Course V - Teaching 11: Unique Value of Renunciation

Renunciation disposes of established values and at a time creates new values.
If a being abandons entirely the world and dies to the world it is because he did not find in the world a solution of his inner problem before Humanity and the Universe, and because moral of men did not satisfy his soul and his inner life. Then, through his renunciation, this being declares his faith and protests against any established value and, through this heroic act of abandonment of the world and renunciation, he is worthy of new values.
First of all, Renunciation is Truth; but this Truth –which you can glimpse in the heroic act of leaving everything behind– does not remove ignorance from a person, because ignorance is absolute evil of everybody, and the cause of every death and pain. Only the right way of living, thinking and acting will make man glimpse little by little that Truth and live in this intuited Truth through his act of renunciation, detachment and selflessness. Ignorance of man is so intimately united with him in such a way that apparently becomes his very life, because man brings with himself, as the result of his past lives, not only all chances, but also all deficiencies.
It is very likely that a person may know the Truth, but he does not know how to use and manage these internal powers. Because of his limited constitution and psyche, he gets used to see things in certain way; still he is an imperfect device. Here is the first cause of ignorance in the world. Also, man knows all things in a limited and partial way, and this limitation and partiality makes him act continuously as if that were the Truth, with continuous incorrect acts produced by ignorance; and the greatest ignorance is to persist in his errors, in his relative truth; because he believes that he knows the Truth, but does not possess it totally and is not in the Truth. This reflects only illusory acts that are not perfect and integral. Only the Truth can give knowledge to man, even though his knowledge about his place in the world, and his dependence on the Universe and on his works and actions was momentarily ideal. In short: the Truth will make him know that he is an integral and universal being. Every limited, specialized and dependent thing contains only partially the Truth, and a partial truth is always ignorance.
But Renunciation grants not only this good, that is, the Truth, but also an inclination of the soul to receive the Truth. Man continuously gets the Truth –Teaching is like an ever-flowing becoming–; but the Truth attains him entirely darkened and distorted because he lives in the limitation of the Teaching. Man should go out of himself and look at the immense Universe –the becoming is the only source of all created things–, and then, at once, his viewpoint will be different; he should break ties of his selfishness and of believing that he is the only object in the existence, and at once his prospect of knowledge will change. This is basic, and can be achieved only by Renunciation, and stopping for a while on the slope toward the abyss, he should say: “No, my way is different”. This moment, this deadlock is enough to know what one is and which are our chances for the future; we must open the window of the soul. This primordial act makes you fit to receive the Teaching. This way, just through detachment, indifference and abandonment of your own personal creatures, you contact the Teaching and the Truth.
So The Teaching enters your mind and instructs your heart. Suddenly, your way of living and being changes entirely.
But this everlasting and divine teaching, flowing to all men of goodwill ready to get it, is given to the Sons of Cafh to be exclusively understood and possessed by them. That is, the Teaching is not only for the Son, but also he has a characteristic inclination to get it: not to receive a false teaching filtered through attachment and ignorance but to receive the Teaching that attains those souls of goodwill.
One of the great gifts of Renunciation is the possibility of receiving the whole Truth. Sometimes we are not clear when we state that Sponsored and Lonely Beings receive a portion, and that Ordained Sons receive the whole Teaching. This is an allegory of the truth, because whoever did not renounce and is not widely and freely prepared and detached from everything, cannot receive the Teaching. He receives it, but filtered. Also this can happen to the Sons: it is likely that they receive it, but this depends upon them, on how inclined is their heart and psyche, and upon their entire readiness.
You cannot receive the Teaching if a part of yourself is continuously closed; you must renounce entirely to everything; only then the Teaching is integral. Here is the meaning of the Teaching.
By this inclination, which is entirely opposite to inclinations of worldly men, the Divine Teaching of all times and of all great masters and instructors can attain the Son. It is the voice of the Masters, the voice of the hereafter. This lofty Divine Teaching –which should open the mind of the Son for any accessible knowledge– becomes his inheritance, his good and his possession. It will attain him with no veils, and none will hid it, as soon as he removes any internal veil and adherence, and becomes, like a bare table, an entirely simple soul, with no compounds.
This divine teaching also has been imparted to Cafh as a legacy. When someone speaks of teachings of the Holy Masters, the Sons seem that they are written papers. The Teaching of the Masters is imparted and arrives from very distant times. The Masters always imparted the Teaching to those who wanted to receive it. Certain fragments can be found in holy texts, which men transformed into idols; the true teachings of the Masters are written on these books: Vedas, Upanishads, and the Bible; and of course, also the Sons of Cafh have taken their legacy.
Then the main basis of teachings is the universal teaching as a whole, which men of goodwill have received. This does not mean that these teachings have to be received in an absolute way; they are only truths transformed into words, and man should take them and meditate, to be again in the presence of God and to find the true meaning that they represent. Teachings contained in Cafh’s texts are not dogma like in any religion and philosophy, but teaching of great beings; the Son must consider and internalize them. In short: it is the universal teaching, first and true. Also these teachings are Cafh’s capital and heritage, because it has been observed that in the Sons there is a tendency to be unable to distinguish the teachings.
Here is the mistake: there are many comparative teachings that you may find in great religions, and some people believe that those teachings are only of Cafh. But this is not so: those teachings are of all men; a philosophy says it in a way and a religion in other way, depending on the viewpoint of men. Cafh explains it in its characteristic way in accordance with writings of Cafh’s Masters.
But besides this universal teaching, Cafh possesses its individual teaching, which Masters exclusively give to the Sons; that is, something apart from the Universal Teaching. Many Sons mix written teachings and mistake them for books that they have read, and then, when they explain the Teaching, say: “The Teaching says so and so, but I have read in such a book…”, and mix up their ideas. The Sons of Cafh must know the great teachings, but later it is proper to define them. So, the Son should say: “In general, I must define the universal teachings and keep them in mind with no changes”.
Like religions and philosophies, in every teaching there are sediments of truth, but later, man mixes all up, and everything becomes particular. All religions are particular because every one says: “I possess the truth”, when Teaching and Truth are only one. Then, none of them is universal. There is no universal religion known to all men; if those religions were universal, they would contain the entire Teaching, would know it as a whole, and would give it to the races in accordance with their progress and chances.
So, besides the universal teaching, Teaching of Cafh is imparted to the Son in detail, because he needs this Truth. Always it occurs like this: certain men take their Truth, and later want to impose it on all. No. This truth may be useless in contact with other beings in the world.
Teachings are unclassified, and none says to the Son: “This is a universal teaching, and this is a direct teaching addressed to the Sons of Cafh”, and then ideas are mixed up. They do not distinguish when it is for all and when it is for them. They must be fundamentally established in the latter to know the universal truths, which the Son will not learn from Blavatsky, Schopenhauer and materialists, but just through Cafh’s Teaching because the Masters believe that this is within the reach and chance of the Sons. And there is no other chance or possibility. It is continually given to the Sons.
The Divine Monitor is a Master of Cafh, whose mission, thirty years from now, is to give the Teaching to the Sons of America. This Teaching is condensed on certain Teachings of Cafh: necessary mystical truths for developing the Sons of Cafh since the moment they enter the Path until their realization. They are not only determined in prompt copies on the teaching, but on all Sons of Cafh. These Sons have received them through Superiors, Orators, and Instructors. These Teachings are particularly in the Sons because even though the Teaching is imparted to the group, it is essentially destined to the soul. So, every Son must adapt it to his conditions.
The Universal Truths must be adapted to every soul; otherwise they are not the Truth, but that of a third person; hence you may understand the extraordinary meaning of Cafh, which does not address to a group of people, but individually to every soul.
If Sons made a collective work, their direction would be wrong because Cafh recognizes that the only truth and dogma is to go directly to the soul to meet their needs in accordance with its ability. How unhappy is that being that depends upon others to act and behave, when everything is prepared for him. On earth there is no other Son of Cafh than the Son, and he is responsible for Cafh as a whole. Every one is as follows: his responsibility as Superior is unique, all Sons depend on him: he is the last that has been Ordained and the new graft; everything rests on him, everything is in his soul; he has to be the responsible being, the victim. He is halfway there; the Teaching is for him; and he is entirely responsible.
Cafh is work of souls. Although the entire world disappears and only one remains, all would be present, none would be dead, and all would be in that Son; the whole responsibility of Cafh and of the Work in the world would be condensed in him and on his shoulders. You should not forget this.
The Son must instruct individually, one by one. That is why Superiors say: “Where there is instruction, you save souls, not when you teach, but when you guide spiritually. There you make the true work of communication between the Teaching of the Masters and the soul”. But this Teaching exists even in prompt copies, in the harmonious body of certain universal teachings and in the teaching imparted to the Sons of Cafh.
The teachings destined to the Sons of Cafh already have been imparted. The cycle of teaching is already complete. But still there is a subtler and more intimate teaching: the teaching received from the Masters that every one imparts. There is the Universal Teaching imparted to the Sons of Cafh and the teaching of the Son, his own teaching, which is the fruit of his soul and his contact with the Teaching revealed to him by the Masters: and even this Teaching must be transmitted. Every Son of Cafh is source of truth and teaching.
So, we can say that there are: 1) A Universal Teaching; 2) A teaching imparted to the Sons by the holy Masters, which they preserve; and 3) The teaching imparted by Superiors and Instructors. The latter is orally imparted –its respective lessons depend upon every Son–; but this is the Teaching, the Only Truth not based on a dogma but on the Truth of all times, and the Sons possessed it here by means of their Brother and Protector: the Monitor.
Later there is the teaching imparted by souls that already realized the Divine Mother and traveled through the spiritual way to Renunciation.
The Spiritual teaching received by the Instructor is universal, and the only one defined by certain school. We may call eclectic to a teaching that is not theistic, but admits a fundamental principle of the universe. It is not absolutistic because absolutism leads to the nothing or to materialism: for instance, if you say, the universe is the only existence, so all the rest is illusory. Then, if everything is non-existent and an absolute Absoluteness, and what man knows is only illusion, this illusion leads to know only by means of our senses, that is, through the material part. Then it lacks an ideal support, a divine support. Here is a materialistic doctrine. The fundamental theory of Cafh is that men cannot define the Universal Absoluteness; its definition would entail to admit the most brutal materialism: man knows it, but is not enabled to define it; man cannot be materialistic or idealistic, because he recognizes the universe as a divine, absolute and cosmic principle, which condenses all the energy of the universe: spirit, mind and matter.
You can never be materialistic when you are a creational and fundamental point of energy. Then you may be in tune with all teachings of the world: spiritual, idealistic and materialistic because Cafh stays in the mean point of observation.
These teachings were imparted to the Son. Now, relative teachings as a Son were fundamental in Cafh: those of Ired, of the cosmic movement, and of relationship and dependence of man on the Universe in a sense historical, psychological and ethical: man is a being and becomes from a centre that is his own soul: the spirit. Here is his being and his knowledge depends on it. This is not the only Universe; his freewill corresponds to a magnetic field connected with the entire Universe. Relationship of life in the Cosmos determines it externally. He gets the keys to the future by means of that historical knowledge united with psychological possibilities of man.
But Cafh in America needed an especial teaching adapted to the temperament of those who would receive it. A Divine Master imparted and engraved these teachings in the mind and heart of those who must give them; the Monitor was this Divine Master who imparted them to a group of souls; it does not matter if this souls did not understand them later: He imparted them and said which truths adapted to the Sons enable them to come in contact with the universe; he explained to them in detail his viewpoint about sciences.
Now we need the Teaching of the Cafh’s Masters, of those Founders that started the Cafh’s Work in America. These teachings are not registered; but even in this case, they remain in those souls who knew and heard them. How many times the Sons received a teaching and understood it in certain way by means of a glance or reading, and later, these Masters explained by means of a glance how the meaning of that teaching is entirely different and that was dead letter. Through the Masters, they learnt to receive the true Teaching.
Here is the Mission of the Master: to impede the letter to die and to maintain it ever living and with an individual sense for every one of those beings that receives this teaching and must impart it tomorrow.
The Son must renounce totally because every day he may miss his occasion to receive the direct teaching, and later, someday, the cycle concludes; this occurred not only with the universal teaching, but also with the imparted teaching of Cafh whose cycle ended. The cycle of the individual teaching will finish, and those Sons destined to this teaching cannot receive it if their renunciation is not total and their personality still occupies much room in their souls.
The quicker the river flows, the faster the waterfall rushes. The Teaching is imparted every instant, but many times people do not know how to take it because there is too much personality and darkness in the soul, and the mind is clogged. Oh Sons, hurry up, live this Teaching! How many treasures God scatters, how many teachings come to the souls! One may say these Sons came in the cycle of the Masters of Cafh, at the moment of triumph of Cafh, when they receive the direct teaching from the Masters; but beware because tomorrow you may repent because you did not receive the total Teaching, because your mind was full of worldly things and because your Vow of Renunciation had not be taken totally to the full.
Consecrated souls really need this teaching. They are the Sons of the second hour: the solemn hour when ideas come true; but as soon as this hour passes, they have to transmit a true idea or a wrong idea, like all men do, because they will not have Teaching if they are not totally detached.
Every one of them is responsible for the Truth, for Cafh and for the Teaching that he has to transmit. Cafh’s Teaching is from soul to soul, from Master to disciple. A Son never must say: “If I forget something, my companion surely knows”. The Teaching is great and solemn, and its contact takes place in your treat with your Superiors, during the break, every instant, but there is only one way to receive it: by emptying your soul, and through a true and open Renunciation.
Souls: cut once and for all your callosities, and be great and infinite souls to fulfill the Divine Mission.
No matter if men think you cowardly and ignorant people as long as your grace is to transmit them the only truth, fundamental and positive! Here is the mission of Renunciation: you must be concrete and pure, get everything from the innermost depths of your being, and transmit this Teaching to all such as it was received.