1924_10_26 Nature and geometry

[Viktoriya]

Беседата на български

Translated by Victoria Koleva

 

 

 

NATURE AND GEOMETRY

Year 4, Lecture 2 of the Youth Occult Class (Special Class)

Given by the Master Beinsa Douno

On October 26, 1924, Sunday

 Sofia

 

 

 

 

Contemplation.

What is the most important thing about eating?

What is the most important thing in food?

Why do people need to eat? ( - In order to gain physical strength.) If that is so then machines gain additional strength when they are filled with oil. Why does a machine need strength? ( - In order to do some work.) Does the machine itself need this work? ( - No, it doesn’t.) A person who gains strength and doesn’t know how to use this strength is similar to a machine. Therefore each thought, act or word of yours, each feeling and each action in which consciousness does not participate is a mechanical process. Can this machine become bigger? Can it become stronger? No, it can’t. It remains as big and strong as it naturally is. Therefore in life a person is strong only when his consciousness is actively involved in manifesting his strength. Being intelligent and sensible is another manifestation of strength. There needs to be a manifestation of strength. Strength is only necessary for the intelligent forms of human self-expression. And this is necessary for your development because if you don’t impose certain maxims and norms on yourself which are true in nature, in a short amount of time you will lose the meaning of life and will go through all the suffering that ordinary people go through.

As disciples you will be subjected to a lot of trials. You cannot avoid this law of changes. If you want to lead an ordinary life, it won’t be any different to the life of animals. Do you think this donkey has no consciousness? It does, its consciousness is in the process of awakening too. And if you probe deeply into this donkey’s eyes you will see that great sorrow is hidden inside them. The donkey is sad, however nobody enters his sadness. The donkey notices this and says to itself: “I am finally on my own, I will carry my burden. What is the point of saying anything to these people who don’t understand me?”

Now you will develop an understanding of Living Nature and all the beings that live on earth which is different to the understanding that people have today. All these beings are conscious and are suffering but they are at different levels. They are all souls that have fallen behind, souls in stagnation. For example marsupials are souls which have fallen behind in their development, and so are birds. All existing animals are souls which are lagging behind. There will be human souls which are lagging behind too. They will be lagging behind souls from the white race just like similar souls from the black race exist. Someone from the black race who has fallen behind will find it very difficult to enter the white race. It is very difficult to transition from one race to another.  Special gaps and border lines have been created in nature for such souls.

I would like all of you to develop a more complete understanding of nature. Those of you who are into natural sciences, do you know which elements in the soil make plants grow bigger? Which elements stimulate growth according to modern science? ( - Potassium, sodium, nitrogen.) If there are less of these elements, what will growth be like? ( - It will be lower.) Ok, what is the reason why some soils contain more of these elements while others contain less of them? ( - There are soils of different origin.) If you create an agricultural field where a forest stands now, will the soil be more fertile, what do you think? How is this humus formed? It is formed by the twigs and leaves of this living matter. Therefore all these elements have been taken from the leaves and given to the soil; they have been stored in the soil by the plants themselves. The soil merely plays the role of a cellar or a basement but if taken separately each root, twig or leaf absorbs a certain amount of energy from the Sun through the air and transfers it to the soil. Only the surplus is stored in the soil. Plants develop more normally, they are unable to become overweight the way people do, and always leave their surplus down in the soil.

Thus I arrive at the following law: if you don’t work in the right way you will not be able to absorb the elements which are necessary for the spiritual world. As a result in the future your growth, your development will be abnormal. For example, sometimes your thought process doesn’t function properly. Why? If the elements that stimulate your mind aren’t there, how are you supposed to work? Imagine that you want to read. – Well, you don’t have any light. You want to write. – Well, you don’t have any paper or ink. You want to work but your fingers aren’t there, etc. In other words, some elements are missing. You need to know that life is closely connected both with the forces of nature and with your organs. To some extent you are able to prepare half of the elements necessary for your proper development and the other half comes from Mindful Nature itself. Whenever I say that we need to live sensibly I mean that we need to follow the laws that exist in nature and then they will grants us the materials that are necessary for life. Have you noticed sometimes that when you live a natural life then this phosphorous energy gathers inside you and your face gains a different expression? Some other time some of you have too much iron of a negative nature – kinetic rather than potential iron, slag, which you cannot use in life. This iron gives a different colour to your face.

That is why this year you will first learn filtration. This is because without filtration, as you are now, you wouldn’t be allowed in the school of Nature. You need purification because the intelligent forces that you need to come into contact with are pure and if you are impure they will trigger a strong reaction in your brain which will lead to discomfort, illness and pessimism. It is the same in the human world, everyone gets ill there – actors and artists alike. Whether you are in the Occult School or not, if you don’t follow the way of nature, the same will happen to you. Visible nature is God revealing himself to us. He is benevolent but very precise – he doesn’t pardon or forgive mistakes that haven’t been corrected. You may fill up a whole barrel with tears, still he will say to you: “You need to correct your mistake.” Some people say a mistake can be washed off by tears. No, it gets washed but it doesn’t go away.

Therefore the first thing you need now is filtration, purification, in order to acquire those elements that are necessary to build a powerful character, to manifest a bright mind and to create a noble heart. There is no other way. This is the right way of development. A lot of people are currently experiencing states which are abnormal. Some of you are having psychological fever; some of you have a weak stomach or a cold; others have weak nerves and are unable to withstand things. What are nerves made of? ( - Mainly phosphorus which gives them their sensitivity.) What distinguishes white from gray matter in the brain? ( - Gray matter contains cells whereas white matter is made up of  nerve filaments.)

Now, the first thing you need to do is to achieve the right mental disposition. What you call mental disposition is sometimes just a mood. Each one of you needs to try and achieve a proper mental disposition. It is created by appropriate thoughts. I am saying that in order to create the right mood or disposition, you need work. In other words, you create disposition through work, and work is something noble, it facilitates the building of disposition.

Now, there is something inside man that resists. It is hereditary. Millions of years ago when humans were going through the marsupial phase, all these animals were fruitarian. Nature was very rich back then. Pears and other fruit kept falling from the trees, the animals just sat there eating and became very lazy. This is what man experienced back then and now as human he remembers that and says to himself: “I could still live the way I lived in the past.” Turks have a similar saying now: “If it is my luck, it will come to my feet.” Well, this is an understanding that belongs to the past; it is how it was back then, but now, given the current conditions, humans need to work and to do so intelligently. Therefore they need to overcome those negative habits that they acquired in the past. All of you have such habits. These habits are animalistic. For example, sometimes you flare up, you want to get revenge on someone, or you say to yourself: “I feel like grabbing him and tearing him into pieces.” That is the disposition of a bear, a wolf or a lion and awakens now in you by habit. However you are neither a wolf, nor a bear, nor a tiger; you are now human. Therefore the animalistic impulse is embedded in your organism and given a small nudge will manifest itself. You have both the bear and the tiger inside you in miniature. However, if you give space to this microscopic bear, it can become very big – so big that it can take control over you and just one look at it will make you crouch before it and obey it.

Sometime you say: “It is impossible to live without anger.” However, these are animalistic states of a non-intelligent life, a life without continuity. Therefore, you should be able to tell the difference: there is an animalistic state in man and when it pops up, you should try to use its energy. It isn’t harmful but once these energies have piled up, they become the ground on which man lives. These animalistic states, or this animalistic soil, constitute the ground in which all social feelings have been planted. They grow on that ground. Personal feelings have been planted inside social feelings and moral feelings have been planted on top of the personal ones. Thus they help each other. Someone would say: “Why should I carry animalistic traits?” Of course you do. What is so bad about the beautiful plant that has been placed in the soil? People may feel disgusted by the soil but when the beautiful fruit ripens they pick it and use this finer material.

Therefore you should first study the law of the plants, these are the social feelings. The law of the animals represents personal feelings and the human himself represents moral feelings. Generally speaking, social feelings are represented by conscious plants which draw and transform the energy of the animal kingdom. There are also plants which are of a higher evolutionary rank than animals but they are in the other world. On earth animals are of a higher evolutionary rank than plants but plants in the spiritual world are of a higher rank than plants on earth. And then the link which exists in this internal law is as follows: one always needs to rely on what has been bestowed upon him, i.e. his nature. When I use the term “human nature” I include the Divine which is in him, God.

Here is a question: If you have written 10 volumes on different scientific topics and you make the effort to read these books all over again, will they make you smarter? Let’s say you have written in different scientific fields: physics, astronomy, natural science etc., if you read what you have written will you acquire anything new? What do you think? Or lets’ say a potter who has made thousands of pots and has made 10 different types of them, no matter how flawlessly he makes them, still, will they contain what a pot can hold inside? – No. That is why people on earth complement each other. If we take all these writers, they complement each other. When you read the writings of a certain author, he introduces a new idea to you because he looks into the topic from a different angle. Some other time he will introduce a different thought. That is why people read different authorities – because they gain strength and fill the gaps in their knowledge and because each person who writes brings something new to the same topic. That is why, given this great freedom you have, you should study living nature in ways that are embedded inside you; this will create harmony. Aren’t we trying to achieve harmony and an atmosphere of softness?

Sometimes it happens that a person can play an instrument and understand music very well but he can’t sing correctly. He may even correct other people’s mistakes but he can’t produce the right tone with his own larynx. Then we will say that such is the constitution of his larynx and his will cannot force him to produce the right tone with it. The opposite happens too: some people sing very well but can’t play. There are also those who can write very well and express themselves superbly in written form but if you ask them to give a speech they falter. What is the reason for this? They say that because some of the centers are better developed, they draw all the energy in, while the other centers remain less developed and this leads to such defects in self-expression. It is the same in music, it is necessary to have very well developed centers. That is because a musician can be just a performer or could be a musical creator, a composer. However in order for him to create something new he needs to have a lot of qualities: he needs to have imagination and in order to create this imagination the upper part of his forehead needs to be developed. There can be no musical creativity in a head like this one here. This forehead belongs to a Chinese head.

The top part of the forehead needs to be developed. Therefore, a broadening of the mind needs to happen in order for imagination to exist. The more the mind broadens, the stronger the imagination becomes. You may imagine anything. There is nothing wrong with that. Imagination can contain no sin. You may think that you are a king ruling over everything. You may think you are an angel abiding in the space above. There is nothing wrong about that. It is a journey. Journeying when you have nothing to do is no crime. What about the actor who gets paid to come to the stage, he wears his crown and thinks he is a king, I am asking you: is he a king? You will at least do this without getting paid and you will play the role to yourself, what about him? He gets paid and he performs for others, not for himself. It will be more shameful for him to think that he is a king.

Therefore, imagination is necessary. You are free in it. Of course imagination also has its laws and limits which you are allowed to reach but not exceed. Thus imagination has its sphere of operation, its limits. You may think that you will become very knowledgeable, that you are very powerful, beautiful, rich… and finally imagine that you use all this for the benefit of humanity. 

Let’s say that you are very poor and you haven’t eaten for three days. You enter your house and you think you have a beautiful home, you are a king who invents rules, releases prisoners and distributes bread to the poor… and all of this happens in your mind. You would say that these are illusions, wouldn’t you? However if these illusions are created with good intentions and are beneficial to your soul, they will be realized one day. And if you are able to think like this and maintain this state of mind after you haven’t eaten for 3 days, this means that you have quite a strong will, something can become of you.

Sometimes it is good to test your character like this, to put your endurance under a trial. For example, imagine that you are poor: your shoes are torn, so is your dress; you haven’t eaten for three days. You go out in the street and see a well-dressed lady: her dress has ribbons on it, her hat and shoes are new. At that moment you should feel happy for her, you should enjoy the fact that she has beautiful clothes, not feel a pang in your heart instead. This leads to an expansion of the heart, it shows character. All of you need this quality. That is because there can be no progress where envy exists. Competition is good but envy is a hindrance. You need competition in order to progress.

How do you call these shapes in geometry?

(- Rhombuses.) They represent movement on the physical plane. These are two physical beings which have a common point D. These beings ascend and descend using the lines. Can these beings have other common points? Yes, the can. If we extend A and A1 upwards and B and B1 downwards, they will have three common points. This figure represents one possible viewing angle of the tesseract. In a broader sense the tesseract is an extended or an expanded cube. It is not necessary for all of you to move in the same direction. Let’s assume that you are starting to develop a certain idea. You are in the centre D, you are in the process of development there and you form a small circle around yourself. However, if you start following the path of your development in the direction of A, A1, B or B1, you will make a circle around the globe, whereas if you stay in D the whole time you will understand the world from one side only.

Thus every idea that lives inside a person can survive and develop in many ways only under certain conditions, whereas if it stays within its own circle it can remain as potential only. When saying this, of course, I have your current level of development in mind. I don’t want you to take on more work than you are able to manage because there are certain ideas that not all of you can adopt. Not everyone’s mind is ready and all ideas need to come sequentially. However you need to become at least partially familiar with some of these ideas and apply them. Certain things are necessary for you – for example the feeling of generosity. One needs to be generous both in his mind and in his heart. There are people who are generous in their heart but miserly in their mind; others have a broad mind and a narrow heart.

Why do you call this shape a rhombus? What does rhombus mean? It is a Greek word. For next time please look up the meaning of this word in Greek.

The elements that mathematicians have put in geometry were taken from living nature. At the same time these are lines and shapes that exist within man as well. This is what living geometry is comprised of. The lines on a human face are drawn geometrically, they represent geometric data and we work on this data. These lines enable us to determine each person’s level of development. What are the lines that make up his face? Are the curves single- or double-centered? There are indeed lines with a dual focus. Such a person looks at things from two points of view. He doesn’t have a single centre and sees things sometimes in one way, sometimes in a different way. That is what the state of his mind is like. He says: “I used to think this way but now I think differently.” And so he keeps changing every day, moving from one extreme to the other and you can never find him in one place; it is as if he is standing on transitory ground.

People need a broad understanding of things. You need to learn to listen without criticizing each other. You should first learn how to determine if a thought is correct or not without attaching anything personal to it. What does it mean to attach something personal to a thought? We can assume that the person we are listening to has a certain tendency. This is harmful to us, we are harming ourselves. All we need to do is to determine whether the thought is correct or not. That is all! We need to determine also which aspects of the person’s thought are correct and which aren’t. We can also determine about ourselves in which respects we are right and in which respects we aren’t.

 Let’s assume something else now – that the lines start to stray from the right path. What conclusion will you make then? Imagine that A is a living being and has a specified path AC. However, with each movement this being makes a certain deviation: AC, Ah, Ah1, Ah2, Ah3… What does this mean? It will change the side of the rhombus. One of the sides will be extended and we will say that there were external reasons which influenced this being and made it change its path. You will notice such lines of deviation on the human face.

Furthermore, human eyes are not symmetric. If you look more closely you will notice that one of the eyes is bigger than the other. Each change that occurs on your face has its reasons. For example, if you strengthen your compassion, if it becomes a guiding stimulus in you, the vertices of this rhombus will merge and form a regular curve O. This drawing represents the human face.

The two rhombuses are the right and left side of the face. Thus in this case the top part of the face grows into O. The same happens when the imagination is developed. If you develop your sensitivity, your nose will change – its lower part will become wider. If you become very stingy your nose will become narrow. When the feelings are well developed the respiratory system becomes more active and the nose develops. When the feelings aren’t well developed, on the other hand, the respiratory system is less active and the nose flattens. All people with narrow chests have narrow nostrils as well.

 

Some people’s noses are a straight line – English people call it a snub nose. Other people’s noses can be curved (a), hooked downwards (b) or upwards (c). These are all just examples of a deviation of the energies in the human organism. For example, at some point somebody developed an excessive interest in other people’s business and this made his nose turn upwards. This habit comes from the animals. When man was still an animal he used to go around and sniff at everything and all of this energy that gathered in the nose lifted it upwards. This is what has happened to people who are very curious. When you have something to say to such a person he will go around you for days on end and will keep asking you questions. Once you tell him what he wants he will think he has learnt a lot. There is the other extreme too – people who are overly open – and they have a curved nose. Pessimists have a nose which is hooked downwards.

You need to know the following: all the energies that express themselves as a certain quality in a person also have an influence on certain parts of the face and always leave their imprint on them. If this energy is harmonious it will generate a harmonious facial feature; if it is disharmonious it will draw a disharmonious line on your face. You cannot avoid this. And once this energy leaves an imprint on your face, this change will be reflected in your brain as well. This line will stimulate certain forces and certain elements will be attracted which are sometime useful for your development but sometimes they are highly disharmonious and bring poison into your life. Thus all lines – both sensible and non-sensible ones – follow certain geometric forms. All harmonious forces of the good follow the most flawless lines in geometry. The lines of evil belong to the disharmonious lines in geometry. That is why you should first of all strive towards having harmonious thoughts, feelings and actions. You will go in and say to yourself: “My thinking needs to be straight!” What does this mean? The straight line is the smallest unit that can be used to measure anything. Then you will say the following:

My thinking needs to be straight!

My feelings need to be straight!

My actions need to be straight!

You should always say this to yourself.

I need to be straight and all my manifestations need to be straight!

Negative traits should remain something foreign to you, something that has simply been inherited, something atavistic. There are a lot of defects of the past which repeat themselves periodically. You are not acquiring them now. You are on earth at the end of your evolutionary process and you need to rectify all the forms in which you have made mistakes. What is ahead of you is a great task of creating your character and learning to think straight. You shouldn’t believe that you can think whatever you want. No, one shouldn’t think in whatever way he wants to. You need to think in ways you don’t want to! That is the right thing for you given your current development: to think in ways you don’t want to think! You say to yourself: “I don’t want to study, I don’t enjoy it.” However, you need to learn your lesson. Then, namely, you will be acting according to what is right – you will be studying without wanting to. Some other time you don’t want to do something good whereas you should do it. Then you will do it without wanting to.

Therefore, whenever we do what we don’t want to do, we are on the right path. Now, where is the contradiction in this thought? Doing what you don’t want to – this means that there is a being in you that doesn’t want something and a higher being that wants to impose that something on the lower being. Then you will reject the request of the lower being and will impose on it what it doesn’t want while following all the rules of the art of friendship.

Contemplation.

You will have a new greeting. I will say to you:

“Love begets the Good.”

You will respond as follows:

“The Good brings us life, light and freedom.”

You will use the words “us” in general but when you use this formula for yourself you should say: “The Good brings me life, light and freedom.” We mean the Divine good, the Divine blessing.