Thinking in the Subtle World

After one leaves his body, he realizes that all that he had is taken away from him. Such an awareness often makes him feel that he is left totally unprotected, like a leaf that has fallen in the currents of the air.

When this feeling passes, he realizes that the Law of Karma is a firm foundation on which he can rest.

Following this realization, he can see that his aspirations and interests give him certain directions. He eventually realizes that it is his thoughts that he can depend on. In the Subtle World, man communicates with thought. Man receives and gives through thought. Man protects himself and fights with his thoughts. Man finds his way toward Higher Worlds through his thoughts.

Those who develop pure thinking and creative thinking will have greater facility in the Subtle World. Almost anything done in the Subtle World is done by the power of thought. For example, things are created, moved, put in motion, and destroyed by the power of thought. Integration, alignment, and synthesis are achieved by thought. Sublimation and transmutation are achieved by thought. All communication within the Subtle World and other worlds is carried on through thought. Those who do not have the ability to think will toss in the dark sea of the subtle planes like a little boat on the stormy oceans.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Other Worlds

Jealousy

Jealousy is a poisonous snake which abides in the hearts of those who have darkness within themselves. When we are jealous, we serve our jealousy and turn into its slave. Jealousy first manifests when a person hates the following in others:

- Beauty
- Abilities
- Success
- Talents
- Health
- Perseverance
- Energy
- Dynamism
- Solemnity
- Wealth
- Possessions

The second phase of jealousy manifests when the person attacks in others those qualities or attributes that he does not have or are better than what he has. He slanders the person, ridicules him, laughs at him, deforms and changes the expressions of the person, or implies wrong motives behind all his efforts and actions.

The third phase of of jealousy is when the jealous person hates himself and falls into depression. He respects no value and thinks that he does not exist.

Man blooms only by appreciating others, by being grateful for their talents and their beauty, and by helping them unfold and flourish more. When, because of jealousy, a person rejects the recognition of the value of others, their beauty and talents, he creates a blockage between his Soul and his personality. The Soul stops providing inspiration to the person. It is a deeply psychological fact that jealous people eventually become ugly, parched lands because their Soul does not precipitate the rain of talents upon them.

Jealousy damages the red blood cells, liver, and pancreas. The greatest damage a jealous person does to himself is when, in the heat of jealousy, he petrifies his pineal gland. Medicine will one day discover that jealousy is the cause of many complicated diseases.

Jealousy disturbs our relationships with people. It creates tension, fighting, animosity, and separation. Jealousy eventually leads to suicide. It creates a grey mist in the aura and poison in the bloodstream. Most of the crimes committed in the world are caused by jealousy.

Jealousy can be overcome only through the exercise of identification with the one of whom you are jealous. Be him, be her, and see yourself

• In his beauty
• In his talent
• In his position
• In his glory
• In his success
• In his prosperity

Through identification with the other person, you draw those same elements to yourself of which you were initially jealous.

Pray and bless those who are

- More beautiful than you are
- More successful than you are
- Happier than you are
- More prosperous than you are
- More talented than you are

The Law says to recognize greatness in others and rejoice in it if you want to find the path to greatness.

Every jealous person carries within himself the seeds of worthlessness - and worthlessness is the cause of moral and physical suicide.

Beware of people who develop ego, vanity, and a sense of superiority. The presence of these three poisons indicates that the Chalice is cracked and is emptying. Sooner or later, the person will be aware of his worthlessness. Jealousy manifests as ego, vanity, and a sense of superiority as the treasures in the person slowly evaporate.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Leadership Vol.3

How are illusions formed?

1. Most illusions are built to protect our weaknesses and ignorance.

People think, talk, and act to cover themselves and to appear the way they are not in essence. Such an attitude impresses on their minds in such a degree that they build an image of illusion about themselves. When such an illusion is built, they no longer think, talk, and act as themselves, but as the fabricated image.


2. Illusions are built when we do not understand the facts and replace them with our opinions, then take our opinions as facts.

Opinions can be a method of escape from admitting the facts for various reasons. For example, admitting the facts may hurt you legally, may humiliate you. Or you are unable to understand the facts, and in your mind you fabricate thoughts or concepts that you think explain the facts. Once the falsified facts are accepted as reality, you have an illusion in your mind. And every illusion is a distorting factor in your consciousness.


3. Illusions are created because of the unreadiness of our consciousness to understand things as they are.

You may not be ready to understand a phenomenon because of lack of knowledge. For example, if you translate thunder as a war in heaven, and lightning as the swords of warriors, you will have a hard time breaking that illusion and discovering the true reason for thunder and lightning. Illusions hinder the progress of mental unfoldment.


4. Illusions are created because of our self-centered viewpoints.

If you look at events, or anything in the Universe, from the viewpoint of your self-interest, you cannot see the entire issue, and the small part in the radius of your viewpoint is impressed in your mind as the totality of the event or issue.

Self-centered viewpoints only see things within their personal interest and level of evolution.


5. Illusions are created when we force our logic and reasoning to justify our negative emotional reactions, such as jealousy and hatred.

When we try to support or justify our jealousy, hatred, slander, and treason, we create illusions in our minds. This is because all these negative emotions are based upon our past wounds, defeats, and hurts, and they come into being as mechanical reactions.

For example, you hate someone whose nose reminds you of a girl who hurt you in the past, and you fabricate reasons to justify your hatred.


6. Illusions are created when we project our weaknesses on others and fight against them.

Most of the time when we are jealous of someone we say, "He is jealous of me," or, "He hates me," or, "He is not honest toward me," and so on.

The truth is that in thinking about others being exactly what you are you prevent yourself from knowing your real nature. Instead you want to fight against them, "because they are no good." Such an illusion does not let you "know yourself."


7. Illusions are created when we try to appear that which we are not or imitate something that we are not.

People appear in many forms because they have an illusion in their minds about their true Image or they hate the image they are. What happens is that over the years they lose the Image of their Real Self and try to be many selves. This illusion creates a long term mental confusion, instability, and finally senility.


8. Illusions are created when we try to distort a fact or lie about it.

Every one of us knows when we lie, but when we continue to distort facts and lie for a long time, the mental body loses its clarity. Man builds so many illusions that the illusions begin to think, to measure, to handle the life of the man. Then man, the real operator of the show, does not exist any more. Illusions cause you to disappear.


9. Illusions are created when, under pressure or bribery from other people, we serve their destructiveness or self-interest.

In helping such people, first we become impressed by their image. Second, we dull our consciousness and inner voice, and act as they want us to act. This forces our Real Self to retreat, and we act by a mechanical self created by them as a toll for their interest. This is a very dangerous illusion.


10. Illusions are created when we impose our self-interest upon others and manipulate or exploit them.

Our self-interest is not truly an innocent interest, but it is an interest of our body, emotions, and separative mind. As we allow ourselves to be used by our self-interest, we lose our real identity and become our lower self. Thus, illusions bind us to our lower self, and for centuries they prevent us from being our Real Self.


11. Illusions are created when we do not choose the right ways to solve problems but act under ego and vanity.

Whenever we choose wrong ways, we create problems in our minds and conscience. Trying to solve problems illegally, or in wrong ways, involve us in more problems. In trying to solve these problems, we identify ourselves with the problems and with the "wrong ways" of solving problems. Identification with wrong ways creates illusions because "wrong ways" are like plastic forms which are not absorbed by our system.


12. Illusions are created also by post-hypnotic suggestions.

When the opinions and concepts of people by-pass your rational mind, they form the worst illusions because you cannot decipher them with your mind. They flash in your mental sphere as unidentified objects, creating disturbances in your thinking.

In a sense they react and respond to your thinking, but you can control neither their response nor their reaction.

Most of our opinions are parts of our illusions, especially when our illusions are created because of our self-interest and because of our emotional reactions.

Illusions, when they increase, do not allow you to think clearly and do not let your consciousness enter or communicate with the Intuitional Plane.

A certain degree of purity must be achieved in the mental plane to allow your soul to operate in the Intuitional Plane because the Intuitional Plane is pure light. This pure light can be used to dispel illusions.

Illusions cannot be dispelled by logical thinking because as long as illusions are found on the mental plane and in the spheres of consciousness, they do not allow you to use your pure logic and reasoning. But when the light of the Intuition hits your illusions, it dispels them almost instantaneously, as if through an electrical shock.

Glamors, which are astral illusions, can be dispelled by reason and logic and especially by the increasing light of the human soul. Clear thinking, confrontations with your glamors through analysis and logic, soon enable them to be destroyed.

Illusions are mental, and they need a more fiery energy to wipe them out. This energy is the energy of Intuition, which can be invoked through meditation and especially through contemplation.

Sometimes your Solar Anger or your Master sends a beam of intuitional light to dispel your illusions, if your karma allows its.



-Torkom Saraydarian
Leadership vol.3

Etheric vision

As the refinement [of humanity] proceeds, more people will develop etheric vision and as a consequence the inhabitants of the etheric planes will be revealed to us. At this stage a new science will be given to humanity - the science of right relationship with the inhabitants of the etheric planes. Through this science, human beings will be able to have the cooperative help of devas and angels to solve their manifold problems on earthly planes and on the planes that are above the earth. Thus, a great breakthrough in human evolution will be achieved, and once more the traveler on the Cosmic Path will see the great Future awaiting him.

-Torkom Saraydarian
New Dimensions in Healing

Borrowing

If you borrow money from your brother, pay him back with interest.

I remember borrowing a lemon from a neighbor. A few days later, my father asked me if I had returned it. "Not yet," I said. "Do it now," he insisted. "We have lots of lemons." I took a lemon and was headed for the neighbor's home when my father called me back and asked, "What are you doing?" "I am returning the lemon." "Well," he said, "the noble thing to do is to return two or three lemons." She was overjoyed because it is so happened that she needed the additional lemons for her food.

In many countries it is customary when borrowing a pan or a plate to return it filled with fruit, pie or cookies. I remember once when we borrowed our neighbor's car while he was on vacation for a week. My father returned the car after putting new tires on it. We were happy at being able to use the car, and our neighbor was happy with his new tires.


-Torkom Saraydarian
(The Sense of Responsibility in Society)

The reappearance of Christ

The reappearance [of Christ] has various aspects that we must bring into our consciousness. The reappearance is an organized, orchestrated movement for Christ to come and demonstrate to the earth that for two thousand years man has not awakened and has gone in wrong directions. The reappearance will be a new impact to show humanity that the Hierarchy exists, that Christ exists, that Masters exist, that higher levels of beingness exist, that Higher Worlds exist.

The reappearance is not like Christianity says. Their attitude toward the reappearance is very vulnerable. They think when Christ reappears, all problems of the world will be solved. He could not solve even the fishermen's problems when He came. He is not going to solve problems. He is trying to make you solve problems because of His Presence, by impressing a new vision on you.

There is no imposition by Him to make you change. He challenges us with beauty and higher knowledge.

It is not the Christ that brings peace; it is your recognition of Christ that makes peace possible.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Leadership vol.3

The advantage of early marriage

Q: What is the advantage of early marriage?

A: Early marriage is good because it saves your energies, saves you from pollution, you do not get sicknesses from other sources. A man who marries at the age of thirty-five or forty has gone, at least in the Western world, with one hundred women. This is a little exaggeration but no too much. If he takes one virus from each one, God save him. It is similar with the girls. It is good to love, but what about the viruses that are waiting there to get you? If you take viruses and suddenly they come out at the most important point in your career or the most important moment of your life, you are really defeated by your former acts. A married person learns responsibility, carries his duties better, and raises children and cares for them. It is a blessing to have a family that starts from youth, but I am not saying that if you do not find it, rush into any marriage. No. Sometimes you marry when you are eighty-five.

Early marriage is very good, especially for boys. Do not delay if you can. Find a wonderful girl and marry. And I will tell you another thing. Do not be afraid of problems. It is good that you have problems at home because if you have a good mind, every problem becomes a source of wisdom.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Leadership. vol.4

Meditation to cultivate compassion

It is possible to cultivate compassion through meditation to open one's heart center. The following meditation is a very beautiful tool to cultivate compassion:


1. Sit comfortably and relax.

2. Close your eyes.

3. Take a few deep breaths and relax further.

4. Visualize the following:

  -Birds singing on a beautiful blooming tree
  -Fish of various colors playing in a pool
  -Flowers of many colors in the fields
  -Various animals feeding their babies
  -Children playing in the fields
  -Pine forests
  -Stars in the midnight sky

5. Take each one for a month and touch them, love them, admire the joy of life in them. Then think that all of these living beings want to enjoy life, want to bring joy and beauty to others. Feel their heartbeats, their desire to live, to be, to enjoy.

6. Think about nations and which every nation greater joy and success. Bless each of them and send your love and peace to them.

7. Think about one humanity and see humanity as one family. Feel the desire of humanity to liberate itself, to free itself from wars, pains, and sufferings and enjoy life in peace, in love, and in understanding.

8. See al boundaries eliminated and nations fused with each other, forming one global brotherhood.

9. Visualize our solar system as a spaceship with twelve wheels in the great ocean of the Milky Way. See how it is necessary to be in harmony with the great Center of Love and compassion beyond the galaxy.

10. See the Central Sun from Whom emanates everything, and to Whom returns every Spark of Life.

11. Decide to increase your love.

12. Decide to be compassionate to all living forms.

13 Feel your heart filling with joy and bliss.

14. Sing a song of gratitude to the All-pervading Life.

15. Open your eyes, sit quietly for a few moments, and then go about your work.



-Torkom Saraydarian
The Flame of the Heart

Rest and labor

People think that rest is the opposite of labor. Actually, they complement each other. When a person performs labor in the right way, it gives rest to his heart, which in turn recharges his mechanism. People have a misconception about rest. Rest to them is a state of immobility or indulgence. Rest is actually a part of a composition where pauses are observed to make the symphony more impressive.

Immobility does not exist in Nature. Nature is movement, a constant flow - and man is part of Nature. Real rest is a state in which a vacuum is created in order to absorb more dynamism for a higher labor.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Myths, heroes, and legends

When Great Ones thought about how to make people progress on the path of evolution, they created myths, legends, and heroes using the dynamics of the mind. The dynamics of the mind are mental images charged with spiritual aspiration, which create a strong drive toward spiritual evolution and beingness.

The Great Ones created myths, heroes, and legends, and They even sent legendary figures to humanity. The spiritual, mental, and emotional health of people depends upon how much they assimilate these images. The more they assimilate, the more they advance. The more they advance, the greater is the beauty they bring to the world and the deeper is their penetration into Cosmos.

The health of the physical, emotional, and mental bodies is related to a vision toward which you strive. This vision creates a polarization in your atoms, cells, emotions, and thoughts, and a rhythmic and harmonious configuration begins to build in your nature.

All sickness is the result of disharmony of the energies and forces in your body. It is the result of conflict within yourself, in which the survival potential is giving in to the powers of degeneration and death. Images created by the Great Ones are antidotes to this "giving in" process.

Worship is a scientific technique to polarize you toward the images of great heroes and eventually mold your life upon the principles of those images. Worship is a technique to make you equal to the object of your worship. The worship of an image of greatness eventually creates such a heat in your bones, muscles, emotions, heart, and mind that the hidden Christ within you is released. An intense moment of worship is a moment of release of the divine electricity within you. The moment of striving in which your image is lost in the image of your worship is the moment of transformation, the moment of overcoming yourself.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Talks on Agni, vol.1.

Four stages of service

Service has a great regenerative effect on the human nature. It not only organizes a person's life, but it also regenerates his physical body, strengthens his inner system, vitalizes his emotional nature, and kindles his intellectual or mental nature.

Service has many levels. One level is that you do something very constructive to meet a real need and receive your reward. Another level is that your presence and your example make people become more noble, honest and striving. There is also a level where you try to help people to meet their spiritual needs, without any expectation. Another level is to help people while they reject you, slander you, or show many other signs of ingratitude. Teachers say that this is where true service starts.

Psychic energy begins to develop in a person when he reaches this fourth stage of service. Psychic energy grows when there is resistance. When a person strives to increase Beauty, Goodness, Righteousness, Joy and Freedom, even while people resist him with opposing forces, psychic energy wells up within the person as he intelligently persists in expanding these five principles.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Spiritual Regeneration

Two kinds of self-confidence

There are two kinds of self-confidence. One is written with a capital "S." The other is written with a small "s." Self-confidence with a capital "S" refers to a person who has liberated his consciousness from the lower vehicles and, to a certain degree, has succeeded in becoming his Self and found the treasures hidden in his being. Self-confidence with a small "s" is the result of an identification with wealth, position, or certain knowledge.

Professional people are mostly found in the second category, except whose who, along with their academic knowledge, developed beingness. Wealth, position, and academic knowledge alone are slippery ground, and those who have a little insight do not feel too secure on it. But those who develop beingness stand firm in all conditions, even in all ages.

The self-confidence gained by worldly power is always defeated by the Self-confidence gained by spiritual powers. Self-confidence gained by spiritual attainment is power.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Leadership vol.2

Service - Whom do we serve?

Whatever we think, speak or act, we are serving someone or something. The main question to ask is, "Whom and what am I serving?" Meditation upon this question will provide great illumination in our life. We often do not know the answer, but when we discover it, our life will change immensely.

We must find out for example, whether or not we are serving things like our vanity, ego, hatred, jealousy, sex, stomach, house, business, stupidity, or accumulated post-hypnotic suggestions. Most of humanity serves these things, which means that they dedicate their thoughts, actions, and feelings tot these things. Fortunately, there are those who are serving higher causes and higher values.

It is very good to sit for two or three minutes daily and consider what we are serving. Whatever we serve directs our energy, and we become the object of the thing we serve. The object of our service formulates and then builds our future image.

People find themselves in different living situations and conditions because they serve different "lords" - different objects or people. People's faces are different, their health and their lives are different because they serve different objectives. People who are half healthy/half sick, half beautiful/half ugly, are serving "mixed lords." Whatever object a person serves, he become that object.

Lord Buddha, in one of His lectures, said, "I became a Buddha because, throughout millions of ages, I served Buddhas." A superficial examination of this statement does not reveal much, but if a person meditates upon it, he will find something very important. For millions of ages and incarnations, Lord Buddha served other Buddhas - Those Who serve the Supreme Light. In this way, Lord Buddha's life was dedicated to the Light, the Great Purpose and Plan, the objectives of these Great Ones - and because of His service to these Great Ones, He became one of Them.

We see in this that a person cannot achieve spiritual heights and spiritual powers unless he dedicates his whole life to the service of a Great One, or serves the disciples of the Great Ones. In serving, a person is exerting and sublimating himself, and eventually the object of his service will reveal the great beauty that the server is in his essence.


-Torkom Saraydarian
The Sense of Responsibility in Society

Ego worship

At present, due to our religious and educational systems, people have become ego worshipers. They worship their own interests, even when they pray to the Lord. They want to be successful, prosperous, healthy, happy, informed, and wise - individually. Almost everything people do is for their own interest.

• They expect payment.
• They expect personal happiness and salvation.
• They expect rewards, recognition, and position.
• They expect inner satisfaction.

Behind all these expectations there stands the ego.

They learn for personal gain; they try to become specialists in any field to make more money and enjoy life. They even try to achieve higher positions just to shine, just to make money, or to have enough influence to turn the currents of interest toward themselves.

There are reasons why we have so much pain and suffering in the world. People in general do not realize that one can only be healthy when he tries to make others healthy and when he creates healthy conditions in the environment. If we do not make our neighbors healthy, they will make us sick.

One can be successful when he tries to make his society successful; a failing society eventually will make him fail. One can be prosperous if he makes others prosperous; if others are not prosperous, they will make him poor. One cannot be happy if his environment is unhappy; if he does not succeed in making the people around him happy, they will make him unhappy.

The light of a person's knowledge cannot increase unless he shares his light with others. Everyone who learns has a chance to be a teacher, has a chance to challenge us and help us all strive for greater knowledge.

If a person wants to be virtuous or holy, he must try to make the people around him virtuous and holy, because if he tries to be virtuous and holy on his own, the others will soon make him work against his own virtues.

The principle behind all of these concepts is that in giving, we can have more, and the more we give, the more we have.

Even if we serve people for our own interests, it is beneficial. Only be serving people can we eventually learn to forget ourselves in the performance of service.


-Torkom Saraydarian
The Sense of Responsibility in Society

A true Teacher destroys your ego

The moment you become a disciple to a true Teacher, that Teacher will do everything existing in heaven and earth to destroy your ego. The building that has lasted ten thousand years must be demolished if you want to build a new mansion with a new plan, new visions, new regulations and new needs. Old-fashioned buildings are obsolete and we are ninety percent old-fashioned buildings which cannot survive earthquakes, floods, rain, lightning, and so on. They are obsolete and must be demolished. Yet, the Teacher has a very difficult time doing this, because the dwellers in that building pray and cry to be left alone. Poor us, we want exactly that body, exactly that emotion, exactly that mental build-up. Well, how to break it? So the Teacher fails if he feels pity and does not break down the old buildings.

This is the battlefield of suffering for the Teacher. He must use high-level tactics and wisdom to destroy old buildings and endure the reactions and animosity of the people who dwell in them. If a Teacher cannot destroy these faulty structures, he fails. He fails in his duty. Some teachers are there only to be worshipped.

Real aspirants realize that their ego must be destroyed. Whenever one is ready, he must go to the Teacher and say, "Now I think I am ready to receive that big hammer on the head of my ego." When he is really ready, the Teacher looks into his eyes and says, "You are entering the path of discipleship."

As long as one caries his ego, his showing-off, he will never enter the Kingdom of God. It is impossible because ego is the "Dweller on the Threshold." It sits there and anytime you want to go through, it swallows you into its stomach and you stay there another ten thousand years.

The Master of a Teacher will ask Him, "What did you do with your disciple?" If the Teacher answers, "Oh Lord, I took her to the movies, and restaurants, I kissed and caressed her, I danced with her and had a good time," the Master will say to the Teacher, "You nasty person; be gone from the field of service!"

When a real Teacher sees your vanity, it will be so uncomfortable for you. The Teacher always steps on your tail and it aches so bad. I know when my Teacher started stepping on my tail, all my being became unhappy. But if the Teacher does not do this, be very careful; he is not a true Teacher. You are going to be really uncomfortable with a Teacher, or else that Teacher is not active in your life.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Spiritual Regeneration

The modern definition of God

The modern definition of God can be understood as One Who talks through our conscience, through our love, through our creativity, through compassion and goodness.

For some advancing human beings, the God idea is an idea of power, compassion and Light. God is

-you
-Father-Mother
-The power of the planet
-The power of the Sun
-The power of Cosmos
-The power of the Milky Way
-The power of that around which our Milky Way revolves

The idea of God is relative to your expanding consciousness. The more you expand your consciousness, the more inclusive is your God. There is One God, but Centers in the One God gradually can be approached.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Leadership vol.2

Ambition

Ambitious people who want to climb upon the shoulders of others are used by dark forces. To reach their goal such people surrender into the hands of destructive forces to secure themselves and to succeed in their job. Of course dark forces benefit from such fools. They help them climb toward the goals of their ambitions, wiping away as much as possible those who were working in constructive labor. 


Ambition is the result of a poison in the brain which increases as it manifests, leading the ambitious person to take nonsurvival and self-destructive steps.

Ambition must not be confused with the spirit of progress and striving toward higher usefulness. A person should strive, have great goals, try to have better positions, better knowledge, better relationships. But all these must be done not at the expense of others but to fill a vacancy in the chain of coworkers and to help others to climb on the ladder of their service. When the spirit of striving is captive of the ego, vanity, and separatism, it turns into the poison of ambition.

An ambitious person demonstrates from childhood the existence of this poison in his nature. For example:

• In gatherings, they push away others to have a better place to stand or sit.
• They are the first in line to eat.
• They decorate themselves with the plumage of others.
• They show off.
• They answer questions not directed at them.
• They put their nose in the business of others.
• They appear that they are defending the rights of others.
• They protest against anything hat they think hurts their interest.
• They use bribery and flattery to advance.
• In their character, they have various phobias, but they show off as if they do not have fear.
• They attack people when they are sure they cannot be detected.
• Before they take your position they pretend they respect you, but after they take your position they insult you.
• They are very smart in not losing any opportunity to occupy new territories.

Ambition sometimes appears as enthusiasm. The difference can be seen when you realize that enthusiasm is inclusive, selfless, and sacrificial, but ambition is separative, selfish, and demanding or imposing.

When ambition increases, it creates mental imbalance which shows itself through various defects of character. Such people fall into cyclic depression, hopelessness, and suicidal moods. The only thing that helps them temporarily is the poison created from exercising slander and treason. This poison eventually unites with the poison of ambition, leading the body and psyche of the person into disaster. It is this period of degeneration that is the most dangerous moment in the life of such people. They become revengeful, destructive, and malicious.

Ambition ends in self-destruction.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Battling Dark Forces

The best way to fight your lower nature

Sometimes when crises occur, people begin to fight against their lower natures and transgressions, thinking that their lower nature is responsible for the arrival of the crisis. They think that crises can be resolved by defeating their lower natures and its failures. This is obsolete thinking, which is still practiced in many outmoded disciplines. Fighting against the trash that you have and emptying trash cans in the yards of your consciousness does not help; it only makes you more miserable.

The best way to fight your lower nature is to shift your consciousness from your weaknesses and failures toward your higher ideals and visions and to work to actualize them. As you strive toward the highest, you raise yourself to a higher altitude from which you can see the pettiness of your failures. You can let them slowly dry out and disappear due to lack of nourishment.

The more you think about your failures, troubles, pain and suffering, the more you identify with them. You liberate yourself only by thinking about your future victories, future glories and achievements and by taking successful steps to actualize them.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Cosmic Shocks

What is creativity?

Creativity means to cooperate with the creative processes of God. If you are doing something parallel to something He is doing, that is creation. When you are creating a man out of a hippy, when you are creating a genius out of a smoker of marijuana, you are creating. That is creating. When you are making beauty everywhere, you are creating. To create means to get closer to the Divinity which is within you. Unless you are in the vicinity of the inner Divinity you cannot create. Your creativity is crime and violence and so on and your creativity misleads people.

Creativity does not just come. For example, you go and see these vicious movies playing in the theaters. People are hitting each other and killing each other. Everything is annihilated and cars are smashed. The children cry and somebody shuts up the child. That is what is in your brain. Your brain is blocking itself with these awful images. We say, "Isn't the producer and writer of this movie a creative person?" That is not the creativity we are talking about.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Initiation

What is Maya, Glamor and Illusion?

Maya is the unsatisfied urges and drives of past lives, accumulated in the etheric body and in the lower centers. It controls our physical body in such a way that we can hardly exercise control over it. Each maya highly charges the nature of the forces received by the astral body.

Glamor is the identification with the objects of our desires. Whenever we are identified with an object of our desires we build a replica of the object of our desire in our astral body. The average man is loaded with such objects, and that is why his astral sensitivity and his emotional relationships are so distorted.

Each glamor and each maya control the energy flow and channel it toward their ends.

Illusion is distorted images of facts or truths. The root of illusion is separatism. As long as man lives as a separate entity with separate interests, he cannot see the things as they are; so he changes and translates things from the point of his individual interests.

When our minds are full of illusions we cannot translate clearly the incoming impressions, and we distort them. In most cases people communicate with each other through their illusions rather than through their Selves.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Dynamics of the Soul

Dark nights of the soul

In the dark nights of the soul we realize how many stupid things we did in the past. We face them. We become depressed as we understand how much damage we did and how much we owe. All of these feelings and karmic debts put us in heavy depression. This becomes a dark night if we do not remember that, initially, we are Sparks of God. When we remember this, we get out of that tunnel of darkness and find ourselves out in the sunshine.

The dark night is also a period in which you prepare and "wind" yourself. For example, bears hibernate during the winter for several months. They gather energy and regenerate themselves. You are going to be like the bears. When the dark nights come, take it easy. They will pass. Your destination is your Father's Home. But you must walk there. The Father is not going to come to you and say, "Here, I will take you home." You are going to walk toward home and this is not easy.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Initiation

Living in danger

It is suggested that we do not think about dangers but try to fulfill our mission the best way we can.

What does it mean not to think about danger but to live in danger? To think about danger means to preoccupy oneself with the consequences of danger to such a degree that one paralyzes himself and makes himself unable to find ways and means to face the danger.

Danger, in reality, is not factual but is only a possibility. Thinking about danger makes the possibility a reality for us. The power of danger does not come from its possibility. It comes from the fact that we make it a manifestation within our imagination.

To live in danger means to realize that anything can happen anywhere and anytime. If this realization is clear, one does not waste his time thinking about any particular danger but thinks how to live a life that makes all dangers a "ladder" of achievement.

It will not be an exaggeration if we say that creation is a field of dangers. Dangers are considered as "propelling forces." They are also the best doors of opportunity. A great success comes after mastery of a greater danger.

People must not dwell mentally on dangers but must forge ahead using the dangers as a propelling force.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Leadership Vol.1

Speed

Evil has another way to destroy humanity. In this age, people are fascinated with speed. They think that speed is the main factor for success and development. Because of this false idea, they have created a lie which imposes increasing speed upon us. In a very short time, man will lose control over his time and turn into a wheel in a great machine - and those who push the buttons will determine his speed and make him run until he is useless.

In an advanced age, people will live in the idea of Infinity. They will not force their bodies to run faster than they are capable of. In our age, life is scheduled in such a way that every hour is planned for something. Very soon, no one will have any private time which is not loaded with something to be done.

Forced speed has many disadvantages. For example, children are forced to act as adults. Man is forced to pace himself and live by the speed of machines. Speed can turn into a disintegrating factor; it can load our minds and hearts and make them machines.

We are receiving three hundred times more knowledge than the average student was two hundred years ago, yet our brain is almost the same brain. We are receiving five hundred times more emotions than an average person received one hundred years ago. Our daily papers, television, and news load us and bring emotions to us from all around the world. Our bodies are under more pressure every day, loaded with radioactivity, short waves, telephone calls, and increasing daily obligations.

One hundred years ago, under normal conditions, a child had only a few emotional shocks in his life. But in these days, a child has, in one day, an equivalent number of emotional shocks to those of the entire life of a child in the past. If he watches a violent or criminal movie, if he hears news of war, crime, terrorism, and earthquakes, his emotional body goes through intense pressure. When he hears that "respectable" people deceive the government, or that a president is impeached or assassinated, or that the police is selling drugs, he undergoes immense mental and emotional shocks. These shocks are responsible for the way he acts at school, the attitude he has toward his parents, the relations that he has in his community, the crimes he will commit in using drugs and alcohol, and his evasion of duty and responsibility.

Why do we load our children's hearts and minds with images of crime, terrorism, destruction, dishonesty, and failure? All of these images will affect their education, behavior, and health. Satan knows this and will make every effort to create more violent, criminal movies, news, and events in order to produce an insane world.

The speed imposed upon our systems is dangerous not only to our physical health but also to our sanity and moral life. We collect information and knowledge in our minds, and fifty percent of that information and knowledge has no use for us or for others. Like junk, we collect information in the backyards of our minds and thus lose precious space in the clutter. Many people cannot store more appropriate data because of the junk that occupies all their space.

We are forced to speedily collect data, emotions, and information. We are forced to do things in a mechanical way. One day we will become only an operator of that machine which we created to do all our jobs and, if the machine goes wrong, we will lose our heads.

We speed our vegetables in growing. We demand that our children grow up sooner. We want immediate responses, rewards, and solutions to our problems. We have lost the state of timelessness. Timelessness is health, relaxation, and tuning in with Infinity. Timelessness originates not from knowledge but from liberation.

We are imposing such a speed upon our mechanisms that we will end the life of humanity on this planet.  We must slow down. Speed leads to insanity if it is not controlled with patience. Patience is a feeling of Infinity.

When merchants brought big clocks to certain eastern countries for the first time, they were examined and considered a tool of Satan. They attacked the merchants and destroyed the clocks with hammers. My grandparents used to tell us this story again and again to make us aware of how ignorant those people were who thought clocks were the tool of Satan. But on closer analysis, there was an intuitive perception in the actions of those people. We have turned life into a machine through clocks, watches, and speedometers.

We force ourselves every year with greater and greater speed, paying for it through our ill health and insanity. Our consciousness is wrapped in the concept of time in such a way that we do not have a period of ten minutes of timelessness. Even the periods of "rest" are flooded with thoughts of what will be done after that short period of "rest." It is only in a state of timelessness that the health of the body, the heart, and the mind can be restored.

Certain people are already machines. They run by a speed imposed upon them because speed has become equal to survival. To survive, one must continually increase his speed of thinking, feeling, acting, and even speaking and writing.

One day a garage mechanic told me that he could change a tire every five minutes. "What is your purpose in doing that?" I asked. "More money," he said. Months later, I went back to have a tire changed. He was sitting on an old battery. "What is the matter?" I asked him. "I was in the hospital for three months.  They changed my tires, but my engine is not running very well and I cannot work for a while". One can "change tires" but if his engine is worn out, new tires will not help. We pay for violating the principle of timelessness.

The whole concept of time and speed is an illusion fabricated by dark forces to exterminate human existence from this planet. How can we isolate ourselves from such a mechanical life based on time and speed? The only way that still presents hope lies in the moments of meditation in which we may enter the domain of timelessness and feel a deep relaxation from the imposed pressures and demands of time and speed. There is no cure except through a catastrophic explosion or through a well-organized plan to decrease the demands of time and speed and give people an opportunity to relax and live in ease, at least for a few moments, in the joy of timelessness. Ecstasy, concentration, and contemplation are moments of timelessness.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Battling Dark Forces

Why some criminals are strong and healthy?

It is interesting to note that sometimes criminals and those who work against the interests of their fellow human beings, causing great difficulties in their lives, have healthy bodies and live a long life. Such people have "integrity," though it is a negative integrity which gives them strength. They act as a unit in their physical, emotional, and mental life. They do not have cleavages.

The reason that they do not have cleavages is that they have their own standards, and they believe in their standards no matter how far their standards are from the standards of righteous and holy ones. They keep their "integrity" and build a personality crystallized on the lines of negative or anti-evolutionary force.

This continues until the Soul sends a beam of light into the personality and creates an opposing thoughtform, which later will serve as the base for evolutionary forces. As the influence of the Soul dawns and increases in the personality, the problems of the subject increase and multiply. He confronts physical, emotional, and mental problems, as if all the creditors were coming at once and demanding their payment. The reason for this is that the inner "integrity" is distorted, and no form can exist for long without inner unity, inner harmony or integrity.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Leadership vol.1

Projected thoughts

We sometimes are slowed down or become crystallized because people project to us certain thoughts - for example, sexual thoughts, hateful thoughts, evil thoughts, or criminal thoughts. When these thoughts are projected into our aura, we feel as though we are swimming in a stagnated pool.

I once knew a very beautiful and fiery girl who was studying and doing meditation. She told me she had decided to become a model, and soon after she posed for nude photographs which appeared in a men's magazine. Three months later she put away all her books and stopped meditating. One night she called me, crying, "I don't want to read anymore. What is wrong with me?" Millions of men were looking at her pictures and directing their sexual energies toward her. She was flooded with their desires, and even though she kept herself physically pure, she was being polluted mentally.

-Torkom Saraydarian
Spiritual Regeneration

What is hope?

Hope is the name of an energy which mobilizes all your forces and energies toward a set goal. Unless you believe that you can do something, you cannot do it.

Hope makes impossible things possible. Hope does not mean to sit and hope that things will happen. Hope is very different from "hoping." Hope does not make you lie down and dream that things will happen. Hope makes you mobilize all your resources to make your hope incarnate and be substantial.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Education as Transformation vol.1

The pursuit of happiness

Remember that hilarity has nothing to do with joy. Hilarity is a disease. "The pursuit of happiness" must be understood correctly. The pursuit of happiness is not a process of being happy at the expense of others. The pursuit of happiness is an intelligent way of living to bring happiness to the entire humanity, to animals, plants, birds, and all of Nature.

The pursuit of happiness is not license of sex, drugs, crimes, and exploitation. The pursuit of happiness is a process of healthy living, healthy aspiration, and clear thinking. It is a life lived in "harmlessness, self-forgetfulness, and right speech."

The pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of freedom - freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of religion, freedom of right speech. There is no happiness, unless the human essence is capable of being free from all conditions which prevent him from being beautiful, full of goodness, righteous, and joyful.

Unhappiness is a very contagious disease. Those who fall into unhappiness are those who break the laws of love, unity, and service. We must try to heal through the medicine of joy. It will take time, but we will eventually do it.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Joy and Healing

Real authority

Real authority is not one who does whatever he wants to do, but one who knows and is, and acts in accordance with laws and principles. He is an authority for those who know little and are not very developed on their path of evolution, but who are sensitive to the knowledge and the beingness of the authority.

Knowledge is not enough to create authority. One needs also the ability to make that knowledge applicable to himself and to others. Realization is the moment when our knowledge transforms our life, causing a steady transmutation of the substance of the vehicles and enables us to function as the embodiment of our knowledge. Only then do we become authorities on our own level.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Psyche & Psychism