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CONTENTS:
Teaching 1: Ascetic Prayer
Teaching 2: Discriminative Asceticism
Teaching 3:
The Divine Goal
Teaching 4: Continuous Asceticism
Teaching 5: Self-control
Teaching 6: Meditation and its Apprenticeship
Teaching 7: Meditation Exercise
Teaching 8: Exercise of Intellectual Meditation
Teaching 9: Sensibility in Meditation
Teaching 10: Meditation and Technique of the Exercise
Teaching 11: Invocation
Teaching 12: Imaginative Picture
Teaching 13: Sensations
Teaching 14: Purposes
Teaching 15: Difficulties in Persevering Meditation
Teaching 16: Resurrection of Hes
Inner life must be centered on God, not on attributes of God, which move away from the primordial end.
A specialized progress of rational faculties in certain way has moved man away from the fundamental Idea of God.
Truly the Divine Presence is in everything, but this does not mean that the divine expression has to become divinity.
Necessarily a man should come to a real and individual contact with the Divine Mother. Nothing and none can give him the truth, with the exception of his own experience. To achieve it, he must take all his energies, centered on the worldly side, and focus them on the purely spiritual and divine aspect.
Some people believe that this is unnecessary, because the Divine Mother is also in the world and nothing is outside Her. But certainly they will not reach the Divine Mother this way. An intellectual attachment to the spiritual aspect is not enough. This attachment is not real if it does not comprise the individual as a whole. The world is a school, and body and soul are only instruments. They are interesting just as such, and when they acquire a value that is not theirs, they lack sense as instruments and means of liberation, and become factors of illusion and ignorance.
A transformation in one’s particular thinking is important, but spiritual life shall be meaningful if and when this particular thinking is confirmed by substantial facts of life, which are consistent with the fundamental idea of the soul. As spiritual life is only a partial attitude in the individual being, body and soul shall be goods in themselves, and shall constitute other opposite attitude. This means that spiritual life shall not be a total act of the individual being, but attitudes in conflict.
Renunciation to the world is not a refusal, but location of human values that acquire divine character only by means of this.
As worldly goods are the objective of man, the world shall be a world of sorrow, and as body and soul are values in themselves, they cannot become instruments of impersonal experience.
Even though union with the Divine Mother may be the soul aspiration, actually the soul prayer begins nothing more than as a monologue, a self-conversation. It is like a tentative true self-consciousness and also consciousness of what this soul actually wishes.
Ordinary thoughts of man are a continuous imaginary conversation; this conversation is entirely unreal and disconnected from him and from surrounding reality. Therefore in the beginnings, meditation tries to center the soul on its real position before itself and the world, giving a deeper and deeper consciousness of being, until its transformation into a true contact, supernatural and divine.
This essential contact with God exists in certain form in prayer and spiritual efforts of any kind, but necessarily it should become a living reality for the soul. Here is the only end of the human existence: to reach a full Union with the Divine Mother, a Substantial Union. All the rest exists in dependent relationship for this purpose.
So, inner life, as a continuous act of living in the divine presence, is the only necessary thing; because it is the living soul expression toward the Divine Mother and already lives in Her.
Teaching 2: Discriminative Asceticism
It is fundamental to know how to discern in order to guide souls through prayer asceticism.
What kind of exercise is fit for inner characteristics of each beginner and what type of mystique is convenient for him should be known.
He should be given fit teaching for every moment of his spiritual development, not accelerating inner processes, and letting the Divine Mother to operate in the soul.
Exercises of meditation should not be forsaken as soon as some glimpses of contemplation have been attained.
Possible difficulties and trials to overcome in different (physical, rational, affective and spiritual) stages should be known beforehand.
Guide should be given not touching particularly the illuminative way.
Continuously, realization in the mystical way should not be lost of sight as a whole.
Basic dangers such as psychical deviations and dehumanization should be avoided.
Experimentally, the human soul course to follow should be known.
This knowledge cannot be attained by any sure means; the exact knowledge about souls and their way can be given only by deep inner life and soul participation. “Nothing is difficult for the one who loves.”
Life in the world is asceticism, but not asceticism oriented and concentrated on the divine realization which is that of integral values of the individual being, but scattered, disordered asceticism lacking a conscious objective in man.
So far human asceticism has not been effective means to realization of the individual; progress of institutions has been in them like independent abstractions from human reality.
Asceticism in the world, more than means to realization, is continuous atonement of mistakes in man. Therefore, all efforts through mystical ways make lead souls to stop being identified with the world and make of the world what the world is: a realization instrument. All mental and emotional powers are brought into action in order to produce detachment from the world, since one needs both quite clear discernment and inner strength as well to transcend the attraction of human goods.
It is not enough to know that the world is not ours; we should detest it and feel desolate in it. At the same time, one causes the whole emotional power to emerge from unknown depths of the heart in order to maintain this power more and more steadily in the thought and ideal image of the Divine Good that we wish to achieve.
Outer and inner rules are given so that, in this world and according to the place occupied in it and to the type of life chosen, all simple deeds may become effective means to divine realization, and specific exercises are taught in order to canalize affections, check passions and to strengthen mental powers in the individual being.
Discipline, method of life and practice of prayer exercises are quite important to the Son. It is indispensable to count on elements defined and properly known, which may become efficient outer asceticism and inner asceticism.
But this alone is insufficient to souls; souls demand something more. They aim at reaching plenitude achieved by close contact with the Divine Mother. This plenitude cannot be easily achieved. Many Sons find that a clear discernment about their vocation is their main obstacle.
Man is prisoner of multiple desires, and a changing will is not the fittest one to achieve perfection. Certain Sons understand what Renunciation is, but at the same time fear it. In this opposite passions there is a germ of dissatisfaction and lack of realization. Even though perhaps they are unable to define exactly what their vocational Renunciation demands, they know that, in order to realize it, must be free of everything that so far became both good and food for the illusion of living as well.
It is all right for Sons to know, be conscious, and realize that vocation is Renunciation; and that if vocation has not been achieved, it is by lack of courage, or by fear, but not by lack of chances. One should not feed illusions.
Renunciation is only one. But it has to adjust itself to environment, time and specific needs of the souls.
The Son wants to renounce, but at the same time knows and does not know how to do so. He does not know, because Renunciation itself is something impossible to learn, understand and possess. One is Renunciation; and if one is not Renunciation, Renunciation always is something unattainable and apparently moving away from us as we come closer.
If Renunciation is an entirely Divine state, one can possess it gradually by substantial and defined human means.
Inner peace cannot be attained after overcoming every obstacle, but it is the fruit of having used our whole being, without reserve, continuously, in order to achieve perfection. Peace cannot exist while there are multiple desires and opposite thoughts.
Because in the world inner life is almost unknown, actions are much important for us, but thoughts, fantasies and illusions of the mind and heart remain free and wild. Renunciation efforts should be absorbed by the whole being, not only by a part of it. So we must know the power of our temperament, habits, natural trends and ascetic exercises of the spiritual method.
But these exercises can be effective if and when one has a clear idea about successive goals to reach, and also about the only and permanent goal presiding the whole spiritual life in the Son.
If Renunciation were a positive goal with certain realization, there would not be any difficulty. What the souls want is also to have both substantial goal and substantial means as well to achieve that goal.
Renunciation is not an ideal goal but a real, but because it is integral, goes beyond definable limits of objective means and ends. It is as if one remained with nothing when we try to grab something else.
Renunciation can bring confusion because is limitless. If Renunciation is to forsake everything and possess nothing, it can lead easily to deny everything and do nothing. So we should be quite careful when we preach and explain it, and over all, we should have very clear concepts.
One travels through the road by stages, and each stage marks a quite defined goal to reach. It is relative goal –which should be transcended by renouncing not only to its possession and also to goods coming from it–but this fact does not deny its immediate goal. It is only a mean, but an indispensable mean to realization.
The case if that if relative goals are substantial, Renunciation, the final good is not so. Souls use to measure everything in terms of efforts and results and are somewhat disoriented when cannot to fix its course within certain line knows and gifted with visible progresses, so usually they lose courage and stop their efforts. Renunciation does not offer immediate and brilliant goods to satisfy their eagerness for possession, and even does not permit them the illusion of a possessive good, or even the illusion of a spiritual good.
The Renunciation Road, even though this Road is for all, can be traveled through only by those who are able to sustain it with the ideal force of supernatural vocation of divine love and actual yearning for liberty.
Few courageous souls know how to persist without any human and ideal support and without the incentive of imagination and future. Their forces scatter continuously and they never acquire the divine power to dissolve those forces as a compound, in order to leave them as simple presence of the soul in the Divine Mother.
Of course, Renunciation is a goal for the souls, but since it is a divine goal, it is a non-goal for human understanding. It is reversibility; divine state is a human non-state; divine wisdom is non-knowing; divine conquest is human loss. Freedom seems to be bondage, and defeat by time seems to be submission to inexorable routine.
Teaching 4: Continuous Asceticism
The Son that lives in the world needs great outer asceticism.
He can reach a rich and full inner life by transforming his outer life into continuous asceticism.
The Ascetic Prayer consists in transforming a sporadic action into a permanent state.
It is very difficult to reach a deep absorption in the world. Everything becomes a continuous urge to turn outwards. Then, irrespective of the very exercises, prayer must consist in transforming an outer aspect into an inner aspect, and everything into points of reversion, into reversible thought focuses.
Every center of outer concern must become means for inner call. A prayer of intention and offering must transform all this continuous activity, which is life in the world.
Daily points to stop become indispensable to achieve it. Besides moments devoted to exercises of prayer, you need other different, indispensable exercises to invert the positive and objective movement in the soul. These moments could be called moments of consciousness, silence and apparent passivity. There the soul is retired totally within; it draws inward the entire strength and display of powers, and remains motionless. But beware not to fall in mental speculations; everything must stop and remain silent. For a moment nothing more is necessary, but this moment can be filled quickly by a divine consciousness.
In no way this is in detriment of exercises and inner discipline. The Son must learn how to meditate properly and his discipline must be spontaneous; otherwise prayer would be somewhat fictitious and forceful.
Discipline should be his second nature; but not rigid, dogmatic discipline, but a discipline that, being intolerant with one self becomes tolerance and understanding with others.
The Son expresses his love for the Divine Mother by venerating and respecting his superiors, and following the Regulation and method made life in him. But, despite an entirely active life in the world, he must be initiated in mysteries of the divine life, not only within, but also in his human experiences and even in his social experiences.
Inner participation preached would be a cruel gibe if it were not reflected on effective understanding of human evils; if separateness, selfishness and prevalence of the perSonal aspect over the universal aspect continued, and if at the same time, a practical and effective solution of evils of the world were not looked for.
The technique of meditation exercise technique must be perfectly handled.
Perfect technique does not imply mystical realization, but shows great mental and emotional mastery attained.
Divine realization is impossible without an absolute control of the mind and heart. A man without self-control is not truly free. Men feel themselves free because they can move to and fro, and speak and think at will. If this were the fruit of their true individual will, it would show that they are actually free; but very few beings are free to think, feel and act. Everything made and said by a man in the name of his freedom is a continuous evidence of his own ties and limitations.
A man not always wishes what he needs. His thought is free; it is determined by ceaseless change of emotions and sensations, by external circumstances, by his mood, and by environment and life.
Just a perfect inner and outer control gives knowledge about what one is or not; about what one actually wants, and about what one wishes under the influence of Nature, beings and things.
Freedom cannot be attained by satisfying at once fickle whims of one’s imagination and feeling, but by checking the power of desire in order have self-control. Thus one is aware of the inner forces, both good forces and harmful forces as well; so one’s will is handled to make of it a liberation tool. Just the mastery of body and mind makes a man fit for liberation, and the effort of man to achieve it is the ascetic method ruling over spiritual life.
Self-control is the first step on the Renunciation road. Spiritual is not possible not going out of the instinctive emotional level.
The Renunciation state manifests in the soul through total and continuous control. At the same time, the discipline of self-control, sustained by the Only Idea, leads quickly to the Renunciation state-
This self-control is basically different from nervous emotional control usually practiced, which brings easily psychophysical stressing states. It is a control exercised by the highest part of consciousness, which neither thinks nor analyses, but observes; and in observing, it knows.
Usually, control is established on the same level of inner struggles, so the soul brings about a mental and emotional conflict by identifying itself with the same forces that the soul is fighting, and it cannot go out of a duality of triumphs and failures, and of winning and losing. Renunciation to a personal triumph over oneself, Renunciation to a positive goal as realization is, transforms the volitional effort into technique, so control is a mental super-power overseeing and leading the inner and outer forces. Inner control is outer control, and it is power over universal forces.
Teaching 6: Meditation and its Apprenticeship
Exercises of meditation must be known properly by the Son.
First, he must be internally ready to pray; otherwise he shall acquire this predisposition by overcoming himself and persevering in his exercises. Second, he must learn how to apply technically the exercise. The teaching about the exercise may have two difficulties: whether a difficult expression of ideas, or verbosity.
A trend to excessive talk can denote exuberant imagination, rich and buoyant emotions, externalization habit, eagerness for domination which is hiding an inferiority complex, or simply usual vain talk.
In difficult expression case, generally one has to teach how to externalize ideas. There may be shyness or fear to ridicule, or a marked introversion stopping any externalization. But usually, even though a person knows how to tell things, he does not know what to say, and this unveils lack of inner knowledge in souls.
Difficult expression does not denote poor inner life. Behind an usual outer silence, many persons hide true spiritual treasures, even though some of them have only fanciful imagination, morbidly use to look continuously at themselves, or tirelessly to return, ceaselessly, to their own troubles, but not going out of there, that is, of their self-pity and moaning.
All these trends are expurgated by the meditation exercise, and by knowledge given by inner life. The apprenticeship may be hard or not, but at the end one gets a technique. Sometimes this technique is the last resource: it is the new façade that protects and again displaces the center of the conflict inwards, supported by the conviction of having faced it; and one is centered again on a false personality.
Some people need to be alone with the Divine Mother, regardless their exercises, in which a soul is sincere in front of the heart. It may be a discharge of insufficient spiritual sensibility that cannot be controlled by the exercise, or also true inner calls. But this may occur because the exercise is a genuine expression of the soul and of its fundamental needs. Being reduced to an organized and orderly developed thought, one does not work with the entire soul power. It is good to know the method in depth, petition modes, and how to awaken the emotional side. Even though one does have it, this is only valid for the exercise spoken, because when you pass to a mental exercise, then vagaries, poor images and emotions, dryness and fatigue may come. It is lacking a persuasive, suggestive and magnetic soul power leading this soul to true meditation.
The word creates the atmosphere for meditation according to the hue of the strength used during the exercise, until you get deep and intense feelings at will.
This exercise is a true science. To get its results, its analytic and exhaustive study is not indispensable, but is sufficient to do it methodically. But those who guide souls must know it.
Teaching 7: Meditation Exercise
The meditation exercise should undergo a gradual simplification not only as to discourse and pictures, but also as to the mode or relationship of the discourse and picture in relation to the soul.
In the beginning it is indispensable to achieve the meditation technique; otherwise efforts made during the exercise are in vain. But when one possesses the technique, we must be careful not reducing the exercise to a technique.
The exercise is a technique, but this technique must be dynamic and alive; otherwise it is a continuous repetition, not a continuous prayer.
At certain point you know perfectly what inner resources to touch in order to get the necessary stimulus for certain emotion, and as soon as one gets some higher feeling, any next effort can consist in repeating again the experience, being unaware that this experience is already ours. This is to transform asceticism into an end. It is unnecessary to live again a thing already known, when one has transformed knowledge into exhaustive experience.
The soul must try to go higher and higher; the meditation exercise has to be a free play of the soul looking for the divine realization, and the technique known by the soul must remain as a barely traced but necessary check outline.
The Son should not go to meditation as a routine, but must turn his contact with the Divine Mother more and more alive and real, being very honest with himself.
Now as one has properly established what is good to look for and what is bad to dispose of, what one has to ask and how to do so, usually these pre-concepts lay aside three needs and problems of the soul, particularly vocational states, which must arise from meditation. On the other hand, as there is an idealized ego, meditation cannot be related to the living reality of that moment of the soul, and cannot have a total effect.
Seldom real problems appear directly, such as they are. Trends, desires and feelings appear in a confused way. It is indispensable to fight and overcome imperfections, but it is good to know the bottom that usually is common to many of those trends that constitute the center of the ascetic work.
This does not mean that always there are subconscious states, which should arise by means of a deep self-analysis; the point is to get a clear vision of our own trends, not to mistake their active expressions and confuse them with the root of evil or the fundamental conflict.
Seldom souls have a number of inner problems. Each soul has its fundamental center, and when this centre stops being a conflict, every aspect apparently pressing fall away. So, in meditating, and always, in contemplating within our own soul, we must be quite clear and see properly the source of desires, particularly the source of those desires seemingly very justified, and have actually a human sense.
In human life, everything is imperfection, and Renunciation, that in men’s view is like ice and lack of love, is the only true perfection of love.
If life and the world are a school, we must pass through them in an entirely objective way, and nothing should stick to it. This attitude appears as insensibility and even incomprehensible cruelty in men’s view. So, the mind transforms the fundamental soul problem into innumerable considerations, insolvable questions, diverse worries and meaningless desires.
Meditation is an exercise leading the soul to get through confused inner states toward a meeting with itself, that is, to meet its Renunciation vocation.
If this is bound to occur as soon as possible in the Son’s lifetime, this occurrence is also good in many souls which, if they are on the road long ago, still are not actually born for a true spiritual life that is for them but that they lay aside not daring to face their Renunciation vocation.
Teaching 8: Exercise of Intellectual Meditation
A Son has to know first the exercise of meditation comprehensively. He must make of the technique, a comprehensive, rational technique.
First it is necessary to discern and charge the persuasive word with comprehensive power. So you get a comprehensive exercise, a self-comprehensive exercise. You see your inner trends and your outer obstacles as well, and you spot the transcendent goal and drive the soul powers toward spiritual realization. But the whole being does not participate. Just the comprehensive being participates; emotions-sensations are charged only with intellectual power. Intellectual meditation is a psycho-technique and its relative reach neither touches deep layers of the human soul nor lets them arise. The intellectual position is an unsurpassable barrier, as much for the ascent of the lower aspect unknown as for the descent of the higher aspect unknown.
Intellectual meditation creates a fictitious reality. It is not a natural soul attitude, but identification of the ego with a sequential consideration. It is transform the non-ego into an ego.
One should make of the ego a non-ego by simplified Renunciation.
The exercise of meditation leads to a higher state than the average, but it is a natural mental state. One should reach a super-natural mental state, which cannot be attained by intellectual exercise. So, while the Sons learn technique and different exercises, apparently they progress as to prayer, but once they finish the apprenticeship and know every method, since they do not go beyond the latter or beyond a continuous repetition, they are stagnant. What they do is quite valuable, but does not grant a transforming value.
Natural states can be transcended only by inner and outer ascetic renunciation, endurance, routine, sacrifice and disappearance. An intellectual comprehension of Renunciation leads only to certain point; it is life made Renunciation the only one that leads till the end.
In short, exercises consist in being self-conscious through self-consideration or consideration of the world. This is to go from an aspect known to an aspect unknown. Only one supernatural comprehension is worth more than years of exercises.
Meditation does not consist in going from known to unknown, but from unknown to unknown through a negative, static, receptive and quite deep soul attitude as a whole.
Teaching 9: Sensibility in Meditation
Spiritual life does not consist in sublimating feelings. So, those Sons who in meditation only are looking for higher sensibility do not go beyond certain limit and never can check their emotions.
Souls who emphasize particularly sensible obtained by ascetic exercises are weak and unable to understand that spiritual life is far beyond what they can feel or think. Wherever they are waiting for some event, they go on to wait for what they feel or dream, or for what they believe to see or hear. They are fond of psychical experiences, but usually have insufficient strength to face honestly Renunciation. They stumble and fall as soon as lose sensible stimulations.
It is important to transcend quickly any sensible externalization and be placed in what is true spiritual life.
The individual being should be transformed entirely, not only his sensibility. As a state, meditation achieves this purpose.
Spiritual meditation not only lays aside emotions, but even does not use the intellectual mental power; it makes of a partial intelligence, a total, spiritual intelligence. Many people are endowed with specific intelligences, but quite few are found with spiritual penetration and intelligence, which is the only one real for man, since it contacts him directly with transcendent and supernatural verities.
Meditation takes all human values and transforms them, and achieves a similar will by using a determining will.
A sensible state achieved by exercises of prayer can become high enough, but never is truly spiritual. It is a mental affective vibration brought about by word and image; it is a sensible soul movement, but not the soul itself.
Needs and high sensations exposed are all right, but one should go on ahead; everything expresses the mental personality of the individual being.
The exercise achieves an emotion that is produced by word, image and sensibility all together. An inverse movement is achieved by gradual simplification of the exercise; nothing can be produced by an outer movement.
Technique is used negatively. In exercises, the soul goes behind technique. In meditation is not so. One gets the control through the spiritual mind. If one says something in terms of the exercise it occurs. The word, which previously would help get the sensation, now does not act this way. Simply, the word guides the already extant simple state through the course wished. Then the word is unnecessary.
Teaching 10: Meditation and Technique of the Exercise
How can meditation on level of ordinary thoughts be differentiated from a beautiful speech that is able to arouse vivid emotions and uttered with order, method and established subject?
Technique is valuable for this: one achieves meditation by means of technique. There are two ways to practice the exercise: as technique and as meditation technique.
As technique, you need an impersonal consciousness ruling over the exercise in order to transform it into living science and dynamic empiricism.
As technique of meditation, the exercise technique becomes indispensable means to acquire gradually contemplative and more and more spiritual lofty states, eventually to make of exercise technique a contemplation technique.
On should master the meditation exercise, but not only as to its inner technique, but also as technique. To achieve it one must reach gradually such inner objective position that, more than an unfolding becomes a super-conscious state. Then one stops working with personal faculties or powers and do so simply with forces. This is the only way to know them and lead them.
Attachment is always a grade of ignorance, and while personal identification survives, true self-knowledge is impossible. This does not mean that your own soul does not matter to you; it means that you reach a transcendent position regarding yourself. Only in this way ascetic exercises become the true liberation technique. So, meditation becomes science, from the moment when you are able to know that you are he who thinks and feels.
So, the individual being can experience with his living forces and acquire an ascetic-mystical technique that perfectly empirical and objective. Of course, this science does not follow a dimensional and contingent empiricism, but a supernatural and whole empiricism.
The individual being has disappeared actually, and certain spiritual power remains only to keep the cohesion in the soul compound. This compound can be experienced perfectly by the vision of the spirit, with its own precise laws. It is the true instrument of the spirit.
From this to intellectual meditation exercises there is an enormous distance. The mistake is if one wants to make of meditation a science through the intellect, when the spiritual science is possible only through Renunciation. Intellectual meditations are mainly unreal. The intellect creates a fictitious reality and never can touch the bottom of things. Dimension should be changed; one can say that the inner dimension, the depth of the spirit, which the intellect cannot reach, should be attained.
It is only Renunciation, as extreme simplicity, that can establish a substantial contact with the simple and unique essence of knowing.
When the Son is about to meditate, he starts repeating the relative formula, and continues later with a more or less uniform invocation, in which it is only the subject that changes.
There are several methods, which vary from a simple petition repeated until the end, to the one who looks at himself in front of what he discovers, and asks what he feels necessary. But this way the exercise is reduced to be only a change in the orientation of thoughts within the same previous state to meditation. It is only the approach that has changed, and this is not meditation. Meditation must lead to higher introspection, and not be reduced to enunciation of wishes.
So, an invocation of this type should not be included in meditation; it is only a reflection about a subject or a problem, something that one can do at any moment. And what one can do continuously and naturally, is improper for meditation.
Invocation is far more than a request; it is the soul effort to raise its mental and vibratory state; mainly it is to become conscious of oneself and, from there, to reach a transcendent state of consciousness.
Invocation starts with a moment of silence. It is the necessary interval between one state and the other.
Instead of beginning with an immediate request of what you feel necessary to ask, one must go down to depths of the soul and pray from the silence. Also, an invocation must not be necessarily a request or a plea. An invocation is reduced to be so only while the soul is unable to transform its mental state through a simple inner movement. So, in an invocation it is necessary to avoid an enumeration of motives and reasons, and to avoid the speech; simply, one has to invoke.
The soul has not many needs; it does not need for this or that motive. The soul needs the Divine Mother.
Repetitions are not important. You do not avoid monotony with the art of speech; at the end, speech is dialectical monotony. The art of exposition does not avoid monotony. However beautiful may be the words, if the inner life is absent, there shall be monotony.
Fundamentally, in invocation you must learn how to change the tonic of the thought, the mental state. This is why it is so important that meditation may be the first action of the day, before the mind follows the usual rhythm of its ideas. Later, by practice, you shall be enabled to achieve this change at any place and moment.
This mental change mainly consists in a stop or inversion.
It is necessary to stop the current of usual thoughts, to keep quiet; in certain sense, it is to stay motionless. As the current of thought cannot stop, inverts its movement and takes an inner dimension.
Then invocation begins. Now the mind does not speak, because only can reflect on soul problems, but the soul voice, the inner voice of the individual being does speak. So an invocation gains power and spiritual depth, and the subject of meditation is formulated and posed really and directly.
A backward survey, rightly made, produces naturally this inversion of movement, and the change of dimension is expressed when one is asleep.
This ability in meditation produces a change in the state of consciousness, from a usual state to other state that is deeper and spiritual.
When one achieves this, also we achieve the exercise; the exercise of meditation becomes meditation.
Teaching 12: Imaginative Picture
In affective meditation one traces an imaginative picture, but not everybody can or must reach a picture of the same type.
Certain souls see everything through some image, and others are unable to make any image. Some souls, despite all their intelligence, even cannot understand the most elemental things if they do not see them, but once they see them, they understand quickly and definitely. In the same way they cannot awaken their emotions but through an objective picture, clear, full of life and color, which produces quick and deep effects.
Certain souls cannot trace images or get an abstraction through a symbol, but can easily grasp directly an abstraction. Even though they know properly what they want to represent, their pictures are rather subjective than objective. It is rather a feeling than a vision.
In the former, the excessive imagination richness must be cared. In the latter, one must avoid a fruitless and tiring exercise.
Certain beings seem completely insensible in front of outer objective pictures. This does not mean they are unable to have emotions, but they need stimuli of another kind. Perhaps in these cases pictures of another type may give results, according to a particular trend; memory of certain event of the day or life, an undetermined inner feeling, an inner heat, a flame in the heart, a light around them, the intuition of a presence, to be aware of being there.
Sometimes one does not respond to visual images, but responds to hearing or tact images: to be touched; to hear a voice.
Also, the imaginative picture must be clear, simple and direct. Many details and qualifications dilute the picture, transforming it into a painting; it falls away as stimulus.
The effect has to be direct; when you make it through a consideration, it loses strength.
Also you can make pictures by opposition; if it is properly made, its effect is direct.
To say that the picture has to be clear does not mean a clear vision, which sometimes impossible, but only one idea. Certain persons, with little objective imagination never shall get an image, but certainly they shall get a picture, the fittest picture for them.
Abstract undetermined images permit a more free and spiritual flight of the soul.
Sensations are a direct effect of the imaginative picture. Not always it is possible to get intense emotions, and this is not the purpose of the exercise, but one must aim at an emotional-mental state that is gradually purer and higher.
The intensity of sensations achieved is consistent with the type of sensibility of every soul, but depends always directly on the imaginative picture.
An imaginative picture is generally objective, even though he who meditates participates in it. For instance, in a meditation on the Veil of Ahehia, one sees oneself receiving the blessing “I see that I receive the blessing; I enjoy it”. This bliss is bliss by consideration, not by participation. Then it cannot be genuinely a sensation formed by the intellect.
It happens this way: “I see that I receive the blessing; I know what a blessing is and I know how much good my soul takes of it. My thanks for being able to receive a blessing; so I am happy; I enjoy it”.
Of course, here there is no reasoning, but consideration exists, though is almost instantaneous. Even though later one may say the soul expands by the blessing or in the blessing, this is nothing more than a way to reflect. One knows that actually one “should” enjoy, expand and live this blessing.
Sensation is mistaken for consideration of sensation. The same occurs in purgative meditations: “I see that I have a bad feeling; I abhor it”. But this abhorrence is not such; it is to reason that this is not a good feeling, that is something bad and harmful, which one “should” detest. This means that the picture has been presented to be considered, but was not actually a total picture.
Sensitive effects can quickly occur and be deeper if there is no duality in the picture: “I receive the blessing” instead of “I see that I receive it”; and one must try to perceive, penetrate, feel in cells and heart, this divine power coming from the soul. When you are able to perceive it, bliss comes by itself, because is expansion achieved by divine contact.
In the picture of abhorrence, one should see not only a bad attitude, but also strive at the same time to become conscious of darkness, ignorance and separation from God, which this means. Instead of only seeing, you perceive this action throughout your being; you begin to know how terrible the conscious state of separateness, evil and sorrow is; and how, when you do not seek it, along with the divine state of good and happiness, your abhorrence includes not only your consideration but also your whole being.
Usually, quite vivid sensations become the most superficial; deepest sensations and more real sensations require more silence. The “totality” of the experience is not depending upon the intensity marked by a suggestive word, but upon the identification between subject and object, which gives total knowledge of the state contemplated. So, meditation becomes true discovery, and instead of being repeated experience, is a dynamic experience.
An imaginative picture of this kind depends on individual characteristics. Emotional persons need short pictures, without details. One must avoid sensations in the picture, look for objectivity, not to be diluted in many descriptive words, and not bring about exaggerated intensity or too many emotional hues. One should look for a simple, unique sensation, and gain depth.
Many people get sensations with difficulty by lack of imagination to make the picture. Generally, when they say, “I see”, they do not see. They make verbal pictures, and get verbal sensations. They should aim at subjective pictures, first passing through anecdotal pictures of their most marked experiences.
Very intellectual persons must avoid abstractions and reasoning. To them, it is convenient an almost childish simplicity in pictures, which if possible should be entirely objective and descriptive. Once the intellect is purified like that, they can pass to subjective pictures, which first are sensible, and later more abstract.
Generally one notices a cut in the exercise when we reach the purposes. Sensibility is increasing its tone until its culmination as a unique emotion, but when one should make the will to continue in certain direction, we lose easily the state of meditation. It is like a quick descent to the plane of human achievements.
So, one loses the chance to animate a purpose with a super-natural power. The power is there at soul’s disposal, but it is not used.
Also here, by this cut, there is a duality between meditation and purposes, though in themselves they can be excellent, they are not natural outcome of the practical exercise; all the energetic force, moved by the invocation, picture and sensation, falls away.
Meditation is unity, even as exercise. It is not arbitrary unity, but a breakdown of the natural stimulus-reaction mechanism in the human being. Instead of reacting arbitrarily in an uncontrolled way, one should reach an automatic reaction lead beforehand. To achieve it, answers must pass through the spiritual consciousness of being. Also, the method one follows permits the creation of the integral power that the soul needs to transcend and reach a higher state of consciousness. One cannot expect natural energies arising spontaneously: one stimulates, controls and leads their transformation into natural forces, or the production of super-natural effects and of a divine result. In the exercise of meditation, the art of purposes consists in canalizing the spiritual power not touching it, that is to say, not losing in the application of will the expansive consciousness so far achieved. Internally, its expression is a change of hue in the same state of consciousness, and the inner spiritual clarity becomes pure energy shaped in vital, integral activities, instead of being limited to mere actions of the individual being.
Fundamentally, the vital attitude of the individual must change. As soon as this is achieved, his actions are consistent and his outer change is spontaneous.
Teaching 15: Difficulties in Persevering Meditation
Despite recommendations of their Spiritual Directors, certain Sons are not constant in their practical exercises of meditation. Laying aside indolence, which is a common cause of this carelessness, there are other motives leading to abandon the exercise.
In the beginning, Sons count on an inner power non-transmuted, and they lose it because of uncontrolled passions. But always a rest of power remains and manifests itself as nervous energy, which wears away mind and body and exhausts the nervous system. It is expressed by a usual excitation, so usual that seems to be normal.
In meditation, this excitation is the first obstacle to overcome. Sometimes meditation is a colored expression of this state, and on other occasions this power is sufficiently powerful to break a habit, since it is necessary to spend it through physical and material discharge.
Meditation reinforces the power by subliming it, and sometimes this becomes almost intolerable to a nervous system used to the pseudo-alleviation of a continuous expense. It is as if one had pins in the body or mind. The mind is not calmed down and concentration seems almost impossible. One starts thinking we are wasting time, and as justification, we qualify all inner prayer and ascetic practices as ineffective; one denies what we cannot achieve or is beyond a comprehension weakened by inner unbalance and lack of mental control. Then one tries to escape by means of a direct action, by spending violently an energy lost in the void of a sterile work. Few souls have clear and free discernment; generally, chemical-physiological causes determine changes of ideals.
Sometimes one abandons the exercise of meditation when a considerable part of the mystical path has been traveled, at the point of quiet prayer or because of spiritual dryness.
Never stop practicing the exercise of meditation, because it is the only efficient support on which you count when sensible illusions fall away. And when one abandons it, it is more difficult to return to it, much more than our efforts to create first the habit.
Teaching 16: Resurrection of Hes
If concentration is necessary in every exercise, in meditating on the Resurrection of Hes, you need to achieve a complete abstraction from the environment; there must take place a true surrender to meditation. You get this concentration through invocation.
Here the steps are only an orientation; but there is a technique, and in this meditation you can measure where you are able to arrive with technique during the exercise.
Now it is not only an objective technique, but also an inner technique on management of emotions, sensibility and inner states, through super-consciousness hovering, as it were, over the entire inner process, but hardly manifested, indispensably, to give sense to the exercise.
In this subject, you can ascertain how a technique can lead to the experience of a super-natural state.
The imaginative picture is indirect. Attention should not aim at the image, but at the direction of the image. The image should be suggested instead of being presented steadily, as you do with other subjects of meditation.
Images: the tomb of the Divine Mother, the black and square stone. For less imaginative persons, images that make intuit the potential aspect, as the moment before dawn, a seed... et cetera. These pictures are not very effective, but need intellectual interpretation to be placed in meditation.
There are more direct pictures, for instance, a dark and undefined feeling of her non-visualized Presence, until you get a spiritual identification with the loftiest expression of the Divine Mother.
Meditation also can be achieved through a picture of successive negations of senses, not to see, not to feel, not to hear... et cetera. It is not difficult to get this if at the same time your attention is concentrated on looking for the divine presence non-visualized or perceived in a sensible form. It is as if you were moving ahead in the dark with your arms stretched but finding nothing, and a time knowing it is there, until the moment of your own transformation in that Divine Presence.
In the awakening of sensations there is an upward graduation, while the steps of meditation succeed without break in continuity. You see; you foresee; you become sensation; and a sensation that is you, expands to embrace everything
In this meditation, discursive intellection is out of question; you should achieve a higher mental state than the intellectual state and it is impossible to get it through discursive intellect.
Active pictures give active sensations that are unfit for this meditation. You should make passive negative pictures, until you achieve a subjective picture, get a non-image that immobilizes the comprehensive mind, and leave the soul free before the Divine.
Meditation on the Resurrection of Hes acquires sense only through passive exercise with subjective image.
Now in subjective states you cannot experience external emotions, and everything becomes a super-comprehension.
Since meditations on illuminative subjects are more difficult than the exercise of purgative subjects, many times there is a trend to let the beginners to remain in these subjects too long. It is a mistake; it is true that you should purify your sensibility, but at the same time you should induce loving meditations, which lead the soul to mystical states.
CONTENTS:
Teaching 1: Ascetic Prayer
Teaching 2: Discriminative Asceticism
Teaching 3:
The Divine Goal
Teaching 4: Continuous Asceticism
Teaching 5: Self-control
Teaching 6: Meditation and its Apprenticeship
Teaching 7: Meditation Exercise
Teaching 8: Exercise of Intellectual Meditation
Teaching 9: Sensibility in Meditation
Teaching 10: Meditation and Technique of the Exercise
Teaching 11: Invocation
Teaching 12: Imaginative Picture
Teaching 13: Sensations
Teaching 14: Purposes
Teaching 15: Difficulties in Persevering Meditation
Teaching 16: Resurrection of Hes
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