If you want more than anything to become a child of God, then your heart will become more generous, your mind more enlightened, your will stronger and more determined; your personality will be only the instrument that expresses the sublime life of the individuality… to the extent of becoming united with it… and then there will be no more personality, the personality and the individuality will be one complete and perfect entity.

In the meanwhile, you may have revelations from time to time, a few intuitions like lightning, enlightening you momentarily, but not for long, the clouds always reappear. Then again while reading a book, gazing at a beautiful landscape, praying, meditating, you are caught up by some wonderful inspiration and live an important moment of your life. As before it does not last long, all too soon it is over… and so it goes. The life of man is a continual alternation between light and darkness until the day finally comes when he becomes, he lives the Spirit. That is, he is born again, into a new Life.

 The centre of the personality is the astral body, the body of desire where all the negative ideas and impulses come from. The astral body gives the stimulus, the motive, and the mental body does the arranging and combining that bring us gratification. You must understand this: our desires dictate our behaviour and, although our mind is superior to our desires, capable of putting an end to them and making them listen to reason, it gives in to them. Is it not true that everyone in the world uses the mind to carry out the demands of their lower nature?  Our learning, our experience, our cultural riches are in the service of something strange and sombre originating in who knows what dark and subterranean places, and the most intelligent, learned, enlightened minds work for forces that are far from clear.

That is the sad truth, dear brothers and sisters, if you do not believe me, go and do a little research… you will see. When the astral body starts working for the intellect, or better still when the intellect starts working for the soul and spirit, that is when perfection becomes possible. It is the purpose of prayer to submit the physical, astral, mental bodies, that is, the lower trinity which thinks, feels and acts for itself only, to the higher Trinity which also thinks, feels and acts, but divinely, for the whole world. The best prayer is to ask the individuality to take over your whole being.

In India, those who practice Jnana Yoga – The Yoga of self-knowledge – meditate, using the formula, ‘I am he,’ that is, only he exists, I do not exist, I am but a reflection, a shadow. Man is not a separate creature, he is part of God. God alone exists, we are his projection. When we say, ‘I am he,’ what we mean is that we do not exist outside of God, we are part of him, we are near him until the day we become him. History has given us proof that creatures have in fact existed who experienced the power, the light, the ecstasy that comes from being able to identify with God.

Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov,
Izvor Book 213, Man’s Two Natures, Human and Divine
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