My father was born on 12 – 12 – 1912. There will be a few raised eyebrows at this triple 12. I am sure numerologists would find a suitable interpretation for this birth date – but we don’t really need any interpretation.

In small private circles my father often complained that he had an unhappy childhood. His father held a high position in the British Naval administration in Cyprus. Very early in his life, my father became aware that his consciousness was more developed than that of other children. To know what other people thought was for him something natural; he did not know other children were different. Nobody seemed to understand him when he talked about the presence of Nature spirits or beings which were invisible to the others. An anecdote which he often told will illustrate this.

The teacher asked my father to go to the blackboard and solve a math problem. My father excused himself and said that he had not done his homework properly and would therefore not be able to solve the problem. The teacher insisted and said, “let us see how much you remember.” When my father stood at the blackboard with a chalk in his hand, a presence behind him said, “don’t worry, Stelios, I am with you and I will guide your hand to write the correct solution on the blackboard.” When my father had finished, the teacher was furious with him and said, “You lied to me. If you had not done your homework you could never have solved this problem. Shame on you. I have to punish you. Leave the room and stand outside the door in the hall.” By chance – as we say – the director passed and asked my father why he was standing there. My father related exactly what had happened. Fortunately, the director was aware of spiritual dimensions. He took my father to his office and asked him many questions about his invisible helper. When he heard that this “helper” could solve any problem, the director asked my father’s father whether he would agree to an experiment with his son. The teachers at school had a mathematical problem to which they knew the answer but could not find the details of the solution. My father, with the help of his “invisible helper”, solved the problem. Then they were interested in the translation of a Latin text. My father asked, “Do you want the translation in Modern Greek or in Ancient Greek?” The director told my father to be very discreet about his relationship with spirits because people would not understand him. In a conversation with my father’s father the director said, “What shall we teach this boy? He knows more than we do.”

At a very young age, my father became aware of all his previous incarnations. To him re-incarnation was an absolute fact and his whole philosophy is based on this belief. He remembered, for instance, the time he spent with Yohannan – St. John the evangelist – during the life of Joshua Emmanuel, the Christ. When my father was seven years old, Yohannan bestowed on him the Seven Promises which became the vows of all “seekers of the Truth” (My father never had any “disciples”, he never wanted to be a “guru”; he called his students “seekers of the Truth”).

I promise to myself:

1. To serve at all times and in all places Absolute BE-ingness to whom I whole-heartedly belong.
2. To be ready at all times and in all places to serve the Divine Plan.
3. To make good use of the Divine Gifts of thought and word at all times, in all places and under all circumstances.
4. To endure patiently, without complaining, all forms of trials and tribulation which the most-wise Divine Law may bestow upon me.
5. To love and serve my fellow human beings sincerely from the depths of my heart and Soul, no matter what their behaviour may be towards me.
6. To meditate and to contemplate daily Absolute BE-ingness, with the objective of total co-ordination of my thoughts, desires, words and actions with Its Divine Will.
7. To investigate and check every night whether all my thoughts, desires, words and actions are in absolute harmony with the Divine Law.

This last Promise gave rise to what my father called “Introspection”. He considered this exercise most important and an absolute “must” for every seeker of the Truth. Each night just prior to sleep the student recalls the day from start to conclusion. Relax completely and see yourself in each encounter and situation of that day and ask yourself:

What did I think or feel that I should not have thought or felt?

What did I not think or feel that I should have thought or felt?

What did I say that I should not have said?

What did I not say that I should have said?

What did I do that I should not have done?

What did I not do that I should have done?

Do not accuse or praise yourself but rather observe as an outside observer. In this exercise the seeker of the Truth will learn to trace his emotions, thoughts and actions to their source, the purpose being to gradually eliminate egoism from our personality.

At home my father spent much time with his Nanny. She knew that he was lonely and taught him the art of embroidery. He has always enjoyed pieces of embroidered art.

He would carefully listen when adults discussed their problems and occasionally give his comment which often amazed them. On such an occasion his father took him aside and said to him, “My son, tell me, are you an angel or a devil?” My father always smiled when he told this story, because his answer was, “probably of bit of both.”

At school he excelled in Music, Art and Languages. He studied the violin and piano and later composed his own songs. The Art teacher told him to sign his oil paintings with “G.M.” – Grand Master.

He mastered the Turkish language so well that he was offered a scholarship to study in Turkey, which he did not take up. Instead he later obtained in England a Doctor of Philosophy, a Doctor of Divinity and some other degrees. He knew many languages, Modern and Ancient Greek, Turkish, Latin, Russian, English, French, Italian, Sanskrit, Aramaic and the hieroglyphic language of Ancient Egypt.

We were a happy family: my father, my mother, who was a teacher before she got married, my younger sister and myself. When I was 14 years old, my mother passed over. It was a big shock for all of us. From then on, my father was for my sister and me both, a father and a mother. He was the most loving father that anybody could have.

My father’s house was always full; neighbours, students or people who had come to be healed. From early childhood, he had the gift of healing. Sometimes he saw up to eighty people in a day. Most of them got their healing. And when they thanked him, he would say, “Thank God, not me.” Some healings were so extraordinary that people called them miraculous. But my father always said: “They are not miracles. If you know the laws of Nature you will understand.”

If I was to give you a summary of my father’s teachings in two words, it would be “wake up!” He loved to wake people out of their spiritual slumber. “Who are you, what are you?” he would ask, and add “You are not your emotions, your desires, nor your thoughts. You are not your bodies, but something far greater: “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most, High.” (Psalm 82:6) (Also John 10:34   Jesus answered them, is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?)

My father used to say that you only need two books in your life: one is the New Testament and the other is the Book of your Life. In the Book of your Life you start every day a new page. Never mind if the last page was soiled. Start a fresh clean page. St. Luke says in his gospel that he who put his hand to the plough, should look forward and not back. (Luke 9:62).

My father loved the New Testament. He used to say that the New Testament should be a seeker’s most precious companion. Unfortunately, much had been removed or changed by the early church fathers, but he who can read the New Testament with an open mind for spiritual truth will still find a lot of most valuable information. My father loved the parables.

For example, let us look at the parable of the unclean spirit that came out of a man, went through dry places, collected seven other spirits more wicked than itself and returned to the man. My father preferred the term “elemental” to that of “unclean spirit”. Every thought, every emotion, every desire, creates a thought-form, an emotional thought-form or a pure thought-form. Christ knew that difference, when He called these spirits or elementals “unclean” and He describes in this parable how these elementals are created, at the moment when they leave their “home”. Their home is the personality of man. When an elemental is created, either by thought or emotion, it vibrates at the same rate as its creator. The elemental has its own life, its own identity, and, of course, a kind of intelligence. Having left the personality, the elemental says, “I will return home” to my creator to be re-energised, to get more energy. But in coming back, it brings with it “another seven more wicked spirits”. Why do we attract such “spirits”, such elementals? Because we know that like seeks like and that the elemental vibrates at the same rate as other such elementals, then attracts such entities, vibrating at the same rate of vibration as itself, or even worse, and comes back.

Does it not make one think, to realise that every thought, good or bad, comes back to the thinker? My father used to emphasise “Be the master of your thoughts, feelings and emotions, and not their slave!” Just try to concentrate for some minutes on your thoughts and you will realise how difficult it is to control them.

Many of my father’s lesson started with the powerful statement “What is, what always was, and what always will be is the Absolute Infinite BE-ingness, God, as the Absolute Infinite Reality. He stressed that all the Divine Beings, Monads, within Absolute BE-ingness express the Divine Common Selfhood – you could say as gods within God. We are not talking about pantheism. My father was very clear: there is only one God in its Trinity: Absolute Infinite BE-ingness, the Logos and the Holy Spirit. God was moved to express Itself in Itself as Creation by “euareskeia”, Will-Pleasure. The Greek word “euareskeia” carries a sense of pleasure derived from bountiful giving done by a warm, generous and wealthy source. Now, what are the worlds of creation made of? Absolute BE-ingness and the Divine Beings emanate what my father called Mind. This holy substance is used in various frequencies of vibration. It ranges from Super Light, to psychonoetical super substance and substance, down to matter which is Mind in solid form.

Our bodies are also made up of Mind: the gross material body of Mind solid; the psychical body, our body of emotion, of Mind substance; and our noetical body, our body of thought, of Mind super substance. We have already said, when we talked about elementals, that every thought and every emotion is a form made up of Mind substance or super substance.

My father strongly recommended to use the gift of observation. From our careful observation of ourselves, of nature and the universes we can draw important conclusions. We will, for example, see that everything has been created by Absolute BE-ingness and his holy Archangels with Total Wisdom and Total Power. (I will say more about the holy Archangels tomorrow before the meditation) Be aware of the divine spark in the smallest thing in Creation. By learning to observe carefully and to concentrate fully, proper visualisation becomes easier. We all visualise all the time subconsciously when we create elementals. This is the way we create our world. Our thoughts are most powerful and visualisation is the process of using thought consciously in a constructive manner either for the expansion of our consciousness or to help others in need.

My father liked to confront people with unexpected questions. He could, for instance, ask a person: “Do you have a Soul?” “Yes, of course,” the person would answer. And my father would laugh and say, “Oh no, you are a Soul and you have a body.”

According to my father’s teaching, man originates from a ray of a holy Monad. The ray of Spirit passes through the Idea of Archangelic Man and then through the Idea of Heavenly man to be shaped according to the law of the Human Form. From that point on a Guardian Archangel is Egofied with the Spirit which is to be humanised. A small ray of our Spirit-Ego-Being is formed into the Self-aware Soul. Now we have two foundations for the Inner Self: the holy Monadic Self within Absolute BE-ingness and its emanation, the Self-aware Soul. As the Spirit-Ego-Being gives birth to the Self-aware Soul, the Soul gives life to its own projection. This projection is what we call our Permanent Personality. Descending into the worlds of existence it takes on its own colour and designs its own projections. As long as it remains in the worlds of space-place-time, it assumes many names and dresses in many present-day personalities and expresses itself in many ways in these worlds. But we should never lose sight of our aim to return to where we came from. For my father, one of the most important parables was the Prodigal Son, which symbolises our descent into the worlds of separateness and our return to the all-loving Father.

We have two states or conditions of things:

First, BE-ingness: the eternal (in the Absolute Infinite BE-ingness), never changing, everlasting, in the Absolute Infinite Selfhood, and second, Existence: what we can see, the expression or manifestation of this BE-ingness in the World of Existence. The World of Existence is in the World of BE-ingness, because in order to exist every form must have BE-ingness in it.

My father never prepared any lesson or lecture. If students asked him, “What are you going to talk about today”, he would say, “Have you ever seen me carrying a paper? When we are in the Stoa, Yohannan will know exactly what is needed.”

Never has my father claimed to know all the answers. To the question why we human beings have come to live in this world of separateness, (have we fallen from grace?) he said that this burning question has never been answered. “Even those Great Ones who had raised their self-consciousness to the highest levels of Self-Super-consciousness … remain silent”, he said. And he added that on the material plane of the planet there are no trust-worthy traces that would allow a scientist to come to a reasonable conclusion regarding the origin of Man. But the theory of Charles Darwin cannot satisfy serious seekers of the Truth, he said.

Did my father read the thoughts of other people? No. Only when – for healing or another legitimate purpose – he had to know. Then he would attune to the person and know exactly what he thought. However, he often said, “To be able to know what people think is not a blessing.” If people asked him about their previous incarnations he would say that it is by the grace of God that they could not remember. To be able to face what we have been and done in the past needs a better mental and spiritual constitution than most people have.

My father had a great sense of humour. We should not take the little problems of everyday life too seriously. When someone with a petty problem came to him, he would ask him “How important is this problem? Would people in a hundred years still talk of it?” One of his favourite sayings was: “Nothing matters much, and most things don’t matter at all.”

Titles were of no importance to my father. He wanted to be a brother-guide and friend. When someone asked him whether he was ambitious, he said, “Yes, I would like to be the handkerchief to dry the tears of people.”

 “Titles are absolutely unnecessary,” he said, and when a journalist referred to “The Magus of Strovolos” (the title Markides gave to his first book), my father said, “and definitely not the word ‘magus,’ for God’s sake.”

After the publication of Markides’ books about my father, the number of visitors to Strovolos increased. On some days hundreds of people had come to hear my father’s lecture. Many were, of course, primarily interested in getting healed. In his last year my father spent more time teaching and preparing his books. He realised that many people whom he had healed suffered in due course a relapse, because they could not or did not want to understand his teaching. He always stressed the point that everybody should control his thoughts and emotions, reduce his or her egoism and love God and all the human beings. This is the basis to be healthy and happy. Feeling the need to be in the presence of a Master or to be surrounded by all the sacred books of the world, is like relying on crutches to move along the way. A Master may advise us how to avoid unnecessary detours. But the work has to be done by our Selves – hard work for years, or as my father often said, for centuries.

I should like to conclude with a prayer and a short meditation. The prayer is the Lord’s Prayer, which my father always recited before a lecture. Yohannan had given him a slightly amended version with an additional stanza. The meditation is a meditation which Joshua Emmanuel the Christ had given, in the synagogue of the Essene Brotherhood, to his disciples before sending them into the world to work as teachers and healers.

Our Father Who Art in Heaven,

Hallowed be Thy Name.

Thy Kingdom come,

Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread

and forgive us our transgressions

as we forgive those who transgress against us.

And lead us while in temptation

and deliver us from evil,

for Thine is the Kingdom

and the Power and the Glory, forever.

Absolute Infinite BE-ingness, God;

Everlasting Life, Love and Mercy;

Manifesting Yourself in Yourself,

as the Total Wisdom and the Almightiness;

Enlighten our minds to understand You as the Truth.

Clean our hearts to reflect Your Love towards You and towards all other human beings.

Amen

MEDITAION: Relax completely. Visualise Joshua Emmanuel the Christ standing before you as you sit peacefully, listening. In perfect at-one-ment with His Divine Self, the Logos, and attuned with each and every human being, Joshua spreads out His arms and says:

All of you, listen. You are my children, my offspring. I am in you as God, as Absolute BE-ingness, your real Self, and you are always in me as gods. And I am also with you as a human being, as your loving father, within our loving Father.

Every breath you take, sustaining the life of your material body, is a fatherly kiss of mine for you. My beloved ones, I will not only speak to you in words of any language, but I will also come to you as inspiration and as sensation.

I am the heat which keeps your body alive. I am the breeze, the fresh air that caresses your face. I am in your eyes – as your sight – allowing you to enjoy my works around you, as phenomena of life. I am the sight and I see all.

I am continuously creating Mind substance for you, to keep your bodies thriving. I am the living “bread of life”. And I am the living water which you will drink and never thirst again. I am the Mind vitality everywhere in the world. I am Spirit and I am form. You are in my Omnipresence.

I am the wise voice in your minds that speaks to you when you are doing something which is not right; not rebuking but awakening you. For I am reason in your thoughts and I am love in your heart.

Cast away from your heart every bitter emotion, all enmity, and any cruelty you may harbour. I am the Life in you. Enjoy my Life. You are my offspring, you are my flesh and blood, part of myself.

I love you. Love all my expressions, love all other human beings as your own self, and love all of life “as I have loved you”, and as I will always love you.