Peter Deunov |
|
| Full name | Peter Konstantinov Deunov |
|---|---|
| Born | 11 July 1864 |
| Died | 27 December 1944 |
| Era | Christianity |
| Region | 20th-century Spiritual master |
| School | School of the Universal White Brotherhood |
| Main interests | Love, Wisdom, Truth, Justice and Virtue |
| Notable ideas | Christianity, Second Coming of Christ, Paneurhythmy, Sixth race, The Testament of the Colour Rays of Light , The Sun Rays, and Pentagram. |
|
Influenced by
|
|
|
Influenced
|
|
Peter Konstantinov Deunov (Bulgarian Петър Константинов Дънов [ˈpɛtər kɔnstanˈtinɔv ˈdənɔv]) (11 July 1864 - 27 December 1944) was a spiritual master and founder of a School of Esoteric Christianity.[2] He is called Master Beinsa Douno (Bulgarian: Беинса Дуно) by his followers.
Born on 11 July 1864 in Hadarcha (Nikolaevka), Bulgaria, around 60 km from Varna. He was the third child of the priest Konstantin Deunovski and Dobra Georgieva. His grandfather on his mother’s side was Atanas Georgiev (1805–1865), an active public figure in the struggle for independence of the church during the Revival in the Bulgarian nation (18-19 century). His father, Constantin Deunovski (1830–1918) was the first Bulgarian teacher and priest in Varna.
In 1872 Peter Deunov was admitted to a primary school and he graduated from secondary school in Varna after the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire. On 24 June 1887 he completed his studies at the American School of Theology in Svishtov and was a teacher in Hotantsa, near Rousse, from the autumn of 1887 to the summer of 1888.
In August 1888 he left for the United States. He was enrolled at Drew Theological Methodist Seminary in Madison, New Jersey and completed his studies there in May 1892. During the autumn of 1892 he was enrolled at the Boston University School of Theology, defended a diploma thesis on "The Migration of the Germanic Tribes and Their Christianisation" and obtained his degree in June 1893. He was a regular student at the School of Medicine of the Boston University for a year.
In 1895 Deunov returned to Bulgaria, settled in Varna and refused the positions offered to him as Methodist and Theosophic preacher. In 1896 he published Science and Education, [1] in which he analyzed the development of mankind in the dramatic world events, about the foundations of a new culture which he thought was bound to take place during the forthcoming century.
In 1896 he was one of the founders of the "P. R. Slaveikov" community and cultural centre. He was appointed a librarian and during the subsequent years he delivered the following lectures in Varna: "The Origin of Man", ”Survey of Ancient and Modern Philosophy", "Science and Philosophy", "Why and How We Live" and "The Basis of Enlightenment".
In 1897 Peter Deunov, together with some of his followers in Varna, founded a "Society for the Elevation of the Religious Spirit of the Bulgarian People", with the following members: Dr. Georgi Mirkovich, Maria Kazakova, Todor Stoyanov, Penyu Kirov, Anastassia Jelyazkova and Milkon Partomyan. He published the brochure of mystic texts in the same year under the title of "Hio-Eli-Meli-Mesail". The events from 1897 placed him at the centre of the spiritual society, which later on developed into a Synarchic Chain (1906) and into the Universal White Brotherhood (1918), while he himself was distinguished as individuality with the byname of Master. Actually after 1897 it is much more appropriate to refer to him as "Master", rather than as "Peter Deunov", although the byname of "Beinsa Douno" gained currency in literary publications only in the 1930s. The etymology of the name of "Beinsa Douno" has Sanskrit roots and translates as The One Who Brings in the Good through the Word. He signed with this nickname some papers in the police, to reduce the pressure on him, obviously shocking the police officers with the question: Who are you? Otherwise, the use of "Beinsa Douno" is irrelevant.
In 1898 he wrote and delivered the lecture, An Appeal to My People (Nation), [2] before the "Mother" Charity Society in Varna. This lecture is an appeal to social and spiritual self-identification. During the following year he recorded "The Ten Testimonies of God and The Divine Promise". From 1899 Master Peter Deunov convened Annual Meetings in Varna, which were originally called Meetings of the Synarchic Chain. From then onwards until 1942 the Universal White Fraternity held its Annual Meetings at various places every year in August: in Varna (1899–1909), in Veliko Tarnovo (1910–1925), in Sofia (1926–1941), in the Rila and Vitosha mountains.
From 1901 to 1912 he travelled to various places in Bulgaria, delivered lectures and did phrenologic investigations of selected individuals among the people. He started delivering his lectures in public. The historic, cosmic and metaphysical figure of Christ has a central place in his lectures. In 1912, in the village of Arbanassi (near Veliko Tarnovo) he worked on the Bible and prepared The Testament of the Colour Rays of Light, which came out in September during the same year. The title page had a motto: "I will always be a faithful slave to Lord Jesus Christ - the Son of God, 15 Aug 1912, Tarnovo."
On 16 March 1914 he delivered his first Sunday talk, which was officially taken in shorthand with title Behold the Man, which laid the beginning of the Power and Life series. Master Peter Deunov postulated the main principles of his teaching, which he called The New Teaching of the Universal White Brotherhood. On 8 February 1917 in Sofia he started a series of special lectures for married women, which lasted until 30 June 1932. During 1917-1918, at the time of the First World War, the government of Vassil Radoslavov sent him on exile to Varna under the pretext that his teaching was weakening the spirit of the soldiers at the front. He lived in the London Hotel (currently the Moussala Hotel) and was in correspondence with his followers. After the end of the First World War in 1918 the number of his followers all over the country started to grow rapidly and they reached 40,000 people in the late 1930s.[3]
On 24 February 1922 he opened an School in Sofia, which he called School of the Universal White Brotherhood. It consisted of two classes of students. The General Class opened with a lecture titled The Three Lives, [3] and the Special (Youth) Class with The Two Paths. [4] Lectures were delivered before the two classes every week for 22 years — until December 1944.
In 1927 Master Beinsa Douno established the settlement of Izgrev near Sofia (today a residential area of the city) where he gathered his audience, followers and disciples to have a centre where the school worked. He settled permanently in Izgrev, where he delivered the various series of his Word. From 19 August 1927 he delivered a series of lectures at the annual meeting of the Universal White Brotherhood, comprising into the cycle with title The Path of a Disciple.
During the period 1929-1932 Master Peter Deunov established contact with Jiddu Krishnamurti (in the town of Ommen, the Netherlands), who left the Theosophical Society at that time and dissolved the Order of the Star in the East.
In the summer of 1929 he took his followers and disciples camping near the Seven Rila Lakes for the first time. On 21 September 1930 he opened a new series of his teaching, called the Sunday Morning lectures, which lasted until April 1944. From 1934 he started working on the Paneurhythmy - a series of twenty-eight exercises consisting of melody, text and plastic movements. Later on he added the exercises The Sun Rays and Pentagram.
On 4 May 1936 he was attacked by an adherent of a political party, causing brain haemorrhage and partial paralysis. In spite of his health problem, on 14 July Master Beinsa Douno went out camping with followers of his near the Seven Rila Lakes and he had recovered completely by 12 August.
On 22 March 1939 he wrote a message to his disciples titled The Eternal Testament of Spirit.
In the early 1944 during the air raids in Sofia he organized the evacuation of Izgrev to Marchaevo (a village not far from Sofia) while he stayed at the home of one of his disciples. He returned to Izgrev on 19 October 1944. On 20 December 1944 he delivered his last lecture The Last Word to the General Class.
Peter Deunov died on 27 December 1944. His body was laid in Izgrev.
The various aspects in the Teaching of Master Beinsa Douno are set out and developed in about 7000 lectures of his, delivered and put down in short hand in the period of 1900-1944. They were published in several multi-volume series: lectures before the General Class, lectures before the Special Class, Sunday lectures, Annual Meeting lectures, Morning lectures etc.
The main categories in his Teaching are: Love, Wisdom, Truth, Justice and Virtue, understood as attributes of the historic, cosmic and mystic Christ. Love is a central macro- and micro-cosmic category, functioning in the various aspects of human existence as aspiration (in the emotional sphere or the heart), feeling (in the soul), power (in the ideal sphere of the ‘I’ or the mind) and principle (in the spirit). The so-called Great Universal Brotherhood is the fundamental cosmogonist view. It is described as an organism, consisting of advanced human souls (lodges of the Great Initiated and their disciples) and the nine hierarchies of super-sensitive beings (angels, archangels, principalities, powers, mights, dominions, thrones, cherubim and seraphim). According to Master Beinsa Douno, Christ is the supreme governor of the Great Universal Brotherhood.
The history of world culture is seen as projection of a cosmic rhythm, structured in global periods and sub-periods. The periods are as follows: Polar, Hyperborean, Lemurian, Atlantis, the Fifth, the Sixth and the Seventh Periods. The sub-periods of the current Fifth Period are also called cultural epochs: the epoch of the Cancer (Ancient-Indian), the Gemini (Ancient-Persian), Taurus (Ancient-Egyptan), Aries (Ancient Greece and Rome), Pisces (Western European), Aquarius (Slavonic) etc. Human consciousness manifests itself and develops through collective, individual, supreme collective and cosmic stages. According to Master Beinsa Douno humankind is entering the epoch of Aquarius from 1914 onwards, i.e. implementation of the evolutionary transition from the Fifth to the Sixth cultural epochs within the Fifth Period. During this period, according to Master Beinsa Douno the Indo-European race is a leader in an evolutionary aspect. The first steps into the supreme collective consciousness are being made during the current transition stage. One of its social forms was achieved through the supreme aspects of Love - life for the Whole. The extended collective consciousness, implementing the life of the Whole, is regarded as an attribute of the forthcoming Sixth (Slavonic) cultural epoch and of the future Sixth race stemming from it. According to Master Beinsa Douno, the Sixth race will manifest itself in the future Sixth big period and will implement the culture of Love to a much greater scope.
The psychological aspect of the human development according to Master Beinsa Douno is a consequential transformation through four cultural archetypes: "Old Testament", "New Testament", the "Righteous" and "Disciple". The transition to the latter is understood as a totality of school methods, aimed at the transformation of the ideal-conceptual consciousness into imaginative and is designated by the term of "blossoming of the human soul". According to Master Beinsa Douno disciples link their consciousness with Christ permanently, experience Him constantly in their mental, emotional and will-power spheres and learn permanently from what He performs within them. Thus the consciousness of disciple and his etheric body more specifically, is naturally perceived as object and subject of the so-called 'Second Coming of Christ.
The main methods for spiritual work in the School of the Universal White Brotherhood are: prayer gatherings, musical and respiratory exercises, reading of the Word of Master Beinsa Douno, greeting the sunrise, outings in the mountains, life in brotherhood communities, annual meetings etc. The special methods are "The Testament of the Colour Rays of Light" and the "Paneurhythmy" dance.[4] All the methods are considered practices for experiencing Christ through the wholeness of the human being and more precisely through the human etheric body.
The contribution is formulated as ideas in various fields of philosophy. Developed in numerous lectures of Master Beinsa Douno, these are subject to analysis and interpretation from now on. Some of the ideas in the philosophical domain are as follows:
During the period 1901-1912 Master Beinsa Douno carried out phrenologic research among selected individuals from the Bulgarian people. Later on some of the results were stated in his Sunday sermons, and the opening of the School of the Universal White Brotherhood (1922) is an indication of his comprehensive approach to the sciences on self-knowledge - astrology, chiromancy palmistry, phrenology, kabbalah etc. His original methodology in this area includes the following major principles:
Some ideas and approaches of Master Beinsa Douno in the above-mentioned sciences are utilised by the Varna astrological tradition for the creation of the so-called "three-dimensional model of a horoscope" - an innovation in the astrological methodology.
Peter Deunov studied music and the violin in 1880s. During the first decade of the 20th century Master Beinsa Douno started composing music to Biblical texts and to texts written by him, called "brotherly songs" later on, and from 1922 he started producing songs and melodies in the two classes of his School, which he called " musical exercises". According to him they were methods for work and were meant to tone up and harmonise the psychic processes going on in disciples. Some of the texts to the musical exercises were written in sacred proto-language, which Master Beinsa Douno called Vatan language and he defined it as the primary language of humankind.
In the 1940s the teaching of Master Beinsa Douno became popular in some European countries: France, Lithuania for example, while in 1970s it was widely spread in Russia, Canada and USA. During the 1990s some disciples and followers of him appeared in United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and Congo. After the democratic changes in Bulgaria, followers of the Universal White Brotherhood in Bulgaria registered a non-profit organization at the court ("White Brotherhood - Bulgaria", 1995), which is governed by a Supreme Brotherhood Council having a domicile in Sofia. There are dozens of spiritual centres outside the territory of the country, biggest of all being the French centre in Bonfin. It was established in 1953 by Mihail Ivanov (1900–1986) - a disciple of Master Beinsa Douno, called by his followers Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov.
The works and activities of Master Beinsa Douno are subject of research and analyses by prominent scientists and spiritual leaders.
After 1925 the Teaching of Master Beinsa Douno acquired world publicity through a number of publications in newspapers, journals and books.
Peter Deunov was born in a family of considerable contribution to the Revival of Bulgarian nation and especially - struggle for church independence. During the second decade after the Liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire he founded a Society for the Elevation of the Spirit of the Bulgarian People (1897) where prominent figures in the struggle for church independence were members. But the bishops in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church did not accept his reformist ideas about returning to the principles of the early Christianity. According to him the clergy should work for free and selflessly, earning their living from their spiritual work among the people. On the other hand, his -Christian doctrine is based on the principles of the cause-result relation and reincarnation (the law on reincarnation and karma) with the purpose to improve and elevate the human soul ever closer to the perfection of Christ - principles contradicting the official church dogmatics.
The same is moral principle of vegetarianism - the practice in the social life of the Universal White Brotherhood. On the subject of vegetarianism, Deunov said, "By consuming vegetarian food, man becomes more purified. Meat contains more toxins. When animals are slaughtered, they experience fear which forms toxins in their organism. The people who eat this meat, assimilate these toxins into their systems and as a result, diseases appear."[5]
During the second decade of 20th century the Bulgarian Orthodox Church made direct and indirect, overt or covert attempts to discredit Master Beinsa Douno. The principle charge against him was that he identified himself with Christ, in spite of his unambiguous speech on 8 August 1920, "Do not look for Christ on the physical level; do not try to find Him in one person only, because He is in all people. Moreover, where Christ is manifested you will see an intensive light. Christ is one and many. Sometimes you say, ‘Is Mr. Deunov Christ or Christ is in him?’ I will tell you that I am not Christ, but that Christ is in me. If I were Christ, whom you take me for, I would be governing the whole world. But as I am not such a person, I am not Christ either. Christ is not in the physical world."
In the spring of 1922 the Bulgarian Orthodox Church campaign against Master Beinsa Douno was at its peak. In his Sunday sermon on 14 May he stated, ‘If somebody attempts to speak the truth today, the first thing he would be called is a heretic… If your teaching yields better results I will accept it, but if my teaching produces better results, accept my methods.’ On 18 June Master Peter Deunov said, ‘Now is the time for culture, we are the bearers of a cultural movement, of a cultural tide in Bulgaria. And the Bulgarian clergy, is plotting how to impede us, instead of working intelligently, benefiting from this blessing sent from Heavens. They have to understand that they will impede themselves first of all.’ On 7 July 1922 at the Bishopric Council of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church Peter Deunov was declared to have self-excommunicated himself, and his teaching was declared ‘heretic and dangerous to the internal peace and public moral.’ Master Peter Deunov did not comment upon this event, did not come out to defend himself in public; he only emphasized the ideal of the Great Universal Brotherhood, ‘Let the Orthodox Church resolve this issue, whether Christ has risen, whether Love is accepted in the Orthodox Church. There is one church in the world. But the Universal White Brotherhood is outside the church - it is higher than the church. But even higher than the Universal White Brotherhood is the Kingdom of Heaven. Hence the Church is the first step, the Universal White Brotherhood is the second step, and the Kingdom of Heaven is the third step - the greatest one that is to be manifested.’ (24 June 1923).
The Teaching of Master Beinsa Douno is subject of theological and philosophical analysis. In 1917 the theologian Daniil Laskov published a couple of articles in the Spiritual Culture newspaper: What is Theosophy and The Attitude of the Bible to the Theosophical spiritism and occultism. In 1922 his book Peter Deunov and His Teaching came out, where the latter was defined as a ‘sum of pagan superstitions, theosophic spiritism and occultism.’ In 1929 Angel Tomov analysed the religious and philosophic concepts in the teaching in the Philosopher’s Review journal. He argued that the teaching could be understood only as a component of the mystic wave of the new epoch, typical for which is the growing interest in spiritism and the advent of theosophy and of various occult schools and mystic societies in the world. Later on the eminent remkeist Prof. Dimiter Mihalchev published in consecutive issues of the same journal several studies, ‘The Religious and Philosophical Points of View of Peter Deunov’ (1930) and ‘Against Danovism as Theosophic Teaching’ (1931). According to him it all comes down to pantheistic metaphysics sweeping the masses in mysticism thus ‘wasting their potential’ in regard to the state and the nation. In 1940 Dr Cyril Cholakov, a psychiatrist, a student of Mihalchev, published three pieces of criticism in the Mental Health journal, qualifying Master Peter Deunov and his thousands of followers in clinical terms. All critical analysis from this period aimed predominantly at the ideal and religious aspects of the teaching, ignoring willingly or unwillingly its -Christian basis.
The Marxist philosophy after 1944 examined Master Peter Deunov as a founder of a ‘specific Bulgarian theosophical teaching’ in the bourgeois society. His followers were defined as people ‘deaf and blind for the sufferings of the epoch’. Biased scenarios about an alleged ‘suicide’ by Peter Deunov were floated, in spite of the existing documentary evidence about pneumonia being the direct cause for his death.
In the late 20th century certain informal philosophic circles in Bulgaria proposed a method for structural reconstruction in respect of the interpretation of Master Beinsa Douno’s texts. In their opinion these were structured on a triple dialogue Christ-I-The Other, which made it possible to see them internally and to experience them as Word or as a Moral event. It is stated that only the structural interpretation makes them scientifically distinct from other or religious texts, since the morphology of Christ-I-The Other is not to be found in the Orthodox Christian literature, theosophy and Eastern Occultism. Contrary to the accusations that Master Beinsa Douno’s sermons lacked any structure is the so-called musical principle. It is understood as a spiritual practice for disciples where reading and/or listening to the Word spiritualises the intellectuality of the contemporary consciousness, revives the life of the Cosmic intelligence within it and thus experiences immediately what the Master, in the form of the Holy Spirit, performs within.
Master Beinsa Douno and the Universal White Brotherhood do not participate on principle in any government institutions or political units. Nonetheless they were subject to both interest and repressions on behalf of politicians, statesmen, parties, the army and the police. There are documents, according to which Master Beinsa Douno intended to present his Appeal to My People before the National Assembly (1897); he gave up this idea later on. From 1912 to 1918 most of his disciples and followers were mobilised in the Bulgarian army and at his instructions they carried The Good Prayer and Psalm 91 sown in their military coats. On 11 November 1912, towards the end of the Balkan War, through Maria Stoyanova, he advised the Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand to sign an armistice with Turkey and not to attack his allies. In August 1915 during the course of the First World War the Tarnovian Military commandment dispersed the Annual Meeting of the Universal White Brotherhood and forced Master Beinsa Douno to leave the town. After Bulgaria’s capitulation at Dobro Pole (15 September 1918) he advised the Bulgarian Tsar through go-betweens to abdicate in favour of his son, Boris.
On 13 July 1921 the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior adopted a statute of the White Brotherhood Society in Rousse and actually this was the first legal registration of the followers of the Universal White Brotherhood. In the 1920s Master Beinsa Douno stayed for a long time in Sofia at 66 Opalchenska Street, right next door to the home of the communist leader Georgi Dimitrov. Memoirs of contemporaries have it that the latter hid several times from the police in the house of Master Beinsa Douno.
According to the memoirs of Petko Epitropov in July 1922 Master Beinsa Douno met Alexander Stamboliyski, then the Prime Minister, and had a private talk with him. On 9 June 1923 after a coup d’etat the party of the Democratic Accord took over; the government of the Democratic Accord did not allow the Annual Meeting of the Universal White Brotherhood to be held. On 21 July 1925 Master Beinsa Douno was summoned to a hearing at the Public Security Police Department in Sofia; his answers to the questions put to him were documented and kept and they represent a peculiar manifesto of his ideal doctrine. In 1936 he was attacked and beaten by an adherent of the Democratic Accord party; the incident led to a brain haemorrhage and paralysis; later on the Master recovered completely. Afterwards his attacker asked Master Beinsa Douno for forgiveness. On 2 October 1937 he was officially called to answer in written form and in detail questions about the attitude of his teaching to the church, the government institutions, the army, the social order, marriage, family and moral. His answers were documented and preserved for the generations.
Four years after the establishment of the totalitarian communist regime in Bulgaria, the Ministry of Foreign Affair recognized the Universal White Brotherhood as a ‘faith community’ (23 January 1948), but in October 1956 repealed its decision. In June 1948 the land plot in Izgrev where the prayer meeting hall was located was nationalised, and was given to the Embassy of USSR. On 6 December 1957, by virtue of a prosecution order, the entire reference literature with the Word of Master Beinsa Douno was seized, and in August 1958 the Sofia City Council nationalized all land plots owned by then Izgrev citizens.
After the democratic changes in Bulgaria, the Council of Ministers adopted a statute of the Universal White Brotherhood Society (7 November 1990), and in 2001 it published a certificate, according to which the Society does not qualify as sect; it is an official spiritual movement arising in Bulgaria as an original tradition that has lasted over a century in Bulgaria.
Originally (during the first half of 20th century) Master Beinsa Douno was identified by his disciples and followers as one of then Great Masters of the Lodge of the Great Universal Brotherhood. In 1940s Vlad Pashov, Georgi Radev, Boyan Boev and Methodi Constantinov were the first to argue in their scientific works the central cosmogonic and gnoseological significance of the concept of the Great Universal Brotherhood, they analysed in detail its macro- and micro-cosmic structure as given by Master Beinsa Douno (advanced human souls and nine hierarchies of super-sensitive beings under the supreme command of Christ) and defined the conscious relation with it as a main cognitive objective in the spiritual practice of disciples. Some Bulgarian publications from 1990s define him as Universal Master, without linking him with any of the existing philosophic, religious or doctrines so far. The prevailing opinion is that his mission was to renovate Christianity in relation with forthcoming Slavonic cultural epoch and the future Sixth race.
From 1999 onwards certain informal philosophical circles in Bulgaria and the Netherlands, taking recourse to some biographical data about the life of Peter Deunov and to spiritual-scientific theses of the anthroposophic teaching of Rudolf Steiner, identified Master Beinsa Douno as manifestation of the Bodhisattva Maitreya in 20th century (for more information download this e-book file "The Teaching about the Lodge of Bodhisatva and the Issue of the 20th century Bodhisatva - An attempted contemporary reading, new ideas"). From this point of view they regard his teaching as the supreme emanation of Christianity, and the methods of his school - as experiencing practices of the so-called etheric coming of Christ in astral level. These interpretations are argued against by some leading representatives of the Anthroposophic School in Dornach (Switzerland) and although Bodhisattva Maitreya is a central object of research in Anthroposophy, they have not stated any alternative points of view so far concerning the spiritual, historic and personal identification of the Bodhisattva Maitreya in 20th century.
On the other hand, the School of Christianity in Dornach is examining certain attempts at personification of the Bodhisattva Maitreya (Jiddu Krishnamurti, Valentine Tomberg, Omraam Mihail Ivannovi etc.) as illegitimate attempts to replace his true mission as a messenger of the etheric coming of Christ in an astral plan. The spiritual scientific dialogue between these two European traditions may be interpreted not only as a token of synthesis, but also as a total human union in Christ.