Course V - Teaching 9: Liberating Automatism of Renunciation

Renunciation kills man for man to live.
When men of the world observe the souls, their expressions are harsh. How many times we hear about generous people who passed away: “So it is easy to go to God, by leaving everything behind. It is more useful to stay in the world facing life than leaving everything behind. Life is made to achieve it, not to suppress it.
All these are words of the world, but beings that have renounced ask them at their deathbed: “And what are you doing? Perchance are you alive?” So it is good that the Sons that passed away may return to the world to see if those people are alive.
The man of the world, this man that is alive, this incarnate spirit that believes that the earth belongs to him and that can manage everything, is really dead. The Son can properly raise their sight to heaven, and cry: “Happy death because you gave me life, you removed everything that for men is life, and granted to me life of spirit, soul and clarity!”
Men are dead and sound asleep; they are walking automatons. Perchance is this a comparison or a metaphor? No, it is a great reality. You may stay amid a multitude or among several men together to realize that this is true. If you observe people by the street, you see them absentminded and far from everything; if someone came, he could strike their head and they would not realize it. Worries, passions and any internal movement are expressed in them. They are true automatons. If someone raises a finger, it is as if he had touched a spring in all of them; then all start assembling round him. They are like tiny ants following the track of the first ant.
Men are automatons because they do not live the life of the spirit like devotion but like reality: they have no self-control and are unable to see themselves from the summit of their higher personality. They think according to the mind that is operating in them at that moment: instinctive mind, rational mind, emotional mind, and so on. They do not live in their totality; always there are certain vibrations of compounds of the soul, which operate in man. One can say that man is stillborn and lives dead; and very few times he truly possesses life and what he is. In short: what does life grants to man?: his instincts, passions, shocks, reactions and actions. It is as if he was a half-blind person and we should dazzle him to produce a reaction.
When a person says a sentence or a word, he acquires knowledge, and everybody repeats it. The expression of an individual thought is absent; there are general and collective thoughts. Even before, though man was ever a slave of his several minds, there was a moment when the intellectual mind had a glimpse. But now, why should he think of if there is someone thinking of him? It is easy to memorize, repeat, analyze, acquire knowledge and express it in accordance with what another person left. In short, certainly one lives in the world of name and form, and only this impresses man. Assessments determine things: name; and these things are differentiated by size and aspect: form. Here is the life of man.
Man makes the difference by name and form, and says: this is a table, et cetera. But this separation, that is so illusory and at the same time necessary and ideal to classify things, does not make him to think: if I remove the glass from a watch, and later its hands, I take apart the machine, and then, where is the watch? Just I have pieces. If I take and melt them down, just one element remains, and if this element is melted down again, then there is just only one substance. But for man, a watch is a bell, and he does not possess the basic idea that all these elements represent an absolute element.
This separation, by which you believe that you are such or such thing, makes emerge the great human selfishness; men live there grabbing a rope, but do not realize that there is a power pulling on the right and left of that rope, and when this rope is broken, man falls in his abyss of misery. He believes that there is something that can support his personality, but this something belongs to him and is his selfishness. This is so false and illusory that is the cause of evil in the world. They do not live; they live an illusion, possess selfishness and believe that they are separate beings from Humanity, and because this is not so, they come back to wars and destruction.
Why do wars continuously repeat? Why tomorrow there will be another war, more a more devastating? Because man only thinks about defending his possessions; he believes that he is safe and sound if his salvation depends upon escaping toward a place where there is no war. But this so illusory thought is like a gap opened in himself because in reality man is a whole, and any suffering of other has repercussion on him; and if there is a war, he must take part in it. If he believes that he does not take part, then he is the silliest person in the world; his selfishness makes him believe that he is safe and sound. Even at the bottom of earth there is a power and a current that unite him with every being in the world and with every created thing. Here is the only truth that men refuse to recognize; they live and act according to expressions of their minds. They think through their medulla, they live in a medullar way, according to impulses of an instinctive part of the body, but in fact they do not live.
It is necessary to die in order to live, and to realize that one is not an ego as personality but an expanding individuality united with the universe.
How joyful death is that of Renunciation that gives life, true and unique life, life of the Universe and expansion.
Men brand as cowards those people who renounced. They say: “They are useless persons for society, they fear to live and fall in temptation, and to lack strength to endure miseries of the world. Also, what do these people make? Nothing; they are parasites, entirely useless persons”. At a time, we may ask this society that calls useless people to consecrated souls, what are they doing and what is the work that they are making. Perchance, do great works of the world, those of science –because it is science that brings breakthroughs and transformations– are made by men of the world? If you observe a little, you can see that none eludes this law living in the world; great beings that make something escape from the world, and are enemies of society, misanthropes. For instance, as an exemplar of them, Einstein was a true Ordained Son, a man without the least sense of society, a well-known man that, obliged to go to a party, forgot to wear evening dress and appeared in pajamas. In his childhood, all believed that he was silly because the escaped of other children. When is a wise man silly to the world? Life of this man is wonderful: his marriage is that of an Ordained Son. The first time he marries a work-mate because she helps and assists him. The second time because she assists him in his disease. In this man there is nothing worldly.
But those who live in the vale are parasites that say, “I do this or that”, but just live by what other gave them with their own sacrifice. All people who to a certain extent excel in the world do not socialize: they escape from the world and world horrifies them. Which are great men today? Film actors or actresses, football players and boxing champions: here are great men produced by society.
They do not produce because a being not truly alive and unable to rise over their minds and to control the latter can do nothing for Humanity. Also, history proves that all great breakthroughs came from convents, cloisters, retreats, ashrams of India and monasteries of Tibet. Even the greatest man in last times, Gandhi, was an Ordained Son: as soon as he finished a public lecture, he ran and hid in his family monastery, in his community. It is proper to compare what the world is doing and what an Ordained Soul substantially does.
The quite important thing is to know that a being that escaped from the world, renounced or died, did not lose anything at all of what he believed that he would lose. He left everything: status, family, society and all those things that man calls happiness of expanded life and of home, and even goods that the world can provide, but, perchance did he lose anything, perhaps his personality? Apparently, life of the Son is bondage. How many people say: “It is a life of obedience, they do not marry and cannot go anywhere; they only atrophy their will, and are guided souls”. But these men that say this are those who are unable to live if they do not smoke, drink and indulge his secret vice freely: they are victims of horse races, gambling, anything. They are free: “their feet are free”.
It is important to know that as soon as you leave all, mind, heart and will, and in fact you believe that you left all behind, you find all, because you transmuted your personality, and selfishness became “egoentia”.
Man is a whole, a compound, not perfectly simple and pure. If he were perfect simplicity, purity and perfection, he would be unable to possess karma, and would be united with God.
Man is a compound. The human being acquired experience by developing ideas since God created all things, but this experience and these pains occurred every time because those ideas brought more complications.
Man changes in many ways because he changes continuously: when he is hungry, his stomach thinks; when is full of pride and vanity, his throat thinks; and when is moved by love and feelings, his cerebral mind thinks. But these are compounds. Man does not think by making use of the only and divine mind, which manages everything. No physician could say what the pineal gland is. But the pure mind is located therein. The purest emotional mind is located in the most secret part of the heart. This cerebral mind and this emotional mind respond to the true –directrix– mind, formed by so subtle atoms still unknown to man; but this is the mind that leads all, is on the arena of the cosmic power and gives a little of light.
A man, to be such, must make use of his mind to think, and also must go up and out, and reflect: “But, why do not I try to go out of myself and look at myself for a while, to see what I am thinking now and what I answer to this? For instance, why do I experience now this sudden change of mind or these variable emotions? For instance, why hunger or tiredness is affecting me in such a way that I forget all? This is “egoentia”. A person who dies in relation to the world possesses true life: by his renunciation to his silly, personal and vicious will, man acquires power to think little by little and to see himself by means of his directrix mind.
Also the Son aims at this life of the spirit because one still acts as an automaton, but his continuous effort –here is a gift of Renunciation– feels obliged to wake up, to go out of himself, to reason and to think by means of that beautiful mind. It is good to try this during the day and to observe oneself. Say: “What am I thinking now? What mind acts at this moment: that of my stomach or that of my feet? Why must I do what this mind tells, if I do not know it: if it calls me, and I dance and follow its rhythm, but I do not know it?” This is “egoentia”: you know yourself, you look at yourself, and you control yourself continuously. Then, the being acquires another self.
If you read Sister Isabel of the Trinity, perhaps you think: “This blessed nun is a great saint, but she speaks continuously of her spiritual life and refers to her actions before God. She never names Humanity; and if she speaks of someone else, it is in relation to her affection for that person. Everything disappears; it is as if her life were reduced to her person” But it is not so. She ascends to the higher self through this consideration of herself.
A person kills the ego, but does not acquire control but through his true self. For instance, man is surrounded by air, and breathes in with his lungs, but is not aware of his transmutation. If he knew the point where air becomes “his” air –the critical point– then he would know the secret of breathing. At this moment, the soul recognizes the Eternity.
You cannot jump into the Eternity as if you jumped to the void because then this would be annihilation, as many that practice Buddhism believe. Being goes up to his higher self, but his divine personality is recognized in his truth. Man needs to kill his ego and to be settled on his higher consciousness.
He should not concentrate his will on an infinite space: this is to get lost. He must concentrate on this divine point, on the spirit, on “egoentia”, and from there he can be established to look at its own nature and at the Universe. Over there is the divine gift of self-control.
Timetable, obedience, Vows and observance help to control his mind and to go out of the lower minds, living in that egocentric point. He can acquire a habit to remain there and not to get lost in different minds, he should take a self-photograph, but man never does this. For instance: if he makes a work, he imagines it in certain way, but this is not his real image. I he looks at himself reflected on the water, he sees that he is not as he had imagined. Even though he takes a photograph, he believed that he was different. It is good to say to oneself, when it is easy to lose our self-consciousness, when we are out of work and when we are eating: “Now I will take a mental photograph to see what part I am playing”. This is a very useful and interesting exercise. You feel a temptation, you take your self-photograph, and then you file it in your subconscious. Your photography should not be real, and you should not look at yourself like a pretty person: you must take a photograph of your ugly points, and this is the photograph that you have to file; and this is the photography that worldly men see. Your can tell about yourself what you say about the photograph of others. It is good to see ourselves on the mirror of the clothes shop to see how we are actually. And when your mind wants to imagine what is not, you should say: “I know you well”, and return to your royal throne. That is why you are dead for the world, you stay there, and you control all from there.
“Sit down, oh Queen, at the right of the King, on the throne, and see all these multicolored gowns presented to you as wedding gifts.” Minds are multicolored gowns, and the spirit is the point where the King is located.
The soul is destined to become liberated and out of the tremendous tangle of minds. We are told that the future race shall acquire “egoentia”, this unique concept related to the existence of being.
Men believe that they are doing something and are doing nothing; they exist, but rather respond to the impulse of collective karma. The Aryan race is that of pairs of opposites, and they launch it from one point to the other, but expecting that this incipient new race may bring the light of truth to beings.
Mystical death leads to true life, which does not start or end up, and has no death or birth. Our hope for this new race to be so, but while beings do not renounce, how can they awaken to a true life?
Today there is a treatment for mental diseases that responds to our teachings: the electric shock. For those people who have lost the light of reason, an electric shock, that is, a terrific astral blow, brings them back to a normal sense of existing things. It would be like a shock that must be applied to awaken all beings and to return them to life. Shocks or blows awaken those who did not renounce. All beings in the world need some few shocks.
These are not punishments of God and do not mean that God is cruel; they are nothing more than the fruit of karma, the fruit of misery; and cosmic forces must act on Humanity by means of blows to open its eyes.
The new race already began, but Humanity lives in mental darkness. And now how will Humanity wake up?: by divine knowledge, by Maitreya’s grace or by war devastating the earth? The Son wonders about this every day, and this is the torment of spiritual masters that live on the earth; here is the question that blows the heart of those souls that have to educate Humanity: What will be the blow destined to these sleepy and blind men? What can we do to attenuate this tremendous and awful blow? A future war will be terrific; in some few months, everything will be destroyed, whether by war or by collective despair and psychosis. May we do something to attenuate it? Even though Divine Providence does not allow to go beyond Maitreya’s veil, we know that the more souls Renounce and live the life of the spirit, the more help can be given to save the world.
What do the souls expect to transform their Vows into a convincing and awakening truth, why not through self-offering? Perchance still do not they possess sufficient spiritual power to lead many souls into monasteries, to take them away from the world and follow whatever religion, for their offering and Ordination, and to awaken many Sons to the light in order to follow perseveringly the path of Renunciation? Because today nothing can stop the destruction; and if people knew how much lethal materials are accumulated, they would die from dread. Demons have prepared everything; they are antichrists, and only a group of souls can stop the destruction.
So, what can do the Son but to live a pure life in his spiritual mind, and from there to pray and expect that other souls may come and offer themselves to save the world? A consecrated soul possesses a life of the spirit that neither comes to being nor passes away; if God wants to take their lives, no matter if Humanity is saved and beings do not suffer so much because of their miseries? And even in the sense of men, who do not have a son, a father or a friend? You cannot be indifferent. Beings must recognize this truth even by a selfish sense.