The loss of the soul

Every time you think, speak, write, or do anything, first check to see whom you are serving. Are you serving materialism, hatred, revenge, separatism, or anger? Or are you serving Light, Love, Beauty, Righteousness, Joy, and Freedom. Which are you serving? Maybe you are blind and are forever serving the armies of darkness and have never realized this. But the moment you find out what you are doing, free yourself because you will be led into greater darkness.

Let us say that you sold your soul to the dark forces. Eventually your physical, emotional, and mental bodies will disintegrate in space, and the soul that you are will eventually evaporate. You will lose your individuality. This is what is meant by “losing the individuality,” or the soul. The Universe is very economical; it dissolves and makes fertilizer out of anything that is no longer serving Its purpose. If a leaf can no longer fulfill its purpose, it falls to the ground and becomes fertilizer; it is gone forever as a leaf. You lose your individuality forever and evaporate if you follow the path of darkness.

You may incarnate three, four, five hundred times, as long as there is still a chance. But if your evaporation is at hand, you are finished. There is no incarnation because incarnation is an opportunity to awaken and come to your senses and say, “Let me choose the right path this time.” But teachers, ministers, and priests do not discuss these things because their congregations would be afraid.

You think that you have a soul, that you are immortal. But this is a false doctrine, a false religion and philosophy. You build your soul. You are a ray of Divine Light. That Light comes to the mineral kingdom and slowly passes into higher kingdoms, eventually building itself into a soul. Unless you build your immortality, you are not immortal.

You have so many teachers and books that you fall into the wrong lane – the lane of darkness. The dark forces penetrated into the Teaching and are telling you things that do not exist.

Dark forces are scientifically trained professionals. They have great certificates and diplomas. They are very smart. Unless a person is very smart, he cannot be a part of the dark forces. When the human soul does not develop to a certain stage of trial and error and is stuck in the traps of the dark forces, the human soul gradually disintegrates. The human soul is nothing else but a focus of energy which is developing consciousness and mind. When this is not accomplished, it disintegrates and once again becomes part of the chaotic forces of Nature.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Battling Dark Forces

How to make our emotional body healthy

How we can make our emotional body really healthy, once we know what is sickness and what is health of the emotional body?

The first step is aspiration toward Beauty, Goodness, Righteousness, Joy, Freedom, and Cooperation. If you see any beauty or any goodness, give it water and fertilizer so that it grows. Appreciate it. I knew a couple who were having problems at home. But when the husband started to appreciate the things his wife did for him, peace came to their home.

Christ once said, "If you give even one cup of water to someone in My name, it will not be forgotten." If one cup of water must not be forgotten, do not forget the good things that are around you. Appreciate each other. Appreciate your health, your body, your heart, your mind, your family, your job, and the life that you are living.

We are not talking about abstract things; we are talking about practical things what we can use. This is more important than to know how many apartments are built in heaven. Maybe ten million are built there, but who cares? We should just live a beautiful life first and then worry about these things.

The second step is to worship God. To worship God does not mean day and night to pray and read the Bible. To worship God means to admire that Almighty Power Who created everything. This kind of worship cleans your emotional nature and takes you away from your selfishness and vanities.

The third step is to know that the emotions of other people affect your life and to be careful about communicating with others when they are under the influence of negative emotions. People can trap you in their anger, in their jealousy, in their revenge, in their fanaticism; and suddenly you are caught in a whirlpool. You can become immediately trapped in the emotions of other people. If you see that people are emotionally violent, stay away. Watch them; be careful; and keep your sanity so that you are not swept up.

The fourth step is always to try to bless people. If you do not like someone, bless him. If you like him, your love is already a blessing for him. Always bless people, even if they do nasty things. Blessing is a contact with the soul in others.

The next step is to be always joyful. No matter what happens try always to keep that joy. A great Sage says that Great Ones enter into battle and complicated labors with true joy and that no one can enter Their abodes without joy. Joyfulness means that your physical, emotional, and mental natures are not controlling you, but you are controlling them.

The next step is immediately to replace any negative emotions with a positive one. For example, if a feeling of hatred comes, change it into love. If someone comes into your mind and you say, "I hate him," immediately change it and say, "I love you." If an ugly picture comes to your mind, change it into a beautiful picture. If a fear comes, change it into courage.

People sometimes know the whole Bible, but they cannot do these things. Immediately when depression comes, stand up and make yourself radioactive. Immediately when someone gives you some bad news, change it into good news. Say, "I see in that bad news a good side also."

If you can change such things, you are becoming a transformer, and you should be a transformer because the secret of life is adaptation.

The next step is to daily, for two or three minutes, sing. Sing anything beautiful for a few minutes, and you will see how it will change your nature. Immediately if you feel depressed or negative, jump into your shower and start singing as if nothing had happened, and you will feel so happy. A few minutes of singing changes your whole nature.

I remember a wonderful film, Zorba the Greek. In that film the man was very successful; then a flood came and took everything away. After everything was destroyed, he brought five or six people together and started dancing. The film showed that the human spirit is greater than any possession, that the spirit is the one who must grow.

The last step is to develop gratitude. We must be grateful not only to others, but also to ourselves. This one thing we overlook: we do not pay too much good attention to ourselves. We must be grateful that we are healthy. We must say to our body, "Thank you very much that you are helping me; you are so beautiful," just as we sit in our car and say, "My car, you are really good; I love you."

We must admire ourselves and be grateful to ourselves. We must be grateful for our talents, our intelligence, and our knowledge - because we are something. If we do not give value to ourselves, we will never give value to others.

Know your value. Know that you are really a precious human being. If you know your dignity and your value, you will never attack the dignity and value of others. Dignity is a sign of health in your emotional body.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Education as Transformation vol.1

Why can't we know our past lives?

Nature covers past lives for many reasons:

1. It prevents occupying a person with the past but instead enables him to forge toward the future, without being directly influenced by past events, relationships, and failures or defeats or victories.

2. It prevents the opening of sources of information that often cannot be stopped, thus making a person live in the past and forget about his present duties, responsibilities and problems. Past events can even explode in the mind of the person with tremendous tension, which sometimes releases him or sometimes leads him to asylums.

3. An Akashic Record contains hundreds of lives which may suddenly reach an individual and devastate his life with tremendous confusion, burning his sanity and balance,

4. Subconscious trash can surface, leading a person into total imbalance.

5. Such revelations can bring back the experiences of the past in such a reality that the person loses his present opportunity to live a new life.

Most of the forced revelations of past lives, fortunately, are unreal. They are the result of the imagination or the result of a projection of a medium, psychic, or hypnotist.

But this unreality may be accepted by a person as a reality which gradually orchestrates a life built upon unreality. In such a life, present seeds of many talents and opportunities are lost, and the person tries to obtain goals which are not planned for his life. This way the program put in this present incarnation is disturbed and mixed with an artificial program. The result is that the person is slowly led to insanity or various physical, emotional, and mental disorders.

If you play two video tapes on the screen of your television at the same time, you can imagine what happens. The same thing happens when a pseudo past life film is mixed with the events of the present life in the same brain.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Karma & Reincarnation, p.374-376

The Teaching creates reactions

In all departments of human endeavor, people react to those who bring new ideas, new visions, and new goals.

First of all, when someone speaks to us about the Teaching and about what the Teaching expects from us, we feel a reaction from our lower self. The reason for this reaction is that the crystallized habits, emotions, and thoughtforms feel that they are under attack. It is not easy to break our habits, our mechanical responses and reactions, our ways of thinking, not only because they are set in certain patterns but also because they are associated with our immediate families, churches, businesses, and traditions. Yet, nothing can change within us without changing all those things with which we are associated. This is often painful for ourselves and for others.

For example, the Teaching suggests that we not eat meat, drink alcohol, or smoke. When you decide to abstain from these things, your friends and family will probably wonder if you have lost your mind. This creates family and social problems, and sometimes in changing yourself you may lose your family, friends, and job. Sometimes you even lose your church, if the people in your church see that you are really entering the path of transformation. Thus we can see that the Teaching not only creates reactions from your lower self, from your habits, from your crystallized emotions, beliefs, traditions, and religions but also from your environment and everyone in it.

For an advanced human being, his family, group or society becomes like his lower self. Just as his lower self reacts to the Teaching, similarly and for almost the same reasons his family, group, and society attack and react to him.

-Torkom Saraydarian

The Ageless Wisdom, p.61

Inhalation and exhalation of the moon

During the waxing period, the moon acts as a vampire and sucks from the emotional sphere of the earth all elements of fear, anger, hatred, revenge, and greed. During its waning time, it exhales into the sphere of our planet these five elements, plus its own decaying particles.

During the waning time, people inhale the emotional pollution of the moon. This creates various tensions, pressures, and psychological disturbances in the masses. Actually, we feed the astral body of the moon and this extends its life span. If humanity enters the age of understanding and eliminates fear, anger, hatred, revenge, and greed, the disintegration of the astral body of the moon will be accelerated, and our planet will become free from such a polluting factor.

One day I was in a monastery and I was in a depressed mood, sitting on a rock and feeling blue. My Teacher came and whispered in my ear, "Do not feed the moon."

It took me long years to understand the meaning of his words. It was not the moon I was feeding, but its astral body. The food that we feed to the astral body of the moon is the same food it will feed us back, adding to its decomposed emanations.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Education as Transformation vol1, p.110

Busying ourselves with worldly activities is a form of laziness

From a Buddhist perspective, busying ourselves with worldly activities is a form of laziness, because we're lax in self-cultivation. Our lives are so busy in modern society: Our appointment books are completely full and we're always running here and there. We often complain there isn't enough time for the Dharma.

However, whenever we have a spare moment, we work overtime or call some friends to fill in the gap. We always have time to eat, but we hardly ever have time to nourish ourselves spiritually by attending Dharma classes or meditating. When the temple has entertainment and free meals, we go; but when there is meditation or lessons, we're busy.

This hindrance to spiritual progress comes because we're attached to worldly pleasures: food, money, reputation, amusement, and friends. The harm comes from our inappropriate way of relating to them. Attached, we selfishly indulge in them. However, these things in and of themselves aren't bad. Through pacifying our afflictions, we can enjoy these things with a good motivation--to improve ourselves for the benefit of others.

-Ven. Thubten Chodron

Taming the Mind

The pull of the full moon

When the moon is waxing, it is drawing millions and millions of tons of water toward the center of the oceans and seas. This is how the ebb comes into existence. What a powerful energy is exercised upon the waters of the earth by the moon.

If we had eyes to see, we would observe that not only is water drawn up but also gases, emotions, and thoughts are caught in the current of magnetism of the waxing phase of the moon.

Man is eighty percent liquid. It will be very interesting if one day scientists prove to us that during the waxing period of the moon not only are the bloodstream, the lymphatic system, the glands and their secretions under a heavy pull, but also the emotional body and mental body are drawn up toward the head and above the head.

During the full moon, dislocations of the subtle bodies are not uncommon. This is why people are excited, irritated, and sometimes irrational, aggressive, demanding, forceful, or "spaced" around the full moon. During the full moon period, various sicknesses related to certain glands increase.

In human relationships, there is more emotional tension during the waxing period than during the waning period. This can be noticed in schools, on freeways, and in various offices. We must remember, however, that every cycle can present an opportunity for us if we prepare for it and are watchful.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Education as Transformation, p.107,108

What is evil? Who is the enemy?

The enemy is any person or force which retards your evolution, growth, unfoldment, and beauty. There are five things that we can say about the enemy.

First, the enemy or evil is a force which makes you ugly. If any force makes you physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually ugly, then it is a dark force. You are yielding yourself and cooperating with it.

Second, if any force takes your goodwill from you and replaces it with evil, it is the enemy.

Third, if anyone or any impression or suggestion makes you fight against righteousness or forces you to be unrighteous, it is evil.

Fourth, if anyone or anything tries to take your joy away from you and load you with grief, fear, or depression, know that it is evil.

Lastly, if anyone or anything takes away your rights or freedom and tries to make you a slave or a hostage of his self-interest or beliefs, know that it is evil.

These forces are everywhere. Because they are everywhere, you are used to them and so you can no longer see them. They are even present in your food and water, in your churches, in your sacred literature. They have penetrated into all layers of human experience. If you are smart, you will develop the great sense of discrimination.

Discrimination means to know exactly which path leads to your destination and which path leads to your destruction.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Battling Dark Forces

How to unfold the chakras

We see that in every age people tried to introduce methods to unfold the chakras

1. by artificial means

2. by meditating upon them

3. through the process of meditation, purification, and expansion of consciousness

4. through initiations

The first two methods are considered very dangerous by certain Teachers. The third method is the safest method. The fourth method is exercised only by the Great Master, to meet certain planetary crises and prepare a certain number of people to handle the danger accumulating upon the planet.

The third, safest method is recommended in Ashrams and in true esoteric schools.

The artificial methods are hatha yoga, breathing exercises, certain exercises of will, and concentration upon the chakras. In far eastern countries, these are exercised with only failing results; but in western countries, because of our chaotic and polluted environment, such methods have very destructive effects.

Those who want to develop their chakras safely must lay a good foundation. When one carefully lives according to such a foundation, the rest will be easy. This foundation is built by

1. purity of life - physical, moral, and mental

2. sacrificial service - service to spread Beauty, Goodness, Righteousness, Joy, and Freedom

3. fearlessness - which is a state of consciousness not identified with material values

4. striving toward perfection - with one's deeds, words, expressions, creativity, thought, and communication

Striving is like having a purpose and making all possible efforts to reach that purpose, then making it a group, national, and global purpose. Without a purpose, even if the centers are open they will destroy you under their flooding currents.

The head center opens when you develop your willpower in trying to serve others and in overcoming problems and obstacles. It opens when you are striving toward a great vision and in the meantime meeting your duties and responsibilities and paying your karmic debts.

The ajna center unfolds through right thinking, in trying to be accurate in your thinking, speech, and expressions; in being simple, straightforward and discriminative of values; in having clear and right direction. When you fabricate or exercise wrong thinking or build wrong motives, you close this chakra. As much as possible, you must give right direction to your thoughts, your speech, and your actions.

The throat chakra unfolds as a result of your right speech, creativity, tolerance, silence, and purity in sex. Malice, slander, cursing, and swearing create blockages in this chakra. The throat chakra starts to unfold when you nourish it with your creativity and your Beauty, Goodness, Righteousness, Joy, and Freedom. Joy is the vitamin of the throat center. Malice, slander, lying, gossip, idle talk, swearing and cursing damage this center.

Love, inclusiveness, compassion, feelings of brotherhood, unity, wholeness, courage, and fearlessness - these are the elements which nourish your heart chakra. When the heart chakra opens, it becomes a door through which you pass into higher spheres of love and wisdom and eventually come in contact with the Great Ones. Hatred, revenge, and grief damage this center.

The higher solar plexus opens when you live a life of peace, serenity, sharing, forgiveness, renouncement, and humility. These are the virtues through which your solar plexus unfolds and makes available for you the higher psychic gifts, especially healing. These virtues are developed first by thinking about them and then by trying to actualize them in your life. Thinking and actualization are methods to expand your consciousness and unfold your centers. Jealousy, greed, fear, and hurry damage this center.

The sacral center can be unfolded by living a life of purity, occasional celibacy, and creativity, by controlling your sensual imagination, and by living a righteous life. The sex center is very sensitive to your actions. Every time your conscience does not approve of your actions, the sex center is disturbed. Many sexual problems are the result of living an unrighteous life.

The base of spine center unfolds and develops safely when one dedicates himself to a life of sacrificial service and striving, and when he works for freedom and makes it his life-aim to serve humanity. Anger, resentment, and hatred damage this center.

What happens when your chakras begin to unfold?

1. When the head center begins to unfold, you develop Soul contact. You start to be impressed by the "Center where the Will of God is known." You develop true leadership. You experience and demonstrate heroism. You liberate yourself from the domination of illusions. You feel bliss.

2. When the ajna center begins to unfold, you develop foresight, the sense of direction, and control over your personality and over destructive forces.

3. When the throat center begins to unfold, you develop discrimination and creativity. You become enlightened. You gain intellectual power. You feel joy.

4. When the heart center begins to unfold, you develop understanding and inclusiveness. You begin to register higher impressions. You reach the hearts of people. You attend Ashrams. You develop intense and inclusive love for all forms of life.

5. When the solar plexus begins to unfold, you develop healing power. You become sensitive to psychic energy and to the psychological conditions of human beings related to you. You develop astral consciousness.

6. When the sacral center begins to unfold, you create magnetism and healthy children. Your aura shines like a rainbow.

7. When the base of spine center begins to unfold, you develop illumination and at-one-ment with your spirit.

One begins to develop the sense of synthesis immediately when the threefold fire begins to fuse with the fire of spirit.

In the future, instead of prescribing chemical drugs, physicians will give patients certain forms of meditation to cure their physical ills. Most of our physical ills are the result of those actions which are harmful, separative, and ugly. Physical health depends upon moral health. The future physician will see that the patient strengthens his morality before he expects to be healed.

The unfoldment of the centers is related to our karma. Our karma is the result of how we used our thoughts, words, emotions, and bodies in the past. Unless the karma of our wrong actions, words, and thoughts is cleared, the development of the chakras may still go on but with many problems, pain, and suffering.

All progress in Nature must have the assistance of the Law of Karma.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Education as Transformation vol.1