After the soul has broken the link with the physical body

It is observed that often after the soul has broken the link with the physical body, people around the subject try to bring the person back to the body. This is carried on especially in hospitals with various mechanical means. People must help the departing one to break his ties easily and joyfully with appropriate mantrams, prayers, and words. Sometimes the delay of departure causes many complications.

For example, immediately after the link between the soul and body is broken, the astral body begins to build itself rapidly. A speedy integration, reorganization, and formation takes place. But when people draw the soul back to the body, by machines or by emotions, the formation of the subtle body is disturbed, and it is badly wounded.

A similar thing occurs when a fetus is forced to take birth before it is ready for it.

Delayed departure also causes great suffering for the person and anxiety for those who are waiting to receive him in their spheres.

Great help can be given to people by teaching them how to detach themselves from the earth. Many experiences are needed to reach such a state of renunciation, and it is possible to create conditions in which people are not tied to their possessions and bodies. The Teaching can help people easily break the tie with earthly life by demonstrating to them the beauty of the Higher Worlds. Meditation and the occasional disciplines or renunciation will provide great help for the future ascent.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Other Worlds

After death there are various obstacles which try to hinder our journey

After death there are various obstacles which try to hinder our journey. Symbolically and collectively they are called the dark angel. They are
a. Accumulations of our wrongdoings, wrong thoughts, and wrong words.
b. Astral attacks
c. Electromagnetic disturbances in the air
d. Collective pollution of human immorality
e. Cosmic Rays
f. Fear

All these obstacles are overcome by the energies created through these five steps:
1.  Prayer
2.  Meditation
3.  Sacrificial service
4.  Deeds of heroism
5.  Silence

Prayer, meditation, sacrificial service, heroic deeds, and silence, create some sort of an element in your aura which, when you pass away, turns into a fuel which propels you toward the Higher Worlds. Earthly attachment, memories, identifications, and duties pull you down to earth. To overcome that pull, you need the fuel created by these five steps which will propel you higher and higher, until you reach the plane where you fit.

Actually, virtues, which are the result of these five steps, are energy sources in your aura. A virtue is a power; it is an energy. This fuel begins to activate itself immediately when one leaves his etheric and physical bodies. In a sense, it disengages the astral body from the etheric body and propels it up toward the Higher Worlds.

Criminals cannot go higher than the lowest level of the astral plane because they lack the needed "fuel."


-Torkom Saraydarian
Other Worlds

It is important to prepare oneself for the departure from earth

It is important to prepare oneself for the departure from earth. The mental body, together with the astral body, withdraws itself from the physical body. On the path of ascent, the astral body burns away, if the person is advanced and if he is ready to enter the Fiery World. But if his destination is the astral plane, the astral body serves as a vehicle of contact with the astral world through its centers and senses. Later, if man advances out of the astral sphere into the fiery sphere, the separation between the astral and mental bodies occurs. The mental body must be inflamed with the fire of the Intuition to be able to penetrate the Fiery World. Thus, step by step, the human soul unites himself with the Higher Worlds, leaving, stage by stage, the bodies which cannot be used in higher spheres.

The last hours of the departure from the physical realms to the Higher Worlds are considered sacred. These are hours in which the departing one, as much as possible, must concentrate his light on his Master or on Christ and joyfully relax himself in order to float out of the sphere of the body. Total silence and the feeling of joy and gratitude must fill the sphere of the room. If it is night, dim candlelight is proper, with some sandalwood and rose oil. It is also possible to have some soft music or singing of hymns.

People think of the moment of departure as a sad moment. This feeling must be reversed and the moment looked upon as a moment of great joy and liberation. An advanced soul is even anxious to depart, to experience the great beauty of the higher spheres.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Other Worlds

No one can teach you how to contact God

No one can teach you how to contact God. Everyone has his own way to do it. While in Italy, I went to a monastery built by St. Francis. I saw the tree in front of which He used to teach the birds. He would speak about great ideas to the birds gathered there. People thought he was insane.

Another great mystic Sufi Teacher would shake the branches of a tree and say, "Good morning, God. I love You. I know You are here and everywhere." You are going to discover things by yourself. Basically, you are going to find a way to communicate with that Supreme Existence.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Teachings of Great Ones

In the month of Capricorn - Overcome pride and showing off

Those born in Capricorn often try to show off. Showing off means that you are identified with your physical, emotional, and mental outer shells; you are becoming the charcoal instead of the fire. A person shows off because he wants to prove to himself that he exists. He does this because he feels that he is empty inside, that he has no inner resources.

It is very important to understand that when you show off, you externalize yourself; you become matter, emotion, and thought. But you do not come closer to your True Self, which is beyond your personality.

People usually show off for only one reason -- because they feel a void inside them which makes them think they need someone else to prove they exist. They put their physical, emotional, and mental bodies on display so that people will say, "You are here. You are beautiful. You are funny."


-Torkom Saraydarian
The Wisdom of the Zodiac vol.4

Joy is mastery over your personality

Joy is an effort to control the elementals of your physical, emotional, and mental nature. Joy is mastery over your personality. Nobody can be a server if he has no joy.

Joy is so important because the world is depressed and the abyss of depression is so deep. A great Sage says that when you are joyful, you can jump over abysses. Joy has a special substance that enters the minds and hearts of people and brings them into sanity. If people are acting insanely around you, manifest joy, and you will see how they are coming to their senses.


-Torkom Saraydarian
The Wisdom of the Zodiac vol.4, p.74

Whatever you depend on, is eventually going to be taken away from you

Whatever you depend on, or whatever you cannot do without, is eventually going to be taken away from you. This is because when you identify yourself with something you are not, you lose your real Divinity. Then life creates these solar or zodiacal "winds" that come and blow away whatever you are not. The supports on which you are leaning are blown out from under you so that you stand on your own feet and eventually walk the path of self-actualization. A time will come when you will not depend on anything outside you, but you will depend only on your True Self, your real identity. If you depend on books, on teachers, on radio, television, artists, and movies, you will never advance. Only in breaking these dependencies and facing yourself can you advance.

-Torkom Saraydarian
The Wisdom of the Zodiac vol.4

Unless people have spiritual freedom, there will be no such thing as political freedom

Unless people have spiritual freedom, there will be no such thing as political freedom. To be free means that you are not identified with your physical body and its associates, your emotional body and its associates, your mental body and its associates. You sit in the car and tell the car, "Go where I want. Do not take me here. You must obey me."

Most of our life, the car drives us. Sit down and honestly ask yourself, "Who is driving whom?" Are you driving your body, emotions, and mind or are they driving you? If they are driving you, you are not safe on the freeway of the spiritual kingdom. Do not kid yourself. Try to face yourself without any hallucinations, preconceived ideas, or prejudices.


-Torkom Saraydarian
The Wisdom of the Zodiac, vol.4

We often impregnate our rooms, our gardens, our offices with worries, with negative feelings, with destructive thoughtforms

We often impregnate our rooms, our gardens, our offices with worries, with negative feelings, with destructive thoughtforms or various kinds. The sphere around our dwelling and working places gets so contaminated with such pollution that our soul has a hard time to breathe and to be creative.

Instead of such negative substances, we can fill our homes and offices with the substance of joy and love, and thus increase our vitality, creativity and service for the world.

"It is useful to impregnate space with joy." We seldom realize that as we think, feel and act, we inject various kinds of substance into space. Joy is a substance, fear is another substance. Love, hate and gratitude are different kinds of substances. It is necessary to ask ourselves what kind of substance are we dumping into the space?

"It is dangerous to strew the heavens with sorrow. Joy is the health of the spirit." A space stratified with sorrow is a space through which destructive and negative forces operate. Even germs like a space full of sorrow; they grow there more abundantly. Dark forces like depression and sorrow because they can easily control a person caught by sorrow and depression. Sorrow blocks the vision of the future, devitalizes your body and paralyzes your intellect.


-Torkom Saraydarian
The Flame of Beauty, Culture, Love, Joy

In the month of Sagittarius - Silence

In the month of Sagittarius...

In an old book it says that the name of this sign is silence.

We must be totally silent toward cruel gossip. A person who has set his goal toward the Hierarchy and toward surpassing his limitations and entering his Divine heritage has no time for gossip because gossip creates the prison in which the aspirant buries himself. It will take ages and ages of labor for the disciple to free himself from that prison.

Spiritual silence is not just a matter of speech. It is a matter of holding your thinking. It is possible to speak subjectively about yourself, or to gossip without thinking. This is more dangerous than physical speech. Subjective talking is controlled when you control your lower mind. It is the lower mind that speaks negative things. If your consciousness if focused in your lower mind, you are the slave of gossip because the lower mind is mechanical. Anything can irritate it and make it react. This makes you the slave of conditions and circumstances.  When you control the lower mind and raise your consciousness higher than the lower mind, you can control the urge to speak and you keep silent.


-Torkom Saraydarian
The Wisdom of the Zodiac vol.3

The first step toward joy is scientific meditation

The first step toward joy is scientific meditation, through which you eventually achieve Soul-infusion. Scientific meditation is an effort to penetrate into the mind of the real Thinker, which is the Soul. This is the transpersonal Self - or the Inner Guide.

-Torkom Saraydarian
The Flame of Beauty, Culture, Love, Joy

Freedom means to live in such a way...

Freedom means to live in such a way that others have a greater chance to enjoy the blessings of life, and choose their own ways to live, their own ways to worship and their own ways to create. We know that man has no right to hurt any human being, but we have not yet learned that man has no right to hurt himself either.

Drugs, alcohol, unhealthy sex, and other unwholesome activities cannot be tolerated even on a personal basis, because the effect of any personal action is shared by all of us in one way or another.

No one has the right to say, "I can do anything I want to do with myself."

True freedom is the ability to choose the wisest way to act, to feel, to think, so that you increase the chance of survival, success and prosperity of all that exists.


-Torkom Saraydarian
The Flame of Beauty, Culture, Love, Joy

The source of Joy

Success is the result of a labor which is carried on in joy. Start your work with joy and the path of success will open in front of you. Communicate with joy, work with joy. Be joyful in all of your relationships, and even observe your failures with joy, in joy. Any failure observed in joy changes itself into success and victory. Any problems observed in joy dissolve. Joy is for Infinity. Joy is for changelessness. And joy is the witness of the imperishability of the human flame.

In the higher realms of the mental plane there is an energy center which resembles a lotus, or a chalice, radiating many colors when it is in full bloom.

Joy is the fragrance of the chalice, the lotus. As the petals of the lotus unfold, joy radiates out of the petals and gives vigor to the physical body, magnetism to the subtle body, and serenity to the mental body.

The lotus is the permanent source of joy. As it unfolds, joy increases. Joy is not conditioned by outer circumstances; it is like a beacon, the foundation of which rests on the ageless rocks.

Happiness is an effect of outer conditions. When favorable conditions change, happiness disappears, leaving the gloom of depression.

Joy never changes. It increases as the problems and conflicts increase in one's life. It grows in spite of conditions.

Joy is not a feeling, nor is it an emotion, it is a state of consciousness, a state which is detached from the domination of the three lower worlds.

Joy is not the absence of hindrances, problems, and difficulties. On the contrary, joy is the flash springing out of each victory earned by the inner man through these obstacles. Joy grows in battle, in conflict, in service, in sacrifice. Real joy creates crises and tensions, and overcomes them. This is how joy grows. Joy overcomes all hostilities, all doubt, and builds numberless bridges between the hearts.

Joy gives courage, inspiration and vision. It purifies, heals and sanctifies.


-Torkom Saraydarian
The Flame of Beauty, Culture, Love, Joy

Our sense of responsibility is the most important tool in our hand

Our sense of responsibility is the most important tool in our hand. Those who have it are the guardian angels of humanity.

We do not belong to ourselves; we belong to each other, to our family, race, nation, humanity, and even to the universe. We can help the well-being of the universe, or be an evil influence within it. With our sense of responsibility, we unite ourselves with the constructive forces, with the Forces of Light in the universe, and are blessed in our individual and family life.

Our sense of responsibility is the end of our selfish motives and egocentric activities.


-Torkom Saraydarian
The Flame of Beauty, Culture, Love, Joy

The rejection of love

A rejected or an ignored Love Energy crystallizes and produces a hindering force which spreads into the mechanism of the person and creates psychological disturbances and sickness. This condition gradually produces more difficulties between the two parties until separation and then a total indifference toward each other becomes an established fact. Or love changes into selfish attacking force which we call hatred. Hatred is a demanding love, a love that wants to possess. If the person cannot possess, he tries to destroy the object of love so that others do not possess it. This is how love turns into rejection. Hatred never recognizes the good in the other person but only the wicked parts, and as the hating one concentrates his force upon the weaknesses of the other party, he increases the wickedness in himself, and thus becomes a destructive force in the world of men.

That is why the leaders of the race often advise us to forget, forgive, and try to remain indifferent, because the worst attachment is the attachment of hatred. Unconsciously, we copy those things we hate; forgiveness and forgetfulness is a process through which we dissipate the accumulated, rejecting, and negative forces which are continuously poisoning our psychological and physical mechanism. Through forgiveness we release these crystallized forces and change them into Love Energy.


-Torkom Saraydarian
The Flame of Beauty, Culture, Love, Joy

Every time you "love" without sacrifice...

Every time you "love" without sacrifice, you create a complex situation in your inner world. You create congestion. This can be avoided if you will stand behind your love and express it through your practical sacrifices. If you love and do not express your love with sacrifice, the fire of love burns your mental, emotional, and etheric centers creating in them insensitivity, dullness, ulcers, and many other unwholesome conditions. Every time you love and are not making sacrifices for it you are touching electrical energy which may burn you. It is said that our God is burning fire.

If you say to a beloved one, "I love you," but refrain from performing sacrificial acts to meet that person's various needs, your love is selfish. If you fail to make sacrifices necessary to uplift and to reach a deeper stage of understanding and creativity, your love is selfish. Selfishness is a state of mind in which the channel of love is congested. The Love Energy cannot circulate and communicate with the greater whole. Selfishness stops the transmutation of matter. Love causes transmutation of matter. The matter of your vehicles must be transmuted into higher sensitivity, enabling you to create under higher spiritual impulses.


-Torkom Saraydarian
The Flame of Beauty, Culture, Love, Joy

The only factor that changes your life is your goal

People do not realize that the only factor that changes your life is your goal. Change your goal, and all will change. Find a higher goal, and your whole life will orient itself to that higher goal. Without changing your goal, you cannot change your personality, your life, or your environment. If you have higher goals, a higher center in your being becomes active.

The Teaching in every age gives us a supreme goal. The universal goal at this time is synthesis. The individual goal at this time is Transfiguration. But these cannot be your goals until you make a contact with your Inner Lord and receive your goal as a gift.

Like an arrow, your spirit must fly toward the target of perfection.


-Torkom Saraydarian
The Wisdom of the Zodiac, vol3, p.399

The only way to learn the meaning of love is to love

When you suppress, within your heart, the greatest energy in the universe, the love energy, you burn with that energy, you are cracked with that energy; but if you release it, you are sane and harmonious. You are a rhythmic note in the Symphony of the Universe. Thus you grow and bloom with the universe, with the cosmos.

The only way to learn the meaning of love is to love. Once you have loved, then  and only then, can you know love. It takes you away. It sublimates you, releases you, and instead of becoming a self-centered man or woman, you become Universe-centered, Cosmos-centered; thus is love energy released.


-Torkom Saraydarian
The Flame of Beauty, Culture, Love, Joy

The difference between culture and education

Cultured people are those people who have a contact with their Inner Divinity to a certain degree. Culture is not education. Education is knowledge, data, information, and the understanding of how to use this information.

Culture is transformation, self-actualization. One can be educated, yet not be cultured. Education is the collection of facts; culture is transformation of one's nature. Culture cannot be created through knowledge only, but through the transformation of life. Education is our society's way of gaining material things; education is the study of culture. The whole subject of education is civilization and culture. Culture is the manifestation of beauty. Beauty is the result of contact with the Innermost Self. Education can learn about culture but it cannot create it unless man transforms himself.


-Torkom Saraydarian
The Flame of Beauty, Culture, Love, Joy

We must try to live with such faith

Faith is the main characteristic of the child. We must try to live with such faith. People think that children believe something you say because they are stupid, because they are "just children." But if you analyze their faith, you will see that it is an intuitional understanding that all is possible.

To make things possible, one needs pure faith. Faith is the lever that puts many laws into action to create and sustain itself.

Remember that your True Self is everything; everything is in you and you are in everything.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Transformation