A few thousand improvised lectures, given wholeheartedly, almost every day for half a century. Over half of them recorded in audio or video that one always listens to with a first-time feeling.
The magic of a consecrated voice to enlighten and soothe…
The Master relates how his Master Peter Deunov used to speak
The Master never prepared his talks in advance, he knew human beings, their concerns, their worries, their sufferings and he only wanted to provide for their needs. And in order to meet people’s needs, one should not prepare anything in advance or make quotations, but feel from the atmosphere the questions they are asking themselves. This is what the Master did.
… Of course, this way of speaking was not academic. He often jumped from one question to another, starting on a subject he didn’t quite finish, to start on another one he didn’t quite finish either. This produced a certain impression of discontinuity, of incompleteness, but that incompleteness was a reflection of life. And the majority of the brothers and sisters, as they left the conference, had the impression that the Master had spoken to them.
Later I understood that this way of speaking was the most useful and I too adopted it.
Coll. Izvor, Homage to Master Peter Deunov, p. 64
The Master himself explains what inspires his lectures
Perhaps if I came with a well-prepared lecture (introduction, first part, second part, third part, conclusion), you would be more satisfied intellectually. But you don’t come here to learn, you come here to live, to receive an inspiration, an impulse.
Each day I have to tell you things that are for this day, for your concerns of the day, for your problems and your sufferings of the day, and it is my love that feels it when I see you there, in front of me. Because my work is you: how you need to be oriented, purified, invigorated, that is what interests me; it is not just to fill your brains and then let you wade. I want to give you the means to overcome all the difficulties you encounter in your daily existence. Therefore, when you come to listen to me, know why you are coming. My words are like food that I give you, they are pieces of my heart, of my soul, it is my life, it is my blood, I cannot do otherwise. When I speak to you, it is my life that you breathe, that you touch.
In order to become a living book – Elements of autobiography 1, chapter XIII “Between speech and silence”.
Stella, one of the first disciples, recalls the conferences of "Brother Mikhaël" in Paris, 1938.
“It was always about inspiration that Brother Mikhael spoke. His lectures were in fact free-flowing conversations, in which he answered intuitively the various questions that the audience was asking itself without formulating them.
… These talks had nothing in common with the Western style. He expressed himself in a very simple, direct language, with words that everyone knew. It was visible that their purpose was to make spiritual truths, usually veiled in an academic language inaccessible to the crowd, accessible to all. Without any make-up or ambition to appear without “being”, Brother Mikhaël addressed all subjects with simplicity, letting himself go to speak as one thinks within oneself, to manifest life in all its forms: mental, sentimental and voluntary, passing from one to the other without effort, totally free of any prejudice as to how to express himself and the need to ensure some kind of prestige in front of his audience.
…
Moreover, Brother Mikhaël, like an oriental storyteller, has the art of decorating his talks with tasty anecdotes, always adapted to what he wants to convey. This alternately moves his audience from a state of intellectual concentration to a relaxed, sentimental state, so that one doesn’t get tired of listening to him: the brain (understanding) rests in laughter.”