New Religious Movement Leaders

"Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov, OmraamWiki, 2 February 2019"

"When he entered the conference room, in front of his listeners, there was an indescribable aura around him. Some days he was inhabited by a mysterious presence: perfectly still, his eyes closed, he spoke in a sober and concise manner; at other times he spoke with great force, like a prophet charged with shaking his contemporaries out of their ruts. But most of the time, he spoke like a father talks to his children, most simply. He knew how to laugh frankly with a spontaneity that testified to a deep joie de vivre. On the material level, there is a will that never knows how to act against others. He is a refined soul, filled with a sacred and impersonal love. He is an intelligence recognized by all his listeners as being particularly luminous and penetrating, possessing extraordinary powers of analysis and synthesis. What is more, he thinks what is divine, he feels it and he executes it."

"Everything was linked, coherent in the life of Brother Mikhaël. I could never discover a rift between his collective life, his words and his behavior. He never advised others of something that he himself did not put into practice in the privacy of his existence."

"According to Aivanhov one of the fundamental truths of initiatic science is that in the “subtle” world (the so-called “higher world”) all elements that make up reality, are linked and connected to each other in a specific way. Therefore, the realization of the Kingdom of God on our planet becomes an almost spontaneous and natural reality, if everybody makes efforts to realize this divine Kingdom within themselves, which then could bring about the... Golden Age. In order to describe the best way of how each individual can come closer to this significant ideal, Aivanhov reveals the eternal principles of initiatic science and defines the cosmic laws which reign both in the universe as well as in man; in the macrocosm as well as in the microcosm. At the same time, he also describes the constant exchange between “that which is above and that which is below”. A basis for this method is the conviction that human beings cannot attain the tangible realization of such a high ideal through faith alone, but that they also need knowledge about how ‘reality’ is organized. This knowledge will help to understand how the arrival of the Golden Age remains no longer a utopia, but becomes a certainty."

"Now is the time to live an experience that humans have not yet attempted and that will free them from their illusions, isolation and helplessness. For the work I envision, I want people who are rich in heart and soul. We must no longer be content to talk about love, peace and fraternity, we must live them by learning to meet and make exchanges in areas where the values ​​advocated by society no longer count so much. Come and support my work, lend your strength, give an example of fraternal spirit. You claim to love your country, but what are you doing so that everyone can live there fraternally? You don't yet know how contagious your example could become."

"Sometimes I receive letters from brothers and sisters saying, ‘Oh Master, we would so like to be like you. You are an example for us.’ But I say that you should take the sun as your example, as I do. I look to the sun, and I point toward it to encourage you to go in that direction. Do not stop at me; go right past me to the sun, immerse yourself in its life, its warmth and its light, so that you can become like it. As for me, think of me as being a signpost that shows you the path you should take. So, do not stop at the signpost. When you travel along a road, and you see a sign that says Paris or Frejus, you do not stop there and hug it saying, ‘How I love you, dear signpost. How I love your beautiful lettering, and how well you point out the direction I should take!’ No, you keep traveling until you reach Paris or Frejus."

"On the surface it may seem that wars are caused by economic and political questions, but in fact they are caused by our wholesale slaughter of animals. The laws of justice are inexorable, and human beings are going to have to pay with their own blood … We kill animals, but nature is an organic whole, and by killing animals we are, as it were, affecting certain glands in that organism. When this happens, the balance of the organism is disrupted, and it is not surprising that before long war breaks out among men. Yes, human beings have slaughtered millions of animals for their meat, without realizing that on the invisible plane those animals are linked to other human beings, and it is they who will now have to share the fate of the animals. When we slaughter animals we are slaughtering human beings. Everybody agrees that it is time to establish the reign of peace in the world, that there must be no more wars. Yes, but war will go on just as long as we continue to slaughter animals, because by destroying them we are destroying ourselves."

"The idea of ​​brotherhood for which we are working is still like a newborn child. I speak to the entire universe about this child who wants to grow up, learn to walk, learn. I know all her needs, my constant concern is to ensure its subsistence and its growth, I have no other job, and I have to be so vigilant! This idea of ​​fraternity, it is she and she alone who has the power to make peace reign in the world. I have come among you so that an ideal of fraternal life can be realized here which will serve as an example for the future... to bring a model of collective, fraternal life, where each individual will consciously accept a kind of magnificent servitude in order to access another freedom, truer, deeper, that of his Higher Being."

"In 1923 he enrolled at the University in Sofia: After receiving diplomas in philosophy, psychology, and education, Mikhael continued to frequent the university. Stimulated by curiosity, he moved freely from one faculty to another, exploring the different disciplines, following courses in medicine, chemistry, and physics. He spent so many years at the university that his friends nicknamed him ‘the eternal student’."

"When I was meditating, I tried to perceive the universe as an immense symphony ... One day, I felt myself carried away in space, very far away, and suddenly I heard that the whole universe was singing ... no human music can compare to what I heard ... This music is not heard with the physical ears, but with the soul, with spirit ... This experience that I had so early in my life has remained like a seal in my soul and has pushed me to seek harmony always and everywhere."

"Jesus revealed the mind of the Father. This mind is the life and intelligence of man as well as the substance that provides for all his needs. This providing power of the Father Jesus brought out prominently, and He showed in various ways how easy it is to obtain supply by trusting God. This teaching is not an encouragement to man to be idle, but rather to be active and trustful, constantly looking to Spirit instead of matter as the source of his good. p. 182"

"However the study of the constituent parts of man, his spirit, soul, and body, reveals man's innate capacity to overcome the disintegrating effects of error thinking and living, and his ability, by conforming to the standards laid down by Jesus, to destroy the seeds of death and implant health and eternal life in his body."

"To the oft-repeated question "If Jesus resurrected His physical body why is He not visible here among us?" we would say that Jesus overcame the sins that caused our original fall from the perfect body of the Adamic man to the diseased and dying body in which the race is now existing."

"Men personalize good and evil in a multiplicity of gods and devils, but Truth students follow Jesus in recognizing the supreme Spirit in man as the "one God and Father of all.""

"No extended definition of good is necessary to those who follow Jesus; even converted savages understand good and do it."

"The universal desire among awakened Christians to love God and man is part of the law constantly operating through man when he finds his right relation to God."

"When we have purified our mind and body and cast out every evil thought, our body will become transparent to human sight, as is Jesus' body. The idea that a transparent body is thin air, a ghost, is wholly wrong. Science says that the invisible electrical units composing the atom are millions of times more powerful than any visible thing. When the atomic energy in the atomic bomb was released great cities were destroyed."

"The status of evil is that of a parasite. It has no permanent life of itself; its whole existence depends on the life it borrows from its parent, and when its connection with the parent is severed nothing remains. Apparent evil is the result of ignorance, and when the truth is presented the error disappears. Jesus called it a liar and the father of lies."

"Language has not yet been invented to tell all the wonders that we have found since we began opening our minds to the Spirit in prayer. We have discovered enough to convince us that the body can be so charged with spiritual life through prayer that it will overcome death, as promised by Jesus Christ."

"The laws instituted in the aeons and ages of the past still prevail in the present. Interpreting Being from a personal standpoint, we have ignored the principles and laws at the very foundation of all creation and substituted a personal God, and many contradictions have followed. Now through the unfoldment of the spiritual man implanted in us in the beginning we are discerning the unchangeable laws of the good and the absolute necessity of conforming to them."

"So we see that Jesus taught plainly that God functions in and through man and nature instead of being a person somewhere in the skies; also that we demonstrate God by making His Spirit manifest in our life. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.""

"Understanding shows us that prayer is more than asking God for help in this physical world; it is in its highest sense the opening up in our soul of an innate spiritual umbilical cord that connects us with the Holy Mother, from whom we can receive a perpetual flow of life. This is the beginning of eternal life for both soul and body, the essential teaching of Jesus, which He demonstrated in overcoming death. We have earnestly sought to know and tell others how to pray, and this book is our very best exposition of the subject."

"We have been so persistently taught that prayer consists in asking God for some human need that we have lost sight of our spiritual identity and have become a race of praying beggars."

"Socrates was asked, "What is a good man?" He replied, "A man who does good." Again he was asked, "What is good?" "What the good man does," he replied."

"God is Spirit in whom we "live, and move, and have our being." We are the offspring of this Spirit and can make conscious contact with it by turning our attention away from material things and thinking about Spirit. As we practice this kind of prayer our innate Spirit showers its life energies into our conscious mind and a great soul expansion follows."

"Jesus told His followers that when they were gathered in that upper room in Jerusalem the Holy Spirit would descend upon them with power; and they were transformed from ignorant men into linguists of unbelievable ability."

"The Lord's Prayer was given as a sample: not to be followed literally... according to Fenton's translation it is a series of affirmations, as follows: Our Father in the Heavens; Your Name must be being hallowed; Your kingdom must be being restored; Your will must be being done, both in Heaven and upon the Earth. Give us to-day our tomorrow's bread; And forgive us our faults, as we forgive those offending us, for You would not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from its evil."

"As in all matters where we seek divine help we are free to use any words we choose or no words at all...Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, Uttered or unexpressed... Prayer in man is a conscious expression of the upward trend of nature found everywhere. So every impulse or desire of the soul for life, love, light, is a prayer."

"All growth and unfoldment from atom to sun is based upon this law of soul urge. What you earnestly desire and persistently affirm will be yours, if you "faint not.""

"When Jesus' disciples asked Him to teach them how to pray He warned them against making a display of their praying in order to be seen of men. They should retire to their "inner chamber" and pray to the Father who sees in secret and rewards openly. Then He said, "After this manner therefore pray.""

"Before they are slain these poor brutes are maltreated in ways almost beyond enumeration. Visit shipping pens, stocktrains, stockyards and packinghouses, if you want evidence of the sufferings of the poor beasts of the field. And these very sufferings are through the law of sympathetic mental vibrations transferred to the flesh of those who eat the bodies of these animals. The undefined fears, the terrors of the nightmare, and the many disturbances in stomach and bowels that man endures may be in a measure traced to these unsuspected sources."

"Therefore, in the light of the Truth that God is love, and that Jesus came to make his love manifest in the world, we cannot believe it is his will for men to eat meat, or to do anything else that would cause suffering to the innocent and helpless."

"When we frame our desires in sound words and place them before our indwelling Lord, we are using intelligently the supreme law of God in bringing into manifestation that which He has implanted in us. A prayer without desire in it, a prayer without sincerity in it, a prayer without soul in it, a prayer without Spirit in it is a fruitless prayer."

"We need never look for universal peace on this earth until men stop killing animals for food."

"Above all practice the presence of God in prayer. Divine Mind has given us all potentialities, in prayer we recognize it as the source of these, and with a right understanding of our relation to it our soul grows great with infinite capacity, all potentiality. "With God all things are possible." "All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine.""

"Paul says, "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds". When we accomplish this transformation we shall see Jesus as He is and as we must all be in the resurrection from the dead and dying body in which we are now functioning. This is not to be accomplished by a great miracle at some appointed time in the future, but day by day we shall be resurrected out of the darkness of sense into the glorious light of Spirit."

"Leaving felt like jumping out of an aeroplane with no parachute. But after two weeks at Marty's place I got my feet back under me. He put me in touch with a community of former Church members. One even offered me a job. It's been two years since then; I've now got a home, a wife, and a wonderful six-month-old daughter."

"When I left Scientology, I lost every friend I ha. Then I went to see Marty. He gave me certainty, gave me hope, and made me realise I wasn't alone. He picked up the broken pieces of my life and put them back together."

"Reading it [Rathbun's blog] had a therapeutic effect. It made me realise that I wasn't the only one with doubts. He reflected exactly what I was thinking."

"Marty presents himself as a true believer. He still believes in the faith, but he's trying to reform it. He sees himself as a Martin Luther figure."

"Marty's blog is a forum for information. That's what makes it such a threat. He's not trying to be a leader of men, or take over the Church, or storm the castle walls. He's just a guy on the outside who wants to speak his mind."

"Marty has become one of the Church's most public detractors, and has appeared in that guise on virtually every major US news network."

"He speaks their language. He's not abandoned Hubbard. He's not given up on the faith. He's just worn down. And the people he's speaking to are also worn down. They are exhausted with requests for donations. Because of that, he reaches deep inside the organisation."

"Many aspects of Marty's story are disputed by the Church, which calls him a liar, a criminal, and an apostate. But the verifiable facts are as follows: he was a fully-paid-up Scientologist for 27 years, before quitting in 2004. For much of this time, he was a high-ranking executive in the Church, helping steer some of its most sensitive legal campaigns. He was also acquainted with many celebrity members, including Kirstie Alley, John Travolta, and Tom Cruise."

"I never doubt the gains that I got from Scientolog. I've never doubted the effectiveness of auditing. But I believe there's a real problem with the Church. The core poison is greed. I look at Scientology, and I think it's being destroyed by this quest for the buck."

"Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, the highest-ranking executives to leave the church, are speaking out for the first time."

"That Rathbun and Rinder are speaking out is a stunning reversal because they were among Miscavige's closest associates, Haldeman and Ehrlichman to his Nixon. Now they provide an unprecedented look inside the upper reaches of the tightly controlled organization."

"I love Scientology. But there needs to be a differentiation between the Church of Scientology and the philosophy."

"That’s the difference between the old Scientology and the new: the brave new Scientology is all these beautiful buildings and real estate and no people."

"I had the No. 2 position from 1998 until I left. I answered to no one but David Miscavige, who was chairman of the board. I was the personal counselor for Tom Cruise, Lisa Marie Presley, John Travolta and Kirstie Alley."