Jackline Spasova-Bobeva Posted December 30, 2013 Report Share Posted December 30, 2013 The Book - The Spirit and The Flesh. Beinsa Douno Translation from Bulgarian - Vessela Nestorova THE MASTERS But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.11 Christ views these words somewhat differently than society. From a purely organic view, there are several institutions in the world which are Divine. One of them consists of the father and the mother—it is the home. This is the first institution on earth. There is no nobler and brighter institution than the home, as there is no higher rank than that of father and mother. Actually there are many fathers and mothers on earth, but in reality they behave as step-mothers and stepfathers. The father and mother play an important role in the organic world, for through their blood they impart the qualities of their souls to their children. The education of the children is conditioned by the qualities the mother imparts to the child at his or her earlier age. By the word blood I do not mean the ordinary blood, but that which remains changeless under all conditions of life. Now I shall not stop to explain the difference between these two kinds of blood, but I can tell you only that this blood is not of a temporary, changeful type; it is like the attar of roses which comes to the surface of rose water and which has real value. The noble germs which the mother deposits in the blood of the child, are a valuable essence which further on spreads and emits fragrance among those around. If this essence is not deposited on time, nothing can be sown in the child later. What people today call upbringing,, is nothing but training, or taming. In the real upbringing achieved by the mother, the process is effected in the root, where the mind and the heart are transformed and undergo different changes for the better. The taming leaves only an external polish. You may train a monkey or a pigeon, but the moment you put them in their natural conditions, they will start living their previous life. In the United States of America the government has made the following experiment: large sums of money were granted for the education of Native Indians, some of whom graduated from different colleges and universities. However, as soon as they returned to their tribe, they forgot what they had learned and became pagan as before. Only if any of them were converted to Christianity and adopted it, a certain change took place. In the spiritual life of a person, the Master's task resembles that of the mother. To be a Master is to give birth to a person. Christ does not say, "Do not teach," but He says, "Do not take the post of a Master, if you are not ready for it," which means not to become a mother who is sick, because such a mother will give birth to a sickly child. If a mother has certain organic, mental or psychic weaknesses; the child will not make an exception, she or he will be like her. Can teachers today teach their students how to combine, for instance oxygen and hydrogen, if they themselves do not know the properties of these elements? Such teachers can make a number of experiments; however, if they do not know the properties of a chemical element, it will not obey them, since they are not its master. Others may know many things about the rotation of the celestial bodies in space, but if you should ask them to calculate this movement mathematically with the exactness of one meter, not with thousands of meters and kilometers, they will not be able to do it. Everyone can make such calculations, but they will not be exact. If the difference is only some centimeters, I can understand that, but when it is kilometers, it is out of the question. These are hypotheses and suppositions only. You often say, "Why did not things happen as we thought?" Who is to blame that you make wrong calculations? All people make mistakes. You want to build a house for which reason you call an architect to draw a plan and to calculate how much and what materials are necessary. Then you buy these materials—stones, beams, iron bars, nails, sand, lime and so on—but if you do not make exact combinations of them, your house will be torn down and you will remain under its ruins. Now I shall explain my thought with an anecdote out of Bulgarian life. This happened a long time ago, around the beginning of the liberation from the Turkish yoke. A young Bulgarian man from the southern parts of the Balkan Peninsula, around the town of Salonika, went with his father to learn gardening. He became 20 years of age, but still he could not make any money out of his job. Finally he decided to take some handicraft which would suit him. He went as an apprentice to a tailor and thought he would only sit there and tack—an easy thing to do. After a week a Turkish bey12 came to the shop and invited the tailor to sew for him a pair of full-bottomed trousers at his home. However, the tailor was not quite well, so he decided to send his apprentice who had already worked for a week at his shop, saying to him, "You go now and I shall come after you." The apprentice went with the bey and waited for an hour or two for his master to come, but he did not turn up. Then the bey turned to the apprentice, saying, "As I see you are a grown-up man, you must surely know this handicraft. Can you cut out a pair of trousers for me?" "I can." The bey brought a big bale of broad cloth and said, "I want you to cut out for me a pair of large full-bottomed pants." The apprentice started turning the cloth this way and that, cutting out what he thought might look like pants, but nothing came out of it. The bey, seeing that what the apprentice was cutting out did not look like such trousers, said to him, "This will not do for trousers, but cut out a doublet for me." The apprentice started to take measures and cut out a doublet, but again nothing came out of it. When the Turkish bey saw that he cannot cut a doublet, he said, "Well then, cut out at least a tobacco purse, if you cannot do that, I shall thrash you." The same way many of you, after staying with a master for a week, take the scissors and the measuring tape and, like this young Bulgarian man start cutting out—they become teachers. Christ says, "Do not become such teachers." In order to be a teacher, one should have positive knowledge and a way of understanding things without any exceptions. To heal and at the same time to kill by a certain means does not imply the possession of positive knowledge. If you make an operation with a knife to cut out the sick part of a person and cut a person's throat with the same knife, you cannot say that you have made proper use of that knife. In the second case you are committing a crime. Some will say, "We have not done such a thing." I know many teachers who have cut the throats of their students. They have cut the legs, the arms, the ears of quite a number of them. I understand cutting in the moral sense of the word. God has not appointed those teachers, they are self- proclaimed. In every church there are such teachers, who have stayed like that Bulgarian man only one week in school and have gone out to preach. Now, what must we understand by the word master? This word has a relation to the spiritual world. Teaching does not consist in telling people how to build churches, sow flowers, vegetables and so on. Teaching in the right sense of the word, is an act of supreme self-consciousness, a purely spiritual process; the teacher and the student must be fully conscious of the task they have to fulfill; a complete interchange must be effected between them such as exists between a mother and her child; the teacher should impart certain truths to the student who must apply them properly. To explain my thoughts I shall give you an example. An Englishman often went to India on hunting trips. One day as he was walking along a path, he felt a strong blow on his left arm by a tigress. She had aimed only at breaking his left arm so that he could not shoot with the gun hanging over his right arm. She carried him to the den to her little ones, then putting him on the ground and pressing down his head, she said, "Now you must lie still, because I shall teach my little ones." She tried to make her cubs choke him, but they jumped around him and were afraid to get very close to him. At one time the hunter tried to raise his head and see what was going on around him. But the tigress pressed his head again repeating, "I told you to lie still, for I am teaching my little ones." As you see the tigress was a teacher. The hunter was saved one way or another, but he said he felt worse when the tigress pressed his head so her cubs could choke him. I say, everybody can tear down, but teaching requires a person who can teach people to build in their mind and heart and who understands the deep sense of the elements which renew and build a new abode, a spiritual body by means of which, according to the Scripture, they will rise. God is waiting for this body to be built. How are children born? They must be born the ninth month in order to live. In certain cases they might be born the seventh month, but by no means any month the mother wants. Such is the Law—the nine-month period must be fulfilled for the formation of the body. How does this formation begin? First, the extremities are shaped—the legs and the arms, then the brain, the stomach and finally the lungs. As soon as the lungs are formed, breathing begins and if the child is not born right after that, it may die. Thus, Nature creates first the limbs—the legs and arms, then the lungs. In the same way the higher organs are formed in you. The human spirit studies also in the womb of the mother, it is not in a dormant state, but works with the spirit of the mother, so both work for the creation of the body. By the same Law the master and the disciple must work simultaneously but with the help of the Spirit. That is why Christ says, "One is your Master." Why do people love Christ? Because He has given something to the world. "I gave abundant life to those who did not have it." Many want to become teachers. I ask, what are you ready to give to that person you want to teach? If you have taught some who have become worse, I understand that you have not taught them anything. In the churches among the Christians today there is a big weakness to teach others. This aspiration is not bad, but one should know the Laws of teaching. The state Laws require of people to pass certain examinations before a committee, before they are appointed teachers officially. In the spiritual world it is the same. You should wait for the visitation of the Divine Spirit, Who will direct you. Those who have not had the visitation of God's Spirit have no right to be a master, because they will violate the Divine Law. When we perceive the deep sense of these words of Christ which have an inner and external expression (now I am speaking of inner Christianity which can connect us with all regions of the invisible world) then we shall understand the sense of teaching. If you want to be a teacher you will be asked the first thing, "Where have you studied? Which school have you graduated from?" "But I have read the Bible." "That is not enough." "I know the Christian faith." "That is not enough." "I belong to this or that church." "Have you studied in heaven in that high institution where the angels study? Do you understand the inner Laws of Nature, how a person is organized, their mind, heart, or what the relation of the soul is to their spirit? "I have read these things." What have you understood? That the soul is an abstract idea, an idea of combination. "A combination of what?" The human mind is a combination of abilities. How are these things combined? This person thinks that they know something. No, the soul is not the kind of combination as you think, my friend. It is actually a combination but not of separate parts. Because of the darkness in you, you speak so incoherently of the mind and the heart, not knowing the place of the heart and of the mind. The heart has three places—one is physical and you know that place. But where is the heart of your feelings and of your mind? You meet somebody and say that person is bad. Why are they bad? Years ago in the USA a buffalo went mad and frightened all the people around. Some wanted to kill it, but a boy who could read the thoughts of the animals was found. When they called him, the boy put his hand on the head of the buffalo and asked it, "What is the matter?" "A thorn is stuck in my back foot and tortures me." The people pulled the thorn out and the buffalo became calm. In the same way a person sometimes becomes mad and people begin to pour cold water on him or her. I say, in the back of your foot there is a thorn, pull the thorn out and the matter will be settled, there is no need of cold water. How funny the learned people are—professors, doctors—when they speak how the human brain is harmed and make the diagnosis: this person has such and such illness and must have an operation. I do not see anything else but some heating of the brain. About four or five months ago people came to tell me that a doctor's son had a running nose which later gave him complications as puss in the brain and had to be operated on. I told them not to allow him to be operated by any means. If they made a brain operation the certainty of the child's death was 99 %, otherwise he would be healed. They made the operation and the son died. Of course for the doctors the operation was "successful." I say, people make operations in regard to the spiritual as well—they cut certain parts to be healed, but this is no healing. People say that to correct a person, you must call them all kinds of bad names—thief, scoundrel. No, this must not be done. People should not be beaten as they were in the past. Do you think that when these harsh sounds enter a person's ear, you will change him or her? Not in the least. The Law is different. In order to educate a person, you must first educate yourself. If you are bad, all those around you are bad. When a mother conceives a child and starts to get nervous and gossip, I can foretell the kind of child she will bear, I can describe exactly the character and fate of this child. A mother who frets nervously should not think that the child she will bear will be a saint and look after her in her old age. One day this child will have revenge on the mother and say to her it were better she had not born him or her. The same way the disciples will say to their teacher, "It would have been better if you had not taught me." The teacher, in the full sense of the word, should be pure as crystal water, she should be a model in everything; there must not be even any shadow of wavering, double-mindedness or lack of faith. By giving these instructions Christ wants to point out to people the great danger they are exposed to and the great responsibility they assume before Him, if they cripple any souls. Every mother, every teacher who do not know how to bring up children and educate, will be punished. Contemporary people have vague and wrong ideas of God's Laws, of heaven and of the angels. In fact they have no conception of these Laws and of heaven. In the first place, heaven is wisely organized and knows what to do. Between the angels and people there are such interrelations as exist between people, plants and animals. Since you do not know how to teach, you goad the animal that ploughs your field 40-50 times and, by doing that, you think you are fulfilling your duty. God says, "Some day I shall teach you how oxen are driven and how a field is ploughed." Some think that God cannot degrade them, cannot turn them back. I say, if He has turned some angels into snakes and horned animals, He can also put people in a condition of having horns and hoofs. He can turn them into angels, or into devils. He can change the human form. Since forms are of great importance in the world—they regulate our life—we must pay special attention to them. If someone should build you an unsanitary house, without any window to the south, but only to the north, and build it deep in the Earth, do you know how you will feel after living in it for six or seven years? A host of doctors will have to visit your house. The same applies for those teachers who say that you must not have windows in the spiritual world. These teachers are first class liars. In a spiritual sense the Sun is the origin of life. I would even say that your roofs should be made of glass so that the Sunlight should enter from above. If your houses were sunlit, your forms would change and you would become very beautiful. I can put to an experiment what I am preaching to you, but you also can make an experiment and see what the results will be in four or five years. I am not teaching you to run away from life. The world is very good and people are good, but according to my opinion, I find that people have a thorn in their heels. Even the Apostle Paul says that this is so and prays to God to pull his thorn out. This thorn may be in another place, but it is usually found in the heel, because we are grounded on this earth by our feet. You must try to take this thorn out scientifically because Christianity in my view is a deep science. A young woman wants to marry. She chooses a young man of a nice appearance—a handsome man. She asks, "Can he feed me?" Yes, he can for he has a monthly salary of four or five hundred leva. "What has he studied?" Such and such science. "Well then." Yes, but these things are not essential, this man may be dismissed on the morrow and his money will vanish. If the woman understands this, she must get informed and observe like clairvoyant this heart and mind, to enter his house and see the rooms, his library, see how his books are arranged, then she should see his kitchen and visit the garden of his love, of his compassion, of his justice, see what flowers he has planted and if all this is in order, only then can she say, "Well, I shall marry this man." This is real marriage. The man must do the same. Men and women of today want to exchange their state and discuss the problem who should be man and who a woman; why God has made woman this way, but man a different way. What is wrong with this? In the far past both men and women could bear, but in consequence man lost the ability to bear and this was left only to woman to do. The Bible says, "Abraham bore Isaac." It does not say there that Sarah gave birth. When man gave birth, the world was in an excellent state, but when he stopped bearing, the world went bad. Man must bear and be a good teacher. The mother may bear a child and deposit all the best and noblest qualities in his or her soul, but if the teacher does not cultivate these noble qualities, nothing good can come out of that. Therefore it is necessary for the teacher to give birth. The teacher must not be like that priest who baptized children and they all died. Why? He baptized them when he was not in a fully normal state. He would put the child in the water of the basin and would keep it there longer than necessary, then the child would die. He would say, "Give me another child, this one cannot be baptized." When you baptize as teachers, your mind should be in its place. Baptizing implies depositing the Divine Spirit in the child you are teaching. As a teacher the priest should know the Divine Laws. "But this is what the church says." To baptize a child in water is not baptism yet. Contemporary priests, teachers and judges are professionals working for money, for a pay. According to the true Teaching of Christ, these people are not servants of God, but ordinary workers. The first thing a spiritual teacher should do is to reveal to the student the invisible world, as a mother who conceives must say to the child, "Wait for nine months, if you want me to lead you into a new world, and show you its wonders. By that time you must not move and jump". After nine months when she bears the child, she becomes its first teacher. Later on other teachers will take up the education of that child. They will start from the point which the mother has reached. She leaves her work because the child enters a new region where she or he must have a new teacher. This is what the Scripture means by "a man must be born again." By this sermon I want to make you think about yourselves and not to aspire to be teachers. Why? Because a person suffers of great ignorance. Sit like the merchants to see what funds your inner cash-box disposes of, whether you have an acquaintance in heaven, or if you have sent someone there a letter. You say, "We believe in Christ." Do you know Him? Do you know Paul? Do you know Peter? The church says that we can have no communication with the other world, that it is a sinful thing to do. This is great ignorance. To have communication with the spirits of hell is permissible, but it is sinful to do that with heaven! What an idea! To be in communication with the devil is right, but to be in communication with the saints and talk with them is wrong for it disturbs them! Then why do you disturb the devil? What kind of logic is this? This is a teaching which does not rest on any Laws. As far as I know the first Christians had direct contact with heaven. They had talked with God and the saints that is why they died with such readiness and self-sacrificing spirit. They were not like the present people who say, "Let me die then I shall see it all." When you die you will not see anything. What will you see when a house is torn down and you are buried under it? You will not see anything, but you will wait for people to dig you out of the debris. Christ describes to his disciples the false teachers. Dressed in long robes and wide sleeves, these preached to people, but in reality they had deceived them for which He blamed them. The same thing applies to our times. If Christ should come today, He would say the same thing. He has not changed His mind. Christ is silent, but when He begins to speak and says the Truth, you will be touched so deeply that it will hurt. He will raise the curtain and you will see all delusions. I shall give you two examples out of Greek history. Two sculptors started a competition to prove which one of them was better. One of them made a bunch of grapes which looked just like natural grapes and the birds flew down to peck them. The other sculptured the statue of a beautiful woman and threw a stone veil over her so artistically that the first artist said, "Raise the veil, so I can see the statue!" Thus, the first sculptor deceived the birds, but the second one—a man. I ask you, whom do you want to imitate—the first, or the second? I would prefer the second. You want to appropriate the whole world, but how can you appropriate it without the necessary knowledge for doing that? Knowledge must rest on a spiritual basis. In the spiritual world knowledge is like the steam in a kettle. It has great power. In the spiritual world knowledge is in the same relation to a person as the physical forces. You walk along the streets on Sofia and you see trams, moving here and there, but how is that done? By the help of a rod—an electric current collector. If it drops from the electric wire—the transmitter of electricity—the tram stops at once. Therefore, there must be a certain contact by means of which the tram moves. Have your teachers put the trolley on the wire, have they connected you with the electricity? The mechanism of the human tram may be excellent, but if it is not in contact with the energy, there is no motion in it. In order that your thoughts may act as a moving power, you must contact the spiritual world. Certain abilities are required for this. By the word ability, I understand the form in which certain spiritual power is limited. When the form is spoiled or disjointed, the power may not be manifested anymore. In the central part of the human brain there are regions in which certain abilities are deposited. These abilities are connected with the powers of the spiritual world and are operating. If your trolley is out of place, these forces do not operate. Besides, certain other conditions are required—rails and a tram-driver who understands his or her work. Therefore, many combinations are necessary. And you, as masters, must often make the rounds in your state13 to see if all the workers are in their place and how they are doing their work. You often find fault with the governing body that they are not ruling well. I ask, how is your own government? You call this or that person unwise, but what are you inside? Your judgements on life will be true to the extent you are inwardly right. We say about a person that they are good. In what does their goodness lie? They are polite with you and good to you. No, this does not mean goodness in the least. The day that person is impolite with you, you will call them bad. The good person is always good and the bad person is always bad. Such a one cannot be a saint one day and a rascal on the other. This is unthinkable! You say that the bad person can repent, but do you know how many thousands of years are necessary for that? Does a new-born child become a professor at once? The baby must study at least twelve years before his or her consciousness gradually starts to develop. When the inner spiritual world is well-investigated, then the Laws of Christianity will be understood. Its purpose is to set families right, to create harmony between man and woman, brother and sister, master and servant. People of today do not suffer from the fact that at times they must be a servant, but from the fact that they don't know how to be masters. Dr Mirkovitch, a friend of ours, used to say, "A second time I do not wish to be rich, but to be a servant of some good master." You want to be masters, to have millions, but then you will be the most unhappy people—prisoners in the confines of your money. A million leva on your back is a big burden. You call the rich people lucky and want to deprive them of their burden by putting it on your back. This is a wrong teaching. Would you be compared to that ass carrying icons on its back? When everybody bowed to the icons, it began to kick thinking people were bowing to it. Therefore, if people respect and admire you, that is for the crosses and icons you are carrying. What are these crosses? The virtues. Thank God for putting them on your back. Christ addresses His disciples with the words, "Be not ye called Rabbi." You will say about someone, "I turned her to God." You have done well. If you have taught that person to do good, God will bless you, but if you have crippled her, if you have distorted her mind and heart, what will God say? There will be judgement in heaven—you will be held responsible. How many people have you crippled in this world! Your flock will appear in the other world—some lame, some with sprained arms—they will all tell God what teachers you have been. That will be the actual state of things. Then God will say, "I will fine this teacher ten thousand talents; shut him in prison until he pays the fine." God means what He says. He is kind, good, just, but also serious and strict. He will take hold of the self- appointed teachers, fine them ten thousand talents and add, "Shut them in prison, so they will learn how to teach." And when they have paid their debt, they will become learned and good teachers. Do you know how many years will have passed by that time? This is the way the fallen angels and people are studying now. Now we say that the church does not go well, we want to give it a good example. If this is so, I want you to have the power to change things. Moses took the rod and it turned into a snake. When he took the snake by the tail, it turned into a rod again. You will say, "Well, but that was Moses!" So what? Moses studied with the greatest teachers in Egypt. He was not an unwise man, because God never chooses foolish people as leaders of humanity, or of a nation. Moses had studied for a long time and had passed certain schooling. See how many wonders he performed in front of the Pharaoh! Moses had two wishes: to become a teacher and a savior of the Jewish people. At first he thought that this work was not for him and went into the wilderness where he spent 4o years feeding sheep, in order to expiate for the sin of killing the Egyptian. Do you know what he did in the wilderness? He devoted himself to deep meditations, since he was initiated in all the mysteries of Egypt. For one crime of killing a man, he had to study whole forty years. And during this time he passed a second initiation. I ask, how many years have you fed sheep? Being a shepherd is a great thing. It means being a teacher. Have you come to know your Master? Two thousand years ago your mother, father and grandfather were Christians, but did they know Christ? If you know Him, give the password He has given you. The military people do the same. To admit someone, they should know the password. What is your password, your slogan? The learned people must have some slogan; what is your slogan? "To serve Christ." How do you serve Him? By studying. How will you study? Are you friends of the school? To walk around the school on the outside is one thing, but to be inside the school is quite another thing. Where are your school notebooks, your school certificates? You have no certificates, but you want to be teachers! The same applies to some priests and bishops—they have no certificates either. By living in such delusions you want the Kingdom of God to come to earth! The Kingdom of God is coming now and reveals all the muddy things of humanity! Contemporary nations want to defend their cause by war. Defend the Justice of God's Kingdom! Every nation must have as much land as it deserves. The same thing applies to every person. Now ask yourselves earnestly: Do you know Christ? I do not want your answer now, if you can give it up to one year, it will be a blessing for you. You may say, "We saw Christ." Paul saw Him and heard His voice, "Saul, Saul why do you persecute me?" He said, "Who are you, Lord?" Have you heard your Master? When you raise a dispute or a scandal in the temple of God, do you not persecute Christ like Saul? Then Christ will say to you, as He did to Paul, "Saul, Saul why do you persecute me? It is not easy to kick against the pricks." Paul realized his mistake and God said to him, since you did this in your ignorance, I shall send you to the pagans to learn your lesson." There he received three times 39 blows on his back. This is the way God beats only those who are of mature age. He never beats the children, only those who are thirty-three years old—the age of Christ. After you receive thirty-nine blows, you will rise. You must endure these blows. When a blacksmith wants to make a knife, or some other instrument, he also uses blows. You are on the anvil and God is forging you. In reality, He does not beat you, but says, "I want to make a knife out of this material, or a plough or a pen." If you are a bad person, He will make a knife out of you to kill the bad people, but if you are good, He will make a pen out of you that some writer may hold you in their hand. The pen a writer is writing with has greater intelligence than the plough by which people plough the Earth. You will say that there is no intelligence in iron. Yes, but it also gets tired. Take a shaving knife, for instance after it is sharpened, it works, but after some work, it also gets tired, i.e. it gets blunt. Everything gets tired. An Englishman, after some observation, noticed that the machines also get tired— everything in the world gets tired. When a machine gets exhausted, it begins to emit a special sound and the machine operator says, "The machine must rest!" In people also, according to the same Law, the same reaction takes place—they get weary and want to rest for at least a week, after which they can start work again. Everything requires its time for work and for rest. Notice how plants develop, how caterpillars are hatched and you will understand the Law. Your thought may have the form of a caterpillar or of a butterfly. In order to succeed in life a person should only have one idea. This is partly true and partly untrue. One may have more ideas as well, but these ideas must be noble. People put blinkers on the side of the horses' eyes that they should look only forward and not be frightened by side influences. In this sense it is good for one to have such blinkers, i.e. to be looking forward to a single idea, but to a noble one. If you cannot have many noble ideas, have at least one and let it be your target, which can uplift and save you. You say, "Christ saved us." He did not only save us, but what is more, He atoned for our sins. Atonement has its bad side, however. Why? Because when an evil person wants to take advantage of the benefits given them, they can always draw a wrong conclusion about things. This is why knowledge should not be entrusted into the hands of ignorant people. When I say this, I have reincarnation in view. It contains a great danger for those who interpret it in the wrong way. For instance, a caterpillar, which has about a hundred legs and creeps on the trees, may say, "I do not need a philosophy and a green leaf is enough for me." However, one day it makes a cocoon and hides in it; after some time it comes out as a butterfly and says, "Now I do not need any leaves, I need flowers to suck their nectar and fragrance." Therefore, in order to enter the spiritual world, you should take off the skin you are covered by like caterpillars. In case you do not take it off, in the spiritual world you will occupy the space of a single leaf and you will understand that world as much as a caterpillar does. I want you to enter the spiritual world, but I ask you, "Are you hatched?" When you enter the spiritual world, you will understand the meaning of the ox, the ass, the wolf, the dove, the fox, and so on. A great idea is deposited in every form, existing in the physical world, and those who make out this idea will understand the meaning of things in the world. You wonder why the wolf has sharp teeth, but that does not mean anything— they are in place. The porcupine has prickles, but they were created only for strategic purposes—so it defends itself from the snake, or from some other creature that wants to harm it. It takes the snake by the tail and starts eating it slowly, until it is all swallowed up during which time it protects itself by its prickles. After some time the porcupine will change too. You may ask how it will be changed. Do you know your form in the spiritual world? In the Bible there is a verse in which God calls Jacob a worm. You will say it is used in a figurative sense. Christ on His part calls his followers sheep. Do you know what the word sheep means? The sheep represent all those souls in whom the spirits live and as the sheep in this world provide us with milk and wool, by the same Law, the souls provide a person with the necessary milk and wool. Try this Teaching! Why are you in this world? Put your mind to action. The first thing you must learn is to cast out all doubt from your mind so that you can make contact with the spiritual world. If you can project your mind, your friends will come to your aid immediately. What is your heart? If you make it very hot, you will be able to bake on it any thought you want. If your heart does not have the necessary beat, it will fail of itself. It depends on the heart how you can send your petition, or your prayer. Someone says, "I prayed." Yes, but I see that your prayer has remained some forty centimeters above your head. You will pray five, ten, or a hundred times from the depth of your heart, until you succeed in sending your petition to God. And when it comes into His ears, He will answer you. How can He answer a petition which has not reached Him? When you pray, you must be so concentrated that you should forget everything around yourself; you must rise in your thought so high that nothing should engage it except your prayer. I ask you, is the hearth of your heart and your mind so hot that they may send the prayers up high? "But there are naughty children around me." That does not matter—God has sent them to the Earth to be taught good behavior, since they had not lived peacefully in heaven, they were degraded.14 God does not want people to make noise in heaven. On the Earth they will learn to plough, to dig to make shoes and after a time, when they learn their lesson, they may become even royal sons and daughters. Before you enter heaven, you will pass before an examining committee which will ask you what your feelings and ideas are, what is your compassion, your love for your fellows, for God and a number of other questions. Christ is already coming to earth. The books of life will be opened and people will be judged. The verdict will determine whether they deserve to pass to an upper class, i.e. to enter heaven. Everyone will be given what they are worthy of. Christ turns to you also and says, "One is your Master." Who is He? Christ. I want all of you to remember this Master, Who came two thousand years ago to redeem you from your sins. And you are still looking for Him! Has Christ written down His name in your soul, in your heart at least once? If He has, you are blessed; but if He has not, try to meet Him and ask Him to write down His name. And when He writes it down, do not blow a trumpet and boast about it saying, "Christ signed His name in our notebook." No, this is not necessary for the Earth, but for heaven. When you go there, the angels will stop you and say, "Take out your notebook!" If the Lord has put His signature in it, they will say, "You are free to enter." Then Christ, the saints and your older and younger siblings will meet you with palm branches. Great will be their joy that you have gone to them. In the Pythagorean school there was a rule that every new disciple should pass through the test of mockery the first year and those who endured the mockery were admitted as disciples. Christ also has sent people to earth to mock you, saying, "This person wants to become a saint—they are off their mind; they are somewhat crazy," and so on. This is the system of Pythagoras for admitting disciples. If you can endure these mockeries, know that you have passed the test. Only in this way will you be accepted as disciple. However, if the attacks make you flare up and say, "Are you going to mock me? I shall show you who I am!"—that is the end of you! "My husband is bad." How do you know that he is not placed there by the commission on purpose, to test you? Endure a year, pass the test and then God will say to your husband, "You must no longer mock and obstruct your wife." Much time will not pass until he becomes soft as a lamb. When? When you have endured all. I am speaking about the outer side of Christ's Teaching. I am giving you these thoughts to help you distinguish the false things from the noble ones. When the Teaching of Christ enters you, it will raise you and you will begin to know people and see their souls. Two people meet and start talking, "I am a Christian. Do you believe in Christ?" If you are Christians, you need not ask each other about it. The mere asking of this question shows that there is not any Christianity in this person. I need not ask what a flower is; if I smell it I shall know whether it is a rose or a carnation. My nose is in its place. If your sense of smell is dull or paralyzed, or if you are blind and you cannot see, you may ask then. But if all you senses are sound, it is enough for you to smell or to see a flower and tell what it is. The same way every soul expresses itself outwardly by its acts. I see many of you as carnations that are in bud yet. These buds promise a blossoming in the future. I do not want you only to blossom, but to go to seed and to ripen as well. The angels will come to you as bees and fructify the blossoms in your soul. If you blossomed up, you will be in contact with them. This is a deep science and how many more things you have to study! Not a single, but ten lectures at least are necessary for me to tell you all about these things. They are very tiring and you will say in the end that they are not interesting and will fall asleep. You are right, for you are not yet ready for this knowledge. A time will come when you will be ready. If you eat too much honey and overeat, you will be fed up with it. Why? Because you will be satiated with it. You are friends with a good person, constantly drawing (knowledge and inspiration) from them, but all of a sudden you say, "Away with this person, I cannot bear to see them any longer!" Why? You have overeaten. You should have been given less honey and stayed friends with this person such a long time as would be pleasant to you. The same way you should not give a dish-full of honey to a person, but a spoonful so that they will not overeat. A Bulgarian proverb says, "It is too much of a good thing" or "being too saintly is not pleasant to God either." You read the same book until you get tired of it. Read a single verse instead and stop on it in meditation. You read, "God is Love"—start thinking in what way God is Love and try to feel this Love in yourself. It must not be as when we eat an apple, or the cat eats up a mouse. For me, to love you means to enter you and for you to love me is to enter me. What do you do with your loved friend? You take their picture and put it at a prominent place. I say, a person's heart represents the astral world, their mind—the spiritual world. If you raise your mind to a certain height—that is the spiritual world. What takes place in the brain is a reflection of the spiritual world. Every noble thought is a form in the spiritual world. Thoughts differ in form and content. When a noble thought visits you, it creates joy and happiness. And when you raise your mind and heart to Christ, He will take you by the hand and lead you into the Divine garden to the spring of Love that you may taste of it. This will be the happiest moment in your life. When you enter there, you should not say, "Let my husband come along with me." No, everyone must enter that place alone and not intercede for anyone else. Everyone must have a deep desire to enter alone into this garden. The capable will be assisted to enter, but those who are incapable, crippled, should stay out of it until they are healed. This world is for the people of infirmities, but those who will enter the school must be pure—purity in thinking and feeling is necessary, also complete selflessness, self-denial is essential. This is the highest state one can reach which means you have passed the test. Now, the first thing required of you is purity in thoughts and desires and unwavering faith that what God has said will be. When you put God in front of everything you do, you should not ask if you would succeed. You may be a teacher, a judge, a priest or a farmer, but if you are fulfilling your duty, there is no power in the world that can obstruct you. You will have many hindrances, many troubles and trials, but they are necessary for your growth. The sufferings sent to you are a blessing for you. Now, I want the thought of knowing your Master, Christ, to remain with you. When you come to know your real Father, then the angels and the world will be your siblings—not one or two, but thousands. For thousands of years they will take you around their abodes in heaven. There are pleasant things, long walks, model schools, new suns, new beings. And how many more things there are in heaven! Then you will say, "Now we understand the deep sense of life, why we must live." This will happen when you have only one Master, in case you have many teachers, you will not learn anything. A child cannot have two mothers. The same way, a person cannot have more than one real Master. If you should say you have two masters, I shall think that you are deceiving both me and God. In the physical world there is one mother, in the spiritual world—one Master, in the Divine—one Father, Who is the Lord. Therefore, you have three in all. On the Earth—the Mother, among angels—the Master and among gods—God. When you pass through these three, only then each one of you will understand the deep sense of life, i.e. the inner side of present life, and you will bear with joy and singing all sufferings; there will be no troubles in life for you and all matters between men and women, between parents and children, between all nations will be set right. Then you will not ask one another, "What will happen with the Bulgarian nation?" If all Bulgarians turn to God, I can guarantee that everything will be in complete order. But if they still have their present heads, they will receive thirty-nine whips with the rod. The same is true for Germany, France, and England—for all nations. God beats all in turn without exception. All people, societies and nations on earth must fulfill the will of our Master, of our Father! I believe that you will all desire to fulfill it and have started on a clean slate, saying like the prodigal son, "Father, forgive us for eating and drinking up all you gave us, but from now on we shall not do this, receive us as servants in your house." Be sure that your Father will cross out everything, clothe you in a new garb and kill the fatted calf for the feast at His home, because His prodigal child has returned. He will put a new ring on your hand, bless you and say, "Come one, my child, go to school and start studying anew!" Sermon held on December 7, 1914 in Sofia.____________________________11 Matt. 23:812. (hist.) a title of high military and civic rank in the Ottoman Empire (ed. note).13. Metaphorical reference to our mastery over the cells and organs in our body as well as over our thoughts and feelings (ed. note). 14. Degraded in the meaning of reduced in rank (ed. note). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ani Posted March 1, 2017 Report Share Posted March 1, 2017 Note 1 Teachers “But you, do not be called ‘Rabbi’; for One is your Teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren.” Mathew 23:8 Christ understands these words a little bit differently than society does. From a purely organic standpoint, the world has a few institutes that are Divine: the father, the mother and the home, for example. These are the first institutes on Earth; there is no establishment that is nobler or brighter than the home and also there is no higher title than that of a father or a mother. True, there are many fathers and mothers on Earth, but, in fact, they are stepfathers and stepmothers. The father and the mother play an important role when it comes to the organic world, for they transmit through their blood the qualities of their own souls to their children. The upbringing of children is determined by the qualities that the mother instills in the child from a very early age. By the word blood I mean not the ordinary blood, but that kind of blood which remains unchanged, the kind of blood that remains the same throughout all of life’s events. At this time I will not dwell on the difference between this twofold blood. All I can say now is that it is not that transient, changeable blood, but the other blood, which is like the rose essential oil that floats above the rose water and which has a real value in itself. The noble seed that the mother introduces into the child’s blood is like a valuable essential oil from which thereon spreads and wafts fragrantly among those who later surround this grown-up child. Nothing can be introduced and sown in man afterwards; what contemporary people call upbringing is nothing but training. When the mother raises her child the process takes place in the roots: it is there, in the roots, where this process changes the form of the mind and the heart. With training, on the other hand, there is nothing but an external polishing. One can train a monkey or a dove but as soon as they are placed in their natural environment, they are sure to revert to their original life. They have done experiments in the United States where the government allots great amounts of money to the education of American Indians; some of these Indians graduate from various colleges and universities but as soon as they go back to their people they forget what they have learned and become wild again. A real change can only take place in one of those Indians if he is converted and embraces Christianity completely. Such is the situation of a Teacher when it comes to the spiritual life: to be a Teacher or a Master means to give birth to someone. Christ does not say, “Do not teach”, but says, “Do not assume the title of a teacher”, or the title of a sick mother, because such a mother is bound to give birth to a scrawny child. If the mother has certain physical, mental or spiritual weaknesses, her child will be the same way, too. Can the contemporary teacher teach his students how oxygen and carbon bond, for example, provided that he, himself, does not understand the properties of these elements? He can conduct experiments, but these elements would not yield to him, because he has not yet become a master of these elements. Another teacher might teach the rotation of celestial bodies up in space, but if you were to ask him to mathematically define the rotation of these bodies around the Sun by using one meter, and not hundreds of thousands of meters or kilometers he would not be able to define it precisely. I, too, can do such calculations but they will not be accurate; I understand if the difference is a matter of a few centimeters or millimeters, but when the difference is a matter of a few kilometers or hundreds of thousands of kilometers, then this I do not understand, for these are all just hypotheses and assumptions. Often times you pause and say, “Why did not certain things happen this way or that way?” Who is to blame if you were the ones doing the wrong calculations? Everybody makes mistakes in life, after all. When you want to build a house, you call an architect to draw the house plan and make an estimate for how much wood, stones, iron, nails, sand, whitewash, etc. you may need and you buy these materials. However, if you do not put these materials together correctly, your building will collapse and you will be injured under its ruins. I am going to use an anecdote taken from Bulgarian life to explain my thought. This story took place some time in the forties or the fifties. A Bulgarian from the Southern part of the Balkan Peninsula, somewhere around Soloun,1 worked as a gardener with his father. As he was twenty years old and was not profiting much from the gardening, he grew tired of hoeing and decided to look for another trade that would suit him better. He took a job with a dressmaker thinking to himself, “Now this is an easy trade; all I have to do is sit here and take my time.” A week later a Turkish bey2 walked into the dress-maker’s shop and asked the owner to bring the yard-stick and the scissors to his home and to tailor him birbuchuklija3 pants from cloth. However, the shop owner was not feeling good and, instead, sent his apprentice of a week and told him, “You go now and I will come later.” The apprentice followed the bey to his house and waited there an hour or two, but as his master did not arrive, the bey turned to the apprentice and told him, “Well, you look old enough to me to know this trade. Can you tailor the pants for me?” The apprentice answered, “Yes, I can.” The bey produced a big roll of cloth and said, “I want you to cut out birbuchuklija pants for me.” The apprentice took to cutting here and there, but the bey noticed that what the apprentice was cutting out did not look like birbuchuklija pants and told him, “This did not turn out to be pants, but can you, at least make me a saltamarka4.” The apprentice took to measuring and cutting here and there, again, but the Turk noticed that this was not shaping up to be a vest either. Finally, he said to the apprentice, “Now, you will make me a tobacco pouch, at least, and if you can’t do that either, I am going to beat you up.” Just like the Bulgarian from the story, many of you have barely been with a master for a week, yet you take the yardstick and the scissors and are ready to tailor and to be teachers. Christ says, “Do not be such teachers.” If one is to be a teacher, he needs to have positive knowledge, i.e. he needs to have only one way of understanding, without exceptions. If you use one means to heal and, at the same time, you use the same means to kill, this does not mean that you have positive knowledge. If you use a knife to perform surgery and cut out the diseased flesh from a man’s body, but then you use the same instrument to cut this man’s throat, you cannot claim that you have used your knife correctly, for this is committing a crime. Some may say, “We haven’t done such a thing.” Oh, I know of many such teachers who have cut their disciples’ throats; they have also cut the legs, arms and ears of a few others- all this is morally speaking. It was not God who appointed these people as Teachers. They are all imposters. In every church there are teachers like these who, like the Bulgarian from the story, have only spent a week at the school but are already preaching. Now, what is it that you should understand by the word Teacher or Master? This word is related to the purely Spiritual world. It is not teaching when you instruct people how to build churches or how to seed flowers and cabbage; no, this is not teaching. Good teaching implies an act of higher self-awareness when a purely spiritual process takes place. With good teaching the Master and the disciple need to focus their entire consciousness fully on the task that they have to accomplish; there needs to exist an exchange similar to the one between a mother and the child she raises, for the Teacher needs to convey certain truths and the student needs to use them correctly. I will use another example to explain this. The story has it that there was an Englishman who went on a hunting trip to India. One day, as he was coming around a turn on the path, he felt a strong blow on his left arm. The blow came from a tigress. All she wanted to do was just break his left arm so that he could not fire his gun that was hanging from his right arm. The tigress then dragged him to her den where her three or four small cubs were waiting. She put him on the ground, pressed down his head and told him, “Now you will be quiet because I am going to teach my little ones.” Then she urged her cubs to try and throttle him. They circled around him but were afraid to approach him. After a while the hunter attempted to lift his head to see what was going on, but the tigress pressed down his head again and repeated, “I told you to be quiet, for I am teaching my little ones.” As you can see, the tigress, too, was a teacher. Somehow the hunter escaped, but later when he would relate the story he would say that the hardest part for him was when the tigress would press down his head so that the cubs could throttle him. Anyone knows how to destroy; however, teaching implies a person who can teach one how to build in one’s mind and heart; a person who understands the deep meaning of the elements that can rejuvenate and build a new spiritual abode: a Spiritual body with which you can come back from the dead, as the Scripture says. God is waiting for this body to be built. How are children born? In order for them to survive, they need to be born in the ninth month or, in some cases, in the seventh month, but this is not random and it is not about what month the parent wants his child to be born. The law is this: the nine-month period needed for the body to be formed should be completed. How does the body begin to form? First the extremities are formed: legs and arms, and then the brain and stomach are formed and, finally, the lungs are formed. As soon as the latter are formed breathing commences and then, if the child is not born right away, it may die. Therefore, what Nature creates first is not the lungs but the extremities: the legs and the arms. The sublime in you is formed the same way: the human Spirit keeps learning in the mother’s womb, as well; it does not hibernate, but works together with the mother’s Spirit to create the body. According to the same law, the student and the Teacher need to work simultaneously together with the help of the Spirit. That is why Christ says, “One is your Teacher.” And why is it that people love Christ? Because He gave something to the world: “I gave Life to those who do not have it so that they can have abundant Life.” You want to become Teachers. Let me ask you this then: what are you willing to give to the one whom you want to teach? If you taught someone and he became a worse person after that, then I say that you have not taught him anything. There is one great weakness that prevails in Christians today as well as in the modern churches and that is the weakness to preach, to instruct. This is not a bad aspiration in itself, but one needs to know the laws of teaching. The common laws require that a person who wants to be a teacher should have certain qualifications. That person then needs to take a test before a committee and only after that can they issue that person an employment paper and an appointment order with which he is officially appointed to the teaching position. Much the same way in the Spiritual world, too, one needs to wait for the Divine Spirit to enlighten and direct him. One who has not been enlightened by God’s Spirit does not have the right to teach and instruct because he will be breaking the Divine law. We will understand the meaning of teaching only when we grasp the deep meaning of these words of Christ’s; these words have an internal as well as external meaning. (I am talking here of internal Christianity, about that Christianity which can connect us to all areas of the Invisible World.) You say you want to be a Teacher, so I then ask you where you have studied and what school you have graduated from. “But I have read the Bible and I know the Gospel”, you say. No, this is not enough. “But I know the Christian faith.” No, this is not enough. “But I belong to this and that church.” All I want to know is this: have you studied in Heaven, in that Institution for Higher Education where the Angels study? Do you understand the internal laws of Nature: how man is built, what his mind and heart are like, and how his soul is related to his Spirit? “I have read about these things.” What have you read? “Now, the soul is this far-fetched concept, this idea of a certain combination.” What is it a combination of? The human mind is supposedly a combination of abilities, but how do these things become combined? So you think that you know something, but I am not talking of a combination of individual parts, my friend, but of a real combination. And it is because of this confusion in us that we speak so obscurely about the mind and the heart, without knowing where the heart is located. The heart resides in three places: one, the physical, is the one that you know of, but where is the heart of your feelings and that of your mind? You meet a person and you say of him that he is bad, but why is he bad? Years ago there was a bull in America who went crazy in appearance and scared all people around him. They decided to kill him but then a boy stepped forward who was able to read the minds of animals. This boy put his hand on the bull’s head and asked him, “What is wrong with you?” “There is a thorn in the back side of my leg and it is bothering me”, the bull told the boy. After they took the thorn out of the bull’s leg the bull calmed down. Likewise, one day you become crazy and people start pouring water over you. But then I say that there is no need for hoses, for there is a thorn in the back side of your leg; you need to pull out this thorn and that will take care of it. But now you have all kinds of learned people- professors and doctors- and they are all so ridiculous when they start talking about what went wrong with a man’s brain and they give a diagnosis. “There is such and such infection”, they say, “Surgery is necessary.” I see nothing but a little overheating of the brain. Some four or five months ago some people came to tell me that a doctor’s son fell ill with a cold and later had complications until, finally, the doctor found that there was an infection in the brain and that the boy needed surgery. I said, “No surgery is necessary, for there is a ninety-nine percent chance that the child will die if you operate on him. He will get better without the operation.” But, what they do is go ahead with the surgery and the child dies. Of course, to the doctors the surgery was “successful”. What I am saying here is that people also perform spiritual surgery in spiritual matters, and what they do is cut out certain parts in order to get better, but this is not healing. Modern people say that in order for someone to right his ways, he needs not to be beaten up like before, but he needs to be scalded like this, “You are a rascal, a thief; you are this and that.” Do you think that when all these sounds of yours enter his ears you will help change him? Not in the least, for the law is different and it goes like this: if you want to discipline someone else properly, first you need to discipline yourself. If you are bad, everyone around you will be bad. If I see a mother, who has conceived, and who takes to being angry and speaking ill of others, I can predict the consequences for her and I can describe fully the character and the fate of her baby; I can tell what will happen to him in the future. If a mother loses her temper easily, she should not think that the baby she gives birth to will be a saint and will take care of her in her old age, for one day this baby will take revenge on her and will say, “I wish I’ve never been born.” The same way, the student will say to his Teacher, “I wish you’ve never taught me.” A Teacher needs to be as pure as crystal water, in the full meaning of the word; he needs to be exemplary and there should be not the slightest trace of hesitation, faltering and disbelief. When Christ gives this instruction, he wants to point out the great danger to which we expose ourselves as well as the great responsibility that we take before Him for the maiming of some souls. Every mother and every teacher who does not know how to discipline and educate will be punished. Now, the views that modern people hold of the Divine laws, of Heaven and of the Angels, are obscure and wrong, for modern people have no idea about these laws and about Heaven. First of all, Heaven is organized in a very smart way and knows its work; and then, between the Angels and people there exist certain relations just like between us and the plants and the animals exist certain relations. And then, since we do not know how to teach an animal, we bestow forty or fifty blows with our pole and our staff onto the animal, which we use to plow the field with and we think that, by doing this, we are fulfilling our role. God says, “I will teach you some day how to manage oxen and how to plow your field.” Some think that God cannot bring them down to a lower level, that God cannot take people back in their development. If God has turned some Angels into snakes and into animals with horns, he can surely make so you grow hooves. He can turn you into Angels as well as into devils; He can change your form as well. And because forms are important in the world- for they regulate our lives- we need to pay them special attention. If I were to build an unhygienic house for you with no windows on the Southern side, but only leave a few on the Northern side, and if I were to build this house deeply into the ground, at that, then do you know how you would feel after you have lived in this house for six or seven years? You will have a number of doctors coming and going into and out of your house much the same way that all those teachers who tell you that you do not need to have windows into the Spiritual world are first-rate liars. That is where the Sun of Life is. I would even say that your roofs should be made of glass so that the Sun can shine on you from above. If you have bright houses that were built like this, your forms will change and you will become very beautiful. I can do an experiment and you, too, can do an experiment on what I am teaching you and you will see what results you will have in four or five years. I am not teaching you that you should escape life, for this world, as I see it, is very good and people are very good; what I see, however, is that people have a thorn in their leg. Apostle Paul says that this is so and begs God to pull out this thorn. The thorn can be stuck in a different spot, too, but most often it is in the heel of the foot because it is with the feet that we are being held down onto this world. We need to learn to pull out this thorn scientifically, because Christianity, in my opinion, is a profound science. When a young woman wants to marry a certain young man, she takes a look at him and observes that he is a good-looking, decent man and she inquires, “Will he be able to feed me?” “He makes four-five hundred leva5 a month.” “Good, he will be able to. What education does he have?” “Such and such.” “Good.” However, all these things are not essential, because this man could be fired tomorrow and his income of four-five hundred leva may disappear. Therefore, if this woman knows better, she should inquire about and observe his heart and his mind; she should be like a clairvoyant who can enter the young man’s house to look around his rooms and his library and see how his books are arranged, to see his kitchen, his garden and visit the garden of his love, his mercy and his justice and see what flowers he has planted there. After she has looked around and seen how everything is arranged and if everything is in good order, then she can say, “See, now I would get married to this man.” Now this is a true marriage. The man should do the same. Many want to change their situation around and so they discuss the question of who should be a man and who should be a woman and why God has made the man one way and the woman, another way. What is wrong with this? There was a time when both women and men used to give birth but since then man has lost his ability to give birth and it was left to the woman to do this. The Bible says, “Abraham gave birth to Isaac” and does not say that Sarah has given birth. Back then, when man used to give birth, the world was in a great state, and when man stopped giving birth, the world went wrong. Man should give birth and be a good Teacher. The mother may birth a child and may instill in its soul all the noble qualities but if the Teacher is not able to cultivate these noble qualities, nothing good will come out of it. Therefore, it is required that the Teacher should give birth, too. The Teacher should not be like that one priest who, not being himself during baptizing, dipped a child in the baptismal font and held it there for a little longer so it died and he said, “Give me another one. This one cannot be baptized.” When you baptize as Teachers, your mind should be in its place; baptizing like this implies that you should introduce the Divine Spirit into the child that you are teaching. The priest should know the Divine Laws like a Teacher. “But this is what the church has prescribed.” Bathing a child in water is not baptizing it. The modern priests, teachers and judges are professionals who work for money; they are paid three or five hundred or a thousand leva. They are paid more in America: three thousand dollars, which is equal to fifteen thousand leva. According to the understanding of the true Christian teaching, these are not servants of God, but common workers. The first thing that a Spiritual teacher needs to do is reveal the Invisible world to his disciple, just like the mother who, upon conceiving, tells her child, “Wait for nine months and I will introduce you to a new world and I will show you its wonders. As for now, you should not fidget and jump around.” After the nine months have elapsed and the baby has been born, the mother becomes its first teacher, and from then on there come other teachers to further his education from where his mother has left off. She leaves her work, because the child enters into a new area where it needs a new teacher, for as the Gospel says, “A man must be born again.” My lecture is meant to urge you to take a better look at yourselves and make sure that there is no desire in you to be Teachers because man suffers from great ignorance. Instead, you should sit down like merchants and take a look at what you have in your inner safe; look to see if you know someone in Heaven and if you have sent a letter to someone there. “We believe in Christ.” Yes, but do you know Him? Do you know Paul or Peter? “But the church says that supposedly we are not able to communicate with the other world and that this is wrong.” This is huge ignorance, for how come you can communicate with the spirits from hell, but it is wrong to be communicating with Heaven? How come it is alright to set up communication with the devil, but when it comes to communicating with the saints and talking with them, then you are not supposed to bother them! Then why do you bother the devil; where is the logic in that? This kind of teaching is not based on any laws. What I know is that the Christians of the old used to have direct communication with Heaven; they used to speak with God and the saints and this is why they would die so readily and with such selflessness. They were not like the Christians of today who say, “Let me die first and then I will see.” You will not see anything; what are you going to see when your house collapses on top of you: you will not see anything, instead, you will have to wait until someone pulls you out of the debris. Christ describes the false teachers to his disciples. Those false teachers, dressed in wide-skirted cloaks, would preach while, in fact, they would be deceiving the proselytes. And so, Christ reproaches them for doing that. The same happens today, too. If Christ were to come now, he would say the same thing; he would not have changed his mind. Christ is quiet, but when he starts speaking and tells the Truth, we will flinch from it, but he will lift off all delusions and we will see them clearly. I would like to draw upon two examples from Greek history. There were two artists, two sculptors, who had a competition to prove which one understands art better and each of them decided to prove that he was a better sculptor than the other one. The first sculptor made a grape cluster with such artistry, so life-like, that he managed to fool even the birds that started pecking at it. The other sculptor, in turn, chiseled out a beautiful woman and covered her with a veil made of stone but he made it so artfully that when the other sculptor came to see his creation, he told him, “Lift up the veil so that I can see the statue underneath.” In other words, the first artist deceived the birds and the second one deceived the master of birds. Now I’m asking you this. Who do you want to be like: the birds or the master? I would prefer to be like the second one. You want to possess the whole world but how could you possess it without the necessary knowledge: all this knowledge needs to have a spiritual basis. Knowledge in the Spiritual world is like a steam engine, full of power. The different kinds of knowledge in the Spiritual world are related to each other much like the physical forces are related. You travel around the streets of Sofia and there are trams moving back and forth, but up on top of their roofs there is a pole, which, as soon as it glides along the electricity-conducting wire, brings the tram to a stop. Therefore, certain contact is necessary which would conduct electricity so as to bring the car to a stop. Have your Teachers put the pole to the wire; have they connected you to electricity? The mechanism of a human car might be working and in an excellent state, but if the pole is off and does not connect the car to the electricity, there will be no moving forward. When movement stops people usually look elsewhere for the reason when all there is to do is pull the rope and fit the pole into its place; then the tram-driver will pull his lever, electricity will run through the wire and the tram-car will start moving again. In order for your thoughts to be active- as thoughts are a moving force- you need to come in contact with the Spiritual world. When I use the word ability I mean the form, which contains a certain force that works in the Spiritual world. When the form is taken apart or is out of order, the force cannot be manifested. In the central part of our brain there are areas that house certain abilities; these abilities are connected to the powers in the Spiritual world that help them work. If your pole is not in its place, then these powers will not work; besides, there exist other conditions: there needs to be tracks and the driver needs to know his job well. There are many things that come into play. You, too, like a master need to walk around your country and check in on your workers to see if they are in their place and how they perform their work. Often you judge your rulers and say that they do not rule well. How well do you rule? You say that this one or that one is not so intelligent; what are you like inside? Your judgments are as true as long as you are righteous in yourself. We say about someone that he is a good man, but where does his goodness lie? “He is good because he treats us politely.” Good manners do not mean goodness at all; if he were to treat us rudely tomorrow, we would call him “bad”. A good man is always good, and a bad one is always bad. Man cannot be a saint one day and a downright rascal the next: this is impossible. You say that it is possible for a bad man to repent. Do you know how many years it takes to do this? When a child is born, he does not become a professor right away, right? He will have to study for at least twelve years and his consciousness will develop gradually during that time. After one has thoroughly studied the inner Spiritual world one will understand the laws of Christianity. Its goal is to bring order into families, to bring harmony between men and women, brothers and sisters, masters and servants. The world today suffers not because it is bad for people to be servants, but because people cannot be good masters. Doctor Mirkovich6 used to say this, “I do not want to be rich again; I’d rather be a servant to some master.” You want to be masters and to have millions of leva. Oh, you would be the unhappiest people then, for you would be prisoners locked behind your money. One million leva on your back make a heavy burden. You wish you were those people and you want to partake in their burden and put it on your back. This is a misunderstood teaching. Do you really want to be like that donkey that was loaded with icons and when everybody would bow to the icons the donkey would start kicking, thinking that everybody was bowing to him? If people respect you and wish they were you, it is because of the crosses and the icons that you carry on your back. What kinds of crosses are these? They are virtues. You should thank God for putting them on your back. Christ addresses His disciples, saying, “Do not be called Rabbi.” Someone might say, “I turned him to God.” Good for you for teaching him, God will bless you for that. But what would God say if you have given birth to a crippled man or if you have broken his mind and heart? You will be judged in Heaven, you will be held responsible. There are so many people in this world who have been maimed by all of you here! When those people go to the other world some will have a crippled leg, others a twisted arm; all of your pupils will get together and will testify to God as to what kind of a teacher you were to them. This is how it will happen in actuality and then God will say, “I fine this teacher ten thousand talents7”. He should be thrown in jail until he can pay off his fine.” God never jokes around with that. He is kind, good, and just, but also strict and stern: he will take such imposter-teachers and will give them a ten-thousand-talent fine and then he will add, “Throw him in jail until he learns the art of teaching.” And when you have paid off your debt, that is, when you have put up with all your sufferings, then you will become very good and learned Teachers in time. And do you know how many thousands of years this will take? This is how fallen Angels and people learn nowadays. We say today that the church, allegedly, does not work well. Let us show a good example, then. I wish for you to have the power that is necessary to change the form of things. Look at Moses: he grabbed the staff and it turned into a snake. He became scared and God told him, “Hold it by the tail” and so, when he grabbed the snake by the tail, it transformed back into a staff. “But”, you may argue, ”This is Moses that we are talking about.” Nevertheless, he too, studied. However, he studied with the greatest Teachers of Egypt. He was not a fool, because God never chooses fools to be the leaders of humankind or of a people. Moses studied for a long time and graduated from a certain school and you see how many miracles he performed before the Pharaoh. Moses had two wishes: he wanted to become a Teacher and a rescuer of the Jews, at the same time. At first he told himself, “This is not for me” and retreated in solitude (he herded sheep for forty years in atonement for the murder). And do you know what he did during that time? He devoted himself to deep contemplation because he was initiated into all of Egypt’s secrets. He had to study for forty years to make up for one murder and during that time he had his second initiation. I am asking you now how many years have you herded sheep? Being shepherds is something great; it is like being Teachers. Have you come to know your Teacher yet? Your father, your mother, and your grandfather have been Christians for two thousand years but have they come to know Christ? If you have, then you should say the password that he gave you, just like soldiers need a password to let you through. What is your password, your secret prayer? Learned people need to have a motto; what should our motto be? To serve Christ. How can we serve Christ? By learning. How can we learn? Are you friends of school? It is one thing to circle around the school and it is a different story to be inside the school. Where are your report cards and certificates? You have no certificate, yet you want to become Teachers. Some priests and bishops are like this, too; they, too, have no certificates. And so, we live with such lies and we want for the Kingdom of Heaven to come. The Kingdom of Heaven is coming now and is revealing all the dirty things of humankind. And now all peoples have taken to defending their cause through wars. You should defend the Divine Kingdom of justice! Every people should have as much as each deserves and so should every person, as well. Now ask yourselves seriously if you know Christ. I do not require an immediate answer, but if you can provide an answer within a year’s time, this will be a blessing for you. You might say, “We have seen Christ.” Paul saw Him, and He asked, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me”, and Paul said, “Who are You, Lord?” So, he heard the Lord. Have you heard your Teacher? When you pick a fight in some religious society or in God’s temple, do you not persecute Christ like Saul did? Then He will tell you what he told him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” Paul realized his mistake and God said to him, “Because you have realized what you did and because you did it out of ignorance, I will send you among the heathens so that you can learn your lesson.” And then they beat him three times by thirty-nine blows; it is only adults that God beats up this way; He never beats up children. When you receive thirty-nine blows in the course of thirty-three years- for this was Christ’s age- then you will progress. However, one has to suffer these blows. When a blacksmith wants to make a knife or some other instrument out of iron, he also bestows blows on it. You are on the anvil and God is shaping you with blows. Actually, he does not beat you, but he says, “I want to turn this material into a knife, a plow or a writing pen.” If you are one of the bad people, he will make you into a knife so that you can butcher people; if you are one of the good people, he will turn you into a quill for some writer to hold you in his hand. The quill which the writer uses when he writes has a greater intelligence than the plow that is used for soil cultivation. You might argue that there is no intelligence whatsoever in iron. But iron, too, becomes weary. Look at a razor blade: it is sharp at first but after it has worked for a while, it becomes weary and dull. Everything becomes weary. There was an Englishmen who did an experiment once and proved that everything- even machines- becomes weary. When the machine is tired, it starts making a certain new sound and the engine driver says, “This machine needs a break.” Following the same law, a man undergoes the same reaction: he becomes tired and wants to rest. The Great Teacher says, “In a case like this, let your brain rest for a week and after that it will start working again.” Every thing needs its own time of work and of rest. Look closely at how plants grow and develop and how caterpillars hatch and you will be able to understand the law. Your thought may be in the form of a caterpillar or a butterfly. If one is to succeed in the world, one needs to harbor only one idea. This is both true and not true; one needs to have more ideas than one but all of them should be noble. They put blinders over horses’ eyes so that they can look only ahead and so that they are not scared by their surroundings; it is good for one to have blinders like these, that is, to be focused only on one idea, on a noble idea. If you cannot have many noble ideas, you should have at least one and it is this one that you should hold as an aiming mark, which can uplift you and save you. We say, “Christ will save us”. He did more than that: He atoned for our sins. But atonement has its negative side, too, because a bad person can always make a wrong conclusion about things if he wants to use all the goods that he was given. Knowledge should not be trusted into ignorant hands. I am talking about reincarnation here: what is the danger for those who give it a wrong interpretation? For example, a caterpillar with hundreds of legs which crawls up on trees might say, “I need no philosophy. All I need is a leaf; as soon as I find a leaf I will eat it and this will be it.” However, one day it is wrapped in a cocoon and then it hatches as a butterfly and then it says, “Now one leaf is not enough for me. Now I need flowers so I can stick my tongue in them and I can suck out their nectar and their aroma.” In order for you to enter the Spiritual world, you, like the caterpillar, need to strip this skin in which you are wrapped. Should you not take it off, you will occupy the space of a leaf in the Spiritual world and you will understand the Spiritual world as much as a caterpillar does. I would like for you to enter the Spiritual world, but my question is this: are you hatched yet? When you enter the Spiritual world, you will understand the meaning of an ox, a donkey, a wolf, a dove, a fox and so on. Every form that exists in the physical world contains a great idea and he who correctly interprets this idea will understand the meaning of everything in the world. “But wolves have teeth.” This means nothing, for if the hedgehog has spines they were made for no other reason, but a strategic one: so that it can protect itself from snakes or some other creature which might want to hurt it. The hedgehog catches the snake by the tail and starts eating it little by little until it swallows it all, while protecting itself with the spines in the meantime. In time this hedgehog will change its form. You might ask: how can it change its form? Do you know what your form is in the Spiritual world? There is a verse in the Bible in which God calls Jacob a worm. You might say that He meant that metaphorically. Christ, too, calls his followers sheep, but do you know what that means? Sheep are all those souls in which spirits abide; just like sheep give us milk and wool in this world, according to this same law the souls, too, give man the necessary milk and wool. Put this teaching to the test. Why are you in this world? Put your mind to work. The first thing you must learn is to get rid of all doubt and connect with the Spiritual world and if you can project your thought, your friends will come to your aid right away. What is your fireplace like? If you make it too hot, that is, if you have the same power as a furnace, then you can bake whatever thought you like. If your heart does not have the necessary heat, it will fall, for it depends on the heart how far your request will be sent. “But I prayed.” Yes, you did, but I see that your prayer hovers only two feet above your head. You may need to pray five, ten or a hundred times from the bottom of your heart before you are able to send your request to God. And when your request reaches His ears, He will respond. What would His response be to a request that has not reached Him? When you pray, you must concentrate and forget about everything else around you; you must transport yourself to a state where there is nothing else in your mind but the prayer. I ask you this now: is the fireplace of your heart and mind so warm as to send your prayers up high? So what if there are children running around you; it is God who sent them to Earth so that they can learn to behave because in Heaven, too, they did not live quietly and so he turned them back in their evolution. God does not want people who make a lot of noise in Heaven; they need to learn how to plow, how to dig, how to make shoes and so on and after a while, when they learn their lesson, they may become princes even. Before entering Heaven you will need to pass a test before a committee which will ask you questions like what your feelings and ideas are, what your compassion and Love for your neighbor and for God is; these and many other questions will they ask. It is because Christ is coming now and the books of Life will open, like it is said, and people will be judged to see if they deserve to pass into a higher grade or not and if they can enter Heaven. Everyone will receive according to his merit. This is why Christ addresses you and says, “One is your Teacher: Christ.” I want you all to remember this Teacher who came two thousand years ago to pay off your sins and you are still looking for him to this day! Has Christ signed His name in your soul or your heart at least once? If He has signed it there, lucky you! If he has not, make an effort to meet Him and ask Him to write it there. And when He writes His name, do not go around bragging and telling everybody, “Christ signed His name in our report card.” No, you do not need this for here, but for Heaven, for when you go there, the Angels will stop you and will ask you, “Take out your report card” and if God has signed it, they will tell you, “You are free to enter.” Then Christ and the saints and your big and small brothers will welcome you with twigs and there will be great joy that you have arrived. Once there was the following rule in the Pythagorean school: when they accepted a new student they would subject him to the worst taunts throughout his first year there and if he could bear the taunts, they would accept him. The same way now Christ has sent some people down to Earth to taunt you, saying, “He wants to become a saint, but he is out of his mind, he is a lunatic, a little bit crazy”: all this is but the Pythagorean system of accepting new students. If you can bear these taunts you should know that you have passed the test and then you will be accepted. If, on the other hand, you lose your temper from all the taunts and say, “What! Me? Just you wait”, then you are finished. “My husband is bad”, you complain. How do you know that he was not placed there by the committee on purpose, to test you? Bear this for a year, pass the test and then God will say to your husband, “You are not to taunt and hurt your wife anymore”, and you will see how docile he will become, like a lamb. But this will only happen after you have suffered through everything and when Christ says so. Remember this teaching. I speak of the external side of this teaching; all of this is but thoughts brought to your attention so that you can tell between what is false and what is noble. When the teaching of Christ enters you, it will uplift you and then you will be able to read people and to see their souls. Sometimes two people meet and ask each other, “I am a Christian. Do you believe in Christ?” If you are Christians, there is no need to ask each other this question, for the very asking shows that there is no Christianity in the one who’s asking. I will never ask about a flower what kind it is, for as soon as I smell it I will know if it is a rose or a carnation as my nose serves its purpose. If I have a bad sense of smell and my nose does not work or if I am blind and cannot see, then I might ask, but if all my senses work then I will be able to tell the kind of flower just by looking at it or by smelling it. It is the flower’s external form or smell that will tell me what kind it is. Likewise, every soul expresses itself through its external features, that is through its acts. I see that you are carnations inside, but some of you have not bloomed. However, there are buds on you and some of them promise to develop in the future. I don’t only want you to bloom, but I want you to bear fruit and to ripen as well. Angels come down like bees to fertilize the soul’s blossoms. As soon as you bloom you already are in communion with them. This is such a profound science, and there are so many other things for you to hear that I will have to give ten lectures before you. But if I were to tell you about all these things, some of which can be very tiring, then you will say that it is not interesting and will fall asleep. And you are right, for you are not ready for this as yet. The time will come when you will be ready. For example, when you start eating honey and eat too much, you will be sick of it. Why? Because you have had too much. Or say you are friends with some good person and you draw from him constantly, but at some point you say, “I want him to get away from me. I cannot stand him.” You should have been given only so much honey so as not to get sick of it, that is, you should have been around your friend only so much so as not to get sick of him. The same way you should not give too much of your honey. All your guest needs is a teaspoon, not a whole bowl, because then he will be sick of it. This is why there is a Bulgarian proverb that says that even God does not like too much of a saint. You read and read until you eventually grow old when all you need to do is read only one verse, then take that verse and dwell on it. “God is Love”: think about the ways in which God is Love and feel that Love inside you. It should not be the kind that we feel when we eat an apple or when a cat eats a mouse. When I love you this means that I can be in you and when you love me it means that you are in me. When you have a friend’s image you put it at a special place where it can be seen easily. Our heart represents the Astral world and the mind represents purely the Spiritual world. If your mind can be lifted to a certain height then you have the Spiritual world before you. What happens in the brain is a reflection of the Spiritual world. Every thought, or every noble thought, that is, is a form in the Spiritual world; thoughts differ in form and content. When a noble thought comes to you it produces Joy and Mirth. And when you lift your mind and heart towards Christ, He will take you by the hand and will lead you into the Divine garden; he will take you to the spring of Love so that you can try this Love. You will try things through experience and there will not be a happier moment for you than this. And when you enter you will not say, “Let my husband enter, too.” No, everyone should enter alone; you should not try to put in a good word for someone else. Everyone should have a deep desire to enter himself. If he is talented, you will help him enter, too. However, the incapable ones and cripple ones should remain outside until they are cured. This world is for the crippled people. Those who enter in the school should be pure, for purity of thoughts and desires is a must. Also, utter selflessness is a must; what comes next is self-denial: this is a high degree and this means that you have passed the test. Now the first thing that is required of you is purity of thoughts and desires, as well as unflinching faith that whatever God has said is what will come to be. When you put God first when you take on a new task there will be no need to wonder if you will succeed. You may be a teacher, a judge, a priest or a farmer but if you fulfill your duty there will be no force in the world that can stand in your way. You will have many obstacles, hardships and trials, but these are all necessary for your development; the sufferings that were sent to us are a blessing. Now I am leaving you with this thought: may you come to know your Teacher, Christ. When you come to know your True Father then both the Angels and the world will be your brethren; and not one or two of them, but thousands of them will be your brethren. They will show you around their home in Heaven for thousands of years; there are many pleasant things there, as well as long walks, exemplary schools, new suns, new beings and much more! And then you will say, “Now we understand the deep meaning of Life; why one should live.” This will happen when you have only one Teacher. If you have many of them, you will not learn a thing. Just like a child cannot have two mothers, so a man cannot have more than one true Teacher; if you say that you have two, then I will say to you, “You are lying to both me and God.” There is one mother on the physical plane, one Teacher in the Spiritual world, and there is one Father in the Divine world, and this Father is God. There are three of them in all: one on Earth, the Teacher is among the Angels, and God is among the gods. When you go through these three then each one of you will understand the deep meaning and the internal side of the present life and you will be able to bear all suffering with songs of joy; there will be no difficulty for you in life and the relations between men and women, between parents and children and between all peoples will be mended. Then there will be no question about the fate of the Bulgarian people. I can guarantee that should all Bulgarians turn to God everything will be set right. But should they carry their present heads on their shoulders, they will suffer thirty-nine blows with the staff, for this is what is written in the Divine book. “But Russia is such and such.” Should it follow God’s ways Russia, too, will be blessed; if not, it will suffer the thirty-nine blows with the staff. The same goes for Germany, France, England and all the rest: God beats up everyone one in turn and all for the same reason. All of us who are here on Earth must fulfill our Teacher’s Will, our Father’s Will; I believe that you all have the desire to fulfill this Will. I can see now that you have turned a new leaf and, like the prodigal son, you say, “Forgive us, Father, for we have sinned and we have squandered away what you have given us; we will not do this from now on, so accept us as servants in Your home.” You can be sure that your Father will erase everything, will give you clothes and will butcher the fattest calf to feed you. And then there will be mirth in His home because His prodigal child has returned. He will put a new ring on his son’s finger and then He will give him His blessing, and will say, “Go to school, son. Go and learn anew.” December 7, 1914, Sofia 1 Soloun was the Bulgarian name for Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece 2 Bey is the Turkish word for the governor of a province or region in the Ottoman Empire. 3 Birbuchuklija is an old style of pants that was popular during the late 19th century in the Ottoman Empire. 4 Saltamarka is an old woolen upper garment with long sleeves that extends to the waist; it usually has a lining and is hemmed with leather. 5 Lev, pl. Leva is the basic monetary unit in Bulgaria. 6 Dr. Georgi Mirkovich (1875-1950) was one of the first disciples of Master Beinsa Douno. 7 Talent comes from the Greek word talanton: an old Greek monetary unit. Source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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