In regards to reforms of spirituality in Russia
Vladimir Antonov
Translated from Russian into English by Aleksey Dikiy
Correctors of the English translation:
Keenan Murphy and Anton Teplyy
Historically, the Orthodox Church has occupied a dominate position in Russian spirituality by the number of its followers.
In spite of all its shortcomings, it has played a decisive and positive role for me in my spiritual formation and further development. I devoted many years of my life to it while I was still a scientist-biologist. It was the Orthodox Church that helped me, a person who was raised in an atheistic family and in the militantly atheistic country (the USSR), to feel the Touches of God for the first time and to choose Him as my personal Teacher and the Purpose of my life.
Since then decades have passed, filled with a continuous search of how to become even better before God in order to more deeply cognize Him and merge with Him by drowning in the Embrace of His Love.
Yes, I feel that I am a successful disciple of God, but what has allowed me to become this? First of all, it was the careful tracing of my own ethical imperfections and the elimination of them. It was the Russian Orthodox Church that gave me this life skill!
As a scientist-biologist, I participated in diverse scientific studies (you can read my autobiographical book How God Can Be Cognized. Autobiography of a Scientist Who Studied God). This experience of scientific research has allowed me to take the skills that I acquired and apply them to the studies of non-material forms of life, including God in His different Aspects and Manifestations. Those studies were recorded and tested many times. This has allowed me, among other things, to create highly efficient systems of psychical self-regulation and of ecological psychology and to expound upon them in our books. At large, all the materials that we have created (books, films, photo galleries, poems, songs, etc. both for adults and children) allow us to speak about the creation of a new direction of modern science — methodology of spiritual development. The core component of this direction can be described as a modern developed Hesychasm (see in Ecopsychology). The systems that we have created differ from the tradition of ancient Hesychasts primarily by their integrity. It is so because they contain integrated and broad knowledge about the bioenergetic structure of a human organism, about the real multidimensionality of space, and about the possibilities of direct communication with God, possibilities that can be realized, among other ways, by being on working sites (places of power) of the Holy Spirits. These systems also include diverse publications with highly significant methodological pieces of advice and instructions received by incarnate people directly from God in the past and at present.
This coming spring will mark 70 years that I have lived in this body. During the past decades of my life as a scientist, who has been in love with the Creator and whose life has been filled with a continuous work, I managed to traverse almost the entire spiritual Path and to help a lot of people in Russia and in other countries on it. From the stages that I have reached, my own past mistakes and the mistakes of others have become clearly visible to me. Therefore, I consider it possible to express my own opinion on the subject of the reformation of the Church that was proclaimed by Patriarch Kirill, a highly intelligent and sincere person and a current leader of the Russian Orthodox Church.
So, I suggest the following:
— It is necessary to remove from the Creed the phrase that depicts Jesus as sitting on the right hand of God-the-Father. We need to do this, because the Creator (God-the-Father) is infinite in size! He does not have the appearance of a human body at all! On the contrary, He is the Universal Ocean of the Subtlest Consciousness, Whose main qualities are perfect Love, perfect Wisdom, and perfect Power! God-the-Father is not an old man sitting on a cloud, and there is no possibility to sit on the right hand of the Infinite One!
This typically pagan concept of God has formed due to the lack of knowledge about Him, and it is contradictory to what Jesus Christ taught. (You can find more details in the books Anatomy of God and The Original Teachings of Jesus Christ. In the last book, the Teachings of Jesus are divided into thematic sections, which greatly contributes to more effective studying of them).
This naive and primitive concept of God rightly causes a condescending smile in all reasonable Muslims who know that Allah Akbar! (God is Great!). For this reason, the majority of Islam followers, to our great regret, do not pay sufficient attention to the study and implementation of the Teachings of Messiah Isa (Jesus Christ).
Additionally, the correction of this and of some other essential views of the Russian Orthodox Church could contribute to its convergence with other religious movements.
Those who have started the religious Path should clearly understand that ritual forms of religious activity can bring only very low benefits to them and that rituals, no matter what a beautiful name is given to them, do not change our destinies automatically! Instead of rituals, we should focus on our ethical self-perfection in accordance with the Teachings of God (You can read about this in our books The Original Teachings of Jesus Christ, Classics of Spiritual Philosophy and the Present, and in others).
— It would be very important for the followers of the Church and for all other people to know that vegetarianism is good! It is a manifestation of love-compassion, which everyone has to develop in himself or herself before this person will become worthy of approaching the Creator by the quality of the soul.
Complicity in causing suffering to animals — for the sake of satisfaction of one’s own gluttony or for other unjustified reasons — cannot be approved by God under any circumstance!
God has not created a human being to be a predator, and this fact is stated twice in the Old Testament, which says that we must eat vegetable food and must not eat the bodies of those creatures in which we can see blood! (more details in the books To Understand God and Ecopsychology).
The predatory way of life of non-vegetarians points out the imperfection of their love. These people create great difficulties for their spiritual growth (more detail in Classics of Spiritual Philosophy and the Present, Ecopsychology, To Understand God, and in others). (Nevertheless, a vegetarian diet should be balanced and based on the scientific knowledge about a correct nutrition; I mean, first of all, that one needs to provide one’s body with essential amino acids and micronutrients, avoid the excessive consumption of salt and sugar, and take into consideration the issue of the indigestibility of milk and of some of its derivatives at certain age periods and the issue of the incompatibility of certain types of food with one another).
— Our problems, including social failures, diseases, injures, pain, and so on, are given to us by God not because of something, but for something. For example, to make us understand what pain is so that we never cause it again to others or to make us stop in doing something and think if I am acting rightly. They can also be caused to make us meet someone important and receive his or her help or give our help to him or her.
— The Holy Spirit is neither a pigeon nor a breath of air. This term has a collective meaning. It is used for People of both sexes Who have attained the Divine Perfection in Their past incarnations in material bodies. Their Abode is the Abode of the Creator. From it, They proceed to help embodied people. There is a Great Multitude of Them. You can learn about some of the Holy Spirits in our book Classics of Spiritual Philosophy and the Present.
It makes sense that we become worthy of having Jesus, His Apostles, and other Holy Spirits as the personal non-incarnate Divine Teachers of every one of us!
— We should remember that the Creator and the Holy Spirits are the subtlest forms of the Consciousness. Emotional coarseness and violence are, on the contrary, the characteristics of the creatures of hell.
After leaving the body, we remain in the same emotional state to which we accustomed ourselves while being incarnated. This, and nothing else, is what determines if we find ourselves in hell, in paradise or, having attained the Perfection, flow into the Creator, enriching Him with ourselves.
Harmonious contacts with living nature, with human children and with the children of animals, with the works of different kinds of art that refine us, as well as subtle erotica and tender sexual communication with our beloved, are the things that contribute to the development of ourselves as souls and move us closer to the Perfection.
Monasticism does not imply celibacy but the full dedication of one’s life to God, that is, to the spiritual self-perfection and to helping others on this Path.
— A human being is neither a body nor a mind, but a soul. He or she, as a soul, can exist in the incarnate or non-incarnate state.
Intelligence is one of the functions of the soul. Being in the non-incarnate state, one thinks on the same level as one thought while living in the material body. After disincarnation, the level of the intellect remains the same.
It is fundamentally wrong to oppose oneself and one’s soul (or to oppose someone and his or her soul). On the contrary, it would be appropriate, under certain circumstances, to oppose oneself and one’s material body.
Such habitual expressions as “my soul”, “his (her) soul”, “our souls” are completely wrong. However, they became anchored in religious literature (including in some translations that are not completely adequate of books) and in prayer practice.
This error must be corrected. It is important to do, because every one of us should work on the transformation of himself of herself as a soul before the Face of God and should try to understand and see how God perceives these efforts.
In this case, we also should take into account that in what qualitative state we disincarnate, in the same state we continue living incorporeally after our disincarnation (i.e., after the death of the body).
At present all people have heard about the soul, but they think about it as something incomprehensible that will appear before God after one’s death. And because it is something incomprehensible for them, they do not know what to do with it…
Nevertheless, it would be correct to understand that every one of us is a soul that was sent by God to the material world so that it can grow and develop itself by making corresponding efforts for that.
— The meaning of our lives becomes clear only if we take into account the knowledge about the Evolution of the Universal Consciousness, the knowledge that was taught by Jesus Christ as well (see The Original Teachings of Jesus Christ, Ecopsychology, Life for God, and our other books).
There is not any “judgment-seat of Christ”! (The words that were supposedly said by Jesus about His right, given by God-the-Father, to judge people are nothing but a wrong translation. The correct translation should be “to know people”, “to discern their main qualities”).
The fear of God does not contribute to the development of love for Him and to becoming closer to Him by the quality of oneself as a soul!
Subtle emotional love, on the contrary, is what brings souls together and unites them!
God is Love, and this means that striving for Him, we also should learn to love!
One of the ways of learning to love, ways that were created for us by God, lies through the sphere of sexual relations. (In this case, the ethical component of such relations must be very carefully observed)!
— Sins are the concrete manifestations of our vices. The task of repentance is to learn not to sin. We need to cleanse ourselves as souls of all vices!
The strong souls can free themselves of their vices at once, as soon as they notice them. Other souls, on the contrary, need to work on themselves for a long time to achieve the same result.
In any case, a sin that was committed a long time ago is in no way a reason for a lifelong cry! The only thing that is necessary is to learn not to sin anymore!
It is also meaningless to beg for God’s forgiveness for the committed sins! Instead, you just need to learn not to sin!
Probably, the regular practice of the perception of oneself on the Palm of God can be of great help to many people. He indeed constantly watches all the actions, words, thoughts, and emotions of every one of us! It is impossible to hide from His Sight!
Why don’t the majority of us see Him? Because we and God normally exist in different layers of the multidimensional space (called eons in Greek or lokas in Sanskrit).
However, it is quite possible to cognize Him. In order to accomplish this, we just need to get rid of emotional coarseness and egocentrism and to become worthy of approaching Him by the ethical criteria.
— Abortions are indubitable evil, but, as a general rule, it is not poor women who have to be blamed for them but primitively selfish men who caused unintended pregnancy by their careless behavior (see Sexology).
— Only those people have a right to call themselves Christians who really fulfill the Teachings of God, and not those who just received baptism.
— Jesus taught and teaches His followers how to master subtle love for each other. This love should then develop into love for the Creator. The essential components of this love should be unselfishness and even willingness to self-sacrifice for the sake of others. The earthly life of Jesus is one of the examples of this.
In Orthodoxy, however, there exists a diametrically opposed movement that is antichristian by its nature and that was created by Ignatius Bryanchaninov. According to him, we all are hopeless sinners, merely because our ancestors, Adam and Eve, “have sinned”. We all are doomed to hell! So the only thing that we can do while we have not died yet is to pray and pray to God and all the saints to save us from hell!
Ignatius Bryanchaninov even conducted special studies on the process of dying of his disciples-monks. From them, he concluded that even such “great ascetics” ended up in hell! “How then can simple laypeople hope for paradise?!”, he thought.
Ignatius was completely right that people who have spent their earthly lives in prayer parasitism according to his teachings and who entirely got stuck in negative emotional states find themselves in hell!
Having realized this, we should conclude that it is necessary to live in the opposite way!
That is why I propose to abolish the prayer books and other books of the Bryanchaninov doctrine as malicious and anti-Christian literature.
At the lower levels of the Orthodox hierarchy, the anti-Christian Bryanchaninov tendencies are widely present in the form of angry condemnation of all non-Orthodox people and hatred towards them, as well as towards the representatives of non-Slavic nationalities, towards people of “non-traditional” sexuality, etc. Victims of the Bryanchaninov doctrine manifest their religiosity, besides rites, through looking for witches, vampires, and other creatures of hell around them. They live in chronic mystical fear and long for “protective magic”. The term “aggressive primitives” can be used when referring to their “pastors”. The schizophrenic psychosis of the masses of their hapless followers, who additionally become firmly programmed to hell, is the fruit of their work! Beware of such “pastors”!
Let us understand the fact that whom we direct our attention to, the very same we attract to ourselves! By directing our attention to the creatures of hell, we involuntarily attract them to ourselves, they cling to us as souls and enter our bodies…
Instead, we must direct our attention to God: to love Him and to learn from Him!
(The materials of the book Life for God will allow you to understand this problem more deeply).
I believe that it would be appropriate to consider the Bryanchaninov doctrine as an anti-Christian destructive heresy and expel the preachers who follow it from the Christian movement.
The alternative to the Bryanchaninov doctrine is the explanation of the Teachings of Jesus Christ to the masses of believers so that they can study them and master them. As for meditation practices, they can “open” and develop their spiritual hearts.
Let us all remember that Christianity is God’s Teachings about love! Those who impose — on behalf of the Church — the substitution of love for hatred and mystical fear are the enemies of God, enemies of Jesus Christ and Christianity, enemies of those poor people who fell under the influence of these villains, enemies of the entire society that has to bear the burden of its numerous psychotic members!
— Not all who are in the list of Orthodox saints deserve it. It is so because true saints are only Those Who have attained Divinity in Mergence with the Creator. (“Only God is Holy!” — Jesus taught).
We glorify true Saints so that people can emulate Them and learn from Them.
Criminals, on the contrary, should not have any place in the list of saints!
— It makes sense to move Christmas to January 1st, because the counting of days in each calendar year begins from this date in the majority of countries. In other words, this fact implies that a baby boy Jesus was born on this precise day. The celebration of Christmas on other days looks like an obvious and nonsensical misconception. (Let us take into account that the factual date of Jesus’ birth is unknown).
— It is necessary to suggest that people refuse vain killing of spruces and other trees for Christmas holidays. These living plants are animate beings, that is why we need to develop compassion for them. A person who has developed love will not maim them or kill them unjustifiably!
… So, Christianity is the Teachings of God about how we should live in Light and Purity, Tenderness and Care, in tender love, without emotions of condemnation and anger, without conflicts, in humility, forgiving others, learning from God and loving Him without causing any harm to anyone unless it is absolutely necessary.
The direct communication with Jesus and with other Holy Spirits, the Embraces and Mergences with Them is what brings the greatest Happiness and Bliss of the highest level!
May Russian Orthodoxy become all this! Then Russia would be able to lead — along this Path of God — not only its citizens but also people of other countries and of the entire Earth!
