Edifying Lecture
The twentieth lecture of the Master held before the Youth Spiritual Class
on 7 March 1923, Sofia
Contemplation
The subject of reading is “The Use of Rivers, Seas and Oceans”.
For the next time you should write on the subject of The Origin of Fire.
As students, you do not observe the simplest rule, namely: whatever you hear in class, you shall
not disclose it outside before you have processed it, before it has become yours. In this sense, you are
leaking the way a cracked pitcher or a chemist’s cracked retort leaks. What will happen to the water you
fill into a cracked pitcher? It will leak out. What will happen to the experiment of the chemist who has put
certain elements in the cracked retort? If no explosion occurs, at least the experiment will fail. When a
gardener plants seeds in his garden, he covers them with soil and does not touch them before they grow.
No one knows what seeds he has planted and where he has planted them. It will be enough to have a child
who knows that, as it can unearth the seeds and destroy them. Therefore, when the Master plants seeds in
the mind and the heart of his disciple, the latter should carefully keep them as children may come from
outside and dig them out. If they dig out his seeds, the Disciple will feel doubts about his Master, he will
lose trust in him.
So, keep this rule: you shall not doubt God, you shall not doubt your Master! He is not a disciple
who doubts his Master. The most terrible thing for a disciple is to have doubts about his Master. Once he
has doubts about God, about his Master, he is finished. If you do not know your Master, why do you go to
Him to learn? When you go to a Master to learn from Him, you should trust Him indeed. There has been
no exception so far in the annals of spiritual history when a disciple had doubts about his Master and did
not come to harm. If the law is strict to the disciple it will be even stricter to the Master: if the Master
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infringes the smallest Divine Law, he is finished. Strict is the Divine Law. It is impossible for a disciple
to be placed in a position that he does not deserve – the place of any disciple is strictly defined. In the
Divine World, the place of every disciple is a strictly defined quantity that never changes. When disciples
doubt their Master, then that Master lives in the world of shadows rather than in Reality. There are many
masters like that in the world and those masters rob their disciples and they give them nothing.
A master like that went to the aristocrats in France and started talking to them about the occult
science, about the forces hidden in it. He decided one day to demonstrate to his disciples how the power
of an occult disciple works. He told them that he needed gold and gems for the experiment he was going
to make. The aristocrats immediately made themselves available to their master: they brought precious
necklaces, and rings with beautiful diamonds. The experiment was as follows: the master would take the
gems and the gold with him and through the power of his mind he would use the power of gems and gold
to stop the express train when it was passing by. All aristocrats went to the station on the appointed day
when the express train was passing to see how the master was going to manifest his power. The moment
the train was passing, the master managed to jump into it and disappeared together with it. His disciples,
however, never saw him again – along with the gems and the gold, the master also disappeared. That is
not a master, neither is that teaching.
He who gives only physical knowledge to his disciples is not a master. A disciple can attain
physical knowledge by himself. How? Through experiments. Should he want to paint, the disciple will
take canvas, brushes, and paints and will start practising. Having practised for some time, he will attain
the art of painting. A real Master is he who gives knowledge about the three worlds to his disciples – the
physical, the Spiritual and the Divine World. Painting belongs to the physical world since brushes, paints,
canvases, enable the picture to be seen and touched. When a disciple spends a long time in the domain of
painting, he finally gets bored with it and wants to move to another domain, to another world. As he can
play the violin, he takes the violin and starts playing, practising. The violin in this case can be touched,
while its sound can be heard but cannot be touched. So, in music we already have a spiritual element,
therefore it is related to the Spiritual World, to the domain of feelings. Having played for some time, the
disciple feels like changing his work, moving to another world – the world of contemplation, of seclusion,
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of prayer. Through, prayer he makes his way into the Divine World. The prayer can neither be touched
nor heard, it can only be thought about. After spending some time in the state of supplication, the disciple
resumes some work in the physical world. Then he moves again to the Spiritual and the Divine World. To
avoid getting bored with his work, the disciple has to change it often, to switch from physical to spiritual,
from spiritual – to Divine work. He should not stay with the same work for a long time. What can prevent
a disciple, while doing physical work, from feeling and thinking at the same time?
So, to avoid having doubts about your Master, you have to test him in the physical world, then –
in the Spiritual and finally – in the Divine World. Once you have tested him in the three worlds, then go
to him to learn. A Master shall hold three certificates as evidence that he has finished a university or at
least a high school in the physical world, he should have finished primary school in the Spiritual World
and elementary school or nursery school in the Divine World – a true Master shall really hold those three
certificates. If in such a case the disciple keeps having doubts in his Master, then the fault is within him.
That disciple has put his thoughts on a wrong path and will not make use of anything he hears from his
Master. To release himself from doubts, the disciple should learn how to interpret, to translate things. The
translation should be threefold – from the physical aspect, from the spiritual aspect and from the Divine
aspect. When making successful translations, a disciple can never doubt his Master. When he has no
doubts, he will develop in the right way.
Now I want to release you from the delusions that you often run into. You should think adequately
so that you can get released from your delusion and not suffer. You meet someone you know who passes
by without looking at you; you say: “Why does this man knit his brows and narrow his eyes, what does he
mean by that, what is he angry about?” To be able to understand the reason why the man behaves that
way, you have to think above all about the origin of eyebrows. In that you will find an explanation as to
why a man knits his brows and narrows his eyes. When looking straight into the Sun, one closes his eyes
a little and knits his brows a little by instinct, to be able to control the light. Thus, narrowing his eyes and
knitting his brows, one receives less light. Sunlight is strong and when one is looking straight into the Sun
the eye adjusts to receive less light. Hence, we can conclude that eyebrows are meant to protect the eyes
against strong light, against strong external impressions. Man knits his brows and narrows his eyes when
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he is experiencing something strong, some big misfortune or a big surprise. So, man knits his brows and
narrows his eyes when there are big difficulties in Life. He is walking, his brows knit and his eyes
narrowed, he sees no one and you say that it is exactly you that he will not see. No, that is a wrong
conclusion. That man is by no means dissatisfied with you, the reason for which he is knitting his brows
and narrowing his eyes is elsewhere.
Therefore, you – as students – should study motions, you should know their primary origin.
Observing people, you will notice that some of them will knit one brow or the other, will narrow one eye
or the other. Others make different motions with their lips and twist them sometimes to the right,
sometimes to the left side. Then you will notice that sometimes one’s lower lip drops, sometimes the
upper lip gets raised. When studying such motions you will see that every motion corresponds to the
thoughts and feelings with which a man is preoccupied on a certain occasion. Through the motions of his
lips one expresses contempt, joy, grief, content, discontent, discouragement and so on. Whenever
someone is told that he will not succeed in his affairs, his lower lip drops at that very instant. As soon he
is encouraged, he smiles and his lower lip goes up a bit. In general, all motions of a man are related to his
inner life. Man’s motions have their reason, their remote origin, the way phenomena in Nature have their
explanation. If you cannot solve small tasks how are you going to solve big ones? The tests that disciples
have to pass are nothing but an examination of their knowledge. A Master can assign to his students tasks
to add, deduct, multiply and divide, he can give them a task based on the simple rule of three or the
complex rule of three or ask them to solve equations with one unknown quantity or with more than one
unknown quantities; finally, he can ask them to solve calculus tasks. Whatever tasks the disciples are
solving, these are tasks related to Real Life, to the life of Truth. When speaking the Truth, you should
present it the way a mathematician solves tasks – accurately, based on continuity, without any distortion
of facts, and of known quantities. Therefore, a clean undistorted mind is required from the disciple. A
disciple can present the Truth as it is, only if he loves it. There is nothing greater for a man than loving
the Truth.
Why should you love Truth? The Holy Writ says: “Truth will set you free”. Once you have the
Freedom you need, you will be able to learn, to acquire knowledge. True Knowledge rests on exact data.
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There is no falseness there, there is no suspicion in Knowledge. Suspicion reveals man’s ignorance,
suspicion reveals likewise that there is something ailing in man’s mind, heart and will. Indeed, while a
man’s stomach is healthy, the man is the master of his stomach; when the stomach is in disorder, it
becomes the man’s master, it gives him commands whether to eat or not. It says to the man: “You shall
not eat anything today!”. His folks at home begin coaxing him: “Have some boiled wheat, at least that.” –
“No, my stomach is giving me orders not to eat anything.” If you foot is healthy, you will command it, if
it is in disorder, it will command you. It depends on your foot whether you can go for a walk or not. If
you think well, you will command your mind; if you do not think well, your mind will command you. If
you are good, you will command your heart; if you are not good, your heart will command you.
Therefore, if a man says that he does not give credit to any teacher, this indicates that his health is
poor. As long as the mind obeys the Spirit, man is healthy and he can learn. At the moment the mind
gives up obeying the Spirit, we say that the man has fallen ill. The Spirit in a man is the Master and the
mind is the student. So, whenever a student gives up obeying his master, he has fallen ill and needs
therapy. Once a student’s mind falls ill, at the same time his heart and will fall ill and he starts distorting
the Truth, starts using untrue facts.
Love Truth and do not be tempted into minor things. Clean is clean anyway, unclean is unclean
anyway; Good is Good anyway, evil is evil anyway; Truth is Truth anyway, a lie is a lie anyway. These
things are absolutely fixed. To prove that a fact is absolutely true, it should be tested in the three worlds –
the physical, the Spiritual and the Divine world. On the same basis, to tell whether a man’s quality or
feature is real, it should have signs on three places: on the head, on the face and on the hand. If that sign is
on all the three places, the ratio is 3:3 hence the quality is absolutely real. If the sign exists on two places
and it is missing on the third one, then the ratio is 2:3; if the sign is only on one place, the ratio is 1:3. In
the latter two cases you do not have Absolute Truth, you have relative Truth. Therefore, when you draw
conclusions from certain facts, you should know the ratio between the values that determine it: is it 3:3,
2:3 or 1:3. If you draw the same conclusion from a 1:3 ratio as from a 3:3 ratio, you will come to the
wrong conclusion. To avoid coming to the wrong conclusions, any phenomenon should be considered in
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the three worlds simultaneously. If that phenomenon has happened in all the three worlds the way you
thought, your conclusion about it will be perfectly true.
You often make statements about people, you say that a man is decent 1 while another man is bad.
Sometimes you compare decent people and say that one of them is better than the other one. If you
understand the meaning put into every letter or every word, you will be able to read them. When you
write or say the word “decent” you should pay attention to the letter d with which the word “decent”
starts. This letter designates a ripe fruit. So a decent person has a ripe fruit inside. However, when you say
“more decent”, this is already a process, some work – to become “more decent”, a man should work. You
say that a man is rich and another man is richer. The richer one is in the state of work in progress while
with the rich one there is something finalized, a certain result. What I said about the decent man is just
theoretical knowledge. What matters for you is to be able to recognize a decent person in reality, to see
the effect he produces on you. A really decent man produces a threefold effect: on man’s body, on man’s
heart and on man’s mind. If a decent man approaches a sick person, the latter gets well. If he approaches
someone whose heart is disturbed, he immediately soothes him, brings Peace into his heart; if he
approaches someone whose mind is dimmed, he brings Light into his mind. If, though, a decent man has
that effect only on the sick man’s body, he is one third decent; if the effect is on the man’s body and
heart, he is two thirds decent and finally, if he produces that effect on the man’s body, heart and soul, he
is three thirds decent. That is a law.
Apply that law to your master to know whether he is decent or not. If when approaching your
master your health gets restored, your heart feels calm and your mind gets bright, he is really decent, he is
the Master. This is a diagnosis, this is an esoteric definition to determine the qualities of a decent man.
There is no exception whatsoever in this definition. Do you always have to try the effect of a decent
person? Try it so that you can see that he is like the Sun. The Sun gives its light and warmth to everybody
at any time, and a decent man likewise reveals his qualities any time to any person. The more open a man
is to him, the more he will receive.
1
The word used in the Bulgarian original means good. Here decent is used in the meaning of good as both in Bulgarian and in
English these two words start with the letter d.
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What do modern people know about the Sun? They say that the Sun is a shining high temperature
body and it is at a big distance from the Earth. They know many things about the Sun yet there is one
thing they do not know: they do not even suspect that this Sun is a reflection of the Divine Sun, i.e. the
Divine Eye that sees everything and urges everybody to work – it awakens some, gives an impetus for
work to others, calls a third group to Life. It says to the tree: “You will grow up, you will work hard.”
When the tree gets that order, that impetus, it starts working. When it meets a spider it says: “You will
knit your web.” After it gives its orders, the Sun climbs up high and from there it monitors the way they
are doing their job. When they get weary of work, all living beings start looking for ways to hide away
from the Divine Eye – at the instant they want to hide away from God, from the Sun, they drop the
clouds. Therefore, clouds are curtains of the lazy and disobedient men who want to hide their deeds from
the watchful eye of the Great One. He will look from here, look from there – nothing can be seen. Then
he sends the wind to tear those curtains. When the wind comes, when it starts blowing, blustering, it
raises the curtains and asks the beings hiding underneath: “What are you doing here, why are you
hiding?”
Students will often do the same: whenever they face a difficulty they do not want to resolve, they
drop a curtain in front of them – so that nobody can see what they are doing. While thinking that no one
can see them, the wind will blow, it will scatter the cloud inside their consciousness, peer inside and say:
“Why are you sitting idle here, go out, all of you! Do as you are commanded. If you do not finish the
work given to you, you will wither.” That is a law: when the Divine Consciousness comes to the world, it
leaves no living creature without work – wherever it finds creatures living with the delusion that they
cannot work, that they are in the dark, in helplessness and ignorance, it will at that moment send the Wind
of Life, it will scatter the clouds of delusion in an instant and say: “You all start working!”
So, if you want to be students, the first thing you are required to do is have Absolute faith in your
Master. Whatever the Master does, the student shall not have doubts. If a student doubts his Master, he
will doubt himself as well. The Master is nothing but the supreme, i.e. the Divine beginning within the
student. You can replace that beginning with some other quantity, you can call it God, Nature,
superconsciousness, etc. Whatever name you give to that beginning, you shall not doubt it. Once you
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have doubts, you will lose everything – God, Master, consciousness. Then the Master becomes an
external subject for you, without any meaning, without any significance. That is not a student, and that is
not any studentship. It is like when you draw a caricature on the blackboard like a small child and think
that you have drawn a peacock. That is no peacock at all – a child’s scrawls are not an artist’s pictures. A
student’s doubts and delusions are not any studentship ideas.
Therefore you, being students, should apply the Truth in your life. Once you say something
untrue, it will halt your progress, your development. Esoteric science does not tolerate any ambiguous,
indeterminate quantities. There everything is strictly determined and has its place. In whichever world
you look, it is that way everywhere. There are illusions, delusions, lies, ambiguities but they are human
inventions, outcomes of aberrations from the great law of Life. The outcome of such aberrations, are
diseases and contradictions: men are ailing because they have violated the law of Truth. If a man wants to
correct his life, to restore his health, he shall love the Truth. He shall aspire after it, know it, and come to
love it. If a man does not apply the Truth he will inevitably apply the lie. Today the lie dominates the
world. Why? Because it is a pole to the Truth. Wherever the Truth is absent, the lie is present. When
Adam sinned, he hid from the face of God; he put a curtain so that God could not see him. The Lord
asked him: “Adam, where are you?” – “I am here, my Lord, but I am naked, I cannot go out.” Adam lied
to the Lord. At first he was not naked but he became naked after he transgressed God’s command. He did
not admit his fault but used a lie instead. Therefore, whenever a man tells a lie, he becomes naked. Just
the same is the situation of a student when he uses a lie.
What I am speaking about now refers to students. Any man who is a student must speak the Truth.
A student is not allowed to lie. If he uses even the smallest lie, the question with him is finished. A man
who is not a student will not be responsible about whether he has told a lie or not. A student, however,
shall in no way use a lie. There is nothing greater than being a student! The name student is beautiful.
Now you are also students, but only in the physical world. So you are just one third of students. To
become real students, you have to go through the studentship of the Spiritual world and from there –
through the studentship of the Divine world. When you have been though the studentship of the three
worlds, you become students in the absolute sense of the word. So you have to go from the visible, i.e.
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from the physical world, to the invisible – to the infinite world, to God. You cannot understand the Divine
world before you have understood the physical and the Spiritual world.
Therefore, strive for the Truth. Check facts – whenever you have doubts about anything, check
whether that thing is true or not. Before you come to the Truth, do not accept anything within you. Only
the Truth is capable of elevating you, of making you free. Whatever happens in your life, use it to inure
you, take things easy. Imagine you are a school student and they put you to the test: all students come in
front of you and spit in your face. What will your condition be? You will come back home aggrieved,
offended and you will not go to your schoolmates again. Why will you not go to school? Because you
have been spat at. Is it true that you have been spat at? Imagine that I have a big, well-polished diamond: I
wear the diamond and I enjoy it, I talk with it; it is conscious about its brilliance, it understands it is
precious. On my way I meet savages who are ready to immediately take my diamond. Knowing that,
while I am still a distance away, I take some mud and spread it over the diamond so that it does not shine
and the savages will not see it and steal it. Unable to understand why I have smeared it, the diamond starts
protesting, complaining about his condition of being smeared. I keep quiet, telling it nothing. As soon as
the danger is over, I take clean water, wash it and it shines again. When another danger comes, I smear it
again; when the danger is over, I wash it again.
Therefore, a man who has a conscious view on things knows that God is wise, He sees from a vast
distance when souls are endangered and protects them. He is strong, knows how to clean souls from the
mud on their surface. When you know that, you should not doubt God. He has allowed evil but there is no
evil within Him at all. Evil is man’s invention, not God’s. Do not ascribe evil or your mistakes to God but
pray that He transforms evil into Good so that you can correct your mistakes. – They say there is no
justice in the world. Why isn’t there justice? Because someone has a house, he is rich while you have no
house, you have no money. I am asking how does that rich man use his house? Has a poor man been in,
has he given shelter to a wanderer? If he has not done all that, can that man be called rich? He is rich from
the outside yet inside he is poor. Can you ask for a greater wealth than the mind and the heart God has
given you? Your mind is a media where bright and elevated thoughts pass and your heart – an altar, a
hearth on which noble feelings are produced. Have you ever asked the question whether the candle of
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your mind is shining and whether the sacred fire of your heart is burning? Everyone should give answers
to these questions.
If you want to find the answers to these questions, you need a positive science that knows the laws
of the Great Nature. That is why you need to have a healthy body the cells of which are in Absolute
Harmony – they should all work simultaneously and stop simultaneously. There should also be an
Absolute Harmony between your feelings and your thoughts. When you go for a walk, the cells of your
legs, of your brain, of your muscles should be delighted, they should participate in the walk. Only in that
case you will be delighted in all the three worlds – the physical, the Spiritual and the Divine world. You
will be walking and feeling delighted. You will sit on the fresh grass to have a bite, to drink some hot
water – that is the physical side of the walk; then you will sing a little – that is the spiritual side of the
walk, and you will finally be absorbed in thoughts, you will thank God for the blessings that you have
received – that is the Divine side of the walk.
Therefore, anything you do should go through the three worlds. Said in the human language, any
thing happens when your thought, your feelings and your deeds are involved. – “Well, isn’t there an
easier way?” There are no easy ways in spiritual science. There is just one way there – that is the sacred
way of the Absolute Truth. That way is expressed by the A – B straight line on which the points A and B
represent two great principles, two great rudiments – the principle of the soft A and the principle of the
hard B, the principle of the heart and the principle of the mind, the principle of the woman and the
principle of the man – the female and male principles, the principle of the soul and the principle of the
Spirit. Hence the way of Truth is the right way. The motion on the AB straight line is done only in the
Divine World. However, in the physical world that is impossible – here the poles A and B are oriented
upwards (Figure 1) until they cross. The crossing point C represents their striving for the Truth. The Truth
is the direction to which all energies in man are going and consequently it gives a meaning to Life. Hence
Love A and Wisdom B in man form the AB straight line of his Life and they start together towards C –
towards the Truth. This is the way you have to go. It is not only a matter of correcting your mistakes.
When you think, feel and act in the right way, you will naturally correct your mistakes.
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C
A
B
Figure 1
I presented an edifying lecture before you this evening, I gave you some rules that are necessary
when entering any school: either a nursery school, or an elementary school, a primary school, a high
school or even the university. With these rules, you will end your life on the Earth. When you get into the
other world, you will be given other rules there. However, without the first rules you cannot make a single
step forward. If you get in the world, there are other rules there but they will make your life meaningless.
Outside Truth, Life has no meaning. It gives man an incentive, a drive to work. It brings Joy and Mirth
into man’s heart and soul and Light and Knowledge into man’s mind. When a man has them, he feels
free. That is why the Holy Writ says: “The Truth will set you free.”
Two main factors- Love and Wisdom – participate in man’s aspiration for the Truth. There is
nothing greater than loving the Truth and knowing how to aspire to it. Love will make you softer and
Wisdom will make you stronger, you will grow sturdier. If you are given too much Love, you will turn
squashy; if you are given too much Wisdom, you will harden. To avoid that, you have to direct those
energies to the Truth as it will show you the inner meaning of Life. In that situation your energies will be
transformed in the right way and as a result the forces of your organism will function in the right way.
That activity will bring within you Joy and Mirth. That way, you will be happy all the time with the work
you have done in the course of the day and will be expecting with excitement the work tomorrow.
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Now I wanted to bring inside you a sacred excitement to Love, Wisdom and Truth so that you can
work with them consciously. This impetus will help you cope with the discouragement that is one of your
companions. You will have to do serious work from now on. You have not worked in the right way yet.
While the work that is coming requires an invincible aspiration for the Truth. Whoever of you makes use
of this lecture he will be jolly and merry, he will have God’s blessing.
May God’s blessing be with you!
Contemplation
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