The following excerpt is from an address given by Torkom Saraydarian at a party held in honor of his birthday celebration in November of 1996.

“I am so grateful that all my co-workers, friends, and students are here to give their love and respect to me. It is very thrilling. I accept their love and respect, and I promise to work very hard if God grants me more years. But I want to tell you that in reality it is not I who gathered you here, not even my personal attraction. You are here because of the electromagnetic field of the Teaching. The Teaching brought you together, the Teaching inspired you, the Teaching built new bridges between you, and eventually this integration and alignment gave you the concept of the group.

“When you can say, ‘I love the work I am doing and will do,’ in that you are dedicating yourself to group work. A real group is the result of the Teaching. If you read the Teaching, if you assimilate the Teaching, if you actualize the Teaching, then you will have greater and greater and stronger Teachings.

“Some people worship the Teacher. It is wrong. They highly respect and love their Teacher, but they forget the Teaching. When you worship the Teacher, you lose the Teaching. You will assimilate the Teaching, actualize the Teaching. You will live the precepts of the Teaching. Your daily labor, daily life must express the Teaching. When you love the Teaching, when you actualize the Teaching, then your Teacher is glorified, not before.

The greatest respect you can give to your Teacher is to assimilate the Teaching. When the Teaching turns into your life, when the Teaching penetrates into your consciousness in such a way that you breathe, inhale, and work in the consciousness of the Teaching, when this is done your Teacher is glorified. When you love the Teaching you have the Teacher and the Teaching.

In many, many groups, on many occasions, for sixty, seventy years I saw that those who worshipped the Teacher lost the Teacher. Those who worship the Teaching and try to live with the Teaching, they gain the Teacher and the Teaching. Do not forget this. I wanted this point very clear in your mind because I never thought about this before.

Second, I will express to all of you my deepest gratitude for your gifts, for your letters, for your faxes, for your nice words, for your prayers, especially. I feel your prayers, and I would have been long ago gone if your prayers were not with me. I really appreciate them. Those prayers are also creating integration in the whole group, and things are happening that are very interesting. Almost one thousand five hundred people wrote me letters, people I never knew. Thirty years ago they found my books, and until today they are reading and they are transforming their life but they never wrote me. Bad news goes quickly. They say, ‘Before you pass away, we want to express our gratitude.’ Look what is happening. People who are known, people who are strangers, people who are totally foreign are coming together for the Teaching.

So I strongly advise that if you want to be in the Teaching and enjoy your Teacher, study the Teaching. There are sixty books now, and one hundred books are coming very soon. People have started to donate ten thousand, fifteen thousand dollars to publish a book in their name. This is a fantastic phenomenon and it makes me so grateful and touched, but in the meantime I think that all these books are not mine. They are given by God and they go to God. It is very strange. “This is the difference between these generous people and those people who do not want to share half their apple. It is very saddening. The Leadership path is woven by joys and by sadness. When the Leader sees stinginess, not sharing, ungenerosity, he cries, ‘What are they doing?’ The life is givingness, abundance, generosity!

It is so beautiful to be together. These kinds of groups are very rare. It is a result of the Teaching. When the Teaching penetrates into your heart, into your mind, into your daily life, you do not have a choice. You will search for each other. When I go to the Temple and see one hundred fifty, sixty people, my heart opens. I say, ‘What a beautiful thing we are creating for the Hierarchy.’ Later these groups will be lotuses in the Chalice of the Great Ones. I know I feel how joyful are the Masters when They see that you Love each other. That is the most important thing. You sacrifice for each other, you care for each other, you assimilate the Teaching and eventually the Teaching becomes your life.

One last thing I will say. Be giving, generous, not stingy. When I got the news, I gave away all the money and different things. I do not want anything. They seem to me that they are all stupid. Do not wait until death comes and says, ‘Bye, we are going.’ Start loving, sacrificing, helping each other. That is where your greatness lies. Your greatness is what you give. Your greatness is not what you accumulate.

God bless all of you. Really, I love you. You are beautiful people, and you gathered together in the Name of the Teaching. Do not forget that point. I am the carrier of Treasures. Like a horse, I bring the Treasures and put here. Use them. Sixty years later Torkom is gone, evaporated, but the Teaching will remain. Strengthen each other with the Teaching, sell the books, buy the books, spread them. There is power in them. Imagine that there is no place in the world that these books are not there. They are translated into many languages, and new ones are coming every day. It will be an electromagnetic field over humanity. That is why I wanted to create — because humanity needed the Teaching. “Thank you very much.” 

– Excerpt from Outreach Magazine; Published by TSG Foundation

https://www.tsgfoundation.org/