Table of Contents

Toward a Solar Civilization

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

Introduction

Chapter One The sun, initiator of civilization

Chapter Two Surya yoga

Chapter Three Seeking the centre

Chapter Four The sun, our provider

Chapter Five The solar plexus

Chapter Six We are made in the image of the sun

Chapter Seven The spirits of the seven lights

Chapter Eight The sun as our model

Chapter Nine The true solar religion

List of English spoken Prosveta distributors

Prosveta Catalog Collections

Books

Audio-visuel

About the Universal White Brotherhood

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

Toward
a Solar
Civilization

Izvor Collection – No. 201

Translated from the French

Original title: «VERS UNE CIVILISATION SOLAIRE»

Original edition:

© 1981, Éditions Prosveta S.A., ISBN 2-85566-169-2

© 1982, Éditions Prosveta S.A., ISBN 2-85566-177-3

© 1986, Éditions Prosveta S.A., ISBN 2-85566-373-3

© Copyright Prosveta S.A. 2010. 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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Readers are asked to note that Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov’s teaching was exclusively oral. This volume includes passages from several different lectures all dealing with the same theme.

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

The philosopher and spiritual Master, Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov (1900-1986) was born in Bulgaria and moved to France in 1937. Although his work addresses many aspects of initiatic science, he makes it clear that ‘we must all undertake our own self-development, not only for ourselves but for the good of the collectivity. Then the collectivity becomes a brotherhood. A brotherhood is a collectivity where true unity reigns, because while working for themselves everyone is also consciously working for the good of the whole.’

Introduction

The sun, giver of life: physical, psychic and spiritual.

As early as 1937, the author had predicted that in the future, humanity would no longer use wood, coal or oil to produce energy, but that it would use only the sun's rays. In the future, he said, "it is thanks to the sun's energy that we will light up, heat ourselves, travel.... We will even feed ourselves with sunlight. "Now more and more people are recognizing the validity of this vision and are gradually becoming aware that the sun is a huge field to explore.

'Although we may know about heliocentricity from the point of view of astronomy, we are still far from having exhausted all its possibilities in the biological, psychological, cultural and spiritual spheres. The sun exists within each one of us and, if allowed to, can manifest its presence by awakening our consciousness to a global view of human problems.'

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

Chapter One
The sun,
initiator of civilization

As soon as the sun gets up it pours forth its light, its warmth and its life, and it is that light, warmth and life that encourage men and women to get up, too, and go to work. Some go off to their offices, some to factories or to the fields, others open their shops and stores. The children go off to school, and the streets are filled with the sounds of voices and cars. In the evening, when the sun goes down, people close their shops and offices and go home, and before too long it is time for bed! The daily rhythm of human life is patterned on the rhythm of the sun’s movements. And it is the sun, too, that is at the origin of all culture and civilization.

People sometimes wonder who was the first person to teach humans the arts of writing and agriculture, the use of fire and certain tools. Various names are put forward but, in reality, it was no human but the sun who was at the origin of these discoveries. Perhaps you will say that’s all nonsense! That the sun is not an intelligent being and that it has neither a brain nor a mouth with which to speak! According to you, then, ignorant human beings have a monopoly on intelligence! The one being to whom all life on earth owes its existence is not intelligent!

And yet, if you just reflect for a moment you will see that the sun was the first to bring science to humankind. How? Well, it’s very simple. It is thanks to the light of the sun that we can see objects, shapes, contrasts, colours and distances. It is thanks to that light that we are able to see where we are and observe what goes on around us, to compare and calculate. Without light science simply cannot exist. What can anyone see in the dark? Nothing at all.

And now, suppose I ask who introduced religion; someone who prides themselves on being quite a philosopher might say it was fear: the fear of human beings confronted with the forces of nature. Don’t you believe it! That theory stems from a very narrow point of view. In reality it was the sun that created religion. It was the warmth of the sun’s rays that first gladdened people’s hearts and awoke in them the need to love and adore. Love cannot exist in the cold. But give someone warmth, and they will begin to feel happy and to love. That is how religion first began: thanks to warmth. Of course, for many, ‘religion’ may begin simply as love for another human being or even for an animal: a dog, a cat or a canary! That doesn’t matter! It is a beginning! And one day that love will grow and reach out to the Lord God, the Master of the Universe.

And lastly, it is also the sun that was at the ori- gin of all art, simply because it gives life. Life is what causes people to move, act and express themselves, and so you have the beginning of dance, song, painting and sculpture. Art begins with life. Look at children: they are always on the move, shouting, and screaming and scribbling. And their shouts are the beginning of music, their scribblings are the beginning of painting, their sand castles are the beginning of sculpture, the little houses they make are the beginning of architecture and all their little gestures and movements are the beginning of dance. Yes indeed! All art begins with life, and life comes from the sun.

How could artists create if the world were plunged in darkness? Where would they find their models? Who would give them the notion of movement, form and colour? I sometimes say to artists, ‘You paint pictures, but who gave you the colours? Was it you who made them? No. By means of the various vegetables or minerals involved, it is the sun that has given you those colours. Do you ever think of that?’ But it never seems to occur to painters to thank the sun for their colours. And, in fact, it is rare that the sun figures in their works.

So, you see, the sun gives light, warmth and life and is, therefore, the father of science, of religion and art.1 And yet it is the last one to be loved and respected by human beings. But that is where I’m different: I’m for the sun! I’m calling for its rehabilitation. It makes me indignant to see how people treat it: they raise monuments to all kinds of impostors and never to the sun! And yet it is the first cause, the origin of everything. The earth itself and the other planets all come from the sun. It was the sun that begot them. That is why the earth contains the same elements as the sun but in condensed form, as solids. All the minerals, metals and precious stones, all the plants, all the gases and all subtle or dense bodies – whether in the soil, in water, in the air or on the etheric plane – all come from the sun. Gold, for example – which human beings appreciate to the point of being ready to commit all kinds of crimes to obtain it – gold is formed by the sun. Just as on the surface of the earth there are factories that manufacture all kinds of objects, similarly there are factories under the surface of the earth which employ millions of entities, and it is they that condense sunlight to produce gold.

I can hear you object, ‘But how can gold be condensed sunlight?’ Let me make it clearer with the example of a tree. Trees, especially oaks, firs, pines and walnut trees, are composed of a very hard, compact material which can be used to build houses and boats, etc. A tree grows out of the soil, and hence it has always been presumed that a tree is made of soil. But that is completely untrue. A tree is made of sunlight. Take a tree, as big a tree as you like, and burn it. What will you see? Flames. Lots of flames, a lesser amount of gases, even less water vapour and, at the end, you will be left with a small, a very small, pile of ash. So much for the soil!

A tree is made of earth, water, air and fire, but it is the fire, the sun’s rays, which go to make up the major part of its bulk. So, a tree is not made of soil. It’s made of condensed sunshine!2 You only have to visit some of the forests that I have visited in India, Ceylon, The United States, Canada and Sweden, to realize that all those trees, which must weigh billions of tons, have not lowered the level of the ground on which they stand. If they had taken out of the soil all the elements that constitute their bulk, the ground should have sunk several hundred feet. This is just one more proof that a tree is made of condensed sunlight. And if trees can collect and solidify the sun’s rays in this way, why shouldn’t it be possible for certain entities working underground to do the same and produce gold? Oh yes, there’s a lot of food for thought in all this!

I once knew a man whose overriding passion was to find gold. He had all kinds of books about hidden treasure and the magical practices which were supposed to help him find it. For quite a while I left him to it and said nothing (and, of course, he didn’t find anything!). And then, one day I asked him why he persisted in carrying on with the chambermaid, instead of trying to win the friendship of the lady of the house. He was very indignant and declared that he was an honest married man and wasn’t carrying on an affair with anyone. I replied, ‘Yes, of course, I know you’re a faithful husband, but I can see that you are still trying to seduce the maid.’

Of course, he still didn’t understand, so I explained, ‘You see, you’re always looking for gold. But gold is only the servant. The lady of the house is the sunlight which, when condensed in the depths of the earth, becomes gold. And when the lady of the house sees that instead of trying to charm her and become her friend you pursue her maid, she is offended and closes her door to you. From now on, go straight to the lady of the house, to the sunlight. Try to love her, to understand her, to attract all her blessings and favours and some day, sooner or later, you will receive gold. Why not go straight to the top? If you are the king’s friend, all his subjects will respect you. But if you are a friend of the doorman you’ll never get any further than the doorman. No one else will bother with you!’ He was astounded. ‘I understand,’ he said. But I doubt it, because he’s still flirting with the chambermaid!

But gold is not the only matter that is a condensation of the light of the sun. Coal, oil, wood and the materials used in manufacturing all kinds of objects are all condensed sunlight. Everything produced by industry, even the clothes we wear, comes from the sun. The whole of our economy is based on the products of the sun, but the sun itself is neglected and forgotten. People forget the creator and run after the outer skin, the peelings, the dross of its creation.

Something is very wrong with humans’ understanding of these things, and it is this error of understanding that is the cause of their greatest misfortunes, for when you abandon the centre in favour of the periphery, when you ignore the essential and pay attention only to what is secondary, you are inevitably heading for disaster, and disaster is what occurs. That is why it is high time to restore the sun to its rightful place ahead of every other consideration, for it is the sun that is the cause of everything.3 If you do this the situation will improve, first of all in your own minds and subsequently throughout society. Everything will go better. You will ask, ‘But how can our attitude towards the sun lead to such fantastic results? It’s only a detail.’ Of course, it seems a detail, but in the long run the reversal of values which we see in today’s world has brought about extremely serious and complicated consequences in all areas of life.

If you reflect for only a minute you will realize that the sun is at the origin of everything. Ask it to explain to you how it meditated and worked so that human beings might live. How did it prepare the right conditions of temperature and climate? How did it calculate just the right amount of light and heat for life to appear on earth? Plant life was the first to exist, followed by fish, birds and mammals and, finally, humans. It was the sun that made ready all the conditions necessary for the birth of culture and civilization. Indeed, it was the sun that was the very first farmer, since it distributed the various varieties of plant life over the face of the earth and makes them grow and give flowers and fruit. It is the sun that commands poverty or plenty, famine or abundance.

When I first came to France, in 1937, I remember saying that in the future, humans would no longer use wood, coal or oil to produce energy. They would use only the sun’s rays. People were a long way from believing me at the time, but they are beginning to see I was right, because it is now well known that the present sources of energy will soon be exhausted, and humans will be obliged to turn to more subtle sources of energy which are inexhaustible. In the future we will all draw our light and heat from the sun. We will travel thanks to the sun’s energy. We will even be nourished by the light of the sun.

Deprived of sunshine humans could never have existed. They could never have moved or worked. Without the warmth of the sun they could never have experienced feeling. Without its light they could never have had the faculty of sight, and not only on the physical level but also on the intellectual level: they could never have had understanding, for understanding is a higher form of sight. As for the sun’s warmth, well, that is what awoke in humans everything that concerns the emotions: contact and exchange with others, love and friendship. It is the sun’s warmth that is at the origin of marriage, the family, human society and all forms of community. If you are cold, people don’t like you, they leave you alone. But if you are warm-hearted they come and warm themselves through contact with you, and they are grateful to you for that warmth. Warmth is what draws human beings together. It is what gives them the capacity to feel, to be moved, to wonder and to pray. So you see, the warmth of the sun is at the origin of all morality and religion.

Of course, I know that if you say that to Christians they will be indignant because they don’t recognize the importance of the sun. For them, what counts is the mass. But then I ask them, ‘But if the sun weren’t there, how could you say mass? In utter cold and darkness, who could say mass? Where would the bread and wine come from?’ I have no wish to belittle the importance of the mass, in fact I tell you frankly, I know much more about it than most priests. They’ve learned to say mass, but they know nothing of its deeper, magical significance. I know that. And I have a much deeper respect for mass than Christians. And yet I still ask them, ‘Without the sun, who would say mass? And who would assist at mass?’ The trouble is they just don’t think!

And now, if I tell you it was the light of the sun acting on our physical bodies that formed our eyes, you won’t believe me either. And yet it is the strict truth. The sun created our eyes. And why? Well, so that we could see it! In the same way it was its warmth acting on our bodies that created the organs of feeling: the heart, the mouth and, above all, the skin and the sense of touch. It decided that only the eyes should be sensitive to light but that warmth should be felt by the whole surface of the body. You see the difference, don’t you? Isn’t that interesting?

The sun commands everything in the universe. It is like the conductor of an orchestra or a king on his throne. When it decides something it only has to give the signal and all the spirits it has sent to earth or to the other planets hasten to carry out its wishes. They modify something in the atmosphere or in the electromagnetic currents, and all kinds of changes take place in the vegetable, animal and human kingdoms, in the biological, psychological, economic and social spheres. Everything that happens on earth is commanded by the sun. Solar eruptions and sunspots are simply signals that the sun sends out to a whole hierarchy of intelligent beings that are there to carry out its orders.

One day science will accept my ideas. It is impossible that it should not tread the same path. And that is why, here and now, I say to scientists, ‘Leave what you’re doing in the laboratories alone and give all your attention to the sun. Everything is in the sun: health, wealth and the happiness of humankind.’ You may say that many astronomers and physicists already are studying the sun and, of course, that is so. I know. I am well aware of all the research that is going on in many countries and particularly in Russia and the U.S.A. But when I reproach the scientific world for not giving enough attention to the sun, I mean that they have not yet really studied what the sun’s light is and, above all, how humans can work with it and let it penetrate them to purify, strengthen and regenerate them. For, if the sun’s rays can penetrate even the depths of the oceans so that certain fish specially equipped to do so can capture their energy and give off light, why be surprised that they can also penetrate us? And if we knew how to receive the sun’s rays within us, they would set in motion certain centres and light certain lamps that have been prepared within us from the beginning of time.4

For me, as I have already said, the sun’s rays are like so many little wagons filled with food. And this food consists of elements and solar energy, to which we can all help ourselves to our heart’s content if we want to grow and develop on the physical and psychic levels.

Everything that humans need is contained in the light of the sun. What an immense field for scientific exploration!

1 See Creation: Artistic and Spiritual, Izvor Coll. n° 223, chap. 1: ‘Art, science and religion’.

2 See The Mysteries of Fire and Water, Izvor Coll. n° 232, chap. 17: ‘Trees of light’.

3 See The Philosopher’s Stone – in the Gospels and in Alchemy, Izvor Coll. n° 241, chap. 14: ‘The gold of true knowledge: the alchemist and the gold prospector’.

4 See New Light on the Gospels, Izvor Coll. n° 217, chap. 9: ‘The parable of the five wise and the five foolish virgins’.

Chapter Two
Surya yoga

I

Nowadays, yoga is a popular topic of conversation. I have already spoken to you about it and explained the different kinds of yoga, most of which come from India and Tibet, while some come from China and Japan. All religions have their own particular form of yoga – even Christianity. Christians have always practised adoration, prayer, love and veneration of the Creator. These are the characteristics of the Christian religion, and in India they are known as Bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion, adoration and spiritual love. The only problem is that this particular form of yoga suits certain temperaments but not others. Some people have gifts and qualities that call for other modes of expression. The ways that lead to the Creator are innumerable. Christians have restricted themselves to one way, and it is a truly marvellous way; there is no reason to criticize it. But Hinduism is richer in that it has produced many different methods.

For those who have a taste for study, reflection, intellectual activity, they have Jnani yoga, the yoga of knowledge, which is a way to reach God through deep thought. Some people are drawn neither to philosophy nor to mysticism but they have great will-power and energy and dedication. They want to work for and serve others. For them there is Karma yoga, the yoga of good works, of duties to be accomplished with no expectation of reward or payment. Karma yoga is the yoga of freely given, disinterested service.

For those who feel the need to control and dominate their own instincts and impulses, there is Raja yoga. By means of concentration and self-control they too can reach the eternal Father and fuse their being with his. The word raja means ‘king’, and they become kings of their own inner kingdom.

Kriya yoga is the yoga of light. It consists in thinking of light, in getting to know and understand it, in surrounding oneself with colours, imbibing and projecting colours. It is a magnificent way to work. Kriya yoga is the yoga that Babaji practised.

Hatha yoga is good for those who have a taste for physical exercise and like to assume all kinds of postures or asanas, as they are called. They fold themselves in two, twist themselves around, roll themselves into a ball, get their legs behind their heads, etc. These exercises, which are of course based on an exact knowledge of the centres that can be activated by the various postures, require a lot of will-power and perseverance. Hatha yoga is the form of yoga best known in the West, but the poor Westerners have neither the temperament and physical constitution of Orientals nor the calm and silence needed to practise it. The result is that many end by ruining their physical and mental health. How many people have I met who confessed that they had given up Hatha yoga because they felt they were becoming unbalanced! One should be very prudent about this, and I personally have never encouraged Westerners to take up this form of yoga.

Agni yoga is the yoga of fire. It consists in thinking of fire, in working with fire, in awakening fire. Since it is fire that is at the origin of all creation, Agni yoga is yet another way to reach the Creator.

Shabda yoga, the yoga of the word, consists in pronouncing certain formulas or ‘mantras’ at certain specific moments, a specific number of times and with a specific intensity. The word is a force, and someone who knows how to use that force can get significant results.

But now, I want to talk to you about a form of yoga that surpasses all others: the yoga of the sun. In the past this form of yoga has been practised by many peoples and civilizations, but in our day it has fallen into disuse, particularly in the West. The Sanscrit word for the sun is surya, which is why I call it Surya yoga and it is my favourite because it combines and sums up all the other forms of yoga. Yes, why not combine all the different kinds of yoga in one?

Disciples of the Universal White Brotherhood cannot be narrow-minded or restrictive. They must grow in all the dimensions of their being. They should act with total disinterestedness: that is Karma yoga. They should seek God and love and adore him: that is Bhakti yoga. They have to meditate and concentrate in order to achieve mastery of themselves and authority over their population of cells: this is Raja yoga. When they are sitting in meditation or doing the movements of our gymnastics or the paneurhythmy, you could say they are practising Hatha yoga. When they project light and colour, when they build a luminous aura around themselves, they are practising Kriya yoga. They concentrate on fire and call on it to consume all impurity within them: that is Agni yoga. They are constantly on guard so as to control every word they utter, so as to avoid saying anything that might introduce doubt or discouragement into someone else’s heart and mind. On the contrary, they always try to become creators of the new life: that is Shabda yoga. Finally, they concentrate their love and attention on the sun, they try to maintain contact with it at every moment, they consider it as the open door to heaven, the manifestation of Christ, God’s representative: that is Surya yoga. The disciple who practises Surya yoga rejects none of the other forms, quite the contrary, and as a result becomes a whole being and lives in inner plenitude.

The portrait I have just drawn for you is a portrait of the coming humanity. In the Universal White Brotherhood, men and women develop all the qualities and virtues. For Surya yoga includes them all: adoration, wisdom, power as well as purity, activity and dedication, light and the sacred fire of divine love. Now you can see how important it is that you realize what great blessings you receive when you go to see the sun rise in the morning.

By the practice of Surya yoga you establish a link between yourself and the power that governs and gives life to the whole universe: the sun. That is why you must necessarily get results! That is why I can assure you that all these different kinds of yoga that were considered so wonderful in the past – and which still are wonderful – will, one day, be replaced by Surya yoga, which surpasses every one of them, for through the sun we work with God himself. I can even say that certain things which no human being could ever teach me have been revealed to me by the sun. No book can give you what the sun gives you if you learn to have the proper relationship with it. Up to now you have not learned to establish real contact with the sun. It is there, before your eyes, but you do not really relate to it. You are content to observe that it’s there and that it’s a little brighter or less bright than the day before. But that is not the way to establish rapport with the sun. If you want to create a bond between yourself and the sun, when you look at it you must be fully conscious of what you are doing. Only then will there be a communication of vibrations between the sun and you in which forms and colours, a whole new world, will be born. And this conversation between the sun and yourself will attract forces and intelligent beings of the invisible world that will come to dance and steep themselves in the beauty of this dialogue. Of course, I know it is not easy to achieve this. If you really want to obtain all these blessings from the sun you have to prepare yourself. And what does that mean, exactly: to prepare yourself? Well, let us suppose that you decide to go and see the sunrise but that yesterday, or even a couple of days ago, you lived in a climate of passions and quarrels. Obviously, you’re not prepared! While the sun is rising you will be besieged by the memory of your chaotic experiences. Even though the sun is there and you are basking in its light you will have no feeling of its presence.

So, you should get ready the day before: try not to eat too much, not to get to bed too late. Don’t do anything that might torment or worry you next day. Try to arrange things so as to be free, your mind clear and your heart at peace, with no loose ends to be tied up and nothing to regret or repair. This is very important! Then, in peace you can begin, slowly and gently, to meditate without trying to concentrate all at once on the sun. First of all, take a look at your own ‘inhabitants’, and if there is some noise and commotion amongst them try to pacify and reconcile them. For it is only when you have managed to free yourself, only when peace and harmony reign within you, that you can project yourself outward, to the sun. Then you can picture it as a wondrous world peopled with the most perfect creatures, beings of light that live in sublime intelligence and in absolute love and purity. Think that in that glorious world there reigns an order, a culture and a civilization that surpass all imagination!

And now, suppose I told you that, although you don’t realize it, you are already in the sun? You don’t feel it, but a very small particle of you, a very, very subtle element of yourself lives in the sun. Science has not yet begun to study human beings as they really are. It has no idea of the immensity, the riches, the depth and the magnitude of humans. What we can see with our eyes, the visible body, is not the human being. Humans possess other bodies (astral, mental, causal, buddhic and atmic) which are composed of progressively subtle matter.1

But what is true for humans is equally true for the earth. The earth is not just the physical reality we can see and touch. Surrounding the earth is an atmosphere over two hundred miles deep, which science has divided into several different layers, each with its own name. But what science does not know is that in each layer there is an infinite number of elements and entities, and that beyond the atmosphere known to science lies the earth’s etheric body, which extends as far as the sun and actually touches it. So, you see, the earth’s etheric body fuses into the sun’s, for the sun also has an etheric body which reaches far beyond its own sphere, to the earth and beyond, to all the other planets. And that is how the sun and the earth can actually touch each other. They are already fused together.

And since humans are built on the same pattern as the universe, they too possess a subtle body, which is linked with the sun. This is why, considering the higher, divine dimension of humans, we can say they already dwell in the sun. They don’t realize it, of course, because their consciousness is still restricted to the visible world.

What I have just said will seem unbelievable to you, no doubt. And yet, believe me, these are truths you should know and try to fathom. Once someone begins to study in the divine school of the Universal White Brotherhood, he or she gradually begins to move from the narrow limits of a strictly sensorial and physical consciousness to the higher, vaster realms of the superconscious. The realm of the superconscious is immense and contains thousands of different levels, which all have to be scaled before you can feel you are truly a citizen of the sun, that you already exist in the sun.

That part of ourselves, that entity which lives in the sun is our higher self. Our higher self doesn’t dwell in our physical body. If it did it would constantly accomplish marvels! From time to time it comes to visit the brain, but as our brains are not yet ready to synchronize with it – in fact they cannot even bear its vibrations – the higher self is unable to manifest itself. However, it continues to work on the brain, preparing it. And as soon as the brain is capable of receiving it, the higher self will come to dwell permanently in men and women.2

Our higher self is none other than God, a part of God. That is why, on the highest level, we are God himself, for apart from God there is nothing. God manifests himself through creation and through each one of his creatures, and we are therefore tiny particles of him. We have no existence apart from him. The real illusion is to believe that we are separate from God. When the sages speak of maya, ‘illusion’, they are not speaking of the material world. The world is not a maya. It is our lower self that is the maya because it gives us the impression that we exist as beings separate from the divinity. The world is a reality. So is matter. I repeat: the illusion comes from our lower self, which insists on making us feel we are separate beings.3

As long as we continue to live on this inferior level, on the level of our lower self, we will continue to live in error and illusion, and we will never experience that unique and universal life, that cosmic Being who fills all of space. Our lower self prevents us from feeling and understanding that Being. And that is why the work we do at sunrise, through our prayer and meditation, is aimed at renewing the contact, building a bridge between our lower self and our higher self, which lives in the sun.

As long as you continue to be influenced by mechanist philosophy, which would have you believe that the sun is incapable of speaking to you and helping you, you will bar the way to your own evolution. You must understand that everything is alive; that a living intelligence manifests itself through everything we see; that the sun is an intelligence, a life, a living light. And when you understand that, all of a sudden it begins to speak to you. If it has already revealed so many things to me it is because I see it exactly as it is: a spirit of such extraordinary loftiness, beauty, grandeur, power and intelligence that all else pales in comparison! Just try! Try asking it questions, and you will see that it will answer you. Perhaps you won’t be able to understand its answers at once, but sooner or later they will show up on the screen of your mind. The sun’s replies are given in a flash, like an electronic machine. It is up to human beings to grow and develop sufficiently to be able to understand them at once.

II

Several decades ago, as we all know, science discovered that space was filled with waves. It was this discovery that led to the invention of the radio, telephone, radar, etc., the problem being simply to build machines that could send and receive waves.

But why should science and technology be the only disciplines to exploit this discovery? Space is filled with waves. True, but not only the kinds of wave that enable us to make phone calls or to tune in to a programme on radio or television. There are other, much more subtle, waves travelling through space, and we must learn to tune in to them. We have the means to do so. God has placed within us all the equipment he needs to tune in to the waves sent out by the sun, the stars and by all the highly evolved creatures inhabiting every region of space. But instead of receiving their messages, instead of switching their receivers to their sublime wavelengths and drawing from them everything they need to improve both their physical health and their grasp of reality, humans are forever running after other things. They are tuned in to other, diabolical transmitters, which fill them with the sounds of strife and revolt. The only thing to do is to learn to tune in to other stations. And you can do that at sunrise. Every morning, when you come to the Rocher( The ‘Rocher’ is the rock at the top of the hill at the Bonfin, which disciples climb to watch the sunrise.), try to bear in mind that you can receive the waves that come from the sun. Instead of continually brooding on your grievances and your unsolved problems, think that you can tune in to a heavenly transmitter. If you don’t do this you will always be the same poor, unhappy soul who cannot see what can possibly be gained from going to see the sun rise!

In fact, of course, I know very well that some of you say, ‘Why go up to the Rocher every morning? I don’t get anything out of it.’ The point is that everything depends on the way you look at it. If the grumblers had the honesty to admit that their lives were one mass of problems and difficulties and that they could see no way out, and if they went to the sunrise and laid out all their problems before the sun so as to find the solutions, perhaps they would actually find the answers they are looking for. Well, why not? In the morning, in the light of the rising sun, take a good look at all your difficulties, and the sun, which can see you, too, will say, ‘There’s an unhappy person. Let’s enlighten them. Let’s help them.’ And how, you may ask, can the sun help? By the light waves it sends out.

No one has the right to lay down the law about anything whatever if their consciousness has not yet been awakened. If they do, they will inevitably be wrong. That is why I have repeated thousands of times already that, in order to be present at the sunrise in the correct way, you must prepare yourself the day before. You must entertain only the best thoughts and feelings before falling asleep.4 In this way you clear the ground during the night, and you can arrive at the sunrise fully awake and in good form, with the thought, ‘The heavens are speaking to us. The angels are speaking to us. They are sending us messages. Thank you, Lord, for letting me be here today to gain a little more health, a little more wisdom and a little more love.’ If you could only tune in your receivers to some of those waves, you would hear all the heavenly entities speaking to you, telling you about your future, about the wealth you possess, about the life that will be yours when your consciousness is fully awakened. Heaven speaks to you. Heaven sings to you! After that how can you possibly say there was nothing there?

The very first being we should turn to in the morning is the sun, and in that way it will have a beneficial effect on our whole day. No one thinks that things of this kind are important any more. And it’s a great mistake. The question of whom you first meet when you leave home in the morning is important, because some people bring happiness and success to your day and others unhappiness and failure.

When I was still living in Bulgaria – of course, that was before the last war – there was a very pretty and touching custom: on New Year’s morning the children were sent out into the streets and homes in their neighbourhood, because children are pure, and the people believed they could bring only good things to them. Each child had a little branch, sometimes with ribbons on it, and they were supposed to touch people with the branch and wish them good health, success, a good harvest, and so on. The people thanked them and gave them fruit or sweets and buns, which the children put into the bags they had with them, and their bags were often bigger than themselves!

And when I was a child I used to do that too. Carrying my little branch, I went and wished a happy New Year to all the neighbours. I don’t know why, but they thought I could bring blessings on them, and many families asked my mother to send me very early in the morning, before the other children. So she used to wake me up and dress me, and, of course, I didn’t enjoy that part of it at all, because I was sleepy and I had to go out in the cold and snow. You know, the winters in the mountains of Macedonia are not what they are in the South of France! But I did it anyway. And, half asleep, I went into each house to touch the people with my little branch, while I mumbled some words that I had learned by heart without even understanding what they meant! But still, it was a nice custom!

It is the same for the sun. It must be the first, in the morning, to come in to greet you and wish you good morning... and all your affairs will prosper! That is why it is so important for you to get ready the day before, remembering that next morning you are going to find yourself in the presence of the finest and most perfect servant of God, that you are going to drink your fill of its light, its warmth and its life. Try to leave all your worries and torments to one side so as to put yourself totally at the disposal of the divine world and enter into communion with the beneficial forces within and all around you.

Now that humans have found the way to make contact by radio, look at how many people can communicate with each other! If someone is in danger on the sea or in the air, on a mountain or in a cave, they can call for help. Every day we receive messages by radio from all over the world. That’s excellent! But why communicate exclusively with human beings? All we hear from them is the clamour of their demands, their revolt, their threats. We should use the receivers God has given us to communicate with the sun and all those beings more advanced than we are, to get on to their wavelength and enter into their aura, into their happiness, light and peace. And once we are stronger, thanks to our contact with them, then we need not fear to establish contact with other poor wretches like ourselves.

Some of you are wondering, ‘When is he going to stop? He keeps talking about the sun, and meantime it’s burning us.’ All the better! Then you’ll be cooked and ready to eat! For, you know, there are intelligent spirits that are like gardeners: they come and visit your garden or orchard to pick the fruit and have a feast. They exclaim with delight, ‘Oh, that lovely melon, that peach! What delicious fruit!’ Yes. When they see a human being who is at last waking up to the spiritual life they take care of them and rejoice in all the light that emanates and radiates from them.5 All men and women are visited by heavenly ‘gardeners’ in this way. Some may say, ‘But I have nothing to give. I’m not an orchard. How can anyone come and harvest something from me?’ In point of fact there is always some element that can be used in everyone... even poisonous plants give their poison for medicines!

But if I let myself go and start talking about this I’ll never stop. It is the most fascinating topic. Human beings simply cannot imagine they are visited by the inhabitants of the other world. Even very young girls and boys are visited. Everyone! Because they are like laboratories, filled with chemical elements. But it is not yet the moment to talk about this at any length. I’m waiting for you to have done some preparatory work, at least on the most elementary and fundamental aspects; otherwise, you will be unable to assimilate the more important, difficult aspects. When I see you are still not able to keep awake while the sun is rising, I’m not going to lead you into areas which demand the greatest possible mastery of all one’s thoughts and energies.

In the spiritual life, even more than in other areas, it is dangerous to try to go too fast. If I gave you a talisman to enable you to call up spirits at will, you are still so weak and inexperienced that you would be destroyed. And what good would I have done you? You will not be ready until you take all these subjects very seriously. For the moment you judge them to be insignificant and unimportant. All right, so they’re not interesting! But they can save your life, whereas the things you do find interesting will bring you nothing but misfortune if they are given to you too soon.

III

Every year, in the spring, the sun begins to warm the ground, and seeds snuggled deep in the soil awake from their silent sleep when they feel the sun caressing and calling to them, inviting them to rouse themselves and begin their work. You may well scoff and say that germination and growth are an automatic, unconscious mechanism in plants, and, of course, I am fully aware of that. But, nevertheless, there is a form of life dormant in plants in the winter which stirs in the spring and begins to move in response to the call of the sun. Seeds start pushing up out of the soil, and men and women rejoice because they see they are going to have a good harvest and enough to eat.

You are thinking you have known that since you were at school! I have no doubt, but I still say it, because I want to show you that you have never really understood it. You know, you know! Yes, but you have never understood. Knowledge and understanding are two different things. People know... but what has all that knowledge done for them so far? Nothing! If you had understood you would have realized that you, too, have seeds in you that you have to tend and make grow.

In the souls, spirits, minds, hearts and physical bodies of men and women, the Creator has planted seeds (gifts, virtues, magic powers, spiritual splendours) that only the light and warmth of the sun can make grow. If we go to see the sun rise – since the sun is the most perfect image of the Creator – every morning during spring and summer, it is to give our seeds the best possible conditions for their growth and flowering. As for those who think themselves too intelligent and knowledgeable to indulge in this practice: the divine seed within them will remain buried for eternity.

So, expose yourself every morning to the sun’s rays and all your seeds will begin to sprout. You will become a garden full of lovely flowers and delicious fruit!6 Fruit that gets no sunlight stays green, bitter and sour, but when it is exposed to the sun it becomes colourful, sweet and delicious. Everybody knows that, and yet, here again, no one has seen that it is equally true for human beings. Of course, I know that a lot of people expose themselves to the sun on the beaches, but more often than not they do so in the afternoon when the sun’s rays are no longer beneficial and can even be harmful.

It is in the morning, very early, that you should expose yourself to the rays of the sun and let them do their work. If you do so you will feel the little shoots and buds beginning to grow. When this happens, of course, you are going to have to water them, because if you don’t they will be too dry. The sun provides light and warmth but it cannot water your plants for you. It needs water as a collaborator, and that collaborator is in us. The sun does part of the work, but we have to do our part, which is to water the plants the sun has warmed. And what do we use for water? Our love, our faith, our trust and good will. We must give the sun a helping hand! If you let it warm you without taking an active part in its work, you will never get very good results, because the plants that spring up in response to its work will wither and die from lack of water.

But how can you take an active part in the work of the sun? Well, when you are there, exposed to the rays of the sun, you must be active too, just as it is; that is, you must meditate, contemplate, pray and give thanks to the Lord, or, if you prefer, say some positive, luminous words out loud.7 In this way you water those little sprouts in your heart with your love, and they will get off to a good start. Learn to become the gardener of your own little plot of land.

1 See Man’s Psychic Life: Elements and Structures, Izvor Coll. no 222, chap. 3: ‘Several souls and several bodies’.

2 See above, chap. 13: ‘The higher self’.

3 See Man’s Two Natures, Human and Divine, Izvor Coll. n° 213, chap. 3: ‘Man’s true identity’, chap. 4: ‘Methods of escape’ and chap. 5: ‘The sun symbolizes the divine Nature’.

4 See Looking into the Invisible – Intuition, Clairvoyance Dreams, Izvor Coll. n° 228, chap. 15: ‘Protect yourself while you are asleep’, chap. 16: ‘Astral projection while asleep’.

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

6 See The Seeds of Happiness, Izvor Coll. n° 231, chap. 19: ‘The garden of souls and spirits’.

7 See Sunrise Meditations, Brochure n° 323.

Chapter Three
Seeking the centre

I

Everything that now exists on earth first existed in its etheric state, in the sun. We can understand this better if we realize that the elements are formed by a series of condensations. In the beginning there was fire. The fire emanated a substance denser than itself which was air, and the air emanated the substance of water. In its turn, water rid itself of its heavier elements, thus forming earth (we now have scientific proof that all life on earth originated in water). Each element, then, is a condensation of another more subtle element: air is a condensation of fire, water of air and earth of water. But beyond the fire that we know exists another fire, the light of the sun, which is the true origin of all things.

You might ask, ‘What happened to make all these elements condense?’ What happened is that they left the centre, the sun, and once they had left the sun and gone outward towards the periphery they began to condense and become opaque and heavy. And that is exactly what happened with humans: when they left the centre, God, they became dense and dark, and in order to retrieve their purity and light they must return to the centre. Now you see how all the precepts of all religions converge in this seeking of the centre or, symbolically speaking, the sun.

Many years ago there was a funfair near Saint-Cloud called Luna Park. One day I went there, and I shall not tell you about all the different things they had for the amusement of the public, only about one thing that was called the ‘butter dish’ or rotor. It was a large circular platform, mounted on a central axis. When people got onto it they started up the motor and the platform began to spin faster and faster. Before long those who had stayed near the outside edge were bowled over by the centrifugal force and swept out towards the edge, whereas those who had stayed close to the centre were able to remain calmly where they were! This is a good illustration of the fact that the further you go from the centre the more you come under the influence of the forces of chaos and disorder until, little by little, you lose your balance and your peace of mind. On the other hand, when you get closer to the centre the movement changes, and you feel yourself gaining in security, joy and gladness.

It was by the observation of things like this in nature and within themselves that the initiates of the past managed to discover a whole science and philosophy and elaborate certain methods. Their research and discoveries have been handed down to us, and I am giving them to you now so that you can use them to perfect yourselves. However, you have to learn to understand my language. I have been given something that is really a privilege, and that is the ability to use a very clear, simple language which may even seem childish when compared to the abstract, obscure language of philosophers and theologians. But why not simplify the expression of the great truths? Why should they not be made accessible even to children? This is a gift that God has given me: to be able to present the most abstract things clearly and simply, and that is what I am doing for you, every day. Look at the image of the rotor for example: it shows us that if we contemplate the sun in the morning with the desire to get right into it, as it were, not only will we draw great strength from it but, at the same time, we will find our own inner centre. We will leave the outer edge and return towards the source in peace, light and freedom.

The sun is the centre of the solar system and all the planets gravitate around it in harmonious movement. We must try to impress this same harmonious movement on our cells, but to do so we have to get back to the centre within us, the spirit, God himself. Once we do this, all the separate pieces of our lives fall together in harmony with the rhythm of universal life, and the feelings and states of mind we experience are indescribably wonderful; no words can do them justice.

You may wonder if it is really necessary for you actually to go and see the sun rising. Wouldn’t it come to the same thing if you prayed at home? Well, of course, you can establish contact with the Lord, pray to him and centre yourself in him perfectly well in your own room. But if, while you pray, you can also breathe in pure air and expose yourself to the rays of the sun, then you can unite yourself to God not only intellectually and spiritually through the power of thought but also physically, thanks to the air and light. Here, at sunrise, we have the help of some very powerful factors: the pure air, the freshness and tranquillity of the morning, all that space and warmth around us and the rays of the sun. Don’t we have all we could possibly desire? If you learn to use all these favourable conditions and make the most of them, your progress towards that central source of life will be much more rapid and effective and much more wonderful.1

All creatures without exception have this need to return to centre. They understand it in different ways, of course, but in fact everyone is looking for God. Those who over-indulge in food and drink, those who are forever running after men or women without ever being satisfied, those who want wealth, power, knowledge: they are all looking for God. My interpretation may well shock religious people, who are often bigoted and narrow-minded, and they may say, ‘It’s not possible for people to seek God in such devious ways’. But it is perfectly possible! There is no creature in existence that is not looking for God, but each one understands this in their own way.2

If we knew where God was and the most perfect way to reach him, that would make everything much easier. But God does exist, just a little, in food and drink. He does exist a little in money. He can be found in men and women. Who else but God could give us such a feeling of fulfilment, gladness and wonder? The thirst for power and authority is a thirst for something that is an attribute of God. The desire to be beautiful is also a desire for the divine attributes of glory and splendour. Even gluttons who spend their days stuffing themselves would not find the pleasures of the palate or the stomach so delectable if there were not some trace of God there. Nothing good, beautiful or delectable exists which does not contain some small particle of the divinity. However, this does not mean that I am recommending you to take these costly and questionable ways to find God. There are even people who look for him in cesspools. No! The best way, the way that leads straight to God, is the sun.

The very first thing you have to do, then, is to realize the importance of the centre and to understand how, when we seek it, important things begin to change in us, even if we don’t feel anything. The nearer we get to the sun with our spirit, our soul, our thought, our heart and our will, the nearer we come to the centre which is God. On the physical level the sun is the visible, tangible representative of the divinity. All those abstract, distant titles that people use when they speak of God: prime Cause, almighty God, universal Soul, cosmic Intelligence... all of this is contained in the image of the sun, so real and so close. Yes, we can consider the sun as the epitome, the summary and synthesis of all these sublime, abstract notions that are beyond our grasp. On the physical, material level, the sun is the door, the link and the medium thanks to which we can make contact with the Lord.

Begin by understanding that when you turn to the centre of the solar system you are restoring an identical system within yourself, a system in which your own sun, your spirit, returns to its rightful place and takes command. Up to now, everything is in a mess. Chaos reigns within you! There is no head, no government. All your ‘lodgers’ eat, drink and kick up a din, vandalizing everything: your thoughts, feelings and desires all contradict each other, all try to have everything their own way. How can you possibly solve your problems in the midst of this anarchy? It’s simple: you cannot!

You have to begin by being, internally, like the solar system, in which everything gravitates around the centre. But the centre within you must be luminous and alive. You must no longer accept a centre that has become dull, feeble, soiled and inactive. Come on, now! Get to work and clean things up! And then, take a good look at all those you accepted as your guides in the past. Examine them, one after the other, with the question, ‘Are you as luminous as the sun? No? All right, out you go! And you, are you as warm as the sun? No? You, too: out!’ Once you have cleaned the place up, you can bring in the sun and install it in its rightful place. And when the sun comes into you, when it has found its place in the centre, when it is truly present, real and alive within you, then you will see what it is capable of! When the sun arrives, all your inhabitants will feel that their leader, their Lord and master has come home.

Look at children in a classroom, singers in a choir or soldiers in barracks: as long as the ‘boss’ is not there, the teacher, the choirmaster or the captain, everyone does as they like. But as soon as the ‘boss’ comes in, everyone goes back to their place and they all get down to work together. Or look at a family in the midst of a quarrel: unexpectedly a dear and much-respected friend turns up, and in no time at all everyone has put on a smiling face, and it’s, ‘Hello! How are you? Do sit down. We’re so glad to see you!’ And they even try to smile at each other so that their friend will not realize they were in the middle of a family row. Why not use the same law and install in yourself the most luminous, the warmest and most vitalizing of all possible ‘captains’: the sun? Once we do that, instinctively, as though by magic, each part of us will go back into place, because it would be ashamed to behave badly in front of such a friend and superior.

When quarrels, tumult and revolution break out within you, if you begin to pray very ardently, everything calms down at once and peace and joy are restored.3 This is because a friend has come into your house and, thanks to them, all your inhabitants calm down. Have you not all had that experience many times? And now, if you pray to that friend even more fervently and persistently, asking them never to leave you again, to stay and dwell in you forever, to be enthroned in your very centre once and for all, then peace and light will reign eternally within you.

II

If you put your trust in appearances and look at things from the earth’s point of view, you will naturally find that the sun rises, sets and revolves round the earth. This example is sufficient to make us realize that those who are accustomed to seeing things from the point of view of the earth, who, in other words, have a geocentric outlook, cannot help but be in error. The whole of their philosophy is false since it is based on the illusion that the sun revolves round the earth. Initiates, on the other hand, know that it is the earth that revolves round the sun, and this gives them a totally different point of view: they take up their position on the sun, they look at all things from this point of view and they see the truth.

Of course you will say, ‘Everybody knows that the earth revolves round the sun.’ Yes. You know it in theory, but in practice you behave as though it were the sun that revolved round the earth. And that is why I keep telling you, ‘As long as you don’t try to find the centre – your own centre which is the divine in you – as long as you don’t live in that centre, seeing everything and acting only from that centre, you will never find Truth and you will always see everything in a false light.’

If you cannot understand what I am saying, it is because you do not know that the sun and the earth both exist within every man and woman. The earth represents our instincts and appetites, and the sun represents our mind, our intelligence. Unfortunately, men and women have lived on the lower levels of their being for centuries. They see everything from the instinctive level, that is, from the material point of view. Nothing else really matters to them. And this is why there are such tremendous obstacles in the way of anyone who tries to bring human beings back to their true centre: the mind, intelligence, light; anyone who tries, in other words, to get them to abandon their geocentric point of view and adopt the heliocentric point of view. How can one make people understand that by reaching the centre of the solar system, they are at the same time reaching their own centre, their own true core, around which everything else should revolve. As long as humans persist in wanting to be the hub and centre of their own existence they will, in fact, continue to revolve round something exterior to themselves and be forever tossed hither and thither, forever tormented, and incapable of finding truth.

I shall use all the means, all the arguments, all the knowledge at my command to bring you to a realization of this overwhelming truth: that you must work to reach, first of all, the centre of the planetary system from which all life flows: the sun, and then, on the spiritual level, the supreme, all-powerful centre: God himself. And this you must do in order to make a link with your own centre, your own little spark, your higher self, the one centre; this is the only way for you to find yourself, to discover truth. You are still living in illusion and torment because you have not yet found your true centre, you have not yet learned to revolve round it, to melt into it. You are still revolving round your desires and whims, your lower appetites. It is not they that should rule your lives! From now on, they must revolve round you, submit to you and be at your service. If you try to satisfy their demands, not only will you be faced with an impossible task but you will end by losing everything you have. They must be at your service and work for you, for it is you who are their centre, their leader, the head of your own kingdom.4

So, what matters most of all is that you change your point of view. Instead of grumbling that there is nothing to be gained from getting out of bed to see the sunrise, or that your brain is too muzzy to meditate, now that you know what a wealth of treasure is waiting to be explored, you can get up in the morning in a totally different frame of mind.

Just to make all this a little clearer, let me interpret for you a page out of the living book of nature: if you observe human beings, you see that instinctively they feel the compulsion to climb the rungs of the social ladder to reach positions of authority and responsibility. In order to satisfy their ambitions, they are obliged periodically to pass exams, and it is only when they have given proof of their worth that they may be chosen for the highest positions. How is it people have never seen that the spiritual domain has exactly the same system? Initiates and true disciples know very well that other examiners, other juries, are there to observe how they solve the problems that life offers, and so they work very hard inwardly, and if they pass their exams they are promoted and given more extensive powers. The higher they climb and the closer they get to the summit, to perfection, the more diplomas they receive from heaven and the more they are entrusted with important tasks until, one day, they are given all powers. When they reach this level they can command even the forces of nature, but always and only for good.

And so, instead of vying with others for high positions, instead of competing for the post of magistrate, minister or president, work at raising your inner self so as to reach the sun. The more you love and understand the sun, the more you will raise yourself to the higher levels of your being and the nearer you will come to the summit. Looked at from another angle, the summit is identical with the centre, for the geometrical projection of a cone is a circle with a point in the centre.5 So you see, whether we speak of moving towards the centre of your own circle, your soul or your spirit, or of climbing upwards towards the summit, towards the sun, it is really the same thing. And the benefits you will receive are also the same: peace, illumination, power and love.

1 See In Spirit and in Truth, Izvor Coll. n° 235, chap. 3: ‘The link with the centre’, chap. 4: ‘Reaching for the top’.

2 See The Seeds of Happiness, Izvor Coll. n° 231, chap. 14: ‘The quest for happiness is a quest for God’.

3 See The Path of Silence, Izvor Coll. n° 229, chap. 2: ‘Achieving inner silence’, chap. 5: ‘Silence, a reservoir of energies’.

4 See In Spirit and in Truth, Izvor Coll. n° 235, chap. 5: ‘From multiplicity to unity’.

5 See The Symbolic Language of Geometrical Figures, Izvor Coll. n° 218, chap. 2: ‘The circle’.

Chapter Four
The sun, our provider

I

The sun is the father of all the planets. They all came from it. That is why everything that exists on earth in the way of chemical elements or minerals and vegetable substances already exists in a more subtle, etheric form in the sun. The question is to find out how, by concentrating on the sun, we can capture, in their original purity, all the elements we need for our mental and physical well-being. For as long as we continue to look for remedies only on the lower, physical plane and make no effort to rise above this plane, we will gain nothing on the spiritual level.

At the slightest sign of illness, most people swallow large amounts of medicine. It is perfectly true, of course, that the elements that go to make up these medicines come from the sun in the first place. But if people would only make the effort to absorb them on the etheric level, at their source, they would get much more benefit from them. Modern medicine knows nothing yet about these subtle elements, precisely because they are too subtle. But they are far more important than all those that have been discovered to date.1

At the moment, orthodox medicine attributes the essential role in health to the endocrine glands, but the truth is that there are other factors, in the astral and mental planes, which trigger and govern the functioning of the endocrine glands. When something goes wrong in the body because the endocrine glands are producing too many or too few hormones, there must be a cause, and where should we look for that cause if not on the astral and mental levels? These two regions, where thoughts and feelings are born, have not yet been explored or mastered, and yet, when part of our system is disturbed, whether it’s the endocrine glands or the central or sympathetic nervous system, the ganglions or anything else, we should look for the root cause of this disturbance on the astral and mental planes. In other words, the causes as well as the remedies of disease should be sought on a much higher level than at present. Little by little, science will discover these causes.

Not so long ago we were told, ‘If you take such and such an amount of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, such and such of mineral salts, every day, that will give you so many calories, which will supply you with so much energy.’ And calories were thought to be all-important until someone discovered that there were other, more subtle, more imponderable things to be considered: vitamins. From then on, vitamins were all the rage, and everybody stuffed themselves with vitamins. But initiates do not need to take vitamins. Through their spiritual activity they can absorb other, much more subtle and far more efficient elements which regulate the whole physical system, including the assimilation of vitamins. And now, more recently, hormones have been discovered. But they are not the last word either.

The last word, as I have already said, is our thoughts and feelings. Our thoughts and feelings are forces which set in motion certain functions, which, in turn, act on the whole body (the endocrine glands, the nervous system, etc.) and produce harmonious or chaotic results depending on the nature of the original thought or feeling.2 A few researchers are seeking along these lines already, but no one listens to them. In the future, however, doctors will adopt their theories; research will explore exclusively these subtle factors of our thoughts and feelings; new branches of study will be created, with laboratories and special techniques, and everyone will be obliged to recognize that esoteric science has always had a solid foundation in truth.

And now, let me tell you how you can receive the etheric particles that the sun sends us in the morning. It is very simple. It is not even worth knowing which elements you need to improve your health: it doesn’t make any difference. All you have to do is to raise yourself, mentally, to the most subtle regions, and there you expose yourself and you wait. It is then that your soul and spirit, which are very competent chemists and doctors, and which know the exact nature and properties of all the etheric substances, absorb whatever you need and leave the rest aside. You must just wait in an attitude of love, submission, joy and trust, and before long, when you come back from the sunrise, you will feel that something within you has been soothed and strengthened and restored to health.

It does not matter if, for the time being, you do not know what these elements are, exactly. But one thing I can tell you in a few words, and that is that they are all present in prana. Prana is a living force. It is the vitality that comes from the sun and that we breathe in with the air and absorb through all our cells. Prana is comparable to water flowing from the heights of a mountain, to a great river flowing from the sun to us, in which we are able to find all the elements we need, through breathing3 and meditation4.

Those who prefer just to open their mouths and swallow a pill should be warned that this is no more than a harmful, detrimental solution to their problems, because it prevents them from developing their will-power and can only bring them temporary, superficial relief. It will not give a lasting or deep-seated improvement. I do not say that you should never take medicines. But never do so without having first of all absorbed their vital, spiritual elements from prana, for the spiritual and psychic effort that this demands of you strengthens your will and establishes a contact between you and the higher regions. It also stimulates and sets in motion certain centres which prepare the ground, so that when you do take the physical medicine it has a much stronger and more lasting effect.

So, what I recommend is a combination of both: the chemist’s remedy and the spiritual remedy.5 But I give priority to the spiritual remedy. Obviously, as I have said, medicines contain vegetable and mineral substances which come from the sun in the first place, and if God has placed these elements in nature it is in order that we should use them. Of that there is no doubt. But to believe that this is the only way, and that only chemical remedies will put you back on your feet, is contrary to esoteric science.

You may say, ‘That’s all very well, but those particles we pick up at sunrise are too tiny to be measured. They can’t be very effective.’ It is true that they cannot be weighed, but they contain the vital quintessence that the sun diffuses throughout the universe. And the fact that homœopathic medicine knows that very diluted doses are often far more effective than highly condensed ones goes to prove the truth of what I am saying. Why not absorb the imponderable, diluted particles, those very subtle ‘vitamins’ that the sun sends us?

There are all kinds of energies in the sun other than those which can be harnessed to make electricity or heat, and we can draw on them. The sun’s energy, if we know how to draw on it, can give us not only vitality and health but also peace, intelligence and love. But with this philosophy we are far ahead of the rest of humanity. Some people have noticed this. They say, ‘With your ideas, you’re several centuries ahead of everybody else.’ It is true. And what we believe today will be accepted by the whole world in the future.

II

Human beings have a physical body in which the cells are completely renewed every seven years. Knowing this we might ask, ‘Since the cells are constantly being renewed, how is it that we still have the same bad habits, the same weaknesses and diseases?’ The reason is that the new cells are influenced by the imprints already engraved into the living matter of our being, and they are obliged to follow the old, established ways. That is why our new cells are unable to change our temperament or to rid us of our weaknesses.

Compare this phenomenon with the way any business or factory functions. From time to time, because of illness, old age or death, members of the personnel have to leave, and new people who are younger and stronger are employed to replace them. The new employees do the same work as their predecessors; the people change but the jobs remain the same. This is exactly what happens with the new cells produced in us, thanks to nutrition, respiration, thoughts and feelings and so on. And that is why, if we want the new cells to be really new and to produce new results, we have to orient them differently and give them other imprints. I have given you many exercises designed to do just that.

In point of fact, the most effective method for renewing the materials we are made of is to work with the sun, and I will explain how. Every morning, you are there, enjoying the light of the sun as it pours luminous particles of extraordinary purity out into space. What is to prevent you from concentrating all your energies on discarding the particles of your physical and psychic being that are diseased, lack-lustre and worn out and substituting new particles direct from the sun? This is one of the most useful exercises you can do at sunrise: by means of your thoughts and your imagination, try to draw some of these divine particles into yourself. In this way, little by little, you will completely renew all the materials of your being. Thanks to the sun you will think and act as a child of God.

Illness is nothing but an accumulation of foreign matter in the body, and if you want to cure your body you have to clean out that foreign matter. This is what health really is: purity.6 And the reason why it is so important for us to harvest the sun’s particles every morning is because they are the only ones that leave no impurities or waste of any kind. Everything you eat, drink and breathe necessarily leaves some waste. Only the sun’s rays are of such a nature as to leave no waste. That is why we have to learn to nourish ourselves with that higher element: light.

If I ask you how long a human being can survive without eating, you will say, ‘Forty, fifty, sixty days or more.’ And how long can you go without drinking? ‘Ten or fifteen days.’ And how long can you live without air? ‘Only a few minutes.’ From this it is clear that solid food (which corresponds to the element earth) is less important for humans than liquid food (which corresponds to the element water) and that liquid is even less important than the gaseous element, air. And now, if I ask how long someone can survive without fire, you will say, ‘Oh, years! There are people who have lived for years with no heating.’ But I’m not talking about that kind of fire. I’m talking about the inner fire. At the very instant a person loses that inner fire, they die. As soon as a person’s heart loses its warmth, they cease to live. Fire, therefore, is the element that is most important to us, and that is why we must learn to nourish it and keep it alive within us.

This is something new! Human beings are accustomed to nourishing themselves only with solid, liquid and gaseous elements. And what do they do with the fourth element: fire and light? Nothing, or next to nothing! They have not learned how to nourish themselves with light, and yet it is even more necessary to them than air. So, all those who criticize and ridicule us because we go to watch the sunrise every morning are simply showing their ignorance and stupidity. We go to the sunrise in order to nourish ourselves with light. Instead of laughing at us they would do far better to do the same! Humans need to feed on light in order to nourish their brain. The brain, too, needs food! And its food is light. Light awakens those faculties that give humans access to the spiritual world. As long as they continue to nourish their brain only with solid, liquid or gaseous elements (which the brain needs least), humans’ understanding will be very limited; they may understand material things but they will never be able to grasp the mysteries of the universe.

You may say, ‘Yes, but when we eat and drink we’re feeding the brain as well as all the rest.’ This is true, but you are feeding only the least subtle part of the brain. For the brain is composed of several different zones divided according to a hierarchy of functions. Some contain centres which enable us to make our way amongst the realities of the physical and intellectual worlds, but others have centres capable of penetrating the realities of the spiritual world. If you learn to nourish your brain with the subtle element, light, the results will be different. Tradition tells us that one day Zoroaster asked the god Ahura Mazda how the first humans were nourished, and Ahura Mazda replied, ‘They ate fire and drank light.’7

Perhaps you will say, ‘That’s all very fine, but it may take centuries to replace all our old particles.’ Not necessarily! You can accelerate that transformation by the intensity of your love. The more you love light, the more you will attract it to you. The majority of human beings are as totally unconscious of the sun as they are of their food. They never worry about how they eat. Even if they spend mealtimes talking, gesticulating or arguing, they think their body will absorb and sort out the elements it needs to function correctly. And, of course, it is true that the body does this. But what they do not know is that their food contains subtle elements and forces, drawn from space, and that only if they eat consciously can these be absorbed.8 These elements, which belong to the etheric, astral and even to the mental planes, can help us improve our thoughts and feelings and our behaviour. This is a fact, but only if we eat intelligently and in all consciousness.

And it is exactly the same thing when you go to the sunrise. If you sit there and think of all kinds of other things, you will receive some slight benefit on the physical level from the sun’s light and warmth, but you will not receive the subtler elements that could help you in your spiritual evolution. If you are conscious that through its rays the sun is sending you its own love, wisdom and beauty, its own life, then you are preparing yourself to receive these gifts. You are opening up thousands of little doors through which the sun’s rays can come in and bring you their treasures. And, in this way you fill your whole being with the benefits of the sun.

So now you can see why it is so important to be conscious of what the sun represents. It is only on this condition that you will be in a position to receive the elements that will help you to penetrate the laws and mysteries of nature and to experience peace and happiness.

1 See Les bases spirituelles de la médecine, Brochure n° 322.

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

3 See Respiration – Spiritual Dimensions and Practical Applications, Brochure n° 303.

4 See Meditation, Brochure n° 302.

5 See Love Greater Than Faith, Izvor Coll. n° 239, chap. 4: ‘Your faith has made you well’.

6 See A New Earth – Methods, exercises, formulas, prayers, Complete Works, vol. 13, chap. 6: ‘Methods of purification’.

7 See ‘Know Thyself’: Jnana Yoga, Complete Works, vol. 17, chap. 6: ‘Food for the soul and the spirit’.

8 See The Yoga of Nutrition, Izvor Coll. n° 204.

Chapter Five
The solar plexus

The light, warmth and life we know here on earth are a very inferior reflection of true light, true warmth and true life. Behind the light of the sun is the light of God. But we can have no knowledge of this light, any more than we can know his warmth, his love or his life, that is, the most intense degree of life. God is utterly unknowable, incomprehensible for us, and yet, at the same time, he almost touches us, although in a very remote and less perfect form. You must not think of the light of the sun as the true light of God. It is a reflection of the true light. That other light, which we can neither know nor comprehend, is so subtle, so tremendously potent that, for us and even for many creatures of the spirit world that are far more advanced than we are, it is darkness.

In Initiatic Science it is said that ‘out of darkness came forth light.’ In the beginning was chaos, unorganized matter or hyle as it is called in Greek. This original chaos is represented by a circle: zero.1 Symbolically, the circle represents infinite, inanimate matter. But it is very difficult for us to understand these notions, particularly if we try to do so on the purely intellectual level: the human mind is virtually incapable of grasping these truths. And this explains why philosophers and scholars who try to understand everything with their intellects fail to really understand. When it is a question of theories, all right, the brain can cope! But to really understand things, that is, to feel, taste and live them, is not within the scope of the brain.

You have often heard the saying that it is the heart that understands. Even the Gospels refer to the heart as the seat of understanding. But what heart are they referring to? People think it means the physical heart, the organ that pumps blood. No. The true heart, the heart according to the initiates, is the solar plexus. It is the solar plexus that feels, understands and grasps the great cosmic truths. The brain is capable only of arguing, writing, talking and bragging about its knowledge, without having any clear idea of reality. Look at the way it is in the world today, the world of the fifth race: people explain, talk and write books, but, in reality, they have not understood what they are talking about for the simple reason that their brains are incapable of perfect understanding. We have to live things to understand them, to live them with our whole being.

The solar plexus governs all the functions of the physical body: respiration, elimination, circulation, nutrition and growth. And it is also by means of the solar plexus that humans can enter into a true communication with the universe, because the solar plexus is linked to the entire universe, and this is not the case for the brain. In actual fact, communication between the brain and the universe could be established, but the brain is not yet sufficiently developed, for it is of very recent formation. The solar plexus, on the other hand, was formed much longer ago, and it in turn formed and nourished the brain. The brain is the offspring of the solar plexus, and that is why it sends the brain sustenance and support; when it ceases to do so, a person becomes tired and sleepy, their head aches and they are unable to think clearly.

The brain is not cut off from the solar plexus; if it cannot always fully benefit from the support offered by the solar plexus, it is because it has not yet learned to communicate correctly with it. I have already explained to you that the solar plexus is a brain in reverse. In the brain, the grey matter is on the outside and the white matter on the inside, whereas in the solar plexus the grey matter is on the inside and the white matter on the outside. Also, I have already explained that it is the grey matter that enables us to think and the white matter that enables us to feel. Thanks to the white matter on the outside, the solar plexus feels all that goes on in a person and in each of his or her cells. And that is why it works ceaselessly to restore order, whereas the brain doesn’t even notice that anything is wrong until it has become very serious and everything grinds to a halt. And even then, it is incapable of remedying the situation. For example, if your heart beats too fast or too slowly, or if you have a stomach ache, the brain is powerless to help. Besides, it is not its job! Whereas if the solar plexus has the proper conditions it needs in order to function normally, it can set everything right. It has an extraordinary pharmacy at its disposal that you cannot begin to imagine. And as it is in contact with all the organs of the body and all the cells, it knows what is going on and can intervene. So it is far better equipped than the brain. But all of this has never been properly explained, even by medical science.

The brain came into existence very late, both in animals and in human beings. In fact, the ant’s brain is far better organized than ours, because ants have existed for longer than humans. When you compare the brain of an ant with that of a human being, you are astounded to see how ants have managed to organize such a tiny brain. The human brain is not yet fully organized, but it will be eventually, because its mission is to take in the total sum of all knowledge; it is designed to achieve fantastic results. But, I repeat: the organ which guides and governs at the moment, and on which all others depend, is the solar plexus, together with the hara centre2 situated a little lower down, for the two are associated.

Westerners are destroying themselves because they centre all their activity in the brain: study, calculations, stress, etc. As the brain is not equipped to stand up to such great tension, much of the nervous illness of our time comes from its being overworked. If Westerners knew how to share out the work between the brain and the solar plexus they would never be tired, because the solar plexus never tires: it is an almost inexhaustible reservoir. But if someone lives a disordered life the solar plexus is prevented from functioning correctly. It feels constricted, jammed, the nerves are ill. Someone who lives a disordered life is in the process of destroying this most precious element, the one on which their whole system depends.

In the ancient treatises on alchemy there is constant reference to a kind of oil or essence that possessed marvellous properties: it could give health, intelligence, beauty, knowledge and so on. In point of fact, all living things, plants, animals and humans, can distil this essence. It has been variously called the true sap, prana, the elixir of eternal life, etc. Some people call it magnetism. This is what Jesus was referring to when he said, ‘From his belly will flow streams of living water.’3 And when people eat and breathe (for the air is full of the essence distilled by the sun and we can receive it when we breathe), and when they think, they are trying to distil this oil or essence.

As I have already told you, this essence can be found everywhere. Plants draw it from the soil, the air and the sun’s rays, and thanks to it they produce their sap. The sap of plants is a symbol of the living sap that flows in us. And where is the spring from which it flows? In the solar plexus. Sometimes, when you are worried or discontented and impatient, if you are sufficiently sensitive to what goes on within you, you can feel that your solar plexus is drained. The solar plexus contains living magnetism and when it is upset and the magnetism escapes, you feel that your strength has left you and that you are incapable either of action or of concentration.

On the other hand, if you are happy and calm you can feel your solar plexus at ease; you can feel something is flowing in it, like a spring. The solar plexus is the reservoir of our vital forces, the accumulator of all our energies, and if you know how to refill it every day you will have a source at hand from which to draw the energies you need at any moment.

And now, here is an exercise to do at sunrise: while you meditate on the light and warmth of the sun, put your right hand on your solar plexus. In this way you fill it with the forces and energies that will enable you to go on with your work without tiring.

BIBLICAL REFERENCES

The heart, the seat of understanding – Matthew 13: 15, Mark 8: 17-18, Luke 24: 25, John 12: 40

‘From his belly will flow streams of living water’ – John 7: 38

1 See Cosmic Balance – The Secret of Polarity, Izvor Coll. n° 237, chap. 3: ‘One and zero’.

2 See Man’s Subtle Bodies and Centres – the Aura, the Solar Plexus, the Chakras…, Izvor Coll. n° 219, chap. 4: ‘The hara centre’.

3 See Sons and Daughters of God, Izvor Coll. n° 240, chap. 12: ‘Out of his belly shall flow living waters’.

Chapter Six
We are made in the image of the sun

I

When we look at the sun, the first thing we see is a luminous disk which never changes shape or size and which can be observed, measured, photographed and so on. What we see is the sun’s body. But if we want to study what emerges from it, the light that pours out from the centre towards the periphery, if we want to know what that light is and how far it reaches out into space, we find ourselves faced with an impossible task. It is quite beyond our imagination.

Human beings are built on the same pattern as the sun: they have a clearly defined physical body which does not change. But what do we know about what flows from them: their thoughts and feelings, their radiations and emanations? Not very much. People have a tendency to take the body for the whole person, but before long they are going to have to revise these preconceived notions. They will recognize that only esoteric science is completely truthful, because it has always taken into account both aspects at once: the objective, measurable aspect of the material phenomena, which must not be neglected, but also and above all, the spiritual, living aspect, the emanations and radiations, the nature and power of which are still unknown.

I told you one day that the planets and the sun touched us, and that surprised you, but it is true. The sun touches us from afar by means of its rays. And we, who are built on the same pattern as the sun, have powers that reach far beyond the bounds of our physical bodies by means of our thoughts, our soul and our spirit. Just as the sun acts on metals, plants, animals and human beings, just as it penetrates, warms and nourishes them, in the same way, by means of our emanations, we can transform, improve, enlighten and vivify creatures far away from us.

But let’s take this further: the luminous disk in the sky, which is perfectly circumscribed, is the sun’s body. The rays flowing from it are its thoughts, its soul and its spirit, which it sends out to the periphery to distribute the abundance of its riches. And when they have discharged their load of treasure they go back to the sun to be recharged before going out again, to visit other creatures in space.1

In our bodies, the heart represents the sun: it has the same function, the same untiring activity. Without interruption, the heart continues its work even when the other organs of the body relax a little, because it has only one aim: to help, support, feed, build and repair. It seeks only to give, to be impersonal, generous and full of love. But have human beings ever realized that they possess a vital organ in their own physical bodies, the heart, and that it represents the sun within?

In the same way, the rays of light that the sun sends out correspond to the blood. Like it, they are filled with all that is useful, beneficial, profitable and salutary for all creatures. When the blood has distributed its load of nutritious, invigorating, healing materials to the cells and absorbed their impurities, it returns, but not directly to the sun, the heart: first it goes to the lungs of the universe to be cleansed of those impurities. The planet which corresponds to the lungs is Jupiter. Astrology attributes the role of the liver to Jupiter; the liver has the same function as the lungs in another area: it cleanses and purifies the system of its poisons. In Bulgarian, the liver is called cheren drob, ‘black lung’, whereas the lungs are called bel drob, ‘white lung’. You can see the striking comparison: in two different areas, the task of both organs is to purify.

Although astrology generally links Jupiter with the liver, I attribute this role to Saturn. Mythology can help us to understand the relationship: in the beginning Jupiter was in the liver and Saturn in the lungs, but when Jupiter deposed his father, he took over the government of the lungs and relegated Saturn to the liver. Ever since, Saturn has led an underground life in the mines like the liver, which works below the diaphragm in darkness, amongst poisons.

But we had better leave all that alone and get back to the sun! So, the light that flows from the sun is its blood. Once the sun’s rays have been used by the planets and the innumerable other creatures of the universe (for space is inhabited by billions of creatures that receive the light of the sun and find their nourishment in it), they lose some of their light and warmth, and they turn to Jupiter, who purifies them (Saturn and the moon both play a part in this process of purification), and finally they return to the sun. Then, once more laden with love, wisdom, truth and force, the sun’s rays are sent out again into the whole universe.

So, you see, the solar system is a living organism with its own circulatory system. The life of the solar system flows from the sun, its heart, which beats tirelessly in order to keep the whole body supplied with the nourishment it needs. And this is why the heart is the symbol of impersonality, disinterestedness and love, because in man and woman it takes the place of the sun. What makes the sun so luminous and warm is its desire to give, always to give. If you deprive someone of their love and kindness, of their desire to help their fellow men and women, their face becomes sombre and lacklustre. Look at someone who is on their way to visit a sick or unhappy friend, taking them presents and consolation: their face is radiant and full of beauty. And then look at a criminal who is plotting some nefarious deed: they are sombre, tense and ill at ease: the light has gone out of them. You must learn to understand this language. The stronger your desire to enlighten, instruct and help others, the more the light within you will increase and spread, until it forms an extraordinary, brilliant, luminous aura all around you. It is the sun that possesses the true criteria and measures, the absolute laws. And that is why I never try to learn from books: for me, the sun is the only true book.

And now, have you never been surprised that the sun should give and give and radiate as it does, for billions of years, and never be exhausted? What you do not know is that there is a law of divine love, according to which the more you give, the more you receive. A vacuum cannot exist in nature. An empty space is immediately filled by something else. And this law is effective on all levels. If what you give is luminous, radiant, beneficial, in return you will receive elements of the same quality, with the same luminous, radiant quintessence. But if you emanate filth, in no time at all your supply of filth will be replenished.

The sun is inexhaustible because in its desire to give it constantly receives. It sends out its rays to us, but at the same time it receives new energies, ceaselessly, from the infinite, the immense, the absolute.2 It never ceases to give, sending out its rays towards the periphery whilst, in its own central core, it is constantly absorbing energy from the absolute. It explained this to me one day, ‘I am permanently tuned in to the infinite, to the divinity, and as my thoughts and desires are perfectly pure, I attract the purest and most luminous energies. Learn from me how to become perfect, inexhaustible, tireless. Adopt the same aims as I have. Make it your ideal to be like me and to work in the same way, and you will see that this is true: if you spend your energies for the good of others, you will immediately find yourself filled with new energy.’ How does this happen? It is mysterious, but it is true! Whereas if you spend your energies pursuing too personal a goal you will take a long time to recuperate and be strong again. If by some misfortune you fall ill, it will perhaps be months or even years before you are well again. People who are inspired by the purest thoughts and the highest ideal always recover very quickly.

Of course, you will say it is difficult to attain to the tremendously exalted stature of the sun. That is true, I know. But if human beings gradually perfect and purify themselves and become more spiritual, generation after generation, they will acquire the same qualities as the sun: they will be tireless, invulnerable and radiant.

II

Esoteric science teaches us that no evil spirit has the right to enter the dwelling place of an initiate. An initiate can post a notice on their own door forbidding evil spirits to enter under pain of such and such a punishment for failing to respect the order. When they want to perform a magic ritual or an important work, they begin by designating and consecrating a special place in order to prevent evil spirits from entering it; they draw a circle round it, inscribe some sacred names, and then they are free to work in peace.3 Only higher beings have the right to enter this circle. Lower entities must remain outside no matter how they scream and threaten, and if they attempt to enter they are instantly struck down.

When human beings want to create, they are like a pregnant woman or a mother bird who is ready to lay her eggs: they need a nest, a peaceful retreat. In the invisible world it is exactly the same; every spirit has its own place specially reserved for it in infinite space. Every spiritual being dwells in a clearly defined place, protected by certain vibrations or colours or by a particular quintessence. No other being has the right to enter and disturb things with its antagonistic vibrations. Only the highest beings have the right to go wherever they like because theirs is never a disturbing influence.

In the dwellings of humans, millions, even billions of beings come and go at will, moving about without anyone noticing them. If you fail to put up a ‘No entry’ sign on your door, by which I mean if you fail to consecrate your home, lower entities will see the door is wide open and will come in and steal. When this happens it is no good complaining to divine Justice, you will simply be told, ‘It’s your own fault! You should have put up a fence or at least a notice.’

As your heart, soul and spirit remain wide open to all comers and are not consecrated and protected until you have put up a fence of light, any spirit has the right to come in and dirty everything, vandalize your home and steal your possessions. They cannot be punished for it. It is up to the owner to take steps to prevent this. Just as, in the past, cities and castles were protected by moats, ramparts and drawbridges, in the same way disciples must surround themselves with walls, ramparts and fortifications. For disciples, as for initiates, the very best form of protection against bad vibrations and the spirits of darkness is their aura.4 The more vast and luminous their aura and the greater the purity of its colours, the safer they will be, for the aura acts as a shell, an armour, to protect against all malevolent currents. Do you ever think about developing your aura? No, you leave yourselves wide open to the comings and goings of all kinds of undesirable beings, and then you complain that you have been robbed, that you are worn out, miserable and unhappy.

Look at how everything in nature is on its guard: birds, insects and wild beasts all develop some form of protection against discovery and capture. Why should humans be so guileless and trusting as to believe that they will be spared and that no enemy threatens their safety? I assure you, millions of entities are relentlessly at work night and day to bring down humanity. They have sworn to wipe it out completely. Fortunately for humanity it has its protectors, too! It is thanks to them that humankind has not already been wiped off the face of the earth, but it still has to endure much suffering and torment.

The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that you must work to develop your aura. And how can you do this? By going to see the sun rise in the morning. Look at the sun and see how it has wrapped itself in a wonderful aura full of marvellous colours. Say to yourself, ‘I, too, want to surround myself with the most beautiful colours.’ Close your eyes and imagine yourself clothed in purple light, then in blue, green, yellow, orange and red. Or if you like, begin with the red and work up to the purple, keeping each colour around you for a few minutes. Bathe yourself in this light, imagine that it radiates a long, long way and that all creatures that come within its radius benefit from it, that everybody you meet or who comes into contact with you in one way or another will receive some blessing from it.

This is how your aura can be a protection for you and at the same time a blessing for others. Thanks to your aura you can help others. In fact, this is something you should know: when someone you love is ill, unhappy or discouraged, if you really want to help them, you can send them colours. Oh, yes, there are a great many exercises you can do with your aura and with colours.

1 See Light is a Living Spirit, Izvor Coll. n° 212, chap. 2: ‘The sun’s rays, their nature and activity’.

2 See above, chap. 1: ‘Light: essence of creation’, and Angels and Other Mysteries of the Tree of Life, Izvor Coll. n° 236, chap. 6: ‘Ain Soph Aur, unlimited light’.

3 See The Book of Divine Magic, Izvor Coll. n° 226, chap. 2: ‘The magic circle of the aura’.

4 See Notre peau spirituelle, l’aura, Brochure n° 309.

Chapter Seven
The spirits of the seven lights

It is written in the book of Zohar:

‘There are seven lights in the Most High, and in them dwells the Most Ancient of all the Ancients, the Mystery of all Mysteries, the Hidden of all the Hidden Ones: Ain Soph.’1

Those seven lights or rays are the seven colours of the spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. They are the seven spirits that stand forever before the throne of God. The colours produced by the prismatic refraction of light therefore also have symbolic significance.

When you look at the sunlight through a prism you discover a world of untold richness and splendour. But how is it that when light, which is one, is passed through a prism, which is three, it becomes seven? One, three and seven! This phenomenon has always intrigued me ever since I was a child, and it has always been a delight to me to see the wealth of beauty and purity contained in the light of the sun. It is this that led me to see that men and women are themselves a prism, a trinity. In order for the light of the sun to be perfectly refracted into the seven colours, it is essential that the three sides of the prism be equilateral as well as perfectly transparent. Similarly, human beings must harmoniously develop the triangle formed by their mind, their heart and their will so that the light of God, the light of the sun, may shine through them and be manifested in all the splendour of the seven colours.

Only disciples and initiates, who have worked to develop their intelligence, who have accustomed their hearts to feel and love properly and who have become strong through their constant striving, through their will to overcome all their negative aspects, only they are able to refract white light into the seven colours, and their aura grows continually in beauty and purity as well as in size.

Those who never properly develop the triangle of their mind, heart and will have only two or three colours in their aura. All the others are absent. And if, by misfortune, they distort their triangle, then their intellect becomes malicious, cunning and aggressive, their heart is filled with hatred, evil, cruelty, they thirst for revenge and sensual pleasures, and their will is at the service of the forces of destruction. When this is the case, their aura not only loses all its vivid, gleaming colours but becomes full of all kinds of horrors.

Initiatic Science identifies the red ray with the spirit of life. The vibrations of red create a bond between human beings and the spirit of life. Red has a vivifying effect and enhances vitality. But there are thousands of different shades of red, each one of which represents a different force: love, sensuality, dynamic energy, intoxication, anger, etc.

The orange ray is identified with the spirit of holiness, the second spirit. By means of orange light, therefore, you can create a bond between yourself and holiness. But here, too, there are innumerable different shades, which may represent dignity, individualism or pride. A certain shade of orange can improve your health, another inspires and strengthens faith, but above all, orange is associated with holiness and health.

Golden yellow is the spirit of wisdom. Its vibrations encourage people to read, reflect and meditate, to seek wisdom and to be guided by reason and prudence in their acts.

The green ray is the spirit of eternity and evolution. Green is the colour of growth and development and also of wealth. It is linked to hope, and it helps humans to advance along the evolutionary path.

The blue ray is identified with the spirit of truth. It is associated with religion, peace and music. Blue develops the musical sensibilities, pacifies the nervous system, heals the lungs and also has a beneficial influence on the eyes, which are the symbol of truth.

Indigo is identified with the spirit of force, the spirit of royalty. It has approximately the same properties as blue.

The purple or violet ray is the spirit of divine omnipotence and of spiritual love. It is the spirit of sacrifice. Purple is a very powerful colour, which protects humans; a very mystical, very subtle colour, which helps the astral body to leave the physical body and travel in other worlds. It also helps them to understand God’s love. It is not at all beneficial to plant life.

When I was a boy of fifteen or sixteen, I did a great deal of work with colours. Not only did I picture them in my imagination and meditate on them often, I also used to daub coloured paint on the windows of my room to see what effect they would have on me. I would meditate in the room filled with the coloured light that filtered through the painted glass, and for a few days I would observe the effects that each colour had on me, then I would wash it off and begin all over again with the next colour. I hardly need tell you that my parents and the neighbours thought I was going out of my mind! But I continued, unperturbed, to experiment with the different colours. With purple I soared away into other worlds. I even invited some friends in to see what effect this colour had on them, and all they did was go to sleep! And all my flowers died. But I still love purple.

When the red in a person’s aura is no longer clear and pure, it is because he or she has given way to anger, drunkenness or sensuality. For each one of these vices the shade of red is different and clairvoyants can readily distinguish them. From time immemorial, red has always been associated with blood and war. It is a beautiful colour, but it must be very pure, a shade that when mixed with white produces a luminous pink.

Pink also expresses love: the white contributes purity and harmony. It has a pacifying influence; when free of violence and egoism, love becomes wiser. It becomes tenderness. That is why pink is seen as the symbol of tenderness, of delicate sentiments. I advise someone who has too much vitality to create a bond with white or to associate with other people who have a lot of white in them, that is to say, who are pure and honest. Then there will at least be a mixture, and the red will become pink. In this way they will no longer be tormented and pursued by the forces of red within them. Pink also has a beneficial effect on the intelligence. We all know that if we say someone wears rose-coloured glasses, it means they are optimistic. Someone who looks at life through rose-coloured spectacles has a spirit unencumbered by worry or sombre, negative ideas. He or she sees the good side of life and is a happy person.

The same general remarks can be made for the other colours: certain shades of blue in a person’s aura reveal that they have lost their faith or that they are no longer rooted in peace and truth. If the yellow is dull or discoloured, it indicates that that person does not follow their reason or that they are incapable of deep thought and understanding; you cannot count on their intellectual capacity. But I do not want to prolong my explanations on this subject; I have other things I want to talk to you about. It is enough if you remember that the seven spirits which are forever in the presence of the everlasting Lord are the spirit of life: red; the spirit of holiness: orange; the spirit of wisdom: yellow; the spirit of eternity: green; the spirit of truth: blue; the spirit of force: indigo and the spirit of sacrifice: purple.

If you want to produce any particular colour, you can always get it by combining two other colours. For instance, purple and orange will give you red, red and yellow will give you orange, orange and green give yellow, and so on. Each colour is the offspring of two other colours: its father and mother. But if you do not know which colours to mix you will never get good results. And why is this? Simply because the oppositions and affinities that exist between colours exist also between the planets that correspond to those colours.

Red, for instance, corresponds to Mars. Mars is impetuous, violent and destructive. It represents the masculine principle in all its potency, but only on one plane, for the sun (although, strictly speaking, the sun is not a planet) and Jupiter are also masculine, but on a higher level. Green corresponds to Venus, and people in whom red is the dominant colour are attracted to those in whom green predominates, because they set each other off to advantage, and this is wonderful. But if they form a union and fuse with each other they give birth to a monster! They can go for walks together, talk to each other, look at each other and exalt each other’s good qualities, but they must not unite, for the mixture of red and green produces a very dirty colour. It is the same with orange and blue: the mixture is horrible, but when you put them side by side, both become more expressive and bring out the best in each other. Blue corresponds to the planet Jupiter and orange corresponds to the sun, and both are positive, or masculine, and that is why they should never marry.

And now, take, for example, yellow and purple, which should never be mixed either. Yellow corresponds to Mercury, and according to the Cabbalah purple corresponds to the moon. However, the moon is usually associated with white, so if we say that the moon is white, then we can attribute purple to Neptune, for Neptune is identical with the moon on a higher plane. Similarly, Uranus is identical with Mercury, but on a higher plane. You will understand these relationships better if you see their position on the sephirotic Tree of Life.2

Mercury (Hod) is in opposition to Uranus (Chokmah). On another axis, Venus (Netzach) is in opposition to Saturn (Binah). On the central pillar, the Moon (Yesod) is in opposition to Neptune (Kether). On the horizontal, Mars (Geburah), which is on the pillar of judgment, is in opposition to Jupiter (Chesed) on the pillar of mercy. One day I will explain all these relationships to you, and you will see how Venus and Saturn represent almost the same reality manifested in different regions. It is quite possible that this contradicts what you have learned before, but you will see, for example, how, on the column of love, the love of Venus becomes the intelligence of Saturn and how, on the other column, the practical intelligence of Mercury, the intelligence of reasoning, words and business, becomes the wisdom of Uranus when it is transposed onto a higher level.

Not much is to be found in books about these correspondences, but heaven has revealed many of them to me. The sephiroth were not placed haphazardly on the Tree of Life: there are geometrical relationships between them which are significant. But all of this is very far from your present preoccupations, and it is not necessary for you to go into these abstract, philosophical questions. Today, simply remember what I have said about the colours, so that you can use them in your efforts to advance. For instance, you can work with a different colour every day, starting with red, which is nearest to the earth, and going on to orange, yellow, green, and so on. Or, if you prefer, you can start with purple. You can move upwards or downwards, whichever you prefer.

Red is the colour closest to the earth. That is why the floor of our big dining hall here*, and in most of our other buildings, is red, whereas the upper parts of the buildings are blue. The sky is blue and the earth red. The Hebrew name for the first human was Adam. The place where Adam lived was called Eden. The Hebrew word for earth is adamah, and for red, adom. So the words ‘red’, ‘earth’, ‘human’ and ‘Eden’ in Hebrew are all formed from the same root. This is why the Cabbalah calls Adam ‘the red man.’ But the old Adam must die and give way to the new human, the Christ. And Christ is symbolized by blue.

The work of the alchemists was precisely this: to transform red into blue. This simply means that everything that is still rough, violent and brutish in humans must be transformed and sublimated. Red and blue are the two opposite poles, and if you want to move from one to the other you can consult the alchemists: they will tell you that you have to learn to work with acid and alkali. If you know how to work with the two principles, masculine and feminine, then you will be able to change the colours. You will be able to turn blue into red or red into blue by adding a few drops of acid or of alkali. So, you see, chemistry can throw light on religious precepts, but religious people do not know this. And nor do chemists. For scientists, these are purely physical phenomena, and they never attempt to interpret them. Science limits itself to noting facts and never looks for the underlying reason, the deeper significance. I am different: I enjoy interpreting facts for you.

So we are the red Adam, who must make way for the Christ. This transformation is possible: it is the goal of all religion. The old human, Adam, subject to his own passions (red), must be replaced by the Christ, the new human (blue), who dwells in truth, peace and harmony.3 Blessed are they who understand! Blessed are they who follow the light!

I will end by quoting those words again from the Book of Zohar. I love them dearly and often repeat them to myself:

‘There are seven lights in the Most High, and in them dwells the Most Ancient of all the Ancients, the Mystery of all Mysteries, the Hidden of all the Hidden Ones: Ain Soph.’

Aren’t those magnificent words? Repeat them to yourself often, and ‘Let there be light!’ From now on, may you all work on light, with light and for light!

1 See Angels and Other Mysteries of the Tree of Life, Izvor Coll. n° 236, chap. 6: ‘Ain Soph Aur: unlimited light’.

2 See above, chap. 2: ‘Introduction to the sephirotic Tree of Life’.

3 See The Philosopher’s Stone – in the Gospels and in Alchemy, Izvor Coll. n° 241, chap. 13: ‘The growth of the divine seed’.

Chapter Eight
The sun as our model

I

Reading of the thought for the day:

‘The highest ideal is to take the sun as your model. If you try to imitate a scholar, a philosopher, even a hero, a saint or an initiate, you will certainly receive some small particles of their virtues and qualities, but never as many or as pure as those you will receive if your model is the sun.

‘The image of perfection is the sun, and if you adopt him as your model, if, like him, you think of nothing but bringing light, warmth and life to all creatures, then you will really work your own transformation. For even if you never acquire all the light, warmth and life of the sun, the desire to do so is sufficient to project you into heavenly regions where you can really perform wonders. This desire to communicate light, warmth and life to other creatures will make you yourself more luminous, more loving and more alive.’

Here, again, we have a text that will scandalize some of you and astonish others. Take the sun as your model? Everyone will say, ‘Look, there’s no sense to it! The sun isn’t a conscious, intelligent being!’ And that is just where they are wrong.

Of course, the sun looks like nothing more than a ball of fire. But what about humans, what do they look like? Bodies function like machines, and the whole universe is a machine. There have even been geniuses, from time to time, telling us that the universe is the result of chance. But isn’t it a bit strange that chance should be so intelligent and so discerning?

If a machine works it is not the result of chance: there has to be someone setting it in motion. No one has ever seen a machine start functioning unless an intelligence has got it going.

Wherever there is matter there has to be a spirit to animate it. That is why the notion that the sun is no more than an incandescent ball of fire is an error. The sun is a magnificent land,1 inhabited by the most highly evolved creatures, which rule over the planets. And it is their vibrations which are transformed as they pass through space into light and heat. On the sun itself the temperature is very moderate. The only thing is: who will ever believe me? Children, perhaps?

In saying that we should take the sun as our model, I am not belittling any of the great Masters of humankind, because they, too, modelled themselves on the sun. The fact that they enlightened the whole world with their wisdom, that they warmed the hearts of all men and women with their love and that they vivified the whole world with the purity of their lives, all this proves that the sun was their model. Besides, if the sun never ceases to shed light and warmth on us, if it unfailingly sustains life in the universe, it is because it, too, follows the example of a model: the Lord God.

Imitation is an innate tendency in human beings, as it is in all creatures. The problem is, who do we imitate? A movie star? A famous football player? People do not have the right criteria to choose their models wisely, and, above all, they have not the slightest idea of the importance of this question for their psychic life. Suppose you have a friend: the simple fact that you spend time with them is sufficient for you to pick up some of their particles. They give you something of their virtues and vices. In this way, without your being in any way aware of it, they are your model. So, in the same way, if you spend time with the sun, marvelling every day at its goodness, its purity, its power, at the abundance of life that flows from it, you will end by noticing that a transformation is taking place within you, in your cells; that something inside you is beginning to vibrate differently, and you become more and more luminous and loving and better able to communicate life to others.

If you want to have a beneficial influence on human beings, tune in to the sun every day so as to receive some of its particles, which you can then communicate to others. The sun is the only being that can induce in you the best possible disposition towards humankind.

If we do not keep this model of warmth and light constantly before our eyes, what we manifest will necessarily be very inferior. Just look at how most people behave: everybody tries to profit from others and to use them for their own ends, to subjugate them. It is not a pretty sight! Whereas the sun offers us the image of radiant generosity and this has a good influence on us. Even if it is not endowed with intelligence and reason in the usual sense of these terms, the contact with its light and warmth can only inspire in us more generous thoughts and more brotherly feelings.

Of course, there have always been a few exceptional beings whom we could take for models of purity, goodness, intelligence and integrity. But perfection is something more. Perfection supposes the ideally balanced development of the three factors: mind, heart and will, and it is this that is so rare.2 There are people who are extraordinarily intelligent and well-informed but they have no love for their fellow men and women. Others are full of love but they have no will-power, and so on. Life is full of examples of people who are highly developed in one area and lacking in others. Whereas the sun offers the spectacle of the ideal of perfection: its light tells us that it knows everything, its warmth is eloquent proof of its love, and the life that flows from it into the whole universe reveals its omnipotence.

When someone wants to learn the trade of a cooper or barber for instance, they go to someone who knows how to make barrels or trim beards to see how it is done. But when people want to learn how to become immortal, how to attain eternal life, they try to learn from the dead! No one thinks to ask the one being that is really alive! That’s human intelligence for you! They think they can learn life from the books of people who are dead and buried. No one goes to the sun. They only use the sun to obtain light and heat and, nowadays especially, to exploit its energy. They want to bottle the sun and sell it! If you try to talk to all those physicists and engineers about taking the sun as their model they will laugh you to scorn. But you, if you listen to me, if you put the sun before all other concerns, you will see for yourselves how it will flood you with light, how it will stimulate and heal you.

But I talk to you about this over and over again, and I know very well that some of you will continue to take some little whipper-snapper or some insignificant little damsel as your model! I can hear you ask, ‘Do you mean to say we shouldn’t have a sweetheart?’ Of course you may have a sweetheart, but that is just it: take the sun as your model in your loving. Turn to the sun, fill yourself with its light, and then kiss your sweetheart and you will see how different it is. Actually, it would be preferable not to kiss each other, but if you must, then at least, before you do so, fill yourself with the light, warmth and purity of the sun.

As for myself I have never advised you to take me as a model. I have always said I am simply a signpost. I look towards the sun and point in its direction to show you the way to it. For it is the sun that will give you everything. What can I give you? All I can do is lead you towards the sun, the best example of perfection there is.3

Most people think there is nothing better than the work they have chosen: their own particular trade or profession. Well, I believe that nothing can compare to this work, which is still unknown: to become like the sun, which illuminates, warms and gives life to all creatures. Yes, take the sun as your example, and, like it, spread light, warmth and life around you. Of course, it is not easy to become like the sun. Even several hundred years from now you still will not have managed it. But at least, if you are faithful to your ideal of resembling it, your ideal will produce such a transformation that, inside yourself, you will truly become a reflection of the sun, and in your presence your fellow human beings will begin to feel more luminous, more loving and more alive.

There are thousands of different occupations in the world, especially in recent years, which have seen the creation of so many new professions, but none can be compared to the occupation of those who have the ambition of becoming like the sun. No other work could ever satisfy them. Look at your own occupations: whatever you do, you are always limited. You may be a chemist, an astronomer, a musician, a painter, a lawyer, an attorney... whatever you may be, part of yourself is fulfilled by your work, but neither your science nor your art will help you solve all the other problems of your life (your husband or wife and children, your friends or even your health).

All those who consciously approach the sun with the desire to resemble it end by bringing life, warmth and sunlight to others. The others, who sense this, are drawn to them. How can you resist someone who makes you feel alive and full of warmth and light when you are with them? Everybody tries to avoid those who are dull, cold and lifeless, and if you can’t avoid them, you take care to protect yourself from their influence. Look at the flowers: at night they close their petals, but in the daytime they open up to the sun. Flowers speak to us. They say, ‘Hearts can only be opened by warmth and light.’ But who understands the language of plants?

Take the sun as your model. Even later in the day when you are no longer in the presence of the rising sun, watch yourself, analyse yourself to see whether you are radiating and spreading light, whether you are warming and delighting the hearts of others, whether you are bringing them life. Every minute of the day, ask yourself this, because it is your key to perfection.

II

The most sublime lesson the sun gives us is its love for all creatures. It does not worry about who receives its rays. Whether human beings are intelligent or stupid, honest or criminals, whether they deserve its benefits or not, it pours out its light on all without distinction. In this, the sun is absolutely unique. Take any one of the extraordinary beings who have lived on earth: all of them had some partiality, some preferences, some dislikes. Even the greatest prophets, even the greatest Masters, never manage to free themselves completely from the need to apply the law of justice and to punish the wicked.

Why does the sun give its light, warmth and love to all creatures without discrimination, as abundantly to criminals as to saints? Is it blind? Can it not see their crimes? Or is it simply a mechanism without intelligence or discernment, in no way concerned by the virtue or the wickedness, the honesty or the dishonesty of men and women? No! The sun sees human faults and crimes more clearly than anyone else, but, for the sun, these are just little mistakes, little deficiencies, little blemishes. It cleanses them, heals them, washes them and continues with unlimited patience to help human beings to reach perfection.

And so you ask, ‘But why such generosity? What is the sun’s philosophy?’ Well, I will tell you. The sun has a certain view of the human race. It can see the immortality and the eternity of the human soul. It knows very well that men and women are fruits that are still unripe, hard, green and sour. So, just as it ripens fruit on trees, filling them little by little with sugar until they have a delicious flavour, it also ripens humanity. But it has also understood that humans take longer to reach maturity than fruit and trees, so it has decided to be patient. It knows that if it continues to warm even a criminal, that criminal will end by being so disgusted with themselves that they will accept the sun’s influence and change into something absolutely adorable: a sensitive poet, a musician, a benefactor of humankind!

The sun never abandons men and women, because it knows that if it did their evolution would miscarry: there would be no more ripe fruit, no more saints or prophets, no more divinities on earth. The sun continues to warm and give light to humans, because it knows the causes and the consequences of their evolution, the beginning and the end, as well as the path they have to tread.4 If it did not know all this, it would be furious, it would close up and become dark, and that would be the end of humankind! The fact that the sun goes on shining is proof that it knows the purpose of its work, the goal of creation, and it continues to help humanity to reach maturity.

To the sun we are like seeds planted in spiritual soil: if we benefit from its rays we are capable of producing flowers with such marvellous scents that even divinities will be in raptures over them. What is a flower? It cannot sing or dance or play the violin, and yet singers, dancers and musicians marvel at it. And we, if we learn to be like flowers, why should we not attract divinities that are so far above us? They will cluster round in raptures over us, exclaiming, ‘Oh, what lovely flowers!’ And they will care for us and help us to become even more pure and luminous and fragrant.

There! The sun knows all that, and that is why it, alone, never tires of doing good to human beings. Everyone else gets tired. They shut up shop and vanish from the scene: dead and gone! But the sun is always there, triumphant and radiant. It says, ‘Come and quench your thirst, take from me. Have you done something wrong? I shan’t hold it against you. Human beings are selfish, evil and vindictive, and if you fall into their hands there’s no knowing where you’ll end. But I’m not like them. I shan’t harm you. Come. Open yourself to my rays. I can give you so much!’ So if we take the sun as our ideal and our model we can become better human beings. When we are near it we find the courage to forget all the difficulties and disappointments we have met with amongst our fellow humans. If we learn to think like the sun we can become divinities, for we will never lose patience. Everyone else is defeated after a while and tells you, ‘Go away. I don’t want to see you anymore. I’ve done all I can for you, and now I’m tired. Go on, get out!’ But the sun never tires of us. Now, perhaps, you understand why I want to lead you to the sun: because it, and only it, can inspire you with noble, divine sentiments.5

One day, with the idea of getting to know the sun’s philosophy better, I made an appointment with it! Yes! We met in a pub, and after ordering our drinks, I said to it, ‘My dear sun, tell me. There’s something that is not quite clear to me: how is it that you shine so brightly?’ And do you know what it told me? It said, ‘It’s because I’m burning with love, and love produces light.’ Then I asked, ‘But please explain to me how you can go on and on loving human beings and giving them your light when you know better than anyone how wicked they are.’ And the sun replied, ‘Oh, you know, I decided a long time ago not to bother about what they were like. I only look after myself, and since it gives me so much pleasure to spread the warmth of my love all around me, I go on doing it and I’m always happy. As to whether humans appreciate me or not, that’s all the same to me, and I advise you to be like me. If you begin to worry about their reactions, you won’t be able to bear it.’

So, I decided to imitate the sun, and that is why I can go on with my work. For, if you believe that humans appreciate me and want to help me, you are mistaken! I’m a thorn in the side of many, and they would dearly love to be rid of me! I assure you: when I see how deceitful, spiteful, self-seeking and ungrateful some are, I feel like packing my bags and leaving people to their own devices. Fortunately, the sun is there, and it whispers, ‘Remember our conversation in the pub.’ ‘Ah, yes, yes’, I reply, and go on with my work. And now what about you? Why shouldn’t you imitate the sun, too?

It appears that science has already calculated the date of the sun’s death; in fact some American scientists believe it is already very ill! But the truth is that the sun possesses the secret of prolonging its own life for as long as it wants, until its whole family has reached perfection. You see, it has a family to bring up and to provide for. All the planets which gravitate around it are its children, and it cannot die until they have reached perfection, that is, until they too have become suns, like their father.

1 See The Fruits of The Tree of Life – The Cabbalistic Tradition, Complete Works, vol. 32, chap. 20: ‘The land of the living’.

2 See The Symbolic Language of Geometrical Figures, Izvor Coll. n° 218, chap. 3: ‘The triangle’, Part I.

3 See What is a Spiritual Master? Izvor Coll. n° 207.

4 See The True Meaning of Christ’s Teaching, Izvor Coll.n° 215, chap. 3: ‘Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect’.

5 See The Seeds of Happiness, Izvor Coll. n° 231, chap. 16: ‘Give without expecting anything in return’ and chap. 17: ‘Love without asking to be loved in return’.

Chapter Nine
The true solar religion

I

Light, warmth and life! The light, the warmth and the life that flow so ceaselessly and in such abundance from the sun! We still have not exhausted all that is contained in these three notions. And now I want to show you how that light, warmth and life can help us to understand one of the most obscure tenets of the Christian religion: the holy trinity.

Theologians tell us that the trinity is a mystery: the mystery of one God in three persons. But what can human beings do with a mystery? They just leave it alone and forget about it. Whereas we, on the contrary, encounter the holy trinity every day, we salute it, spend time in its presence and rejoice in our contemplation of it. The Church may well say that this is blasphemy. Perhaps! But if you talk to human beings about a divinity that is so abstract and distant you must not be surprised at the results: they will no longer have any feeling for the divine Being. He will no longer dwell in them, and they will have no reason to prevent themselves from giving way to their worst instincts and committing every senseless and immoral act that comes into their heads.

In the new religion, which is coming ever closer and will, one day, embrace the whole world, spiritual realities will be closer and more accessible, and people will be able to live them and feel them, to communicate and unite with them. Every day they will receive such extraordinarily luminous nourishment that they will be obliged to transform themselves. For, only if humans absorb the best possible nourishment on all levels can they really be transformed.

Under different names, the trinity can be found in all the religions of the world. There is always the notion of one original Being who engenders another who, in turn, engenders a third. In Christianity they are called Father, Son and Holy Spirit.1 The Father is the life that floods the whole universe, the fountain-head of all creation. The Son might be called the light, for Christ said, ‘I am the light of the world.’ But he is also love, that is, warmth. And the Holy Spirit is sometimes identified with love and sometimes with the light that illuminates men’s intelligence and gives them the power to prophesy, to speak in tongues and to penetrate the great mysteries. In point of fact it makes no difference which person of the trinity is seen as love and which one is seen as light. The Son and the Holy Spirit are one; they each become the other and both have the same powers.

What is essential is to understand that these three principles – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – are present in the life, the light and the warmth of the sun. The Father is life; the Son is love or light and the Holy Spirit is light or love. You may ask, ‘But do we have the right to see such exalted Beings in the light, warmth and life of the sun?’ Yes, indeed you do. And this correspondence is of great practical value: it means we can contemplate the holy trinity every single day. It means we can enter into communion and form a bond with the trinity and benefit from all its great blessings. It is a promise of resurrection and life.

Why cannot Christians understand that the greatest truths are all there, before them, visible to the naked eye? Before long everyone will have under- stood except Christians! They will still be saying, ‘Oh, you know, it’s not the sun that matters. Even if the sun didn’t exist, what would still matter would be the mass. It’s the mass that will save us.’ They have never realized that if the sun did not exist no one would be alive to say mass. They themselves would have been dead, frozen, turned to stone, ages ago. Christians beat everyone else for blindness and narrow-mindedness! I can hear you protesting, ‘But what have you got against Christians?’ Nothing! Nothing at all! I am a Christian too. If I shake them up a bit from time to time, it is simply to try to get them to open their eyes and see things a little more clearly.

When the world above created the world below, it left signs, traces or reflections of itself so that humans could follow these signs and make their way to it. And one of these reflections is the sun. The trinity has no wish to remain forever hidden and inaccessible to human beings: it manifests itself to them by means of the sun so that they can find their way to it. This is something we have to be clear about: the holy trinity is not actually contained in the light, warmth or life of the sun. It is infinitely, unutterably greater. But we can use that light, warmth and life as a means of access to the trinity, as a way of entering into a communion of love with it, as a channel through which we can call upon it to penetrate our whole being.

And, since we are created in the image of God, each one of us must be a trinity. In fact, thanks to our three faculties of intellect, heart and will, we are already a trinity: a trinity which thinks, feels and acts. But, of course, this little trinity is completely lacking in light, life or warmth. It needs to be reanimated, warmed and illuminated by the sun. So, here again, we see the use of being present at the sunrise: little by little our own tiny trinity becomes luminous, warm and vital, like the sun. It begins to draw a little nearer to the great trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Christ said, ‘Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.’2 But, as we have never seen the Father, where can we find a model of his perfection? Here, in the sun, we have the model we need. God is very far above us, very, very far away, but in his mercy he has given us the means to find him. He has, as it were, blazed the trail, and if we follow that trail, which takes us through the sun, we will reach the Father.

Every day, we have before our eyes a sublime image of the holy trinity, and if we can learn to work with this image, our own little trinity will become holy. Everybody repeats Christ’s words, ‘Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,’ but as long as we do not know how the Father manifests himself, if we have no notion or perception of his vibrations, his colours, his power, then Christ’s injunction remains purely theoretical. The sun can explain to us that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are indissolubly one. In the minds of many Christians, the three persons of the trinity are separate and distinct, but in reality they are one: three in one. In the Cabbalah, one is three, and three is one.

In men and women, similarly, the intellect, heart and will are never separate. They are welded together and they work and advance all together. The intellect formulates its plans and the heart encourages it, ‘Go on, go on! I’m with you.’ And the will hurries to carry out the plans. All three gallop abreast to put an idea into effect. Sometimes, however, you can see the will rushing ahead of the mind and the heart. And if the intellect lags too far behind disaster follows. Even if it shouts after the will, ‘Wait for me. Don’t go so fast. You’re making a mistake!’ the will just answers, ‘Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Oh, yes. The three of them have some great discussions... but it is not yet a holy trinity!

If we want our own little trinity to be holy, we have to adopt the sun as our model and strive to resemble it more and more in order to become luminous, warm-hearted and vibrant with life as it is. Of course, it is not possible to attain the fullness of perfection manifested by the sun, but the work we put into it is in the direct line of initiation. Instead of being bogged down in old, useless, outdated notions, it is far better to go and contemplate the sun and strive to reach the ideal of becoming like it. As I have already told you, there is a law of mimicry, according to which all creatures end up resembling their own environment. If you often spend time, a lot of time, contemplating the sun, if you love and understand the sun and soak up its light with all your being, gradually you will become like it. And if you know how to collect and condense the sun’s rays and store them up in your solar plexus, you will have the power to draw on your reserves when you need to, and in this way you will become tireless. This is a profound science, which has to be studied, a real training programme, which requires serious work, and those who do take it seriously will be astonished to see how, every day of their lives, their efforts will be abundantly rewarded.

How is it possible that people do not realize it is the sun that manifests most adequately the generosity, the immensity and the eternity of God? If we want to seek the holy trinity, we must turn to the sun. Every teacher knows you have to begin by showing children the concrete, tangible aspects of things first, that which can be seen and touched, before trying to teach them more abstract things. Religion should have been taught in the same way. Instead of speaking of the divinity, of the holy trinity in such abstract terms that no one, or practically no one, can understand the first thing about it, it would have been so much better to begin with something more concrete and accessible: the sun. We should begin by putting ourselves in the presence of the sun, by drinking in its warmth, light and love, and by thanking God for them. After that, if we have the mental capacity to do so, we can go further and seek the cosmic Spirit, the Absolute.

Perhaps you will ask, ‘But can’t we find God in church, in the sacred host?’ And the answer, of course, is: yes, you can find God in church. But what church, what temple could possibly be compared to nature? And what host could be compared to the sun? You can eat wagonloads of hosts and still be just as evil, jealous, sensual, stupid and sickly as you were before. Whereas, if you go to the sun, that immense host, and if you partake of it every day, you will be obliged to transform yourself. For nowhere else does God manifest himself in all his power, light and warmth as potently as he does in the sun.

Besides, if you think about it, who can deny that even the host is made of materials supplied by the sun? And no one ever thinks of thanking the sun. We accept everything it has to offer: wheat and grapes, and we forget to say ‘Thank you.’ We do not even think that without the sun we could never make a single host or one drop of wine. Why have men and women been so misled? Why has the importance of the sun been hidden from them? Why have they been taught to believe that they will find God in the bread and wine? In reality, it is possible to find God in these symbols, but only if one learns what the symbols really mean.

As you know, the origin of holy communion is the last supper that Jesus ate with his disciples. He took the bread and wine in his hands and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body... Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood... Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life...’3 In point of fact, bread and wine were two deeply significant symbols known to people long before the time of Jesus.

If you read the Bible you will learn that Melchi- zedek was the first to institute the rite of communion when he presented Abraham with the gift of bread and wine.4 Melchizedek was the king of justice (in Hebrew, melek means ‘king’ and zedek means ‘justice’), and he dwelt in the kingdom of Salem (Salem has the same root as shalom, ‘peace’). That is why Melchizedek is called the king of justice and peace. He brought the bread and wine to Abraham as a reward for his victory over the seven sinister kings of Edom, for those seven kings symbolized the seven deadly sins. You must not think that Melchizedek, the greatest of all initiates, went out of his way to reward Abraham for having killed a few hundred, or even a few thousand, enemies in battle. Abraham came from Ur in Chaldea (and ur means ‘light’). He practised magic and called up spirits, and it was on the advice of the spirits who were at his service that he went to Egypt to complete his initiation. So Melchizedek gave Abraham the bread and wine, and you might be tempted to think that this was not much of a reward, unless, of course, you understood their symbolic value. In reality, bread and wine represent the whole of Initiatic Science, which is based on the two cosmic principles: the masculine principle, symbolized by the bread, and the feminine principle, symbolized by the wine, for these two principles are at work in all regions of the universe.

Bread and wine are solar symbols. It is not a question of the physical reality of bread and wine, but of the two properties of the sun: light and heat, which combine together to create life. But the heat is love, the light wisdom. And so we can see that Jesus meant that if we ate his flesh, wisdom, and drank his blood, love, we would have eternal life.

For two thousand years, now, Christians have been eating wagonloads of hosts and drinking barrels of wine without ever attaining everlasting life and even, sadly enough, without being in any way the better for it. The only way to attain eternal life is to eat the light and drink the warmth of Christ, the spirit of the sun.

BIBLICAL REFERENCE

‘I am the light of the world’ – John 8: 12

‘Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect’ – Matthew 5: 48

‘Take, eat; this is my body’ – Matthew 26: 26

‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood’ – John 6: 53

Melchizedek brings the bread and wine to Abraham – Genesis 14: 18-20

II

When Jesus said, ‘No one can go to the Father except through me,’ it was Christ who was speaking through him. He was saying, ‘No one can go to the Father unless he goes through me, because I am the spirit of Christ, who manifests himself through the sun.’ You may object that this is an arbitrary interpretation, but that is not so. I could show you how you can situate each truth in its right place. We find truths scattered and seemingly disconnected, but an initiate must find the links between them and fit each one into its rightful place in the great living book of nature.

I have already shown you how, with its warmth and light and with the life it gives us, the sun is the most perfect image of the trinity we could have here on this earth. The life that flows through the sun is the Father. The light and the warmth can be seen, respectively, either as the Son or as the Holy Spirit, but for an initiate, the Holy Spirit is best portrayed by warmth, that is, love, and the son, Christ, is best portrayed by light, that is, wisdom.

The light that flows from the sun, therefore, that light that produces such tremendous transformations in the universe, that brings with it such great benefits for all creatures and whose true nature is still unknown, that light is Christ, the spirit of Christ. The light of the sun is a living spirit, and it is by way of this light that the spirit of Christ is always with us, unfailingly present and active, forever at work. If this were not so, how could we understand the words, ‘I am the light of the world,’5 or ‘My Father and I are one’?6 They are one in the sun, for it is in the sun that light and life are one. And then again, Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’ Who raises the dead to life? Who gives us life?7 None other than Christ, the spirit of Christ that dwells in the sun.

Christians have a tendency to see Christ in a particular place, usually, of course, in Palestine, since that is where Jesus lived. But if he is truly the resurrection and the life, he dwells not in Palestine but in the sun. Of course, Christ is everywhere in nature, but as far as we are concerned he is in the sun. And that is why, if you can get into the habit of contemplating the sun in the morning, remembering that it is Christ who is there before your eyes, and if you link with him and love him, your whole being will throb and vibrate in harmony with the cosmic light that shines, in condensed form, through the sun.

Of course, Christ is far greater than the sun. He is the Son of God, the second person of the trinity, manifesting not through our sun alone, but through all the innumerable suns that exist in the cosmos, many of them far bigger and more brilliant than ours. This is why, when I talk of Christ, I am not talking about Jesus, but about the cosmic Principle that knows no beginning and no end.8 Jesus was a man living in Palestine two thousand years ago who was so pure, so noble and so highly evolved that when he was thirty years old he received the Holy Spirit and, at the same time, the spirit of Christ. That is why he is called Jesus Christ. But Christ can be born in the hearts and souls of all human beings. It was Christ who manifested himself in Orpheus, Moses, Zarathustra, Buddha and all the great initiates of all lands and all ages.

There is only one Jesus, but there are, or there can be, thousands of Christs. Jesus will always be a unique figure. He is the head of the Christian religion, just as Buddha is the head of Buddhism and Mohammed the head of the Moslem religion. But Christ is the head of the whole of humanity, even of the whole universe: not the head of one religion, but of all religions. It was Christ who inspired religion. And this is why men must get rid of all racial or sectarian overtones in their religions. Even Christianity is still a sectarian religion. In the Old Testament God was the God of the Israelites alone. They were the only ones who had the right to survive, the right to dominate and even massacre other peoples. Later on, Christians used the New Testament in the same way, with the idea that they alone were chosen and beloved, the Lord’s elect, and all others were infidels. Here you have the Christians’ greatest mistake: just as the sun shines for all men and women without discrimination, in the same way the Lord loves all his children. If this were not so we would have to conclude that the sun was more loving and more generous than God himself!

How can one get human beings to realize how ridiculous it is to try to win God over to their side? Look at what goes on when two countries go to war: with pomp and ceremony the priests bless their respective armies and weaponry, imploring God to give them victory and wipe out their enemies. They even try to gain his favours with offerings of hymns, prayers and incense! What a deplorable mentality! We must never try to bribe God. From an ordinary human standpoint, of course, all this is quite normal. Everyone tries to protect their own interests. But if you rise above this level to a higher level you will see that, just like the sun, God is absolutely impartial and even leaves humans free to massacre each other, since that seems to be what they enjoy most!

One of the essential aspects of a solar philosophy is that it leads to a spirit of universality. We have to stop wanting one race or another, one people or another, one supreme religion or ideology to dominate the whole world. We must all advance together towards the only universal religion, that of love.

Believe me, the Lord is like the sun: different races, religions and ideologies leave him completely indifferent. It simply does not bother him whether you are yellow, black or red, whether you are a Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant or even an atheist. We are all his children, and he cares only about our qualities and virtues: our love, wisdom, honesty and generosity.

Always keep in your mind’s eye this image of the sun as the most perfect representative of the divinity. How is it that people who find it normal to go to their church or temple and bow or kneel in prayer before an icon or the statue of a saint think it quite abnormal to contemplate the sun? Why do they imagine they will get more light and comfort from praying in front of something made by human beings who were not always especially pure or honourable than they would from praying before the sun, which comes, bursting with life, straight from the hand of God? Go to church or to the temple if you want to – I sometimes do so myself – but know that only the sun will teach you to live the divine life.

BIBLICAL REFERENCES

‘I am the light of the world’ – John 8: 12

‘No one can go to the Father except through me’ – John 14: 6

‘My Father and I are one’ – John 10: 30

‘I am the resurrection and the life’– John 11: 25

1 See Angels and Other Mysteries of The Tree of Life, Izvor Coll. n° 236, chap. 10: The cosmic family and the mystery of the trinity’.

2 See The True Meaning of Christ’s Teaching, Izvor Coll. n° 215, chap. 3: ‘Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect’.

3 See above, chap. 6: ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life’.

4 See Sons and Daughters of God, Izvor Coll. n° 240, chap. 6: ‘Jesus, high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek’.

5 See The Philosopher’s Stone – in the Gospels and in Alchemy, Izvor Coll. n° 241, chap. 6: ‘You are the light of the world’.

6 See The True Meaning of Christ’s Teaching, Izvor Coll. n° 215, chap. 2: ‘My Father and I are one’.

7 See La fête de Pâques, ‘Je suis la résurrection et la vie’, Brochure n° 308.

8 See Sons and Daughters of God, Izvor Coll. n° 240, chap. 7: ‘The man Jesus and the cosmic principle of the Christ’.

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Prosveta Catalog Collections

Books

Complete Works

The Complete Works collection consists of several hundred improvised talks

Izvor

Our popular pocket books The Izvor Collection presents all the main themes found in the talks of Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

Brochures

Every brochure consists of a complete talk given by Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov on a particular subject

Synopsis

The Synopsis Collection presents a synthesis of the teaching of Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

Daily Meditations

Since 1991, One inspiring thought given by Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov for every day of the year (includes index)

Stani

Deepening spiritual practice

Autobiographies

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov autobiographies in two volumes

Testimonies and studies

Testimonies of several authors who knew or followed Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov for many years, attesting his outstanding spirituality and nobility of character

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Audio CD's with brochures. Talks read in English by Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

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Talks given by Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov in French with subtitles in English and more than 10 other languages

Musiqc and songs

1 CD instrumental music composed by Peter Deunov and intended to accompany a dance of ritual character named Paneurhythmy

A book about descriptions and commentaries (with schemas) of the dance movements of Paneurhythmy with musical scores

5 CD of Mystical songs by the Master Peter Deunov

About
the Universal White Brotherhood

The aim of the Universal White Brotherhood association is the study and practice of the Teaching of Master Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov,

published and distributed by Prosveta.

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