Rosy promises in spiritual literature

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

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

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

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

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

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