Selections from the Agni Yoga Series
Presented before the Agni Yoga Society, April 10, 2007
Children, be ready for great ingratitude./ You may give up the most precious and they will notice it not./But have no regrets.
Traveler, you must give away all possessions that impede you./ And the more you give, the lighter your path.
Be grateful to those who have taken from you without gratitude./ They will help you; they have helped you.
For he who goes lightly easily attains the heights./ And you will learn how to reach the summit.
Therefore, be grateful to the ungrateful. Leaves of Morya’s Garden I, 330.
Quality of thinking must be realized as healing. Gratitude is likewise the finest purifier of the organism. He who has found the seed and realized the care of the Sender can project gratitude into space. Great is the healing power of the emission of gratitude. One must transform everything abstract into reality. Agni Yoga, 31.
Gratitude is the setting for justice. The community must know the essence of gratitude. Each goalfitted action is not reduced to nothing but carries along gratitude. The essence of gratitude will be adjoined with the closest harmony of consciousness. New Era Community, 211.
Gratitude and devotion flourish joyously in Our Community. If Our conduit brings word to Us that a co worker thinks he has sacrificed something in the name of the Teaching, this would compel Us to reject his cooperation. Our co workers know both how to receive and to give. When you spread Our Teaching do not shout in the square, but simply offer a smile to the approaching ones. Those who come voluntarily will accept the Teacher. But he who is ensnared will gnaw at his chains. We expect joy, and accept only the wondrous flower of devotion. Let us hasten to understand the Teacher!
Affirm success; affirm joy; affirm understanding of progress. Cast away the thoughts that belong to the old world. I shall not tire of repeating this. Agni Yoga, 76.
Spread the grains of the Teaching little by little. Let it imperceptibly flood the being. The time for preaching has passed, and life remains. Inspire the consciousness of your brother with an imperceptible touch, brought to him as his daily bread. Expose and understand his wrath and quench it with goal fitness. Affirm him in the joy of realized containment. Beware of manifesting miracles to him, but reveal to him the co measurement of that which passes into the Infinite. Abolish special holidays, and make of life a perpetual holiday.
“My holiday will be yours. My path will be your achievement. My generosity will be your inheritance. You will not notice the generosity, but you will be astonished at your own transformation. I have no need of thanks, but your gratitude will be fuel to you, because supreme above the flames of other offerings is the fire of gratitude.”
“Teacher, I see and remember indelibly.” Agni Yoga, 83.
Express your prayers by devotional action. Know how to affirm the Teaching each day. Lose not one day, nor one hour. Know how to think of yourself as the creator of a whole world of action. Know how to apply all your forces to every action. Know how to bring the Teaching into every thought. Know how to array your forces as on a battlefield. Know how to feel gratitude as the union of joy and beauty. Agni Yoga, 98.
Gratitude is one of the main qualities of justice. Without justice one cannot reach the path of Great Service. Therefore, in pointing out the necessity for the realization of gratitude, We only assist the Great Service. How beautiful is gratitude! It so easily kindles the fire of the heart, and, as if in the presence of the Image of the Lord, it fills the spirit with nobility. The ingrate is, first of all ignoble. We term nobility the benevolent accumulations from former lives, while upon Earth nobility is considered only according to one's birth. One should especially develop gratitude, because gratitude is the sister of loyalty. It is necessary to realize how difficult it is sometimes for the Teacher to combine the best possibilities. One must know how to assist by the fire of one's own heart. Hierarchy, 182.
Sometimes let your heart converse with the Higher World. This conversation can be held in many tongues. Perhaps the heart will gather in its memory hours from many lives. Perhaps the conversation will be a silent one, without precepts and advice, only ascending and strengthening in ascension; there may be the silence of gratitude or the silence of the power of readiness. The flame of the heart is kindled in striving toward unification with the Higher World. Only the heart will find the way to Hierarchy. The heart will strengthen itself by the power of the Highest. Only the heart will be a stronghold in battle. Heart, 41.
Each feeling gives birth to energy. A feeling that is shared multiplies the energy tenfold. A collective feeling creates a mighty energy, but the individual feeling must be strained and the mutual collective feeling must be harmonized. Therein lies the entire reason for the weak effect of contemporary feelings; almost no state of intensified feeling is observed today. Yet, what a great reality would be reflected in the exaltation of a myriad of harmonized sentiments. The ancients called feeling the forge of power. Verily, how majestic is the feeling of mutual love. No less is the power of mutual gratitude. Invincible is the feeling of self sacrificing heroism. Thus beautiful towers and citadels can be constructed. But from where will harmonization come? Not from the reason or the circumvolutions of the brain, but from the heart, from Light. Only the feeling of wrath will we leave to the dark ones. Among the murky red sparks there will be no harmony. Heart, 278.
We have spoken about solemnity, friendliness, magnanimity—let us complete the square with gratitude. From the most minute through the entire line of Hierarchy, shine the sparks of gratitude. Precious are these fires! Fiery World I, 191.
There is much ingratitude. I advise you in the future to lay up a store of patience against ingratitude and ignorance. Strangers are often more thoughtful, therefore We classify people first of all on the basis of gratitude. Aum, 313.
Gratitude is a great motive force. No one solicits gratitude, but great is the quality of this power. Gratitude acts as a purifier, and whatever has been purified is already more easily moved. Thus, gratitude is a means of hastening the path.
Some believe that by a transport of gratitude they lower themselves. What ignorance! Gratitude only exalts, purifies; it attracts new energies. Even a machine works better without dust. Aum, 454.
Compare a delineation of manifestations of good will and gratitude with the hieroglyphs of malice and envy. In the first you will obtain a beautiful circle, while the second yields ugly scrawls. In spite of strong tension, malice produces disorderly lines. Such a disharmonious structure manifests abasement of all creative fundamentals. It is impossible to create by means of evil; it produces temporary convulsions, then it falls into madness and consumes itself.
But beautiful is the circle of magnanimity; it is as a shield of Light! It can expand and deepen in harmony of movement. In investigations of the primary energy it is instructive to convince oneself as to how clearly it has been granted man to distinguish positive and negative qualities. Already much has been repeated to people about the relativity of good and evil. But there is the basic impulse, which does not lead one into error; it is impossible to counterfeit the depictions of psychic energy, they indicate the essential nature of things. Brotherhood, 54.
People do not want to imagine how many dangers take place around them. How many times the Highest Forces and participants in the Subtle World have saved them! But mankind assumes that if the day has passed nothing has threatened. Such a trend of thought deadens the embryo of the sense of gratitude, yet without this feeling humanity cannot succeed. Instead of gratitude a demand appears and then a threat. But one cannot cross by a threat, just as one cannot do so on nettles. Pitiful are the threats against the Highest Powers! There is nothing more disintegrating than threats. The heart withers from the dust of threats. Heart, 524.
When I indicate the beneficialness of gratitude, I do not mean that someone is in need of it, but that in itself it contains the chemism of bliss. One must analyze the chemism of various emotions; such observations will help in finding psychic energy. Not vitamins so much as the fiery energy must occupy the imagination. The revelation of the essence of human existence cannot be regarded a something occult! One should attract many minds to these researches; they will also observe in passing other useful peculiarities of feelings. Thus, one should first establish the direction of evolution. There cannot be two directions of progress. There can be but one true direction, and all other efforts will be errant. This should be remembered, because many confuse individuality with the general stimulus of the epoch. If a given epoch must strengthen in the consciousness the power of psychic energy, no machine can screen the imperative advance of the world. Fiery World I, 396.
Anonymous thoughts also receive secret gratitude. Each thought of good receives the best gratitude. It is not for us to judge where the song of gratitude will arise. Gratitude need not be defined. The most beautiful song of gratitude resounds in a moment of joy; but the thought of such joy has been sent by someone.
Let us say gratefully—Aum! Aum, 326.