Table of Contents

COSMIC MORAL LAW

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

Chapter One: ‘You reap whatever you sow’

Chapter Two: The importance of choice – work not pleasure

Chapter Three: Creative activity as a means of evolution

Chapter Four: Justice

Chapter Five: The law of affinity: peace

Chapter Six: The law of affinity: true religion

Chapter Seven: The laws of nature and moral law

Chapter Eight: Reincarnation

Chapter Nine: Don’t stop half-way

Chapter Ten: Know how to use your energies

Chapter Eleven: How to distil the quintessence

Chapter Twelve: The moral law exemplified in a spring

Chapter Thirteen: Why look for models in the world above

Chapter Fourteen: Man creates in the invisible world by means of his thoughts and feelings

Chapter Fifteen: We must not sever the link between the world below and the world above

Chapter Sixteen: If you are light you will seek the company of light

Chapter Seventeen: Duplicates – new recordings

Chapter Eighteen: Morality comes into its own in the world above

Chapter Nineteen: Example is the best teacher

Chapter Twenty: Turn the other cheek

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

COSMIC
MORAL LAW

Complete Works – Volume 12

ISBN EBOOK: 978-2-8184-0310-5

Translated from the French

Original title: LES LOIS DE LA MORALE COSMIQUE

Original edition:

© 1975, Éditions Prosveta Soc. coop. (Suisse)

© 1975, Éditions Prosveta Soc. coop. (Suisse)

© 1984, Éditions Prosveta S.A. (France), ISBN 2-85566-268-0

© 2006, Éditions Prosveta S.A. (France), ISBN 2-85566-445-4

© Copyright Prosveta S.A. 2006. All rights reserved for all countries. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, adapted, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, whether privately or otherwise, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, audio-visual or otherwise, without the prior permission of author and publishers (Law of March 1957 revised).

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ISBN 978-2-85566-445-3

Published simultaneously printed

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Readers will better understand certain aspects of the lectures published in the present volume if they bear in mind that Master Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov’s teaching was exclusively oral and that the editors have made every effort to respect the flavour and style of each lecture.

The Master’s teaching is more than a body of doctrines; it is an organic whole, and his way of presenting it was to approach it from countless different points of view. By treating certain aspects in many different contexts he constantly reveals a new dimension of the whole, and at the same time throws new light on the individual aspects and their vital links with each other.

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

Chapter One
‘You reap whatever you sow’

I

Yesterday, as you will remember, I talked to you about what it means, on the psychological level, to be attuned to someone else. If you want to understand what a friend is saying to you, you have to vibrate in unison with him. To understand someone is to be on the same wavelength, to vibrate in unison with that person; this is the definition of comprehension. If you want to listen to a particular radio programme, you have to tune in to the wavelength of the station that is transmitting it. Similarly, if you want to comprehend, to be attuned to, the thoughts, feelings and desires of others, you have to get onto their wavelength. If you don’t understand someone, it means that you are unable or unwilling to vibrate in unison with him, to rise – or sink – to his level of consciousness. And when you do understand someone, it means that you have succeeded, if only temporarily, in getting onto the same wavelength. This is the secret of comprehension: it is a kind of attunement to an object or another being.

Actually, there are a few details here that need some further clarification. When you listen to what someone is saying, part of you has to be in tune with him in order to hear and understand the meaning of his words, but part of you may well not be in tune with him at all. Just because you listen to someone and try to understand his words, it does not mean that you agree with what he says. You can perfectly well agree to listen and to understand him without agreeing with what he is saying. If, on the other hand, you not only listen to him but accept and agree with every fibre of your being with what he says, then you are doubly attuned to him. Thus there are several different levels of attunement or accord.

A human being is made up of a certain number of organs, each of which vibrates on its own particular wavelength: the wavelengths of the heart, the brain and the liver, the stomach and the spleen, etc., are all different from each other, and yet the one organism embraces them all. And a person’s thought – or, if you like, his brain, although they are not the same thing – is the composite reflection of the behaviour of all his cells; it expresses the tendencies and desires, the whims, torments and sufferings of them all. It is the cells of the brain, the thousands of millions of these tiny cells, that are designed to be the spokesmen for the whole individual. To be sure, the cells of other parts of the body also have something to say, they try to explain themselves and to voice their needs, but they lack the tool, the mouthpiece, with which to make themselves understood. This is why the brain has been given the task of expressing the will, inclinations and needs of the mass of individuals that go to make up a human body. As I have said, the fact that the brain is intelligent and capable of expressing itself by moving the tongue, rolling the eyes or twitching the nose, does not mean that it is the only part of the body capable of speech. Every part of man speaks but, for the time being, the brain has the special responsibility of being the mouthpiece for all the other organs, although not all the brain cells share in this function. Only a small proportion of them are concerned, those that are situated in the centre of the forehead.The other cells of the brain have others functions.

The various organs that go to make up a man are seldom wholly in agreement with each other: the heart rejects what the stomach wants, the brain denies the desires of the heart, etc. A human being is a creature who is out of tune, a creature at odds with himself, unhappy and in a perpetual state of conflict, torn between his own contradictory opinions and passions, between that part of him which aspires to goodness, light and honesty and that other part which drives him to cruelty, violence and works of darkness.

What should we do with all these disparate and contradictory tendencies within us? Well, this is where those conscious, intelligent brain cells that I mentioned come into play: we must use them to learn how to conquer and control, pacify and, above all, unite all the cells of our body so that, instead of forming a cluster of minor states and principalities at war with each other, they come together to form a single nation. History illustrates the situation perfectly: a few hundred years ago, the countries that we know today were divided into innumerable warring duchies, principalities or tiny kingdoms. It is relatively recently that, thanks to a gradually expanding consciousness, these rival factions began to understand each other better and came together. In the same way, a new light, a new intelligence, must dawn in the mind of man, a new ‘king’ must take over the reins of government and persuade all the cells of all his different organs that, in order to be truly prosperous and powerful they must unite and give first priority to the interests of the whole.

Illness is the most eloquent proof that anarchy and disorder reign in a human organism, that light and intelligence have not yet penetrated into the depths of each organ, of each cell. Owing to his ignorance, man has allowed disorder to take root within him and, now, in the common interest, he is going to have to reverse the situation. He is going to have to obtain the submission of all his subjects once again, restore law and order and, with the help of certain methods, bring his cells into a state of harmony in which they vibrate in unison. If he manages to do this, all his organs will obey him and work lovingly together in wisdom and intelligence and he will be blessed with prosperity and joy.1

But human beings will never attain this state of harmony in a world governed by a philosophy of disorder, anarchy and disintegration. They must find a corner of this earth in which the philosophy of harmony prevails and there, having probed and studied these great truths in depth, they must work at transforming themselves. This is the work that surpasses all others. No other activity on earth is more worthwhile than the endeavour to introduce harmony, order and beauty into one’s own being, to melt into and become one with Cosmic Intelligence. All human beings work at a trade or profession of some kind (and this is good and necessary, for we all have to provide for our own needs), but they have come to neglect the best and highest form of activity: the work of fashioning oneself, of projecting into each cell of one’s being, into each atom and electron, the ray of harmony that alone is capable of bringing every particle into tune with a divine idea, the work of conveying ceaselessly to the whole of one’s organism, the conviction that its only need is this need for harmony.

How can human beings, today, be made to understand these truths when they have no inkling that they so much as exist? To the sages of the past, who knew how to observe life, all these truths were clear and self-evident and, as they lived very long lives, they actually saw the great laws of nature at work. Today, I want to emphasize one of the laws which they discovered in this way and, I assure you, if you take the trouble to understand what I tell you, you will become steadfast and unshakeable, capable of holding your own against all the philosophies of chaos and disorder that prevail throughout the world.

This law, the mightiest that Cosmic Intelligence has given us, is to be found where no one thinks to find it, where philosophers and theologians no longer look: in nature or, to be more specific, in agriculture. Every farmer knows that if he plants a fig tree he will harvest figs not grapes, and that he will get apples and not pears from an apple tree. This is the supreme moral law: ‘You reap whatever you sow’. This is what I mean when I say that farmers were the first moral philosophers; it was they who saw that the Intelligence of nature had laid down this strict and immutable law for all growing things. Later, observing life around them and the behaviour and actions of men, they saw that the laws of agriculture applied to them as well: human beings can only reap what they have sown. In other words, if you behave with cruelty, selfishness and violence, sooner or later you will be paid back in the same coin of cruelty, selfishness and violence. Whether you think of it as an echo reflecting off the side of a mountain or a ball bouncing off a wall, it is always the same, absolute law.

Moral law was not invented by human beings. There are those who accuse the Church of making up rules and regulations in order to chloroform and enslave the masses, and there is no denying that there have been popes and cardinals who committed abuses and used religion for their own ends, but this does not mean that the great religious and moral laws had been invented by them. They were handed down to them from the initiates who had discovered them, long before, in nature. True morality and true religion are not human inventions.2

‘You reap whatever you sow’. If you study every detail of this fundamental law and explore it in all its length and breadth, you will find in it a whole system of tremendous wealth and depth of meaning, for the essential truths are applicable in every domain. The detailed explanation of this law has given birth to a complete philosophical system and this is why religion contains such an abundance of rules and precepts today. Underlying all these rules there is still the one, original law: ‘You reap whatever you sow’. Later, other laws grew from this one as a consequence, an extension of its philosophical implications. Jesus’ precept, ‘Do to others as you would have them do to you’, for example, is simply an extension of this law.

Those who deny or disregard these fundamental laws drift further and further from the truth: their souls torn by doubt and hesitation, they are in a perpetual state of uncertainty and irresolution. And yet the truth is staring them in the face, and it is very simple. Why do contemporary thinkers refuse to recognize it, preferring to put forward, instead, all kinds of theories of their own invention which are not in accord with Cosmic Intelligence? The fact that they no longer believe in the existence of a moral law based on the laws of nature inevitably distorts their reasoning and the conclusions it leads to, and those who read their books and believe all these false theories are driven to a state of inner chaos, anguish and darkness. I am warning you: be very careful! You must learn to reason and judge these things correctly, for if you do not possess reliable criteria, the first person who comes along can lead you astray. Be on your guard; don’t let yourselves be influenced by human intellects that are shrouded in darkness; open your minds to the Cosmic Intelligence that has ordered and organized all things so marvellously.

Even if you don’t believe in God it is impossible not to recognize that there is order and, therefore, Intelligence, in nature. Take the simple fact that every seed produces its own species: how can anyone deny that this is the work of an intelligence? To see this law at work is enough to change one’s view of the world. You may be unable to believe in God but you cannot fail to believe that every seed, germ or egg, reproduces its own kind, whether it be plant or tree, insect, animal or man. This law is absolute and it should make every human being reflect. You may be ungrateful, unjust, cruel or violent, but if you are, you can be sure that this law will apply, sooner or later, to your own life. Perhaps you will have children who will resemble you, in that case you will be the first to suffer from your own behaviour as it rebounds on you through them. Even if God did not exist, Cosmic Intelligence would still be there: the evidence is constantly before our eyes.

You do whatever you please in the belief that nobody knows and there is no record of what you do, so you will not be punished. If you want to believe that, do so, but I tell you that Cosmic Intelligence records everything. Every one of your thoughts, feelings or actions carries within it a living germ that begins to grow and, if you have been ungrateful, unjust, cruel and violent, you will find your path strewn with this same ingratitude, injustice, cruelty and violence. Thirty or forty years from now you will be crushed under the weight of these things and, when this happens, you will begin to understand that there is such a thing as Cosmic Intelligence and that It records everything that happens.

Forget about the Bible and the Gospels if you like, forget about the Prophets, the churches and the temples, but remember that ‘You reap whatever you sow’ is an absolute, incontrovertible law. As the Sages of old, who had seen this law at work, also put it, ‘They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind’. As for the scientists, writers and thinkers who choose to reject this truth, they too will be snared and bitten by it, unable to escape from the consequences of their own acts. When this happens they, too, will understand. They are so clever and yet they cannot see what is so straightforward. In fact, I will go so far as to say that all the Sacred Scriptures of the world could be reconstructed on the basis of this one law!

Many people say, ‘Of course, there are a lot of things in the Bible and the Gospels, but we don’t even know for sure that God exists!’3 To that I answer that you don’t need to know whether God exists, whether Jesus ever existed or whether the Gospels are authentic or not! All you need to know is this law: it alone is sufficient to put all the pieces of the puzzle in place and lead you to the truth. As you see, my explanation is very simple. In fact – as Voltaire said, although in a different context – if God did not exist we would have to invent him! So why let yourselves by led astray by so-called ‘fashionable’ philosophers who destroy whatever they lay their hands on? I, for one, have no intention of following their lead, for the truth that I see, the truth that I know, is eternal and irrefutable and can be verified by everyone. The pity is that these thinkers never point out the simple, tangible realities before our eyes. They are more interested in their own supposedly ‘original’ arguments and theories; it doesn’t matter if these theories are contrary to truth: everybody is lost in admiration for them as long as they are new and original!

Moral law is a reality, but human beings cannot see it, they spend their time arguing about God or the finer points of theology. But it is pointless to argue. The only thing you need to know is that everything, absolutely everything, is recorded. If a tree can produce seeds in which all its properties, colours and dimensions, all the flavour and perfume of its fruits, are recorded, why should man not do as much? Why should nature not do as much in every domain? Nature records everything and morality is built on the recordings, the memory, of nature. Nature has a memory from which nothing can be erased, and woe betide those who decide to ignore it! Continually, day and night, she records all that goes on in man, all the discord, all his hideous inner states and then, one day, it all rebounds on him and he finds himself bitten, crushed, wiped out! No one escapes this law; no man, be he emperor or dictator, has ever had the power to avoid it. Everything that ever is or was is recorded in nature’s memory.

This is why I insist so often that you must be careful about what you record! Everything you do, everything you say or think or wish is continually being recorded in the depths of your cells and, sooner or later, you will harvest the fruits of all these things in your own life. How different men’s destiny would be if they were guided by light and reason, if they took care never to plant or sow or cultivate seeds of darkness and destruction by their thoughts, feelings and actions! In spite of all those who draw hasty conclusions and proclaim that good is always repaid with evil, you must not think that if you are kind and generous and loving you will be repaid with evil rather than good. It is not true.

Good always breeds good and evil always breeds evil. Even if you never asked to be rewarded for the good you did you would still be repaid with good. If you do good and are repaid with evil it is because there are still people in this world ready to cheat and take advantage of you. Be patient and continue to do what is right and, sooner or later, they will be punished and become victims, in their turn, of others who are stronger and even more violent. When this happens, they will understand and repent and make reparation for the wrong they did you. In this way, good always bears fruit. Doubly so, in fact because, in these instances, heaven takes into account the suffering you had to endure, what it cost you to do good and all your undeserved misfortunes, and your reward will be twice as great!

It is often true that, in spite of doing good, you begin by encountering evil, but this does not make the law any less valid: one day good will rain down on you and never cease! You still have no real notion of what good is; you have no idea of how powerful it is and how easily it can protect, heal and enlighten you. The power of good is beyond all description! It is because they have never learned any better that people repeat the slogan, ‘Good is always repaid by evil!’ They have never actually put it to the test. As I have said, there is an element of truth in this (you don’t need to tell me this; I happen to have noticed!), but the evil is only apparent and it does not last long. Continue to do what is right and you will see that for yourselves!

Men and women stand in great need, today, of solid truths, of tangible, irrefutable knowledge that everyone can experiment and verify for himself, and this is what I can offer you. Go ahead: try to deny that you reap whatever you have sown! Of course, everyone will tell you that he is convinced of the truth of this law, but only insofar as the physical dimension is concerned; nobody goes further than that. If they did, if they applied it to other, higher planes, they would find the same laws and the same correspondences, for the world is one. The same phenomena and the same laws prevail on every level, although in different, subtler forms.

That which exists on earth exists, also, in water, and that which exists in water exists in air, and so on. The laws that govern the four elements are the same but, as the essence and the density of each element is different, there are differences, not in the guiding principles, which are always identical, but in their application, in the speed or violence, for instance, with which each element reacts. The mental world of man corresponds to the element air, and the same currents and turbulence as are found in the atmosphere exist in his mind, but in the subtler form of thoughts and ideas. The laws of the psychic world are exactly the same as the laws of physical nature.

Agriculture teaches us that we reap only what we have sown but we must extend this notion beyond the physical plane and recognize the same laws and correspondences in the world of thought. Men make the mistake of believing that they can do whatever they please with impunity, that even if they sow cruelty, violence and evil, they will still reap happiness, joy and peace. It is just not possible! There may be some delay, but even if the seeds of their actions do not spring up into full-grown plants at once, sooner or later they will do so. Some plants take weeks to grow, others take months. There are even some exotic flowers and trees that only begin to bloom a hundred years after being planted. In the same way, if you wait long enough you will inevitably end by seeing the consequences of your actions. This is an absolute.

So continue to do good, continue to believe and to love. Don’t listen to your lower nature which wants everything for itself and is always trying to make use of others. Work, instead, with your higher nature, your solar nature, which is only interested in giving, radiating and spending itself for others in the same way as the sun.4 You were surprised, a few days ago, when I asked you if you knew why the face of the sun shone so brightly. Well, in the school in which I studied, I learned that the sun’s face was so bright and luminous because it thinks of nothing but how to give, help, vivify, warm and resuscitate others. When I see someone’s face light up I think to myself, ‘Ah, he’s planning something magnificent.’ Even if he says nothing about it I can tell. And who taught me this? The sun. And when I see someone’s face becoming darker, clouding over, as it were, I say to myself, ‘He’s got some evil plan in mind’. And it is always true.

You will say that they don’t teach these things at University. You are probably right, but that doesn’t bother me. Scientists have not yet reached the same conclusions as myself, but they will certainly do so eventually for, I assure you, this is the absolute truth. If a person’s face does not shine with the brilliance of the sun it is because the good he has in mind is not strong enough to produce so much light. Let me give you an equation of my own invention, and we’ll see what the mathematicians amongst you make of it: the light of the sun is in proportion to the intensity of its love and wisdom.

Don’t worry, there will be many more new formulas, new discoveries and new truths and, in this way, the third Testament will one day be written.

The Bonfin, August 3, 1968

BIBLICAL REFERENCES

‘You reap whatever you sow’ – Luke 6: 31

II

What more can I add to what I was saying this morning? The popular saying, ‘He who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind,’ is proof enough that these truths are well known. But we don’t have to restrict ourselves to a literal understanding of this saying. We can substitute all kinds of other things for the word ‘wind,’ things such as hatred, tenderness, kindness or purity, and then we can work through to the logical conclusion and see what the consequences would be in each case. The wealth of meaning in this saying is almost endless, and yet human beings continue to repeat it without any real grasp of its implications.

When a gardener, who has not sown any carrot seed, fails to find carrots in his garden, he is not in the least surprised. If he is honest and fair-minded he will simply say to himself, ‘Well, it’s a pity I didn’t have time to sow any carrots because that means I won’t have any this year. But never mind, I sowed rows of lettuces, parsley and onions, so I’ll have plenty of those.’ It seems that human beings are very knowledgeable about agriculture and the fruit and vegetables they grow in their gardens but, when it comes to the things of the soul or of the mind, all of a sudden, they are very ignorant. They believe that in spite of all the violence, cruelty and evil they sow, they are entitled to expect a harvest of happiness, joy and peace. And, then, when their expectations come to nothing, they are angry and disappointed. In other words, they are not good farmers.

The first rule of morality is never to allow yourself to think, feel or do something that could injure or endanger others because, sooner or later, you will have to harvest and eat the fruits of what you have sown and, if they are poisonous, you will be the first to be poisoned by them. Once you have made this your unbreakable rule you will begin to grow towards perfection. I realize very well that people have difficulty in understanding this because the consequences of these laws – whether good or ill – manifest themselves only after a long delay. A man may flout them for years and continue to succeed in everything he undertakes. He may eat and drink to excess and be thoroughly dishonest in his business dealings, with no apparent ill-effects. Those who see this think to themselves, ‘If he can get away with it, without being punished, it means that there is no such thing as justice. There is no law,’ and they start to imitate him. And, then, there are others who, in spite of the fact that they continue to pray and are good and kind and honest, never succeed. And, here, too, people see this and draw the conclusion that there is nothing to be gained by following the example of virtue.

Everybody thinks that if justice truly existed it should manifest itself much more rapidly. They do not understand why reward and punishment are so long in coming and think that if they were punished as soon as they broke the law they would understand and learn much more quickly not to do so again.

Well, for my part, I know the reason for this delay. It comes from the kindness and mercifulness of Cosmic Intelligence which wants to give men time to make their own experiments, time to reflect and to repent and amend their ways and atone for their faults. If human beings were punished as soon as they broke the laws, they would be struck down at once and never have a chance to improve. But if they are given plenty of time and a few minor inconveniences, every now and then, to upset them and prod them into reflecting about things, it gives them a chance to make reparation and correct their faults.

On the other hand, those who do right are not rewarded immediately either. If they were given their reward at once they would be tempted to become complacent and make less effort and, before long, they, too, would start to break all the laws. Heaven gives them time to become stronger, to learn to know themselves better and, by withholding their reward, lets them show how persevering they can be. So, as you can see, there are good reasons for this slowness. But this does not alter the fact that good always and inevitably engenders good and evil always engenders evil. The law is absolute. The only question is how much time will elapse before it takes effect.5

Of course, it takes tremendous strength and determination, great will-power, tenacity and faith, to continue to act with integrity when the whole world is falling apart. But it is precisely this that is deserving of reward. When everything is agreeable and effortless and conditions are favourable, it is easy to continue to believe in good and to act accordingly. It is here and now, when the situation is going from bad to worse, that it becomes praiseworthy to persevere and not allow oneself to be deterred or diverted by external conditions. Whatever the circumstances, a Master, a true disciple, puts his faith only in the vigour and potency of his spirit. Even in the worst possible conditions he strives to awaken within himself, the forces of will-power, goodness and light. This is the mark of a true spiritualist. [The word ‘spiritualist’, in the language of Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov, simply means one who looks at things from a spiritual point of view, whose philosophy of life is based on belief in a spiritual reality.] A great many people, judging from the way they talk, consider themselves spiritualists but, at the first sign of difficulty, they fall by the wayside.

Everybody expects others to be thoughtful, friendly, patient and indulgent. That is all very well, but how can you get them to be like that? By being thoughtful, patient and friendly yourself. If you want people to be considerate towards you, start by treating them with consideration. You will probably say that you know all that already. Perhaps you do, theoretically, at any rate, but there are millions of men and women on this earth who are rude, inconsiderate and, even, cruel to others and yet who cry out in indignant surprise when others retaliate. They are convinced that it is up to others to give way and comply with their wishes.

Read your history books and you will see, for instance, how many men have used threats and even violence in the attempt to win a woman’s love. Of course, fear and the use of force have obliged many women to submit to an unwanted suitor, but inwardly, in their souls and hearts and minds, they were millions of miles from him. Coercion and violence can never win the love of a human soul, and yet people continue to rely on such methods; nine tenths of humanity use them to get what they want. You only have to look at how they behave: they believe that they will obtain the desires of their heart by means that are diametrically opposed to those desires. They spurn the idea that it is only by sowing seeds of gentleness, love and kindness that they will reap a harvest of gentleness, love and kindness in return.

In spite of all this, I do assure you, if you continue to be kind and gentle with someone who is unpleasant and hostile to you, in the long run he will be won over. The law is infallible: in the long run, you will reap what you have sown. If everybody knew that law and had learned to apply it, the face of the earth would have been changed a long time ago. Intellectually, of course, they do know it, but their whole behaviour, all their actions and attitudes make it impossible for them to obtain what they desire.

If you want affection and trust you have to call them to you. ‘But we do call them,’ you will say; ‘We call them and they don’t come!’ When I say that you must ‘call’ them I mean that you must summon them from within yourself, produce them within yourself. When you produce affection and trust in yourself you can be one hundred per cent sure that you will meet them, also, in others. To produce them within you is the only way to call them to you. This is the magic of it. If human beings are so unsuccessful in attracting love and joy it is because they have never concentrated on producing them in themselves and projecting them outwards so that they may be returned to them by others.

Now that you understand this, make up your minds to put it into practice. If there is something that you love and long to receive, try to give it and, in no time, you will receive it from others. You cannot receive what you have never given. You may say, ‘But that’s not true. I know some very rich, influential people who never give anyone anything. They are utterly selfish and have nothing but contempt for others, and yet they are showered with honours and everybody admires and respects them.’ That may be true, but it only means that they have showered respect, admiration and honours on others, in the past, and now it is their turn to receive them. But if they persist in their disdainful, unloving attitude they will, one day, receive the same thing through others.

The secret of all success and happiness is to manifest in your own behaviour whatever you would like to receive from others. If you want smiles and kind looks, give smiles and kind looks to others. If you want the guidance of heaven and its angels, find someone who has had less opportunity to learn and start sharing your light with him. Your action will immediately be reflected in the invisible world. It will be a call for entities to come and do the same for you.

This is an extremely powerful law and it can be applied in a great many other areas. A smile, after all, is such a little thing. You smile at someone and they smile back at you. You are friendly and polite to someone and they are friendly and polite to you in return – that is all very good and necessary, no doubt, and it gives you a nice, bright feeling. But you must put this law to work in other regions and trigger effects of far greater importance than a smile or a handshake, a kind look or a few friendly words of greeting. You must use it to set something in motion throughout the whole universe. This is when it becomes really interesting, when you use it to reach out and influence the most distant regions of the universe.

You can only harvest fruits which correspond to the seeds you have sown. Of course, there may be floods or drought, the sun may be too hot and burn your crops, or birds and moles may eat the seeds before they have a chance to sprout, but that is another matter. These are accidents which have no effect on the reality. They have no power to rob the seed of its inherent qualities. They can prevent it from bearing fruit, but nothing can change its nature, and it is this, the nature of the seed, that I am talking about.

If, in spite of being always kind and friendly and polite, your only reward is a ‘four-letter word,’ that is a detail! You must see who responds in this way and when and in what circumstances. Perhaps you have been too kind, too charitable and generous and trusting and, if so, people probably take you for an imbecile and you have to suffer the consequences of passing human conventions. But that is unimportant and, in any case, people and circumstances change, whereas the laws are unchangeable. When true values are restored and opinions and behaviour change accordingly, everything will fall into place again and you will reap the fruits of what you have sown.

If you want to be admired and appreciated in today’s world, you have to be aggressive. If you ride roughshod over others and are thoroughly unpleasant and contentious, people think that you are worthwhile. But your triumph won’t last for ever; sooner or later another ‘tough’ will come along and it will be your turn to be victimized. Why? Because you have sown a poisonous seed and you are a victim of what you yourself planted. It is a question of restoring the balance... and that is only a question of time.

You must not let yourselves be misled by appearances because appearances never last. If you are observant you will see that the violent always fall victim to others more violent than themselves. And don’t be in too much of a hurry to raise all kinds of objections to this. I know all the possible objections far better than you. In fact, I don’t wait for others to raise objections and try to demolish my arguments, I do it myself. I seize hold of my arguments and attack them from all sides and, if they stand up to the onslaught I know that they are gold, pure gold! In other words, they are true. And what about those that fail the test? It only remains to bury them – Requiescant in pace. Problem solved!

And, now, let me paint a picture for you: imagine a vast and beautiful forest teeming with animals and birds and all kinds of gorgeous flowers and succulent fruits. There is only one snag: no one can get at all these good things because the forest is surrounded by an immensely high, massive wall topped with barbed wire and broken glass. In addition, there are all kinds of wild beasts – lions, tigers and bears – which would be only too pleased to feast on anyone who was rash enough to venture into the forest. The problem is that you need some of that luscious fruit. How are you going to get it? All of a sudden you notice some monkeys in the trees and you know that there is the solution to your problem. You take a bag of oranges and start pelting the monkeys with them and, as monkeys are expert mimics, they immediately begin picking fruit from the trees and throwing it at you and, before long, you have all the fruit you need. You can fill your basket and go home. The secret is to throw oranges at the monkeys.

You will be thinking, ‘What on earth is all that about? As though we could go and find a forest with a wall round it and start throwing oranges at the monkeys!’ But it is an image. Have you never seen a farmer sowing seed? He is throwing oranges at the monkeys. The only difference is that his oranges are minute and the monkeys are hidden below the soil. When he has sown his seed he can go home in peace of mind, knowing that he can come back, a few months later, and harvest the grain and store it in his granary.

‘Ah,’ you will say; ‘If that’s what it means, all right. We understand.’ I’m sorry to say that I don’t really believe that. I don’t think that you have really understood the image. The monkeys represent the forces of nature. It makes no difference whether we say that they are in the soil or in the branches of the trees; they are a symbol. And now for the explanation: the universe created by God is an immense forest bursting with every treasure that man could possibly desire. The walls represent all the difficulties and obstacles that prevent men from reaching these treasures; the monkeys are the entities of the invisible world, and the oranges represent the light and love that you project into the world by means of your thoughts and feelings. And then what happens? Once you start pelting the world with ‘oranges,’ the entities of the invisible world do the same for you. They pelt you with fruit, that is to say with blessings of every kind, until you are paid back a hundredfold. But if you project bitterness or hatred or anger, then, one day, that is what will be thrown at you in return.6

‘You reap whatever you sow’. This also means that the way you behave today has a direct effect on the kind of tomorrow you will have. At every instant, by your inner work, you give direction to your future. Every decision you make, whether for good or ill, sets the course of your future towards good or evil.

Suppose that, today, you decide to serve God, help your fellow men and resist the bad influence of your lower nature. Your future instantly becomes bright and full of power and beauty, full of everything marvellous and wonderful. Why are you unable to experience this result here and now? Because the past still has a hold on you. But if you continue to work with the same determination and in the same direction, little by little, the past will be paid off and, one day, you will inherit your divine birthright. If, on the contrary, you decide to go back to a life of selfishness, everything will be changed, once again, and you will begin to build a very different future for yourself, a future of pain and shattered dreams. To be sure, for the time being, you will continue to enjoy life and carry on your business as usual. Your present will not change much because you will still have some funds in reserve, and the grim future that lies ahead will still be hidden from you. But once your reserves are exhausted, that dreadful future will suddenly be upon you. It is easy to create the future but it is very difficult to erase the past.

Let me illustrate this with a different example. Suppose you decide to go on an excursion by train and you cannot decide whether you would rather go to Nice or to Moscow. Let’s say that you finally decide to go to Nice. As soon as you make that decision, the towns and villages, the countryside, the different stations you will have to go through and even the people you will meet on your journey are all determined. Once you have chosen your destination you are obliged to follow an itinerary that already exists. It is not you who create the countryside you travel through, its existence does not depend on you, but what does depend on you is the initial decision to go that way.

We don’t actually create our future. When we say that man creates his own future it is a manner of speaking. It would be more accurate to say that he chooses which direction he will take. You say, ‘I’ll go that way,’ but it is not you who create the regions your route takes you through nor the entities that you meet on the way. They were created by God a long time before. We do not create our evil destiny, therefore, but we set a course that inevitably takes us towards its treacherous swamps and quicksands and its dangerous forests. We decide what direction we want to take, that’s all. And if, on the other hand, we choose to steer towards a splendid future, the same rules apply: it is we who set our course, but our destination is already there, waiting for us. There are thousands of different regions and spheres in space, peopled with an infinite variety of creatures and our path leads us upwards or downwards until we reach the region of our choice.7 Every possible kind of happiness or unhappiness already exists and others have experienced them before us. They were created long ago. All we have to do is choose between them.

This is why, at this very moment, you should make up your minds to change course and steer towards the heavenly regions that God has prepared for you from all eternity.

The Bonfin, August 3, 1968

1 See Harmony and Health, Izvor Coll. N° 225.

2 See The Faith That Moves Mountains, Izvor Coll. n° 238, chap. 7: ‘A Religion is only one Form of Faith.’

3 See above, chap. 9: ‘Proof of God’s Existence Lies Within Us’.

4 See Man’s Two Natures, Human and Divine, Izvor Coll. n° 213, chap. 5: ‘The Sun Symbolizes the Divine Nature’.

5 See The Wellsprings of Eternal Joy, Izvor Coll. n° 242, chap. 3: ‘Suffering is a Stimulus’.

6 See above, chap. 18: ‘Visits from angelic beings’.

7 See The Seeds of Happiness, Izvor Coll. n° 231, chap. 11: ‘The Land of Canaan’.

Chapter Two
The importance of choice –
work not pleasure

Nobody, today, wants to hear about morals. It seems that the one subject everybody finds disagreeable, repulsive, old-fashioned and obsolete is that of morality. In France, especially, nobody dares to preach morality because the French understand that it is grotesque and ridiculous for anyone to pose as a moralist. They are willing to be seen as scholars, scientists, artists and anything else you please, but not as moralists. They are so convinced, in fact, that the traditional moral code was hypocritical and false that, in the attempt to be logical, fair and honest, they feel they have to scoff at the whole idea of morality. In one way, of course, they are quite right because the moral codes they have rejected were invented by man and varied so much from one country or one century to another, that it is difficult to see why anyone should respect them. The truth is, though, that men have never understood what true morality is nor where it comes from. Today, I want to show you that it is very simple and easy to rediscover the moral law exactly as Cosmic Intelligence established it and not as it was invented by men in keeping with their prejudices, their self-interest or their likes and dislikes.

Before going any further, though, I would like to say something more about a point that we have already discussed, for I can see that you still have no idea of how important it is for your health and happiness, your success and the harmony of your whole being.

Within the last few centuries, human beings have made great progress in the area of nutritional hygiene. They know that it is better to wash their vegetables, peel their fruit, sort out the good from the bad and throw away whatever is harmful or indigestible. The problem is that they have not yet understood that in the area of thoughts and feelings we also swallow certain foodstuffs which may be easier or more difficult to digest depending on how pure they are. It is time, now, to carry this question beyond its purely physical application and learn to choose healthy psychic food in exactly the same way as we choose good physical food.

If you study the nature of thoughts and feelings you will begin to discover the outline of a natural moral law which says that, in order to build a healthy psychic body, we must nourish ourselves only on pure, subtle, luminous, divine elements. Young people will demand to know why – especially those who have been led by the Living Theatre into thinking that they must give a free rein to all their instincts. This group went to Avignon, that beautiful City of the Popes, and invited the audience onto the stage to take part in a kind of orgy in order, so they said, to bring unity out of multiplicity. They imagined that a sexual orgy could create unity! The Mayor and people of Avignon were so horrified, they drove them out of the town, and now it seems that they are going to go to Switzerland. But, I ask you, what kind of philosophy is that? Actually, it should not astonish us particularly; it is simply the result of man’s ignorance of his own structure.

How many thinkers have ever really studied human beings to try and discover how they were first created in the workshops of the Lord? Everybody knows that man has a stomach and sexual organs and that they must be given what they need. I agree, but I say that there are some choices to be made and some screening to be done. Here, again, young people will not like this. They don’t want to exclude anything from their experience. But if they accept that it is normal and necessary to screen what they eat, why do they refuse to admit that if they swallow any and every feeling or pleasure they are liable to be poisoned? They kiss and sleep with anyone without discrimination without realizing that, in doing so, they are absorbing some of the nauseating, pestilential fumes and emanations that many human beings carry within them; it is as though they waded in a cesspool.

I am certainly not opposed to exchanges between men and women; the question is to know how they should be accomplished. An exchange should always be a cause of improvement and embellishment.1 Love should always enrich both partners. But, very often, one or both of them are already ill and psychologically unbalanced because of all the heterogeneous elements they have swallowed so carelessly and thoughtlessly. The question, therefore, is not that men and women should not love each other, but that they should know what choices to make so as to absorb only what is pure and luminous and become equally pure and luminous themselves.

What is it that characterizes a child? Children and adolescents are ruled by their desires, emotions and sensations. The intelligence that enables an adult to weigh the pros and cons, to test and evaluate things, is not fully awakened. This is why children are in the care of adults, their parents, grand-parents or teachers, who can guide and advise and protect them. Children are always attracted by things that are not good for them, but it is so easy for them to fall and cut or burn themselves or make themselves ill. You know what children say: ‘I love Mummy and Daddy but I love jam best!’ A child’s mentality is summed up in that one word, ‘jam’. And this includes all that is agreeable, enjoyable, sweet and easy.

A child cannot imagine that what is bitter and difficult might be far better for him, he has not yet acquired the wisdom to choose what is disagreeable. And this is where the danger lies, not only for children but also for adolescents, for behind a façade of beauty and charm lie hidden snares, disillusionment and bitterness. Young people don’t know enough about life and, as they have not got an experienced inner guide, they allow themselves to be led by their feelings and the desire for pleasure. They refuse the control of reason and reject advice from their elders. This is why they so often burn their fingers and, then, of course, they are unhappy and regret what they have done.

As long as young people do not have enough inner wisdom to guide them, they should obey their parents who have more experience and are motivated to protect and teach them. Of course, I know that young people will not agree with me. In their eyes, their parents are already senile, and the pleasure principle is the only guide they are ready to follow in all circumstances. In this they are making a grave mistake. They are convinced, today, that they are right but, later, when they have fallen and experienced failure, when they have already lost a great deal, they will begin to use their reason. They may even admit that the adults were right, after all, thanks to their age and experience. But, by then, it will be too late.2

And, now, I would like to take a closer look at this human inclination towards pleasure. Should we always trust the natural tendency that urges us to satisfy all our instinctual drives? Some people take pleasure in eating or drinking to excess, in fighting, stealing and vandalizing or in raping women. I understand that they can find pleasure in such things – nature is so rich in possibilities! But if this instinct for pleasure is not guided and controlled by reason and wisdom, then I think that it is not always absolutely justifiable. It is justifiable in its initial impetus, but not in its accomplishment. It must not be allowed to express itself without restraint. Do you need to eat and drink? to have great possessions? to order other people about? to kiss every girl that takes your fancy? There is nothing wrong with that. All these drives are magnificent forces; there is nothing evil in them. They only become evil in the absence of that other factor, the factor of reason. When you are not guided by reason you can get carried away and go too far. It is so easy, then, to upset things and do someone an injury or commit a crime.

Man’s tendency to seek pleasure is not something to be condemned, it is perfectly natural. We all seek pleasure. Every human being who has ever existed has this desire for pleasure, even the greatest initiates. Perhaps, when you hear this, you will say, ‘But then, we are justified in trying to satisfy this drive.’ That is true, but it all depends on how and where you try to satisfy it. You have to make a distinction, after all.

Take the case of a man who finds such enormous pleasure in sleeping with a woman that he can think of nothing else: what is he actually looking for? We have already analysed this tendency and seen that he, himself, does not really know what he is looking for, but that, inherent in the whole of nature is the tendency to seek out and become one with the Creator, only the Creator, because in him is all good: all happiness, joy, wonder, poetry, strength... everything. And, as the poor wretch is not very enlightened, he thinks that he will find the union and ecstasy he longs for by sleeping with a woman. We could tell him, ‘You’re right to try to find beauty and ecstasy. There’s nothing wrong with the urge itself. It’s just that you are going about it in the wrong way, you are going in the wrong direction. Instead of finding true pleasure by uniting yourself with the Lord, you have taken a roundabout way through the sewers. There is a better way than that.’

You must not condemn this man, for he is seeking God. Behind his little joys and pleasures is God Himself. Do you enjoy eating? It is God that you are looking for in food, it is he who is there. He is the source of the joy you find in eating, because nothing and no one but God can give man joy or delight. But, instead of doing what an initiate does and going straight to him, you take all kinds of roundabout ways. Initiates also look for God; they, too, want to experience happiness and ecstasy, but they don’t want to take the muddy byways that would only delay them and make things more complicated.

God has infused a particle of his quintessence into everything he has created, so he can be found everywhere, in every object and every living being. But if people continue to disperse their energies in all directions it will take them billions of years to find God. If you want to take the most direct route to God, you must follow the path of light, kindness and purity. However roundabout the route men take, it is always their yearning for God that moves them, it is always the Source, their lost life in Paradise, that draws them like a magnet. But, as they don’t possess the light and have no one to guide them, the poor creatures have to get along on their own and, in the process, they get so dirty that they are unrecognizable. And yet, to begin with, their natural inclination was good and stemmed from the unconscious desire for union with God. In the meantime, however, they unite themselves to a multitude of little devils.

Hindu philosophy teaches that appearances are often illusory, that behind beauty lies ugliness, behind wealth lies stark poverty, behind strength lies weakness. This deceptive appearance is what they call maya, illusion. A wise man is one who sees the hidden reality behind the veil of appearances and, once he has pierced the veil and looked at the reality behind it, he is free to decide whether to follow the promptings of his desire or not. For it often happens that, once someone sees the true visage of the reality he once pursued so ardently, he is so disappointed and disillusioned that he has no taste for it any more. On the contrary, he is aghast at the sight of the monster that he has unwittingly nourished.

When one does not see or understand these things one follows one’s natural inclinations and falls into the trap. I have met so many young men and girls who were already disillusioned, sad and unhappy. They say, ‘I was wrong. I thought I had found happiness, but it was all an illusion. It was all a terrible mistake.’ Now they regret their mistakes but, in the meantime, they have lost all their freshness and innocence. They have allowed every Tom, Dick and Harry to come and wash in their lake and each one has left some of his dirt behind him. And now that the water in their lake is no longer pure and transparent it cannot reflect the light of the stars and the sun.

Young men and women do not know that, when they are in each other’s arms, a process of osmosis, a very significant levelling, takes place in the electromagnetic dimension of their beings, in their emanations, a process in which each one absorbs the weaknesses of the other. Of course, what is true for their weak points is also true for their strong points. Love levels out differences and puts lovers on an equal footing. This is why, before setting this process in motion, young people should know the rules to apply in making a choice and how to sort out the good from the bad. Just as they make sure of the quality of their physical food before eating, they must reflect before absorbing astral food and find out where it comes from, who produced it and what it contains, etc. Unfortunately, young people are not particularly fond of reflecting, and their intuition rarely helps them to choose the attitude or activity that would bring them happiness. In spite of all that they learn at school, they still allow themselves to be counselled by their feelings rather than by wisdom.

I have nothing against feelings, I have nothing against the need for love; on the contrary, for this is the meaning of life. But we also have to use our intelligence, develop a sense of discernment, learn to choose and discriminate and know who to love, how to love and how to sublimate and spiritualize our love. ‘Why?’ ‘In order to accomplish a very important work.’ ‘But what about pleasure?’ ‘You must substitute work for pleasure.’ ‘Do you mean that you want us to give up all pleasure?’ ‘Certainly not! You will have a great deal of pleasure, but it will be a far subtler, more complete and more divine pleasure which will not leave you with a bitter taste of regret.’ Pleasure, such as young people understand it, inevitably turns to bitterness and poison almost at once. Perhaps it will help to understand what I am saying if we compare gold and lead. Gold never rusts or tarnishes, it never corrodes, it is always noble, precious, bright and luminous, whereas lead is always dull. If you cut lead it will shine for a few moments but, almost at once, it will become dull and tarnished again. When alchemists sought to transmute lead into gold, what they were really trying to do was to transform and ennoble human nature. And this is possible if we substitute work for pleasure.

Those whose goal in life is pleasure, who have set their compass for the land called Pleasure, will cry out in horror when they find that it is a land of treacherous swamps teeming with mosquitoes, toads, snakes and wasps. Whereas those who set their compass for a land called Work will discover a world of fantastic beauty. Are you wondering what all this means? It means that all those emanations, storms and volcanic eruptions triggered by sexual energy must be channelled, given direction and devoted to the important work of awakening and setting in motion certain centres dormant in the brain. This is how man becomes a genius, a Master, a divinity.

Very few human beings have accomplished this work but it is something in which I have always been passionately interested and to which I have dedicated myself. This is why I am in a position to guide young people in the same direction. The problem is, though, that they cannot understand what I tell them, because it is not what they are looking for. They are looking for pleasure at any price. They are looking for what they call happiness. But will they find it in pleasure? There is no guarantee that they will, because pleasure is linked to pain and effervescence is linked to fermentation and decay. As they have no sense of moderation, they will eat and drink too much (symbolically speaking) and stuff themselves with what one of the graffiti on the walls of the Sorbonne proclaimed as ‘lashings of love’. That is their understanding of love! And what will the results be? That is something they don’t know, the poor creatures, because no one has ever told them.

It is not a question of trying to prevent young people from loving, creating or being free, but of educating them. They ask for freedom and they are perfectly justified in doing so; everybody should ask to be free. But the freedom they hope to find in licentiousness is, in reality, a form of slavery. For them, freedom means to smoke, to fornicate, to destroy and deface property, to use insulting language! But where will all that lead them? I have nothing against youth. I was young once; inwardly, in fact, I’m still young, a great deal younger than most young people. They are already old: it is visible that, in their attitudes and the things they want, they are already old. This is why young people must be educated, they must learn that, instead of rushing headlong into new experiences, they must take the time to reflect and choose only what is good.3

There is as much variety and as much rich food in the domain of feelings as there is on the physical plane. Some feelings are the equivalent of spiced meats and blood sausages; others are the equivalent of fruit and vegetables; others, again, are like wine or drugs, and so on. But, as young people do not understand the world of feelings, they swallow anything and everything and poison themselves.

When I speak of young people, of course, I know that many adults are just as bad. They, too, are only interested in pleasure, they are just as ignorant and lacking in common sense as the young; they, too, make themselves ill by swallowing all kinds of filth. My advice to them is to take a few doses of bitterness; that is the only thing that will cure them. They have been over-indulging themselves with sweet things and now they need a little quinine, and quinine is to be found in wisdom. True, I know that the remedy is not very pleasant but they would do better to take it anyway. Otherwise they will find themselves in bed with a temperature.

There are always plenty of passions and desires boiling over in human beings. That is not what is rare. But what is very rare, almost non-existent in fact, is the intelligence that would enable them to make choices. Although this is the most precious attribute they could have, human beings want none of it. They think that if they exercised prudence and wisdom, they would be obliged to renounce some of the things they enjoy, and they have no intention of depriving themselves of anything. But such an attitude only shows how ignorant and stupid they are. If they had the intelligence to recognize the true nature of their sentiments and show more discrimination in the choices they make, they would be far happier. How can you be happy if you are blind? If you cannot see or take any steps to defend yourself, you will always be at the mercy of an accident. Don’t delude yourself that you will be happy if you are blind. It is as though you were handed a closed sack, and told, ‘Don’t look, just reach in and take out whatever you want.’ So, with your eyes closed, you put in your hand and get bitten by a viper and die. Believe me, there is always a viper lying in wait for those who are blind.

No one can blame you for needing exchanges with others. I need them too, but the great difference is that I don’t go to the gutter in search of joy or happiness; I go to that source of universal love, the sun. The sun floods the whole of nature with its particles of light and love, and we receive these particles through the stones, plants and animals of the earth as well as through other human beings. It is true that men and women also possess a few particles from the sun, and it is because they have so few that they never feel satisfied. They are always hungry for more. They always feel the need to look elsewhere for them.

True love can be found in abundance in the sun; that is where you must go and look for it. If you don’t drink from the abundance of the fountainhead, you will have to make do with a few drops of dew that have condensed on a leaf here or a petal there – and that is never enough. True, there are certain areas of the human body in which a little love has been hidden, but if you are content with what you find there you will always be hungry and thirsty. All lovers experience this: they have a constant sensation of inner hunger, they are never completely satisfied. There is always something missing. The only answer is to go to the source and drink from that immense love which is food and drink to the whole of creation.4 If, in addition, they want to love a man or woman, there is nothing to prevent them from doing so, but to be totally fulfilled, they must first go and look for love at its source. No man or woman can give them enough love to fulfil all their needs. In the long run they will always feel that part of their being is dissatisfied, unfulfilled.

I realize that what I am saying is very remote and even unattainable for many. They cannot really grasp it, even in theory, and it will be centuries before they can hope to put it into practice. But I know someone who has already put it into practice; why not ask him how you can do so? Am I unhappy? Am I constantly running after women? No, I have everything I need. I have so much love that it overflows from my heart and pours out on humanity. If I have found the secret, you can do so, too. The trouble is that you don’t really want to. You reason exactly like all those who think that they will be miserable if they cannot satisfy their sensual appetites. Well, if you insist, go ahead, satisfy your lusts, I have no objection, but you will see the results. What results? They are always the same: ruin and bankruptcy. A great many famous people, many writers, painters, poets and musicians have fallen victim to a passion that they were unable to vanquish. If the truth were told, they never really wanted to vanquish it because they were convinced that they would be unhappier still if they freed themselves from it. Nine tenths of mankind reason in the same way.

I have met a great many people who were ill and unhappy, and when I told them what they could do about it, they would reply, ‘But I don’t have time.’ ‘Ah, you don’t have time. I see, I see...’ ‘What do you see?’ ‘I see that you will have plenty of time to suffer.’ Believe me, if you have no time for the light, you will be obliged to have time for darkness. If you have no time for health, you will have time for sickness, you will have time to toss and turn in your bed. What else can I say? It is absolutely, mathematically certain. You don’t have to tell me how human beings reason, I know it only too well. They reason like babes in arms. It is almost unbelievable. To be sure, if you have no criteria by which to judge some of their theories, you will probably find them very unusual and philosophical. You will exclaim, ‘What an original idea! How exciting... how wonderful!’ Well, if you were an initiate you would not find their ideas at all wonderful, you would find them infantile.

You must realize that your body is built of the materials you absorb. If these materials are not pure, you will be impure, and if they are poisonous, they will make you ill. This is an absolute law, not only on the physical plane but also on the psychic plane. So, just as you must be careful about the purity of what you eat and drink on the physical plane, you must also be careful to see that the thoughts and feelings you absorb and digest are pure.

I pity those who refuse to understand these great laws. It is not I who have invented them; all I have done is to discover their existence in nature and ascertain their effect on myself. This is why whatever you say and whatever new philosophy you feel like inventing, I shall always compare it with the philosophy that Cosmic Intelligence has written into nature. If I see that Cosmic Intelligence approves of your philosophy, I shall accept it willingly, but if Cosmic Intelligence shows me that it contradicts what exists in nature, then I must reject it.

Young people have a tendency to accept something only if it is pleasant. I understand this tendency, but, as I said a few moments ago, pleasantness is not a good guide. You must not let yourself choose something simply because it is pleasant for the consequences will always be unpleasant. It is very pleasant to treat oneself to a delicious meal in a restaurant, but it is not nearly so pleasant to be presented with the bill afterwards. Why do people think that they have the right to eat all they want without paying for it?

Everything in life has to be paid for in one way or another. There are quantities of markets and shops and displays of goods that tempt you to buy, but as soon as you decide to buy something, you have to pay for it. And it is the knowledge that you are going to have to pay for whatever you take that should restrain you and make you think to yourself, ‘It’s not really worth it. It’s too expensive. The pleasure I’ll get from it won’t last long, it will take years to pay my debt and I’ll have nothing to show for it.’ You must not get the idea that I want to deprive you of all joy and happiness. On the contrary. All I want is to persuade you to exchange your extremely costly joys for others that cost almost nothing. There are only a few things that are indispensable in life, and, for the most part, these things cost nothing at all. Sunlight, air, water and food are all indispensable and, except for food, which costs a little, you need never pay a penny for them.

It seems that, ever since last May, young people have been demonstrating in support of their demand for the right to smoke, make love promiscuously and rebel against society. You never hear them clamouring that they need light, spirituality or a divine science. No, all they want is the freedom to eat and drink and amuse themselves. But none of this is new, you know. Men have shouted the same refrain ever since the beginning of the world and the Roman populace clamoured for ‘bread and circuses’. We never hear people shouting, ‘Give us the kingdom of God and his righteousness!’ It is always the easy, pleasurable things of life that people clamour for.

But just as it is essential, for the sake of his health, beauty and intelligence, that man should choose the best physical food, it is equally essential that he should choose the best possible psychic food. This is another aspect of the moral law that cannot be denied. People always try to mix the good and the bad without discrimination and it is this that is immoral, it is this that is in contradiction with the intelligence of nature. The good and the bad can be mixed, that is true, but the result is spiritual death. This is why, instead of abandoning themselves without restraint to the pursuit of pleasure, gratification of the senses and amusements of all kinds, young people should study and work and give themselves time to mature, and then nobody would want to deprive them of anything. First and foremost, instead of giving themselves up to disorder, they must learn to control themselves and master their own impulses, otherwise the result will inevitably be the loss of all their magnetism, all their youthful freshness and charm and that subtle, heavenly quality that is their most precious treasure.

At the moment, young people stand before the open gates of hell. Their one thought is to seduce and inflame each other, and no one is capable of restraining or steadying them; no one, not even some of the priests or philosophers who try to talk to them, because there is no solid science behind their words. The advice they give is, no doubt, very good, but it is not based on scientific arguments. The great need, now, is for some irrefutable scientific arguments.

I am not against pleasure. It is perfectly legitimate to want pleasure, but why not combine pleasure with another element so that, when you unite with a man or woman, it becomes possible to produce a spark, a light? You cannot produce light alone. Men and women seek each other out because, left to themselves, neither of them can create a child, neither of them can create happiness. But when they come together they produce a spark, a child. And the same is true in the inner dimension; feeling or pleasure by themselves, without thought, are incomplete (there is the scientific argument for you). Why act according to your feelings alone, without the participation of their partner, your intelligence? Your intelligence can achieve nothing without the power of feeling and feelings can achieve nothing without the power of intelligence.

I am not particularly narrow-minded or puritanical, it is just that I look at things from a different point of view. If the young people’s demands were aesthetic, useful and constructive, I would be the first to congratulate them. Take the case of nudists, for instance: I am not scandalized by their behaviour, I don’t condemn them. The only thing I hold against them is that, under cover of a healthy enthusiasm for fresh air, sunshine and freedom, they have other things in mind and their way of life is not blameless. I am not opposed to their ideas, for they are true and in harmony with nature, but they do not apply those ideas correctly. If they did I would be the first to preach the merits of nudism.

To be sure, none of this is new. In fact, far worse things have been done. There have always been groups of licentious men and women given to the practice of debauchery. Even here, in Paris, about ten years ago, there was a Russian woman called Naglowska who introduced practices of sexual magic. She would stand in the centre of a circle formed by couples engaged in sexual intercourse, under the pretext that she was capable of gathering up the fluidic forces emanating from them and of using them to work wonders. It is certainly true that fluidic forces are released at such moments, but it would be ludicrous to imagine that a poor, witless, unbalanced young woman should be capable of collecting and transforming these forces. People can say what they like, but they cannot pull the wool over my eyes. I see through it all. I analyse and sort and weigh what I hear and allow nothing untrue to pass.

Human beings always have a tendency to obey the dictates of their sensuality and, then, of course, they feel the need to justify their behaviour, so they say, ‘It’s a beautiful idea... a work of unity... a transformation... a sublimation, etc., etc.’ How nice it would be if it were enough to say so for it to be true! People use ideas picked up in esoteric books, many of which are perfectly good in themselves, but they apply them in diabolical ways. It is important that you be aware of these things.5 Practices of sexual magic exist, or have existed, in certain tribes in Africa and throughout India and Japan and, even, in England, with the activity of the late occultist, Aleister Crowley. I don’t deny that there may be cases in which it is practised with the utmost purity, but such cases are extremely rare and, unfortunately, the practice is going to be more and more widespread. You will see that orgies and licentious practices will become more and more common, and the reason is that true science is disappearing, the true Initiatic Science, the true knowledge, which you are learning from me and which is irrefutable. Someone who does not possess this science thinks that all his aberrations can be justified, but once he possesses it, he knows that he is inexcusable.

One day, if young people begin to grasp this, they will be horrified to see the abyss that is waiting to engulf them and it may well be that it is they who sound the alarm and bring the rest of the world to its senses. I hope so, anyway. I certainly hope so! But, for the time being, they have not got this knowledge, their elders have not given it to them because they, themselves, have not received it. In the circumstances it is not surprising that they allow themselves to be guided by their desires and instinctual tendencies. What is so reprehensible in that? If they combined these tendencies with a knowledge of Initiatic truth, they would be content to take their pleasure in homoeopathic doses and everything would be different. Everything can be therapeutic, even pleasure, but if you take too much of it or if you take it with people who are dirty, it will poison you.

The Bonfin, August 4, 1968

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

1 See The Yoga of Nutrition, Izvor Coll. n° 204, chap. 11: ‘The Law of Symbiosis’.

2 See Youth: Creators of the Future, Izvor Coll. n° 233, chap. 12: ‘Benefit From the Experience of Older People’ and chap. 13: ‘Compare Yourself to Those Who Are Greater’.

3 See Love and Sexuality, Complete Works, vol. 14, chap. 27: ‘Youth and the Problem of Love’.

4 See Love and Sexuality, Complete Works, vol. 15, chap. 3: ‘The Sun is the Source of Love.

5 See above, chap. 16: ‘Tantra-Yoga’.

Chapter Three
Creative activity as a means of evolution

When I see what goes on in the world – and since I am living in this world I can hardly avoid seeing what goes on – it becomes obvious to me that human beings are gradually losing something essential. There are many indications of this and, in particular, the fact that men and women no longer know what to believe or in what direction they should be going. In spite of all their culture and science, in spite of so much progress in every area, they are more and more troubled and unsure of themselves. In my opinion (and since everybody proclaims his opinion, why shouldn’t I give you mine?) this is because they have not got a true philosophical system.

Everyone is free to invent or believe whatever he pleases, and the result is an extraordinary variety of weird and wonderful opinions and theories to choose from, but there is no one system that everyone can use as a frame of reference. True, there are some remnants of traditional spiritual and moral doctrines, but the majority has ceased to believe in them; instead they allow themselves to be influenced by any theory that presents itself, however deformed, perverse and negative. Human beings are no longer attracted to what is sensible, ordered and harmonious; they want something new and different. They clamour for change for its own sake. Take the case of the arts: why are painters, sculptors, musicians and poets so eager to portray ugliness, deformity and chaos? In the past, artists looked for beauty, harmony, perfection and light and, now, it seems, they spurn all that. The few individuals who still cling to some principles and ideals, are objects of scorn and distrust.

I can remember my life in the far-distant past, so I can compare what goes on today with a time when the Kingdom of God existed on earth and the Golden Age of mankind ensured peace, happiness and prosperity for all. One day, all that disappeared and the world became subject to the rule of anarchy and violence. There is no more room for love, intelligence, kindness and gentleness. The only God men know, their only creed, is violence, violence in all its forms.

I was not in France during the ‘Events of May,’ in Paris, when the young people were in revolt, but my whole soul was anxiously keeping watch, for I had a feeling that civil war was not very far off. Mercifully, heaven spared us that tragedy. Later, I talked to a certain number of young people about these events and one, in particular, insisted that rebellion was the only way to bring about change, that history showed that men have always had to resort to violence and the use of force in order to achieve greater justice and freedom. The only alternative, said this young man, was to withdraw from the main body of society and form a sub-culture in which one could live according to one’s aspirations.

But let me tell you what I told this young man: that there is a third solution. The first solution, the solution of violence, is the one we see most often in history. But, the problem with this solution is that, once the impetus has been given, it can no longer be controlled, it rolls on to the bitter end, driven by passion and instinct. Reason is powerless to halt the process. The second solution is unrealistic and unattainable, for the time being at any rate, because young people have no one to counsel and guide them in building a new society. But there is a third possibility, and that is to do what the people of India did when they pursued their legitimate, logical and intelligent goals in peace and non-violence. These methods were so much admired and acclaimed in other countries that Great Britain was obliged to give in. In the face of the selflessness and moral strength of a whole nation, she realized that to continue to try to impose her rule on India would cause her to forfeit her international prestige.

The youth of France could have obliged everyone to capitulate if they had behaved differently, if they had demonstrated the superiority of their demands, the intelligence of their methods and a high degree of calmness, self-discipline and order in their behaviour. If they had refrained from burning or damaging property, they could have stirred the conscience of the entire world. Why turn to people like Che Guevara, Fidel Castro or Mao Tse-tung for guidance? Young people need to learn from other sources, from far higher, more luminous beings than these. Besides, policies that have succeeded in one country will not necessarily succeed elsewhere; different methods are needed in different countries. Young people still have a lot to learn. I agree that they should have won through, but by reason of their moral superiority, not through the use of violence. To follow the example of the violent ways of the past shows an appalling lack of judgement and perception in the choices they made.1

As I have so often said, the situation in which men find themselves, today, with no genuine philosophical system to guide them, is far from reassuring. The mentality is such that we have to be prepared for almost anything. What is happening today, in fact, is nothing compared to the terrible events that the future holds and which are all too easy to foresee. When there is no room for God in a man’s heart, why should he continue to be good and kind and generous? It becomes ridiculous to be kind and honest in such circumstances. This is why I am so anxious to put before you and before the whole world, a philosophical and religious or moral system which no one, neither scientists nor philosophers nor religious leaders, will ever be able to demolish. People may scoff and pour scorn on it, but no one will ever be able to refute or destroy it, because it is not a human invention that fluctuates with the times; it is a system established, once and for all, by Cosmic Intelligence.

If you transgress the moral codes or rules laid down by men and are found out, you must expect to pay the price. If you are not found out, you will not be punished, because nature is not going to make you pay for breaking laws invented by human beings. But if you break the laws of nature, you cannot hope to escape punishment. Even if your fellow men admire you and crown you with laurels, nature will punish you. You may be a hero to others, but it is impossible to placate nature; she will simply put you to bed. Now, don’t think that I am telling you to break the laws laid down by men. Not at all. Jesus said , ‘Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’.2 In other words, ‘respect the law of the land, the laws of men, but respect, first and foremost, the laws of God, that is to say, the laws of nature’.

The first point of the cosmic moral law which I explained to you two days ago, was the law of cause and effect. This is the law that states that we reap only what we have sown and I told you that it was drawn from the lesson of agriculture. Yesterday, I showed you that, just as we are obliged to sort the good from the bad, on the physical level, and choose some things and discard others, we have to exercise the same discrimination in respect to thoughts and feelings and accept some and reject others. We can consider that these two irrefutable points have been sufficiently hammered home... So we come, now, to another point of cosmic moral law which is particularly important because it concerns one of man’s most essential activities, creation. You will certainly have noticed that I always base my teaching on something concrete and tangible – stones, plants and animals, for instance, or human beings and the way they live and behave – rather than on abstract, philosophical, metaphysical notions. I do this because it is not a good pedagogical method to start with something abstract, it is always preferable to start from concrete, visible, tangible reality and work up to the level of abstraction. So, if I always begin by taking you for a stroll on earth, it is because, to my mind, this is the best starting point.

When one observes human beings, one sees that they need to eat, drink, think, love, study and work, etc. But they also have another need: they need to create. From their earliest childhood, they express this need in their little sand-castles, their drawings and paintings. I receive quantities of these creations every day, from all those creative geniuses of the future, the children of the Brotherhood. Even the most primitive peoples have this need to create, as we can see from the cave paintings found in so many parts of Europe and Africa. Thanks to these drawings, we can have quite a good idea of the animals that existed in those periods and of the customs of the people, including their magical practices, for it seems that these drawings were an attempt to put a spell on the animals they portrayed and ensure success in their hunting. This is a very interesting point, because it shows that they had some notion of the laws which enable man to use the image of a living being in order to influence it.

From the very beginning of his evolution, therefore, man has felt the need to create and, first and foremost, the need to create children. One of his strongest and most tenacious instincts is this need to be a creator and, in this way, to resemble his heavenly Father. And if it is not children that he wants to create, it is works of art – sculptures, monuments, ballets, song, poems, etc. When I talked to you about Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, I told you that they were tremendously gifted in every branch of art, poetry, painting, sculpture and architecture. Leonardo da Vinci, in fact, was also a musician, a mathematician and an engineer. The simple fact that art exists proves that man’s urge to be a creator is not restricted to the creation of children, to a mere function of reproduction for the preservation of the species. It manifests itself as a need in man to transcend his own limits, to move onto a higher level and replace old forms by new, subtler, more beautiful, more perfect forms. This is a truth that many artists have failed to comprehend. Man’s creative powers belong to a higher plane than his ordinary consciousness, to a region of his soul that manifests itself as imagination, as the capacity to explore and contemplate realities that transcend him and to capture something of their elements. To create is to transcend, to surpass oneself.

I have already explained to you that, if inventors discover such extraordinary laws and techniques, it is because they have the ability to rise to the level of imagination and, higher still, to the level of intuition. They get their ideas and images from above before bringing them down to earth in the form of writings, designs or concrete realizations. Orthodox science has never explored the possibilities of intuition or the nature of this faculty which is like an antenna or radar that can see and foretell the future. Whenever a scholar who is half-way between the accepted science of the day and esoteric science, ventures to expose more advanced ideas, nobody believes him. His ideas are condemned and rejected and it is only much later that he is recognized as one of the great precursors of scientific knowledge. Take the case of Jules Verne, for instance: he was not a scientist, only a novelist, and he had never travelled when he wrote Five Weeks in a Balloon, Around the World in Eighty Days, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, From the Earth to the Moon, etc. At the time, his books seemed much too far-fetched. In fact, he was a laughing-stock for many, but, today, even his most extravagant ideas are beginning to come true.

Thus this faculty that we all possess, the faculty of imagination, is truly creative and, if we learn how to purify it and cultivate it in conditions of perfect clarity and lucidity, it is capable of showing us undreamed-of realities. Inventors have always spent long hours totally absorbed in meditation and research and we cannot deny that their intuition is a truly authentic faculty. And we, in this Initiatic school, are doing exactly the same thing, but consciously and deliberately. The only difference is that our imagination is not orientated towards discoveries in the field of physics, chemistry or technology, but towards inner, spiritual discoveries. In this area, we discover things that would be unimaginable to many.

I cannot spend any more time on this question today, fascinating though it may be, but I have already mentioned, on other occasions, that our imagination is our spouse, an inner wife who brings children into the world. And each of your children will turn out to be a success or a disaster depending on the quality of what you have contributed to their creation. If they behave badly and damage other people’s property, it is you, their father, who have to pay their fines or, even, to forfeit your freedom or your property. If the children win prizes, on the other hand, it is their father who receives all the credit for them. You will ask, ‘But what children are you talking about?’ I am talking about our thoughts and feelings. Our thoughts and feelings are our children and we are their father.3 Here, again, is a very vast field of study and research... but I must not digress. Let’s get back to the question under discussion.

This creative instinct, that we all possess, inspires us to reach out beyond our ordinary possibilities and puts us in touch with other regions and other worlds inhabited by other subtler, etheric, luminous entities. And it is thanks to this dimension of our being that frees itself from its earthly constraints and rises to higher spheres where it receives other, entirely new elements, that we can create children or works of art that are superior to ourselves. Indeed, it often happens that a creation is far lovelier than its creator. When you see a weedy little runt of a man, it is difficult to believe that he is capable of producing tremendous works of art worthy of a giant, a Titan. And yet, that subtle part of him that is capable of reaching beyond the physical realm, frequently journeys far afield and rises to great heights and brings back a wealth of new elements. And then the artist earns the praise and admiration of the whole world when he uses these elements to produce and exhibit works of art of exceptional power and beauty.

But, although all men need to create, very few are capable of becoming creators on the spiritual plane. Very few rise to this level or realize that, in order to produce sublime works of art, they must know certain laws and train themselves in a very special way. What is that special way? You will understand in a moment. How is it that, in winter, the earth is unprepossessing, bare and sterile, and, then, in spring, it is covered with beautiful, colourful vegetation? What has happened to produce the change? It is because, in the spring, the earth is closer to the sun from which it receives certain elements that it is incapable of producing by itself.4 Once it has received these elements, it sets to work and surpasses itself, producing quantities of extraordinarily beautiful, sweet, coloured, delicately scented ‘works of art’ which it exhibits for the delight of all creatures. If man wishes to create and produce works of great beauty, therefore, he must also find a sun, a being of greater power and intelligence than himself, with whom he can unite himself and establish an exchange.

Now you can understand why we go and watch the sun rising in the morning: in order to learn to create works that resemble the sun, works that will be new and limpid and capable of conveying life, warmth and light to others.5 In fact, the sun helps us to go much further than that. It helps us to seek out and unite ourselves with God himself, because it is when we establish a relationship of exchange with the Lord that we can become creators as he is a creator. This is the reason for prayer, meditation and contemplation.

I am not sure that all this is quite clear to you, however, so let me try to explain it further.

For many years, I have had the desire to combat and destroy the philosophy of materialism. You will, no doubt, say, ‘What terrible pride and ambition! No one has been able to do that.’ But I have a handful of very simple arguments which will enable me to do so. Suppose I take two different perfumes which I pour into two glass flacons. The two flacons are quite separate and distinct and a materialist would be perfectly correct in saying that there was no connection between them. On the purely material level, as far as the external form of the two containers is concerned, that is true, there is no interaction, no connection. If you consider the contents of the flacons, however, this is no longer true, for the subtle particles emanating from the two perfumes touch and blend with each other as they rise into the atmosphere. A scientific system that studies only visible, tangible, measurable phenomena can have no perception of what goes on on the subtler level of quintessences and invisible emanations. At this point, therefore, that system ceases to be entirely truthful, for fifty percent of truth is beyond its scope.

And, now, let’s take the case of the sun. It is very far from the earth, millions of miles away, and yet we can feel its presence, here on earth, as it touches and warms and heals us. How can it be so far away and, at the same time, so near? It is by means of the quintessence emanating from it, by means of its rays, that the sun touches us. The light and warmth of the sun caress and kiss and penetrate us so that we become one with it. And since the light and warmth of the sun are, really and truly, the sun itself, it is also true to say – as I have already told you, a long time ago – that the sun and the planets actually touch each other. I know that you half believed this and half doubted it, but perhaps you will have a little more faith in what I tell you, when I say that, last month, I came across an article by an astronomer who said exactly the same thing. Do you want to know how I found it out for myself? It is very simple. Look at our planet: it consists of dry land and, over parts of that land, there is water. Over the water is a layer of air, and above the air is the ether, or what the Hindus call Akasha. The ether, therefore, is a subtler state of matter and it is on this etheric plane that we can say that the planets touch each other. They are joined, not on the level of their solid, physical dimension, but on the level of their subtle dimension, the level of their souls. This explains why astrology has always believed in the influence of the planets and constellations.

And, now, let’s study those miniature planets called man and woman. What is it that happens between them? Here is a young man and, there, a girl, and they are in love. They look at each other and smile. If we look at the situation from a materialistic point of view, we would have to say, ‘Here are two bodies, quite separate and distinct. They are not touching each other, therefore there is no point of communication between them.’ But, from a spiritual point of view, we would see things differently. We would say that, since the souls of these two young people are in communion with each other, they are really and truly joined by means of their fluids and emanations, exactly as the rays of two suns meet and unite in space. Man takes up far more space than the volume occupied by his physical body. If you study man’s emanations and radiations, his aura and his magnetic field, you will see that their action can be felt at great distances. Man is much more than his physical body. His being reaches out into space, he moves about in space.

You have probably heard of the experiments in telepathy carried out by the American army in an attempt to test certain possibilities of man’s mind and see if they could be used for military purposes. Two people who were known to be psychically sensitive were chosen. One of them remained in Washington, under the observation of a special committee: his task was to emit images and thoughts which he noted as he went along. These notes were immediately placed in a safe, so that there was no possibility of anyone cheating. The other person was thousands of miles away, in a submarine submerged in the Pacific and he, too, was kept under constant observation by a special committee. His task was to note the images and thoughts he received and he, too, put his notes away, immediately, in another safe. At the end of the experiment, everyone was astounded to find that, with a few minor exceptions, the two files coincided exactly.

We are obliged to recognize that, if thought can penetrate the depths of the ocean, it must be an extraordinarily powerful force. It is by means of these radiations, these emissions of minute particles which vibrate extremely rapidly and powerfully and which can be received by other minds, that man can reach tremendously far out into space, as far as the sun. Materialistic science has still not studied everything, that is why it should not lay down the law about things it knows nothing about.

I once told you that stones could fly, and you wondered what had got into me, to say such a thing. But what is dust? Isn’t it minute stones floating in the air? It is the same matter, for dust comes from the earth and the earth comes from rocks and stones which have crumbled away. And water, too, can fly in the form of vapour. Similarly, man, by means of his thoughts and feelings, by his quintessence, can fly through space and unite with other beings. The physical bodies are apart, but their souls meet and blend like perfumes.

Which is more important, the bottles or the perfume they contain, the container or the contents? It all depends on your point of view, on whether you are interested in the outer or the inner reality, the bark of the tree or the life that flows through it, the mechanical or the living aspect of things. If you adopt a mechanistic point of view, obviously, you will believe that the sun is neither alive nor intelligent. But if you envisage the living dimension of the universe, you will find that there is nothing more powerful or more intelligent than the sun. You have the choice between two points of view, but it is imperative to realize that, if you look only at the mechanical, lifeless aspect of the universe, you will always be blind, unhappy and ill.

What I have been saying will help you to understand how man, by means of his subtle bodies, can reach and unite himself with the Soul of the Universe. And this is the reason for the existence of prayer. Prayer is simply a communion and communication with our Maker, an act by which we rise above our own level, by which we transcend ourselves in order to create works of absolute, divine perfection. And this, too, is an essential element of the cosmic moral law. A human creator who wishes to produce an immortal, unforgettable masterpiece, must not make the mistake of so many contemporary artists and remain on the level of the five senses. It is the fashion, in modern art, to portray the most prosaic realities of everyday life. Most artists do not know how to rise to the contemplation of sublime beauty; they have nothing but platitudes and monstrosities, ‘gargoyles,’ to put before the public because they have lost the secret of true creativity.

So this, then, is the third point of cosmic moral law: if you want to free yourself from all the difficulties that beset you and become a true creator, you must unite yourself with the Godhead. In this way you will receive something divine, some minute, divine particles which you can, then, communicate to your creations. Whatever you create in this manner, whether it be a child or a work of art, will be far lovelier and more intelligent than you, its creator. What unimagined vistas and vast, unexplored horizons open before you when you see prayer, meditation and contemplation as a relationship of communion and exchange with higher levels of being and a means of creation.6 When you understand this, the possibilities that open up before you are so immense that your whole lifetime will not be sufficient to explore them all.

Those who refuse to recognize the necessity of rising to a higher level in order to create, should realize that they are sawing off the branch they are sitting on! How can they ever hope to improve and grow? They will whither and dry up and, once dried up, they will only be fit to be lopped off and burned. There is nothing more important in the whole universe than to be linked to the Creator. Have you never noticed that the birth of children is based on the same law, that the mother must be united and become one with the father? Every creation requires a union between father and mother and, if the subtle dimension of the soul and imagination is excluded from that union and fails to contribute any higher elements, the creation will be aborted or, if not actually aborted, it will not be a step forward. True creation is not something stagnant, it is not a mere reproduction, a copy; it is a step forward, an evolution. It is thanks to this creative instinct that individuals and the cosmos as a whole evolve. With the single exception of God himself, everything has to evolve.

The Bonfin, 5 August, 1968

BIBLICAL REFERENCES

‘Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’ – Matt. 22: 21

1 See A New Dawn: Society and Politics in the Light of Initiatic Science, vol. 25, chap 3: ‘Youth in Revolt’.

2 See The Key to the Problems of Existence, Complete Works, vol. 11, chap. 14: ‘Render Therefore Unto Caesar’.

3 See Le grain de sénevé, Complete Works, vol. 4, chap. 12: ‘Croissez et multipliez’.

4 See Langage symbolique, langage de la nature, Complete Works, vol. 8, chap. 7: ‘Le premier jour du printemps’.

5 See Sunrise Meditations, Brochure n° 323.

6 See ‘Know Thyself’: Jnana Yoga, Complete Works, vol. 18, chap. 6: ‘Concentration, Meditation, Contemplation and Identification’ and chap. 7: ‘Prayer’.

Chapter Four
Justice

I

Everybody, even a child, knows that, when you buy food or anything else, you have to pay for it. The salesman weighs, measures or counts out your purchases – so many kilos of apples, so many metres of cloth, so many tins of peas – and then he expects you to give something in exchange, something that is neither so heavy nor so bulky nor so numerous, but which is equivalent in value to what you are buying. You will say that that is nothing new; you know all that. True, but if you have just a little patience, you will learn a great many things that are new to you. The little things we do every day are so simple and have become so automatic, that we never take the trouble to examine them and see how they can throw light on important truths on other levels.

Suppose, for instance, that you fill your shopping bag with food at the grocer’s and then go off without paying for it: what is he going to do about it? He will chase after you, of course, and shout and threaten and insult you and get you arrested. For thousands of years, human beings have understood that life in a community is based on the law of exchange. Experience has taught men that life is possible in human society only if all its members agree to this notion of give and take, not only on the physical plane but, also, on the psychic and spiritual plane. And this is what they call justice, this law of exchange which decrees that if you take something you have to give something of equal value in exchange. He who manages to maintain the balance between the two sides of the scales manifests himself as a just man. If the symbol of the Scales of Justice can be seen over the entrance of so many Courts of Law, it is because justice is based on this notion of balance, of equal exchange. But the notion of balance applies to all kinds of other areas, as well. In the area of physical and psychic health, for instance, we say that someone is well-balanced or not well-balanced, and the same notion applies in politics, economics and finance. Through play, children learn the notion of balance when they are still very young. They make a see-saw with a plank poised on a big stone and then, with a child sitting on each end, another stands in the middle and moves from one foot to the other, making the two ends move alternately up and down. You can see the same thing with trained animals in a circus. But how many people have understood the laws that lie behind these games?

You will perhaps remember that I have already spoken to you about the Cosmic Balance which is considered, in the Zohar, to be the foundation of the universe in which the forces of nature are in a state of perfect equilibrium.1 In actual fact, the equilibrium of the universe is not absolute, there is a constant oscillation; if the two sides of the scales were absolutely immobile, all manifestation would be impossible. It is thanks to this slight lack of equilibrium that the forces of the universe are constantly in motion, constantly active. If the universe were in absolute equipoise it would be in a state of entropy, that is to say of inertia and stagnation. The important thing is that this imbalance should not be too great because that would lead to total destruction. An example of this can be seen in the area of psychology: geniuses, for instance, are not well-balanced people, but their lack of balance is within acceptable norms. This is why we say that genius is only a short step from madness. A madman is someone who has gone just one step too far!

If one learns to work with opposing forces without letting oneself go to extremes one can become a very great creator. If an irrigation ditch is on a very slight slope the water will flow gently down it and irrigate your garden. But if the slope is too steep and there is too much water, everything will be swept away in the flood. This is what happens when a dam bursts, and the same phenomenon can be seen in man.

After thousands of years of experience, both happy and unhappy, human beings have understood that a stable, harmonious society is impossible unless the great law of balance is respected. They have always clamoured and even fought for justice, but without really understanding it. You may be surprised when I say this and feel like asking, ‘How can you say that men don’t understand justice?’ The trouble is that they understand it on a purely material level. They give someone something and expect to receive the equivalent in return and, then, when they don’t get it, they accuse the other person of injustice and try to revenge themselves. If you give a friend some money you expect him to pay you back. Even in the past, before money or a standard system of measurement existed, men practised a form of exchange. They bartered something – wheat, oil, wine, livestock, skins or metals, for instance – in exchange for an equivalent quantity of something else. And, today, men recognize standard weights, measures and currency, but they go no further than that.

A true understanding of justice can only be found on a higher level of life, on the psychic level of thoughts and feelings. The phenomena that exist on the physical level are also present, on the psychic level, but in a subtler mode. And it is precisely on these subtler levels that, without anyone realizing it, the greatest injustices occur. Take the well-known case of the relations between a husband and wife. A man takes everything his wife has to offer, her youth and beauty, her freshness and vitality, and gives nothing in exchange but money and physical comfort. Obviously, this is not enough. She also needs attention, warmth and affection, and he fails to give it to her. This is an injustice: the balance is upset. This kind of injustice is at the root of all hostility, not only on the family level but, also, on the level of society and of mankind as a whole.

The fact that human beings are continually at each other’s throats is not due to a lack of money, power or knowledge, but to their lack of a sense of justice. Each one wants the biggest slice of pie for himself, each one tries to monopolize and drain off all profits for himself without realizing that others have exactly the same needs. Why do they behave like this? Because man has developed his lower nature to the detriment of his higher nature. On the psychic level man is an ellipse, that is to say that his emanations, his aura, form an ellipse and, as you know, an ellipse has two focal points. The lower of man’s focal points represents his personality, the stomach, belly and sexual organs or, in symbolic terms, the earth. The higher focal point represents the individuality, [This use of the words ‘personality’ and ‘individuality’ may be misunderstood if it is not placed in the context of Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov’s teaching concerning the two natures in man, the human and divine, the lower self and the higher Self or, as he terms them, the personality and the individuality. For a fuller treatment of the subject, see The Key to the Problems of Existence, Complete Works, vol. 11, and Man’s Two Natures, Human and Divine, Izvor Collection, No. 213.] the brain, which is the seat of reason, intelligence and intuition or, symbolically speaking, the sun.2 And, as the great majority of human beings have made it their rule to take care only of themselves, to look out for their own comfort and well-being, their own advantage, and care nothing for the state of their fellow men, their personality has swollen out of all proportion, and the clamour of its demands, as it uses hoof, nail and claw to get what it wants, drowns out the voice of the individuality.

Look at what happens with many married couples. The husband goes off to work in the morning while his wife, left to herself at home, starts mulling over all his shortcomings. ‘Why did I ever marry the imbecile? He’ll never be a success; he earns next to nothing; I’ve got nothing decent to wear and none of the comforts I’m entitled to in the house... Look at the woman next door, she’s got everything, a fur coat, jewellery, a car, a new washing machine, etc., etc.’ All day long, she grumbles about her husband, for no other reason than that she only thinks of herself. And her husband does exactly the same. He thinks to himself, ‘That woman will drive me crazy. She hasn’t got a grain of sense. She thinks of nothing but gadding about, shopping and going to the beauty parlour. Everything I earn goes on perfume and jewellery. And to crown it all, she spends hours in tea-rooms, gossiping with her friends and stuffing herself with cream cakes. I’m the one who has to bear all the responsibilities!’ Well, after a day spent in thinking along these lines, is it any wonder that, when the husband gets home in the evening, they are both ripe for a fight?

For my part, I believe that it is all a question of one’s point of view: a better, different point of view does exist, and, if these unhappy people adopted it, they would see things in a different light and their lives would be the better for it. What is this point of view? I will tell you. Instead of criticizing her husband for not earning enough to satisfy her taste for smart clothes and the comforts of life, the wife should change her outlook, and think to herself, ‘The poor darling spends his life working his fingers to the bone in a noisy, dusty factory, surrounded by all kinds of unpleasant people, in order to earn enough money to keep me and the children. He’s always exhausted when he gets home; he never has time to relax. While I’m free to take as much time off as I want. I can sleep or watch a film, go for a walk or to the beauty-parlour, play the piano and visit my friends whenever I please. I must do something for him to make up for all his hard work...’ So she sets to work and prepares his favourite meal and, when he gets home in the evening, she hugs and kisses him and tells him that he is the best husband in the world and makes him sit down and rest while she gets his supper ready! And he stares at her in astonishment, wondering what on earth has got into her!

And the husband, for his part, should say to himself, ‘The poor darling doesn’t have much fun. I’m free to have a game of cards or go to the pub with my pals, while she has to stay at home and wash and clean and cook and look after the children. She never has a minute to put her feet up. There’s not a better wife in the world! I must change my attitude; I must be nicer to her.’ So he buys some flowers or a little present to surprise her with when he gets home, and she is so touched that they bill and coo and live happily ever after!

Thus it is the point of view that needs to be changed. Instead of clinging to one’s wretched little personality that sees only the worst aspects of people and events, you must move up to the higher focal point of the ellipse, where you will find the sun. Do this and you will see the results for yourself; it will give you enormous happiness. It is the easiest thing in the world to use others and dominate and crush them. Or perhaps I should say that it is not so easy as all that; you can never be absolutely sure that you have put your adversaries out of action once and for all. On the other hand, it is far easier simply to change one’s point of view. Try it and you will begin to see all kinds of qualities in that woman you used to complain about, qualities which she may not really have, of course, but that does not matter. It will do no harm if you idealize her a bit. And wives can invent a few qualities for their husbands. Why do married people always think of their own happiness, their own advantage, their own merits, and never of those of their partner? It is unjust to think only of oneself. In fact, it is this injustice that causes such strife and suffering in the world, for it exists absolutely everywhere.

The same kind of thing can be seen in the relations between employers and employees: tensions and conflicts stem from the fact that both parties think only of their own interests. And do you know what advice I would give to workers? We all know that they are always asking for higher wages and, when they get them, prices go up and their situation is exactly what it was before. So, then, they want another rise and the vicious circle is perpetuated. But we have to break out of that vicious circle. How? Instead of asking for more money, I advise workers to ask for less. I know that this will astonish you, but my advice to workers is to strike – but to keep on working while they strike – for lower wages. Do you know what the result would be? Their employers would begin to love and respect and admire them so much that it is they who would decide to increase their wages. So I advise workers to ask for less money! Of course, I know you will all be saying, ‘He’s joking. He must be out of his mind!’ Possibly, but be patient; you may yet make some very interesting discoveries.

There are a certain number of laws with which I am familiar, and one of them says that an increase on one side is always accompanied by a decrease on the opposite side. This is absolutely mathematical. We can see this law at work, for instance, in the inverse proportion that governs the relation of speed to time: when speed increases, time decreases and, when speed decreases, time increases. You have all experienced this for yourselves: you know that if you normally take ten minutes to walk from one place to another and, today, you want to get there in five minutes, you will have to walk faster than usual. But if you want to take twenty minutes on the way, you will have to walk more slowly. Nothing could be clearer. Well, the same kind of relationship exists between many different phenomena in life. Take the case of nutrition, for instance: the more you eat, the less hungry you will be. Similarly, in the area of love, which is a kind of nutrition, the more lovers ‘eat’ – you know what I mean – the weaker their love will be; in fact they glut themselves to such an extent that their love almost ceases to exist. When they learn to eat less, to take only homoeopathic doses, their love increases in intensity, strength and breadth and grows into something extraordinary.

It is vitally important to be aware of these laws. The more importance you attach to wealth and material possessions the less intense will be your spiritual and mental life, and the less inclination you will feel to read, study or meditate. You will allow these levels of activity to slacken off because you no longer feel the pressure of need. Those who are too comfortably provided for on the material level run the risk of seeing the forces that once surged through them dwindle away. Before becoming rich they were alert, active, dynamic and ingenious and, then, once they are rich, they are weighed down by their possessions and begin to lose their former qualities. They become dull and sluggish. Their lives unwind in slow motion. To be sure, you will see these people in public life and at social gatherings but, within themselves, they are wilted, empty, burnt out: the fires of true life have been stifled.

If a man manages to deprive himself, even if only a little, in the area of food and physical comfort, he will begin to feel a force awakening within him which is capable of overcoming and transforming every obstacle. But most people find themselves thickening and becoming heavier and more materialistic and, then, they wonder why they no longer feel the same joy and inspiration. They begin to be more and more disillusioned... sick and tired of everything. Their life loses all meaning.

The meaning of life is to become, every day, more enthusiastic, energetic, dynamic and ardent. What is the alternative? What is the point of depriving oneself of life in order to accumulate masses of dead material? Those who think of nothing but money and material possessions very soon lose all sparkle and burn out. Their lives drag on without enthusiasm, without any real joy, without inspiration, without any of those great illuminations which reveal the meaning of life. If you offered me all the wealth in the world I would say, ‘Do you want to kill me? Keep the world and its wealth for yourself; the thing I’m interested in is life! Thanks to life, I shall possess the whole world. You may rule the world, to be sure, but its quintessence will be mine.’

I have already talked to you about how dangerous money can be in the hands of someone who has no spiritual ideal, because he will think of nobody but himself. The thought of money, the desire for money, grows and swells within him until it blots out the heavens and, then, with so little light to guide him, he ceases to see the subtler realities and makes more and more blunders. Also, deprived of the warmth of the spiritual sun, his heart becomes hard and cold and closed to others. Money is a necessary commodity, to be sure, but you must take care to keep it in your pocket, in a drawer, in a safe or wherever else you please, as long as you don’t keep it in your head. Otherwise your money will become your master and you its slave. If you are its master and you make it obey you, then you can do a lot of good with it; it will never seduce you or incite you to crime.3 But if money is your master, it will insist on your being ‘top dog’. It will want you to buy and monopolize everything, to control everything and everyone and, in order to do this, you will be obliged to break the laws of God. Only an initiate can safely possess all the gold in the world because, being in complete mastery of himself and of his gold, he will never use it for evil purposes. You must think about this, examine your position in relation to money and, above all, you must be sure never to make it your ideal, your goal in life, otherwise it will be the ruin of you.

And now, let me go a step further. If men do not understand justice properly, how can they be expected to understand love, which is a form of injustice? ‘What are you saying?,’ you will exclaim; ‘How can love be a form of injustice?’ A very simple example will answer that for you. Suppose you go into a shop to buy a pound of cherries; the greengrocer weighs out the cherries and, finding that there is one too many, he removes it, and gives you exactly the pound you asked for. He is being perfectly just, but as that is not the kind of justice you appreciate very much, next time you want some cherries, you go to a different shop and, there, the man weighs out your pound of cherries and then throws in three or four more for good measure. This man is being unjust, but that is exactly what you like about him! The nature of love, you must understand, is not the same as the nature of justice. And, for my part, it is injustice that I am preaching. Believe me, people are too just! I want nothing to do with their kind of justice.

The Old Testament says a lot about justice and very little about love. But is the world any better because of that justice? ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth...’ And people were stoned and killed in the name of justice, but that never made anyone any better. And, then, Jesus came and preached injustice, the injustice of generosity, kindness, mercy and forgiveness. And that is the injustice that our Teaching preaches, too.

To be accurate, the word ‘injustice’ has two meanings. Absolute justice is in the middle and on one side of it is the inferior form of injustice which takes without giving in return and, on the other side, is the higher form of injustice which gives without taking. The first kind of injustice stems from the personality and gives rise to hatred, revenge and reprisals, whereas the higher kind of injustice stems from the individuality and brings with it happiness and every blessing. If, instead of trying to maintain the scales in perfect balance, you lean a little to this side, you will be unjust, but your injustice will be admirable. I wonder if you have really understood what I am saying. Justice, you see, is very poor, it is no more than a thin dividing line between two injustices. Injustice has a much broader range because it has two keyboards to play on.

Actually, I should say that there is no such thing as justice; there are only two kinds of injustice, the higher and the lower. It is extremely difficult, impossible in fact, to be perfectly just, and so easy to be unjust, in one direction or the other. In order to be absolutely just we would have to give back exactly as much as we received, and this is not always possible. If you give someone an apple, justice requires that he pay you back in kind, but the apple he gives you will never exactly match yours; its size, colour or flavour will never be quite the same. On the other hand, you may give someone an object and receive something completely different in return, love, trust or loyalty, for instance, or a service of some kind. Some people complain that they have always treated everyone with kindness and respect and yet they never receive anything good in return. They sometimes forget that they enjoy good health, that their children love them, that they have a great many friends and so on. They don’t realize that their reward takes other forms. You must have a much broader understanding of justice.

And then, I ask you: how can you ever hope to find anything remotely equivalent with which to repay good thoughts and feelings or words and looks full of warmth and encouragement, especially if you are always so ignorant and selfish? If an initiate gives you a piece of advice that saves your life, how can you repay him adequately for something so precious? It would take you hundreds of years to do so, and where would he be by then? So, as you can see, it is extremely difficult to manifest absolute justice because you have not got the scales or the instruments you would need to calculate it. The best thing you can do is not to worry about being absolutely exact but to decide to give more and receive less. This is a simpler and much more rapid solution than trying to tot up exactly what someone owes you or you owe them.

Of course, I know very well that people are not particularly concerned about being just and paying off all their debts. On the contrary, they take a lot and give very little, and think that everything is settled. They don’t know the karma that is in store for them or that their debts have all been recorded on that minute spool which we all carry within us and which records everything we do. I have already talked to you about this little spool of magnetic tape on which it is recorded that they have not paid for what they have taken, and which is going to oblige them, in the long run, to pay for it with suffering. They have eaten and drunk and stolen; they have seduced and deceived others and defiled their love; they have taken advantage of others without paying, without giving anything in return. Many think they can escape by changing their name and address and even their country, but karma always catches up with them in the end. The Lords of Karma have a record of their prints and can easily find them wherever they may be hiding and, in fact, many years later, even in their present incarnation, they often knock on their door and exact payment from them.4 Much of the suffering men endure is a payment for past injustices.

The best way to understand justice is to see it as a liberation. It is only when you have given back or paid for what you have taken that you are free. Yes, you need the light of this Teaching in order to understand that cosmic Justice exists, that when one takes one has to give. Those who become rich by trickery and cheating are reputed to be very clever and people admire them for it. Well that may be, but every one of their misdeeds is noted and, sooner or later, karma will come to them and claim payment in the form of illness, accidents or other kinds of problems. Justice, you see, is a kind of commerce, a transaction. And love, too, is a transaction – a rather peculiar kind of transaction, to be sure, in which, very often, one partner is unhappy and accuses the other of taking everything and giving nothing in return.

And now I would like to help you to understand how justice manifests itself in your families and in society. Man receives everything from his parents: his body, life (although, of course, it is not they who create the life they give him), his clothes, food and lodging, his education, etc., and all this adds up to a considerable debt which he must pay back. A great many children refuse to acknowledge this; they criticize and disobey their parents, sometimes they even hate them. This is unjust. Their parents have loved them and suffered for them, they have fed and clothed and protected them, nursed them when they were ill and given them an education. Man’s first debt, therefore, is to his parents.

Secondly, man owes a debt to the human society or nation to which he belongs, for the culture and civilization it has bequeathed him; for all its museums, libraries, laboratories and theatres; for all the means of transport by land, sea and air; for doctors and nurses to give him the medical care he needs; for the schools that provide for his education, and for the armed forces and even the policemen who protect him. He owes something, too, to his race, which has given him the colour of his skin and a particular physical and psychic structure, a particular mentality.

But this is not all, he also has a debt towards the planet earth that has borne and nourished him, towards the whole solar system (for it is the sun and the other planets that constantly sustain, vivify and console us), towards the universe as a whole and, finally, towards the Lord.

How many human beings realize that they have never done anything but take, take, take and that they now have an enormous debt. According to them they owe nothing to anybody. In fact, they seem to think, not only that they owe nothing, but that they have the right to destroy everything. What a mentality! What they fail to realize is that, if they persist in their ways, they will be annihilated. Nature cannot tolerate those who have no respect for the law, they are dangerous beings and, in one way or another, she gets rid of them.

The first concern of a disciple who has understood the importance of the law of justice, is to love his parents and repay his debt to them by his own kindness and generosity. He also pays his debt to society, to his country, to the whole of mankind, to the solar system and the entire cosmos and, finally, to God Himself. He expresses his gratitude by dedicating all his work, thoughts and feelings to them. Thus, by means of his activities, he is continually giving something good to the entire universe and paying off his debts and, when he does this, nature recognizes him as an intelligent being. But those who fail to pay their debts are ranked as thieves, as dishonest, unjust creatures, and nature provides them with a few difficulties in order to chasten them and make them correct their ways.

We may say, therefore, that to be just is, first and foremost, to recognize that there are certain laws and that we incur a debt towards nature for the air and water, the warmth and sunshine, for all that we receive from her. And, as we cannot pay our debt to nature with money, we have to pay it with love, gratitude and respect and our willingness to study all that she has written in her great book. We can also pay our debts by doing good to all creatures, by sharing our love and light with them. And suppose you have a Master who gives you everything: what can you give him in return? Are you going to preach to him and instruct him? Are you going to take care of him and console him as he consoled you? Of course not: he does not need any of that. Instead of doing it for him you must do it for others. Do for others the good that your Master has done for you and he will be satisfied. He will be repaid.

We are not obliged to give back the air we breathe in the form of air, nor the water we drink in the form of water. How could we manufacture air or water or the light and warmth of the sun? We have received our bodies from the earth and, one day, we are going to have to give them back, that is unavoidable, but, in the meantime, as long as we are alive, we have the right to keep them, nobody asks us to give them back. But what we can give are our luminous emanations, for man was designed by the Lord to shine, to radiate, to project rays of light into the universe. He has been given a quintessence of light and the power to amplify and vivify it and send it out into space. But to do this requires a great deal of practice, otherwise he is capable of projecting nothing but darkness. All these ideas are new to you, I know, but it is now up to you to apply them. Our possibilities on the physical plane are severely limited but, on the spiritual plane, they are infinite. It is on this plane that we can pay back a hundredfold all we have received.

It is very important for you to understand the nature of justice. If someone detests you, for instance, there must be a reason, and you must try to find that reason. Perhaps you owe him something. Why not free yourself from his hatred by doing something good for him either on the physical or the spiritual plane? Justice is the only thing that can free you. But if you want to free yourself even more rapidly, you will have to choose the higher form of justice that manifests itself in kindness, generosity, love and self-sacrifice. Thanks to this higher justice, a debt that would otherwise take years or even centuries to repay can be repaid very rapidly, sometimes immediately. This is why some people have accepted persecution, martyrdom and death, in order to free themselves by paying off the debts incurred in the course of several incarnations. Those who are truly enlightened choose the shortest route; they are in a hurry to stop wasting time in the lower regions, to break their bonds and leave unhappiness behind them. They want to be free and are prepared to accept the suffering that that entails.

To be sure, there are not very many beings of this stamp. The majority would rather cheat and try to wriggle out of paying their debts. The trouble is, of course, that the law of karma always catches up with them in the end and obliges them to pay. I know that many of you who are listening to me will stop up your ears, but, one day, you will understand the truth of what I am saying. Unfortunately, not a single human being has ever escaped the hand of Cosmic Justice. Not one! Not even that exceptional being St John the Baptist. Even amongst Jesus’ disciples, St John the Evangelist was the only to be spared because he was already free, he had no more debts to pay. This can happen, therefore, but it is extremely rare. As for all those who ‘eat’ and take advantage of all that is available, one day they will be caught and made to pay their debts.

The law of equilibrium that all men know and apply on the level of physics and economics, must now be transposed onto the psychic, mental and spiritual planes. In the area of feelings, for example, you must know when you are taking and when you are giving, because that is the only way to understand the nature of love. If you do not understand justice, how can you understand the mysteries of the universe? The doors of Initiation will remain closed to you. They can only open to those who know and apply, first and foremost, the law of justice and, then, the law of love.5

When a human being is still a child he does not want to give; on the contrary, he only wants to take, to eat, to keep things for himself, to be greedy and demanding. Later, when he is an adult, he marries and has children of his own and reaches a balance between giving and taking. Later still, in his old-age, he begins to distribute his belongings to his children and grandchildren. He strips himself of everything, money, land and houses; even his own body shrinks (which proves that he is beginning to give back particles of air, water and earth) until the final ‘diminishment’ of burial. This is the pattern of man’s life: to begin with he only takes; later, he gives and takes, and, finally, he only gives. He gives everything he has, even his own body, his last dwelling place, and, having given everything, he leaves this world.

Justice is one of the cosmic moral laws that no one can ever destroy because it is an inherent part of nature. Even very small children have an instinct for justice, they know very well whether you are just or unjust with them. They don’t have to go to college to learn how to say, ‘That’s not fair!’ How do they know what is fair if no one has ever told them? Where did they learn that? In fact, even animals have a sense of justice. I read a scientific article, recently, in which the author described how he had watched a trial conducted by a group of crows. They stood round in a circle, ‘discussing’ the case (there was even a lawyer for the defence!) while the culprit listened with a hangdog expression. It seems that he had committed adultery! The outcome was that the guilty bird was condemned to death and, with one accord, the other birds fell on him and tore him to pieces.

So, even animals have a certain sense of justice. You have certainly already noticed that, when a cat or dog has stolen something from the kitchen, its whole attitude expresses a guilty conscience. And a bird or animal that has ventured into territory that does not belong to it knows that it is in the wrong and is much more likely to flee at the slightest sign of hostility on the part of the rightful owner. Nature has given every creature an innate sense of justice and neither scientists nor philosophers can prove the contrary. They are obliged to bow before it and to recognize that Cosmic Intelligence has engraved this law on our hearts and souls and that we may break it only under pain of punishment of all kinds.

And now, let’s draw some conclusions from all this. Since everything that goes wrong on earth is the consequence of injustice, we are under an obligation to settle all our debts as quickly as possible; we must calculate what and how much we owe and to whom, and pay it back in one form or another. If we cannot pay the father, we must pay the son or the wife. This is the task of a disciple, to set about paying his debts and, even, to give back more than he owes in order to free himself all the sooner. One day, in fact, his Master will show him what he owes to certain people on earth, and, then, he will have to go to them and make reparation, otherwise he will continue to drag his chains after him for a long time to come.

For a few days, therefore, take the time to review your life and see how you have behaved and what you have taken without giving anything in exchange, and from whom. Then go and apologize to these people and give them what you owe them or do them a service of some kind and tell them, ‘I am sorry, I didn’t realize what I was doing. Please forgive me for the mistakes I have made and accept this so that we may be at peace with each other.’ You have probably never realized that the day would inevitably come when you would be obliged to face up to this problem. But now that time has come: you must face up to it and solve it, otherwise the implacable, inescapable response of justice will be terrible.

But what if you cannot find the people to whom you owe something because they have already left this world? Then you must turn to God and ask him to settle things for you. Tell him, ‘Lord God, at last I am beginning to understand how unjust I have been to others. I have cheated and deceived them, and now it’s too late to make reparation. And yet I do want to advance and improve. Lord, I want to make a bargain with You (you remember, we said that justice was a commerce, a kind of bargain). Take my life, I dedicate it to Your service. It’s the most precious thing I have and I want You to use it to pay all my debts. You know far better than I, how much I owe and to whom; I am at Your service for all eternity.’ This is really the best way to settle everything.

When the Lord sees that you have reached a sufficiently high level of consciousness to want to dedicate your life to him for eternity (and be sure to make it quite clear that it is for eternity and not just for your present incarnation), he will be amazed by the light flowing from you. He knows very well that if you can feel and promise such a thing, it means that you possess a great deal of light and he will be dazzled by it. And, as he will not want to be outdone by your generosity, he will be even more generous, and tell you, ‘There, we’ll say no more about it. It has all been paid, wiped out. Go, now, and work!’6

What I am revealing to you, today, is one of the greatest secrets that exists. All the secrets contained in books, all the secrets of a magus or magician, are insignificant compared to this. I have read a great many of these so-called secrets and, I assure you, they are worth nothing. What are their secrets all about? The goose that lays the golden eggs? The treasure of the old man of the pyramids? The red dragon or the green dragon? None of it is worth anything. What good can any of that do? Whereas the secret that I have discovered is the secret of divine commerce in which you say to the Lord, ‘Lord, give me Heaven; I give You my life in exchange.’ If you are capable of giving your life, you can have everything you want. But people keep their lives for themselves. Their lives belong to them, they are not going to give them away so easily.

Some people, when they are in difficulty, promise to give some little thing, a candle, a statue of a saint or some oil for the church. But I have rarely heard anyone say, ‘Here You are, Lord. Here’s my life, take it in exchange for such and such.’ Why does everyone hang on to his life so jealously? Because they want to do all kinds of stupid things with it. But if you give God only a few worthless bits and pieces, you cannot really expect heaven to give you anything more valuable in return, can you? You can only receive as much as you have given. If you give a few pennies, you will not get much in exchange, but if you give your life, you will be given life in exchange: Eternal Life, heaven, Light, everything.

People are very miserly, it is true, but it is because they are ignorant; they have never explored the depths of these truths. They are always thinking up ways to outwit others and turn everything to their advantage, without knowing that Cosmic Intelligence has laid down a law of justice which declares that in order to receive one has to give. This is why I tell you, ‘Put a stop to your sly, miserly practices and dedicate your lives to the service of God and you will receive everything your heart desires.’ That is my philosophy, my creed, my life. This is no mere theory; this philosophy is my whole life. It makes no difference to me whether you sense this or not, I know what my life is.

For years, when I was young, I would implore heaven to transform me. I would say, ‘What can I do for you? I’m feeble, stupid, mediocre, worthless. Do you really want me to be like this for the rest of my life? I warn you, I shall not be much use to you like that; in fact you’ll have a great deal to complain about! So, hurry up and take it all. Make me die, if you like, but come and take possession of me. I can’t go on living as I am now. Send some angels to help me, send me all kinds of pure, noble, intelligent creatures. It will be to your advantage because, if you don’t answer my prayer, I’ll never do anything right and it will be all your fault!’ And my threats seem to have done the trick. They realized that this troublesome fellow had got them with their backs to the wall! After much discussion and scratching of heads, they decided that they had better give me what I was asking for because, if they left me as I was, I could do a lot of damage. And it seems to me that, as a result, I occasionally do something that is not too reprehensible.

And what about you? What are you waiting for? Why don’t you make the same request? Go on, ask! Oh, I know what it is: you are afraid to consecrate your life to God, you want to keep it for yourself. Time and again I have heard people say, ‘I intend to live my own life!’ And what kind of life do they live, I wonder? A senseless, idiotic life, or a divine life? Everybody is intent on living their own life and this means a life that has no rhyme or reason.

Henceforth, you must give yourself another goal in life, the goal of serving the Lord. Tell him, ‘Lord, I’m beginning to realize that without You, without your light and intelligence, I’m nothing at all. I’m so ashamed and so disgusted with myself! I want to work for You and do something for Your children and for the rest of the world.’ Keep repeating this, day and night. Even if the Lord is so tired of hearing you that he blocks up his ears, keep repeating your prayer. If you are insistent enough, the twenty-four elders will hear you and call a Council meeting. I know this Council and the sublime, magnificent Being who presides at its debates, and I know that, when they see that you are determined to go on badgering them, they will issue a decree, saying that, at a given moment on a given day, your life shall be changed. And this decree will be made known throughout the length and breadth of the universe; the angels and all God’s servants will immediately put it into effect, and you yourself will find that something really has changed in your life.

You attach so much importance to the things of the world, to pleasure, parties and amusements. You spend your time overburdening yourself, squandering your fluidic forces and all your strength, health and light and, in this way, you lose the love of heaven, too. Take my advice: put in your application to serve the Lord. The radiance and glory of the light that starts to flow from you when you do this, will be so great that even the angels in heaven will see it and, knowing what it means, they will come hurrying down to help you and take care of you. Many people shrivel up and lose all their light, and then heaven cannot see them any more, they are completely forgotten and neglected. Their worldly affairs mean so much to them that they forget all about heaven and, then – what else can you expect? – heaven forgets them, too.

To my mind, neither heaven nor the earth should be forgotten or neglected. I am in favour of both as long as the right proportions are respected. Moses, in the Book of Genesis, says, ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ Heaven, as you see, came first and the earth second. This is meant to show us that heaven is more important than earth, but most people put things the other way round: it is earth that comes first and heaven second – always supposing that there is a little time and space left over. A true disciple, on the contrary, attaches far more importance to the things of heaven. This does not mean that he neglects the material dimension; as long as he is on earth the material dimension is necessary, but heaven is more important than earth. He gives three quarters to heaven and one quarter to earth.7

Our Teaching neglects neither the one nor the other. Nor does it separate the parts from the whole, and this is why it offers you fulfilment and perfection. Instead of being jumbled up higgledy-piggledy in the kind of disorder that reigns in the heads of most human beings, our Teaching gives each element its rightful place and, in this way, human life can unfold harmoniously. A body cannot function properly if there is no order in the way its limbs are disposed. Try putting your legs on your shoulders and your head between your legs, and see how you get along!

Although I have not exhausted the subject, I know that you have sensed and understood a great many things, today. The law of justice is unchanging and eternal and, for this reason it is worthy to take its place amongst the great moral laws of the cosmos. As far as they were able, human beings have invented laws, rules, codes and tribunals to conform to and reflect this eternal moral law, but it existed long before man appeared. Its presence can be seen and felt throughout nature and its name is balance, equilibrium.

As a matter of fact, every human being bears the symbol of justice and balance in his own body. Our bodies are built on the principle of symmetry, the number two. Why does the brain have two hemispheres? Why have we got two eyes, ears and arms, two lungs, two legs and two kidneys, etc?8 And why have we got only one heart, liver and spleen, one spine and one mouth (although the mouth contains one tongue and two lips, and I have already explained this to you in another lecture)?9 What is the reason for this symmetry? If the right and left hemispheres of the brain do not match perfectly, a person is unbalanced. Balance is written into the structure of our being. Of course, this point of the moral law is the one we like least, because it is always a question of paying, settling debts, balancing the books... and we do so love to take, to snatch up something and disappear without paying!

The Bonfin, 6 August, 1968

BIBLICAL REFERENCES

The twenty-four elders – Revelation 4: 4 and 9-11

‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ – Gen. 1: 1

II

I would like to add a few words to what I said, yesterday, about justice. The subject is so vast that I feel as though I had not told you anything.

As I have said, justice is associated with the symbol of the scales, but it is also associated with all the different instruments that are used to weigh or measure. You probably know that, a few years ago, a Bureau of Weights and Measures was established in Sèvres. Why is this bureau necessary? Because, if there are no standards to which everybody can refer, weights and measures would be purely arbitrary and vary from one person to the next. In order to ensure the absolute accuracy of these standards, a special building was needed to protect them from fluctuations in temperature and humidity or the effects of earth tremors, for heat and cold cause bodies to expand and contract and earthquakes can throw delicate instruments out of order. So these instruments are now housed in a subterranean shelter which is insulated against external vibrations and in which a constant temperature is maintained. As you see, elaborate precautions have been taken.

But when it comes to the inner world of thoughts and feelings, do human beings ever wonder what their system of weights and measures is worth? They are always weighing, evaluating and pronouncing judgement, but can they rely on their instruments? Can they be sure that their faculties are in perfect condition and not slightly out of order? They all have their own tastes and preferences, their own points of view, and it never occurs to them that their psychic instruments should be as sophisticated and as accurate as their material instruments. Men, too, are exposed to the influence of heat and cold, symbolically speaking; they, too, live in the midst of noise, trepidation and volcanic eruptions; how could their instruments fail to be out of order? And yet, with complete self-assurance, they lay down the law about absolutely everything. It never crosses their minds that they might do well to have their instruments checked by a spiritual Bureau of Weights and Measures, that is to say, by a genuine initiate.

Instead of asking whether their hearts and wills, their brains or their tastes and preferences are in order, they firmly believe themselves to be perfect and eminently fit to express their opinions about anything and everything and make the most extraordinary and idiotic pronouncements about the existence of God, morals and politics, love and, especially, other people. Everybody thinks that this is normal. Take the case of a young girl: when she is influenced by a warm feeling for a young man, she finds him handsome, brilliant, godlike! But if her feelings towards him cool, she speaks of him as though he were the devil himself. How can he have changed so radically? The answer is that it is not he that has changed, but her own standards. Where can we find reliable standards of measurement? How can we tune our instruments to such a degree of accuracy that all that we see and hear, feel, think and desire corresponds exactly to the truth, the whole and unadulterated truth?

Actually, our five senses are not the only instruments we possess with which to weigh and measure; we have others, in every part of our body and in all our cells. Suppose that someone has never washed his intestines with a purge or an enema, isn’t it inevitable that the wastes sticking to the walls of his bowels will end by affecting him psychologically? And, when this happens, how will he judge things? What will be the effect on his tastes and opinions? I have already spoken to you, several times, about the need for purification and I cannot dwell on it again, today. You must learn to fast and wash, not only outwardly but, above all, inwardly. I have even explained how you can invoke the angels of the four elements and ask each one of them to cleanse you from the impurities that come within its particular scope. Earth buries, water washes, air purifies and blows things away and fire burns. Thanks to each of the elements, we can rid ourselves of all impurities.10

But let’s get back to the question of our precision instruments. Men and women are subject to so many influences and have so many prejudices and so little notion of the criteria needed to form an opinion! If you are asked to form an opinion of a perfume when you have a cold in the head, will you be able to do so? No, you won’t. In fact, your sense of taste will be affected, too, and even the most succulent dishes will have no flavour. And yet, people whose inner senses have been blunted and deformed still have the temerity to state their opinion about even the most profound problems. They would do better to go and have their instruments checked by an expert before saying anything. Once that is done, they will be in a position to judge, but not before. But, today, whatever state he may be in, everybody has his own opinion, absolutely everybody.11

Let me give you the example of two men: one of them has suffered a great deal because of his wife. His unhappiness has soured him and made him pessimistic and embittered and he has begun to write books condemning all women. But not all the women in the world are like his wife; why does he paint such a hideous portrait of them? The other man enjoys a very happy marriage and writes only beautiful things about women. He is not completely realistic either. The measuring devices of both these men are warped. Every individual has his own truth. Give a string of pearls to one woman and she will be furious: ‘What do you take me for?’ Give the same thing to another, and she will cling to you; you will never be able to get rid of her! Can you draw a conclusion that applies to all women? No, it is impossible. And it is equally impossible where men are concerned.

Justice can be found only in the mind of someone who is perfectly balanced. All injustice stems from imbalance, and imbalance is the result either of a misapprehension, a lack of light or a lack of goodwill. In a living organism, this is called illness. Illness is simply an injustice on the level of the physical body. If a person always favours one side of the scales and gives nothing to the other, one pan will be weighed down and the other will rise and he will be ill.

When an acrobat walks the tightrope, he has to stretch out his arms on either side of him to keep his balance. Morally speaking, we are all on a tightrope, life is a tightrope, and, if we fail to add a little here and subtract a little there in order to keep the two pans of heart and mind on a level, if we neglect one side in favour of the other, the resulting imbalance will express itself in the form of dark thoughts, hostile feelings or destructive acts or in the form of illness. Every minute of the day, we must take care to keep the two sides of our inner balance level.

If someone concentrates all his attention on his money, his land or his car, and never thinks of his spirit or of heaven, the lack of balance that this creates within him will show up even in his body, in his facial expression or his eyes, in the way he talks and acts: there will be no sense of joy or spaciousness in him. It is important to know this law by which every gratification of a need on one level gives rise to a lack that must be taken care of on another level. Most of the people I see around me are unbalanced: they are either too intellectual or too sentimental, too mystical or too down-to-earth. For my part, I preach a philosophy of equilibrium.

The notion of Justice is very vast and it includes many other elements, such as balance, harmony, health and so on. And the thing to remember, in particular, is that, every now and then, you must check to see if your measuring devices are in order. Ask yourself whether what you think and believe and desire are what they should be. Go and consult an expert and ask him to adjust your instruments. He knows his business and he will be able to tell you if your yardstick has shrunk, if your compass is a little rusty or if your scales are slightly off balance.

It is very easy for me to tell whether someone’s measuring devices are in order or not. I only need to listen to him talking for a quarter of an hour about any subject at all. For psychological, or ‘diplomatic’ reasons I may refrain from telling him what this teaches me because, very often, if you tell people the truth, not only do they not understand you but they become your enemies. Why do people come and see me? So that I can lie to them, of course! To be sure, they start by saying that they are ready to accept the truth from me, however unpleasant it may be, but, when it comes down to it, they would much prefer me to lie to them. They are all like the woman who knows very well that her husband does not love her any more, but who pleads, ‘Darling, tell me you love me; it does me so much good to hear you say it!’ She knows the truth but she prefers to listen to lies.

Justice is a commerce, an exchange; even on the spiritual level justice consists in taking one thing and giving something of equal value in exchange. And the most valuable thing we have to give is our life. If you succeed in giving your life, you can take whatever you want: heaven will be ready to give you everything. But if you are not ready to give away any part of your life, heaven will not give you anything either. That is justice.

Here, on earth, you give your work, your time, your writings, words or songs and you receive money in exchange. The same is true on the spiritual plane. In fact, a higher law of justice sometime makes it possible for you to pay certain debts spiritually. For example, if your karma destines you to experience illness, accidents or great difficulties, you may be allowed to avoid these trials and cancel out your debts by paying in a higher currency. But, although this can happen, it is not very frequent because, generally speaking, these things exist in separate, watertight compartments.

Suppose that you want to render someone a service and, through ignorance or clumsiness, you hurt him instead: human justice, which looks, not at your motivations but at your acts, will declare you guilty. But heavenly justice, which knows how well-intentioned you were, may allow you to be punished by the laws of man, because it does not interfere on that level, but it will reward you generously for your divine, impersonal intentions. And the reverse is also true: suppose, for instance, that you are very generous with a young girl because you secretly intend to seduce and despoil her, your actions may win praise and admiration on earth, but heaven will punish you because the higher Courts of Law judge you, not on your acts but on your motivations. Actions and the motivations of the soul come under two different jurisdictions. But, of course, if both your motives and your acts are divine and irreproachable you will be rewarded on both levels and, in the same way, if you break the laws on both levels, you will be condemned by both tribunals.

Justice, as you are beginning to see, is a whole science in itself!

The Bonfin, 7 August, 1968

1 See Cosmic Balance – The Secret of Polarity, Izvor Coll. n° 237.

2 See The Key to the Problems of Existence, Complete Works, vol. 11, chap. 3: ‘Giving and Taking’.

3 See A New Dawn: Society and Politics in the Light of Initiatic Science, Complete Works, vol. 25, chap. 6: ‘Gold, or the Light?’.

4 See Angels and other Mysteries of The Tree of Life, Izvor Coll. n° 236, chap. 15: ‘Binah: I - The Laws of Destiny’.

5 See Vie et travail à l’École divine, Complete Works, vol. 31, chap. 8: ‘Comment dépasser la notion de justice’.

6 See Freedom, the Spirit Triumphant, Izvor Coll. n° 211, chap. 6: ‘True Freedom: a Consecration of Self’.

7 See The Key to the Problems of Existence, Complete Works, vol. 11, chap. 14: ‘Render Therefore Unto Caesar’.

8 See Cosmic Balance – The Secret of Polarity, Izvor Coll. n° 237, chap. 9: ‘The Caduceus of Hermes – The Astral Serpent’.

9 See Langage symbolique, langage de la nature, Complete Works, vol. 8, chap. 10: ‘Comment les deux principes sont contenus dans la bouche’.

10 See The Mysteries of Yesod – Foundations of the Spiritual Life, Complete Works, vol. 7.

11 See Truth: Fruit of Wisdom and Love, Izvor Coll. n° 234.

Chapter Five
The law of affinity: peace

All men wish for peace, peace in their families, peace in society and peace between nations, and yet, in spite of all their efforts, they never seem to be any nearer their goal. As for inner peace, the thing is hardly worth mentioning.

Even when they go off alone into a forest or to the top of a mountain, people cannot find inner peace. Why not? Because the transistor that they carry about with them in their heads continues to spill out its noise and, as often as not, it is tuned to a programme from hell. Yes, hell has its own broadcasting stations, and what a racket it makes! And yet, there they are, in outward peace and quiet and silence. Outwardly, all is calm, but turmoil is raging within because of that transistor which never stops or because they cannot stop mulling over their arguments with their wife, their mother-in-law or their boss. To obtain peace is one of the most difficult things in the world and it requires a great deal of knowledge.

The human organism is a microcosm which exactly reflects the macrocosm (the universe) and this means that man and the universe are bound together by numerous correspondences. The whole of Esoteric Science is based on the law of correspondences. Man is infinitely small and the cosmos is infinitely big, but there is an absolute correspondence between them; each organ of man’s body has a special affinity with a specific region of the universe. Of course, one must not imagine that the universe has organs like ours, but in their essence, the organs of the cosmos and ours have something identical in common; they correspond absolutely one to the other and, through the law of affinity, we make contact with the centres and worlds which correspond to certain elements within us. A knowledge of these correspondences opens up unheard-of possibilities for us.

The human body is composed of a great many interdependent organs; each one has its own particular task, but they must all work together in harmony, otherwise the result is disorder or – to put it in musical terms – dissonance. Man can be healthy and at peace only if each of his organs works disinterestedly and selflessly for the good of the whole. But that kind of peace and well-being is purely physical. To obtain peace of the soul and spirit we have to go much higher. All the different elements which go to make up that other whole, our psychic organism, must also vibrate in unison, selflessly, impartially and without friction, like the organs of a healthy physical body. Peace and harmony, therefore, must be sought on a higher level, they are a higher state of consciousness and, as our state of consciousness largely depends on the state of our physical body and the least little problem on the physical plane has repercussions on the psychic plane, the different levels of our organism must be in harmony with each other before peace can dwell permanently in us.1

Peace such as most people understand it, is not true peace. Your problems and anxieties may vanish for a few minutes, but that is still not peace, for it does not last. Once true peace dwells in you nothing can ever dislodge it again. Peace is not simply a question of feeling carefree and at ease for a few minutes; it is something much deeper and much vaster; it is already the result of a combination of elements. In an orchestra, when all the instruments are tuned to the same pitch and the musicians follow the leadership of their conductor, the result is perfect harmony. And in a human being, peace is also harmony, the perfect accord that reigns amongst all the various elements, forces, thoughts and feelings.

This deep peace is impossible to describe; it is also very difficult to attain, because it requires tremendous will-power and love as well as great knowledge. When a disciple begins to know and understand the nature and properties of all the elements he absorbs on both the physical and psychic levels and when he has finally managed to rid his organism, as well as his thoughts and feelings, of all discordant elements, then, and only then, will he possess true peace. If you smoke or if you eat and drink without discrimination, you are introducing harmful elements into your organism which will make you ill and, when you have a toothache or a stomach ache or palpitations, how can you be at peace? You must begin by getting rid of those particles you absorbed and which are now festering inside you and hampering your circulation. And the same law applies on the psychic plane: as long as man is ignorant of the true nature of his feelings, thoughts, desires, passions and instincts and continues to breathe them in and feed on them, without knowing whether they are good or bad for him, he will never possess peace.

Peace, therefore, is the result of an accurate perception of the nature of the different elements. But, as I have just said, knowledge is not enough: a person must also be very vigilant and really determined never to admit any discordant element into himself. When you reach the stage of being reasonable, prudent and alert and constantly vigilant in the defence of your kingdom, the kingdom of your inner Self, then, and only then, will you obtain true and lasting peace. And what can we say about that peace? That it will be bliss beyond the power of words to describe, an endless symphony, a sublime state of consciousness in which all your cells bathe in an ocean of light, swim in living waters and feed on ambrosia. Imbued with this peace, you will live in such perfect harmony that all the glory of heaven will be reflected within you. Released from the inner turmoil which prevented you from focussing both inwardly and outwardly, on the reality around you, you will begin to discover the splendours which, today, are still concealed from you.

Only peace enables us to see and understand the presence of the subtlest realities and this is why, when an initiate begins to taste true peace, he begins to discover the marvels of the universe. Other people rush frantically in all directions, so anxious and tormented that they have no time to pause to read and decipher the book that is lying open before their eyes and in their innermost hearts: they go through life seeing nothing.

The truth is that peace can only enter you if your whole being has begun to vibrate in unison with a sublime, disinterested idea. You will never know peace until your whole being, even the cells of your physical body, are steeped in thoughts of love, that is, in mercy, generosity, forgiveness and self-sacrifice. Only thoughts of this nature can give you peace. Suppose you bear a grudge against your neighbour, you cannot find it in your heart to forgive him and keep trying to devise ways of revenging yourself; or suppose someone owes you money and you keep worrying about it and wishing he would pay it back. In these conditions you will never know peace because your preoccupations are too personal, too selfish. You may have a few moments or a few hours of tranquillity, but that is not peace; it is no more than a respite, a lull (which even the wicked enjoy at times), and those moments soon give way to renewed torment and mental anguish. True peace is a spiritual state which can never be lost once you are in possession of it.

When the one thing you most desire is to do God’s will and work for the good of all mankind, to love, serve and understand all men, this single idea makes all the particles of your being vibrate on the same wavelength and you are capable of enjoying peace. And this peace, once you have found it, will follow you wherever you go; you felt its presence yesterday, it is with you again all day today, and tomorrow it will be waiting for you when you wake up in the morning. You will even be astonished to find that you no longer have to make an effort to feel its presence. Before, in order to recapture a sense of peace, you always had to concentrate for a long time or pray or sing – or take a tranquilizer – and, now, none of that is necessary.

Man and the universe, the microcosm and the macrocosm, are bound to each other by the bonds of an absolute correspondence. Due to his disruptive way of life, however, man has broken these bonds, he is no longer in tune, his organism is no longer in a state of ideal, perfect harmony with the macrocosm, with God. And it is this condition of harmonious correspondence that man must, now, attempt to restore. He is perfectly capable of doing so, for, when he was first created in the workshops of the Lord, he was given everything he would need in order to develop and – if he got lost – find his way back to his heavenly homeland. When a child comes into the world, it has everything it needs; perhaps the heart is a little too far to the right, the stomach too small or the kidneys not quite up to the mark, but at least he has a heart, a stomach, kidneys and lungs and so on. It is all there. Similarly, a spirit that incarnates on earth possesses the organs and instruments which correspond to all the qualities and virtues which exist above, in heaven,2 and it can, therefore, do everything it needs to do. Not all at once, of course, but progressively; and the first step is to know the laws.

What are they, these laws that we have to know? Let me explain with the help of an example: suppose you have two identical tuning forks. If you set one of them vibrating, the other will also start to vibrate even though you had not touched it. This is what we call resonance. Everybody is familiar with the physical phenomenon but no one ever stops to study it more closely and understand how it operates in man. If man succeeds in tuning his physical and psychic being to the same pitch as the universe, he becomes capable of making contact with heavenly powers and establishing a relationship of exchange which will be a source of great comfort and strength to him. It is all a question of communication. You speak and can be heard. In fact, you can even draw certain forces to you and benefit from their presence. In this way you can communicate with whatever region of the universe you choose and it is precisely in these relationships of exchange that God has placed the greatest possibilities for man’s perfection.

I know that you will be wondering how to tune your organism to the cosmos. You have the impression that there are so many details to be considered. Don’t worry: it will all take care of itself. All you have to do is cultivate love, selflessness, mercy, forbearance and broad-mindedness and your organism will begin to tune itself, because you will be working with forces which automatically harmonize everything else. Take the example of someone whose nervous system has broken down: is this something he did consciously, deliberately and systematically? Did he know exactly where and how he was disrupting it? Of course not, but when he allowed all kinds of bizarre thoughts and feelings into his inner fortress he upset the whole system. It was simple: no need to know exactly where each centre of his nervous system was in order to disrupt it. In the same way, you can tune your entire organism to the right pitch simply by working with thoughts and feelings of a high order which will set all your spiritual centres vibrating harmoniously.

Many people, when things are not going as they would like, complain that life has no meaning and that God does not exist. But the fact that they are stupid, unhealthy and unhappy is no proof that there are no intelligent, healthy, happy people anywhere in the world! It is their reasoning that is at fault. When you find yourself in this state, when you are unhappy and tormented and nothing seems to be going right, what can you do? Instead of weeping and wringing your hands and going round in circles, why not go and ask for help from somebody who is capable of giving it to you? You will ask, ‘Where are these beings? How can I find them?’ They are there, with you and in you. All you have to do is go to them in thought and, thanks to the acoustical law of resonance (or, as I sometimes call it, the law of affinity or of sympathy), you will reach them. Once you know this law, you are obliged to transcend and surpass yourself in order to touch the subtlest, most sensitive chords of your being and set them vibrating, in the sure knowledge that they will awaken a response from higher forces and entities and regions.

I have so often spoken to you about this acoustical law which I also call the law of echo response. You call out, ‘I love you,’ and, even if you are all alone, a throng of voices replies, ‘I love you’. And if you shout ‘I hate you,’ the voices will echo, ‘I hate you’! If this is a reality on the physical plane, why should it not be equally real on the mental plane?

Take a ball and throw it against a wall. If you don’t get out of the way, it will bounce back and hit you because of a law similar to the law of the echo. This is what I call the law of reaction, rebound or backlash. Here, too, you are familiar with this law on the physical plane but it never occurs to you that it is operative on the psychic plane as well. Whatever you do, whether good or bad, you will inevitably feel the backlash, one day. Every feeling that you experience has specific characteristics and, in virtue of the law of affinity, it awakens forces of a like nature in space, which rebound onto you. If your feelings are bad, the results will be bad; if they are good, you will receive something good. Thanks to this law we can obtain whatever we want from the great reservoirs of the universe, on one condition: that we emanate and project thoughts and feelings of the same nature as those we wish to obtain. The nature of the elements and forces which we summon from space and which, eventually and inevitably, reach us, is unconditionally determined by the nature of our own thoughts and feelings.

This law of affinity is, to my mind, the most important key, the greatest arcanum, the magic wand. My whole life is based on it. Knowing this law, I know that I only have to work in a particular direction with the thought of all that is best and most beautiful in mind, and wait for it to materialize. Many things have already materialized, and many others are still to come. This is the only law I work with and it embraces all the others. Thanks to this law, everything can be explained: the structure of human beings, their intelligence or stupidity, their kindness or cruelty, their fortunes and misfortunes, all their wealth and all their poverty. Everything.

An excellent example of how this law applies is shown by fish in the ocean. The ocean contains every chemical element and mineral that exists; some fish take one kind of particle from it and form a beautiful, brilliantly coloured, phosphorescent body, whilst others take particles that give them a dull, dingy body. None of this is conscious, of course, but each fish takes elements from the sea which correspond to its nature. And that is exactly what we do. Our habitat is the etheric Ocean which contains an abundance of every created element, and we are what we are because of the type of element we have used to form our bodies. This explains everything. If someone is ugly, miserable and always ill, for example, it is not because of his present incarnation. It is because, in previous incarnations, he was not properly instructed or enlightened and, in his ignorance, he attracted various pernicious elements from the environment and, now, he does not know how to get rid of them.

So, I am warning you: now that you know this law of affinity – the most potent law of magic and the foundation of all creation – you must immediately set to work to draw particles from the universe so luminous and precious, that everything in and around you begins to improve. And, when people see that you have changed and become much more attractive, more radiant, more intelligent and even more powerful, they will treat you quite differently and your destiny will change. As you can see, everything in life is connected. If you are ignorant and don’t know the laws on which life is based, if you destroy and lay waste all round you, the forces of nature are obviously going to have to abandon you. They will help you for a time, but if they see that you continue to plunder and destroy all that God has given you, they will abandon you. And then what sorrow and distress!

I’m afraid that a great many people are in this situation. I have met a lot of them, and I have found that they don’t understand how they managed to get into such a state. Unfortunately, I have never been able to explain it to them because their heads were too full of obscurity and illogical notions; they could see no meaning or order in anything. I would have had to start from the very beginning and instruct them for years and years! Above all, they would have had to show a readiness to listen patiently and that, unfortunately, they could not do. It would have taken more than five minutes to show them when and how they had begun to go astray and how, step by step, they had reached their present deplorable situation. Unfortunately, most people are incapable of recognizing the sequence of cause and effect. Even when one shows them arguments and proofs that are almost tangible, they refuse to admit it. The truth is that every single thing that happens in our lives or in the universe was prepared in advance. This is important; make a note of it because, in the Third Testament, this and many other great truths, will be shown to be incontrovertible facts.

It is no good clinging fondly to the idea that you will find peace by changing your house or your friends, by getting a new job, a new nationality or a new religion – or a new husband or wife! If it were as easy as that I would have been the first to do it. But I don’t believe that peace has anything to do with changes of that sort and you would do better not to believe it either. You might get a breathing space, a brief respite, in that way but, in no time at all, wherever you went, other problems would crop up and begin tormenting you all over again if you had not understood that peace can only be obtained by changing the way you think, feel and behave. Change your thoughts and feelings and the way you behave and, then, even if you stay in the same place, in exactly the same difficult circumstances, you will know peace.

True peace does not depend on external circumstances; it comes from within, and all the turmoil and agitation of the whole world cannot prevent it from surging up and flooding your innermost being.3 It is like a river pouring down a mountainside. Once you possess that peace and are capable, in turn, of pouring it out on others and communicating it as a tangible, living reality, once you start working for the good of the whole world by giving peace to others, you become a different being; you rise to a higher level in the hierarchy of beings, you become a son of God and his representative on earth, for, in virtue of the law of universal correspondences, you are distributing the very blessings, treasures and splendours that exist in heaven.

In the meantime, in order to obtain this peace, you must prepare the ground for it. In other words, you must pay all your debts and free yourselves, then you will not be disturbed by someone intruding on you and clamouring for his rights. How can you expect to find peace if you have a pack of creditors looking for you because you have robbed and plundered them? ‘By running away and hiding,’ you say? No, with human creditors that might work, but what about the ones inside you? How can you get away from the thoughts that pursue you wherever you go? To reason like that is to show how little you really know. Don’t delude yourselves: your thoughts will always catch up with you! Now that you know the truth, stop hiding behind your illusions and get these great laws firmly into your heads. When one understands the affinity that binds kindred beings to each other, one is obliged to change the way one lives for the better, even if one does not want to.

For me, the word ‘affinity’ is one of the most potent, one of the most magical words that exist. It is thanks to the law of affinity that each one of us is able to draw all the best, subtlest and most radiant elements from the cosmic Ocean with which to build our Body of Glory, that wondrous Body of immortality and light. I have already spoken to you about the Body of Glory in previous lectures and explained how to form it and build it up.4 The Gospels mention it also, but without really explaining it. Each human being carries his potential Body of Glory within him, but we have to keep giving it the materials it needs so that it can reach maturity.

How does a woman form the child in her womb? All that she eats and drinks, the air she breathes, the thoughts she thinks and the way she lives, give her child the materials it needs gradually to grow and develop. It is the mother who forms her child, but it is not she who creates it. And nor do we create the Christ within us. Our soul must first be fertilized by the cosmic Spirit in order to conceive Christ, and then, like a mother, we give him form by our emanations, by living in the best possible way.

When, from time to time, we experience a very elevated state of consciousness, when we feel the desire to embrace the whole world, to work for the Lord, to strip ourselves of self and do something really noble and great, then the particles that emanate from us go to feed our Body of Glory. This is how we contribute to its growth: it can use only what is best in us, and if we nourish it for a long time with our flesh and blood, with our own fluid, our own life, one day it will begin to shine and radiate light. And, because it is formed of materials that cannot rust or corrode or tarnish, it will be immortal and very strong, powerful and invulnerable, capable of accomplishing wonders, not only within us but also all round us. Through this vehicle of the Body of Glory, the Body of Light, Christ can work miracles.

Before his Body of Glory takes shape within him, man is lacklustre, weak, vulnerable and sickly, but every human being bears within himself a germ of Christ which he can tend and cultivate. And this brings us back full-cycle to the law of affinity: the work of a disciple is to transcend and surpass himself in order to draw in to himself the purest and most luminous particles from the etheric Ocean and incorporate them into his Body of Glory. We can begin to gather these particles at once, today; in minute quantities to start with, but we shall gradually learn how to obtain more and more of them. This is what we do every morning at sunrise: leaving the earth behind us, we reach up to heaven and the sun and gather some of these bright, shining particles to add to our Body of Glory. This is one more page from the book of true knowledge.

For years and years I worked with only one idea in mind: to contemplate and comprehend the structure of the universe. For years, it was the only thing that interested me. I spent days and nights out of my body, striving for a clear vision of that structure, of the bonds that tie all the disparate elements together. I knew that everything else was unimportant. The only thing that mattered was to see the overall structure. As long as human beings are content to study the multifarious phenomena of the physical world, the world of facts, the conclusions they reach will always be erroneous. Only if they look higher, at the world of laws and principles, and contemplate the overall structure, will they obtain an authentic vision of the whole. For my part, it took me years to achieve, but now I have it. This is why I am in a position to instruct, enlighten and advise you: because I have this model of perfection to refer to.

Almost nobody recognizes the value of this philosophy. But that will not always be the case. There are forces in the world that are more powerful than men, and, one day, they will oblige men to appreciate the true worth of this Teaching. I don’t worry about it because I am completely confident of the outcome. I live with the conviction that, sooner or later, everything will slip into place.

For the moment, everything is upside down, on this earth: that which has real value is despised and rejected, while that which is worthless is treasured above all else. Look at what men prize most: gold, jewellery, houses and cars! And what about divine ideas? They think they are totally unimportant! Well, this is just the reverse of what I see in the cosmic edifice. Above, in the divine world, it is an idea, a truth that holds the highest place; everything else is secondary. It is human beings that have turned everything upside down and given first place to that which Cosmic Intelligence puts last, and vice versa. But this state of affairs will not last for ever because the law of correspondences says that inner beauty must be clothed in outer beauty and inner ugliness in outer ugliness. This is how the Intelligence of Nature has ordered things.5

In the world of men, as we all know, the opposite is often true: the most vicious and diabolical live in the midst of rich, sumptuous surroundings, whereas those with sublime inner qualities enjoy none of the external trappings that correspond to these qualities. As they are not greedy for possessions, they make no effort to obtain wealth, with the result that they often possess only the barest necessities on the physical plane. Outwardly, nothing in their way of life corresponds to all the splendour within.

In the distant past, when things were given their rightful place, those who were inwardly poor were also outwardly poor, and those who had inner wealth also enjoyed external wealth. This is how it is with the Lord himself! He who possesses all qualities and all virtues, possesses, also, all the wealth of the universe. It is only here, amongst human beings, that this order no longer exists but, as the law is absolute (all that is below must, one day, be like that which is above), another order will eventually prevail in which every being will find his rightful place. Those who are rich in intelligence, kindness and nobleness will also possess external riches, and those who have none of these qualities will have no external wealth. Of course, it will not be human beings who restore this order, for they have no way of knowing who is deserving and who is not. It will be the work of Cosmic Intelligence, for the law of correspondences is one of the absolute laws of the universe.

With the key that I have given you, today, you can restructure your whole being by using your thoughts and feelings to produce vibrations and emanations of a far higher nature, and sending them to seek out from amongst the billions of elements that exist in space, those which correspond to them. The law of affinity makes everything possible on condition, first of all, that you know this law and, secondly, that you apply it with perseverance. Some of you come to me and complain, saying, ‘Master, I’ve been praying and meditating for years and years without results: I have nothing to show for it!’ How mistaken you are! If you really think that, it means that you have not understood the first thing about this extraordinary Teaching.

I sense that you sometimes think this about my work, too. You think, ‘You say that you are working, but what do you have to show for it? There are no visible results?’ That is perhaps true for the moment, but there is one thing you must know, and that is that it takes a great deal of time for spiritual work to produce material results,6 and I, for one, am not interested in undertaking something easy that can be achieved rapidly. I have embarked on the most difficult undertaking of all, and it is going to take a very long time to achieve it. If I had aimed at something easy the results would have been visible and fully accomplished by now, like plants which produce fruit in only a few months. Yes, but my plants are of a kind that requires much more time to grow and produce fruit. But what fruit, when it does come!

The only things that interest and attract me are those that are very difficult, wellnigh impossible, to achieve. Why ask for something that can be had easily but that won’t last? Isn’t it worth working exclusively for something so glorious that it is beyond all imagining? Someone who wants to become a doctor, engineer or chemist, is prepared to spend five or six years on his training: but five or six years is not very much. Why not concentrate on acquiring a quality that can only be fully developed by working at it for centuries: divine intelligence, heavenly kindness or self-mastery for instance? Could you earn a doctorate in self-mastery in five or six years? These are the things you should be striving for, the things that are not easy. You can get a diploma as a manicurist or a chiropodist in only a few months. That is easy – too easy!

So, now, I am urging human beings to enter other fields and other areas of study, to undertake other activities and, in five or six or even ten years, we shall see whether they have earned a diploma. It takes centuries to achieve success in these areas, but it is well worth the effort!

The Bonfin, 10 August, 1968

1 See Harmony and Health, Izvor Coll. n° 225.

2 See Man’s Subtle Bodies and Centres – the Aura, the Solar Plexus, the Chakras…, Izvor Coll. n° 219.

3 See The Path of Silence, Izvor Coll. n° 229, chap. 2: ‘Achieving Inner Silence’, chap. 7: ‘Harmony, the Essential Condition for Inner Silence’ and chap. 9: ‘The Quest for Silence is the Quest for the Centre’.

4 See ‘Au commencement était le Verbe’ – commentaires des Évangiles, Complete Works, vol. 9, chap. 13: ‘Le corps de la résurrection’.

5 See ‘Know Thyself’: Jnana Yoga, Complete Works, vol. 18, chap. 1: ‘Beauty’.

6 See The Faith That Moves Mountains, Izvor Coll. n° 238, chap. 13: ‘Rabota, Vreme, Vera: Work, Time, Faith’.

Chapter Six
The law of affinity: true religion

Now that you have understood that peace is the result of harmony, of the harmony that unites all the disparate elements which constitute man, you must get into the habit of devoting a few minutes every day to filling your being with harmony. Don’t wait until you feel completely crushed and annihilated, and are wondering desperately how you managed to get into such a piteous state and how you can possibly find a way out. Take stock of your situation every day, and, as soon as you feel troubled, anxious or agitated, pause in whatever you are doing and take the time to restore your inner harmony before getting back to work. Why are you all so ready to accept suffering? When it is a question of happiness, you haven’t got time, you are in a hurry, but when it comes to suffering, you are always available. This is the worst possible attitude you could have, and yet it is the attitude of almost all human beings.

If you get into the habit of putting yourself in harmony with the divine world, everything will become clear to you and you will even be able to glimpse something of the prodigious harmony of the cosmos. Your spirit already sees all this; it senses and takes part in all the events of the universe, but, as your brain, heart and lungs are not sufficiently developed to transmit these impressions to your conscious mind, you know nothing, see nothing and feel nothing. And yet, in actual fact, you know it all.

Information about everything that occurs in the universe reaches us in the form of waves which are unavoidably received and recorded by us. But it is only the highest, most sublime part of ourselves, the part that is furthest away from us, that hears and responds to these messages. We, ourselves, can have no notion of them. Our situation is exactly that of a radio: the waves carrying radio messages from all the transmitting stations of the world reach us here, in this room, and if you turn on your radio, you can hear them. But if you switch off your radio it is as though there were nothing there any more; all is silence. And yet, all that music and all those words are still being broadcast. Each one of us is like a radio receiver: from every corner of the universe the waves reach us and flow round us without our having the least idea that they are there.

You will probably want to know what you should do in order to receive these messages consciously. ‘Should we try to strengthen and enlighten our spirit?’ you will ask; ‘Or educate and train it to receive these waves?’ No, it is not the spirit but the physical body that needs to be purified, sublimated and spiritualized. Ancient alchemists were on the right track when they concentrated on matter; what they wanted was to transmute matter by replacing some of its grosser elements with subtler, more sensitive elements.1 And this is exactly what we have to do, too. We have to nourish our physical body with pure food and drink, pure air and sunlight and, even, with all that is most beautiful in the way of forms, colours and music. We shall achieve our goal much sooner and more effectively by concentrating on our physical body. The spirit does not need any of that; it is omnipresent and omniscient, like God.

Suppose you have before you a child who is mentally handicapped or retarded, who can neither talk nor play. You might be tempted to think that it was his spirit that was retarded. Not at all. His spirit is a virtuoso, but it has been given a faulty instrument, that is to say, a brain that is defective and, for this reason, it is incapable of manifesting itself. If it were given an instrument that was in good condition you would soon see how talented it was. It is the body, the brain, that hampers the child’s spirit. You must never confuse the instrument, the physical body, with the entity who inhabits it and who, for one reason or another, is being punished by not being allowed to express itself or contribute anything to others. But this is not a situation that will last for ever.

Picture to yourself a man who is in prison, forced to endure frightful conditions of filth and foul, cramped quarters. His excellent reasoning powers and a lively appreciation of beauty have left him totally unprepared for such conditions so that they cause him great suffering and unhappiness. But, as he has broken certain laws, he is obliged to submit to his punishment. This is a faithful image of the case of someone who is an idiot at birth: his body is in poor shape but not he himself. In a later incarnation, when he has served out his term of imprisonment, he will be given a different body and will manifest himself, perhaps, as a genius.

This is why we must always try to improve the condition of our physical body so that it may be capable of receiving and transmitting properly. Take the case of musical geniuses such as Mozart or Beethoven: they were beings whose brain – or, rather, whose musical nerve centres – had attained such a degree of perfection that they could listen to melodies of the invisible world and, then, write them down on paper. To be sure, it is always possible to ‘create’ a certain kind of music; all you need is some knowledge of the laws of harmony. In fact, nowadays, music can even be made by computers. But that kind of music cannot give us anything. Many modern musicians are fascinated by these methods of composition and, instead of rising to the highest regions of their soul in order to receive and record divine harmonies, they sink to a lower level and become more material. It is the machines that are making music for them!

Today’s artists are no longer the inspired beings of the past whose first concern was to rise to a higher level and contemplate the beauty of the world above, before trying to express it through their art. In those days they would not begin to create until they sensed that they were in communication with the heavenly regions and had succeeded in contemplating their beauty. They respected and followed the rules of a certain discipline which they handed on to others. Whereas, today, artists have forgotten these traditions; each one works according to his own whims and fancies and it is the most eccentric that are considered to be the finest artists. The truth is that art demands that the artist be initiated, that he know the laws of the universe, for, without that knowledge, he can never be a creator.

Now, to complete what I was saying yesterday, let me add that true religion is founded on the law of universal correspondence. This law, which is valid on the physical, magical, chemical and spiritual planes, states that when one creates a bond with any form of perfection, whether it be perfection of intelligence, power or form, perfection of colour, perfume or beauty, one benefits personally from that perfection because it becomes part of one’s own being. This is an infallible law and, once you know it, you cannot rid yourself of this idea of perfection without feeling that you are destroying something of yourself.

True religion is based on the knowledge of laws that are perfectly real and verifiable, since they can be seen to apply in every aspect of nature, in zoology, entomology, etc., etc. Suppose that you have a tremendous admiration for someone whom you see as a divinity and whom you take as your model: you contemplate and meditate on him and, in this way, form a bond with him so that all that perfection and splendour that you contemplate begins to penetrate your own being. Gradually, you will become more and more beautiful and powerful, until you reach the same degree of perfection as your model. This is how the law operates.

However, it is very important to know, also, that if you fail to respect this law, you will lose all the good, all the sensible, splendid things you have accumulated so far, and no one in heaven or on earth will be able to help you. Before, when you respected this law, who was it that helped you? The Lord? No, he probably did not even know what you were up to! It was the law itself that helped you. As soon as it is touched, it begins to take effect and is obliged to encourage and help you and free you from all your difficulties and suffering. If, in spite of your great love of the Lord, you have not yet reached this degree of freedom, it is not because the law lies, but because you have worked so negatively for so long and have built up such a thick, tough shell, that it is going to take a long time to break through it. But, one day, you will no longer be able to escape from this law; once it has got you in its grip, you will find that the good in you is so strong and unwavering that you will never again be able to demolish it.

If, at the moment, you do not feel that you are making progress, it is not the fault of the law. It is because, in previous incarnations, you have allowed so many layers to build up and fence you in that even if you are working with this law now and amassing marvellous treasures, you cannot see or feel them. The law itself is infallible and, if you persevere, your outer shell will gradually be worn away until there is nothing left of it and all the treasure that you have been storing up through your thoughts and prayers and contemplations, all that wealth and beauty, all that splendour, will pour over you and flood your being. The ocean of blessings that you have accumulated without realizing it, is ready to engulf you.

If your religion is based on nothing but the habits or beliefs acquired through education, the family or society, it cannot be solid and durable.2 True religion is based on the knowledge of the law of affinity. Knowing this law, we understand that we must love and think of the Lord, not because the Church tells us to or because it says so in the Bible, but because there is a great and absolute law by reason of which we ourselves – and, through us, the whole world – benefit from that love. But this knowledge has not sunk in to men’s minds yet; this is obvious from the fact that so many christians are leaving the Church. They have not understood the first thing. Their religion was based on nothing solid. What men need, now, is Initiatic knowledge, the secret knowledge that used to be revealed in the course of Initiation. A disciple who went through certain experiences under the guidance of his Master was in no doubt that he had actually touched reality; he could never forget or doubt what he learned in this way; it was as though his knowledge had become part of his own flesh and nothing could separate him from it.

The stronger your bonds with the Lord, the more happiness, power, omniscience and eternity will be yours because you will be receiving and drawing into yourself all these particles, forces, rays, currents... call them what you will. Don’t listen to all those ignorant people who lay down the law about God with such self-assurance, telling you, as likely as not, that he does not exist! What secret source of knowledge do they have to dare to make these judgements? The truth of what I teach you has been verified over and over again, for thousands of years. I have verified them for myself, too. In fact I continue to do so every moment of the day. I know only too well that, the day I cease to love the Lord and think of him, I shall be lost and nobody will be able to help me. I have understood that it is in my own interest to love him.

God does not need our love any more than he needs our gratitude or our prayers. It is we who need to love him and to pray to him. Some people decide not to go to church or light any candles to him any more as a punishment. He has not made them rich, for instance, so he has to be punished! Can’t you just see him, weeping and gnashing his teeth because some poor fool has thrown him over? What a mentality... The truth is, as I have said, that it is to man’s advantage to believe in the Lord and to pray to him. If you do away with the Lord, you will necessarily substitute other gods for him and, as these new gods have none of his perfection, you will begin to attract to yourself their vices, weaknesses and disease. So, do as you please, but God will not even notice if you turn your back on him. He is far too exalted to be affected by the chattering of idiots. It is they who suffer if they deprive themselves of his splendour.

Although its members may not realize it, every society that has chosen to do away with God deteriorates and begins to become weaker and less intelligent. They start by believing that they are invulnerable but, one day, they will realize what they have lost. They are like the man who made a pact with the devil. The devil agreed to give him as much money as he wanted on condition that he give him one hair from his head every time he asked for more. ‘Pooh!,’ said the man; ‘That’s nothing.’ Before very long, however, he discovered to his dismay that he was quite bald and his baldness caused all kinds of other changes in his life. A great many people reason like that: ‘What does it matter if I cut myself off from God and live as I please? Nothing happens...’ That is where they are mistaken: something does happen. Every time you do something wrong, you lose a tiny particle of your vitality, beauty and charm and, in the end, even if you have gained a great deal on the material level, you will have lost everything that is most precious.

This is why I insist that you renew your links with heaven every day and, thanks to this law of affinity, set in motion a process which will have very important repercussions for you. To my mind, the greatest mistake anyone can make is to cut himself off from the Almighty. There is no need for me to enumerate all the foolish things people do; you know them well enough; but this is the most foolish of them all, for it opens the door to all the others. Don’t be alarmed; I’m not asking any of you to become religious fanatics, always muttering and mumbling prayers in church. People like that are so often grumpy and unfriendly; if they were sincerely religious they would at least radiate a little light and warmth. The fact that they never change shows that their religion is still external. It seems that there are all kinds of religion...

People today do not have the respect that they had in the past for religion and, especially, for the Church and churchmen. As a matter of fact, many priests are well aware of this and try to keep in touch and cultivate popularity with the crowd by lending their churches for all kinds of secular activities. You can see them, rosy-cheeked and chubby, full of fun, with a smile for everyone, in the midst of noisy crowds of dancers disporting themselves in their churches. They are constantly wracking their brains for new ways of attracting people to these churches which have nothing sacred about them any more.

There is only one thing that can save religion and that is Initiatic Science, because it is the only thing that can put religion on a sure footing. A lot of people have stopped praying because they see that they get better results by working. When there is work to be done, why take the time to pray and meditate? Prayer and meditation only lower one’s income!

Of course, the purpose of prayer is not to obtain material advantages – money, houses, cars, high office or a wealthy match – but advantages of quite another order. When you love God and your thoughts are in touch with him, you constantly receive qualities, forces and light and all kinds of spiritual, invisible gifts and, although all these things are invisible, they are very real and they influence all those who come into contact with you. In your presence they feel vivified, comforted and consoled, so they begin to trust you and give you all sorts of advantages, even material advantages. But it is the spiritual aspect that is first.

You must not expect any physical benefits from your love of God or your prayers. A lot of people say, ‘I keep praying and praying and I’m as poor as I ever was!’ In other words, they expected their prayers to make them rich. It is truly amazing to see how some people understand these things. Human beings badly need instruction in the realities and laws of the invisible world in order to understand, at last, what true religion, true knowledge and true life really are. At the moment they are suffering from a profound misapprehension: they continue to look for certain advantages and fail to find them, whereas they are continually receiving others and fail to realize it.

When you are united to the Lord you draw to yourself all his virtues and qualities: they filter in and penetrate into your deepest being and you become radiant, intelligent and well-balanced.3 When this happens you may also be given material wealth, if such is your destiny. But to ask, first and foremost, for material wealth, is to show that you have not understood the first thing. To begin with, of course, you will not necessarily succeed in all you do, but things will begin to improve on the invisible plane, and although you cannot see this you can feel it. Have you never felt, for instance, that the mere presence of certain people soothes and quietens you and gives you a sensation of well-being, whereas others irritate you without your knowing why? This is an invisible phenomenon, to be sure: invisible but no less real for all that.

Religion is based on the knowledge of the law of affinity. As soon as you tune in to a given source, power station or transmitter, you necessarily receive some of its particles. And if you tune in to one that is in direct opposition to the first, the particles and messages you receive will also be in contradiction. Can’t you see this? Well, it does not really matter if you cannot; you will see it one day. What I am giving you today is part of the true knowledge possessed by the initiates of old. If you accept it you will become invincible.

If someone tells me, ‘I put your Teaching into practice. I do everything you tell us to do, but I still feel unbalanced and tense, almost out of my mind,’ I would have to say, ‘You are obviously mistaken in thinking that you are applying the Teaching correctly in your life. Inwardly, you are almost certainly giving a free rein to some negative tendency, pride, perhaps, or a lack of restraint on the sexual level or an undisciplined imagination. Or perhaps you are trying to rush things, trying to achieve great spiritual progress too quickly. None of that is in accordance with the Teaching, so don’t blame it. Blame yourself for not going about it the right way. Look for the cause of your problems in yourself.’

The Teaching is there to help people to find their balance, to give them strength and happiness, not to destroy them. If you are not at ease, therefore, try to find out which law you have broken. Suppose, for instance, that you feel that you don’t want to have anything to do with your family any more. You think that they are not very highly evolved and not at all mystical and you would rather be completely free of them. Isn’t your reasoning a bit extreme, even dangerous? After all, you have ties to your family and they cannot be severed as easily as all that. If your reasoning, the decisions you make and the way you feel about things are too personal, it will always lead to anomalies. When you notice an anomaly, therefore, you must look for the cause in yourself, not in the Teaching. If you know how to work with it correctly the Teaching harmonizes everything.

Others may think what they like, but you, who are being entrusted with the great secrets of life, you must remember that you have an obligation to seek true life, that is to say, to seek Immensity and Perfection. What kind of life is it if you limit yourself to eating, drinking, sleeping and working? In the name of science, today’s so-called ‘civilized’ and ‘cultured’ minds have done away with all that is most vibrant and spiritual in life and are leading humanity straight into the jaws of death.4 For my part, I am a great advocate of science; how can anyone be opposed to it? The results it gets are so eloquent. What I am opposed to, at the moment, is the direction it has taken, but when it finally applies itself to the study of life, its achievements will be even more sensational.

Science is like money. People say, ‘Money is evil. It corrupts men and makes them unhappy.’ But that is untrue: money is neutral. If a man is evil he will use it for evil purposes but if he is upright and generous he uses it quite differently. It is not money that is the cause of man’s misfortune. In fact, as exchanges are necessary to human society, if money were no longer used, we should have to find some other matter or invent something else to take its place; it would no longer be money but it would fill exactly the same role as a medium of exchange. Money corresponds to the blood in society and, as such, it is indispensable. The same is true of science. Science stems from a divine source but, as it embraces both good and evil (‘the Knowledge of Good and Evil’), it supplies a means for those who seek to do evil, but it also supplies a means for those who seek to do good. Science is neutral, it has no moral conscience. It is the human beings who use it who have a moral conscience.

What I am telling you today about the law of affinity is extremely important. When we do not know these things we stifle all the best possibilities that God has given us in order to enable us to become like him, for these possibilities depend exclusively on our fervour and the intensity of our desire to accelerate this process of divinization. Obviously, if we pray from force of habit or in order to conform to convention, nothing will happen. You can pray your whole life long like that without results. What we need is to set forces in motion and project them all the way to heaven. But, for this, faith and love are needed.

All those who have discarded religion, saying, ‘The only thing that matters is to work to organize society. It makes no difference whether one believes in God or not,’ are deluding themselves for, before very long, that society will start to decay. Having no central focal point to revolve around it can only crumble away, and they, themselves, will cease to be ideal social creatures. Greed, prejudice and injustice will begin to worm their way into their dealings. All societies, empires and kingdoms begin to disintegrate in this way once they have nothing solid to hold on to and can no longer prevent the development of negative forces. On the other hand, when a society is firmly centred on the higher, sublime, divine dimension, forces of such power inhabit it that its wild animals are muzzled and too cowed to manifest themselves. In these conditions, it becomes possible to institute just laws and the individuals in that society have a better chance of enjoying a life of abundance and harmony. But when the spiritual intensity of a society diminishes, when the centre or head is no longer there, all kinds of negative forces awake and take possession of the individuals, for there is nothing to threaten or subdue them any more. All the evils of the world have come about in this way: because human beings have allowed the divine, beneficial forces within them to weaken.

This, then, is the life of a disciple, a life that turns on one, central idea, and the first effect of this idea is to inhibit the enemies concealed within him. Let me illustrate this with an example, that of people who have ruined their health by their disordered life and who are now devoured by tuberculosis. If they go to hospital for treatment and are made to lead a quieter, more balanced life, with less turmoil of the passions, a healthier diet and more sleep, their bodies begin to secrete certain substances which counteract and neutralize the bacilli and they regain their health. But if they go back to drinking and smoking and spending their nights in revelries, their defences will crumble and disease will regain its hold on them.

Exactly the same phenomenon can be seen on the psychic plane: the life of the spirit helps man to build barriers against the evil that is trying to invade and devour him. All the workers he needs are there, hard at work within him, for there are veritable factories within every human being. But if a man begins to indulge his lower appetites again, forgets to be on his guard and abandons a harmonious way of life, the forces of perversion and evil will break loose within him and he will begin to decay and disintegrate. The most powerful focal point, the only centre that can give us complete protection, is God Himself. We must maintain and strengthen the bonds that tie us to this pivotal point so that the forces it awakens within us disarm and neutralize the entities that are always lying in wait, ready to attack us. Of course, if we want to cut our ties with this central point, we are always at liberty to do so, but, sooner or later, we shall have to pay very dearly for that liberty.5

Here, then, is a page from the book of true science. And it is absolute; it is not an invention. I have studied it in great detail all my life, not in books, but in the depths of my inner being. I have immersed myself in it and, now, it is perfectly clear to me. And you, too, whatever philosophy may be going the rounds today, cling to this idea of the Deity. Try to find him, think of him, love him and call on him. If you do this you will be given tremendous energies which will protect you and prevent your enemies from injuring you. Perhaps you will be bitten a little, from time to time, while your defences are still imperfect, but, once they are completed, evil will no longer be able to reach you. Christians sing, ‘The Lord is my shepherd,’ but the words have no meaning for them because they know nothing of the extraordinary science that lies behind them. They recite them mechanically without realizing that they have magical power.

Believe me, nothing is more important for you than to love your Creator. All the rest follows on from that. Thanks to that love, everything else slips into place and order and harmony reign. Even if the effects are not visible in this incarnation, it does not matter, for the beings who look down at us from above will commend and bless you for behaving intelligently.

The Bonfin, August 11, 1968

BIBLICAL REFERENCES

‘The Lord is my shepherd’ – Ps. 23: 1

1 See The Philosopher’s Stone – in the Gospels and in Alchemy, Izvor Coll. n° 241, chap. 9: ‘The work of the alchemist: 3 over 4’ and chap. 11: ‘The regeneration of matter: the cross and the crucible’.

2 See The Faith That Moves Mountains, Izvor Coll. n° 238, chap. 3: ‘Faith and Belief’ and chap. 7: ‘A Religion is only one Form of Faith’.

3 See above, chap. 10: ‘Identifying with God’, and What is a Spiritual Master?, Izvor Coll. n° 207, chap. 11: ‘Identification’.

4 See The Faith That Moves Mountains, Izvor Coll. n° 238, chap. 4: ‘Science and Religion’.

5 See The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Izvor Coll. n° 210, chap. 7: ‘The Undesirables’.

Chapter Seven
The laws of nature and moral law

When we look at the world around us and think about the conversations we have with others, the books we read or the films we see, we cannot help but realize that more and more human beings are unhappy, ill and unbalanced. What is the reason? It is no good trying to find the answer to this question by looking at individual cases. That would take centuries. If you want to reach conclusions that are valid in every case, you must arrive at a synthesis of the problems that exist. I have already given you an example of this in my lecture about simplicity and complication1 or in the one about presence and absence,2 in which I studied every aspect, from the presence or absence of an object to the presence or absence of God himself.

It is enough to observe the way men and women behave and the choices they make, to realize that they do everything to excess. Either they stuff themselves with food, or they don’t eat enough, and in both cases, they undermine their health. Either they work themselves to death or they get rusty because they never do a hand’s turn. Some drink too much, others not enough etc., and all these different anomalies come from their tendency to ‘overstep the mark,’ to transgress the law. This leads us to conclude that nature has laws which men should know and obey. But, if you question people, you will find that most of them do not even know that there are certain laws that govern not only our bodies but nature itself. How can you talk about the moral law to people who don’t even take into account the basic physical laws and who bring all kinds of misfortunes, difficulties and illness on themselves by breaking them?

In prehistoric times, when primitive men still lived in caves, they knew nothing about the laws of nature. It was only much later, after they had acquired a great deal of experience and endured terrible suffering, that they began to understand that there were laws which must not be transgressed. And, later still, when they decided to improve their material conditions by grouping together into clans, tribes and nations, they were obliged to adopt laws based on those they had observed in nature. They saw that, when there were no laws, they spent their time fighting each other and that these incessant wars destroyed whatever gains they had managed to make. Human laws, therefore, the same laws that today’s young people are bent on destroying, were elaborated by men at the price of centuries of experience, great suffering and great losses. As to whether they must all be respected, that is another question and I do not intend to deal with it today.

The fact that so many people continually transgress the laws of nature shows that they are unaware of their existence. In India, when I saw the lack of hygiene in which Indians lived, I realized that it was not surprising that they were riddled with disease. There are also some who, because they refuse to eat, grow weaker and weaker and, eventually, die: they, too, transgress laws which they should have known and respected in order to remain alive and healthy. Those who know certain rules of hygiene have more respect for the laws of nature and try to give themselves better conditions. Nowadays, everyone knows that an alcoholic will end by having cirrhosis of the liver and that those who smoke or eat or work too much will end by making it impossible for their organism to function as it should.

Most human beings, therefore, understand that they must obey a certain number of laws concerning their health. Similarly, they know that, if they break the laws of society, they will have to pay a fine or go to prison. They have learned all this from experience. But those who know and obey the moral laws are few and far between, and it is these laws that I want to talk to you about today. Something is lacking in human knowledge today, something essential, and although men may still cling to some vestiges of belief in the existence of a certain order in creation, the majority of today’s writers, philosophers, artists and scientists formulate theories, write books and produce works that can only contribute to the destruction of these beliefs.

And yet, since these moral laws belong to a world which is not entirely separate from the physical world, human beings should be able to recognize or discover them for themselves. It is easy to see that the two worlds are connected. Take the case of a man whom you know, today, as a confirmed drunkard. Only a few years ago he was a sensitive, well-mannered, cultivated, thoughtful, noble, generous person; he had all the virtues. And then, once he had started to drink, all his virtues and qualities began to fade or even disappeared completely. What was it that changed? The moral dimension: his qualities and virtues and his code of behaviour. It all crumbled away because of his excessive drinking. Take another example, that of a man who has such a passion for gambling that he ends by neglecting all his obligations, duties and promises. To begin with, his gambling has no moral implications but, in the long run, it is the moral dimension that is destroyed by it. How can human beings be so blind to the obvious connection between these two worlds? I know that they only believe in the material dimension, but the moral, inner dimension also exists.

There are three worlds: the divine world, which is the world of Ideas; the psychic world of thoughts and feelings – and it is this that is the moral world – and the physical world of forms and concrete manifestation. The material world is linked to the moral world which, in turn, is linked to the much higher world of Ideas, the divine world. If human beings fail to see these connections it is because they have never observed or studied things with enough care and, as long as this deficiency is not corrected, it will continue to have disastrous results.

Even if you know nothing about the laws that govern human behaviour, once you begin to break them and have to put up with the consequences, whether grave or otherwise, you begin to realize that they exist. You also begin to realize that they are far subtler than the physical laws because they are inherent not only in man’s physical body but also in his soul and spirit. He who fails to respect them will be accused of egotism and self-seeking and will gradually find himself deprived of the support and friendship of his fellow men, and, whatever his offence, he will have to pay. How? In all kinds of ways, by remorse, suffering, regrets, disillusionment, bitterness and, perhaps, even with money. You can see examples of this in every domain.

The day human beings understand that everything hangs together, that everything is connected and that, in the moral dimension, there are certain unchanging, inexorable laws that they must know, they will begin to evolve. People ignore these laws because they are not written down anywhere and they think that they have the right to behave as they please, but they will never make any real progress until they realize that these laws exist. You are going to find this out for yourselves, one day. You have no right to go by your own rules of conduct, saying, ‘I can do as I like.’ Why not? Because you will have to pay for it, if you do. You say, ‘I have every right!’ Well, please yourself, but I’m warning you: you will pay for it. Everything in the natural order has to be paid for, even happiness and joy, even ecstasy. And it is no good objecting that you cannot pay because you have not got any money, because these laws do not ask for your money (it is only human beings who are always asking for money). They will ask you to pay with some of your strength or knowledge, some of your health or beauty, some of your inner light. Sooner or later, if you are clairvoyant or have true knowledge, you will realize that there is a hole in your bank balance: the Lawmakers, the cosmic Powers, the Intelligences who rule the universe, have withdrawn something from it and you are poorer than you were.

Initiates understand that if someone wants to become extremely rich he must never break any laws: neither the divine nor the moral nor the physical laws, nor even the laws of man. Although man-made laws do not have the same fundamental reason for existing as the natural laws, as long as you live in a society in which they still hold good, it is better to obey them (and not drive through a red light, for instance). If you manage to break these laws without being found out, nature will not hold it against you because it does not concern her. But if you break one of nature’s laws, even if human society continues to respect and honour you, you will fall ill. The natural law will punish you by putting you to bed, and there will be no escaping your punishment. Go where you will, the law will always catch up with you because you carry your criminal record within you.

Nature foresaw that men would always manage to break her laws, so she installed recorders in them, and now she only has to glance into a man to see exactly how much he has eaten or drunk and what he has thought, felt or done. And it is no good trying to lie; it cannot be done! Do you still want to convince me that only human beings know how to record things? How could man invent anything if nature did not first show him an example? Nature recorded things long before man, but he is too blind to recognize this. Nature has taken all the necessary precautions, and if man breaks the law he has to pay.

Henceforth, try not to break any laws, neither those of man nor those of nature nor the moral laws, which are a degree above the laws of nature. Of course, the moral dimension is still part of nature, but nature has different degrees. On the lowest level is physical nature; above this is a subtler level of nature which includes thoughts and feelings and, finally, above both these levels of nature, is the divine world. Nature also has to obey. Just as we obey the laws of nature, she, in turn, obeys the laws of the spirit, for the spirit commands nature. When man succeeds in rising above the first two levels of nature – the purely physical and the subtler level of thoughts and feelings – he is no longer subject to their laws. He becomes so pure, so luminous and powerful, so perfectly in harmony with the spirit that it is the turn of nature to obey him and, whatever he does, it will never be in contradiction with the law. This is the only instance in which a man can do exactly as he pleases and never break a law.

But only the most exceptional beings, only those who are predestined to do so, manage to rise above the natural and moral laws. Such beings have always existed, they exist today and they will continue to exist, but there are very few of them. They can do whatever they like without ever committing a crime or a sin. Truly fantastic things have been revealed to me about this, but it is very difficult to explain; I could not begin to give you even the faintest idea; it is something that cannot be put into words.

But let me try, anyway. Perhaps I can help you to understand: when someone is very pure and luminous, whatever he does will always be good. And when someone is dirty and full of darkness, when he dwells in the depths of hell, even if he would like to do something good, he only manages to cause harm. It is as though he tried to wipe a speck of dust off a friend’s face when his own hands were filthy: he can only make matters worse. In his desire to purify a friend, he only succeeds in making him dirtier. In his desire to make life simpler for someone, he can only complicate it even more. Why? Because all that emanates from him is so chaotic and vile that he destroys whatever he touches. On the other hand, when a being is pure light, pure love and pure intelligence, even a blow from him can save someone rather than injuring him, because all that emanates from him is divine. No one can attain this height and dwell in the Sephirah Kether unless he has been predestined to do so, long, long before, by the twenty-four elders.3 A disciple must understand that, until such time as he has reached this goal, there are certain laws to be respected. This must be the point of departure for everything he does.

Human beings are ready to admit that, in their professional activities, certain types of behaviour are acceptable and others are not, but where morals are concerned, they think that they can do as they like. Not at all! This is the truth that Hermes Trismegistus proclaimed, in general terms, when he said, ‘That which is below is like to that which is above, and that which is above is like to that which is below,’ and these words apply to all levels, all areas, all human activities. A tremendous number of principles, activities, objects, colours, forms, creatures and regions are contained in these two words, ‘below’ and ‘above’. Many people have understood the saying to mean that that which is below – that is to say, that which is here, on earth – is similar to that which is in heaven. But this is not quite true: that which is below, on earth, is not exactly like that which is in heaven. Neither the forms nor the dimensions, neither the light nor the colours, neither the glory nor the splendour that we know on earth are those of heaven. The laws, however, are the same. Hermes Trismegistus did not specify this in detail because he wanted his words to conceal a meaning so vast that it could be discovered only by those who were capable of penetrating the mind of a great thinker or initiate. For years and years I struggled to see things as the initiates see them and, today, I know what Hermes Trismegistus meant by the words, ‘That which is below is like to that which is above... to accomplish the miracle of one thing.’ The two have to unite in order to create a third, the power, the wonder of wonders, the splendour of unity.

Very few men have discovered this secret, but I have done so. Why don’t I tell you what it is? Because it is something that cannot be told. The initiates of old had the precept, ‘Know, will, dare and be silent.’ I must be silent, therefore, for the secret I discovered is terrifying. It is titanic, ‘Babylonian,’ as Berlioz said of his own music. What a Requiem that is! What a painting of heaven and hell, of God and his angels and of the multitude cowering in terror when the ground trembles and the blare of trumpets is heard to the ends of the earth. And to think that Berlioz did not believe any of it! What an extraordinary creature he was; great and petty at the same time, great and terrible...

Thanks to their understanding of the physical laws, scientists have achieved some amazing results. The moon flights are a case in point. But if they knew the moral laws their achievements would be greater still, not only on the material plane, but in the vast, infinite realm of the soul and spirit. They study physics and chemistry but they know nothing of another kind of physics and chemistry. An essential factor is missing, therefore, in conventional scientific knowledge, in the minds of today’s intellectuals, the knowledge of these moral laws. And since, to add to this, they do their best to destroy and erase from men’s minds the last vestiges of these moral laws, they are working towards the destruction of the whole world. They do not realize that they are sapping the foundations, the roots, the pillars on which human life is built. It will all crumble and come tumbling down because of those who deny the existence of moral laws.

To be sure, human beings have made laws of their own, but they have nothing in common with the laws of nature. In the first place, they are much too changeable. Take the question of dress, for instance: in the old days it was immoral for a woman to show an ankle below her skirt. Today, women are practically naked when they are on the beach and it is considered perfectly moral! What kind of morality is that if it keeps changing? True morality is eternal and one of its laws can be seen very clearly in agriculture. It is this, ‘You reap whatever you sow.’ This is a law that has been in vigour since the creation of the world. [See Chapter 1 of this volume.]

Perhaps you will say that this is a question of agriculture and that it has nothing to do with ethics or morals. But what you must realize is that the realm of thoughts and feelings is governed by exactly the same laws as those that govern agriculture. Thoughts have the same properties as seeds. When you plant a thought in someone’s mind, it produces fruits in accordance with its nature, for the mind is a soil in which seeds can be planted. This is why I say that this law is one of the eternal moral laws and not a purely human law. The saying, ‘They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind’ also exists, and this, too, is a moral law that has never changed. It is just as absolute as the laws of physics and chemistry. To be sure, it is not always easy to identify the moral laws, but the fact that human beings have never discovered them does not mean that they don’t exist. No one can be justified in belittling or denying what I am saying. Anyone who is sufficiently patient and capable of observing and analysing himself, will be forced to conclude that every inner breach of the law must be paid for, because our inner world is governed by the immutable precepts of eternal moral law.

Suppose that you have broken one of these laws and you tell me that you continue to eat and sleep and earn money as usual, that your health is as good as ever, that nothing has changed. Well, my friend, all I can say is that you are blind. You cannot see what is changing on the subtler levels of your being. You may go on trafficking and conniving for years and never realize that you are losing something. What exactly it is that is slipping away from you is something you are going to have to discover for yourself. All I can say is that I know, in advance, what you will lose and what tremendous and terrifying changes will take place within you. Why do people tell each other that the only thing that matters is to ‘eat, drink and be merry’... and make money? It only takes a few years of that kind of life to kill all your enthusiasm and spontaneity and, especially, your taste for life. These are immense losses from the spiritual point of view, and if you cannot see this it is because you are still on a level with the animals. You may go on working and earning a lot of money, but you will no longer be sons and daughters of God, supple, alive and as radiant as light. Deep inside you, great changes have taken place.

This is a school, and the purpose of this school is to help us to become whole beings by teaching us to live in the subtler regions of life. I give you one week in which to examine and review your lives, to see how you have behaved in the past, whom you have wronged and the consequences your actions have entailed, to count the joys and difficulties you have experienced, to see whether you have advanced or regressed. In doing this you will discover a world in which everything is logical and true. One week should be enough for you to discover what I and many others before me have discovered, thanks to a familiarity with the higher, subtler world, the psychic, moral world that modern men have eliminated from their lives. When man denies and rejects this world he falls back to the level of the animals.4

Animals live, too. They eat and sleep and mate with each other, but have you ever known an animal to compose a Mass or an oratorio, like Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Handel or Berlioz? Have you ever heard of an animal that wrote plays, like Shakespeare? Do they read the Bible? Are there libraries in the world of animals? Perhaps there are, but they are not like ours. What about churches or temples? They may have them, for they certainly know how to pray; have you never listened to doves? You say that doves coo, but isn’t their cooing a formula that they recite while bowing in a special way? It is all a mystery to us. When a hen drinks, for instance, first of all it lowers its head and then throws it back and looks up; perhaps it is giving thanks. We don’t know much about the life of animals, yet. I will talk to you about this, one day, and you will learn some fantastic things that even zoologists still don’t know.

So animals eat, hunt, fight and fondle each other and protect their young, and many human beings do no more than that. They don’t know that they have been sent to earth in order to develop other potentialities, that their mission is different from that of the animals, that they must become servants of God and conductors of the light. Men are in the world in order to manifest the glory of God and bring to full flowering the subtle, divine potential inherent in each one. They have been sent to turn the earth into a Garden of Eden, to establish heaven on earth. That is their mission, but they have forgotten it; they eat and drink and put down roots in the world and have no desire ever to detach themselves from it. So, after a certain number of years, they are uprooted and packed off to the other world where they learn that they have not lived as they were meant to: they forgot that their mission was to incarnate in order to learn to overcome their weaknesses and give priority to the divine dimension.

Most human beings conform without more ado to the laws of this world and become completely materialistic, believing in nothing. But then, when they return to the other world and are shown how many laws they have transgressed, they suffer greatly. This is what hell and purgatory are: the suffering that comes from this realization.5 Later, when they have paid their debts and been washed clean, they move to a higher level, to the first heaven, before returning once more to earth, in order to continue their evolution towards perfection. This is the life history of the human race.

Men constantly have to be reminded of their mission on earth. They have to ask themselves, ‘What did you come here to do? Try to remember.’ But how can they remember? In an Initiatic school, surrounded by so many great truths and good influences and with the help of the angels, a disciple begins to remember the world of light from which he came and to which he must, one day, return. This is the greatest blessing a disciple can have, to recover this memory. He will also remember all the suffering he has had to endure, the faults he has committed and the debts he still owes. He needs to remember all this because he still has to seek out those he has wronged and pay off his karmic debt by making his peace with them and atoning for his faults. This is what lies ahead of every disciple, of every one of you. Eventually you are going to have to pay for what you have taken unjustly from others. Oh, I know that you will probably not enjoy hearing these things – human beings much prefer to be praised and left in blissful ignorance of all unpleasant truths – but, even if you are not particularly eager to hear this, today, you should realize that you are very privileged to have the opportunity to do so because, sooner or later, you will be obliged to learn the truth.

Prepare yourselves to atone for your past faults, therefore, just as I am preparing myself. Let’s say that I have been the greatest scoundrel, the most destructive arsonist in the world and that now I repent and am sorry for all the wrong I have done and want to atone for it. Let’s say – just for the sake of argument – that I have wronged you, that I have disgraced and robbed and assassinated every one of you and that, now, I am paying my debt to you and making reparation for my sins by putting up with you, loving you and talking to you. And if it is not true that I have ever wronged you: what then? So much the better. I don’t intend to tell you whether it is true or not. I have no obligation to tell you how or why I came into this world, nor where I came from. That is my own business. Just take it that I am a man who has broken all the laws and that I have been condemned to pay back what I owe you. That is more to your liking, isn’t it? You enjoy hearing that!

Now, if I can admit this to you without embarrassment, why can’t you do the same with your husband or wife, or your children, family and friends? Why can’t you say, ‘If our Master is paying his debt to us, couldn’t we do the same for each other?’ Of course, I understand, you would rather believe yourselves to be above reproach whereas I am a confirmed criminal. I have no objection, the only question is, ‘Is it true?’ No matter... The point is, if I am capable of admitting to you that I am not perfect, surely you can do the same to others? Every now and then, someone will come and complain to me that he has a child who constantly torments and disgraces him. He asks, ‘What have I ever done to God to deserve a child like that?’ and I tell him, ‘You have certainly incurred a debt towards that being in the past, otherwise he would not have incarnated in your family.’ It is sometimes astonishing to see how many just, honourable men and women have disreputable children; it seems to be in direct contradiction to the natural law, for they have never sown seed of that kind, and yet there is always a reason. The law is always just.

A brother came to see me recently. He was in great distress, because, although he was unfailingly kind and generous with his family, he received only ingratitude and unkindness in return. The injustice of it was almost destroying him. I said to him ‘Would you like me to give you a key, a remedy, the perfect antidote? You will never be angry or in revolt again, in fact you will feel completely fit and happy, if you realize just one thing, and that is that the invisible world uses these means to strengthen you, to set you free, to force you to reflect or to make a better person of you. It is the feeling that all this is unjust that is eating your heart out and destroying your health. Make up your mind that you are receiving your just deserts and you will begin to feel better.’ Well, this brother took my advice. He had faith in what I told him, with the result that he soon began to feel much better about it and, today, he is radiant and in peace. He knows that he is probably paying for past transgressions and this thought has saved him. You have to be able to see things from this point of view, otherwise your torment will continue to eat away at your heart, your stomach or your nervous system.

And, today, I say the same to all of you: if the injustice of your situation torments you, accept the notion that it may seem to be injustice, but that it is not so in reality. Even if it is not true, the idea in itself is very effective and, by accepting it, you free yourself, suffer less and become a much better person. I have proved the truth of this for myself. In the past, I did not know this remedy and I often wondered why certain things happened to me. Nowadays, I never need to wonder: I tell myself that I am getting my just deserts... even if it is not true. What had Jesus done to others that made him deserve to be crucified? To be sure, Jesus’ destiny was something quite exceptional and you must not start thinking that your situation is the same as his. But it can happen that the innocent are imprisoned or put to death, and if they rebel against the injustice of it they simply torture themselves to no purpose. Here, on earth, even if you are innocent, you would do better to consider yourself as guilty as everyone else, for it is this thought that can free you.

There are beings on this earth who have really and truly come from heaven, but most of them don’t know it; no one has revealed the truth to them and they have no memory of it. Those who come to earth with a special mission do not necessarily remember immediately what they have been sent to do. They think that they are like everybody else, weak and feeble and incapable. In fact, they often suffer quite dreadfully and can be overcome by their own sadness and sense of desolation. But, sooner or later, the truth about themselves and their mission is revealed to them.6

We sometimes hear stories of kings, in past ages, who knew how to bring up their children wisely. In order to ensure that his heir acquire the virtues of kindness, patience, compassion and mercifulness and, above all, a knowledge of human nature, a monarch would send him to be brought up in humble surroundings, far from the glitter of the royal palace. He was forced to work hard and experience poverty and even occasional humiliations, until his education was completed. Then, when the time came, a large delegation was sent to fetch the prince and take him back to the king, his father, and his true identity, which he had never suspected, was revealed to him. In later life, even in the midst of wealth and honours, a prince who had been brought up in such a way would continue to be kind, fair and compassionate with his subjects, instead of becoming a tyrant like so many others. The same thing happens with certain initiates: they don’t know that they are the sons of a king and that, one day, they will be called on to reign. They don’t even know what mission has been entrusted to them until the day of their coronation comes.

You have been given the task of discovering, within yourselves, a spiritual realm whose laws are immutable and, sooner or later, you are going to have to pay for the slightest infringement of these laws. The thing that misleads you is that you are not called to account immediately, but that does not prevent everything from being recorded and having certain repercussions. The same law can be found in many other areas. Take an example from chemistry: you have to wait quite a long time before you see a piece of Litmus paper turning from red to blue or vice-versa. The change comes all of a sudden, when just one drop of acid or alkali is added to the mixture in your beaker. But that one drop is the last in a long series of drops. Similarly, the hands of a watch move only as the result of a series of imperceptible movements in the wheels and cogs of the mechanism. The time that elapses between the initial movement and the ultimate result that you can see or feel may be short or it may be long but, as everything is connected, you can be sure that the result will come.

Suppose that you have a particular vice or passion. You cannot see any immediate repercussions and you continue to indulge yourself. The first wheels that are set in motion move others and they, in turn, move yet others until, one day, you wonder why you are worn out and ill. But the effects that you are just beginning to feel actually began a long time ago. It is simply that, today, the bailiff has turned up with the summons! But you should have known, long before this, that he would come. Why have human beings never understood this law which exists in every area? All men’s trials and tribulations come from the fact that they have never studied and interpreted the mechanisms of their organs and even of their brains. Let me give you a very simple proof of this.

Imagine that you are eating a lemon. People say that thought is immaterial, but if that is true, how can it cause your salivary glands to start secreting? And when a young man, in his imagination, embraces his beloved, how is it that the mere thought is enough to trigger physiological reactions as though he had actually experienced in the flesh what he has only imagined in his mind? His thought was not a material reality, it was only an image. Where was that image? If human beings had learned to observe and analyse phenomena of this kind, they would have discovered other laws and other truths. You have all had occasion to see that thought alone is capable of triggering visible, tangible effects and you must realize that this is one of the foundation stones of morality. As to why punishment is not meted out as soon as we break a law, it is, as I have already explained, because the glass is not yet full, it has not begun to overflow. Go on breaking the law and you will see what happens. If human beings took the trouble to study, they would discover a world whose existence they have never suspected but which is, nonetheless, real, almost tangibly real. They don’t want to know this world and yet they dare to hope that their lives will be beautiful and extraordinary. That is impossible. As long as they continue to build their lives on illusions they will be bizarre and tormented. They will continue to live, to be sure, but they will live like animals.

If you really want to be a child of God, a truly complete being, living the life of the soul and spirit, you must abide by the laws of true morality; there is no other way. The doors are closed to those who transgress these laws. The invisible world cannot be subjected to the whims of irreverent, anarchical, depraved human beings. ‘But what is this invisible world?’ you will say; ‘I can’t believe in something invisible.’ Well, let me repeat that the world I am talking about is, indeed, invisible and that you are being illogical if you say that you cannot believe in something you cannot see. Can you see your thoughts? Can you see your consciousness, your soul, your feelings? Are these things visible? Can you see your hopes and plans for the future? Of course you cannot, and yet you admit that they exist. As for your convictions or religious beliefs, they are not visible either, but you are ready to fight and even kill people in defence of them. Have you never realized that your whole life is built on things you cannot see? In fact, the invisible world is the only reality; all the rest is open to doubt. To deny the existence of the invisible world is to saw off the limb you are sitting on and, one day, you will find yourself on the floor. You should be ashamed to deny the existence of these truths rather than admit that you have never studied the question. A man who denies the existence of the invisible world is signing his own death warrant. How can you accept people like that as instructors and guides? You must not follow them any longer, for they know nothing. They are as blind as you – and you know what happens when the blind lead the blind, don’t you? They all fall into the ditch together! You must follow those who not only possess true knowledge but who also live by it.

Human beings will continue to suffer until they understand that the invisible world is the only reality. Do you know what argument I use to convince someone who refuses to accept this? I tell him, ‘You say that you refuse to believe in something that you cannot see. Very well, but suppose that you are on your way home, one dark night, and a thief suddenly jumps out at you and holds a knife to your throat, saying, “Your money or your life!” You, who have plenty of money and who have never believed in life before – after all, it’s invisible. How could you believe in it? – all of a sudden you begin to believe. In fact, you are ready to give up all your visible possessions for the sake of your life, which is invisible; how inconsequential of you! If you were logical you would say, “Take my life, but leave me my money.” Yes, but then, of course, you would be dead, and what good would your money be?’ Nothing is more precious than what you cannot see. Life is an invisible reality and yet you would be ready to give up everything else in order to keep it. What extraordinary creatures men are!

Does the invisible world really exist? Should it be given the same recognition and respect as the visible world? It does and it should – much more so, in fact! Don’t be misled by the fact that the penalty for transgressing its laws is slow in coming. It is bound to come sooner or later.7 The time has come, now, for you to be aware of the existence of this subtle level of life and to learn to value it. When you do this, you will see the change in yourselves. Even if no one else notices anything, even if you don’t become king or prime minister, your life will begin to take on a new inner freedom, joy, buoyancy and inspiration; it will become musical, harmonious, truly poetical. And, if you manage to reach this ideal, it will reflect even on your material well-being. People will begin to notice the kind of life you are living and – who knows? – the whole world may begin to bring you gifts! Everything is connected; even if it takes time to see the effects, inner wealth necessarily attracts external, material wealth. If you attain this level of perfection in your inner life, your vibrations and emanations will reach out to the whole world, to the farthest star, and bring back to you all kinds of joys and blessings.

Many of these blessings are already on the way; they are getting closer and closer and, when they arrive, you will ask them, ‘But where have you come from? Who called you and when?’ and they will answer, ‘You yourself called us a long time ago.’ Yes, happiness is on its way but it takes time to get here, because it has to come a long way. And the same is true of sorrows: you may not realize it, but, a long time ago, you called upon all these sorrows and, eventually, they will arrive. Actually, this should not surprise us, for what else can a man expect if he has no inner light and is ignorant or stupid? Can he expect to be clothed in glory and light? Will he be visited by archangels? Of course not. He cannot possibly attract heavenly splendour to himself. Why not? Because there is such a thing as a law of affinity. Primitive man was unable to comprehend the science behind such a law, so the initiates expressed it in the form of a proverb or popular saying: ‘Birds of a feather flock together.’ This simple phrase sums up the immense science of the law of correspondences (which we have also called the law of affinity or of echo response, the boomerang effect or the law of polarity). Men ask, ‘How did I bring all this misfortune on myself?’ and an initiate would answer, ‘By your own attitude. Your way of thinking and acting made it inevitable,’ And is this true for joys and blessings, too? Yes, when you work hard, make sacrifices and are generous with others, you bring blessings on yourself. All this is a question of justice. You will not be consulted about what reward you would like; you will be given exactly what you deserve.

Study yourself; study the depths of your being, for this is where you will find all the sciences and all moral laws. Observe yourself attentively. You, who are in a divine school, do you really need to follow ignorant, anarchical people? Can they teach you to be luminous, radiant and free if they are none of these things themselves, if they don’t even know what these things mean? What an absurd idea!

Let me say one more thing before concluding. If a policeman gives you a ticket for speeding and you try to excuse yourself on the grounds that you did not know that you were breaking the law, he will tell you that ignorance is no defence before the law, and you will still be obliged to pay your fine. This rule is equally applicable to our inner life: everyone is supposed to know the law and, whether you know it or not, you will have to pay for breaking it. Henceforth, don’t try to find excuses; they will not do you any good. And don’t think that I exclude myself from this: it is just as true for me as it is for you. If I want to advance and see results I am obliged to know the laws and put them into practice. People have often told me, ‘You should slow down and rest. You have already done so much.’ They don’t realize that, to my way of thinking, I have not even begun my real work. It is a bit too soon to think of resting on my laurels! Obviously, their yardstick is rather small, whereas mine is enormous. I am not going to tell you what my real work is; for the moment I am only preparing the ground. If I compare myself to those who are ignorant, I shall obviously see myself as an elephant. But I’m not interested in being an elephant in comparison to a multitude of ants, because that could lead to pride. I prefer to compare myself to suns and stars because, then, when I see how tiny I am compared to them, it encourages me to humble myself in order to learn and make more progress. If you use the first scale of comparison, you will stop moving ahead and, both physically and spiritually, you will stagnate and die.

The keys, norms and criteria that I have given you, today, belong to the higher moral world. As I have already told you, I don’t try to learn from the ignorant. My only instructor, my only authentic frame of reference, is the Intelligence of Nature, for the Intelligence of Nature can never lie or mislead me.

The Bonfin, September 4, 1968

BIBLICAL REFERENCES

The twenty-four elders – Revelation 4: 4 and 9-11

1 See ‘Know Thyself’ – Jnana Yoga, Complete Works, vol. 17, chap. 9: ‘Truth’, parts I and II.

2 See Life Force, Complete Works, vol. 5, chap. 5: ‘Presence and Absence’.

3 See Angels and other Mysteries of The Tree of Life, Izvor Coll. n° 236, chap. 2: ‘Introduction to the Sephirotic Tree of Life’.

4 See The Key to the Problems of Existence, Complete Works, vol. 11, chap. 19: ‘Your Inner Animals’ and chap. 20: ‘But Which Nature?’ .

5 See Death and the Life Beyond, Brochure n° 304.

6 See The Wellsprings of Eternal Joy, Izvor Coll. n° 242, chap. 7: ‘A commitment to heaven’.

7 See ‘Au commencement était le Verbe’ – commentaires des Évangiles, Complete Works, vol. 9, chap. 11: ‘La Résurrection et le Jugement dernier’.

Chapter Eight
Reincarnation

I

Today, I want to talk to you about reincarnation because I see that some of you are worried about the question and don’t know what to make of it. You have always been taught that man lives only once and, now, all this talk about reincarnation upsets you. The thing is not clear in your minds.

One could talk endlessly about the subject. I could tell you, for instance, what the Tibetans, Hindus and ancient Egyptians taught about reincarnation and about their practices and experiments in this area. But what I want to do today is to interpret a few passages from the Gospels to prove to you that Jesus himself knew and accepted the fact of reincarnation. You will probably object that you have read the Gospels from cover to cover and never once come across the word ‘reincarnation’. That is nothing to be surprised at: why should the question be mentioned explicitly when everybody knew it and took it for granted? How could the Evangelists imagine that they should talk about it specifically in view of an age when men would no longer believe in it? Their accounts were already so condensed, they were not very likely to enlarge on something that was part of their traditional belief. You are not convinced? Very well; but you soon will be.

Let’s see what the Gospels tell us about some of the questions and answers exchanged between Jesus and his disciples. One day, Jesus asked, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ What does this mean? Have you ever heard anyone asking, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ Everybody knows who they are, they don’t need to be told by others. To ask such a question means that one believes in reincarnation. And look at the answer the disciples gave him: ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the Prophets.’ If reincarnation did not exist, how could Jesus have been someone who had died long before his time?

On another occasion, when Jesus and his disciples met a man who was born blind, his disciples asked, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Would anyone who did not believe in reincarnation ask such a ridiculous question? How could the man have sinned while he was still in his mother’s womb? When could he have spent his nights carousing? How did he manage to swindle others? Who did he murder? Either the question is absurd or it implies a belief in a previous existence.

Perhaps you will object that the disciples were simple fishermen who had never been to school, so they might well have asked some very strange questions. But if that had been the case in this instance, Jesus would have pointed it out to them. The Gospels tell of several occasions on which Jesus reprimanded his disciples, but this is not one of them. He replies, quite simply, to their question: ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.’ And this, too, is an important point. If the disciples asked whether the man was born blind because his parents had sinned, it was because they knew, from Jewish law, that every anomaly, infirmity or affliction was a result of having broken the law, but that, very often, a person may be paying the penalty for someone else. This is why, when one sees someone suffering, one can never know whether he is atoning for his own faults or is sacrificing himself for another.

This was the accepted belief amongst the Jews. If the disciples asked this question it was because they knew that when a man suffered it meant that there had been a transgression of the law. No one can be born blind without good reason, or, as christians fondly imagine, because it has pleased God to afflict him with blindness. Jesus answered, therefore, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.’ In other words, ‘So that, seeing him as I passed this way, I should heal him and that all who see this, should believe in me.’ And then Jesus explained the whole question to his disciples: ‘You have been taught that there are two reasons for the sufferings of men, either they have sinned and are being punished, or they are innocent and are paying someone else’s debts and sacrificing themselves in order to hasten their own evolution. But there is a third category and that consists of those who have completed their evolution and are free. Although they are not bound to return to earth again, they do so in order to help mankind by accepting illness, suffering or infirmity and, even martyrdom. This man, who was born blind, belongs to that third category. Neither he nor his parents sinned. He came into the world with this infirmity so that I should heal him and, seeing this, the multitudes should believe in me.’ This blind man was a saviour for countless others.

Are you still sceptical? Then, let me give you more evidence. One day, Jesus was told that John the Baptist had been thrown into prison. The Gospel text simply says, ‘Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee.’ Some time later John was beheaded by order of Herod. After the Transfiguration, the disciples asked Jesus, ‘Why, then, do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?’ Jesus answered, ‘Elijah is indeed coming and will restore all things, but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but they did to him whatever they pleased.’ And the Gospel adds, ‘Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them about John the Baptist.’ Obviously, therefore, Jesus was saying that John the Baptist was the reincarnation of the Prophet Elijah. Notice, also, that the Gospels tell us that when the angel appeared to Zacharias, John’s father, to tell him that his wife Elizabeth would bear him a son, he added, ‘With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him.’

And now, if we look at the life of the Prophet Elijah, we shall see what he had done to deserve to be beheaded when he reincarnated as John the Baptist; as you will see, it is a very interesting story. Elijah lived during the reign of King Ahab whose Queen, Jezebel, was the daughter of the King of Sidon. Because of Jezebel, Ahab and all his people had switched their allegiance to her god, Baal. Elijah, who had been sent by God to reproach Ahab for deserting the God of Israel, said to the King, ‘As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.’ After this, Elijah went and hid in the mountains, as God had commanded him, to escape the wrath of the King. At the end of three years, when the country was ravaged by drought and famine, and the people were starving, Elijah was, once again, sent by God to speak to King Ahab. When Ahab saw him he cursed him bitterly for causing the drought, but Elijah answered, ‘I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father’s house have, in that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and you have followed the Baals. Now, therefore, send and gather all Israel to me on Mount Carmel, the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal... who eat at Jezebel’s table.’ When the prophets and all the people were assembled, Elijah said, ‘If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him. I alone am left a prophet of the Lord; but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men. Therefore let them give us two bulls; and let them choose one bull for themselves, cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it; and I will prepare the other bull, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it. Then you will call on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the Lord; and the God who answers by fire, he is God.’

The prophets did as Elijah said and, all morning long they invoked the name of Baal, ‘Baal, O Baal, hear us!’ But there was no answer, and Elijah mocked them, saying, ‘Cry aloud, for he is a busy god; either he is meditating, or he is busy, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened.’ The prophets cried all the louder and, because they had some knowledge of magic, they slashed their bodies, hoping that the blood would attract spirits and elementals to set fire to the altar. But nothing happened and, after a time, Elijah decided that that was enough. Taking twelve stones, he built an altar to the Lord, dug a trench round it, put wood on it and, cutting the bull in pieces, laid it on the wood. Then he said, ‘Fill four waterpots with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood.’ After they had done this three times, and the trench round the altar was full of water, Elijah stood by the altar and cried out, ‘Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that you are the Lord God!’ Then fire fell from heaven with such power that everything was consumed: nothing was left, neither victim nor wood nor stones nor water, and the people were so terrified that they fell on their faces and acknowledged that the God of Elijah was the true God. But Elijah, intoxicated with his triumph, ordered the four hundred and fifty prophets to be led to a mountain stream where their throats were slit.

This is why it was only to be expected that Elijah would have to submit to the same treatment and lose his head. That is the law. And it was this law that Jesus referred to when, in the Garden of Gethsemane, he rebuked Peter for cutting off the ear of Caiphas’ servant, saying, ‘Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.’ But, as we have seen, these words do not always prove true in the same incarnation. How did Elijah die? Not only was he not beheaded, but a chariot of fire caught him up and carried him straight to heaven. It was only in a later incarnation, as John the Baptist, that he paid for his crime. Jesus knew who he was and spoke of him in glowing terms, saying, ‘Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist.’ But Jesus also knew the destiny that was in store for him and this is why he did nothing to save him: he knew that justice must take its course. Now you can see why Jesus left the country when he heard that John had been thrown into prison: he was not meant to save him. The law is the law.

Now, let’s go a step further and I will show you that, without reincarnation, nothing in religion or even in life has any sense. Ask any priest or minister to explain why some people are rich, handsome, intelligent and powerful and succeed in everything, whereas others are sickly, poor, ugly, miserable and stupid, and they will tell you that it is the will of God.1 Sometimes they will talk about predestination and grace, but that will not make anything clearer. It all boils down to ‘the will of God’.

Well, if we analyse this answer – after all, God gave us our brains, we must not let them get rusty from disuse – we have to conclude that God is capricious, that he is moved to act by his arbitrary whims, that he gives everything to some and nothing to others. Well, he is God, after all. He has a right to do as he pleases, and if that is his will, I can only bow before it. But there is still something that I cannot comprehend, and that is why he should be offended and fly into a rage when those to whom he has never given anything good, are vicious and sinful, stop believing in him and turn to crime. If God gave them a mentality that is so lacking in intelligence and love, why does he also have to punish them for it? If he is almighty and omniscient couldn’t he make all men good, honest, intelligent, wise and devout? Why shouldn’t all his creatures be magnificent? We are expected to believe that, not only is it his fault if men commit crimes, but that he then punishes them for doing so. I simply cannot subscribe to such nonsense! I agree that God is all-powerful; I agree that he can do whatever he pleases; I have no argument with that. But then why is he not more consistent, logical and just? Surely, the least he could do would be to leave human beings alone? But we are asked to believe that he sends them to hell for eternity.

And this, again, is something I cannot accept. What I say, is, ‘Did they sin for thirty or forty years? In that case, it would be fair if they were condemned to burn for thirty or forty years. Not more... not for eternity.’ This I cannot accept. Use your reason. People are afraid to use their reason; their minds are paralysed by what they have been taught. They behave as though it were a crime to think for themselves. But, what are our minds for? What did God give us intelligence for?

From the moment we accept reincarnation, from the moment we study and understand it, all that is changed. We see that God is truly the Almighty Lord of the Universe, in Whom is all nobility and justice, and that it is our own fault if we are poor, stupid and unhappy. It is our own fault, because we have failed to make good use of what he gave us to start with, we have insisted on making our own costly experiments. And, as God is also generous and tolerant, he allows us to do as we wish. No doubt he said to himself, ‘They are bound to suffer and run into trouble, but that doesn’t matter. I shall always have plenty of love and all the other things they need, when they are ready for them. They have enough reincarnations ahead of them in which to learn wisdom.’ In other words, God has left us our freedom so that, now, everything negative that happens to us is our own fault.2 Why does the Church put all the blame on God for what happens to us? Perhaps you will object, ‘The Church has never blamed God; it simply suppressed the belief in reincarnation.’ Well, if you think about it, you will see that it amounts to the same thing.

Until the fourth century, christians as well as Jews, Egyptians, Hindus, Tibetans, etc., believed in reincarnation. But the Fathers of the Church probably thought that the faithful were not progressing rapidly enough, that the idea of reincarnation made them think that they had plenty of time ahead of them, so they decided to suppress the belief and teach people that they had only one life in which to strive for perfection. Gradually, the Church invented more and more horrors in the hope of frightening the faithful into obedience. By the Middle Ages, in fact, all they believed in was hell, the devil and eternal damnation! Reincarnation was abolished in the hope of forcing people to improve more rapidly, but the result was just the opposite: not only did they not improve, they became worse – and ignorant to boot! It is essential that we return to this belief. Without it everything is absurd: life has no meaning, God is a monster, etc., etc.

The question of reincarnation has been studied seriously and in detail, so I shall not go into it any further. There are quantities of books about every aspect, including the way Tibetan lamas choose the new Dalai Lama. But I want to tell you about one, really exceptional case that I came across in Bulgaria.

One day a couple came to the Brotherhood; they were worried about their little boy who was always saying things that seemed incomprehensible to them. ‘One day,’ they said, ‘We took him for a walk to a place he had never been to before and, when we got there, he exclaimed, “Oh, I know this place. I’ve been here before.” He even described things that were not visible from where we stood, and it was exactly as he described it. And yet, he had never been there before.’ (The couple knew that their first child had been to that place, but not this one.) But the boy insisted, ‘Don’t you remember? This is where I hid on my way to school... and that’s the river where I drowned.’ And, in fact, it was exactly at that spot that their first son had drowned, but this child had never been told about it. It was clear that it was the first child who had reincarnated in the same family. It is very rare that a child should reincarnate twice in the same family, but it can happen. If you question children under seven, you will find that they sometimes remember a great deal of their past lives but, instead of taking it seriously, their mothers scold them and tell them not to talk nonsense. After two or three attempts, they don’t dare to talk about their memories any more.

As I have shown you, the word reincarnation does not appear in the Gospels, but there are several passages in which it is obvious that it was an integral part of traditional belief at the time. Let me give you yet another example: there is a passage in which Jesus says, ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ What are we to make of this precept? It seems that either Jesus spoke without thinking (for how could he expect men who are so imperfect to attain the perfection of their heavenly Father within a few years?) or he had absolutely no notion of the immensity of the heavenly Father and imagined that it was easy to be as perfect as He. In neither case does Jesus appear in a very good light. The truth is that he was speaking in the context of a belief in reincarnation. He certainly knew that man could not reach the perfection of his heavenly Father in the space of one lifetime, but he also knew that, after many incarnations, those who yearned for that perfection and continued to strive for it would eventually attain it.

This question is referred to in the Old Testament as well. Let’s see how Moses describes the Creation of man in the Book of Genesis. ‘Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle…” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them…’ What has become of the word ‘likeness’ in the second part of this text? No doubt God meant to create man in his own image and likeness, that is to say, as perfect as himself, and yet he did not do so. He created him only in his image, that is to say, with the same faculties as his, but without the full maturity of those faculties, in other words, without the likeness.

An acorn is a good illustration of this. An acorn is in the image of its father, the oak tree, that is to say that it possesses all its father’s potential, but it does not yet resemble an oak tree; it will only begin to be ‘like’ its father once it is planted and starts to grow. Man is in the image of God, he has been given the same wisdom, love and power, but in infinitesimal amounts, compared to the Wisdom, Love and Power of his Maker. In time, as he grows and develops, he will come to be like God and possess the fullness of his qualities. Thus you can see that this growth, this passage from ‘image’ to ‘likeness,’ implies reincarnation. God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness’, but he did not do so. ‘God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them…’ It is in the omission of the word ‘likeness’ and the repetition of the word ‘image’ that Moses conceals the notion of reincarnation.

But men do not know how to read books. Still less do they know how to read what is written in the great Book of Living Nature which is full of references to reincarnation. Take the example of a tree. Only the Cabbalists really understand what a tree is; that great Cabbalistic symbol, the Tree of Life, is an image of the universe in which every living creature has its rightful place, as part of the roots, the trunk or the branches or as a leaf, flower or fruit. According to this vast and comprehensive science, every form of life, every activity and every region has its own particular place on the Tree of Life. At different times of the year, the leaves, flowers and fruit fall off the tree and rot, thus becoming food for the roots. And this happens, also, with human beings. When a man dies, he is absorbed by the roots of the Cosmic Tree only to reappear, before long, in another form, as branch, leaf or flower. Nothing is lost, human beings appear, disappear and reappear ceaselessly on this marvellous Tree of Life.

So, as you see, reincarnation exists on every level of being. Where can we find other examples? In the phenomenon of evaporation, for instance. A drop of water evaporates from the ocean into the air where it is transformed into rain or snow. In this form it falls back to earth and, eventually, finds its way to the ocean again. A drop of water never really disappears, it undertakes a long, long journey of exploration, mounting to the heavens, falling to the mountain tops, flowing down valleys and sinking into the depths of the earth where it takes on the yellow, red or green tints of the soil. The cycle of water, alternately rising and falling back to earth, is yet another manifestation of this law of reincarnation: like a drop of water, the human spirit journeys through space and time in its quest for knowledge and perfection.3

Would you like yet another argument? Very well, take this one: every night, before going to bed, you undress. One by one, off come your jacket, your shirt, vest and socks, etc. To go to sleep at night is a symbol of death, and the clothes you take off represent the different bodies from which you must progressively free yourself when you die. First, the physical body; then, a week or two later, the etheric body; then the astral body. To divest oneself of one’s astral body takes much longer because it is in this body that all the passions, desires and sentiments of a lower order accumulate. This is the stage that we call hell, the astral and lower mental planes. It is here that we have to stay to be purified. It is only later, when we have divested ourselves of our mental body, that we are allowed into Paradise and rise to the first, second and third heavens. Tradition claims that there are seven heavens and it is only when we are stripped of all impedimenta and completely ‘naked,’ that is to say, completely purified, that we may enter the seventh heaven.4

And then, once again, morning comes, symbolizing man’s return to earth, the birth of a baby. We put on our clothes again: vest, shirt, jacket, etc., just as a child, coming back to earth, clothes himself in his subtle bodies (Atmic, Buddhic and Causal) before putting on his mental, astral, etheric and, finally, his physical bodies. Thus, every night of our lives, we undress and, every morning, we dress again, and we have been doing it for years without ever pausing to reflect on our gestures and see that they correspond to the process of incarnation and disincarnation, to birth and death. And yet, if we knew how to interpret our everyday gestures, work and behaviour, the automatic processes of eating and breathing, etc., we would make some astounding discoveries. All the great mysteries of the universe are contained and reflected in the gestures, words and acts of our everyday lives, but only those who have studied in an Initiatic school are capable of deciphering them.

Some people are waiting for the Church to recognize reincarnation officially before making up their minds. But when will that happen? I have often had occasion to talk to members of the clergy and I can see that many of them do believe in reincarnation, but they do not dare to admit it openly for fear of stirring up various problems. However that may be, I assure you that if you do not accept the fact of reincarnation you will never fully understand your present situation nor the events in your life (why you always seem to be persecuted and hounded by misfortune, for instance or, on the contrary, why you always find the help and encouragement you need), nor how to work in order to prepare your next incarnation. And when one is not guided by the truth, how far can one go?

Videlinata (Switzerland), December 11, 1966

BIBLICAL REFERENCES

‘Who do people say that I am?’ – Matt. 16: 13-15

‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents…?’ – John 9: 2-4

‘Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee’ – Matt. 14: 13

‘Why, then, do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?’ – Matt. 17: 10-13

‘Elijah is indeed coming and will restore all things’ – Luke 1: 17.

‘There shall be neither dew nor rain these years’ – I Kings 17: 1

Elijah and the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal – I Kings 18: 20-36

‘Put your sword back into its place’ – Matt. 26: 52

‘Among those born of women’ – Matt. 11: 11

‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ – Matt. 5: 48

‘Let us make humankind in our image’ – Gen. 1: 26

‘God created humankind in his image’ – Gen. 1: 27

II

When we read the lives of some of the Saints, Prophets and Initiates and see what terrible sufferings they had to endure, we wonder, ‘Why did they have to go through such martyrdom? They hadn’t done anything to deserve it.’ But we have to look for the cause of their suffering in a previous incarnation, for the fact that someone has restored a state of divine order within himself does not necessarily mean that all his debts have been paid off or that his past is totally obliterated. Our past is always with us and we cannot be completely free until we have paid every last penny of our debts.

Take the case of Jesus’ disciples: they spent all their days with him; they lived in the light and did not sin, and yet they were put to death or thrown to the lions. Why did Jesus not help them? Because he knew that they had not finished paying off their debts. They had committed faults in previous incarnations and had not had time to make reparation before leaving the world. This is why the Scriptures say, ‘Do not let the sun go down on your anger’ and, ‘Before the sun sets, go and forgive your brother.’ But the true meaning of these precepts has never been understood. If we take them literally, we don’t have much time in which to heal the breach with our brother – especially in winter when the sun sets very early. But these words do not refer to the setting of the physical sun. Sunset, in the symbolic language of the initiates, means man’s physical death, his departure to the next world. So, in actual fact, he is given plenty of time, several years, in which to pay his debts. But once his time has run out and the sun sets, if he has forgotten or been unable to pay, the law of karma takes effect. A record exists of everything we have ever done, because everything leaves an imprint which hardens and crystallizes and there is no way of getting off cheaply or settling ‘out of court’ as it were. If we have not cleared all our debts by the time the sun sets, we shall be obliged to pay every last penny in a later incarnation.

And you, who live according to a spiritual Teaching, who live in the light, you are also subject to mishaps and misfortunes. To be in an Initiatic school does not necessarily make you immune from all negative influences. The only way to be sure that suffering cannot touch you is to be free of your past debts. If you still owe something, then, Teaching or no Teaching, light or no light, you are going to have to pay. As you see, the question becomes clearer: you are a faithful follower of this divine Teaching, you live in the light and do nothing but good, but you have to remember that good bears fruit in the future, not in the immediate present. Thus, when you have problems, you should accept them willingly, knowing that they cannot obliterate the good work you have been doing. In fact, you can say to the Lord, ‘Dear Lord, so much the better if I have to suffer, today. In that way, I shall be freeing myself. Now that I know why I have to endure all this I have no desire to rebel against it; I don’t ask to be spared.’

Perhaps you will wonder about Jesus: ‘Does his crucifixion mean that even he had a karmic debt to pay?’ No, the case of Jesus was completely different. The case of Jesus raises the vital question of self-sacrifice. There are beings who are willing to sacrifice their lives and accept terrible pain and hardship even though they have no debts of any kind. But such beings are the exception. When one does not have a detailed understanding of the question of reincarnation one is liable to be very much mistaken in one’s judgements.

People come in four categories as far as reincarnation is concerned. First we have those who are so ignorant and unaware, so lacking in all inner light or moral sense, that they live lives of crime. They break the laws and run up huge debts and, as a result, when they come back to earth, they have to suffer terrible conditions in order to pay their debts and make reparation. This is why they have such unhappy lives.

The second group consists of more highly evolved beings who try to develop the qualities and virtues they need to free themselves. But, however hard they work, one incarnation does not give them enough time in which to settle all their debts, so they have to come back again to complete their task. Next time, better conditions will enable them to work more usefully and on a higher plane. But they must still keep coming back until all their debts are settled and they are completely free.

In the third group are those who have reached an even higher degree of evolution and who return to earth to complete certain specific tasks. They have very few debts still to pay and they stand out from the masses owing to the great breadth of their consciousness and their virtues. Their whole life is spent doing good. When beings such as these leave the world, their task is accomplished and they will not come back again.

Some of them, however, are willing to give up the blissful state of joy and boundless freedom that is theirs in the bosom of the Lord. They are so filled with pity and compassion for men that they leave this sublime state voluntarily and return to earth to help them, even when they know that it will mean torture and a violent death.5 Others, who wish to pursue a spiritual work begun on earth, may, without actually reincarnating, come to dwell within a highly evolved human being and manifest themselves through him. As a matter of fact, Jesus referred to such a possibility when he said, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.’ These beings have no need to reincarnate. Without assuming a physical body of their own, they can enter into a living man and accompany him every step of the way, through gestation, infancy, youth and mature adulthood, working with, in and through him.

A great many people desire freedom, but they don’t really know what it means. They do everything possible to avoid their obligations, shirk their duty and sever their ties to others – and they think that when all that is done they will be free. But that is not the way to achieve freedom. The first step towards freedom is to pay all one’s debts. People want to free themselves from their wife or children, from their boss, society and even life itself, by committing suicide. But freedom is an impossible illusion as long as you have still not paid off all your debts and wiped out your karma.

It is perfectly legitimate to want to be free, but freedom can only be achieved in accordance with divine law, and very few human beings know how to go about it.6 Even here, in the Brotherhood, many of you still see it the wrong way round: you try to achieve independence by dodging your obligations. But this is as though you ate a hearty meal in a restaurant and then tried to slip out without paying the bill. It is a dishonest, dishonourable way to behave and it will not be countenanced by the spirits of light in the world above. People often imagine that they have freed themselves because they have left their job – or their wife – but to do this is to jump from the frying pan into the fire: they will soon see that they picked the wrong solution when they meet all kinds of new problems and fall into new traps.

The best way, the best method to use in order to free yourself, is love. The worst way is selfishness, greed, craftiness and guile. Every time you act with generosity and self-sacrifice, every time you are kind, every time you give, you are working towards your liberation. This is why, instead of clinging to possessions, instead of always trying to dodge the issue or calculate what you can get out of a situation, you must give, give, give. Look at how couples behave when they separate or get a divorce, how fiercely they defend their own interests! What they don’t realize is that, because of their attitude, they will have to meet and come to terms with each other again in future incarnations.

It is love, kindness, compassion and generosity that set a disciple on the path of true liberation. To be sure, if you talk about kindness and self-sacrifice to the average human being, he will take you for an imbecile because he is not guided by this light and does not know the value of generosity. But an initiate knows how important it is to give, to help others and be generous and magnanimous, because that is how one frees oneself. So, give! Always give more than justice demands, because this is the quickest way to free yourselves.7

The Bonfin, September 29, 1963

BIBLICAL REFERENCES

‘Do not let the sun go down on your anger’ – Ephesians 4: 26

‘Those who love me will keep my word’ – John 14: 23

III

The fate of nations, countries and peoples exactly reflects that of individual human beings and all other living creatures which are born, grow and mature before growing old and moving on to make way for others. They give what they have to give and then they fade out. It is as though they had to rest for a time before coming back to distribute new gifts and riches. This is the pattern followed by all civilizations and, even, all religions. One after the other, they are born and expand, gradually achieve greater influence until they reach their peak, then fall into a state of inertia and, finally, decline and lose the keys they once held to the great mysteries of life. What is left of the Mysteries? Where are those keys, where is the knowledge, where are the powers once possessed by the temples of ancient Egypt? Where are all those hierophants? What is left of that vast science?8 They have all come and gone in keeping with this unchanging law of life: every object and every being that is born into this world must die and make way for others. Only that which has no beginning can have no end.

Look at ancient Greece, at the extraordinary number of creative geniuses it once contributed to the world: poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, architects, philosophers. And now? A country is like a river. The river bed is always the same but the water that flows along it is always new and different. The inhabitants of the river, the myriad drops of water, come and go on their way down to the sea while other drops take their place. When they reach the sea and are heated by the sun, the drops of water become so light and subtle that they rise into the atmosphere before falling back to earth in the form of rain or snow and, once again, pouring down the valleys in streams and rivers. It is a never-ending cycle.

And what is a country? A country is simply a river, a river in which an endless succession of different beings reincarnate, coming from a variety of other lands. Or, if you prefer, a country is a house which is destined to be occupied by one group of people for ten years, say, and by another group for the next five years, and so on. For the first ten years, the house is filled with music, song and harmony and, then, when the tenants change, the atmosphere changes and becomes dull and utilitarian or noisy and disorderly. But it is still the same house. The destiny of a country can be explained in this way. Geographically, modern Greece is the same country as the Greece of two or three thousand years ago, but the inhabitants are not the same. And this could be said of all countries.

Perhaps you will ask, ‘How is it that the Tibetans, for example, seem to have retained the same concepts, ideas and customs for thousands of years?’ Comparison with the human body gives us a clue to this question: the cells of a human organism are constantly changing and being renewed, but the work they do is always the same. The same is true of a factory: the personnel is constantly being changed and renewed. Some work with computers, others with optical instruments or electrical circuits, and the newly hired workers have the same skills and have been trained to do the same work as those they replace. Similarly, the entities who reincarnate in Tibet are those that have an affinity with Tibetans and have prepared themselves to live there. But Tibetans who have prepared themselves to live in France, for instance, reincarnate in France. In fact, there are many former Tibetans in France, even amongst the children of the Brotherhood.

You will, perhaps, wonder about the Jews, who have been persecuted for so many centuries. The Jews that have been martyred came from many different countries in the world. They reincarnated into Jewish families because it was their karma to be persecuted and put to death, but they had not necessarily always been Jews. Heaven arranged that they should reincarnate as Jews at a particular stage of their evolution so that they could pay their debts. And the citizens of modern Greece have also come from other countries – from Bulgaria, perhaps, for these two countries have always been at loggerheads, and people often reincarnate in the country of their former enemies. Many Greeks have reincarnated in Bulgaria, also, but whether as a reward or as a punishment, I would not like to say!

When you hate someone the effect is the same as if you loved him, for love and hatred both create bonds. Hatred is as strong as love. If you want to be free of someone and never see him again, you must neither hate nor love him. You must be indifferent to him. If you hate someone you will tie yourself to him with bonds that no one can ever untie and will have to associate with him for centuries to come. This is something people do not know; they imagine that hatred severs their bonds with others. On the contrary, hatred is a force that binds you to those you hate just as love binds you to those you love. The nature of the bond, of course, is not the same. The bonds of love will have certain effects and the bonds of hatred others, but the effects of hatred are just as unavoidable and just as powerful as those of love.9 If the different countries knew this they would understand how ridiculous it was to hate each other.

You must not be surprised or offended if I tell you that France will begin to lose her remaining men of genius. French artists, writers and philosophers have given extraordinary treasures to the world, but if the country continues to turn its back on heaven from which all this wealth comes, future men of genius will choose to reincarnate somewhere else. Truly great minds have no special attachment to any one country, they are citizens of the universe. A country may take pride in the fact that great geniuses have been born there, but if you asked those concerned for their opinion, they would tell you that they are at home in the whole universe, that their fatherland is the universe. Besides, when you get to the next world, the question of nationality does not count any longer. If you could only see all those French and German soldiers who died in the war, toasting each other and laughing at how stupid they had been to kill each other when they were all sons of God!

It is very easy for the Entities of the invisible world to let one country slip into decadence and raise another to prominence. Just why they do this is their secret. Take the case of Bulgaria: a few centuries ago it was a poverty-stricken, down-trodden country that never produced any thinkers, artists or scientists of note. Now, all that is beginning to change. The situation is improving, for neither the glory nor the decadence of a nation lasts for ever. And what about China? For centuries it was a sleepy, backward, lethargic nation and, now that it is beginning to rouse itself, the whole world looks on in fear and trembling. How do you explain this? Who decides these things and why?

Everything is planned from above, it is the heavenly Hierarchies that decide these things and for them, of course, it is easy. It is like the international programmes of aid to the Third World countries. If a country is poor and backward, a richer, more advanced country sends teams of economists and technicians and, in no time at all, the country is on its feet again. This is what the invisible world does: it sends engineers, scientists and artists, that is to say, a picked team of very advanced souls, and that is enough. They renew the whole culture of the country. Sometimes, in fact, it takes only one really good political leader to set a country on the right path within a few years.

Some of you may feel offended and angry when I say that your country is losing its grip, but it does not depend on me: all I can do is recognize what is happening. I have no nationalistic axe to grind; I am neither French nor Bulgarian. I am a citizen of the universe, a child of the sun. I do not belong to the world, so why should I quarrel with anyone over Bulgaria, Greece or France? I am above national boundaries. But there is one thing I have noticed, and that is that scientists in the Slavic countries have gone further than anyone else, today, in the field of parapsychic research, subjects such as telepathy, psychometry, clairvoyance, divining, etc., and, even if there is still no visible sign that this is happening, Russia will eventually abandon Marxism, and Communists will become our brothers in the great Universal White Brotherhood.

Actually, although the parapsychological discoveries of the Russians indicate considerable progress in this area, they represent barely one hundredth of what I have revealed to you over the years. One day, though, Initiatic Science will be known throughout the length and breadth of the world. Not, of course, the very highest degrees of this Science. There will always be certain limits, certain forbidden areas. Human beings will not be given access to the ultimate secrets because they are not ready for them yet, they still have a pronounced tendency to use their discoveries for their own self-interest and in order to dominate and assimilate others. But, before long, certain realities will be brought to light and known throughout the world and it will be the dawn of a solar civilization.

The Bonfin, August 11, 1974

IV

The Master reads the Meditation for the day:

‘The least little flower that makes its appearance on earth is linked to the whole universe and needs the consent of all of nature to survive. If it appears before its time, nature may withhold her support and the flower will die.

‘And for each one of you, too, the whole of Creation had to consent to your appearance on earth. Perhaps you will think that, because you are somebody quite unimportant, it is unlikely that nature should have been in any way concerned with your birth; and yet it is so. Every detail, including the amount of food and drink you will consume during your lifetime, is on record somewhere, and for you to appear when you did, the cosmic budget must have had room for you at that time. Everything is connected to everything else. Every living thing is part of the cosmos and nothing can appear in heaven or on earth without the consent of all Creation.’

I know that many of you will be surprised, perhaps even shocked, when you hear this, because it is not the usual way of looking at things. People believe that things happen by chance, that nothing is intentional or planned in advance, that there is no higher Intelligence to preside over the course of life on earth. It is this false philosophy that prevents them from understanding what goes on in the world.

Take the example of a tree. All of nature must be ready to participate in the life of a tree before it can grow and bear fruit. If the earth does not give it the nourishment it needs it dies. It cannot survive without water, sunshine and warmth and, in some cases, the care of human hands. A tree needs the help of all Creation but, as the processes involved are imperceptible, men think that the tree springs up and grows simply by chance. And what of man? Man also exists, lives, breathes and moves thanks to the consent and collaboration of all Creation. If only a few minute elements are withheld, if he is denied air, water, or certain vitamins or hormones, he dies. Where do these vital elements come from? It is the whole universe that consents to supply him with them.

Look at all the planning that goes into the running of nations, businesses and even families. ‘That’s different,’ you will say; ‘In human organizations there are people who plan operations, calculate expenses and draw up a budget to determine how much to spend on food, heating, upkeep, and so on. They decide what sectors can be trimmed, how many workers must be fired or how many new hands taken on, and so on.’ That is perfectly true and, precisely because it is true, doesn’t it seem reasonable to suppose that human beings don’t just arrive in this world without their arrival being planned for and approved in advance? What makes you think that, although men plan for expansion and organize resources on a national, municipal or family level, there is no equivalent foresight on the part of nature, and that everything just happens by chance? Human ignorance is, indeed, abysmal! The fact is that everything in the universe is planned in keeping with an extraordinarily detailed economy. In the world above there are intelligent Beings who determine how many human beings shall be born and exactly how long they shall live.

Every human need is provided for in advance and yet men still think that it all happens haphazardly and that, even for an exceptional being such as Jesus, there was no one to pick the most auspicious astrological conjunctions, the most favourable moment for his birth. Jesus, they think, just ‘happened’ by chance – nobody knows exactly why. The truth is that his coming had been ordained in advance by heavenly Entities. Nothing is left to chance. Even the advent of Hitler was planned and determined in advance so that many people – himself included – should learn some very hard lessons.

Perhaps you are wondering how the invisible world above can possibly foresee every last detail in this way. Would you believe me if I said that it was all done automatically by computers? It was not human beings that first invented computers; nature has been using them for a very long time. The Cosmic computer contains all the essential data on every creature and, on the basis of his past record, it determines exactly when and where he shall incarnate, what kind of physical body he shall have, what talents and faculties he shall be given, and so on. Then other spirits are assigned to see that these decisions are carried out. Everything takes place exactly as and when it was planned: if there is to be an ‘accident,’ for instance, they wait for the precise moment and, unfailingly, the accident occurs as planned. People think that these things happen by chance; they don’t realize that they have been foreseen with mathematical precision. If a child is to be born at a particular moment, the computer calculates the astrological data, draws up his birth chart and determines his sun sign, his ascendant and the position and aspects of the planets, and the child is born – and even conceived – at precisely the right moment. All the elements in a person’s horoscope correspond exactly to the life he has lived in previous incarnations. This is what determines whether he is destined to know happiness or sorrow, whether he will have an accident or not, etc. It is all decided automatically.

‘If all that is true,’ you will ask, ‘how can we still say that we are free?’ Freedom abides in the spirit. It is at work wherever and whenever the spirit manifests itself and decides to modify, improve or hasten the pre-ordained processes.10 Broadly speaking, though, life is triggered and set in motion in the manner of a child’s clockwork train which, eventually, comes to a stop when the spring runs down. Man is like that clockwork train, he is wound up just enough to enable him to live a fixed number of years and, like the train, he encounters certain ‘hurdles’ and has to go through tunnels or over bridges on the way. And all this is planned in advance, even the apparently ‘chance’ events. When you unexpectedly meet someone who revolutionizes your entire life, you can be sure that it was planned long ago. Even before you were born it was decided that you would fall in love at first sight with So-and-so. When you see a new-born baby, there will be no outward manifestation of all the equipment, all the switches and circuits and chips that have been put into him, but it is all there. A baby is a veritable factory, a State, a constellation, a whole universe.

Don’t be surprised when I say that for one tiny flower to grow and blossom, the whole universe must give its unanimous consent and provide for all its needs, otherwise it will die. The same is true for you, too. If you are given advantageous spiritual, mental and physical conditions, you will grow and prosper, whereas adverse conditions will hinder your development. Also, conditions that are favourable for others may be unfavourable for you and vice versa. You may, therefore, be endowed with certain qualities and talents and deprived of others, such as health, for example, because some of the currents and forces of the universe were opposed to your coming into the world and make trouble for you.

This is why you must work to cultivate harmony in your lives. You must introduce into yourselves the very harmony of the universe, of the stars, of the whole cosmos, otherwise there will always be someone or something to make trouble for you. You may have a harmonious relationship with your family and your neighbours, but if there are people somewhere in the world who wish you ill, they will inevitably cause you certain difficulties. Good is often intertwined with evil. This is why I always insist so much on the necessity of reaching a state of harmony, of being in tune with the whole cosmos, so that everything within you may be ideally beautiful and luminous.11

Let me give you another example: suppose that you have a very dear friend who loves you and is a true help to you and, on the other hand, you have an enemy who is constantly trying to harm you. Unfortunately, you can never have the one without the other. You will share some of the best moments of your life with your friend – or sweetheart – but your enemy is a constant source of problems, arguments and distress. Whether you like it or not, therefore, you cannot ignore him; he is a negative but integral part of your life. This is why it is so important to be in harmony with the whole world.

It is true that this is difficult, but you can, at least, try. Try, above all, to be in tune with the entities of a higher level who guide and direct our lives and, secondly, try to establish harmonious relations with other human beings. This is why the Scriptures tell us to make our peace with our brother before the sun sets. ‘Before the sun sets,’ that is to say, before the end of this incarnation, because it becomes much more difficult to make reparation later on. It is in this life that we must go and find those we have injured and atone for the wrong we have done and make our peace with them. Every negative thought, feeling or action that emanates from you does harm to someone. You may not see what they are doing but you must remember that they are living entities that seek out their target and do their evil work.12 One day, you will have to pay for the harm they have done.

And now, let’s pause to look at this question of our destiny being mapped out for us in advance. As I have already explained in another lecture, the heavenly Hierarchies sometimes allow us to change and improve certain elements before coming back to earth but, once we are born, we no longer have that possibility. Our lives have to unfold as planned. Our bone structure, the muscular, circulatory and nervous systems of our bodies, our health and intelligence – all these different elements are predetermined. Our destiny, therefore, is laid out in advance. If a person is ugly or deformed at birth, he will not enjoy much joy, happiness or success in this world. And the destiny of a girl who is born with great charm and beauty will also be predetermined. She will win the title of ‘Miss World,’ her life will be a constant round of receptions, she will be besieged by photographers, and a handsome young multimillionaire will beg her to marry him!

This is why I often tell you that you cannot change your destiny very much in your present incarnation. On the other hand, every possibility is open to you for your next one if you start, now, to prepare it with your work, thoughts and prayers. During your present life your possibilities are limited, but whatever you ask for today will be yours in your next incarnation. It is important to know this, otherwise nothing will be any better next time. Why are some people in such deplorable situations? Because, in their previous incarnation, they did not know what to ask for or how to work in order to obtain the possibilities or virtues they would like to have in this incarnation. They did not know what to do in the past and, if they continue to be just as ignorant in the present, their next incarnation will also be a disaster.

Listen carefully to what I am telling you. Listen and apply it for your own good. Make up your minds to use the years of life that remain to you to meditate, hope and pray for all that is best. In this way you will be launching plans and ideas which will crystallize and take concrete shape in the future.13 Your present circumstances are the crystallization of other hopes and wishes in the past and, for the time being, they stubbornly resist change. This is only to be expected: they cannot be exchanged for new forms until they have served their time and are worn out. But when a man dies, he takes with him all the good things he has created in his mind during his lifetime, and now it is their turn to crystallize and become concrete on the physical plane so that the next time he returns to earth he will have all the beauty, intelligence, health and generosity he wished for. His desires will materialize in new forms which resist erosion by negative, destructive forces with the same unshakeable tenacity as the old ones. The work we are doing today is not really for the benefit of our present incarnation. This is why many of you tell me, ‘I can’t see any results, Master. I’ve been working for years and nothing changes. I’m no better than I used to be.’ But I tell them, ‘You don’t understand. You have really and truly changed, but you cannot see it yet. When the present structure disappears you will see the new one that you are working on today, and you will be astounded by the beauty and splendour of it.’

A few minutes ago, I said that freedom was in the spirit. I must explain this a little more.

If you observe the behaviour of an animal or of an infant, you will see that the animal obeys the natural law. It does not try to oppose or change the course of events because it has not been given the liberty to do so. An animal, therefore, is obedient and submissive; it faithfully observes the natural law and, for that reason, we can say that it is innocent. Even when an animal attacks and devours its prey no blame attaches to it for it is acting according to its nature. It is obeying the law of nature. Similarly, an infant is like a baby animal, its intelligence and will are still undeveloped so it obeys its instincts and impulses. Only later, when it is older, does a child become capable of choosing to obey or to defy the laws of nature, to live in harmony with the law or in opposition to it.

When an adult human being spends his life eating, sleeping, amusing himself, procreating children and working to earn his living, then, whatever illusions he may have on the subject, his life is that of an animal, governed by instinct and his biological urges. Animals and even plants do as much. His life follows its course as though he himself, his consciousness and will, had nothing to do with it. He goes from childhood to adulthood and from adulthood to old-age, sickness and death without any active participation at all.

But as soon as a man uses his consciousness and his intelligence to intervene actively in his instinctive life, to take control of it and purify it and add a spiritual dimension to it, he becomes an extremely important factor, capable of changing his destiny. What is destiny? It is an implacable chain of cause and effect to which only the animal, biological, instinctive level of life is wholly subject. What, for instance, is the destiny of a hen? Can it hope to become king, poet or musician? No, its destiny is the pot. Every creature has its own destiny: a wolf is destined to be hunted, trapped and killed or bundled off to a zoo. Even sheep, even doves have a destiny in keeping with what they stand for, consistent with their activity and the elements of which they are formed.

If you want to escape blind subservience to your destiny, you must not be so weak and so completely enslaved and subjugated by the lowest, instinctual levels of life: the functions of breathing, procreating, eating, drinking and sleeping. This level of life is very far from being divine. True, it is divine to the extent to which it comes from God – everything comes from God – but in the spiritual sense of the term, it is far from divine.14 Divine life begins when a man becomes aware that there is more to him than a stomach, a belly, sexual organs, flesh, muscle and bone, when he realizes that he is also a spirit, and decides to act as such. Divine life begins when man feels the desire to act in the realm of the spirit and to create something divine, luminous and grandiose. At this point he escapes the stranglehold of destiny, for destiny is to fall ill, to die and be buried and to rot in the grave. This is the destiny that cannot be changed, the destiny of the physical body, and no man can escape it.

The spiritual life gives us the possibility of adding something to our purely biological, instinctual life and of rising to a higher plane beyond the reach of destiny. But to achieve this the spirit must be given the freedom to work and manifest itself, to direct our lives, to put its seal and signature on everything we do. In this way we escape the grip of destiny and move into the world of Providence. All bodies are destined to return to dust. The body, yes, but not the spirit. The spirit is not subject to destiny, it is governed by the laws of Providence.

The question then arises: what do we have to do to enter the realm of Providence? First of all, we have to realize that, between these two levels, between destiny and Providence, lies a zone in which free will comes into play and that the principal task of a disciple is to free his will so completely that it is able to move, work and be active in the world of the spirit. In this way the disciple becomes subject to Providence and is in a position to choose from an infinite range of possibilities. He can choose whatever he likes and his choice will always be excellent. Whereas, in the realm of destiny, there is no choice, only one obligatory path for all: the path of destruction, disintegration and annihilation. What is the destiny of an ox? To be yoked to the plough, poor beast, and to spend its life toiling in the fields – unless, of course, it gets sent to the slaughterhouse and ends up on somebody’s plate. An ox cannot change its destiny and nor can any other animal.

Those who are deprived of the light of Initiatic Science spend their lives in the grip of destiny and are ceaselessly jostled, oppressed and tormented. The world of destiny is implacable and the man who is subject to it, be he king or emperor, is obliged to accept its unswerving, inexorable conclusion, even if it means losing his head under the guillotine! It is extremely difficult to escape from destiny because, during the course of innumerable previous incarnations, we have often built up a heavy karmic debt. The laws of cause and effect are absolute and destiny, which is unconscious and pitiless, takes effect as inevitably as the law of physics which causes a glass to shatter if you hit it with a hammer. Destiny is a set of rigid, unswerving laws.

We have the opportunity, in this incarnation, to create good conditions for the next one, providing we know what to do and do it consciously. If we do not work in this direction today, our next incarnation may well be worse than this one. By depriving people of their belief in reincarnation, the Church deprived them of the opportunity to create a brighter future. Christians have no idea of their true potential. They are told that, if they go to Mass on Sundays, they will go straight to heaven when they die and be seated at the right hand of God. As though it were so easy to win a seat at the right hand of the Almighty. But if they don’t go to Mass regularly, they will spend the rest of eternity burning in the fires of hell. Why does the Church mislead people so? Does it want to console them? But they should not be consoled, they should be told the truth.

And, now, let me summarize this question: all those – and there are a great many of them on earth – who allow their instincts and physiological urges to dominate them and who do no spiritual work will never be in a position to change their destiny. Their lives will unfold as decreed. But those who work with ardour and do their best to enter the world of light and love will be able to escape. Destiny is cruel and relentless, but they will no longer be completely in its power. They will have attained a subtler region from which they receive beneficial elements to counteract the negative influences of destiny. Of course, we could say that this is still destiny, that Providence is a kind of destiny. Yes, but it is destiny of a different kind. Under the rule of Providence things are still predetermined, but divinely so.

What I have been telling you is extremely important. Henceforth you can be aware that if you are content to live like everybody else and never do any work on a higher plane, you will not have much hope of changing your destiny, you will never be able to create your own future, for you will be submitting to the status quo. Of course, you may think that your destiny is not bad at all. Some people have a destiny that, on the surface, is very favourable: they have a life of wealth, ease and luxury. No one bothers them, they eat and drink, travel all over the world, marry and have children. It’s the good life! But an initiate would not agree with that evaluation. He sees other men toiling, struggling and suffering, stumbling up against innumerable obstacles and bereft of every comfort, and he knows that, in reality, it is their lives that are more fruitful than the lives of those who seem to be favoured by destiny.

Men’s conception of happiness is far too materialistic. Even astrologers have been contaminated by this mentality. They will read a chart and exclaim, ‘Oh, but this is magnificent: you have Jupiter in the second house, the Sun in the tenth and Venus in the seventh. That means that you will be rich, important and famous and lucky in love. You’ll have everything your heart desires!’ Whereas, if they see Squares and Oppositions in your horoscope, they are sorry for you because they foresee all kinds of difficulties and disasters. But they obviously have not understood the first thing about it. An initiate would never interpret a chart like that. He would study it to see if you were ready to do God’s will, to achieve certain tasks, to accomplish something divine. He would not bother about Squares and Oppositions, nor about planets in Detriment or Fall – all that is unimportant.

But very few astrologers today are guided by this new light or are capable of seeing and interpreting things from this point of view. They are prisoners of the popular conceptions, they judge things by a materialistic scale of values according to which success in life depends on money and material success. But material wealth and success are ephemeral. They can’t last, and what will be left once they have gone? It is not given to every astrologer to discern the spiritual significance of a birth-chart. Often, when others study a chart and exclaim in admiration, I only have to look at it to see that that person will never do anything worthwhile for heaven. They have what would generally be considered a good horoscope because it promises them talent, wealth and a respected position in society, and yet, in the eyes of heaven, they are the most unexceptional, insignificant beings. I would never want to be in their shoes or have a ‘good’ horoscope such as theirs. There are other standards by which to evaluate a horoscope which are unknown to the average astrologer.

Let me give you another example of the kind of thing that shows that today’s astrologers have a false scale of values. Instead of telling you, for instance, that you still have a debt to pay in a particular area and explaining what you can do to pay it and be free, they will tell you how to try and avoid an accident which is supposed to happen to you on such and such a day. But their advice will be no use; the accident will happen anyway, if not the day they warned you about, the day before or the day after. Karma has no time for those who try to cheat or wangle things to their advantage, so it deliberately misleads the astrologer in his calculations.

What is the use of astrology if it can’t help us to improve our destiny? Ah, but it can help us to improve our destiny, but not by urging us to run away from it.15 It would take too long to explain this fully, but let me give you just one example to illustrate my point. Let’s say that you are aware that if you fail to pay a large sum of money by a certain day, your furniture and all your belongings will be seized and you will be evicted from your home. With no roof over your head, you will be exposed to the wind and rain, in danger of falling ill. Rather than standing by and waiting passively for disaster to overtake you, you start to prepare for the day of reckoning by working and saving as much as you can and, when the day comes, you are able to pay every penny and keep your home and your belongings. This situation can be transposed onto every plane of existence: if you work and ‘save’ on the spiritual level, you can avoid the accidents, illnesses or bankruptcy that may otherwise be in store for you.

Think about the absolute truths that I have revealed to you today. Study them, verify the truth of them for yourselves, and you will see that I have not been misleading you. Tremendous possibilities are open to you because the Teaching helps you to prepare yourselves and shows you how to create a truly sublime future.

The Bonfin, July 25, 1974

1 See The Wellsprings of Eternal Joy, Izvor Coll. n° 242, chap. 4: ‘Seeking God’s answers within’.

2 See Les deux arbres du Paradis, Complete Works, vol. 3, chap. IX-3: ‘Le retour de l’enfant prodigue’.

3 See The Mysteries of Fire and Water, Izvor Coll. n° 232, chap. 11: ‘The Cycle of Water: Reincarnation’.

4 See ‘Et il me montra un fleuve d’eau de la vie’, Synopsis Coll., Part X, chap. 5: ‘Enfer, Purgatoire et Paradis’.

5 See The Wellsprings of Eternal Joy, Izvor Coll. n° 242, chap. 7: ‘A commitment to heaven’.

6 See Truth: Fruit of Wisdom and Love, Izvor Coll. n° 234, chap. 18: ‘The Truth shall Make you Free’.

7 See Vie et travail à l’École divine, Complete Works, vol. 31, chap. 8: ‘Comment dépasser la notion de justice’.

8 See Life and Work in an Initiatic School – Training for the Divine, Complete Works, vol. 30, chap. 8: ‘The Meaning of Initiation’.

9 See Love and Sexuality, Complete Works, vol. 14, chap. 26: ‘The Bonds of Love’.

10 See Freedom, the Spirit Triumphant, Izvor Coll. n° 211.

11 See Harmony and Health, Izvor Coll. n° 225, chap. 2: ‘The World of Harmony’.

12 See Life Force, Complete Works, vol. 5, chap. 6: ‘Thoughts are Living Entities’.

13 See The Seeds of Happiness, Izvor Coll. n° 231, chap. 12: ‘The Spirit is Above the Laws of Fate’, and chap. 21: ‘We are the Artisans of Our Own Future’.

14 See Sons and Daughters of God, Izvor Coll. n° 240, chap. 1: ‘I came that they should have life’.

15 See The Zodiac, Key to Man and to the Universe, Izvor Coll. n° 220, chap. 4: ‘The Cross of Destiny’.

Chapter Nine
Don’t stop half-way

Most human beings spend their lives in pursuit of pleasure as though nothing more important existed. In this they are sadly mistaken, and I propose to make this clear to you with the help of an example that no one would ever think of using because it is taken from the prehistoric days of man.

Matches and cigarette lighters are modern inventions; our forefathers had several other methods of producing a flame and one of these consisted in rubbing two pieces of wood together. The friction produced heat and, eventually, a spark and a flame – light. Everyone knows this, but how many have ever thought about its underlying significance and realized that, since it is a mechanical, physical phenomenon, it must correspond to some important, hidden truths on the psychological level. People are content simply to observe such things; they never try to probe them and learn how to interpret them.

So, now, let’s see what we can learn from this phenomenon. We take two pieces of wood and rub them against each other. The rubbing is a movement; the movement produces heat, and heat is converted into light. Movement, heat and light are the three sides of the triangle with which you are all familiar, and which represents a human being. Movement is associated with the will, activity, strength and power; heat is associated with the heart, feelings and love, and light is associated with intelligence, thought and wisdom.1 And, just as man is capable of producing light on the physical plane, he can also produce light within himself. By his actions, by the practice of certain exercises, he can produce a form of heat and begin to experience certain feelings. If he does not stop there, if he knows how to go beyond this level, he will eventually reach understanding, that is to say, light.

We must now study this process as it applies to the realm of love. What do human beings do when they make love? Symbolically speaking, we could say that they are like the two pieces of wood rubbing against each other to produce heat, that is to say, a sensation of pleasure. That is all right as far as it goes, but why stop there? Why is there no light? Why are they not illuminated? Their love should illuminate them, give them an understanding of the mysteries of creation, make them lucid and clairvoyant. But this is not the case; on the contrary, it is quite likely to make them even more obtuse. Movement and heat, these are the only aspects of love that human beings understand. They stop half-way; they never reach light. In order to produce light, one must not make pleasure one’s only objective, for pleasure absorbs all one’s energies and prevents the light from shining forth. This is very simple and clear: you have to go all the way to the top, to the light; you must not stop on the way. To be sure, there are a great many things to be seen on the way, some very interesting and seductive scenery and many sparkling decoys to attract your attention, but if you stop for all these things you will never reach the goal. This is why I say to lovers: you have set things in motion and produced some warmth, but then you stop there, in the warmth, whereas you should keep going until you reach the light, for light is the goal and purpose of all activity.

Almost everybody stops half-way because they find so much to attract them there, so many fascinating, glittering things. But this is where the Sirens are lying in wait to destroy us. Remember Ulysses. Ulysses was a wise man, he knew that he would have to pass within earshot of the Sirens who would try to enchant him with their song and lure him to his death, so he took precautionary measures to protect himself and his men. He stopped up the ears of his men with wax so that they would not hear the voices of the Sirens, otherwise they would never have been strong enough to resist their call. But, as he wanted to hear them himself, instead of stopping up his ears, he told his sailors to bind him to the mast and, on no account to release him, even if he beseeched and implored them to do so, until the danger was safely behind them. As their ship came closer to the island where the Sirens lived, Ulysses nearly went mad as he began to come under the spell of their singing, and begged and implored his men to release him and even threatened them with death if they refused to obey him. But the sailors followed the orders he had given them earlier and only tightened his bonds. Ulysses encountered the Sirens when he was exactly half-way home, [Is it no more than a coincidence that the episode of the Sirens appears in Canto XII of the Odyssey (the Iliad and the Odyssey both consist of twenty-four cantos), exactly half-way through the story that tells of the return of Ulysses to his homeland of Ithaca? (Editor’s note)] and you must never stop half-way. To be sure, this is where you will find everything that is most charming and seductive, but you must still not stop.

You are probably familiar, also, with Wagner’s opera, Parsifal. At one point, the hero finds himself in a meadow with the Flower Maidens, a multitude of beautiful young women who attempt to seduce him. Hiding behind each maiden is a snake.

These tales – of which there are many examples in the literature of the world – contain some important occult truths. Ulysses and Parsifal are symbols of the initiate whose path is strewn with temptations which he must steadfastly resist; if he dallies on the way he will die. He has to persevere until he reaches the summit and, once there, he will be given everything he needs or desires: rest, food, beauty and love.

There are other ways of presenting this adventure: suppose, for instance, that you are sent on a mission and that your path takes you through a forest in which there are all kinds of delightful flowers and fruit, in particular, some perfectly delicious little wild strawberries. You begin to stray from the path and wander here and there – those little strawberries are so pretty and so tempting – and you suddenly realize that time has passed while you were looking for them and it is later than you thought. Night is falling, you cannot see the path any longer. You are lost. And to make matters worse, the cries of animals and the eerie creaking of the trees begin to make you very nervous. Well, this is what happens to a disciple who strays from the path to look for some pretty little strawberries. Are you telling me that you never pick strawberries? Perhaps not, but the strawberries in my story could also be pretty girls, or even a few drinks in a bar. They are a symbol. The little strawberries could well be some very big strawberries!

And it is pleasure that is represented by all these appetizing things – strawberries, Sirens or Flower-Maidens – and if you succumb to their attractions you will be devoured. By whom? By elementals, ghosts, the undesirable spirits of the underworld. They see that you are offering a banquet and they arrive in droves. In the past – and even today, in some Oriental countries – when there was a royal wedding or the birth of a royal baby, a great feast was prepared and everybody could come and eat and drink to their heart’s content; all were welcome, even the tramps and the beggars. And the same thing happens when two lovers are ‘feasting’: they produce quantities of appetizing nourishment for the spirits of the lower world who flock to them, to eat and drink, for this is the custom. Who is it that benefits from all that food and drink? Not the lovers, in any case. It is the others who gorge themselves at their expense.

Does it always have to be like that? Is there no other way? No, it does not have to be like that, there is another way, and that way implies a whole science. If a man and woman know how to prepare themselves consciously so as to spiritualize and consecrate their whole being, instead of nourishing elementals, they can nourish angels with their love. And, in this case, they will not be robbed and impoverished; on the contrary, they will be enriched with greater beauty and better health. Why does everything have to be ruled by ignorance? Men’s greatest ignorance consists in not knowing the consequences that the word ‘pleasure’ necessarily entails. They do not know that when their only goal is pleasure they are inviting all kinds of entities to come and feast at their expense while they themselves waste away.

There is a great deal that could be said about feasts and banquets. When a rich man gives a dinner party or a reception, quantities of different dishes, wines and flowers are required, not to mention all the china and glass, silverware, tablecloths etc., etc. All this costs a lot of money. In fact, some people ruin themselves by giving too many sumptuous receptions. This is exactly what happens to lovers when they are not enlightened; they squander their reserves with the utmost extravagance. They don’t realize this. They have never noticed that they are spending their strength and their fluidic energies and they certainly have no idea where it has all gone. But you only have to see what happens to them in the long run – they have been fleeced and ruined.

And there is another thing that goes on at these receptions: pick-pockets and thieves often slip in among the guests and take advantage of the crush to steal money, jewellery and works of art. And this, too, happens with lovers. While they are feasting, thieves slip into them, but thieves of the worst possible kind, for, instead of stealing money or ornaments, they steal the treasures from the hearts and minds of their host and hostess. They steal all their inspiration; they steal their ideas; they steal their plans for the future, and the wretched couple, stripped of all their valuables, no longer have the same impetus, the same desire to know the secrets of the universe. On the contrary; their desires become altogether prosaic. It is extremely important to learn to observe and study and, with the help of the law of analogy, to interpret everything that happens in life.

I am leading you towards the truths that Initiatic Science has revealed to me. I have studied and observed human beings and I know that what I am telling you is absolutely true. When men and women are dominated by their desire for pleasure, they are opening their doors to thieves. They must go beyond pleasure and bring forth light. Light may encourage them to give banquets and invite guests, also, but, instead of bringing in all the riffraff of the astral world, they will invite angels and heavenly entities to come and rejoice with them. And, when these heavenly entities go, they will leave gifts a hundred times more valuable than anything they received.2 In this way, instead of being impoverished, the lovers will find that they have gained, that they have gained revelations, ecstasy, a tremendous input of energy. They will find themselves rejuvenated, revitalized. You have to know who to invite to your parties and, if you want to be sure of inviting the right people, you have to understand that you must go beyond pleasure.

Nowadays, everybody is gorged and intoxicated with pleasure. But this is not the solution to the problem of sexuality. Human beings need to be told that pleasure is only half the story and that, if they stop there, they will be invaded by undesirable guests and subjected to some very costly experiences. They will be tied hand and foot and deprived of their liberty. When a butterfly’s wings are too damp it cannot fly. This is what pleasure is: dampness. When I see someone whose wings can no longer lift him (symbolically speaking), I don’t need to ask him how he got himself into such a state. It is obvious that he has exposed himself to too much humidity. Humidity, dampness, makes flight impossible – and it takes a long time to dry out one’s wings in the light.3 So, don’t let yourselves be blinded by pleasure, for it will stop you when you are only half-way. Go all the way to the light.

Of course, I know that many of those who read or listen to my explanations about pleasure will be astonished – perhaps even angered – by such monstrous ideas. Innumerable books have been written about pleasure in all its forms. In fact, for most people, pleasure is indispensable, essential even, almost the goal of life itself. No, pleasure is not the goal; it is only half the story. You will ask, ‘But does this mean that we should never have any pleasure?’ Certainly you must have pleasure, but a much subtler, much more spiritual form of pleasure. Pleasure as people know it today inevitably turns to poison and bitterness. When you cut a piece of lead, it shines for a few moments and then it quickly tarnishes and becomes dull. Pleasure is like lead. If you want your pleasure to be always as bright and untarnished as gold, you must give it nobility by adding another element to it, the element of thought and, in order to do that, you must, first, replace the idea of pleasure with the idea of work.

Work begins when a man decides to stop squandering his strength and energies on the pursuit of pleasure and to use them to set in motion other, higher centres in his brain. Instead of allowing storms and volcanic eruptions to rage within him, he must learn to channel and control them and awaken new faculties capable of making a genius, an initiate, a divinity of him. This is how he transforms heat into light, by substituting work for pleasure. And, as soon as he does this, genuine pleasure, the kind of pleasure that will not defile but exalt and ennoble him, begins to flood his being.

The Bonfin, July 24, 1969

1 See The Symbolic Language of Geometrical Figures, Izvor Coll. n° 218, chap. 3: ‘The Triangle’.

2 See The Wellsprings of Eternal Joy, Izvor Coll. n° 242, chap. 18: ‘Visits from angelic beings’.

3 See La pédagogie initiatique, Complete Works, vol. 28, chap. 7: ‘La chenille et le papillon’.

Chapter Ten
Know how to use your energies

If you read the great Book of Living Nature you will realize that, in order to evolve satisfactorily, it is essential to know exactly where one’s energies go, what one spends them on, what use one makes of them. This is just one more area in which human beings do not have the light they need. They squander their energies frivolously and unthinkingly on whatever takes their fancy. But to live in ignorance of how to use one’s energies makes it virtually impossible to advance and evolve. We are responsible for our energies; heaven has not given them to us so that we can waste them, and the use we make of them will be noted on our record. The Book of Living Nature says, ‘Blessed are those who devote all their physical, emotional and mental energies to working for the good of mankind and for the kingdom of God and his righteousness.’1

A close look at human beings will show you that they are not really aware of all the energy that has been given to them so that they may live. They have no idea how precious it is, how much the Lord values it, where it comes from or what it has cost nature to manufacture it for them. It is in things like this that one sees that man is not very highly evolved, for he wastes his energies on fits of anger, orgies of sensuality and selfish, criminal activities without realizing that, in this way, all that priceless treasure goes to feed the forces of hell. If I told you that it was human beings that nourished the forces of hell you would be astonished, and yet this is the truth. Out of ignorance, most human beings spend their lives nourishing, sustaining and supporting hell. They are extraordinarily well-informed in the sciences, but they have never been told that they are responsible for the way in which they use their energies – and it is not at University that they are going to learn this.

One of the first tasks of a disciple is to become conscious of how he spends his energies, for they have been carefully counted, weighed and measured. When heaven sees someone wasting his energies in harmful activities, it shuts off the supply. It says, ‘That man is dangerous; he has got to be put out of action.’ Do you know, for example, why some people are drunkards? It is because the invisible world chose that way to render them harmless. If they were in full possession of their faculties they would use their destructive energies to create havoc in the world, but their abuse of alcohol chloroforms and stupefies them. They are incapable of doing any harm. This is not true in every case, of course; there are all kinds of reasons why people become alcoholics.

You should continually be aware of how you are using your energies, continually ask yourself to what purpose, in what direction you are using them. There is nothing more important than this, for heaven watches you and sees what you are doing with all that wealth it has entrusted to you, whether you are using it for purely selfish purposes or for a divine purpose. That is the question. If you ask yourself this question lucidly every day, many things within you will improve unbelievably. To be sure, you will not succeed in bringing everything into line from one day to the next, but at least you will learn to be conscious. Never forget that without this consciousness you will continue to be subject to karma.

As long as you have still not consciously taken control of your life and started to synchronize the vibrations of every particle of your being with the vibrations of the divine world, you will be subject to the blind forces of nature. This is the situation of most human beings, because no one has ever shown them the importance of working on their inner life. It is of vital importance to realize that, if you oppose Cosmic Intelligence with a way of life contrary to Its design, you will progressively disintegrate until there is nothing left of you. Perhaps you will exclaim at the cruelty of Cosmic Intelligence in destroying those who reject Its laws, but the truth is that it is not Cosmic Intelligence that destroys people. It has never wished to destroy anyone. But if a man is stupid enough to pit himself against Immensity, the forces opposing him are so powerful that he will, inevitably, be torn to pieces. It is only to be expected. If one puny human being tries to stand up to a whole army, he will soon be wiped out. If an insect batters itself against a window-pane until it knocks itself out, is it the fault of the window? Men behave like insects: they pit their strength against the divine law, against the splendour of the universe... they love a good fight! But they are heading straight for destruction and it will not be God who destroys them, but themselves.

A disciple must seek, first and foremost, to attune himself to Cosmic Intelligence. Every day, he must try to vibrate in harmony with this Immensity, to melt into It, to open himself to It, to let himself be caught up and swept away by It. The only way to do this is by love, for the only way to become one with another being is to love them. This is why Jesus said, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’2 God does not need our love, he can get along very well without it. It is we who need to love Him; it is to our advantage. Jesus did not say, ‘Think of the Lord, unite yourselves to him, do his will’. He simply said, ‘You shall love the Lord your God,’ because only those who love each other can be in tune with each other.

And this is what I am saying, also, when I ask you to attune yourselves every day to that Supreme Intelligence, to act in accordance with his will without even knowing exactly what it is. We often do not know what God’s will is, but we should always be ready to do it whatever it may be. That is what love is. When you love someone you are always in harmony with him; even before you know what he is going to ask of you, you are ready to trust him and do everything in your power to please him.

Amongst all the things I tell you, there are some points that you should think about every day and others that may apply only in certain circumstances.3 What I am telling you, today, about how you use your energies, is one of the things that you must note down and think about every single day, for I shall not always be there to remind you of it. There are a great many things that you can leave to one side, but this is not one of them. Every day, in all the different circumstances in which you find yourself, you are asked to be conscious of how you are using your energies. You can do this wherever you are: in the street, on the bus, at the dentist’s, in your own kitchen – wherever you are you can glance into yourself and ask yourself, ‘Let’s see, if I do this or that, what is it going to cost me? Ah, I can see that I shall be feeding the swine with all that is most pure and divine in me. No, I’m certainly not going to commit myself in that direction. I don’t intend to spend my energies on bringing back the dead.’ As Jesus said, ‘Follow me and let the dead bury their own dead.’4

As you see, it is essential to be clear about the work to which we must devote our energies. I cannot insist too much on this point.

Sèvres, April 11, 1966

BIBLICAL REFERENCES

‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…’ – Matt. 22: 37

‘Follow me and let the dead bury their own dead’ – Luke 9: 60

1 See A New Dawn: Society and Politics in the Light of Initiatic Science, Complete Works, vol. 26, chap.5: ‘The Kingdom of God and His Righteousness’

2 See Les deux arbres du Paradis, Complete Works, vol. 3, chap. 2: ‘Les deux premiers commandements’.

3 See Golden Rules for Everyday Life, Izvor Coll. n° 227.

4 See Sons and Daughters of God, Izvor Coll. n° 240, chap. 4: ‘Let the dead bury the dead’.

Chapter Eleven
How to distil the quintessence

I want to talk to you, today, about the work you can do with thought. I know that most people have completely lost the habit of all mental activity and never attempt to concentrate or meditate. They think that it is pointless, that time is too precious and should be used for much more important things. People have become so used to acting only on the surface of reality that it is very difficult to get them to envisage things differently. They are a long way from suspecting that the work of the mind contains untold possibilities that no other activity can match.

Let me give you an example to illustrate the difference between work, as it is generally understood, and the work of the mind. When you extract copper or iron ore from the ground, you need thousands of tons of ore to produce only a small amount of metal. All the rest is worthless gangue or rock. Similarly, to produce a few litres of Bulgarian essence of roses, you need several wagon-loads of rose-petals. But this essence, once you have distilled it from the flowers, is worth a fortune. And do you know how much a few grams of radium or uranium are worth? In other words, it is always necessary to have enormous quantities of raw material in order to obtain the tiniest quantity of the precious element it contains, the quintessence.

And this brings me to what I want you to understand, that almost all human work is equivalent to shifting tons of soil and rock, great masses of raw material, whereas, by the work of the mind, we extract the quintessence from this raw material. If you never learn to use your mind in order to concentrate, to control and master yourself, to channel your energies and project them to higher levels, whatever you obtain from life will be like so much raw ore which will simply weigh you down. It will be no use to you unless you learn to extract the quintessence from it.

The prodigious amount of work accomplished by an initiate is all done with a view to extracting the quintessence from raw matter. Quintessence is that intangible element without which everything would be insipid and meaningless. Even if you possess all the wealth in the world, if you do not possess the quintessence of that wealth on the mental plane, you will still feel poor, empty, dissatisfied and restless. It is not the quantity of your material possessions that gives meaning to your life; it is the quality, the quintessence. Unfortunately, all human activity consists – symbolically – in grinding up and storing huge quantities of rocks and mineral ore without ever getting at the quintessence, because to extract the quintessence requires a totally different kind of work.

If you look at human beings, you will see that they work hard and earn a lot of money but, whatever they do, they continually complain that something is missing. Well, what is missing is this, the quintessence, that intangible, imponderable something that gives meaning to life.1 They concentrate on quantity, whereas the quintessence implies quality. Nowadays, people are interested in producing and consuming ever greater quantities of goods, they are not interested in quality. Quantity corresponds to the physical world, rocks and earth. Quality corresponds to the spiritual, divine world.

It is only in an Initiatic school that a disciple learns to seek the quintessence of reality. An Initiatic school, in fact, is like a distillery in which the disciples learn to distil the essence from their total life-experience. All that they have accumulated in the form of thoughts, feelings and sensations, all their successes and failures, all their sufferings and, even, their faults and mistakes, are mashed in the still and then the quintessence, that is to say, the lessons they contain, are extracted from the mash. The pure liqueur of wisdom flowing from the still enables a disciple to understand how the laws operate and why success crowned some of his endeavours whereas others failed.

An initiate is a being who has succeeded in distilling the quint- essence of his own life. It is no more than a tiny phial but its perfume never fades or evaporates. When an initiate possesses this, the quintessence of his life, the quintessence of his being, he possesses the purest and most precious of all things, God himself, for it is God who is the quintessence of all creation.2 A quintessence is all that is most perfect in creation. It is a perfume, something infinitely precious that emanates and radiates ceaselessly and tirelessly. Only one gram of this precious substance emanates an infinite quantity of particles without ever being diminished. The quintessence of man is his spirit.

Scientists are excited and fascinated by all that they discover in the world around them, but it does not occur to them to be excited by themselves even though they are a far more precious quintessence than uranium or plutonium. It is human beings, we ourselves, who should be our principal source of wonder and admiration, for we are more than plutonium and radium, we have been radiating for billions and billions of years and we shall continue to do so for thousands of years more. Human beings are like children, unconscious of their own inner reality, always busy and fascinated by their exploration of the world around them.

If a man abandons meditation and the work of thought which, alone, can bring direction and order to his life, he will slowly but surely slide towards hell, for hell, too, is present in every man. Heaven and hell exist within each one of us and we are free to choose which one we shall aim for. Most people, led by the desire to be free and independent and to ‘live their own lives,’ choose the path of disorder and chaos which leads straight to hell. Don’t let yourselves be influenced by ignorant people who try to persuade you that you would be happier if you abandoned the spiritual life. You will never find happiness that way. Listen, instead, to the initiates who tell you to pray3 and meditate4 every single day. Obviously, you must also continue to work in the world; you have your job and you have to go on earning your living, but be sure never to give up entirely the only thing that can lead you to a richer, more meaningful life. I am constantly struck by the fact that people work against their own best interest. They do away with all activity of the mind, and yet this is the only thing that is essential, the only thing that can give them the knowledge and mastery they need to live a life of splendour. You have to begin working in this direction with patience and perseverance when you are still very young, for this is the only way to get good results.

When human beings sink a mine shaft into the bowels of the earth, they can bring up tons and tons of earth and rock. That is the easy part. The difficult part begins when they try to extract something of value from all that raw material. The work of thought, too, is difficult. Most people imagine that their meditations should produce immediate results and, when that does not happen, they stop trying. Why are they in such a hurry? It takes time to extract all that is most precious – a great deal of time. Try to understand what I am saying: once you have begun this work, you must never abandon it. You must meditate, if only for a few minutes, every day, and if you can do so for an hour or two, so much the better. In fact, it would be better still to devote whole days to meditation if this were possible, for how much quintessence can you hope to extract in only a few minutes?5

Look at all the poor, infertile countries in which fantastic wealth – oil, gas, gold or diamonds – has been found underground. Similarly, however destitute and wretched a man may be, if he understands these truths and undertakes a process of elimination and distillation in his life, all his failures, errors and misfortunes will yield their quintessence of wisdom and he will discover the laws and understand the designs of Providence, his path will lie open before him.

Believe me, if you succeed in extracting the quintessence of your life, you can become extremely valuable, extremely precious. You will be like the poorest country in the world that suddenly discovers diamonds in its subsoil and becomes immensely rich, thanks to those diamonds. Even the most abandoned, the most despised human beings can become multimillionaires, kings of wisdom and virtue.

Thought is the most effective means that exists of living the divine life, but on one obvious condition, that we focus our thought exclusively on good things. Everybody thinks. The question is, how do they think? Everyone knows that if you stir up a dunghill it will give off a nauseating stench. Well, this is how many people think: they stir up the filth in their minds and poison the whole atmosphere. Everyone thinks; there is not a living human being who does not think. Even when they are not concentrating on anything in particular, they are still thinking. The trouble is, though, that they think in the wrong way. I am not saying that people should make the effort to think, because they do that already. Thought exists before everything else and takes precedence over everything else. Even the laziest people think, but their thought floats like a leaf in the wind, while others think about how to swindle and thieve and murder. But that is not really thought.

In order to think, one has to know, first of all, what to think about and how to think. When I talk about thought I am talking about an instrument that we must use in order to be ever closer to the divine world, the world of light, certainty and peace. If our thought does not bring us closer to the divine world it will inevitably bring us closer to hell, for the fact is that the faculty of thought has equally strong ties with both worlds. A great deal of practice and hard work is needed to detach it from the lower powers to which it is subject and direct it Heavenwards. But if you fail to make this effort you will be living in hell. Even if you are always beautifully dressed and frequently invited to sumptuous receptions where distinguished people gather to congratulate and flatter you, in reality you will be in hell. Whereas, if you know how to direct your thought towards the divine world, even if you are all alone in the world, your joy will overflow, for you will possess heaven and earth within you. They will belong to you. Of course, people who see how happy you are may say, ‘Poor fool! He’s got nothing to be happy about.’ But what does it matter what other people say?

Man was constructed in the Lord’s workshops in such a way that he is capable of vibrating in unison with either heaven or hell. The Lord has not restricted his choices. When people say to me, ‘If God existed he would prevent people from committing crimes,’ I tell them that they don’t know what they are talking about, because God’s greatness is revealed precisely in this, that he gave man the power to become a malefactor. If he had made it impossible for man to do wrong we should all be robots, automatons. How would God’s glory be served if we had no freedom of choice? We should all sing the same tune – and how dull that would be! God must have said to himself, ‘It will be dreadfully boring if they all do the same thing all the time. Let’s give them some freedom.’ And now he is the spectator at the show, for ‘all the world’s a stage...’

Oh, I know what you are going to say. You are going to tell me that I am contradicting myself because I have often said that God never even looks at what human beings are doing. Well, that is true. He never looks. Why should he look at them when he knows only too well what they are capable of? He knows exactly what they are going to do next; nothing astonishes him. That is why he has packed his bags and gone off to the farthest heights where he has other things to do. He leaves human beings to their own devices.

Well, this is not the moment to go into all that; the question is too complicated. What I am really interested in getting you to understand is the importance of this habit of never letting a day go by without raising your thoughts to focus on the world above, for it is at these moments that you trigger forces of a higher order, that you are in direct communication with regions of the most sublime purity from which come help and support. Perhaps you wonder if the advantages of this habit are really so great. Yes, they are. They are immense. In the first place, your health improves because you stop wasting so much energy on external and internal battles. Secondly, you are cleansed of many impurities and enriched by all kinds of new and more spiritual elements. And, finally, the entities of these higher planes will get to know you better. When they see a beam of light coming from you, even if you are almost hidden amidst the shadows of earth, they will feel obliged to take an interest in you.

So, get into the habit of meditating. It is of first importance for you. Of course, I am not recommending that you live like yogis and meditate all day long, but nor do I recommend that you sever all your ties with heaven simply because you have to carry on your business and earn your living. If you follow my advice you will be taking the best course: go ahead, make money, acquire knowledge and anything else you want, but don’t forget to set aside some time in which to distil the quintessence of your activities. Without this quintessence, even if the world itself belonged to you, you would still be unhappy. In the back of your mind would always be the thought, ‘What use is all that? It’s nothing but a burden...’ Without this quintessence, even if the world itself belonged to you, you would not be any better off.

You must remember, though, that this quintessence can only be obtained by thought. Suppose you find yourself in an extremely difficult situation, for instance, and have lost everything you possessed, you still have the faculty of thought and the possibility of working with it. You can still use your mind to concentrate and focus your thoughts on heaven. When you do this you make contact with entities of a higher order and you may be sure that things will begin to take a turn for the better. Through prayer and meditation one can always regain that which was lost. I have known men and women who were so unhappy that they were on the brink of suicide and then, by their thoughts, they made contact with these worlds of wondrous beauty and, instantly, it was as though they had lost nothing. Once again, they felt that they were rich and happy. This is the quintessence.

There is a great deal more that could be said about quintessence. The quintessence is simply the fifth essence – in Latin, quinta essentia. ‘What about the other four?’ you will ask; ‘What are they?’ There is the essence of earth, the essence of water, the essence of air and the essence of fire. And the essence of these four essences combined is the quintessence, the fifth essence distilled from the four others, the etheric essence. The ether is above fire, even above light. Fire is still in the physical, material domain; you can see and touch and measure it. Light, also. Light borders on the etheric domain, but it is still material. As a matter of fact, the ether also belongs to the physical, material dimension; it is the subtlest level of the physical dimension, the quintessence of the four physical elements. Man has still not discovered the tremendous wealth of the physical plane, the wealth of its subtle, etheric aspects. But the etheric world is still not the spiritual world.

Crystals and precious stones are the quintessence of the earth.6 All the purest and most luminous elements of earth have gone into the making of precious stones. Flowers, the loveliest and most perfect flowers that exist, are the quintessence of water. Birds are the quintessence of air. And the quintessence of fire is the initiates, God’s representatives on earth. You find this astounding, I know. You would never have imagined anything like that, would you? Indeed, you will not find this in any book. And the quintessence of the ether, that is to say the quintessence of these quintessences, is the angelic world reaching all the way to God himself, the ladder that Jacob saw in his dream, on which angels ascended and descended.

What about the four-legged animals whose home is on the ground? They are an essence that has not yet reached the perfection of birds. Similarly, the imperfect, less highly developed forms of plant life are imperfect degrees of the essence of water. As for gems which are flawed or imperfect, they have not yet become the quintessence of the earth, they are still on the way.

Why are flowers the children of the angels? Why do gnomes work on precious stones? There is a whole science in these things. Sacred Scripture says that man must become a precious stone in the crown of his Creator. This is a symbol. Precious stones belong to the earth and are nourished by the earth; flowers cannot live without water; birds live in the air, and men die if they cannot have access to fire. Fire is the food of initiates. When Zoroaster asked the god Ahura-Mazda how the first man was able to survive, Ahura-Mazda replied, ‘He ate fire and drank light.’7

Reflect on these things and you will understand a great deal.

Sèvres, January 23, 1966

1 See The Seeds of Happiness, Izvor Coll. n° 231, chap. 6: ‘The Meaning of Life’.

2 See The Mysteries of Yesod – Foundations of the Spiritual Life, Complete Works, vol. 7, chap. 1: ‘Yesod reflects the Virtues of All the Sephiroth’.

3 See ‘Know Thyself’: Jnana Yoga, Complete Works, vol. 18, chap. 7: ‘Prayer’.

4 See above, chap. 6: ‘Concentration, Meditation, Contemplation and Identification’.

5 See above, chap. 2: ‘Spiritual Work’.

6 See A New Dawn: Society and Politics in the Light of Initiatic Science, Complete Works, vol. 26, chap. 6: ‘The New Jerusalem’.

7 See ‘Boire l’élixir de la vie immortelle’, Pamphlet n° 5.

Chapter Twelve
The moral law exemplified in a spring

A new idea always leads to complications, everybody knows that. You may have a very good idea, but if it is new it will upset all your old habits and your cells and all your organs will rise up in rebellion. Human beings are often taken unawares and so upset by the inner upheaval caused by a new idea that they abandon it. They say, ‘We were much better off before. Everything was tidy and nicely organized, and now look at the mess we’re in!’

Suppose, for instance, that you start having new ideas about the food you eat. You used to eat meat and now you want to be a vegetarian. What problems in store for you! All your eating habits are going to be turned upside down and even if you, personally, are not upset, your family and friends will be. Nobody is going to understand your decision. Everyone will criticize and badger you and try to persuade you to revert to ‘carnivoracity’!

And that is not the only example. I could give you plenty more. If you move so much as a scrap of paper, for instance, you stir up countless motes of dust; if you start to dig a hole in the ground in order to plant a tree or build a house, what an upheaval follows! Pandemonium breaks out amongst the insects, worms, field-mice and moles and even amongst the fungi and bacteria in the soil. But all that is normal and natural and has to be accepted.

Those who always refuse to envisage new ideas because they are afraid to face the inner changes and upheavals they involve, will never get anywhere. And not only that, but the difficulties they will have to face, later on, will be far worse. What kinds of difficulties? Every sort and kind! For, if the invisible world decides to transform mankind by sending new currents and new influences into the world, those who resist them will find themselves at a great disadvantage. This has already occurred in the past. At each phase of man’s evolution, those who refused to accept the new conditions imposed by life lagged far behind.

I have already told you, in other lectures, how some creeping animals succeeded in flying and becoming birds, whereas the others remained reptiles. Man has also had to make great efforts in the past before becoming what he is today, and all those who refused to make the necessary effort remained at a lower stage of evolution. Anyone who reflects about these things, therefore, and wants to evolve further says to themselves, ‘If heaven is offering us conditions that are more conducive to new qualities and virtues, why stagnate? Why stay stuck in our old rut?’ And they prepare themselves for a glorious future.1

If you study the history of the human race – not in history books, of course, for they only go back a few thousand years, but in the libraries of nature – you will see that, several times, in the past, there has been a split, a separation between those who advanced and those who refused to advance. This split was inevitable if the race was to continue to evolve, otherwise those who held back would have hindered the progress of the innovators. Those who refuse to move forward are weeded out and thrown aside; this is the law. This is why Jesus, who knew that law, said, ‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And he will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.’

You will say, ‘But that is cruel. Doesn’t God show any pity or generosity?’ Well, the truth is that God would like it to be otherwise. He would like all his children to be on his right hand, that is to say, to enjoy fulfilment and bliss, but he has created Mother Nature, and Mother Nature knows no pity, she only knows justice. She is implacably just. So when Mother Nature sees creatures who are deformed and without light, she says, ‘I cannot do anything with such shoddy material. Put them with the rejects and send them back to the factory to be melted down and recast.’ But she transforms those who have come through the sorting process into marvellous statues, crowns, stars, whole worlds. There is no viciousness in Mother Nature.2

What does a jeweller do? With a magnifying glass and various instruments he tests and examines precious stones in order to sort them according to their quality. ‘This diamond is perfect. That one is flawed. This one is not of the first water,’ etc. In other words, he grades his stones – diamonds, rubies, emeralds, topazes and sapphires, etc. – and rejects some and selects others, before mounting them in rings and brooches and so on. In every area of life, human beings do this; they are constantly screening things and keeping some and rejecting others. Why shouldn’t Nature do as much?

Let’s take the question a step further with a very simple, very prosaic example. There are restaurants for the very rich, in which the food is always fresh and so rich and rare that only millionaires can afford to dine there. Other, cheaper restaurants go and collect the left-overs from these smart restaurants, and dish them up in stews or soups for their own customers who cannot afford anything better. And, while we are on the subject, let me remind you of what I explained to you about water.3 It is amazing how much can be learned by studying water. The whole of the moral law is contained in it; the true moral law, that is, not the morality invented by human beings which changes according to time and place. You can see this in the question of dress, for instance: fifty or sixty years ago, men and women wore the most incredible bathing costumes because it would have been considered immoral not to conceal one’s body. What a difference, today – and yet no one is outraged! And dress is not the only example of this; there are many others.

As I have already said, there is such a thing as an immutable, unchangeable moral law, the law of nature, and water can teach us something about that moral law. Perhaps you will say, ‘How can it do that? Water has nothing to do with morals. That is a department that belongs to theologians.’ True, theologians debate certain questions, questions such as how many devils can sit on the point of a pin, for instance! Many theologians have spent days and months racking their brains about this and other, more indelicate questions! But it is water that teaches us true morality.

Take the example of the water that flows from a natural spring high up in the mountains: not only does it taste delicious when you drink it, but it also gives you an element that strengthens you, clears your brain and makes you feel happier. This is because it is still unpolluted, it is still pure and crystal-clear. But suppose you follow that water as it flows downhill and becomes, first, a stream and then a river, you will see that the people who live along the river banks wash their clothes in it, let their animals wade in it and drink from it and generally use it as a sewer and a rubbish dump. At this stage, you would probably be poisoned if you drank the water from that river.

Perhaps you will say, ‘Well we know all that, but what does it tell us about morality?’ This: that if you want to be healthy and happy you must go and look for life at its source. A river, from its source to its mouth, represents a hierarchy. And we, too, are a hierarchy that extends from our higher, divine Self, through our subtle bodies and on, down, to the astral, etheric and physical planes. If we want to be nourished by the purest form of life, we must go high up into the mountains – symbolically speaking – and drink from the source. Those who drink from every ditch and stream fall ill, on the psychic plane, to begin with, and, eventually, on the physical plane as well. They become vulnerable to every conceivable misfortune simply because they are in the habit of drinking polluted water. And if, for the word ‘water,’ you substitute ‘Teaching,’ ‘philosophy,’ ‘activity’ or ‘behaviour,’ you will see, at once, that the image of the spring and that of the first-class restaurant represent the same idea: if you want only the purest, richest and most substantial food, you must go to the best restaurants – symbolically speaking.

We can also apply this notion of hierarchy to a hierarchy of beings, with the initiates at the summit and the masses of ordinary, ignorant men and women below. Through meditation, contemplation and identification, the initiates climb to the heights and drink from the springs of cool, crystal-clear, living water, and this purity is reflected in their health, intelligence and beauty. But the vast majority of mankind make no effort to climb up to the spring; they stay down below and drink water polluted by the coarse thoughts and desires of everybody else. How do you expect them to feel, after that?

Initiates are rich. They have worked hard and earned a lot of gold, so they can afford to go to the very best restaurants in the world above, the divine restaurants where they are given food of the highest quality. Others, who have never worked to earn that gold, have to make do with other kinds of restaurants – sometimes, even, with the restaurants of hell. It is important to understand that there is a hierarchy in nature and that, in order to obtain something, one has to know on what level it exists and how to reach that level. This is why initiates teach their disciples certain exercises and methods which they can use to go and seek their food in the highest places.

Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life,’ and we shall understand these words if we understand the image of the river, of the water flowing from the mountain spring. Jesus was saying, ‘I am the source of the river, that is to say, the truth from which everything else flows. I am the bed, or path, of the river, and I am life, that is to say, the water, for water is life.’ This means, therefore: I am the spring (that is to say, the truth) from which flows pure water. Water (that is to say, life) needs a bed, a path along which to flow, and this path is wisdom, for life and love must follow the path of wisdom in order to find their way back to the truth. In saying, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life,’ therefore, it was as though Christ were saying, ‘I am love, wisdom and truth.’4 This is clear to me because I have the key with which to unlock these words which are still so mysterious. Nothing could be clearer.5

You can give another, slightly different, interpretation to these words if you apply them to the Blessed Trinity. The Father is the source, truth; the Son, Christ, is the way, wisdom, and the Holy Spirit is water, love. But, as the three Persons of the Trinity are one, Christ, the Son, can also express himself in the name of the Father and the Holy Spirit. The whole of the spiritual moral law is contained in this image of the river flowing from its source at the top of the mountain.

Some of you may feel like asking, ‘But why should I make an effort to accept new ideas? Why study? Why pray? It’s all so dreadfully boring!’ The answer to that is simply that it is the only way to be healthy and happy, to have a clear brain and to assuage all the pangs of hunger and thirst. If you don’t pray and meditate or have an active spiritual life, you will always remain on such a low level that you will be obliged to eat and drink vile, unhealthy food that will poison you. This is what the initiates have always understood and it is they who have given us this moral law, the moral law of the spring, of water.

I am well aware that you were never taught anything like this when you were young. Nor was I, for that matter, so I understand the situation very well. It was only later on in life that it was revealed to me that there is an eternal, immutable moral law which is none other than the law of nature. Whether you believe this or not will not change anything. The only thing to do is to accept it, to submit to it and to say, once and for all, ‘Very well, that’s settled. I’m going to go mountaineering!’ You will often get very hot, of course; you will strip off layers of clothes, mop the sweat from your forehead, sigh and cough, throw yourself down on the ground, shout for help and goodness knows what else... but you must not give up. Keep going out on these mountaineering expeditions, keep trying to reach the summit and drink the pure spring water.

You will say, ‘Ah, now I understand,’ and you will all go off and ransack the sports shops until the salesmen exclaim, ‘What on earth is going on? Everything has been bought up. All the climbing equipment, all the boots, shoes, trousers, knapsacks, ice-axes and ropes have all disappeared!’ Well, go and climb some mountains if you like; it is a marvellous experience, I know, because I have often been mountaineering. But that is not exactly what I have in mind. What really matters is to climb mountains symbolically. The highest mountains are inside us and we must continually climb up to breathe the pure air at the tops of these spiritual mountains and nourish ourselves with the food that we find up there.

And now let me tell you something: the best restaurant of all is the sun. That is why we go there every morning. But, if you want to eat at that restaurant, you must have some gold. Not the gold that you can carry in your pocket: that is no use at all. What you need is the gold that is carried in the brain, in the mind.6 When the proprietor of that restaurant, the Solar Spirit, sees that you have that kind of gold, he will serve up the most succulent dishes. Otherwise, you will simply sit there, yawning and scratching yourself and moaning, ‘I’m not getting anything to eat. There’s no point in coming here again.’ Others will be served but you will get nothing. You will be told to come back when you have some gold.

Somewhere in the Bible it says that in order to have money one must first possess gold, but nobody understands what this means. To have gold is to have spiritual gold, that is to say, the golden-yellow light that all initiates have in their aura. To have gold is to understand divine wisdom, to value, love and cherish it. When the sun sees that we have this gold he takes special care of us. And the others? Well, the others are still there, of course, they receive a little warmth and light, but that is all.

You must be ready to accept new, divine ideas. If others misunderstand and criticize you or even give you a hard time, that is no reason to stop going up to the mountain tops for your food and water. The Universal White Brotherhood has repeatedly sent messengers to earth to incite human beings to enter a new phase and there have always been divisions: some accepted to advance and others stayed where they were. The two groups continued to live side by side for a time, for the initiates accepted persecution and opposition; when one wants to help human beings one has to be extremely patient. But nature has imposed certain limits, and all those who are incapable of following the leadership of the exceptional beings who have been sent to guide and direct them, are discarded and left by the wayside. A sorting out takes place and it is nature that does the sorting.

Jesus also spoke of this sorting out: ‘It will be like that on the day that the Son of Man is revealed… I tell you, on that night there will be two in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. There will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken and the other left. Two will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left.’ It would be impossible to understand how Jesus could say such a thing if he did not know these laws, for it would mean that everything was purely arbitrary. Why should one be taken and the other left? Even in the same family there can be no favouritism. No one can claim privilege because he is your brother or your father or mother. If someone follows with trust, faith and love, then he will be taken: not otherwise. Jesus has given us this one image, but you can find the same law in every area of life. We see all kinds of things that have to be sorted and graded. Nature judges us all and when she sees someone who behaves without kindness, intelligence or respect, she excludes them from certain graces and blessings. ‘But can’t beings of a higher order intervene?’ No, once the sorting machines have done their work, no one can intervene.

There are occasional exceptions, of course, such as the good thief who was crucified at the same time as Jesus and who rebuked the other thief who was scoffing at Jesus,7 saying, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!’ The good thief acknowledged that he was guilty and deserved to be punished but that Jesus had done nothing wrong. Then he said to Jesus, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ And Jesus answered, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’ But this, as I have said, is a very exceptional case and only a Master as great as Jesus can plead for such a man.

From all that I have been saying, remember this one thing most particularly: that the image of water flowing from the mountain heights can give you an understanding of true morality. On condition, of course, that you are capable of deciphering what the great Book of Nature says about affinities and correspondences. For my part, I see the whole of moral law exemplified in this image of the water flowing from the mountain tops – and I am not alone in seeing this.

If I were to interpret the natural life-cycle of water: evaporation, the formation of clouds, rain and snow, etc., I could show you that it, too, contains a lesson for us, for it exemplifies the laws of reincarnation. Yes, all the laws of reincarnation are there, concealed in the saga of the oceans, clouds, rain and snow, in the rising and falling of water.8 Only the initiates have discovered that natural phenomena of this kind conceal so much secret knowledge. This is why, for years, now, I have been trying to teach you to read and decipher this great Book that lies open before you. For years, I have been doing nothing else, but you still stubbornly refuse to see it. It is nature that has taught me all these things, why shouldn’t she teach you, too? You could benefit from her teaching exactly as I have, but on condition, of course, that you trust her, as I have, and know that her book is the only one that will never deceive or mislead you. God alone knows how much truth there is in all the other books that you have so much faith in.

Sèvres, January 5, 1964

BIBLICAL REFERENCES

‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory’ – Matt. 25: 31-33

‘I am the way, the truth, and the life’ – John 14: 6

‘On that night there will be two in one bed…’ – Luke 16: 34-36

‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!’ – Luke 23: 39

‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom’ – Luke 23: 42

‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise’ – Luke 23: 43

1 See La pédagogie initiatique, Complete Works, vol. 28, chap. 2: ‘Le sens de la vie, l’évolution’.

2 See Angels and other Mysteries of The Tree of Life, Izvor Coll. n° 236, chap. 15: ‘Binah: I - The Laws of Destiny’.

3 See The Mysteries of Yesod – Foundations of the Spiritual Life, Complete Works, vol 7, Part II, chap. 5: ‘The River of Life’.

4 See Truth: Fruit of Wisdom and Love, Izvor Coll. n° 234, chap. 6: ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’.

5 See The Philosopher’s Stone – in the Gospels and in Alchemy, Izvor Coll. n° 241, chap. 1: ‘On the interpretation of the Scriptures’.

6 See above, chap. 14: ‘The gold of true knowledge: the alchemist and the gold prospector’.

7 See Spiritual Alchemy, Complete Works, vol. 2, chap. 1: ‘Gentleness and Humility’.

8 See The Mysteries of Fire and Water, Izvor Coll. n° 232, chap. 11: ‘The Cycle of Water: Reincarnation’.

Chapter Thirteen
Why look for models in the world above

Man can never improve anything on this earth if he has not first learned to rise mentally to higher levels so as to contemplate other images, other modes of existence superior to his own, and find his models and guidelines in them.

Jesus said, ‘Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’1 He could not have expressed such a prayer if he had not already contemplated heaven and compared it with earth – and seen that there was simply no comparison! Above, in heaven, everything is so perfect, so glorious, that when one sees how different it is from earth, one cannot help wishing what Jesus wished for in his prayer. But for man to achieve heaven on earth implies, necessarily, that he must be capable of rising above the shabby, mediocre, fragmented realities of this earth in order to contemplate the realities of heaven and, having contemplated them, of returning to organize and adjust earthly realities to conform to the models he has seen on high. And this is the work of initiates: through their meditations and contemplations they perceive and tune in to the perfection of the world above, which they then endeavour to reproduce here, on earth.

It is only in Initiatic schools that human beings learn to do this: most men have no idea how to rise to a higher plane, above and beyond that of the earth, and to contemplate that higher world, and this is why they have made such a ghastly mess of this world below. Only nature is truly beautiful, with its lakes and mountains and flowers. The things that man has built in the midst of nature are often dreadfully ugly. But, in spite of all obstacles and thanks to all those beings who bring to earth new notions more akin to those of heaven, humanity has gradually been improving over the course of the centuries. The only purpose of meditation and contemplation is to enable man to reach a higher plane of consciousness capable of influencing and colouring his tastes, judgements and attitudes. The problem is, however, that one has to know how to meditate, how to contemplate, and what subjects to choose. A great many people meditate, but they meditate about the most prosaic things: how to organize their businesses, how to earn more money, how to steal a kiss from a lovely woman! If you ask somebody what he is doing, he will tell you, ‘I’m meditating,’ but only the Lord knows what he is meditating about! A cat meditates, too: it meditates on the problem of how to catch a mouse. So, you see, there are different kinds of meditation. And since, in spite of all their meditations, human beings are still bogged down in the same old faults and failings, the same perversions, the same infamy, it is obvious that they have not yet grasped the secret of true meditation.

True meditation is, first and foremost, to rise to a higher world, to lose oneself in wonder and admiration and, then, to reflect that wonder in oneself. If you still feel apathetic, dull and uninspired after your meditation it means that it was a failure. Meditation should change something in the way you look, in your smile, your gestures, the way you move. It should give you something new, something subtler, just one little particle, perhaps, but a particle that vibrates in harmony with the divine world. This is how you can tell whether you have meditated well or not.

Meditation begins with the choice, by the intellect, of an elevated subject on which you fix your mind. After a few moments you can relax your mental concentration and simply contemplate the beauty you have conjured up in your mind’s eye and let yourself be steeped in it. And finally, if you are able, you identify with that beauty. The first stage, therefore, is concentration and meditation, and then, once the ground is prepared, comes the stage of contemplation in which you bask in the image of perfection that fills your heart and mind, you drink deeply of its beauty, you savour it and find happiness in it. And, finally, you identify with it – and this is plenitude.2 These are useful, magnificent methods and if you apply them you should be able to draw great benefit from your meditations. Otherwise you will fritter your life away, deluding yourself into believing that you have done something worthwhile, whereas in reality you have accomplished nothing.

These methods used to be applied by the great geniuses of the past, painters, sculptors, musicians and poets, and it was thanks to such methods that they were able to bequeath so many masterpieces to humanity. Today, unfortunately, artists have forgotten these helpful practices, they prefer to create amidst the noise and prosaic ugliness of everyday life. This is why their creations are incapable of bringing you closer to the world of beauty and perfection, whereas, in contemplating the masterpieces of the past, you are in direct contact with more advanced beings and you begin to feel and experience what they felt and experienced. Without any deliberate effort on your part, you are practically obliged to follow them into the sublime regions that they contemplated and in which they found such delight.

This is the great advantage, the educational value of art but, unfortunately, it does not apply to contemporary art. Contemporary art, instead of reflecting the sublime regions of the superconsciousness, often reflects the infernal regions of the subconscious. Today’s artists who create works of this kind are leading mankind to destruction. And the same must be said of thinkers and writers who have never meditated or experienced ecstasy, who have never risen to celestial heights or contemplated the structure of the universe: they write books which have a destructive, disintegrating effect on their readers by filling them with doubt and revolt and a taste for disorder and anarchy. A great many of the books published today are written by authors who have never made the effort to rise to the higher regions of the spirit. Perhaps you will ask, ‘How can you know that?’ Simply by seeing the effect they have on you. If a writer fails to awaken your higher nature it is a sure sign that he has never visited the heavenly world above. When a man rises to higher spheres he absorbs particles from those regions and those particles continue to be active and to vibrate within him; in fact, they vibrate in such a way as to operate all kinds of transformations in the world. This is the ideal of a true artist, the ideal of an initiate.

In short, initiates, mystics and artists resemble each other in that they all have a favourable influence on mankind: artists, through their works of art; mystics, through their spiritual emotions and virtues, and initiates and the great Masters (whom I rank above all others because they are in almost direct contact with Heaven), through their power to propagate light. Artists work to produce forms which adhere as closely as possible to the ideal of perfect beauty; mystics and religious men and women work towards the perfection of the psychic and moral dimension, that is to say that they work on the level of content, whereas initiates and the great Masters work on the level of meaning, on the level of ideas and principles. These three categories of beings are united in their desire ceaselessly to improve and perfect humanity, but they go about it in different ways, in keeping with their different capacities and talents: artists on the level of form, mystics on the level of content and initiates on the level of meaning. Artists, mystics and initiates all have different faculties, different means of expression and different missions. But the reality, the quintessence, is one and the same; only the expression is different.

These three categories of human beings correspond to the three essential principles in man: spirit, soul and body; intellect, heart and will; thought, feeling and action.3 All three are essential, but intelligence and understanding take priority; ethics, mysticism and a generous, sensitive heart come second, and action, the work of making the world a better place, comes third. A whole man is one who is capable of embracing all three worlds: philosophy, religion (including ethics or morals) and art.

The foremost desire of a true initiate is to work for the accomplishment of Jesus’ prayer: ‘Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’. Even the religious have never really probed the meaning of this phrase which contains the whole of Initiatic philosophy, the whole plan of action for a disciple, for a true Christian. It is no good just reciting the words and hoping that the Lord will send someone else to accomplish it in actuality. It is up to us to do it; it is our job to set to work and make the earth like heaven.

But there is one thing you have to realize, and that is that if you are not willing to spend enough time, effort and love to rise to a higher level so as to contemplate and comprehend the realities of heaven, you will never bring it down to earth in any form whatsoever. Something like this cannot be done haphazardly. You cannot express beauty unless you have some contact with beauty. And yet there are a great many artists who think that their shallow, sordid lives will enable them to create sublime works of art. They are far more likely to produce gargoyles and monstrosities – accurate expressions of their own degree of evolution!

Besides, man is only man. He cannot give more than he has got. The French have the saying, ‘Even the prettiest girl can only give what she’s got’. If you want to give, therefore, you must have something to give and, even more obviously, if you want to create, you must possess the elements of that creation within you. If someone produces a monstrously ugly creation, it means that he has monsters of ugliness within him; there is no need to look further for an explanation. No one can produce divine works of art if he is not inhabited by divine beings. In order to produce something that is better than oneself, one has to transcend one’s own limitations, penetrate into more perfect regions and there gather divine elements which may then be communicated to others. This is the secret of divine art.

One always has to transcend oneself in order to give mankind something better. If I had not had that ambition, I would not have been able to give you anything better than the most ordinary philosophy. If I am able to reveal to you truths that no one has ever known or experienced before, it is because I have always had the ambition to create something new and better. Human beings are always looking for something better, something new and more beautiful. This is what they are looking for in theatres and cinemas, concerts, libraries, exhibitions and museums. Every human being has this deep-seated instinct to seek something better. But the poor creatures don’t know that, instead of looking for it in concert halls, theatres or night-clubs, they must rise to the higher levels of the soul and spirit by means of meditation and contemplation.

Cosmic Intelligence has instilled in man the instinctive desire to open new horizons, thus ensuring that the human race shall continue to evolve and progress. Look at plants and animals: they are still the same after thousands of years, their evolution is very slow, whereas human beings are capable of advancing very rapidly. But the external, objective, superficial aspect of life has such a fascination for men that, if they are not guided and taught by initiates and Masters, they easily fall under its spell and become enslaved. They always look to external things for satisfaction. They always expect to find greater joy on the fringes of reality, in human creations. But they will not find it there. To find what they are looking for they have to look upwards – or down into their own depths, if you prefer; it is simply a different way of expressing the same reality – for all the wonders created by man are no more than a pale, distant reflection of the divine world.

Even the very greatest artists are limited in their means of expression; they can never transcribe exactly what they see, hear or feel in their moments of inspiration. Even Beethoven, Mozart, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo or Rembrandt were unable to communicate all that they saw and heard. So you must not think that the best way to hasten your evolution is to visit museums and art galleries. Of course, I am not saying you should not do so; on the contrary, it can certainly be useful. For my part I have visited museums and art galleries, temples and churches, and attended concerts and plays in every country I have been to; but that is nothing, really nothing, compared to my excursions into other regions. It is in those other regions that I have seen and understood and contemplated splendours which surpass all the masterpieces of this world. This is why I cannot summon up any great respect or admiration for certain human ‘creations’. It is not my fault: I have been shown things which are so much more beautiful and more perfect!

And now, since you already know that my advice and the methods I have given you over the years have always been true, useful and full of good sense, I ask you to listen attentively to the advice I am giving you today and to surpass and transcend yourselves in order to become true creators. You might begin, for instance, by improving the way in which you create your own children, for children should be better than their parents. They should not have the same faults and weaknesses. Parents who have already learned how to bring into the world children who are superior to them, are very few and far between, so you must not think that you are already beyond reproach.4 As you can see, there is a lot more to learn, even in this respect.

The Bonfin, September 17, 1973

BIBLICAL REFERENCES

‘Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’ – Matt. 6: 10

1 See The True Meaning of Christ’s Teaching, Izvor Coll. n° 215, chap. 5: ‘On Earth as it is in Heaven’.

2 See ‘Know Thyself’: Jnana Yoga, Complete Works, vol. 18: chap. 6: ‘Concentration, Meditation, Contemplation and Identification’.

3 See Man’s Psychic Life: Elements and Structures, Izvor Coll. n° 222, chap. 6: ‘Body, Soul and Spirit’.

4 See Education Begins Before Birth, Izvor Coll. n° 203, and Hope for the World: Spiritual Galvanoplasty, Izvor Coll. n° 214.

Chapter Fourteen
Man creates in the invisible world
by means of his thoughts and feelings

The Master reads the Meditation for the day:

‘All the thoughts and feelings that take shape in the minds of human beings, whether they are conscious of this or not, are living beings, and those who bring them into existence nourish them invisibly, every day, with their own emanations. At the moment of death, some people actually see and recognize these beings as their own children and, although they may try to flee from them, they cannot shake them off. This is why we must learn to focus on light, every single day, and renew our ties with our Maker as often as possible, for it is these ties that will deliver us from the monstrous creatures that ignorance has led us to create.’

I am well aware that, in the present state of things, human beings are a very long way from envisaging or accepting the truth of such a statement, for they know nothing about the nature or power of their thoughts and feelings. They have become so materialized, so fossilized, that this subtle, vibrant world escapes them. They neither feel it nor believe in its existence – and yet they continually manufacture it. Human beings are ceaselessly engaged in manufacturing thoughts and feelings, good or bad, without realizing that they are bringing tiny entities into the world which, in order to survive, have to feed on those who produce them. This means that, if those entities are evil, they will drain them of all their strength and, if they are good, they will enrich them with many precious gifts.1

If I were the only one to tell you such things you might be justified in refusing to believe me but, from time immemorial, Masters, initiates and clairvoyants have taught the same thing, and this teaching constitutes a large part of Initiatic Science. If a man’s mind is so benighted that he denies these realities, he will remain in his ignorance, but what trials, tribulations and hardship are in store for him! Actually, it is not so much a matter of believing as of studying, observing and verifying things for oneself, and if you want to verify something, you must accept a certain discipline and certain exercises. What do those who deny the reality of the astral world claim to know that justifies this denial? Sooner or later, when they are being besieged by their own children, their own monstrous offspring, they will understand and no longer deny anything, for these children are terrifying.

On the physical plane, the thing is very obvious. If your children are rebellious, violent and undisciplined, if they make too much noise or vandalize the neighbourhood, you will receive complaints from passers-by, neighbours and even the police. And, since parents are responsible for any damage caused by the rowdy behaviour of their children, you will be obliged to compensate your neighbours and pay for the damage. Exactly the same situation prevails in our inner world which is teeming with our own creations, our own children who cause untold damage in all directions, simply because they are the fruit of dark, evil motives and intentions and, one day, the cosmic moral law is going to demand that we make reparation for all the damage they have done. The father has to pay for his children, and if he wants to avoid this, it is up to him not to create rebellious, destructive, unruly children.

As long as human beings are instructed by the ignorant, these subtle, secret, mysterious realms will remain closed to them and they will continue to wonder why they are continually harassed, tormented and unhappy. The answer is simple: they are being persecuted by their own children. It is man’s own hatred, anger and spirit of revenge that has produced them, for, like the Lord, we are true creators, not only on the physical level but on all levels. Just as you create children on the physical plane, you also create them on the astral and mental planes. Of course, the material of which your astral and mental children are made is not the same as that of your physical children. Your physical children can be seen and touched and judged by others, but those that you create on the astral and mental planes are invisible. Only clairvoyants can see them emerging from the head of their creator. In some cases they are monsters and, in others, they are luminous, winged creatures.

Whether you believe this or not, therefore, the fact remains that fortune or misfortune will come to you through your own children. You can see this amongst your own friends: those who have energetic, intelligent children receive a lot of help in their work; they get through their household chores in record time because they have good, co-operative children. But those whose children are hooligans are constantly obliged to answer complaints and pay for damages. On the astral and mental planes, the pattern of events is exactly the same as on the physical plane; the evidence speaks for itself. Why are some people inwardly tormented and persecuted? As far as one can see from outward appearances, they have never committed a crime and no one bears them any ill will. True, but you should hear the uproar, the pandemonium, the bedlam going on inside! Their children do nothing but shout and scream and clamour for what they want – it is far worse than anything on the physical plane. One can at least send one’s physical children out of the house to play, or put them to bed. But you cannot get rid of your inner state.

Here, then, lies the true moral consciousness, in this realization that each one of us is responsible for everything we do, not only on the physical plane – that would be poverty, indeed – but on every plane. On the physical plane, in their acts, people are always – or nearly always – admirable, wise, beyond reproach: they obey the law and abide by the rules. But, inwardly, they feel free to transgress all the rules. True morality consists in knowing and applying these truths of the inner world in order to be a creator, consciously and unceasingly, day and night. A genuine Master is extremely prolific; he is continually creating tiny winged children, little angels that fly in all directions to do good throughout the world. A genuine Master has quantities of children.

Try to get it into your heads, therefore, that true morality is not a question of conforming to external rules and regulations; to be truly moral is to be in the habit of creating beneficial, luminous thoughts and feelings, it is to send out from one’s heart and soul a constant stream of these tiny beings – invisible but nonetheless real – that have a beneficial influence on every creature in the universe. Unfortunately, what goes on in the thoughts and feelings of men and women is just the opposite. They spend their time creating evil, monstrous creatures and then wonder why they are unhappy, ill and weak. Anyone who, in good faith, paused to reflect on this for a few moments, would be obliged to admit that, at some point or another, they had allowed themselves to harbour truly diabolical thoughts and feelings. These thoughts and feelings necessarily trigger certain effects. It is not only words and gestures, external actions, that have consequences; everything that goes on in a man’s inner life also has its consequences. There, too, everything one does sets other things in motion, triggers, disturbs or displaces something else, so that consequences of some kind are inevitable.

Ignorance, ignorance, ignorance – ignorance is the cause of all misfortunes. But how can anyone dispel this ignorance? Even if someone tries to show men the truth they dig in their toes and say, ‘Oh, I don’t think that’s true... I don’t believe that...’ Instead of saying, ‘I don’t really know much about it but I shall study the question and observe things and do some experiments,’ they say, ‘I don’t believe it.’ But who do they think they are? Have they studied and probed all the secrets of the universe? Do they have some special qualifications or powers? Not a bit of it: they are non-entities and they take themselves for the hub of the universe. A disciple never says, ‘I believe’ or ‘I don’t believe’. When you have actually experienced something for yourself you can tell someone that what he says is right or wrong because you really do know. But if someone refers only to what he believes or does not believe it means that he does not actually know anything.2 All these people who believe this and believe that – the Lord alone knows what they really believe. All kinds of idiotic and monstrous things. They are ready to believe anything that is not true but they refuse to believe the truth.

If, for once in their lives, they could bring themselves to say, ‘Who am I to lay down the law? I don’t know the first thing about it. But I’m going to study the question; I accept to be like a child in kindergarten who still has to learn his A B C.’ This at least would show that they were humble and, later on, they would be in a position to take a stand. But they study nothing, they are dinosaurs, prehistoric monsters – and they think they know everything! If you want to evolve you must change your attitude, otherwise you will make it impossible for yourself to advance. I know the laws and I know what makes human beings advance or regress. If you cling to this obstinate attitude you will never advance, you will never even begin to understand the spiritual realities and, at the end of your life, if you are honest, you will have to say, ‘I came in as a calf and I’m leaving as an ox.’ Nothing will have changed; you will not have got beyond the stage of the bovine!

You are astonished to hear me speak so harshly, with such severity. I assure you, if you were in my shoes and could see the aberrations of human beings as clearly as I see them, you would be much more violent... you would lash out in all directions. I am really very gentle; I have not broken anything!

So, it is not a question of believing or not believing, it is a question of knowing that the thoughts and feelings that you project follow the trajectory that corresponds to their nature, their quality, their intensity and the force with which you project them, and that they complete their course by returning to the centre from which they came: yourself. If they are good they return in the form of blessings that rain down on you and, if they are evil, if they contain a venom secreted by your brain or your heart, you will feel the sting of that venom. This is what I call the backlash or return shock and it is a law that operates both for good and for evil. A disciple who strives to become more and more aware, every day, of the importance of this question, will quickly master his own thoughts and feelings. And even if alien, hostile feelings attempt to get a footing within him, he will be in a position to eject them and put his own, wonderful children in their place.

I know very well that it is not because you have listened to this talk, today, that you will instantly be capable of keeping a check on your thoughts and feelings. But, with the knowledge you now have, you will be in a position to see where you stand, and this is one of the positive aspects of this science. The ability to reject and replace undesirable thoughts and feelings with better ones depends on your degree of evolution, your ideal, your intelligence and perseverance and, above all, on your love. If you love this ideal, if you really and truly want to be good, luminous and radiant, you will succeed much sooner and more easily than others.3 But if you are so proud and imbued with your own worth that you think you have no further progress to make, you will not advance much.

Everything depends on yourself, therefore. I am obliged to reveal these great truths to you, because that is part of my programme. If you neglect them, you will be obliged, one day, to pay dearly for doing so. But if you become conscious of the need to apply them, you will be the first to benefit, for you will be given great joy and wonderful revelations. These laws that I have explained to you about the reality and power of your thoughts and feelings are infallible. The question is far too important to be left to one side; I am obliged to talk about it. As a matter of fact, men will soon be able to photograph thoughts and feelings and record their colour and form, their dimensions and their intensity. Before the end of this century all this will be revealed. Let us hope that it will not come too late.

It is important to know that black, chaotic thoughts and feelings leave indelible traces on the physical body. Very often a person’s face reveals the kind of life he lives. Others will see him as someone unpleasant, even repugnant, without quite understanding why. They are uncomfortable in his presence and find it impossible to love him; their one idea is to get as far away from him as possible. The reason is simply that, through ignorance, he has admitted inferior entities into his inner sanctuary and, as a result, has created a brood of lawless children who break and soil everything. Someone else, on the contrary, who has learned to keep a watch on his thoughts and feelings, will advance and make progress and everybody will love him and find him attractive.

If you do not sense that what I reveal to you is absolutely true, it is a sign that your place is not in an Initiatic school. If you belonged here, you would have learned these things a long, long time ago. When I reveal them to you, your reaction should be, ‘That is not new to me. I know that already. I don’t know when, but I have already experienced what he is saying: it is absolutely true.’ You should almost feel that these truths are so much a part of you, that I am not teaching you anything. Don’t worry, I shall not be insulted if that is your reaction! But if what I say awakens no echo within you or if you reject it because you think you know better, then it is pointless to come here, to our school; you are wasting your time. Perhaps you would be more usefully employed breaking stones or sawing wood or tending a flock of geese.

The Bulgarians have a proverb which says, ‘It is the intelligence that reigns, the intelligence that becomes a slave and the intelligence that tends geese.’ In other words, whatever your circumstances, it is the work of your intelligence. In any case, either you are king or you are a slave or you tend geese and, when you reach that point, you should tell yourself, ‘It’s your own doing, old man! It’s your intelligence that brought you to this.’ In other words, instead of blaming others, you must admit that it is you who are to blame. This is what I do and it is this that enables me to keep making progress. As long as you blame everyone else for your misfortunes you paralyse yourself and hinder your advancement and you will never understand exactly why. You will never learn the real reason. But, if you say to yourself, ‘If I had been wiser and a little more reasonable and intelligent I wouldn’t be in such a fix, today...’ you will continue to make progress. There are many of these truly powerful formulas that we can use.

The Bonfin, August 23, 1974

1 See Le grain de Sénevé, Complete Works, vol. 4, chap. 12: ‘Croissez et multipliez…’, Life Force, Complete Works, vol. 5, chap. 6: ‘Thoughts are Living Entities’ and chap. 7: ‘Unwanted Guests’.

2 See The Faith That Moves Mountains, Izvor Coll. n° 238, chap. 5: ‘Faith always Precedes Knowledge’.

3 See Life Force, Complete Works, vol. 5, chap. 10: ‘A High Ideal’.

Chapter Fifteen
We must not sever the link between
the world below and the world above

You must not think that I continually feel obliged to attack the glory and prestige of scientists; on the contrary, there is only one point on which I criticize them, and that is the fact that they have cut the link between the external world of matter, which is their particular field of action, and the inner world of the soul and of consciousness. This is where they are at fault and this is where I quarrel with them. Only when the link between the spiritual world and the physical, mechanical, material world is restored, will true progress become possible. Perhaps you feel like asking, ‘But why do you attach so much importance to this link? Surely it doesn’t change things all that much?’ This is precisely what saddens me, the fact that nobody recognizes the importance of this link. If it were not vitally important, I would not waste my time and energies on it. I insist on it because, as long as this link is severed, nothing in life will ever be clear and comprehensible.

Hermes Trismegistus said, ‘That which is below is like to that which is above,’ and this precept has constantly guided my research. Let me give you an example. When a doctor auscultates a patient, he may discover a deficiency in one of his organs which is upsetting the balance of the whole system, and then he will use all the means at his disposal to correct that imbalance. But the point is that we should go beyond the purely physiological question and let the human organism teach us how to solve the problems of mankind as a whole. An organ is composed of cells; the cells are composed of particles, and the particles, themselves, are composed of even smaller particles (in fact, today, no one knows just how far the analysis of the infinitely small can be taken). A multitude of cells, therefore, forms an organ; many organs form a unit, a human body, and the body, in turn, represents one minute particle in relation to the whole universe. Of course, you all know this.

But if this unit is to be healthy and to eat, move about, speak and think, etc., its organs must all be in good working order and this is possible only if each one works for all the others. The stomach digests food, but it does not keep it all for itself, it distributes it to the rest of the body. The heart does not keep all the blood for itself, it pumps it through the blood vessels. And the eyes do not see or the ears hear only for themselves. They are all at the service of the whole organism; their job is to feed or protect or warn or guide or transport the whole. None of them works exclusively in its own interests, to ensure its own livelihood or wealth, or to establish its pre-eminence over the others. They all obey the law of self-sacrifice, disinterestedness or brotherliness – call it what you will – and when a person falls ill, it means that microbes, viruses or impurities of some kind are preventing one of his organs from carrying on its divine work of selflessness.

From all this we can draw the conclusion that there is a higher Intelligence who has established certain laws and that every breach of these laws, that is to say, every manifestation of egoism or disorder, leads to illness and death. Human beings have known all this for thousands of years: why have they never seen what it meant? Since that which is below is like that which is above – and this means, too, that that which is small is like that which is big – we can conclude that what is true for the individual is also true for the collectivity. Mankind is an organism and each country is an organ which, in turn, is made up of the individual cells that live and work there.1 But the organs of mankind are not animated by the same spirit of disinterestedness, the same love, as the organs of the body. Each one seeks its own interest and works exclusively for its own welfare, to the detriment of its neighbours.

The human body functions according to laws conceived by a Sublime Intelligence, whereas the ‘body’ of mankind functions according to rules laid down by human minds. This is why it is not functioning properly: the body is ill, so ill, in fact, that it is in danger of death. If mankind is to be restored to health, we must take the human body built by nature as our example, see how it functions and what makes it healthy or sick, and apply the same rules to the whole of humanity.

I know what your objections will be. You will say that it can’t be done because human beings are still like animals, they are still too narrow-minded, selfish and cruel. I know better than you why things are as they are today, but that is not the point. The elite, the leaders are in a position to intervene and change things, but they do nothing. All of them work for only one organ whereas each organ should work for all the others; if they did this, the whole of mankind would live in prosperity and peace.

When a body is healthy, all its cells benefit. When your brain is lucid and your heart is beating regularly, without tension, even your feet are comfortable – you can actually feel that your feet and even your toes are happy! Have you never noticed? On the other hand, when your feet are cold, you start to sneeze; it is your feet that suffer from the cold and your nose that reacts by sneezing. I don’t need to give you more examples. It is obvious that when one organ is comfortable, all the others benefit and feel comfortable, too, and when one organ is in a tight spot, all the others feel the pinch. Human beings are the only creatures that rejoice when someone else, another country, is in a tight spot, and that is because they have severed the link.

Human beings have broken the link that connects them to each other, and that break is called hatred, hostility, revenge or spite. You only have to look at Israel and the Arab countries, or the United States and Vietnam. Perhaps you will say, ‘But they haven’t broken off relations; on the contrary, they are fighting each other.’ That is true. On the physical plane, at least, the link has not been broken, they are continually at each other’s throats. But the link I am talking about is the spiritual bond and it is this that has been broken – and the breaking of this bond is called war. Of course, there is a link of a kind there, too. There is certainly a link between two people who loathe each other and who are locked in a struggle to the death; they could hardly be closer! And others, too, even if they are thousands of miles apart, may be joined by a very strong bond. My understanding of the link, the connection, is that of a mechanic or an electrician faced with the problem of a machine that is not working because one little bit of wire is missing. If he can just replace that length of wire, the connection will be restored and the machine can function again. It is the link that is all-important.

Once men have really understood that that which is below is like that which is above, the groundwork will have been done and it will be possible to establish the Kingdom of God on earth. The vital thing is to understand that there is a link, a bond between heaven and earth. At the moment, it is obvious that this link has been severed, for even scientists and philosophers claim that nature is neither intelligent nor conscious. But if they continue to divide matter into smaller and smaller particles, they will eventually discover the intelligence that rules these particles. And, let me tell you, there are three categories of particles, just as there are three categories of men.

The first category of men includes those who are content with the laws as they exist. They are the respectable, law-abiding citizens. A second category includes those who are not content with the present state of things and want to get humanity to rise to a higher state, to the divine, angelic state. These are all the great initiates who have come to earth and tried to help man to free himself from the condition of an animal and rise to a higher plane where there is greater justice and love. And, finally, there is a third category, and these are the destroyers, the anarchists, who have appeared at different moments of history in order to lay waste and introduce their pernicious philosophies. Thus, there are three categories, one of which respects the established order, and two of which want to change it. One of these wants to change it for a divine order and the other for a diabolical order. These three categories can also be found in atoms. The question is, what is the Intelligence that commands these particles, these three categories of particles?

But scientists have never accepted the system of correspondences which would have enabled them to draw a parallel between the life of man in the family and society, and the life of atoms. It was a blow to their hopes and expectations when, in spite of themselves, they discovered that the atom was built on the same pattern as the solar system. Many of them were shaken by the discovery because it upset some of their theories. But, whether they liked it or not, it was so obvious that they were obliged to recognize it. And one day, in their studies of the atom, they are going to find some ‘comets,’ some foreign particles that are not part of the system, and this is going to puzzle them very much, for they will not understand where they have come from. In other words, scientists are going to find so many things that surprise them that, in the end, they will have to give in and recognize the law of correspondences. In the meantime, they have been misleading mankind because, once you sever the link between heaven and earth, true morality begins to break down.

When human beings cease to believe in the existence of a Supreme Intelligence that presides over all that exists, they lose their faith in the meaning of life.2 And once faith is shaken, love also begins to wane, for faith and love are linked. As I have said: ‘Believe in someone and he will love you; love someone and he will believe in you’. If you believe in nothing, why should you love your neighbour? What is the point of trying to do good? Surely it would be more logical and more profitable to do just the opposite and take advantage of others, to do them down or even assassinate them, if need be, in order to get them out of your way?

This shows how the mere fact of severing the link between heaven and earth, between the great and the small, between the inner consciousness and the outer world, has led to an upheaval in behaviour and attitudes. The present situation is a result of this rupture for which scientists and philosophers are largely responsible. They failed to foresee that, by destroying the two pillars of faith and love on which the whole edifice depended, it would all come crashing down. And, today, the situation has reached catastrophic proportions, and nobody knows what to do about it. You will say, ‘But these people were very sincere’. True, but they were blind, they did not possess the light. This is why, in spite of all their discoveries and inventions, I have to criticize them. They should have foreseen the disastrous consequences that their theories would lead to; they should have understood that there is a connection between what a man believes and what he does. They thought that even if he no longer believed in God or Cosmic Intelligence, man would continue to be virtuous, honest, noble and disinterested. But this is one more link that they cut in failing to see the connection between the two things. I have always insisted on that connection – always!

Philosophy and science have destroyed man’s faith in something reasonable, in something with meaning, only to drive him to believe in something senseless, in chance, in the absurd. Could the unutterably complex arrangement of the atoms and molecules that go to make up an intelligent being have happened by accident? Are we to believe that intelligence is the outcome of chance, of the absurd? What strange reasoning that is! The fact is that everything in nature flatly contradicts that idea, for a seed cannot produce something that does not correspond to its own nature. Even the alchemists used to say that one cannot manufacture gold if one does not have at least one particle of gold to begin with. But now, because scientists and philosophers proclaim that it was mindless chance that gave birth to an intelligent being, everything becomes monstrous.

The link. I can never insist enough on the importance of the link, and life will prove how right I am, events will vindicate me. The other day I heard a so-called thinker talking on the television, explaining that he was in favour of disorder. But what kind of men are these who claim to instruct mankind? He was in love with disorder! I can assure you, if I could meet that man face to face he would have a very bad time of it! I would say, ‘Ah, so you love disorder, do you? Then, of course, I presume that you are perfectly willing to suffer from cancer?’ ‘No, no, certainly not.’ ‘Well, that is the disorder you appreciate so much, cancer. Since you like disorder around you, you must accept its presence within you as well. And, I promise you, when that happens you will see what disorder really is. You are an imbecile; you don’t know what you are saying!’ And to think that it is people like this that are welcomed with open arms on television programmes.

If human beings sincerely want to work for good they must first realize that they will never manage to do so as long as each one works for himself; never! Everything may go smoothly for a time, they may become rich and powerful, but nothing can save them from being attacked and destroyed by others. No one who works exclusively for himself can ever be safe. True safety is to be found by working, first and foremost, for others. If you work for others, you need never fear that someone might attack you, because everyone will love you.

This tendency on the part of human beings, which is so widespread today, to work only for themselves, for their own safety and well-being, will never bring them the fruits they hope for. They must get rid of that idea. Individuals will be in safety only when all members of the collectivity are linked together to form one mind and one conscience. Once again, we can see this mirrored in the human body: the different organs don’t consume each other. I have never heard of a stomach attacking the heart or liver and devouring it. To be sure, there are cases of men whose hand has picked up a revolver and blown their brains out, but that is abnormal. In normal human beings one organ never tries to harm another. On the contrary, if your head aches or you have a pain somewhere, consciously or unconsciously, your hand will go to the spot that hurts to soothe and warm it. Our different organs help and collaborate with each other.

In the long run, a philosophy which urges men to work exclusively for their own country can only bring misfortune. History gives us ample proof of this. Look at how many powerful kingdoms have disappeared – and other powers are doomed to disappear, one day. What will become of England, France, America and Russia if they continue to cultivate a jealously separative spirit. Ours is the only philosophy that can lead mankind to happiness and fulfilment. The great need, now, is to find intelligent men and women in government who will understand and decide to apply it. To understand it is not difficult; it is the practical application of it that is difficult. Political leaders will say, ‘It is not possible to put it into practice yet. We represent a country and it is our duty to work only for that country. Apart from that, we absolutely agree with you. Clearly, what you say is quite true’. Thus, even the heads of State are not free.

Mankind has such powerful means at its disposal, today that, if this philosophy were accepted, the Kingdom of God would very soon be established on earth. All the means and possibilities we need are there, but there is still something missing in the minds of men. All that is needed is for those at the top to decide to form a world government that would ensure peace for all men. Then, as it would no longer be necessary to spend billions on weapons and defence systems, all that money could be used to ensure a better life for each individual.

When you hear me denouncing scientists you always wonder what I have against them. Nothing; I have absolutely nothing against scientists. It is their mentality that I am opposed to. I would like to destroy their attitude and put a different one in its place, but they themselves are magnificent, wonderful people. I would like to embrace them all! What I am fighting is an idea, but the scientists themselves are very precious people for, while spiritualists, [The word ‘spiritualist,’ in the language of Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov, simply means one who looks at things from a spiritual point of view, whose philosophy of life is based on belief in a spiritual reality.] mystics and the religious do nothing at all, scientists work very hard, so we must take care of them. If only they would restore the link between the physical world and the moral, spiritual world! If they did that, they would be so useful, so necessary and admirable, that everybody would embrace them and serenade them – by moonlight, perhaps! It is this link, therefore, that matters, this tiny wire that needs to be put back where it belongs so that the current can flow, once again, between heaven and earth, between the world above and world below.

When Hermes Trismegistus, speaking of the force of Telesma, says, ‘It doth ascend gently from Earth to heaven. Again it doth descend to Earth, and uniteth in itself the force from things superior and things inferior,’ he is referring to this communication, this contact between the divine and the physical worlds. This force is life, the current that flows between heaven and earth. Everything is connected. Outwardly, everything seems to be disconnected but, in reality, everything is tied in to everything else.

All the power of magic is here, in this one thing, the link. A magic wand3 is simply a rod that links the two worlds, and he who wishes to be a magus must possess this little rod within himself. If he does not possess it, if all he has is the wand he is holding in his hand, he will be incapable of setting in motion the forces of nature or of working magic of any kind, because it means that he has not understood that the only true magic wand is this living link which allows the current to flow between the two worlds, the plug that must be connected to the mains. The function of a magic wand is to close the circuit so that energy can flow from one world to the other. If you want your lamps to light up you have to connect them to the electric current from the power station, and a magic wand is the plug that makes this connection.

When a magus possesses this wand in his head and his heart, therefore, and, in addition, he holds a physical magic wand as a symbol of this connecting rod, he is able to trigger the flow of current from the divine world to the physical world. I realize that this is new to you; in fact, I am convinced that it is also new for most occultists, who often have rather vague ideas on the subject. They use various props but without understanding what they mean or how they should be used and, as long as they fail to understand this, as long as there is no little ‘fuse wire’ within them to ensure the connection between the two worlds, there can be no spark of magic. This is what a magic wand is, a fuse wire.

No matter what I tell you, it seems that you still do not see the importance of this thread that links the two worlds. You say, ‘He keeps talking about a thread, a connection, that science has cut. Pooh. Who needs it?’ You do! Without this thread you will never get anywhere. For my part, I have this thread, but I am the only one who can use it. I cannot lend it to you, everybody has to have it for themselves, it is not something that you can borrow and plug in, mechanically. Each individual must understand what it is and accept and agree to it in order to plug it in for himself. For my part, I have already done this; but we are not talking about me, we are talking about you and all the others like you. Believe me, all the misfortunes of mankind stem from the fact that this connection has been cut. Of course, everyone explains these misfortunes in his own way; economists see them as a result of economic factors; politicians explain them in terms of politics; the clergy will say that it is because people have stopped going to Mass, and doctors will say that it is because people refuse to take their advice. But I am telling you that all the misery in the world is a consequence of the rupture of this link. It now remains to restore the connection, to rebuild it with wisdom, intelligence and skill.

Hermes Trismegistus said something else, too. He said, ‘You shall separate the subtle from the gross with great diligence.’ Why must they be separated? And what must we do with them once we have separated them? The answer is simple: we must break our bonds and separate ourselves from all that is dense, obscure and mindless, and bind ourselves to all that is subtle, luminous and intelligent. When one cuts one’s ties with Cosmic Intelligence, as contemporary scientists and thinkers have done, one establishes ties with the absurd. To detach oneself from one thing always implies an attachment to something else. If you detach yourself from the Lord you will inevitably attach yourself to demons. If you move farther away from the light you will be closer to darkness. Nobody has ever envisaged this broader application of the words of Hermes Trismegistus. The precept, ‘You shall separate the subtle from the gross’ implies the underlying notion that this separation is followed by an attachment, that when one detaches oneself from an object or being, one inevitably attaches oneself to another object or being.

Perhaps you understand, now, that if I am always scolding scientists and philosophers, it is not that I believe myself to be any better than they are, but because my point of view is superior to theirs. I am like a child who, from his perch at the top of a tree, can see things that those on the ground cannot see. When I was very young, about four or five, I had four passions which I have kept to this very day – although in a different form, of course. I loved to climb trees, light fires, collect threads and bits of string – it may seem very stupid, but I was fascinated by threads – and watch running water. In the village in Macedonia, where I was born, at the foot of the Babuna Planina (the Grandmother Mountain), there were some very big trees, mostly poplars, and I loved to climb up as high as possible into the branches of those trees and stay there a long time. When my mother called me – she always knew where to find me – I would get down by sliding down the trunk and, as I never wore a shirt in summer, the skin of my tummy became as tough as leather! How I loved those trees. I could stay there for hours, perched up in the highest branches.

As for my love of threads, I remember that, one day, when I was only five or six years old and not fully conscious of what I was doing, it caused something of a tragedy. One of the women in our family was a weaver and, one day, when I saw her loom standing there, with all the threads so beautifully arranged on it... Well, I don’t know what got into me, but I wanted those threads so badly that I cut them all off her loom and took them. There, now I have confessed my sin of destruction to you. Of course, I was duly punished, but what a tragedy! I can still see everybody running round in circles in a panic while I looked on, wondering why they were so upset. I had cut everything off the loom just because I wanted the threads! And what did I do with them when I had got them? Nothing. Why did I want those threads? It was only much later that I began to understand my fascination with threads and, also, with fire and running water.

I did quite a bit of mischief with fire, too. I used to light a fire anywhere I could, just for the joy of watching it burn and, one day, it was my parents’ barn that burned down! I could not understand, on that occasion, either, why everybody was in such a panic and rushed to put it out. I thought it was so beautiful. The flames were so bright.

Water, also, had the same enchantment for me. I shall never forget the little spring that bubbled up from the ground quite near where we lived; I would sit there for hours, watching it, entranced by that pure, crystal-clear water flowing out of the ground. To this day, I have a vivid picture in my mind of the pure, transparent waters of that spring. And ever since then, all my life long, I have had this constant preoccupation with water and fire.4 That is why the very first lecture I gave here, in France,was about fire and water and the relationship between the masculine principle (fire) and the feminine principle (water). 5 None of this was accidental: something within me, something from the past, drew me to these two elements and allowed me to discover a whole new world in them.

Even my passion for threads can be explained. Why was I never interested in needles? All I was interested in was the threads; needles held no attraction for me. What did that mean? Needles did not interest me because they represented the masculine principle and I already possessed that. What I needed was the feminine principle, matter, the thread with which to weave my cloth. Eventually, after a great deal of hard work, God gave me the threads I needed, so now I have them. But I can see that you have never looked for threads; you have never cut all the threads off a loom, as I have. It was a crime, I admit, but I made reparation for it, later on. A few years ago, I returned to the village where I was born (it is now in the part of Macedonia which belongs to Yugoslavia), and the people who were there at the time of my ‘crime’ were very old but they were still there, so I was able to give them something to atone for the disaster I had inflicted on them. We must never leave things unfinished. Sooner or later, we have to pay all our debts.

As for my passion for climbing trees, it was an early indication of my determination to see everything from above, from very high up.6 God did not give me the intellectual faculties that I see in today’s scientists and philosophers. Their intellectual capacity is truly phenomenal. I do not have that, but I am the little boy who loves to climb up to the top of a tree. His father, who has doctorates from several universities is downstairs, in his study, reading or writing, and he hears his son calling out, ‘Dad, Uncle is coming. I can see him at the bottom of the road.’ ‘What else can you see?’ asks his father. ‘Aunty is with him.’ ‘What else?’ ‘He’s carrying a big basket...’ etc. Thus the son can explain certain things to his father because he can see a long way from his vantage point at the top of the tree. He may be ignorant, that little boy, but, thanks to his viewpoint, he can see things at a great distance, whereas his father, for all his brainpower and his numerous degrees, sees nothing, because he is too low down. There, that is my explanation. I am not as proud or conceited as I may seem. I know how limited I am, but I also know that I have been placed on a summit from which I can see a great deal farther afield than all those who have much greater intellectual ability.

You never imagined that my passion for threads could lead me such a long way, did you? But a magic wand is a thread, a wire. Even in our own bodies we see examples of this: what are muscles, nerve fibres, blood vessels? They are threads. And plants and trees? Threads again. And rays of sunlight are also threads which come all the way down to earth so that we can tie ourselves to the sun with them. You see? The ramifications are endless. Isn’t life itself a fabric of interwoven threads? Nature works with threads. Indeed, all human beings also work with threads, particularly women, when they sew, embroider or knit. Nowadays, even in industry, in the manufacture of plastics, for instance, we see nothing but threads, threads and still more threads.

How could I have sensed the significance of threads at the age of five or six? Obviously, at that age, it was unconscious, but there was certainly a hidden intelligence behind it. It was given to me in order to show me that nothing happens by chance for, as soon as I began to examine my seemingly strange childhood passions, I discovered the existence of a marvellous, extraordinary world. Life itself is a tissue of threads. Chromosomes are threads and the character, heredity and structure of a living being are all contained in these threads. And telephones, radios, computers – they are all threads, a mass of interwoven threads. You could say that everything that exists consists of threads. Isn’t it extraordinary?

Human beings constantly work with threads but they have cut the one thread that matters, the one I am talking about, the one that I am working to restore in order to restore the connection between the two worlds. This is the only true magic. Can you define magic? I was very young, about fifteen, and still living in Bulgaria, when I first read a definition of magic. I had got hold of a book about chiromancy by Desbarolles in which, amongst many other interesting things, I found this definition of magic: ‘Magic is a comparison between the two worlds.’ This definition made a great impression on me, although, as you can imagine, I was too young to understand it. At fifteen, after all, one cannot be expected to grasp the full significance of such a profound thought. I imagined that magic was the ability to command the spirits and work miracles. But, even so, that phrase stuck in my mind, I kept thinking about it and, later, when I studied it and reflected about these things, I realized that it expressed a very important truth. You cannot compare two things unless there is a link between them. That is what a comparison is, therefore, first and foremost, a connection. True magic is the comparison between the divine and the physical worlds which is made possible by the link between them. Without this link there can be no magic.

This is what I understood and this explains why, for years, now, I have been so insistent about this question of the link. The whole of my philosophy is based on this little thread, the fragile link between the two worlds. Do away with this link and, not long after, it is all over: nothing has any sense any more, you find yourself floundering in the absurd, everything is confused and disorganized. But as soon as the link is restored, things become clear and simple once again. When it gets dark, you plug in your lamp and, at once, the light comes on and you can see everything as clear as day.

Instead of speaking of a link you might prefer to speak of a bridge, for it amounts to the same thing. A bridge joins the two opposite banks of a river, if there is no bridge you cannot cross to the other side. In wartime, the opposing forces try to destroy all the bridges so as to disrupt the enemy’s progress. And highways? Roads, paths, highways are also links. The destruction of all its bridges and roads is a disaster for a country because the cessation of all traffic and communication spells inevitable ruin. An exact parallel can be seen in the physical body: if an artery is cut, the organ that depended on it dies, for its supply of nourishment is cut off. And yet human beings think that they can cut their link with heaven with impunity, that nothing will be changed, that they will continue to receive nourishment, happiness and fulfilment. Good God, how stupid they are! Fortunately there are still some links that they have not managed to cut. The fact that they are still alive means that they have not cut the silver cord that links them to their physical body. And they still have their links to air, water and food. Many of them still retain their links with society and their families, also. But they have severed the link that joined them to their heavenly Father and, gradually, if they don’t change their attitude, they will destroy all their other links as well.

We can find the equivalent of the word ‘link’ in other contexts, too. Why do we speak of a ‘liaison’ between a man and woman? The coming of a child into the world is the result of a link between the father and mother. This is a good example of the magic of it: a man and woman form a bond, a link, and the result is this child that we see walking and talking and playing! It is always a question of a rod, a magic wand that has to be plugged in, inserted into something so that the current can circulate. Every man possesses this wand, but if he does not ‘plug it in,’ there can be no child. Men and women do this all the time, but without understanding the first thing about what they are doing. There is no higher magic than to restore the link, restore contact between the two worlds: between the feminine and the masculine worlds, between the world below and the world above, between the receptive and the emissive worlds. Where will you find a more significant event than the birth of a child? Everything else pales in comparison.

But the conception of a child is not a phenomenon that takes place only on the physical plane between a man and woman. There are other realms in which a child can be conceived,7 and this is the vital work that is waiting for you. If this is not completely clear to you yet, don’t worry. It will become clearer as you listen to other lectures.

Sèvres, January 14, 1968

1 See The Wellsprings of Eternal Joy, Izvor Coll. n° 242, chap. 10: ‘Our place on the Cosmic Tree’.

2 See Harmony, Complete Works, vol. 6, chap. 8: ‘The Human Intellect and Cosmic Intelligence’.

3 See The Book of Divine Magic, Izvor Coll. n° 226, chap. 3: ‘The Magic Wand’.

4 See The Mysteries of Fire and Water, Izvor Coll. n° 232.

5 See The Second Birth – Love, Wisdom, Truth, Complete Works, vol. 1, chap. 1: ‘The Second Birth’.

6 See ‘Know Thyself’: Jnana Yoga, Complete Works, vol 18, chap. 5: ‘The Causal Plane’.

7 See La pédagogie initiatique, Complete Works, vol. 28, chap. 9: ‘La naissance dans les différents plans’, and The Philosopher’s Stone – in the Gospels and in Alchemy, Izvor Coll. n° 241, chap. 10: ‘The philosopher’s stone, fruit of a mystic union’.

Chapter Sixteen
If you are light
you will seek the company of light

One day, the Master Peter Deunov said, ‘A sheep knows that it is a sheep, and seeks the company of other sheep. A wolf knows that it is a wolf, and seeks the company of other wolves. A man knows that he is a man, and seeks the company of other men. Every creature is determined by its species. And what of you? What company do you seek? If you are light you will seek the company of light.’ The greatest laws of life are concealed in this simple picture of each creature seeking the company of its own kind. It is through the application of this law that every being determines its own future.

Those who have studied the relation between a human being and the forces of nature, have found that there is an absolute correspondence between the two. Every wavelength tends to seek out and attach itself to an identical wavelength. Thus, every creature of whatever wavelength or rate of vibration, makes contact with other beings, entities and forces in the universe of the same wavelength, the same vibratory rate. By means of his thoughts, feelings and actions, a man has an affinity with regions and entities in the universe that vibrate on the same wavelength, and the force of attraction is such that it is bound, eventually, to bring them together. But, as human beings are ignorant of these things, they end by finding themselves in the company of terrifying beings or situations.

The light of Initiatic Science gives us all the powers we need to create the destiny and future that we dream of. If we learn to nourish certain spiritual desires, nothing can stand in our way or prevent us from reaching higher planes and associating with the beautiful, luminous, noble creatures that we aspire to associate with. All this is contained in these words: ‘A sheep knows that it is a sheep, and seeks the company of other sheep. A wolf knows that it is a wolf, and seeks the company of other wolves.’ Every living creature decides its own destiny by choosing its ideal. In the invisible, subtle world above, this is effected instantaneously, but it takes time before the consequences are seen on the visible plane. Every day, every hour of the day, and every minute of every hour, you determine your own future: if you choose the light, the effect is instantaneous: your future will be one of eternal glory. And if, a moment later, you choose darkness, the thing is immediately determined: you will find yourself in hell.

You determine your own future at each instant, therefore, but it may be centuries before the material consequences of that determination appear. Nothing is seen to change on this level, but something changes in the world above and affects the direction you are taking. It is as though you threw the switch that changes the points and made your train run on a different track. This is what man does every day, a thousand, sometimes ten thousand times a day. At one moment he is heading straight for hell and the next for heaven. Here, on the physical plane, we see no difference, but on the invisible plane, each change of direction is recorded. If you want to set yourself on an unalterable course and determine your life once and for all, you must steer unwaveringly in the same direction. If you keep changing direction, every train that passes will pick you up and carry you to other regions.

At each instant, therefore, man determines his destiny. This is not manifested outwardly, yet, because it takes a long time to change the crystallized forms of matter. Take the example of a piece of iron: suppose you don’t like its shape, you want to bend it and shape it differently. You can hammer and hammer at it, but it is going to take you a very long time to make any impression on it, and you cannot be sure that the result will be to your liking. But if you put it in the fire, it becomes malleable and you can give it whatever form you like. We have to keep hammering away for a long time; in other words, we have to cherish the same ideal and the same hopes and desires, think the same thoughts, and persevere at the same work for a long time, in order to shape our lives and our destiny differently.1 That is the idea behind these words, ‘If you are light you will seek the company of light.’ It is inevitable. A foregone conclusion. And if you are darkness...

No one can change the laws that God himself has implanted in matter. No one can take disharmony with him into the regions of light and he who is imbued with light will be refused admittance to hell – however hard others may try to push him in that direction – unless, of course, he changes direction himself. In this case, he will, eventually, arrive in hell. This is what those words of the Master Peter Deunov mean.

Very few human beings realize where they are going, the direction in which they are heading. Consciously or unconsciously, everyone has already bought his ticket but he is still not clear about his destination. You must buy your ticket, consciously and deliberately, for the Kingdom of God, for the world above. How long it will take you to get there is not important. What is important is that if you have bought your ticket you can be sure of getting there. The journey may be slow or very fast; it all depends on the love you bring to it and the intensity of your desire to reach your goal. If you have an ardent desire and unshakeable faith, you will soon be in God’s Kingdom.2 ‘If you are light you will seek the company of light.’

Sèvres, April 15, 1965

1 See The Mysteries of Fire and Water, Izvor Coll. n° 232, chap. 6: ‘A Blacksmith Works with Fire’.

2 See The Faith That Moves Mountains, Izvor Coll. n° 238, chap. 13: ‘Rabota, Vreme, Vera: Work, Time, Faith’.

Chapter Seventeen
Duplicates – new recordings

The Master reads the Meditation for the day:

‘Everything in nature exists in duplicate. Whatever you do always has its ‘carbon copy’. If you help someone or, on the contrary, injure them, the original of your action leaves you but its imprint remains within you. This is why you must try never to do anything that is not good. By your prayer and meditations, try to strengthen your desire to help and love all men.’

This is quite true, everything exists in duplicate in nature. Even our physical body has its duplicate, the etheric body, which has exactly the same shape and functions as the physical body, even though it is made of a different, much subtler matter. Everything you do leaves a trace, an imprint within you. If you do a good turn to somebody, that good goes out from you and disappears, but it leaves an exact reproduction of itself in you. Similarly, if you do evil, the evil leaves you but its double, which is animated by the same virulence, remains and continues its damaging, destructive work within you. This is something that human beings do not realize. When they do something, be it good or evil, they think that it has no repercussions beyond the act itself. Unfortunately – or fortunately – it does not stop there: unfortunately, if what they do is evil; fortunately, if it is good.

It is not only man and his actions but everything in nature that exists in duplicate. Plants, insects, animals, the stars, mountains – they all have their double. Today, however, it is man’s double that interests us. A man’s etheric double can be seen by clairvoyants and, in certain cases, even, it can be taken from him. When this happens, the person ceases to have any feeling, he can be pricked or slapped or burned without feeling anything. Actually, even when the etheric double is detached from the physical body, the silver cord that links the two is not cut. If the cord is cut because of a shock, a wound or an illness, for example, the person dies.1

I should add that our astral and mental bodies also have their double. The astral double conveys energy in the area of feelings to the astral body, whereas the mental double contributes energy in the area of thought, to the mental body. If a man’s astral body is deprived of its double, he sinks into a state of apathy, he has no more sentiments or emotions. Similarly, if his mental body is deprived of its double, he becomes incapable of thought. Very few know or understand these things, but if doctors and psychiatrists understood them, it would help them to explain many, apparently inexplicable, psychic phenomena. Very often they look for the cause of these problems on the physical plane when their origin is not physical at all.

And now, let’s talk about man’s double. As you know, when a government department or business office draws up a document of some kind, it always makes a copy (nowadays, a photocopy). The original is delivered to its destination, but the copy is kept on file for future reference. This is exactly what happens in nature, and this is why I say that every one of our actions exists in duplicate. The original of our actions leaves us and may go as far as the other planets or the stars and, once it has gone, we can never get it back. But there is always an exact copy filed within us, and it is this copy – or, rather, these copies, the physical, astral and mental duplicates of all our actions, thoughts and feelings – that we take with us when we leave this world.

When a human being arrives in the next world, he is summoned before an assembly of highly evolved spirits and is obliged to witness the film of his life. The imprint of all he has done in life becomes audible and visible to him and he has to see and hear it all. This is not for the benefit of the spirits of the other world. They have no need to be informed about his life; they already know about his qualities, the degree of evolution he has reached and all his sins and crimes as well as all his good deeds. It is he who does not know himself, it is he who is ignorant and imagines that he is a monster – unless, of course, he imagines himself to be a divinity. In either case he is mistaken and has to be shown exactly what he was in life. It is not the entities of the other world who need to be instructed, it is man.

I repeat, therefore, every man carries these duplicates within him and takes them with him when he leaves for the next world. Whether you believe this or not will not change the reality; these are the hard facts and they owe nothing to your belief or lack of belief. To be sure, it is far better to believe and accept them, for they will give you all the more reason to improve your life and try to perfect yourself. In fact, if everybody knew these great truths, very few would choose to remain with their weaknesses. It is because they don’t know them that they continue to live as they have always lived without the least idea of the consequences of their acts. This is why it is imperative to instruct human beings. Children, in particular, should be told that certain laws exist and, even if they don’t fully understand at the time, they will reflect about these things as they grow older and, above all, they will be able to verify the truth for themselves.

What happens, for instance, when a man commits a crime? Why does the memory, the imprint of it continually return to haunt him? The crime itself is over and done with. It is a thing of the past, there is no visible clue to it and the criminal is safe from discovery or pursuit. True, but the duplicate of his act is still with him and he does not know how to free himself from it. It is not necessary to delve into the Sacred Books of mankind in order to believe in these things; everyone can see them at work in themselves. Why can we not free ourselves from remorse? Why does our conscience trouble us to such an extent that we cannot eat or drink or sleep until we have atoned for a crime? Because a ‘carbon copy’ of everything we do is on file within us.2

Cosmic Intelligence has had plenty of time in which to adjust everything perfectly and organize the universe with the utmost wisdom. It is only in the minds of men, poor creatures, that things are chaotic, meaningless and without order. Whatever one tries to tell them, they say, ‘I don’t believe it.’ But who do they take themselves for to say such a thing? If they are such great minds, why are they so puny and weak in their everyday lives? Why are they powerless to change the course of events and free themselves from all the things that worry and torment them?

Everything is recorded. To know that this law exists is enough to make you understand, for instance, that you must be very careful not to let negative thoughts slip into your mind for, even if you don’t entertain them for long, they leave their imprint in you for eternity. What is more, once the stereotype has been engraved in your mind, it has a tendency to repeat itself indefinitely. I have often talked to you about this and explained how you can cut new stereotypes so that any deplorable habits you may have cultivated in the past will stop repeating themselves. But if you do nothing to replace them, they will go on and on repeating themselves in each reincarnation, each time you come back to earth. If you do nothing to change your faults, there is no reason why they should not reappear exactly as before in each incarnation. You must keep and strengthen your good qualities, of course; even something that is good can always be improved on. But you must work to correct your faults.

Human beings are always at a loss to know how to correct their faults. They are often unhappy, depressed and discouraged because they are forever wrestling unsuccessfully with their bad habits, not knowing how or when they acquired them nor how to get rid of them. The truth is that, instead of dwelling on the deformities caused by a work of destruction in the past, they would do much better to concentrate on making sure that the future will be better. From now on, therefore, you should promise yourselves that you will repair and rebuild your lives. Tenaciously, every day, with unshakeable faith and absolute conviction, you must concentrate all your energies to that end, using the elements that God has given you – imagination, thought and feeling – to project the most beautiful images into yourself. See yourself bathed in music and light, see yourself in the sun, in the perfection of forms and gifted with qualities of kindness and generosity and the capacity to help, encourage and enlighten others.

Since everything you do is going to be recorded, the important thing is to record only the best in every area, and you will see, once you embark on this work, that you will be so busy and so gripped by it, it will give you such inspiration, that it will become an inexhaustible source of joy to you; you will be building the temple of the Lord in your own being. I know of no work that is superior to this: to build within oneself the temple of the Almighty, with materials of the highest quality, with the purest and most disinterested thoughts, feelings and acts.3

Considerations of this nature are very far from the minds of most human beings. Their only thought is to file a little information in their brains; they never even begin the real work.

The difference between our Teaching and all other schools is that, in the schools, people learn, whereas here they work. A certain amount of knowledge can be very useful, but it cannot transform us. The only thing that can transform us is the work we do, not what we read or hear. Knowledge can incite us to work, but we shall never transform ourselves if we refuse to move, if we don’t set forces in motion within us. Whatever we learn, we shall remain the same unless we work.

We do acquire some knowledge, here, in the Universal White Brotherhood, to be sure, but what we receive, above all, is the impetus for this work of transformation of our whole being. Every day, we are encouraged to climb to higher planes and, like architects, masons or carpenters, find the materials we need. Some of you will say, ‘But I get no pleasure out of this work,’ and, in saying this, they reveal what category they belong to. Every single creature belongs to one or other category in nature. They all have their lair or burrow or nest; they have all manufactured their own skin or pelt or feathers, depending on their tastes and tendencies. And, one day, nature will put each one of us into the category that fits our preferences. This is what destiny is.

Some people are predestined to be ill, others are predestined to fail in what they undertake, others are predestined to be ill-used and persecuted. But it is they who predestine themselves, who determine their own destiny. You will ask, ‘Can someone escape his destiny?’ Not in his present incarnation, no. It was in his previous incarnation that he should have been reasonable and intelligent enough to make this one as good as possible. But in this incarnation, we have tremendous possibilities for the preparation of our next incarnation, on condition that we work unceasingly, night and day, to make new stereotypes.

I know that what I am talking about is very difficult to carry out, in practice. How can we summon up the necessary goodwill and enthusiasm we need in order to begin – and continue – this work? It is, first and foremost, a work that we must do on ourselves, because any improvement in ourselves reflects advantageously on others (the Lord alone knows whether all the other things we do, all our highly organized physical activities, do any good to others). And all this is recorded and kept on file. And, at the end of his life, when a man arrives in the next world, heavenly entities don’t ask him how he has lived or whether he has done anything useful during his life. They don’t ask him whether he helped or comforted others and guided them towards the Source. They don’t ask him any questions at all, in fact, because they know that he would only tell them a pack of lies, so they take the tiny spools of recorded material from him and project them on to a screen where he can see it all for himself. And what a sight it is!

You will object that that is not possible but, I assure you, it is! We all carry within us these minute spools, mere atoms, on which the whole of our life is recorded. Look at the magnetic ribbon in a cassette: can you see or hear anything? No, but if you put it in the right kind of machine you will hear... what? The Barber of Seville perhaps? So, instead of being given an opportunity to tell things your own way and try to justify yourself, you are told to sit down in front of a screen and then you see everything in the minutest detail. History does not tell us how your hair stands on end at the sight of it. And it is no use objecting that you will not have any hair, at that moment, for there are other kinds of hair. You have left your physical hair behind you, but you will have another kind of hair which will stand on end. And there you are: you cannot lie any more!

All this has been described in various Sacred Scriptures, particularly in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, for instance. Of course, it is not explained in exactly the same way. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, we are told that the dead are brought before Osiris, that their soul is weighed, and so on. Then there is also the Tibetan Book of the Dead which tells us about the different phases of a soul’s passage through the next world, how it is judged and the conditions necessary for its rebirth.

In this brief explanation about the way our lives are recorded you will have seen, in particular, how important it is to make new and better recordings every day. In this way, you will gradually cover up the old recordings with new ones. This is a prospect which can encourage you.4

Unfortunately, you are bound to make a certain number of bad recordings in the days to come, simply because of the influence of the old ones which are still there, inside you. But, at least, now, you will be aware of all this and in a position to prevent things from getting any worse. As soon as you notice that you have slipped up and recorded something negative, you can react and make reparation to prevent it from having any evil consequences. If you have thought ill of someone, said something wounding or destroyed something, be aware of it and make up for it. For the time being you will often be unable to do more than that but, do it! Time and time again I have seen people who do nothing, absolutely nothing, to make up for a negative thought or action, whereas others at least say to themselves, ‘Oh, it slipped out. I couldn’t catch it in time.’ This can happen to anybody but the least you can do is realize it and try to atone for it.

The truths that I have given you today are priceless. Personally, I have given up everything in order to know them; I was so convinced of their value that I was ready to sacrifice everything else in order to possess them. And you? They are not worth twopence to you. The things that you value are money, a house, your car, clothes, dogs and cats – your own little backyard! heaven judges people on their attitude towards divine ideas. Have you never seen the price-list that shows the true value of things? To my mind, nothing is more important than to know the true value of each thing.

The Bonfin, September 5, 1973

1 See ‘Et il me montra un fleuve d’eau de la vie’, Synopsis Coll., Part IV, chap. 2 and 4, Part VIII, chap. 1.

2 See Man’s Psychic Life: Elements and Structures, Izvor Coll. n° 222, chap. 11: ‘Consciousness’.

3 See Life and Work in an Initiatic School – Training for the Divine, Complete Works, vol. 30, chap. 8: ‘The Meaning of Initiation’, part III.

4 See On the Art of Teaching – from the Initiatic Point of View, Complete Works, vol. 29, chap. 5: ‘On Perfection’, part III.

Chapter Eighteen
Morality comes into its own
in the world above

Do you know why scientists are so successful? Because they have a religion, their own, rather special kind of religion. They have studied all bodies and all elements and have seen that each one has its own stable, unchanging properties, so that, now, they have an absolute certitude, an unwavering faith in their discoveries concerning the chemical, physical and mechanical properties of physical bodies and, thanks to this firm faith, they achieve remarkable successes – even to the point of launching men into space.

This is the religion of scientists, but it is a religion that is restricted to matter. They have not gone beyond the realm of matter or tried to find out if there was a higher Intelligence that organized the world and determined the properties of each thing. They still have to find out that their successes prove beyond a shadow of a doubt the existence of a Cosmic Intelligence. After all, it is not the elements themselves that decided, one fine day, what weight, properties, colour or consistency they would like to have; it was not they that determined their affinities, their radiations or the number of electrons their atoms should have.

This, then, is the source of the tremendous success of scientists, today; this absolute certainty that bodies and elements have fixed, unchangeable properties. If they were not so sure of this they would never dare to launch the dangerous undertakings they launch today. Their conviction is a kind of religion, a creed based on the knowledge of the chemical, physical and mechanical properties of bodies. But what exactly are chemistry, physics and mechanics? Chemistry is the study of matter; physics is the study of forces and energies, and mechanics is the study of motion which is intermediary between matter and forces.

In their own special way, therefore, scientists even have a trinity. The only thing is, I repeat, that they still have to climb a few steps higher. They still must recognize the existence of a Cosmic Intelligence which has so marvellously organized all those elements they study. They must stop turning their backs on It and trying to turn others from It by insisting that they rely only on the physical dimension.

As I said, yesterday, life is very short. Life is no more than a dream. All religions teach that we are on earth for a very short time and that we must not forget the true meaning of life and imagine that this is all there is. If we think that this world is all that matters and that the only thing that counts is to be as comfortable as we can while we are here, when we get to the other side, we shall be treated as ignoramuses. There is a great deal that could be said about this, of course. We live on earth for a very short period, then we go back to the other world for a long time; we come back again and leave, once again, and so on. The significance of all that is very profound. All religions mention these successive arrivals and departures, but human beings have hardly ever understood the deeper meaning of this and, today, they are so hypnotized by life on earth and material success that they understand it less and less.

Success on the physical plane is one thing; success on the invisible, spiritual plane is quite another. How does one succeed in the invisible world? I have already explained to you, at length, that, contrary to what most people believe, morality is not a human invention, that it is based on the laws of nature and that this cosmic moral law which is inherent in everything that exists, is an essential principle, the most important principle of Creation. Human beings have chosen to abandon the moral law, thinking that, in doing so, they would be freer and have less constraints, and have adopted the laws of the physical plane where morality is unnecessary, where one can steal, swindle, destroy and commit murder with an easy conscience. It is true, one can get along perfectly well on the physical plane without a moral law. You will object that that is not quite true, that there is a judicial system and courts and prisons that punish thieves and criminals. To be sure, there are some minor human institutions which occasionally upset people’s plans: if they get caught, these institutions punish them, but if they manage to break the law without being caught, if they commit ‘the perfect crime,’ they can rest easy, they will never be punished. What kind of morality is that?

This is why I said that, as long as man is on this earth, he does not really need to be moral. Once he leaves this world, however, he finds himself face to face with the full force of the moral law and is obliged to make reparation and atone for his wrongdoing, to suffer for his faults and to pay his debts to the last penny. It is on the other side, therefore, in the invisible world, that morality really comes into its own and assumes its full importance. Here, on earth, you can do without it. You can transgress all the laws; you only have to be sufficiently tough and astute. In this life there is only one circumstance in which morality becomes indispensable, and that is when a man wants to live a celestial, harmonious life and attune himself, once again, with divine splendour and perfection. In this case, of course, he is obliged to respect the moral law but, apart from this, a great many people get along perfectly well without moral considerations of any kind. That does not prevent them from living a normal life: they eat, drink and sleep and live like animals without worrying about morals. The only problem with this is that it becomes very difficult to get along with each other, and that is tiresome. As soon as men want to live in society, the same old question of morality crops up again and obliges them to accept certain constraints and make certain efforts, because it is not possible to live with others in harmony, friendship and love without a moral law.

Morality is linked to the subtle dimension of life and it is because human beings no longer believe in this subtle dimension, because they have never studied the invisible world, its foundations and laws, that they have rejected morality.1 They don’t know that, when they get over to the other side, the only thing that will count is morality, that is to say, the laws of harmony, love, generosity, purity and justice. If you have transgressed these laws on earth, when you get to the other side you will see each one of your transgressions in the form of a monster which will pounce on you and grind you to dust.

Human beings sometimes imagine that they would have been freer and happier if there had been no moral law to respect. But Cosmic Intelligence did not ask advice from ignorant fools when It made this world. On the contrary, It weighed, measured and foresaw in such detail all the causes and effects that would come into play, and so delicately adjusted and regulated the elements of the universe, that it would be impossible to conceive a design for a better organized world. Some people think that God has not made the world very well, that things would be much better if this, that or the other were done differently. Poor fevered minds! If what they wanted came about, they would soon be calling for help, for their situation would be far worse.

The story goes that a tribe of gypsies once sent a delegation to discuss their problems with the Lord. ‘Lord,’ they said, ‘you haven’t organized things very well. Look at us: we’re always on the road, life is never easy and, in winter, we have trouble finding enough wood to build a fire, so we spend our days and nights shivering with cold. In fact, many of us die of cold. So, couldn’t you please do away with winter all together?’ ‘Very well,’ said the Lord; I’ll do exactly as you ask and there will be no more winter.’ As you can imagine, the gypsies were delighted. The months went by and, in the warm weather, the insects became more and more numerous. There had never been so many mosquitoes, grass-hoppers, wasps, toads and so on. As there was no more winter, instead of dying, they just went on getting bigger and more numerous, devouring everything they came across and generally becoming a plague for human beings. So the gypsies, bitten, stung and invaded by all these little creatures, sent another delegation to talk to the Lord. The poor wretches were in a piteous state and petitioned the Lord, saying, ‘Lord, look what’s happening. It was much better before. Please, it would be better if you brought back the winter’. They had, at last, understood that there was an intelligence that presided over nature.

There is a great deal of medical research being done, today, with a view to prolonging human life as much as possible. But whose life is prolonged? Very often those who live useless lives, who are only interested in eating, drinking and amusing themselves and making mischief. They are rich and can pay well, so they must be cured, and no questions asked about whether it is for the good of humanity to keep people like that alive! People consider that that is not their business. As long as they can pay, their lives should be prolonged. Others, even if they are saints or geniuses, will not be cured because they have not got any money. In this way, all the best will die and the most depraved will continue to live. Isn’t there something peculiar in this situation? Wouldn’t it be far more sensible to prolong the lives of those who do good and let those who do evil go to the other world and learn a few lessons so that they could repent and come back in a better frame of mind? You will protest that it is cruel to say this. On the contrary; isn’t it the present situation that is cruel when such efforts are made to prolong the lives of people so that they can go on doing harm? As I have already said, human beings can get along perfectly well without taking into account the moral law; they can perfectly well prosper and multiply while living an immoral life. But, once they get to the other side, they are going to understand that morality is the only thing that matters for, there, they will find themselves examined and weighed, they will be shown all the harm they have done to others and they will have to suffer. They will suffer because, when we injure someone, we have to suffer that same injury ourselves. That is what morality is: it is based on absolute justice. On earth it is perfectly possible to commit all sorts of crimes with impunity. We can cheat and steal and kill, etc., but on the other side we receive exactly the punishment that each crime merits and suffer exactly the same injuries that we have inflicted on others.

True morality, therefore, is first and foremost, justice. It is important to know this. This truth was brought to earth by beings who, when they reincarnated, wanted to warn men what was in store for them, for they had seen how they were received and judged in the other world, and how they suffered for their faults. If men believe them, all will be well; if they don’t... well, they will find it all out for themselves, one day.

Morality and religion are not inventions of the human mind, they are founded on experience.2 Some people have tried to show that religion was a kind of drug invented in order to chloroform human beings and exploit them more easily. That is a totally false theory invented by people who had not studied the question properly. It is quite true that there have been Popes and members of the clergy who misused their powers in order to exploit the masses, but it was not they who invented religion; they only used it. They were unworthy individuals whose goals and ambitions were not at all what they should have been and they used religion for their own ends. Religion can be used, just as science or anything else can be used, but to say that religion was invented by human beings is completely untrue.

Religion, I repeat, is not a human invention. Religion is a knowledge, the truest, most luminous, most vital knowledge, the knowledge of the Universal Soul and of our relation to that Soul and to the world in which we live. True religion is simply a knowledge of God, of the world and of man and of the relations between them. When a man knows all these relations, he adopts a certain attitude, a certain discipline and certain rules of life which are the necessary outcome of that fundamental knowledge. I have never opened a dictionary to see how it would define the word ‘religion,’ but my definition of it is the absolute truth and every initiate would agree with me.

If you restrict yourself to the meaning derived from the Latin root, religare (which means to attach or tie up), and say that religion is a link between man and God, it is true but it does not go far enough. The word cannot explain everything. True initiates tell us that religion is an absolute knowledge concerning God, the Creator, the universe that he created and man, his creature. In order to forge a strong, profound link with God, a man must possess this knowledge. He cannot attach himself to the Lord nor avail himself of the influences of the cosmos if he knows nothing about the centres and organs in his own being or how to make the connections that trigger forces and allow him to vibrate in unison with them.3 If he does not possess this knowledge, what kind of religion can he possibly have? It is not enough, therefore, to say that religion is a link.

As long as human beings have no knowledge and no certainty about life after death, they will never become truly moral beings because they will not see any need to do so. For this reason, we need not be surprised to see that when the light of Initiatic Science fades, men reject all the rules of morality, honesty, justice, gratitude and kindness.

I have studied for centuries to acquire this Science and verify it for myself and, now, I am handing it on to you. The only things that count for most human beings are financial profit and success. They accumulate great material riches but, inwardly, they run up huge debts because they are ready to be as dishonest as need be to gain their ends. Here, in the world, their success makes a great impression, but the entities of the invisible world are not at all impressed. Heaven does not care one jot for your worldly successes. It is only interested in your character and your moral integrity and, as It often cannot give you your reward on earth, It is waiting for you to get up there to give you everything: you will live for centuries in joy, happiness and freedom.

I have a great deal of respect for people with outstanding intellectual and artistic gifts, but I do not rank those gifts above everything else. I consider that it is a man’s moral sense that is most important, how he behaves, where he draws his strength from, what he thinks and why and what his goals are, etc. The perfect man is one who has outstanding moral qualities and is, at the same time, extremely talented and gifted and, when I find someone like that, I want to do everything possible for him.

As you can see, the things that count most for the majority of mankind are not those that initiates value most highly. As I have often said, your earthly wealth is not going to be yours for very long. None of it will last; it is all a dream and you will forget about it, one day. But you will also see, one day, what real rewards are in store for you in the other world. This is why I always insist so strongly on the goal, the ideal, the way you think and act, the direction you take.

Wonderful things are in store for those who are willing to understand and follow me. When Jesus said, ‘Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal’, what treasure was he talking about? Why lay up treasure? In what world should we lay up treasure?4 This is an extremely important question.

You must begin to think about your future and stop making such a commotion, stop trying to massacre others – or yourselves – for the sake of things that are purely and exclusively material. All that is nothing and will soon be forgotten. You are going to have to leave it all behind you. It is much more worthwhile to start working inwardly, by means of your thoughts, feelings and actions, to prepare a magnificent, royal life for yourself in the world above.5 This is the meaning of morality. It may well be that those who reject it leave this world rich and covered in glory, but this is no reason to rejoice. It is much better to pay one’s debts here than on the other side; it is far worse, there. Every thought or feeling of hatred and jealousy, all the calumnies we have ever voiced, confront us in the other world in the form of ferocious animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, monstrous devil-fish, or else as wasps or mosquitoes, and we are horribly gnawed, stung, bitten and pursued and, however much we cry for help, no help is forthcoming.

To sum up, then, morality may not seem to be very important on earth, but in the next world it is extremely important and, if men’s moral conscience seems to be less and less in evidence, today, it is because their sense of the invisible, divine world is also becoming less and less pronounced. And yet, it is this that is the supreme reality.

Blessed are those who have understood me!

The Bonfin, August 7, 1969

BIBLICAL REFERENCES

‘Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven’ – Matt. 6: 20

1 See Looking into the Invisible – Intuition, Clairvoyance, Dreams, Izvor Coll. n° 228, chap. 1: ‘The Visible and the Invisible’ and chap. 3: ‘The Entrance to the Invisible World: From Yesod to Tiphareth’

2 See The Faith That Moves Mountains, Izvor Coll. n° 238, chap. 4: ‘Science and Religion’.

3 See Man’s Subtle Bodies and Centres – the Aura, the Solar Plexus, the Chakras…’, Izvor Coll. n° 219.

4 See Spiritual Alchemy, Complete Works, vol. 2, chap. 5: ‘Lay Up for Yourselves Treasures’.

5 See Love Greater Than Faith, Izvor Coll. n° 239, chap. 6: ‘Only our actions witness to our faith’.

Chapter Nineteen
Example is the best teacher

I have often told you about the Book that is my favourite reading matter, that extraordinary Book in which the Creator has written all his secrets. Of course, I have not got to the end of it yet. It is very long and there is so much in it, but the things I explain to you are all things that I have gleaned from this Book. To be sure, I sometimes have to hold back a few things because I can only give you this knowledge step by step, as your development enables you to receive it. But, don’t worry, I tell you all the most important things, everything that is essential for you.

On Easter Sunday I spoke to you about the Resurrection, and I think that, now, you have a better understanding of it and know what you have to do to attain it.1 Today, I want to add to what I said on Sunday. Try to listen very carefully, for what I am going to explain is very important and should be enormously helpful to you.

I have often been asked to express my views on the education of children. As I always say, tremendous efforts have been made in schools, in recent years, for the benefit of children and adolescents, but the improvements that have been made are all external: bigger and handsomer schools, playing fields and swimming pools, more expensive equipment and machines. Everything possible has been done to facilitate the education – or, rather, the instruction – of the young.

There was nothing like this in the past. Outward appearances mattered far less, then. Any house – even any stable or barn – was good enough to be used as a school. The wind blew in through the windows that were stuffed up with newspaper; there was no wood for the fire, so the children trudged long distances every morning, each carrying a log for the fire. Sometimes, in fact, there were no books; only the schoolmaster had one. And yet these schools produced some very exceptional men and women, people with strong characters and of a high moral stamp, models for their fellow men. Today, by contrast, we see that the material aspects of schools are vastly improved but the young people they turn out are sly, dishonest, selfish, worthless individuals. Oh, to be sure, they are very well-informed. They can dazzle you with reams of facts and figures, but their characters lack the nobility and honesty, the solid virtues of the past.

In their desire to improve material conditions, people have forgotten the inner dimension, the question of character. Teachers and professors, even parents, thought that what the children needed were more attractive books and more sophisticated equipment. Unfortunately, the results are not excellent. Many people realize this, of course, they can see that in spite of all this material progress and in spite of all the remonstrances and punishments meted out to the youngsters, they are not getting any better. Rather the contrary, in fact. Why? Because they have no living examples of excellence before them.

If instructors and educators want magnificent results they must be magnificent examples. A child’s principal educators are its parents, and if parents are unfit for their mission and tell their children to do one thing while they do just the opposite, the children notice the contradiction. Then, not only do the parents lose all authority, but their children begin to follow their example. They learn that there are two kinds of truth, one for others and one for self, and that what counts is to cover things up and save face. In other words, young people are brought up to lie and cheat because the importance of example has not been sufficiently emphasized.

To be sure, it is not easy to be an example, a model, for it is not enough to put up a façade, to act a part. One has to have the intelligence, will and character to sustain a high standard. If human beings are not capable of being models, it is because they don’t understand the great laws of nature properly. This is why I am going to read you a page from this book, this great book of psychology and cosmogony which contains every science that exists. What does this book say about education? It says that unless you know how to be an example you will never be fit to instruct or educate anyone.

When I speak of being an example, I am not referring only to the necessity of being a visible, external example for others, but of being an example for oneself in front of the cells that inhabit us. Our cells are intelligent, they watch what we do and, as they are permanently in contact with us, we cannot elude them. They register the slightest duplicity, the first sign of foul play on our part and, before long, they start copying what we do. They say, ‘Let’s eat and drink and do as much damage as we like; our master is like us and we’re like him!’ This is what people don’t know; they don’t know that our cells follow our example, that our thoughts, desires and actions influence them and lead them to imitate us. If you are dishonest they will be dishonest, too, and do all kinds of fraudulent, unjust things... and it is you who will suffer.

There is such a thing as absolute justice and it is no use looking for it outside ourselves because that is not where we shall find it. It does not exist outside ourselves. Absolute, divine justice exists within us because every move we make, every great deed and every tiny gesture, is recorded within us. When you are alone in your room, plotting some morally dubious action, you think that no one sees you, whereas, in fact, it is all being recorded within you. This is the terrible thing about it – perhaps I should say, the wonderful thing, also, because the same law applies to good, as well as evil – you cannot get away from the fact that everything is recorded.

Nature has installed meters in man to count how much water, gas and electricity we use, in other words, how many thoughts, feelings and acts and what kind of thoughts, feelings and acts.2 I repeat: everything is recorded and man, poor wretch, is the only one who is unaware of this. Whatever you do is recorded. This is why, when you are alone, at home, try to do something good, knowing that what you do will be recorded. You don’t have to tell anyone about it; do it in secret. In the past, God was often represented as an eye within a triangle. This was another way of saying that God has installed a recorder in every man.

Some people are very good at keeping up appearances; when they are at a reception or a public event of some kind, they put a good face on things, but when they find themselves in a difficult situation, if they have never consolidated their character, the façade is liable to crack and their real weakness becomes apparent. The only ones that can really be relied on are those who have worked in secret and achieved something within themselves, in their character and their thoughts. Their foundations are solid and, sooner or later, their true value will become evident even in spite of them; even if they try to hide it, it will come to light. If you are full of fear and hatred, jealousy and sensuality and you try to look as though butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, sooner or later, your true self will show through. And if you are good, wise and patient and full of love, whatever you do to conceal it will be useless. It is a waste of time to attempt to hide either love or hatred; they always show up in the end.

Once you know that everything is recorded you will make great strides in your evolution for, from then on, you can no longer let things slide. Even when you are alone, you have to be on your guard, and say to yourself, ‘Careful! There are billions of eyes watching me. They see everything I do, even if I try to keep it secret’. This is a new point of view for you, isn’t it? You have never envisaged this before. Man is inhabited by a vast population which is bound to him, welded to him, and this population imitates their master in everything he does. If he lets himself go and defies the law, they see it and do the same, and it is he who has to suffer the consequences of their behaviour. If he begins to have some health problems, for instance, he will wonder what has gone wrong and complain that his inhabitants are rioting. But it is his own fault. It was he who taught his cells to behave like that, to be disobedient, recalcitrant and anarchical.

All the disorders we suffer from are the result of the bad upbringing we have given our cells. You grumble as you sweep your room, you bump into chairs, slam doors and kick the furniture and, without your realizing it, these disharmonious gestures leave their imprint on your cells and they begin to imitate you. When they move, they do so clumsily, with kicks and bumps. You cry out in pain and wonder what is going on and it is simply that your cells are doing what you taught them to do: they are kicking the furniture about.

If you have always given your cells a bad example, you must now show them the example of a better attitude, more harmonious movements, better behaviour. When they see the changes in you, they will imitate you in your new ways, just as they imitated you in the past. To begin with, of course, your new behaviour will not seem natural to you, but it will gradually become second nature and you will constantly receive the encouragement and help you need to persevere in the right direction.

If someone has already worked to give the children within him a good education in this way and is then called upon to educate other people’s children or even adult men and women, there will be nothing hollow about him, nothing that rings false. On the contrary, people sense a fullness, a power and vibrancy about him. They sense that his inner population supports him and gives him strength and that he is a true pedagogue, an integrated, unified being without pretence of any kind. This explains why his mere presence is magical. Every word he utters takes effect because his whole being is accustomed to working as one; he is not divided in himself, outwardly showing one thing while inwardly it is just the opposite. All of you must attain this integrity, this unity, and be on the outside what you are on the inside. When someone achieves this, he can be extremely effective as an educator, a teacher. This is true power, magic power, because every single cell of his being emanates something genuine and true. Otherwise, only the part of him that talks emanates a few little rays of truth while all the rest of his being cries, ‘No, no, no. It’s not true!’

Genuine magic lies in truth and unity. Magic always implies a unification of all one’s forces, all one’s energies. There can be no magic where there is dislocation, dissipation. But, when I speak of magic, you must understand me correctly: I do not deal in magic, I don’t read books about magic or sorcery. It is a very long time since I leafed through a book of this kind, just to have an idea of what was in it. I have no time to waste on books of this kind. For me, it is the universe itself, the whole of life, that is magic. The only authentic book of magic is lying open before you, but you do not know how to read it.3

Actually, there are three kinds of educators: those who oblige their children or pupils to respect certain rules while letting it be seen that they themselves respect nothing; those who give a good example in front of others, but who do so out of vanity or self-esteem, to protect their reputation, and who allow themselves a great deal of latitude in private, and, finally, the third category, those who are not divided in themselves. These are the initiates, the only true pedagogues; whatever they say or wish for is absolutely themselves, their body, their quintessence. This is the state that you must all reach.

Now, let me go one step further and tell you that, when you give a good example to your cells, not only do you receive their help and support, but what you do is recorded on other tapes in a higher world and, in virtue of the law of affinity, a relationship begins to build up between you and beings of a higher order who are working in the same direction but who are already more advanced. These beings receive you into their circle, you begin to dwell with them, because there is a law of magic (you see: once again it is a question of magic!) that we call the law of affinity. Otherwise, if you give your cells a bad example, you will be a hypocrite and a liar, and this, too, will be recorded in other regions and, one fine day, you will find yourself with all those who are like you. No one has ever evaded these laws. No one! Each individual prepares himself to dwell in a specific region; each one eventually arrives at his destination, and each one attracts other entities with which he has an affinity. There can be no cheating, no injustice.

If you believe that it is possible to cheat the laws of nature you had better get the idea out of your heads at once. It is easy to cheat human beings, they are so blind that you can do what you like with them, but not with the laws of nature. And, as the thing that counts is not to pull the wool over people’s eyes but to learn to work with the great laws of life, you would be better occupied thinking about these laws rather than putting on an act for the benefit of the blind. You can always hoodwink human beings. You only have to tell them a few lies: they love to be lied to. If you tell them the truth they are sure to doubt you, but if you lie and cheat you will always get your way with them. Unfortunately, all this will be recorded in the world above, and you will end by losing all that is most precious to you. True, you will have got the better of all those dimwits, they are yours for the plucking, but you will have lost a kingdom in the world above.

You did well to come here, today, because now you have acquired yet another great truth. If you only knew how highly heaven values these truths! They are priceless treasures.

Sèvres, April 11, 1966

1 See ‘Au commencement était le Verbe’ – commentaires des Évangiles, Complete Works, vol. 9, chap. 11: ‘La Résurrection et le Jugement dernier’ and chap. 13: ‘Le corps de la résurrection’.

2 See Les deux arbres du Paradis, Complete Works, vol. 3, chap. 3: ‘Ce que révèle le visage humain’.

3 See The Book of Divine Magic, Coll. Izvor n° 226.

Chapter Twenty
Turn the other cheek

It says in the Gospel, ‘If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also’. I sincerely hope that the christians who hear what I am going to say about this phrase will forgive me, for it goes far beyond anything they could ever imagine. Let me assure them, at once, that the future will prove that my interpretation of it is the right one.

Certain moral precepts which were valid in the past are no longer right or useful for the present or the future. Jesus’ words do not mean that we must always be passive in the face of insults and ill-treatment. He was not telling us always to accept and submit to violence and put up with every torment and, in the long run, allow ourselves to be wiped out. It is true that this is how these words have often been interpreted, but I shall show you that that is not what he meant. Of course, if one does not possess the light, there is only one solution: to submit passively and allow others to destroy you. But that is a code of behaviour for the weak and ignorant and it must not last for ever. It has never been decreed that spiritualists, the wise, initiates and sons of God, should be perpetually oppressed, enslaved, ill-treated and put to death, while idiots and criminals prosper. For the time being this is still the situation, because men have lost the divine spark, they have lost the strength that comes from the sun, they have lost all fire, warmth, light and life and, because they have lost all this they will necessarily be beaten and ill-treated.

It has also been said, ‘You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot’.1 So, there it is: if you lose your flavour you will be trampled on by men until you find it again. The Gospels do not say that you must be trampled underfoot for ever, but when you deserted God you lost all your powers and, now, you are an easy prey for the violent and corrupt.

At the time of Jesus, men needed to develop certain qualities and virtues which had never been emphasized before that; qualities such as indulgence, forgiveness and mercifulness. At the time, the code was one of justice, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The new moral code that Christ introduced was designed to encourage men to cultivate the qualities of the heart. Instead of reacting to others with such crude weapons as stones or knives or the sword, they had to learn to respond with nobler, more lofty means; with humility, love, patience and magnanimity. This is what Christ meant. But he was speaking to the men and women of his day and age, and what he said to them is not necessarily valid for the rest of time. He is telling us, now, that there is a better way: ‘When you are the victim of injustice, you must respond with such intelligence, such strength of character, such understanding, light and warmth, that your enemy is completely bowled over, blinded and thunderstruck. Yes, thunderstruck; that is to say, transformed. Not annihilated, not killed but regenerated. Instead of killing your enemy you give him life by leading him closer to God. If you are capable of doing this, you are a true hero, a true son of God.’

Why should we always let our enemies massacre us and crow over us? We must not kill or hurt anyone, we all know that, but that is no reason why we should be the eternal underdog. We have to learn to defend ourselves by becoming like the sun and shining so brightly that even if people try to attack us with senseless cruelty, they will be dazzled and blinded. In this way you blind your enemies and then you open their eyes, just as Christ opened Saul’s eyes when he was on his way to Damascus, bent on massacring the Christians. One ray of light and he fell blinded to the ground. And Saul became Paul. If you could blind people in this way, for just a few moments, and then heal them again, do you think that they would still be determined to persecute you? The new philosophy does not teach us to remain weak and at the mercy of cruel and violent people; it teaches us to become like the sun so that our enemies cannot touch or soil us and, if they approach us, they will melt like wax.

If human beings do not possess the power to use light in this way it is simply because it has never occurred to them. They have embraced a mindless philosophy of weakness and impotence on the pretext that they are supposed to turn the other cheek. Well, you can turn as many cheeks as you like, it will not do you any good and you will not change your enemies that way. They will continue to slap your face and, in the long run, to assassinate you. You are just going to have to understand the question differently. The ‘other cheek’ is the other side, the other aspect of yourself, the side of the spirit, the side of power and light. Jesus showed this other side to his tormentors. His whole attitude proclaimed it: ‘You can imprison my physical body, you can even crucify it, but I’ll show you the other side of my being, the indestructible, divine side. Strike me, if you like, but within three days I shall rebuild my temple’. And he kept his word: he showed his other side with the result that the whole world was revolutionized. He showed the divine side of his being, not the earthly side, and he rose from the dead!2

Christians and spiritualists in general still have a lot to learn and understand. Instead of always allowing themselves to be overwhelmed by the powers of darkness or by materialistic philosophies, they must learn to unite. They have a habit of saying, ‘Amen. Amen. So be it,’ and accepting whatever is flung at them. But it is time to stand together, now, for they have it in their power to transform the world and restore the Kingdom of God on earth. The time for saying that Jesus teaches us to turn the other cheek and let ourselves be martyred is over. This may have been acceptable, in the past, because people could not do otherwise, they were not sufficiently advanced to hit back with sublime, divine weapons. But that is no longer true today.

Today we have the possibility of manifesting the power of the spirit through our knowledge and love, through our gestures and the whole of our behaviour. This is where true strength lies. Why should we forever try to show that we are true Christians by being weak and spineless and cowardly? If that were the Christian ideal I should be the first to say that the world will never be rid of evil if we have to rely on a bunch of weaklings like that! We have to be strong and mighty, dynamic, active, impetuous, even violent – although, obviously, not with the violence of the physical plane. If Christianity is not properly understood it is worthless. True Christianity teaches us to be well armed, but with other arms and, when we are attacked, to show that other side, the side that is well armed, not the puny, impotent side.3 Until now no one has ever explained what that ‘other side’ was.

Many of the things that were not well understood in the past will be better understood, today, and other, entirely new things will have to be learned, for nothing is ever stagnant; everything changes and evolves. Jesus himself demonstrated this very clearly in teaching a new morality which was not that of Moses. The Gospels relate how, on several occasions, Jesus said, ‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times… But I say to you…’ Let me give you some examples of this: ‘‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement’; ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart’; ‘Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.” But I say to you, Do not swear at all’, and, finally, ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.’

It is obvious, from these passages, that the moral law taught by Jesus was no longer that of Moses. So why should there not be another, even more perfect moral law today? Christians will be scandalized by this suggestion because they consider that Jesus taught the definitive doctrine: there is nothing more to be said. And what if Christ himself came and added some new notions? Can christians deny him the right to do that? After all, everything has to grow and evolve. The laggards and all those who are too set in their ways will be left behind. We are in favour of evolution, of something even more sublime, of the new life, the new religion which will be known throughout the length and breadth of the world, the true religion of Christ which has never yet been put into practice.

As long as men were still primitive, what could they be expected to understand? Before anything else, they needed to learn justice, and Moses was sent to teach them justice. Later on, Jesus was sent to teach love and forgiveness. But, why stop there? That is not all there is. Forgiveness cannot solve all our problems. If someone tries to thrash you, is there a law against your being stronger than he is? Why shouldn’t you grab him by the leg and hold him up in the air, saying, ‘Do you want me to break every bone in your body?’ Not that you would do it, of course. On the contrary, very gently, you would put him back on his feet again. Wouldn’t that be much better?

What kind of Christianity is it that obliges you to be constantly ill-treated and massacred? I cannot accept that. You must be stronger than your enemy. So strong that the slightest gesture, a glance, a divine vibration flowing through you is enough to make him realize that you are far superior to him. And, when he feels so small, he will beg you to spare his life. ‘Very well, my friend,’ you reply; ‘You’re beginning to understand?’ And as soon as you put him down, he will take to his heels and leave you in peace. Tell me frankly: wouldn’t it be far better to be strong enough to react like that? I assure you it would. But no one has ever dared to envisage the possibility. The very idea seems far too ambitious, and that is exactly what I am interested in: giving you this ambition. How long it will take you to achieve such strength is another matter, but you can, at least, cultivate the desire to do so. You will never do anything worthwhile in the world if you are always passive, conciliatory, meek and vulnerable – wishy-washy.

There will be no more martyrs in the future. The martyrs of the past have already made the contribution that was required of them. They have fulfilled their mission. Besides, the main reason for their martyrdom was to allow them to pay off their debts and make good their past misdeeds more rapidly. Now that they have done that, why should they be martyred all over again? In the future, some beings will be so strong that when they know that someone is planning to injure them they will be able to put him to sleep at a distance, before he can get close enough to do them any harm. You will say, ‘That’s a bit far-fetched, isn’t it? You’re going too far.’ Not a bit of it. On the contrary, the time has come to lead human beings very, very far. At the moment they are in a dead-end street.

If you think that what I am saying is too much for you, very well, stay where you are. Others have more heroic ambitions. They want to be strong, powerful and full of light. They have no desire to be eternally victimized by the powers of darkness. When people like that are attacked they put up a fight. They know that they are not obliged to submit passively until they go under, on the theory that their destruction is ‘the will of God’. When Christians are stupidly submissive the powers of darkness smack their lips in gleeful anticipation of a feast. ‘Oho,’ they say: ‘These christians are tasty morsels. So juicy and tender! Let’s make a dainty dish of them.’ In other words, by their attitude, christians actually serve themselves up as a choice dish for the powers of darkness. Sometimes one gets the impression that that is their only goal in life. Well, if they really want it that way, I have no objections. Let them go ahead and nourish the powers of darkness, but a true Christian defends himself by projecting a protective screen of light when he is threatened by forces of darkness. And the light dispels the darkness. That is the reaction of a true Christian.

Some of you may be tempted to object, ‘But we are not supposed to fight. It is written that we shouldn’t try to contend with evil.’ It is absolutely true, of course, that you should never try to battle with evil on its own home ground because it is far too powerful and you would inevitably get the worst of it. But move to a higher plane; get above your adversary and, from your vantage point, hurl rockets and bolts of fire at it. You will soon see it turn tail and run. Man has an impregnable inner fortress, the fortress of light, armed with canons and machine-guns that spit fire. What is to prevent you from turning the full force of that weaponry on your enemy and bombarding him with light? You will not kill or even injure anyone that way. On the contrary, you will transform them for the better. Aren’t you perfectly within your rights in doing this? But people think that they have to behave ‘in a Christian manner’ and, for them, that means letting themselves be martyred without reacting in any way. But the only thing that we are told in this respect is not to use the same weapons or react in the same way as the enemy.

Why assassinate someone who is trying to assassinate you? Paralyze him, blind him, put him to sleep, if you like, but get him to change his mind. There are some comic sketches based on this idea: we see someone plotting all kinds of dastardly deeds against a whole family, then along comes a neighbour who talks so much nonsense, asks so many stupid questions and makes so many impossible suggestions that the villain is completely bemused and disarmed. All that nonsense concealed the fact that the neighbour was really far more intelligent than the villain. So, you must defend yourselves. Not with the same arms, of course, with other, far more potent weapons which no one ever thinks of using because they do not really believe in their efficacy. In fact, most people have no inkling that they exist.

Christians will never get out of the morass they are in if they do not learn to work with divine methods. The very fact that they neglect the sun and attribute no spiritual value to it, proves that they have not got the means they need to overcome evil. But once they realize that they have disdained and neglected the sun, they will humble themselves and the sun will forgive them and, when that day comes, they will be all-powerful and the reign of evil will be over and done with. As long as christians refuse to recognize that the sun is a gateway to God, they will always be weak. They can pray as much as they like and fill their churches with the smoke of incense, but that will never put anything right; the world will still be devastated by catastrophes, and disorder and chaos will continue to reign. But the day they recognize that the sun is the visible image of God and a doorway that gives them direct access to him, it will be much easier for them to reach him.4

There is no doubt about it: the future belongs to the bold, to those who fight and work according to the laws of their divine nature. It is they who will have the last word. You must not believe that, just because things were thus and so in the past, they are going to be like that for ever.

Now, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, in Bulgaria, there was a young schoolteacher. He was not very big or strong, but he was an intelligent, sensible young man. One day he was with some friends in the village square and one of them, a big, hulking fellow who was not very bright, did not agree with something the schoolteacher said and started to argue with him. When the schoolteacher began to get the better of him with his intelligent arguments, the colossus lost his temper and let fly: one, two, and our hero was flat on his back! Of course, the others laughed and applauded the winner. After all, he was a real heavyweight, and physical prowess is always much admired. The poor young teacher went slowly and sadly home, the laughter and jeers of his friends ringing in his ears. But then, wonder of wonders, when he got home he found that his cow had calved and there was a lovely little calf in the meadow. He bent over and stroked it and then picked it up in his arms and hugged it, forgetting all about his recent humiliation. The next morning, and every morning after that, he would go and pick up the calf and pet it.

This went on for several months. The calf was rapidly growing into a full-sized bullock but the schoolteacher never noticed. He just went on picking it up. Then, one day, he suddenly realized that his muscles had developed enormously and he decided to go down and join his friends in the village square, once again. When he got there, there was the bully who had knocked him out, bragging and preening himself, as usual. Going up to him, our hero asked him, ‘Do you remember me?’ ‘I’ll say I do,’ said the bully; ‘You’re the little chap I knocked out.’ Without a word the schoolteacher stooped, grabbed him by the leg and held him up, at arm’s length, over his head. ‘Make your peace with God,’ he said; ‘Because I’m going to throw you to the ground and smash you to smithereens!’ Well, of course, the big bully started to whimper and beg for mercy: ‘Forgive me, forgive me. I’m sorry I hit you. Don’t kill me.’ ‘Very well,’ said the teacher; ‘As long as you’re sorry...’ and put him gently down on the ground, whereupon the bully took to his heels and ran. All the other young men laughed and cheered and the teacher went home feeling very pleased and proud of himself: a true hero! So you see, you must never let yourselves be vanquished and trodden underfoot because you will not help others to be any better that way. They will just go on bullying you and misusing their strength. If you are too meek and mild, people think, ‘Aha, there’s someone who won’t fight back. Let’s take advantage of him’.

The Lord asks strength, intelligence, light and power of his servants. If you want to conquer your difficulties, your enemies, therefore, you have to build up your strength. See if you cannot find a little calf somewhere – in your head, perhaps – and practise picking it up every day. You will soon be so strong, and so luminous and powerful, that you will be capable of picking up your enemies and holding them up in the air, telling them, ‘Make your act of contrition; I’m going to smash you to smithereens!’ You will not kill them, of course; you will not even hurt them, so you will have nothing on your conscience. This is the true philosophy: instead of killing someone you help him and give him a chance to become wiser, more reasonable and better behaved. In other words you teach him something extremely important.

Don’t try to hide behind weakness. Weakness will not save you and nor will stupidity nor indolence. You must meditate, search and practise and, one day, when you are as bright and as hot as the sun you will be invulnerable for, after all, can anyone touch the sun without burning himself? Ill-wishers will steer clear of you because – symbolically speaking – you will be aflame, a fiery furnace. In the face of true spiritual strength, everyone is obliged to lay down their arms.

You will say, ‘Yes, but if I turn the other cheek, my enemy will be ashamed and beg me to forgive him’. Don’t you believe it. He will not repent; he is more likely to treat you worse than ever. No, you would do much better to follow the example of that young schoolteacher who picked up his calf every day. As an example, it is unique, you could find none better. Day and night, for years on end, you must practise and grow stronger and stronger until, one fine day, you seek out your enemies, saying, ‘Do you recognize me? You’d better look out because you’re in for a surprise!’ And, at the sight of your strength and the light radiating from you, they will realize that while they were resting on their laurels, you have been in training and have become invincible.

Take an example from mothers; they know what to do. When a child is disobedient and does exactly the opposite of what she tells him, she shows him the ‘other cheek’. That is to say, she begins by reasoning with him and perhaps, even, sheds a few tears. But if the child still refuses to obey, she gives him a taste of the slipper, and he instantly understands and obeys. She does not kill him, but by showing him the ‘other side,’ the side of strength, she teaches him a lesson. Instinctively, she reacts divinely.

There are two sides (in fact, there are three or four or, even, ten, but to make things simpler, let’s just say that there are two), gentleness and strength, and it is important to know when and how to use them. Very often, when you are feeling depressed, worried or discouraged, it is because undesirable spirits are tormenting you, attacking you like a swarm of wasps, flies, mosquitoes or snakes.5 Is this the time for gentleness? Should you let them invade you and feed on you without a word of protest? On the contrary, it is time to show the other side, the side of strength. With words and gestures, you must show your strength and light and, in this way, teach them a much-needed lesson. And you can do this every single day. Why sit there suffering and feeling sorry for yourself? Show the other side, show your strength, your will-power. Get up and chase these entities away; don’t allow thoughts and feelings that torment you and sap all your energies to drag on and on.

Is all this clear, now? It goes against your traditional ideas, I know, but that doesn’t matter. The important thing is that it is useful. And it works! You must adopt ideas and methods that work instead of clinging indefinitely to attitudes that are totally ineffective. To begin with, these new notions may shock you, but, if you want to become stronger and stronger, always stronger, but without violence, without killing or destroying, you will be obliged to accept them. You can be strong, invincibly strong, thanks to the light.

Thus, each one of you must begin training and practising in order to be strong. You can only do it with practice. When war breaks out and you have to give battle to the powers of darkness, will you be ready? Start by trying to overcome the minor enemies within. Put them to rout. Stop giving in to them on the pretext that you are a Christian and don’t believe in violence. A strange kind of Christian, indeed! Don’t you know that christians are knights-errant? They are fighters, Christ’s soldiers, and they must be well armed. Why do you suppose that so many Orders of knights were created in the Middle Ages? Simply because a true Christian is just the opposite of a meek and timid individual. He is a soldier, and his arms are light and the power of the spirit.6

The Bonfin, September 12, 1963

BIBLICAL REFERENCES

‘If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also’ – Matt. 5: 39

‘You are the salt of the earth’ – Matt. 5: 13

Saul on his way to Damascus – Acts of the Apostles 9: 1-9

‘You have heard that it was said… But I say to you…’ – Matt. 5: 21-45

1 See The Philosopher’s Stone – in the Gospels and in Alchemy, Izvor Coll. n° 241, chap. 3: ‘You are the salt of the earth’ and chap. 4: ‘But if the salt loses its flavour…’

2 See Sons and Daughters of God, Izvor Coll. n° 240, chap. 10: ‘Jesus, dead and resurrected?’.

3 See Love and Sexuality, Complete Works, vol. 15, chap. 27: ‘Our Only Weapons: Love and Light’.

4 See The Splendour of Tiphareth – The Yoga of the Sun, Complete Works, vol. 10.

5 See Life Force, Complete Works, vol. 5, chap. 7: ‘Unwanted Guests’.

6 See above, chap. 8: ‘The Strength of the Spirit’.