Worshipping the Fire

The best way to fight your lower nature

2012-02-17T22:13:00.002+02:00

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 This is obsolete thinking, which is still practiced in many outmoded disciplines.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?

2012-02-15T12:43:00.002+02:00

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?

2012-02-13T15:23:00.001+02:00

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

2012-02-08T14:27:00.000+02:00

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

2012-01-21T17:11:00.002+02:00

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

2012-01-18T00:17:00.003+02:00

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 hum 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?

2012-01-14T20:15:00.000+02:00

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

2012-01-14T00:40:00.003+02:00

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?

2012-01-09T23:29:00.005+02:00

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

2012-01-07T17:23:00.002+02:00

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

2012-01-06T23:32:00.003+02:00

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

Simplicity

2011-12-24T16:49:00.007+02:00

Simplicity. Higher thinking is not confused thinking. It is clear, correct, and to the point. You can see the great simplicity in the words of Buddha and Christ. Simplicity does not mean a lack of richness of meaning, a shallowness, but a depth which you can see because of its clarity.

Simplicity is directness. It is the ability to present a great beauty, a great truth without confusion.

In simplicity the words or forms of expression do not hinder the light of the manifesting idea, vision, or spirit. They do not curtail it. They do not pretend that they are spirit. That is why we are told that "the letter kills the spirit," or any form of expression weakens or even kills the spirit when it pretends to be the spirit.

In simplicity the expression is the lamp that holds the light and makes it manifest as it is. In simplicity the form disappears in the light of the spirit, in the light of ideas, meaning, and purpose.

In simplicity there is soul-to-soul communication. In simplicity the words are silent to make the spirit sing.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Thought & the Glory of Thinking

Being born in times of crises

2011-12-13T13:25:00.003+02:00

People sometimes complain and say, "If I lived in different condition or in a different country, my light would probably shine out in a greater magnitude." Once there were two brothers. One was living in luxury because of an inheritance from his wife. The other was trying to do everything possible to educate himself, to achieve victory over his nature and weaknesses, to help and enlighten people. In the end both passed away, and the one who had been living a luxurious life was found in the lower astral plane, while the other one went to the higher mental plane.

Once when the brother living on the lower astral plane asked a visiting master the reason for such an unrighteousness, He replied, "Those who face difficult conditions, serious problems, obstacles of many kinds, complications and dangers in life grow faster toward Higher Worlds than those who fall into luxury."

Before the Spark is ready to reincarnate, It decides where to go. Some of the Sparks choose easy conditions, shallow waters of life, pleasures, etc. Others choose difficult conditions in which to exercise their spiritual faculties and prove their achievements and wisdom. They incarnate in those cycles in which the world is going through crises. We call such souls "heroes" who knowingly choose difficult conditions of life because intuitively they know that difficult times give the greatest possibilities to prove our worthiness to come closer to the Central Magnet.

Those who are consciously born at this time must feel proud and double their efforts to help humanity enter into greater light, in spite of the spreading darkness. There will be no regrets or complaints from the Sparks of light, only a joyful acceptance of conditions and a conscious effort to shine Their light.

-Torkom Saraydarian
Education as Transformation vol.1

Are we our consciousness?

2011-11-27T16:39:00.001+02:00

Q: Are we our consciousness?

A: We are not our consciousness. We use the consciousness. Consciousness is our mirror, made of a very high substance in which things are reflected for us to look at until we surpass our consciousness. A day will come when we do not use our consciousness. We will be aware, and then the day will come when we will no longer need our awareness; we will simply be.

For example, I think about you and use my consciousness, defining you in certain ways. Later, I will surpass that and become aware of what you are, without reason or logic. In the third stage, I will no longer need awareness because I am you! This is progressive beingness.

We use our consciousness; our awareness determines the consciousness which we use. The level of consciousness which we use continuously affects the atoms in our mechanism. Consciousness sets the page, the rhythm, and the measure. According to that measure or vibration, the physical, emotional, and mental atoms absorb and synchronize. Whatever the consciousness is, that is what the bodies are.

Consciousness determines the level of matter, the elements which you absorb from space and use to build the bodies. The mechanisms you use constantly ascend and change; they change as you change. Until your body is one hundred percent pure, you cannot be free of it; you are stuck to it. Until your emotional body is totally pure, you cannot rid yourself of it. Any impurity in the body attaches it to you. Only by refining and purifying the bodies can you break your link with them. The mental body must be illuminated ninety percent to be free of it.

But the human being builds a house and then destroys it the next day. He builds a chateau or a palace and then destroys it. He builds a road and then bulldozes it. He builds a nice body, then goes out drinking and does wrong things, destroying his body. He makes his emotions happy and beautiful, then hates, feels angry and greedy, and takes revenge. Mentally he thinks about great, beautiful plans, and then he gets on the telephone and gossips. He builds with one hand and destroys with the other. He builds himself and then destroys what he has built. We must pay attention, building continually toward perfection, being careful that we do not do something which will bring the whole building down.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Karma & Reincarnation

The glory in you that will start to shine out

2011-11-01T00:15:00.002+02:00

Look at yourself physically, emotionally and mentally. Look at your job, friends, home, education and life-goals. Are there elements in them which are against the highest or the best that you are capable of? Slowly you must try to eliminate your ugly emotions and ugly thoughts. You must find yourself refusing to go places which will not bring out the best in you, and slowly low-level friends must drop away. You must not want to do anything that lessens your nobility.

The glory in you that will start to shine out is your Divinity. The genius and talent that will radiate from you is the light of the Inner Sun within you that you are manifesting. As others feel the warmth of this radiation, they will notice your grandeur, the Cosmic beauty that you are expressing.

-Torkom Saraydarian
Talks on Agni vol.1

Religious superstitions engraved in childhood

2011-10-01T15:50:00.004+03:00

Many people break their former religious or traditional limitations and begin to open their sails on the oceans of new interests. They enjoy their new adventures for a long time, generally until they are sixty or sixty-five years old and in some cases only until they are thirty or thirty-five. Then they slowly return to their former interests, religion, traditions, or the habits of their childhood.

An average man in his seventies usually reflects the habits and mentality of his childhood when he was seven years old. This is the result of beliefs or traditions having been imposed. Converting people to your religion or traditions is the best way to create conflict within your church or group in the future. If the converted ones are in the majority, or if they are a powerful minority, and they are reverting to past beliefs, they will take over your church or group and translate your religion or tradition in a way that agrees with their former faith or habits.

How does this work?

Childhood impressions are the strongest because the vehicles are pure. The young mind does not have the disturbances or turbulences of adulthood, and the incoming impressions are almost carved in the deeper consciousness of the child. These impressions are not gathered there through logic or reasoning but by faith. Faith is total acceptance.

Logic and reason are ways of dialogue or negotiation. Early adulthood is a time of exploration and interaction with ideas. As a man grows older, his reason and logic weaken and his faith grows stronger.

Childhood faith stands there as a part of his being. As he becomes older, his beingness becomes his only refuge. Man takes refuge only in those things which he believed without any doubt in his mind, things which he accepted on faith.

Doubt is the substance of disintegration. Whenever a man doubts some logic or knowledge, that logic or knowledge does not last long. Curiously enough, dogmas, doctrines, or beliefs impressed upon the child through his faith are the factors which create doubt in all things that he tries to study in the future. As such people grow old, they have less trust in other people or different faiths or traditions.

The cure for all this is to impart children universal principles without dogmas, doctrines, and beliefs. Universal principles will be the foundation of future right relationship with all traditions which have universal principles in them.

Superstitions engraved in childhood will not lose their power over a person until the person clears his superstitions and illusions through the expansion of his consciousness and the transformation of his life through the fire of Intuition. Outer pressure to change superstitions, illusions, deep-seated convictions, and beliefs proves to be a failure.

As a man becomes more spiritual, or as he evolves toward greater achievements of Beauty, Goodness, Righteousness, Joy, and Freedom, he does not limit his life through any separative interest or any particular religion or politics. Instead he expands his life within those principles which tend to synthesize and unite.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Leadership vol.1

Communication in the subtle worlds

2011-09-27T15:29:00.002+03:00

In the subjective world, speech is not used; communication is through thoughtwaves. Those who have not passed away but can function in the subjective world can formulate thoughtwaves into words. But those who have left their physical brain have only their mental body, and if the mental body is not developed and cultivated by the science of spiritual thinking, then the person has a real problem in the subtle world. He cannot understand what is going on there. He cannot communicate with people. The guides, or invisible helpers, cannot teach or lead him. It takes hundreds and thousands of years to communicate with him through some sparks of thinking still left from the physical existence.

Conscious progress in the subjective world depends highly on our ability to think, to send and receive thoughts, and to understand them in their abstract values. This is what the science of meditation teaches.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Spring of Prosperity

Infinity and right use of time

2011-09-09T23:09:00.001+03:00

Some people say that they have all eternity to work out their salvation and they use this as an excuse to wallow in pleasures now. They feel that the future will take care of the mess they are creating now. They don’t realize that they will have to clean their own mess in the future. They don’t care about air pollution now and they don’t consider that they may not have air to breathe tomorrow. They never consider the adaptations that the body has to make in order to live in bad air. Such people do not understand the damage they are doing to their permanent atoms, which will bring them much pain and suffering in the future.

The disciple does not use the limitlessness of Infinity as an excuse to dance while the building is burning. The disciple does not care about those things which are tied to the finite. He knows that desire is tied to the finite. If you give a man a thousand dollars, he will soon want a million. The disciple sees attachment to the finite world as a rejection of his Divinity, and he lives only for the Divine Manifestation. He does not betray his own Divinity by identification with limitations.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Talks on Agni vol.1

The voice and the subconscious

2011-09-05T23:03:00.001+03:00

It is possible that a person has a great wealth of achievements but cannot share them with others or use them for his own benefit because of his voice and manners. This occurs when the person makes every kind of effort to improve his inner man, but his subconscious mind and the outer example in his environment, especially in childhood, enslave him and impose upon him a special tone of voice, a way of speech and manners. It is here that such a person needs help. And the help is to change the voice and manners and bring them into line with his achievements.

I remember a high level minister whose voice was like the voice of a chicken. He used to say wonderful things, but without deep affect. When I gave him special exercises so his voice would reflect his own level, he became the most influential minister.

Artificial exercises to change our voice create various psychological problems. The real help is not to make people change their voice but their level of consciousness and clean their subconscious mind. If these two are not done, a person can change his pitch but not his tonality. Tonality holds the secret, and it is the one that affects people and affects the cells and atoms of their bodies.

Spiritually advancing people change their voices and tonality, but this comes naturally. With such a change, their magnetism and their power of influence over other people is also changed.

A voice that is the expression of jealousy, revenge, vanity, or ego always sounds the same and hurts people’s consciousness, even if he or she talks about joyful things. The subconscious mind dominates the tonality of the voice.

-Torkom Saraydarian

The subconscious mind and the Chalice

Appreciation, recognition

2011-09-04T00:39:00.002+03:00

Many people take walks in the early morning and see beautiful flowers. They may appreciate them. But when it comes to appreciating members of their family, these same people are like frozen fish! For example, they say things like “I don’t care if you are singing, studying ballet or writing poetry; I just want you to work and make money.” That person will eventually lose his sense of worth, leading to criminal actions.

This has not yet been researched. I once asked a criminologist why he thought people became criminals. He replied, “Because of their genes, environment, and so on.” I said, “They become criminals because you don’t recognize them.”

You can see this in your children. Your children do many obnoxious things for only one reason - to get recognition. They want to bring out the beauty from inside themselves. They are "pregnant" with it, but there is no doctor or nurse to deliver it. Recognition is the "doctor" and "nurse."

-Torkom Saraydarian

The sense of responsibility in society

Food is a condensation of the sun's energy

2011-09-04T00:25:00.001+03:00

Food, particularly plant food, is a condensation of the sun's energy, as well as more subtle energy from the stars and other sources in the universe. Though the influences of these celestial bodies is indeed subtle, scientists have discovered that the surface of the Earth is constantly bombarded by radiation from different celestial bodies, including the moon, star systems, and other sources of radiation in the universe. Plants take these radiations into their energetic systems and ultimately transfer them to humans when they are eaten by humans. From a spiritual perspective, these energies are simply various condensations of the Divine cosmic energy In the process of our eating food the cosmic, solar, stellar, lunar, and other universal energies stored in the food are released to be absorbed directly into the human organism. We can experience the whole universe in each bite of our food.

Food is a love note from God. Its letters are written by the rays of the sun. It says I love you and I shall take care of you and sustain you with the offerings of my earth. If we take time to read the love letter, by chewing carefully and feeling the messages that are stored in food by the sun, earth, wind, water, and even by those who have grown, harvested, and prepared the food, its assimilation takes on a whole new meaning. This is a specific way of receiving God's grace, a holy sacrament to be experienced slowly, carefully, and consciously.

-Gabriel Cousens

Conscious eating

Maintaining equilibrium on the waves of incoming energies

2011-09-02T02:34:00.002+03:00

The equilibrium of man, nations, and humanity is periodically disturbed by an increasing flow of spiritual energies from constellations, from Higher Worlds, or from human, planetary, and solar centers. Such times are calls for equilibrium, or calls for serious striving to create balance and equilibrium between the future and the past; between the incoming energies and the created forms of every kind.

This call is met by expanding our consciousness and absorbing the new energies within a progressively refining system of bodies, emotions, thoughts, and actions.

Often these inpouring energies are the answer to mass invocations and prayers. Striving is, among many other things, an effort to maintain equilibrium on the waves of incoming energies.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Education as Transformation vol.1

Harmlessness

2011-08-31T16:09:00.001+03:00

People think that to be harmless in a society means to withdraw into your skin and bury yourself in your own petty pleasures. This is not so. A harmless person tries to eliminate all those sources which hurt people, distort their future, and lead them into physical and spiritual failure.

Harmlessness is an aggressive interest in the welfare of humanity, and is one of the attributes of a warrior for Goodness, Beauty, Righteousness, Joy, and Freedom. Harmlessness is not a passive virtue. It actively works and even attacks with the intention to love and uplift.

-Torkom Saraydarian

The Creative Fire

Balance and equilibrium

2011-08-27T22:17:00.003+03:00

We create imbalance in our system through the amount of food or the kind of food that we eat. We create imbalance in our system through speeding where we should go slowly and slowing down on the paths on which we should speed. We create imbalance in our system by thinking, living, and acting around the axis of our self, forgetting the All-Self; by always thinking “me, me, me, I, I, I,”...without remembering that we are cells in the body of the Whole Self. We must find a point of equilibrium between these two extremes and live a life that is healthy for ourselves and also beneficial to the All-Self. We must live our individual lives in a way that our lives turn into a contribution for the Common Good.

When people are one-sided, they enter a state of imbalance. For example, spiritual people used all their time to count the angels, and they left the world affairs to those who were materialists. Now we have a world which on one side is very idealistic, and on the other side has material luxuries without purpose or vision.

Our personal life must have a balance between, for example:

sleep and work
rest and labor
income and expenditure
spiritual life and worldly occupations
body and spirit
self and the All-Self

If we do not create an equilibrium between these factors, we fail. We must remember that matter is as spiritual as the spirit, and that spirit is as material as matter.

Extremists and fanatics can belong either to the matter or to the spirit. In both cases, they are very dangerous because they use matter or spirit for their own advantage, and against the interests of others. Fanatics and extremists lose a major balance between the individual and the whole, and they use all that is available to them against the whole.

In the human being, the Solar Angel is the point of equilibrium between the human soul and the Cosmic Self, but It controls the balance between man and Higher Forces carefully so that man progresses safely – if he wants to. Thus the Solar Angel impresses the human soul to cultivate his body, his emotions, and his mind but in the meantime to cultivate his willpower, love, and light so that the advancing mechanism of the personality can absorb and use creatively the increasing flow of spiritual energies.

Every time you are going to an extreme, remember that you are out of order. But people manipulate such a concept and think that if one is noble, he must try to be ignoble in order to balance himself; or if he is chaste, he must go into prostitution to balance himself. To make the above concept clear and simple, we can say: If you are sitting in a cave for a long meditation, have an equal amount of time for serving human beings. If you are reading and meditating all day, you are going out of balance if you do not create for yourself an equal time for work, labor, or service.

Only those who understand the secret of balance and equilibrium can progress into higher spheres of substance and higher spheres of spirituality. Every expansion of consciousness and every initiation is achieved through a moment of equilibrium in which your material and spiritual sides are harmonized to such a degree that an escape toward a higher state of consciousness becomes possible.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Education as Transformation vol.1

Protecting children from imbalance and psychological dangers

2011-08-26T19:09:00.002+03:00

There is imbalance in our entertainment system and in the process of our maturity, growth, and learning. Once a family brought me their seven or eight-year-old son and said, "This boy is the most obnoxious boy at home and in the neighborhood. He does things that no one can imagine."

I talked with the boy. He said that he liked to watch television three or four hours every day when his parents were not home. By watching three or four hours of television daily, that seven-year-old boy filled his mental and emotional baggage with so many events and unassimilated experiences that he was no longer living in his brain but in the memories of the television programs. He was a grownup before his time. And because he could not digest, analyze, and relate these recordings, he was out of balance. Anyone who is out of balance will do lots of obnoxious things.

Too often people are doing this to their children, leading them to television, movies, and different experiences for which they are not ready. Children must have their childhood. When they are too loaded with crime, terror, and violence, the lessons they learn in the Subtle Worlds will not last too long and will vanish, leaving them to the disturbing currents of life experiences.

Five-year-old children are deeply worried about nuclear fallout, atomic war, and terrorism. How can the best flowers in them flourish under such pressures? You protect little seedlings from winds and other dangers, but you do not protect your children from psychological dangers because it has become almost an impossibility to do so. You pump into their minds everything about their religion, their tradition, their nationality...to such a degree that they can no longer fit into a world community in which there are many religions, traditions, and nationalities as respected as theirs. This is how we create imbalance in their consciousness and in the world society, and then try to solve the problems emerging from such attitudes.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Education as Transformation vol.1

The high vibration of live-food diet

2011-08-22T01:05:00.001+03:00

A live-food, or even a primarily cooked vegetarian diet is a powerful aid to the healing process. The level of health stimulated by such a diet creates a whole new experience and lightness in the body. The vibration of the somato-nervous system becomes so high that it literally forces the lower-vibration, negative thoughts out of the system. These negative thoughts become incompatible with a higher vibration of energy that begins to fill the system.

Metaphorically speaking, a live-food diet brings so much lightness to the system that “the light is able to dispel the darkness.” Paradoxically, this is one reason I recommend that people make a slow transition to vegetarianism and particularly to a raw-food cuisine. I see this release of stored negativity as healthy and healing if one creates the proper psychological space to process these thoughts.

-Gabriel Cousens

Conscious eating

Diet and repressed emotions

2011-08-17T00:02:00.003+03:00

A vegetarian diet, and particularly a raw-food diet, can be threatening to some people because it directly forces them to face their food issues, and indirectly, their life issues.

Live foods have so much nourishment in them that considerably less food is needed to get the same amount of nutrition. Needing less food for optimal nutrition, however, forces us to observe whatever food compulsions we may have. If we compulsively need to eat more food and the body actually needs less food, it becomes increasingly harder to deny this contradiction. Many negative thoughts may arise when beginning to eat less, particularly on a raw-food diet or when fasting. Because of the highly energetic qualities of raw food, it seems harder to suppress feelings when eating it compared to overeating cooked and nonvegetarian types of foods to numb ourselves to life. On raw foods, repressed emotions and thoughts seem to be more easily released by the body-mind complex.

-Gabriel Cousens

Conscious eating

Distorted creativity

2011-08-16T00:49:00.001+03:00

Distorted creativity: the pressure of impressions from higher spheres reaches the artist, but because of the pollution of glamor, illusions, and vanities found in him, he distorts these impressions.

We can see such distortions in music, painting, and dancing; in science, politics, communication, finance, religion, and education. Such distortions are often carried on through channeling and mediumistic activities.

It is also possible for dark forces to use such artists to increase crimes and cause degeneration and corruption, often without the artist’s agreement. It is to be observed that such artists use drugs and exercises to stimulate their various etheric or physical centers. Often they expose themselves to hypnotic suggestions and carry on their work in extreme fanaticism and zeal.

-Torkom Saraydarian

The Creative Fire

Microbes, germs and bad karma

2011-08-13T16:06:00.001+03:00

There is a secret regarding the immune system. When the immune system is destroyed, AIDS results. This means that your protective energies, your vitality is defeated by your own actions, by the things you spoke, thought, or did. You killed your own vitality and now germs can attack you and do anything they want because you are no longer under the protection of light. That is why Christ advises us to "live in light and always let your light shine." It is vitality that shines out.

Microbes and germs are living entities like us. But they become destructive to us when we have wrong karma. They become instruments of retribution, helping us to correct ourselves. They are agents of karma to straighten us. If a person does not have bad karma, they will never touch him.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Battling Dark Forces

Karma and "good karma"

2011-08-13T15:46:00.001+03:00

Karma is not punishment. It is a law which gives you a continuous chance to correct your path by learning discrimination.

We wonder whether karma is not a reward as well. But God is good. We live, move, and have our being in Him - if we do not create artificial walls by living a life that is not in harmony with the higher laws of Nature.

There is no "good karma"'' because we do not earn good karma; it is already ours. To the average consciousness however, we say that good karma is the result of all that you do that is in harmony with the Laws of Goodness.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Appropriate food

2011-08-13T03:53:00.000+03:00

If the food one eats enhances, or at least doesn't interfere with, one's communion with the Divine and the flow of cosmic energy in the body, the food is appropriate. If after eating, one feels heavy and slow because so much energy is needed for digestion that attention is drawn to the stomach, then one is eating the wrong food.

If one's energy feels drained, or the communion with the Divine is blocked before, during, or after the meal, it is an indication that some factor in the process of eating needs to be changed. If one's ability to sustain meditation is enhanced and one experiences greater harmony with the forces of nature, this is strong evidence that what one is eating is appropriate.

-Gabriel Cousens Md

Conscious Eating

The loss of the soul

2011-07-29T23:46:00.001+03:00

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

2011-07-24T20:57:00.004+03:00

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?

2011-07-20T00:45:00.001+03:00

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

2011-07-17T15:47:00.001+03:00

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

2011-07-15T19:55:00.000+03:00

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

2011-07-15T00:55:00.000+03:00

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

2011-07-14T22:41:00.000+03:00

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?

2011-07-09T14:50:00.001+03:00

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

2011-07-03T16:09:00.001+03:00

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

Time is not limitless

2011-06-30T15:25:00.002+03:00

Do not listen to those philosophers who say time is limitless and you can fool around as long as you want and eventually everything will be alright. Eventually everything will not be alright. You can be eliminated, totally evaporated and annihilated if you do not fulfill the time limit and reach the stage where you should have reached to pass the gate.

God gave you life. Carry that light, that torch until the end. Do not let any stupid things stop your progress.

A girl, who was a student, wrote that she cannot meditate because her boyfriend was fooling around. I asked her, "Don't you have greater interests than your boyfriend?" Your spiritual progress is of supreme value. You cannot sell your diamond for a stone. How precious you are. Unfortunately, all our television programs, newspapers, and books tell you, "How stupid you are, how nonsense you are, how valueless you are. You do not have value. What are you? Nothing. One bullet can kill you and you are finished." They put this trash in your mind and slowly, slowly you believe that you do not have value. That is why Christ said, "You are Gods." Look at what He is saying. He did not say that you are trash. He said, "You are Gods." When is that God going to manifest itself? How long will it take? Ask yourself every night, "Did I manifest my God today? Or was I really a monkey?" You find yourself and every day try again and again and again.

Do not give up because this is a chance for you. This life is a great chance for you. Save your time. Save your emotions. Save your money. Save everything so that you focus yourself on your spiritual progress. Do not depend on anybody else. Depend on your Inner Lord, and open your ears and eyes and listen, and let your Inner Lord guide you.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Dynamics of the Soul

Blending of energies and karma through sexual relationships

2011-06-21T14:42:00.002+03:00

Q: Is it just in marriage that there is a blending of the energies, or is there an interchange in any sexual relationship?

A: If a person is promiscuous, he takes on the energies of his sexual partners. I am not saying that promiscuity is a transgression and that promiscuous people are going to hell. But chemically-combined results create different effects. Young people must be very careful about what they are doing. They must try to find the best partner and continue with him or her. Sexual promiscuity can change future incarnations. If a person is not a liberated human being and he has a lot of different sexual partners, he will have trouble with these people in future lives.

Sex is very important; we do not know how really beautiful it is. In sexual activity, one combines karmic conditions. You can be a very beautiful man, but you go with a girl who is karmically loaded. While driving home, a car hits you because you share her karma, even though you did not do anything bad.

We have all "mixed our waters," so to speak. Now what can we do? We can take vows of celibacy and dedicate all our energies, transmuting them to higher development and slowly clean ourselves, or we can find the best partner and say, "This is it." If a person is physically celibate, but mentally imagining, there is no progress. If he is really celibate, physically, emotionally and mentally, then he progresses. When St. Paul was asked whether it was good to marry or not, he said that if a person could do it, he should stay alone, but if he was boiling inside, he should marry. The person has to be the one to choose. No one else knows his own heart.

The opposite is also true. A boyfriend or girlfriend may help us advance ten thousand miles. Who can determine these things? It is better to take slow and careful action, so that you have time to think and observe and not hurry.

There is a great science of love - physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual love - which is not taught here. Most men and women do not know how to make love or what love is. They are producing children without knowing what they are doing. Sometimes they are forced; sometimes they are caught in a trap; sometimes there is no chance to escape. But this situation must end. In the future, we must have a university that will prepare men and women for sexual activity, marriage, and child-rearing. (See also Sex, Family, and the Woman in Society and Woman, Torch of the Future).

-Torkom Saraydarian

Karma and Reincarnation

Regularity in meditation

2011-06-15T12:44:00.002+03:00

The first labor to improve meditation is regularity in meditation. Many people do "rabbit" meditation. This is a symbolic way of saying that they are not stable or steady. One day they meditate; the next three days they do not. They start again, and then they stop.

If meditation is performed regularly, it expands your consciousness. Meditation is an effort to cast out limiting factors from your mind. If you are not regular, you cannot cast them out. If you are successful in pushing out the limiting factors, and then you stop meditating, they will return with stronger force, occupy your mind, and make it impossible for it to expand. Limiting factors are illusions, glamors, habits, hang-ups, and fanaticism, to name a few. Regular meditation clears these things.

In meditation you contact beautiful ideas or visions. But if you do not feed them regularly, they fade away. Every time you meditate, you nourish ideas that will bring more harmony and rhythm into the lives of all nations. Regular meditation keeps your highest visions, impressions, and inspirations alive.

Regular meditation builds subjective contacts between you and Higher Forces. Through regular meditation you refine your mind and gradually function on higher levels where creative forces exist. Creative forces are attracted to rhythm and harmony. Wherever there are rhythm and harmony, there are creative forces present which bring in more inspiration and fiery striving.

Creative forces are not interested in irregular, flickering lights. Such influences repel creative forces. This is why rhythmic and harmonious motions, invocations, singing, and dancing are performed in temples. Regularity, rhythm, and harmony attract Higher Forces.

If your meditation is not regular, cyclic, rhythmic, and harmonious, the Higher Forces know that you are not yet geared to the natural laws of rhythm, harmony, and cycles. Because of this, They consider contact with you to be dangerous to you and to those around you.

Regular meditation disciplines your bodies, your nervous system, heart, and brain. It disciplines your emotional body, and it makes your mental body focused, concentrated, awake, and creative.

When you forget to meditate for a few days, the old habits of your bodies return. Your emotional habits sneak in; your mind feels that it is time to be as it was before - scattered, unfocused, rebellious, and foggy. Then when you resume your meditation, you have a hard time because you must fight against the limitations of your bodies. Eventually you will give up under the pressure of your age-long habits.

Regular meditation helps your mind concentrate, focus, analyze, and synthesize without drifting. Regularity disciplines the mind. Regular meditation makes your etheric centers more receptive and sensitive to higher impressions. In regular meditation, you feed your centers with higher substances and charge their central fires. You create synchronization within the centers and between the centers. Sensitive centers receive and transmit more energy. Through energy, you serve; you keep yourself healthy and dynamic so that you are able to offer yourself for greater sacrificial service. Regular meditation builds a magnetic and protective sphere wherever you are doing your daily meditation, and you develop a magnetic aura which attracts the interest of the Great Ones Who can impress and reach you.

During meditation, your psychic energy flows out and accumulates in the place where you sit, in the walls around the spot you are sitting. Your lofty thoughts increase the beauty of the electromagnetic sphere which is building around your room. When you enter that room, you feel the power of the sphere. In this sphere, you can more easily contact creative forces which not only inspire you with great visions but also protect you from various attacks from mental and astral sources. This sphere requires regularity to build itself. Every time you forget to meditate, the sphere dissipates, melts away, and eventually evaporates.

Your sphere of energy is your temple. Energy spheres remain only when the Law of Compression is used or applied. Continuity creates compression and increases density because it exercises heavy pressure on existing spheres.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Education as Transformation vol.1

What is hell?

2011-06-11T23:08:00.002+03:00

Two or three days later [after death] you enter the astral plane. The astral plane consists of two sections - the lower and higher sections. The lower astral plane is hell. Hell is a state of friction between the astral energy and your aura. If you participated in wrong speech, wrong thinking, wrong feeling, and wrong action you violated the laws of love, justice, beauty, goodness, and freedom. Because of this, you accumulated a lot of pollution in your astral aura, which is flammable material. The instant this material comes into friction with astral energy, a tremendous explosion of fire occurs, which is the origin of the idea of hell.

Hell is not reality, in a sense. But hell exists because you create it. Your astral body burns until all the pollution in it is totally melted, at which point your astral body either dies or releases itself from the pollution and enters the higher astral level. In the higher astral plane you see greater beauty, greater freedom and liberation to use Cosmic direction as your own will. At these first stages you do not control what you want to do. As you proceed, you gain more control over your time, direction, and activities.

The higher astral plane is occupied mostly by artists, humanitarians, and those who sacrificed their lives for others. It is here where you meet your teachers and guides. Your Solar Angel immediately appears to you. In the lower levels It watches you as you go through the "valley of tears," the "valley of gnashing teeth," but It does not contact you at that level.

In writing about these levels, the Great Sage says that Urusvati heard the lamentations and grinding of teeth coming from the lower astral plane. The inhabitants at this level really suffer not for punishment but because they created it. Their pollution contacts the fire of the astral plane and creates a hell for them.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Karma & Reincarnation

When animals die

2011-06-05T16:24:00.001+03:00

Q: You said that animals incarnate again after only a few days. Is there anything special we can do for them?

A: Just send them your love. They will follow you astrally for three or four days; you can say, "Poochy, I love you. You are here, i feel you," and put out some dinner for him. Many advanced animals come back in different forms.

Q: Do they suffer when they die?

A: They go directly into their astral body and do not hurt like humans do. Humans have imagination, which makes them hurt more. Animals do not have this kind of imagination; they withdraw immediately to the astral plane. That is why if an animal breaks its leg it can sit for three or four days without making a sound. It is in the astral plane watching its body.

Q: Do animals take longer to incarnate if you killed the animal and it is mad at you? Can it bug you?

A: I think that killing animals is very bad because when you die they find you and really harass you. Can you imagine what will happen to butchers and the people who eat meat? They do not know what they are creating.

A scientist who kills three or four hundred monkeys has his astral body eaten day and night by the astral bodies of the monkeys. The Ten Commandments say, "Thou shalt not kill." But we kill: guns, bombs, war.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Karma & Reincarnation, p.296

How does grieving affect the departed one?

2011-06-04T18:57:00.001+03:00

Q: How does grieving affect the departed one?

A: Any time you are grieved, really sad and depressed, they try to appear around you, to be around you. They feel very bad because they know they are immortal and see how stupid you are. But, because they love you, they miss their "plane" to the Higher Worlds because they are tied and limited by your grief.

When my Uncle, who was a very joyful and beautiful surgeon, passed away, my Father smiled and said, "He is released." I said, "Why are you laughing? He died!" My Father said, "It is good; he is released." Twenty-five people, with drums, flutes, and different instruments, went to his grave and danced for hours because he loved dancing. They dressed a man exactly like him and celebrated. When I asked my Father what was going on, he said, "He will be so happy! If you sent a man to the palace of the king, would you get depressed? So we are seeing him off."

We are brainwashed to such a degree that it is hard for us to think in these terms.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Karma & Reincarnation

A spiritual person is not a soft, jellylike person

2011-05-29T14:54:00.000+03:00

Sometimes people think that the spiritual person is a soft, jellylike person who can fit into any condition without creating a noise. This is a false image of the spiritual person. On the contrary, the spiritual person is a fighter. He stands up and risks his life for the truth. He risks his life to protect the innocent. He fights against the spreading dangers of drugs, prostitution, and crime, as well as the misuse of the discoveries of science and technology. However, his fight is not to gain personal advantage or votes of popularity; it is a fight for the Common Good.

It is only a spiritual person who can stand against dark activities and help his fellowman enter the light. The spiritual person hates ugliness, crime, injustice, depression, and slavery. He does not hate them emotionally, but he sees in them the germs of decay and he fights like a physician to eliminate the germs, even trying to save those who have been contaminated by the germs.

A spiritual person opposes things such as drug dealers, prostitutes, hypocrites, those who exploit, those who work for organized crime..., but in the meantime he tries to gain their souls and to defeat the weaknesses of their personalities.

A spiritual person stands against darkness and tries to dispel it with his light. A spiritual person is always enlightened by the light of compassion, without losing his measures of righteousness.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Education as Transformation, vol.1

Conception, miscarriage, abortion

2011-05-28T13:36:00.001+03:00

Q: Regarding miscarriage and abortion, at what point does life begin?

A: The moment conception takes place, the soul is there. When a man and woman have intercourse, their united aura creates a funnel at the head through which the baby's soul travels to the mother's womb and the seed begins to germinate.*

In esoteric books, abortion is condemned unless the mother's life is endangered because it violates a person who has worked very hard to leave the subtle planes to enter the womb. You are breaking the house that he is building for his survival.

Q: What about miscarriage?

A: Miscarriage can be karmic, or it can be a dark attack. For example, let us say that a masterpiece child is coming; the dark forces will attack and try to kill it. There are hundreds of cases in medical history where the mothers of very advanced human beings tried abortion but were unsuccessful. The dark forces attack the child through the mother because a soldier in the Army of Light is a danger to them, and they try to prevent his birth. There are powerful politics waging in astral and mental planes.

Remember that nothing happens by accident. One does not really know what is happening - whether miscarriage is karmic, self-created, or a dark attack.

The first three months in the womb the child is still in astral consciousness, developing the physical counterpart of the astral consciousness. During the third to fourth month, a time comes when the soul makes contact with the developing body. This is the moment of "quickening" in which a woman feels the movement of the child. Then in the remaining seven to nine months, the soul makes a connection with the mental and astral bodies, and then takes birth. He makes a connection with everything and then "lands" his instrument.

The process reverses in death.

Q: When an egg is fertilized by the sperm in vitro, when does the soul unite?

A: The moment they fuse. When the fertilized egg is transplanted into the woman, it grows there.

Q: The soul is present in the test tube?

A: You must know what kind of soul is present at this sort of procedure. If science continues, we will see many zombies walking the streets - without feeling. Why is marriage sacred? The marriage ceremony creates an etheric and auric atmosphere for coming children, with prayers, chanting, and blessings. When the prayers and the intention of the marriage partners are very high, a high-level frequency is created which attracts only high-level souls.

When a man and woman decide to have a child, they should spend several hours in meditation and prayer prior to intercourse, so that they attract a genius, a talent, a beautiful leader. This is why many religions forbid kidnapping a bride, or making a woman pregnant in a nightclub or motel. What happens in these instances is that the parents attract entities living on the etheric plane, who are mostly criminals or people trapped in vices. Sometimes they are victims of war who are full of tremendous anger, revenge, and hatred, the results of which fill our prisons.

Q: How do the dark forces know whether the incarnating soul is advanced or not?

A: The dark forces are more thorough than the FBI or the CIA. They have a "computing system" in the astral and mental planes. They can detect every movement. This is why in one of the schools in higher planes we are trained to keep our thoughts and emotions secret.

Any time a soul incarnates, their automatic registration shows them where. What is our protection? The White Lodge can disturb their instrumentation, if the incarnating one is really pure and under Its guidance. That is why we pray, "God protect us."

Q: Yet you say that nothing happens by accident, that it is karma.

A: Let us say that a very beautiful worker, a savior of men, is coming. The dark forces do not like this, especially if he is incarnating into a family and environment where all of his qualities will unfold and bloom. They will create everything possible to prevent his birth. If his karma is bad in certain aspects, they can harm him according to his karma. But if he is without karma and they attack, the White Lodge destroys them.

*See also Woman, Torch of the Future, and Sex, Family, and the Woman in Society for detailed discussion on marriage, sex, conception and family relations.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Karma & Reincarnation

The guidance of the Solar Angel

2011-05-26T15:06:00.002+03:00

The Solar Angel is like your teacher, if you really give yourself to the Solar Angel. Let us say that I am your Solar Angel and I see that you are doing certain things that will limit you. I say, "Don't do that; do this instead; follow this line of work." You say, "I want to be a dancer. I want to be a doctor. I want to be a painter. I want to be President of the United Nations." So I say, "Take only one thing." You may hate me for it, but it is good for you.

The Solar Angel looks at the situation and sees that as a dancer you would die in a car accident on the way to a dance. He says, "Honey, I would like for you to be a dancer, but I do not want it." He does not explain why, but you must be a doctor because He sees that in that line of work you will develop.

If you listen to the impressions coming from the Solar Angel, it prevents future dangers on the Path. In the meantime, you feel as if you are being limited. He saves your life, and you think He is limiting you. This is why it is very important to develop communication with the Transpersonal Self, the Solar Angel.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Karma & Reincarnation

The goal of education

2011-05-19T14:58:00.004+03:00

The goal of education is to eliminate all those hindrances which bring health problems, emotional problems, and stresses, mental problems, and social and global problems. Until now, our religious and academic education has not given us a safe world. It has not given us a future we can be proud of. It has not given us clear skies, clean water, or food uncontaminated by insecticides, poisons, and radiation. Education has not reduced or stopped the increase of crime all over the world. Education has not been able to uproot the causes of war, and so on.

If education is guilty of all these things, one wonders why, then, we spend billions of dollars all over the world just to employ teachers, build buildings, and try to teach a new generation of mankind. All men and women of higher vision are waiting to see a change in education. Change in education will not be accomplished by a change in machines or the increase of the number of computers, televisions, radios, tape recorders, video and sound equipment, etc. It will be a change in the goals of education.

The people of the world are paying so much money and spending so much time to see a better and safer world. Education can and must meet the problems of the world.

*******

What is the purpose of education? In a short and brief way we can say, "To lead every student to perfection to save the human race." This is the most practical and most magnetic formula for education.

Let us explain a few words in this formula:

1. Perfection means the best possible state and condition in which the student can physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually reveal his or her highest potentials.

2. To serve the human race. The goal of education has been built upon individual interests or upon national interest. This must change. Every student must know that all knowledge and talent must be used to lead humanity to perfection, toward the best health, happiness, success, cooperation, peace, freedom. The student must realize that the state of the whole humanity is the only foundation upon which can be based his future happiness and success.

There was a time when people were concerned only about their individual happiness. Then there came a time when people were concerned about their group success and happiness. Now every nation is concerned about its own success and happiness, but also this is the time in which people are realizing that such an understanding is outmoded and cannot contribute to the future.

Many millions of people are now seeing the reality that there is only one humanity, and every nation, every group, every individual is affected by the conditions in which humanity lives.

The new education will base all its curriculum upon this foundation: Humanity is one, and the sacred duty of every individual is to serve humanity in a way that leads human beings toward perfection. Such a vision will create miracles in the schools, and for the first time in millions of years education will serve its true purpose.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Education as Transformation vol.1.

Spiritual, moral and intellectual retardation

2011-05-18T15:52:00.000+03:00

Most of the problems, pains, and sufferings in the world are caused by morally, spiritually, and intellectually retarded people. What are the sings of retardation?

Physical retardation is characterized by the incapacity of hands, feet, organs, and senses to accomplish efficient action; and brain damage manifests as lack of control over the physical mechanism.

Moral retardation appears as heartlessness, cruelty, lawlessness, hatred, anger, jealousy, revenge, greed, malice, slander, and harmful urges and drives.

Intellectual retardation appears as vanity, ego, self-deception, treason, separatism, selfishness, ignorance, fanaticism; inability to grasp the needs, demands and visions of the times, and crystallization of attitudes and viewpoints. An intellectually retarded person works like a tape recorder, he does not have his own thoughts. He cannot think.

Spiritual retardation manifests as lack of the power of synthesis. Those who are spiritually retarded cannot use abstract thinking; they cannot visualize; they cannot contact Higher Worlds; they cannot use their mental and higher senses. They live as materialists, negating any possibility of other values. They cannot grasp the existence of the One Self. They cannot strive toward unity. They cannot see any purpose behind the existing life.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Education as Transformation vol1, p.291

How to develop willpower

2011-05-15T17:15:00.003+03:00

Those who like to live like slaves are called cattle or sheep because they do not have willpower. They do not have direction, but they follow the direction of their own glamors and illusions and the direction of the glamors and illusions of other people.

It is possible that man moves, desires, and thinks by the effect of external forces using his urges and drives, desires, glamors, illusion, prejudices, or superstitions. External forces appear in man as if they were his own free will.

People demonstrate strong urges and drives and powerful desires and force their body to take strenuous actions. People also demonstrate intense mental activities, forced by desires and urges and by other outside influences, giving the illusion that they are working with a strong willpower. The fact is that such people do not even have will energy in them, and they are victims of blind forces.

It is interesting to note that man for most of his life is like a machine, like a car which is driven by some other force. If you ask anybody on the street, "What are you doing?" he will say, "I am going here, there... I am talking about this or that... I am feeling this way, that way..." The reality is that the majority of people do not even exist. It is their bodies that are walking, directed by an emotion, thought, urge, or desire.

Stop any moment and ask yourself:

-Why am I doing this?

-For what reason?

-What is forcing me to do this?

-For whom am I working?

-Who is my boss?

-What is my purpose?

When you ask such questions, you will suddenly realize that you are really not the owner of your mechanism. Other thoughts, emotions, desires, and interests of outer agents are controlling your life, and in your innocence you are calling such a life your "own life."

Disciples are those individuals who cultivate willpower through a life of discipline. Once you commit yourself to a heavy discipline, you will see that willpower is really awakening within you and putting all your systems into order, into the right direction.

The Teacher makes you attack your self-pity, touchiness, hatreds, fears, jealousy, revenge, desires for revenge, greed, and sensitiveness because as long as you are infected with such maladies, the fire of the will cannot be awakened within you. It is only after freeing yourself from such pollution that you can feel the first rays of willpower within you.

The Teacher makes you face harder and harder conditions so that you cure yourself and bring out the spiritual essence hidden in you. Sometimes you do not even need to have a Teacher. A great beauty, a great idea, a great Teaching manifested by some powerful Individuality, such as Christ or Buddha, acts as a Teacher, as a direction. Once you dedicate yourself to such a direction, you will face a great challenge and you will submit yourself to a strict discipline.

******

There is only one willpower, one central powerhouse. The same electricity can run through all wires. To develop willpower means to tune your True Self to that powerhouse and make the flow of energy come and connect your True Self with the powerhouse. There is only One Will, the Will of the All-pervading Architect.

Surrendering your will to that realized Almighty Will is in fact an act of developing willpower. Until one resigns his physical, emotional, and mental "wills" for the One will, he will not find will within him and become one with the Almighty Will.

The path of renunciation is a process in which you leave your self-will, or free will, to gain the real will of your divine Self and fuse with the One Will. Every time you stop the process of your renunciation, you turn into a slave, no matter where you are found on the Path.

In its real sense, advancement is progressive renunciation of your separating self.

Those who run after their own tail in a life of luxury and a life dedicated solely to physical, emotional, and mental amusements and pleasures are called builders of their own prisons. They want to be prisoners for a long time. This is how one loses his willpower, his own divine heritage, and becomes body, urges, drives, desires, glamors, and illusions.

Will is developed in many different ways:

1. The first step is to engage yourself in responsible duty, task, or labor which is carried on as a service to others in the light of Beauty, Goodness, and Truth.

2. The next step is discriminative rejection of things that distract your divine direction.

3. The next step is accepting Beauty, living in Beauty, thinking in Beauty so that ugliness is rejected. Accepting Beauty, Goodness, and Truth makes you reject ugliness and ill will. As you increase in Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, you manifest greater willpower.

4. The next step is to put all your heart, soul, and strength into the things you are doing, speaking, or thinking for Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. We call this a state of beingness when it is present in all your expressions and labor. This develops a great power of will because it calls forth your inner essence. To have willpower means to bring yourself into existence. You exist to the degree that you have willpower. Willpower makes you exist.

You exist not because your body exists; you exist not because your emotions and thoughts exist; but you exist because your will-to-be exists.

Every one of us must do the things we are doing with all our heart, soul, and might. It is through such a concentrated tension that the True Self, the divine Presence in the form of man, manifests Itself.

Things done without concentration, attention, and observation; things done without lovingness, dedication, and devotion; things done without direction cause disintegration within ourselves. Disintegration is a process of losing willpower. Integration is accumulation of willpower. A man of integrity is a man of willpower. That is why virtues are manifestations of willpower.

Focus is willpower when things are held in integrity. Focus is manifestation of integrity, manifestation of the Self in action, in thought, in direction.

Concentration is not focus. Focus is clear projection of the attained image of the essence. Concentration is the ability to sustain the direction of the essence in any field of activity.

Concentration is exercised in difficulties and in crises. Difficulties and crises develop your concentration to keep the flow of essence in the right direction.

All great Teachers come to earth to present a model of life of crises and difficulties and challenge us to engage ourselves in such a life. Their intention is to develop willpower within us which transcends all urges and mechanical reactions of the lower planes.

The real Teaching tells us to live a life of difficulty, labor, and crisis because it is after graduation from such a life that the real joy and bliss will manifest for us. Joy and bliss do not exist without a cultivated willpower.

If you do not have trouble, create it. But understand this statement in the right way. To create difficulties and crises means to set higher visions in front of yourself and strive to achieve them. A man of willpower does not escape from difficulties and crises because for him the joy and bliss are senses in overcoming the crises, difficulties, and problems. Willpower is gained on the path of victory, not in the cave of inertia.

Willpower is measured by the degree of self-mastery, joy, and renunciation.

*****

People sometimes think that when a man has willpower he can dominate the wills of others and make them his slaves. This is an error. True willpower does not enjoy creating slaves and dominating their will. On the contrary, true will is an agent of liberation and freedom. It is only those who have willpower who never try to dominate other people's will.

It is possible that a man of willpower is a king or a president or the commander of an army. But if this man has real willpower, he will use all his power to create peace, freedom, and creative joy.

It is fear that creates totalitarianism. Fear is the absence of spiritual will. Fear is the source of many crimes. Fear does not tolerate freedom but tries to make other people live the way it wants. Those who are limited to their self-interest cannot develop willpower. Willpower cannot survive in separate interests. Willpower is inclusive and universal.

-Torkom Saraydarian

The Mysteries of Willpower

Illusions and fiction

2011-05-07T14:56:00.003+03:00

Fiction, especially in the religious field, prevents the progress of light. People have great admiration for fictitious stories about angels, about God, about prophets and saints, about the human soul and the souls of the dead. Since these stories are not based on pure experience, pure reason and logic, or pure scientific fact, they are obstacles on the path of human progress.

Higher forces cannot reach a mind which is clouded by illusions or by distorted facts or truths.

Scientific thinking is an effort to see things as they are without the distortion of prejudices, superstitions, or illusions.

One of the most innocent fictitious characters is Santa Claus. This character occupies a large territory in the minds of children. Such a fiction is a distortion of truth, and it must not be allowed to occupy the minds of children if we want them in the future to see things as they are and live in the field of reality.

One wonders how much territory of the mind is already occupied by fictitious television programs as the child watches them with intense concentration and involvement. There is no method yet to burn out such illusions which, like a curse, sap the sanity of our youth.

There are two kinds of fiction. One is made up by our own imagination and inspired by our blind urges, drives, and desires. The other is a fiction in time, but it is a reality in Space. These things exist as fact in higher realms, in archetypal planes, and reflect on certain minds who present their reflections as fiction.

Thus, a great genius writes a fiction which years later manifests as reality. It is possible that the genius cannot reveal clearly all that he can see, but at least partially he can reveal whatever he senses. It is also possible that through a strong imagination a man can affect thousands of minds and build a fictitious thoughtform which eventually manifests on earth. The difference between these two is that the first one brings greater achievements for humanity, but the second one brings retardation and even degeneration.

One of the greatest aids for humanity is to clear away illusions and establish factuality, reality, and common sense.

Illusions exercise such control over us that we hardly can escape their power. An illusion is a distorted truth which is accepted as a fact.

Illusion is also created as we read fiction. In the religious and spiritual fields especially, there are thousands of fictitious stories which create a great thoughtform in the mental body of the race. The Forces of Light struggle and fight to the end to wipe out such illusions.

Significant victory has yet to be achieved to eliminate such fiction. It is true that some of their contents and indications are highly beautiful and moral. But fiction has no place in Space. It contradicts the laws of Nature and creates psychic turbulences which affect the health and sanity of the human being.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Leadership vol.1, p.240-242

How to help a dying person's journey toward Higher Worlds

2011-05-05T16:25:00.002+03:00

There are some steps we can follow which will help ease a dying person's journey toward Higher Worlds and also ease their reincarnation.

It does not matter whether a person is conscious or unconscious when he is dying - because in reality he is always conscious. Sometimes he is out of his body and cannot control the mechanism of his brain to contact you. Sometimes certain nerve centers are paralyzed so he cannot talk or move. But his soul listens; he senses what is going on around him. Sometimes his senses are more sensitive than you can imagine; sometimes dying people can hear things that are being said two or three rooms beyond. So if you speak to a dying person, do not think that he is not listening and use care in what you say.

1. Inspire the dying person with fearlessness. Talk with him about how God is love and tell him not to be afraid. Explain that all he did wrong is nothing compared to all of the good he has done throughout the ages, that the balance of good will increase and that the love of God will embrace him. Cast out all fear.

The Teaching tells us that those who enter the Subtle Worlds with fear are paralyzed for as long as forty years. Like a bug which pretends it is dead when you hit it, a person who is hit with fear is stunned when he enters the Subtle Worlds.

I once asked a surgeon, who was also a psychiatrist, why one of his patients was having difficulty awakening after surgery. Every possible means was used to bring the patient to consciousness, but he was just gone. The doctor told me that the man had gone under the anesthetic in a state of fear. Those who are not afraid of the anesthesia awaken much better; those who are fearful have a more difficult awakening.

The same is true in the Subtle Worlds. Fear paralyzes a person's senses, his striving, and prevents him from seeing his vision for the future. A dying person often has a tendency or inclination to identify with the state of his body, emotions, mind, and failures. This leads him into a state of fear. Because of this, it is important to help the person overcome fear by strongly impressing him with fearlessness.

2. Never mention any failure or wrong-doing the dying person may have committed in the past; this will cause him to identify with his failures. Any human being who is identified with his failures is not successful; he is a failure and cannot go forward. For example, if he opens a new business, it will fail because the image of failure controls his mind.

Talk with him about how beautiful he is, how many friends he has, how many people love him. Make him feel that he did good things.

3. If he has transgressed in any way against you, tell him that you forgive him and ask him to forgive you. Make him lighter so that he does not attach to any thing he may have done incorrectly. This is because we carry each failure image with us.

The Great Sage advises us to leave as much of this trash behind as possible; you can supply a dying person with better luggage than failure images.

4. After the person dies, it is good to give a dinner party in his honor, inviting his friends and family. Everyone must speak very beautifully about him and not mention his negative qualities. The discussion should center around his good qualities and the good deeds he performed.

Often a person does not know he is dead for a period of one week to forty days after he has passed away. He thinks that he is still with you, and he is sometimes surprised that you do not answer his questions. Sometimes you answer his questions mentally, and he thinks that it is verbal communication. But if you speak evil of him or mention his short-comings, you make him identify with his failures, which makes him earthbound, and he will have the same emotional and mental disturbances that he had while he was in the body.

There is a tradition in many Moslem, Sufi, and Christian monasteries that for forty days after a person dies, a place is set for him at the table. I once asked a monk why this was observed, and he said that the person does not know he is dead yet, so he comes to eat. He does not actually eat, but he thinks that he is eating.

A person who has died is still in the same etheric and emotional bodies, which appear like the physical body. However he imagines he is dressed, he is immediately dressed. He listens to everything. He sits down to eat and supposes that he is eating. He sees that he is eating, but the food is still there. But if a chair is not left for him, he receives a great shock and wonders why he has been omitted. This causes him to grieve.

When a family member dies, it is a contemporary custom to take everything he owned and either give it away or throw it away. The person is so surprised to see this happening because he is still "alive". How would you feel if your father and mother took all your possessions and threw them in the rubbish? It is important to make the person feel that everything is the same until he awakens naturally. Give him the impression that everything is all right until he slowly feels that he is departed, that there are no hard feelings, pain or suffering, and that it is okay because there is no separation.

There are also invisible helpers which assist in his awakening. Sometimes his own Solar Angel awakens him; sometimes it is a friend who is still living.

If a person has continuity of consciousness, these problems are solved. Astral consciousness is different from physical consciousness; physical consciousness is related to physical life. There is also mental consciousness. If these three are awakened, there is continuity of consciousness on three levels. If only one level of consciousness is opened, no matter where you are you think you are on earth because only the earthly "radio" is in operation.

5. Every Saturday or Sunday night, light a candle and some nice incense and say, "We remember you; you were so beautiful." Say a few nice things to the person, and then say a prayer for him. This is a tradition which is very helpful to those who have passed away.

6. If someone passes away, it is helpful to pay any of his remaining debts. For example, if your father passes away without paying his debts, it is marvelous to pay them for him because you release him from any anxiety he may fell in the astral or mental plane as to why he did not pay them. Paying them is a great release for him; you really advance his evolution and help him prepare for a better incarnation.

If the person who is dying has done something harmful to you, it is important to find him before he dies and tell him that you forgive him, that he should not worry. This also cleans your account with him. As you clean your account, you prepare yourself for a more successful experience at the time of death and a better incarnation when you return.

If the person used malice and slander against you, tell him that you have no hard feelings and always bless him, especially at the time of his death.

There was a warrior king who had an enemy, and as they fought, the enemy was wounded and fell to the ground. The warrior king carried him to a lake where he washed his enemy's wounds and waited with him until he died. The enemy asked, "Why don't you just kill me?" to which the king replied, "I did not want to harm you; I wanted to kill your animosity. In truth, I love you. The next time you come, be a commander in my army. You are free to die in peace because I will prepare a place for you in my army." The story says that after the man died, he was born again as the warrior king's son. Because the king had mortally wounded him and created tremendous pain and suffering for him, the king owed his enemy everything he owned - even his entire kingdom.

When people die, they need energy. We not only need energy to maintain our physical bodies, but also our emotional and mental bodies. Energy is needed to feel, to sense, to express emotion, to move in space. There are three things that create energy: beauty, goodness, and joy. Events in our life that are beautiful and joyful are charged with the good that is buried in our subconscious.

For example, I do something very good for you, something beautiful and joyful for you, but I forget about it. I hardly notice that I have done this, but it is still buried in my subconscious mind and inactive in my being. When I am dying, you mention the incident, and by doing so, you release this buried source of energy that has been stored, and you equip me with more energy to use in the Subtle Worlds.

If someone is passing away, even if you had trouble with him, do not allow the trouble to continue into the next world. Just mentioning any act of beauty, goodness, or joy that he may have done will create a subconscious release of energy which will assist him in his journey.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Karma & Reincarnation, p.266-271

Rosy promises in spiritual literature

2011-04-30T15:51:00.001+03:00

I must warn you that I am against any kind of sentimentality and the rosy promises about the ease of attainments that abide in the late occult literature. Precisely they engender so many lukewarm, halfway aspirations which lead nowhere. Life has taught me how dangerous are all sorts of promises and encouragement of impossible hopes, how ruinous they can be, and how much betrayal they may cause. Therefore I do not like to conceal the reality if I see that the spirit is ready to accept it. I would rather keep silent than lull one with rosy promises.

-Helena Roerich

Letters Of Helena Roerich II, 22 July 1935

Periods of retreat

2011-04-25T20:26:00.003+03:00

Those seeking to be Agni Yogis should take periodic retreats away from all outside influences. These influences include television, friends, family and routine work. A retreat should be a time of seclusion so that an inner tension may be achieved.

The purpose of a retreat is to intensify the spiritual focus upon the personality. The Soul intensifies Its focus upon the personality so that the personality becomes flooded with the Soul's purpose, plan and intention.

One of the techniques of the dark forces is to prevent you from being alone with yourself. Many people are influenced by such attacks. They hurry from one place to another, from one person to another, keeping company with others or killing time with certain amusements. Such people are afraid of being alone. They feel lonely and depressed if by chance they find themselves alone. Some people even try to ignore their self in order to escape the judgment of the Self.

Those who want to be Agni Yogis must cultivate the spirit of loneliness. They must feel happy, joyful, and more creative during the times when they are alone because in lonely moments one has a greater chance to meet his Self, to utilize his time creatively, to contemplate his future and to see himself as he is. One can also meet himself in a great danger or in a great ecstasy; but why wait for such moments when one can easily and naturally meet his Self by exercising daily a period of total retreat?

At the beginning, it is not easy to use such a time creatively and immediately have contact with one's true Self. But by striving, during retreat one eventually rejects the daydreaming tendency of the mind, the pleasure-seeking imagination of the emotions and the laziness of the body. Each retreat must be used as a time of healthy introspection, creativity and planning for new changes. Loneliness conceives future heroes and great talents.

A time of retreat is required to create a channel between the Higher Self and the personality. Eventually, this channel carries the flow of future visions and creative spiritual forces to the life of the personality.

In order to build this channel between your higher visions and your personality, a regular period of retreat is required. This may be a half-hour daily, a half or whole day weekly, one weekend a month, one week a year, or any other amount of time which is possible to be set aside for reflective meditation. In this manner you build the channel through which you will flood the physical, emotional and mental nature with spiritual intention and energy. A focus of incoming energies will fuse, master, beautify and transform the personality into a blossoming of creative endeavor for the Hierarchy.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Talks on Agni vol.1, p.65

The dark forces through the movie industry

2011-04-23T18:26:00.001+03:00

The dark forces have many agents in the movie industry. They know that this industry is a great device to influence masses of people.

In most movies, you are strongly impressed with crime, destruction, murder, extreme violence, beating, and killing. You are impressed in various ways about loose sex. This is the moral side of it. They also make political suggestions, which subtly sink into the bones of the audience.

In many movies you see that even if a person is right in his opinion or judgment and stands against those who violate the rights of people, the police are called upon to solve the problem instead of justice. The police will be victorious in the end, even if justice is buried. Such movies influence you to be extremely careful not to think and act beyond the limits of establishments and interests, even if all your efforts are directed for the good of your nation and humanity. This is a powerful effort by the dark forces to kill every new idea that the young might have to change things and lead the national or global life toward a happier condition. After watching such movies one thinks, "Why should I attempt something new, if the end is destruction?"

Dark agents even whisper, "We tried through these movies to awaken resistance toward injustice and showed how cruel some authorities can be." Secretly, however, they mean, "Try to oppose authority, but remember all the shooting and killing that will result. That will be your destiny and the destiny of those who follow you."

Dark forces create deep sympathy through these movies toward those heroes who are working for the Common Good. The sympathy of the audience reaches such a degree that they begin to indentify with the "good guys," who are eventually killed and mercilessly destroyed. Thus, the audience is psychologically defeated. In no way will any member of the audience try to institute a new change because he is already killed psychologically.

When you watch movies try to observe this point and see how, with all subtleties of techniques, they are created in such a way to defeat in you all that is really human, warning you not to dare, and showing you that in the end your destruction is inevitable.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Battling Dark Forces, p.150

Advertisements and subliminal suggestions

2011-04-21T00:16:00.003+03:00

Most advertisements provide a source of manipulation of the subconscious mind. They create associative pictures or words to restimulate corresponding elements in your subconscious mind. Once these elements become active, you generally do not listen to the resistance of your logical mind.

This is how certain advertisements create greed in you, and you buy or accumulate things which you do not necessarily need. The gifts of Nature are then wasted, and money is accumulated in irresponsible hands.

Some of the advertisements are shown immediately after certain violent moments in the movie and when you are in a relatively hypnotic state. It is during such moments that the advertisements sink into your subconsciousness as strong posthypnotic suggestions.

There are also advertisements subliminally directed to your subconscious mind. These subliminal messages are imparted so fast that your conscious mind cannot catch them, nor can it filter them out. They go directly into your subconscious mind.

Subliminal messages are imparted during a moment of extreme happiness or sorrow, or in a moment when your analytical mind is intensely preoccupied with a problem or an object. Subliminal messages are given in various ways. One is by the use of recordings of verbal messages at an accelerated pace behind music or film tape. Another is by making drawings on top of other drawings or using photographs that they eye cannot detect but the subconscious mind can.

This is a blackout technique which, if developed a little more, will be the most frightening tool to control people and to exploit them in a number of ways.

Man cannot really detect such subliminal suggestions unless his Chalice is in the process of unfolding. If this is the case, he feels uncomfortable during any subliminal message broadcast in any form. Such a feeling may warn him not to listen to that music or watch that movie or look at certain advertisements.

It is also possible to detect subliminal suggestions through their results, provided that you have developed clear observation, are ready to see changes in your character or behavior, and can take action to destroy the roots of the cause in your subconscious mind.

-Torkom Saraydarian

The subconscious mind and the Chalice, p.105

Communes

2011-04-13T22:06:00.002+03:00

Some people think that group consciousness is achieved in communes or community living. This is an illusion. When a number of people unite with each other for their private interests, they form a commune.

Communes are separative, and they do not present group consciousness. Group consciousness does not allow a man or a group of people to disassociate themselves from humanity, from the world, from life.

Communes consider themselves better than other people. They separate themselves from the rest of humanity to save themselves, as if they were more precious than all other human beings who toil and labor and serve in their own fields with the sense of duty and responsibility.

The ultimate goal of the Teaching is the salvation of humanity. By escaping from humanity, no one fulfills this goal.

Communes eventually create in their members stagnation, egoism, and a hostile attitude toward the rest of humanity.

If people come together for higher education and spiritual practice, to perfect and make themselves ready for the service of humanity, such a group can stay healthy. It becomes like a healthy pool of energy which continuously receives new currents of light and releases light-bearers into the world to carry on the world salvation. Such a group works in a special field of human endeavor or, if it has the Teachers, it works in all seven fields of human endeavor to provide right leadership for each field. Such a group acts as a great university, open to all those who can demonstrate special qualifications.

Civilization can be divided into seven branches:

Politics

Education

Communication

Arts

Science

Religion

Finance-Economics

World salvation will not come through religion or politics only. It will come through all seven branches of human endeavor. Each of them is sacred and spiritual if their aim is to serve humanity and lead humanity into higher and greater achievements.

Communes cannot survive if they are not equipped to become places of discipline, learning, and preparation for service. There is no difference between a separative person and a separative commune. A separative commune eventually turns into a cult which worships itself or its own ideas and viewpoints and becomes "the only way to fly." When the members of a commune develop such an idea of being special, they fall into the trap of self-worship and separatism and look at other people as inferior. It has been notices that such people have a very difficult time fitting themselves into any community if they leave their commune. Their adjustment is painful and full of rebellion and remorse.

The common person has a sound heart and right judgment. He looks on such "separative," "special," "chosen," or "bestowed" people with suspicious eyes because such people always, at any opportunity, try to exploit or use others for their own separative interests.

The motto of the world server is: "I belong to humanity. I will live with the joys and sufferings of humanity and will bring my share to the great labor of the redemption of humanity."

-Torkom Saraydarian

Leadership vol.1, p.189

Lose yourself to find yourself

2011-04-02T16:18:00.002+03:00

Christ said, "If anyone wants to find himself, he must lose himself." To lose oneself is to lose the attachments which tie you to your past and to the problems of the past. To lose yourself means to master all those urges and drives in your nature which work against your progress and perfection.

"To lose yourself" does not mean to surrender yourself to those who will exploit you for their own interests. On the contrary, a man "loses himself" to find his Self. He is a man who, because of being able to find his Self, is now able to see the traps of those who are anxious to exploit him.

"To find oneself" is a state of consciousness where a man is totally Self-actualized and Self-determined. No longer does his lower self rule him. No longer do the interests of those who are attached to their lower selves rule him. He has independence, and because of the purity of the note he sounds, he can be a part of the symphony.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Leadership vol.1, p.179

Summits create crises

2011-03-27T20:43:00.000+03:00

Do not ever attempt to make people conform to your religion, church or ideology. Leave them alone; let them decide their own path. You teach them the Teaching of discrimination and enlightenment through service and meditation. Once they are enlightened they will find their own way that fits them.

Do not interfere with their karma. Show them summits of achievements, and let them strive. Summits create crises. Crises eventually bring a person to the right path, to the summit. Discipleship is the response to the summit.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Leadership vol1, p.174

Karma and the Solar Angel - Torkom Saraydarian

2011-03-07T21:55:00.003+02:00

The karma of a person and the plan of the Solar Angel do not conflict because the Solar Angel bases Its plans on the karmic records of the person and the potentials that he demonstrates. But it so happens that due to various influences, a person may do unexpected things that create conflict with the plan of the Solar Angel, and he may fail to fulfill the plan.

The plan of the Solar Angel is to help you overcome past vices and wickedness and help you develop your potentials. It is always the plan of the Solar Angel to prepare you in such a way that you take part consciously in the Divine Plan. Let us remember that the Solar Angel is a member of the Hierarchy and cooperates with the Hierarchical Plan.

When disciples are accepted, they are mostly under the control of the Hierarchy, which acts as the collective Solar Angel for humanity.

The Hierarchy may prepare a disciple to perform sacrificial deeds and die. But such a disciple is always conscious, whether he is in or out of body. After he dies, he does not succumb to the lower hells, as do suicides, but proceeds to higher planes with greater enlightenment.

Sometimes a disciple sacrifices all his time and energy with self-forgetfulness to help others, but in so doing he does not slow down his own spiritual progress. When he dies, special Teachers take care of him, teach him, and help him assimilate in just a few years all that he would have learned and assimilated in the life span that he sacrificed for humanity. Total righteousness exists in the Higher Worlds, and you are paid back for a cup of water given to a thirsty soul.

Sometimes fanatics appear to be like heroes or disciples. The difference is that they are following the direction of obsessors or possessors or following the dictates of their glamors and illusions. Most fanatics do not have continuity of consciousness.

The Hierarchy presents the Plan to disciples and leaves them free to work with the Plan. The Hierarchy even leaves them free to choose how they will exercise their ingenuity.

Those entities which are totally dedicated to genocide, terrorism, and destruction are those people whose Solar Angels have left them. Such people can be very vicious and bestial. In human history there is evidence of people obsessed with such entities. These are people who butchered others and tried to destroy whole cultures or civilizations.

There are two kinds of people who do not have Solar Angels:

1. Those who in previous manvantaras achieved individualization by the power of the Divine Spark within them

2. Those who were endowed with Solar Angels on this globe but lost them

Some people who do not have Solar Angels came to this planet from space to continue their education. They demonstrate a strong mentality with great intellectual powers. They are materialists who use separatism and factions. They are scattered throughout all nations and work with selfishness and separatism. They create the crises necessary to awaken the thinking of average people. They do not belong to a single religion or nation, but are from all nationalities. They are recognized by their selfishness, cunning intellect, power of manipulation, materialism, and totalitarian attitudes. Sometimes they are born into families among those who have Solar Angels.

Those who lost their Solar Angels are primarily destructive people. If a chance were given to them, they would burn the world and enjoy its destruction. Fortunately, these people are rare. A contemporary example is Hitler and his seven evil coworkers. Hitler was not possessed by a disembodied human being but by a member of the Dark Lodge.

You read in mythology and legend about people who denounce their souls and make a pact with Satan. There is some truth in this. When a human being becomes totally inhuman and loses his Solar Angel, he becomes an agent of the dark forces and uses his intellect, knowledge, and resources to bring destruction to Earth.

Those people who evolved without Solar Angels and eventually individualized or developed "I" consciousness or ego consciousness, were inhabitants of other or previous solar systems. Their Spark very slowly unfolds Itself with the help of great Masters Who act as Solar Angels for a large mass of people. Through Their methods, the focus of consciousness of people was eventually drawn into the lower mental plane where "I" consciousness developed, and they realized that they were separate, thinking human beings.

To undergo further evolution, these people came to Earth to develop their love nature. If they fail to overcome their separatism and materialism by cultivating inclusiveness and spirituality, they will be counted as failures in the next manvantara. Who knows what destiny awaits them.

Sometimes people without Souls develop their love nature through the experience of incessant pain, suffering, isolation, revolution, war, and destruction - unless they take deliberate action to develop their heart nature and compassion.

Those who developed without Solar Angels and are now living on Earth are those who attach fanatically to teachers, ministers, or leaders sometimes with total blindness. The reason for this is that they use their teachers and leaders as "solar angels" of sorts. These people are usually fanatical devotees. Of course, one can highly respect his teacher, follow the wisdom imparted by him, and still have a Solar Angel. The differences between these two kinds of devotees are instructive:

-One is exclusive; the other is inclusive.

-One separates; the other synthesizes.

-One obeys blindly; the other obeys con- sciously and with his free will.

-One destroys for the sake of his beliefs; the other tries to understand the beliefs of others and to find beauty in them.

-One is materialistic and totalitarian; the other is idealistic, practical, and purely democratic.

-One collects and stores; the other dis- tributes and shares

I was once asked what happens when a man without a Solar Angel marries a woman who has a Solar Angel; do their children have Solar Angels or not? The answer is that any soul who has a Solar Angel is born with It. The soul who does not have a Solar Angel is born without one. If two people who do not have Solar Angels marry one another, they tend to attract children without Solar Angels. If by chance they have a child who has a Solar Angel, their life will not be easy with that child. The child will eventually leave them, after making numerous attempts to open their heart qualities and inclusiveness. It is also possible for two people who have Solar Angels to have a child who does not have one. These parents will have similar problems; the child will eventually leave them to join those who do not have Solar Angels.

People without Solar Angels have a very strong tendency and urge to be together for protection. They go into business together and share various interests. It is very strange how people without Solar Angels stick to each other better than those who have Solar Angels. Perhaps this is because the Solar Angel works to create synthesis and fusion, rather than grouping.

Fortunately, people without Solar Angels are not a single nation; they are in all nations, in all churches, in all organizations - pursuing the same goals: materialism, totalitarianism, and separatism.

It is important to remember that all those who strive can reach perfection. Those who do not have Solar Angels can achieve the Fourth Initiation and beyond, just as people who have Solar Angels can. It is also possible for a person who has a Solar Angel to fail to reach the Fourth Initiation, or Arhathood. The path toward perfection is open to all.

People without Solar Angels must unfold their heart and cultivate compassion, inclusiveness, and intuition. People with Solar Angels must cultivate reasoning, logic, practicality, and other mental qualities, and strive toward perfection.

Both types of people eventually meet on the Intuitional Plane as brothers. Both of them at this stage do not have Solar Angels, and both of them are in the Light Supernal.

People who do not have Solar Angels think that they are the Solar Angel for the personality, which is comprised of billions of lives divided into the mental, astral, etheric, and physical planes. These billions of lives must proceed on the path of their evolution through the light shed upon them by the human soul himself.

A person who does not have a Solar Angel has a hard time understanding the subjective dialogue which goes on between a human soul and his Solar Angel. Such people have a different psychology and do not experience the intervention of a Solar Angel.

The intervention of the Solar Angel is very subtle. It is not direct or imposed but, because of the very presence of the Solar Angel, with all Its glory, beauty, and wisdom, the person, no matter what he does, at some level measures himself by the standards of the Solar Angel and feels happy or guilty. He feels guilty if he does not meet the standards of the Solar Angel. He feels happy when he cooperates with the standards of his Solar Angel. There is always a dialogue or inner connection between the two poles.

In the case of those who do not have a Solar Angel, they do right or wrong without having an inner reaction or response. Those who do not have a Solar Angel have an orphan psychology. They feel as if there is no one to whom they belong. They do not experience an inner pressure to which they complain or rejoice. They create substitutes. Their wives or husbands carry a heavy load of their complaints and are forced to rejoice with them in the smallest success they have. And if they do not find any substitute, they sink into deep depression.

If they are of average consciousness, they always need someone to tell them what to do. They need constant encouragement to move forward. If they are advanced, they are totally indifferent to praise or rebuke. This is why they can donate ten million dollars without the joy of giving, or commit a serious crime and feel as if nothing has happened. You cannot scold these people. No matter how deeply you try to insult them, they do not feel the slightest impression on their skin. All of this does not mean that they are bad people, merely that they are different from those who have Solar Angels.

People without Solar Angels often act like little children; dependency is very high in them. This is why those who do not have Solar Angels often rule, manipulate, and exploit those who do. In 4 | a sense, an average person who does not have a Solar Angel is more immature than an average person who does. They have a cunning mind, and find ways to cheat those who have Solar Angels, manipulate them, and by so doing, help awaken them to progress.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Karma and Reincarnation

Instead of altering his vision man wants to change creation

2011-02-27T00:39:00.000+02:00

Thoughts and feelings determine what you are. Change your thoughts. If you give up your worldly outlook and view the world from the spiritual point of view, the Vishvam (world) and the Vishnu (Divine) will become one. Therefore, change your viewpoint.

Instead of altering his dhrishti (vision) man wants to change Shrishti (creation). No one can change creation. It is one's vision that has to be changed.

-Sai Baba

Divine Discourse, 14th Jan 1995

A great future awaits humanity

2011-02-20T18:50:00.002+02:00

According to the Teaching, a great future awaits humanity. The "Captain" of the "ship" is alert and able, and conditions will gradually improve. Though many are suffering and will continue to suffer, the future of humanity is bright.

Many agents of darkness and their servants try to convince humanity that the end of the world is near, that humanity will never learn cooperation, that peace will never come, that greater suffering, pain and starvation are on the way.

The agents of darkness never give us a bright picture, and by spreading such pessimistic, negative thoughtforms, they pressure humanity to think and act along the lines of destruction, death, suffering and pain.

Once the gears of the human mind are engaged in such negative, ugly, destructive thoughts, humanity will be forced to live in such a way that it will fall into danger in trying to actualize the prophecies of the agents of darkness.

At the present we need leaders who will bring us hope, optimism, and joy; tell us that the future will be bright; tell us that the human soul is alive and sound; tell us that humanity will pass the crises and will build greater future. In spreading such a vision we will condition the thinking of humanity and lead it into positive lines - "Whatever man thinks in his heart, so is he."

Give vision to people and people will actualize the vision.

-Torkom Saraydarian

(Olympus World Report, p.8)

Karma and the law of dates

2011-01-23T12:59:00.001+02:00

Whenever we create karma, it is under the law of dates that decides when karma will manifest. Not every action meets immediately its reaction, or not every cause immediately meets with effects. The law of dates inherent in karma decides the time. Sometimes karma is met five lives later or is met in three months or instantaneously. To know the dates of manifestation of karma is beyond our ability as it is entered into the computer which processes the group, national, global, and Cosmic karma - together with our individual karma related to the rest.

There is the opinion that our karma is final and nothing can change it. This is a superstition. We can change our karma. We can improve it, even totally erase it by actions that are sacrificial, heroic, all-inclusive. Even in a dire situation a bad karma can appear as a feathered friend if you lead a sacrificial and intelligent life.

We must consider our karma as a chemical compound. It is possible to change its chemistry using chemicals that change it, dissolve it, or render it totally beneficial.

Chemicals are not only physical elements. They are also heroic actions, sacrifice, devotion, dedication, lofty thoughts, unconditional love, spatial ideas, and supreme striving. Such chemicals have power to change the compounds of our karma.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Karma & Reincarnation, p.168

Return to the Source

2010-12-06T22:12:00.003+02:00

The real you is a Spark. You descend into the Divine level, then into the Monadic level. You feel that you are something else than the whole. This is why we call it the Monad. You go to the Atmic level. The Atmic level is a level of bliss, total nirvana. You then descend to the Buddhic level. In that level, you know all that is going on everywhere. Next, you descend to the mental level. And when you enter into this level everything is confused. When you go to the astral level, everything is berserk. And when you enter the physical level, you forget everything that you were.

From the physical level, you are going to return toward the Source and consciously conquer, with your own merit, every step of the way. At the lowest level of the physical plane, you are Mr. Potatoes, or Mrs. Eggplant. You are not yourself. This is the state of "lost paradise." We are living as bugs here with our physical food, sex, sleep, and clothing; that is all. We have lost everything that was granted to us. Now our duty is to win by our own merit the higher states of consciousness.

We are going to awaken and discover ourselves. Socrates said, "Know thyself." Buddha said, "Be yourself." And Christ said, "Be perfect." All of these statements mean the same thing. We are going to be REAL. We say:

Lead us, O Lord, from darkness to light,

From the unreal to the Real,

From death to Immortality,

From chaos to Beauty...

From the individual to the Universal,

From the many cycles to the One Life,

From manifestation to Space.

You become Real when you become your Self. In some Eastern Teachings it says that as the Spark started on Its journey into matter, someone gave him "wine and whiskey." When he reached the physical plane, he was totally drunk. He does not know where he is or what he is. This is humanity today. The Sufis go on to say that in order to recover from that unconscious state, man must get rid of the intoxication. He must awaken. We are running and crying and collecting money. We are fooling ourselves. Le us hurry and go back.

When you come back to the Buddhic Plane, you are an Arhat. And on the Atmic Plane or level you are a Master, a liberated Soul, an Avatar.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Avatars, p.282

Vision of the Future

2010-12-05T16:07:00.002+02:00

In our education the only thing lacking is vision. There is the spirit of competition, separatism, and self-interest but not vision. Our children are not taught the science of service for humanity. There needs to be a curriculum which inspires the students to work for humanity, to create one humanity, to eliminate all discrimination, and to develop sacrificial will to dedicate themselves for the upliftment of one humanity. This is the failure of education. This means that contemporary education has no foundation. It can give knowledge and information and let it be used against the survival of nations and humanity.

If you do not have a vision you are becoming a failure. Failure means not to have a vision or not to follow your vision.

Vision is a dynamic power that leads you forward.

A vision always evokes from your Real Self an aspiration to sacrifice, to give, to serve, to radiate, and to uplift people. There is no vision if it is not associated with the idea of service.

Vision is an image of yourself projected into the future. It is an active, dynamic image which inspires you and pulls you up and forward on the path for your evolution.

Vision is what you want to be and what you want to do for the service of humanity.

The goal is not to be a doctor but to be a doctor to serve humanity with utmost selflessness and without exploitation. The goal is not to be a lawyer but to be a lawyer who is dedicated to the service of those who are mistreated and exploited. The goal should not be personal interest but the interest of others. If your vision is not beyond your own interests, you do not have a vision.

Is it necessary to have a vision?

I would say that without vision man will slowly descend into apathy, inertia, depression and become suicidal or criminal. If you want to cure such people, give them vision. Give them hope and future. Show them what they can do for others.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Leadership vol1, p.27-33

Sexual energy and the aura

2010-11-14T14:18:00.001+02:00

Abstinence also has an effect on the aura. When the sexual force is sublimated, it increases the strength and beauty of the aura. Sexual energy is creative. When sublimated, it first becomes part of the etheric body, then becomes part of the astral and mental bodies.

Sexual energy makes the aura highly charged and magnetic. Healing energy increases in the aura if one abstains for a long time. Actually, our thoughts and emotions are the children of our sublimated sexual energy. Mental fire is a higher correspondence of sexual energy. This creative energy travels all the way to the Chalice and accumulates in certain petals.

A beautiful poem, painting, or other work of art is sublimated sexual energy, molded by a vision. Sexual energy increases in the aura when two people love each other greatly, but abstain from sex for a while. The two auras begin to interchange energy, and thus the love energy between them deepens and sublimation takes place. In addition to this, one feels balance, stability, and equilibrium in his nature, and he conducts his life with wisdom and grace.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Aura, Shield of Protection & Glory, p.19

Music and the aura

2010-11-11T02:36:00.001+02:00

Singing is considered a healthy sign. When birds or people are sick, they do not sing. Singing is proof that the aura is balanced and that the person is not caught in a groove but can go from one color (note) to another, stimulating or revitalizing many of them. When a person stops singing, you see that his aura is not healthy; it has an imbalance of colors and many other complications.

Music is very closely connected to our health. Certain nations have national sicknesses which are caused by the music that the people of that nation constantly hear. Some groups develop heart, liver, and kidney problems because of the kind of music they hear. It is impossible to indicate which music is good or bad for an individual, but in general, any loud music, rock-and-roll, acid-rock, disco, or similar music stimulates the kidneys, solar plexus, and sacral center. The diseases contracted by people who listen to these kinds of music originate from these sources.

Music can retard or assist the development of the aura. Certain notes affect the etheric and physical bodies. Certain notes affect the astral and mental bodies. Music that makes an advanced person greatly disturbed may suit the emotions of an average person and give him great pleasure. Some people, not having an organized mental aura, do not respond to those notes, so they are safe. Those who have a mental aura, however, become highly disturbed.

Beautiful and creative music harmonizes and balances the aura of the listener, purifies, and energizes it. Such music is usually composed by an artist who has the same purity, energy, and balance.

One creates out of his true being. Disturbing music creates imbalance in the aura, increasing dramatically certain colors, and greatly reducing the colors of the higher vehicles.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Aura, Shield of Protection and Glory, p.20

Crowns and higher bodies

2010-10-03T15:49:00.002+03:00

The legends say that the first kings of humanity were Divine Beings Who came from a very advanced civilization from Space and guided and ruled humanity. At that time people used to see etheric crowns on the heads of the kings or queens.

As these Great Beings left this planet after fulfilling their duties, human kings succeeded them, and because they were not advanced spiritually, they did not have their natural crowns. People built crowns for the kings with precious stones and colorful materials.

Again the legends say that the first priests who came from other civilizations in Space to lead humanity on earth used to shine with their etheric, mental, Intuitional, and higher bodies during the ceremonies. Ages passed, and they departed. To imitate them, human priests prepared colorful vestments as correspondences or symbols of their finer bodies.

All these higher bodies exist within us, and they are visible to a true clairvoyant. Everyone of us must do his utmost to unfold his higher bodies and strive toward perfection.

-Torkom Saraydarian

New dimensions in healing, p.37

Meditation is dangerous when...

2010-09-16T14:27:00.000+03:00

Meditation is dangerous and unprofitable to the man who enters upon it without the basis of a good character and of clean living. Meditation then becomes only a medium for the bringing in of energies which but serve to stimulate the undesirable aspects of his life, just as the fertilizing of a garden full of weeds will produce a stupendous crop of them, and so crush out the weak and tiny flowers.

Meditation is dangerous where there is wrong motive, such a desire for personal growth and for spiritual powers, for it produces, under these conditions only a strengthening of the shadows in the vale of illusion and brings to full growth the serpent of pride, lurking in the valley of selfish desire. Meditation is dangerous when the desire to serve is lacking.

-Djwhal Khul

(Alice Bailey, a Treatise on White Magic)

Every limb of the body must be put to proper use and sanctified

2010-06-27T02:31:00.001+03:00

The human body is a sacred instrument given by God and it has to be sanctified by contemplating on God at least one or two times a day.

What kind of activities are to be undertaken so that man may derive happiness and joy? The most appropriate answer to this question would be that He should be engaged in constant contemplation of God. The eyes must always see good things. The ears must be engaged in hearing good things. The tongue must be made to speak always sweet and noble words. It should chant the divine name. Thus, every limb of the body must be put to proper use and sanctified.

- Sai Baba

Do not attack the object of worship of others

2010-06-27T02:25:00.003+03:00

Those who dishonor an image of worship, an image of joy and adoration, or an object of devotion and high respect are criminals, no matter in what field that object is found: political, educational, philosophical, artistic, scientific, religious, or financial.

Let people worship anything they want, but try to draw their attention to the innermost meanings of their object or religion and you will have an opportunity to make the object of their worship an object of transformation.

Thus, do not attack the object of worship of others, but try to find something beneficial in it and draw their attention to that point of beauty. Every object of worship can be turned into a source of energy that can transform the nature of its worshippers.

......

The ancients used to say:

"Do not belittle a father in front of his son, or a husband in front of his wife."

"Do not attack images of worship."

Such attacks destroy the people's vision and faith, and those from whom a great image is taken become criminals.

Of course in any field one can find failures. Instead of telling the story of their failures, instead of broadcasting into the public consciousness the failure images of our leaders, let the authorities deal with them.

People think that all truth must be the public's property. Many people use this argument to make their lies, fabrications, and falsehoods public property.

People especially must not tolerate attacks on the images of their religious worship because such images are commingled with their heart and life, and without such images they cannot create energy or sustain their integrity.

A great political example of this was Russia. During the 1917 revolution, there was widespread destruction of churches, mosques, and temples. Widespread murder was committed against religious leaders. They were publicly disgraced. And now we have seen how the people have slowly disintegrated and fallen into corruption, bribery, hatred, cleavages, and so on.

Seventy years of Communism was not able to create friendship, brotherhood, respect, or cooperation between various races and nations, and at the first opportunity for freedom the dirt came out.

Respect the images of worship of people, and you will be able to create the harmony of cooperation among those whose images of worship are highly respected and recognized.

Every hero, every public image, can be used as an opportunity to create public festivities and to produce energy. The purpose is to create a unified field of energy.

It is important that people feel excitement, love, devotion, and gratitude because these feelings create energy. If a group is full of such feelings, that group is in a field of energy which purifies, heals, and changes every member in the group.

Many people in the group feel that something changes in them when they are in special meetings. They feel physically rested and harmonious. Many of their physical complaints even disappear; they feel healed. Eventually they fell harmony and joy. They fell mutually inspired and uplifted, their horizon expands spiritually, and their whole being is charged with a new ecstasy. These are the results of the energy created by the unification and harmony of group feelings. That is why in certain phases of our life - such as birthdays, baptism, marriage, graduation, and various happy events - we feel totally uplifted. The accumulated feelings of joy, gratitude, appreciation, love, and respect are doing their work.

Group festivals or festivities of inaugurations and other public celebrations create massive energy which may transform a nation and clear many ugly accumulations from the aura of that nation.

-Torkom Saraydarian

The Mystery of Self-Image

Each mistake is an open door...

2010-06-27T02:11:00.002+03:00

How do dark entities set about harming humans? They urge them to make mistakes, for each mistake is an open door giving the entities the right to go in and torment them. If people resist, if they don't make mistakes, the entities are powerless. This is why the devil - we'll say 'the devil' for simplicity's sake - only has the powers you give him. If you don't want to deal with him, don't let him in. He will not force you, he just makes suggestions - this is why he's called the 'tempter' - and you are the one who says 'yes'.

Most people imagine their disquiet, their distress and their anxieties have come suddenly, just like that, all at once. No, they prepared for them, they opened the door to them, they invited them in. How? By means of their desires, thoughts and lower feelings, by means of certain weaknesses and certain transgressions. At that very moment, the devil found the door open, came in and began his campaign of destruction.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

As you increase your response to the greater light, you become more of a "troublemaker"

2010-06-19T21:09:00.002+03:00

Q: What do we have to do to help bring changes in the planet and nations? Is there a formula for what changes will be possible in response to the light?

A: Of course. As you increase your response to the greater light, you become more of a "troublemaker." That is why most of the great leaders were revolutionaries. The emancipation of slaves that Lincoln introduced was revolutionary, for instance. Why? Because that man responded to the light of freedom in a greater degree than you and I. He brought upheaval and conflicts when the light, peace, and understanding - strong things - changed him. Now we are saying, "Peace, peace." If we stand on it, we will have it. But if we say, "Peace," and take LSD, we will not have it. So when you stand in the light you pay the price for standing in the light. That is difficult. ...

Can you pay this price for standing in the light? It is not easy. When you have a greater response to the light, you are a greater troublemaker. And when you are a greater troublemaker, you have more resistance and must be ready for greater suffering. If you are ready, you are one of the followers of Christ or followers of a great Master or of a Plan that you can follow.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Avatars, Revelations of God, p.177,178

Cleansing during sleep

2010-06-19T21:06:00.001+03:00

From the moment we slip into sleep, our soul moves away from our physical body and goes to join the universal soul. During the body's rest, an entire work of cleansing and purification takes place. On its return, the soul finds the house cleaned and washed, and it can take up its work again. If the soul did not leave the body in this way, we would die from poisoning and asphyxiation, because the work of cleansing could not be done.

You will say, 'But why do we have these toxins and poisons?' Because life is a combustion. All the physical, emotional and mental activities we know as 'life' produce a release of forces, but they also leave behind rubbish which takes a while to be eliminated. So it is necessary for the soul to withdraw from the body so the cleansing can take place. This is how nature has resolved the problem of life.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Taking the responsibility of our mistakes

2010-05-29T15:24:00.000+03:00

Those who lack the sense of responsibility argue with you if you point out their mistakes. They feel angry and hurt and eventually deny their failure and mistakes. No one can help such people.

A responsible person will beg you to show him his mistakes because he knows that it is only through correcting his mistakes that he will be able to exercise his sense of responsibility more efficiently.

Irresponsible people insist that their mistakes originate from you or from others, if they can even see the mistakes at all. They cannot correct themselves and therefore always remain mediocre and resentful.

If you do not accept your failures or mistakes with humility and joy, and if you reject those who point out your mistakes to you, something very serious happens to your mind. Every time you make a mistake, your mind will accept it as if it was not an important mistake. Eventually your mind will develop a system of rationalization and the making of excuses and tell you, "It is okay; there is no problem." When your mind programs itself in this way, it eventually leads you to disaster. Because your mistakes are not corrected, they increase and cause you failure.

-Torkom Saraydarian

The sense of responsibility in society, p.17

If you feel abandoned, it means you, yourself, no longer love

2010-05-29T15:23:00.001+03:00

When you love someone, it is God that loves them through you. So, by loving them, you experience the love of God. That is why the act of loving can be just as fulfilling as that of being loved, in fact, even more so.

You have certainly already felt this love. It visited you, but then it went away. and that is how it will always be until love finds a permanent dwelling place and nourishment within you. For it eats a great deal! So, next time it comes to visit, try to reflect on the circumstances of its coming, so you are able to summon it again, for it is you, consciously or not, who provide the favourable conditions it needs.

Love enters where there is purity, the purity symbolized by the transparency of a crystal, and if it finds impurity it leaves again. So you see, this is a very serious question; think about it instead of complaining of being alone and abandoned. You can never lose the love that lives within you. If you feel abandoned, it means you, yourself, no longer love.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Sincerity

2010-05-27T16:01:00.001+03:00

People think that talking openly about their bad intentions, feelings, or actions is an act of sincerity. But sincerity is a virtue. How can you be a thief and in the meantime be an honest person? Sincerity is related to the expression of your inner beauty, not to hiding your responses or reactions to other people's thoughts, feelings, and actions. A sincere person is one who shines his light without hindering it or hiding it.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Aura, Shield of Protection & Glory

Identifying with an illness

2010-05-20T01:31:00.000+03:00

Someone says: 'As you can see, I'm sick; there are no two ways about it.' But what he doesn't know is that by affirming his illness in this way he reinforces it. Although the illness affects only one part of his body, he identifies with it and in his mind allows it to take over the entire terrain.

So what should you do instead? When you are sick, even if you are dying, you must say: 'It is true that my body is sick, but I myself - a child of God, a divine spark - cannot be sick.' And this conviction puts you above your illness: you do not identify with your body but with your spirit, which lives in light and eternity.

When you decide to put this law of the supremacy of the spirit to work in your life, you first effect changes in the realm of thought. These changes then influence the realm of feelings and sensations, finally crystallizing on the physical plane where things become organized and clear.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Effects of thought

2010-05-19T23:42:00.000+03:00

Thought energy not only affects the minds and thoughts of other people, but it also affects the atmosphere, the elements found in the atmosphere, and the energy currents active there. This means that the composition of the elements of the air changes due to human thoughts.

Thought affects the cloud formation and the ionization of the air. It affects magnetic polarization, lightning, thunder, and rain. It causes earthquakes or creates stabilization. It causes epidemics and natural calamities if it is massive and negative.

...

Our thoughts can carry great currents of beauty, lofty images of heroism and nobility, and strong waves of healing energy into space. These thoughts are drawn in by creative people, by people of pure heart and goodwill, and used by them to change themselves and their environment and bring in a better life on this planet. Every human being can add his share to this accumulation of good thoughts and serve the Common Good.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Thought and the Glory of Thinking, p.61

God is always ready to give you all that you want

2010-05-19T23:37:00.002+03:00

God gives you whatever you pray for, so take care. Ask for the right things. Not knowing what we should ask, we are asking Him for something when we really want something else. In this process, we are getting ourselves into difficulties.

God is always ready to give you all that you want, but you do not seem to know what is good for you and what you really want. Since you do not know what you should want and under what circumstances, it is better and easier to surrender yourself completely to God and simply ask for His grace.

-Sai Baba

The walking dead

2010-05-10T01:07:00.000+03:00

Brotherhood, 561. It will be asked, Can so-called living corpses wander about on Earth for a long time? For long periods, depending upon their animal attraction to the physical world. Psychic energy will leave them, their radiations will become negligible, and a small apparatus will reveal the signs of death.

These walking corpses easily fall under the influence of strangers. They repeat empty words of their bygone days, convincing no one. Physicians may vainly examine their aorta, pointing to a valvular disease of the heart.

These corpses are sometimes sensed by certain animals. Often these corpses remain as heads of big enterprises, nevertheless their dead husks permeate everything therein. The walking dead are strongly attached to life, for they do not understand the change of condition. They fear death.

-Agni Yoga

No energy from Space can put us into the right direction

2010-05-07T13:14:00.000+03:00

People think that cycles, new configurations of zodiacal signs and stars bring benevolent changes to humanity. This is a great mistake. No energy from Space can put us into the right direction. On the contrary, it stimulates our beingness at whatever level we may be. And because we are focused mostly in our subconscious mind, we live the same tragic life over and over again as centuries come and go.

New cycles, new configurations of stars, new education, and new Teachings can change us only when we respond to them with our conscious mind. Unless we are focused in our conscious mind, we will not benefit from new energies. On the contrary, even with all our sophisticated civilization, we will sink more and more into savagery.

-Torkom Saraydarian

The Subconscious Mind and the Chalice, p.30

Astral magnetism

2010-05-01T17:05:00.002+03:00

The force of kundalini flows as a river through men and women. Sexual intercourse gives that river an outlet, creates a channel, a psychic-astral tube between their muladhara chakras. After the first intercourse, awareness is turned outward into the external world and the man or woman is more vulnerable to the forces of desire. The ramification of the intellect can now be experienced more than ever before. If the force is contained within the marriage covenant, with blessings from the Devaloka and Sivaloka, rays similar to the astral tube established between the couple are established between each of them through the higher chakras with the Mahadevas and their devas. A holy state of matrimony has been entered into.

Dancing with Siva, Hinduism's Contemporary Catechism states: "When a young virgin man and woman marry and share physical intimacy with each other, their union is very strong and their marriage stable. This is due to the subtle, psychic forces of the human nerve system. Their psychic forces, or nadis, grow together, and they form a one body and a one mind. This is the truest marriage and the strongest, seldom ending in separation or divorce. Conversely, if the man or woman has had intercourse before the marriage, the emotional/psychic closeness of the marriage will suffer, and this in proportion to the extent of promiscuity."

The higher rays and lower astral-psychic tubes that are created between husband and wife can contain the forces of desire within them. They also control the instinctive curiosities of the intellect, allowing its full power to manifest and create a productive and abundant life for the family which has continuity and consistency. A life of dharma can be lived.

The release of the sacred seed into the woman during sexual intercourse establishes, through the first chakra, a connecting psychic astral tube which can be clearly seen on the astral plane. It is through this psychic tube that desires, feelings and even telepathic messages can be passed from one to another. This connecting tube is generally about six inches in diameter.

Nowadays, because of promiscuity, masses of people are connected one to another in this way. A great bed of astral matter envelops them as they go from one partner to another. This causes the forces of intense fear to persist. From an inner perspective, their soul bodies are obscured by this astral matter, and it is most difficult for those living in the Devaloka to contact anyone on the Earth plane who is thus involved. Such individuals must fend for themselves, with little or no protection from the Devaloka or the Sivaloka, as do the animals, who do not have benefit of the intellect to guide their actions.

Any two people touching in other ways--kissing, embracing--also establishes a temporary connecting link of astral matter which penetrates their auras and completely covers their forms. This is sometimes called the great magnetism, for it appears in the Second World as a psychic mass connecting the two of them as wide as the length of their bodies. This astral matter is created from the diverse expulsion of emotional energies, blending their auras together. The psychic connection is magnetic enough to repeatedly pull them back together or cause emotional pain if they are separated. But unless the encounter is repeated, the astral matter will wear away in three or four days, a month at the most. In this way, touching or caressing someone causes an abundant release of magnetic force to occur.

-Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

http://www.himalayanacademy.com/study/mc/daily_lesson_html/lesson_66.shtml

Before practising meditation, you should first put your psychic being in order

2010-05-01T16:59:00.004+03:00

It is possible to enter the spiritual world by several routes. Meditation is one of them, but it requires preparation. Those who start meditating without having acquired a certain inner discipline, that is, control over their thoughts, feelings and desires, begin by wandering in the lower regions of the astral plane, and on their way they stir up all kinds of dark layers inhabited by entities often hostile to humans. What they experience then is known as delirium or phantasmagoria, but not meditation.

So before practising meditation, you should first put your psychic being in order; otherwise, even this most useful and profitable of exercises can become very dangerous.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

The reason for the present beastly and demonic tendencies in our minds is the food we consume

2010-05-01T16:54:00.002+03:00

Food is God - Do not waste food.

Firstly, consider the food we consume. Eat only what you need to eat. Do not be greedy. Do not take more than you can eat and waste the rest, because wasting food is a great sin. The surplus food can feed another stomach. Do not waste food, because food is God, life is God, and man is born from food.

Food is the main source of man's life, body, mind and character. The gross part of the food, which is the major portion of the food consumed by the body, is thrown out as waste matter. A minute amount of the food, which is the subtle part, is assimilated by the body and flows as blood. And a minuscule amount, which is the subtlest part of the food, makes up the mind. Therefore, the mind is the reflection of the food consumed. The reason for the present beastly and demonic tendencies in our minds is the food we consume.

A large part of the water we drink is expelled as urine. A minute part of the water consumed becomes the life force (prana). Therefore, the nature of the food and water that we take in decides our character. Only by controlling the quality of our food and water can we attain Divinity. This is why food is said to be God. Hence, to waste food is to waste God. Do not waste food. Eat only what you need, and be sure that what you eat is Sathwic. Give any surplus food to those in need.

-Sai Baba

The highest utility of human existence

2010-05-01T16:52:00.001+03:00

In every mind, utility is conditioned by its own peculiar wants. To men, therefore, who never rise higher than eating, drinking, begetting progeny, and dying, the only gain is in sense-enjoyments; and they must wait and go through many more births and reincarnations to learn to feel even the faintest necessity for anything higher.

But those to whom the eternal interests of the soul are of much higher value than the fleeting interests of this mundane life, to whom the gratification of the senses is but like thoughtless play of the baby, to them, God and the love of God form the highest and the only utility of human existence.

-Swami Vivekananda

Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda

The Teaching is not a supermarket

2010-04-25T00:54:00.003+03:00

People approach the Teaching as if it were a supermarket from which they can buy all that they need for their stomachs and bodies. But the Teaching is given to cause radioactivity and decentralization of self-interest and to make people learn the science of sacrificial service.

As long as one approaches the Teaching as if it were a supermarket, he will not profit spiritually from it, although he can use whatever he collects from the supermarket to entertain himself and others and thus waste the treasury of the Teaching. Wasting the Teaching can produce sad consequences due to the following reasons:

a. You lose your magnetism.

b. You turn into a hypocrite.

c. You exploit people for your own pleasure.

d. You blind your inner eye and inner ear.

e. You accumulate heavy karma.

f. You fall into isolation.

g. You are born into unfortunate circumstances in your next incarnation.

Just as people like to collect items of interest for their home, they also tend to collect ideas and information from the Teaching to be added to their mental collections, whereas the Teaching is only to be used for the actualization of their higher potentials and to cause transformation in their life.

The Teaching must be approached also with the intent to learn the following:

How to love
How to lose self-interest
How to serve
How to increase joy and freedom
How to liberate people

........

The Teaching is not a supermarket but a center for transfiguration and mastery. As yet, most of the places of worship are not centers where people can learn how to renounce their glamors, illusions, maya, ego, and vanity, or learn how to step on the not-self. They are not yet centers where people enter the path of discipleship. Places of worship are usually places of emotional entertainment and abodes of personal "security". Some of them are mainly occupied with easing the path of glamor for others or occupied with taking advantage of others through psychic glamors and manipulative techniques. Many still refuse those people who point out their wounds and mistakes; they are still absorbed in the material world for most of their life.

It seems very strange that most people use the Teaching like some sort of personal medication. They "take" the Teaching because, after they hear uplifting lectures and read a spiritual book or two or have a good meditation, they experience the following:

They feel very good.
They enjoy life more.
Their house is in better shape.
They can make more money.
Their family loves them more.

These results are good, but the goals of the Teaching extend beyond a person's personal pleasures and comforts, beyond his business and his home. We seldom hear people telling us that they love the Teaching because of any of the following reasons:

1. Their field of service to others improves.

2. Their viewpoints change.

3. Larger fields of labor open to them, and they have become extremely busy serving in them.

4. They experience self-forgetfulness and have begun to understand the meaning of self sacrifice.

5. They see greater light in people and see the efforts that others are making to make this world a better place.

6. They are taking many risks to be of service to the Teaching.

7. They are realizing their weaknesses and glamors and see how these prevent them from becoming a better servant to humanity.

These seven points signal a sincere approach to the Teaching, indicating that a person is beginning to understand the Teaching. It is important to serve the Teaching instead of making the Teaching serve us.

...............

The Teaching is the Law - the Dharma. It embodies the living fire given to humanity for regeneration and transformation. Every act which distorts the Teaching and causes harm to the Teacher is an unforgivable slander against the Source of Light.

Christ once said, "...but whosoever speaks against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven, neither in this world nor in the world to come." The Holy Spirit is the Source of the pure Teaching, the Source of Light given to humanity for regeneration and transformation.

The Teaching is the Ageless Wisdom given throughout the ages by this Source through Great Ones in different words and experiences and according to the level of those to whom it is given. Those who are touched by this spark of light will see the pure Teaching passing like a beam of light through all wisdoms and religions given to humanity. It is this beam of light that must be discovered. It is found only through tolerance, inclusiveness, love, compassion, and through a life lived for the good of all.

-Torkom Saraydarian

The Ageless Wisdom

Light is the matter of creation

2010-04-25T00:52:00.001+03:00

It is light that informs us of fire's presence. Yes, for light is the vestment of fire. And, insofar as all forms of clothing are material, we can say that light is actually matter. Above, in the sublime regions, light represents matter and fire represents spirit. This is why it is said that God, who is the primordial fire, created light first and then used light to create the world. Before light there was fire, and light is therefore the matter of creation.

You may be wondering whether it's possible for fire to exist without light. Yes, the original fire, the non-manifest fire is not luminous. In order for fire to be accompanied by light, it has to manifest.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

In God’s creation, there is nothing like sorrow

2010-04-24T23:57:00.002+03:00

In God’s creation, there is nothing like sorrow. Whatever God does is for the welfare of humanity. Some people feel depressed and wail as to why God gave them troubles and sorrows. But, sorrows and difficulties are our own making. God does not differentiate or cause trouble to anyone. Sorrows and difficulties are only your feelings. Everything in God’s creation is meant to provide happiness and convenience to the living beings.

That is what I have been repeatedly emphasizing. Whether you are in sorrow or enjoying happiness, always think that everything is for your own good. One has to develop a firm conviction that whatever God does is for one’s own good and not for putting one to trouble.

-Sai Baba Divine

Discourse on 17th October'2004

Psychic and physical pollution

2010-04-15T22:55:00.001+03:00

Scientists are joining forces worldwide to alert public opinion to the risks run by humanity as a result of their pollution of the air, the water and the earth. But does anyone stop to consider that asphyxiating fumes, gas escapes and toxic products spread in the psychic world too?

Many present-day illnesses are due not only to the pollution of air, water and food but to psychic pollution. If the psychic atmosphere we are immersed in were not so polluted, it would be easy to neutralize all external poisons. The ill is first and foremost inside.

When you feel strong inside and in harmony with yourself and others, it's as if currents of energy were running through you, throwing off impurities - even on the physical plane - and your organism succeeds in defending itself better.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

If you insist on wages, you become a servant

2010-04-15T22:51:00.002+03:00

People pray to God to relieve them from pain, grief and loss to confer on them wealth, health and strength; but, if you develop an intimate attachment to Him and make Him yours, He will manage to give you all that you need.

Do not demean the relationship into bargaining; give me this, then I shall give you this in exchange. If you insist on wages, you become a servant. Become His own. He is provider for the idler, the insane, the shirker; can he not provide for you?

-Sai Baba

Source: SAI VEDA, P-21.

Whatever you love, you are

2010-04-15T22:43:00.001+03:00

If you want money more than anything,
you'll be bought and sold.

If you have a greed for food,
you'll be a loaf of bread.

This is a subtle truth:
whatever you love, you are.

- Rumi

Value of the intellect to the detriment of the heart

2010-04-15T22:41:00.002+03:00

There are many highly educated people in the world with highly trained intellects, and that's good. But that is not what will save humanity; quite the opposite, for it is not the nature of the intellect to display kindness, patience or generosity. On the contrary, those who have a highly developed intellect often try to deceive others, to control them, exploit and enslave them.

Look at how all these highly gifted intellectuals behave, how often they become critical, scornful and wily. You will say, 'Oh, that's because they are ill-natured.' No, the fault lies with the education they received, which places value on the intellect to the detriment of the heart and so reinforces people's lower nature. They are given weapons without being given the ideal of improving themselves, and then, of course, they use these to satisfy their most basic appetites. When will these 'educators' decide to give people knowledge that will allow them to work on controlling their lower nature?

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

We think that the enemies of light are so powerful that they are running the whole show

2010-04-06T14:42:00.002+03:00

We sometimes think that the enemies of light, the dark forces, and evil are so powerful that they are running the whole show. When this impression is given, it creates inertia, disappointment, and hopelessness in us.

Actually, the contrary is true. It is Divine consciousness, Cosmic consciousness which has ultimate power over everything.

There is a great angelic organization which fights against the dark forces. This organization consists of millions and millions of beings, both on earth and in the heavens. Specifically for our planet, it is very significant that the army of the Forces of Light are under the command of Christ.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Battling Dark Forces, p.51

Man must know that, which if known, all else is known

2010-04-05T01:05:00.000+03:00

Man has become artificial, crooked, twisted out of his normal shape. He has left behind the simple natured ways and made his mind a lumber - room for ideas, worries, anxieties and terrors. He can live on very much less, with much greater joy for himself and others. If only he remembers that he is a treasure chest with the Divine spark in it, he will be more loving and useful.

There must be a Divine purpose in life. Man must know the way to attain God, must be led and guided to attain him, must be educated to rid himself of distractions on the path, must know that, which if known, all else is known. The rest is all secondary, incidental and unnecessary.

-Sai Baba

Source: Sai Veda (SathyaSai Advises Inspires Vivifies Educates Dispels All doubts)

Creating a harmonic ambience

2010-04-05T00:41:00.003+03:00

The atmosphere, the ambience in which people find themselves, is an important factor in bringing out either their good or their bad side. This is why you must immerse yourself as often as possible in an ambience of peace, harmony and light. Of course, its effects often last no longer than the time you're immersed in it, but at least for a few moments your lower nature is reduced to silence, while your higher nature expands. And by dint of repeating this experience, your higher nature will one day predominate.

Some people consider that toning down their lower nature is a sign of weakness; they feel much better giving vent to their aggressive instincts and their desire to dominate - in letting their wild animals out, in fact! But then these wild animals cause a lot of damage and devour their children, in other words their good thoughts and feelings that are not yet firm and strong. So these wild animals need to be restrained a little, and this is what the disciples of an initiatic school seek to do, thanks to the harmonious ambience they strive to create.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Does hell really exist? Is there a Satan?

2010-04-05T00:33:00.001+03:00

There is no eternal hell, nor is there a Satan. However, there are hellish states of mind and woeful births for those who think and act wrongfully--temporary tormenting conditions that lift the fiery forces within. Aum.

Hell, termed Naraka, is the lower astral realm of the seven chakras below the muladhara. It is a place of fire and heat, anguish and dismay, of confusion, despair and depression. Here anger, jealousy, argument, mental conflict and tormenting moods plague the mind. Access to hell is brought about by our own thoughts, words, deeds and emotions--suppressed, antagonistic feelings that court demons and their aggressive forces. Hell is not eternal. Nor is there a Satan who tempts man and opposes God's power, though there are devilish beings called asuras, immature souls caught in the abyss of deception and hurtfulness. We do not have to die to suffer the Naraka regions, for hellish states of mind are also experienced in the physical world. If we do die in a hellish state of consciousness--burdened by unresolved hatred, remorse, resentment, fear and distorted patterns of thought--we arrive in Naraka fully equipped to join others in this temporary astral purgatory. The Vedas say, "Sunless and demonic, verily, are those worlds, and enveloped in blinding darkness, to which all those people who are enemies of their own souls go after death." Aum Namah Sivaya.

-Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

http://www.himalayanacademy.com/study/mc/daily_lesson_html/lesson_363.shtml

Discrimination

2010-04-04T21:14:00.004+03:00

Discrimination is an essential part of your approach to the Teaching. In choosing reading material for example, you may wonder how you can know whether or not a book contains a fantastic Teaching without reading it. The answer is that when you have a sense of discrimination, you "smell" it before you read it. A dog smells a piece of meat to find out whether or not it is rotten and will not eat it if it is. If he ate the meat without smelling it first, he would poison himself and it would be too late for him to find out that it was spoiled. Similarly, by reading a "rotten" book, you have already polluted your consciousness. A sense of discrimination saves you from reading the book.

If your sense of discrimination is not very active, read a sentence or a paragraph and then toss the material away if your intuition tells you not to read it at all. You must develop the sense of discrimination or intuition. Do you drink a cup of liquid to find out what it is? First you smell it. Then you may dip your finger in the cup and taste just a little. Or you may send it off for analysis, and so on. Before you read a book, you must know who the author is and what kind of life he has lived, what his philosophy is, what religion he practices, and what are his goals in life. All of this information can tell you whether or not to read his book.

A person once brought me a book with a fantastic cover. I knew the author was a man who used various drugs and encouraged others to do the same, so I said, "I don't like to read books written by this author." The person replied, "Well, you are a prejudiced and narrow-minded fanatic." I told him, "Even with such accusations, you cannot make read that book." Years later the person became a drug user. When he finally saw his own destruction, he searched for help from various organizations. Eventually, after losing his job and his wife, he came to me and said, "You know, it was that book which ruined my life." "You are a fanatic," I said to him, reminding him of what he had said to me in the past. "Well, he said, "I withdraw my accusations; you were right." But he realized this only after a great tragedy.

Discrimination saves your life. Try to develop the sense of discrimination by all possible means. Purify your nature, and your sense of discrimination will grow and unfold.

Beware of those who advise the use of drugs in conjunction with the Teaching and meditation.

Beware of those who think that life is a joke, a purposeless drama or comedy.

Beware of those who are "prophets," "sages," or the "incarnations of Great Ones."

Beware of those who use you for their own separative policies and who manipulate you and use your resources to climb to higher positions.

Beware of those who praise you, flatter you, or bribe you. They will lead you into an undisciplined life.

The Ageless Wisdom never encourages showing off. It encourages humility, simplicity, and inner work - inner transformation.

-Torkom Saraydarian

The Ageless Wisdom, p.31,32