AGNI YOGA WEB TV
SERIES
EXPERIMENT IMMORTALITY
BROADCASTING 2: The Secret of Immortality
Nicholas Roerich "Kanchenjunga"
Part I: With seven Steps to a Life that does not end
Nicholas Roerich "Mount of five Treasures"
Since human beings exist, they are
afraid of death. (Beethoven,
3rd Symphony, Funeral March)
Since human beings exist, they are
dreaming of immortality. (Richard Strauss "Also sprach
Zarathustra")
The
time is ripe to overcome this
fear and to realize this dream!
(Nicholas Roerich "Star of the Hero")
Do you want
together with us conquerdeath? We are showing
you how you
can step by step achieve
immortality. (Paul
Cézanne "Three Skulls")
Immortal man – will that not be worthy of the
future? (Agni Yoga 553) (Nicholas Roerich "Agni Yoga")
Do not think that we
are telling you fairy tales.
The first immortals are already living
among us!
New Men who are everlasting,
inviolable, invincible, fearless, and completely free, for nobody and nothing can do them any harm.
They resemble the Gods because they live eternally. They will continue to exist
when this earth has long
fallen to pieces.
Not only the
universe, also the existence of man is infinite!
The immortal man walks a path without end. He has at his disposal
not just one single life, but all eternity. There are no
limits to his growth. He uses the gigantic
potential of his imperishable
spiritual being to become ever greater,
to climb ever higher levels,
far beyond today's humanity.
The new immortal is
far superior to the old mortal
man!
As an immortal, you can reach
for the stars!
A new life
in the spirit of immortality is the way out of the misery of the
time, the foundation upon which we can
completely transform ourselves and human society as a whole.
The eternal existence of man is the starting point
from where we can get
rid of all our outdated thinking, of the whole old
world, as well as of ignorance,
imperfection, distress and suffering.
Already Goethe taught: Man should believe in immortality, he has a right to do so, it is according
to his nature. (Goethe
to Eckermann, 04.02.1829)
New Step
of Evolution
Let me explain with
an example what we are talking
about:
Millions of years ago, one of our
ancestors left the animal kingdom.
He rose up onto two legs.
He climbed a new stage of evolution. He transformed from a being with four
legs into a being with two
legs.
What a heroic deed! A huge leap in the
development of life! A gigantic progress for all mankind!
Upright walk: What an achievement!
What a new dignity! It opened
up immeasurable possibilities to the human race!
Just imagine how this
higher being distinguished itself from the four-legged
creatures around him:
How it wandered
through the savannah liberated, detached from the
earth, proud, with head erect
– looking into far distance, to
the future, to the heights,
to the light.
In fact, a God for all those wild hordes around him, who
were still crawling on all fours.
*****
Today, we are standing
on the threshold to a leap just as big. The time has come for humanity
to gain immortality.
Thereby, we shall be climbing
the next step of evolution on which new, fantastic
possibilities are awaiting us.
*****
Evolution is advancing every
day. We humans
have to keep
pace with it. We must continue
to develop further. We ourselves
have to grow,
not just our technical devices. Otherwise, we will be eliminated
one day as
unsuitable, as before us the
dinosaurs.
*****
Unlike the animals, we
are called upon to consciously participate in our own evolution. We have
to climb the new level
on our own. No one else will lift us up there.
Part I: With seven Steps
to a Life that does not end
Let us now start
our course. We take you
by the hand
and walk together with you the
seven steps that lead to
immortality.
1st Step: You recognize your Soul
"Know thyself!" this is what the
wise men of the past taught.
What do we find when we
follow this good advice and examine ourselves?
1. Universal Realization of the Soul
We encounter a knowledge that is both
ancient and universal: Man consists
not only of the visible,
material body; he also has
an invisible, spiritual being, called
by religion: the soul.
All cultures know: The death of the body is
by no means
the end of human existence. The soul continues to live in a spiritual world that is
called Heaven or Hell,
Paradise, Gehenna, Hades, Olympus, Orkus, Underworld, Walhalla or the like. (Botticini "Assumption
of the Virgin"; Dierick Bouts
"Hell")
The wisdom of all times teaches the immortality
of the higher nature of man. No one endowed with insight
ever believed that our existence
was limited to one single earthly life.
The peoples of all times: Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and Germans, Africans,
Indians and Chinese, American Indians, Incas and Mayas;
the religions of all times: Christians,
Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, even the so called
primitive cults:
They all
know of the survival of an aspect of man on a
higher level after the death
of the body.
This applies to you,
too: Do you remember the last sentence of the Apostles’ Creed?
"I believe in life everlasting."
Since Plato's
works "The Republic" and "Phaedon – On
the Immortality of the Soul", this knowledge is one
of the foundations of the Western worldview.
*****
The religions of this world, so estranged from each other as
they are, nevertheless have one common basis.
This is not the belief in God – the gods of men
are very different!
The common basis of all confessions is: The knowledge of the immortality of the soul, the promise
of everlasting life.
On this point, we
can distinguish believers from non-believers: A faithful Christian,
Jew, Buddhist, Hindu or Muslim cannot
be a mortal.
*****
All, really religions agree on four essential points:
1. One aspect
of man survives death on a
different, non-material level.
2. It is
an individual being, distinctly
different from others of its kind, that
passes over to the other
world. It has acquired certain
personal merits. It has burdened itself
with certain personal guilt. These properties were accumulated during its stay
on earth.
3. One can
and must provide for the future existence,
for example by laying objects into the grave, or by a virtuous
earthly life. The quality of the existence in the world beyond is
decisively determined by the preparations
taken in the material sphere.
4. The being that goes over
leaves the body behind, continues
to live without it, does not need
it there any longer: It
is an invisible, non-material, spiritual creature.
If the people of all times possessed this knowledge, then we, too,
can use it
today as a secure foundation for our "Experiment Immortality".
2. Personal Realization of the Soul
It is of the utmost
importance that you do not blindly believe what I am telling you here.
It is of no use to
reiterate dogmas or formulas such as "I believe in life everlasting." You have to
sense yourself that you have a soul
as well as
a body. Let us now see
how you can
make such an experience.
3. The Matrix
You know the movie
"Matrix", this modern version
of Plato's "Allegory
of the Cave"? A brilliant
film! It shows humanity as enslaved
in a prison of wrong conceptions. The bars are inside our
own heads!
We real human beings of today’s time are no better
off:
Do you know the greatest
obstacle to the further ascent
of humanity, to the overcoming of the omnipresent ignorance, and to the fight against
need and suffering?
The limitation
of our thinking to the material,
the visible!
People
refuse to recognize the invisible, not touchable, spiritual aspect of reality. They limit
themselves to the physical world,
which is, however, only one
half of reality.
By ignoring the other half, you are banishing
yourself into an illusionary world – a matrix. You must
act wrongly, you cannot advance
if you refuse
to take into
account the more important part of reality!
*****
We want to show
you here the other, the
higher, the spiritual side of reality – hoping that you
will not close your eyes before that
what exists.
Of course, we are unable
and unwilling to free anyone by
force from the prison of his
illusions. All we can do is to
point with the finger at something
– the watching you have to
do yourself.
*****
The expansion of
consciousness beyond the limits of the
material sphere should preferably begin with ourselves: We should be
able to recognize
the essence of our own being more
easily than anything else.
When you recognize yourself,
you recognize the whole world.
When you sense the Divine within your own inner being, you will also find the Divine in the surrounding outside world.
4. The other Ego
The writer Odön
v. Horvath says:
In principle, I am quite different,
but I rarely manage actually
to live like that.
This is a truth everyone knows. Each of you feels: There
is something higher hidden within
you: A being so childlike pure, so priestly, so
royal, so divine – with a
power that can "tear out trees" and "remove mountains".
5. Superman
You know the Comic Superman? The small, inconspicuous clerk Clark Kent who turns, when required,
into a mighty hero and saves the world from
all sorts of catastrophes?
You feel yourself: Within you, too,
there is hidden such a giant! Within you, too,
there slumbers a potential
of immense forces, which allows you to
carry out the heroic deeds of which you are dreaming!
This comic is so successful only because it
strikes a chord within all of us, because it touches
at something that lies deeply within
us.
6. Cinderella
Or think of Cinderella, indeed an
archetype of mankind! Don’t you,
too, sometimes feel completely out of place in your life
situation – like a neglected
stepchild whose true destiny it
is to be
a queen?
It is of the utmost
importance that you do not dismiss this feeling as
an illusion, but take it seriously. The deep longing to
realize your higher potential indicates the right path.
Every now and then you succeed
in expressing your higher self. Then a deep joy fills
you – because you have lived
the great, the eternal, the
divine of your nature and overcome the animal part
of your being.
You are much greater
than you think and than you realize in everyday life.
7. Knowledge of the
Heart
Of course, we cannot
prove the existence of the soul with the
methods of classical physics or chemistry.
Nevertheless, we are acting perfectly
scientifically when we now proceed
to investigate into the higher
reality by the means of observation
and experience. We are no spinners,
no mystics and no occultists – we are scientists!
All we are doing – no
more, but no less either – is
to look without
prejudice
and to perceive that
what exists!
For this, we have to
add the knowledge
of the heart to the traditional methods of the natural sciences.
Saint-Exupéry says in “The Little
Prince":
One sees clearly only
with the heart; what is
essential is invisible to the eye.
Allow this sentence to
melt on your tongue. Do you grasp its immense importance? The essential, that what really counts
in your life, is not visible and not touchable
– and, therefore, can be recognized not by the intellect,
but by the heart alone.
This is true for spiritual realities such
as love, fidelity and beauty, or for the distinction
between good and bad – and for the soul.
Let us therefore open our hearts and take a look at some everyday situations
in which you feel your innermost
and noblest with a certainty beyond all reason.
8. Music
When you listen to the
music of the great masters: Don’t you feel the
existence of something greater within you? Of something bright which awards
courage to you? Of something in its essence invulnerable
which gives you the strength
to master even the worstmisfortune
with a smile? (Beethoven
3rd Symphony, Finale)
Don’t you recognize with pride, with fury
and with shame that there lives
within you a being so innocent, so childlike and pure to which you lend,
unfortunately, only too seldom expression
and whose voice you tend to
suppress under the apparent constrictions of your material existence?
Above
all, Mozart shows us over and over again
the marvellous picture of a better world, of a higher sphere – the homeland
of our soul. His music teaches us
that in every human being there is
buried an angel, who waits to
be awakened. (Mozart
„Laudate dominum“)
Don’t you feel when leaving
the concert hall: He who is
filled with the superior spirit, which speaks from
a symphony of Beethoven or
Bruckner, could overcome triumphantly all the nuisances of earthly life! There comes
to light a true power which lies within
you.
*****
Music makes us really greater:
We enter the music hall
depressed from the load of everyday
life. We leave it elevated
and with head erect in the newly
animated consciousness of our majesty and dignity.
*****
Music makes us experience our
true self, the royal, priestly creature, which we should in reality
be, which is so much greater
than our miserable material
existence. Music appeals to the divine
core within us.
It is not without reason that the
concert halls are better filled
than the churches: Here you can actually experience
a reality about which the priests
can only make words.
All true works of art,
the great treasures of literature, painting and sculpture, lend expression to the spiritual aspect of reality, which only the
heart can grasp. (Paul Cézanne "The
Path". Le Corbusier Chapel of Ronchamp.
Kandinsky "Riding Couple". Goethe
"Faust". Auguste Rodin "The Cathedral")
9. Nature
In nature: Don’t you feel your kinship
with every flower and every tree, with the
stars, the sea and the clouds,
with every stone, even with
the most tiny grain of sand?
What is this miraculous
feeling based on? On the fact that
not only you yourselves are animated by a soul,
but the whole Creation as well;
on the fact that the same divine
spirit dwells, as within you,
so in all other matter.
The old, gnarled oak
is your little
brother, the sparkling crystal your little
sister! Both have souls exactly like yours – only smaller,
not so highly developed ones.
10. Love
Auguste Rodin „The Kiss“
What happens when you
love? Your higher self touches
the related angel-like being, which is
hidden behind the insignificant physical façade of the beloved.
By true love, souls
are being attracted towards each other, not bodies!
Maybe for only one tiny bright
moment you perceive something miraculous; something that the others
do not see, because it is hidden
within your beloved: The eternal, the divine core.
11. Aura
Even those of you who do not regard themselves as esoterics know:
Every human being has his own particular aura. You are
able to capture
the essence of another man instantly by intuition in the moment when
he enters a room.
It is not primarily the body that
radiates. What you sense are the
emanations of the soul.
Of course, the body as
well has a certain radiation, but limited to the physical
side: big or small, thick
or thin, strong or weak, skillful
or awkward.
The
spiritual nature radiatesa much stronger emanation. (Nicholas
Roerich "Christ")
You are perfectly aware,
at the very first moment, whether
you have to do with a small
or a great soul, with an important
or an insignificant, a wise or an ignorant, a positive or a negative, a cheerful or a downcast, a friendly or a hostile person.
All these and many others are
characteristics not of the body, but of the soul.
12. Prayer and Meditation
Nicholas
Roerich „Tsong kha-pa“
In prayer or meditation, the worldly life
of the body takes a break. Now your soul awakes
to its life.
Now it can
develop. It also has its needs.
Your soul receives from
the communion with the higher
spheres consolation, strength and knowledge.
These are the noblest moments
when the divine within you
communicates with the divine in higher
spheres in a purely
spiritual way.
13. Conscience
Rembrandt
„St. Matthew and the Angel“
Your higher self – through
your heart – speaks to you
as conscience. It advises you
to observe the laws of the
spiritual world and to apply ethical standards
to your actions.
The body has no conscience.
It knows the rules of the
physical world only: struggle for survival and pleasure.
You all know that the
voice of your spiritual being sometimes quarrels with the
wishes of your lower self, which
is linked to the body.
This is so exactly because your soul
is a creature different from your body.
14. Death
Albrecht
Dürer „Death“
Think of the death of a beloved person: We all harbour after all a secret,
timid, blessed confidence that his spirit
lives on; that he has passed over
into a better world where he continues his work;
that one day we shall
meet him again if we
are really related, that means,
if our souls
belong to each other spiritually.
We refuse to imagine,
it simply cannot be, it
would be absurd, a gigantic cosmic wastefulness, if a powerful spirit such as Goethe's, which still has so much to
discover, to say and to accomplish,
were to be
completely extinguished.
The conviction of our continuity I derive from the concept
of activity. For if I continue to work
restlessly until my end, nature is obliged to
allocate to me another form of existence, if the
present form is unable to endure
my spirit any longer. (Goethe to Eckermann, 4 February 1829)
This feeling of the heart shows
the right way. We not only
hope – we know at the bottom
of our heart, with a certainty beyond all reason, that those are
right who paint the miraculous
picture of an everlasting existence.
Simple unspoiled
minds not misled by the intellect
sense this truth very well.
15. Near-Death Experiences
Hieronymus
Bosch „Flight to Heaven"
Even the natural scientists begin to concern
themselves with that part of man, which is different from the body:
They question patients who have looked
down from the ceiling of a room and watched the doctor
reviving their body. Such so-called extra-physical experiences occur for example with strokes, drug-taking,
epileptic attacks or near death.
They are recently being investigated into with scientific methods.
*****
The patients report of a bright world, so beautiful that they had
no desire to return to
earth at all! Not the body has entered
this world – it lay meanwhile
on the operating table –, but the soul!
16. Longing for
Truth, Justice, Beauty and Love
Your soul is not of this world. Material things do not satisfy it. It longs for something
higher, for spiritual values.
It is enthusiastic
about ideals such as truth, justice,
beauty and love.
Your spiritual being actually suffers from every
untruthfulness, injustice, ugliness or unkindness
– even if it does not concern
you yourself at all, but others.
What has an animal with
its hardly developed soul, what has the
purely physical side of your being
to do with justice? Nothing! Like cattle, it is only
concerned with survival, reproduction and satisfaction of its desires, with devouring
and being devoured, with the law
of the stronger, which rules in the jungle.
Why did we overcome
in the course of evolution this primitive state? Because we followed our higher
nature, we have established, by an immense struggle, the rule of a spiritual principle (justice) over brute force
and superior material means.
This proves: There lives something
higher within us, which belongs
not to the physical, but to the spiritual world.
The greatest longing of man is to bring to bear
this divine aspect of his nature.
The highest satisfaction fills us when
we succeed in this – not, as one tries to
make us believe,
when we satisfy
our animal needs.
17. Longing for
Paradise
Peter
Wenzel „Adam und Eva in the earthly
Paradise“
Your soul actually remembers
the ideal world from where it
comes – paradise, from which you
were expelled in order to incarnate
on the material plane.
Your soul longs to
return to these heavenly conditions.
Your soul strives to
introduce down here on earth the overwhelming
beauty of the supermundane order, which it has
itself experienced before birth. Hence the eternal dream
of the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth.
18. Conclusion of
the first Step
These examples should be sufficient for the moment. Do you now grasp
a little bit more of the infinite reality? Has your
consciousness been widened by a few
millimetres?
Do you now realize?
Your soul is no less
real than your body. You would
not deny the reality of thoughts, feelings, X-rays or other energies,
just because you are unable to
touch them!
He who denies his
higher nature, the divine within
himself, falls back to the level of the
animals who have not yet developed
a consciousness of the
spiritual part of their being.
One tries to rob
you of the best you own! It
really is a victory of the devil and a spiritual catastrophe
that modern man finds no way, under
the influence of Enlightenment, to reconcile the truth
of science – or reason –- with the truth of religion
– or the heart.
If we rely on our
intellect alone, if we deny
every spiritual reality – then we fall back into barbarity, become spiritless robots and create a cold, dead world
in which to live is a torture.
*****
Let us sum up:
The first step towards immortality is:
I recognize my soul.
2nd Step: You change your Identity: „I am a
Soul“
1. Transformation
Nicholas Roerich "Higher than
Mountains"
We have taken the
first step on the way to
immortality. You now know that
you have a soul. How do we continue? Which are the next
steps?
Some try to
gain immortality by extending the
life of the body. However, this is impossible. Everything material is bound to pass away.
The immortality of your body is not even
desirable: The life of your soul in its
homeland, the world beyond, after
the death of the body, is
indispensable to your
spiritual development.
If you want to
become immortal, you have to
transform into a
non-material, spiritual being that
is not limited by the restrictions of matter, space and time – and therefore cannot die.
2. The Choice
We have learned in the first step:
We humans consist of two parts. We are
twofold like the Roman god Janus.
Two souls are dwelling in my breast. (Goethe, Faust)
Our being is composed
of
- a material, visible, mortal body and
- a spiritual, invisible, immortal
soul.
If this is so, you
have the choice:
Who or what do you
want to be?
Which of the two parts do you
want to regard
as your true
self? Of whom of the two would
you like to say: "This is me"? Of the body or of the
soul?
Of course, you will choose the soul!
No one will regard the perishable
part of his nature as his
true ego, after recognizing that there is an eternal
being as well. You will not choose to be
something that will soon cease to
exist, when you can be
something else that is everlasting!
Of course, you would
rather be an immortal than a transient being.
3. The new Identity
The second step towards immortality
is: You assume
a new identity!
Up to today, you
have saddled the wrong horse:
the old man identifies with his body. This is hardly reasonable.
The New Man identifies with his soul, which
he regards as his true self.
For that what is eternal is
certainly more real and more important than that what
is perishable.
The personal man is ephemeral, incidental to the real man or soul who
is an evolving, persisting entity, "eternal in the heavens," who never had a beginning
and to whose life there can
be no end. With the growth of the
idea of the soul as being
the important part comes the
perception of the unity of all life. (Teachings of the Temple Vol. III,
Lesson “Lifes Efflorescence”)
Change your identity!
As long as your
body is your
ego, your existence ends with its death.
When your soul becomes your
ego, you continue to live on eternally even after the death
of the body.
When you are asked:
"Who are you?", answer:
I am a soul. I am not a material, I am a spiritual being.
Previously you used
to think: "I have a soul."
Correct, however, is: "I am a soul!"
Do you see? You
have already turned into an immortal being. For, once you are
a soul, you go on living after
the death of the body.
We have to form a completely new picture of ourselves: Man is a species belonging
to the spiritual world that can
neither be seen nor touched.
Antiquity, from the
two premises "All humans are mortal"
and "I am a human being" drew the conclusion:
"I am mortal".
Today, we establish two new
premises: "All souls are immortal" and "I am
a soul", from which we conclude:
"I am immortal".
4. Overcome
the Illusion of Matter
We immortals beseech you: See through the illusion of matter! The sun does not go
down in the sea in the evening, it
only appears to do so.
At the age
of seventy-five years one cannot fail to think about
death from time to time. This thought leaves me in complete
peace, for I have the firm conviction that our spirit is
a being of an indestructible
nature; its activity is continuing
from eternity to eternity. It
is like the sun, which seems
to go down only to our
earthly eyes, but which in reality never sets, but shines on unceasingly. (Goethe to Eckermann, May 2, 1824)
You must overcome the
illusion of matter in relation
to yourself as well: You
are not the body that acts
on earth. You are the spirit,
which animates that body! You
are not the dress, which is
constantly changing; you are the
everlasting creature, which bears the
dress!
You are not the person,
which you perceive in the mirror, the figure
with head, torso, and limbs – this is only
illusion, short-lived cover.
Previously, you used to
believe that you are a body.
To be sure,
you also had a soul, but you did
not really know what to make
of it, and certainly not of
its eternal life.
Today, you have to
change your picture of yourself and say: "I am a soul. I also have a body – which,
however, does not matter very much, because
it will soon perish. "
So to know
the real do not think you have a soul,
but the soul has you. (Teachings of the Temple Vol. II,
Lesson “Life and Death”)
You are: That what
remains after your body has died.
Remember the near-death experiences which we have
already talked about: you are
not the body, which lies on the operating table. You are the
invisible, spiritual being who
is watching from the ceiling.
All human beings are actually immortal.
They just do not know. Do
not allow yourself to be deceived
like a mayfly, which ridicules the term
"month".
Rise up! You are
much greater than you think!
You are a cosmic giant, who
already lived before our earth
existed, and who will continue to live when this insignificant
chunk of matter has long disintegrated.
5. The Role of the Body
My body is
a tool which "I"
(the soul) have to use
because "I" as a
non-material spiritual being
cannot appear and act on the physical
plane without such a vehicle.
Just as a deep sea diver is
able to descend
to the bottom
of the sea only in a solid diving bell.
See through the illusion
of matter! In this case, too, the true
ego is not the outwardly visible shell (the diving
bell), but the invisible being,
hidden within the shell: the
diver.
The monks regard the body
as their little friend and companion and call it "brother
donkey". Thereby thy expresses very
nicely its serving function. You, however, are
not the donkey – you are the
rider!
The body decays
after death and is gnawed by worms.
The "resurrection" of this
cadaver, worn out and grown unappealing by long use,
is a fairy tale, incompatible with the laws
of reason and of science.
Moreover, no one can
seriously desire the immortality of his frail and with
increasing age ever more defective
body.
The body is
like a marionette, which has to play
a role. It is led to
and fro on the stage of earthly life by the
will of an invisible player. You
are the player,
not the doll!
*****
How should we treat our
physical being? Of course you should
keep your body fit through a little training and preserve it as
a suitable tool. More attention is not required for an object, which will soon disintegrate.
Is it not ridiculous for a man to care for and decorate his donkey, rather
than to embellish
himself?
It is much more
important that you nurture, heal,
train, and make great and strong your true, imperishable self, your soul.
When you learn to
think and to act in this way,
your transformation into an immortal being begins.
*****
Let us summarize: The second step on the way to
immortality is but small and easy to accomplish. It takes place solely
within our minds: You change
your identity and say confidently:
I am not a physical being. I am not a body. I am a
spiritual being. I am a soul.
You achieve immortality by learning to
become a soul!
3rd Step: You adjust your Consciousness:
„I am an immortal being“
We are continuing with the third
step towards our goal: immortality.
Let me give you
a simple example to help you to
better understand what we are
talking about:
Imagine a young eagle growing up
in a henhouse. His "parents"
who raise him, his playmates,
his whole environment, which moulds him – all but chickens. Because there is no mirror,
he does not recognize that he is different from the others.
He imitates his companions, behaves like a chicken, and thus presents a miserable picture.
What does the eagle
have to do in order to realize
his essential nature, to become truly
himself? He must first recognize that he is not a chicken like the other creatures around him, but a much greater, more
powerful and majestic being.
As long as
the eagle thinks he is a chicken, he will behave like a chicken, present a sad picture and waste his higher
potential.
What does man have to
do in order to realize his essential nature, to become
truly himself? He must first recognize
that he is not a mortal like the other creatures around him, but a much greater, more
powerful and majestic being.
As long as
you consider yourself to be
mortal, you will behave like a mortal and show a deplorable picture, because you are
throwing away the immeasurable possibilities of an everlasting creature.
We all are still chickens, although we have
the potential of eagles. However, knowing nothing of this treasure, we do not use it, and therefore
risk to spoil
our mission.
A sensitive, high-minded person feels vaguely
that he is greater than it
seems; that he does not exhaust his possibilities by far; that
he is destined to something far
greater than to scratch in the dung, to quarrel
about worms and to squander his
powers for the everyday, small-scale rubbish with which
the world around him is
concerned.
However, he finds no way
out of the prison, and so drowns his longing
for higher strivings in alcohol, debauchery, or the hunt
for material things.
For millennia, man has been conditioned so as to regard
himself mortal, and he behaves accordingly. Gradually and with arduous labour we have to
overcome this formation.
We notice here for the first time and will find again and again: Our consciousness is the true
reality!
Whoever has the consciousness
of a chicken is only a chicken (because he behaves like a chicken) – even if, from the
outside, he looks like an eagle.
Therefore, the essential transformation must take place
in our thinking:
The New Man differs from the old
one primarily in one aspect: The consciousness of his immortality.
Do not listen when you are
told that you are small,
limited and perishable. In reality,
you are great,
unlimited and eternal.
We are infinite, not temporary. (Heart 515)
Let us sum up:
The third step towards immortality is taken when
you adjust your consciousness and think:
I am an immortal being.
4th Step: You
shift your Consciousness to
your higher Self:
„I fill my Soul with Consciousness“
We are now taking
the fourth step towards immortality.
It is not enough for us only
to be immortal.
We also want to use the
gigantic possibilities of a
creature living eternally.
1. „Anima“
Imagine: There is an individual,
non-material, everlasting being.
Let us call
it, to give
it a name,
"Anima". Let us imagine it, in default of a better picture, like this:
.jpg)
(Nicholas
Roerich "Higher than Mountains")
Anima has her home in the spiritual world. In the course of her eternallife, she again and again descends to the
material plane. There she establishes, with the help of perishable
physical bodies, various limited, mortal existences. After their death, Anima returns to her homeland.
For example: 2000 years ago, she
dressed herself in the garment of a Greek lady. Then she appeared on earth in the Middle Ages in the body of a knight. After the death of this
shell she returned to a break of rest and instruction to her eternal home. Centuries later she appeared
on the stage of material life as a lady-in-waiting at the court of the King of France.
After the end of this role, she
again went to the world
beyond, in order to digest what
she experienced. 100 years ago, she
incarnated as a craftsman. This existence, too, ended after a few years, and today she lives
as a banker at the Wall Street. Who knows which roles she
is to play
in the future?
Between these material incarnations,
Anima lives without a physical body in the world beyond
– actually for a much longer time than on earth.
This creature "Anima" is your soul. This is you – your
true, eternal, spiritual self.
2. Illusion of the perishable Personality
You think: "I am Robert Miller". And you think: "I am Mary
Smith". This is a pardonable
error, caused by the illusion
of matter. (Edouard Manet "In the Wintergarden")
In truth, you are
Anima. Mr. Miller and Mrs. Smith are
only transient personalities,
which your Eternal Individuality has temporarily formed. Anima will
cast off these material covers
as soon as
they are no longer usable.
Mr. Miller and Mrs. Smith will cease to exist in a few
years’ time. Anima, on the other hand, walks
an eternal path through the most
diverse material and non-material worlds,
spheres and planes of existence.
*****
This your true self
"Anima" really exists.
As a non-material, spiritual being it is not bound
to the limitations
of matter, time, and space. Therefore,
it is immortal.
Whether you believe in this or not, is without
any influence on this hard fact.
3. No Life without Consciousness
We are now coming
to a crucial point:
The spiritual being, to which
we provisionally gave the name
Anima, exists. But it only vegetates like a plant or an animal, as
long as it
is not conscious of its existence.
In the case
of higher beings than plants and animals (already with humans,
especially with spiritual beings!), "living" means more than
merely "existing".
It means being conscious of one’s self as
well as using
consciously one’s powers and abilities.
So that Anima, your higher ego, can
"live" in this sense, she
must become conscious not only of her mere existence. She must also know
her essential nature. She must know who
or what she
is – for example an eagle, not a chicken. Therefore, she must become conscious
of herself as a
non-material, spiritual, eternal being.
As it stands today, when your soul
is hardly aware of itself, let alone of its
immortality, it cannot develop and is unable to
use its higher
spiritual powers.
Let me explain this
based on an example: There once was a rich man. He was hungry because he did not know he had a treasure in his cellar. Objectively
was rich. Nevertheless, he could not make use of his wealth,
for he was not aware of the
fact that he is rich.
Likewise, as long as
Anima is not aware of her being immortal, her treasure remains in the cellar and she cannot make
use of the huge potential of an everlasting life.
4. Equip Anima with Consciousness
So, if you are
not content with just being immortal, but want to use
the treasure of immortality, you have to equip
your Eternal Individuality with consciousness. Without consciousness,
"Anima" is not much
more than a dead, empty shell.
You must extract your
consciousness from the body, from
the currently incarnated, perishable personality, and move it into the
soul.
In order to
gain immortality, the student of Occult Science has to learn the
means of shifting gradually
his sense of individuality from his corruptible
material body to the incorruptible and eternal Non-Being represented by his seventh principle.
Please consider this as the
real aim of Occult Science.
(Mahatma Letter No. 131 of 26.06.1882)
You must not allow your consciousness to get stuck in the tool, in the
donkey. You have to move
it into the
rider!
You must stop limiting
yourselves with the consciousness of transient personalities such as Mr. Miller or Mrs. Smith. Instead, shape for yourself the consciousness
of an everlasting being!
An example: This is as if
you leave the house, in which
you have lived for many years, sit down behind the wheel
of a car, and drive away.
All of a sudden, your life
changes completely. You can now
use the vast
possibilities of the new vehicle, which
your spirit has entered.
Enclosed in a house you were
unable to move around. Once you take possession
of a car, you can tour the world!
Enclosed in a perishable body, your existence is limited. As soon as your consciousness
enters your immortal soul, your existence becomes unlimited. You can now
begin to make use of the
immeasurable possibilities
of a non-material being.
Another example: Think of the movie "Avatar": The
consciousness of a human being
leaves its physical body and is transferred to another vehicle,
with the help of which a life in a foreign world becomes possible.
5. One
single uninterrupted
Consciousness in all Worlds
If your consciousness remains in the body, it ends
with the death of this vehicle.
When you move your consciousness
into the soul, it lives
on with her. Only in this way can the
promise of everlasting life, known to
all religions, become a reality.
As long as
your consciousness remains in an earthly personality, you think that you
are Mr. Miller or Mrs. Smith, a Greek woman, a knight, a lady at court, a craftsman or a Wall Street banker. Then you form many separate, limited existences, all of which are mortal and without any relation
to one another.
Then you start every new life
again and again at zero, always from
scratch with a new personality.
If, on the other hand,
you provide Anima with consciousness, Anima is Anima on all levels, because she is
always aware of being Anima.
She lives as Anima in the world beyond.
She descends consciously as Anima down to earth. She
consciously enters into a perishable body and lives in it as Anima for a few years. After the death of the
vehicle, she consciously returns to her homeland, continues to live there, later descends
again, and so on forever.
Above and below, during descent and ascent, she always remains
Anima.
Immortality is nothing
else than the preservation of one single continual
uninterrupted consciousness
throughout the whole eternal way.
Immortality is that
gift which allows the same great personality to step at will from one worn-out
body into another. (Helena Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine II, Part 1, Stanza X, “No Devils outside Humanity”)
The achievement of true immortality means the maintaining
of consciousness on all four
planes of existence. (Helena Roerich Letters Vol. I, letter of 11.06.1935)
Anima has only one single
continual uninterrupted life: Above and below, in all worlds, at all times and in all circumstances, she always appears with one and the
same identity.
One may regard the
chain of incarnations as a sequence of separate lives, but it is
better to look upon the entire
chain of incarnations as one life.
Truly, there is but one life. (Agni Yoga 450)
Only when you succeed
in this, Anima becomes immortal. Then you continue your work
and your development there, where you
left it at the previous stage
of existence for a short
break.
*****
Let us sum up:
You take the fourth step
towards immortality when you draw
your consciousness out of the physical body
and move it into your Eternal Individuality:
I fill my
soul with consciousness.
6. An Exercise
For some of you, this
may sound somewhat abstract. However, we do not want to make
just words. We are walking a path
together. Therefore, I would like to show
you the fourth
step towards immortality in practical terms as well.
How exactly do you shift your consciousness to the soul?
The following exercise will
show:
*****
Occult research has shown
that our spiritual being is a little
bit bigger than the body.
Therefore, imagine your soul as
a kind of etheric shell that permeates
the body and surrounds it from
all sides – like an aura.
This being you must fill with
your consciousness, otherwise it will remain dead and empty.
Guidance is always
effected from above. So, extract your consciousness from the body
and move it into the tip
of your spiritual cover that is situated
above your head.
Your ego-consciousness
is now sitting
up there, no longer in the
body. From there, from the standpoint
of eternity, you look around and watch the world
as well as
yourself – your body.
You face yourself – your body – like a stranger.
By this practice you
actually begin to experience that
your Eternal Individuality is a being distinct
from your body.
7. Another
Exercise
Remain the same in joy and sorrow, in sunshine and in rain!
This is an advice of the old sages.
You can best realize
this ideal by shifting your consciousness to your immortal
soul, because your spiritual self is not affected by the vicissitudes
of material life, which your perishable personality is used to classify
as "good luck" or "bad luck".
5th Step: You think and feel like an Immortal
We have already reached
the fifth step towards immortality.
Can you imagine to
be a being that one can
neither see nor touch? Yesterday, you would have
said: "There is no such thing."
Today you begin to realize that
you yourself are such a creature!
*****
What does it mean
to be a soul,
an incorporeal, invisible being,
to lead a non-material existence, to live in the spiritual world beyond matter, space and time? Here we nearly reach the
limits of human imagination.
1. Man is what he thinks
Auguste Rodin „The Thinker“
Buddha teaches: Man is what he thinks.
He who thinks like a chicken, is only
a chicken. He who thinks like an eagle, a saint, or a king,
is an eagle, a saint, or a king,
even if he is banished to
a henhouse, or to unsaintly or
humiliating conditions.
The same applies to your
transformation into an immortal: You are
a spiritual being as soon as you
think like a spiritual being.
Our consciousness is the true reality!
You turn from a mortal to
an immortal by changing your thinking
habits. As unusual as it may
sound, it is true nevertheless:
The difference between a common mortal and an immortal (a God!) is, above all, in their consciousness: He who always thinks
like an immortal is an immortal, how ever
he may fare apart from that.
Obtaining immortality is a spiritual exercise. The immortal has adjusted
his thinking: When he thinks of himself, or speaks
of himself, he does not mean his body,
but his Eternal Individuality,
which survives death.
2. Some practical Exercises
Let us look at some
practical examples:
As long as you
are a mortal, you think, "I say or I do this
or that", or "I go here
or there." This, however, is wrong,
because on the material level you – your
true ego, Anima – as a spiritual being, says nothing, does
nothing and goes nowhere either.
So, learn to think
like an immortal, which works like this: "I – the immortal soul
–, in order to fulfill my mission,
make my earthly
tool, the body, say or
do this or that, or cause
him to go
here or there."
When you are driving
with your car and the petrol
at the petrol station, which you are just passing,
is too expensive, you drive on. Your
car will have to get along
with that fuel what it
has for another while. Likewise, you have to
treat your perishable personality: the spirit decides
whether, when, what, and how much
food your body gets to
eat.
When his stomach growls,
the old, mortal man thinks: "I am hungry." Anima, the immortal part of your being, does
not think like this. As a
spiritual being, she has no need,
nor even desire, for material food.
Therefore your soul thinks:
"My tool, the donkey is asking
for food. Is it really absolutely
necessary to supply my vehicle
with fuel again? Is not the
last filling sufficient for
the moment?"
When you have a wound,
up to today
you thought: "I am
hurt." Your spiritual being
does not think like this: It is
not affected by injuries of the body. Anima thinks: "My vehicle seems to
be damaged. Do I have to repair
it at once, or will it still last for a while?"
The old mortal
man is afraid when he is threatened
with death, because he sees the end of his
existence before him. Your true,
Eternal Individuality does
not know this feeling, because it is not affected
even by the
death of the body – as little
as the rider
by the death
of his donkey. No one and nothing can hurt her.
Are you impatient or
irritated? This is an expression of your perishable personality. For your true self,
such a feeling is absurd, because in eternity there is an infinite amount of time available to wait patiently
and to try again when conditions
are ripe.
*****
Therefore, learn to adjust
your thinking and feeling. Thereby you gradually transform
your essential nature and
turn, indeed, from a
material to a spiritual creature.
Think at every moment, never
forget, make sure constantly:
I am a soul. I think and feel like a rider (like a spiritual being),
not like a donkey (like my physical tool).
This is the key
to everything else. Then you will draw the necessary
consequences with time by yourself.
Do not listen to your body.
Do what your soul wants. Then your life will change completely.
Ask yourself, “What does the
spirit wish?” (Leaves of Morya’s Garden II, 120)
*****
Let us summarize: The fifth step of your
transformation into an immortal is taken
by your adjusting
your thinking and feeling in order to bring it in accordance with your Eternal Individuality.
I think and feel like a spiritual being.
6th Step: You act like an Immortal
We are now coming
to the sixth
and penultimate step on the way to
immortality:
The new consciousness (thinking and feeling like an immortal) is an internal process only. This alone is not enough.
Your transformation into an immortal will be completed only
if a corresponding new behaviour results
from it. Your new nature must
also manifest itself externally
through a new attitude.
*****
Your spirit must actually
allocate to the body (like the rider to
the donkey) what food it
gets and how much. If, on the
contrary, the pleasure of the body in food prevails,
you are in reality not yet a spiritual being (which, as
we have said,
neither needs nor even desires
material food).
*****
If you are in danger
of death, you must in the material reality behave fearlessly, otherwise you have not yet
really turned into an immortal (who, surely, does
not fear death).
In general, we can say:
A spiritual being – and thus
immortal – is he who thinks, feels,
speaks and acts like a
spiritual being.
Therefore, your task on the
way to immortality
is to distinguish
the thoughts, feelings, wishes, and expressions of your perishable personality from those of your
Eternal Individuality.
Think, feel, speak and act only
as your soul
wishes you to think, to
feel, to speak and to act!
To be a soul means
to express the soul. You are
a spiritual being only if you are
acting as such – not only "in heaven", but
on the material level as well.
A rider is
he who acts like a master. He who behaves like a donkey is only a donkey,
even if he looks like a rider from the outside. He who behaves in the world like a material, perishable being, is also only a mortal.
When the donkey leads
and the rider follows, they both
spoil their mission. Then both do something that contradicts their true nature.
Anima’s motto is:I am the rider, not the donkey. I do what I want, not what my vehicle wishes!
Let us sum up:
You take the sixth and penultimate
step towards immortality when you appear on the
material level as a
spiritual being and show a corresponding attitude in all circumstances.
I act like a spiritual being.
7th Step: You use the Senses
and the higher Forces of your Spiritual Being
The seventh and final step of your transformation into an immortal is that you
actually begin to make use
of the higher possibilities of your new vehicle.
You enter the car
and actually go off.
In concrete terms, this means: You
begin to use the higher
senses and the higher powers of your soul. To
this end, we propose to begin
with some exercises:
1st Exercise
First, watch yourself – namely your transient, material personality
– as if it
were a stranger with the eyes
of your Eternal Individuality:
What do you see? What does
your physical self think, what
does it feel,
what does it wish to
do? Is it offended, hurt, depressed, irritated, joyful, tired, aggressive or confident?
Thereby you start to
bring to life that part of your
being, which is different from your body.
Your soul is actually
active when it regards the
body, and the conditions in which it lives, from
above – indifferently, calmly, from a superior point of view.
Thus, you set in function
the eyes of your soul. You
begin to watch not with your physical eyes
but with your inner senses.
Draw your consciousness within, and look out on life from your own vantage
ground, from your own center. See with the eyes
of the soul. (Teachings of the Temple Vol. III,
Lesson “Center of Light”)
2nd Exercise
Awaken to life the
other senses of your higher self
as well by
using them: especially the heart.
For example: Practice the feeling of the heart in order to grasp the
nature of another man: Can you trust him?
Does he mean well with you, or
does he just make nice words?
*****
Or listen to the voice
of the heart, which tells you
reliably what is good and what
is bad for you: For example: Certain food or amount
of food, certain medicines or treatments,
distractions, places, activities, times of sleep, climates, spiritual teachings, diets, people, situations – all this and much more
is judged by the heart
with unerring certainty.
Remember Saint-Exupéry: One sees clearly only
with the heart; what is
essential is invisible to the eye.
Consult your heart in every
situation. Instead of
"listen to the voice of the soul",
we can also say "listen to the heart": The spiritual, the divine within
us expresses itself via the heart. The heart is the most
important organ of your Eternal Individuality.
If you are not sure
how you should
behave, if you do not know what your higher
self wants you to do, question
the pure feeling of your heart.
So you deny
the most divine,
if you do not mind the allusions of the heart. (Goethe, The Natural
Daughter II 1)
3rd Exercise
Begin to control
your body from above as
the rider steers his donkey.
Let the body
carry out the will of the spirit, just as the donkey follows
the rider's will. Observe calmly, as if it
were a stranger, what the body
wants, where it strives. Then you decide what
it gets and where it moves.
For example, allocate to your body
how much and what kind of food
it gets. Use your "spiritual muscles"
in order to enforce your higher
self against the desire of the
body. Thus your soul begins to
live, to act and to grow.
4th Exercise
The need to control
your lower self through your
Eternal Individuality refers
not only to the material side of your being, but to your thoughts,
your feelings and your instincts as well.
Theosophy offers the helpful
notion that besides the physical
body there is a body of feelings,
(astral body), a body of thoughts (mental body), and a body of instincts.
These bodies, too, you
must bring under the control of your higher self!
Just as you should not identify with your physical
body, you should not identify with your thoughts,
your feelings or your instincts
either.
Your
Eternal Individuality has to steer four
perishable bodies, just
like the charioteer his four horses.
So, learn to observe
your thoughts, feelings, and instincts like those of a stranger from above, from
the position of your true, eternal
self.
Then, for example, your soul
is affected by the anger
that your body of feelings harbours no more
than by the
anger that one of your neighbours
feels!
*****
Next, strive to decide,
from the perspective of your higher self, which
thoughts, feelings, and instincts you wish
to allow to express themselves and which you want
to reject, which you want
to follow and which not.
Not "I" – my
Eternal Individuality – think
or feel. My body of thoughts or my body
of feelings – parts of my perishable personality
– thinks or feels. "I" – Anima – rule this thinking and feeling. (Nicholas
Roerich "Higher than Mountains)
Begin with rejecting negative thoughts or feelings
and replacing them with positive ones.
Try to spend
a few hours without negative thoughts – you can hardly
imagine how difficult this is!
By establishing the rule of the spirit
over your thoughts, feelings, and instincts, you are training the
powers of your Eternal Individuality, which will grow and become ever greater and stronger by this
exercise.
Here, we offer you
a training program that can keep
you busy for years. The remote goal is:
Nothing but the Divine thinks within you,
speaks out of you, and acts with you.
5th Exercise
Albrecht Altdorfer „The Battle of Issus“
Let us consider a final practical aspect of your transformation into an immortal:
At every moment, both
sides of your being, the material and the spiritual one, are trying to
express themselves. There is a constant struggle
between these two. When you
reveal the divine side of your nature, you
are an immortal; when you manifest material aspect, you are
only mortal.
At any moment, you
have to choose
which of the two parts you
wish to express. As history shows, we human beings unfortunately allow too often our
lower self to gain the
upper hand.
Become a spiritual warrior! Take up the fight
with your baser instincts. Strive to enforce
your eternal self at every moment,
in all circumstances. Through this
struggle with resisting forces you strengthen the power of your soul. (Ernst Barlach "The spiritual
Warrior")