The Where to Start? page listed the 12 Izvor books relating to the SynoSphere themes. Here are the next 12 Best Sellers from the Izvor Collection. They cover a wide range of topics. Click on the book images to ‘Flip Through’ the contents.

What is a Spiritual Master?

‘Although the idea of a spiritual Master is becoming more and more familiar to the general public, his nature and role are still poorly understood, even by those who claim to be disciples.

The main purpose of this book is to clarify this question. Some may find this clarification a little ruthless, but it is necessary, for it is of first importance not to delude oneself about spiritual realities.

It is true that a Master is that prodigious being who can lead men to the highest summits of the spirit, but for him as well as for his disciples, this sublime venture can succeed only if it is accompanied by a rigorous inner adherence to truth and selflessness.’

Golden Rules for Everyday Life

‘Get into the habit of seeing the whole of your daily life, with all the things that you are obliged to do, the events that occur and the beings with whom you have to live or whom you meet in your work as a raw material, a matter that you have to transform. Don’t be passive. Don’t be content to accept whatever comes and submit to events: always add an element to that raw material that will animate, vivify and spiritualize it. This is what the spiritual life really is: the ability to introduce into every activity a yeast capable of catapulting it on to a higher plane.

You will ask, “What about meditation and prayer? Where do they come into it?” That is just the point: it is by meditation and prayer that you pick up that subtler, purer element that enables you to give a new dimension to all your acts.’

The Seeds of Happiness

‘When you get something you want, of course, you are happy for a little while, but that satisfaction is soon followed by a feeling of emptiness, and you start to want something else.

Your satisfaction never lasts. So what is the answer? The answer is to set out in pursuit of the farthest and most inaccessible goal: perfection, immensity and eternity.

In pursuing this goal, you will find all the things you desire: knowledge, wealth, power and love. Yes, you will find these things without even asking for them.’

The Living Book of Nature

‘In Initiatic Science, to read means to be able to decipher the subtle and hidden side of objects and creatures, to interpret the symbols and signs placed everywhere by Cosmic Intelligence in the great book of the universe.

To write means to leave one’s imprint on this great book, to act upon stones, plants, animals and men through the magic force of one’s spirit.’

The Yoga of Nutrition

This is not a dietary handbook.

In fact it has little to do with diet. Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhovteaches that our attitude toward nutrition is far more important than what we eat or how much we eat. He restores to the act of eating the mystical significance it attained at the Last Supper.

Even the reader to whom this spiritual aspect is foreign will realize that his attitude toward food can lead to a deeper understanding of the relation between man and nature, for nature supplies man with food, and man, if his thoughts and feelings are attuned to nature, becomes capable of extracting from his physical food the subtle elements necessary to the full flowering of his whole being.

The Path of Silence

‘How wrong we are to think that silence denotes emptiness, nothingness, the absence of all activity or creation.

In reality, there is more than one kind of silence: the silence of death and the silence of a higher degree of life. It is this silence, that of the higher degree of life, that concerns us here and that we must try to understand.

This is not the silence of inertia; on the contrary, it is the stillness that surrounds a work of great intensity taking place in a climate of perfect harmony. Nor is it emptiness or absence; on the contrary, it is fullness, a fullness comparable to that experienced by two human beings who love each other very deeply and share something that cannot be expressed in words or gestures. Silence is a quality of the inner life.’

Man’s Two Natures, Human and Divine

‘The majority of human beings belong to the group without light. They talk about rediscovering Nature and obeying the natural laws, but which nature are they talking about? There are two natures in man, one lower, one higher. People think they are obeying Nature when in fact they are doing something exactly opposite to their higher Nature, whereas others concentrate on their divine Nature and do everything in their power to subjugate and restrict the impulses of their human nature.

Confusion reigns in people’s minds and that is why it is so important to make them realize that a higher Nature exists in them, which expresses itself quite differently from the human nature they inherited from the animal kingdom.’

The Book of Divine Magic

‘True magic, divine magic, lies in using all one’s faculties, all one’s knowledge, toward realizing the Kingdom of God on earth.

Very few magi have reached the high level where the only ideal is to work in the Light for the Light.

Those who manage to do so are the true benefactors of humanity.’

Sexual Force or the Winged Dragon

The dragon, that fabulous beast common to all mythologies as well as to early Christian iconography, is not a pure fiction; it is the symbol of man’s instinctive, primitive forces. The great challenge of the spiritual life is to learn to conquer, tame and use those forces so that we may reach the highest peaks of the spirit. The fact that this fire-breathing monster with the tail of a serpent also has wings shows that the forces it embodies have a spiritual destination.

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov says, ‘Sexual energy is like petrol: if you are ignorant and use it carelessly you will burn yourself; your very quintessence will be destroyed by this all-consuming force. But Initiates, who know how to handle it, use it to move freely about the universe’. This is the true meaning of the winged dragon.’

Light is a Living Spirit

‘Have you ever realized that fire is visible only if it is accompanied by light?

This is because light is the matter by means of which fire manifests itself.

And if we transpose this image onto a higher plane we find that light is the substance which emanated from God, the primordial Fire, at the beginning of the world, when He said, ‘Let there be light’. It is this Light which St John, in the Prologue to his Gospel, calls the ‘Word’: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… All things were made through Him…’

Light is the Word uttered by the Creator and by means of this Light He created the world.’

The Zodiac, Key to Man and to the Universe

‘The constellations and planets are the hieroglyphs, the sacred letters which reveal, to those who know how to decipher them, how mankind and the world were created, how they evolve hand in hand and how their inner structure is identical.

Every human being who becomes aware of his kinship with the universe begins to feel the need to cultivate his inner life in order to rediscover, within himself, that cosmic plenitude symbolized to perfection by the circle of the zodiac.’

Education Begins Before Birth

‘Is it possible for education to begin before birth? Yes.

Because true education is primarily subconscious.

A child is not a little animal which you can start training as soon as it is old enough. A mother can have a beneficial influence on her child in the womb through the harmony of her thoughts, acts and feelings.

And this pre-natal influence must be faithfully continued once the baby is born, for, as all parents should realize, a tiny baby is highly sensitive to its environment. Ultimately, it is by example that parents and pedagogues should accomplish their educational mission.’