About the Path to God
Vladimir Antonov
About the Path to God:
Questions and Answers
Based on the material of lectures
given at the beginning of 1990s.
© Antonov V.V., 2000
Table of contents
Question: Please, tell us about the history of your School. It would be interesting to hear it in connection to your biography.
Answer: I started my search for the Truth in the late 1960s, when I became seriously interested in philosophy, being a
university student. Now I can say that I have found it completely, exhaustively. And this allowed us to start the work of spreading our knowledge and our methods of self-perfection.
We started this work in early 1980s in the conditions of our then gruesome reality, which were very favorable for this kind of work though. This was what I’d
call the epoch of the reign of anti-communism, when the Communist Party, despite
that it was naming itself “communist”, totally distorted the ideas of communism.
What is communism? This term is derived from the word commune that means harmonious co-existence of people in the society. But in this country, everything was done to wipe out this idea. It is no by chance that the Soviet Union
was on the second place in the world in terms of the suicide rate in early 1970s. Hungary was on the first place at that time. This was secret information revealed only to psychiatrists.
Those were wonderful conditions for a spiritual breakthrough in this country. If our Earth was paradise, people would not yearn for fleeing from this paradise, for changing themselves in any way. The fact that it was hell here accelerated the evolution considerably. Some people committed suicide, some resorted to heavy drinking, some took to the same criminal path as the Communist Party, but still others sought the way out of this hell — the way toward God. And many of them attained their goal.
We started in those years with studying the experience of the world spiritual culture — Orthodoxy, Catholicism, various Protestant denominations, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam,
Taoism. We let this pass through our own experience. In this way, in
several years we formed a system that helps people accelerate their development in ethic, intellectual, and psychoenergetic aspects. From the very beginning our credo was to take all the best from all the worthwhile that existed on
the Earth. And the system that formed in this way not only allowed us to attain the highest spiritual achievements, but also turned out beneficial for other people, whose number by now is measured by several thousands.
However, I have to note that by no means we regard our path as the only correct one. The more ways toward the Perfection, the better and the greater number of people can choose the path which best suits each one of them. Looking at the whole history of mankind, we can see that none of the known ways turned out to be the common one. There exist the world religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Islam; as well as other religions: Taoism, Judaism, Confucianism, different trends of Hinduism, and so on. Moreover, Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam have split into a number of trends. If we take a serious look at the mystical work of different Christian churches, we will see that each of them has developed its own wonderful methods. This is, for instance, Hesychasm in Orthodoxy, the
eight-day spiritual exercises in the Catholic Jesuit order, and the exalted prayer in Protestantism. The same is true for various
schools of Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism, and so on. The Lord leads specific people along these specific ways. And He offers each person to choose from various schools in different stages of their advancement. And people
should not oppose this Intent of God.
The more freedom there is on the Earth, the fewer people impose their point of view on others — the more harmonious the life and development of all people are. And even if there are schools on
the Earth that call themselves spiritual while leading their followers in the opposite direction — for example, black magic or
“Satanic” schools — even this is objectively good. Who will get into those schools? — The people who strive to cultivate bad qualities. It is not that
these schools “entice” good people and corrupt them. This is absolutely not true. People become members of spiritual schools of their own free will — and they get an opportunity to learn from their own mistakes. This is also of great importance. This is an essential, serious method of educating in the God’s School on
the planet Earth.
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Question: You said that you managed to practically attain a certain spiritual level. Would you elaborate on this, please?
Answer: In Sanskrit there is the word polomi that means “to reach the other bank”. I can say that the other bank is reached. There was a moment when I felt that I had reached the other bank and buried the boat’s bow into the sand. But the current could still carry the boat away if water raised or wind started blowing. Then there was a moment when the boat was already drawn onto the bank and thus it could not be carried away anymore. But what lies ahead is the construction of
a house on that bank — and the completion of this task will constitute the end of the Path. But the house is not finished yet, and there is still a large amount of work to be done. But now I know how I have to live the remaining days of this life.
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Question: I am an Orthodox priest and I am pleased to hear that there are people who have reached “the other bank”. In connection with this, I’d like to know the following — not for the argument, but for a positive exchange of experience. In the given situation I am interested in the major issue — that of the purpose of life. For what sake do people suffer? Is it for the purpose of coming back into the state from which they came? Is there any profound meaning in suffering, enduring, and ascending?
Answer: An individual soul gets incarnated in order to master the next stage of its personal perfection. It is in a series of numerous incarnations that we evolve from the most primitive states — up to the divine ones. The final goal of the whole process for each one of us is to merge with the Creator. This is, in particular, what is written in
The Book for the Perfect by apostle Thomas. It says that as a result of numerous incarnations we have to become one with the King, that is God-the-Father, and to stay in this state forever. Jesus also said that we
have to seek the Divine Perfection: “Be perfect even as your Heavenly Father is perfect!” This same thought permeates the Bhagavad Gita — the principal source of
yoga.
When speaking of yoga, I do not mean hatha yoga, of course. Hatha yoga is not yoga at all, this is rather
“pre-yoga”. This is a culture of body, which helps one to make
the body fit for further work and enables one to start the path of yoga properly.
The word yoga is translated as “mergence”, “union”, “becoming one”. Of whom with whom? — Of man with God.
There exist three basic directions of work in yoga — ethic, intellectual, and psychoenergetic one, in keeping with three major aspects of
the Perfection, of which Jesus spoke.
What is the Perfection? No matter how many times people are told, “Be perfect! Be perfect!” — they are not going to become perfect just because of this, for they do not have any idea what
the Perfection is. Some would say that one has to become a perfect mother: to give birth to a lot of children and raise them. This is great, but this is
not all to it. Some believe that one has to become perfect in the art of killing, so they study martial arts for this purpose. Some see
the perfection in domination over other people — which is typical
for “satanic” schools of black magic and some occult schools.
So, what is the Perfection that Jesus was talking about? This is perfect Love, perfect Wisdom, and perfect Power. These three qualities
are inherent in God. And so, aspiring toward
the Divine Perfection, we have to develop ourselves along these three basic lines.
If Hindu tradition were to be considered, it comprises three major trends of yoga:
bhakti yoga — the path of Love, jnani yoga — the path of Wisdom, and raja yoga and
buddhi yoga — the path of developing Power through psychoenergetic self-perfection.
By developing ourselves along these trends we can get closer to the
Perfection. And the Supreme Goal is to become one with the Father. The final
stages of this Path are outlined in the Bhagavad Gita. It contains, in
particular, such words: “Submerge yourself as a consciousness into Me, then you
will live in Me!”
But, what is consciousness? Consciousness is man himself. Starting our
spiritual Path we have to realize — first intellectually, then empirically —
that we are not bodies. Man is a consciousness! And we have to immerse ourselves
as consciousnesses into the Consciousness of the Creator!
But, in order to understand this we have to also answer the question ‘what is God?’. There are
pagan fantasies on this subject. But now we are interested in the monotheistic meaning.
It turns out, that there are two of them. The first one is the Creator; He is also the Supreme Goal of man,
the Heavenly Father, the Supreme Teacher. But the Creator created His Creation out of Himself, and in this sense God is
Everything, or the Absolute (that is absolutely Everything).
Why is this so principal? Why did I emphasize this question? Because in some Oriental schools there is a notion that since God is
Everything and I am a part of this Everything, — I am a part of God and — in this sense — I am already God. And if I am already God, why should I do anything then? Why should I make efforts on the Path to God that Jesus recommended? (I mean the words of Jesus, where He said that only those who make efforts can attain the Kingdom of God).
Yes, we are parts of All. But there is a very big difference between just believing in this in
the mind and realizing this knowledge in the way Krishna taught, that is by submerging
the consciousness into the Consciousness of Ishvara (God-the-Farther)! The effort, of which Jesus spoke,
have to be made in order to attain first the Father’s Abode — the highest spatial dimension of the multidimensional Creation, and then to learn to merge
into the Father with the consciousness. It is only then that we will be able to truly realize our oneness with God, having eliminated our separateness from Him.
But where, in what direction should we look for God-the-Father?
When the first astronauts started to fly to the space, atheists began claiming at once: man has flown to the sky, but
have not found God there, thus God does not exist. The same primitive approach can be found also in some religious schools, in which people appeal to God, Who is up there in
the sky. In reality, God is to be sought not above, not in the sky. “Heaven” should be understood not in the earthly sense, but as the highest spatial dimension. The multidimensional nature of the universe is reality, not mathematical abstraction.
The space is really multidimensional! And the creation of the world began from the highest, the subtlest spatial dimension. It proceeded toward the creation of increasingly more dense layers of energy — down to the solid matter. In such a way the Creation was formed; this is how the
“manifest” world came into being;
it was designed to become a School for incarnated beings. In this School, we undergo
development in the physical bodies and surrounding matter. And in the long run, we will have to become perfect. But this can be achieved not through cultivating arrogance, self-assumption, pride of one’s successes, but the other way around — through destruction of
the “I”. There is a dilemma: “I — versus God”. If one’s ego is strong, one does not need God! For such a person God will be — at best — abstraction or abstruse reality. Such a person will think something like this:
“Well, let Him be — this God. When I die, we will meet and talk. But meanwhile, let Him not prevent me from doing what I consider essential!”.
God truly appears to man only when he becomes humble, his pride, egocentrism, and self-importance destroyed. And in order to achieve this one has to really understand what God is. Only then will we be able to realize our insignificance and the insignificance of our affairs
on the Earth — compared to the Ocean of His Universal Consciousness! He, who realizes this, will become capable of dissolving in
this Ocean. Then remains only God, and there is no “me” anymore. In such a way man merges into God and becomes one with Him.
But one can accomplish this only having cognized the Abode of God, that is, having attained the highest spatial dimension with
the consciousness. There exist special techniques of raja yoga and buddhi yoga
for this purpose. But mastering them requires not weeks or months, but — at best
— years of tireless work on oneself. One has to devote the entire life to this, combining esoteric practice with purposeful consolidation of what was mastered in the very thick of social life — otherwise no achievement will be stable.
So much for your question, I think.
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Question: In what way cosmic planes (lokas) are correlated with the structures of the human organism? I mean etheric, astral, mental, and other “bodies”.
Answer: First, regarding the etheric “body”. There is no place for it on this scale. This is an
error of occultists. Etheric “body” is simply the energy of the cocoon. Hence, there also can be no correspondence with cosmic evolutionary planes here. The
cocoon’s energy, or etheric “body”, is just the energy, emanated by the cells of physical body, which forms a kind of a protective casing.
The next one is the astral “body”. This structure is the coarsest on the scale of subtlety-coarseness, (after, of course, the physical body), of all other components of multidimensional human organism.
There are also other — more subtle — structures. But the occult terminology is quite lame here; hence there is no sense in using it. Why do I state so? The reason is that, for instance, the next formation after astral
“body” is called by occultists the mental “body”. But it is not related to
mentality, that is intellect. There is the energy of the head chakras, shen in Chinese. But in occultism, it is not this energy that is meant, but a structure of the physical body, which is enclosed in it like other
“bodies”, as it were.
In reality, there is no sense in speaking too much about these structures (in occultism they are six). One has to know about
the physical body as well as about the highest structure — Atman or the Holy Spirit that
dwells in us, according to the New Testament. We should know about the astral “body” — and the astral cosmic plane — the next coarsest of all other planes, after the physical one, but we should not be concerned with them. There is no point in developing
the astral “body” — it does not result in anything good! It is better to skip over the astral plane in one’s development as soon as possible! The reason is that this is a plane inhabited by the coarsest, the least evolved entities.
And what we have to know about Atman is that it is our goal. It is on this divine plane that we have to settle down.
Between the astral “body” and Atman there are indeed other structures of the multidimensional organism. But there is no sense in discussing them extensively, since it would be methodologically correct to direct
the whole aspiration toward cognition of Atman, where we come into contact with God for the first time.
The question can also be put this way: maybe evolutionary stages of man’s development, described in
The Holy Science by Yukteswar and in our works, correspond to a degree of development of certain
“bodies” of
the human organism? My answer is — even if this is so, the occult terminology is not fit here because of its impropriety.
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Question: What dimension does buddhi belong to?
Answer: To that in which we place buddhi at the given moment. Buddhi,
that is consciousness, is man himself, who is able — at each moment to be in
specific dimension, if man has mastered this ability.
Most people’s buddhis are located on the material plane. Buddhis of some others — in other dimensions. As an ideal, one has to accustom
oneself to living in the highest spatial dimension and to act from there in all others.
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Question: How do buddhis of different people differ?
Answer: They differ in size, in the level of refinement, in mobility, in efficiency of action; it depends on such qualities as Love, Wisdom, and Power.
In order to merge into Ishvara, one’s buddhi has to be developed by all these three aspects. As to the size, in the process of study at our courses buddhi gets developed from
the size of an apple up to cosmic scales.
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Question: What is the size of the buddhi of a child?
Answer: It depends on the degree of its development in the previous incarnations.
Here I should note that the entire mass of the consciousness, which can be
very large, not necessarily resides in the body of a newborn child or around it:
all the best, Divine, which was accumulated by the soul in the series of its
incarnations, is “archived” in a special “container” outside of the body. This
“reserve” is called Kundalini.
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Question: Does the size of buddhi always increases in a series of incarnations?
Answer: Not necessarily. Degradation is also possible. It is mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita, in particular. Krishna says that if man gives way to anger, he loses memory of
his previous spiritual achievements, and losing this memory he also loses the energy of consciousness. In other words, not only
crystallization, accumulation of “mass” of energy of consciousness is
possible, but also de-crystallization.
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Question: Which is the best way of cognizing the Absolute?
Answer: The Absolute can be fully cognized only from the plane of Ishvara.
It is by looking and acting from there that we can gradually develop the ability
to interact with the Creation in the way the Creator does.
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Question: Are spatial dimensions cognized inside or outside of the body?
Answer: Inside the spiritual heart developed to the sizes much larger
than the size of the physical body.
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Question: How is one to study all this? How can one develop the buddhi? How can one come to the Father and cognize the Absolute?
Answer: In earlier stages of work with students, we teach them how to
become ethically purer, provide them with theoretical knowledge so that they do not get lost in search for their ways in the multidimensional Ocean of the Creation. Then we teach them how to develop chakras, meridians, the
bubbles of perception, how to reach Samadhi and certain levels of Nirvana. In the course of this work, the buddhi is being developed. A significant part in the process of
crystallization is played by meditations on the places of power.
But in the following higher stages of work, teaching cannot be of the same type. There, a person
has to be guided not by an instructor, but solely by love for the Father. Only this love can be a motive power. The condition for acquiring this power is the state of
“facing God”. When it is God, not even the school or students, who occupies the first place in us (namely,
from the standpoint of the activity of
the emotional “center”) — only then may the further part of the Path be realized.
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Question: What is the fundamental difference between total reciprocity and crystallization?
Answer: Crystallization means increasing the mass of the consciousness.
Total reciprocity is transfer of crystallized consciousness into the state of
“non-I”.
Total reciprocity brings one into the state of Nirodhi, that is
disappearance of “me” in God, dissolution in Him. But in order to achieve
this, one firstly has to develop the consciousness, correctly and fully.
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Question: What happens to the consciousness during performance of total reciprocity?
Answer: It may be said that it assumes the state of “non-I”. Or that it merges with the Paramatman (provided that
that consciousness has been on the plane of the Atman prior to this). Or
mergence with God takes place if this meditation is performed in the spatial
dimensions of the Creator or Holy Spirit.
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Question: How can one imagine this?
Answer: There is no point in speaking about this. When you have done it, then we will be speaking a common language for discussing it. In order to start mastering
total reciprocity, one has to master proper crystallization first.
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Question: What is H-0 on the hydrogen scale of Gurdjieff?
Answer: This is void. God exists in it. God in the aspect of the Creator is H-1.
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Question: Lao Tse said: “Tao is a tender being”. How should one interpret this?
Answer: This is a very wise saying. Its essence comes for us to the following: if we desire to put into practice the commandment of Jesus concerning achievement of the Divine Perfection, we have to become very, very tender.
Tenderness is one of the main
constituents of Love!
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Question: Would you say a few words about Castaneda, please? When did the described by him take place?
Answer: Castaneda is our contemporary. While reading his books, one has to realize that he primarily describes not his spiritual experience, but the way he was taught, that is the process of his apprenticeship.
He was a student at university, and he started gathering materials for his ethnography paper. For this purpose, he went to Mexican Indians. In particular, he was interested in hallucinogenic plants that they used. There he found Juan Matus who later became his spiritual preceptor. Their contacts were going on for several decades.
Castaneda’s books describe how Juan Matus himself grew over this period of time and how he taught Castaneda. The books are written in a very interesting, bright literary form. Castaneda used the technique that speaks of his humility (most high feature!), he laughed at himself, at his failures; he also described episodes when Juan Matus and others mocked him.
It is essential to emphasize, that Castaneda’s books contain not the
complete Teachings of Juan Matus but the history of their relationship, the personal search of Juan Matus and
his friend Genaro, their mistakes, how they found themselves in a deadlock on the spiritual path, how they found their way out of it, how they made a lot of things that are unnecessary on the
Straight Path. The reason is that they did not have such an enormous amount of
book knowledge with description of their predecessors’ experience that we
possess. There was only very simplified Catholicism, which did not even provide parishioners with the New Testament. Don Juan did not read the New Testament himself, otherwise he would quote it. And naturally, such form of religion could not satisfy Juan Matus; he was looking for more. There was also a tradition of ancient sorcerers — Toltecs, who did not walk the
“path of love”, the “path of the heart” (in Juan Matus’s terms), and this also ceased to satisfy him starting from a certain moment. And then he took to the new path, having proclaimed Love the major principle for successful advancement toward the Goal.
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Question: What is the assemblage point?
Answer: It is the zone, in which the energy of consciousness is concentrated. This is neither a point that can be drawn with a pencil, nor a point in space, nor a point on the wall of the
cocoon, but the zone, the area in space, where consciousness is distributed. For example, transferring
the consciousness from one chakra into another, from one bubble of perception into another, bringing it out of the body’s bounds, and transferring from one spatial dimension into another, will constitute shifting of the
assemblage point.
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Question: What is schizophrenia?
Answer: The major symptom of the basic form of schizophrenia is prolonged inadequate behavior on the physical plane
from the patient’s molding his/her conduct in conformity with information received from the astral plane.
The astral plane is the spatial dimension inhabited by coarse non-incarnate entities; this is the world of demons, evil spirits. Having gotten into this world — the world of violence, spite, falsehood, and hatred — a person listens, for instance, to the voices that by means of intimidation or provoking to anger and jealousy, or inspiring to the idea of superiority over other people, make him/her behave in conformity with that information without evaluating it critically. Demons initiate such situations not only because they are in charge of this role, but also out of their personal interest, since the gross energies of negative emotions emanated by incarnate people serve as their
“food”. Demons may assume
appearance of people revered by their victims and indoctrinate in them certain ideas,
allegedly on behalf of these people.
The cause of the described form of schizophrenia is always gross violations of ethics the person makes. Very often those who seek super abilities (siddhis), rather than mergence with God, get into this trap. It is always the case that schizophrenia is a result of one’s persisting in vices, such as disposition to fear, condemnation, jealousy, and others.
I should note, that schizophrenia is a characteristic feature of some mystic schools, which do not walk that
path of love. The majority of mystic schools in this country preach not love, but fear of demons, vampires, and witches. A path without love, a path based on cultivation of mystic fear, is a direct way to mental hospital! Propensity for mystic fear and weak-mindedness are the only contra-indications for meditative practice.
You can see for yourself, how numerous such schools are. And psychiatrists are rightfully horrified at the results of their activity, as they get a lot of patients from them.
Now, we have examined the basic form of schizophrenia. But, similar symptoms may appear as a result of other things, for instance, intoxication of the brain if
one drinks urine. You know that drinking urine became popular among some groups
in this country. Some people view this practice as their path of spiritual
development.
What happens when a person drinks urine? The organism gets poisoned! Urine is
that, which has to be removed from of it, which has not to be present in it! There is
the disease called uremia — getting poisoned with one’s own urine in case of disorders of the natural urinary excretion. So, the organism poisons itself.
If one takes a small doze (or dozes) of urine, one’s organism reacts with physiological stress to it, like to poison. The protective functions of the organism, its immune system, get activated. And some diseases that were present in the chronic form can really disappear. So, in some cases urine therapy can turn out to be effective. But there are those who drink urine systematically and for a long time. I myself observed the case of development of schizophrenic state accompanied with mental confusion, disorientation in space, deterioration of intellect, in a young woman who was this enthusiastic about drinking urine...
Yes, there are positive results of treatment with urine. But we have other, much better techniques of healing at our disposal. And what is also important — we start curing diseases not from their symptoms, but from their causes, which, as a rule, are to be found in the souls rather than in the bodies. And if we take care about
the purity of the souls — the bodies will be cured as well.
But let us get back to schizophrenia. The same symptoms can be observed during certain infectious processes, deep sclerosis, and bioenergetic disorders of the brain.
But of greater interest for us is the main form of this disease. It should be emphasized
that one can help the patients in the early stages of the disease through ethical work
with them. If one manages to convince the patients that they are ethically wrong,
they recover and come to a stable healthy state, since they have learned from
their own mistakes. But this help is possible only if the patients respect certain moral standards, for example, the New Testament. Then
such a patient can be said: Do you see whom you worshipped? How can you love God if you keep thinking only about demons? How can you love people if you suspect everyone of being your enemy?! And so forth. If
the patient’s reason is sound enough to see these mistakes, he or she will get cured. But if
the patient does not come to reason, the disease progresses, the patient’s mental capacity deteriorates (after about two years), and imbecility develops, after which this process becomes irreversible. Then
such a person is good only as an example for edification of others, showing what man
should not be, what path should not be followed.
Doctors usually give sedatives to such patients, so that they do not disturb
other people and live in their delusions quietly...
A person may have an inborn predisposition to a certain ailment inherent to the body into which
that person incarnated. Geneticists even discovered the “gene of schizophrenia”. Some mental disorders can be predicted from childhood by the lines on one’s palm. Does this prove wrong the ideas of ethic nature of the basic form of schizophrenia? No, it does not. This is just an evidence of the fact that this person in
the previous life developed those features, that he or she was already destined to have schizophrenia. But
such predestination is not necessarily strict. Everything depends on whether the person
continues to behave ethically wrong.
Children too may have symptoms of schizophrenia. This can indicate that they
got ready for this in the past life. But one should not exclude the possibility
of development of such symptoms as a result of poisoning or major energetic
suppression from the side of other people. In the latter case, the child can
react with autism. Indeed, there are people with really demoniac energy! And the
child, being unable to change the situation, “retreats into himself”.
Another cause of schizophrenia, which I have not mentioned yet, is direct
inducing from the side of bioenergetically powerful people who suffer from
schizophrenia. They can not only suggest their delusion to others, but also
transfer the emotional state through a bioenergetic channel. The bioenergetic connection formed in this way may be sustained even at a distance.
We know of a case when a woman, who suffered from schizophrenia, not only conducted
“health classes” for children, but also threatened them that demons would take hold of them if they behaved badly. During the peaks of the disease, she radiated powerful low-frequency bio-field typical for excited schizophrenics, which brings people into the state of anxious stress.
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Question: What is your attitude toward fasting?
Answer: Positive. I resorted to fasting many times in the beginning of my path. Fasting is effective in
cleansing the organism from coarse energies and other consequences of “killed”
nutrition. I do not fast now, since I have been keeping to the killing-free diet for the
past 25 years and can get rid of energetic contaminations by other means.
The idea of fasting become popular in this country over the last years thanks
to the activity of the followers of Porfiriy Ivanov, who created a good and sound
School. One-day fasting recommended by this School has two goals. The first is to destroy stereotypes of primitive life,
with gluttony as one of its bases. We know it from our own experience: in the
past, we could not imagine our life without devouring every day some delicious food, violating all ethic principles. But if a person starts practicing fasting, this stereotype of gluttony gets destroyed,
and enjoyment of food is no more in the focus of attention. It is very
important — to destroy the stereotypes of primitive life in order to start the
spiritual ascent! About the other purpose of fasting — cleansing — I have said
already. But for this purpose, fasting for three days once a month is more effective, since in this case
the cleanse processes are more intense. It is not advisable to resort to longer
fasting without supervision of a specialist. It can be used only when there are
special medical indications. In this process, cleansing of some diseased organs may start, which
requires that a competent specialist looks after the patient. For example,
ceasing the fast prematurely may deteriorate one’s health.
There is one complicated point in connection with the fasting method suggested by Porfiriy Ivanov. I mean, fasting without drinking any water. This type of fasting is allowed only when there
is a lot of depot fat in the body. Otherwise it is not permissible! Why is it so? Because
in the process of fat decomposition, much water is generated. For Porfiriy Ivanov himself “dry” fasting was all right. But lean people, on the contrary, have to drink more while fasting. It is with water that poisonous wastes are taken out of the organism — and this is the purpose of fasting. I would recommend that you never fast without water, this is unscientific! An exception can be made only for those who want to lose weight.
The “exit” from the fast should be gradual, using juices and fruits. At least the first two meals should be composed only of juices and fruits. Later something cooked can be added. While
“exiting” a fast, one should avoid using salt, otherwise one risks developing an edema.
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Question: What can you say about sexual life in relation to our courses?
Answer: If you desire to achieve big success in our work, it is
absolutely necessary to avoid sexual contacts with those people, whose lifestyle
is different. Your partners should also stick to the killing-free diet and be at about the same stage of psychoenergetic
advancement as you are. During the first 6-8 lessons it is not so essential, but later on — I guarantee! — you will not be able to achieve much if your partners do not start the work together with you by the program of our or a similar
school.
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Question: In some families, where only one of the spouses practices our system, a tension grows. What is your advice in such a case?
Answer: It is not without purpose that Jesus said: “I did not come to
bring peace but a sword”. When we start getting detached from our old life, our
old social ties start getting tense and collapse. Of course, it is better if we all, with all our old friends and relatives started to walk toward
God. But it is not possible for everyone at the same time. In what are we
different from one another? The principal difference is the psychogenetic age,
the age of the soul. This is why such groups and schools attract people (although
with some exceptions) who are mature enough in their psychogenesis (and not only in ontogenesis) to be able to
encompass the information which you receive here.
There was a time when I also had an illusion that our methods suit all, that they are able to make our society more cultured. When the Communist Party was waging a war against us back in 1980s, our students joked that it would be nice to force those party
functionaries to
take our courses, so that they change. This is a nice joke. But speaking seriously — before starting a large-scale spiritual work one has to be fully developed on the material plane. And this requires a lot of incarnations. Krishna says the following in the
Bhagavad Gita:
on the Earth all people are revolving as on a potter’s machine, being molded by Ishvara. God constantly
“molds” us leading us to
the Perfection by placing us into new training situations of interaction with different people, with other factors of environment. And we all are
being perfected through this — through child rearing, marital relationships, and various worldly battles. In this way we are getting prepared for the moment, when we will find ourselves
truly interested in the Supreme. From this point starts — in this or that
modification — the eightfold path of the Patanjali’s yoga. As a result of
going through these stages, one acquires the ability to love God. And then, as Krishna said, God presents such a person with buddhi yoga, and this
person quickly comes to the mergence with Ishvara.
This is the reflection of psychogenesis. But all of us, before awakening spiritual, established a lot of social links needed then, but unneeded now. We grew through these relationships, matured, getting to know
other people and ourselves. Through them we developed our intellect, grew
stronger, sown the seeds of love in ourselves. In such a way we built a kind of
“material” foundation, from which we
can make our spiritual take-off.
And now we are trying to fly up, but... find ourselves tied to that foundation. And it is far from being easy — for many reasons — to free oneself from these ties, for there are not only our personal attachments here, but also real debts, which we must repay. But it takes time. It also turns out that our former companions do not feel like letting us go.
So, when we awaken spiritually, a struggle starts not only within ourselves, but from the side of other people as well. People of low levels of development usually do not tolerate those who strive to change.
“Why you don’t want to have a drink with me?! Don’t you respect me?!” — this is their typical formula.
I observed the following case. A son quitted drinking hard with his father. And the latter began writing
complaints to the regional committee of the Communist Party and other instances that this Antonov
“breaks up families”! From that moment, a lot of problems
came to my life, and I endured much because of them.
When we start awakening spiritually, our natural urge is to share our discoveries with our friends. But while we
find some people understanding us (though not always accompanied with a
desire to go with us), in case of others we see opposition and hostility. This is a good opportunity for us, since it enables us to start a new stage of studying people. We all have to become psychologists on our Path to
the Perfection.
Some time in the future every one of us will attain the state of Brahman. So what is the role of Brahman in the Creation? From His Divine level Brahman directs all incarnate beings in their development, realizing their destinies. It is Brahman who realizes our karmas.
With His Love — in particular, through blessing grace — He encourages all manifestation of love in all creatures. Hence, it is clear what refined psychologists we have to become
to merge into Him! And what our love should become.
Yes, we encounter hardships now. But through them we can begin a new stage of perfecting Love, Wisdom, and Power.
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Question: Are the terms Salvation, Liberation, Samadhi, Nirvana, and Moksha are identical in your opinion?
Answer: No, there is difference between them.
How is Salvation understood in, say, Orthodoxy? One has to be baptized, to confess
the sins, to receive Communion, to visit church regularly, to cross oneself — then one will be saved. And
those who do not do that will not be saved.
Some people realize that this is not enough for the complete
self-realization. This is necessary only for those who just start walking the
religious path.
If we do go deeper, a question arises: “What are we saving ourselves from?”
From hell? But is it what Jesus called us to? He taught not to save ourselves
from hell but to become perfect as God is perfect! And faith alone is not enough
for us to be saved from hell: as it is said “without deeds the faith is dead”!
The term Nirvana denotes a whole class of states, stages of ascent — from the
first instance of achieving Nirvana up to establishing oneself finally in it. At this part of
the Path, one has to do a lot, in particular, to master “static” and “dynamic” aspects of Nirvana in Brahman and Nirvana in Ishvara. There also exists a very big gap between reaching these states — and full and
steadfast mastery of them. When the latter is achieved, it constitutes the attainment of Mahanirvana.
The term Samadhi is also many-sided. In the Bhagavad Gita, Samadhi is an emotional state arising during first immersions of
the consciousness into Atman. In this sense this word is used in our
School. But some Hindu schools started expanding the meaning of this term — both onto the higher and lower states. The highest among them is called Sahaja-Samadhi which is somewhat equivalent to the state of Mukti.
The term Liberation means getting free from all attachments to everything “earthly”, including
the body and “I”. In Sanskrit, this word sounds as Mukti (Moksha).
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Question: Please, tell us about tantrism.
Answer: The word tantrism is of the Sanskrit origin, tantra means
action. Tantrism implies active religious practice in contrast to mere faith.
Religiosity can be expressed in various forms. One of them consists in observance of rituals, reading of religious books, observance of the rules of conduct established by a certain religion. Another form implies active
use of esoteric techniques of psychoenergetic development. In this sense our
School is tantric.
But the term tantrism in present days is often used in another meaning. I mean some pagan schools of Hinduism, whose basic concept is as follows: there are two divine principles: male and female, and their sexual interaction on the divine level energetically ensures evolution of the whole universe (slightly different versions of this mythological picture are possible). In other words, the evolution proceeds from sexual interaction of male and female principles. And people started imitating gods, endowing sexual interaction with religious meaning. Corresponding sexual-religious ritualism was created.
On this basis, the knowledge of bioenergetics of sex has developed (like in some Chinese esoteric schools), which is useful for everyone to be familiar with.
One should not confuse these two meanings of the word tantrism to avoid awkward situations.
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Question: The negative attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church toward yoga is well known. What is the reason for it?
Answer: How do our Orthodox people and their pastors understand the word
yoga? For them it means standing on the head, swallowing broken glass, and other miracles — in contrast with prayer. And, certainly, powerful prayer, especially that of
Hesychasts, is higher than the best
hatha yoga.
But yoga is immeasurably more than hatha yoga. The word yoga is identical to the word
religion. They both are translated into Russian as “union, mergence of man with God”. And the basis of yoga is not asana. The basis of yoga is Love! And how to study Love — this is written in the New Testament, the Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, and many other wonderful books, including
the stories by Leo Tolstoy and others.
Yoga is ethics. Yoga is the Path of Love. And if we preach and propagate yoga in this way, maybe with time the antagonism that you mentioned will disappear.
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Question: How is “resurrection from the dead” spoken of in Orthodoxy to be understood?
Answer: Yes, the belief in “resurrection from the death” is included into the Orthodox Creed. But Orthodox
believers “aspire to resurrection from the dead” in bodies
on the Earth, instead of yearning for mergence with the Father, for the sake of which one has to renounce all earthly attachments, including one’s body and
the Earth itself.
In this belief one may see traces of the knowledge of multiple incarnations that was lost by mass Christianity, though formally the belief in the
“resurrection from the death”, in
the Orthodox version, is based on the information from Revelation of John the Divine.
Jesus taught of incarnations in various bodies. He said, for example, that John the Baptist is Elijah who came but was not recognized. Apostle Philip, a disciple of Jesus, devoted
His gospel completely to this topic. But the church authorities at the council
in Constantinople in 553 decreed that we live
on the Earth only once. There was a certain sense in this: so that people were not tempted to postpone efforts on self-perfection until the next incarnation. So, they were told: we live just once, and it depends on this life, whether we will face torments of hell or the bliss of paradise. There is logic here, but not truth.
So, how should “resurrection” be understood? Yes, each new incarnation can be called that, indeed. But to aspire to this
return into flesh instead of striving toward the Highest Goal... — this is not the true intention.
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Question: Please, tell us about holotropic breathing.
Answer: The essence of this method consists in the following: by breathing
in a certain way, we can render the body unsuitable (temporarily and reversibly) for
dwelling in it. Then we go out of the body in the way similar to the one of
apparent death.
This method is fine in a sense that it allows one to “play” death without risking
the health, to get acquainted with it, try oneself in it, to get rid of fear of it as a result.
Classes are held in groups led by a specialist-analyst. A group comes back from the
“immersion” after about one and a half hours. Everyone returns with their own impressions. Then the second major moment of the
“session” takes place — the analysis of what everyone has gone through. This
has to be done by a highly competent esoteric specialist, who can provide correct explanations and recommendations concerning spiritual
self-perfection to each of the participants. An incorrect interpretation of such experience may be detrimental to psychic health of the group members.
What people experience during the “immersion” depends on the level of their spiritual advancement. For example, people with
contaminations in their organisms sometimes experience painful muscle spasms of agony type. While other people separate from their bodies easily and freely. People
with non-crystallized consciousness get very poor impressions from meeting with the
“other world” and sometimes spend this time in a kind of sleeping state. Those with developed consciousness may be active in the highest spatial dimensions and bring rich experience out of the
“immersion”.
This method allows us to know what we are in the face of the death, because during the
“session”
we find ourselves in that spatial dimension which is the most habitual for us; it is into this plane
that we will get after the apparent death. In other words, we cognize hell or paradise, or the higher states. But, since real death did not come yet,
we have some time ahead to change ourselves, to become better.
It is significant that among ordinary participants of the sessions who were
not involved in spiritual work, 70% to 80% turn out to be “candidates to hell”,
while at the end of the first course of our system this ratio changes into the
opposite: about 80% become “people of paradise”.
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Question: Why do you discommend to wear earrings?
Answer: On the external ear, especially
on the earlobe, there are a lot of acupuncture points located close to one another. From each of them a channel runs to certain organs. Metal inserted into the zone of a certain point influences the state of
the corresponding organs in a certain way. And this influence is not necessarily positive.
Do you know what acupuncture points and, accordingly, what body organs your earrings-antennas influence? And this influences are increased by many times during the process of group meditative work.
Look at the ethic side of decorating the body with metal. Is it not better to
occupy oneself with beatifying the soul? Is it not better to try to put God into
the focus of your attention, instead of the body? And if you want to be liked by
other people — it is better to place the consciousness into the anahata and
radiate love from there. There is no better way to become attractive!
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Question: When should we give to those who ask of us and when should not?
Answer: Jesus said regarding this the following: give to everyone who asks
of you. At the beginning, doing in this way makes sense; it is good for a start. We
shall make mistakes and it will give us pain. But in this process we shall learn altruism and self-sacrifice, as well as the wisdom expounded in the Bhagavad Gita
on this issue. In particular, it says that gifts can be tamasic, rajasic, or sattvic. So I refer you to the Bhagavad Gita.
It expounds the wisdom, which we have to master as a result of practice of giving away.
If we do not give away, we will never master Wisdom, not to mention Love.
Yes, our love may be unwise, but we have to start with something, do you understand? This will be at least something,
some kind of love. And only when we start loving people, we start learning how to do this. If we have never loved before, if we live with consumeristic attitude toward other people, what kind of wisdom we
are talking about? When we start giving away, when we start making mistakes, when we see that our love produces an effect different from what we expected, when we see that our love makes other people suffer, then we get a chance to learn to love wisely. One cannot learn anything without doing it. This is
unavoidable: we unwittingly inflict pain to others, inflict pain to ourselves. In the long run we shall master the wisdom of love, and later — the Love with which God loves people.
But, we know that God not always seeks to remove somebody’s pain; sometime it is the other way around — God creates painful situations for people’s bodies in order to save them
as souls! But we should not try to imitate God in this right now; in this respect we are on the other pole
in relation to God. At the moment, we have to learn giving away, cordial love, and service. This is why Jesus said to us: give everyone asking
of you! But in another case He said: do not throw pearls to swine and dogs, otherwise they
trample them will attack you. As to the truth here, we have to find it ourselves through the practice of giving away.
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Question: There are people-“vampires”, who are ready to use giving away of other people without end. Should they be barred?
Answer: In this situation, created by God for our training, we also have to learn the same: Love, Wisdom, and Power.
In different types of this situation, the decisions may be different, but we
have to preserve love always.
But let me say a few words concerning bioenergetic vampirism.
When we unite with God — the goal we are progressing toward — then “vampires” are of no harm to us.
There is a tendency, propagated by many modern specialists of bioenergetics, including even psychiatrists who took to this path, claiming that one has to protect oneself from
“vampires”, enveloping oneself into bioenergetic “shells”. One of the psychiatrists even wrote an article stating that
“vampires” are especially dangerous at night, so one has to be particularly watchful at night so that
“vampires” do not steal energy. This is a straight way to schizophrenia. It is mystical fear
that in our days is the major cause of this disease.
The New Testament proclaims: there is no fear in perfect love.
Perfect love implies that we grudge nothing for others. It also implies union with God in the embrace
of Love, mergence of the consciousness with Him.
And if my energy resources are united with God’s energy, who can cause harm to me?
So the solution is not in being closed, but, on the contrary, in the utmost
ecological openness, in turning the soul toward God, in learning to conduct His Love through the body
to all who suffer. To unite with God — this is the true path to security!
What happens when we cover ourselves with “envelopes”? In this way we hide
ourselves in a vessel closed from the environment. But at some moment, we will
lose energy anyway when there is a person-“vampire” desiring something from us.
It can happen if we get distracted by something and forget about maintaining
the “envelopes”. Then we suddenly recollect, restore the envelopes, and stay
inside them — without energy. The feeling of vulnerability and fear grows — and so we get new proof that
“vampires” are dangerous and that we are victims... One person, whom I knew, jumped out of the window in such situation.
I am asking you all to be afraid of your own fear! Fear is a sign of mistrust toward God; this is a sin, which
often has bad consequences! Too many people go insane developing schizophrenia
if they give way to mystical fear!
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Question: Is it allowed to “give” by force? Maybe we save someone’s life in such a way? Is this mercy?
Answer: No, this is not mercy. Saving the body is not always mercy. I will give you an example of how bodies of the dying ones are saved sometimes. My 90-year old aunt was close to her end; it was her natural death of senility. But a doctor started
“saving” her: a nurse was coming and regularly giving her
injections of heart stimulators. Her agony lasted for many days until her sister came to know about it and
protested: what are you doing?! Why don’t you let her die peacefully? Then a doctor
showed true mercy and prescribed soporific instead of heart stimulators, and
everything finished quickly and smoothly.
This is an example of unreasonable and forced love. Would you like to die this way?
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Question: So we should not feed the sick by force? Is this love?
Answer: Love combined with violence is called not love, but rape.
You say that the sick should be fed by force. But the reason of his or her
loss of appetite is that the organism needs to be healed through fasting. So you will
bring such sick person to death with your forced love.
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Question: Do you agree with the concept of the existence of devil?
Answer: The concept of devil exists in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This word usually denotes either the
leader of the hierarchy of
evil spirits or just a single evil spirit (one of many). The latter is
characteristic to Islam. There are also other names — Satan, Lucifer. These are
the names of that “fallen angel” who indulged in pride and became
“the
adversary of God”.
The legend of the “fallen angel” is not unfounded
because there are quite a lot of people who, upon reaching certain spiritual
heights, enter on the way of cultivating pride, arrogance, self-admiration. They
do not need God anymore, since they developed the feeling of full “self-sufficiency” in relation to God.
But in the pagan Christianity and in some other pagan religious trends
there are two opposing beings — God and Satan. Each of them has his own troops. They are constantly at odds with each other, they have
waged several battles, in which Satan was defeated and weakened. Another battle is ahead, which is going to be his final defeat...
But the Bible contains a different description of the relationships between God and Satan. The Book of Job in allegoric, fairy-tale form, describes the
“Council” where God assigns tasks to each of His servants. Satan
too is given a task: to tempt righteous Job. So, Satan is a God’s servant. But since he possesses evil qualities, he is assigned a nasty task.
There is wisdom in this. Although there are a lot of such “fallen angels”, rather than only one
as it is described in this myth, it illustrates the general principle of how God employs non-incarnate entities
of various qualities, which they cultivated in their incarnations. Some of them
are sent with a certain mission: to help the incarnate beings through love,
through their professional skills, while others — through temptations,
illnesses, and other afflictions.
Demons are non-incarnate entities with evil features of character. They can be animals or
humans, according to the last incarnation. While living in the bodies, all of them developed such vices as aggressiveness, malice, violence, the ability to enjoy inflicting pain, and so on. Thus, they are used by God to
kill the bodies of people for whom it is time to disincarnate, to make someone think about
the true meaning of life through pain, and so forth. God teaches us with their help, as He taught Job. Each of them is needed. Each of them can help us
get to reason some day...
So, it is clear, isn’t it?
There remains only the question of “battles” between God and devil and their troops. Roots of these legends are to be sought for in
the ancient Greek, Roman, and Indian pagan mythologies, where “gods” would regularly fight with one another, demons, and other entities.
So, if we really believe that God has the form of a flying man, which is typical of paganism, it is easy to fantasize how he gets on his horse, takes a spear, a sword, and a shield and with his white warriors rushes to fight the army of darkness.
But why does not it occur to modern pagans to arm God and Satan with more up-to-date weapons — chemical or even nuclear?... Wouldn’t it be funny?
But to be serious, God is not a man on a cloud or on a horse! God is the
Consciousness flooded in the highest dimension through the entire universe! God is the Ocean of
the Universal Consciousness! And no matter how deeply fallen is Satan or any
other person, they are just tiny particles in this Ocean.
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Question: In the beginning, Carlos Castaneda writes about the assemblage point as a point on the cocoon, but in other places — differently...
Answer: Castaneda misunderstood Juan Matus and mistook one particular case of placement of the assemblage point as the definition of this
concept. The assemblage point is not a point at all, but a region, a zone, in which the energy of
the consciousness is distributed. A consciousness is energy. A lump of the
energy of consciousness can assume various forms. Moving it within the body and outside of it, giving it different form, shifting from one spatial dimension into another — this constitutes shifting of the assemblage point.
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Question: Juan Matus said that with a birth of a child, one loses “completeness” of oneself, which results in formation of a “hole” in one’s cocoon, through which the energy leaks out. Is it true?
Answer: What meant here is not the fact of birth of a child, but distribution of the parent’s attention. Juan Matus explained it a bit mechanistically, but we have to understand the essence of this phenomenon. In particular, Gorda, a disciple of Juan Matus, abandoned her two children, entrusting their raising to her relative — for the sake of restoring her
“completeness”. I advise you against following her example.
What is completeness versus incompleteness?
Incompleteness is duality, that is distribution of one’s attention to both the
“earthly” and the divine. The objects of such duality may be (but not necessarily) one’s own children
but, of course, not only them.
Completeness implies directing the
attention only to God. Completeness can be achieved only by very few people.
And objectively very few of us need it: the rest of us have to perfect
themselves in quite “earthly” situations until the stable “inner” need in completeness
develops.
But even those few people who are really ready for completeness should not abandon their children. One has just to learn to treat them without
being attached, that is with love and care, without making them
“mine!” among other children and people.
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Question: How does insufficient sleep influence one’s meditative ability and bioenergetics?
Answer: Let us consider what sleep is. It is necessary not only for bioenergetic structures of the organism, not only for
the consciousness. Sleep is a necessary process for the brain as well. The processes that take place in the brain during sleep are thoroughly studied by physiologists and biochemists. During certain phases of sleep
the brain is purified of biochemical products accumulated during the waking
state. The rest process of the brain consists in this.
If one does sleep enough, the brain gets ill. This is seen with the help of
clairvoyance as appearance of dark spots, which disappear if one sleeps one’s full.
I call on you to sleep properly! The sleep has to be adequate, so that
meditation can be effective! One has to view good sleep as a necessary
prerequisite for spiritual advancement! While we have bodies, we must take care of them, in particular, provide them
with good sleep!
Sleep before midnight is considered to be the most beneficial, and practice proves it. Therefore, it is important to go to bed early and get up early. I do not know anyone, who would be successful in our work and would go to sleep and get up late.
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Question: Why does God need us to love Him?
Answer: First of all, it is us, who need it.
Everything that we do at our classes will be of little value, unless it is devoted to one strategic goal: advancement toward God, seeking God, rather than just getting pleasant sensations.
When classes are over, we may wither like flowers, which have not grown powerful roots, after a drought. These roots are steady aspiration, a powerful
magnetic center, in Gurdjieff’s terms.
Only provided that everything we are doing now is sustained by an intensive
individual search for God — only in this case — our classes will bear fruit!
Let us recall what we were in the past: coarse, self-centered, seeing most
people around as rivals or enemies... And what we are now? The most essential
thing is that we cognized what the emotional love is! This is what we lacked
before! In the past we could have close emotional contacts (and not always) only
with one, two, or three persons. But God loves everyone! We were so far from Him
at that time! Now there are a great number of beings whom we love! And when we learn to love wisely and powerfully all creatures in the entire Creation without exception, plus the Creator Himself — then will our love
will become perfect.
Apart from love, we also acquired knowledge — through reading, communicating with one another, and our talks. Without proper understanding of what God is, what each of us is, what our place in God is, what our duties are in connection with this — without an adequate understanding of all of this, we are not destined to attain the mergence with God soon, even if we have developed structures of the emotional
“center”.
Earlier we knew only the material plane and its coarseness. Now we know the
subtle worlds and have touched God. But it is not enough just to touch Him! One
has to settle down in His Abode and merge with Him!
And to attain this, one needs powerful magnetic center directed at Him.
What will happen to those who do not have it after our classes are over? Now, let us imagine: the classes are finished, each one is left to
oneself. What are we doing? Yes, we have nice recollections of powerful, bright experiences in this gym hall... But we leave this wonderful past farther and farther behind, proceed into severe present, and gradually lose everything...
To avoid it, a continual personal intellectual search for God, for the path to Him, is required.
This is an intellectual process!
Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita
says: “Direct your mind to Me, submerge yourself as a consciousness into Me —
verily, then you will live in Me!”
“Direct your mind to Me” is on the first place. The second cannot be effective without the first.
The developed magnetic center — this has to be formed! We
have to direct our minds to our Highest Goal, and then the corresponding
emotional dominant will be formed: the magnetic center.
An indicative thing happened in one of the groups that practiced our methods. The instructor was reluctant to talk with students about God because she saw that atheists, who happen to come to her classes, are not too pleased with this subject. That is why during exercises she used only such words as
harmony, bliss, joy, and so on. I was against it, saying that from the very beginning the instructor must talk with students about God, and if there are those who do not like it, it is not time for them to practice these methods yet. But she insisted on her position. As a result, one of her students went to another school where the whole practice consisted in repeating the name of God. When they met some time later, he told her that at last he had found the true faith, now his activity is really related to God, while what was at her classes was similar to masturbation: getting pleasant, but fruitless sensations in meditations, some tricks with anahata, — and what for?
Why did he see no sense in the classes? Because he did not see the Path to God in all this. And why did not he see it? Because the instructor presented it this way!
She retold me this story, trying to show how bad some students are! But it was the student who was right. Since whatever we do for sake of pleasure is not spiritual work! And students with true potential will leave for the places where people speak about God.
I am telling all this to you to call upon you once more to direct your minds to the Creator. We
should work with our magnetic centers; we should attend these classes not just for fun, but with a firm resolution to devote our lives to searching for God! And when we have our magnetic centers
formed — that which attracts us to the Goal like a magnet — then the seeds of
the knowledge you acquire here, will grow on the fertile soil!
At present, we have enough information concerning the Path to God. But this
must not be abstract knowledge, but that which will really transforms us —
transforms in terms of affecting the life, affecting one’s beingness, as
Gurdjieff put it. Only then we reach the “homestretch” of the personal
evolution, when we fall in love with God! And what does being in love mean? This is not just thoughts that I seem to love Him. It must not be expressed by the
“I love You” phrase, said casually. We have
to fall in love with Him passionately!
We have to make all efforts to fall in love with God! But to achieve this, we
have to be capable of falling in love, we have to become passionate and energetic! All this
we have to be developed, if have not developed it yet! Maybe, some will need to
fall in love with each other as a kind of training — for if we are not able to
fall in love with people, how then can we fall in love with God? How can we long
for God, if we have never longed for a beloved person? And when we feel that we
miss God, that we long for Him, that we cannot live without constant contact
with Him — only then can we say to ourselves: yes, now I do love Him! And only
then can one’s quick approaching to God state. For it is this passion of emotional
love that brings us close to Him quickly! And nothing but this passion can unite
us with Him!
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Question: Jesus said, “I am the gate”. But you quote Krishna and others so often...
Answer: Well, first of all, He did not say “I am
the only gate”. Jesus was far from being arrogant. On the contrary, He suggested that we learn humility from Him.
Secondly, what does the word gate mean? Jesus could not mean His body,
could He? He spoke about the Teachings that the Father gave through Him!
But God-the-Father taught, teaches, and
will teach the Supreme Truth not only through Jesus. But also through all those people who come close to
the Perfection.
You can compare concepts of diverse schools with the Teachings of Jesus. What is in accord with it is good, what contradicts it is bad.
I, for one, evaluate other schools in this way: is there a priority of Love in them and is God-the-Father their adepts’ Goal. This is what Jesus taught.
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Question: What are the specifics of teaching children by your system?
Answer: We have published a number of works concerning spiritual work with children. They are collected in the book
Spiritual Work with Children.
General specifics are the following:
Children and teenagers are taught simplified program, according to their age. They may not be taught
the “adult” program in full volume. The program is given to children and
teenagers over a longer period and in a playful manner, up to exercises of
“looking” from anahata.
The goal of this type of work is to introduce to children the ideas of their possibilities in life. In other words, they
should be familiarized with diverse trends in the art, sports, religion, they
should be provided with basic knowledge of ecology and ethics; it is also important to give them a chance to try their hand at everything.
Children and teenagers should not be required to necessarily demonstrate great progress, like adults. They just should be given the information and when the time comes, they will go into what they choose themselves.
New elements should be constantly introduced into classes, otherwise they become boring and the group will fall apart. The work with children must not contain meditative techniques connected with dis-identification of
the consciousness with the material plane. Children may
“get lost” in the multidimensional space, which may result in mental disorders. The same goes for the adults who are intellectually and ethically immature.
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Question: What is the objective sense in observance of the principle of truthfulness? Lie does not necessarily cause harm to other living beings.
Answer: It causes harm, first of all, to the person who lies. Since having lied once, we become
“hostages” of our lies. We have to keep our lies in mind, being afraid of getting exposed. This drives us into a state that can be called a
“complex of being besieged”, which characterized by a tense mental condition and sometimes even accompanied with neurotic symptoms.
But the ideal mental state is that of complete openness and harmony with everything and everyone. Only under these conditions the mastering of highest meditations becomes possible. Only in the state of utter peace can we open to God and to unite with Him.
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Question: Are there any contra-indications to practicing your system?
Answer: Feeblemindedness, schizophrenia, paranoia, disposition to mystic fear, and unwillingness or inability to accept the ethic concept of the
School.
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Question: How can we come to love God?
Answer: When Jesus was asked once, what the principal commandment of
Judaic Bible was, He answered: “Love the Lord your God with all the heart, and
with the soul, and with the mind, and with all the strength”. His second, not a
lesser precept was: “Love your neighbor as yourself!”
Let us consider now the first of these precepts. How do we understand it? I think that almost each one of us can say that they do not separate its
four components, that they are united. But in reality, each of them has its own profound and sacred meaning.
What does loving God with all the heart mean? First of all, one should
understand that it is not an anatomic heart that is meant here, but the
spiritual heart.
One can love “from the mind” as well as “from the heart”. What does it mean —
to love “from the mind”? This means that if one accepts the authority of certain religious teachings, in particular, the Teachings of Jesus Christ — one has to follow its precepts, including that which requires
us to be kind to other people. But there is also love
“from the heart”, which represents not intellectual, but emotional aspect of love.
In old days, there was a trend in the Orthodox church, which can be
characterized as Christian raja yoga. It was called Hesychasm — from the
Greek word hesychia, that means inner silence. Hesychasts
developed one of the finest techniques in the history of spirituality on the
Earth — the "Jesus prayer". There exist various forms of this prayer, but all of
them had to contain the word “Jesus!” — addressing Jesus as “the sweetest”,
“the most beloved”. This emotion of love had to be introduced into anahata along with the name Jesus, like a mantra. And after many years of practice people would suddenly get transformed —
and the spiritual heart would “open”. The whole world would get transformed for them; they started to perceive everything through their love.
Emotional love is inherent in some people — very few — without special efforts from their side: they came to this incarnation already having it. There are also those who have easily developed it through natural situations in life, for example, a harmonious motherhood. But the overwhelming majority of people do not have a slightest idea of what
“cordial love” is. For them, it is mere words.
There is a dominating opinion in Orthodoxy that the secrets of "Jesus prayer" have been lost. But we managed to re-discover these secrets, using scientific
method. And so, during the years when the word God was de-facto
forbidden in our country, when the word love was used only in its sexual meaning — we trained thousands of people using these methods; we helped them master the basics of spirituality — emotional love.
Let us remember that it was Jesus — after Krishna — who offered us the only reliable path of
becoming closer to God, closer the Divine Perfection. This path consists in development of
the emotional love. How can we learn to love God, whom we cannot see with our ordinary eyes, Who is initially not the reality for us? Therefore, Jesus said that we can come to love God through learning to love emotionally. How is this task to be fulfilled? Through love to people! Learn to love each other — and through this you will learn to love God! For only when we have developed
the emotional love, can we re-direct it toward
God! Love for God is the only means of approaching Him! Love is the force that
attracts us to the object of our love! Love is that which unites! Love unites
person with person, it is also that which can unite man with God! The ultimate
goal of our development, of everyone’s evolution, is mergence with
God-the-Father. This is what apostle Thomas said in The Book for the Perfect about
it: “We have to become one with the King”. This is what God says in the Bhagavad Gita about
it: “Submerge
yourself as a consciousness into Me, then you will live in Me!” But one can achieve this only through cultivation of love.
We are speaking of spirituality all the time. But what is it? There are such
words in the Gospel of John: “God is Spirit”.
From this the word
spirituality originates. It denotes the extent of closeness to God, to the Divine Perfection, seeking which is one of the precepts that Jesus gave to us. And it is with development of Love that spirituality begins. And only if
the intellect is based on this foundation — wisdom will form. And only if power is added to the foundation made of love and wisdom — it is possible to say that mastering of this power will be beneficial, rather than detrimental to its owner.
So the direct esoteric path to the Perfection starts with the development of the anahata chakra. I will make it clear that our emotions are born not in the brain, as physiologists taught us. When we experience emotions, certain processes are registered electrophysiologically in the brain. But they are not the emotions per se. The brain just participates in the collection and transmitting of information. Emotions, as bioenergetic processes, are born in chakras. And it is the anahata chakra that is the
“organ” of emotional love. So one cannot really love a person or God — if one’s anahata is not developed.
This is the profound meaning of the recommendation that one should love God
with all the heart!
And what does it mean to love God with all the soul? In these words there is also an immense profundity. The meaning of these words is revealed in one of the sayings of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of John:
“God is Spirit, and they who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth”.
What is implied by “in truth” is clear — to understand adequately one’s duties before God, to aspire toward ethic perfection, perfect knowledge, and so on.
But is everything clear as to the rest of the citation? The first part of the phrase is:
“God is Spirit”, i.e. God is not a material object. God is the Universal Spirit.
“And those who worship Him must worship in spirit...” What does this mean?
Being born in material bodies, we identify ourselves with them from the very birth. All of us believed — and
some still believe — that
we are bodies. But this is not true. Man is not a body, but a consciousness. The
consciousness does not die when the body dies, but just
gains freedom from it.
Later it enters into a new body to continue its evolution. All people, who are successful on the spiritual path, know this truth. All sacred books proclaim this truth. And this is not just a theory, but knowledge
verified experientially.
So, man is a consciousness, or a soul. And man — as a consciousness — has to learn to love God,
Who is also
a Consciousness.
And how should one come to love God with all the mind? It should be noted that
in order to understand this part of the precept one has to have a clear idea of what God is.
We are not going to examine the pagan fantasies about this. Let us consider the monotheistic meaning of the
word God. And we will see that it has two meanings.
The first one is — God as the Creator, the Father, the Supreme Goal of one’s personal evolution, the Supreme Teacher.
But there is another meaning of this word: God as the Creator who created everything that is alive out of Himself and in this respect He is one with His Creation. In this sense God is All (the Absolute).
And now, a natural question arises — one has to merge with God, but in which
meaning of this word — the Creator or the Absolute?
Whom did Jesus call the Heavenly Father? — The Creator. It is toward trusting Him and mergence with Him that Jesus called. The same
is written in the Bhagavad Gita.
The Absolute can also be cognized, although not with the mind, but only with
the
crystallized consciousness, by looking at the Creation from the state of the Creator with His eyes.
But how and where should one search for the Creator? We can find Him in the highest, the most subtle spatial dimension. God in the aspect of the Creator is Primordial Consciousness that exists on the deepest plane of the multidimensional Universe.
As early as at the turn of the 20th century, mathematicians started speaking of the multidimensional nature of space. This is really so, though mathematical formulas are of no help when it comes to the empirical cognition of this multidimensionality. This task can be solved through methods of raja
yoga and buddhi yoga, i.e. by means of developing the consciousness (buddhi) and penetrating with it into the depths of the multidimensional space. It is buddhi that represents the
“instrument” of the cognizing process that we are talking about. While all physical instruments are effective only in the material world — the
most dense spatial dimension.
So, God should be sought not on the sky. Jesus was saying about this the following: if you seek God in the sky, then birds will precede you. God is to be sought not in Shambhala,
or on some mountain, or on another planet. God is to be sought in the depth of the multidimensional world. And anahata is the structure of our organisms where we can touch Him for the first time, through the bliss of Samadhi. Why is it anahata? Because God reveals Himself only to those who love Him! But, as I said, it is not possible to love without a developed anahata. Having developed
the anahata through love for people, for all beings, for the whole Creation, and for the Creator,
and using esoteric methods for accelerating this process, we become capable of immersing into the Abode of the Creator through this
chakra — so that later to dissolve, disappear in Him.
Of course, it is easier said, than done. There are a lot of nuances on this
Path, on which I will not dwell now. But to those who seek and love Him, God
shows the way toward Him!
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Question: What is the difference between love and attachment?
Answer: It depends on what meaning we assign to these words.
But let us speak in detail about attachments. To start with, there are
different kinds of attachments. Take an attachment to God, for example. This is
what everyone has to cultivate, encourage, and foster in themselves. But there
are also attachments that lead to the state of “duality”. This is, for instance, an attachment to
the old workplace, to outdated methods of spiritual practice, and many others.
But it is not always that we have to fight with our false attachments. It is best when they die off by themselves being replaced by the growing love for God. For if
we are still not capable of falling in love with God — what sense does it make
for us to fight our attachments? We break one attachment by force, but it will be instantly replaced by another one of the same kind.
What are the objects of our attachments? That which is of great value to us.
We should also understand that this feature of ours — to attach or fall in love with something or someone — is of much help in our development. For example, it teaches us to strive toward attainment of our goals, to sacrifice ourselves, it teaches us to be
vigorous, it develops the intellect, and so on. Moreover, being passionate — it
is also needed! Only a genuinely passionate person is able to advance on the
spiritual Path quickly and successfully! It is just necessary to turn the developed passion to the needed direction.
So, let those who are still not able to fall in love with God, fall in love with each other,
etc, and thus grow through this. But it is useful for them to keep in mind the perspective of falling in love with God.
I have been talking now about what I learned
by my own experience. For example, I had attachment to my old
decrepit automobile. And the necessity to constantly repair it myself, in the conditions of shortage of spare parts and unavailable service, taught me so much! It taught me, in particular, how to find decisions in unusual situations, like, for instance, an engine failure in the woods hundreds of kilometers away from home. Or even — how to unscrew a nut that has rusted dead-tight to a bolt? This develops
the intellect remarkably! So, some of you I can recommend buying an old
automobile and devoting some period of life to it.
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Question: What about unscrewing that nut? I am having the same problem at the moment.
Answer: I won’t tell, otherwise a ready decision will inhibit development of your intellect. What is important on the spiritual
Path is not the fact of unscrewing a nut, but the process of seeking the correct decision by oneself.
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Question: When do we have to fight in “earthly” situations and when — to exercise humility?
Answer: Everyone has to go through the stage of kshatriya in one’s
personal development.
At the beginning one is a student, that is a shudra, who is still unable of creating anything by
oneself — neither big things, nor small ones. At this stage one has just to watch others do this and to learn by helping them.
Then one becomes vaishya. This step — in line with another scale of psychotypes — is the beginning of mastering the stage of a householder. In India such people were farmers, craftsmen, and merchants. To perform these tasks, one
has to have a developed intellect and be energetic to a certain degree. To ensure a proper reception of guests — does not it call for a lot of skills?
The next higher step (or the second half of the grihastha stage) — is a step of kshatriya. Now
one becomes a fighting leader. In this struggle one develops psychoenergetically
as well. In particular, fighting activates a special energy structure — hara. And this contributes to the effective functioning of anahata.
Only that person has powerful love, who is energetic, which is determined by the
proper function of hara! As we can see, one cannot to skip this stage. Therefore, we have to learn to struggle. But this should be done in an ethically impeccable way, that is in complying with principles of ahimsa of kshatriya, in particular.
As a result, we ascend onto a higher stage of brahman (or in line with another scale — of sannyasi, i.e. the one who renounced all worldly desires).
On this stage, one does not need to repair automobiles or raise children for the sake of
own personal development. The struggle conducted now is not external, but an internal one — for the full Perfection and mergence with God.
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Question: What is humility?
Answer: Humility is manifested in different ways at various stages of one’s development. For instance, humility of shudra is obedience. Humility of vaishya and kshatriya is to stay away from unneeded conflicts, not to give way to anger, and if a battle is lost — to be able to accept
one’s own destiny. For a brahman humility is renunciation of the personal desires (except essential needs of the body), that is surrender to God’s will and non-attachment to the fruits of
one’s own actions and to the action itself. In a great detail this subject is covered in the Bhagavad Gita.
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Question: The Bhagavad Gita states that God sends sinners to incarnate into increasingly worse conditions. How does it accord with your statement of “totality” of the Divine Love?
Answer: Yes, there exist ascending and descending streams of the Divine Evolution.
So, when some of us move toward more suffering — whose fault is it? Only
their own! Not God’s at all! For people create their destinies themselves!
It is not God’s task to ensure paradise for people on the Earth. And God is also not our servant, who must satisfy our desires.
All the time God offers each of us the opportunity to advance along the ascending Path. But whether to advance or not is up to us to decide.
How can God teach us to move in the required direction, in complying with the universal laws, toward our own happiness? Through a word? But people were told about this numerous times, still they do not comply. Through the blessing grace of the Holy Spirit? But are there many people who aspire to this? The only means that remains is — through pain, which we experience, when we go in the wrong direction or do wrong things.
For the sake of saving us as souls, God sends pain to our bodies. And we have
to learn to understand Him and be grateful to Him for these lessons and prompts, for His help.
But let us get back to your question. In what should we see God’s Love, when He makes stubborn sinners incarnate into situations of increasing suffering?
My answer is the following. When the pain is slight, we do not pay much
attention to it. But when the pain is great, we start thinking about the cause
of this pain and begin to look for the way out. And if we find it, the despair
due to ours recognizing the current miserable state can be of enormous help to
us. The emotion of despair provides us with energy and power needed to extricate
ourselves!
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Question: Why do you accept so few people for senior courses? Why do you abandon students on the half way to the Perfection? How would you explain this in line with your concept of Love?
Answer: We accept only those for the next stage who are able to ascend
onto it and, what is more important, — who will be able to hold their ground at it.
You have to understand that everyone has their own rate of advancement. And the exceeding of one’s individual possibilities may result in a breakdown.
As an example take a person who has completed several courses of our School, but who does not possess wide scope of knowledge and who gets into a certain sect of Orthodox or some other orientation. There they start intimidating him
or her: how did you dare to learn from anyone except us, what a sin! Repent, confess your sins, and so on! And not
anyone can withstand these accusations, especially if they are accompanied with the use of magic! And
the victim gets filled with fear because of his/her allegedly
“sinful” past and condemnation of those, from whom he or she, maybe for the first time, learned about God and the Path to Him.
And as soon as one lets mystical fear and anger of condemnation into oneself —
this instantly attracts demons (i.e. inhabitants of coarse spatial dimensions). Since the energy of our coarse emotions is the best delicacy for them! Then they begin — by their own means — to intimidate their victim to even greater extent and to provoke him
or her to further condemnation. This is how schizophrenia develops.
You may ask: why does God allow this to happen? But did not God teach us not
to condemn? And at the same time He edifies the instructor as well, so that he would know which students should be expelled from the group in advance before this happens to them.
Or one more example. A person quite unequivocally encounters devils. What kind of emotions does he
or she experience?... The Orthodox Church teaches people to hate and be afraid of devils... But it is exactly what they need!
Mystical path is not for weak people! And if the instructor protects the
students from the trials beyond their capabilities — how is this called? Is it love or not?
Still, every next step of spiritual work means increased susceptibility to mystic factors. And it is better not to receive it, than to obtain it when one is not mature enough yet.
I have presented just one scheme of a fall-down, but in reality there are lots of them.
Well, one more example. A young mystic catches flu. To admit such a common
disease — his pride does not allow him. Hence, his conclusion — somebody
influences him with evil charms! Who? Whom do I know as being energetically
powerful person? Oh! — this is my instructor! So he speaks of love only to
disguise himself, but in reality he is up to such things! (For a normal person
such logic seems impossible. But I witnessed two of such cases.)
It also occurs sometimes that female students fall in love with the instructor and believe he must response with similar feelings. If he does not, what follows is well-known:
“Well, he does not love me! Bastard! He might be in debauchery up to his ears with other students, while does not care a bit about my pure love!...”
Love of primitive people is very easily transformed into hatred. The results of this we know.
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Question: They say that time disappears when one enters Nirvana. Is it so?
Answer: Only earthly time does.
Time is inherent not only in the material plane. It is everywhere in the universe but it is of different kind in other systems.
What do hours, minutes, and seconds on our clocks mean? This is a result of division of natural for
the Earth unit of time — a day, that is the time required for the Earth to make one turn round its axis. People agreed upon dividing a day into 24 hours, an hour — into 60 minutes, a minute — into 60 seconds.
On the Earth we also have a year — the time the Earth makes one revolution round
the Sun. It was agreed upon dividing it into 12 months. And so on.
There are also other — little used — time units on the Earth: moon time and the time used by astrologers. But all of this is valid only for
the Earth. On other planets time is different.
There is also time in the Abode of the Creator, but it is measured not by earthly days and years, but by Manvantaras — cycles of the Creation’s pulsation, which last from one
“creation of the world” till the next one. The Bhagavad Gita contains a detail explanation of this. So, God exists in time and evolves.
Having entered the state of Nirvana, a person gets from the usual earthly time — into the Divine one. And it may seem to
such a person — due to ignorance — that time does not exist there at all.
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Question: Is the practice of raja yoga necessary? In the Bhagavad Gita it is said: “Direct your mind to Me...”
Answer: But this is just the first part of the phrase. And the second one reads:
“... submerge yourself as a consciousness into Me, then you will live in Me!” Can you submerge yourself
as a consciousness into Ishvara?
To those who are not able to do this at once, Krishna recommended meditative practice.
But not anyone can practice meditation easily. Therefore, Krishna advised to prepare oneself to this stage through karma yoga (that is study of ethics and ethically correct behavior) and through sankhya — study of philosophy.
“Direct your mind to Me...” — this is a call to the initial steps of the religious ascent. This is a call to cultivating faith, to aspiring to God.
Ritualism of various religions contributes to formation of faith. But those whose faith is already formed and who also possess other propitious dispositions — should advance forward along the
well-known eight stages of yoga, expounded by Patanjali.
Faith is the principal issue on the spiritual Path. For it is faith that
encourages a person to strive to become better. Why should atheists try to
become better if they consider themselves and others only as mortal physical
bodies?! Atheism deprives people of the feeling of personal responsibility before
God and before one’s own further destiny.
And why are there good, kind, honest people among atheists, nonetheless? It is because of the fact that they accustomed themselves to this in previous lives and now live in the moral way as if by inertia. But it is easy to tempt such a person, deprived of sound theoretical and ethic foundation, to commit a sin and to drive him
or her into hell!
So, the first step on the Path to the Perfection in a religious school — is acceptance of faith. And with time this faith may grow — through numerous personal efforts — into religious knowledge. And meditation plays the prime role in this transformation.
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Question: Do you kill mosquitoes?
Answer: I prefer to use repellents in the woods. But if a mosquito
gets into a room despite the net on the windows, ahimsa of kshatriya has to be resorted to. That is, I destroy
its physical casing, but without negative emotions. I wish the mosquito good re-incarnation into a fly.
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Question: There are various opinions as to when the last Kali yuga ends. What is your opinion on this?
Answer: The answer is very simple: there are no yugas at all in that sense in which it is dealt with nowadays.
I will explain my point. In ancient Hindu Vedas there was a notion that the solar system with our Earth flies along its trajectory of oblong orbit around a certain divine center. When we get closer to it, a
“golden age” comes — a time of spirituality
on the Earth. When we fly away from it — an “iron age” comes — a time, when spirituality declines.
But this is a typically pagan approach implying the existence of a localized personified god as a ruler of the
universe.
But in reality God is everywhere! He is inside and outside of our bodies! And
He is to be sought in the very depth of multidimensional Ocean of the universe,
in the highest spatial dimension!
Success on the spiritual Path depends not in what part of the universe the Earth is, but on
our personal efforts in self-perfection.
And God always loves and teaches every one of us.
It is hardly true that there are more sinners on the Earth now that at some
time in the past. Since God sends new souls to incarnate on the Earth all the
time — the souls that just begin their development in human bodies. We have to
treat them like mischievous children and avoid getting angry. And we have to
advance toward God. Believe me: we have everything required for doing it here
and now!
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Question: What is the reason that even now there are pagan tendencies in religion?
Answer: The pagan concept is easier to understand and therefore more attractive. And it requires much less efforts on changing oneself.
Look, here is a bright example of a typically pagan logic adhered to by some Christians: Jesus Christ has already expiated all our sins with His death, so the only thing we have to do in connection with our religiousness is to
go to church and participate there in rites.
Another example from the Orthodox tradition: we are capable of nothing ourselves due to our weakness, therefore we should pray to saints asking them to pray to God in their turn asking Him to save us from hell.
More serious pagans may seek an “astral teacher” for themselves. And nowadays many people are engaged in searching for contacts with beings from other planets.
But let us better remember the following words of Krishna: those who worship the
ancestors (that is spirits) — go to the ancestors, those who worship deities —
go to deities, those who worship Ishvara — go to Him. The same was taught by Jesus Christ — i.e.
we have to aspire to the Father.
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Question: In the tradition of Porfiriy Ivanov it is not forbidden to eat meat. Why?
Answer: Yes, they believe that if meat is subjected to a certain ritual of
“consecration”, it is not harmful to health.
But we view the choice of nutrition — predatory or non-predatory — as an ethic issue, rather than that of health. The basis of ethics is Love. And the first step in Love is compassion.
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Question: About what “segments” of the cocoon they tell in the School of Juan Matus?
Answer: These are chakras or systems of chakras (dantyans). Only people with developed energy structures of the organism were accepted into this School; it was determined with the help of clairvoyance. Of course, there were quite few such people in the regions where yoga is not practiced.
Contrary to the School of Juan Matus, we give chances to accelerate the
personal evolution also to the people whose chakras are not developed yet. We
have methods which allowed many people to develop the chakras in less than half
a year.
There are other segments, but we are not going to discuss them now.
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Question: How does the way we perform our home exercises influence our success? What is the mechanism of this?
Answer: It is everybody’s right to perform or not to perform at home the exercises they learn here. But your inner transformation depends on your diligence.
We construct new structures of our organisms: developing them from
“rudiments” — into effective organs. Growing of the immortal body, in terms of alchemy, calls for constant training. Rare attempts do not result in steady development. Only constant intense practice ensures it.
How do our muscles become large and powerful? — Through work. The same goes
for the structures we work with now. We have to work with them in the same way
athletes work with their muscles. Only then will they become large and strong!
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Question: What should I do if I do not see the progress that I would like to see, though I try to practice daily?
Answer: Personally to you I would advise to practice with a hatha yoga group for the time being: you do not have enough energy for our work within the program of
raja yoga. The same goes for some other students present here. Practice hatha
yoga for a few months, then this program will be more effective for you.
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Question: What is your opinion of Daniil Andreev’s book Rose of the World?
Answer: The book is written by a person carried away by demonism of the astral plane, like it happened in the past to Ignatiy Brianchaninov — another famous
“demonologist” — and his followers. They all became enslaved by that environment, to which they dedicated their lives. This is a result of pagan faith in spirits, rather than in God.
I repeat once again — only strict monotheism gives a basis for scientific viewing of the universe as a multidimensional structure, only it can ensure
the optimal methodology of spiritual advancement! Only this approach allows one to direct one’s efforts to searching for the Creator where He is in reality — in the depth of the multidimensional space.
And this implies development of methods of refining the consciousness, since the Creator is the ultimate degree of
the universal subtlety. So, only through refinement can we get close to Him and merge with Him.
Understanding of these ideas is what sets our School apart from many other
schools. And it makes our School related to those of Yogananda and Rajneesh, for
instance.
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Question: Do I understand correctly that paganism is oriented at the astral plane?
Answer: As a whole — yes.
The astral plane is the coarsest non-material spatial dimension. It is inhabited by the grossest of non-incarnate entities.
Occultists studied the astral plane in detail. They, in particular, distinguish seven sub-planes within it, which differ in the degree of their coarseness.
The coarsest sub-plane of the astral plane is that, which is called hell.
After shedding the body, people get into that spatial dimension or its sub-plane, to which
they accustomed themselves while living in the body. And this is determined by the emotions dominated during life in the body (subtle or coarse ones), as well as the plane
we attuned to. If we attune to God — we get close to Him. If we attune to the astral plane — we get into it.
There are very powerful books of the authors who devoted themselves to research of hell, rather than God. It was hell that interested them, attracted them; so they studied it. Afterwards, they decided to tell other people about it — as about the only actual.
It makes no sense to analyze separate elements of their narration now: what is correct and what is not. Another thing is essential — these books make those who read them attune to hell, attracting them to it. And having gotten in the company of demoniac beings — not everyone manages to get out of there.
I say it once again: those incarnated people who live in attunement to
coarseness, in energetically coarse states, are inevitably going to find
themselves in hell!
And the last thing — should one read such books? Yes, to reading and to analyze, without getting attuned. One
has to know everything! But shrinking from evil and cleaving to good, in the New Testament’s words.
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Question: What sense does it make that God allows such books to be published?
Answer: With these books God makes a barrier on the Path to Him to those people, who are not ready for this yet. They are those who
are developed intellectually and not
steadfast in Love yet.
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Question: Will you, please, sum up the basic principles of your School?
Answer: Our School is strictly monotheistic. Our God is He, Who is
called Jehovah in Hebrew, God-the-Father in English, Allah in Arabic, Ishvara in
Sanskrit, Tao in Chinese. The Path to Him runs through Love. Love is the most
quick and safe Path to Him.
There are schools that give priority to the sahasrara chakra in practical esoteric work, other view ajna as the principal chakra, while others — muladhara
or the complex of the three lower chakras — hara, and so on. We, in accordance
with the Teachings of God,
know the anahata chakra to be the principal one on the Path to Him.
If we have Love, this ensures that our acceptance of knowledge and power will
be safe.
But on the initial stages of one’s development of Love, these same things make one more vulnerable to influences of coarse energy. That is, the
one who has
“shed” garments of coarseness starts feeling
oneself “naked” among coarse people. There is a recommendation in the New Testament for this stage:
shrink from evil and cleave to good. These hardships will be over when one acquires — through special methods of training — the
power in subtlety. Then such a person, again in parlance of the New Testament, will be able to
“be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good”.
One may certainly ask: what if I develop power first and refine it later? I will answer: it would be very nice and in reality it happens sometimes and with good result.
But there is a dilemma. If we start with Love and subtlety — we will have a certain period (some months) of hard time,
or may even
“break down”. But if we start with Power, we may get lost in vices and accumulate
so bad karma!... What is better and what is worse?
And to avoid this “break down” we have to hold tight to God: to perfect our Love for Him, to study the directions concerning living
on the Earth that He gave to us in the New Testament, the Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, and other books. I would advise that those who cannot do this should not hurry to start
the psychoenergetic line of work. They would rather pay more attention to jnani
yoga and karma yoga.
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Question: Please, tell us what we should beware of to avoid “breaking down”?
Answer: Most of all, you should beware of your own fear and anger. Both of these are vices. Fear is mistrust toward God. Anger is indulgence in egoism.
Thus, God teaches us, sometimes with help of devils, not to behave in this way.
I witnessed people who got carried away by anger and condemnation and developed schizophrenia. They experienced bright hallucinations
of intimidating influence from the side of those they were angry with. But hallucinations are not just a fruit of imagination! Hallucinations are what a patient really sees in the astral plane! And he sees whatever
inhabitants of this spatial dimension show him, since they can easily take on any appearance and speak on anyone’s behalf.
One of my acquaintances got into the school of a bioenergy doctor who taught spiritism and techniques of
“bioenergetic protection” from “vampires”. Soon, spirits-“well-wishers” started warning her of the danger of staying at home and later — even in her home town, saying that she was a target of
“hunting”. They even gave her the addresses and names of the people in another town, who were allegedly supposed to
“help” her. She went there and really found people with the names given to her. She demanded that they help her, save her from
“persecutors”, told them about her “well-wishers”... Naturally, she ended up in a
mental hospital.
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Question: There is a point of view in literature, that
one necessarily goes through the stage of astral plane. Is it so?
Answer: Yes, it is so. But one may make a big stride further from it
very soon or may remain on it for a long time. It depends on the depth of one’s
intellectual understanding of the spiritual Path and on the characteristics of one’s magnetic center. Therefore, it is
to these aspects rather than to students’ success in psychoenergetic work that
the instructor has to pay attention, first of all.
I want to underline once again that the characteristic feature of pagan occult schools is exploration of the astral plane;
for this purpose they even practice special methods of developing the astral
“body”.
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Question: So, does it make sense to develop the astral
“body”?
Answer: No: this is a way to the astral plane, not to God.
The Straight Path to God implies quick cognition of Him and crystallization,
which consists in the growth of the consciousness in the highest spatial dimensions.
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Question: What is Truth?
Answer: The Body of the Absolute in Which Evolution goes.
Our goal is to understand the laws of this Evolution and to advance in compliance with them.
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Question: What does Evolution of God mean?
Answer: In every new cycle of the “manifested” world, that is at the beginning of each Manvantara, God performs a new
“creation of the world”. At that, at the beginning there are three constituents of the Absolute. One of them is used for creation of condensed forms of energy — material carriers of the souls
are formed of
it. The second constituent is that, which will actively evolve through incarnating into those material carriers. But the main
part remains unchanged. It is the Creator Himself.
When this cosmic system has fulfilled its role, it is destroyed — Kalpa is followed by Pralaya. After this a new Creation comes into being and it may turn out to be totally different from the previous one. At that, the Body of the Absolute — in the form of which It will exist at that moment of It’s Evolution — will again
manifest Itself in a threefold way. And the next
convolution of the spiral of the Divine Evolution’s will start.
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Question: How can I make my husband attend our classes? I am persuading him without end — and to no avail...
Answer: Stop persuading him, and then, maybe, he will come some time later... But, maybe he does not need all this.
But please, keep in mind that by frequently repeating our desire we more
often achieve the opposite effect. The same request or offer may be repeated no
more than two times in the same form. If we repeat it in the same form the third
time — we become a bore. And any bore is the one whom it is extremely difficult
to love at close distance; it is possible only to try to tolerate him. No one is
willing to listen to, as well as to see, a person who proved to be a bore!
Being a bore is not just words, it is either energetic aggression (with coarse energies) or bioenergetic vampirism.
Boringness of parents is a typical cause of their loss of contact with their
children. As a result, even the most reasonable offer a child accepts more
readily from other people, than from the parents. The reason is that parents
proved themselves to be bores, intolerable tyrants, whom one is willing to flee
from — but there is no place to go!
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Question: What should I do if this stereotype is already formed in my children regarding me? Children have already grown up; will I ever be able to re-establish correct relationships with them?
Answer: Hardly. You better have new ones.
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Question: How does God teach us?
Answer: First of all, He sends each one into the body of this or that gender, into the specific situation
on the Earth. The latter is characterized by a certain form of religion, a certain opportunity of getting education, a certain form of ethics, to learn or to fight and so forth.
Secondly, He gave all people general principles to which they should adhere while living
on the Earth, recorded in sacred books, and through some people He continues to speak now, preaching, bringing people to reason.
Thirdly, He guides each of us along the life, placing us into a number of specific training situations, where we learn to make correct decisions. The pattern of interaction here is as follows. A person has a certain desire: to get education, to
create a family, to get a degree, to rob someone, to
mock somebody, to take revenge, and so on. God, using this motivation, creates specific situations favorable or unfavorable for their fulfillment, encourages or makes fun
of that person. In each case we should always try to feel and to understand His Will. However, if we do not want to see Him as our Teacher,
then we have to search for the right way as if we were blindfolded. Later, depending on the decision we make, He guides us further — to resolve next problems in this school, or we have to repeat the lesson which we failed, over and over, which is far from being pleasant sometimes.
Nothing happens to us by chance. No one insults, robs, kills us against God’s
Will. Also, our joys and blissful moments are just training situations. God just
brings together those people who have corresponding desires. In this sense,
everything is good! We just have to accept the rules — then it will be more
interesting to play this training game!
Let us remember: it is Evolution taking place within the Body of the Absolute...
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Question: So, it is God who sends murderers?...
Answer: But our bodies have to die! And
is it not better to die
from a bandit’s hand, than of cancer? Now, every fourth death in our city is due
to cancer. So what kind of death would you prefer: quick or slow?
People die in the way they deserve. He, who killed others in this or past life, will get killed with the same kind of pain, so that he could experience this pain and learn to sympathize with the pain of others. Only
repentance can save one from this — sincere repentance, accompanied with compassion toward
the victims, be they people or animals, willingness to expiate the sin with one’s
own pain — then it will be taken into account.
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Question: Does it mean that criminals should not be punished, since they execute God’s Will and will be punished by Him for their sins?
Answer: There’s no need to take vengeance, as well as to curse, get angry, or be afraid.
But, we have to fight with evil, to defend others! This is the duty of kshatriya, through which
one perfects oneself.
And while choosing the measure of punishment for a criminal, one should not
be guided by vengeance, but by the desire to help him or her become better. Only
then can the sentence be just and objective. But this approach does not mean
that all criminals should be released after having listened to a lecture on
morality. Let us see how God acts in such cases and learn from Him!
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Question: If my Goal is clear to me and this Goal is the path to God, should I abandon everything right now and go only into this?
Answer: How do you understand “going only into this”? Every one has to be engaged specifically in that type of activity, which corresponds to the
current stage of one’s development. And this is both exoteric, i.e. usual,
“earthly” occupations, and esoteric ones; but also various. The most general answer to your question may be this: a person develops in the best way in the process of
his/her active Love-service to other people. Apostle Paul said about this the
following: serve with your highest gifts, striving to develop in yourself still higher abilities for service! So let all of us learn and share our knowledge and skills with other people! And this will be the Path to God for each of us.
Only the one who cognized Atman and resides in Him — that one alone, according to Krishna’s
Teachings, is delivered from the duty to be active
on the Earth. But such people act in the same manner as Krishna did, for Love does not allow
them to be idle when there are those who need help.
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Question: I have not eaten meat for a long time, but sometimes I give it to my son when he asks me. Do you think I do a right thing?
Answer: Yes.
There are two factors to be taken into consideration regarding children. First —
“killed” food is not only unnecessary for them, but as harmful for them as it is for
adults. The opinion that proteins that children need can be found only in there, is erroneous, but it is often supported even by doctors. Milk and eggs contain complete sets of
the amino acids that compose the proteins that we need. And it is milk proteins that are optimal for us. By the way, it is well known that
the killing-free diet relieves excessive sexual excitement in children and teenagers, decreases their excessive mobility, and so on.
But on the other hand, a child who turns out to be “unlike others” in our society may face big problems, which may be more harmful than
“killed” food. For example — growth of arrogance and the feeling of being “chosen”. Or, the other way around — other children can alienate one who is
“unlike others”.
The best decision that I see is to give children killing-free food at home, but not to prohibit them from eating “killed” food in other places. And it is important not to emphasize it too much. Give a child a free hand in this.
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Question: Who are those beings from other planets that are spoken and written about so much lately?
Answer: Do not get distracted from God! And creatures from other planets are miracles that God arranges for people to distract them from drinking.
More specifically — those are not comers from other planets but from other spatial dimensions.
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Question: You told us about holotropic breathing, but did not explain its physiological mechanism.
Answer: This problem needs to be studied. Probably, these states are
induced by “washing away” of the carbon dioxide from the organism by the
hyperventilation.
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Question: All of us, who attend classes, started to feel much better. Do you have any statistics regarding this? Are there any observations in relation to children?
Answer: We processed the data regarding the influence of our methods
on health of adults in line with materials of 1986. These data are published in
the books The Complex System of Psychic Self-Regulation and Raja Yoga and Buddhi Yoga. The data
are statistically processed.
There are also positive results of using exercises with chakras with their symptomatic application in a cardio-vascular clinic.
And for all of us the exercises with chakras, microcosmic orbit, latihan, pranava, middle meridian, and others are the constant means of correcting our state. Those who master those practically never get ill. As to doctors, we visit only dentists — sometimes
fillings need to be renewed.
We also have interesting experience concerning children. One of the doctors who attended our classes ran specialized groups with neurologically and mentally diseased children. In particular, she had a group of children with autism. Autism in some of them was
so marked that they did not react to adults; speech contact with them was impossible; they spent all their time in immobility. But when the doctor started proposing them to work on cleansing their chakras in a playful manner (kind of letting sunshine and wind into the
“room” inside one’s chest, driving out all dust from there) —
children became animated and by the end of the term of their stay in
the sanatorium were transformed to such an extent that were eager to perform on the stage at the
farewell party! In control groups of children subjected to usual methods of treatment such impressive results were not observed.
The same doctor had good results of treating with the same method children
with hyperkinesis.
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Question: Is it true that it is possible to direct the soul of the deceased to those regions of multidimensional space that are called paradise? This is dealt with in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. There are also special techniques known in some Buddhist schools. They believe that it is possible to avoid hell in such a way.
Answer: No, all this is not true. After the death of the body, man “settles” in a certain spatial dimension not because
he was brought there by someone or because he likes it there, but in accordance with quite a different principle.
Man
“settles” in that energetic plane to which he accustomed himself while living in the body.
Those who constantly live in coarse emotions, have paved a sure way to hell for themselves, regardless of the place and
the person they will be guided by and of who and how will pray for them.
The one, who lived in sattva, gets to paradise.
And he who habituated himself to living in God, that is in one of the two highest spatial dimensions — that one finds
oneself in God, becomes Him.
One can pass from subtler spatial dimensions into coarser ones. In this way the spirits residing on coarse planes are governed.
But it is impossible to enter subtle planes from gross ones. In The Secret Doctrine by E.P.Blavatskaya, this is expressed in terms of existence of the
“no-trespass line”. But it should be understood in the light of knowledge about multidimensional space.
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Question: Does the place, where a disincarnated person gets to, depend on the cause of his/her death? Does the position of a person who is forcefully disincarnated improve? And is the next incarnation accelerated after forceful cessation of the previous one?
Answer: No, do not look for mechanistic regularities, patterns in God’s actions! Incarnation and disincarnation of people is controlled by Brahman (the Holy Spirit). This is up to Him to decide. He does it for the benefit of everyone, taking into account particularities of a specific person and circumstances as a whole.
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Question: So, is it useful to pray for the deceased and also try to help the deceased with the means that are mastered by Buddhists, who practice Bardho yoga?
Answer: Yes, this is beneficial. But not for the deceased, since he or
she have predetermined his/her destiny and by no means we can influence it.
But certainly it is beneficial for those who are trying to help. Through this they perfect their love, as well as power — if they make meditative efforts in
“leading” the disincarnated one.
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Question: And those prayers for the deceased that are used in the Orthodox Church, do they have any positive meaning?
Answer: Undoubtedly they have. They teach those who pray to care about others, rather than only about themselves.
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Question: Is it true that we chose this country for incarnation, as well as our parents, ourselves?
Answer: This is chosen only by those who have advanced high enough in
the previous lives. In particular, a sufficiently crystallized consciousness is required for this.
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Question: Why do some people remember their past lives while others do not?
Answer: In order to be able to remember what took place in the past life, one
has to have the consciousness developed by the end of the last incarnation — in
order to have that which can remember.
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Question: Does not it seem to you that we all were “placed” into the Soviet Union as a punishment for certain similar crimes we committed in our past lives?
Answer: No, it does not. For there were different conditions in the USSR. See, one could get incarnated in the family of
“serf” peasants who did not have the right to move to another place or the right to pension: village residents did not even have passports until recently! But another one could be born to a family of a member of the Communist Party Central Committee — with material abundance and rights to everything. But this is just an external aspect.
But, there are also problems that do not depend on the place of our birth, as for example — problems of death, diseases, self-affirmation among other people, sexual problems... And in accordance with objective significance, these problems are no less important than political oppression.
However, for us, for our School, the situation in the USSR, I would say, was, on the contrary, favorable.
Better than any other, it encouraged people to undertake spiritual search, provoking to seek the meaning of life — but,
of course, not those who indulged in power and alcohol...
The tyranny of the Communist Party was also favorable for the “hardening of
the warrior’s character”, as Juan Matus said.
I do not know whether our School would have formed if I had been incarnated
in some “decent” democratic country.
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Question: Why does God make it possible that little children die?
Answer: In such cases not only the destiny of the child, but also that of
the parents, should be examined. This situation is created more for the parents
to help them learn something from this. What exactly? — There cannot be one answer for all situations: everyone has to learn what he
or she is ready to learn on the given stage of personal evolution.
You may ask: and what about the child — the child does suffer!
No, the child does not suffer to the extent that we think. Children do not
have that fear of the death of the body as most of adults do.
And death itself is not an objectively terrible event. Objectively, there is no death at all. The body dies, but not the person.
And one more aspect to be considered: who incarnate into those children’s bodies that are destined to die early?
Of course, God does not send highly evolved souls to this.
And for those who incarnate as humans for the first time, it can be useful: they just start to adapt to human way of life, and later — in another bodies —
they will go on in more serious manner.
Or here is another case that I observed myself. A young woman started being idle in her spiritual work and
then voluntarily (having yielded to sickness) left her body, having forgotten that the incarnation is a great gift of God, a great opportunity to become better. And God incarnated her again about two months later — but into
a body, which was unfit for living in it (craniocerebral birth trauma). I spoke to her
after she had left this body. Her despair was immense, since it was only now —
thanks to this situation created by God — that she started to understand the value of having a body! She said,
“The only thing I do day and night is praying God to give me another body — so
that I could put into practice that which you called us to do...”
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Question: But Yogananda told that the cause of our incarnations is our earthly desires...
Answer: Yes, there is such an opinion. But this is not true for the majority of people. It is earthly desires that spur us to action on all stages of development
on the Earth, except the highest ones. And it is in action that we evolve! Those who do not act do not evolve.
For almost all people the causes for actions are desires — desires, which are quite earthly and simple.
In the higher stages of development people become capable of accepting ideas of karma yoga, that is selfless action-service.
And only on the highest stages when a person cognizes the Creator personally, he
has to think about getting detached from everything that attracts him in the Creation.
So it is not correct to preach renunciation of desires to everyone. It is karma yoga that
has to be preached! It can bring harm to no one!
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Question: I heard many times that each person has a double-reciprocal and that meeting with it has certain significance. Can you clarify what it is?
Answer: Those are fables.
But nonetheless, some people really meet doubles — their own and others. So what’s the matter?
Any powerful enough spirit can appear before incarnated people in any
appearance — in the appearance of any person, even of the one before whom it presents itself, in the
appearance of a saint or even that of Jesus Christ. Various spirits can do this — both highly evolved ones and demons.
For what purpose? — To tempt, to allure, to mock
the one who got lost in ethical vices or, otherwise, to
bring to reason, to give advice
through the mouth of a respected person. The assessment criterion here is the same as everywhere —
the ethical one. Everyone has to learn to critically evaluate any information
received. In this way God teaches us Wisdom.
And what is the total reciprocity, with which some of us have worked already? It has nothing to do with what I have just been talking about, including fables. It has other goals and other results; specifically — destruction of
the lower self... But we go into detail concerning these very complicated methods only at
the corresponding levels of students’ development.
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Question: Is abortion a sin?
Answer: In most cases — it is. But this question calls for more detailed consideration.
First of all, if this is a sin, then whose sin is it? In most cases — of the
men, who made their girlfriends risk becoming pregnant. This is a manifestation of utter egoism, of ethical primitivism.
But there are cases when the woman herself provokes the man to such imprudent action. This is a sign of another primitivism — the intellectual one.
Unplanned pregnancy may have two basic consequences: “accepting” of it followed by a birth of a child — or its artificial interruption.
In most cases an abortion is an egotistic choice, a result of the desire to stay away from
the burden of taking care of someone else and to go on with one’s worldly enjoyments. In such a case this is a sin, that is an ethical error that burdens one’s destiny. Any egotistic action is
sin!
And childbearing is necessary to God to proceed with the evolution on the
Earth! But parents also need it — to perfect themselves in love, in helping
others!
And what if a war or a famine befalls? Or if it is nowhere to live? Or a child is to be born with a certain disease? Will not it be a sin to give birth under such conditions?
We may consider such a situation as well (although it is quite rare): a woman may be choosing between a large-scale social service and personal happiness of rearing her baby...
There is another aspect of this problem: is abortion a killing of a person?
In order to answer this question we have to look at the process of incarnation as to when it
happens. There are different opinions concerning this. Some claim that incarnation takes place right at the moment of conception, others — at the moment of birth, along with the first inhaling.
So, how does incarnation proceed? Is the woman’s body or child’s body a kind of a vessel? The soul flew in
and — bang! — it gets corked up and it has to live there?
No. Souls reside in different spatial dimensions in relation to our physical bodies. Over the period of pregnancy the
soul can enter, leave, and pass through the fetus a lot of times...
Incarnation is not an instantaneous act, but a gradual process of blending, “securing” of the soul to the fetus’ body. It may be said that this process is
concluded on the seventh month of pregnancy.
Hence an artificial interruption of pregnancy at early stages (before three months) is just putting a human fetus to death, but not killing of a person.
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Question: Apart from our School there are others that employ methods or raja yoga. Our friends from other places often ask us how they should be treated, which are the best to attend? Do you have any recommendations?
Answer: Ethical criteria are known to you. So let us deal with the methodical aspect.
I should divide all the schools of autogenic training, psychic self-regulation,
qui gong, and
raja yoga into two groups: those who do not work chakras or dantyans and those who do.
Among the former I cannot name those that can inflict any harm with their methods. Each of them targets a certain type of
students and does a lot of help to them — in terms of health, psychic regulation, expansion of their intellectual abilities, etc.
The second group is a different case. Work with chakras or dantyans is a quite serious matter and errors can have significant negative results.
The first example is the assigning of colors to chakras. Someone has devised and wrote that the color scale can be superimposed onto the system of chakras. Since then leaders of a number of schools,
who accepted this concept uncritically, crippled and continue crippling their students.
Chakras are not initially colored (just as they do not have any “petals”),
and they should not be assigned any fixed coloring. All of them in the process of work
have to be brought to the state of the subtlest white goldish.
Every color represents a certain energetic level on the scale of coarseness-subtlety. And if we fix the red, green, violet, or other colors in chakras — we program these chakras to the coarse regime of functioning! This may be useful in some black magic, but on
the Path to God this is a serious hindrance, a trap! Our experience reveals that
followers of such schools are not capable in the current incarnation of refining the consciousness.
Another serious error — work with chakras on the background of “killed” nutrition. This results in gross fixation of chakras and development of coarse power. This is the programming for hell.
There are also attempts to raise Kundalini without preliminary refinement of the organism’s energy and cleansing of corresponding meridians. Such attempts often result in serious ailments.
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Question: We come across facts when some instructors acting from the name of your School perform gross ethical violations, striving only to personal enrichment, resorting to explicit lies, and displaying incompetence. You know, whom I mean. Do you take any measures against this?
Answer: Yes, I am aware of such situations. But think: what would it be like if everyone started tracing errors of everyone else’s, forcing others to become such as
I WANT? You can see it in the example of interstate relations: in such a case only wars take place — either
“hot” or “cold”. While spiritual work, even if it was performed, will recede into the background.
In order to avoid it, wise people devised the principle of
“non-interference into internal affairs”. This is pertinent also to interaction between spiritual schools.
If you see mistakes of another — do not repeat them yourself! And students of those schools, as of all others, have to receive not only positive, but also negative life experience. Only in this way is it possible to gain Wisdom.
You may ask: is not it cruel? — Do not worry unnecessarily: God controls thoughts, desires, and actions of all people! He is responsible for everyone!
He led those students to those instructors! It will be Him who will lead them away when these situations are resolved.
It is sad, of course, that some leaders act on my behalf without my consent.
By the students who read our books can compare the information. They can also
ask us by mail: there is our address in the books.
Let us remember what God says regarding it (I mean our book Talks with God): each one has the right to self-expression! That is, everyone can proclaim himself/herself a leader! And it is up to potential students to decide — from whom to study or from whom not. Through this they develop under God’s supervision.
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Question: You are speaking about big heights... And what if a person does not make large progress on the Path to God, but leads a lot of people?
Answer: This is a very important question.
The other day, I met one of my old acquaintances. He told me that he had just been out of
mental hospital, because he had been “in astral” all the time and other
people had not understood him, and that he had brought a lot of people to God!
And his story is as follows. He read in Vivekananda’s book that each man is a part of God and in this sense he is God. Well, this fellow accepted this thought quite literally. He went to his neighbor in the communal flat and claimed:
“I am God!” His neighbor was an atheist and, naturally, did not believe him. Then my acquaintance got angry and started tossing an iron at him. This is how he got into a
mental hospital for the first time. Since then he gets there each year for several months.
And he claims that he has brought a lot of people to God!
Jesus told regarding this that if the blind leads another blind — won’t they both fall into a pit?
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Question: You speak of immortality as of mergence with God, but Gurdjieff told that immortality is achieved through crystallization of consciousness. How is this correlated?
Answer: First of all, I am expounding not only my own point of view. Krishna dealt with it in detail.
The ultimate immortality can be reached through stable Nirvana in Brahman.
But one of the stages toward it is crystallization of consciousness, which ensures, so to say, not the absolute, but relative, immortality — that is,
the possibility to be active during one’s life in between incarnations. Gurdjieff in his last incarnation was not aware of
the higher abilities of man, so he did not speak about this.
Relativity of “Gurdjieff’s” immortality consists also in the fact that crystallization not necessarily leads to spiritual progress. Crystallization in coarse states of consciousness leads not to God, but away from Him, transforming people to devils.
At the “end of the
world”, those who performed crystallization incorrectly, as well as those who have not attained Nirvana at least in Brahman, are destroyed. Those who have attained it acquire the eternal life (that is, true immortality) in God.
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Question: Is there a possibility to attain mergence with God and Perfection not through the way you are going, that is, a thorough and long work on oneself, but having accomplished one bright and glorious feat?
Answer: No, there is not. The Perfection is achieved through two psycho-energetic processes: first, refinement of consciousness, second — its crystallization. Hence, no matter how clever and selfless we are, we cannot perform it quickly.
As for feats for other people’s sake — they are very beneficial! They are result of making correct decisions (if only they are real feats and not crimes — they are often mistaken). Feats improve one’s karma for the future. So, perform feats!
But not with the aim of “earning” better destiny for oneself: selfish deeds do
not yield the needed result!
I recall one occasion now. An Orthodox old woman sat down next to me and
crossing herself, pronounced:
“Oh, Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord... oh! It is the
eighth day of the month already! And it has just been the first one...
“Oh Lord,
oh Lord, time flies!...
“Skipping meal is bad, eating it is no good, too!...
“Oh,
Lord, oh, Lord!...
“It’s so boring, isn’t it ?!...”
She believes in God, crosses herself. She uses the word “Lord!” in the
cases where others use swear-words. (This, by the way, is a typical feature of
our society of atheists and those of little faith — to curse with the word “Lord!”). There are lots of people like her:
crossing themselves, bored, ill, suffering...
But we, as you know, follow another path. And we are never bored! And we live
in good health and happiness in spite of “thorough and long work on ourselves”!
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Question: Why do people view death as suffering?
Answer: There are three reasons: ignorance, lack of faith, and
egotism. Everything is clear with the first one. The second is expressed in
mistrust toward God — the Creator of everything, Who is Omnipotent and Perfectly
Loving. Egoism is manifested in two ways: in unwillingness to and fear of losing
one’s “I” and in unwillingness to let go of those who give us pleasure. The
latter is expressed in the formula: “Why did you leave me?!”
But Baptists — they do not mourn for the deceased. They say to the one who
has left the body: “Good bye!” and there is culture in this!
Rajneesh taught His disciples beforehand to celebrate His forthcoming
departure from the body, rather than lament and grieve. And so it was done.
There is Wisdom in this!
Once God showed me the grave of one of the students of our School, the grave of her previous body, she was a nun-hermit in an Orthodox nunnery. She later went to the cemetery of nunnery, where God also showed
this grave to her. We would joke then: you go there to mourn over your own grave!...
