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CONTENTS:
Teaching 1:
Mysteries of the Sacrifice
Teaching 2: Tedium
Teaching 3: Struggle for Life
Teaching 4: Continuous Changes
Teaching 5: The Past
Teaching 6: Uncertainty about Tomorrow
Teaching 7: Blood-relationship
Teaching 8: “What people will think”
Teaching 9: Material Circumstances
Teaching 10: Compassion
Teaching 11: Wisdom
Teaching 12: Physical Defects
Teaching 13: Diseases
Teaching 14: Separateness
Teaching 15: Moral Stigmas
Teaching 16: Death
Teaching 1: Mysteries of the Sacrifice
Even if we wished to flee from sorrow, sorrow is ever present in human life despite every effort of the civilization and despite modern breakthroughs for a more bearable living,
Now, as two thousand years ago, Apostle Paul’s words can be used, since not only the inner situation but also the outer situation of Being did not change at all: “Fight and sorrow is the life of man upon the Earth”.
Religions, and particularly Christian religion, have heightened the concept of sorrow to make it more bearable. In order to overcome sorrow, certain mentally-conditioned philosophers said sorrow is illusion, a mirage of the human mind. But sorrow goes on to reign constantly in the world.
According to religions, sorrow should be acceptable and welcome, and we should resign to it; otherwise, sorrow must be forcefully overcome, defeated and uprooted from the human soul.
In the old temple of the Sacred Order of the Knights of Fire, on one of its stones, an axiom is engraved which elucidates this dilemma, “Overcome sorrow sinking yourself in it”.
Sacrifice is the virtue that grants to students the gift of overcoming sorrow by self-knowledge. Sacrifice transforms into sweet nectar the crudest hardships and longest diseases, and even the innermost, fiercest disorientation.
As a bee transforms the bitter juice of a flower into honey, so the soul, through Sacrifice, transforms human suffering into happiness and glory. Perchance is not this what the Rosy Cross wants to symbolize?
The soul is transformed by suffering; the wonderful flower sprouts from thorns. Perchance is not this the symbol of Christ's resurrection after suffering on the Cross?
Certain rites knew this fundamental secret, and with mantram and oral prayer tried to stimulate the devotee to acquire strength and stand sorrows of life. Even today, in India the sannyasis hang around their necks chains made of little seeds that they pass through the fingers to pray; and Christians practice something like that with their Rosaries.
Sacrifice has diverse nuances, diverse forms. It is necessary for diverse reasons and at certain moments.
In the Order, these nuances are also characterized by a mental Rosary, divided into fifteen mysteries of understanding. We are told “mysteries” because the root of sorrow is as large as the root of Eternity; to know the reason of sorrow by means of unitive Sacrifice is to know the very Eternity.
A man may possess all, enjoy all goods of life and a perfect health, and travel from on point to another on the Earth; however, at certain time of the day, an importune visitor will come to him: it is sorrow of human tedium; tiredness of fleeting hours; a vague sensation of something lost for ever; a hidden sense of an unknown evil that may happen at any moment. Who did not experience this feeling? Even a Saint is unable to overcome this deadly enemy: tedium and inner tiredness. To flee from it is to encounter it; to disguise it, to seek crowds and entertainment is to hold on to it. There is only one remedy to overcome tedium, and this remedy is the Sacrifice of going toward it, of looking at it squarely in the eye, or of studying, analyzing and knowing it.
A great mystic said, “My life is continuously open to God, but every day there is a hour when everything becomes darkness around me, when divine consolation and infuse understandings seem to be so far way as if I had not ever known them. In the beginning, this hour is really frightful; but since I have understood that it is the opposite pole of my spiritual life, because I am based upon it to fly higher and higher, I expect it with joy, and at this hour of darkness I enjoy the same pleasure I experience in more glorious hours of light”.
But not only is an inner enemy knocking at the doors of the soul in sad times, since everything around a man is cause of sorrow. Perchance is not the whole life a continuous destruction, a continuous slaughter only to survive? And on a higher or lower scale, men are not entities wishing to absorb other men? Figuratively, we should say the mightiest planet wants to absorb the weakest one; and this continuous fight to keep the independence, this continuous temptation calling, flattering, pursuing, helping and destroying man, how many sorrows brings about!
But the Sacrifice that gives needful strength to stand and not succumb under the blow, and encourages recognizing, accepting and removing it at certain moment, is the means by which we are able to know our own courage and responsibility. Those who flee from sorrow continuously fall in it; and those who fear suffering, this suffering falls on top of them; but those who face it to know and conquer it, by their sacrifice gain a halo of liberty.
No human being can flee from sorrow, but many have made of it a source of understanding and happiness. Even men who ignore the spiritual life are proud of having suffered much because they feel that sorrow has hardened and transformed them into men.
Krishnamurti said in one of his talks, “Do not flee from sorrow, but join to it”.
Teaching 4: Continuous Changes
The variability of the Universe is source of continuous changes, and man, that by his inner nature tends to be static at the point where he is, bitterly suffers because of these repeated changes.
Today a man loses his youth; tomorrow his material wellbeing, and so on. Friendships change, customs change, cities change. Need separates human beings that love one another, and when this is not by need, it is by death or indifference. A rich man lost his loved woman and went to see a saint to know his future, wishing to know whether the object of his love would come back to him; but the saint replied No; then the rich man said, “I have money, and any money available to get that which I wish”. Even so, he did not get it.
There are changes beyond human chances, and broken bonds never re-joined. For worldly men, these changes and abandonment should to be very bitter, but for a spiritual being these sacrifices become a source of really sweet consolation. Flesh still suffers by separation and changes, but this suffering becomes ecstasy, since what you had belongs to you, even if years had passed by, things had changed, and beings had died.
We can dispose of many things, but who can dispose of his own past? Moreover, who can dispose of the congenital memory of his past experiences through lives and deaths?
The past is like a plumber cloak over beings, a continuous sorrow, everlasting cross that is so hard to throw away. How many times we hear, “I would wish to be good, but I cannot; my instincts are ever taking me toward what I was!” How many times the past is an obstacle, even for those people wishing to start a spiritual life! And even for those advanced beings on the path of perfection, many times the past appears before them like a frightful enemy who, in the form of impulses, memories, calls and relationships with the old life, hinders to progress as they would wish. Well, but even here Sacrifice is Liberating.
To surrender in the arms of the Eternal Will, to take all from the hands of the Lords of Karma, to set oneself freely in the service of the Four Knights guarding the Grotto of Ras, is to overcome this sorrow, which is fruit of past accumulations.
Not to fear the outcomes of yesterday is to prepare a joyful tomorrow, and to delete a memory that is so harmful for the progress.
It is very wise the law by which a man forgets all when he comes again into being. And the Catholic confession is fundamentally valuable when, according to it, although the absolution does not removes penalties from blames, certainly deletes the sin; in other words, it deletes memory of the past. “To remember is to live the past and to be tied to it”.
Also it is Krishnamurti who says, “To remember is to live the past and to be tied to it”.
Teaching 6: Uncertainty about Tomorrow
Not to have always the same orientation in life, in short, the uncertainty about the future is a continuous suffering for the soul. Seemingly today the soul is in the hand of a happy conqueror; tomorrow, this dream-like king falls headlong and gets discouraged. The reading of a book opens today a new horizon in the mind of the reader, all dark points of the doctrine are elucidated, and tomorrow a new word, a new concept floods again and darkens the mind. Today a man says, “I have conquered the truth”; but tomorrow he shall establish that the truth is far away from him.
Also in daily life one sees so many strange cases: decent men who commit undue actions that, according to them, they have erased for ever from their moral behavior; every day one sees that men who had chosen the path of virtue and spiritual progress, now turn around and transform themselves into statues of salt.
In front of so many facts like that, a soul anxiously wonders, “What shall happen with me tomorrow? Shall I arrive at the end of the Work?” Only Sacrifice can elucidate the tomorrow, because he who has left his work in the hands of God never can fall, because it is written on the Temple, “He who works for himself already has his own reward and tomorrow cannot claim for anything; but a person that works for the Great Work has his reward in the hands of the Masters”.
But, the more an individual being detaches himself from his self-love and the more he sacrifices himself by renouncing to the fruit of personal satisfaction, the less uncertain shall be his future.
Teaching 7: Blood-relationship
Sacrifices so far described are inner sacrifices and belong to the soul; many times they are unnoticed because they happen hidden from the eyes of men, in the innermost of the individual being; but there are Sacrifices that, although not so subtle, are not less strong despite their material nature.
These Sacrifices are enemies made flesh, which should be fought. Flesh is an ever-living sorrow, and one needs hard Sacrifices to overcome it. Also the Master has said, “The enemies of a man are those of his own house”.
The soul wants to take flight and aims at perfection, but all material affections appear before it and claim for their rights; and since the blood-voice is as strong as the very death, only a being ready for a great Sacrifice can stand the frightful trial. That is why certain attitudes of great beings are strange. Mary Baker Eddy ever lived far from his son, and never remembered him; when she saw his child, then a grown-up, she looked at him, and as she did not notice in him the sign of faith of an eventual adept of her beliefs, she said, “Go away; I do not know you!”
Francis of Assisi had not shame when, taking out his clothes and throwing them at the feet of his father, exclaimed turning his eyes toward the sky, “Now I am free; I can say only one thing, Our Father who are on heaven”. And who does not remember the Buddha coldly looking at the sleeping bodies of his wife and child, before leaving them forever?
At the point of leaving her home, Jeanne of Chantal feels her mother heart devastated; but when her son tried to block her way, she did not hesitated, passed over the body of him, and followed her path to perfection.
Then, all those wishing to find the alliance of the spirit should fight the alliance of the flesh, and it is from these great Sacrifices that the soul emerges tempered and able to say, “I overcame the flesh and I wear the spiritual attire”.
Teaching 8: “What People Will Think”
A spiritual can do or try anything to harmonize worldly life and spiritual life, but is ever unable to flee from gossip and censure.
How cannot a lamp be seen on the mount summit? How can a spiritual man hide himself when he follows his path? He is over and above a lot of men, and he who is object of many glances, must stand flattering and censure. Also, as every being has his particular trend, even among his spiritual companions sometimes he finds involuntary, quite tormenting enemies. According to an old saying, “The good make suffer the good”.
For a noble and sensitive soul, it is always a hard trial to be impeded and misunderstood. Chosen souls are not overwhelmed by sorrow and toil, but by incomprehension of men.
Who is the man recognized in his time? Mankind extols great and good men when they died, and tortures them when they are alive.
The Sacrifice that entails to overcome even the incomprehension of spiritual companions, and to know that the noblest and most righteous deeds are sometimes unfairly appreciated, is a type of construction that lays the foundation of the spiritual triumph.
Teaching 9: Material Circumstances
However the individual rises over human things, he is unable to get entirely rid of them, and many times the struggle for life and for earning a living, apparently hinders the progress. But it is not so.
Happiness was the starting point in the Cosmic Creation, and sorrow shall be the ending point in the great drama of the Universe. But life is kept by the conjunction of these forces.
The daily struggle, the call of bodily needs is the painful point that along with the inner happiness of the spiritual knowledge keeps the balance that is indispensable to achieve the perfection.
Many people say, “The city harms me; if I lived far from the noise, it could be better”. Others complain for his job; seemingly to them it is an obstacle and an occupation entirely against their inner aspirations. But nothing is despicable in daily tasks assigned to man.
Fleeing from material duties, a man ever will find his enemy; but by sacrificing himself and trying to do better and better what he dislikes, he will transmute these ugly things into beautiful, pleasant and advantageous deeds.
The more you progress and the more you widen the individual consciousness, the lesser gross are sensitivities, although they become more subtle and wider.
Personally you can understand the reason of pains and sufferings in Mankind; but the collective sorrow intensely attains the Wheel of the Heart, and fills it with the pink color of compassion.
All sorrows of Mankind overwhelm the anguished soul that asks, “Why do men suffer so much? Why are beings so blind and continuously hurt each other?” This tender compassion is what makes suffer continuously.
The soul knows that is unable do anything to soften externally the world evil; the soul knows that, however good all charity institutions, asylums and hospitals are, they can bring a very relative relief to human sufferings.
The soul also knows that the sentimental compassion that many men experience when they see some sorrow and forget it at once is not only vain but also harmful because it is useless energy waste. But the soul also knows that only by taking part in this innermost sorrow, it can amend it to some extent.
A Buddhist book says, when the Buddha’s heart opens and he looks at the world, pains decrease, sorrows become more bearable, people stop weeping and for a moment happiness shines in the world. So every time that a soul feels in the innermost depths of his heart the evil of Mankind as a whole, this soul has laid the foundation of a future joyful race.
True redeemers of Mankind are those men who feel the essence of sorrow and who sacrifice themselves for this inner pain, not only for them, but also for all in general, and by this sacrifice they achieve one of the deepest parts of the spiritual life.
If the ninth mystery of Sacrifice, on its loftiest grade, transforms man into a master of compassion, the tenth mystery makes of him a master of wisdom.
Sorrow may be effectively valuable only by “feeling” it collectively and “understanding” individually.
The spiritual student is the only person that can understand the case of every human being and the reason of his suffering if Mankind has to be helped by that sweet torment of ineffable expectation and continuous wish so that all may become and certainly be liberated from the chains of sorrow.
A person that knows and felt in himself all sorrows of beings and is not affected by them is the only one that can descend among men and understand their sorrows. He knows the roots of evils, how they are brought about and how they end; to him nothing is strange or alarming; he does not brand anyone as good or bad; he analyzes with serenity and examines minutely every case until he exposes it and finds the cause of evil and sorrow.
In the hands of a person that knows, suffering becomes power, a living power to take sorrow from an unsuitable field to a propitious field, and to remove sorrow by knowing the cause of evil. All these beings can get down into depths of human misery, because their knowledge is really so great that nothing harms them. But they always get new motives and experiences to remove evils from every individual. The advice of these beings is a vivid light. Their help is really so vital and important that instead of being manifested in the soul, is hinted in it.
Only they know how to correct the ignorant, how to comfort people that do wrong, how to show the good way to a being that is lost, how to cheer up the sad, how to forgive affronts and patiently undergo adversities of any kind.
One of these masters of wisdom passed one day by a road, and someone saw him and said, “I have seen an unknown man who has filled my soul with joy and happiness”.
All these expressions of sorrow so far enumerated and heightened by so subtle Sacrifice both in their inner manifestation and in their outer one, do not impede at all to consider the grossest and most material sufferings and sacrifices.
Who can deny the continuous sacrifice of a person sentenced by destiny to a physical defect since his birth? How many people, in despair by the terrible idea of never being physically similar to the rest of men, have the bitterest hatred and the deepest wickedness against everybody? However, they do not know that the wise Divine Laws nothing take away on the one hand, not compensating it on the other hand.
Remember, disciples, how much good can be done to these poor unhappy fellows; teach them how to stand their sorrow with noble Sacrifice; also teach them that if they lack an organ, or a bodily organ is defective, surely they will have other organ that, properly cultivated, can give them satisfaction and success, and that they will achieve this only by transmuting their useless evil impulses into other good ones.
How joyful was Beethoven’s deafness! It made him really perceive so spiritual melodies of another world that he could be properly named the musician of Wisdom. How joyful was Roosevelt’s paralysis! Thanks to it he really developed so powerful mind forces. How joyful was Therese Neumann’s prostration! Thanks to it she really developed so great psychical powers.
A poor nun, blind from birth, resigned and quiet, had been exclusively devoted to the contemplation of God; and God rewarded her by opening her spiritual sight, and showing lofty visions. One evening she was sitting by the door, and Saint Brigit by her side would looked at the sunset; so wonderful was the scene and so great her compassion for the poor blind nun, that she fervently prayed that the nun were able to see the Sun in its whole purple splendor. Then the blind nun recovered her sight and admired the landscape, “What I am seeing cannot be compared with what I got used to see”, he said. “If this is the will of God, I prefer to be as I was before and to enjoy that vision I previously had”. And at once everything became shadows so that she could enjoy the inner light.
Then sorrow is a companion of all men in every aspect and form. Mental forces are continuously hindered and oppressed by physical deficiencies and diseases. A physician said Mankind is sick, and he was right, since no man is free of suffering from certain type of evil. Since our early years, this hidden and bitter struggle takes place between the destruction principle and the resistance principle as a whole.
When physical strength seems more necessary to win, an enemy –so far ignored– appears as a disease to crush man. Here two important factors come into play: fear, which effectively helps to destroy, and the spirit of Sacrifice, which helps to resistances as a whole.
Nothing is more beautiful than conformity and stoicism before diseases. He who takes his disease, which sometimes seems incurable, as a way to perfection, with true spirit of Sacrifice sometimes can overcome it. The great General San Martin, when he was completely overwhelmed by bleedings produced by stomach ulcers, thought it was useless to deal with his own body and completely devoted himself to his military tasks, saying: “I want to finish my work before my death; neither my disease nor advises of physicians are important”. So he recovered.
In some cases, if the thought power or the spirit of Sacrifice cannot overcome a disease because it is too serious, they localize it in such a way that form around it a defense and prevent it from going out of its citadel. Sometimes a physical pain not only keeps a man awakened but also stimulates him to go on forward.
A disciple asked a friend that was suffering from a very painful lumbago whether he was suffering much, and his friend replied: “Not much; this pain serves me as a concentration point”.
Ineffable happiness is the achievement of the potential state, and pain is the achievement of the active state.
In short, life manifests in its whole splendor through suffering. It overwhelms not only human beings with moral martyrdom, physical pain and hidden sorrow, but also pursues men in any form and way.
The country where we come into being, the race to which we belong, the characteristic color of our skin, all these are weapons in the hands of destiny so that a man may eat his bread kneaded with tears, and when these painful spasms of the world become unbearable, pain reacts with pain, martyrdom with martyrdom, and blood with blood; and revolutions, wars, political strife and racial fight take place, and scatter suffering helter-skelter on the Earth.
How many heroic Sacrifices have been recorded by the sorrow of human separateness; but the true Sacrifice, which redeems and exalts, is not that of a man who goes to death as member of a faction, but that of a man who sacrifices his outer form to be like all men and to make of all human communities only one society. If every person does not want to sacrifice himself within, people shall claim in vain for universal peace, and uselessly they shall want to establish fraternity among all beings.
We are told all men are equal; but every being keeps his own separateness. In a rich man’s view, he is superior to a poor fellow, and a man of white race feels superior to black people; diversity is in the being, in his personal concept. Peace can be brought to the world only by sacrificing this personal principle.
Here is the greatest weight, the heaviest burden of Mankind: moral stigmas of individuals. It is frightful to see in a child a fierce and murderous instinct that tomorrow will lead him to kill and destruct his fellow men. There are numberless men who come into being with one of these moral stigmas that only death can extirpate: vampires, degenerates, murderers, and individuals that instinctively can commit unprecedented evils.
Sometimes even in educated brains there are these little centers of evil that continuously urge a man to certain despicable action. A testimony of it is Rousseau, who had the courage to confess his inner evil.
But here a question arises: Here may sacrifice be suitable for them or for the rest of men if these poor fellows are unable to correct themselves, and others are unable to help them? Yes, Sacrifice is suitable. It is suitable for the former by continuous effort because, even failing, it opens a door to the near or distant future of redemption. And it is suitable for the rest of men in the form of tolerance with them.
But spiritual beings are those who are more obliged to overcome the instinctive disgust that those individuals produce and to try to tolerate their evils because the spiritual beings know the motive of all things and of their inexorable laws.
A good word or a good advice never will fall in the void because everything yields fruit in due time, and because these poor fellows, today slaves, could be luminaries in the future.
Here we have attained the last mystery, the solemnest shadow, the Sacrifice that none can avoid. Because who can defeat old age and death?
A poor human being sadly sees how years flee from their hands and how rapidly, despite his own efforts, he could achieve very few illusions forged in his youth; or, at most, when he starts enjoying the fruit of his work, his memory already declines, his senses grow weak and infirmities of old age impede him to enjoy mentally the victory. Even life did not begin, and already we have to realize how old age knocks at the door.
Sometimes years of physical decay are years of long martyrdom in men losing their strength and in women losing their beauty. Not all have Frine’s courage, that beautiful Greek woman; she preferred to throw herself to the fire not to see her physical beauty decaying. Usually most people wait and wait, get old and die slowly; and when death comes, even in old age, death is never welcome.
Death is everywhere around. But people live as if they never should die, as if they were the only worth fleeing from the last law. Just to think about death is frightening in many people; they do not want that anyone talks of it in their presence and elude any funereal conversation.
But what a beautiful Sacrifice is to die voluntarily, to die beforehand, in order to overcome the painful part of death, that is, fear.
But to a person that from his early years has learnt how to look at the last enemy square in the eye, death gradually loses its mysterious veils, and by the Sacrifice of thinking about it, he is able to possess it beforehand.
We are told that Cistercian friars dig every day a shovelful of earth, preparing their tomb. For mind is good to take out every day a shovelful of this moral earth, that unpleasant aftertastes of fear and ignorant darkness have deposited in it and to expose the concept of death such as it is: that of a quiet sleep achieved through continuous Sacrifice of knowledge.
CONTENTS:
Teaching 1:
Mysteries of the Sacrifice
Teaching 2: Tedium
Teaching 3: Struggle for Life
Teaching 4: Continuous Changes
Teaching 5: The Past
Teaching 6: Uncertainty about Tomorrow
Teaching 7: Blood-relationship
Teaching 8: “What people will think”
Teaching 9: Material Circumstances
Teaching 10: Compassion
Teaching 11: Wisdom
Teaching 12: Physical Defects
Teaching 13: Diseases
Teaching 14: Separateness
Teaching 15: Moral Stigmas
Teaching 16: Death
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