Simplicity

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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