‘Over the course of my life, I have had occasion to study many individual people and to see why they do what they do, to see what their motives are and what they hope to obtain. And as it was often easy for me to see in advance that a person’s built-in faculties and capacities were not attuned to the goals they had set themselves, and that they would soon have exhausted all their energies, I would warn them of the danger they were in.

But my warnings were never any use. Yes, the importance of this question of one’s physical, astral and mental work is incalculable. Think about it, reflect on it, and ask yourselves whether what you do on the physical plane corresponds to what is in your heart and your head.

Inactivity on the mental plane will eventually be felt on the physical plane
If you try to imitate certain sadhus whose only work is meditation and contemplation, and who never do any work on the physical plane, this too will lead to certain anomalies, for human beings were created to live in the three worlds and, properly understood, every activity on one plane benefits the other planes.

This is why we refuse to eliminate any one type of activity; anyone who does so is no longer a whole person, and they will never be able to present themselves to the Lord as one who has developed all their God-given possibilities on the three planes. When you are active only on the physical plane and never on the mental plane, the lack on the mental plane will eventually be felt on the physical plane, and vice versa. These notions should be very helpful to you.

It is time to discard the narrow philosophies
The goal of the Brotherhood is not to imitate certain aspects of the various religions or philosophies. The vocation of the Brotherhood is to create new human beings, men and women who are whole and complete.

It is time to discard all those narrow philosophies that develop only one small part of the human being and leave all other aspects incomplete and undeveloped. The true philosophy that is going to spread throughout the world must be a philosophy of total fulfilment.

The ideal of the ‘New Human Being’
Human beings must be strong, flexible and robust on the physical level; they must be full of love, kindness and indulgence in their hearts, and they must have a keen, luminous intellect capable of understanding the laws of life and of the universe.

This is the ideal of the new human being. Whatever other people may think, believe or preach does not interest us. We are here to tell you that the new human being must be a whole, capable of working on both the physical and spiritual planes and, even, on the far more exalted planes of the divine world.’

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

From a lecture given at The Bonfin, August 5, 1965

To be continued…

Complete Works Volume 18, Jnana Yoga Vol 2
Chapter 2, Spiritual Work