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I divide people into four categories: Old Testament people, New
Testament people, the righteous, and pupils. I use these terms for lack of
other more fitting words and because they arouse in men familiar images and
ideas. These words express four great epochs in the development of man, four
kinds of culture, four general group trends in human consciousness. You will
find in the Old Testament the kind of views held by the Old Testament people.
You will find in the New Testament the views of the New Testament people. You
may learn the conceptions of the righteous if you study our contemporary
culture. The righteous are men of an established order of rights. But if you
look for the path of the pupil, you will find it neither in the Old Testament
nor in the New Testament, neither in the scientific nor the ethical systems of
the present world.
The path of the pupil - this is the new concept that is being introduced today
into the life of humanity.
In order to give a conception of the attitudes of these four categories in the
world, I will give you the following explanation. First, you are an intelligent
being whom the supersensible world sends to earth, giving you a body without
asking you whether you want it or not. That is the attitude of the Old
Testament man. Second, you are sent to earth, you are given a body, and you
have the small amount of freedom to say where you want to go. This is the attitude
of the New Testament man. Third, you are sent by the supersensible world to
earth to study under the most favorable conditions, and you have,
comparatively, greater freedom. This is the attitude of the righteous man. In
the Old Testament life, you atone for your sins and suffer. In the New
Testament life, you try to perfect yourself. In the life of the righteous, you
help others, but when you come to the earth as a pupil, you begin to study the
great science of Love.
In the life of Love, a man is truly self-determining, and at the same time he
determines his relations to other men, and to the perfected beings.
All contradictions existing in the world derive from these four types of life,
these four general streams that operate in the world. Applied to the human
organism, they have the following correspondences: Old Testament life flows in
the stomach and the intestines; New Testament life flows in the lungs and the
sympathetic nervous system; the life of the righteous flows in the lower layers
of the brain; and the life of the pupil flows in the upper layers of the brain.
This last occupies the best place. Therefore, the life of the pupil represents
the highest ideal in man.
Many have tried to reconcile these streams of life, to eliminate the contradictions,
which arise as a natural consequence of them. But the results of these four
types of life are in themselves not reconcilable. These streams cannot be
isolated immediately. Their isolation or better, their full control, takes
place gradually. It is attained only when the life of the pupil comes to its
completion and attains its high goals.
The life of the pupil includes the values of all the four types of life,
because these types of life in themselves are phases through which man must
necessarily pass. The Old Testament people prepare the way for the New
Testament people, and these prepare the way for the righteous, and the
righteous prepare the path of the pupil, and the pupils prepare for the coming
of the Kingdom of God on earth - to them belongs that difficult task. And when
a man passes from the Old Testament life into the life of the New Testament, he
takes with him everything of value from the former into the latter. Later, when
he passes from the New Testament life into the life of the righteous, he takes
into this third life everything of value from the second. Finally, everything
of value from the life of the righteous is taken to the life of the pupil. In
this way an inner connection is established among all people, an inner unity
above and beyond the contradictions, which are inherent in these four types of
life.
The sources of these four types of life are various, and the conditions under
which they develop differ. The pupil, after passing through all these four
types of life as through a preparatory school, enters into entirely new
conditions and draws life and strength from a new source. Christ spoke of this
source when he said, "When the Spirit of Truth is come, he will teach you
all things."
Once man enters on the path of the pupil, he assumes a new outlook on life
entirely different from the conceptions of the Old Testament and New Testament
people, and from those of the righteous as well. All men from these three
categories still live only in the sphere of personal life - they do not yet
live for the Whole.
Old Testament men seek wealth and property. They become embittered by the
difficulties of life.
New Testament men seek sympathy and tenderness. The difficulties and sufferings
of life make them hesitant and discouraged, and lead them into temptations.
The righteous seek honor and esteem. Contradictions hurt them and offend them.
They have climbed to the highest peaks of personal life, and that is why they
are so sensitive concerning their personal dignity. In everything they do, they
seek acknowledgment, esteem, and honor.
Only the pupil seeks neither external wealth, nor sympathy and support, nor
honor and esteem. Only the pupil does not become embittered, offended, or
tempted. He gladly accepts the contradictions he meets in life, because he
knows that they are the inevitable results of the four group streams of life.
He accepts every contradiction as a problem of importance, which he must solve.
He thinks and acts in this way, because he has passed through self-renunciations.
He has set foot on the path of the pupil after he has rejected the life of the
Old Testament man, the life of the New Testament man, and the life of the
righteous.
Therefore, I say to you: Only the pupil learns; others simply occupy
themselves.
Ordinary people fight one another, criticize one another, and moralize with one
another. The pupil never criticizes anyone, nor does he moralize with anyone.
He does not occupy himself with the mistakes of others. They do not exist for
him. For him exists only the right way to live - the life of Love. For the
pupil, God is not the Jehovah of the Old Testament who judges and punishes
people. For him, God is the God of Love, of Light, of Peace, and of Joy. These
are also the qualities of a pupil.
And if you ask me what the ideal of a pupil is, I shall reply:
Love, Light, Peace, and Joy for all souls! This is not an ideal to be attained
in eternity. It can be attained even now. I speak not of Wisdom and Truth -
another epoch will come for them. They are not for the present age. At this
time, pupils need Love, but not without light; they need light, but not without
peace; they need peace, but not without joy. They need Love with light, light
with peace, and peace with joy. All these are connected with one another.
Present-day people have within themselves neither peace nor joy For that
reason, when men of religion or of science speak of their experiences, their
deductions and conclusions are ordinary and temporary.
When a pupil tells of a personal experience, it must be an experience of Love
in which there is light; it must be an experience of light in which there is
peace; it must be an experience of peace, which brings joy to the soul.
The Love, the Light, the Peace, and the Joy of which I speak are not manifested
in modern life in the lives of ordinary people. They are attributes of the
pupil. Pupils are the only channels of these powers, they are their only
interpreters in life.
Of course, I only touch upon those great realms into which the pupil enters. In
truth, they constitute a great and vast science for the study of which ages of
time are necessary.
Love is a beautiful, boundless world. It is a great thing for man to experience
love in its developing and unceasing manifestations, beginning with the
physical world, passing on to the spiritual and reaching to the Divine world.
A great thing it is for man to experience Light in all the forms, which it
creates. A great thing it is to experience Peace, to experience Joy.
These are realms through which the pupil must pass, which he must experience
and investigate on his path, until he reaches the completion of his life as a
pupil and begins to study thoroughly the great path of a Master.
Then at last he will attain that deep understanding of life, that deep
understanding of the Love that operates in the world, the understanding of the
reasons which cause the Great Masters to come down and work among men.
Love, Light, Peace, and Joy are fruits of the Divine Spirit. Those fruits must
nourish the pupil. The first fruit, which he tastes, is Love. The pupil must,
without fail, taste of this fruit, because it contains eternal life.
And he who wishes to find eternal life - the life that flows from Love - must
return to the tree of life. He must forsake the ways of the Old Testament man,
of the New Testament man, and of the righteous, and follow the path of the
pupil.
You know the words of Christ: "Go, sell all you have, and give it to the
poor, and come, follow me." And I say to you: "Go and give away the
life of the Old Testament man, give away the life of the New Testament man,
give away the life of the righteous, and then go to your Master! He will
welcome you."
A Master has four great pupils in the world that he loves best. And if these
four pupils recommend you to him, he will accept you in his school. If Love
recommends you to your Master, if Light recommends you, if Peace and Joy
recommend you, he will accept you. He will open wide for you the doors of the
school, he will bless you and acquaint you with the other pupils, and
thereafter you will be a pupil of your Master.
But beware of going to your Master before you have given away your Old
Testament and New Testament treasures, and your wealth of the righteous. If you
go to him with all of the trifles and adornments belonging to those three types
of life, if you go with all of your righteous dignity, the Great Master will
only smile and close the door of the school to you.
A pupil must have only one comprehension of life. He who wishes to be a pupil
must have only one conception about things.
A pupil may have only one Master in life.
Remember this great truth:
There is only one Master in the world and all masters have come from him.
There is only one Pupil in the world, and all pupils come from him.
The pupil must know that only he who teaches him - his Master, can love him.
And the pupil can love only him who teaches him. Only the immortal is to be
loved - only that which never loses its beauty, its intelligence, its kindness
and goodness.
You may ask what are the first steps on the path of the pupil?
The rule is - the pupil must begin with love. Then he will proceed to light,
and after that to peace and at last to joy.
The pupil will bring joy to his life as a solution to his problems. I speak not
of the joy that is changeable, but of the joy of the pupil upon which nothing
can cast a shadow, and which is never exhausted. That joy is the highest peak
in the material world. No cloud can cover that peak, and the divine sun always
shines on it. Never are there any storms on this peak - there reigns love,
there reigns light, there reigns peace.
This is the natural path of a pupil: love, light, peace, and joy. A man might
travel over the entire world, he might knock on the doors of all schools, he
might look for all the great Masters who bring the Divine Word, and they will
all indicate to him this path. They all have the same divine idea about the
path of the pupil, which cannot be changed.
Everywhere he will be told that the first step in the life of the pupil is
Love. When he begins to apply Love, the gates of his mind will be opened and
the knowledge of past ages, as well as the knowledge of the present and the
future, will begin to stream into him naturally.
Indeed, there is a greater path than that of the pupil, but only after a man
reaches the end of the path of the pupil, will the great path of the Masters be
opened before him. It is the path of Wisdom, which is the most difficult of
all.
Love, light, peace, and joy - these are the stages on the path of the pupil.
When I speak of the pupil, I have in mind the ideal pupil. This pupil studies
in this world and in the world of the unseen as well. He never leaves school -
during the day he studies in the laboratory of the earth, and during the night
he goes to his Master who teaches him theories. The next morning he returns to
the earth in order to continue his practical work in the laboratory.
The ideal pupil knows that he is always a pupil - that he has been, is, and always
will be one. And in the future, when the earth and the whole solar system
finish their evolution, he will become a pupil in another, a greater school.
Then he will have another name. The word "pupil" is too weak to
express the profound idea hidden in this conception. In a more narrow sense,
the word "pupil" implies one who studies here on the earth, in this
restricted circle of life. He studies here, and will learn as much as the
conditions of earthly life permit. He does not yet have a conscious connection
with the supersensible world - when he goes to sleep in the evening, his
conscious pupilage stops. Therefore, the "pupil", in the true sense
of the word, is one who has already had real experience in the spiritual world,
who has conscious connection with it.
The life of the pupil, after his consciousness is awakened, becomes a life of
creation and of work - not a life of grace. Through grace he became a pupil,
but now labor, effort, and work are required from him. A pupil will be tested
and weighed for a long time before he is accepted into the kingdom of God. If
he is found the least bit wanting, he will immediately be sent back.
Entrance into the kingdom of God depends on the knowledge and the wisdom of the
pupil, and not on his love. One cannot enter the kingdom of God through grace.
Christ tells us what is required of the pupil in order to enter the kingdom of
God and to obtain eternal life: "And this is life eternal, that they might
know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou has sent." The
knowledge of God and of Christ is the condition for attaining eternal life.
Only through this knowledge is eternal life attained. If knowledge does not
bring eternal life, then it is of no use.
But in order to attain this, the pupil must learn to create as God creates.
How? In the first chapter of Genesis a symbolic picture is given of that
process of creation, which begins within the pupil after his consciousness, is
awakened.
Before that, however, the pupil will enter into the great silence, in which
there is neither sound nor light. Then, from the depths of his soul he will
call to the Unseen, Unknown God of Eternity, the Creator of all. He will call
to Him with all his soul, with all his spirit, with his entire mind and with
all his heart, and he will say, "Lord, I wish to know You. You are the one
Creator of all, and beside You there is no other God!" And if the pupil
calls on God with that fullness, from somewhere in space, a small, microscopic
light will shine forth and give him such joy that at once he will forget all of
his suffering and sorrow. And from afar he will hear the voice of God, his
Master, saying to him, "You wish to know me and to test me - be prepared,
then, for work. This is the first day of your life. Your earth is unorganized
and barren; darkness is over the deep. Separate the light from the darkness and
begin to organize your earth. Say, "Let there be light!"
And if the pupil is one of the chosen, he will say, "Let there be
Light!" and within him there will be Light.
"Let there be Light!" - this is the great aspiration to learn which
is in the soul of the pupil.
Then the great days of creation will succeed one another in the life of the
pupil, and he will begin to construct his universe under the skillful guidance
of his Master.
"Let there be Light!"
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