Peter Deunov -Wisdommaster of Love

His grave is like a timeless life program. Encircled with a white cast iron fence full of pentagrams, it shows the keys on the path of the new spiritual man: wisdom, truth, virtue, love and justice.

Daily, dozens of Bulgarians come to the lush rose garden in the heart of the Bulgarian capital Sofia, where the wisdom teacher and heir of the Bogomils, Peter Deunov, lies buried. They reflect, make subdued music or read a text from his immense spiritual legacy.

That spiritual testament includes over 7000 lectures. They can be divided roughly into four categories. In the (five o’clock) Sunday morning lectures Deunov (1864-1944), also known by the name of Beinsa Douno, speaks to his students and listeners about the ‘new heaven’. On Sunday afternoon, again at five o’clock, he talks about the ‘new earth’. On Wednesday at five o’clock in the evening he focusses on the ‘living forces of nature and the cosmos’ and on Friday at five o’clock the ‘new man’ is the central topic.

Love, wisdom and truth.

Have love for the perfect path of truth and of life,

use the Good as a foundation for your home,

Justice as a measure,

Love as a jewel,

Wisdom as a wrap,

and the Truth as a lamp

and I will reveal myself unto you.

In the fulfilment of God’s will lies the power of the human soul. 

This quote describes the foundation on which Deunov builds up his “new teachings”. It has three basic principles. First of all, the love that brings true life, furthermore the wisdom that generates light and the true knowledge, and finally the truth that brings unlimited and full freedom. But of these three, love remains the ever-returning Leitmotiv:

My teaching is about living nature, about the people and about the intellectual achievements of this world, but especially about God, because it is a teaching of love.

Not without reason the writing on the fountain in the rose garden proclaims, with big Cyrillic letters:

GOD IS LOVE.

Blossoming of the human soul

For Deunov, humanity is, in a spiritual sense, heading for a turning point of times. So far, the human soul has not been developed much further than “a bud”. But in the coming new era this bud will open. That is one of the greatest events in the All and is called the “blooming of the human soul.”

You are souls, once received in the Spirit of God, and now you have the opportunity to flourish and bear fruit. That will gratify God. This thought will lay a basis beneath your existence so that you will start to understand the meaning of life and always find the One Way. 

On this path, however, there are also sufferings and bindings, which also Deunov cannot deny. After all, man permanently has to reckon with his dividedness, with his dual nature: matter and spirit. That physical element is “wrapped” in the “I-personality”. This is distinguished by dualistic characteristics like joy and sadness, love and hate, envy and dedication. When man steps out with his personality, he stands on the “lowest step” of his life.

The origin of that personality lies in the consciousness of man, the mother of the personality. The “I” is the father of the personality. Presented in this way, consciousness – the lower self – and the I, the higher self, form the pair from which the personality is derived. Above this pair stands the divine Monad, above the monad the divine soul and above the divine soul stands the divine spirit.

Preparation class

The life of the personality is, in fact, just the preparation class of the big School of Life” says Deunov. “In man the personality represents the life of the flesh, and the divine in him the life of the spirit. If the mind now comes in the first place for man, then the personality must be satisfied with a lower place. There where the spirit lives, the flesh dies. Where the flesh lives, the spirit dies. Why? Their nourishment is not the same. The spirit cannot lead his life into the right direction with the nourishment of the personality – he lives his own life.

Why can’t the personality live in harmony with the spirit, Deunov is often desperately confronted with.

That is because those two have swapped places. But some day, when everything falls into place, the personality and the spirit will once again be in harmony and in unity with each other. At some point the personality will realize, by the awakening divine element within her, that it does not live for itself and that it should hand over the guidance to the immortal soul as the carrier of purity, holiness, brotherhood, harmony and peace.

Gandhi

Peter Deunov is often seen as an heir of the deeply rooted spiritual tradition that began with the Orphic mysteries of the Thracians in Eastern Europe and was strongly carried on by the Bogomils. With his message of love he travelled the whole world. In India, even Gandhi was among his students. In his own country, he built up tens of thousands of followers who united themselves in the White Brotherhood. The authorities feared but also respected him. The latter was proven during World War II when he was secretly consulted about the possible prosecution of the Jews in his country. Deunov’s natural authority proved so great that his message of love made the breakthrough: not one Jew was prosecuted in Bulgaria!

After the revolution of 1989, Deunov gained an honorary place in the collective memory of the Bulgarians. This was reflected in the election of the “greatest Bulgarian in history” in which wisdom teacher Deunov finished second, after the Bulgarian freedom fighter and national hero Vasil Levski (1837-1873).