Chapter Seven:
Religious Rituals
Alexey began the work on the book “On the Arrangement of the Religious Life of the Russian State”.
It was progressing easily. The words came as if by themselves, and the lines were smoothly falling onto the paper. Everything that he had understood over the course of the many years of his spiritual search, was now coming to fruition.
With each passing day, the work progressed. For example, Alexey wrote down the following thoughts:
“Every human being is endowed — by God — with free will! And no one has the right to force one’s faith upon others! There should be no oppression and, even more importantly, no killing of others, who worship God in other ways — by people who have their own beliefs.
People should not be forbidden to worship and praise God as their fathers and grandfathers did, if those people desire this. Such prohibitions are as absurd as forbidding people to speak their native languages — instead of teaching them to speak in that different language, which is also understandable to others, who live side by side, and which would help in mutual understanding and agreement.
And the understanding should be universally inculcated that it is One God, the Creator of all things, Who is worshiped by all, who are sincere in their love and reverence to Him, regardless of by what name or names they call Him.
This knowledge, when cleverly preached, will gradually reduce contradictions and enmity between communities of people with different beliefs and different religious rites. It can bring peace and harmony in spiritual arrangement and in living side by side — for all people of the Russian state.
There should be a limit only on those cults that are harmful to the health and lives of people — of both the believers themselves, and of those who believe otherwise.
The killing of people or causing them other kinds of harm because of their beliefs is unacceptable! This should be stopped — so that enmity and hatred, strengthened in the memory of generations, do not multiply.
It must be understood by all people through spiritual education.
There is only one God — the Father and the Ancestor of all. This understanding, assimilated from childhood years, will facilitate the education of the new generations of people, for whom hatred to dissenters will be disgusting and unacceptable.
If at present, the people, who come from other states, are allowed to profess their own faith and serve the glory of the Russian state — then why not share this kind-hearted attitude with the people who were born in Russia?”
* * *
Sometimes Alexey went to Blagoslav with his questions. He asked how to make the deep knowledge clearer to many people:
“Why are there rituals in all existing religions?
“Why do these rites sometimes substitute Living God?
“Is it possible to live spiritually without ceremonies at all?”
… Blagoslav was silent for a couple of minutes before replying. Then he spoke, demonstrating that he had thought much about the harmonious arrangement of the religious life of all people:
“Rituals are not always evil… Rituals usually arise from the aspiration of Those, Who have already attained, to convey Their understanding to those who do not yet see, hear, and sense God.
“The rites, in most cases, come from attempts to convey to the multitude of young souls the state of redirecting the attention from the dense world — to the Divine World.
“Unfortunately, the spiritual essence of such ceremonies is usually not kept for long by people…
“The rite of the sacrament is an example for you: if people have communion, that is, they took on symbolically the Blood and Body of Christ — that means they had become parts of the Whole. And therefore, after this ceremony, the One Blood of Jesus must be felt by everyone in themselves. Then they all must perceive themselves and each other — as brothers and sisters in Christ.
“In particular, one cannot raise an arm to the other person: because there is in that person the Divine Flesh and the Holy Blood…
“And, if in the person himself or herself there is now a Particle of Christ, how then can this one have sinful thoughts or do unrighteous actions?
“I want to show you through these examples how the memory of a ritual that has been performed should help one to live with God all the time!
“But for many, is it so right now? How many people understand this rite? What do you think?
“Or, here is another example: many nations worship fire, they commit all sorts of fire ceremonial acts — but they not only do not see the Divine Fire but even do not remember about It!
“Although, in fact, by even just contemplating for a long time the flame of an ordinary fire, one can calm one’s mind and even cleanse the body’s energy a bit…
“You yourself understand how easily rituals lose their intended meaning!
“Sometimes you cannot even guess, what meaning these rituals should carry!
“Rites would not be harmful if the intentions of those, who perform them, were pure. And — if the hearts of God’s worshipers were open!
“But symbols always lose their meaning very quickly…
“And always very soon there come greedy people who want to extract benefit from such rites and obtain power over others.
“Thus, those rites, which exist with a substitution of the meaning, arose…
“For example, instead of eradicating the ‘animality’ in themselves, people began to ‘bring to God’ bloody sacrifices, that is, innocent animals…
“And priests, who have lost God, always find ways to take advantage of the sincere worship of people — and begin to ‘accept’ those ‘victims’… They use those ‘sacrifices’ for themselves, saying: ‘After all, we are servants of the cult!’…
“A rite can replace the communion of the soul with God! Herein lies the sadness: a symbolic action with a lost meaning — displaces the purposeful transformation of the soul!
“I could give a lot of such examples… But another one is more significant…
“Man can speak with God, even when standing before an icon, if he or she means the Living God behind that symbol!
“And sometimes the Divine Souls can even adopt those visions, to which people worship — with all their hearts, but they are not ready yet for more. Those Souls answer in symbols, understandable to each such human soul, — to their appeals and prayers…
“So, for someone — the icon seems to become alive!… For another person — other images become visible by the soul. By them God wants to render help to a person in order to support the right efforts or to keep him or her from making mistakes.
“That is why people, while only just approaching the perception of the Divine World, sometimes have visions of the images, to which they worship.
“And if the aspiration of others is directed at the impersonal Aspect of the Divine, then they do not see images, but perceive immersion in the Light and dissolution of oneself in It.
“All this exists at the disposal of those Souls, Who — from the subtlest worlds — manifest to worshipers what is most tangible easily perceivable for them, in order to guide such souls along the path of cognition.”
“But there are demons, and they, too, can take different forms…”
“Yes, evil and strong souls may take different forms. They feed on people’s energies of fear or arrogance. The low attracts the low…
“This fear of demons and devils sometimes becomes the main tool of the priests to control the crowd of blindly believing young embodied souls.”
“But people should know that infernal creatures exist…”
“Yes, they exist. And it is important to understand this.
“But the only weapon that protects human souls is the love for God!
“The state of pure love defends one from the beings of hell and makes the soul unattainable for their touches!
“And any intensified attention, directed to evil, and also the arising mystical fear — turn souls into ‘tasty sacrifices’ for demons and other entities, which are attracted and are nourished by the emotions of fear, hatred, or complacency…
“It is necessary for people to understand that God never wished for people the sickness and suffering, He did not devise hellish torments… People themselves create those states for themselves and for others! People doom themselves to sufferings!
“But even by suffering, God can help in cleansing the body and soul — and get rid of torment!
“It is very important to understand that God does not punish people! God wishes happiness for people! The Great Parent — like any kind earthly parents — desires only the good for His children, helps to get rid of the bad qualities in souls, and heals them from errors and vices!”
“And how to explain, where does evil come from? People used to think that it comes from Satan. And both evil and hell — they really do exist!”
“It’s as if you have not seen evil?”
“I have seen it…”
“Hell is that evil, which is carried in themselves by embodied souls and is sent from them towards other beings. Then, such souls, when they are without bodies, are the inhabitants of immaterial hell, which is the world of darkness and suffering. They multiply this world by themselves.
“By combining the manifestations of evil in a single image, people created myths about ‘the chief of all the forces of darkness’ and called him by different names… But God has no ‘enemy’, who could be equal to Him in strength and skills, and whose intrigues allegedly seduce people and make them bad!
“There are souls that have many disgusting qualities. They are in opposition to the Divine Principles of Love, Harmony, and Beauty.
“Evil has homes and places for growth — in souls burdened with vices. Such souls can be very big — and then such carriers of hatred and anger can be called devils.
“The pleasure from causing harm to others — can be obtained by only perverted and deviant souls. They do not know about the real happiness from giving their love, from making others happy! But they immeasurably crave satisfaction only for themselves. It is namely this insanity, this spiritual blindness, and this raging of low passions — that are the causes of hell, in which such souls are immersing themselves by their thoughts, actions, emotions, and aspirations.
“So the souls build their destinies — both in their present life in bodies and in the life after the death of their bodies. They remain the captives of those states, in which they lived during the past life in the body.
“Then, in order to redeem themselves by understanding and transforming the evil in themselves — into goodness, the hellish souls again get the opportunity to come to the material world…
“The evil in this world is inevitable: otherwise people, who understand the perniciousness of hatred and fear, meanness and deceit, — would not strive for freedom and purity, joy and love! And the Heroes of Good would not grow!
“Try to explain all this for people — at least in part — with simple and clear words!
“The main thing is that love for the Creator and approaching Him — casts out fear! A strong faith-aspiration defeats doubts! And the life’s spiritual experience gradually turns faith — into knowledge!
“But every soul does not quickly grow up and gain wisdom.
“For example, even images and symbols from meditations can turn into just mechanically repeatable actions…
“I myself, even in our community, saw how easily it is possible: to turn the right meditation into a kind of rite, which is habitually performed by a person only because everyone around does this…
“Now, in your meditations, you can see all the stages of how a soul, before entering the Mergence with the Creator, makes efforts which bring him or her closer to the Creator.
“If one loses — behind patterned actions — that love-aspiration, reverence, and tenderness, which allow one to approach the Divine and to enter Mergence with the Primordial, — then very soon meditations can become… too similar to rituals!
“Only when people have already grown as souls, and when they love God with all their hearts — only then, will they not get off the Path, substituting the desire for Mergence with the Creator — with just ordinary actions!
“Yes… how different are the souls that live on the Earth in bodies! And there are only a few of them, who, like you, can quickly perceive all the knowledge! For this, the soul must grow up, mature, grow in wisdom, and develop in oneself the aspiration to God — as the Main Goal in life!
“Little children turn everything — into games…
“There can be also games of adult (by their bodies) people — for them, it would be useful to strengthen the memory about God and recall rectitude.
“And also there may be harmful games, perverted by priests…
“You, Alexey, have great strength of the soul. For more than just one life, you have been striving to God! You had more than just some techniques and skills that would allow you to acquire the complete purity of perception, clarity of understanding, and the fullness of Mergence with Him!
“But for the young souls, which are less ready, — all of this will be incomparably more difficult. And they cannot overcome all of this during one life, even if you tell them everything that you know now!
“Do not think that any person in a short time can be taught everything that you so easily and quickly mastered! A young embodied soul cannot quickly reject the ‘earthly’ in itself and soar to the Divine, just by simply desiring this!
“Look: this is a forest nut… If you try to remove the shell of the young nut in order to more quickly ripen it — it will not work! While the nucleolus is not ripe — the shell and the ripening fruit are still fused. Only then, when the time has come and the nut is ripe, — can you remove the dense shell and extract the nucleolus.
“Or — if you crack an egg, which has just been laid by a bird, then there will not be a chick in it…
“And a chick cannot fly up until its wings have become fully fledged and have grown stronger!
“But the sequence of meditative techniques and even correctly understood rites can facilitate the spiritual Path and speed up the progress…
“Remember all this — to bring the help to people!”
… Alexey, carefully considering and weighing every word, continued to write down how spiritual leaders should help people.
Book in PDF
