by Rita Moiseyeva
Given in the Blue Star Memorial Temple 19 January 2025
Good Morning!
In one of the recent Friday classes, we studied Lesson 17, “The Meeting of Extremes” from Teaching of the Temple, Vol. 1. In this lesson we are told that, “Until man can learn to dwell with his brothers in peace and unity upon Earth, it is absolutely impossible for him to dwell with God in that conscious at-one-ment which constitutes perfection.”
The lesson further tells us that “no one man — a single cell in the great body of humanity — can exist or attain the highest possible development apart from his kind.”
During our discussion, the fact was brought to our attention that in our days there are so many books about self-help, self-improvement, self-development. And the question was: Wouldn’t it be better for the evolution of humanity to focus all our energy, attention, education, and culture on “how man can learn to dwell with his brothers”?
I, personally, found the best guidance on “how to” in the collection of notes by Kora Antarova that were compiled into a little book called The Science of Joy.
Kora Antarova is also the author of the esoteric novel called Two Lives, the book that brought many Russian-speaking people to the Temple.
The translation of The Science of Joy from Russian into English was done about 24 years ago. It was a combined effort of three people: one wonderful lady from St.Petersburg, Natalia Tsvetkova (Andriets in marriage), myself , and our dear Sister Linda Rollison.
I would like to share with you only some parts of that book, the ones that have helped me the most in my everyday life and in my efforts to “learn to dwell with my brothers and sisters in peace and unity upon Earth.”
The Science of Joy
The power of Affirmation
Remember that Joy is an invincible force, but despondency and negation will ruin everything you are trying to do. Knowledge grows, not as a result of your victories over others, victories which help you surpass others, but because of the Wisdom, Peace and Joy that you have gained in your soul without anybody seeing it. Win with Love — and you will win everything. Search with Joy — and everything will respond to you. Life, the whole life of the Universe, has always been an affirmation. It is only possible to build with affirmation. He, who cannot learn, in the circumstances of his simple daily life, the Joy of affirmation, cannot become a light on the paths of others.
A man should live his day so that emanations of peace and rest flow from him to everyone he meets. It is not his assignment to become or to strive to become a saint. But the task — the real task, mandatory for every man — is to live his simple regular day so, that he brings to his own and to someone else’s existence a drop of peace and joy.
Simple is your daily work. Console and comfort every one who comes to you. If a lonely one comes to you, give him the whole love of your heart, so that when he leaves he understands that he has found a friend. If a sorrowful one comes, lighten his life with your joy. If a weak one comes, help him with the knowledge of that new meaning of life that has been revealed to you. And your life will become a blessing for people.
In any dark or tragic moments of your life you shouldn’t forget the most important thing: the joy in the fact that you are still alive and able to help someone else, bringing him an atmosphere of peace and protection.
Never let in a despondent feeling that the majesty of someone else’s spirit is unattainable to you. Always bless the one who has attained more than you, and pour your joy onto him, so it will be easier for him to reach even greater heights. Simpler, lighter, more joyful — these words — constitute the whole program for everyone. In these words you should see that spiritual height is not a yoke, not a renunciation, and not a heroic deed, but complete harmony. It is expressed in joyfulness, constant and undisturbed.
Do not take upon your shoulders debts and duties which nobody has loaded on you. Walk in joy. Waking up in the morning, bless your newly dawning day and promise yourself to accept to the end everything that will come to you in this day. The creative work of a man’s heart is in his simple day. It exactly consists of accepting all circumstances of the day as unavoidable, only yours, and purifying them with love, charity, and mercy. But this doesn’t mean to bow down and let evil trample on you. It means to fight and learn equanimity and awareness, to fall and stand up again, to surmount obstacles and win them. Perhaps outwardly it is not always possible to win them, but inwardly they have to be won with love.
Try to transfer your relationships with people out of the trash of the insignificant and the conditioned into the fire of the eternal. Break down the growing barriers of conventions between you and other people. And look for all possibilities to put yourself in the place of the one you are communicating with. And you will always find the way how to break up the obstacles of prejudices absurdly erected between people, to open all the best in yourself and to enter the temple of the heart of the other. In yourself find the flower of love and throw it at the feet of the one you are talking with. And only in rare cases will encounters with absolutely mean people be left without the victory of your love.
Brothers and friends! Do not consider that which you give or receive, while perceiving it as a duty or a heavy load, to be charity. For this is still a stage of prejudice. But consider charity that which you give in joy, in shining happiness to live and love. It is not the one who carries around his debt of honor and faithfulness who loves, but the one who lives and breathes simply because he loves, feels joy, and it cannot be any other way. And the love of the heart of such a person is not like wine, heady and enchanting, creating a conditional beauty, but pure beauty itself, bringing peace and serenity to everything.
How to live a simple working day?
There is no point in waiting for some special challenges. In your simple working day try to discern the main acts of love, and living lightly your simple working day is a major sign of it.
Remember the first rule of those, who decided to keep step with their people, with their time: THERE ARE NO LITTLE THINGS.
Get used to working on the current task as if it were the most important task of your life.
Starting your new day, live it as if it were your last day. And last not in a sense of hurrying to fulfill all desires, but last day of harmonious and selfless life.
About Helping Others
It is impossible to hide a discord of feelings, to suffer deeply, to be torn apart inside, and at the same time to show the outward appearance of peace in order to try to help another man to live through his ordeal. But only truly wise behaviour, that is one’s state of inner peace, can help others. It can stop thousands of human dramas simply by its presence. Such is an example of a wise man. No matter what his appearance may be, he is able to lift human strength to a heroic effort. You may say that you know and understand all this. But as a matter of fact, you know and understand nothing. For in the language of Wisdom, to know means to know how, to be able to do it, and to understand means to act. He who says that he knows and understands, but doesn’t know how to act in his working day, in reality knows nothing. He, in his ignorance, is no different from the circus dogs and horses, who just learned a set of habitual associations, perceived in this sequence or the other.
About the Inner Peace
The path to perfection is constant motion, which doesn’t stop even for a moment. As soon as irritation or anger burst into a man’s path, he will stop developing. The melody of his harmonic chord is interrupted and he has to look for another opportunity to join in the symphony of the Universe, which has gone forward in its creation while the man halted. No one can go higher on the stairways of the Universe if it is hard for those he meets to deal with him, for his angry peremptory shout or irritated moralizing does not help those he meets to find peace, but causes protest.
Malice is not an innocent hobby. Every time you fall into anger you attract the evil currents from all sides of the air and they stick to you like leeches, ugly red and black leeches with the most disgusting heads and snouts that can be imagined. They all were born of your passions, your envy, your irritation and malice. After it seems to you that you have already calmed down and can control yourselves, the storm in the air around you will be raging for at least two days. These invisible leeches feed on you like the usual leeches, which suck human blood. Each pure being is very sensitive to the stink of these small animals and avoids those who are surrounded with them and lack self-control. When a pure being meets a man who is used to living with his nerves undisciplined, in irritated shouts and shortness of temper, it suffers more than when it meets a leper. On the contrary: a wicked creature possessing only a stubborn will rushes toward such a person with delight, seeing in him a tool for achieving its own purposes.
The first element of Life is peace of heart — always and everywhere. The greater is peace in which man lives his earthly life, the higher and the further he is able to see. And the further he sees, the more he understands how insignificant he is, how little he knows and is able to do, how much he still has to attain.
Switch your thoughts, forget about yourself and think only about how to not disturb human harmony with your caustic currents. In his daily work a man should think first of all of how to bring more peace into his deeds and encounters. The peace that one soul gives to another is like a plaster which closes the wounds of irritation, like a hot compress on the bruises from raging passions, and like balm poured on the disappointed and offended heart.
About Children
Do not forget that the most important human encounters are encounters with children. We should pay more attention to them for we never know whom we meet in a child.
A child is not a tyrant, which captures your whole life. He is not an idol for whose sake you should separate the whole world from yourselves and yourselves from the outer world to create an exclusive cell of close family tied together by a single personal interest: the love of “your own people.” A child is a new connection of love with the whole world, with the entire Universe. It is the freed love of the mother and the father who are raising not “their own” child, but a soul given to them to keep and care for.
Do not forget, that children born to you are not simply the fruits of flesh and blood, belonging to you. But they are the precious chalices that Life gave you for caring, improving and developing in them the creative fire. Do not get attached to them like a snail is attached to its shell. Always keep in mind that they are destined to live and stay in your house only for some time, to mature and get ready for their own lives.
Children are not the flowers of the Earth only. They are also your gifts to the entire Universe. Through them you are either helping the Humanity to rise, or you remain that mash, out of which, like out of the rotten forests, only in thousands and thousands of years will form the coal and the diamonds.
About Attention
The first thing you should remember is attention to each person you are speaking to, to every thing you are doing. Attention is of vital importance for human existence. It is the first necessity in life.
It is necessary to remember about everything, keep in mind everything though the Heavens might be shining in your soul.
You have a mirror in your room, not to pass by it but to use it to put your appearance in order before leaving your room. It is the first of the conditions from which nobody has freed you. You should think not about yourself, while straightening the folds of your clothes, but about those who may be irritated by your appearance if your untidiness catches their attention or if you look ridiculous in your clothes. Remember that those who are untidy often fall into penury. Untidiness holds up the evolution even of highly developed spirits.
The second necessary convention is the “Hello”that people say to each other. The Russian word for greeting means “Be in good health.” You should understand this word more deeply, as your greeting of Love, as your bow to the Fire and Light in another human being. It is not only a simple convention of outer politeness for you, but also the basis of your benevolence at the moment of encounter. Start bringing the nobility of your heart to people through habitual insertions in their conventional communication. Become a link in a spiritual channel (chain), communicating in the forms which do not antagonize people or repel them from you and do not make it difficult for them to perceive your own image, but on the contrary, conform to that which is pleasing to them.
Each soul is a gentle flower that needs our tender care and solicitude. But it is necessary to understand that your own soul grows up and is purified only through the power of kindness it gives to another heart.
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This is in such a beautiful resonance with the Mountain Top message from Vol. 2, page 275, “Would You Serve Another?”:
“If one would serve another to the lasting benefit of that other, pure, unselfish Love alone will pave the way for much service. If desire to serve is tinged with passion, envy, jealousy, or lust, the door to service closes, for when passion rules, understanding takes leave; and the human heart must understand the desires and purposes of another heart to minister to the needs of that other.”
The Fifth Rule of Discipleship tells us:
“Thou shalt not speak falsely, unnecessarily or critically about thy neighbor, and so put into action the converse force of creative sound and word; for the Higher Law will reverse the action of the force thus directed and bring back upon thee, with the intensified strength, the results of the broken law.”
The following paragraph from The Science of Joy to me, adds another facet of this rule:
“Everyone who enters the path of Knowledge should try to speak so that none of his words would be sarcastic or biting. If you carry kindness within your heart you will never do anything tactless. Make it a new rule of your behavior: never say anything about your brothers and sisters in their absence and say only words which are free of your irritation. Every time a word of condemnation is ready to escape your lips, remember how little time remains for you to spend in this body and that each moment that was missed in vain decomposes not only your spirit but also all the spirits you meet at such a moment.
“Take with you as a behest: courage and tact. Never say a word until complete balance has led you to the thought that a man who complains and mourns to you is at that stage of his evolution when he has not yet discovered that everything is in him, that he has created his life before and creates it now. And then look for courage in your heart to give the noblest answer to any shabby question or complaint.”
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There is only one invincible force in life, and this force is Joy. Every time when you are struggling to accomplish something, when you want to overcome some obstacles and to achieve some results, win with love and joy. Every smile will quicken your victory and will help to reveal your strength. Every tear and word of despondency will destroy what you achieved in your abilities, and will push your victory far away from you.
Joy weaves a luminous substance of spirit; joy leads a man into Unity with other people and therefore with the entire Universe.
Thank You!
Rita Moiseyeva
Inner Guard
19 January 2025