GUIDANCE FOR THE YOUNG -- PART THREE

The time is now long passed for young people of today to pursue the ways of idleness. It is time for action. It is time for work as Humanity has never worked before.

Forms of Stimulants

When I refer to drugs I am not talking only of the drugs which young people are using today but also of the many other forms of stimulants which are used by Humanity, for all of them do damage to your higher bodies. Medical science has been able to point to a few specific diseases of the physical body which can be attributed to alcohol, to cigarettes and to other herbal stimulants, but it has yet to discover the real damage that they cause. It is the disharmony which stimulants cause to your higher bodies that you cannot see. The more you take these stimulants the more you disharmonise yourself and the more you place yourself in a position when you will never be able to make a correct decision with regard to your life.

Today, therefore, the danger is that many young people have so abused their bodies that they stand little chance of ever regaining their destiny path, not only because of the damage done to their physical bodies in terms of the nerves, the brain and the link between the brain and the mind, but also because they have placed themselves in a position where they will never be able to regain a state of normality and to see the condition in which they really exist. It is difficult to tell a person who is drunk that they are making a fool of themselves, because they will never accept it. It is the same with a person using drugs or cigarettes. The ego is so in control that it will not be controlled.

Time For Action

The time is now long passed for the young people of today to pursue the ways of idleness. It is time for action. It is time for work as Humanity has never worked before. That is not to say that you must work around the clock without rest, without time for spiritual development and upliftment, but that the whole concept of work today is incorrect because of the way in which Humanity lives.

If you look back at the lives of many of the great Masters you will see that they led simple, yet active, lives and that they followed trades which employed their hands as well as their brains. They did not incarnate into what, no matter what the Age, one would call the top technological or political jobs of the time. They chose simple tasks of humble work, for it is in such work that you can best harmonise your being. Indeed, it can perhaps be said that the simpler the work, the easier the path to bodily harmony.

Changing Society

Today there are many jobs which the old souls now incarnating in physical bodies will not, and should not, accept. Those which involve the prostitution of the Animal, the Vegetable, the Mineral and the Human Kingdoms should, of course, be rejected, but what the young people of today do not always realise is that they change society not by avoiding it, not by shunning it, not by establishing in isolation their own way of life, but by mixing with society expressly to demonstrate their own way of life. Society can only be changed from within, and that is the primary purpose for which the young people of today have incarnated. They have incarnated to change society.

As one looks around the World today one can see the influence of young people in many fields. They have brought a breath of fresh air to many of society´s institutions and formalised ways of life. Young people today are not prepared to accept automatically the judgements and standards of their elders and, supposedly, betters. They bring with them the knowledge and the wisdom which they have acquired over many incarnations and, slowly, they are changing society. But the change is not occurring at the rate at which it should because so many of the young people of today are ignoring their duties and are denying their responsibilities not only to themselves but also to their Creator.

Perfect Inner Balance

How then are the young people of today to change themselves so that they may become responsible members of society and fulfil the destinies to which they have agreed?? Firstly, remember that it is in the simplicity of life that you will advance. Secondly, you must learn to become balanced, to control your emotions. You must realise that there is no reason whatsoever for sickness or disease within the physical body. Recognise it as the temple of the soul, and harmonise it with all that is around you. You must learn through meditation, concentration and, above all, perfect inner balance, to control your body, to dissolve sickness, to eliminate weaknesses of the flesh, to eat and enjoy the fruits of the Earth which are your birthright to enjoy, but not to make food and drink your master.

Thirdly, you must harmonise yourself with Nature. You must become at one with her. Be aware of the wind, of the mountains, of the rain and of the trees. Grow to listen to them. Grow to communicate with them, to recognise the elementals and the devas, and to know that they too have a function to perform which you must respect. Fourthly, learn to commune with yourself and with the God within you, so that in times of crisis you know what to do and there is no doubt, no uncertainty, no waiting: there is only the certainty of your soul evolution which tells you what to do, so that when disaster looms nigh you will not be there, so that when disease threatens you will not suffer.

Sharing Your Wisdom

Obviously, if you are to achieve these four objectives it will mean that you will have to lead a life very different from that which society advocates today. So be it. It is by leading such a life that you will change this World, but remember that that way of life has to be seen by others, that it has to be lived amongst the peoples of the World, and that you have to work alongside those who do not understand in order to teach them. How are you, with your knowingness, for example, to convince those who are destroying present-day society through their political and financial views if you are not in a position to influence them?? It must be amongst society that you work. It must be amongst society that you demonstrate. It must be amongst society that you teach.

The Choice is Yours

So I say to young people today: the future of this planet lies in your hands. There are many evolved souls still to incarnate who will play a great part in the cataclysm which is to come, but it is you who are now approaching the age of thirty who will be responsible for the period of transition, who will have to face the death, the disease and the destruction. If, at this present time, you do not establish the way of life that you have known before then you, too, will suffer the fate of many less evolved souls and will perish. As always, the choice is yours, but remember that many of you died in the cataclysm of Atlantis for the same reason: you were not prepared to subjugate that ego and to look beyond the self to the common purpose of life on this planet Earth. You are faced now with that same choice. The Lords of Karma have decreed. How will you answer??

This article is from "The Fantastic Teachings of Ramala".

GUIDANCE FOR THE YOUNG -- PART TWO

As one looks at the lives of many of the young people of today I have to say that their basic motivation, and it is one which has been caused entirely by their parents together with the society in which they have been brought up, is that of self-gratification.

Ignorance

Many young people also lack awareness, for basically, unawareness is selfishness: it is ignorance of the needs of other people, it is thinking only of the self to the exclusion of all those around. Young people today are for the most part selfish. They have not been taught the values of living in a true family union. They have not been taught the values of living in a true group or society. They have only been taught to imitate their parents and society around them, which teaches that they should look first to the self, next to the family, next to the country, and only then to the World.

Lack of Spiritual Guidance

Hand in hand with this breakdown of modern civilisation has come the decline of organised religion. This in itself was destined to happen, but nothing has come to replace it, and because of this the spiritual guidance which is the essential birthright of every young person has been missing. You therefore have the young people of today living in an affluent age, which supports their whims, searching around for a form of guidance and a purpose to their lives which appeals to the ego, to the self. Do not assume, however, that my words apply to all the young people of today, for they do not. There are many young people who have guidance, who have motivation, who are fulfilling their destinies.

But.... equally so, there are many lost souls who do not possess that guidance, who are not on their destiny paths and who give cause for much concern, for it is the young people of today who are to be the founders of the New Age. Amongst them are many souls of great wisdom and evolution but because, as children, they have not been stimulated and encouraged in the right way, they have allowed their personalities to take over their very beings to the extent that they think only of their personalities and not of their higher selves. It is to these young people that I speak in this article.

Searching for a Purpose

Being of aged evolution, many of you have experienced levels of life in past incarnations on the Earth which were far removed from the ones in which you find yourselves today. You look back to the Ages when true spirituality existed on the Earth, to the great days of Atlantis, when Humanity did not live in so dense a body, when the Earth was not so wrought with devastation, disease and disharmony and, once more, you desire to experience that stage of evolution. That is why so many of the young people of today are turning to drugs, for within their soul memory is the knowlede of the use of drugs in those days of Atlantis.

Drugs were used in Atlantis by the priests of the temples, but I would stress that they were used only by evolved souls who had passed many testing physical and spiritual initiations, and who were using them under the strictest guidance and control, with the purest of motivation. Today, young people use drugs as a form of escapism, to avoid the realitites of physical life. If they cannot understand the nature of life around them, if they cannot find a purpose in life around them, then they try to reach another plane of existence and hope that there is one there.

The Effects of Drugs

I cannot stress too much the dangers inherent in this. Drugs can lift you, drugs WILL lift you, onto a higher plane of consciousness. That cannot be denied, but by so doing you are overcoming the inherent defence mechanism of your physical bodies which your Creator has wisely provided for you. Until you are in perfect harmony and balance, until you possess the wisdom, the understanding and the knowledge to recognise what exists on those higher planes of life and know how to handle what you will meet there, all that you are doing is putting your total incarnations into jeopardy, for you will so unbalance yourselves that you will be unable to fulfil your destinies.

What is the point of experiencing the higher planes of life if you cannot understand them?? What is the point of experiencing the higher planes of life if you cannot bring those experiences back to the physical level in an understandable and definable form, for how can you describe the colours and shapes of the astral plane in terms of the colours and shapes of the physical plane?? Moreover, the effect of drugs on the physical body is most damaging.

Medical science has yet to discover this fully -- and I will not at this time go into specific illnesses -- but even the drugs that are considered harmless have a permanent and lasting effect on your physical body, for they are creating disharmony between your higher bodies. Moreover, if you could but see the effect that drugs have on your etheric body, the energy giving body, you would be amazed. Drugs wreak havoc with this particular body, leading to a loss of energy and subsequent apathy and ill health.

Lessons of Earth

You have come onto the Earth to learn the lessons of the physical, not the lessons of the astral, the emotional or the mental planes: you have incarnated on the physical plane of Earth to learn the physical lesson of Earth at this moment in time, and only if you are of great evolution and know exactly what is taking place as you rise onto those higher levels of existence should you use drugs.

Let the great Masters who have incarnated on the Earth be an example to you, for at no time did they advocate, or indeed practise, the use of stimulants to achieve higher levels of consciousness. They taught always that Humanity must reach these levels through its own inner development, and that it must work and strive with all that it possesses to achieve the knowingness of its Creator. But to many of the young people of today who have known only idleness it is the easy way, the quickest way, to get what the self wants, which appeals.

Part Three follows....

This article is from "The Fantastic Teaching of Ramala".

GUIDANCE FOR THE YOUNG -- PART ONE

One of the faults in our society today is that it divides itself into various segments. The old think they have no link with the young, the young think that they have nothing in common with the old, and so division is created and the interchange, the communication, between old and young which is so essential for both their developments is restricted.

Full Physical Maturity

When I refer to a young person I am, of course, referring to a person who is young in physical years, not young in soul evolution for, truly, at the present time there are a large number of evolved souls incarnating into young physical bodies. When I talk of a young person I am talking of a person under the age of thirty, for that is the age when full physical maturity is generally reached.

It is at the end of the thrirtieth year that the soul has opened and sensitized the three lower chakras (spiritual centres) of the body. In each of the first three ten-year cycles one of the three lower chakras is developed, and it is only when the third chakra, the solar plexus, the emotional chakra, has been developed, that a person has fully reached physical maturity.

Time of Great Testing

Because of the situation in which the World exists today, with only a short time to go before a cataclysmic change and a rebirth of the surface of this Earth occurs, it must be remembered that the souls who incarnate upon the Earth at this time do so for very specific and destined reasons. It is a difficult time in which to incarnate, with difficult lessons to learn.

Indeed, at this most critical time in the Earth´s evolution, whilst it does present a great opportunity for learning and spiritual advancement, it is also a time of great testing. Because of this many of the young people today will fall by the wayside, but there should be no recrimination, no blame, no feelings of guilt, for this is a time of testing which young people would normally not have to face.

One´s Own Choosing

All those people who are now in their youth chose to incarnate into these dramatic and turbulent times because they wished to experience that which is now unfolding upon the Earth. They saw in the changes that were to come lessons which they could learn. They recognised that there was a great opportunity for soul evolution. Because this rebirth of the Earth is to involve a cataclysm, and because Atlantis is to rise again in that moment of rebirth, so many of the souls who are here in young bodies are citizens of Atlantis who have come to transmute the evil of over twenty thousand years ago.

Young people should therefore recognise that they live in this Age of their own choosing. They cannot say that it is not what they want, that it does not give them that which they desire from life, for it is they themselves who have chosen to be here: No one has forced this decision upon them. Indeed, they are privileged to be present on Earth at this time of great growth and evolution, for there are many souls still waiting on the higher planes of life for just such an opportunity.

You are still probably aware that the decision to incarnate is taken on levels above the physical long before the moment of conception. Consequently, all you young people who live in this turbulent Age, be aware that it has a lesson for you. There is a lesson in this chaos and disharmony which you have to learn. There are obstacles which you have to overcome.

Time Speeding Up

Because the vibratory rate of this planet is being raised, because the frequency of the Earth is being increased by the Lords of this Solar Body, so there is this apparent speeding up of time and of the rate at which you lead life. There is much disharmony and evil to be seen as all the erroneousness of Humanity comes to the surface. It is therefore a difficult time to learn the lessons of youth.

It is particularly difficult for one main reason. Society, as you know it, is declining. It is collapsing. As you look around you may witness in almost every aspect of life the final demise of Western civilisation, for Humanity, having pursued the path of intellect without the balance of spirituality, has created a wholly materialistic society in which the aims are self and self-aggrandisement. As a result of this, what you are witnessing in the youth of today is a generation of young people who for the first time in this Age have been given the freedom to be idle.

Avoiding the Work

In the centuries which have gone by it had been an essential part of life that young people worked from the moment they were capable of doing so, both to help feed the family and to ensure the survival of that family within society. However, with the onset of the industrial revolution and the subsequent great advances in Humanity´s technology there has been a rapid increase in personal freedom, the results being that the young people of today have the opportunity of avoiding the work which they should be doing. They have, therefore, lost the essential discipline of work.

Today young people go to school and then during their holidays have long periods of rest when, truly, it should be in those periods of rest that they really begin to work, that they should be taught to appreciate the true values of life, for such is the nature of the educational system at this time that they will not have been taught such values at school but only the lessons which will lead them to adopt the values of society as they exist today: those of materialism, of providing only for the self, of obtaining personal possessions and power for the self.

Lack of Motivation

Young people today are growing up with the freedom and with the time to pursue whatever they desire, but they have not been given the essential guidance to motivate themselves correctly. They are searching. They are looking for something to motivate their lives so that they may spend their hours of freedom profitable. You have only to look around your World today to see the many paths which young people have followed in their desperate search to discover a meaning to their lives.

They have adopted many beliefs, created many dogmas, formed many cults, and lived their lives in ways which seem extraordinary to the older generation who did not have the same amount of freedom when they were young. The older generation cannot understand why young people need to pursue such aims, but they are not aware of the lack of motivation within the young people of today.

Part Two Follows....

This article is from "The Fantasic Teachings of Ramala".

THE HEALING TOUCH -- PART THREE

Humanity must realise that illness is an evolutionary lesson. It is not something to be scorned, to be pushed under the carpet and ignored. There is always purpose in illness.

Acts of Evolution

There is always purpose in disease. They are essential parts of Humanity´s evolutionary pattern. They are acts of evolution. It is essential that both the healer and the person to be healed recognise this fact. Inevitably education must come before healing. The role of the healer is not just to channel energy but is to hold a mirror. It is to stand before the person and to enable them to see why they are ill. The person who is ill must then take action, after consultation with the healer, to ensure that the lesson of that illness, that dis-ease within the body, has been understood.

Choosing Whom to Heal

In the World in which you live today, where so many are sick, inevitably the healer will have to choose who to heal. You cannot heal everyone. It is not desirable, or even physically possible, for you as healers to continually channel the healing energy that flows through you. You cannot always be healing. You must keep your physical body in balance. You must respect the nature of your being. Therefore you must choose those who you are to heal. You must select those who will benefit from your healing touch. This inevitably comes down to a feeling within you, to the intuitive force of your being listening and responding to the people who come to you.

Intuitively you will know those who you can help and heal. Recognise that there are different healers for different illnesses. Only the great Masters such as the Master Jesus can heal universally. Only they have the cosmic healing touch, the power to raise from the dead. Such power belongs only to those who understand the purpose of creation, and above all, who recognise the workings of the Law of Karma.

Potential to be Healers

Many people in your World today are beginning to feel that they have the potential to be healers. Many are discovering that they are succeeding where the medical profession is failing. There is no longer a clear division between, shall we say, the doctor and the faith healer. People are beginning to recognise that anyone can heal once they have an understanding of the purpose of life and the true nature of disease.

Indeed, the role of the healer will once more return to the "priest", to the divinely motivated and spiritually grounded person, as was the case in the days of old. Jesus was both a priest and a healer and that is the ideal to which you should all aim. A true healer shoulders great responsibility, for to heal without reason or purpose is to question the nature of dis-ease and the reason for karma.

Detachment

It is distressing to see people suffering but the healer must not allow himself or herself to be dragged down by that suffering. The essential quality of any healer, therefore, is detachment. If you are not detached you cannot heal or, rather, you cannot heal to the best of your ability. The healer must always view the patient with detachment: compassion, yes, but always with detachment. The healer must see clearly as he or she looks into their patient´s eyes the nature of their soul being. The healer must see clearly the source of their disease, the nature of their inner being, and should always strive to heal not just the outer disease but the inner cause. It is the wise healer that looks first to the cause and then to the disease.

Divinity of Body and Soul

In an Age which is witnessing so many new beginnings, do not be afraid to try to heal. In as much as you are all divine instruments and you align yoursleves with the healing flow of the Cosmos you are fulfilling the true purpose of your beings. Many new techniques of healing will soon be discovered and the ways of the old will gradually begin to disappear. They will be regarded as outdated by the people of the New Age.

Now that is not to say that all medicine in the World today is wrong, that all surgery is unnecessary, for it has shown that it is capable of great acts of healing in many fields. Nevertheless, the main stream of medicine today has become detached from the divinity of life. It does not recognise the source of life. It does not recognise the divinity of the human body or of the soul that dwells within it. For a true healer, that must always come first.

Path of Human Destiny

I would ask those of you who are thinking of becoming healers to consider carefully. There can be no greater role in life. All the great Masters who have walked the physical plane of life have been healers. They have been healers because the World has always been sick. The World has always been in dis-ease, has always been divided. That is the path of human destiny.

While Humanity has choice, while there is goodness and evil, inevitably some will choose evil. Some will choose the learning process of illness and disease, and to those I would say, greet that illness just as you would greet health. Recognise that you are carrying forward not just your evolution but the evolution of the whole human race.

This article is from "The Fantastic Teachings of Ramala".

THE HEALING TOUCH -- PART TWO

We live in an Age when more than ever before people are beginning to search for and experiment with forms of treatment neither recognised nor accepted by the medical profession.

Divinity of the Physical Body

A growing number of people are using forms of treatment which recognise the divinity of the physical body and, above all, which regard themselves as instruments of healing. Now that is not to say that there are not surgeons and doctors who do not regard the human body as a divine creation and try to attune to it when they operate and try to heal. There are some who do this, but one only has to look at the nature of many surgical operations today to see that for many surgery has become an intellectual exercise devoid of feeling, a game of physical skill played at the expense of the human body with its only objective to fulfil the will of the surgeon or the doctor.

Compare this with those who heal through the healing touch, through the laying on of hands, through the invocation of higher energies, through prayer and absent healing. Here you will see a recognition of the part that the Divinity plays in the healing process, an acceptance of the fact that every individual is a channel of divine energy.

The Nature of Healing

It is essential, therefore, for those who heal through the healing touch that they ensure that the person who is being healed is aware of the part that the Divinity plays in the healing process. For the patient to lie in front of the healer and to expect the healer to heal them is no better than the patient lying on the operating table and expecting the surgeon´s knife to work a miracle. The patient must understand what is the nature of healing and, above all, the responsibilities inherent in healing. The patient must realise that healing energy has to be invoked and that there has to be a "flow" of energy to them through the healing touch. They should always be conscious of, and invoke, that energy.

Transference of Energy

Healing is not just a process of one person giving energy to another. Rather it is the process of one person acting as a channel to another, of positive energy to negative receptivity. There has to be a transference of energy for the healing to take place. This is the point of the story in the Bible of the woman in the crowd who touched the hem of Jesus´s cloak as he passed by and was subsequetly healed. Both felt the transference of energy but it was the woman´s faith in the power of that Master and her invocation of the healing energy that created the flow and resulted in her being healed.

The Healing Source

In the World today, where the Divinity is hardly ever recognised, the essential role of the healer is to teach as well as to heal. The healer should teach the patient as to the source of the healing energy, which is the Creator of all life. Therefore every act of healing should be seen as an act of worship. Every healer should demonstrate the fact that they are simply channels for that divine energy and that it is the source of the nergy that should be invoked and thanked, not the healer. It should be made clear that the healing process is initiated from the higher planes, not from the physical plane of life.

Not Always Granted

It must always be clearly understood that the Divinity, knowing the destiny of Humanity and the cause of an individual´s disease, does not always heal. Some people expect that if they go down on their knees and ask for healing that they will always be healed and, what is more, in the way that they expect. It must be clearly understood that the Lords of Karma, the great beings who control and maintain the balance of human life and creativity on the Earth, judge without emotion. They see only the spiritual reality of what an individual has created and, therefore, what that individual must attract back to himself or herself. It is the nature and destiny of some people to be ill. That must be recognised.

Part Three follows....

This article is from "The Fantastic Teachings of Ramala"

THE HEALING TOUCH -- PART ONE

Although we live in a World of great technological achievement, a World where Science, Humanity´s Science, is indeed becoming a god, few people today really understand the true nature of disease or recognise the divinity of the human body, the nature and effect of Healing, its source and its energy.



The Nature of Disease

Many people are on the healing vibration, but before we can consider the nature of healing and the healing techniques that are present on the Earth today we must first look at the nature of disease, that which necessitates healing. Most people today regard disease as the visitation on a healthy body by a foreign object. Disease is considered to be an invasion from outside the body and, as such, can be healed in a similar fashion.

In the World today few people understand that every illness is self-created and that the seeds of any illness always lie within the human body. The medical profession today, with its practice of treating the symptoms and not the cause of disease, tends to support the view that illness can best be treated from outside the body and then only by qualified practitioners. As a result of this attitude the individual´s responsibility for health at this time has perhaps never been lower.


A Magnetic Being

You must understand a disease before you can heal it. You must recognise that every human being is a magnetic being, a being capable of attracting unto itself according to the nature of its own creations in thought, word and deed. The note that you send out, the vibrations that you emanate, come back to you no matter the level of life on which you dwell.

You have within you a magnetic power with the potential for good or for evil. It is the note which you sound that attracts the corresponding vibrations of the Cosmos to you, there being in the Cosmos an equal potential for good and for evil. It is how you choose to use that cosmic power that brings about evolution. According to the way you live your life so you attract into your being the corresponding vibrations of the Cosmos and these affect the various elements within your body which can lead to disease.


Creations of the Mind

If you take something that is so prevalant in the World today, the smoking of cigarettes and the disease associated with it, it is easy to see how the one action leads to the others. However, many diseases in your World today are what you would call psychosomatic and are created on a different level: they are the creations of the mind and are not solely the result of physical actions. Such diseases are created in the first place by the individual on the higher levels of life and then manifest later on the physical level. Any person with the necessary psychic powers can see an illness on the higher levels before it manifests on the physical plane of life.


Taking Responsibility

Humanity has to learn that it must take responsibility for everything that it creates within the divinity of its body. Every disease, every illness, including the disease of cancer, is self-originating. It is created by the individual human being. The fact that you have plagues or epidemics when a large number of people die from a certain disease merely represents the collective thought forms, the collective energies and consciousness of the people in that society. A healthy body can resist any plague, any illness. Disease, therefore, in the broadest sense can be seen as being karmic. That which you have sown you attract unto yourselves.


The Medical Profession

As we look at the nature of healing it is essential that you remember the source of disease. The medical profession today with its allopathic medicine and surgical practices does not encourage sick people to be responsible for their own healing. Moreover, for the most part, sick people offer their bodies to the doctors and the surgeons and allow themselves to be drugged and operated upon without questioning what is the short term or the long term effects of a drug or an operation. They expect the doctors and the surgeons to be god, to remove the disease in their body and to restore them to perfect health.

In the medical profession today there is scant regard for the divinity of life and for the wholeness or holiness of the physical body. For the most part, the doctor is not concerned either in discovering the cause of a disease or in educating the person that suffers from a disease as to how to prevent it in the future. Disease is seen simply as a foreign body to be removed as quickly as possible and the patient to be allowed to return to his or her fomer lifestyle afterwards.


Part Two follows...

This article is from "The Fantasic Teachings of Ramala"

THE FIVE HUMAN VALUES -- PARTS 3, 4, & 5.

RIGHTEOUSNESS

Righteousness or Morality is the fundamental nature of a human being. It can be understood or described as "right conduct, code of conduct, duty and justice, moral obligation". The quality of righteousness is a measure of the dignity in a person.


This righteous morality is behind all relationships between people, their path in the world, their conduct in business or within the family. When this quality is strong, then relationships within society are correct and just. But, when it declines, evil abounds and chaos takes over.

In these days, Righteousness is declining rapidly and humanity is sinking into misery, chaos, fear and mutual hatred. It is within the home that Righteousness should be fostered and developed. When respect for each other in a home declines and the values of morality and religion are not taught, then the decay of Righteousness must affect the fabric of society and eventually the nation.

Birds, beasts and trees, says the Master, have not deviated from their nature; they are still holding it valid. Man alone has disfigured it, in his crude attempt to improve upon it.

We must learn to understand that Man is born for the attainment of joy, not for sheer eating and revelling. Real and lasting joy can be won only by a life led along the path of Righteousness, which, in turn, makes the inherent Divinity of Man shine forth. Obtaining this Illumination is the purpose of life. A constant focus on the indwelling God will promote Love for all beings. One will see the good in others and thereby strive to do good for others.

PEACE

Peace is a spiritual value inextricably woven into a fabric with the other human values. It is the peace known as "the still, small voice of God" within. Peace of mind, heart and soul is sought after by all people, but so seldom found. It is easily disturbed when one chases after worldly pleasures. When ego and desires become rampant in the human heart, Peace will surely disappear.

Peace has detachment as the basic quality. The Master explains: "The sea which likes to gather and possess lies low; but the cloud that likes to renounce and give is high up in the sky."

First and foremost Faith has to be cultivated. This Faith has to be nurtured in Love, and Love is fostered by equanimity. So Man should check his emotions often and not allow his blood to boil or give in and yield to fear. Knowing and understanding that God and Man are One... Joy is the birth-right of all humanity and Peace is our inmost nature.

NON-VIOLENCE

The value of Non-violence incorporates all the others. Here the Master explains: "When Love illumines thought, Truth is revealed. When Love motivates action, it is transformed into Right Conduct (Righteousness). When Love saturates feelings, they become calm and serene and thereby Peace is ensured. When anger, envy, greed and hatred are cast away, Love dawns as understanding and Non-violence will reign supreme."

Non-violence shows itself as total respect for other people and all creation. There is a clear relationship between Non-violence and the other virtues as you will see. Violence is not only physical in its manifestation, but is also an internal state in the form of anger. Therefore refraining from violence also entails refraining from violence in mood and thought as well as deed.

When the principle of Non-violence is fully understood, the desire to eat meat drops away. This is because Non-violence means avoiding causing harm to anyone or any being by thought, word or deed. Every person should lead their life that no pain is caused by them to any living thing. This is Man´s supreme duty, yet to be understood by many.

Finally, Non-violence lies behind respect for the Earth and its resources, as well as respecting the environment of other people. In the business and industrial world, Non-violence has a wider social meaning than merely avoiding harm to others. The avoidance of pollution of the atmosphere or of natural resources like rivers etc., is one of the ways in which an enterprise can practise Non-Violence. In such ways, a great deal of good can be done.

The Master has also pointed out that the glorification and entertainment of violence in our cinemas, television and video games is extremely disruptive for spiritual growth, particularly in young people.

These articles are taken from the teachings of Bhagavan Sathya Sai.