1944_08_26 A poor man and a rich man

[Jackline Spasova-Bobeva]

Note 3

 

A Poor Man and a Rich Man

 

VII Lecture, held by the Master

 

On 26 August 1944 at 6:30 a.m.

 

In the canteen of the “Broks” hut – „Ostrets“, under the peak of Ostrets in the Vitosha Mountain.

 

The Secret Prayer.

 

The lecture “Watering”, held on the previous day at the peak of Ostrets, was read.

 

If I were a stranger, I would say that this lecture was held in very unfavourable conditions. The weather was cold, the hall was not heated, the piano was out of tune, and the people wanted to go outside. This is the impression from the lecture. You have not understood this idea up there. Moreover, the Bulgarian language is not suitable for such a lecture. The European languages are even less suitable. For that lecture each word must have one meaning, not two. Now assume that a great musician gives a concert, the piano is out of tune, it is quite a good piano, but it is out of tune. What do you think, can he hold an excellent concert. He does not play well. Not that he does not play well, but the piano does not satisfy the conditions which harmony requires. Then imagine the other thing: the audience is ill, one has a stomach-ache, another has rheumatism of the knee. I hear them say, “When will this finish, we are bored with listening.” Love does not require ill people. When it comes, do not go to listen when you are ill. You say, “Certain rules must be observed”. When a person is far from you, you speak loud so that he can hear you. When he is near, you speak silently. When you are near, you speak loud, when you are far, you speak silently.

 

How do you understand love? You understand love by speaking loudly to the people near you. To those who are far you speak quietly. Do you think that this love is understood? Do you think that it will hear you? Love speaks with the quietest voice that exists in life. There is no quieter voice than that of Love. To hear that quiet voice, an adapted mind is needed and an adapted ear. This loud speech, these expressions of feelings, the burning heart, the strong light, these are things not understood. They are strong things. What do you think, how does God see in the darkest affairs? Where nobody can penetrate, God can see in the darkest things. What do you think, who is the clever man, the man who has put five lumps of sugar in the cup or another man who has put one lump of sugar? Imagine that each lump costs one hundred levs, five lumps are five hundred levs. He says, “I am used to five lumps.” This is an unnatural habit.

 

Here is another clarification: You go to the baths. The people go to the bath in two suits. In the newest or in the ragged one. You go dressed in your best clothes, when you go into the bath you take off your newest clothes. One should not go into the bathroom dressed in new clothes, nice clothes. The same law. The one, who goes to the baths dressed in his most ragged clothes, he also has to take them off. When he goes into the bathroom in his nice clothes, he has to take them off and go naked. If he goes with the ragged clothes in the bathroom, they will get cleaned, the dirty clothes will come out clean, washed. If you go into the bathroom in your clean clothes you will spoil the style. In love the ignorant come out more educated, while the educated people come out with a little bit of a spoilt style.

 

Now in the nature while a baby is in the mother’s womb, he is dressed in a king’s mantle. In the womb of his mother he is in heaven, dressed in a mantle. When the child commits a sin, then it gets born. What we call birth, it is a transgression. God chases him out of heaven – he goes out of his mother’s womb. „If the seed that is put in the ground does not spoil, it cannot grow”. I say, “In analogies, in comparisons you have to juxtapose one clear understanding that exists in the human heart, in the human mind. The heart understands in one way, the mind understands in another. The heart understands the sweetness, the mind understands the beauty. The mind can never understand what sweetness is and the heart cannot understand what beauty is. When the heart wants to understand what beauty is, it goes up to the mind. When the mind wants to learn what sweetness is, it goes down to the heart. What is the sweetness? The mind goes down to the heart. If your mind cannot come down to the heart, it cannot understand sweetness. If your heart cannot go up to the mind, it cannot understand what beauty is.”

 

Sometimes you wonder why man has to come to the earth. To understand what is sweetness and what is bitterness. He has to go up to the sky to understand what beauty is and what ugliness is. You can understand beauty and ugliness in the sky. Ugliness is a shadow of beauty. Bitterness is clothing of sweetness. Sweetness is dressed in bitterness. Sweetness cannot manifest without bitterness. It shows in the contrasts. If there is no sweetness, there is no bitterness, if there is no bitterness, there is no sweetness either. They go together. The people want sweetness without bitterness. Sweetness without bitterness is impossible and bitterness without sweetness is impossible, too.

 

Singing is what is needed now. You should write the best song according to all the rules, with all the ornaments. To sing a well-written song, to play it you need the best singer, who has a well-developed throat, the best piano or the best fiddle, the best harp, to play it. I say now, “If you do not have a tuned heart, you would not understand sweetness. If you do not have a tuned mind, you would not understand sweetness, either. Imagine that a child is passing across a river, which is four fingers deep. You shout at the child not to pass across the river so as not to get drowned in it. You are not saying a true thing. Do not shout. Just say, “Pass the rivulet.” If the child is passing through a river ten meters deep, then you can shout, “You can get drowned!” When we are saying something, we have to express truth. We should never say that in the shallow water one could get drowned. This is not true. You say, “My heart is burning”. The heart never burns. What is burning and burns out is the two fingers of shallow water. You will get drowned. You will not get drowned. The water would dry out. When it gets dry, there is ash, sand. While it is running, the water is shallow. When it dries out, there is no water, only ash is left. What is water? The water stops running through the sand.

 

So, I am saying, the notes that you have taken are wrong. It is very hard. The way you have read it, I am a stranger, I see a piece of jerked meat. It should be boiled at least five, six hours to become soft. We think right now, aren’t we. Since we have dressed love in ragged clothes, it filled with indignation and appeared in mist. It says, “You should go to the baths”. Now what would you compare this process with? When you enter into a bathroom and you do not take your clothes, you are an ignoramus. If you go in your nice clothes, you are a bad-mannered man with no character. When the well-dressed man takes his clothes and remains naked in the bathroom, and the one with the ragged clothes takes off his clothes, too, they both are clever. It will turn out that the body of the man with the new clothes is cleaner, whiter, while the body of the man in ragged clothes will be dirtier. After they have a bath and go out of the bathroom, they both will be white and clean. When they go out of the bathroom, this is the Divine teaching. When people are dressed in the nice clothes, in the ragged clothes, this is earthly love, they need a bath. Those who have not entered in this bathroom cannot know Divine Love. Suffering is taking off the nice clothes, the beautiful clothes. Ragged clothes, this is resignation, having a bath in the bathroom. When you go out of the bathroom, this is the Divine joy. This understanding has already sense. The other things remain not understood.

 

If I now correct a lecture, if I am a shorthand writer, you will not recognize it. If I read it to you even ten times, you will not get bored. Now I don’t want you to read it even once more. A second time out of the bathroom. Now this is the rule: at the bathroom we have to take off our clothes. Those who are in nice clothes or in ragged clothes, have to undress, we have to go inside naked. Adam was naked in heaven. Nakedness is purity. Dressing, as people now get dressed, is a wrong state. When someone gets into trouble, in prison they give him a dressing gown and put chains to rattle. He becomes vainglory, it is recommended for two or three aides-de-camp to watch him, escort him. What is the difference between a king and a prisoner? Both the king and the prisoner are escorted. The king is dressed nicely. They both go to the bath. The king is dressed in nice clothes, when he goes into the bathroom, he will take his clothes off and will remain naked. The one in the ragged clothes will have his chains taken off and he will go into the bathroom naked. Both of them are escorted and both walk slowly. Why will you be delighted if you are a king, but if you are a criminal you will grieve? Misunderstanding. Imagine that a king is transported on an old jade. This will be the greatest insult. Imagine that a criminal is transported in the best coach. What will happen then? The people outside who are watching will say, “It is a crime if the king is transported on an old jade and the criminal is transported on the most handsome horse and in the best coach.” Then what do you have to do? You will move the criminal onto the jade and the king in the coach. This is the natural order of things.

 

Now the poor man has to pray until the bag is empty. When the bag gets filled up, he has to stop praying, but lift the bag up. When does the rich man have to pray? The poor man has to pray until the bag is empty. The rich man has to pray while the bag is on his back, to have it taken down. When the bag is emptied, he has to take it and run. This is understanding of life. The rich people need someone to take their bags. The poor people want their bags to be filled up. The rich people have the experience of full bags, while the poor do not have the experience of a full bag. When the poor man is shouting with his empty bag, this is right. When the rich man is shouting with the full bag, this is right. When the rich man is shouting with an empty bag, this is not right. When the poor man is shouting with his full bag, this is not right. “Shout”, this is an equivocal word. Now you think that when we talk about love, it is a strong current. The only thing that is invisible in the world is love. Where it comes from and where it goes, it is not known. Love brings all goods, but remains invisible. The only thing that is invisible, this is love. Not the form but the essence cannot be seen. Love comes in the most silent way and brings the most useful things. What is left to you, you think this is love. It is the good of love. The fruit that has come to you and you think it is love, the sweetness. You do not know what sweetness is. You feel sweetness, but you do not know it. Sweetness is invisible. You see only the form. Sometimes we want to see love. The only thing that cannot be seen, this is love. It is experience. What you feel is sweetness, it is love. What is it like? You cannot give it any shape. You feel that one sweetness is different from another sweetness. The sweetness of the pear, of the apple, of the plumb differs. Where is the difference in the sweetness? You can say that the plumb is blue, the apple can be red, the pear can be yellow. The blue colour, the red colour, the yellow colour, this is not sweetness. These are labels. I say, the only thing that cannot be seen in the world, this is love. Its fruits can be seen, but it itself cannot be seen. When we say that God is invisible, it is like sweetness, without seeing it, you can feel it as very real. I say now, “You all have one view of God’s Love. The only thing, when you come near to love, you have to be happy. The least discontent, and you are out of love. Love does not stand for absolutely any disharmony in the world. You all have the delusion. If you want to understand love, you have to enter naked. By “naked” I understand “who is perfect”. Only the perfect man is naked. There is beauty in the naked man. Light comes out of the naked man, he is dressed. The other one is also naked, but there is darkness. A naked man, from whom light comes out, and a naked man, in whom there is darkness. The white people are naked and the black people are naked. What is better, is the white man better or the black one? The black means emptiness. The empty bag is black, the full bag is white. What is the white? Fullness. What is the black? Emptiness. Therefore it needs to be filled up. What is the light? When you empty the light, darkness is formed again. The real concept of darkness is emptiness. The light is fullness. It brings the idea. The poor man is darkness, the rich man is light and fullness.

 

Now we are talking about the natural wealth. The other state when the rich man is dissatisfied, his wealth is on his back. It is the state of an animal that is loaded. This animal is walking and they want to take down its burden, to unload it. The rich men in the world are loaded. If you have wealth and you are dissatisfied, you are loaded. If you are happy with the knowledge, if you are happy with the wealth, it is Divine good. Knowledge must make us happy, wealth must make us happy. All that we have must make us happy. It is the Divine. So, if you are sad, it means that you are not valued in the environment in which you live. A doctor who has killed ten children, he is no longer a doctor. A doctor is only the one, who has never killed even one child. Every doctor who has killed ten children is held responsible, he will be judged. He will study the art of curing, he will start curing people. Every singer, who has not learnt to sing well, is hissed off the stage ten times, it is his fault. It is the same if he has not sung one song in the right way. He has killed the song. I consider every singer who has not sung one song to have killed the child. The one, who has sung the song according to all rules, he has acted as midwife for the child and he has come out alive.

 

Now you want to be a doctor. When you act as midwife to your thoughts be careful not to kill your thoughts. You are a doctor of your songs, you are a doctor of your feelings, you are a doctor of your deeds. When you kill ten thoughts or ten deeds, you are held responsible. I never judge the doctors. Because if I decide to judge them, I also will be judged. „Measure for measure“. Now you sometimes want to reconcile. Unless the rich man and the poor man do not go to the bath they cannot reconcile. The one with the ill-smelling clothes cannot reconcile with the one, who is clean, he has sense of smell. When a man has many defects and wants to be loved, it cannot be so. There must be humanness. He has to go to the bath. The rich man and the poor man have to go into the bathroom, then this is fraternization. One of the ministers has said “In the bloody bath”. When the people come out of the bloody bath, they will get to know each other and they will fraternize.

 

This is the law: The rich man must be happy when he frees himself of the wealth and the poor man must be happy when he frees himself of the poverty. Both are equal. When the rich man is sorry that he has lost his wealth, and when the poor man regrets that he has lost the poverty, then they are equal. But now the people never regret when they lose poverty. By a poor man we understand a good man who has not committed any crime. I call rich these people, those who have committed all crimes. The man must be happy when he frees himself of the wealth and regret when he loses his poverty. Poverty is wealth in heaven. Wealth is poverty on the earth.

 

Now we have to have breakfasts. To come to the good of Love.

 

 

 

 

Source