text: During the early years of his discipleship, Aivanhov was quite poor. He owned a bed, some books, a violin (given to him by Deunov) and a few shabby clothes.  He spent most of his time on spiritual retreats in the mountains, where he studied and meditated, occasionally taking a job to earn his keep. Deunov also obliged him to broaden his conventional knowledge by pursuing studies at the University of Sofia, and he enrolled in courses on psychology, education philosophy, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy & medicine between 1923 and 1931.  From around 1932 to around 1937, he worked as a school teacher and then a high school principal.
  In 1937 with the approach of the Second World War, Peter Deunov foresaw that political unrest, war and the spread of communism would lead to a ban on all spiritual associations in Bulgaria and so he entrusted Mikhail Ivanov with bringing his teaching to France. Deunov chose Aivanhov out of 40,000 other students.
  On July 22, 1937, he arrived in France penniless, with no knowledge of French and only one contact person in France, Stella Bellemin, a Bulgarian expatriate.  However, Aivanhov turned out to be an excellent linguist. He took no money from his students or charged for his lectures apart from one exception when touring America.  The money was banked and used later for a publishing project.  On January 29, 1938, he gave his first public talk in the Luxembourg Hall, Place de la Sorbonne.  This was the first of over 5000 conferences. In 1944 he published his first collection of talks. On January 21, 1948, he was arrested on a false charge and sentenced to 4 years in prison, but in March 1950 he was released.