A man of heart, emotion, and enthusiasm, a cultivated mind enamored of science as much as of utopia, and eager to see the earth give birth to a new world, Pierre Renard was the author of several books written in an energetic, poetic tone.

“It was summer. The cicadas were singing in the heat, the pines were crackling beneath the sun, a trickle of water sprang from a cool blue basin, and Master Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov, dressed all in white, his silver beard and hair reflecting the light—as anyone can see—was there: grave and gentle, distant and close, seated beside an oleander in the garden of his esoteric school on the Côte d’Azur. He had agreed to receive me, and, grateful for the opportunity, I asked him for a few words to introduce this book, which could only have come into being through his teaching and thought.

… After gathering himself inwardly, he expressed ‘the essential.’

‘There is a very great secret that one must know in true philosophy. Without knowledge of this truth, whatever you may do or study—whether you are a scholar, a writer, a minister, or a head of state, and so on—you will always lack something essential to understand life, truth, human beings, and everything else. This secret is concealed in a few words: there are three worlds—the world of principles, the world of laws, and the world of facts; or, expressed differently, the divine world, the spiritual or astral world, and the material or physical world. This corresponds to the world of meaning, content, and form.’

He had taken a peach from a bowl filled with splendid fruit from his garden. He offered it to me, saying that the stone—the pit—that had organized the peach could not be seen and was therefore hidden; likewise the flesh, which one ate and which nourished us. Only the skin, which one threw away—the covering, the rind, the form—was visible.

‘The universe, human beings, and all things are likewise built on the same model, and no other,’ he told me.

I looked at the peach, now cut open, with its stone at the center, its flesh, and its skin.

I have seen it again often since then—every day. The solar system is made this way, with the sun at the center, and space and the planets all around it; so is the cell, with its nucleus, its protoplasm, and its membrane; so is the seed, so is the atom. Everything is organized from a center. Even individuals, families, and societies organize themselves around a center: a tradition or an ideal, a thug or a king. Everything depends on the center. The pit comes before the skin; the world of causes comes before the world of facts; Spirit comes before matter.”

A New Heaven … and a New Earth,” Sila Jivott Editions (Ville-d’Avray), 1969, pp. 12–14

A simple young woman with a pure heart, Giselle endured difficult family and material hardships. During the war of 1939–45, when all gatherings were forbidden, she had only one wish: to meet “Brother Michael,” the spiritual guide she had heard about. That encounter did not put an end to her trials, but it gave her the strength of spirit to lighten their burden.

Her intuition always guided her along the path of trust and faithfulness to the Master.

A highly musical person, she remained throughout her life one of the Brotherhood’s choir directors, as modest as she was competent.

“…Then came that memorable spring of 1945.

May arrived, and Mrs. L. announced to me that, at last, the Brotherhood’s meetings would resume; I felt a great emotion.

We were to go to Sèvres on Sunday, May 25.

At last that blessed Sunday arrived. The weather—what was it like? I could not say. Mrs. L. was dawdling and taking forever to get ready; I felt that we would be late, and irritation rose within me. I so wanted to arrive early, sit down, and close my eyes while I waited! Since then, I have understood that circumstances are not, especially for something so important, as one imagines them to be.

At last, after quite a long walk, always uphill, we arrived.

The house where Brother Mikhaël and five other brothers and sisters lived was on Rue Jeanne d’Arc, which pleased me.

A gate, a garden inhabited by old trees with thick foliage, a white two-storey house. A few steps, a porch—my heart was pounding wildly. We climbed the porch steps and entered the hall: there were many people there.

I forgot Mrs. L. and headed, as if pushed forward, toward the staircase, whose steps were covered with people sitting on them.

Without it surprising me, they stood up to let me go up and then sat down again.

Thus I reached the entrance to the room on the second floor. There, tall men standing before the entrance were singing wonderful songs… Fir Fur Fen…

I remained quietly behind them, but while singing, one of them sensed my presence, turned around and, taking me by the shoulders, brought me in front of him.

Thus, passed from hand to hand, I made my way from the back of the room to the piano, where I discovered that I was the only one standing, above a carpet of human beings seated on cushions!

Astonished, I looked everywhere for Brother Mikhaël and could not find him. Yet at last I saw him opposite me, seated on a small platform. He smiled; he was radiant, and my soul began to sing: it was he, the long-awaited Master!…

The choir began Slaveiceta gorski, and as the song ended with tra la la’s, I felt like singing with them. Brother Mikhaël smiled at me and motioned that I could, so I sang with all my heart that tune, so easy to remember.

Then he said a few words, which my memory has not retained, and we went down into the garden. There, at last, I noticed that the sun was flooding nature with its wonderful May light. I would turn 23 in six days, and I had my whole life ahead of me.

Brother Mikhaël was speaking with a brother on the other side of the tree facing me. I said to Mrs. L.:

— ‘Would you introduce me to Brother Mikhaël?’

She replied that no one had introduced her to him, and that I could do it myself. I waited a little, and as soon as the brother had left, I started to walk toward Brother Mikhaël, who came to meet me. We met beside the tree.

He held out his hand; I placed mine in it with respect and love.

He said a few words to me that would help me through the turmoil of my life to come.

I returned silently to Paris and told my mother that I had found a place where people were happy. I persuaded her to come with us the following Sunday.”

Previously Unpublished Memories of Giselle Lannic

Maurice Rivoallan was 22 years old when he met the Master in Paris in December 1941. After an adolescence marked by bereavements and illnesses in his family, he became an aircraft-construction mechanic. He was drafted during the “Phoney War” of 1940, then, having emerged unharmed from a bombing raid, was demobilized. Intuitive and mystical, with an interest in clairvoyance and mediumship, he was introduced to a small group of disciples…

Five decades later, in an audio interview, he recounts his memories spontaneously.

“…And so, the meeting with Brother Mikhaël took place at Sister Stella’s, in the part of her apartment that she had given over to him. Obviously, at the time, a young unmarried woman housing a young man… [that was a risk to her reputation]. He was handsome as a god. He was 41; he was in the full strength of his life, and so beautiful! Dazzling eyes, slightly graying hair, a dark complexion. He had the same beauty that can still be seen in his photographs today. An extraordinary smile. And above all, a life force that burst forth from him!

So he received my friend Georges and me… What emotion! When I saw him, it was… I was instantly certain that he was the one I had been looking for. Even when I had read his lectures, in which he explained the Gospels, the parables, and so on, I was convinced—I was certain—that he was the one. But when I saw him, it was dazzling. I truly… I had found the land and the being I had been looking for. I did not know who he was; I did not even know that I was looking for a Master. I knew nothing at all, but what I did know was that I had found him!

…

And then he told us astonishing things about our lives, things that showed his extraordinary clairvoyance. Though I was single, he spoke to me about my parents, about my father. My friend had a complicated romantic situation; he told him what risks he faced from another man, and said: ‘Within eight days, everything can be settled. If you are wise, if you do not start again, Heaven will give you another chance, a new beginning, and so on.’ And he gave me advice concerning my parents.

It was dazzling. I had met the being who answered all my questions, who was capable of doing so, and who saw everything. He would remain silent, with his head bowed. That was his humility… His favorite posture: he would lower his head, remain silent, pray, murmur a few formulas—we understood this later—and then his clairvoyance would be activated, and he would say extraordinary things.

Later, he told us that he would veil himself with seven veils. And it is true that after the war, he systematically said that he had no clairvoyance at all, that one should not listen to everything people said on the subject, that it was untrue. But those who knew him during that early period—1937 and so on—were witnesses to his exceptional clairvoyance, and to other things as well.

…

So that is how my meeting with our Master, ‘Brother Mikhaël,’ came about for me. He was a being of light. His eyes were radiant; his speech was gentle. He was the Master of love. Throughout that whole period, he spoke in a very gentle way. His strength could only be seen in the way he would spring up in his armchair. What struck us was that he would leap up as he spoke to us! His life force burst forth through his gestures, through his manner—it was absolutely extraordinary.

…

And of course, he asked for nothing. He never asked for money. He received us free of charge. Even if it was for hours and hours, he gave us all his time.

All his time. All his love.”

Excerpts from an audio recording, Le Bonfin, 1991

Jean Kruger recounts having met Svezda (Stella) through mutual friends in 1935. He was struck both by her scientific reflections on the evolution of human beings among living species and by her intuitive perceptions as a medium—perfectly sensible and balanced.

An upright and principled man, and the first president of the Universal White Brotherhood association, he was one of the Brotherhood’s stable and faithful pillars during the difficult years of the 1940s and throughout the decades that followed.

“[…] I was among the first to be brought into contact with ‘Brother Mikhaël,’ as he was called at the time.

I attended all the conversations held at the beginning of Brother Mikhaël’s stay in Paris. The richness of the divine science he shared with us from the very first weeks, and the profound and remarkable love that radiated from him, were more than enough to bind us to him.

I cannot pass over in silence the fundamental feeling that overwhelmed me from my very first contact with him. Although I had already passed the age of fifty, in his presence I felt transported into a luminous atmosphere, into a new world; I even felt welcomed by a kind of homeland of the soul that transformed all the spiritual searching I had pursued unsuccessfully for years.

From that very first meeting, in the Master’s presence, I felt enveloped by the gentleness of his pure gaze, which permeated my being and my entire life with the supernatural warmth of a higher love that seemed to come directly from heaven. I immediately understood that there was nothing I could tell him about myself that he did not already know, and that he knew my life and my entire past better than I myself could possibly imagine.

From that time onward, I followed as closely as possible the teaching that the Master never ceased to give us—first in Paris, in public lectures; then in Sèvres; and during the summer in the Var.” […]

Sèvres, May 25, 1970
Preface to SVEZDA’s book, “The Life and Teaching in France of Master Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov” (2nd edition, Prosveta, 1992)

Six months after his arrival in France, the disciple of Master Peter Deunov, “Brother Mikhaël,” already knew enough French to begin speaking about his Master’s Teaching before a Parisian audience. In the Luxembourg Lecture Hall, at 2 Place de la Sorbonne, he gave his first “talk”: “What Is the Second Birth?” That evening, Jean Jahan—a racing driver with the soul of a poet—and his wife Raymonde were preparing to join the audience.

Both would remain faithful disciples, friends, and supporters of Master Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov for the rest of their lives.

“At the entrance to the hall, which was preceded by a long corridor, he appeared to me surrounded by such a light that I understood then that I had found again in him the Master I had been waiting for. We recognized one another, moreover, when our eyes communed deeply, while at the same time our hands clasped magnetically.

During those few moving moments—whose details cannot be described in all their subtlety—new sensations silently, imperceptibly, delicately imprinted themselves upon my soul, causing these unforgettable words to spring forth in my heart:

Like pure crystal reflecting the sun,
his luminous gaze rekindled in my soul
the radiant memory of heaven’s splendor.

…

The lecture he gave on that memorable and historic evening of January 29, 1938, fulfilled all my wishes. It was entitled ‘The Second Birth’ and answered the noblest aspirations of my soul.

…

So, after the lecture, I went to Brother Mikhaël and said to him: ‘Master, I felt and understood who you are. I place myself at your disposal, together with my car, so as to give you greater opportunities to make yourself known.’

He accepted immediately.”

André Jahan, “Who Is Master Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov?”, Prosveta, 1974, pp. 16–17

Andrée Giraud, then an actress of a very sensitive nature, with a rather troubled soul at that time, was invited to a friend’s home (Stella) to meet “a disciple of Master Peter Deunov” who was passing through Paris.

She was at home, waiting for the time to leave for her friend’s house.

“The closer the hour came, the more impatient I felt. At last, I hurried out of my home. I did not understand my haste; I thought I could hear a call…

I entered my friend’s home. She barely had time to say hello before opening the door to a room. There I found myself facing a very young man, with features of astonishing beauty—the kind of beauty that reflects a profound inner life. Brother Michael stepped toward me with his hand outstretched and a wonderful smile. Seeing him so radiant, I was shocked and wanted to run away. I felt as though whatever had remained pure within me was driving away the being of suffering I had become. I turned around and took a few steps toward the door… Yet I had to come back and finally look at him.

My Protestant faith, far removed from all mysticism, was troubled by what I saw around him: a glow radiating above his shoulder. I opened my eyes, closed them, opened them again, and the light became more intense. I cried out, ‘But what is that shining near your head?’ He remained silent for a long time, then, in that somewhat low voice that still moves me deeply, he said, ‘You can see it? Good, Sister Renée.’

Why was he giving me the name ‘Renée’? It was not mine; my name was Andrée. And why ‘Sister’? He had picked up my thought. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘In our Brotherhood in Bulgaria, we call one another “brother” and “sister.” As for the name I have given you, it is better than the one you bear; it will change your destiny. Do you accept it?’ Was it I—or someone else—who answered ‘yes’? I do not know. It was an extraordinary moment.

After that ‘yes,’ a freshness descended into me—the impression that, in the desert of my life, the being standing before me was giving me a glass of pure water to drink. I was freed from my fear, attentive only to a presence that had come from elsewhere.”

Collective work, ‘At Last We See a Light’ (Prosveta, 2014)

When, at the request of his Master, Mikhaël, a disciple of Peter Deunov, arrived in Paris in July 1937, the first person to welcome him with complete generosity was Stella Bellemin (Svezda means “star” in Bulgarian). She gave him the material means to begin his work and fulfill his mission. Throughout her life, she would remain his unwaveringly steadfast and faithful disciple.

In 1937, Stella had just returned from a journey to the Rila Mountains in Bulgaria, where she had been received by Master Peter Deunov. There, she had had a vision of Saint Peter and Saint John—the latter appearing as a being entirely of light and gentleness. But she did not expect to encounter anything similar…

“I was still deeply imbued with the emotions I had recently experienced in Bulgaria. As soon as I saw this disciple of Master Deunov, a surprise awaited me. I was instantly struck by the intense auric radiance of his physical person. His invisible nature could be compared only to that of Master Deunov. In Sofia, I had known particularly remarkable disciples (…) but none of them could compare with the one standing before me.

At the sight of him, a cry arose within me: ‘Here is the true disciple of Master Deunov!’ Then: ‘He has the face that was shown to me: Saint John.’ His eyes, his hair, his expression—at once masculine and feminine—left no doubt as to this correspondence.

…All this took place within a few seconds, in the form of dazzling perceptions that cannot be described. From that moment on, I knew what I had to do.”

Svezda
“Life and Teaching in France of Master Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov” (2nd ed., Prosveta, 1992)

… « But then a rumor began to spread through the city: Peter Deunov was now in Varna. The clergy of the Orthodox Church, disturbed by his person and his ideas, had managed to obtain from the government that he leave Sofia, where he had been living for several years.

As I still felt very weakened by the illness that had kept me between life and death for weeks, I did not dare present myself to him in the condition I was in. But as soon as I felt better…

Then one day, when I had gone out to walk a little along Varna’s main street, I saw a man approaching who immediately caught my attention. He was very simply dressed and, despite his beard, still appeared young. Yet his face bore such gravity, such nobility, that I instantly thought: ‘It is he!’ I have seen many handsome faces in my life, but none impressed me as deeply as his; none left such an imprint upon me. He passed quickly by, walking in the way that only he knew how to walk. My heart was beating very strongly, and I felt that the time had come to meet him.

I made inquiries, and he agreed to receive me. »

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov, “With Master Peter Deunov: Elements of an Autobiography, Volume II,” Chapter I

When I went to see him for the first time, at the Hôtel Londres where he was staying, one of his secretaries came to open the door and ushered me in to him. Before I arrived, he had been busy composing the music for the song Chté sé razvéssélia, accompanying on the violin this sister who was singing. At the time, I did not know that he had studied music and played the violin. And I, who since childhood had dreamed so much of playing that instrument!

After greeting me, he said: “You are going to sing with us…” I was so impressed that my voice could barely come out. I watched how he drew sounds from his violin: his whole face bore the marks of an intense inner life. The melody gradually unfolded as we began again and again… It was wonderful!

Chté sé razvéssélia was therefore the first song by the Master that I heard and sang while he was composing its music based on a verse from the Book of Isaiah:

I will rejoice exceedingly in the Lord,
My soul will be filled with joy in my God,
For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
He has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
Like a bridegroom adorns himself with a diadem,
Like a bride adorns herself with her jewels…

Although the words are full of joy, the melody and rhythm of this song are imbued with great solemnity.

For about half an hour we sang, then the Master asked me whether I had any questions to put to him.

Before meeting him, I had done many exercises to develop certain psychic faculties, especially clairvoyance. The visible world was not enough to satisfy my curiosity; I wanted to know what was happening beyond it. Yet, despite my efforts, I found the results I had obtained very inadequate. I told him so and asked him to advise me. Naturally, I expected him to reveal some great secrets and give me difficult exercises. So imagine my surprise when he simply replied:

‘It is through love that one becomes clairvoyant.’

Yes, what a surprise—and what a disappointment as well! He advised me to abandon all the methods I had been using up to then, whose danger I had not realized.

Love that gives clairvoyance… I admit that at first I did not understand. I was young, and what I saw around me tended instead to make me think that love makes one blind. But although I did not understand his answer, I took it seriously. And now, I believe not only that love—spiritual love—makes one clairvoyant, but that it alone gives true clairvoyance.”

When I left him at the end of my first visit, the Master had invited me to come and see him again. I was not yet able to put into words what I felt. It was as though a sun were rising: the clouds were clearing, a new light was entering me, wiping away my suffering and fears. Everything in my heart vibrated and sang as on the first day of spring. So I went to see him again at his hotel, and I also attended the lectures he gave.

But even more convincing, even more eloquent than his words, was the life that emanated from him—a radiance, a breath of pure air that illuminated and purified my own life. In a person of great spirituality, it is not the perfection of one’s features that is most remarkable. Whatever one’s features may be, one’s true beauty lies in one’s light, in everything that emanates from one. Even when the Master was silent, his whole being spoke; and when he spoke, his whole being underscored his words. To me, he was a book—the best book—a living book. It is living books that we need.”

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov, With Master Peter Deunov, Vol. II, Chapter I

The moment I saw him, I was dazzled. His face, his radiance, the peace that emanated from him, the dignity of his bearing, the lightness of his gestures, his way of walking, his way of speaking, his gaze, his smile—everything seemed to come from another world. In his entire being, one could sense the long work of the Initiates and the Masters: work marked by patience, perseverance, nobility, and selflessness. What the Master brought was an immense world, profound, rich, and beautiful.

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov, “Tribute to Master Peter Deunov,” Izvor Special Issue (1991)