The loss of the soul

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Torkom Saraydarian

Battling Dark Forces

How to make our emotional body healthy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Torkom Saraydarian

Education as Transformation vol.1

Why can't we know our past lives?

Nature covers past lives for many reasons:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Torkom Saraydarian

Karma & Reincarnation, p.374-376

The Teaching creates reactions

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

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

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

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

-Torkom Saraydarian

The Ageless Wisdom, p.61

Inhalation and exhalation of the moon

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

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

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

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

-Torkom Saraydarian

Education as Transformation vol1, p.110

Busying ourselves with worldly activities is a form of laziness

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

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

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

-Ven. Thubten Chodron

Taming the Mind

The pull of the full moon

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

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

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

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

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

-Torkom Saraydarian

Education as Transformation, p.107,108

What is evil? Who is the enemy?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Torkom Saraydarian

Battling Dark Forces

How to unfold the chakras

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

1. by artificial means

2. by meditating upon them

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

4. through initiations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What happens when your chakras begin to unfold?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Torkom Saraydarian

Education as Transformation vol.1

Time is not limitless

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

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

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?

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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