1924_10_19 The Disciple's New Understanding

[Viktoriya]

Беседата на български

Translated by Victoria Koleva

 

 

 

THE DISCIPLE’S NEW UNDERSTANDING

Year 4, Lecture 1 of the Youth Occult Class (Special Class)

Given by the Master Beinsa Douno

On October 19, 1924, Sunday

 Sofia

 

 

 

A moment of contemplation.

Topic I: “What is the connection between psychology, logic and ethics?”

I will ask you the following question: What essential characteristic distinguishes humans from animals? – (“Humans have common sense”, “Humans can express what they think”, “Humans strive towards something”, “Humans are capable of loving God”, “Humans posses ethics, esthetics and logic”, “Humans have free will”, “According to philosophy humans have an innate need to explore, whereas in animals impressions alternate without getting systematically organized”).  

I will ask you another question: What is the difference between the positive and the negative polarity, between the male and the female principle? – (“Women embody the life of the heart, the principle of love, whereas men express the mental, the principle of wisdom. They differ in their passive and active nature respectively”).

In esoteric science when we talk about the female principle we mean that there is passiveness on the outside and activeness on the inside. The male principle, on the other hand, is active on the outside and passive on the inside. They say that the woman is passive. If she is passive then how does she take hold of a man’s mind? How is she able to control him at all? If a child is smart enough to get you all tangled up, then it isn’t passive.

I would like you to get a good grasp of some fundamental ideas. Each fundamental idea needs to be well differentiated so that you can apply it properly. If you say that you are passive, this means that you are active on the inside and passive on the outside. This leads to some contradictions. A person who is active on the outside will face disturbances and opposition from outside. Since he is internally passive he will remain intact on the inside. People who embody the passive principle will face internal disturbances. Therefore the mind deals primarily with external obstacles and the heart – with internal ones. The heart is passive externally and the mind is passive internally. The heart is active internally and the mind is active externally. Thus the two principles can be of mutual assistance. When the mind falls into a contradiction in its own activity, the heart, which is active on the inside, will come to its aid. The mind acts as an external support for the heart and the heart – as an internal support for the mind.

You need to understand this law very well. When you fall into a disturbance of the mind, you need to look inward to find your serenity. And when you are faced with disturbances of the heart, you will find your serenity in the Divine Principle of the mind. This is because the heart always requires one principle that it can rely on. Once the heart loses its trust in that principle, it starts to become overly active and suspicious. Skepticism does not start in the mind, it starts in the heart. It originated from the woman, not from the man. When I say “woman” I mean that skepticism originated in the heart. Of course you shouldn’t associate the words “man” and “woman” with yourselves, you should only see them as principles that you can work with. The term “virgo” or “virgin” embodies the female principle in its purity. When we talk about the woman as a primordial principle, we use the term “deva” (Bulgarian for “virgo” or “virgin”) which means “divine”. And the word man, human or “manas” mean “son of wisdom”. It is an expression of Divine Light or Divine Wisdom. Therefore these two principles complement each other in people: one principle is active on the inside, the other one – on the outside. One principle is passive on the outside, the other one – on the inside.

Now, the difference between humans and animals is based on how dense the matter is which they are made of. The matter which animals are made of is denser. Therefore less light penetrates their world. That is why their understanding of life and the surrounding world is less clear. It is not as clear as in humans. Occultists believe that animals live in the 13^th sphere. This means that they will need to wait for a long time before they can ascend. There are no conditions for their ascension yet.

I will ask you another question: Why has nature made precious stones grow inside the earth? Do you think that crystals possess any intelligence? How do we determine the level of intelligence of a certain being? We can judge a person’s intelligence by looking at his house, his windows, his room or the surrounding area. We could also determine a person’s level of intelligence by looking at an object or a statue that he or she has created. That is a form of generalization. Crystals that have grown inside the earth also possess a level of intelligence. They understand the laws of light and have learnt how to absorb it. Each crystal has absorbed the exact type of light that is necessary for its development. Occultists claim that crystals are born and ripen inside the earth just like fruit does. Crystals, however, are very selfish. They possess great pride and vanity. Because they are so proud, they have been buried deep inside matter, so that their haughtiness can be softened. And you can see how hard they are. They lack softness. You need to polish them for a long time before you can make them smooth. In that sense crystals embody the original reason for man’s fall.

I would like one of you to describe the colours of the more important precious stones. Some of your ideas are related to crystals. You shouldn’t think that crystals can be found inside the earth only. Whatever is inside the earth exists inside you as well. You need to know this: everything that exists in nature can be found inside your body too. All the plants that live on the earth, as well as all the insects exist inside your body too. Sometimes a wolf plants itself in your mind’s way and spoils your mood; it eats some of your sheep and creates a whole catastrophe. You occupy yourself with the wolves in the physical world but you ignore the wolves inside you. Once a wolf eats a sheep in its lifetime, you will feel great pain inside your heart. You think about the other wolves but you don’t want to do anything about your own. Some other time a bear might eat one of the cows inside you, or a spider might grab hold of a fly you carry on the inside – all that needs to be examined. This is a valuable science. You need to start subjugating all the animals you carry inside you.

These are symbols, ideas, currents of that Divine World which comes from many different directions. A human being is made up of many different forces that have been pieced together. These are small rivers which have shaped the human being. This is how I see it: the animals and the plants that exist on the earth constitute the human being broken down into its components. All of these components pieced together in a single body, together with a monad that leads them (*a monad – a simple, eternal, indivisible spiritual primordial element of existence; a unit) constitute the human being. Isn’t this Leibnitz’s idea as well? Thus, inside the human being there is a central monad as well as many other monads, which, however, do not all have the same level of development. These are beings which exhibit a great diversity in their levels of development. Savage predatory animals live in a form of matter which is extremely dense. This creates more friction and heat whose laws they haven’t learnt yet, and makes them exhibit their coarseness.

I could make any one of you angry without the use of words. Imagine that I promise some good clothes to one of you and tell you that you will have them in two months’ time. You keep waiting, but Christmas comes and I still don’t give you the clothes. Immediately you fly into a rage. How dare I not keep my promise? How come? A promise is not something material. Why does it make you fire up? Therefore when somebody promises something to you, consider it not promised, so you can remain independent. Whether you will receive it or not should be all the same to you. You can express some joy only after you receive the clothes and put them on. Do not harbor the thought that somebody has promised some clothes to you. If you keep thinking about the promise you will cause harm to your soul. Let the person who made the promise think about it - it is his own idea which he needs to realize. Let him work on his idea himself. You can enjoy the fruit that it will bear. Do not keep asking him when the clothes will come. You shouldn’t be interested in the clothes at all.

Here is another example of the same idea. Imagine that somebody tells you he loves you. It is the same thing. It means that he has promised something to you. He sends you a dress, a hat, some shoes and tells you: “I love you”. You take them and say to yourself: “Well, he loves me”. No, forget about that! This is his thought. Let it stay with him. If he loves you, it elevates him. That is all. You should be happy that this thought or feeling is working inside him. When somebody loves me I will appreciate him the way I appreciate the playing of a violinist. I will sit next to him, listen to him and appreciate the fact that he is playing for me. Thus while he is playing I can enjoy his music the way he enjoys my presence. The feeling he has for me could generate a new idea in my mind. I may not have the same technical ability in music but I may have a good musical understanding and I can benefit by listening.

Now you can add this new understanding to your old outlook on life. Do some experiments with that understanding. The first experiment you should do this year is to control certain thoughts of yours which can irritate you. Let’s say you harbor a thought which can cause you a lot of harm and block your development for the next 10 years. Ok, why don’t you stop that thought? Stop it now so that you don’t have to suffer and cry afterwards. - “What are these thoughts?” I will dedicate some other time to discussing these specific thoughts which are a hindrance to us. Do you understand what I am talking about this evening? It is something very delicate. It is something powerful. It is an art form that you have to master. One of the greatest art forms in the world is the ability to control yourself whenever you need to. You shouldn’t think that it can happen in one go. It is like the violinist who is in the process of learning. He learns first position first, then second, third and then does exercise after exercise after exercise. Only after he goes through all the necessary exercises can he become a virtuoso. And then he will come in front of the audience and play something beautiful, not these ordinary exercises.

A person trying to control himself – that is a form of exercise. Many times you won’t be able to complete these exercises successfully. Before playing a beautiful piece of music in front of the audience even the most eminent violinist will have to practice it for two or three hours and repeat the same passage over and over again, and you will still notice that not all the tones he produces are clear enough. Some tones are clear, others aren’t. He will also get tired many times before his tones become clear and audible. Sometimes his fingers get tired and he keeps moving them to and fro. Do you think that whenever you want to exercise self-control you will be able to master this art in one go? If you say to yourself: “I won’t get angry from now on”, will you be able to keep your word? If you say this to yourself, you will get angry four times before noon tomorrow, seven times on Tuesday and ten times on Wednesday.

I was once observing a man who wanted to play the violin but tried to pull down the blinds first. He kept trying to pull them down but he still couldn’t. He got angry, pulled the blinds and threw them down on the floor but the window still remained visible. This man is not a simpleton, he is a well-educated man, yet why did he throw the blinds down? He is getting angry: how dare the blinds not obey his will! The blinds are saying: “It is all the same to us whether you get angry or not”. Indeed he sees that there are no reasons to get angry and finally hangs back the blinds.

This anger can be avoided. The reason for this anger was the need for secrecy. He wanted to remain hidden in his room while playing and not be seen by anyone. If he hadn’t had the need for secrecy he wouldn’t have needed the blinds and would have avoided a case of getting angry.

There is secrecy in nature too. It is a feeling which gives birth to ideas. One needs to remain secretive up to a point and hide certain feelings because the feelings which are necessary to reach perfection need to ripen in secret. Generally people who lack courage are more secretive, whereas brave people are less so.

In your current situation you need to realize that all necessary conditions for your growth or happiness are to be found inside you. That is where they exist. Outside of the possibility that is hidden inside you there is also an external pole – that of Living Nature or God. Just like the Sun comes to the aid of some germs inside the earth to make them grow, in the same way Nature or God comes and helps everything inside the human soul grow. Our environment and the other beings around us also help to a certain extent – they could assist us with this or that. In some cases, however, they are unable to help us. For example, how many people in your life are able to help you? Their number is small. Of course in this case you need to beware of a contradiction that may arise in your soul: when you work on your self-development do not exclude people from your life. The law is as follows: all animals, plants, minerals and crystals which are inside you, as well as all the souls that exist in the world, are not only reflected in you but also have their representatives inside you. Each person, wherever he might be, has a living representative inside you. Do not try to meet this person on the outside but look for the small needle on the Vitosha mountain. You are bound to find this small person somewhere inside you and then you can converse with him.

Then you will find yourselves in the following situation: one of Voltaire’s stories talks about a French expedition to the North Pole with a steam boat. At the same time an intelligent being decided to explore the Solar system and on its way to the Sun came down to Earth. It stepped inside our oceans and the water reached its knees. When it saw the steam boat it grabbed hold of it with its fingers and picked a Frenchman with a small pair of pincers. It came into contact with the Frenchman and in the course of the conversation became surprised that this small human being was so smart and was able to do such scientific experiments. This is what you should do as well. Pick this little being inside you with your pincers and talk to it. It is very smart. In this story Voltaire imparts an actual truth using humour.

The first law is as follows: you should not renounce the existence of any person inside you. Sometimes you say about someone: “I don’t want to have anything to do with him”. No, you shouldn’t say that. Say the following to yourself: “I would like to know something about this person. I will find his friend who lives inside me in miniature and will ask him what he wants to talk about. This small being will tell me the truth as it is while the external person does not have the opportunity to do so”. The person on the outside cannot tell you the truth even if he wants to. At this point, the way people have been created has made it impossible for them to understand each other externally but they are able to understand each other internally. I haven’t met a single person so far who is able to tell the truth. There are very few people who are able to do that. All the rest just beat around the bush. In order to reveal a certain truth people normally keep going around the topic, they do not follow the Divine path of the straight line. One person in history who has conveyed the truth properly in his confession is Tolstoy. Another one is St. Augustine. There are some others too but these two are the major examples.

All of you need purity of heart. When this purity comes you will be able to say the truth to yourselves, not to the external world. Tolstoy made a confession not to the world but to himself in order to achieve a piece of mind and restore the connection between God and his soul. Even though this confession became available to the whole world, it is to himself that he made it.

Thus when we talk about confession I do not mean a confession in front of the people around us but rather a confession made to ourselves, our own soul, in order to restore our connection with God. In order for this connection to be restored everything needs to be exposed to the Divine light. Tell me, why shouldn’t you expose everything in front of God? If God has opened your eyes, he has endowed you with his trust and shown you Heaven and all the opportunities that he has created for you, all of life’s bounties that await you, all the care he takes of you, isn’t it worth having the same attitude to him that he has towards you? Why not? We should have the same relation to God that he has to us – nothing more, nothing less. He has a certain relation to us as God and we will have a relation to him as humans. My relationship to God will be as straight as my soul is able to define that. This is possible and this is what makes the world beautiful! When a person comes to that state he feels powerful. Before he comes to that point he is faint-hearted and fearful but once he decides to set his relationship to God straight, he becomes a hero, light penetrates his mind, calmness settles in his soul, he becomes elevated in his own eyes and says to himself: “Everything is possible”. This person has already seen through the Divine Light, he is facing it.

For example, if you go to Germany, England or the USA where people are materialistic, if you look at someone and he is a German, he will say to you: “Why are you looking at me, mister? Why are you fixating your eyes on me?” If he is an Englishman, you will have to duel. You need to stay away from such people. Nowadays people are so materialistic that they are afraid lest somebody should penetrate their soul. What is there to penetrate into? They are afraid of you penetrating their pettiness and all their pettiness is not worth a pipe of tobacco.

Let’s take the law of love. Love has a positive polarity and a negative polarity. The following question comes to mind: Why does a person need to love? – In order to express himself.

Existence, life, cannot be expressed without love. There is no life without love. The first act of life is love. In order to show that you are alive you need to love. Thus the first step that love makes is a step towards a given object. You find an apple, you pick it up, you look at it, you love it. There is love in the negative polarity as well. The negative polarity in life always represents the sphere in which life can express itself. Therefore, in order for life to express itself, you need to have someone to love. First and foremost, a person loves himself. He doesn’t start with others but with himself, his body – he eats and drinks. After a time he allows for love to somebody outside of himself. Therefore, he can love one more person. At first he attracts everything to himself, he grows only. When he has reached a certain level of development and wealth, then he allows for the opportunity to love one person outside of himself. This act of allowing has been talked about everywhere in philosophy. This is when a person starts feeling divided.

Why does a person start feeling divided? This is a question of philosophy. When you use the word “divide”, what meaning do you give to it?

The female principle which was initially inside man, inside the human being, could not be controlled by man because this principle was active on the inside and passive on the outside, whereas the human, man, was passive on the inside and active on the outside. Since humans are double-sided in nature, the second (female) principle saw through the external phenomena. Its external passiveness turned into external activeness and its internal activeness into internal passiveness. As a result this second principle separated itself from man, left him and came out. That is the situation Adam found himself in. This principle that came out of man did not come back anymore. That is why to this day we can see the lack of harmony between men and women. There is never ending competition between them. People are right to say that love cannot exist between them. Love is not something external. First of all this principle needs to come back in, become passive on the outside and active on the inside and take its initial position.

Now both men and women are active. That is why, given the current situation, no education or culture of any kind is possible. What I am saying now does not refer to you. You are just an embodiment of the principle whereas we are talking about the principle in general. What I am talking about you will find inside yourself. Then you might say: “I don’t need a man”. No, you will come to a contradiction. You have a heart and a mind, they are two different states and you cannot deny them. If your heart starts loving an external object it becomes active. The heart should never be interested in external things, only in internal affairs. A heart which is interested in external things has been corrupted. Similarly, a mind which is interested in the internal life is a twisted mind. You shouldn’t renounce either your heart or your mind but you need to steer them in the right direction so that each deals with its own affairs.  

Don’t take what I am saying to be the absolute truth. These are contemplations. You should take them, put them to the test and once you become convinced of their validity, you can work with them.

Then we can write the following: we will denote the mind with the number 1 and the heart with the number 2. I would define these as follows: the mind is a plus on the outside and a minus on the inside, whereas the heart is a minus on the outside, i.e. it is passive, and a plus on the inside, i.e. it is active. You should remember the following: if your heart starts loving certain objects on the outside, you will definitely fall into some temptation. Why is that? Because you can’t control this object – that is the first thing. If your heart falls in love with somebody, he will want to be independent too, therefore you won’t be able to control him either. Whenever you fall in love with somebody you want to control him or her and that is impossible. Saying that you can keep somebody under your influence is meaningless. They say that the Sun has tremendous power and influence and is able to attract. Ok, take the following fact into consideration: a certain comet approaches the Sun, it keeps approaching, but then makes a powerful turn, moves away and goes into space. Here is a question: if the Sun has such a strong influence, why doesn’t it stop the comet or keep it close to itself, why does this comet drift away into space? This means that there is something else out there as well which keeps bodies moving. If a comet was moving towards space we might say that there were other reasons for it, the Sun was not the major factor involved. There are other centres that exert an invisible influence. And if in any given case we are approaching another person, this shows that he is having an influence on us, he is attracting us. We will come very close to that person, he might heat us up and share his idea with us but we will simultaneously start tracing a path of our own and get lost in space, i.e. we will not get lost but will continue the path that was predetermined for us by the Divine Powers. You may experience influences from different directions but you will always end up following your own path.

Therefore we are free on our path. Each one of you is free. This should not scare you. Somebody says: “I am going to fall”. No, do not have any fear! No matter how close you come to the Sun, it will not keep you. After all, the closer you come to the Sun, the faster you will move. Then you will enter your own path again and you will be free. There are other forces that take care of your path. Therefore the path that was predetermined for you by this Divine law is something that no one can take away from you. When you approach a certain Sun or a planet – Jupiter, Saturn – they may dislocate you slightly but these are small perturbations only. In effect nobody can divert you from your own path. There has been no occasion in the whole cosmos whereby a solar system has diverted another solar system from its path. They may exert a certain influence on each other but that is love – they complement each other. Sometime a given system will exert an influence on another one, some other time the latter will influence the former. That is stability. Therefore the path you are following, the path which makes you grow, is predetermined and nobody can divert you from your orbit.

However, in order to grow, you will have to experience different influences. Take the example of a planet that exerts an influence on the Sun just as the Sun does on the planet. That is necessary. Each being that moves has received an impulse from some higher being and follows a strictly defined path. On this path the being may approach or move away from many centres; it may even experience different influences by them but it cannot change direction. It has not received its impulse from the centres it meets on its path which is why it can’t stop there.

Let’s come back to the previous thought. You should know that the prototype of everything is inside you, what you see on the outside is just the copy. Therefore you shouldn’t love external objects as your own. What you have is inside you. When you lose it on the outside you should say: I have the original, I will find it inside myself. On the outside you can only enjoy it. We are only assuming all this. These are assumptions, mathematical probabilities, but whether this is indeed so or not has not been proven to you yet. You should know that each thought that has been expressed is not lost but remains written inside the person.

Let’s say that you love somebody. He only represents an opportunity for your love to be expressed. You should be thankful for that combination of things in the world which allows for your love to be expressed. For example, if there was no white canvass here, would the cinematographer have been able to imprint his images? Similarly you should be thankful that there is a living being that poses for you. It is passive. You will project your love onto him and it will talk to you about your love. When I love somebody I don’t know to what extent I love him. He will tell me how much I love him. Who do you mean? – The person inside, he will tell me how much I love him. That is because he exists simultaneously on the inside and on the outside. In this case, when you love somebody, you should be so calm and peaceful that it should be all the same to you whether he is with you or leaves for America. These connections stretch. Wherever he goes, be happy about that because he is simultaneously inside and outside of you.

I will use the following example to demonstrate to you the difference between physical and spiritual love. If a mother loves her child physically, if it decides to go for a walk, she will keep it with her, she won’t let it go and will say: “You can’t go out, something bad may happen to you”. A mother who loves her child spiritually, on the other hand, will let it go, will prepare its backpack and will be happy all day that it has gone on an excursion. She won’t think that something may happen to it. Therein lies the difference. Physical love always expects some mischief and misfortune and they do occur whereas spiritual love brings good fortune and beauty. If we love someone physically we are able to attribute the worst qualities to him whereas if we love him or her spiritually we would only attribute the most beautiful, the best qualities to them. For example physical love would say: “something may happen to him”, “he may lie”. Yes, but you are only guessing and your guess may or may not come true. If you love physically it will happen but if you love spiritually misfortunes won’t occur; only what is positive will materialize. Spiritual love is the right kind of love because nothing can change it. It is of Divine nature. That is why Paul says: “Love never thinks evil thoughts, Love never falters”. And so it is indeed.

I am asking you now to change your canvass, i.e. whatever images you have now, transfer them to another place because the new ideas cannot work on them. Bring new sheets! What I am telling you now should not be imprinted on your old sheets. You will take out new sheets and experiment with these things there. If you keep your old images and superimpose the new ones on them you will create a total mess. Let the images of your past remain but turn a new leaf and imprint your new ideas on it. Do your experiments on it.

I am thinking of doing a microscopic experiment. It will be done by two disciples. The experiment is as follows: one disciple will stick a needle in the other one’s hand to a depth of 1cm. He will stick it well enough so that the other one feels the pain and then take it out. The other one will tell him: “Keep going!” The one who is getting stabbed will try to overcome the pain and forget about it. He needs to feel as if no needle is being stuck in his hand. He should allow no thought in his mind that anything has happened to him at all but should maintain his inner peace and calm like a fakir and think of this later as some little game that he had played.

Not only should he forget about this experiment but when he remembers the incident he should be happy about the fact that a needle had been stuck in his hand to a depth of 1cm. This is a psychological experiment. Of course it will happen free willingly. We will choose two of you who are willing to do it. Not all of you will do this experiment. When sticking the needle you will be careful. We will try and see how the law works. Some blood will be spilled but the experiment has to be tried out. We will collect this blood on a very clean small piece of cloth; we will make a beautiful little box and put it there. Then we will note down the date of the experiment. This will be the first experiment on the great ideas. The class will preserve this box as something sacred. If the experiment turns out successful, we can use this blood to make other experiments too, and if it is unsuccessful then the blood won’t be as precious either.

I will end the topic now and continue with it some other time. I would like to clarify some issues before we start working with the knowledge you have gained in life in greater depth. You know a lot of things in theory but you need deep proper understanding of things.

You should now write down the following three rules that you need to apply:

1. When your heart starts cooling and becomes unable to embrace and incorporate other people’s freedom, extend the radius of your heart so that it includes people’s shortcomings. Continue the sacred journey of the heart towards the God of Love even throughout the greatest of misfortunes.

2. When your mind gets clouded so that you become unable to understand and accept certain truths, extend the radius of your mind. Keep the thought in your mind that everything needs to be as it is so that God of Eternity can express himself in the whole existing diversity. Find Him in everything. Continue the great journey of the mind towards Truth even throughout the biggest of contradictions.

3. When your will gets corrupted and turns into waywardness so that it stops doing good deeds, double the radius of your will. Accept free will as a gift of God and dedicate it to His service. Thus continue the powerful journey of the will so that Divine Grace can be revealed even throughout the biggest of evil.

 

 

 

Only the bright path of Wisdom leads to Truth!

It brings us constant joy!