates requires a
little more explanation. Once a human being has succeeded in
freeing themselves completely and has no more debts to pay, they
are not obliged to reincarnate again; they can remain in the light and
bliss of the world above; they have no more obligations on earth.
Sometimes, however, amongst all those who have achieved this
freedom, there will be one who is moved by the suffering of human
beings and, making up their mind to help them, they will go and
present their case before the twenty-four elders and ask to be
allowed to return to earth. Then the twenty-four elders deliberate
and decide to take advantage of this extraordinary occurrence: a
human being who wishes to sacrifice themselves and, as the elders
are the expression of the inscrutable wisdom of the Lord, they plan
the most terrible and at the same time the most marvellous course
of events for their life on earth. Before they actually incarnate, the
elders will show them, as it were, a film of the life they have
planned for them, with all the sufferings and difficulties they will
have to endure, and will ask them whether they accept it. And, of
course, they accept.1
I have often spoken to you about the case of Jesus, who was
destined to be betrayed by one of his disciples. Although the
decree was issued thousands of years before, the identity of his
betrayer had never been mentioned. There was a part for a traitor
and it was Judas Iscariot who acted the part.2 If he had not been
ready to do so, someone else would have come forward. You
cannot eliminate the roles in a play by Shakespeare or M olière, for
instance; there will always be a Falstaff and a Harpagon, but it is
not known in advance which actor will play the part. He will be
chosen according to his merits when the time comes.
So, as I say, the Lord has written a play which is going to take
billions of years to enact. The actors come and go on the stage.
They make war, they make peace; they build up and they tear
down. And it is true that some of the roles are determined
thousands of years in advance, but human beings have not yet
arrived at the finale. Sometimes the same actors come back and
sometimes new ones. Yes, the life of the cosmos is a play written
by God. In fact, it was also God who created the actors, but he
created them with the freedom to play whichever part they chose.
As I have said, the role of Judas, for example, was not written for a
particular actor. There had to be a Judas who would betray Jesus
(in the world of traitors there were certainly several who were
preparing to play the part), and the one who was attracted by this
part was the one who had the greatest natural affinity for it. If God
determined the destiny of all his creatures there would be no
freedom nor would there be any responsibility. How much
responsibility does a machine or a robot have? And if people were
not responsible how could they be condemned? It would be neither
intelligent nor just.
The ups and downs that human beings, the solar system and
even the entire cosmos are destined to encounter are
predetermined. They are part of a plan that has already been
decided and we can do nothing to alter that. You could think of the
destiny of the world as an ocean voyage: you cannot change its
course or the ports of call that have been decided in advance; nor
can you leave the ship without finding yourself in the water. But
you can decide how you are going to use your time on board: you
can read, you can chat with a pretty girl, you can go to sleep in
your cabin or you can go up on deck and look at the sea, etc. We
are all together in the same ship whose route has been planned by
the Lord himself and no one can change any of it. Can you imagine
what would happen if we could? All the Lord’s plans would be
devastated! We can all do whatever we like with ourselves; we can
destroy ourselves or we can perfect ourselves; but we cannot
change the ship’s course. It is not true, therefore, as the Church
once taught, that some people are predestined from all eternity to
be damned while others are predestined to be saved.3 What a
stupid thing to believe! The truth is that human beings are free to
choose whether they want to be damned or saved.
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
II
True freedom is a consecration
Those who think that freedom consists in being totally
independent of everything and everyone do not realize the extreme
danger of this attitude: if they have nothing to fill their minds,
souls and spirits, it means that they are full of gaps, and all the
spirits of darkness, all the negative, demonic entities roaming in
search of shelter, find those gaps and slip into them. When they
seek this kind of freedom, men and women become totally
submerged by other forces of which they know nothing. I have so
often seen this! The devil soon finds work for those whose minds
are not already occupied by a divine, sublime ideal: he urges them
on to all kinds of follies and wild adventures. Yes, simply because
they are ‘free’! The only way to be free and safe at the same time
is to be occupied, engaged, inhabited by heaven, for there is no
such thing as a vacuum.4 This is why you must hurry to be free no
longer and make yourself available to heavenly forces so that you
may be filled with heavenly blessings. It is in their commitment,
their submission to heaven, that the initiates find freedom, for the
forces of heaven never use coercion or constraint; on the contrary,
they only help to organize, harmonize and embellish your life. If
you want everything to go well, therefore, it is to your advantage
not to be free.
How many boys and girls want to be free to ‘live their own
lives!’ But what kind of lives will they live if they have neither
knowledge nor learning, neither light nor will-power? They will live
like animals: eating and quarrelling, laughing and crying in turns.
That is what it means to ‘live your own life.’ You must not delude
yourself that you are free just because you can do what you please
and go wherever you like without a M aster to guide and advise
you.6 If you do not consecrate your life to heaven, freedom is
simply a form of slavery.
If you start to look at things in this way you will free yourself
from your enslavement. Every time you obey an inferior desire
you are a slave; and the world is full of slaves. Human beings seem
to be free but, in reality, they only act in obedience to an inner
tyrant. A true initiate is free of all desire except the desire to serve,
help, enlighten, support and encourage others. But there; I know
you cannot really understand this: you cannot have even the
dimmest notion of that state of freedom. You are forever driven,
dispossessed, tossed to and fro by others, and you think that you
can excuse all your faults and follies by saying, ‘I couldn’t help it!’
When someone says that, it is obvious that they are already a
slave; they are at the mercy of someone or something other than
themselves. A free man or woman would never say, ‘I couldn’t
help it.’ It is an admission of defeat; it is as though their visiting
card bore the inscription: M r or M rs So-and-so, Slave’! You will
object, ‘No; my visiting card shows that I’m chairperson of this
and director of that...’ Yes? Well, that is possible, but what I read is
something quite different. Is it my fault if I have been so
conditioned by my work that I can always read between – or
behind – the lines?
III
Liberation through death –
fate and freedom
Ah, today we can see that spring is on the way! ‘What? With
all that snow?’ you will say. Why yes! The snow is there to
announce the coming of spring. If there were no snow there would
be no spring later. The snow is a promise of spring. Think about it
and you will see how true this is: a present grief is a promise of a
happiness to come; a failure announces a future success. How can
you hope for success if you have never had any failures to teach
you where your weaknesses lie? In fact, I’ll go even further and
say that death is a promise of life, but of a different kind of life, of
course. Besides, if you are really too unhappy, if you have no hope
of being cured or are condemned to poverty for the rest of your
life, if there is really no way for you to get what you want, death is
always a solution. You will say that no one has ever suggested to
you that death was a solution. That is quite possible, but nature
sees it as a solution. Nature tells you, ‘M y child, if nothing is going
right any more, there is only one solution; the one that I have
found. You must leave this world. There is neither hunger nor thirst
nor suffering on the other side.’ Why are people so afraid of death?
Nature is not afraid of death; it has been using this solution for
billions of years.
From now on, therefore, you must get this question of life and
death in proper perspective: you must not be afraid of dying. The
only thing you need be afraid of is being prevented from finishing
your work. That attitude changes everything and gives you the
right to ask heaven for the right conditions and the time and skill
you need to bring your work to a fitting conclusion. But you must
never pray for your life to be prolonged simply in order to go on
enjoying money and pleasure.
Let me tell you a story that I heard in India. There was once a
very rich man who had the gift of understanding the language of
animals. One evening he heard his dog talking to another dog who
had come to invite him to go for a walk. ‘No,’ said his dog, ‘I have
to stay with my master; his house is going to burn down tonight
and I can’t leave him alone.’ The dog’s master was very astonished
to hear this and told himself that, of course, he should not take it
seriously. But he still decided to take everything of value out of his
house and to get some fire-fighting equipment ready, just to be on
the safe side! And, sure enough, a fire broke out in the night and,
thanks to the precautions he had taken, it did not do much damage.
Not long after this, the man overheard another conversation
between the two dogs. His dog was saying, ‘No, I can’t go with
you. I have learned that there are some jackals and hyenas coming
to attack the sheep-fold tonight. I must stay and protect the
animals.’ Once again the dog’s master took the necessary
precautions and put all but one sick ewe away in a safe place so
that when the hyenas and jackals invaded the sheep-fold they
found only the one sick ewe. As you can imagine, the man was
very glad to have such a clairvoyant dog. Some weeks went by and,
once again, he overheard a conversation between the two dogs.
‘No,’ his dog was saying, ‘I can’t come with you tonight; my
master is going to die. I must stay and watch over him.’ The other
dog asked in surprise, ‘But why does he have to die? Can’t you do
anything to prevent it?’ ‘No; there’s no way out,’ replied the man’s
dog. ‘He has got to die because he has never sacrificed anything. He
has used his knowledge to avoid the losses he was supposed to
incur. If he had been ready to accept certain inconveniences in the
past, his life would not be in danger today; but he has always
refused and now he has got to die.’ These oriental notions will
certainly seem very bizarre to you but there is a very profound
lesson in this story, and it is that we must be ready to accept
certain sufferings or the loss of certain things in order to gain other
things. Those who are incapable of sacrificing anything can never
gain anything in exchange.
We still do not really know what the stars are. The ancients
knew them far better than we do. I read some of the books that are
being published today and I see that they do not correspond to the
truth that I was taught in this initiatic school. I could give you
many examples to show you how events happen exactly as
planned for some people, whilst for those who are more highly
evolved, they happen too, but on another level. Let’s say that
someone has a debt to pay: instead of paying it on the physical
plane, they may be allowed to pay it on the astral or mental plane.
In one way or another they are going to have to pay but they can
choose on what level they want to do so. Those who have not
reached the same degree of evolution, however, must pay as
planned, on the level that was planned. This is something that you
must always bear in mind. Above all, bear in mind that no one can
avoid paying their debts; their freedom only allows them to choose
on which level they will pay them. No one is free to elude their
karmic debt, therefore; only to choose how to pay it.
One day this boy was up a tree picking fruit when he saw a
ship anchoring off the shores of the island. An imposing
procession of people in rich garments came ashore, and amongst
them was a very handsome youth. Not long after, the boy saw
everybody except the beautiful young man board the ship and sail
away again. Once the ship was out of sight, the boy went straight
to where he had seen the people go when they first arrived, and
there he found a large flat stone with a ring set in it. Seizing the ring
he pulled up the stone, and finding a staircase, he went down until
he found himself in a large room, most beautifully furnished and
decorated. The young man he had seen with the sailors earlier was
there all alone and very alarmed at this unexpected intrusion.
However, the boy told him of his own plight, of how his ship had
gone down, how he had managed to swim to this island, and, above
all, of how intrigued he had been by the arrival of all those people
so splendidly arrayed. The prince’s fears were calmed so
completely that he asked the boy to stay with him and keep him
company during his stay underground.
The two got along very well together and time passed
agreeably enough. The king had spared no expense and furnished
the palace with a magnificent library full of books, and they spent
a lot of time together reading. One day the prince wanted a book
which was on a shelf over his head and the boy climbed up to get it
and was sitting on the step-ladder cutting the pages of the book
with a little gold-handled knife. Suddenly the knife slipped from
his hand and struck the prince on the temple and he fell to the floor
in a pool of blood. In a panic, the boy rushed out of the
underground chamber and, at that very moment, the king’s ship
came in sight: he was coming to fetch his son, trusting in the
prediction that if nothing terrible had happened to him by then
(and, of course, he firmly believed that this was the case), he would
no longer be in danger. And behold, he found his son lying dead!
Now, of course, it is probable that none of this really happened,
but the tale is interesting because it illustrates the conception that
the ancients had of destiny.
You must not plan for bad days ahead – whatever precautions
you take there are bound to be some; we cannot expect perfection
as long as we are on this earth – but you must have something
saved up for when they do come; that is to say, you must have
lived sensibly. When you grumble and say, ‘What’s the use of being
a vegetarian and having to attend the sunrise and do all those
exercises? They don’t bring us wealth or fame!’ it just shows how
ignorant you are. You don’t realize that all that is like money; you
can become rich by saving it up.
IV
Attachment and detachment
The Emerald Tablet says, ‘You shall separate the subtle from
the gross gently and with great diligence.’ But where shall we find
the subtle and the gross that need to be separated? Are they in the
alchemist’s crucible? Are they in our own thoughts and
sentiments? Is this what we witness in death when it separates the
subtle – the soul – from the gross – the physical body? Of the four
great archangels, the one who separates things is the Archangel
M ichael12 and this is why his feast is at the end of September, for
he rules the autumn, the season of separations: the season in which
the fruit is separated from the tree and the husk from the seed.
Separation is a very important element in the alchemical process
but it is not confined to the alchemist’s laboratory; it exists in
every area of life, although you may often think of it rather as a
cleansing or sifting, a distillation, purification or liberation.
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
You will object that when people speak of equality they mean
equality before the law. Yes, but even there, there is no equality, for
the law treats those who are rich, influential and well-informed
very differently from those who are poor, ignorant and without
influence. If a desire for equality leads you to apply the same laws
to those who are very highly evolved as to those who are not, that
‘equality’ is not founded on truth. Divine justice, which is superior
to human justice, proceeds very differently; it evaluates and judges
beings according to their degree of evolution and not just according
to their actions. Earthly justice looks only at what you do; it
knows nothing about who you may be, your degree of evolution,
the reason why you did this or that; it takes into account only the
fact, the action, the event. Whereas, in every region of the universe,
throughout rational nature, you are judged according to your
intentions, your emanations, for the same act can mean two quite
opposite things. The kiss of a criminal, for instance, will
contaminate a woman for years, whereas that of an initiate will heal
her.
And now, just to show you that when I tell you something
you can always find confirmation of it in all the manifestations of
nature, let me give you one more example. When you cut yourself,
a scab forms over the wound and the new skin begins to grow
under the scab. But if you pull the scab off before the new skin is
fully formed you will reopen the wound and then you will have to
wait for the whole process to take place all over again. Before
pulling off the scab you must ‘build your new house’, that is to
say, you must give the new skin time to form. If you are observant
you will see that the human organism, nature, trees and the whole
universe respect this order of things. Human beings are the only
exception. They want to be free, but as they do not know how
dangerous it is to break away from old attachments before creating
new ones, they are always getting tied up in unexpected
difficulties. Yes, because if you do not invite higher realities to fill
the places you have cleared out in your heart and mind, all kinds of
other entities will slip in, and you will be in a terrible situation.
Your heart and mind must be occupied by a magnificent ideal, by
all that is best, most noble and most luminous. That is why
initiates teach their disciples always to give first place to the Lord.
Even if this strikes you as ridiculous, even if it is in complete
contradiction to all modern ideas, do it; put the Lord firmly in first
place.
Anyone who does not know this law and tries to improve
human beings without first giving them a taste of something better,
something that dazzles and attracts them, will necessarily fail. It
does absolutely no good to rant and rave against evil if you don’t
help people to see what is good and to attach themselves to it so as
to advance.
So, there you are, my dear brothers and sisters: isn’t life
wonderful? Once you know that you can love even your enemies
and that the greatest possible blessings are hidden in all the most
distressing circumstances, how can you avoid being glad? Once one
has understood that, one is free. Yes, free! But free to chain oneself
all the more securely to the divine work.
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
1 See The Wellsprings of Eternal Joy, Izvor Coll. n° 242, chap. 7: ‘ A commitment to
heaven’ .
2 See Vie et travail à l’École divine, Complete Works, vol. 31, chap. 7: ‘ Maîtres et
disciples’ , part IV.
3 See New Light on the Gospels, Izvor Coll. n° 217, chap. 6: ‘ Let him which is on
the housetop not come down…’
4 See Love and Sexuality, Complete Works, vol. 14, chap. 15: ‘ Wealth and poverty’ ,
chap. 25: ‘ The meaning of renunciation’ , and Complete Works, vol. 15, chap. 17:
‘ Emptiness and fullness: the holy Grail’ .
5 See Le rire du sage, Izvor Coll. n° 243, chap. 3: ‘ P rotéger les frontières de notre
âme’ .
6 See W hat is a Spiritual Master?, Izvor Coll. n° 207, chap. 2: ‘ The necessity for a
spiritual Master’ .
7 See The Wellsprings of Eternal Joy, Izvor Coll. n° 242, chap. 18: ‘ Visits from
angelic beings’ .
9 See Cosmic Balance – The Secret of Polarity, Izvor Coll. n° 237, chap. 10: ‘ Iona,
principle of life – Horev, principle of death’ .
10 See The Zodiac, Key to Man and to the Universe, Izvor Coll. n° 220, chap. 1: ‘ The
enclosure of the zodiac’ .
11 See Le rire du sage, Izvor Coll. n° 243, chap. 1: ‘ Le sage vit dans l’ espérance’ .
12 See Angels and other Mysteries of The Tree of Life, Izvor Coll. n° 236, chap. 12:
‘ Malkuth, Yesod, Hod, Tiphareth, archangels and seasons’ .
13 See The Key to the Problems of Existence, Complete Works, vol. 11, chap. 3:
‘ Giving and taking’ .
14 See Vie et travail à l’École divine, Complete Works, vol. 31, chap. 9: ‘ Hiérarchie
and liberté’ .
15 See Angels and other Mysteries of The Tree of Life, Izvor Coll. n° 236, chap. 8:
‘ When God drew a circle on the face of the deep’ .
16 See W hat is a Spiritual Master?, Izvor Coll. n° 207, chap. 10: ‘ The magical
presence of a Master’ , and The Path of Silence, Izvor Coll. n° 229, chap. 11: ‘ A
Master speaks in silence’ .
17 See Le rire du sage, Izvor Coll. n° 243, chap. 2: ‘ Comme un berger veille sur ses
brebis’ , chap. 3: ‘ P rotéger les frontières de notre âme’ .
18 See The Seeds of Happiness, Izvor Coll. n° 231, chap. 18: ‘ Our enemies are good
for us’ .